Page 30 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)

“C ora.”

She jolted upright and her heartbeat kicked into a pounding rhythm. At the foot of her bed stood a man, his eyes glittering like coals in the night. Gaze riveted on her, he took a slow step forward into a shaft of light spilling from the stained-glass window. Moonlit prisms gilded his bare-chested body, corded with muscles.

“Malachy?”

Another slow step and he returned to the shadows. “Have any unusual dreams lately?”

Was she still in one of them? After fleeing the Emerald Club last night, she had stripped out of the ruined suit, cleaned off Durbec’s gore, and collapsed on top of the bed. Bane had told her not to wait up for him, but she had anyway, tossing and turning while her mind frothed. Sleep had been slow to overtake her, and when the dreams began, there had been no rest.

Cora pulled the covers tight. “My dreams usually are.”

Another step. “Dreams of me?”

The covers came higher. “Maybe.”

He loomed beside the bed, close enough she could stretch out her fingers and follow that trail of dark hair disappearing into his loose trousers. His eyes, black and ravenous, bored down into her. “Dreams of fuckin’ me?”

Shock robbed her of coherent thoughts. Words caught in her throat. His grim features told Cora that he hadn’t picked this moment to start having a sense of humor.

“You mean— Those dreams— You’ve been—? This whole time?”

At his grave nod, she buried her face in her hands and groaned. Her startled mind reeled. This had to be lunacy. Shared madness. No, shared dreams.

He’d shared all those dreams?

He’d shared all those dreams!

He’d shared all those dreams.

She buried her face deeper in her hands. Bane had shared all that intimacy, too. Kissing her in a sea of tall grass and between her thighs. Pressing her against a door, then almost inside her. She had stroked his cock, wanting all of him.

A furious blush stained her cheeks. Their unconscious carnality, and its conscious implications, rendered her speechless.

Then came the sudden, piercing realization he’d seen everything else as well. Her death. Felix’s death. Even Father Hoyt’s death. Stories she’d shared with no one, and he’d had a front row seat to all of it. An even greater intimacy than his tongue on her clit.

With a fresh wave of mortification, she drew her knees up and dragged her hands down her face. If only she could sink into the bed and never emerge.

“How is this possible?” She risked a glance between her fingers. “Is it the Binding Agreement?”

The mattress dipped as he sank beside her. Head bowed in a moonlit vigil, he braced his elbows on his knees and rubbed his temples. The muscles of his back rippled, and she had an urge to trace them. She fisted her hands in the silk sheets.

He raked back his hair, gleaming like burnished copper. “An Oneiromancer is entangling our dreams.”

“What? Who?” Struck by a more disturbing question, she sat up further. “Why?”

An Oneiromancer might dream walk between sleeping minds as an unseen observer, if they chose not to reveal themselves. While the dreamers slept, they could implant suggestions, sow seeds of doubt, pull the strings of their subconscious like a puppet. Empires had fallen from the machinations of dream mages.

Through dream entanglement, an Oneiromancer could bridge individual Dreamscapes. Like Cora’s and Malachy’s.

Icy horror twisted in her gut. They’d shared all that intimacy not only with each other but with an unknown Oneiromancer. Two witnesses too many.

“I’m not sure yet.” He turned to her, moonlight bathing his unguarded features in sharp relief. An ocean of unspoken things passed between them. “But they saw everything.”

She gulped. “Everything?”

“Everything. This Oneiromancer is only entangling our dreams, not manipulating them. Building bridges, not tearing down walls. A spectator, not a puppeteer. It feels more… invasive when they’re puppeteering you. This Oneiromancer’s only entangled our dreams when we’re asleep under the same roof. They’re either weak, curious, or a voyeur.”

She released an uneven breath. “Do you know any Oneiromancers?”

“Enough to cause trouble. This one would’ve had to physically touch us both at some point to entangle our dreams like that.”

She shivered. The only Oneiromancers she’d interacted with, as far as she knew, had been quite dead at the time. This one had remained hidden in both the Living and Dream Realms.

“Know any that would force us to have sex and watch?” The light tone she’d attempted came out shrill.

His knee brushed along her thigh as he faced her, watching her with a dark intensity. “Did you feel forced?”

“No.” Her gaze lifted. “Did you?”

Unsated hunger smoldered in his eyes as he drank her in. His gaze dragged over her body, committing every slender curve and shadowed hollow to memory. “Truth be told, I thought I was going mad from wanting you.”

