“You don’t believe in the curse.”
“Neither did my brother.” A twig snapped, and she turned toward it, but it was only a rabbit moving in the hedge. “Curse that jacket,” he said, walking faster. “Curse the war, curse Marwenna and her cruelty and Madelaine and her cowardice.”
His shifting moods left Magdala reeling. He was sunshine one moment, storms the next. It was dizzying.
“My brother was five years my elder,” Asherton went on. It came out in a rush, like a confession. “When he was in trouble a few years ago, he stayed with me here for a summer. We made plans—plans to rule the kingdom together someday. To end the dragon trade and the wars, and he would be my royal dragon master and I would be king, but now…” His voice trailed off. “And he was ill back then, so I should have known it would end in tragedy.”
Magdala’s heart squeezed. This task had seemed so easy when Huxley presented it to her. Asherton was one of a cloud of faceless royals, too insipid and immoral to love anyone but themselves. She wondered what she would tell Huxley if Asherton was right, and she wasn’t mercenary enough to do this after all.
She forced herself to think of her father. Of his big shoulders filling that tiny cottage. She forced herself to remember the way the muscles in his arms had atrophied when they ate nothing but turnips and potatoes for a month and a half because they could not afford meat. She recalled Julian’s staring eyes in the moonlight. Asherton had killed him. Driven a knife into his chest.
Everyone is sad when their brother dies, even murderers.
Lost in her own thoughts, Magdala didn’t notice when the prince disappeared down a new pathway. When she looked up, Asherton had vanished.
“Your Highness,” she called, alarmed.
“Keep up, Mags!” His voice carried through the thick hedge. She rushed toward it, but the passage dead-ended.
“I need to stay with you!”
“Then catch up!”
With a growl of frustration, Magdala took her knife and cut at the shrubbery.
“None of that, Mags,” Asherton sang. “These are ancient hedges. I’ll stand right here and wait for you. Go to your right, then your left, then left again, and you’ll reach me.”
Throwing up her hands in frustration, Magdala followed his directions, but reached another dead end.
“You Highness!” she bellowed. “You’re not here!”
“Oh, sorry, two rights then a left,” Asherton called. “I’m terrible with directions. Double back and try again.”
Clenching her fists, Magdala retraced her steps and tried again, but before she turned the first corner, a set of boots crunched on the gravel.
“Your Highness?” she called. The boots fell silent. She peered through the branches and made out a blue eye gazing back at her.
Magdala’s heart leaped into her throat and she jumped, her back scratching on the shrubs. No one on the island had blue eyes, so either it was a ghost … or an assassin.
The boots crunched away, toward the place where she’d last heard the prince.
Magdala paused, her heart in her throat. She should call out to him, warn him. She should tear through the hedge and chase the assassin down. But her feet remained rooted to the ground.
Or she could tell everyone how the prince, stubborn and wild in his habits, had wandered away into the maze. She had done her best, but the assassin was too quick for her. She’d inflict a few mild cuts and bruises on her arms and face, so she could pretend she put up a fight. No amenite and no confessions necessary.
It made sense to leave the assassin alone and let the prince fend for himself.
Maybe it was because she believed the Only watched her from above, frowning at her heartlessness. Maybe it was because she wanted to look at herself in the mirror. And maybe it was curiosity—Asherton was himself a labyrinth unsolved, but she hardly recognized her own voice when she screamed, “YOUR HIGHNESS, LOOK OUT!” Ignoring Asherton’s warning not to cut the shrubs, Magdala tore through the hedge, her hair and clothes scraping. Scratched and bleeding, she broke through to the path and ran after the crunch of retreating boots on gravel.
She skidded around the bend. She’d reached the center of the maze. A marble statue of a faerie woman with a melancholy face frowned down at her, its eyes glowing faintly. Asherton stood beside it, his back to her.
“Your Highness!” she cried. She expected him to turn with a knife in his chest, or his throat slashed. But he was unharmed.
He fixed his eyes on her knife and lifted his hands. “Now? Before breakfast?”
Bewildered, Magdala scanned the surroundings. “There was someone in the bushes. A pair of boots and …”
“I’m sure there was,” he said sarcastically. “If you’re going to do it, just do it. This is as good a place as any.”
