Chapter 41 Jude
Jude
Jude ran.
Panic blurred his vision into pinpoints. He didn’t look to see if anyone in the tavern watched him crash through the chairs and tables and fling open the front door, a flurry of snow casting his world in white. The sting of the cold was inconsequential. Only the burn in his lungs remained.
Ropes banded his chest, each knot cinching tighter the further he ran from the inn.
From her. Shame rushed up, hot and bright.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t fucking breathe.
How could he have left her, warm and eager, standing alone in that damned room with its single bed, looking at him like he’d just pulled her heart out of her chest and stomped on it?
How he hated himself.
For a beautiful moment, their kiss had been exactly as he had dreamed about in those dark midnights alone in his bedroom. She’d stirred up long-dormant feelings in his body and made him believe, for one shining heartbeat, that he could offer her the love she deserved.
But, then. Oh, then – the shattering.
Maeve had slid her hands up his shirt and onto his bare skin.
She’d whispered, begged him for more, for all of him.
She’d pushed herself against him until there could be no confusion about how much he wanted her.
Yet, all he could think about were the tattoos under her fingers, and as soon as the fear invaded, it consumed everything else.
He scraped the sleeve of his jumper over his eyes, heaving breath after breath.
How could he expect her to want to see his body when he couldn’t bear the sight himself?
The physical wounds from the Abbey might’ve healed over the past eight years, but the emotional wounds remained so raw he wondered if he would ever allow himself to be vulnerable.
At that moment, it had felt impossible.
So, Jude had run, and he would keep running.
The village stretched around him in a network of narrow alleys and snow-covered streets. The air smelled of salt and metal. Buildings flashed by in shades of dishwater grey, pale yellow, the faded blue of worn fabric. None of it recognizable, all of it blurry.
He stopped and leaned against a dirt-streaked wall. A sign dangling above him creaked, mixing with the faint whistle of the wind and his panting breath. A creeping thought slipped past the pounding of blood in his ears, somehow more poisonous than all the self-loathing that had come before it.
She knew him. She’d seen him. She’d painted him.
Maeve wanted him. His traitorous heart ached with the realization.
It had happened too slowly for him to grasp every moment fully, but somehow, she’d seen the broken, hollow person he was and wanted him still.
She’d placed her hand over the tattoos on his arm and offered to shoulder the pain for him.
She’d begged against his mouth. She’d had her hands on bare skin and whispered please.
Fuck.
Jude opened his eyes. He’d made a mistake.
He would go back and be honest with her – he wanted her desperately, but he was afraid.
Vulnerability wasn’t something he took lightly.
It had taken months even to have a full conversation with Elden when the other man had first arrived, knowing it was the Abbey who had sent him to keep Jude company.
Months of skirting around each other, eating Elden’s attempts at meals, watching him as he generously took care of the unpleasant tasks Jude had been avoiding around the house.
But slowly, his consistency eroded Jude’s hostility.
The same tactics he’d used to tame Olive when they’d found her cowering under a bush a few months prior.
Maybe Jude was more of a feral cat than he realized.
Jude had let Maeve in quicker than Elden, but his reason for keeping her at a distance had been different than with the other man.
Elden might’ve been found and employed by the Abbey, but he’d come from a life as a woodsman and not from its limestone halls directly.
Maeve had been raised the same way he had.
Both of them came scarred, visible or not.
She wouldn’t laugh at the marks of his upbringing. He had to believe that if he would ever allow her to see him fully. And dammit, he wanted to. He wanted to experience everything with her.
If he knew anything about Maeve, it was that she’d listen to him with an open heart, take his hand, and give him exactly what he needed.
A singular lamp flickered sluggishly above, casting the street in oily shadows. He’d seen the lamplighters out earlier – boys running about with their poles, hoisting them up the streetlights to light the flame within. There was no sign of them now, nor anyone else.
The building across from him was boarded with wax paper, a torn corner flapping in the salted wind coming up the narrow alley.
The scent gave him pause – hadn’t Elden said they were at a village on the outskirts of Whitebury?
He shouldn’t be able to smell the sea this far inland.
The salt dissipated with the next breath, replaced with a slight smokiness.
Snow drifted down in damp flakes to coat his upturned face.
He dug his hands into his jacket pockets, thankful he’d had the foresight to re-don his coat.
His undershirt chafed his oversensitive skin, reminding him of the feeling of Maeve’s nails scraping up his torso.
He unhooked the thought before it could embed itself any deeper.
He needed to get moving.
An open sewer ran alongside the cobbled path, smelling uncomfortably like Elden’s compost. Wherever he was in the town, Jude hoped he was safe.
He hadn’t liked the look in the guards’ eyes earlier.
A frenetic tension lit the air, a watchfulness.
If it weren’t for the softly falling snow, he’d wonder if a thunderstorm was approaching.
Nearby, a bell tolled.
Jude turned a corner, and there it was – the clock tower.
