And someone was inside it.
29
Maeve
As the night deepened, Maeve’s anger, the prowling insecurity, had only sharpened its teeth. Jude was with Bethan. She heard them only a few doors down. The murmur of voices, the scrape of furniture on naked floorboards. Bethan had said his name, a gasped exclamation loud enough for Maeve’s breath to catch in her throat. Hours had passed since dinner, but he would take his time. She’d seen enough of his intensity, his single-mindedness, to know that.
Still, she wasn’t quite sure why she had come to the library.
The book she chose was bound in scuffed black leather; the runes inside indecipherable. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t read it. All she needed to do was open it, and the magic would do the rest. It vibrated in her hands; the pages edged in the gold that would consume her as soon as it opened.
Maeve stood at a crossroads. Continue, and she’d have a piece of Jude he might never have given her. Stop, and the rejected beast inside her would remain hungry.
She placed the book on the floor and laid shaking hands on the cover, deliberating. It pulsed with its own heartbeat. Underneath her closed lids, gold swept into her vision like the unending tide from the sea, staining all it touched. Even with the cover still shut, distorted memories pulsed against her lids. Pain and stifled weeping. Cries smothered into a fist. Blood leaking from slender gashes.
With a choked gasp, she pulled back.
She couldn’t do it.
Beneath layers of muscle and bone, her heart fought to be freed from her chest. She had nearly looked at it. She had been so close to opening the cover. Her shaky exhale broke the silence as relief coursed through her. She hadn’t done it. She hadn’t betrayed his trust.
Around her, the library shifted, drawing breath.
Her eyes snapped open, and suddenly, he was there.
Hands were against her shoulders, pushing her forward towards the book. Maeve’s head fell against his chest as she struggled against the movement. ‘No.No, wait, Jude—’
‘Do it,’ he hissed. ‘You came in here for my secrets, so have at them. Read it.’
He pressed against her back, surrounding her, gripping her wrists to draw her hands to his book. She had barely more than a heartbeat to fight back before her palms were against the pages.
Nausea surged up her throat as the memory swept her into its fold.
Damp walls pressed in from all sides. Seawater slapped against the window in a rhythmic pulse. The iron frame rattled, water straining through the edges where fogged glass met stone. Maeve recognized the sound of the sea, the shade of the stone.
She was back at the Abbey. It smelled of brine and blood.
Kneeling on the floor, illuminated by a shaft of weak sunlight, was Jude. Alone. Young – just barely past childhood. His body was frail and shaking, naked from the waist up. One hand was braced on the wet stone floor underneath him, the other banded over his mouth. Tears dripped off his nose and mixed with the salt and reddish stains already coating the floor.
His exposed back leaked blood.
Her head spun, and her tongue felt unwieldy in her mouth. As she moved closer, unable to look away from the horror ofJude’s childhood, she wondered if she would pass out. Her vision wasn’t quite right. Hazy, blurring at the edges.
Scratched into his pale flesh, from armpit to armpit, was the wordDEVOTION.
Blood slunk down the hollow of his spine to collect in the waist of his trousers. The skin around the gashes was purple and bruised. Jude braced both hands on the floor, grunting as he stood. His collarbones were like twin knives, every rib visible, caging the hollowed expanse of his stomach. His face still had some childhood roundness around the cheeks and jaw. Tears streaked down it in messy lines. He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, taking a deep breath and wincing when the movement pulled at his ravaged skin. The air around him stilled, dust motes freezing in the light, lit with every shade of gold.
His eyes met Maeve’s.
She fell backwards out of the memory.
Maeve opened her eyes to Jude standing over her, a spectral figure of pain and embarrassment. His chest rose and fell in rapid, uneven breaths. ‘Are you satisfied? Now that you have what you came for?’
‘Jude—’ Maeve heaved. She couldn’t stop her tears.
Who would put achildthrough that, tearing a word into his skin?Devotion?She felt despicable, the lowest sort of human to think she could claim his nightmares for her own. To even call herself his friend was an abomination. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so—’
‘Enough.’
