Chapter 1 Maeve #2
His fingers moved faster beneath his cuff – a frenetic rub of his forefinger with his thumb. ‘This will have to do,’ he replied after a bloated pause.
Maeve dipped her brush in the paint. It was doable, she reasoned.
She could follow her sketch from the neck down and still keep his face turned away.
A thought occurred as she limned the curve where his neck met his shoulder in gold, lining out the halo’s contours surrounding his face – did he want his scar hidden?
The texture was unlike that of the scars on her own body or ones she’d seen on any of the men she met in the town – though she’d rather not dwell on her secret dalliances right now, worried that Felix might somehow know what thoughts swirled in her head.
She was painting his icon, after all, and outside of answering prayers, his saintly abilities were largely a mystery.
The Abbey didn’t know she liked the occasional night away in someone else’s bed, and she wanted to keep it that way.
Some things were a private indulgence just for her, sweetness tinged with shame.
A constant teetering between letting the guilt suck her down or pushing back against the Abbey’s rhetoric around chastity.
As an iconographer, purity was expected.
Her personal feelings didn’t matter under the weight of her title.
Her thoughts spun out the longer she painted, the deeper the silence grew.
She had a saint in her studio. Would she ever have the honour again, an object of her devotion at such close range? Alone, with no listening ears at the door?
If she gained Brigid’s position, certainly. If not… Maeve didn’t know what shape her life would take. She tried to shove the gnawing thought from her mind. So much of the Abbey was kept from her. If she became lead iconographer, perhaps that would change—
Slowly, her eyes rose to Felix.
A saint in front of her. Questions on her lips.
Long-fermenting wonders about sainthood, his holy magic, the mystery surrounding his very existence. Her own prayers cast doggedly into the world. Forbidden questions and even more insidious doubts.
But she couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t.
Not Felix, not Ezra… no one. There was no one she could ask, no one who would reassure her.
She forced her eyes back to the painting. Lifted her brush. Pressure built just behind her eyes.
Waves drummed outside her window, urging a comfortable looseness to Maeve’s limbs.
The action of sliding her brush across the canvas rode on instinct.
The weak sun shifted into shadow, shadow into dusky blackness.
Her gaze strained to focus only on what the bristles touched.
An ear. The fold of a cloak. The arch of his cheekbone highlighted in raw sienna.
Minutes, maybe hours, ticked by.
Her breathing grew shallow, muscles tensing in her shoulders and wrist. Nothing else remained but him.
Nothing could exist but what she formed by paint and brush.
Gold-tinged candlelight flickered at the furthest reaches of her vision.
Perhaps it was a mistake keeping the window shut as paint fumes filled her lungs.
A deep hum trickled into her ears.
With it, a voice. A whispered suggestion.
Maybe she could ask him whatever she wanted.
Maybe she could beg him to answer her prayers, to call upon his glorious abilities and grant her every petition.
If she could paint an icon worthy of him, an icon that would propel her into lead iconographer, she could have the security she wanted so desperately.
All Maeve wanted was to belong. To be acknowledged.
To be trusted with the Abbey’s secrets. She wanted to be carved into their history as securely as the icons she depicted.
All she had to do was her best, and everything she wanted could be hers.
Everything.
She sat at the cusp, the precipice just before the fall.
Wind beat at her back. Never before had she stepped so close to the edge.
How would it feel to jump? To break all the rules and ask, ask, ask.
To shatter the mirror and open the door.
To fully see the glory of the Abbey she’d so readily given every particle of unflinching faith she had to offer.
A shivering wash of pain coasted down her arm to the fingers clamped tight around the brush, skating up to linger behind her eyes. Her vision began to blur.
In the space between breaths, Maeve tipped backwards on her stool.
She blinked slowly, slowly.
High above, the ceiling swam and dipped as the world shifted to glimmering, gauzy metallic. Reality unspooled like yarn. Warmth moved up her arms, down her shoulders and ribboned around her spine. A soft space of welcoming nothingness. Dreaming without sleeping.
A push on her shoulder. Fingers on her pulse—
Maeve returned to herself with a choked gasp.
Felix stood above her, an unmoving and spectral figure. She lurched upright from where she’d been lying flat on the floor. Nausea surged as her vision continued to spin. A fine layer of dust covered everything in the room, soft and shimmering like powdered gold.
How long?
How long had she been passed out on the floor? The dryness of her eyes and the pain at the small of her back told her it had been a while. Her stomach curled in, clenching at nothing. She pushed clumsily to her feet.
‘Felix?’ Maeve’s voice was a choked rasp in the heavy silence.
He didn’t reply, only stared. But not at her – at his icon.
She turned.
Staring down at them from her easel with an imperious curl to his mouth was Felix in oil, fully formed.
Slowly, she reached towards the fine streaks of white daubed in the corner of the canvas – her signature, an M, the edges curling to circle around the letter.
The oil paint was hard to the touch. It should have taken days to finish and weeks for the oil paint to fully dry.
She was dreaming. She had to be.
She pressed her fingers harder against the dry paint to prove she wasn’t imagining it.
Gold dust gilded her hand. She had painted the shadow under Felix’s jaw less than an hour ago, keeping the time from the track of the shadows across her lap.
The thick coats of oil paint peaking like meringue on the canvas.
Yet, it was dry.
Impossible.
Maeve turned to Felix. The same gold dust that coated her skimmed across his shoulders and the high points of his face. A holy figure, demanding her unflinching respect.
