She was here, and they were alive. It was more than he ever could have wished for.
‘My memories…’ Maeve murmured against his skin.
Jude pressed a hard kiss to her temple. ‘Mine too.’
She tilted her head back. Her eyes were clear and dark. Dear and familiar in a way that made his throat convulse. ‘We were friends,’ Maeve whispered. Her words sent a roll of pain through his chest, grief for what could have been.
Jude cupped the side of her face, running his thumb along her jaw. ‘You were always there. Every good memory I have of this place is down to you. It’s always been you.’
She opened her mouth, looking like she was about to say more, when a shattering crash broke the air. Jude spun, his arms spread wide, as the rose window collapsed inwards. Glass shattered on the fleeing acolytes and pilgrims as flames licked at the jagged hole it left behind. Black clouds of acrid smoke billowed up from the tapestry and the icons alike.
‘Fuck,’ he gasped. ‘We need to leave.’
Maeve grabbed his hand and began pulling him towards the crush exiting the basilica. It was all he could do to maintain his grip as the flow of people shoved at them. Panic dripped down his spine at the remembered feeling of falling beneath their feet.
Not again, he nearly cried. He couldn’t bear it. Not him, not Maeve.
He shouted her name as her hand abruptly went limp in his before slipping out completely.
Thick smoke sent tears to his eyes as the heat grew unbearable. Under it all, his skull continued to pound as memories filled his mind like plaster into a mould. He couldn’t make itstop. Flashes of midnight sea swims, the feel of paper under his hands as he learned illuminations, the sun’s bright glow through a salt-streaked window. A bird silhouetted against an endless blue sky.
Jude stumbled into the stone doorframe.
His heart jerked an unsteady rhythm as he looked up, up. The sculpted cloisters, black smoke against white stone. A flash of movement as a raven took flight ushered in a new memory, more vivid than any that had come before it. At first, it cycled too quickly for him to parse out what he was remembering.
His legs gave out, forcing him to his knees.
Colour and light swirled against his closed lids. Flashes of windswept moors and angry skies. A chipped mug slid across a scuffed table. A snap of frustration at a ruined meal to cover the pathetic gratefulness beneath. A hand on his shoulder to hold him upright, the growing familiarity of laughter on his tongue. Someone who cared for him. Someone who wasthere.
And there, and there, and there.
A choked sob left his throat. The agony of the memory was worse than the pain burrowing into his skull. Elden – his friend, his trusted companion, someone he’d come to view as a brother – Jude couldn’t bear it.He couldn’t allow the memories to work their way any deeper.
Distantly, he heard Maeve scream his name. Felt his lungs convulse at the smoke, his body cowering uselessly away from the horde leaving the basilica, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t command his mind to obey as the memories continued to drown him.
The flashing visions slowed slightly as they moved deeper, older. Childhood memories.
He recognized the now-familiar contours of the Abbey. His old bedroom, his favourite seat in the dining hall. The ache of his knees on the floor echoing the strain at the back of his neck. Maeve, poking him with her paintbrush when he bothered her in her studio.
Felix– Jude marvelled at the sight of the saint.
Not an enemy like the false memories had led him to believe, but a friend. A boy who’d been closer to a brother than anything else.
Memories of laughter, running down the halls, studying in the library and learning their prayers. Pints of cider and barrels of kerosene in a cellar. Gold dust and hands pressed to foreheads.
But that wasn’t all the memories showed.
Someone else stood beside them.
The memory echoed Jude’s current reality – a burning Abbey and a hungry desperation in his chest. A voice telling him that he was viewing what Ezra had alluded to just before he forced Jude onto the altar, a memory that, above all else, had been stripped from him so completely that even a shadow of it hadn’t been allowed to remain—
The memory of Felix and Jude freeing Ezra’s son.
Flickers of conversations nudged in at every side. Discussions about burning the elder’s quarters to distract Ezra from noticing his son was escaping. Plans to set the whole Abbey on fire to save one person – justone. They’d done it, too, succeeded until he and Felix were caught on the outskirts of Whitebury. They were told Ezra’s son had died, that it was their fault, but that wasn’t true, was it?
The scene turned blurry and dreamlike, whether from the smoke filling his lungs or the force of the memory, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t care, because Jude recognized the boy smiling at him.
His blond hair was shorter and far curlier in his youth. His blue eyes were his father’s. His smile was anything but.
