Was that his body, his hands?
The foreign hands were folded in prayer with palms together.
Not foreign, not strange.Hisarms.
‘There have been five hymns so far. Three to go,’ Ezra murmured. ‘The more the pilgrims worship, the higher they urge their voices, the more magic I can use. And your icon is there, Jude. Watching, listening. And I have this.’ Something cold brushed Jude’s face. ‘Know what it is?’
A glint of silver came into focus. A chain. From the end of it, a locket hung open. Inside, cast in resin, was a dark spiral. Jude blinked.
Hair.
Human hair.
Just as Maeve remembered.
It looked familiar; the colour almost black. It’d shine with a reddish tint in the sun.
‘Is that mine?’ Jude croaked out. He licked moisture back into his lips. His voice sounded like it’d been dragged over hot coals. ‘My hair?’
‘Mm. Indeed,’ Ezra replied. ‘A relic.’
A metallic sound, the locket clicking shut. Ezra made a quiet, contemplative noise deep in his throat. The relic swung inches from his nose. ‘I’ll always have a piece of you, Jude.’
Disgust rolled his stomach. Seeing a curl of his hair stuck forever beneath the resin was horrifying, a disgusting display of invasion.
Ezra sighed, the sound regretful. ‘I suppose thewhyof your return doesn’t matter anymore. The eighth hymn begins at daybreak, and we need someone to Call the Sun. You’ll do perfectly. And with this,’ he clicked the relic open again, flashing the hair inside, ‘I can keep your mind pliant. Keep your memories trapped.’
Jude’s head lolled on his shoulders.
He’d die. They would martyr him.
The darkness of his reality washed over him; a black tide of inescapable despair reminiscent of everything he’d tried so hard to leave behind. A familiar, insidious voice whispered in his head that maybe it was for the best. Maybe he ought to die. Maybe it would be easier to give up.
Desperate, he scrambled for a foothold, a rope to lead his mind back to clarity. He didn’t have his garden or books nearby, but he needed a reason to stay alert and keep fighting.
He found it with bloodied fingers and seized.
Anger.
He’d scraped himself up every time Ezra had tried to bury him; he had a life and a home and some semblance of peace, even if it had taken him leaving to realize how rich he truly was. He had Maeve.HisMaeve, his beating heart, the only saint he could believe in. The Abbey left him in the cold, and he’d be damned if he didn’t burn it down to keep himself warm.
He couldn’t die. Not yet. Not when he’d promised himself he’d live.
Singing poured through the open door. Ezra manoeuvred Jude to his feet. His body was too weak from the pain and the relic to resist. Somewhere behind him, lingering at the furthest reaches of his vision, gold.
Then, pure blinding white.
46
Maeve
Maeve thought she knew her way around the Abbey, but the room Brigid had pointed her towards was entirely unfamiliar. She tried to quell the nervous shake in her legs as she looked around. The narrow space smelled of neglect and seawater and was filled from end to end with piles of forgotten items. Why had Brigid wanted her to come here?
Her panting breath cut the silence as she crossed the room to where two frames were stacked near the windows. The only paintings she could see amidst the stacks of stools and hampers of crumpled bed linens, a sideboard topped with teetering plates and a low bench covered in a white sheet.
She knelt before them, willing her racing heart to slow.
The wood of the larger one was chipped and aged, paper backing spotted with mould. Her hands shook as she reached for the closest painting and turned it over.
