Page 28 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)

C ora jerked back and nearly knocked Durbec’s proffered drink out of his hand. He spoke something she couldn’t hear above her own heartbeat and the music. The band had started without her.

Durbec took a step toward her. She took a step back, but there was a wall of bodies behind her. He captured her hand and brought it to his chest. Her fingers brushed a hard lump under his shirt, and the urge to withdraw her hand evaporated.

Marcel stepped closer. She didn’t move away.

“What is this?” Her fingers traced the lump circling his collar.

“A charm necklace.” Marcel’s lips moistened the shell of her ear. “To enchant beautiful mademoiselles such as yourself. S'il te pla?t , hold onto it. Keep holding onto it. Bien . And here, now, drink this. I made it just for you, mon c?ur .”

How thoughtful of this sweet little man. Cora smiled and lifted the glass to her lips. The drink tasted like bitter almonds. Its effervescence tickled her nose.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Marcel said when she lowered the glass. “Drink all of it, mademoiselle.”

As Cora had been practicing all day, she downed the drink. Marcel pulled her down the hallway to the toilets. He didn’t need to ask. She would have followed him anywhere. He was such a gentleman as he guided her into a dark alcove, murmuring in his sweet voice how lovely she was. Statuesque . Resplendent . Going to earn me a shit ton of money .

She still clutched his charm necklace and the empty glass, but her grip was weakening. Her limbs grew heavy, and her eyelashes seemed to be individually tied down. Fighting a losing battle against gravity, she slumped against the wall with a relieved sigh.

“Do you have any weapons on you, mon c?ur ? Hm? Just this knife? Oh, and this one? And this one? And this one? And— just give me all your weapons.”

Muscles slackening, Cora slowly retrieved each blade she’d stashed. She’d be wearing more suits from now on from the pockets alone.

It felt good to hand her weapons to Marcel. She could trust him. He was the rock that steadied her. Literally. Leaning against him was now the only thing keeping her upright. Her tongue was too thick to form words, but if she could, she’d thank him. Why had she ever thought he was anything but a dear, sweet man?

There was no resistance from her leaden limbs when Marcel tugged her towards a more private place . He shifted to open a door leading outside, and her fingers slipped from his necklace. His palm was soft and damp as he hoisted her back.

A clammy hand silenced her scream.

The memory clawed at the edges of her mind. She reared back. Her heart pounded wildly, yet her muscles were too loose to make a fist. Panic surged beneath the drugged feeling. She slipped from Durbec’s grasp, wobbling backwards into something solid.

Bane appeared like an unexpected storm and drew her into his arms. Durbec froze, fear etched onto his face. He licked his lips and made to run when he collided with the hulking Hydromancer blocking his exit.

“Dimitri,” Bane said in an icy voice. “Escort our guest to my office.”

Vaguely, she heard the sound of something being dragged away. Drowsiness weighed down every limb as she sank against Bane. Brow knitted in concern, he asked her earnest questions she didn’t hear. She tried to speak but her words came out like a prolonged groan.

He swept her up into his arms and carried her through a parting sea of bodies. Nestled against him, she drifted in the slumberous rocking of his body.

The leather was firm at her back when he laid her down on his office couch. She clung to his jacket, desperate to keep him from leaving. He rested a knee between her legs and leaned over her, his concerned face swimming in her vision. His eyes were as dark as a moonless night swirling amidst snow brightness.

“Am I interrupting, Mal?” came a woman’s Cockney voice from far away. Words were exchanged without Cora understanding them. “Rush of blood to the head coming up, boss.”

Hands planted on her sternum and her blood rose up to meet the touch. Anita’s magic sobered her like tossing a bucket of ice water straight into her veins. Cora startled awake as if from a dream. Groggy, but undeniably awake.

“...I dunno, Mal. It’s some kind of sedative. There’s only trace amounts in her blood. It’d take a Sanguimancer and some dark magic to make it this potent, that’s for sure.”

“Here’s the glass she was holding,” Bane said. “What did Durbec drug her with?”

Anita dipped a finger into the glass and tasted it. Her eyes widened. “Like fizzy cyanide.”

“What happened?” Cora sat up with a wince. Both her vocal chords and thoughts were packed in wool.

“Looks like Frenchie spiked your drink, love.”

“Fuckin’ bastard.” Bane was coldly, calmly furious. “Drugging my w—” His gaze shot to Cora. “Gang.”

Cora was gingerly planting her feet on the floor when the door burst open, bringing in a wave of jazz, laughter, and desperate pleading. The Hydromancer shoved Durbec inside. “Rat try to sneak off.”

Wrists bound with ropes of water vapor, Durbec’s eyes spun as he cringed and wheedled apologies. Dimitri tossed him against the far wall and forced him onto his knees, and a smug Anita cuffed him with the manacles hanging from the ceiling.

