Maeve shivered at the touch. He pulled back. ‘Because I’m a saint?’ he asked, not looking away from where his hand hovered a hair’s breadth from her skin.
He took his time returning his focus to her face. Her golden hair hung in matted tangles, her eyes huge and softly dark. Her gaze roamed him like she was searching for something hidden, something only she could see.
‘No,’ she said, ‘not because you’re a saint.’
For once, Jude didn’t have a reply.
14
Maeve
Jude’s remaining boot swung from his hand as they entered the house, tracking muddy drips on the wooden floor. He stopped, scraping a hand over the short crop of his hair. ‘I’ll draw you a bath. Get some oats for it. For the…’ his gaze raked down her body, landing on the tear in her dress and the leg beneath. ‘For the inflammation. It’ll be ready in a few minutes.’
Without waiting for her response, he turned the corner and disappeared towards the kitchen.
Maeve gazed up into the dark confines of Ánhaga.
The tangled mess of her hair would take hours to wash and detangle, and she didn’t even want tothinkabout the state of her poor dress. She rubbed her fingers absently over the wound on her thigh. Pain pulsed up her leg and curled around her hip, burning faintly. She still felt the ghost of his unexpected touch – surprisingly gentle and alarmingly cold.
The scratch was the least of her worries.
She didn’t knowhow, but when his fingers first brushed her wrist, she’d felt the abrupt stirring of a memory, similar to the uncanny feeling of remembering somewhere you’d never been. After, a fine layer of gold had covered her vision for a heart-wrenching second before she’d blinked it away.
She hadn’t missed the shock flying across Jude’s face when it happened, the careful way he searched her eyes after.
Had he somehow pried into her head? Was that the corruption of his magic Ezra had warned her about? And, perhaps more importantly, how had he done it?
A slippery sense of vulnerability coated her limbs. More than vulnerability –violation.
Slowly, she reached for the smooth contour of the key tucked beneath the neck of her dress. She was surprised Jude, cautious, paranoid Jude, hadn’t noticed her slip it from his neck when she pulled him from the bog, a move born more out of opportunity than anything else.
If he hadn’t noticed already… he would soon.
She needed to break into the locked room.
Now, with pain still pulsing behind her eyes, the memory still ripe on her tongue.
Now, with Jude preoccupied elsewhere.
Guilt wriggled in her chest. He’d fallen into the bog trying to protect her from the same fate. He’d followed her into the storm, trusted her to help him free from the earth’s hold. Even now, wet and covered in mud, he was drawing her a bath first.
But… would she get another chance? How long did filling a bath take? Not long enough.
She had minutes – if that.
Maeve took one step up the stairs, then another. Soon, she was racing towards the top, keeping her steps as quiet as she could. That infernal itch picked up as she approached the door. An urging to keep walking, to lay her hands on its worn wood frame, its shiny brass handle. This time, she obeyed wholeheartedly. She wasn’t thinking of Ezra waiting for her updates, or the advancement she desperately wanted. She wasn’t even thinking of Jude, who would be coming to find her in mere minutes.
There was only the door and whatever lay trapped behind it.
The lock gave with a faint click. Maeve stepped inside.
Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. Bookshelves rounded the room, covering the walls until they reached a windowat the far side, each crammed with more spines than she could count. Gold glittered on every surface, falling through the air. Like dust, but finer and less substantial. Slowly, she turned her palms skyward to collect the powder on her fingers. The room was gilded light and spun-sugar gold, awash with something strange and beautiful.
She turned in a slow circle.
The gold was the same as in her studio. Was it a mark the saints’ magic left behind? Had Jude been exercising his abilities in here? She froze, gazing at the falling powder as a thought occurred.
Had he been answering prayers?
