A push on her shoulder. Fingers on her pulse—
Maeve returned to herself with a choked gasp.
Felix stood above her, an unmoving and spectral figure. She lurched upright from where she’d been lying flat on the floor. Nausea surged as her vision continued to spin. A fine layer ofdust covered everything in the room, soft and shimmering like powdered gold.
How long?
How long had she been passed out on the floor? The dryness of her eyes and the pain at the small of her back told her it had been a while. Her stomach curled in, clenching at nothing. She pushed clumsily to her feet.
‘Felix?’ Maeve’s voice was a choked rasp in the heavy silence.
He didn’t reply, only stared. But not at her – at his icon.
She turned.
Staring down at them from her easel with an imperious curl to his mouth was Felix in oil, fully formed. Slowly, she reached towards the fine streaks of white daubed in the corner of the canvas – her signature, an M, the edges curling to circle around the letter. The oil paint was hard to the touch. It should have taken days to finish and weeks for the oil paint to fully dry.
She wasdreaming. She had to be.
She pressed her fingers harder against the dry paint to prove she wasn’t imagining it. Gold dust gilded her hand. She had painted the shadow under Felix’s jaw less than an hour ago, keeping the time from the track of the shadows across her lap. The thick coats of oil paint peaking like meringue on the canvas.
Yet, it wasdry.
Impossible.
Maeve turned to Felix. The same gold dust that coated her skimmed across his shoulders and the high points of his face. A holy figure, demanding her unflinching respect.
But yet, butstill—
‘Did you do this?’ she asked, voice hoarse.
Felix’s throat bobbed. ‘Not me.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You didn’t?’
‘No,’ he replied, just as short, almost dismissive.
His tone rankled something deep inside her, a part that stretched its limbs every time an elder ignored her when shespoke or Ezra denied her request for more supplies. The note of condescension wasn’t an unfamiliar one, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
His gaze dropped to the floor. Maeve’s frustration sparked higher, shifting steadily towards anger. Who else could have done it? He was the one with magic flowing through his veins.Hewas the saint. Somehow, he’d dried her painting, taking hours of her life in the process, and dared to try to convince her he wasn’t behind it?
‘Felix,’ Maeve began steadily. She needed to confront him somehow. He’d involved her in his act of magic, involved herwork, and that surely warranted answers, but finding the words to do so without offending his position proved difficult. ‘I think I—’
‘Ezra,’ Felix interrupted. ‘We need to find Ezra.’
She shut her eyes briefly, trying to swallow the thorns in her throat before turning towards the door. A hand on her wrist stopped her. ‘No. I’ll do it,’ Felix said with a shake of his head. ‘I’ll find him. You stay here.’
Something surged in Maeve as he moved to leave, stronger than any impulse she’d ever harboured. A blistering, phantom heat upon her skin. A question on her tongue that she couldn’t remember placing. Her mouth gasped open like it searched for air after drowning.
‘Your scar,’ she croaked. ‘It’s from a fire, isn’t it?’
Felix froze with his back towards her. Slowly, he turned. His eyes met hers.
Before he could reply, a knock sounded at the door.
A wall-mounted oil lamp haloed Ezra from the shoulders up. His dark brown habit was wet with seawater at the hem. ‘Felix. Maeve,’ he said. ‘I was finishing my evening round and heard your voices. Is everything all right?’
Before either of them could reply, his eyes widened at the state of the room, the gold powder covering every surface. Felix’sicon watched from the corner. Ezra stepped past them to approach the painting. He ran his fingers lightly over the dried peaks, tracing her signature in the corner. ‘It’s finished already?’ He turned to Maeve, confusion in his pale blue gaze. ‘Didn’t you just start this?’
