Page 33 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)
C ora slipped through a gossamer veil into a boundless sea of stars. Disembodied, she floated through velvet waves of twinkling midnight. Stars seemed to glitter far overhead and deep below. Colors were blurred and sounds muffled as if she were underwater, but she felt no wetness. Figures, dark and distant, drifted among the stars. She thought she heard them call her name.
Thoughts filtered through her mind like mist, vague and formless. Was she in a dream within dreams? Or a nightmare she couldn’t wake from? Understanding was slow to surface. This wasn’t the Dream Realm where sleeping minds wandered, but a fusion of dreams with the corporeal. A living, breathing nightmare she couldn’t escape.
“Cora,” came a faraway voice, deep and lyrical. A shadow separated from the darkness. Malachy floated near. His eyes glinted in the starlight, one sky blue, one demon black. “The bullet— I can’t traverse us away. We’re asleep and trapped in a Dreamverse, a pocket between the Dream and Living Realms. The only way to escape is to wake up. Can you—”
A falling star streaked overhead. No, not a star, but a metallic sphere. Koschei’s Egg fell and dropped onto a cloud of velvety night, unbroken. A figure with mirror-bright eyes emerged from the inky ocean sparkling with celestial dust, holding Koschei’s Egg close to their chest.
The figure was like a Rorschach test of dreams projected onto the blank silhouette of a woman. She patterned herself in warped configurations of constantly shifting dreams and nightmares.
At first, Cora saw a tree struck by lightning, then the vision scrambled back into the blank woman-shaped canvas, then into a mouth full of rotting teeth. Before her mind could process, the vision morphed into a heartless corpse.
Cora had seen this nightmare before, reflected in the towering mirror of a dream when the creature had reached through the glass to caress her face with a long claw. The woman’s jaw unhinged. Her mouth gaped into a fang-lined blackhole from which the keening of a thousand shrill cries emerged. Cora tried to cover her ears, but her limbs were too heavy, the starry sea too thick.
Malachy’s horrified gaze fixed on the reconfiguring woman. “ Ikelas . But… I saw you die.”
Ikelas smiled, her vicious mouth impossibly wide. The stars reflected blindingly bright in her mirror eyes. “But you did not see me reborn,” she said in a voice like liquid darkness.
“How?”
“I spirited myself away in dreams, boy. For decades after you left me to die in Russia, I have insinuated myself into dreamers. Feeding my puppets the threads of my spirit until they are more me than them. But each transfer weakens my magic, and my puppets are drained so quickly. I must wear younger flesh vessels to prolong their usefulness. Such is the high cost of the Profane Arts.” She caressed Koschei’s Egg. “A cost you have avoided too long, Realmwalker.”
“A body-snatching dream demon.” Mouth in a grim line, Malachy watched her fondle the vessel enclosing his heart. “I liked you better dead.”
A thousand discordant laughs blasted out of her maw. “Still as arrogant as you were as Master Ghose’s apprentice—or should I say servant? —when Tsar Nicholas raged across Crimea, ripe with the suggestions I seeped into his dreams. I long for that time. I long for that power. Soon, I shall have it again.”
Ikelas sucked in a gale of wind. The starry sea rippled, ferrying the pool of dreamers into a vortex around her. More dreamers fell through the veil and floated past in slumberous waves. The Dreamverse was expanding, and with it her power as she feasted off their dreams.
“You will fail, Ikelas.” Malachy fought against the vortex’s current. “As you have before, given your experiment’s death toll. How many Profane curses, how many spirit vessels did you try? How many more sleepwalking guinea pigs do you need to kill before you realize? It won’t work. Not even with Koschei’s Egg.”
“Ah, but it will, Realmwalker. As you know, the body must be alive when the spirit is transferred into the vessel. If not, both body and spirit will die. Keeping the blood flowing is insufficient. The spirit is partially transferred, the rest damned to Purgatory. But stopping time, as you did those many stolen years ago, will work. Your Chronomancer Moriarty did not oblige my request when we held him below those docks. Fortunately, we have a more agreeable Chronomancer.”
Cora’s thoughts surfaced like dead bodies tangled in seaweed. Failed rituals and heartless corpses. Demons and Chronomancers. When she’d communed with Moriarty, he’d been shouting, I won’t stop time for you! Moriarty hadn't been a casualty of gang politics, but the dream demon, via her puppets. And Teddy. Had he been one of the Oneiromancer’s guinea pigs for immortality?
