Page 3 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)

“H ow did that little favor go, pet?” Mother asked Cora, her dulcet tone laced with a subtle venom. Sunlight filtered through the lacy curtains of her office and caught the lambent eyeshine both in her eyes and the Siamese cat’s purring in her lap. The telltale amber glow of Bestiamancers.

The Siamese cat, one of Mother’s pets who transformed into animals, domesticated and ferocious alike, had been gifted to the Prime Minister’s wife and supplied her true owner with priceless information. Cora never knew if the rat scurrying underfoot or the bird overhead was just an animal. Mother was always watching, always listening.

Cora envied the Bestiamancers for their anonymity, to be able to shed their human hides for animal ones and become something else entirely. She did not envy, however, the animal hearts they had to consume to do so.

Mother caught Cora’s pointed look at the cat. Cora wouldn’t divulge anything in front of anyone except Mother and her ornery second, Owens, who transformed into an equally ornery crow.

Owens is the soul of discretion , Mother had insisted over her protestations at involving another in her secret. As far as Cora knew, Owens had kept her identity hidden the many years she’d been doing Mother’s favors. Her secrecy was the only concession Mother had been willing to make in their arrangement. Cora suffered no delusions it was for her benefit.

“That will be all, Florence dear.” Mother patted the flyaway strands of her steel wool hair pinned in a loose bun. Her plump face crinkled in an indulgent smile as the cat hopped down and sauntered away. Her smile faded when the swishing tail disappeared, and they were alone. Mother turned her full displeasure on Cora, her lips puckering as if the very sight of her was sour.

Cora endured the reproachful sweep of Mother’s gaze. She might have over a foot on the stout old woman, but Mother still made her feel small. Shifting in the overstuffed armchair, she awaited the punishment Mother had curated after the Silvertown docks disaster.

This office, decorated in nauseating pastels, frilly lace, and filled with the cloying scent of gingerbread, was the magpie spy’s preferred torture chamber. The dolls on the shelves, tracking her with lifeless glass eyes, didn’t help matters.

Mother flicked cat fur from her jumper. Among her seemingly endless supply of ugly jumpers, today’s did not disappoint: lumpy and puce-colored.

“Well?” Mother prompted.

“Well, Moriarty’s still dead.”

Mother’s mouth—the best barometer for her mood—thinned. Tomes of disapproval were written in each line of her pursed lips.

The uneasiness dogging Cora since the tunnels shot through her in a cold fire. Restless nights, punctuated by dreams of faceless Chronomancers, hadn’t improved her nerves. Each day, the rattle of death grew louder and closer, like the tolling of a death knell inside the cage of her bones. That thrumming undercurrent of anticipation persisted even when she was alone. It had to be the premonition of her own death, gnawing away at her and taking on a life of its own.

Mother waited in scolding silence.

“Didn’t you get my note from Owens? Moriarty was quite dead when we arrived, you see—”

Owens, dressed in unrelieved black, appeared with a tea tray. His pinched face held a permanent sneer, particularly when he looked down his beak of a nose at Cora. He set the tray on the table and left with an imperious sniff.

From a silver dish, Mother forked the small heart of a magpie and popped it into her mouth like candy. She poured a cup of tea and set it on its matching saucer in front of Cora. Magpies were painted on the porcelain, their white and iridescent black plumage frozen in graceful flight.

Mother moved the sugar bowl away when Cora reached for it. “You’ll ruin your figure, dear.” She dropped two cubes into her own cup. “Especially at your age.”

With immense effort, Cora absorbed the barb without comment. The doughy woman had long been a critic of her body. Sipping the unsweetened tea, she tried not to let it grate on her.

“And do stop slouching, pet. You’ll only wrinkle that old dress more. Do none of the dozen girls in your little flat own an iron?”

Only ten other girls live there, thank you very much. Swallowing the retort, Cora smoothed out her dress, the black cotton long faded to gray. Even Teddy owned more dresses than her, and far more fashionable ones.

