Page 5 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)

T he Emerald Club’s walnut-paneled office was aglow with warm light. And occupied.

Behind the desk, surrounded by neat stacks of paper and a half-empty bottle of whiskey, sat the devil in an impeccably tailored three-piece suit. Lamplight cast his face into deep shadows. The hollows beneath his sharp cheekbones. The hard line of his jaw. The cruel curve of his lips. Dark hair, slicked back from an implacable brow, gleamed like burnished copper.

His eyes cut to the doorway. Their gazes collided. The intensity of his obsidian eyes pinned Cora. Cold, calculating eyes. Shark’s eyes.

His features flickered with surprise, then cooled into cynical resignation when he saw the revolver trembling in her grip. He took her measure in the time she managed a shallow breath. All her inadequacies laid bare in a sweep of his shrewd gaze.

With a graceful wave of his hand, the door slammed shut behind her, as final as a gunshot. Locking her inside with the Realmwalker.

Panic heated and chilled her blood in turn. Her heart rammed against her ribs in a frenzy to escape. In a moment of stark clarity, Cora realized the grievous mistake she’d made coming here. Likely the last mistake she’d make. Ensnared in the trap she’d unwittingly set, Cora watched the disaster of her own making unfold before her.

Arching a dark eyebrow, Malachy Bane draped an arm over the back of his chair and stretched out his long legs. He watched her with a predatory stillness, his expression composed as a sheet of music she couldn’t read. But there was an undercurrent of the effortless violence she knew all too well he was capable of.

Silence, taut as a wire about to snap, stretched between them.

She palmed the gun, its solidness her only reassurance. Regretting every choice she had ever made, she met his piercing stare and stepped forward. “My brother Teddy Walcott was m- murdered .” She swallowed the lump of grief that threatened to choke her. “Did you kill him, Realmwalker?”

Gaze not leaving hers, he languidly shook a cigarette out of a silver case and set it between his lips. A lighter appeared with a smooth motion of his fingers.

It was more than a sleight of hand. His fingertips disappeared for a heartbeat, as if dipping into opaque waters with the faintest of ripples. And it was more than a casual display of his magical finesse, to displace only a part of his body across an unseen distance. It was a threat. The portal mage could strangle her from across the office at his leisure.

The lighter’s flame danced in his eyes. Dark pools that swallowed light, so black they defied nature. If eyes were the window to the spirit, his was surely forsaken. He took a languorous drag on the cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“What if I did?” A menacingly soft challenge in a melodic Irish lilt. Beneath the deep calmness of his voice was a chord of unrelenting resolve. The Realmwalker did not need to shout to be heard.

Her shaking betrayed her, but her grip remained firm as she aimed the gun at his chest. “I’d shoot your fucking heart out.”

The ghost of a smile haunted his lips as he took another drag. “And what if I didn’t?”

“Don’t play games with me, you bastard!” Her finger twitched on the trigger. “Did you kill him or not?”

“Does it matter?” He crossed his ankles, smoke curling from his lips. “You won’t shoot me.”

She shot him.

Or rather, she shot where he’d been sitting a moment before. Now the only thing behind the desk was a smoking bullet hole in the wall. The gun was knocked out of her hand and skidding out of sight before she could make sense of it. In an instant, he rematerialized across the office. Behind her.

An arm banded around her middle and crushed her back against the solid wall of his body, trapping her arms and holding her breath captive. His other hand fisted in her hair and tugged . Pain seared across her scalp. She cried out, head bent back and throat exposed.

Few could tower over Cora. Unfortunately, Bane was one of them. He had a couple inches on her in height and much more in breadth. The unyielding prison of his embrace surrounded her.

She bucked against him, landing a kick to his shin. He cursed, and the floor warped and swallowed her feet, rooting her to the spot. She struggled in vain. If not for his biting hold, she’d topple over.

Fathoms. She was fathoms out of her depth. With the lucidity of a cornered animal, she knew she’d only made it this far because he’d let her, out of curiosity or amusement. She might have created this disaster, but Bane was at the helm.

Leaning down, his lips grazed the shell of her ear and whiskey-warm breath caressed her cheek. Even, steady breaths to her labored panting. “What are you?”

Her blood chilled. “A woman that doesn’t appreciate being restrained,” she said, jerking away.

His grip tightened. “How did you get in here?”

She heaved and writhed and said nothing. Eventually, the cage of his arms loosened. Her relief was short-lived. One hand manacled her wrists behind her back while the other glided down her front.

Cora drew in a sharp breath and held it while his palm skimmed over her, turning out the pockets of her dress. Knives and lock picks clattered to the floor.

Long, deft fingers brushed over her ribs, down her hips, circled her thighs. Her muscles fluttered at the intrusion. Those clever fingers found the weapons tucked into her garters and unmentionables, tossing them across the office. The back of his hand slid up her stomach and traced the curves of her breasts to the hard lump over her swift-beating heart.

They both stilled.

