Page 112 of The Unweaver

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.

Chapter 31. His Heart on a Plate

Her tea had long gone cold. Cora re-read the same paragraph in the dense Oneiromancy text, her thoughts as shaken as her confidence in coming out of this ordeal on top, let alone alive. But she couldn’t give up on Teddy. Regardless of the dream mage and their sleepwalking puppets, she needed to find the vessel entrapping the rest of his spirit. And she needed Bane to do it, though she’d rather combust from embarrassment than converse with him again.

After waking to a rather splendidly shirtless Bane and the revelation of a voyeuristic Oneiromancer entangling their dreams, she had abandoned sleep to put on the kettle. Her thoughts kept straying to Bane, her stomach clenching with humiliation and an unquiet ache.

Last night churned in her mind. She was jittery, waiting for a man that never came, waiting for a Wolf Moon ritual that wouldn’t work unless they found Teddy’s missing spirit. Worse, an inkling of death had risen along with the morning sun.

With a frustrated groan, she forced her attention back to the book.

A pair of black boots appeared from the ceiling, followed by trousers and a flapping coat. Cora shrieked. Bane dropped out ofthin air and landed on the kitchen table with a menacing thump, spilling tea and scattering toast.

“Holy hell!” The chair toppled over as she scrambled to her feet. “Can’t you use a bloody door?”

He looked down at her with an unreadable expression, his suit rumpled and stained, hair falling into his eyes. Blood dripped from his hand. Jumping to the floor, he tossed the bloody object onto her plate.

A heart.

Mouth gaping, her eyes darted between Bane and the heart. He gazed steadily back. Realization struck her like an ax. “You killed him?”

“I need you to ask Monsieur Durbec some questions.” Bane poured himself a cup of tea. “Death’s the only way to get answers out of him. Go on. Commune with him.”

“Youkilled him?”

He shrugged and sipped tea. Finding the tea cold seemed to disturb him more than the Sanguimancer’s heart oozing onto her breakfast. “You rotted his stones off. Figure I did him a favor.”

Fury and betrayal raged within her. Her gloves decayed and angry tears stung her eyes. Durbec was their only lead to finding the Oneiromancer and reuniting Teddy’s spirit. A now very dead Durbec. Bane had damned Teddy to a true death, to an eternity of incompleteness in Purgatory. He’d damned all her hopes.

“You liar!” She hurled a spoon. He ducked aside. “You’ve killed Teddy along with Durbec. Our Binding Agreement was that you find Teddy, not kill him more!”

“Technically—” He dodged her volley of cutlery projectiles with ease. “I’ve never lied to you.”

“Despite all evidence to the fucking contrary!” Holding his gaze, she planted her palms on the table between them. Thewood warped and collapsed into fibrous sludge in the shape of her hands.

Bane made to stop her, then gave up. “Not my table, too,” he muttered.

Her anger at him was eclipsed by her anger at herself. Of course, her deal with the devil hadn’t been in her favor. You couldn’t grift a grifter. A timeless lesson. Almost kissing him hadn’t just been a momentary lapse in judgment, but a momentous one. A mistake she’d never make again.

“You may not have outright lied, you bastard, but you haven’t been honest either. I am sick of your half-truths.”

He leaned against the counter and crossed his ankles. “Durbec is worth more dead than alive. He was the Oneiromancer’s puppet, and only they can free your brother’s spirit. I’ll let you kill them after.”

“Chivalrous of you,” she fumed. She didn’t believe him. She wouldn’t make that mistake again, either.

“Getting pissed at me changes nothing.” He drained his cup and set it down with a clatter. “The Oneiromancer is the key. After another chat with Durbec, courtesy of Anita’s magic, it was clear he remembered fuck all. Commune with him and find the answers.”

“I will never forgive you.”

“We can discuss how that’s bullshit—at length, if you insist, and we both know you will—after we take this dream mage down.”

She glared at him. He raised his brows. Venting an exasperated breath, she reached for Marcel Durbec’s heart on a plate and hesitated. She’d only communed with the dead in front of Teddy, and even her twin had been disturbed by her hollow body laced with necrotic veins.

“You can’t watch.”

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