He Stole My Life, So the Moon Gave Me Back novel · Chapter 3 of 27

Chapter 3: The Hand That Must Ask

In the archive, Adrian forces Noah to heal his burned hand by holding Brother Idris hostage; Noah refuses until the old man is freed, pockets a sheath and wax seal while Adrian watches, and finally reaches for the burn, at which point Adrian grabs his wrist and the sun-blood erupts between them.

Adrian unlocked the archive door and shoved Brother Idris's chair into the strip of light before Noah.

The old man sat with his wrists bound to the armrests, rope cutting red lines across the skin. Ink stained his fingers. It always had. Noah had spent six winters in the scriptorium bent over the same bench as the old man, learning the psalms in a room that smelled of lamp oil and wet stone. Idris had a way of humming the first line under his breath before he wrote it, and the habit had driven the other scribes to distraction. Noah had never minded. He could still hear it if he tried.

Noah felt the brass key press cold against his hip.

Adrian stood three steps inside the doorway, the burned hand still wrapped in cloth. He had not looked at Idris once since they entered. His eyes stayed on Noah, and they were the wrong kind of steady, the kind that came from having already decided everything and waiting for the world to catch up.

Noah read the room the way he had been taught.

Two guards at the outer door. Three exits. One window too high to reach.

He stepped forward and let his fingers brush the edge of the nearest table, testing how far Adrian would follow. The table was oak, scarred, littered with the archive's leavings. A broken stylus. A spool of thread. A leather sheath with the knife long gone from it. A wax seal stamped with the bishop's crest, cracked down the middle.

Adrian followed.

Idris lifted his head at the sound of footsteps.

'Noah,' he said.

The single word carried the weight of every lesson the old man had given him in the scriptorium below the church.

Adrian moved to stand between them.

'Heal the burn,' he said.

Noah looked at the wrapped hand and did not move.

'You brought him here to make me useful,' he said.

Adrian's mouth tightened.

'I brought him here so you would see what happens when you refuse.'

'And what happens when I refuse?'

'I send him back to the court.' Adrian said it without heat, which made it worse. 'The lord has questions for a priest who knows what you are. He won't ask them gently.'

Noah kept his face still.

'He's an old man who copied psalms for forty years. He knows nothing.'

'He knows enough to have kept you hidden since you were a child. That's a confession on its own. The court will get it out of him one joint at a time.'

'You would do that.'

'I would let it happen. There's a difference, and I'm not sure it matters.'

Noah stepped past him and knelt beside Idris.

The rope at the old man's wrists had been tied by someone who knew how to make pain last. The knots sat wrong. The rope was tarred, and it had already bitten through the skin in two places. Idris did not flinch when Noah's fingers found the cord. He only watched Noah's face the way he used to watch a difficult passage, patient, waiting for the scribe to find the word himself.

Noah touched the knot without untying it.

'Free him first,' he said.

Adrian did not answer.

'Free him,' Noah said again. 'And then I'll do it.'

'He stays in the room.'

'He stays.'

'And if you lie to me?'

'I'm a priest,' Noah said. 'I don't have the luxury.'

Adrian crossed to the table and picked up the knife he had brought in with him. He cut the ropes in two strokes, one wrist and then the other, and he did it without looking away from Noah's hands, which were resting on the arms of the chair. The old man rubbed his wrists but did not stand. He stayed where he was, and Noah understood that Idris was not leaving this room until Adrian had what he came for.

Noah stayed where he was too, close enough that the cold coming off Adrian's coat reached his shoulder.

The key in his waistband pressed harder when he breathed.

He tested the nearest cabinet door with his free hand and watched Adrian's eyes follow the motion. On the way past the table, his palm had closed over the sheath and the cracked seal. Both were small. Both fit inside his sleeve. Adrian saw the movement and read it as fidgeting, the way a man reads a nervous prisoner.

Adrian opened the cabinet for him.

Noah stood again and faced him.

'Free him,' he said.

'He is free.'

'Free him and send him out of this room.'

Adrian's hand went to the back of his neck and stayed there. He looked at Idris, then at Noah, and for the first time something crossed his face that was not calculation. It left before Noah could name it.

'No,' Adrian said. 'You'll heal me with him watching. I want him to see what you are. I want you to see what you are when someone you love is in the room.'

Idris shifted in the chair. The wood creaked. He had not spoken since Noah's name, and he did not speak now, but his eyes moved between the two younger men with the unhurried attention of a man who had spent his life reading things that were meant to stay hidden.

Noah waited.

The guards outside shifted their weight but did not enter.

Adrian's jaw worked once.

'Do it,' he said. 'Or I put the ropes back on and we start again.'

Noah stepped forward until the space between them narrowed to the width of a hand.

Adrian held out the burned hand, cloth still in place.

Noah reached for it.

Adrian caught his wrist before the fingers could touch.

Gold light cracked open along Noah's forearm and raced up Adrian's sleeve. The archive went white at the edges. Veins of it split the skin at Noah's throat and pulsed down his wrist, and the temperature in the room climbed so fast that the guards at the outer door flinched back a step. One of them swore. The smell of scorched cloth rolled off Adrian's cuff where the light touched it, and a thin line of smoke curled up between the two men.

Adrian's grip tightened for half a heartbeat. Then it broke. He let go and stepped back, and the gold light folded itself away under Noah's skin, leaving the room colder than before.

Idris sat in the chair with his freed hands in his lap and watched Noah's face.

Noah did not look at him. He looked at Adrian, who was looking at his own hand, at the cloth gone black at the edge, at the skin beneath it that had not healed.

'You didn't touch me,' Adrian said.

'No,' Noah said.

'What was that?'

Noah did not answer. He did not know how to answer something he had spent his whole life being told to keep buried. The sheath and the seal sat tucked in his sleeve, and the key sat against his hip, and the old man in the chair behind him had taught him every psalm he knew, and none of them had a line for this.

Adrian lifted his burned hand between them, palm up, an offering or a demand, Noah could not tell which.

Noah reached for it.

Adrian caught his wrist before the fingers could touch.

Gold light cracked open between their skin, and this time it did not stop.

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