“Well, dear?” Mother slid the twenty pounds Cora was owed onto the table, just out of reach. Eyeing Cora over her teacup, she raised her penciled brows, as if awaiting for a child to explain the mistake she already knew they’d made.

It was the same expression of anticipatory disappointment she’d worn the day they met over thirteen years ago.

* * *

London, 1906.

Cora had awoken in a strange place. Mind sluggish and throat raw, there was a throbbing pressure against her skull and a stinging numbness in her limbs. The astringent smell of bleach cut over the stench of sweat and sick.

Her eyes, heavy and caked with filth, opened to a searing shaft of light. She winced, and her surroundings solidified in abysmal detail. A crowded hospital ward, crammed with narrow beds full of groaning, writhing bodies. The animal stink of suffering and overflowing bedpans made her gag. Over the beds and down the hallways, death hovered.

No, not again. She jerked upright. There were bandages over her wrists and handcuffs over the bandages. Tall and spindly as a reed at sixteen, her feet dangled off the bed she was strapped to.

“Oh, good. You’re finally awake, my pet.”

Sitting beside her bed was a gray-haired woman in a hideous jumper. She set aside her knitting and rested a hand on her shackled arm, smiling that expectant smile.

“Call me Mother,” she insisted as she deftly picked the handcuffs open with a hat pin. “Oh dear, what a pitiful predicament you’ve gotten yourself into. I paid the nurse a tidy sum for your death certificate, but we had best call you something else, lest anyone note your hasty departure. Let’s call you Cora.”

Thus reborn, she rubbed her bandaged wrists. The scars that marked the beginning and ending of Cora Walcott throbbed in pain.

She tried to bolt when the woman snuck her out of the hospital. But the old bird was quick. Her nails bit into Cora’s arm like talons, drawing blood. “Why, your manners are most appalling, dear.”

Chagrinned, she followed Mother into a chauffeured car. Cora had never been in a car before. It was like a roaring engine of death on wheels, ferrying her from one cage to the next. Her filthy clothes stained the leather seat.

As London blurred past the tinted windows, Mother told her a fairytale of magic. Of mages hiding in plain sight that could weave and unweave threads of magic that were unseen but sensed.

Each mage affinity sounded more impossible than the last. Fire and water mages. Shadow and light mages. Mind mages, like Memnomancers and dream-puppeteering Oneiromancers.

In astonished silence, Cora marveled at the fairytale. The terrible things she couldn’t always control weren’t abominations, but magic . Not born of demonic possession, but a manifestation of something deep in her marrow, in her very spirit.

Magic was real, Mother said, and Cora had it. She was a mage of the gravest affinity—a Necromancer, capable of unweaving the threads of life and inducing a little death. A death that could become much bigger, Mother explained, if Cora behaved with the decorum of a proper young lady and stopped fidgeting.

Necromancer . Cora tested the word on her tongue. Unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. The truth sank into her gently and dripped inside her bones. She wasn’t an abomination, as the nuns and Felix and countless others had spat at her, but a mage. And she was not alone.

All she could think about was how much she wanted to tell Teddy. They had been separated years ago at the orphanage, but not a day passed when he didn’t feature in her thoughts. She sensed his presence in London like music from another room, synchronized with her heartbeat. Theirs was a bond that couldn’t be severed by time or distance.

“If I’ve got magic,” she began, “could my twin have it, too?”

“Twin mages are unheard of,” Mother said, puncturing her hope. “However.”

However.

The stronger the magic, the earlier it manifested. While most mage affinities appeared near puberty, her Necromancy had burst out like pus from a lanced boil at the tender age of nine. The odds her twin had experienced something similar were not impossible, only very improbable.

“Do stop slouching, dear.” Mother shoved her shoulders back. “Slouching makes you appear even more boyish.”

“Good.”

