Chapter 12 The Chapel Door Locked from Within
The chapel door had been barred from the outside, yet the iron latch trembled beneath Maeve’s fingers as though someone within had only just withdrawn from it.
She crouched in the narrow corridor, pressing her ear to the warped oak. Cold seeped through the stone beneath her knees. Beyond the door came no prayer, no footfall - only the faint scrape of paper against wood.
Leif’s hand closed over her shoulder.
“Maeve.”
She turned her head. His amber eyes caught what little gray light entered through the broken roof, fierce beneath the notch in his left eyebrow.
Snow clung to his ash-brown hair. He had followed her without a word from the ruined nave, leaving the search path they had marked through the chapel’s fallen stones.
“If they find us here,” he murmured, “we will have more than a stolen list to answer for.”
“The list is why we came.”
“And the men outside are why we should leave.”
She looked again at the door. The witness list was meant to prove that their temporary marriage oath had been sworn before lawful eyes.
Without it, every lord who wished to break the truce could call their union false.
The oath-stone, the words, the witnesses - all could be dismissed as a widow’s desperate bargain and a raider’s lie.
Maeve lowered her voice. “You said the chapel was sealed after the militia searched it.”
“It was.”
“Then someone has entered since.”
His thumb moved once against her shoulder before he withdrew his hand. The brief touch left heat beneath her cloak, unwelcome only because she wanted it there.
From beyond the outer wall came a muffled voice.
“ - Rourke said no one was to pass the north path.”
Maeve went still.
Another man answered, “Eamon Rourke said the list was already gone.”
The name struck harder than the winter wind.
Leif’s gaze sharpened. He mouthed, Eamon?
Maeve nodded. Her cousin’s name had already lived in every broken seal, every false tally, every threat sent against their alliance. Hearing it spoken here, beside the chapel where the true witnesses had gathered, turned suspicion into something with a body and a trail.
She pointed to the door.
Leif drew his knife. Maeve slipped her own from her belt, the same small blade that had once freed his bound hands. He noticed it and gave her a look that held both warning and reluctant pride.
“Stay behind me,” he breathed.
“I have done enough staying behind men.”
His mouth tightened. “Then stay beside me.”
The iron latch lifted.
Maeve and Leif flattened themselves against opposite walls as the door opened a hand’s breadth. A gust carried in snow and the sour smell of wet wool. A guard peered through, his face hidden beneath a hood. His eyes passed over the corridor and moved on.
“Clear,” he called.
The door began to close.
Leif caught it.
The guard turned with a grunt, but Leif drove his shoulder into the gap.
Maeve seized the man’s wrist and twisted until the knife fell from his hand.
The guard struck at her with his free fist.
She ducked; his knuckles scraped the stone.
Leif dragged him inside, and Maeve kicked the door shut before the second guard outside could see.
For several breaths, there was only the harsh sound of struggle and the guard’s boots striking the floor.
Leif pinned him against the wall. “How many?”
The man spat at him.
Maeve stepped close enough for the guard to see her face. “You heard Eamon Rourke’s orders. Tell me where the list went.”
His eyes flicked toward the side chamber.
That was answer enough.
Leif released him only long enough to bind his wrists with a strip torn from the guard’s own cloak. Maeve kept her knife near his throat, not touching skin.
“Speak,” she said.
“Search it yourself.”
“Gladly.”
The side corridor narrowed beyond the chapel’s broken altar. Maeve moved first, one hand against the wall. The stones were damp and furred with moss. Somewhere overhead, wind worried the empty bell tower, making the ruin groan like a ship under strain.
At the end stood a second door, smaller than the first. Its iron lock was new.
Maeve knelt. Wax had been pressed around the hasp - not the red wax of the chapel’s seal, but dark brown, stamped with a shallow crescent and three cuts.
She knew that mark.
“It is Eamon’s,” she whispered.
Leif crouched beside her. “You are certain?”
“I saw it on his letters when we were children. He marked his hunting accounts with it.”
