She wanted to resist, but he felt warm and familiar and like a friend. Her throat ached and her eyes stung. “Alright,” she relented, but only because he would be behind her and she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“I am a man, mind you, so not an expert, but I have curly hair, too …”
“A little shorter than mine, I fear,” Magdala said.
“No wonder you’re a bodyguard, with those observation skills.”
She let out a soggy laugh. Asherton twined his fingers in her tangles, gently separating the curls while making disapproving clucking sounds with his mouth.
“I have just the thing …” he jumped up and hurried into the washroom, his bare feet padding on the marble, returning a moment later with a dragon bone hair pick and an amber glass bottle.
“This”—he tossed Magdala’s hairbrush aside—“you do not need. Now, this is what I use on my hair, and it works wonders.”
Magdala’s shoulders tensed. Rain ticked against the windowpane. The fire crackled. Magdala pretended she was passive—that she wasn’t both thrilled and terrified by Asherton’s fingers kneading her curls, and the pick gently working out the knots. That the warmth of his body, so close to her, didn’t inexplicably break her heart.
“The scent of this is masculine, so I’m sorry,” said his smooth voice, just behind her ear. The room filled with the aroma of cedar as Asherton poured oil from the amber glass bottle into his palm, then grabbed fistfuls of her hair, working the oil into it.
Magdala shut her eyes and tilted her head back. There it was again, the sensation that she was reaching across a void, but now she imagined a calloused hand—with dirt under the fingernails—reaching back.
“Do you know how the assassin is getting on the island, Ash?” she asked.
His hands stilled. “No.”
“But you knew he was there.” The truth clicked in her mind like a gear sliding into a pinion. “At the greenhouse, you thought I meant to shoot you, and you turned toward me anyway. You lost me on purpose in the maze. You sent me into the washroom and sat in front of the window. Why?”
He rested his forehead on her shoulder. She tensed, then, haltingly, she leaned her head against his hair.
“Why?” she asked. “Just tell me why.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“But you did make yourself a target?”
He exhaled slowly. “I did.”
“Why?”
He didn’t reply.
“You’re a cruel, selfish …” She pulled away from him, and her hair slid through his fingers. “How could you do this to Zephyr? To me?”
Asherton let out a defeated sigh. “Mags, Zephyr was very happy before I came along. I have filled his life with worry and stress and mud …”
“Go and ask him right now!” she said, her voice rising. “Go and ask him if he cares about all those things more than he cares about you!”
“He doesn’t know what’s best for him. And he’s paid to look after me, the same as you.”
“Then what about me? How could you do this to me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t want to die, alright? I’m not suicidal …”
“Then what the hell is all this?” she cried, pointing at the broken window.
He scooted toward her and she did not back away. “What if someone comes after me, and Zephyr gets in their way? What if you get in their way?”
Magdala’s fingernails dug into her palms. “Do not tell me you hired your own assassins so they could kill you on your own terms.”
“I didn’t. But there were times when I knew they were there, or I thought you were the assassin, and I didn’t resist because no one else was around, and it seemed the safest time for it to happen.”
