Page 126 of The Unweaver

When he stood to leave she clung to his sleeve like a child. “What do I do now?” she asked with enough desperation to fill an ocean. A simple question with a deeper meaning. What she really meant was:What do I live for?

The solicitor patted her hand awkwardly before removing it. Looking everywhere but at her, he mumbled he had nothing for her. Bane’s schemes had not included her.

Hope, hanging on by a fragile thread, snapped under its own weight. “Oh,” she said. A world of disappointment in one word.

O’Leary hadn’t come back.

Avoiding Anita’s pity and Dimitri’s stilted condolences and Kevin’s purring affections, Cora was left alone with her thoughts. Some grew louder in the silence. Bane had others to enact his schemes and attend his bedside vigil. She wasn’t needed. She wasn’t wanted.

Try as she might, she couldn’t scrub the nightmare from her mind or the blood from her hands. Teddy and Bane and all the sleepers who might never wake up. In one fell swoop, she had lost everyone who mattered to her. What remained of her heart compacted in her chest, growing smaller and harder every day.

These moments with Teddy in the Death Realm were all she lived for. Chattering inanities while the world fell apart. At first, Teddy was garrulous. Her heart swelled to see the whimsical movements of his hands again, to hear his cackling laughter. Even subdued in death, she basked in his brightness. Content in this unreality, she could almost forget where they were and why.

“I buried you atop a hill near the sea,” she said softly, reaching out as Teddy turned away. “Like you wanted.”

For a man of a thousand conquests, Teddy’s last was a small hole in the ground. For a man of a thousand acquaintances, only three were there to bury him. The two who had loved him in life and the Hydromancer who had only known him as a corpse. In silence, Ravi levitated the casket into the grave and Dimitri shoveled frozen mud over it.

“You okay?” Dimitri asked as they departed the graveyard.

“I’m fine,” Cora said, not meeting his eyes.

He shook his head. “Not fine,” he said gently.

Cora had blinked back tears and walked away.

“Please tell me, Teddy,” she begged. His spirit was retreating farther, but she couldn’t let him go. Not again. “What really happened to you?”

His livid features grew weary as he gazed into her watering eyes. He blinked away and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

After a long moment, he said, “A… woman spoke to me in my dreams. She promised an end to the daily torture. She promised an eternity of peace. I thought if I removed my heart, it wouldn’t hurt anymore.” He laughed, harsh and bitter. “And now look at me.Look at me, Cora. I am nothing. I am less than nothing. After all the pain and the nothingness of Purgatory and that blasted ruby, I would kill to feel again. To feel anything again.”

“You… You knew? About the Specter’s Scourge? About the cost of the Profane Arts? You knew the entire time?”

He crossed his arms. “I may have dabbled in dark magic from time to time. Who hasn’t?”

Her heart broke into too many pieces to ever put back together.

Teddy hadn’t been a victim, but a willing participant. He hadn’t been taken from her; he had chosen to leave her. Trying to undo the fate Teddy had sealed for himself had been a fool’s journey.

The sheer futility of it all crushed her.

Cora looked at him with eyes hollowed by grief. Her other half had chosen death over living with her. “You did it to yourself.”

Bane had been right from the start. And now he would never have the satisfaction of hearing her admit it. After a fortnight, it was time to accept he wasn’t going to wake up.

“Don’t you dare judge me,” Teddy seethed. “This wasn’t my fault. She promised me eternity without pain. It’s not my fault she fucked up.”

“Ikelas was a dream demon, Teddy. She tricked everyone. She killed Mother.”

His head whipped up. “Mother’s dead? Oh, thank god! Finally, I can have some decent company down here.”

Cora could only stare at him, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I thought the dead couldn’t lie,” she whispered. “But they can lie to themselves.”

“Well, my dear,” he bristled. “Maybe you can go to hell.”

Teddy had spoken, but it was Mother’s voice she’d heard. Even as an incorporeal spirit, he was still Mother’s favorite pet. But he was also her twin. Her only lifeline. “Please… don’t do this.” Melancholy bled into her voice. “I’ve loved you your entire life, Teddy. I’ll love you your entire death. Please—”

“Now you’re flaunting your aliveness? Get out!”

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