Their gazes connected. In the last fragment of her imploding mind Cora knew she couldn’t trust the emotions throbbing inside her. But she’d never wanted anything, anyone, as much as she wanted him. The feel of his lips and hands lingered in wakefulness, temptingly thorough in their possession. Mounting a resistance against this mounting desire felt impossible.

She wanted to slake the craving his nearness brought to a fever pitch. Wanted to crawl into his arms and close all the distances between them. Thread her fingers through his hair and let his touch burn away the uncertainty. Splinter into a thousand pieces and reform into another version of herself. The girl she might’ve been, had her life taken another path.

His fingers grazed hers. Slowly, he lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, devouring her with his endless eyes. Awareness coursed where they touched—all the places they could touch. He curled her fingers inward as if to keep hold of his kiss. Then, with careful deliberation, he set her hand on the bed, withdrawing his own.

Brows knitting, she searched his features, concealed once more by shadows. She thought she glimpsed desire and restraint dueling for control. Wishful thinking, perhaps. “Don’t you ever think of me that way, Malachy?”

More than silence was between them, deepening with each beat of her racing heart. There were a hundred words in his eyes but only one on his lips.

“Yes,” he said. “Frequently. And in great detail.”

He angled closer. For a breathless moment, she hoped and feared he might kiss her. A beginning or end to this torture. Catching himself, he drew back. His gaze found hers, the corners of his mouth lifting in a mournful smile. “But I won’t.”

Her heart sank. Now he was the one saying those words. “Why?”

“It’s not for lack of wanting you, Cora. You want a kind of intimacy I can’t give you. Even if I did all the things I want to do to you, you’d only come to hate me for not giving you more. For not giving you what you deserve. I haven’t the heart to love you.”

A gentle rejection. Not born of disgust but conflicted self-restraint, or frustrated self-denial. Cora was just another woman who wanted too much from Malachy Bane.

Of course. It was reasonable. Sensible. Devastating.

Rationally, she’d already known the outcome. Logically, she’d told herself as much. But hearing it from his lips made it real. What scant pleasures they might share weren’t worth compromising their lifelong working relationship.

Cora had few expectations to be disappointed by, yet disappointed she was. Rejection was a bee sting with lethal accuracy. The war between his words and his body tempered nothing. His internal conflict was a weak salve for her wounded heart.

Unable to bear meeting his gaze and reconfirm the painful truth, she glanced down at their hands on the bed. Almost but not quite touching.

The scar on her bare wrist nearly shimmered in the night. She’d forgotten to put gloves on. Wrenching her hand away, she buried it under the covers.

Alarm smothered any lingering passion. He’d witnessed how she’d gotten those scars and all the darkest miseries of her life. He’d seen for himself how unstable she was, rebuilt from broken parts on an irreparably damaged foundation. It was enough to cool even the strongest of desires, and Bane had only a passing curiosity about her. A craving satisfied after one taste.

Last night, he had wanted to kiss her. Now, he knew too much to make that mistake again.

“What really happened?” he asked softly.

“Right.” The laugh tasted bitter on her tongue. “As if you didn’t just see the whole thing for yourself.”

“Tell me. Please.”

A word she never thought she’d hear out of the Realmwalker’s mouth. The undertow of those terrible memories threatened to abduct her. She stared down at the vining scars. The beginning and ending of Cora Walcott.

“I-I killed Felix. I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now. After they found me, I ran away and… died. For a while, at least.” Couldn’t even get that right . “I awoke in a hospital with Mother perched by my bed.”

“Did you sense Felix’s death beforehand? How much time between killing Felix and yourself? Seconds? Minutes?”

Her head snapped up at his insistent questions to find his gaze strangely intent. “I wasn’t exactly keeping an eye on the time. Does it matter? A few minutes, maybe.”

“How many minutes? Two? Five? Ten?”

She pulled the covers to her neck against the intensity of his attention. Gone was the blue-eyed man who’d comforted her in dreams. His black eyes burned with unfurling schemes.

“Maybe five. Why do you care? Don’t you have enough dirt on Cora Walcott?”

“I know there is no Cora Walcott.” Her breath faltered at his gentle words. “Cora Walcott doesn’t exist. The Sacred Heart orphanage registered Theodore Walcott’s twin as Theodora. Who died in 1906, on the same day as Felix Rabinowitz.”

Naming the orphaned twins Theodore and Theodora had been a small step up from numbering them, she supposed.

Theodora Walcott . Felix Rabinowitz . The names of ghosts. No one had called her Dora in a lifetime. Not since she’d ended Felix’s.