Malachy stared at Ikelas, shock etched onto his face. “You cannot summon him. Coal-Eyes belong in the Demon Realm. As do you.”
“As do you .” Ikelas cradled the Egg and smiled her terrible smile. “The rift in the veil between the Dream and Demon Realms has already been torn. He comes.”
“ He comes ,” the dreamers echoed across the midnight waves. “ He comes …”
His two-toned eyes widened in horror. “Tearing the veil will destabilize the boundary between Realms. Fusing Realms will create chaos. The end of life as we know it. The rift must be sealed!”
Fear spiked in Cora’s sludgy veins. They needed to flee this nightmare.
The only way to escape is to wake up , Bane had said. If the veil was thinnest between Dreams and Death, she could slip into the Death Realm and back into her body, likely buried in the wreckage of Mother’s ballroom, and wake him up. Together they might end this.
With her numb senses, Cora reached out to part the gossamer veil trapping them in the Dreamverse. Black nothingness dripped through and rushed towards her. She sank down until claws dug into her shoulder and pulled back. Death was reluctant to release her so soon, but the claws were stronger. Cora was hurtled back into the demon’s clutches.
Ikelas ground her bones in an unrelenting grip. Dreams cascaded over her changing form. A crying child. A laughing corpse. “There is no escape, Necromancer. We made a deal.”
“Cora.” Malachy spun to her. “What have you done?”
“I—”
“ He comes ,” droned a cacophony of overlapping voices.
Through a rift in the gossamer veil stepped half a man, ripped down the middle, followed by another half. The two mismatched pieces threaded together into an incomplete whole of slightly staggered limbs. His black-on-black eyes swept the sea of dreamers in a cold assessment as he glided nearer atop the waves.
Cora recognized him with a jolt. The man reflected in a dream’s mirror, and ripped apart in the Doomsday Watch vision.
“Ikelas,” said the demonic imprint of Master Alastair Ghose in a rough Scottish burr like broken glass underfoot. He swung to Malachy with an uneven smile, one half of his mouth lifted high, the other tensed in a sneer. “And the mighty Realmwalker. At long last, lad.”
Malachy froze. His terrified face drained of color.
“Alastair.” Ikelas spread her arms wide. “Welcome to my Dreamverse.”
Ghose laughed. A horrible sound, like a high-speed collision on repeat. He circled Malachy, stiffening under his coal-eyed scrutiny. “How very good it ‘tis to be back. Despite your best efforts, eh, lad? What’s this? All this time and you’ve nothing to say to your Master?”
“Go back to hell, Coal-Eye,” Malachy spat.
“Och, a century old and still a chip on your shoulder wide enough to drive a carriage through. Deathlessness doesn’t become ye. Ah, Mal. My most promising pupil. My greatest disappointment. Your betrayal in Siberia wounded me deep, lad.” A long nail traced the crooked, puckered seam down his middle. “I’m but half a man.”
“You’re not a man.” Malachy clenched his fists. “You’re a demon.”
“When I recover the other half of my spirit you ripped away, I shall be.” Ghose glided towards Ikelas and reached out to Koschei’s Egg, his face half-full of longing, half dread. “Where my heart should be beating. Shame it no longer suits me, half a spirit that I am.”
“I shall release you from the Dreamverse to find your other half once the ritual is complete.” Ikelas’s mirror eyes flicked to Cora. “We have gained an ally, Alastair, to assist in our immortal machinations. This Necromancer is stronger than the Queen of Rot and has made a Binding Agreement to join us.”
Angling his head, Ghose perused Cora with the glittering pits of his eyes. “How very fortunate for us. Mal’s waited a long time for you, lass. Across the veil, we’ve been following you, Necromancer, since you slunk out of your sewers and into the light. Just how much you’re capable of, we shall discover. Sorry to say that reviving Mal’s dead heart isn’t one of them.”
“Cora,” Malachy pleaded. “What deal did you make?”
Head hanging low, Cora gestured to the Oracle Ruby and whispered, “She said she’d release Teddy if I joined her.”
Ghose’s horrible laugh scraped her ears. “Och, lass. You’ve made a fool’s bargain.”
“Jesus,” Malachy nearly wept. “She can release his spirit from the ruby, but no one can bring Teddy back. The Specter’s Scourge… His spirit can only be reunited in death. I’m sorry, Cora.”
Cora’s head whipped between Malachy and the demons, although the distinction was blurring. Betrayal bloomed in her chest. “Is that true?”
Ikelas’s laugh joined Ghose’s. “Such is the high cost of the Profane Arts.”
