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					Read an Excerpt From The Sacred Space Between by Kalie Reid
					
  
    
      
                  
                                                        
                                      
                  
                  
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                Read an Excerpt From The Sacred Space Between by Kalie Reid
                  An enemies-to-lovers fantasy about an exiled saint and the devout iconographer sent to paint him.
                
                    
            By Kalie Reid
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                              Published on October 29, 2025
                          
          
        
                
  
    
    
      
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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Sacred Space Between by Kalie Reid, an enemies-to-lovers romantic fantasy out from Little, Brown and Company on November 4.
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.
1
Maeve
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.
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                    The Sacred Space Between
                              Kalie Reid
                  
      
            
        
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                            The Sacred Space Between
                                          Kalie Reid
              
                          
          
          
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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.
Excerpted from The Sacred Space Between, copyright © 2025 by Kalie Reid.
The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Sacred Space Between</i> by Kalie Reid appeared first on Reactor.