Even after all these years, the Rabinowitz’s, a middle-class Jewish family in Birmingham, still had a reward out for information on their youngest son’s murderer. No one in Felix’s squat had known Dora’s full or last name. But one tipoff to the coppers and Cora’s manufactured life would be as over as Felix’s.

I have only to make one call, my pet.

“That’s what Edwina was blackmailing you over, wasn’t it? Rabinowitz’s murder. In the unlikely event you were ever connected with his death, you have a valid self-defense case, and I have an excellent solicitor. O’Leary can bury Felix under a mountain of paperwork.”

A sound escaped her lips, part laugh, part sob. The blackmail hanging like a sword over her head for years, disarmed with paperwork. It was too good to be true. The relief that stole over her—the unclenching of a decade’s worth of strain—was premature. False hope was worse than none at all.

Cora didn’t know how to respond. Leaning against the headboard, she squeezed her eyes shut and dragged her hands through her hair, fighting to harness her down-spiraling thoughts.

The coolness of the room ghosted over her breasts. Her eyes flew open. And downward. The covers had fallen, revealing the low neckline of her chemise. Whisper thin silk was the only barrier between her pebbling skin and Bane’s flashing eyes.

Gasping, she yanked the covers up and he ripped his gaze away. His eyes landed on the nightstand, then narrowed into slits. The lips she’d been craving hardened in displeasure. She followed the line of his vision.

Shit .

They lunged for the book at the same time. His half-naked body pinned hers to the bed, skin sliding against skin in a bewildering eruption of sensations, hard muscle crushing her into the forgiving softness of the mattress. He snatched the proof of her flagrant disobedience from her hands. The Demonomicon glowed eerily in the moonlight.

“Some bedtime reading?” he ground out.

Her stomach knotted. Curiosity would kill the Necromancer. What little she’d gleaned from the forbidden book from the forbidden room seemed unworthwhile now she was under the full brunt of his accusatory stare.

“How did you get this?”

“You mentioned demons existed before and I was… Curious?” She winced, feeling herself slow roasted over the spit of his anger. “Can you blame me?”

“Yes. Absolutely. I told you multiple times not to go in that fuckin’ room.”

Worse than his harsh words was the excruciating silence that followed. Any burgeoning intimacy withered in the wordless desert. She’d rather he throttle her with his hands than his silence.

“I can’t even read Greek.”

“It’s not Greek.” His hand disappeared with the book and reappeared empty. “It’s Phoenician.”

“Ah. That explains a lot.” She felt compelled to fill the hostile quiet. “Listen. As a bootlegger, you should know that nothing fosters action like prohibition.”

“Your lack of impulse control is my fault?”

“I’m not going to tell anyone about your naughty books. Need I remind you of our Binding Agreement?”

He contemplated her, intrigued in spite of himself. “How’d you get in the room?”

Guilt and pride battled for dominance. “I figured out it was an Intentions Lock, set my intentions and, well. You know.”

“Cora, you are…” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Maddening.”

Memories of his dishonesty—all the half-truths and secrets not locked away in the forbidden room—sobered her. “And you’ve been keeping secrets. I was looking up Master Ghose and—”

His gaze sharpened to knife points. She stiffened at accidentally confessing to not only disobeying his direct orders but eavesdropping.

She plowed onward in the grave she was digging for herself. “All right. I may have overheard some things whilst you and Lazlo were discussing a certain prophecy. One that seems very relevant to me. Twin mages born of, er, something?”

Looking like a man who wanted to be anywhere but here, his throat worked on a swallow. “Twin mages born of death shall bring your death to life.”

Words that shattered her lifelong illusion of choice while she was led by threads unseen to Malachy Bane. Being an Oneiromancer’s puppet now seemed much less disturbing.

Cora exhaled a pent-up breath. Both her unconscious privacy and free will, lost in a single week. She understood so little, and his selective truths weren’t helping. “For someone so adamant about honesty, Bane, you are certainly full of shit. Half-truths aren’t truths. They’re lies by omission.”

He ran a hand through his tousled hair. “Prophecies are self-fulfilling.”

“If you believe that, why are you bothering with me? Or Teddy?”

“I don’t believe in prophecies, but I do believe in precaution. I’ve looked into every mage with a twin. Including you. I’d written you off as human years ago. I applaud your efforts.”

“Thanks. Creep. What does the prophecy mean? That I’ll kill you?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I am sure, however, that I don’t like how excited you sound at the prospect. Need I remind you of our Binding Agreement? Kill me, kill yourself.”

She gave him a considering look. “Tempting. Wait. Is that why you agreed so quickly? Because of this prophecy?”