With agonizing slowness, his hand sank into her dress’s hidden pocket and pulled out the Portal Key. He dragged the skin-warmed metal up her throat and held it in front of her face, so she had nowhere to look but at it. Her damnation resting in the palm of his hand.

Bane came to stand before her. He lowered his face until he was inches away, his eyes as dark and forbidding as a starless night. Under the entirety of his unnerving focus, Cora felt even smaller.

“How did you get this?” he demanded.

Mother’s third lesson came automatically. The best lies come from truths. “Moriarty… gave it to me.”

He raised a brow. Silence lengthened as he considered her like a riddle he couldn’t solve. “Before or after his face was fuckin’ shot off?”

She winced, desperately willing her trapped feet to move. He circled her, a shark scenting blood in the water. The prodding weight of his scrutiny was more invasive than his hands had been. After a lifetime of heartbeats, he stopped before her.

Feeling the draw of his gaze, she looked into obsidian eyes alight with a grave understanding. For an unguarded moment, fear flashed across the Realmwalker’s face. There and gone in a moment. A dark omen.

“Cora Walcott.” Her eyes widened at the shock of her name rolling on his tongue, the lyrical cadence heavy with morbid fascination. “You’re the Unweaver.”

Abomination.

She recoiled as if he’d struck her. Her thoughts ground to a halt, replaced by a roaring panic. A hundred fractured fears clambered for a foothold in her mind. One overpowered them all.

He knows .

Denial died on her lips. The devastating truth was written on his face. The devil knew her name. All of them.

Her overwrought nerves, already toeing the edge of hysteria, plummeted over in freefall. Coming here had been a series of fatal lapses in judgment. If she listened over the frantic drumbeat of her heart, the rattle of her own death might be heard at last. She only hoped Bane made it quick. A small mercy, to have her worst day also be her last.

Yet it wasn’t revulsion on his face, nor condemnation in his tone. He was looking not at her, but through her, into the truth buried in her rotten heart, as if he found her at once horrifying and entrancing.

“No one can know,” she said in a low tone. A warning. A plea.

It fell on deaf ears. She may as well have implored a slab of stone. His eyes remained on her, but his gaze turned inward. Through the cracks of his composure, a storm roiled. He fell back and sank onto the edge of his desk, running a hand through his hair. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

“ No one can know .”

“Twin mages,” he muttered as if she hadn’t spoken, pouring himself a full glass of whiskey. “To fate,” he toasted bitterly and tossed the drink back.

A curious detail to toast to in light of other revelations , came a fleeting thought.

The man who had stripped Cora of her brother and now her identity was bloody toasting her. Through her fear and heartache burst an anger she clung to. “Let me go. Now. I-I’m harmless.”

His gaze sliced to her. “That’s the last thing you are, Unweaver.”

She could see the cogs of his mind turning. After agonizing moments, the floor spat out her feet. She shook out her stiff legs, sensation prickling back. Her eyes darted around. The only door was several paces away and locked. Her lock picks were lost to the emerald rugs, and the revolver was out of sight. Some of her knives were a lunge away, but even if she made it out of his office, there was the rest of the club, staffed with his lethally efficient gang, to deal with.

Death magic dripped from her fingers. If Bane got close enough, she could rot his heart out. The Realmwalker’s impossible reflexes would be a problem for future Cora.

First, she needed answers. “For the last time. Did you kill Teddy?”

He studied her over his whiskey. “Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of killing your twin.”

“You— You didn’t kill him?”

“That’s what I fuckin’ said. If I’d wanted him dead, I would’ve taken my time killing him in those tunnels. And you, for that matter. Corpses beaten so unrecognizable, only your teeth would identify you.”

“That’s…” She tried to swallow but her throat was bone dry. “Oddly specific.”

Her mind and heart raced. Bane was blunt, but was he also a liar? Bluntness itself wasn’t exonerating. After years indentured to Mother, she knew lies could be told many ways. She searched his features for some sign of guile or deceit. He gazed steadily back. Other than a momentary slip, he’d taken getting confronted by a gun-wielding Necromancer in stride.

Her thoughts spun like leaves in a windstorm. The memory of the slowly disemboweled man she’d communed with leapt to the forefront. Her gut—thankfully still intact—churned with doubt. If he’d wanted retribution for Moriarty’s death, why hadn’t he killed Verek and his thugs? Or her? She had given him ample opportunities to do so, including the present one.

Instead of snapping the neck of the prey he’d caught, he merely contemplated her in the trap. But he wouldn’t let the Unweaver, his attempted murderer, just waltz out of his office. With only emptiness awaiting her, Cora didn’t anticipate surviving much longer anyways.

Though, if Bane was telling the truth, that opened a deeper, darker pit of possibilities, slithering and fanged like serpents. If not the Realmwalker, then who had cursed Teddy?

Any tentative confidence she might have had in him evaporated when he said, “After Moriarty, can’t say I’m displeased someone’s removed the Teddy-shaped thorn in my side for me.”

She opened her mouth to retort, and clamped it shut. Hurling insults at the Realmwalker would only incite further violence between the gangs. “Moriarty was dead before we arrived. Verek’s gang had him.”