Malachy’s features crumbled amidst the starlight. With an anguished groan, he dragged his hands over his face. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Cora, but delaying the pain has only hurt you more. I’m so sorry.”
Anger and hopeless despair burned through the mist in her mind. He had known the nuances of the Profane curse all this time and purposefully not told her. Teddy’s fate had always been death. Inescapable, permanent death. Releasing his spirit from its cage would only damn it into another. She’d made a deal with a demon for a forsaken spirit. His death had been forged by a curse and carved into implacable stone.
Teddy was never coming back.
It had all been for nothing.
The scream clawed out of her throat. She jerked back when Malachy reached for her, knocking into the other dreamers swirling into the growing vortex.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she sobbed, swimming outside the current of dreamers, Malachy in her wake. “There has to be another way! This can’t be it.”
“It is. I know it, for it’s the same fate awaiting me. Once they free Teddy’s spirit from the Oracle Ruby, he will die. Once they take mine from the Egg, I will die. It’s too late for me. But not for you. Survive , Cora.”
His gaze shot to the demons now a hundred feet away. Ikelas and Ghose were in the center of a massive vortex, their backs bent as they laid down a glittering pentagram.
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Don’t let Ikelas use Koschei’s Egg. It will give her powers unimaginable. She could drop London into a Dreamverse no one will wake from.”
“But… How can I stop her? I might be able to slip out through the Death Realm, but—”
“There’s no time. Destroy Koschei’s Egg, however you can. If you destroy it, from our Binding Agreement, killing me will kill yourself. But—” He held up her wrist, the scar a white vine thick with thorns. “Killing me will resurrect you.”
“What?” she gasped. “That’s impossible! Resurrection is a myth. I-I can barely reanimate.”
“Twin mages born of death.” He traced the thorny corona of scar tissue around her navel. “You can resurrect. You’ve resurrected yourself twice. Why not thrice? A life for a life. Your mother’s life, Felix’s life, and now my life for your own.”
She stared in stupefied silence. “You can’t be serious—”
He seized her by the shoulders, his eyes boring into her. “The death must be committed by your hands for you to resurrect yourself. You said your death empowerment only lasts a few minutes, the time a spirit is in transit to the Death Realm. You’ve a short time to balance death’s scales.”
“But…” She looked around in desperation. “What if I can’t?”
“We’ll still be dead.”
She released a shaky breath. “Fair enough.”
The rippling sea thickened around them. Turning her head seemed to take minutes. A bubble was forming around the demons, like oil suspended in water. They moved much faster inside than the dreamers outside.
“Time freeeze,” Malachy said in a drawn-out groan.
Infinitely slow, they swam through the viscous night sky, and slower still, he shoved her through the bubble before it closed. She went from being suspended in sap to a whiplash of normalcy.
Behind her, Malachy was frozen in horror. Time had stopped everywhere except within the bubble.
The demons turned as Cora broke through. Ikelas was sprawled in a bloodred pentagram while Ghose was poised to carve out her heart. Images shifted on her body—a coiling snake, a belly swelling with child.
Cora burst past the stunned time demon and leapt onto Ikelas. Channeling her death magic, she rotted off the clawed hand clutching Koschei’s Egg.
Ghose wrenched Cora off a moment later, but the damage had been done. Ikelas grasped the unspooling canvas of her mutilated arm. From the slack grip of her severed hand rolled the Egg.
The time bubble burst.
Cora and Ghose dove after Koschei’s Egg. She was overflowing with awful energy, but he could manipulate time. Her fingers grazed the pulsing metal. Close. So close . Surging forward, she grasped it. Right before time stopped.
Seconds or lifetimes later, Cora unstuck from the demon’s sap-like net. In time to see Ghose crush Koschei’s Egg between his hands. The needles cracked in half. Within the broken metal cage, Malachy’s heart beat its last.
Cora screamed.
“What have you done?” Ikelas’s fearsome screech echoed across the waves. “Only Koschei’s Egg keeps both body and spirit ageless! No other spirit vessel will work! We had a deal, Alastair. I won’t release you from my Dreamverse.”
“You don’t need the Egg with the Necromancer on our side, and I don’t need you to slip through the widening rift in the veil. With the Realmwalker dead, our true work can begin.”
Ghose’s terrible laughter echoed as Cora swam to the broken Egg. She held Malachy’s beautiful, black heart in her hands while he laid motionless in a bed of stars. His features were peaceful, as if he were merely sleeping. His heart withered in her palm as death rose up, at last, to claim him.