Irritation flashed across Mother’s features, then smoothed by degrees into a maternal smile. “ Impertinence ,” she said. “Do you know what impertinence means, girl? No? I don’t imagine the gutter I pulled you out of—from whence you could swiftly return, mind you—had suitable vocabulary lessons. Impertinence is a word reserved for particularly rude boys and girls who lack respect for their elders. I do not tolerate impertinence from my pets. Do we understand each other?”

Not even the nuns had been this concerned about her posture. The car was warm, though, and Cora couldn’t remember the last time she’d been warm. Grumbling, she sat up straighter.

“A lady must always comport herself with grace and humility, lest she appear brash or, heaven forbid, impertinent. Under my careful tutelage, a proper lady you shall become.” Her mouth pursed as she surveyed her newest pet’s unwashed dishevelment. “Eventually.”

Mother’s first lesson was ground into her over the years: decorum over morality, at all times.

The car pulled up in front of a sprawling boarding house. Mismatched additions had been tacked on over the years, lending it a hectic instability. The only thing that could keep the precarious structure intact, Cora realized with awe, was magic.

Mother’s house had been built, extended, and carved up without concern for geometry or practicality. There were triangular hallways and octagonal rooms, filled with adopted mages both like Cora and not like her.

The docile, well-groomed pets gathered on the stairs with their perfect postures to gawk at the mangy stray Mother had dragged home. They stared down at Cora like she was fresh meat.

Whether they had come from homes or the streets, whether they had been born into wealth or poverty, the others had shared the same orphaning when their magic manifested. The Covenant demanded secrecy, even from loved ones, and untrained magic was hard to hide.

Some of the pets were as young as Cora had been when she’d discovered what she was. Abomination , the nuns had screamed as they chased her out of the Sacred Heart orphanage. Cora couldn’t blame them. She had known the unknowable about how Father Hoyt really died. A touch of the priest’s body and she had glimpsed into Hell and seen the terrible truth for herself

Now, she knew it wasn’t Hell she’d been seeing all these years, but the Death Realm. She wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or disturbed by that revelation.

She often thought back to that moment in the orphanage—that single moment that would come to define her entire life—and wondered what would’ve happened if she’d kept her fucking mouth shut.

“Dora?”

She froze on the stairs. A boy she hadn’t seen in years but would recognize anywhere was on the top step. Only he was no longer a boy, but a teenager on the cusp of manhood. Shock was plain on his achingly familiar features. So much had passed since they were forced apart. A gulf of experience no words could cross.

Teddy.

Her twin was not only a mage, he’d also lived at Mother’s house since she adopted him after his Animancy manifested years before. Coaxing people’s innermost desires was a lucrative skill in Mother’s business, which she vaguely described as “just chatting.”

After the orphanage, Teddy had gone from one caring foster home to another. Cora, however, had been raised by the cruel necessities of life without adults. The London streets had given her a brutal education.

Clutching her dirty, bandaged hand, Teddy pulled her into an empty room and embraced her. She stiffened. When was the last time someone had touched her out of kindness?

A peculiar current of energy seeped into her. Something unthought but intuitively known stirred deep within her, drawn like a magnet to his touch. The energy spiked and laid her spirit bare in a stark invasion, like spotlights shining on all her darkest places. Gasping, she pulled away.

“Terribly sorry about that, D–Cora. Magic surge,” he said as if she understood what the hell that meant. In a gentle voice, he told her that he’d sensed what had happened to her. That he was sorry, that he’d never let anyone do that to her again. She stood wooden in his arms, fighting not to cry.

“Why didn’t you come looking for me, Teddy?” she whispered. “I’ve been here in London. I’ve never stopped looking for you.”

“I told Mother about you,” he rushed to say. “Of course I did. Mother’s been looking high and low for you. She told me so herself. It wasn’t until you wound up in the hospital that she finally found you.”

“Aren’t they… spies? How could they not have found me sooner?”

Teddy stroked her mangy hair and a soothing warmth spread downward from her scalp. By degrees, she softened. The tears she hadn’t let fall for years came. Wrapping her arms around her twin, she wept. Reunited with her missing half, Cora found equilibrium once more.

