The Sacred Space Between

by Kalie Reid

Genres: Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

An enchanting enemies-to-lovers fantasy about an exiled saint and the devout iconographer sent to paint him, for fans of Divine Rivals and A Study in Drowning.

The Abbey has controlled the minds of its patrons for a millennium through memory magic, stolen from exiled saints. At fifteen, Jude was exiled from the Abbey to the bleak moors in the countryside, to maintain their control over his bourgeoning magic. Almost a decade later, he wants to live a normal life free from the Abbey’s oppressive gaze. When they send Maeve, a stubbornly devout iconographer, to paint an updated icon of him, Jude makes it his mission to get rid of her as soon as possible. That is until he discovers she holds the same tainted magic of the saints as he does, and that the icons she paints may be the key to destroying the Abbey's power.
 
As Jude and Maeve draw closer, the two of them face a choice—they can take on the full power of the Abbey and risk their lives for freedom or escape back to exile and make the most of their fading memories. But this institution has eyes everywhere, and the only thing the Abbey loves more than a saint is a martyr.

Release date: November 4, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 448

Sample

The toll of the Abbey’s bells cracked through the silence. Maeve lurched upright.

Fractal sunlight arched across the basilica’s ceiling like the ribcage of a great leviathan. This late in the morning, she was alone in the colossal room, a fact she was secretly thankful for. Praying was a vulnerable practice, with her knees aching and the nape of her neck prickling with cold. She preferred privacy with the icons to the other acolytes’ whispered requests.

Her icons.

Her chosen saint, a middle-aged woman called Siobhan, stared down at her with her usual lack of emotion. The wall before her held the Abbey’s hundreds of icons, each neatly framed and hung from long lengths of silken rope stretching from one end of the room to the other. Despite all the options Maeve could kneel in front of, she returned to Siobhan because she liked the colour of her robes. Cadmium yellow was so hard to get lately.

She studied the stone floor under the kneeler, the spot of red beside her left knee. She scraped it with her nail, examining the flakes stuck to her thumb. Oxide red.

The guard stationed at the door to the basilica tutted at her tardiness as he eased open the double doors for her to leave. Maeve dropped her eyes, ignoring the heat in her cheeks and the weight of the guard’s gaze as she passed. She’d overstayed her allotted time. Acolytes could only enter the basilica alone under strict supervision, but her status as an iconographer granted her some level of leeway. Even so, she shouldn’t make a habit of abusing it.

A briny layer of seawater coated the corridor leading to her studio. The room occupied a lonely corner of the Abbey, far from the other acolytes. Maeve liked the seclusion; painting was an act best done alone, in her opinion, but the walk to and from the basilica often felt never-ending.

Her boots slipped on the wet stone as she quickened her pace. She needed to return to her studio before the oil paint hardened beyond use. Ezra’s temper might burst if she let more paint go to waste. She’d already begged her mentor for coin to buy more onyx and ochre twice this month.

Besides, Felix might be early, and she couldn’t stomach the idea of the saint waiting for her.

Gaining an audience with Felix was a privilege earned through years of devotion, study, and dedication to her craft. Though she was trained to paint an icon with little more than a vague description, the honour of having a saint sit for her was one she didn’t take lightly.

Felix was her first in-person sitting, the first saint of his stature she’d put to oil and canvas.

She couldn’t help the dart of hope shooting through her chest – maybe it was more than an honour. Maybe it was a sign.

Brigid, the lead iconographer, hoped to retire in the next few months. The position would be open.

It could be Maeve’s… possibly. If she kept her wits about her and proved her devotion, she could move up in station and have her voice heard in the strictly regimented Abbey hierarchy. She would be allowed to form friendships with the other craftsmen, a seat at the monthly conclave of elders and senior craftsmen where every moment of Abbey life was decided. After fifteen years of living in the limestone halls, she would finally see behind the curtain. Her life would no longer be one of questions and sightless trust. Purpose and belonging: two peaks she had long pointed herself towards, finally within reach.

If her icon of Felix met Ezra’s ruthless standards, of course.

Simple tasks, really.

The stiff set of her shoulders finally relaxed at the sight of her empty studio. No Felix yet.

She lowered the scarf from her hair and toed off her boots, stepping into a pair of soft-soled slippers. The studio was small, barely more than a closet, but it was hers. It was more than many people held claim to, and she was grateful for it.

A draught from the half-closed window slunk through the space, skating down her neck with icy fingers. She crossed the room to close it fully. It was usually open to air out the ever-present smell of turpentine and oil, but as winter sharpened its claws, she’d need to put up with the fumes. That, or freeze.