“Can you prove they killed him?”

Ah, that was why she was still breathing. A Necromancer’s testimony to the Tribunal would provide Bane with ample leverage against the conspiring Verek and Mother. Rather than clinging to her potential usefulness, she threw it away with both hands. “Moriarty killed himself. He swallowed a bullet rather than let them finish their interrogation.”

He assessed her with an inscrutable expression. “How would you know that?”

“His… death throes.” The words sounded strange to her ears. Two simple words to encompass the horror that gnawed at her waking hours, the nightmares that tormented her sleep. Two words and a gross oversimplification of the living hell that was death. “When someone dies—when I touch them—I can sense their final moments. Their memories.”

It was more than she had ever voiced aloud about her private hell and it had been too much. His gaze sharpened in calculation. She cursed herself for giving even more away to an enemy.

“What were you and your late twin doing at the docks?”

Late twin . Her heart seized, dropped, and shattered at the awful finality of the past tense. Gut-wrenching in its permanence. The image came unbidden. Teddy, lying still. So horribly still.

Fighting the wave of sorrow, she trained her watering eyes on the floor. She might have lost every shred of composure, but she wouldn’t let Bane see her cry. “Mother sent us. To question Moriarty.” She felt no loyalty to Mother. Only a perverse pulse of self-preservation.

“You fuckin’ scavengers.” He thudded his glass down, a muscle working in his jaw.

Her conscience pricked, remembering the feelings of brotherhood Moriarty had for this man, even in death. The Chronomancer hadn’t just been another favor. He’d been a person, with people left behind to mourn him.

“Did you commune with Moriarty?”

The depths of hope and despair in those few words echoed in the hollowness within her. She wasn’t the only one to have lost someone irreplaceable. Her heartless brother. His faceless friend. Had the Realmwalker wept for Moriarty as she did for Teddy? Beneath his controlled features, was he also aching with grief?

Compassion only went so far, however. “No,” she said.

His gaze raked over her. “You are a terrible liar.”

“Well, you interrupted before he could respond. You broke my ribs, by the way.”

“Good. So, you’re telling me that my dead second handed you, the Unweaver, his Portal Key. Bringing you straight to me.”

“He was a bit preoccupied with shooting his own face off to explain. It doesn’t matter how or why he gave me that key. What matters is my brother. Who’s been murdered .”

“This concerns me how?” He regarded her coolly. “Your first mistake is thinking I give a shit. Your second mistake is thinking that fuckin’ shooting at me is going to change that.”

“Every mage in London is going to give a great many shits when they learn how Teddy died.”

Sighing, Bane checked his silver pocket watch. “And what fate has befallen poor Teddy?”

“A fate worse than death.” She fought back the anguish, the helpless fury. Unshed tears stung her eyes, made worse by his indifference. “I can’t find his spirit in the Death Realm. His body is here but he’s…” Her gaze rose. “It was the Profane Arts. Someone cursed him with dark magic.”

Her words hung heavy in the silence between them. The Covenant forbade the Profane Arts. Any mage wielding dark magic would be executed by the Tribunal without trial.

Obsidian eyes blazed with intrigue. “You should’ve opened with that.” His brows furrowed. “Are you sure Teddy didn’t do it to himself?”

“Yes, I’m bloody sure! How could you even suggest that?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I’m always right.”

“His fucking heart was gouged out.” Gasping on a sob, she spun away. She couldn’t fall apart, not in front of his abrasive matter-of-factness.

“When did you find the body?”

Her throat bobbed on an upwelling of grief that threatened to drown her. The body . Teddy wasn’t a person anymore. Just a body.

When she glanced up, Bane was looking at her with peculiar intensity. He held her gaze for a too-long moment, and she felt herself falling into the bottomless pits of his eyes.

“I-I dunno. I sensed him and— I left the Starlite Club, around midnight. Maybe that was days ago, or only hours... I searched for his spirit, but I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“Jesus.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “The Profane Arts at midnight on the Winter Solstice.”

Magic fluctuated in ebbs and flows corresponding with the moon cycle. The longest night of the year held portentous power. It was the most auspicious date for dark magic. The Profane curse on Teddy had been planned.

“Does your Mother know yet?” The name sounded like an insult from his lips.

“God no, she’s the last person I’d go to. I came straight here.”

This he considered for a long moment. “Did Edwina have a falling out with the prodigal son?”

“No, Teddy spent twenty years with Mother and never once doubted her adoration. This wasn’t a crime of passion. This was premeditated slaughter .” She hated how her voice broke. “Mother couldn’t have hidden that from him. You can’t lie to an Animancer.”

“That assumption is probably what got him killed. Where’s the body?”

The body . “His flat in Hackney,” she whispered, and gave him the cross streets.

In a blink, he was no longer leaning against the desk but standing before her. He captured her hand in his. A current of energy radiated from his fingers, skittering up her arm and along her nerves until her entire body tingled with an unusual awareness.

“Show me.”