The bastard shrugged. “I wanted you to trust me. A Binding Agreement seemed the most efficient means.”

“Of course you had an ulterior motive.” He had tied those threads of prophecy in a tight knot around her throat, all right. Remembering another Chronomancer’s fateful words, she ventured, “Say, did Moriarty ever… mention me to you?”

Bane grew very still. “Why?”

She squirmed under his sharp scrutiny. “I may have communed with him. Briefly. I asked him what your weakness was, and he said... I would be. Then he handed me his Portal Key.”

His face drained of color. “You’re just telling me this now? Jesus, I thought you stole the key off his corpse.”

“I did not steal! Well, I didn’t steal that . You’re missing the point. The Death Realm is incorporeal. Handing me that key should’ve been impossible.”

An impossibility that had changed her life. Only that key unlocked the door to the Realmwalker. Without it, she never would’ve made it inside his club, let alone his office or his spare bedroom. She’d still be doing Mother’s favors and playing ragtime for the Starlite’s junkies. At the moment, though, she wondered if the key hadn’t changed her life for the worse.

His expression was appropriately mortified. “Moriarty insisted on moving the business to London, even though he hated the English more than I do. Said I’d find what I was looking for here.”

“That’s not ominous at all.” She pulled the covers closer and tried to collect her thoughts, but they were like live wires, shooting sparks into darkness. “Speaking of disturbing visions of the future… Do you think Master Ghose is connected to this Oneiromancer?”

“What’s left of Ghose is in another Realm which I’ve made damn sure he stays in. Besides, not even a demon, let alone a mage, could exert their affinities like that through the veil between Realms.”

“Then how is the Oneiromancer getting into our dreams?”

“The veil is thinnest around the Dream Realm. Even humans and dogs can dream, after all.” His head shot up. Bane fixed her with a wild-eyed stare. Springing to his feet, he paced the length of the bedroom in rapid strides. “The veil is thinnest around all of the Dream Realm. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, this Oneiromancer is hiding more than their presence.”

Cora worried her bottom lip, struggling to keep up with his leaping thoughts and furious pacing.

“The cemetery attackers,” he muttered. “Verek after taking that tonic on the porch. They acted like they were in a trance.” Turning on his heel, his gaze pierced her through the darkness. “Or sleepwalking.”

A shiver washed over her. “Their eyes were moving back and forth under their lids, like they were in a deep sleep. But… how? Can Oneiromancers induce sleep? How can they control people outside the Dream Realm?”

“The potion Durbec drugged you with wasn’t for sleeping, but sleepwalking. A fuckin’ sleepwalking potion. That’s how the Oneiromancer is doing it. Durbec’s potion makes the sleepwalkers and the dream mage puppeteers them. The human attackers, Verek, probably Durbec—drugged by his own bloody potion—and who knows how many others are under this Oneiromancer’s compulsion.”

Her thoughts churned with a bone-deep disquiet. “Durbec’s sleeping alibi for smuggling and murder wasn’t a lie, then. Could the girl Durbec sold the sleepwalking potion and Oracle Ruby to be another puppet? How can we possibly find Teddy’s spirit vessel or the Oneiromancer if all their puppets suffer a convenient case of amnesia?”

He paced with renewed vigor. “This is bad, Cora.”

“How bad? On a scale from one to we’re fucked.”

“We’re fucked. Are you familiar with dream feeding?”

She slumped back on the bed. “Not particularly.”

“Same principle as death feeding, but the victims are temporarily unconscious as opposed to permanently. The more dreamers, the more dream energy to feed upon, and this Oneiromancer has been fuckin’ feasting. They likely started on the humans in the cemetery and moved onto bigger prey like Verek when they stored up enough energy. They’ll be even more powerful by the time we find them.”

“Well.” She bent her head in defeat. “Shit.”

Finding the Oneiromancer, let alone retrieving Teddy’s spirit vessel and stopping them, felt impossible now. Finding what they sought, however, might draw them into the open.

Cor-a, find me the needle within the egg , the voice haunting her dreams had told her and Marcel Durbec. Had it been the Oneiromancer echoing in her mind this entire time? Why did they want Bane’s greatest weakness? And why curse Teddy?

“What’s the connection between the Oneiromancer and my brother?” She might as well have tossed the question into the void. Bane completed another circuit of the room, muttering to himself as if she hadn’t spoken. “Scheming, not listening. Got it.”

The pendulum of his pacing made her eyes cross. After several minutes, he halted midstride like he’d run into an invisible wall, opened his mouth to speak, then left without a word. She fell back on the pillows and watched him disappear.