Would the room be comfortable enough for Felix? Wherever he spent his time when he wasn’t at the Abbey, it was sure to be lavish.

If he lived at the Goddenwood, she could only dream of the luxury and comfort he was used to. The secluded village where the holiest of saints lived in community with each other was a fabled mystery in its own right. She’d never been tasked with painting it herself – her talents lay more in portraiture – but she’d studied depictions of it enough to picture its gabled, gold-tipped roofs and jewel-toned buildings with perfect clarity. Outside of the Goddenwood, saints lived in isolation, sequestering themselves to better focus on the prayers only they could answer.

Maeve aspired to their piety, dreamed of it, even, but she found the idea of such a lonely existence hard to grapple with. Maybe that was why only the holiest of saints were allowed to live in the Goddenwood – community truly was the highest reward.

Monasticism might have been a virtue, but loneliness…

The Abbey was isolating enough as it was. Hundreds of people lived in the limestone halls – acolytes, craftsmen, elders, guards, household staff – yet interaction between them was kept to a bare minimum. Sometimes, Maeve went days without speaking, longer without touch. Coupled with the Abbey’s strict censorship of information from the outside world, the solitude often felt like a physical weight on her chest. Impossible to breathe around.

The saints were worth every bit of the sacrifice living at the Abbey called for. Maeve was grateful for the life she had been given, the life her parents had chosen for her at seven years old. Always, always grateful for the opportunity to pray and to paint.

The icons she dedicated her life to creating were more than just portraits – they were objects of focus, symbols designed to connect the intercessor to the saint. She didn’t take her role in the sacred practice lightly, nor the prayers sent dutifully to the saints she so carefully depicted.

Carefully, Maeve traced the edge of Felix’s profile with the tip of her paintbrush. A heady tremor passed through her fingers. A slow-burning peace, undercut by the steady thrum of devotion, not unlike what she felt during prayer or hymns. Warmth, bright and golden and consuming, threaded through her chest.

She’d already completed the underpainting in preparation for Felix’s sitting. Hopefully, the remaining work shouldn’t take more than four or five sessions, though oil painting was a fickle beast and might take longer than she’d mapped out. The detail work could be done without the saint, of course, but a part of her was tempted to extend it as long as she could to keep herself in his presence.

Her hand twitched, smearing a line of burnt umber across his jaw.

Maeve dropped the brush.

No questions. She needed to stay professional. Only professional.

Just as she was collecting her brush from where it had dropped on the floor, a knock sounded at the door. With a stern word to her nerves to stay in line, she moved to open it.

Felix stood on the other side.

The reality of him forced the breath from her lungs.

A saint. Here, in her studio.

Felix was tall and imposing, with dark brown skin and a finely boned, carefully blank face. Perhaps five or six years older than her. He stared down at her for a beat before his gaze fixed somewhere over her left shoulder.

Words formed and died on her tongue. She’d seen him at a distance before, but never so close.

The thick brocade piping on his black robes shone silver as it swirled over his shoulders and down his chest. A swathe of shiny scar tissue ran up the left side of his neck to spider over his cheek and jaw, dragging down the corner of his eye. A medallion hanging at the centre of his chest glinted as he breathed, revealing a hollow centre. It wasn’t a relic, a medallion that signified an elder’s connection to a particular saint, but it resembled one. Enough for her to take an unconscious step forward to examine it closer.

She was sure she had seen something wrong in the light refracting off the metal.

Felix cleared his throat.

Maeve flinched, stepping aside to let him into the room. ‘Apologies. Thank you. Welcome.’ She cringed, swallowing another rush of mindless words as Felix moved past her.

‘Where do you want me to sit?’ he asked. His voice was low, scratchy.

‘There. Please.’ She pointed towards the stool she’d set up by the window.

He complied, angling himself to face almost entirely in profile. The scarred left side of his face wasn’t visible from Maeve’s position by the easel. Usually, saints faced fully forward, one hand raised, the other on their lap. Her preliminary drawing had posed him that way.

She picked up a brush and tried to think around the heavy silence. She needed to ask him to move, but would it offend him? He seemed wholly absorbed in staring out the window. If it weren’t for the stiff set of his shoulders or the subtle movement of his fingers under the cuff of his robe, she’d wonder if he was aware of her at all. She couldn’t paint him as he was. Ezra wouldn’t be pleased, and she needed Felix’s icon to be perfect.

‘Felix?’ Maeve hedged. Her knuckles bleached white around the paintbrush. ‘Could you… I mean, please, could you move to face me?’

His eyes flicked briefly to hers. ‘No.’

‘I need to see your entire face for the icon,’ she said, voice petering softer with every word.

