Agony shot through her head. It grew and grew until finally, overcome, she toppled to her knees. She placed her forehead between her hands andscreamedas her brain tried to force its way from her eye sockets, her nose, her mouth.
Her thoughts liquefied, slipping like water through her hands the harder she tried to hold onto them, like someone had cracked open her skull and poured burning coals into it. She slammed her palms on the ground, begging,praying, for it to stop.
It went on and on and on.
Memories slipped in, one after the other, too quick to focus on just one.
Maeve, running by the sea, holding her sister’s hand and laughing, kicking up saltwater as they went. She was thirteen now, giggling with a friend as they read an illicit book in the back corner of a shop. Fourteen, seeing anger on Ezra’s face as he pulled back his hand and slapped her across the jaw. She saw Jude, a young man, standingbefore her and smiling. She saw him hold out his hand, a paper-wrapped biscuit nestled in his palm. Jude, his head bowed over a notebook, scribbling fervently before angling it towards her to read. Jude, smiling. Jude, crying.
Jude, Jude, Jude.
Maeve came back to herself with a gasp.
The pain had stopped.
Jude.
52
Jude
Sun split the air above Jude’s head in a wash of gold-tinged light. It glinted off the rose window, the gleaming organ pipes, the metallic sheen of buttons and hairpins and wretched, glazed eyes. His body no longer belonged to him. He was the property of the masses, just as Ezra had promised. He’d been reduced to the sum of his parts, and everyone wanted a piece.
A hand searched for purchase in his hair, and that,that, was the act that ruined him.
He snarled, wrenching back against the acolytes holding him aloft, kicking out with all his strength until he landed flat on his back. The stone was cold and unforgiving but blessedly still.
Of all the eyes searching for him, his focus locked onto one pair.
Fractal sunlight cast the man in triplicate. A ruddy, gaunt face and a shock of reddish hair to match. With a bellow, the man launched onto Jude’s chest, tearing and scratching at the fabric over his heart. ‘Fix me!Fix me,’ he screamed. Jude convulsed, trying and failing to push him off. Wetness tracked down into his robes as the man sobbed into his neck. ‘Please.’
A potent mix of fear and pity curled up in his stomach. What had happened to this man to reach such a point of desperation that he’d look at a ruined saint and beg for absolution?
‘Who are you?’ Jude shouted. Every laboured breath was pureagony under his weight. For a fraught moment, only the two of them existed – a saint in name alone, and a man who still believed. ‘Ican’t– I can’t help you,’ he choked.
The man pulled back far enough for something to dangle in the space between them. Jude’s heart gave an unsteady jolt.A relic.The man was an elder, down here amongst the rabble and not up in the balcony with the others. He knew Jude couldn’t grant his prayers but yet here he was, desperate enough to ask.
Jude grabbed the relic and pulled it free. The elder howled in response, grasping his neck, but it was too late. The metal burned hot as Jude brought it down to the stone. The pain was irrelevant as it shattered against his palm. All that mattered was that it was destroyed.
Nails scratched against his forearm, digging deep furrows into his skin. Jude convulsed, trying to push the elder off him. His face was crimson, eyes glazed, not with hysteria like the acolytes and pilgrims, but with pain, with misery. ‘You,you little—’
Jude brought his knee up directly between the elder’s legs. He wrenched back with a bitten-off scream. Gasping, Jude rolled as far as he could onto his side and spat. The foamy transparency of stomach acid was tinged with bright, vivid red.
Next to the unsightly puddle was the relic. The metal was twisted, hinges broken beyond repair. A thin strand of reddish-brown stuck out from the broken resin.
Continuing to cough, Jude gazed up, momentarily disorientated.
The air was thick with sweat and screaming, underlaid with the unmistakable scent of smoke. It wouldn’t take much for the writhing crush to trample him. Already, his limbs had been trodden over so many times he no longer flinched at the smash of a boot or the jab of an elbow. Unreality coated his mind in cotton. The view overhead – mouths open to scream, tendrils of smoke disappearing between bodies and, high above, a glorious cut of sunlight – doubled, tripled. He floated up towards the rafters.
How easy it would be to close his eyes and never reopen them.
The sickening, damp crunch of something snapping filled the air. The answering scream was blood-curdling. A shudder overtook Jude’s body from start to end.
He needed to getup.
With a shout between clenched teeth, he forced Maeve’s face to the forefront of his mind and fought back to his feet. An arm whirled in front of him, catching him on the side of the jaw before it moved, creating a sliver of space wide enough to force himself into.
He lurched forward, step after aching step.
