Chapter 16 Maeve
Maeve
Maeve’s tenuous grip on reality seemed, for a moment that felt too long and entirely too short, to comprise of a dusty library, gold dust upon wooden floors, and Jude’s hands slipping from her shoulders.
The back of her skull buzzed like a bee had been set loose somewhere between her ears, left to dart through bone and brain matter in search of escape.
If she could move, she would have turned and run.
Left his home and his life and his secrets.
But, as it was, she couldn’t feel her fingers.
In a terrifying shift of time and vision, Jude’s face momentarily flickered between his current appearance and the painting of him in the Abbey. Long hair that held a loose curl, thick lashes that brushed his brows. The strange deadness to his gaze.
Pliable, innocent.
Jude as an icon, a boy. Jude as a man, a saint.
He reached for her once more, pulling back when she flinched. The expression softening his face spoke of pity and regret, and she couldn’t bear it.
‘I was sent away?’ she asked, her voice small and choked. ‘But the Abbey… my mentor – he wants me to come back. He said I was being considered for lead iconographer.’
She refused to believe it. She couldn’t.
And whatever this… magic was – the gold dust. The memory tampering.
She closed her eyes. Felix’s finished icon stared back at her from behind her lids, vivid, watchful.
Jude said the magic could alter perception, play with time.
Cast the world in bright, gleaming gold once it had finished its terrible course.
Something he claimed prowled in her. Under her skin and in her blood, foreign and unwelcome.
Maeve took a step back. Another. Swallowed. Words locked in her throat. ‘You’re wrong.’
The closed library door hit her back. She reached for the doorknob. The metal was hot to the touch, almost burning. It shocked her into action. She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t.
For the second time that day, Maeve fled.
Jude followed as she left the library and headed for her bedroom. ‘Maeve. Maeve, please listen to me,’ he asked, voice muffled and far away.
She watched her hands throw items into her bag as if from above.
Dresses, tubes of paint, a half-filled notebook.
Her fingers slipped on a glass jar of hair oil, spilling the liquid down her wrist. A scrap of fabric cleaned it off, Jude’s presence too close as he gently wiped the bandage down her arm.
His hands shook in fine tremors against her skin.
Maeve pulled away, shoving the half-closed jar into the bag and wrenching the straps tight. ‘Leave. Please leave,’ she whispered, hating the tears in her voice. ‘I need to be alone. I need to think.’
His lips parted. ‘Maeve.’
She shut her eyes. Asked again—‘Please.’
The door shut softly behind him. Then, silence.
Maeve lowered herself onto the bed and dropped her head into her hands.
Uncertainty clouded around her, thick enough to drown in.
She longed for the steadiness of the Abbey.
A surety that she was on the right path, that her steps were watched and measured by those who knew better.
There were no surprises, no gut-wrenching upheavals.
Not like here. She’d been set adrift, dropped in the open sea without a sail to guide her.
And she wanted to run. Desperately. To go home. Back to safer waters.
Like she had so many times in her life, Maeve tilted her head to the ceiling as a prayer formed on her lips.
For answers, for guidance. A desperate plea for a candle in the dark to show her the way.
She wasn’t expecting an answer, wasn’t even sure she wanted one, exactly, but it settled her to ask all the same.
She opened her eyes to a startling realization.
It was Jude’s face she’d pictured as she prayed.
‘Fuck,’ Maeve sighed, the word unfamiliar on her lips. ‘Fuck.’
A gentle knock at the door startled her out of her thoughts. A second later, the door creaked open, revealing Elden. She pulled upright in surprise. He’d never come to her room before.
‘Maeve?’ he asked. ‘May I come in?’
She nodded, curiosity outweighing the simmering turmoil in her stomach.
The blackness of the hall beyond obscured his expression as he stepped inside.
A cream knitted jumper was pushed up around his elbows, a streak of mud on his forehead underneath a hank of rain-soaked hair. He scanned the room. ‘Are you packing?’
Maeve fiddled with the strap of her bag, tucked up against her hip on the bed. ‘Maybe.’
Elden cocked his head. ‘You all right?’
‘A very good question.’ Her voice cracked pathetically at the last word.
Elden’s eyes softened, and that was all it took.
She banded her hand across her mouth and wrenched to her feet, heaving breath after breath through her nose as she crossed the room to the window. Footsteps sounded behind her. A hand gently touched her shoulder, and, like a cast-aside dog, she turned to the first kind touch offered.
‘Shh,’ Elden hushed into her hair as he folded her into his arms. ‘I promise you he’s not that awful.
At least not always.’ She loosened a damp laugh, letting herself be held for another heartbeat before pulling back.
