“I’m stronger than you!” Magdala argued.
“You’re … what? You are not!”
“Go! Before it eats us both!”
“Devney.” Asherton’s eyes sparked, and she imagined, could he have freed his hands, he would have shaken her. “You are terminally stubborn! GO!”
“I’m the bodyguard, so I stay and you …”
But before they could finish the argument, footsteps pounded on the grass and glass shattered beside them. Dozens of wriggling green caterpillars crawled over Lewis’s stem. He hissed and curled in on himself, hiding his vulturous beak under his vines like a bird sleeping with its head under its wing.
Asherton slid off Lewis and lay panting in the grass. Magdala flopped beside him.
“How did he get out?” Zephyr demanded, rolling a wheelbarrow past her. He hefted Lewis into it and trundled back into the greenhouse, muttering to himself.
Anger simmered behind Magdala’s breastbone; she wanted to jump up, grab Asherton by both arms, and shakehim, but her legs were steady as jelly; she couldn’t find the energy to stand.
“You absolute …” Asherton tremored.
“Oh, shut up,” Magdala snapped.
“We could have been eaten because you wouldn’t listen to me and just …”
“We were almost eaten,” she interrupted sharply, "because you keep man-eating plants in the greenhouse! That’s the only reason.”
“He’s never attacked me before. Lucky he did, though, since I saw you in the window with the shotfire.”
Magdala dropped her arm over her eyes. “Yes, Your Highness, I was about to shoot you but decided I’d spare a minute tosave your lifefirst.”
“Ah, but you don’t get paid if a plant eats me, do you?”
“Are you trying to convince me to assassinate you? Because I didn’t intend to when I got here, but I’m beginning to change my mind.”
Magdala considered rolling over and punching him in the nose, but something stung her shoulder. Her fingers brushed over a soft bulge under her shirt.
“One of your blasted worms is stuck to me!” She clawed at it, but it clung to her like a leech, its green light pulsing through her black blouse. “It is hurting me! It stings.”
Asherton sat up and caught her wrist. “Don’t tear at it! The venom will release faster.”
“Venom?” she gasped, jumping to her feet. “Are you serious?”
Asherton gripped her arm. “Don’t move!”
Magdala’s head spun. She took one step and her knees buckled.
“Skat!” Asherton caught her as she sank to the grass. Magdala’s chest squeezed, the world spinning like a top.
As her eyes drifted closed, she murmured, “I hate you.”
Chapter 19
Magdala sometimes wondered if she might be part seer. She had abnormally frequent dreams—lucid, symbolic, and strange. Sometimes, she dreamt memories mixed with portents. Her mother, who was so strong with magic her fingers let off violet sparks when she cracked her knuckles, swore that Magdala had the gift of second sight.
As Magdala lay unconscious, she pictured her mother again, standing on the crest of a hill as two men in red livery lifted Magdala onto a dragon’s back. The trees were flushed crimson, the rolling wildland moors purple with autumn. Tears tracked down her mother’s cheeks.
This was the agreement. Every autumn, she returned to Elegy and her father, her warm days of wildness locked away until spring. She would not see her mother until the royal cherries bloomed and the frogs sang in the ponds. She did not know why her parents never saw one another, or why her mother fled Elegy in the night when she was still a babe in arms. But her mother must have had a good reason.
“Why can’t you come, too?” Magdala called over her shoulder. The dragon’s wings beat, flattening the heather. A grouse scurried from the underbrush.