She lasted a month. Mother’s house was less of a refuge than a boiling pot of incompatible temperaments and affinities.

Bound by secrecy and humbled by ostracization, Cora had assumed mages would be united by their misfortunes. This, apparently, did not inspire camaraderie so much as it bred contempt. They might all be mages, but only Cora was a Necromancer. A critical difference, she soon learned, and one she’d never be allowed to forget.

There was a pecking order in Mother’s nest, and it was clear from that first day that Cora was at the absolute bottom. It began with taunts. Insults the pets hurled out of Mother’s earshot. They tripped her in the corridors and down the stairs. Knocked her meals to the floor. Ripped her new hand-me-downs.

Cora hadn’t survived sixteen years without learning to defend herself. But there were a dozen of the beastly brutes and only one of her. She tried to keep her head down.

Every creature harbored a bone-deep fear of death. For Bestiamancers, their senses honed by animal instincts, the natural revulsion one felt for decay was tenfold for Cora. Necromancers were the personification of their fears, the walking reminder of their mortality.

Surrounded by her own kind at last, and Cora would never belong. The mage’s condemnation confirmed the truth no magic could dislodge. Necromancy was just another word for abomination.

Her only comfort was the closet-sized room Mother stuffed her away in. A private sanctuary within four sloped walls Cora could only leave unscathed if she endured the humiliation of Teddy escorting her. The small window that didn’t quite latch was her porthole to the outside world.

When not doing Mother’s one-sided favors or avoiding spiteful pets, she was beaten down into the shape of a proper young lady. She barely reacted when Mother’s switch sang through the air and stung her skin. Flinching had been beaten and starved out of her long before Mother took to the task with such relish.

For their second, dreaded weekly check-in, Teddy escorted Cora into Mother’s office that was more like a parlor.

“Teddy, darling,” Mother cooed with a warm smile, waving him to her perch on a pillow-laden settee. She cupped his face fondly. “Let’s have a look at you. Why, you grow more handsome by the day! So well-mannered. And clean. How do your lessons progress, dear?”

“Splendidly, Mother. Most splendidly. I calmed Rupert down from a homicidal rage—you know how unreasonable he is in his mongrel form. I even persuaded Jane that the bite marks weren’t that unsightly. And that was only this morning.”

After plying him with sweets, Mother sent Teddy off with her lipstick branded on his cheek. When the door closed, Mother’s smile frosted over. She eyed Cora like she was a mistake in need of correcting.

Cora fed on the crumbs of affection Mother lavished upon Teddy, tucking the stray compliments away for safekeeping. There wouldn’t be any crumbs today. She was forced to stand, straighten, and spin in a circle— a slow circle , Mother snapped—while Mother tsked and shook her head.

Mother frowned at the ring of bruises on her arm, courtesy of her fellow adoptees. Her frown deepened when Cora tried to yank out her grasp. “What happened?”

“Your bloody pets happened.”

Her sharp nails dug into the bruises until Cora grimaced. “Well, my dear.” Sitting back, Mother sipped her tea. “I daresay, that is a most atrocious story. I know my pets and they are not the cretins you describe. None of my darlings are capable of that. Are you quite certain you’re not imagining things?”

Mother waved a dismissive hand before she could respond, as if sweeping Cora under the rug.

The pets upgraded to leaving rat carcasses in her room, then poisoning her drinks. One night, a viper Bestiamancer greeted her in bed, coiled beneath the sheets. Its fangs sank into her flesh like sabers. The acid burn of venom catapulted through her veins.

During their next check-in, Mother chided her foul mouth for half an hour before addressing her venom-mottled flesh. Cora told her with barely restrained rage.

“Well, my dear. Even if that did happen—and given your flights of fancy, I daresay, there is room for doubt—I’m sure my pets didn’t mean it that way. They are jokesters, not ruffians. You’re being overly sensitive.”

