By the time she straightened, dusk had deepened the library into a study of shadows and fading orange light. Her stomach cramped with hunger. She sat back and studied her sketch. Her whole body ached. Her shoulders from hunching, her fingers from gripping the charcoal. The soft hollow of her wrist where it had dug into the tabletop. She dug her thumb into the offending muscle as disappointment filled her.
‘As I said.’ Her voice cracked unsteadily. ‘A perfect town.’
Jude brushed his forefinger over the edge of a building. Charcoal blackened his skin like a bruise. ‘Is that what you see?’
Maeve studied her drawing. The peaked roofs, the glistening river, the uniform pattern of shadow and light. Exactly like thepaintings she’d seen of the Goddenwood hanging in the Abbey. ‘Yes?’
‘That’s not what I see.’ Warmth coated her back as he leaned down. ‘Look again.’
The paper shivered. She ran her fingertips over the edges.
‘Look at it from the corner of your eye,’ Jude murmured.
She obeyed. The drawing changed shape slowly, moving faster. But when she returned her gaze to it, the town was perfect once more. She sighed. ‘Maybe… maybe my memories are false, somehow. Like there’s a distance between what I remember and what I draw. Drawing the town – it just felt like sketching. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. What the secret is.’
The sketch wasn’t her best work, admittedly. Maeve had never enjoyed drawing anything that wasn’t people. It felt so lifeless. Mechanical.
An idea occurred.
Immediately, she tried to swallow it.
She must have made a sound or stiffened in her seat,something, because Jude dropped to his knees beside her, putting their faces level. ‘What is it?’
‘I need to sketch her,’ Maeve said. ‘Siobhan. What I experienced in her memories, I won’t find it in a drawing of a town. I’ll find it inher– a saint.’
‘An icon,’ Jude repeated.
‘Yes.’
He stood, pulling a book free and tearing out a page near the back. She cringed—‘Jude!’
‘The book’s empty,’ he said, dropping the page before her. ‘I wouldn’t ruin it if it were not.’
‘Still,’ she grumbled. She picked at the corner of the paper. ‘What if it harms her? If icons allow someone to drain magic, wouldn’t this put Siobhan at risk?’
‘We’re not elders,’ Jude replied. ‘I don’t think someone can unintentionally steal magic. There has to be a process behind it.I’m sure of it. Otherwise, it could happen accidentally…’ He paused, frowning down at the paper. ‘Right?’
She met his eyes, seeing a flash of anxiety there before he dropped his gaze.
He cares for her, she realized. Despite the saint’s eccentricity, Jude genuinely cared for the elderly woman, with her scarves and her cadmium yellow. The thought of bringing Siobhan harm pained him.
‘I’m sure the elders have their own way of accessing the magic,’ Maeve agreed. ‘I don’t think it could happen accidentally. Their harm feels… deliberate.’
Jude nodded, exhaling heavily. ‘Even so, I worry that even the very act of creating the icon will drain her.’
Maeve turned back to the paper. She hated what she was about to say.Hatedit. She didn’t want to see Siobhan harmed, didn’t want her actions to drain the saint even more. But she couldn’t see a way around it. Whatever Siobhan had shown her was important, and Maeve needed to recall it.
‘Is it worth it, even if it is a small risk? To remember what Siobhan showed me. To see if there’s something there that could help her far more than it could hurt her.’
Jude searched her face for a long moment before drawing in a short breath through his nose. His gaze moved to the window. ‘Just destroy it after. The sketch.’ His lips tugged down as his voice dropped. ‘The icon.’
He returned to his window-side vigil as she picked up the charcoal and tried to forget about her pounding heart. Tried to leave everything behind that wasn’t her memory of Siobhan, both as she was in her icon in the Abbey and the version of her Maeve had met that morning.
Maeve’s hand moved quickly over the page. The slight curl to the edge of her lips. A precise crosshatch of shading under each eye. Each fine detail sprang faster and faster into existence.
And,there—
A low buzz. Faint at first, growing louder as gold settled finely across the desk. A swirling tide, drawing closer with every feature that fell into place. Distantly, she heard her name being called. A frantic plea, one she had no choice but to ignore.