His fingers moved faster beneath his cuff – a frenetic rub of his forefinger with his thumb. ‘This will have to do,’ he replied after a bloated pause.

Maeve dipped her brush in the paint. It was doable, she reasoned. She could follow her sketch from the neck down and still keep his face turned away. A thought occurred as she limned the curve where his neck met his shoulder in gold, lining out the halo’s contours surrounding his face – did he want his scar hidden?

The texture was unlike that of the scars on her own body or ones she’d seen on any of the men she met in the town – though she’d rather not dwell on her secret dalliances right now, worried that Felix might somehow know what thoughts swirled in her head. She was painting his icon, after all, and outside of answering prayers, his saintly abilities were largely a mystery.

The Abbey didn’t know she liked the occasional night away in someone else’s bed, and she wanted to keep it that way. Some things were a private indulgence just for her, sweetness tinged with shame. A constant teetering between letting the guilt suck her down or pushing back against the Abbey’s rhetoric around chastity. As an iconographer, purity was expected. Her personal feelings didn’t matter under the weight of her title.

Her thoughts spun out the longer she painted, the deeper the silence grew.

She had a saint in her studio. Would she ever have the honour again, an object of her devotion at such close range? Alone, with no listening ears at the door?

If she gained Brigid’s position, certainly. If not… Maeve didn’t know what shape her life would take. She tried to shove the gnawing thought from her mind. So much of the Abbey was kept from her. If she became lead iconographer, perhaps that would change—

Slowly, her eyes rose to Felix.

A saint in front of her. Questions on her lips.

Long-fermenting wonders about sainthood, his holy magic, the mystery surrounding his very existence. Her own prayers cast doggedly into the world. Forbidden questions and even more insidious doubts.

But she couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t.

Not Felix, not Ezra… no one. There was no one she could ask, no one who would reassure her.

She forced her eyes back to the painting. Lifted her brush. Pressure built just behind her eyes.

Waves drummed outside her window, urging a comfortable looseness to Maeve’s limbs. The action of sliding her brush across the canvas rode on instinct. The weak sun shifted into shadow, shadow into dusky blackness. Her gaze strained to focus only on what the bristles touched. An ear. The fold of a cloak. The arch of his cheekbone highlighted in raw sienna.

Minutes, maybe hours, ticked by.

Her breathing grew shallow, muscles tensing in her shoulders and wrist. Nothing else remained but him. Nothing could exist but what she formed by paint and brush. Gold-tinged candlelight flickered at the furthest reaches of her vision. Perhaps it was a mistake keeping the window shut as paint fumes filled her lungs.

A deep hum trickled into her ears.

With it, a voice. A whispered suggestion.

Maybe she could ask him whatever she wanted. Maybe she could beg him to answer her prayers, to call upon his glorious abilities and grant her every petition. If she could paint an icon worthy of him, an icon that would propel her into lead iconographer, she could have the security she wanted so desperately. All Maeve wanted was to belong. To be acknowledged. To be trusted with the Abbey’s secrets. She wanted to be carved into their history as securely as the icons she depicted. All she had to do was her best, and everything she wanted could be hers.

Everything.

She sat at the cusp, the precipice just before the fall. Wind beat at her back. Never before had she stepped so close to the edge. How would it feel to jump? To break all the rules and ask, ask, ask. To shatter the mirror and open the door. To fully see the glory of the Abbey she’d so readily given every particle of unflinching faith she had to offer.

A shivering wash of pain coasted down her arm to the fingers clamped tight around the brush, skating up to linger behind her eyes. Her vision began to blur.

In the space between breaths, Maeve tipped backwards on her stool.

She blinked slowly, slowly.

High above, the ceiling swam and dipped as the world shifted to glimmering, gauzy metallic. Reality unspooled like yarn. Warmth moved up her arms, down her shoulders and ribboned around her spine. A soft space of welcoming nothingness. Dreaming without sleeping.

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 of dust 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 was dreaming. 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 was dry.

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, but still—

‘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 she spoke 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. He was 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 her work, 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’s icon 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?’

Maeve opened her mouth to respond when her gaze caught Felix’s.

His eyes levelled hers with a maddening intensity. Every moment he had previously refused eye contact coalesced into his stare now – something so fervent she felt like he was trying to speak directly into her mind.

Indignation and something like confusion rolled in her stomach. How could Felix put her in this position? What was she meant to say to Ezra? As much as she couldn’t allow whatever magic Felix had deployed to finish his icon to compromise her career, equally, she couldn’t be seen disrespecting, doubting, the saint in front of her.

The truth, then. Her only option.

