Chapter 15 Jude
Jude
The scent had been the first sign something was amiss. He recognized its sharpness: a candle freshly blown out, a hearth fire left to smoulder. But the power behind it wasn’t its own. The edges were unfamiliar.
It hadn’t taken him long to realize his key was missing once he’d pulled off his muddied jumper and slid on a fresh pair of trousers to tide him over until he could bathe, the bandages and poultice for Maeve’s injury already in hand, her bath filling just down the hall.
She must have slipped it from his neck while he’d been waist-deep in the bog.
He had been desperate and vulnerable, and she had stolen from him.
Jude drifted down the stairs in a half-conscious daze, knowing, dreading, what he’d find once he arrived, only to have his worst nightmares confirmed. Maeve, in his library. His book, open beside her. His memories, laid bare for her viewing.
The only sound was his heart beating in his ears and her rough, panting breaths.
His attention skated between the part of her lips and the flush settling high on her cheekbones.
The hem of her muddied skirt, faded blue and white checkered gingham today, opaque throughout, stirred up a cloud of gold.
Distantly, he recognized the screaming cry of violation battering against his walls. He should be shouting, raging at her for the egregious misstep of breaking into his private space, but instead, Jude was calm. Coldness swept over every still-smoking coal as he stepped towards her.
‘Jude,’ Maeve begged, holding out her hands as if to ward him back. ‘I’m sorry. Please, I didn’t know. I didn’t realize—’
He reached forward with both hands, fingers curling around her wrists.
His magic sighed in relief.
It breathed in, then clamped down.
Gold hazed the room in a rush of fine powder.
High above, a portrait watched with knowing eyes.
The painting was finished, seemingly in mere seconds.
How? How had he done it? She struggled upright as the last humming chants left her ears.
Her rasped cry of his name hung in the gold-dusted room as the saint turned to face her.
How like his icon he was, she thought as she reached for the canvas. The paint was dry under her searching touch, just as she feared. Impossible, but yet—
‘Did you do this?’ she breathed.
He had to have done it. His whispered denial shot terror into the deepest confines of her heart.
Who else could have?
Surging pain lit her skin as words formed before she could stop them. She tried to swallow, tried to clamp her teeth around the question, but it was too late.
‘Your scar,’ she asked. ‘It’s from a fire, isn’t it?’
The saint’s eyes met hers.
She’d seen those eyes before.
Jude stumbled back as Maeve lurched free of his grip. Her eyes were fiercely dark as they bored into his. She rubbed her wrists with frantic motions. ‘How… What—’
Shame and vicious, poisonous hurt surged with a vengeance, transforming quickly to anger. She’d stolen from him while saving him from the bog. Violated his memories while he was in the middle of drawing her a fucking bath.
‘You stole from me,’ Jude said, control hanging by a thread. ‘I returned the favour.’
‘What is it? The gold. The memories.’ Maeve keened, her chest heaving. ‘Please. Please tell me. Don’t lie like he did. I know… I know you have no reason to tell me the truth. But – please.’
He took one step back, then another. An untangling started deep in his chest at her words.
Biting dread ate at his anger. Maybe it was the pleading in her voice, or maybe it was her naked desperation for answers, an anguish he knew intimately.
Either way, his fragile sense of stability peeled away completely, leaving him unsupported against the reality of her.
Maeve had seen the gold.
And still – the Abbey had sent her here. To him.
The memory he had stolen changed something between them, like a fire had been lit in his head, obliterating everything he thought he knew about her and replacing it with ash. He needed to sift through it and see what he could pull free.
He could start with the truth. As much as he could afford to give.
‘The gold is a mark of magic, Maeve,’ Jude said. ‘Memory tampering. Whatever happened before the memory in my book, the events that caused the Abbey to exile me, was because of my magic. Because of something I did. Something I can no longer remember.’
He paused. He didn’t trust her, wrapped up in the Abbey like she was… but did he have a choice?
If her memory had showed him one thing, it was that she was more like him than he’d thought, than he’d feared. And if she was, he needed her to be open with him. Needed her answers more than anything.
Jude drew in a breath. ‘The gold is why the Abbey sent me away. The magic that has the ability to tamper with memories, change others’ perception of reality.
Magic that can dip into other people’s minds.
’ He worked the words over on his tongue.
‘Magic that can write memories into books just as easily as it can into paint. It’s why I was sent away from the only home I’d ever known. And why you were, too.’