He studied her face, and the doubt between them returned - not the sharp suspicion of before, but its quieter cousin. The thing that asked what else she had known, and when.
Maeve felt it like a blade laid across her ribs.
“I did not know he had taken the list,” she said.
“I did not ask.”
“You thought it.”
His eyes lifted to hers. “I think you have been forced to discover your cousin one betrayal at a time. That is not the same as believing you serve him.”
The words should have eased her. Instead they exposed how badly she needed them.
She turned back to the lock. “Help me open it.”
Leif wedged his knife beneath the iron plate. Maeve added hers. Together they levered until the wood split with a sharp crack. The sound seemed to race through the ruin.
Outside, a man shouted.
“They are inside!”
Leif tore the door wide.
The chamber beyond was scarcely large enough for two men to stand. A stone shelf ran along one wall. On it lay scraps of parchment, broken quills, and a small leather pouch cut open at the seam.
Maeve crossed the threshold.
The witness list was gone.
“No,” she breathed.
She searched the shelf, then the floor, then the recess beneath the stones. Dust coated her fingers. Nothing. Only one torn scrap remained, caught beneath a splinter of the shelf.
She snatched it up.
Three names showed in a cramped hand. The first was blotted beyond reading. The second ended in Brennagh. The third bore only a tall, hooked mark - but beneath it, written in another hand, were the words: paid at the old quay.
A clue. Perhaps the name of the man who had taken the list. Perhaps the place where he had carried it.
Leif seized her wrist. “We must go.”
Footsteps pounded in the main chapel.
Maeve folded the scrap into her palm. “The list was here. They removed it recently.”
“Then we have proved what we came to prove.”
“Proof will not hold the oath. Names will.”
The door behind them shuddered beneath a blow.
Leif pulled her toward the corridor. “Maeve.”
She followed, but as they reached the locked outer door, the scrap slipped from her wet fingers.
It fell into the snow beyond the threshold.
Maeve saw it land, pale against white, just as the door burst inward.
Leif dragged her behind a fallen pillar. Guards poured into the chapel, boots crushing the scrap beneath them. One man kicked it aside without looking. Another seized the bound guard and cursed.
Maeve’s breath caught.
She lunged, but Leif caught her around the waist and hauled her back against his chest. His arm locked beneath her breasts, holding her firmly without hurting her.
“Let it go,” he whispered against her hair.
“It names the quay.”
“And if you die reaching for it, the list remains lost and our oath dies with you.”
The truth cut deeper than his restraint.
She stopped struggling. The warmth of him pressed through wool and linen, his breath stirring the curls at her temple. For one perilous instant, she felt not the ruined chapel or the men hunting them, but the solid strength of his body and the question in the way he held her.
Would she trust him to release her when she asked?
“Leif,” she whispered.
His grip loosened at once.
She turned within the circle of his arms. They stood close enough that her birthmark burned beneath her clothing, remembered from the warmth they had shared before the sea and the raiders had made every touch dangerous.
“I will not forgive you for stopping me,” she said.
“I know.”
“But I understand why.”
His amber gaze searched hers. “That is more than I had yesterday.”
Outside, a guard shouted that the prisoners had escaped. The men began moving toward the corridor.
Maeve rested her palm against Leif’s chest. His heart struck hard beneath it.
“The trail is gone,” she said.
“For now.”
“No. The list is stolen. The scrap is trampled. Eamon knows we are searching, and whoever carried the names to the old quay will have warned him by nightfall.”
Leif covered her hand with his. “Then we find another road to the truth.”
She wanted to believe him. Wanting it frightened her more than the guards.
He drew her toward a breach in the rear wall, where snow had filled the fallen stones. Together they slipped through into the bitter daylight. Behind them, the chapel rang with angry voices and splintering wood.
Maeve looked back once.
The locked door stood open now. The chamber was exposed, empty, and useless.
Leif took her hand - not as captor, not as shield. His fingers closed around hers with deliberate care.
She held on, though the only proof they had possessed lay crushed beneath an enemy’s boot, and the answer they had nearly touched had vanished into the white.