As Magdala followed Julian, her conscience pricked her. She could not shed the conviction that she was betraying her father and her heritage by protecting the prince tonight.
I’m not protecting the prince, she told herself.I’m protecting the villagers and the other guards. I’m protecting Julian from the rioters and their trampling feet.
There had been a day when protecting Julian would have lit a fire in her heart, but now she just wished he’d been assigned to link arms with someone else. Her father had poisoned him. Maybe, she thought, the cursewasreal, andit had already rebounded upon the city of Largotia. Maybe the people and their hatred were the curse.
“I can’t do this,” Julian said.
“Do what?” Magdala asked, irritated.
“I know our duty is to hold back the mob, but you know how dangerous that will be.”
Magdala crossed her arms. “Angelonia has made you soft.”
Julian frowned. Magdala suspected that he was both proud and ashamed of his alliance with the pixie duchess. On one hand, he was marrying wealth and prestige; on the other, he was leaving the sweaty, gritty, leather-rash and knuckle-bruise life of the guardsman. And that was its own kind of lowering. Something no amount of crystal, diamond, or dragon ivory could lift.
“It’s not that,” he snapped. “There is a new heir now. Asherton is a threat to the kingdom, and if he survives to his coronation, he could involve us in the war with Ashkendor and dismantle our whole economy. He could bring the curse down on Allagesh.”
“Don’t think about that,” Magdala said to herself in equal measure. “If we don’t hold the line, people could get trampled. A guard could be injured ...”
“We just need to let them get at the coach for a few minutes. It’ll be over in seconds. Come, Devney, you of all people …”
Magdala held up her hand to silence him. “Don’t question my loyalty. Even without a curse, I despise Prince Asherton.I wish he was dead, but tonight we are guards and our personal prejudices don’t matter.”
“How can you stand there and think of your father in that miserable little mousehole he lives in and tell me you mean to protect the man who stole your home? Magdala.” He caught her elbow and pulled her closer, his nails sharp on her skin. “You should be learning to dance, to run a household, courting a duke’s son …”
Magdala’s lip wrinkled and she jerked away from him. She knew how to dance. Her mother had taught her when she visited her in the Wildlands. When she was a happy, barefooted girl. Free, untethered, uninhibited. The queen of the heath, the whole rolling moorland her palace, the spotted hinds her subjects. Julian could never imagine her that way. And neither could her father. She was split, two warring women trapped in one body.
You never could give yourself to the cause, her father had said a hundred times. But she didn’t like the empty boasting and fruitless riots of her father’s little band. They lacked cunning. If she were to cut the prince’s throat, she would do it so slyly, no one would ever discover her.
“If Asherton dies, as the curse says he will, Elegy will be empty and I am to be a duke soon,” Julian murmured in her ear.
Magdala realized where Julian was headed. “Are you saying that, should Asherton die, you could use your position to restore my father’s fortunes?”
“If the prince is gone, then yes, I would do that for you.”
“Why?” Magdala asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Because I respect your father.”
Magdala chuffed. “What’s the real reason?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Julian hissed. “Will you let the crowd break through or not?”
The room was so hot and crowded, Magdala couldn’t think. Her head pounded. “I don’t … I don’t know. You should have introduced this to me earlier so I could think about it. It’s a lot to throw at me now.”
“It’s not a complicated decision,” Julian said. “All you have to do is let the crowd through. We’ll be lucky if we can hold them back anyway.”
Magdala looked dubious. “Have you heard of Fennimore the Flat?”
Julian’s eyebrows pinched. “Who?”
“He was a royal guard who let the people break free during a night like this, and he was trampled so severely, they said his body was as wide as half the village square, and paper-thin.”
Julian crinkled his nose. “You’re revolting.”
“No, Fennimore the Flat was revolting. Soon, he’ll be forgotten in favor of Julian the Jammed.”
“Oh, shut it, Magdala. You’re such a little coward,” Julian snapped.