She turned to Ezra. ‘I started with the oils today. I was working, and there was this gold light, and the dust—’

Felix stepped closer. Maeve glanced at him. Something like panic crested his expression. Was it her imagination, or did he shake his head at her?

Abruptly, fear surged within her. Why was he nervous? What had he done?

And was she about to be blamed for it?

‘Maeve?’ Ezra prodded. She tore her eyes back to her mentor. To his placid, encouraging expression. He laid his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. ‘Whatever happened, you can tell me.’

Maeve sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘Well… My head started swimming. I think I fainted, and when—’

‘Sounds like you might have been unwell,’ Felix cut in. ‘A spell. Women have that sometimes. Hysteria.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Maeve forced out through the anger limning her throat. ‘How would that explain the paint drying? Besides—’ she paused, weighing her words. ‘You were here. What did you see?’

Felix shut his eyes briefly, breathing out hard through his nose.

‘What, indeed, Felix?’ Ezra murmured.

She wanted to ask more, demand that Felix tell Ezra the full story. It was her career on the line, after all. But what did she have to gain by angering a saint?

The gravity of her thoughts hit her full in the face – maybe she was the one in the wrong.

Who was she to question a saint?

Maeve ducked her head under Felix’s pressing stare. Guilt surged in her chest.

‘It’s getting late,’ Ezra continued. ‘Perhaps you ought to go to your room, Maeve. I need to speak with Felix. We’ll discuss this first thing in the morning.’ He pulled her around by the shoulder, a smile on his face. ‘A good night’s rest will surely offer clarity.’

Felix disappeared down the opposite hall as Ezra guided her from the room. His footsteps echoed like bells in her sluggish mind.

‘Maeve,’ Ezra said quietly. She dragged her gaze back to his.

Torchlight flickered, licking long stripes of flame up the Abbey’s limestone walls. The weight on her shoulder increased. Ezra’s smile seemed to grow softer in response. Warmth filled her chest. An early summer berry, sour on her tongue. When he spoke, his voice sounded muffled and far away. She’d expected anger for her questions, her impertinence. Not… this – the gentle smile, the guiding hand.

‘Let me walk you to your room,’ he said.

Soon, Maeve sat on the edge of her bed, worrying the edge of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger. Shadows trailed Ezra as he moved around the room. The darkness undulated in the liminal space between her slippers and the doorframe. Thicker than air, thinner than water. When she lay back against her pillows, the light behind her eyes faded into night-pressed blackness. She covered her face with the crook of her elbow.

Ezra closed the door behind him. The lock slid home with a metallic click.

The vicious beast of worry struck as soon as Maeve awoke the following day.

Her questioning was concerning. She’d entertained the odd doubt over the years – who wouldn’t? The Abbey was all she’d ever known. Her parents had chosen to give her up and offer her life and talents to the saints. It was an honour and a privilege she’d do well not to squander. There was no room for questions, not when the saints had given her so much. Besides, once she was made lead iconographer, she’d have no need for questions.

The nausea grew teeth, guilt biting down.

Questioning showed a lack of devotion, and Maeve was nothing if not devout.

She’d spent years bundling up her questions into neat parcels and shoving them into the furthest recesses of her mind, hoping to forget the truth that underneath the surface she presented as an acolyte, as a believer, she was cracked. Crumbling and drying out.

Soon, her questions would ruin her.

If she attained lead iconographer, it might allow her to pick at the secrets that shrouded the Abbey, like the saints’ ability to answer prayers or why their community needed to remain separate from the outside world. Maybe she could even convince them to loosen their rules around friendships between the acolytes. Unpicking their rigid confines wouldn’t be easy, nor could she do it alone, but as lead iconographer, she could encourage the process.

But not yet.

She couldn’t question yet.

Maeve shifted off her bed to kneel. She pictured Felix as he’d looked in his icon. Paint and canvas and not flesh and blood. Someone who couldn’t see her in her entirety. Someone safer at a distance. The prayer for forgiveness came easily to her lips.

All too soon, the bells for the morning meal split the air.

Ezra was an early riser. Why hadn’t he come to see her yet? He had said a good night’s sleep might offer clarity, that he’d talk to her tomorrow, now today.

Yet… nothing.

She pushed up to her feet and rubbed the ache in her back as the bells finished their chiming. She kept her space neat and orderly. Jumpers, coats, and dresses in the wardrobe. Shoes under the desk, laces tucked inside. Freshly cleaned brushes in a glass jar she had salvaged from the sea. Coins stacked in a neat pile, one on top of the other.

Sitting in front of the small mirror, she smoothed her pale, thick hair with a boar bristle hairbrush before braiding it down her back. She leaned closer to the mirror, touching her fingertip to where the thin skin under her eyes shifted to a bruised purple. Another mark of a sleepless night and too little sunlight.

