“The queen is fighting with her sister, and it’s getting tiresome. Lady Valenna wants to go find her dead husband in Ashkendor. Poor delusional woman.”
“They all have delusions like that,” a man at the end of the table said. He was fair-haired and spoke with a drawl. “They don’t know what it’s like to be powerless, so they imagine they can do the impossible.”
“Tell us”—he turned to Magdala—“are Allageshan royals as moody as ours in Sennalaith?”
Magdala hesitated. She didn’t want to talk about Asherton at this table like he was a horse and they were stablehands. He was a person. He washerperson.
And suddenly, she realized how ridiculous that was. She was a silly, naive little girl, playing house with a prince because she’d forgotten he was a prince. But this kitchen, with these people and this simple food, was where she belonged. She was no queen.
Now that Asherton had met a real princess like Valenna, he would realize what he was missing. He would see what a woman could be.
Magdala’s eyes stung, and her body ached like she’d been struck by a cart from behind. “He’s human. He acts like one,” she said.
Everyone laughed, and Magdala scowled at them. She hadn’t meant it to be funny.
“I’m not complaining, but I do miss guarding the lower royals sometimes,” Olivette’s guard said. “They were simpler creatures, and there was more action. No one really tries to assassinate a queen. But they do try to assassinate unfaithful dukes. Oh yes, my hands were very full with my last charge. He had mistresses sending assassins after him every week. What fun that was.”
“Miss Devney’s had some fun, I hear,” an athletic girl with short hair said from across the table. “How many assassination attempts have you thwarted?”
“A few,” Magdala muttered.
The athletic girl leaned forward on her elbows, hungry for more.
“I’m sorry.” Magdala started up, her chair screeching on the tile. “I need to return to His Highness. It’s been a pleasure.”
They returned the pleasantry cheerfully and fell back to their gossip as Magdala stumbled out of the kitchen, her head spinning, her stomach in knots.
This little dalliance with Asherton was madness. It had to stop. She had to end it tonight, before someone found out and she looked like a fool in front of everyone—these guards, the nobility, her own father. She winced, remembering how she had awoken in Asherton’s bed with Zephyr glaring down at them.
She tried to tell herself that she didn’t really love Asherton. That she’d just been swept up in his charm and his familiarity. She was young—she’d meet more men who’d sweep her off her feet. He wasn’t special.
But Magdala had no skill with lies.
It was true that she belonged in the basement, with the other servants. It was true that her passion for Asherton grew from naivete and youth. It was true that they could never be together.
But the greatest truth, the one that stood over the rest like a mountain towering over foothills, was that she loved him. Deeply, passionately, and beyond all sense. Perhaps, in her whole life of lies, it was the one thing she could not deny.
But she resolved that her love must not be tainted by desire. It must always be faithful love, dutiful love, sacrificial love.
She couldn’t go back to Asherton’s room, with her stomach all in knots and terror in her eyes. He wouldn’t be there anyway, since he was still signing his new taxlaw into effect. She needed a moment to let reality settle like snow on her shoulders. Before she realized what she was doing, her feet were carrying her out the servants’ entrance, across the gravel drive, and down the road toward Owlbright.
Chapter 34
Magdala glared at her father’s door and the door seemed to glare back. She wanted to knock, to push it open and duck inside, but what was she going to tell her father? That she’d taken a job for the man he hated? That she loved his enemy?
All her life, she had fought to keep her father afloat, while her own head dipped below the surface. Now, she’d taken a shotfire and blown a hole in his hull.
She bit her lip and twisted her hair around her hand. Eventually, she would see Huxley again, and Huxley would tell her father the truth.
Before she could decide what to do, someone said, “Magdala?”
Her father stood at the corner of the house. “What are you doing here, little hen?” he asked.
“I came to see you.”
He opened his arms. “I’m so pleased!”
Before she could remind herself that Seamus meant to kill the man she loved, she launched into him, wrapping her arms around him. He reminded her of safety and home, smelled familiar, and even as she dreaded him, she couldn’t help but bury her face in his shoulder.
