The pressure in her skull was consuming, pulsing, sending a wave of pain across her forehead. She gasped, cradling her head in her hands, and tried to fight back the volume of the memories calling for her attention. Amidst the torrent of the past few days – crossing the bitterly cold moors, Caleb’s cottage, Elden’s terror-white face at the doors of the church – deeper memories surged to the forefront.
A flash of gold like the sun. A drop of blood like paint.
A groan slipped past her clenched teeth. With a concerted effort, she managed to wrench the memories back, staggering to her feet in the process.
Burning the iconsworked– the memories pounding fists against the back of her mind were proof enough. But she couldn’t let them consume her. Not yet. Not until she found Jude.
Smoke from the still-burning icons was ripe in the air as she made for the door. She would crawl through the Abbey if shehad to, bloodied and exhausted. Anything to find him. Anything to save him. She burst from the storage room and froze, her back against the doorframe. Her nails bit into her palms as her gaze locked on a door directly in front of her.
With a quietsnick, it clicked open.
Maeve cast around desperately for somewhere to hide, shoving herself into a nearby alcove behind a marble statue of a woman, praying the darkness was enough to hide her.
A figure emerged from the double doors. Brown habit, iron-grey hair—
Ezra.She bit her cheek so hard blood filled her mouth. She wasn’t ready to see him. Wasn’t ready to explain what she was doing here. He had lied to her. Constantly and without remorse. He was complicit in the Abbey’s treatment of Jude. Ofher.
Ezra closed the doors behind him and turned. Light from his upheld candle cast the beaded seams of his chasuble milky white, the hundreds of gems hoarding the light. An invitation for the fire to eat away at it until all that remained was a tattered hem.
Maeve pressed tighter into the alcove, too frightened even to breathe.
He paused, running his fingers over something hanging from his neck before pushing his hair back from his face. A sheen of sweat on his forehead caught the meagre candlelight. Her gaze dropped downwards, past the reddish stains on his habit to the slim silver locket bouncing on his chest. Two more hung beside it.
Maeve choked back a gasp at the sight of the relics. Three of them – was one of them hers? Disgust welled up in her throat. Deep in her belly, fear gnashed its teeth. Gold flickered in her peripherals.
Ezra looked up. His pale-eyed gaze scoured the hall, sweeping over the alcove Maeve hid inside. His chin lifted as he sniffed the air. She clenched her hands into fists as he moved towards her, gaze fixed on the open door to the storage room on her right.
If he went in there, if he saw the burned icons… Maeve had no doubt he’d know she was here, and what they were planning on doing. But if she tried to stop him, he’d find her even faster.
She had no choice but to let him discover the icons and run while he was preoccupied.
She clenched her eyes shut as he passed, turning her face towards the wall. The door to the storage room clicked shut behind him.
She had minutes, if that.
As quietly as she could, Maeve slipped from the alcove and headed towards the door he’d just left. The faint sounds of singing came from the basilica, yet somehow, she knew Jude wouldn’t be there yet. If they wanted to use him for the Call of the Sun, they would hide him away until the final moment to create the biggest impact on the already fevered crowd.
Her hand froze on the handle for one, painful heartbeat. The reddish stains on Ezra’s habit… those had been blood, hadn’t they? And the relics he wore around his neck…
Had he just come from Jude? Was Ezra responsible for his capture?
She pushed the question down with all the others, letting them fester in her stomach, fuelling her as she pushed open the door. What was one more treachery amidst the wreckage of her entire life?
The door opened to a narrow hall broken up by slender, salt-stained windows. She plucked a lit candle from one of the sconces and used it to light her way. At the end of the corridor was a single doorway which, from her memory of the Abbey’s layout, led to the largest classroom in the western wing. She hadn’t been there in years but remembered a vast space of stone and glittering windows, acolytes’ voices echoing off the arched ceilings above.
The handle spun easily, the door shoving forward into a darkened room. The candle did little to penetrate the thick blackness. The air filling her mouth tasted of salt, underwritten withsomething sweet and metallic. She swallowed down an acidic rush of nausea.
Something wasn’t right. She knew it in her bones.
Maeve turned, braid whipping against her face. The sound of her shoes and the sharp inhale of her breath lit the space. She skidded to a stop in front of the door.
It had shut behind her.
She set her candle by her feet and ran her hands around the edge of the doorframe, searching for the handle. Her testing fingers met a gouged chunk of wood, the sharp sting of disfigured metal.
The door handle was missing, locking the door after it shut.
She knelt to examine the pale glint of naked wood at the base of the door. Thick scratches were scored deep into the door, evenly spaced in five long lines. The shape was familiar…