‘It’s not easy for Jude. He spent too many years alone, I think,’ he said, pity clear in his voice.
Maeve nodded, wiping her eyes. She directed her gaze back out the window.
Watery moonlight illuminated droplets racing down the glass.
The silence between them had the air of the confessional.
She was far from its sacred quiet and velvet bench, but the weight on her soul and words on her tongue felt just as heavy. Just as impossible to resist.
‘Has Jude ever… I mean, does he—’ she pressed her lips together. ‘I went into his library.’
‘Ah.’ Elden’s gaze drifted over her head, becoming unfocused. ‘What did you find?’
She didn’t know whether Jude had shared the memory with Elden, but, like in the confessional, she couldn’t have stopped the words if she tried—‘A book. A memory was in it, somehow. Written in runes. I couldn’t read it, but I…
I didn’t need to. It sucked me in. I saw the memory like I was there.
It was of the day he was sent away from the Abbey. Sent here, I think.’
Elden’s face didn’t betray any emotion as he stared out into the wilds beyond. His chest rose and fell slowly. ‘Were there more books? With more memories?’
‘I think so. I don’t know.’ She weighed her words, debating whether to ask Elden some of the questions she longed to ask Jude. ‘What are they? The books.’
He didn’t reply for a long moment. Finally, he rubbed his brow. ‘They’re memories, as you said. A record of sorts. He keeps them stored in books. Puts them there. I don’t know how.’ He blinked once. Twice. ‘He doesn’t like anyone in his library.’
‘Maybe it’s to hide the books. The memories,’ Maeve said, thinking of how furious Jude was when he found her. ‘Somewhere only he can view them.’
A shiver coursed through Elden’s body. ‘Hide them – yes. That makes sense. Keep them safe.’
‘Safe,’ Maeve echoed. There was something odd in his expression, as though he searched for answers from her just as eagerly as she probed the truth from him. Perhaps Jude was in the habit of keeping secrets from everyone in his life.
‘Well. Anyway,’ she said. ‘It was disconcerting, to say the least. Jude thinks I’m the same as him. That the Abbey sent me away because of this… this magic.’
Elden’s gaze shot back to hers. ‘And if they have?’
‘If the Abbey has sent me away? If they—’ she paused. The lump in her throat grew too large to ignore. She thought of Jude’s memory. His magic had hurt someone. ‘If they think this magic I have is dangerous and expelled me because of it, I don’t know what I’ll do.’
Other acolytes had disappeared over the years.
Not many, but enough to send fragmented gossip through the limestone halls like ripples across a pond.
The speculations around the disappearances were never very well formed.
A sickness the saints didn’t want to cure.
A wrongdoing so egregious the member couldn’t be allowed to remain.
Sometimes, there were rumours of members running away.
Those were always stamped out the quickest.
But never for magic. Never for golden dust and stolen memories.
‘Yes,’ Elden replied. ‘If the Abbey has cast you out, what then?’
‘I don’t know.’ Maeve tried to ignore the rapid pace of her pulse, the rising panic. ‘I was sent here to paint Jude. That hasn’t changed. I think… above all, that remains my priority. I’ll finish it and then… go back to the Abbey. If they don’t want me to stay, they can tell me.’
She sounded much braver than she felt, but Elden couldn’t see how her legs shook beneath the hem of her muddied dress.
Elden took a step closer. ‘If you were sent here, same as he was, maybe it’s best if you stay for now. Maybe that’s what the Abbey wants. You’re one of their own. And you need to finish his icon, as you said.’
‘Yes,’ Maeve breathed. Her fingers tightened around the strap of the bag hooked over her shoulder. ‘Yes.’
If she truly did hold the same magic Jude did, Ezra knew, and the Abbey had sent her anyway.
Jude might have his own ideas about why they’d sent her, but she needed to trust what she had been told directly.
She was to paint Jude, to spy on him, and then return to the Abbey.
No matter how much she wanted to give in to the panic, to pack her things and run – she still had a purpose here.
A purpose she needed to unravel with the one man she wanted to avoid.
Whether or not she decided to continue reporting on him…
she needed the truth, and she needed it directly from Jude.
‘Go speak to him,’ Elden said quietly. ‘He might tell you more than you expect.’
Maeve nodded, blowing out a breath.
Elden gave her one final smile as Maeve moved towards the door. Questions still lingered, clinging like early-morning frost. They wouldn’t dissipate until the sun rose and light was shed – light only Jude could provide.
She buried the last of her panic too deep to reach for without effort, without pain, and left the room. Her footsteps echoed down the stairs.
Each step brought her closer to Jude.
To answers or to more lies, she wasn’t yet sure.