Page 129 of The Unweaver

“Are you sorry not to have cheated death forever?”

Gathering her closer, he covered her hand with his own. Their hearts beat in tandem.

“If everything that happened led to this?” He mulled over her question. “No. Who wants to live forever? Back then, life was a misery I wanted to prolong. I tore out my own heart for power. But I wasn’t really living. Only surviving with a sliver of my spirit that grew darker each year. But now, I feel… Ifeel. After decades of numbness, I can feel again. I am more than I was, and less than I have been. Considering the alternative, I’ll take it.”

“How… old are you?”

He laughed. A deep, rich rumble that warmed her broken heart. “Technically, my hundredth birthday was in June.”

She assessed him with new eyes. “I knew you were an older man, but... Jesus. So, you’re a hundred-year-old spirit in athirty-five-year old’s body? Bloody hell, everything about you makes so much sense now. No wonder you’re this cynical. You’ve got a century’s worth of disappointed hopes.”

“You would too if you lived through the entire Industrial Revolution.”

She marveled at him. Countless questions formed on the tip of her tongue, silenced by the gentle stroke of his fingers through her hair.

“You’ve saved my life more than once, and in more than one way. But…” His hand fell and clenched the sheets. “I don’t know if I can live with myself. All the things I’ve done… All the unforgivable things I’ve done. Christ,I’mthe abomination.”

His agony resonated with her own. In front of her, he was only dipping his toes into the bottomless waters of regret. In private, he was probably drowning in them.

After a painful silence, she said, “You showed me more kindness with only a sliver of your heart than anyone with a full one ever has. Honestly, I’m amazed you weren’t even more of an arsehole.”

He met her gaze, brows rising and lips curving. “That’s high praise coming from you.”

Her mouth lifted, then fell. Smiling felt unnatural. Wrong. “I don’t know how to live with myself either,” she confessed. “I buried one sibling, and it nearly killed me. You buried a dozen. You’ve survived a century and can still smile. How? Does it get better?”

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it eases them. Someday, you’ll remember Teddy without all the pain.”

The raw, ragged hole where her heart had been begged to differ. “What happened to your family?”

Jaw working, he was quiet for several moments. “I was careless back then.”

“The last thing anyone would accuse you of being is careless. What changed?”

“I did.” He grabbed the Doomsday Watch from the nightstand and contemplated its silver face.“Sixty seconds and a pocket watch changed my life forever. For years, I’d watched Master Ghose’s descent into depravity. Lazlo and I were his so-called apprentices, though I was twice the lad’s age and not there by choice. By the time we’d chased Koschei’s Egg down to a shack in Siberia, Ghose was beyond redemption. More demon than man, his eyes blacker than coal as he corrupted his spirit with the Profane Arts.”

He set the watch down. “I couldn’t let the demon have that kind of power.”

“So you took it for yourself.”

His gaze slanted to her. The light in his eyes disappeared like the sun behind clouds. He looked away. “To mixed success.”

It chilled her to see him retreat behind a familiar wall. Weariness and exhaustion had caught up to them both. Nestling closer, she closed her eyes and breathed in his evergreen scent. “Tell me about Ireland.”

She fell asleep to the soothing rumble of his voice and the rich melody of the Irish he fell into, the lilting rise and fall of unfamiliar words rocking her into a dreamless slumber.

Chapter 37. Hope

Pale winter light spilled across her face.

Cora burrowed into the warm male she had slept beside for blurred days. A comforting presence in the darkest hours between dusk and dawn. His nearness was a balm on the wound she knew would never fully heal. The best parts of her had died with Teddy, leaving her hollow.

Each day was its own eternity.

Malachy had given her an enchanted ring—one of a pair and made of malachite, no less—to reach him whenever she needed. Twisting the ring would reverberate across any distance to the matching one on his own finger. He even promised not to be irritated in advance of any interruptions.

After reassuring him, several times, that she’d use the ring, he would leave in the morning, pressing a kiss to her cheek, and return after the sun had set, climbing into bed and wrapping his body around hers.

When her suffering wanted her closer, he was there, soothing her. When she awoke from nightmares, he was there, reaching for her in the night, an arm roping around her waist and tucking her against solid warmth. Lulled by his even breaths, she would drift back asleep, less troubled. Cora had never slept as well as she did in Malachy Bane’s arms.

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