Why are there manacles hanging from the ceiling?

Durbec, kneeling with his hands bound overhead, began sobbing in earnest. Cora savored every tear, relishing the rapture of his impending death. She had never been more sober in her life than when Durbec’s panicked gaze met hers. Shock, then terror flashed across his blanched features. His mustache trembled as he gave her a simpering smile.

One. Thread. At. A. Time.

“Found this round neck.” Dimitri handed Bane a polished sandstone obelisk with a diamond-tipped point that looked vaguely familiar to Cora.

“A fuckin’ Occlusion Obelisk. Diverting the suspicions of the betrayed from the betrayal.” Holding it by the chain, Bane dropped it into his desk drawer. “You shouldn’t have, Durbec.”

Occlusion Obelisk . The same as Mother had handed Cora after the botched Chronomancer favor. The obelisk linked Mother and Durbec like the gossamer threads of a web. But who was the spider and who was the prey?

Cora shivered. How readily she’d complied with Durbec’s wishes under the obelisk’s influence. Unsuspecting, she’d disarmed and drugged herself without hesitation. A sheep led willingly to its slaughter.

Bane dismissed Dimitri and Anita locked the door behind them, leaving Durbec alone with the Unweaver and Realmwalker.

“I do hope you’ve had your fill of pleasure, Durbec,” Bane said. “We’ve business to attend to.”

“Are w-we to conduct business with the m-mademoiselle present? P-please, this is all a t-terrible misunderstanding! Allow me to explain. I meant the mademoiselle no insult. No, quite the contrary! In Paris, it is the highest of compliments—”

The strike of Bane’s fist cut Durbec’s words short. His head snapped to the side, and he sagged against the manacles. Bloody spittle leaked from his mouth, pleading with increasing franticness.

Bane loosened his tie and shrugged out of his suit jacket, leveling Cora with an intent look. There was a question, an invitation, in his gaze.

Cora understood the dark implications. A smile stretched across her face. “ Oui .”

Bane smiled back. Turning to the Sanguimancer, he said in a menacingly soft voice, “I don’t appreciate you drugging my gang, Durbec.”

“Dr- drugging ? Oh non , monsieur! I swear on my sweet Maman’s grave, I-I merely added a drop of opium.” His moist lips tweaked into a beseeching smile. “To help mademoiselle relax.”

Bane stilled her lunge. “Let me kill him,” Cora snarled.

“Not yet. Dispense with the bullshit, Durbec. That wasn’t opium.”

“But— Please, b-be reasonable —” Bane cracked his fist along Durbec’s jaw and his head whipped back. He whimpered in broken French.

“Cora?” Bane glanced over his shoulder, a lock of fallen hair sweeping his brow. “Persuade Durbec to be more cooperative.”

Her shadow fell across Durbec as she towered over him. Gaze never straying from his terrified eyes, she removed her gloves finger by finger. In a dark, nasty part of herself, she liked frightening him. The rush of power was thrilling, addictive.

She clasped his head between her hands and hovered her thumbs over his fluttering eyelids. “Are you feeling more cooperative, Marcel?”

“Enlighten us.” Bane held up the drink Durbec had drugged. “What is this potion?”

“I-I don’t know what you mean!”

Cora dug her thumb into his right eye and rotted away the lid. Shrieking, he tried to yank from her grip, his eye rolling in its lidless socket. Her thumb squelched through the vitreous jelly of his cornea. Blood and decay oozed from the darkened hole in his skull.

He thrashed against the manacles with a high-pitched whine. “The p-potion was for a customer! I kept the most negligible amount. For personal use.”

“Do you hear that, Cora?” Bane cupped a hand to his ear while Durbec whimpered. “The sweet sound of cooperation.”

“Which customer?” she demanded.

“I-I don’t know!” Tears leaked like ruddy sludge from where his right eye had been. “ Mon dieu , I don’t know! Believe me, if I knew who sh-she was I would tell you this v-very instant!”

Cora lifted her thumb a fraction. “She?”

“ Oui . A petit mademoiselle. She never gave her name and I n-never asked. I would never make customers divulge something so intimate as their name. Privacy is of the utmost importance to Marcel Durbec. Why, I wouldn’t dream of revealing your names to anyone should you be so kind as to release—”

Her thumb descended. “What did the girl look like?”

“Blonde! Strange eyes. I followed her once b-but lost her on the way.”

“What else do you know about her?”

“Nothing! I swear on my life—my dear Maman’s life—on the life of my unborn children—”

Her thumb pressed into the putrid remains of his eye while Durbec shook and cried.

“Sh-she came into my shop. Once a month for six or s-seven months. Always alone. She bought relics, the custom potion. A very private, v-very effective recipe, should you be interested in the discounted rate I only offer my most prestigious—”

“What potion? What relics?”

