“I’m collecting eggs for our breakfast. The chickens like to roost in the hedgemaze, and I spent half the nightdreaming of bloody jackets and battlefields and needed to clear my head.”
“I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight.”
He spun on her suddenly, and she stumbled back a step, startled. “Do you think I am stupid, Miss Devney?” he asked.
Magdala blinked rapidly. The air had grown thin around them. “Yes,” she whispered.
A smile flashed across Asherton’s face, and he closed the space between them, his head tilted to the side, like she was a scientific puzzle. He was so close, his loose shirt brushed her chest.
“Do you want to know what else I think about you?” Magdala asked.
“Everything,” he replied. A tremble ran through him. Was he trying to seduce her? The thought both inflamed and revolted her. To want this man would be the ultimate betrayal, the farthest fall. She moved her hand to her knife, and his smile flickered but didn’t fade.
“I think you’re a slovenly, indolent princeling living in a house that doesn’t belong to you, raised by a man who isn’t your father, and set to inherit a throne that is not your birthright,” she said.
Asherton raised his eyebrows. “Right on all counts.”
“Now back away.” She shoved him. Inhaling sharply, he looked down at his body like he expected to find a knife in his stomach. With a jolt, Magdala recognized his game.
“Are you … are yougoadingme?” she cried. “Are you trying to make me put my knife to your throat again?”
Asherton dusted his shirt sleeves, assiduously avoiding her eyes. “That would be insane.”
“And you’re the picture of sense.”
Asherton cut a quick glance at her, then spun on his heel and waded deeper into the maze.
“You flatter yourself,” Magdala said to his back. “Myonlyreason for being here is so I can rise in my career as bodyguard to the king. That is how careers work, you know. For those of us who do actually work. We start at the bottom and move upward, and the higher we rise, the more money we make. You’ve heard about money, I assume? Those lovely shiny coins that make the jingly sound when you shake them?”
Asherton let a branch spring back and slap her in the face. “You’re not amusing, Miss Devney.”
“I am amusing.” She smirked. “But you have a bad sense of humor. I don’t find you interesting,” It was a lie, but she executed it with skill. “And I don’t care what happens to you as long as I get paid.”
“I don’t believe that. You have this …” Stopping, he turned and considered her, his eyes sharp and skeptical. “... this heat under your dutiful facade. I don’t think there’s a single mercenary nerve in your body. You value loyalty, Devney, but you want something else. Something that the royal guard can’t give you.”
Magdala wanted to bite back with a witty riposte, but before she could reply, he cut to the right, veering down an overgrown path. Magdala regretted her moment ofweakness the night before and wished she’d given him the amenite when she had the chance.
Asherton turned, walking backward. With every step, Magdala expected him to trip and fall, but he kept his feet. His mood was manic, but his eyes were sad. He had the strange energy of a man about to throw himself off a bridge.
“What do you do for fun?” he asked abruptly.
Hunt, dance, sing, run barefoot over the fells chasing a kestrel, wade naked in the loch, daring the dragons in the black water to snatch me up.
“Nothing,” Magdala said. “I work.”
“But when you’re not working?”
“I’m always working.”
“I like to grow mushrooms, propagate frogs, and I have a waterlily garden coming along nicely.”
Magdala’s frown deepened. “What do you do in winter?”
“I read scientific books on growing mushrooms, propagating frogs, and planting waterlily gardens. And sometimes I indulge in a novel.”
Magdala adored novels. Her father, Julian, the other guards—they all mocked her for reading them, so she hid them under her mattress. Maybe at Elegy, she could read a good romance, undisturbed. “And when you are king?”
“I’ll never be king,” he said with a ringing laugh that sent a chill down her spine. “Haven’t you heard? I’m cursed. I’ll die young.”
