Page 119 of The Unweaver

Guilt speared Cora. She had led Mother straight to Bane’s house and practically held the door open for her pets to plunder.

“Did you get it?” Mother was breathless with excitement. “Did you fetch it for me?”

“Yes. Come, puppet.” Shuffling steps approached at the snap of Cecelia’s fingers.

A rhythmic thumping grew louder. Cora would know the sound anywhere. Malachy Bane’s heart, beating inside its cage of Koschei’s Egg. Begging her, as always, for release.

The temptation was too great. Cora slitted her heavy eyes open. Cradled in the girl’s arms like a baby was an egg made of smooth metal bars pulsing with Bane’s heart, and on her velvet choker flashed the Oracle Ruby. Cecelia held Bane’s spirit in her hands and Teddy’s at her throat.

Mother’s tittering laugh iced Cora’s veins. She waved for the girl to hand over Koschei’s Egg, but her hold only tightened. “Do not be insolent, Cecelia. Give it here. Now. Everything is prepared for the ritual. Your dallying is delaying my eternal life.”

The girl laughed, but it was not a girl’s laugh. Chilling and ancient, the sound curled at the base of Cora’s spine and spread like a spider’s web across her ribs.

“Grab her,” Cecelia said in an inhuman voice. The voice that had haunted Cora.

The sleepwalking puppets, eyes closed and faces serene, pounced on Mother. Her mouth widened in astonishment, as if her Pomeranian had gone for her jugular.

Owens surged to defend Mother and was knocked down by a clotheslining arm. A puppet strangled him with indifferent lethality. Owens burst into a flurry of black feathers and flew away.

Two puppets tossed a chainmail net around the crow before he could escape. Desperately cawing and flapping, Owens was trapped. The puppets dragged the net down and beat him until the crow turned back into a man that no longer moved.

“How dare you!” Mother struggled against the puppets imprisoning her. “You mannerless, discourteous— How could you do this to your Mother? I took you in, Cecelia! You were a baby bird with broken wings when I found you. Weak!Powerless. I took you to my nest and nursed you back to health. I have given you everything. And this is how you repay me?”

Cecelia stroked Koschei’s Egg and watched Mother with unblinking silver eyes. Mother might have orchestrated the war and infiltrated Verek’s gang, but her prized weapon was turning against her. Empowered by dream feeding, the Oneiromancer had grown stronger than her leash. And Mother knew it.

“My pet,” she pleaded. “H-have I not been a good mother to you?”

“You are not my mother,” the girl snarled, her face contorting in rage. “I have lived lifetimes before you crawled out of the swamp of your slattern mother’s womb. Puppets, kill her.”

Mother disappeared and a magpie emerged from the heap of ugly clothes. With harsh squawks, the magpie battered itself against the walls, the locked door, the closed windows. There was no escape from the ballroom. No escape from the net that ensnared her. Beak and talons were no match for chainmail. Frantic caws echoed as the magpie crashed to the floor.

Cecelia beckoned her puppets to bring her their catch. Young face devoid of emotion, she raised her foot and stomped on the magpie. Blood and feathers flew. Again and again, her Mary Janes came down until the beating wings stopped and the squawking silenced.

Mother reappeared inside the net. Plump, nude, destroyed. “I…” she gasped, cupping her spilling guts in her hands. “Find your… m-manners… lacking.”

Death claimed the only mother Cora had ever known.

The girl’s head swiveled. She looked directly at Cora, too startled by Mother’s corpse to feign sleeping. “Have you been enjoying the show, Necromancer?”

Cora stared up at the girl, and something else stared back through her eyes. Eyes like the mercury of a mirror, bright and empty.

I have lived lifetimes… Was Ikelasthe dream mage pulling the strings? Had she somehow transferred her demonic spirit into this girl’s body?

“Pity you won’t live long enough to retell it.” The Oneiromancer floated closer and cocked her head. “Unless you’d care to make a deal? We have been watching you closely, Necromancer. You can do what theQueen of Rotcould not. Koschei’s Egg will be superfluous when we actualize your potential.”

Cora jostled to wake Bane and winced at the bite of chains. Only his blood stirred as it dripped from his bullet wound into the growing puddle.

“You care for him.” The girl studied Cora as if her concern for Bane was an oddity in a curio shop. “Don’t bother denying it. I’ve walked through both your dreams. You dream of death. He dreams of you, death incarnate. I entangled your dreams; you entangled your bodies. Puzzling.Revolting. The Realmwalker I knew decades ago did not debase himself thus. Yet the stronger he grows, the more pestilent he becomes.”

She planted a bloody Mary Jane into Bane’s gut and Cora bore the brunt of her kick. “A buzzing gnat, swatted down with ruination.”

Cora’s drugged, frenzied mind took stock of her imminent demise. It had to be Ikelas, the former Master Oneiromancer Bane had watched die, now a demon wearing a girl’s body. She was surrounded by sleepwalking puppets, weakened by magic-draining chains and potions, and on her own.

Helpless and hopeless, she pulsed her weakening death magic into the floorboards. The wood fibers relaxed, bending but not breaking. It wasn’t enough.

“Wh-what deal?”

“I wonder, Necromancer. Whom do you care for more? The Realmwalker?” She caressed Bane’s heart pulsing withinKoschei’s Egg. “Or your twin?” She touched the Oracle Ruby and considered Cora for an endless moment. “This is the deal, Necromancer. Join us, and I will release either your twinor the Realmwalker. You may only choose one. Refuse, and you die along with them.”

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