But Bethan was right – neither of them were safe. As much as he wanted to continue in their bubble of makeshift peace in his home, they were both in danger. The Abbey drew closer by the day.
He couldn’t keep the truth from Maeve any longer. Siobhan’s death was proof enough.
So, he’d given her the letter. He’d cast the first stone into her fragile foundation. Now, he would throw himself at her mercy and offer to help piece it together again. He knew better than most the desire to scramble to higher ground when the flood began – but her perch wouldn’t remain steady for long.
Jude folded the letter neatly and tucked it in his pocket, moving towards the window. Through the thin wash of moonlight coating the moors beyond, he spotted a thick mass of clouds rolling in the distance. Easing open the catch, he flinched against the bracing rush of winter wind. Though it was late, closer to dawn than dusk, he searched the sky, not knowing how many birds he would need to see to settle him.
A storm was fast approaching. Maeve was out there, alone.
And he knew exactly where she was heading.
32
Maeve
Maeve knelt before Oakmoor’s shrine. Rain and wind battered her from every direction, the mud soaking through her dress cold enough to burn. The saint stared back impassively as she bent her head before it. The act felt wrong. Blasphemous, somehow.
Anger fizzled in her throat.
It was all coercion. All manipulation. Stealing memories and calling them answered prayers. A structure built around discrediting the people who’d given their lives to support it. She’d been encouraged to stretch the limits of her piety in every way she could, and for what?
Her whole fuckinglife… gone. Taken from her before she even knew what it meant to live.
Digging her hand into her pocket, she withdrew her coined icon and laid it in the mud beneath the shrine. Pressed it deeper into the earth. After fifteen years of devotion, she was as sloughed smooth as the coin.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
She didn’t turn and look as she got to her feet; she didn’t need to. She knew he’d come. Knew he would follow her into the storm, into the reckoning.
Rain slid down Jude’s exposed nape and darkened his collar in splattering bursts as he knelt before the shrine. His knees fitted into the muddied divots hers had left behind. A saint turned penitent.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. He spoke his apology into the ground, into the shrine that had long governed their lives. It wasn’t holy, but it felt like a prayer all the same. ‘Maeve, I’m so sorry. Taking the letter was a mistake. I feared what it contained when I took it, and I couldn’tbear—’ his voice broke.
He scraped both hands over the back of his head, fingers digging in. ‘I wasn’t allowed to be brought gently to the truth. Some part of me, mistaken as it was, hoped to be that safe person for you. Even when I hated you. Even when I wanted you gone. But who was I to be your anchor when I’d been the one to call the waves?’
She stepped closer, sliding her fingers up the back of his neck. A long exhale left his parted lips as he rested his head against her lower stomach, eyes shut. She moved her hand to the side of his throat, felt it as he swallowed. Rain coursed over his face, washing him clean. The moment lengthened and stretched with unspoken possibility. She wanted to pull at it until it unravelled.
‘Maeve.’ Jude’s voice was a harsh whisper. ‘I need to say it. I need you to understand fully. No more secrets between us.’
Her chest compressed, panic digging claws into her ribs, her sternum. Shecouldn’t.
She wrenched away, putting her back to him as though it could stop the words sheknewhe was preparing to say. Behind her, Jude repeated her name, an edge to his voice this time. Heat brushed against her back. The ghost of his touch skated down her arm, pressing something into her palm and closing her fingers around it. A coined icon.
She uncurled her fingers to look at it. Jude’s face stared back at her, etched in metal.
‘I don’t want you to say it,’ she begged. ‘Please… please don’t say it. I don’t want to know.’
Jude slid his hand down the sodden rope of her braid, pulling her head back against his shoulder. Around the jut of her hip, his finger dug in. Soft lips went to her ear. ‘They’ve marked youas one of us, sending you here. Nothing less than blasphemy brought you to me.’
Maeve trembled. He was an open flame. Any closer, and she’d burn.
‘There’s no difference between us,’ he said, each word hammering at her carefully erected walls. ‘In the eyes of the Abbey, you’re a saint, too. Exiled for your ability. The elders take our magic for their own, sacrificing our memories along the way. Prayers aren’t real, Maeve. No miracles have happened. It’s all memory manipulation masked over with the mark of sainthood.’
She shook her head, pressing back against his shoulder.
‘Look at what they did to Siobhan, worn thin by prayers. Look at your own memories. Even before this, before your exile, they were using you,’ Jude said against her ear. ‘The Abbey chose you long ago.’
A choked sound broke past her guard. ‘I’m not marked. I don’t have the tattoo. I can’t be a saint.’
