“Calm down,” Asherton said firmly. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
Magdala forced herself to relax as Asherton pulled her arm around his shoulders.
“Slide to my back and let the water lift you,” he said. “And relax a little—you’re strangling me.”
She tried to relax, but the breakers crashed over them. She was terrified that she would be swept away and drowned. And then, suddenly, the waves quieted, and they were beyond the breakers, bobbing with the gentle swells.
Asherton struck out through the calm water as Magdala held onto his shoulders. “Was that the nix?”
“Yes,” Asherton replied. “I call him Algie. He’s been here forever.”
“So that thing is just swimming around in the creek every night?”
“He swims around in all the freshwater on the island,” Asherton said.
Magdala glanced over her shoulder at the shore. Algie was pacing back and forth at the water’s edge, watching them.
“How do we get home?” Magdala asked. Already, her arms were cramping, and she could feel Asherton tiring beneath her.
“I know a place,” Asherton said. “Your clothes are weighing me down. Take them off.”
“Very funny.”
“I mean it. It’s not as though we haven’t seen one another in our underclothes before.”
Rolling her eyes, Magdala kicked off her pants and then slipped one arm out of her blouse, then the other, until she was only wearing her black undershorts and sleeveless undershirt.
Asherton struggled with his trousers.
“We can’t both be undressed,” she said.
“Like I said, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
Magdala groaned. The surge of terror-fueled energy had left her tired and shaky. “How much further?” she asked.
Asherton nodded toward a shadowy outcropping of rock in the distance.
“Can’t we swim back to shore and …”
She glanced at the beach, but Algie was keeping pace with them, his eyes like beacons.
“Oh, stars above,” she groaned. “I’m going to drown.”
“I’m a strong swimmer. I go out every morning.”
“No, you don’t!”
“I used to before I had a bodyguard ordering me around. There, that’s what we need.” He pointed to a piece of driftwood. Magdala reached for it gratefully and clung to it, but it bobbed, threatening to slip from her grasp.
“Hold it across your stomach,” Asherton said. “Float on your back.”
She obeyed. It wasn’t broad enough for both of them side by side, so Asherton turned on his back behind her, holding on to the driftwood with one arm and the other looped across her chest.
“Relax,” Asherton said, his breath warm on the shell of her ear. “Look at the stars.”
With an effort, Magdala relaxed, melting into him, and turned her eyes to the stars. They spangled the sky like a distant, magic city.
“There is the queen of spring,” he said, pointing to a constellation sparkling overhead. “And there is the baron of winter. On the other side of the moon. When I was at school with my brother, we would steal the school’s dragons and run away on dark nights. He taught me how to handle a dragon and how to fight, and I taught him the constellations. He was curious about them. He was interested in everything.”