The next week, Cora startled awake with a noose tied around her neck. It was the last night she would spend at Mother’s house. After getting browbeaten into sitting ramrod straight, Cora recounted to Mother what she had awoken to. Pathetic tears burned her eyes.

“Well, my dear.” Mother nibbled a gingerbread biscuit. “Even if that did happen as you claim, are you quite certain you didn’t do something to deserve it?”

Cora frowned. Had she done something to deserve it? Beyond existing, that is. She had socked the Bestiamancer for his snake stunt. He still bore the bruise on his pimply jaw. Was that provocation enough for murder?

The gleam in Mother’s eyes caught her attention. Under the facade of maternal sympathies was a flicker of wicked glee. She relished Cora’s suffering, delighted in her self-doubt. They were weaknesses Mother could wrap around her throat like a leash.

Her pet's animosity was becoming homicidal and Mother wasn’t going to lift a finger. She’d sit back and watch them squabble in the nest until Cora was knocked out, likely dangling at the end of a rope.

If she was Teddy, Mother would intervene. If she was Teddy, Mother would have adopted her when her affinities manifested years ago.

How long had Mother known about her? The magpie spy seemed to know everything. Had she waited to collect Cora until she had irrefutable proof of the abomination she was?

No, that wicked gleam in her eye told her that Mother had known exactly who, what, and where Cora was long before the hospital. She had bided her time for when Cora was the most malleable, scraping her off of rock bottom and sculpting her into a useful tool.

“Do you want them to kill me, Mother?”

Mother smiled a little smile and waved her off.

Cora was rounding the corner to her bedroom when they ambushed her. The pets pulled her into a dark room with an open window. A rag, wet with an acrid chemical, covered her face.

She bucked and writhed against the hands restraining her. Lungfuls of the chemical dragged her into the depths of a numb darkness. As her body slowed, so too did her mind, moving like molasses.

Hands released her and she thudded to the floor. In a state of drugged incomprehension, she watched them slip the noose around her neck.

“A mercy killing,” the pets told her as they strung her up.

“Can’t suffer a Necromancer to live,” they said as they rolled her body to the open window. Two stories below laid a little garden choked with weeds. One final push and she fell with a violent, suffocating jerk.

To everyone’s lasting disappointment, her neck didn’t break. A constellation of pain exploded. She thrashed and swung, hovering above the garden on the verge of unconsciousness. The biting rope strangled the breath and willpower out of her.

Through the spreading darkness, instinct howled at her to fight. She sent a wave of death’s awful energy into the noose, and the fibers rotted and gave way. She sucked in a panicked breath that turned into a scream as she crashed onto the weeds in a bone-shattering impact. A moment of blinding pain, then darkness.

Other than the horrendous bruises, injured vocal chords, and irreparable damage to her self-worth, Cora had survived. When she came to hours later, still twisted in the weeds long after night had fallen, surviving didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment. They’d hung her from the window and left her shattered body in the garden to rot.

Limping and gasping, she snuck through the quiet house and gathered her few belongings. She ducked into Teddy’s room to say goodbye, but the room was empty, the bed unslept in. She didn’t make it past the foyer before Mother’s hand snatched her back with a barrage of questions. Cora rasped half-answers from her ruined throat.

Mother tilted her head and considered the angry bruises circling her neck. “Did you die?” The question was serious, not mocking.

Cora blinked, uncertain how to respond even if she could.

“Well then. It was only a harmless game my pets were playing. Stop overreacting.”

In a hoarse whisper, she pleaded with Mother to let her go anywhere but here. Surely, Mother didn’t want to be under the same roof any more than she did. They struck a deal. Or rather, a conditional indentured servitude. Cora would reside elsewhere and continue doing her favors. In return, Mother would keep her terrible secret.

Years passed. Wars came and went. Cora tried but never could escape Mother. There was always another note, another favor, all with the same implied or else .

I have only to make one call, my pet.

