Magdala sprang to her feet. “Don’t get murdered until I get back,” she ordered.
“I’ll do my utmost,” Asherton replied.
Zephyr was still in the dining room, peering through a set of binoculars at a blue heron wading in the pond outside. “What are you doing here?” he asked without turning.
“I need a favor. Could I have an advance on my salary? I know it's alot to ask …”
Zephyr huffed. “An advance on your salary? So far, you’ve proven a negligible bodyguard. Why should I do you any favors?”
Magdala balked at this. “The prince is alive.”
“Alive, but there was another attempt on his life,” he said. “Which you both chose to keep from me. You expect to keep secrets about the health and safety of my son …” He bit down on the word and lowered his binoculars. “Ward,” he corrected, raising them again. “And then ask me for your salary after less than two days?”
“I find myself in an unusual situation … I have a family member in need …”
“Prove to me that you can do your job, and I will consider paying you early.”
Magdala chewed her lip. Even if she did give Asherton the amenite tonight, it would be weeks of trial, then probate, then moving. There wasn’t any money attached to the Elegy estate, so her father would have somewhere to sleep and put his furnishings, but nothing to buy flour or hire servants. And he would insist on renovations that he couldn’t afford. Where would the silk jackets come from? The leather shoes? How would he pay to replace the gnawed curtains or shine the scuffed floors?
If she wanted to keep her father off the streets, Magdala needed to earn an honest living before she could throw Asherton out of the house. Which meant she had to stay at least a week, and she had to prove to Zephyr that she could protect the prince.
“If, one week from now, the prince is happy and whole, will you pay me early?”
“Of course, Miss Devney,” Zephyr replied. “I would be more than happy to.”
Predictably, Asherton had not remained in the sunroom. Assuming he’d gone to his bedroom, Magdala headed toward the stairs, but she took a detour through the cavernous ballroom. Ornate murals decorated the far wall, a floor-to-ceiling mirror the other. The floor was a mosaic of green-and-blue tile spiraling to a round piece in the center, painted with two orange fish circling one another. When Magdala was little, her father would not allow her to dance on the burnished tiles unless she wore her best shoes.
In a fit of inexplicable defiance, Magdala slipped off her boots. The cold floor chilled her bare feet as she raised her arms above her head and turned in a slow pirouette. Her dance teacher had said she was awkward and graceless, but when she was on the Wildlands with her mother, her body knew how to move, guided by the wind and the rain, the fiddles and pipes of her mother’s people. Smiling, her eyes closed, she spun in a reckless whirl, her hair flying, her feet squeaking on the tarnished grandeur of her father’s tile. The world blurred, and she imagined music guiding her. Her hair came loose and flew around her in a joyful tangle. She bumped into the mirror and turned to laugh at herself, but when she gazed into the glass, her reflection stared back with blue eyes.
Magdala started away from the glass with a gasp. She blinked and her eyes were hazel again. Goosebumps spread down her arms.
The ghost. Surely, it was the ghost. There was no other explanation.
“And you said you couldn’t dance.”
Asherton’s voice sent her heart into her throat.
“Why are you creeping about?” she snapped, her hand on her chest. “I told you to wait for me!”
He was leaning against the wall, grinning at her. “If you’d agreed to dance with me upon our first meeting instead of putting a knife to my throat, we could have had a lot more fun. Picture us, the bastard prince and the Russuli expatriate, scandalizing the whole court.”
Magdala’s cheeks burned so hot she feared her sweat would simmer. Because that did sound fun. In a horrible, devil-may-care way.
Asherton pushed off the wall. “Let’s say I’ve read you wrong and you’re not trying to kill me. What happens to you if I die, Devney? Do you lose your position? Will you ever get a posting again? Or tell me truthfully, would you get a medal?”
He moved closer, a reckless gleam in his eyes. She backed into the mirror, and he braced his arm against the glass above her head, leaning in.
“The heroic bodyguard,” he continued, “who rid us of that troublesomebastarddestined to curse us all.”
“Maybe they would,” she said. “Maybe I should let the assassin shoot you here.” She meant to shove him, but she cowered at the last second, lost momentum, and found herself with her hand flat on his chest, over his heart.
“Or do it yourself,” he said softly. “I sleep a stride away every night. What’s stopping you?”
Magdala wondered why he was goading her again. Perhaps some dark part of him wanted her to try.
Magdala smiled coquettishly. She’d never donned a coquettish smile in her life, but Asherton made her act strange. Stars above, she needed to get off this island before it ruined her. “Kill a man while he sleeps in his bed? What would be the fun in that?” she said.
Asherton let out a burst of laughter as she ducked under his arm and passed him into the hall.