“A sleeping potion. The Serenity Chalice. An… Occlusion Obelisk.” Durbec had the self-awareness to cringe at this admission. “The Oracle Ruby.”

“What about Sephrinium?” Bane said.

His remaining eye bugged. “You speak of myth, monsieur! I deal in the rare, not the nonexistent.”

Bane and Cora exchanged a look. Beckoning him to stand out of Durbec’s earshot, she whispered, “Mother had one of those obelisks when I was in her office, right before Teddy died.”

He nodded thoughtfully. His gaze fastened on Durbec. “The Oracle Ruby could be used as a spirit vessel.”

Her eyes widened. The vessel of the remainder of Teddy’s spirit, sold to an unknown girl.

Bane stalked towards Durbec. “Why would a child buy a sleeping potion and dark magic relics from you?”

“Sh-she never said. S'il te pla?t —”

“Is Edwina Morton one of your customers?”

When Durbec remained silent, Cora rotted away his other eyelid. He cried out, and she removed her thumb before it sank into the cornea. Head hanging down, he looked up at her with a lidless, unblinking eye and a rotten socket, licking the decomposing blood from his lips. “ Oui .”

“Why did you curse Teddy?” Her voice broke on a sob.

“Teddy?” Beneath the gore and tears, Durbec looked surprised.

“Teddy fucking Walcott.” Cora slapped him, hard, streaking decay across his cheek. “You cursed my brother with the Specter’s Scourge. Carved his heart out. Trapped his spirit in eternal damnation. That ring any bells for you?”

“C-curse? Please, I know nothing of this! I have never met a Teddy Walcott before in my life. And the Specter’s Scourge? Mon dieu , that is the profanest of curses—”

Cora was on him before Bane could act. She grabbed Durbec’s testicles through his trousers in a vice-like grip. Terror struck his features. Fabric and flesh decayed beneath her touch. With a fierce rip, she unwove the causeway of threads through his groin. The skin of his scrotum loosened, splitting at the seams as the rot spread deeper.

Awful, wonderful energy tingled up her arm. It felt good to take something vital from the man who had taken everything from her.

His bloodcurdling scream rang in her ears long after his shrill voice faded away. She wiped her filthy hands on his jacket, smearing burgundy fabric with the rusty crimson of his own rotted scrotum. The stench of the putrid crater that remained of his crotch wafted through the office.

Her eyes darted to Bane, fearful she’d gone too far.

“Merciless,” he said. “I approve.”

Blood puddled on the floor and soaked her shoes. Not arterial blood, though Durbec might wish it was given most of his manhood had sloughed off. The groin held a lot of vasculature, and he was bleeding profusely from it. Limp and pale, his voice was scarcely more than a rasp.

Cora worried the Sanguimancer might pass out before he could coagulate his own blood and she could get some answers. “We know you cursed Teddy,” she gritted out. “Now you’re going to uncurse him. Where is his spirit’s vessel?”

“Spirit v-vessel? Please—”

Cora backhanded him, leaving a matching streak of blood across his other cheek. He drooped against the manacles, eyes shuttering and face slackening. Her hands shot up in exasperation. “How could he black out from blood loss? He’s a bloody blood mage!”

“Not a very good one without his dark magic crutches, apparently.”

Jittery with awful energy, she began to pace. “Who doesn’t remember cutting someone’s heart out?”

“The same man who doesn’t remember smuggling dark relics in my cargo.” Bane shook Durbec until he spluttered awake. “Have you been losing time lately, Marcel?”

“ Oui ,” he whispered, voice ragged. “I have… awoken in strange places. No memory of how I got there but… blood on my hands. In my dreams, I hear a voice tell me to… to…” His mumbling devolved into incoherent French, but Cora thought she heard him say, “Find the needle within… the egg…”

They both stared in shock at the Sanguimancer. Cora gasped. The egg . Coshoy’s Egg? The words she’d been struggling to understand since Moriarty uttered them. Was the Realmwalker’s greatest weakness actually Coshoy’s needle within the egg?

Bane’s gaze narrowed at her stunned reaction. The flash of his black eyes as he scrutinized her told her that he knew that she knew what Durbec had said. And he was not fond of the development.

Bane switched into flawless French. French he mistakenly thought she couldn’t understand. A trick she’d picked up from Mother. Every advantage is an opportunity, pet . His attempt to shut her out so the men could discuss business was in vain.

Their fluency soon outpaced her ear for conversational French, however. She picked up every third word and watched Durbec’s spasms for clues. In a fading stutter, Durbec repeated needle and myth with dark reverence while his blood pooled under her boots. Not even a talented Sanguimancer could staunch that much blood loss. They were running out of time.

“I am… the victim…” Riddled with rotting injuries, Durbec slumped forward, unconscious.