With a few words, her parting threat as Cora staggered out of her house had chained her secret Necromancer like a dog, ensuring she performed on command. And so her loyalty to Mother had stretched over thirteen years like a festering umbilical cord she couldn’t chew off. The unwitting child nourishing the parasitic mother. There was no other choice if she wanted to stay in London with Teddy. While not a docile pet, Cora was submissive, nonetheless.

* * *

Mother’s delicate cough broke her reverie. “Please explain, dear, how you managed to undermine everything I spent years building in the course of a single evening.”

Dutifully, Cora recounted her failure. How Moriarty had given up only one secret of something called Coshoy’s Egg before the Realmwalker appeared out of nothingness like a harbinger of death.

She touched her ribs gingerly. It had taken days for the broken bones to stitch themselves together and the bruise on her throat to fade. Accelerated healing was the only perk of being a mage. The more her magic unwove, the faster she healed.

Death feeding , a Sciomancer disguised as an oracle had once told her. The knowledge diviner’s sixth sense for magic had felt like a talon scraping against Cora’s skull and cracking her wide open. Child born of death on the day of longest night , y ou feast on the dying .

Cora had taken particular care to avoid Sciomancers since.

For reasons she didn’t care to ponder, Cora didn’t tell Mother about the key lying heavy in the pocket near her heart, or Moriarty’s ominous words that whispered in her mind. He will love you to death . These secrets she kept to herself, unsure who her silence was really protecting.

Mother’s mouth tightened as she listened. “Are you quite certain that is everything?” She skewered Cora with a hard stare. “There are no pertinent details you may have left out?”

“Yes. Er, no. That is, yes, I’m quite certain. No, no further details.”

Hairline cracks formed where Mother gripped her teacup. “And how is it that Mr. Bane knew about Mr. Moriarty so swiftly, hm? It would seem he knew precisely where to locate him.”

“We didn’t exactly chat before he beat the shit out of us.”

“Do not be crude.” Her mouth puckered. “That ill-mannered tongue of yours drives men away.”

“Good. It’s working.”

Mother clanked her cup down, splashing tea. “You miserable child.” Eyeing Cora up and down, a furious blush seeped into her powdered cheeks. “That is all very well and good if you wish to die alone.”

Spinsterhood was a milestone—love’s gravestone—Cora had passed years ago. Romance required a hope she didn’t possess. Lust required a desire to be touched that she couldn’t bear. Felix had made sure of that. Cora was a rock wedged in a stream, watching life pass her by and happen to other people.

Just because she was resigned to her fate didn’t mean she wanted to be reminded of it, however. She lifted her chin. “I won’t die alone. I’ve got Teddy.”

“And what happens when Teddy’s gone?” Mother’s words cracked like a whip.

Cora started. Wariness crept up her spine as she searched Mother’s livid features. “What do you mean, when Teddy’s gone?”

Mother tore her eyes away. Hands fluttering, she straightened pillows and tea-stained doilies until she regained her composure.

More than Cora had ruffled the old bird’s feathers. Her thin patience and thinner lips had to be from the escalating gang war. Verek had all but pulled the trigger on Bane’s Chronomancer. Mother had sicced her Animancer and Necromancer on the corpse. And Bane had attacked Mother’s pets.

London was still under the heavy shadow of the last gang war, and now they were hurtling over the brink into another. How many more lives would be tossed in the bonfire of greed before the bosses had enough?

When Teddy’s gone . The words spun in her mind like a train on a circular track, the wheels greased by that unshakeable premonition of death. Was it her own death she’d been sensing?

She hadn’t seen Teddy since they limped out of the tunnels, broken and defeated, three days ago. His jaw had been too bruised to do more than grunt. She had wanted to see him safely inside his flat before going to her own, but he’d shut the door in her face. Her hand rose to knock, then fell. While his bruised body would recover in days, the damage to his ego would take longer to heal. He’d go on a bender and reemerge next week with a crisp new outfit like nothing had happened. She had left him to his wallowing to tend to her own.

