Once his mind settled, he would confront her. He needed to approach her carefully, and a repeat of the heated argument in his former bedroom was the furthest thing from careful.
Jude tipped his head back and exhaled a stream of smoke into the air.
Ideas swirled and dipped on a gust of wind. He took anotherdrag and thought of a bird as it plummeted towards earth, safe in the confidence of its wings.
He set the cigarette on the tin’s lid.
It had done its job – he was ready to open the second letter.
Maeve hadn’t noticed he had stolen the letter from her bag. It had been tucked into a pocket along the side, the buckle stiff with disuse. Maybe she hadn’t even known it was there at all, secreted away for her to find on her arrival.
Pity, Jude thought as he laid it atop her letter to Ezra. It was his now.
Only her name was written across the front, no craft. The envelope was crinkled and water-stained but still sealed with the Abbey’s sigil of hands cupped around a sun.
He wanted to open it – badly.
But something stopped him. Not quite the jaded sense of morality that still lived inside him, but close. A recognition that the letter wasn’t for him to read, at least not yet. The one he’d stolen from the mailbox had been about him. He’d been right to open it. But this one…
Discomfort tightened his chest. It crawled up his throat and lingered heavy on his tongue. The smoke swirling in his thoughts made cutting through the chaff easier than normal, erasing the ever-present edge of anxiety that hounded him like a hungry dog.
Had he reached the point where he wanted to take a step he couldn’t draw back from?
He wasn’t sure. Not yet, at least.
He wasn’t regretful he had taken the letter, but equally, he wasn’t ready to open it. Not while he still had his own questions. Questions around her craft, around her beliefs, her reliance on prayer.
The smallest embers of hope stirred freshly in his chest.
If he could discover how the elders accessed the magic within the icons, he would be one step closer to breaking the link. Hewouldn’t need to protect his mind or his memories, wouldn’t have to live in fear of losing control. His life would be his own.
Perhaps the iconographer had the answers.
In the edge of his vision, his reflection wavered.
Jude spun slowly to look himself in the eye. For a moment, the candlelight formed a corona around his head. A golden halo of light, marking him as something holy. A vision he only saw when he let himself smoke. He could never decide if he loved it or hated it.
He blinked, and it was gone.
Was that how she’d paint him if she had the chance? Would she pick up her brushes and show him not as he was, a ghost of a man who trod too lightly to leave footprints behind, but as a saint? She was sure to be talented. All Abbey iconographers were.
It would be a masterful rendition, even if it was blasphemous.
He wanted to pick her apart. Parse through the shroud of devotion and misplaced faith until he discovered what she knew.
Was she aware of the power she held when she put brush to canvas? Was there somethingpurposefulshe did when she painted that linked the saint’s magic to their icon, some process he could disrupt that would free his magic from the Abbey’s hold?
If the Abbey had an icon of a saint, they could access their magic. In return, the saint would lose their memories, draining them like water from a well. The iconographer had a part to play in it; so did prayer. What it was, he wasn’t yet sure.
Jude drifted his fingers through the candle’s flame as the smoke fogged his mind.
His magic flew restlessly under his skin, searching for an outlet. He hadn’t visited the library for more than solace since Maeve’s arrival. He should, heneededto, but the idea of allowing himself that kind of vulnerability while she was mere walls away was unfathomable.
Light flashed behind his closed lids. If he accidentally touchedElden now, his magic would eat into his memories with a voracity Jude couldn’t control.
Corruption of his holy magic, indeed.
If only Maeve knew the truth – he wasn’t the one doing the corrupting.