Depictions of bygone saints marred the pale stone, carved around narrow windows of simple stained glass that marched evenly up the side of the tower.
The tower reached higher than its neighbouring buildings, its facade older and better looked after.
He guessed it had been here long before the other structures, its presence an obstacle for all other infrastructure to build around.
That was how the Abbey worked – claiming space even where it wasn’t welcome.
He stopped at the base of it, staring up.
Gold flickered at the edge of his vision.
He pressed his palms to cold stone, traced the outline of an outstretched arm, the folds of a cloak.
He skated the backs of his fingers against the long braid of a saint, picturing Maeve’s face in its place.
Had artists like her done it – acolytes turned artisans, creating for the Abbey?
Giving of themselves to mark their devotion?
The work was nothing like hers. These figures were frozen. Hers breathed with life, with passion and light and devotion to her craft. He pressed his palm flat to the saint’s face, covering it to avoid its stone gaze.
Above, light from the belfry flickered and pulsed. His chin tipped slowly skyward. A voice in the back of his mind, growing fainter the longer he stared, whispered that he needed to look away.
He didn’t want to.
Suddenly, the gold peeled back, exposing the dark contours of the tower’s facade. Each carved face stood out in sharp relief. The texture of the stone-like skin looked softer than flesh. He tried to close his eyes, tried to see anything that wasn’t gold and watching, leering faces.
He couldn’t.
He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t.
The saints under his hands turned to stare at him. Their eyes grew wide, their mouths opening as terror overtook their carved features as effortlessly as if they were human. The tolls pulsed louder, drowning out his thoughts, his heartbeat, the very blood inside him—
‘Jude?’
For a harrowing second, Jude didn’t recognize the man before him.
A hood obscured his face and swamped his frame in a sea of mud-stained black.
His sudden appearance ate away the preternatural calm from the bell tower until only panic remained, strong enough to send a shockwave of dizziness through him. The hand reaching for him – unwelcome.
Jude stumbled back as the man grabbed his shoulder, pulling him away from the clock tower.
The hood slid off. All the breath returned to his lungs in a painful burst. ‘Elden?’ Jude sagged, scraping a hand over his face. ‘Fuck.’
Elden’s hand tightened on his shoulder before it loosened. ‘What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be with Maeve?’
Jude looked away. He couldn’t tell him what had happened, not now. ‘I was.’
Elden didn’t reply. Jude chanced a glance at his face. He was looking over his shoulder, brows furrowed and lips moving soundlessly. Jude stepped closer. ‘Elden?’ he repeated.
He shuddered, a rough movement that travelled from head to toe. ‘We should go back,’ he murmured. ‘It’s late.’
Jude nodded his assent. Elden wove through the streets like he held a map before him, not checking to see if Jude followed.
The village seemed even lonelier than when he’d left the inn, if such a thing was possible.
No curtains twitched as they passed, no distant sounds of laughter or arguments coming from nearby taverns and brothels. Only silence padded his ears.
Elden turned a corner, the toe of his boot catching on a loose cobble.
Jude hurried to right him, his hand fastening around Elden’s bare wrist. His magic hadn’t reacted without his consent in weeks, regulated not by the books, but by his own growing acceptance of it.
His steadying internal keel. But now, on edge and anxious, it lunged.
Elden’s memory shot through him, completely blank but for a deluge of noise.
Fog as grey as ash-fire sank down his throat and obscured his eyes. A hand wrapping around his throat, the words in his ear sweet and unavoidable. He didn’t want to, he couldn’t—
His lips froze as a silent scream left his throat.
The word wouldn’t come.
Jude jerked free. His thoughts spun out. ‘What – what was that?’
Elden kept walking, his steps short and jerky. He didn’t pause as Jude gaped after him.
‘Elden!’ he called as he hurried to catch up. What had he just seen? Memory tampering, that much was obvious, but he’d never seen a memory so obscured it was little more than stifled emotions made manifest. Nothing but words in his ear.
Vaguely, Jude recognized the sky had somehow lightened in the minutes since he’d left the bell tower. Streaks of violet and indigo shot through the clouds above. Hadn’t the clock just tolled midnight? The sun shouldn’t be rising for another eight hours.
Elden finally turned to face him just outside the door to the inn.
His eyes flared wide as panting breaths clouded the air around them.
In the limpid light, every slack angle of Elden’s face was suddenly visible.
His eyes were entirely blank, like he wasn’t even there, like he no longer inhabited his body at all.
Sweat beaded on his temple and the line of his neck.
‘I—’ Elden choked. Both hands raised to wrench through his hair. His eyes bulged. ‘Forgive me.’
Jude didn’t have time to reply, didn’t even have a second to breathe before they were on them.
Hands on his shoulders, his wrists. Clasped over his eyes.
Shouts filled the air alongside the violent sound of retching.
A wet rag shoved between his teeth, the sweet smell of incense in his nose.
Cloying and searching, wiping away everything that wasn’t his final, fading view of Elden, falling to his knees, a puddle of vomit pooling around him.