Jude made his legs move. He’d go to her first. He needed to hold her, to reassure himself that she was whole and unharmed. To tell her that he was there, and he remembered her.
‘Jude.’
A voice rasped through the thickening cloud of smoke. A wet sound followed, a gasping squelch like a boot pulled from mud.
Jude stilled.
‘Please,’ the voice called, desperate. ‘Help.’
Several paces away, in a crumpled heap, lay Ezra. His mouth gaped like a fish, eyes glazed and struggling to focus. His purpling hand grasped weakly at his neck. Blood flowed freely between his fingers. His nose was a mangled lump of bone and cartilage.It seemed somehow wrong that Ezra would bleed the same as him; the arterial redness vivid against the stone.
Jude drifted closer. He knelt, knees dipping into the pool of cooling liquid. The pale blue of his mentor’s irises was vivid against the grey of his skin. He didn’t have long for this world. Jude felt a flash of watered-down pity, the faint sting of satisfaction, and then, nothing.
‘Help me,’ Ezra gurgled. Fresh blood spilled from his mouth.
Jude furrowed his brow. ‘Why? I have my memories back. We all do. You have nothing over me anymore.’
While Ezra’s body and clothes were littered with scrapes and gashes from the stampeding crowd, his neck bore the brunt of it. It looked like a fractured candlestick had been driven straight into his artery. A painful way to go.
Jude couldn’t have helped him, even if he’d wanted to. The blood loss was too significant.
Ezra must have known that, but he still searched Jude’s face with muted desperation.
Jude watched the blood dribble from between his mentor’s fingers with detached interest. His gaze travelled down, over the ornate beading on his chasuble and stole. The sigil of the Abbey in gold and white embroidery, now stained red with blood.
Three relics hung from his neck, cradled in a fold of his cloak like eggs in a nest.
Jude breathed out, breathed in.
He collected the relics and stood, hesitating for less than a heartbeat before he smashed them beneath his boot. They crumpled into a mess of metal, resin, and hair. Maeve’s golden hair shone next to his own darker strands. Finally, a curl of darker blond. All crushed beneath his heel.
He brushed the remains away with the toe of his boot before returning his gaze to Ezra.
Fury shone in Ezra’s bloodshot eyes. ‘You… can try to fix me. You’re a saint.’ He heaved one, panting breath. ‘Please.’
‘You of all people should know that praying to me is meaningless.’
Ezra coughed, closing his eyes.
As Ezra bled out in front of him, thinking of his son, of Jude, of lives moulded and lost, he made his decision. He was done turning the other cheek.
Jude knelt back down. ‘Would your son like to watch you die too, I wonder?’ he asked.
He couldn’t decipher the look in his mentor’s eyes, couldn’t dissect the meaning of the emotions playing in his expression. Terror and regret, resignation and a curl of sorrow. His features settled, smoothing into blank unknowingness with one final breath.
Jude rose to his feet, turned his back to Ezra, and left.
53
Jude
Maeve’s face was tired and streaked with soot, the pilgrim’s habit hanging from her shoulders torn and burnt. She bled freely from a cut above her eyebrow and another just under her jaw. Yet, her eyes were brighter than he’d ever seen.
‘Maeve,’ he breathed, reaching for her. ‘You’re all right.’
‘You’realive.’
She tucked herself into Jude’s side, pressing her nose beneath his ear. Her whole body shook. He held her tighter. He ached to place her heart behind his ribs and keep it safe. The numbness broke, ushering in a heavy weight of sadness and relief, undercut by the most resounding wave of hope he’d ever allowed himself to feel.