“Have you seen my brother recently?”

“You know how dear, unreliable Teddy sulks. Now.” Mother leaned forward, eyes flashing amber. “You’re certain that is everything?”

“Yes.” She reached for the twenty pounds. Mother slid it into her beaded reticule.

“This payment was for the successful completion of a favor. The only thing you’ve succeeded in doing is putting us in the Realmwalker’s crosshairs.”

Withholding the money meant forgoing Teddy’s Christmas gift to make rent. He’d pout until New Year’s. Cora bit back a retort, or tried to. “Conspiring with Verek to kill Moriarty may have already accomplished that, don’t you think?”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Mother said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Right. What will we do when the next war starts?”

Mother pierced her with a sharp look, then settled back with another biscuit. Her lips lifted in a little smile. “Wait and see, my pet.”

Cora remembered the last gang war too well to do anything of the sort. “I won’t be involved. Not this time.”

Her little smile twisted into a scowl. Mother surged to her feet and Cora braced herself for the slap. The old bird had a lightning-fast backhand—always the right hand, the one with the most rings.

Instead, Mother walked to her desk and pulled a strange object from the top drawer. She handed it to Cora, watching her closely. “What do you think of this?”

Cora turned it over. The four-sided pillar was made of polished sandstone that came to a diamond-tipped point. An obelisk. A strange current of energy, not unpleasant, tingled up her arm. “What is it?”

“A gift from a dear Frenchman. One of a pair and extraordinarily rare.” She perched herself on the arm of Cora’s chair. “Tell me, dear, why do you believe I’m conspiring with Mr. Verek?”

When she looked up at Mother, it was not with suspicion, but gratitude. This was the woman who had taken her in when everyone else had cast her out. The closest thing she’d ever had to a real mother. “That was awfully foolish of me, wasn’t it? I could never suspect you. You’re my mother, Mother.”

“Then speak no more of such foolishness.”

“Of course, Mother.”

“You look so very tired, pet.” She traced a sharp nail along Cora’s cheek. The obelisk vibrated in Cora’s hand, dimming the kneejerk revulsion she felt whenever someone touched her face. “How have you been sleeping?”

Her nurturing tone and soft touch warmed Cora from within. Sighing, she leaned into her hand. “Not well, Mother.”

“Poor dear.” Her hand dropped. “Do you still dream of death?”

Cora shivered, remembering dreams of her own eyes staring back at her from rotting faces. The death throes of countless spirits she’d communed with coiled inside her dreams like shadows. “Yes, Mother.”

She scrutinized Cora for a long moment. “Whose death?”

“Mine.”

“Hmm.” She tapped her nails. “What did Mr. Moriarty say Mr. Bane’s greatest weakness was?”

“Something called Coshoy’s Egg. And me.”

A long pause, followed by a heavy sigh. “Drat. I might just have to keep you, then.”

The obelisk was plucked away. Cora blinked at her empty hand, shaking her head to clear her cottony thoughts. What had they been talking about?

“Now. If it’s not too much of an imposition, go and do the job I am paying you to do. My note shall contain the instructions.” Mother didn’t spare Cora a glance as she locked the strange object in her desk drawer. “That will be all.”

Ah, so Owens was to deliver her personalized punishment at Mother’s convenience. Thus dismissed, Cora made her leave.

She collided with a girl in the doorway. Icy fingers latched onto her arms and held her in place. The girl, blonde and moon-pale, slowly raised her head and perused Cora with silver eyes too ancient for her young face. On a velvet choker around her throat glittered a bloodred ruby.

Cora broke away from the silver gaze when she heard someone call her name from far away. She searched the hallway, but it was only her and the girl whose lips hadn’t moved.

“Cecelia?” Mother called out. “There’s been a change in plans, darling.”

The girl didn’t move. Cora shrugged out of her grasp and hurried away, feeling the girl’s gaze between her shoulder blades like the sharp point of an icicle. She didn’t pause for breath until Mother’s house was well out of sight.