“You will make a fine king …”
“That’s not what you said before.”
“I take it back. I’ll help you, and so will Zephyr. We’ll make sure everything works out.”
He nodded slowly. “Thank you, Mags.”
“And no more assassins.”
“It’s not as though I paid them myself. I just didn’t run away from them either.”
“Well, next time, run away!”
Asherton fell silent as he gathered her hair into his hands again and began to weave the tresses together. “I’m not much at braiding,” he said. “But it’ll do. Let it out in the morning and see what I mean.” He stood and walked to the bed, lying down on top of the covers.
“Can I trust you?” she asked him. Her voice sounded thin, fragile.
“Yes,” he said. “Can I trust you?”
“Yes.”
“Goodnight, Mags.”
“Goodnight, Ash.”
Magdala lay awake and gazed at the ceiling. Her hair smelled like him now, carrying his scent into her dreams.
Chapter 25
Magdala awoke to footsteps on the bedroom floor. With a gasp, she snatched her shotfire from under her pillow and lunged at the intruder. Her arm was across their throat, and the shotfire barrel pressed between their eyes before she realized it was Zephyr.
Tangled in the covers like he’d wrestled them and lost, Asherton mumbled, “It’s barely dawn. Just let them murder me, for mercy's sake.”
Zephyr stared back at her, his eyes wide and the tea tray dripping camfe on the carpet. “Very good,” he said, his shock resolving into a paternal smile.
“Why wasn’t the door locked?” Magdala snapped, stepping back and sinking onto her cot. She felt unusually irritable, like Zephyr had come in the room specifically to annoy her. “I locked it before I went to sleep.”
Her hair had come out of the braid in the night and fell around her shoulders in perfect coils, upsettingly soft and smelling of cedar. She wanted to bind it in a tight knot atop her head where she couldn’t see it or smell it.
Asherton yawned and sat up, stretching. “I got up in the night and went down to the kitchen to …”
“NO!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “Did you not listen to a single thing I said last night?”
Asherton glanced guiltily at Zephyr. “I’d rather you didn’t mention our conversation last night,” he whispered to her.
“Then stop being impossible,” she hissed.
“I can’t spend my whole life cooped up in my room.”
Magdala wanted to hit him. She wanted to get her hands around his throat and throttle him. She wanted to press her lips against his and feel his rough hands on her back and inhale his scent …
He took a teacup from the tray and lifted it to his lips. Magdala slapped it out of his hand, and it shattered on the floor.
Zephyr let out a yelp of horror and covered his mouth with his hands. “That was seven centuries old.”
Magdala winced. “I’m sorry, Zeph.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, his voice shrill. “It’s just, the clay used to make it doesn’t exist anymore.”
