She shook her head, light flickering against her face. The candle had less than an inch of wax remaining. A few minutes before it burned out, if that. Hopelessness carved her features into stone as her eyes met his. ‘Does it matter though, if we have figured it out? The door locked behind me. We’re stuck in here. Trapped. The Call of the Sun is at dawn.’
Jude pushed onto his elbows, wrapping one arm around her waist and drawing her into his side. ‘We’ll leave,’ he said against her ear, not wanting to voice his suspicion that the last thing the Abbey wanted was for them to miss the Call. ‘We’ll break the door down or find another way. I promise.’
Maeve huffed out a disbelieving breath. Her nose was cold where it pressed into his neck. Just as he was about to move closer, tell her how glad he was to see her, how sorry he was formixing her up in this mess, she pulled back and laid her hand on his forearm.
‘I’m so sorry about Elden. I had no idea. Never eventhought—’ Her voice cracked painfully. ‘It’s not your fault, Jude. Whatever choices he decided to make to betray you were made long ago. Nothing you did could’ve stopped it or encouraged the path he took.’
He closed his eyes. Her words were like a balm soothing over the burn beneath. If he gave himself leave to feel the full hurt of Elden’s betrayal, he’d never recover, and now wasn’t the time.
‘Did you see him?’ he asked, eyes still shut. ‘After they… took me. Did he follow?’
‘No.’ She ran the back of one finger against his jaw, a soothing back and forth. ‘I don’t know where he went. He wasn’t well. Vomiting and lurching around. It was… strange.’
Jude opened his eyes. ‘Strange how?’
Suddenly, the candle guttered out. Blackness pressed in on all sides.
Maeve inhaled sharply. ‘We need to go.’
Pain shot down his legs, lingering in the backs of his knees as he slowly got to his feet. He bit his tongue to keep from groaning. The ache slowly ebbed the longer he remained steady, like it was draining into the ground beneath him. ‘It’s not—’ he gasped, ‘as bad as I thought.’
She made a low noise of disagreement, pulling one arm over her shoulder and steadying him with a hand pressed against his lower stomach. Her touch was warm through his jumper.
Suddenly, a low scraping noise moved through the darkness. Both of them stilled.
‘What was that?’ Maeve whispered.
The penetrating blackness of the room split as a shaft of light cut across the floor. In a slow reveal, a silhouette emerged in the now-open doorway. Jude tensed, pulling Maeve tight to his side. He took one step back, then another, stalled by a ripple of freshpain up the nape of his neck, gathering around his jaw. Maeve gasped as the figure in the doorway moved closer, his features suddenly in sharp relief. Her hand on his waist convulsed.
Before he could stop her, she moved out from beneath his arm, and headed straight for Ezra.
48
Maeve
There was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. Tension tightened Jude’s every muscle, skin over-hot where it was separated from hers by a scant few threads. He smelled of blood and sweat and ash, and she loved him. Maevelovedhim, and love brought a weight to her decision. There were no limits, nothing she wouldn’t sacrifice. She would do anything to protect him.
Anything.
She released her hold on Jude’s waist and stepped towards Ezra, ignoring Jude’s frantic whisper of her name, the fingers glancing off her wrist. ‘I’m so glad you found us,’ she called, pitching her voice high, as though she’d been waiting for Ezra to come and save her.
‘Maeve?’ Ezra replied. ‘Is that you? Are you all right?’
She prickled at the false sweetness in his voice. Her footsteps echoed in the high-ceilinged room.
What her plan was, she didn’t know, only she had to stop Ezra before he got to Jude. She walked closer, balling her fists at her sides. She wasn’t powerless. She could face him, look him in the eye and tell him that she wouldn’t comply with the Abbey, wouldn’t do as she always did and duck her chin, sayingyesto whatever he asked. She wasn’t that person anymore. Perhaps she never had been.
Ezra met her in the middle of the room. The candle in his lefthand guttered, sending waves of deep shadow across his face. The look in his eyes was unmistakable. One she had seen watered down in brief flashes, never in its totality.
Rage– and it was ready to boil.
Maeve froze. Her gaze skittered down to his right hand, clenched just beneath his throat. A flash of silver shone between his fingers. She lurched back, stopped by a glittering wave of pain banding across her head. Somewhere far behind her, Jude gasped.
Before she could take another step, before she could run to Jude and cover him with her body, Ezra struck out towards her with the flat of his palm. In his hand, the relic glinted metallic, open to show a lock of pale hair.
Her vision fuzzed with a wash of golden light before her head split open with pain.
There was no fighting as her world faded to black.
