She crossed her arms tightly around herself. ‘As much as I can.’
‘Good. Maybe stay out of Oakmoor for a while,’ he said, worry tugging at his chest. If anything happened to Bethan because of him, like it had Siobhan…
Jude swallowed, scanning the darkened horizon from the window. The pressure inside his chest worsened, becoming hard to breathe around. He couldn’t give in to the agony now. Not yet.
‘Your dreams showed you the wall of icons burning,’ he said. ‘And a man. An elder. You said it was a warning – what do you think it means?’
Bethan’s interpretations were as much a work of magic as her dreams. She deciphered symbolism and meaning in a way he couldn’t wrap his head around. Whatever she picked up on from the dream he’d seen, if it truly was a warning… he feared the worse.
Bethan returned to her seat at the desk. She skimmed her fingers across the gold on the mirror. ‘I think the Abbey wants you to know they are watching. They know Siobhan brought the iconographer to the Goddenwood, if only in memory. The icons on the wall were empty, as though they will remain that way until Maeve brings back her creation. The bright light, the flame, I think it represents how the Abbey takes the magic from the icons. She must return, or else—’ Her voice cut out. She rubbed her fingertips across her mouth. ‘Siobhan was only the beginning. A warning, even more than my dream. If Maeve doesn’t bring back an icon to the Abbey, she will be next.’
Jude could do little more than stare, utterly frozen as his world shifted and reformed.
He thought himself safe here, far from the Abbey’s reach as long as he led a quiet, lonely life. As long as he didn’t run, didn’twant more from his existence outside of what they allowed him. He’d protected his memories and reformed his broken body one day at a time. It had been slow. It hadhurt. And then Maeve had turned his world on its head once more. She’d shown him that freedom wasn’t just a dream, it was a possibility he could grasp.
He’d wanted nothing more than to send her back to the Abbey. But not anymore.
‘Maeve being here is… significant,’ Bethan continued, watching him carefully. ‘Both to you and to the Abbey. She’s brought your life to a crossroads.’
Terror continued to carve a home in his chest. He tried to detach himself. To think of Maeve, and Maeve alone. Her skin against his. Her scent in his nose. How she’d taken things he previously hated – touch, openness, vulnerability – and made him crave them. How she’d come into his life and wholly upended it.
He needed to keep her safe.
Whole.
‘Oh.’ Bethan’s tone had changed as she watched him try to swallow her words. When Jude met her eyes, she levelled him with something both serious and quietly happy. ‘Jude.’
He looked away.
Bethan had become like an older sister to him. Sometimes annoying, always caring. She’d long wished for Jude to find someone. Bethan herself had a long-term, casual partner. A sheep farmer called Caleb that Jude had met a handful of times. She claimed neither were interested in leaving their families and marrying, but Jude had his doubts. Bethan had too much love to give to survive on sporadic trysts alone.
If he spoke his feelings for Maeve into existence, he would never recover when she inevitably left him, or if the shadow that had stalked him for over half his life claimed her, too. He feared the Abbey would never let them find peace in each other like he desperately wanted.
Bethan squeezed his arm. ‘It’s not one-sided.’
Tightness banded across his chest. ‘You don’t know that.’
‘I notice these things. Her feelings for you are written all over her face.’ She removed her hand and stood. ‘You should tell her. She seems like a rare gem.’
His throat thickened. ‘She is.’
And he wouldn’t be telling her anything.
Bethan nodded. ‘I should go. It’s late. And Jude,’ she waited for him to meet her eyes. ‘Look after yourself. Maeve, too. With Siobhan…’ she trailed off, shaking her head. ‘Oakmoor doesn’t feel safe. Not like it used to. And I worry that unless the Abbey is stopped, it’s only just beginning.’
After she had gone, Jude pressed the side of his face against the glass, letting it cool his overheated skin. Ánhaga breathed silently around him. Every creak and whisper magnified a hundredfold.
Bethan’s words, her dreams, and her warnings, swirled through him like a windstorm, steadily picking up speed. She’d said Maeve’s arrival had brought his life to a crossroads. She was right – but what if the crossroads truly was just the start? What if a steeper path awaited them?
He knew, heknewin the same uncanny way his body knew when to wake in the mornings, that the Abbey would know the second the prayer crossed his lips.
They would come. And he and Maeve would be at their mercy.
Unless they did something to stop them.
Suddenly, out of the night-pressed darkness, a slamming door startled him upright. Jude’s eyes flew open as his heart lurched into his throat with a sickening jolt. He froze, listening intently. Somewhere deep inside the house, floorboards groaned. Footsteps, moving quickly. A door squealed on its hinges.
Directly below his bedroom was his library—