Bane stilled her when she tried to jostle Durbec awake. “You’ve done good, Cora. Very good. I’ll handle the rest.” With a hand low on her back, he steered her towards the door. “Go home and get some rest.”

She dug in her heels, her gaze flickering between the men. She needed to find the girl who held Teddy’s spirit hostage, not go to bloody bed. Interrogating an unconscious man, however, would be unproductive. “Can’t we get Anita to revive him?”

“It’ll be hours before he can answer any questions. If he even knows the answers.”

A devastating disappointment. Perhaps she had been a tad overenthusiastic in her bloodletting. Next time, she’d bleed him out slow. With reluctance, she let Bane guide her away. They lingered by the door, neither moving to open it.

She faced him, feeling the warm press of each of his fingers on her lower back through the damp shirt. “What do we do now? If he doesn’t know who this girl is, how can we find her or the vessel?”

He smoothed her hair back from her face. “I’ll take care of it.”

Cora felt her heart pounding for a reason other than torturing the Frenchman. She refocused her scattering thoughts. Sleeping potions and the Oracle Ruby in unknown hands. A voice in Durbec’s dreams and waking without memories. Like Teddy, thrown out of his favorite brothel after having a strange dream.

Bane tilted her chin to meet his endless eyes. He stood close. Too close. Not close enough. Weightless anticipation tumbled in her stomach. His nearness and evergreen scent filled her senses, beneath the tang of sweat and blood.

Blood . Oh god . Droplets clung to her hands. Grimacing, she wiped them on her trousers. Technically his trousers, now painted with a palette of red and brown stains.

She mumbled an apology, pressing back against the door, unable to meet his eyes. “Still think I’m beautiful?”

“Yes,” he said, low and rough, and closed the narrow space between them.

Her gaze lifted and met his, molten with wordless promises. Hair tousled and expression raw, his cool detachment had melted away. Without his mask, Malachy Bane was beautiful.

The darkness in him called out to the darkness in her.

His hungry gaze drank her in. Softly, slowly, his fingers combed through her hair and cupped the back of her head. A simple touch that stoked a flame within her. She leaned into his caress, aching to cry, aching to kiss him. His arm tightened around her waist, melding their bodies together, inch by inch, until their shallow breaths intermingled.

Pinned between him and the door should have felt confining. But it still wasn’t enough. She wanted to drown in the pools of his eyes. Her fingers skimmed the hard contours of his chest, tracing the dark outlines of his tattoos.

He pressed a gentle kiss to her temple. Her cheeks. The corner of her mouth. Eyelids drifting shut, she gripped his shirt to keep him from ending the exquisite torment of his soft lips. When his mouth whispered over hers, his breath became her breath.

They stood poised on the edge of uncharted waters. Dark and deep. Terrifying and exhilarating. Waters Cora wanted to both avoid and sink into.

Neither moved.

There was a question in his hesitation. Her eyes fluttered then flew open when she saw the blood smeared where her hands had trailed, staining him with her rot-caked touch. “Oh god,” she breathed. “I am a monster.”

“After everything that’s happened to you, Cora, you should be a monster. But you’re not.” He cradled her face and lowered his mouth, a breath away. “You’re beautiful.”

Years of repressed desires uncoiled low in her belly. Heating her. Overwhelming her. It was too much, too quickly. She turned away and his lips brushed her cheek. “Are you only saying that because I’m wearing your suit?”

She felt his lips curve on her cheek. “Maybe.” He drew back, dark eyes glittering. For a moment, they smiled softly at each other.

Her hands splayed on his chest. Tentative at first, she dragged them down the dips and planes of his abdomen. He groaned low, resting his forehead against hers. When their gazes met, they were no longer smiling. She searched his features for confirmation of her fears, her desires.

“I’ve been playing tug-of-war with fate.” His eyes pierced into her. “I don’t want to win anymore.”

She watched the slow path of his tongue across his lower lip and angled nearer for a taste. His grip tightened and a whimper escaped her lips. A masculine whimper responded.

Malachy Bane, whimpering? Her eyes opened. No, Bane hadn’t made that sound. They both tensed in realization. Breaking apart, their heads swung to Durbec, regaining consciousness with a thready caterwaul.

A wave of panicked adrenaline doused any pleasure. She’d almost kissed Bane—her secret-keeping bastard of a boss—while Teddy’s murderer was a few paces away. A reckless near mistake.

Bane’s gaze roamed over her with uncertainty, then understanding, and finally unconcern. His hands dropped, his mask slid back on. Shutting her out. His impassivity stung more than any rejection.

The intimacy was over, but she knew the embarrassment would fester. She ached, not from need, but emptiness. She disentangled from him without resistance and twisted the door handle, daring a last peek before leaving.

Eyes on Durbec, he said, “Don’t wait up.”