“That door is hundreds of years old!” Zephyr protested.
Asherton ignored him. His face shadowed with rage, he marched across the room to Magdala and knelt in front of her. She couldn’t look at him. She was so ashamed. She wished he would shout at her, swear at her, tell her she was scum and he hated her. But he didn’t. Trembling, he lifted her roughly in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I really, really …”
Asherton didn’t reply as he strode out the broken door.
“Don’t trust her!” Zephyr growled. “She’ll cut your throat!”
“Enough, Zeph,” Asherton said.
“That woman will be the death of you!”
“ENOUGH!” Asherton spun on Zephyr, and Magdala could feel the anger tremor through him. “Can no one remember that I am the future king, and until I am dead,this ismy house! I will not allow you to murder the help, however justified it may be, and I will not have you or anyone else defy me!”
Zephyr let out a tremulous, disbelieving laugh. “I raised you from a child, boy.”
“Yes, thank you, Zephyr. But Miss Devney and I need to talk. Alone.”
Zephyr reached for him as he passed through the door, but Asherton shrugged his hand off and bore Magdala back to his room.
Chapter 27
Asherton crossed his room and tossed Magdala onto the bed. She bounced gracelessly and sprawled on the pillows as Asherton backed away from her, his cheeks flushed and a muscle in his cheek ticking.
“How utterly stupid do you think I am?” he demanded.
Magdala started. “What?”
“You didn’t want to kill me, you wanted to force me to abdicate so you can take my house. Well, listen to me now, Magdala Slorus-Devney: I amnevergoing to give you this house. When I die, the house goes to Zephyr. It’s in my will, and you can’t get it.”
Magdala stared at him, speechless, until her anger caught up and she cried, “I told you I don’t want the house! But regardless of how I feel, my ancestor did build it! With his own hands!”
“First, that’s ridiculous,” Asherton said with a scornful laugh. “No noble builds anything with his own hands! He had a band of servants do it for him, so don’t tell me stories of your ancestor’s broken fingernails and calloused palms.”
Magdala fumed. “He had the house built for his children and grandchildren, one of which is ME!”
“On land that already belongedtoZephyr!”
“The land was empty! There was no house here!”
“No, but Zephyr lived here nonetheless!”
“How could he live here if there was no house?”
Asherton looked suddenly discomforted, like he’d been caught giving up a secret. “It doesn’t matter. This land is Zeph’s, and when I die, the house goes to him. So, whatever Huxley told you, he lied—and he set you up so he wouldn’t have to dirty his hands with killing me.”
Her pride badly bruised, Magdala sat up and hugged her knees against her chest. Huxley had tricked her, and the fact that, had she succeeded, the house still wouldn’t have come to her was salt on the wound.
“I told you, I don’t care about the house,” she said, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve, “which is why I risked my own neck to save you just now. But as a matter of principle, this housedoesbelong to me. These grounds which you have so badly neglected …”
“Neglected?” Asherton cried. “Your father butchered this island with his constant pruning and cutting and manicuring! The frog population was nearly extinct, he introduced non-native flowers that crowded out the indigenous flowers, he put koi fish in the ponds.Koi fish. They eat everything, and they’re death to the life system of the island.”
Magdala’s body trembled with adrenaline. The last brick of her preconceptions teetered on the edge of her crumbled foundation. “My father loved this place. He made it beautiful.”
“Oh, come off it, Mags,” Asherton snapped, closing the space between them. “Look me in the eyes and tell me thatyou don’t honestly think that this island is better off now than it was when you were a child.”
“It was cared for!”