She tried the door, finding it unlocked. Maybe she’d imagined the metallic echo of Ezra bolting it shut last night, or maybe he’d told her to meet him in his study and she’d forgotten. Either way, if she didn’t hurry, she was going to miss breakfast. She stepped into the hall, casting a final look at her bedroom. Water beaded on the iron-webbed window like pearls, tracking down the glass in slick rivulets. Sunlight illuminated swirling dust motes.

For a moment, the dust flashed gold.

Her steps faltered. She blinked once, twice, as a shudder coursed through her body. Emptying her thoughts, Maeve kept moving. A cold rush of sea air swept through the corridor as she approached the stairs leading to the courtyard below. Despite the early hour, the courtyard was half-full of acolytes milling about. Though each acolyte kept to a schedule of meals, prayers, and hours designated for study or craft, interaction between each other was minimal in the extreme. Even after over a decade at the Abbey, Maeve wasn’t sure if she could count any of her fellow acolytes as true friends – exactly as the elders wished it to be.

She scanned the courtyard for Ezra, instead spotting Brigid heading towards the open doors of the dining hall. She let out a relieved breath. Just the person she ought to speak to. If there was anyone who might know what strange phenomenon had completed the icon, it was the lead iconographer.

The stairway down the courtyard was crowded this time in the morning with the youngest acolytes leaving the basilica. Maeve gazed over their heads as she reached the ground floor, searching for Ezra’s familiar cap of thick grey hair. Had he taken the early prayers, maybe?

A bright wash of light cut from the gap between the massive doors leading to the basilica, momentarily flooding her vision. She blinked. The sound of the acolytes pattering feet disappeared up the stairs behind her.

Suddenly, a shout cut the air.

Two elders wrestled a young boy from the basilica before throwing him bodily onto the rough flagstone. One knelt, wagging a finger in the boy’s face. Maeve was too far to see what was being said but close enough to see how his face paled as he gazed up. His mess of blond curls flung back from his face. A tear, vivid against the bright blue of his eyes.

She started forward, to intervene or to watch closer, she wasn’t yet sure.

She’d also been thrown from the basilica in her younger years for gossiping, picking at the pews, lagging behind on the prayers. Still – he didn’t deserve the rough treatment. Her heart clenched at the startlingly red blood streaking down his temple.

Maeve froze mid-stride.

Something was strange about the boy’s habit.

His collar flapped in wide points that covered his shoulders, the edges intricate with embroidery. She hadn’t seen that style in years, and maybe only in icons. It had to be at least twenty years old. Perhaps older. They were given new habits each year, some subtle differences marking the year’s style. Always in dark grey for acolytes. As the previous years were taken to be remade… there was no reason for the boy to wear something so markedly old-fashioned.

The boy reached out, clasping his hand on one of the elder’s shoulder. The elder jerked back, his hand flying towards the boy’s face in an open-palmed slap.

‘Maeve! Maeve.’

Maeve whipped around. Her legs were shaking, a stitch in her lungs like she’d been running.

No one was there.

An ink-black raven sprang off the arched cloisters above. Wingbeats filled the air as it ascended towards the pearl-grey sky, disappearing amongst the clouds.

Her pulse pounded unsteadily in her throat.

Slowly, she turned back to the basilica’s firmly latched doors. There was something she’d been watching, a reason she had stopped… wasn’t there? A finely pointed headache throbbed behind her eyes as though she’d been staring at the sun. Maeve closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her lids. Her ears echoed with a phantom scream.

Suddenly, the pain left as quickly as it had come.

She opened her eyes. Her back was pressed tight to the wall, the jut of a stonework digging into her spine. The Abbey was still and silent around her. It was breakfast. She was here to meet someone, wasn’t she? Brigid. She’d seen the other woman making her way to the dining hall.

Slowly, Maeve peeled off the wall, giving her head a rough shake. Pushing past the strange uneasiness swirling in her stomach, she stepped inside the hall. The room was half full, the platters set up in the middle of the long tables almost empty.

Brigid’s hand trembled slightly around a piece of charcoal as Maeve sat beside her and picked up a piece of toast. She was midway through some kind of still life – of what, Maeve wasn’t sure. An empty breadbasket, maybe, though it looked like blankets were trailing from the lip.

Maeve cocked her head and looked closer. She choked on her toast, hurriedly washing it down with a sip of lukewarm tea. Not a breadbasket. A bassinet.

Brigid dropped her charcoal. ‘My goodness, Maeve. Must you cough so loudly?’

‘Sorry,’ Maeve managed. She f