‘Elden,’ Jude heard himself say in the memory. The Abbey burned behind them. ‘You need to go now. Before he notices you’re missing.’
Beside him, Felix nodded emphatically. Blood coursed down his face and neck. Elden drew a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at it. Felix winced, pulling away, his fingertips lingering on Elden’s wrist. ‘I can’t leave you,’ Elden said. His gaze wrenched from Felix’s to scour the Abbey with burning blue eyes. ‘I won’t.’
Whatever Felix said in reply faded into the distance as Jude traced Elden’s face with a voracious need for understanding. This version of Elden looked around twenty, with Felix a similar age. Jude would’ve been around fifteen. They’d orchestrated the Abbey fire to free Elden from his father. Their aim had never been to burn the icons. Learning the Abbey’s secret had been an unintended consequence, a realization that had been wiped from his memory alongside every other moment from the fire.
Then, why had Elden betrayed him? Why had he come to Ánhaga in the first place?
He couldn’t ask the Elden who lived inside his memories. He could change the past no more than he could write the future.
Before he could delve any deeper, something knocked into his back – hard.
All the air rushed from his lungs, replaced with an urgent burning as he was thrust from the memory and back into reality. His hands came up to search his throat for grasping hands. No matter how hard he fought for breath, it wouldn’t come. Black spots danced in his vision, obscuring the tidal rush of the crowd around him, the face coming into view. The hands reaching towards him.
A sudden lightness trickled down his limbs. Jude’s eyes slowly shut, his legs curling inwards as his body rose into the air. His head flopped forward onto his chest.
A gentle hand landed on his face, carefully closing his lids.
54
Jude
Jude awoke sprawled out on a patch of scrubby grass. The ceaseless beat of waves came from somewhere nearby and, underneath, the hiss of frantic whispering. He peeled his eyes open. The sky above him wavered as the smell of the sea ate away the lingering smoke in his nose.
‘Maeve,’ he croaked. His throatached.
Her ashen face appeared above him, the hand on his shoulder stopping him from sitting up. Tears tracked messy streaks down her scrubbed pink cheeks. Her gaze darted between him and something to her left. ‘Just… just rest a bit longer. Okay?’
His whole body throbbed, a rhythmic pulsing that originated in his lungs to travel down each limb. He turned his neck to better see where he was lying. To his surprise, Elden stood beside the low stone wall separating the grassland from the beach beyond. His shoulders were curled inwards, eyes wide as they searched across the sky. An emptiness blanketed his face.
A look Jude had seen before.
‘He’s not well,’ Maeve whispered. ‘We’re not sure his memories were returned like everyone else’s. He doesn’t know where he is. Who I am. He only recognized you.’ She moved her hand to his lower ribs, thumb circling lightly until his focus returned to her. Her voice dropped even further. ‘He carried you from the basilica. He saved your life.’
Jude swallowed past the burning in his throat. ‘What happened?’
She wet her lips. ‘I lost you in the crowd leaving the basilica. All the icons were burning. The smoke was impossible to see through, tobreathe—’ Her hand moved further up his stomach to rest over his heart. ‘By the time I made it out of the Abbey, you were gone. I couldn’t find you anywhere.’ She clapped a hand over her mouth as a fresh bout of tears rushed down her cheeks.
‘Maeve,’ Jude started. Tears brimmed in his own eyes. ‘I’m right here. We’re both safe.’
She nodded, steadying her voice. ‘Then I saw Elden come running out of the basilica with you in his arms. You’d passed out, and he’d found you. He ran right past me like I wasn’t even there. He… he punched aguard.’ She loosened a damp laugh. ‘Felix and I followed him here. I think he wanted to put you somewhere safe, where the guards or elders wouldn’t find us quickly. He won’t leave your side.’
Sure enough, Elden had drifted closer as Maeve spoke. His gaze was fixed on Jude, yet he didn’t think he reallysawhim. His brows were furrowed tightly, lips moving around silent words.
‘His mind has been in the Abbey’s grip for a very long time.’
Jude startled, turning to see Felix standing to his left. Felix stared at Elden with a burning, gut-wrenching sadness in his eyes before his gaze peeled free to land on Jude. He knelt by Jude’s head.
‘Longer, even, than either of us,’ Felix continued. ‘He doesn’t have the magic we do. His mind isn’t able to shield against the Abbey’s control. There was nothing of him to take, only space to fill.’ He scraped his teeth over his lower lip. ‘I think we…youcan help to undo it though, Jude.’
‘Me?’ Jude asked, incredulous.
Felix nodded. ‘You… you know him best, now.’
Did he, though?
Elden had betrayed him more egregiously, morepainfullythananyone ever had before, even Ezra. He’d taken the fragile shards of trust Jude had given him and shattered them completely. He’d lied, deceived, and manipulated his way into friendship, only to turn Jude over to the Abbey in the final hour.
But.But.