But yet, but still—
‘Did you do this?’ she asked, voice hoarse.
Felix’s throat bobbed. ‘Not me.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You didn’t?’
‘No,’ he replied, just as short, almost dismissive.
His tone rankled something deep inside her, a part that stretched its limbs every time an elder ignored her when she spoke or Ezra denied her request for more supplies. The note of condescension wasn’t an unfamiliar one, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
His gaze dropped to the floor. Maeve’s frustration sparked higher, shifting steadily towards anger.
Who else could have done it? He was the one with magic flowing through his veins.
He was the saint. Somehow, he’d dried her painting, taking hours of her life in the process, and dared to try to convince her he wasn’t behind it?
‘Felix,’ Maeve began steadily. She needed to confront him somehow. He’d involved her in his act of magic, involved her work, and that surely warranted answers, but finding the words to do so without offending his position proved difficult. ‘I think I—’
‘Ezra,’ Felix interrupted. ‘We need to find Ezra.’
She shut her eyes briefly, trying to swallow the thorns in her throat before turning towards the door. A hand on her wrist stopped her. ‘No. I’ll do it,’ Felix said with a shake of his head. ‘I’ll find him. You stay here.’
Something surged in Maeve as he moved to leave, stronger than any impulse she’d ever harboured. A blistering, phantom heat upon her skin. A question on her tongue that she couldn’t remember placing. Her mouth gasped open like it searched for air after drowning.
‘Your scar,’ she croaked. ‘It’s from a fire, isn’t it?’
Felix froze with his back towards her. Slowly, he turned. His eyes met hers.
Before he could reply, a knock sounded at the door.
A wall-mounted oil lamp haloed Ezra from the shoulders up. His dark brown habit was wet with seawater at the hem. ‘Felix. Maeve,’ he said. ‘I was finishing my evening round and heard your voices. Is everything all right?’
Before either of them could reply, his eyes widened at the state of the room, the gold powder covering every surface.
Felix’s icon watched from the corner. Ezra stepped past them to approach the painting.
He ran his fingers lightly over the dried peaks, tracing her signature in the corner.
‘It’s finished already?’ He turned to Maeve, confusion in his pale blue gaze. ‘Didn’t you just start this?’
Maeve opened her mouth to respond when her gaze caught Felix’s.
His eyes levelled hers with a maddening intensity. Every moment he had previously refused eye contact coalesced into his stare now – something so fervent she felt like he was trying to speak directly into her mind.
Indignation and something like confusion rolled in her stomach.
How could Felix put her in this position?
What was she meant to say to Ezra? As much as she couldn’t allow whatever magic Felix had deployed to finish his icon to compromise her career, equally, she couldn’t be seen disrespecting, doubting, the saint in front of her.
The truth, then. Her only option.
She turned to Ezra. ‘I started with the oils today. I was working, and there was this gold light, and the dust—’
Felix stepped closer. Maeve glanced at him. Something like panic crested his expression. Was it her imagination, or did he shake his head at her?
Abruptly, fear surged within her. Why was he nervous? What had he done?
And was she about to be blamed for it?
‘Maeve?’ Ezra prodded. She tore her eyes back to her mentor. To his placid, encouraging expression. He laid his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. ‘Whatever happened, you can tell me.’
Maeve sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘Well… My head started swimming. I think I fainted, and when—’
‘Sounds like you might have been unwell,’ Felix cut in. ‘A spell. Women have that sometimes. Hysteria.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Maeve forced out through the anger limning her throat. ‘How would that explain the paint drying? Besides—’ she paused, weighing her words. ‘You were here. What did you see?’
Felix shut his eyes briefly, breathing out hard through his nose.
‘What, indeed, Felix?’ Ezra murmured.
She wanted to ask more, demand that Felix tell Ezra the full story. It was her career on the line, after all. But what did she have to gain by angering a saint?
The gravity of her thoughts hit her full in the face – maybe she was the one in the wrong.
Who was she to question a saint?
Maeve ducked her head under Felix’s pressing stare. Guilt surged in her chest.
‘It’s getting late,’ Ezra continued. ‘Perhaps you ought to go to your room, Maeve. I need to speak with Felix. We’ll discuss this first thing in the morning.’ He pulled her around by the shoulder, a smile on his face. ‘A good night’s rest will surely offer clarity.’
Felix disappeared down the opposite hall as Ezra guided her from the room. His footsteps echoed like bells in her sluggish mind.
‘Maeve,’ Ezra said quietly. She dragged her gaze back to his.
Torchlight flickered, licking long stripes of flame up the Abbey’s limestone walls.
The weight on her shoulder increased. Ezra’s smile seemed to grow softer in response.
Warmth filled her chest. An early summer berry, sour on her tongue.
When he spoke, his voice sounded muffled and far away.
She’d expected anger for her questions, her impertinence.
Not… this – the gentle smile, the guiding hand.
‘Let me walk you to your room,’ he said.
Soon, Maeve sat on the edge of her bed, worrying the edge of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger.
Shadows trailed Ezra as he moved around the room.
The darkness undulated in the liminal space between her slippers and the doorframe.
Thicker than air, thinner than water. When she lay back against her pillows, the light behind her eyes faded into night-pressed blackness.
She covered her face with the crook of her elbow.
Ezra closed the door behind him. The lock slid home with a metallic click.