Page 51 of The Unweaver

Teddy’s fanciful imagination styled their unknown father as a lovesick Lord, set to whisk his children away from London’s soot to places they only saw in Sister Frances’s atlas. Cora daydreamed along with Teddy but never believed it. She knew the truth without being told. Their parents were just the first people not to want them.

“Father Hoyt had a heart attack?” asked the boy beside her.

Warning bells clamored in her ears, yet Cora blurted the words before reason could stop her. A mistake she would regret for the rest of her life. “Sister Jessica was on top of Father Hoyt when he died.”

Everyone became very still. A pregnant hush fell. Their eyes widened on Cora, then the flushed, stammering Sister. The orphans tittered behind their hands.

Sister Frances narrowed her eyes on a flustered Sister Jessica before turning to Cora. “How would you know that, child?”

“I saw ‘em. She was riding him like a horse. Then Father Hoyt grabbed his chest and keeled over.”

Sister Jessica gasped. Her eyes bounced over the shocked nuns. “Wh-why would anyone believeher?The girl is an abomination!”

“I saw that mole on your back,” Cora said. “Near your right shoulder. Kinda looks like a heart. Or a kidney.”

Gaping mouths and stares were the only response. Cora realized her mistake then. Her awful mistake.

The priest’s stark chambers were windowless, with a heavy slab of wood for a door. The only way she could have witnessed his death was if she’d been standing right beside the bed. While she was good at hiding in shadows, she wasn’tthatgood. Her window into the priest’s torrid end hadn’t been gifted from God.

“W-witch!” Sister Jessica cried. “The child tries to beguile you with lies! Do not believe her.Abomination. Abomination!”

The mortified nuns joined in, screaming as they chased her onto the pitiless streets of London.

She wrapped herself in the garbage she couldn’t eat to keep warm. There was no dignity when you were starving. There was no pride when you were freezing.

She roamed across the city on bleeding feet like a ghost. Beaten by corseted matrons. Harassed by men, young and old. Batted away by the coppers like flies on shit.

Those years of suffering reinforced the Sacred Heart’s most important lessons: those who should care for her would hurt her, and those who should love her would leave her.

But Hell followed her everywhere. Again and again she returned to its unfeeling embrace.

Cor-a, came an eerie voice.Cor-a…

The nightmares began, of reliving deaths not her own. The rictus grin of corpses. The crushing pain in Father Hoyt’s chest. The vise-like fist squeezing Teddy’s heart. Her heart. Ripping it out of the jagged cage of their sternum. A disintegrated face reforming with the reversing path of a bullet.

A rustic cottage sprung up around her. The door swung open, beckoning her outside into rolling green hills that stretched to the horizon, dotted by cottages with thatched roofs and puffing chimneys.

Through a sea of tall grass, rippling like waves in the rain-kissed breeze, she waded. Amber stalks whisked against her knees. The warm summer drizzle misted her face.

Over the song of swaying grass and birds came the cry of a boy, unseen. She followed the cries until she saw him huddled amongst the waist-high maze. A boy near ten, his copper hair caught the stubborn sunlight peeking through the clouds.Patched hand-me-downs from a bygone era hung off his thin body like pauper’s rags on a scarecrow.

He glanced up when she neared and his tears cut off like a faucet. One eye was as blue as a summer sky, the other swollen shut. Blood trickled from his quivering lips. Beneath the rags was a collage of multi-hued discoloration—bruises new and old, fresh welts and whitened scars.

“Are you all right, boy? Why are you out here all alone?”

He swiped his cheeks with a filthy sleeve, and she strained to understand him through his hiccupping breaths and thick accent that rolled like the green hills. “I-I dunno. One moment, Da was wallopin’ me—he’s deep in his cups, mind ye. Next I’m here, out in the middle o’ the back field. Ach, Da will be furious with me. Muckin’ me trousers when I should be workin’. I’m the oldest, don’t ye know? Da says I’m supposed to take care o’ them.”

“But who takes care of you?” She reached to help him up. But he was no longer there. Straightening, she shielded her eyes from the drizzle to see where he could’ve gone. A dark shadow loomed in the sea of grass. She froze.

She could see the boy in the man standing a few paces away. Dark copper hair fell across his brow and his damp shirt clung to his tall, lean frame. His features clouded with uncertainty then brightened into surprised recognition.

“Cora?”

Malachy took a step forward, and another. The eyes that drank her in were not unrelenting obsidian, but blue as an azure sky. Not cruel or cold but radiating warmth. There was no bite behind the smile curving his lips.

She was mesmerized. With blue eyes and a warm smile, Malachy Bane was beautiful.

He strode across the sea of grass and embraced her. An arm curled around her waist, hauling her against the solid wall ofhis body, fitting them together. His fingers threaded through her hair and tilted her face to his. He leaned down, a breath away.

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