Gold hazed the room in a rush of fine powder. High above, a portrait watched with knowing eyes. The painting was finished, seemingly in mere seconds. How? How had he done it? She struggled upright as the last humming chants left her ears. Her rasped cry of his name hung in the gold-dusted room as the saint turned to face her.
How like his icon he was, she thought as she reached for the canvas. The paint was dry under her searching touch, just as she feared. Impossible, but yet—
‘Did you do this?’ she breathed.
He had to have done it. His whispered denial shot terror into the deepest confines of her heart.
Who else could have?
Surging pain lit her skin as words formed before she could stop them. She tried to swallow, tried to clamp her teeth around the question, but it was too late.
‘Your scar,’ she asked. ‘It’s from a fire, isn’t it?’
The saint’s eyes met hers.
She’d seen those eyes before.
Jude stumbled back as Maeve lurched free of his grip. Her eyes were fiercely dark as they bored into his. She rubbed her wrists with frantic motions. ‘How… What—’
Shame and vicious, poisonous hurt surged with a vengeance, transforming quickly to anger. She’d stolen from him while saving him from the bog. Violated his memories while he was in the middle of drawing her afucking bath.
‘You stole from me,’ Jude said, control hanging by a thread. ‘I returned the favour.’
‘What is it? The gold. The memories.’ Maeve keened, her chest heaving. ‘Please.Pleasetell me. Don’t lie like he did. I know… I know you have no reason to tell me the truth. But –please.’
He took one step back, then another. An untangling started deep in his chest at her words. Biting dread ate at his anger. Maybe it was the pleading in her voice, or maybe it was her naked desperation for answers, an anguish he knew intimately. Either way, his fragile sense of stability peeled away completely, leaving him unsupported against the reality of her.
Maeve had seen the gold.
And still – the Abbey had sent her here. Tohim.
The memory he had stolen changed something between them, like a fire had been lit in his head, obliterating everything he thought he knew about her and replacing it with ash. He needed to sift through it and see what he could pull free.
He could start with the truth. As much as he could afford to give.
‘The gold is a mark of magic, Maeve,’ Jude said. ‘Memory tampering. Whatever happened before the memory in my book, the events that caused the Abbey to exile me, was because of my magic. Because of something I did. Something I can no longer remember.’
He paused. He didn’t trust her, wrapped up in the Abbey like she was… but did he have a choice?
If her memory had showed him one thing, it was that she was more like him than he’d thought, than he’d feared. And if she was, he needed her to be open with him. Needed her answers more than anything.
Jude drew in a breath. ‘The gold is why the Abbey sent me away. The magic that has the ability to tamper with memories, change others’ perception of reality. Magic that can dip into otherpeople’s minds.’ He worked the words over on his tongue. ‘Magic that can write memories into books just as easily as it can into paint. It’s why I was sent away from the only home I’d ever known. And why you were, too.’
16
Maeve
Maeve’s tenuous grip on reality seemed, for a moment that felt too long and entirely too short, to comprise of a dusty library, gold dust upon wooden floors, and Jude’s hands slipping from her shoulders. The back of her skull buzzed like a bee had been set loose somewhere between her ears, left to dart through bone and brain matter in search of escape. If she could move, she would have turned and run. Left his home and his life and his secrets.
But, as it was, she couldn’t feel her fingers.
In a terrifying shift of time and vision, Jude’s face momentarily flickered between his current appearance and the painting of him in the Abbey. Long hair that held a loose curl, thick lashes that brushed his brows. The strange deadness to his gaze.
Pliable, innocent.
Jude as an icon, a boy. Jude as a man, asaint.
He reached for her once more, pulling back when she flinched. The expression softening his face spoke of pity and regret, and she couldn’t bear it.
