Chapter 22
Echoing Regret
The sun had nearly set over their half-eaten feast by the time Malachy’s torrent of words slowed to a trickle.
Talking about his history with Ghose had opened a floodgate.
He had spilled his grief and heartache all over Cora, telling her the whole sad saga—about his mum, the withering blossom, buried with the thirteenth baby that had killed her; his father, the blathering drunk, tossed into the maw of cold earth.
Of thirteen Banes born, nine had survived past their leading strings, and now all but one was buried six feet underground.
Malachy had seized Koschei’s Egg for himself after he tore Alastair Ghose down the middle in that Siberian tundra.
Near immortality, at the mere cost of his already broken spirit.
His heart had been ripped out long before he caged it inside the Profane egg made of needles.
Splitting the dregs into smaller pieces did not signify.
As the years wore on, as his scourged spirit and his eyes darkened, as cold numbness crept over him, Malachy often wondered why he bothered.
Heartlessness had freed him from the vagaries of emotion, all except for the guilt, the marrow-deep sense of loss.
Grief had carved the names of his massacred family into his bones.
The price for power had been higher and dearer than Malachy could have anticipated, and for what?
Sharper suits and hoarded wealth? Profane magic had dragged his life into the twentieth century, and he had watched the air thicken with the poisonous smog of Industry and the smoke of entire forests burning in the furnaces of Progress.
Now, blue-eyed and black-hearted, he was a mortal monster once more. One who had unveiled his darkest secrets, his deepest shame, to a woman whose hand remained warm on his as she listened with grave sincerity.
“Ghose slaughtered my entire family because of me,” he said, voice soaked with anguish. “Because of my carelessness. I won’t let Ghose hurt you too, Cora.”
“Oh, Mal.” She closed the distance between them and framed his face with her hands.
Masochist that he was, he leaned into her touch. In her eyes, bright with unshed tears, he found only compassion, not condemnation. Despite everything she now knew, she cared for him still. The enormity of the realization crushed him.
“You tried to save them. You’re not to blame for their deaths. How could you have predicted the cruelty of an unknown man?”
He released a stuttering breath. “Ghose isn’t the only monster I’m trying to save you from. Colleen was right about me, all those years ago. I’m no better than my Da, a bastard that I killed.”
“You helped his death along,” Cora said gently. “Did he deserve it?”
“Aye,” he said without hesitation. Time had not diminished his bitterness.
“Good.” She nodded as if his answer solved the moral conundrum of patricide. “You did what you had to do. In my limited experience, fathers either traumatize us by being there or by not being there. Sounds like the former for yours.”
“Killing my father is the least of my crimes.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Killing my family killed me.”
She wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in the crook of his neck. “It’s not your fault.”
Her words danced over him, soft as a caress, but his guilt was stronger. Tears stung his eyes. He hesitated, poised on an uncertain threshold. Then he crushed her against him.
For once, he let himself be held. For once, he let the tears that hadn’t fallen in seventy years roll down his cheeks and soak her hair.
“I’ll be your family, Malachy, and you’ll be mine.”
She pulled back. Their gazes held. Their breaths intermingled. She threaded her fingers through his hair and pressed her lips to his. He held her fiercely and kissed her softly, like saying goodbye.
“I can’t let you get hurt because of me too, Cora.”
Her eyes flashed, not with anger, but determination. “Is that the only reason you don’t think we should be together?”
“Other than the near certain risk of you getting killed? Yes.”
“Fuck it.” She lifted a shoulder. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Are we even having the same conversation? If it’s a choice between you living or you getting brutally murdered, I’m going with the option where you’re not fuckin’ murdered.”
“I am not your responsibility. Give me a chance to say no. It’s my life. It’s my choice, too.”
“Ghose has already hurt you twice because of me. Months of memory loss—how you must have felt, thinking I’d abandoned you, then what Ishtar made you do—” A finger over his lips silenced him.
“The desires were mine. Just not, you know, the complete lack of inhibition.”
His grip tightened on her waist, the perfect fit in the span of his hands. “Cora…” His voice trailed off along with his dwindling self-control. “Being together while Ghose is out there would be exquisitely stupid.”
“Oh, Ghose is a dead man walking. This time, I’ll make sure the son of a bitch stays dead.”
“Ghose is dangerous. He can manipulate time, has an army of cronies at his disposal, and decades’ worth of a head start. He’s already killed me once and taken back the Doomsday Watch.”
“What does the demon want from you now?”
“You.”
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“He wants you to kill me to resurrect the missing half of his spirit.”
She paled. “That’s… is that even possible?
I can only resurrect spirits in transit, and his has long since passed into the Death Realm.
I don’t understand how Ghose exists, let alone how to put all the mismatched pieces of him back together.
A spirit in the wrong body should kill them both, yet he seems to be doing jolly well. How?”
“Ghose mentioned a Necromancer sewing him back together with a thread woven from Clotho’s Spindle.”
“That’s real? Bloody hell, someone stitched the demon up with a thread of Fate?”
His nod was grim. “They say the threads of Fate cannot be unwoven.”
“Maybe not. But the rest of him can be. I just need to get close enough.”
“First, we need to find him. Then we need to take the Doomsday Watch out of his claws or he'll be invincible for sixty seconds at a time.”
“Brilliant.” She pulled a revolver from her handbag. Satisfied that the cylinder was fully loaded, she clicked it shut. “Soon, Ghose will be fully dead, and we can be… us.”
He took in the conviction of her voice, the steadiness of her grip on the revolver, the burn of protectiveness in her eyes. Understanding rippled between them.
“Why would you risk your life to be with me, Cora?”
“You’re worth it.” With a tender kiss, she silenced his protests, quieted his doubts. “Twice I’ve come back to life, and I don’t know why I’m still alive and so many others are dead. But I know that I want you, Malachy. I want your time, your body, your secrets. I want all of you.”
He pulled her close. Her arms, her understanding and acceptance, wrapped around him.
"You deserve to be taken care of too, Mal."
A shudder worked through him. The words caught in his throat, and so he told her with a slow kiss how his lovesick heart clenched at her compassion, how infinitely precious she was in his arms, how afraid he had been to nearly lose her again, an echoing regret.
Christ, he knew better, and yet his heart overflowed.
Another person had peeled back all the layers of his armor and seen the sad, sick heart of him and not looked away.
Instead, Cora reached inside and cupped the broken pieces of him in her palm.
He knew better, and still his fingers tangled in her hair and his kisses trailed down her throat to the pulsing vein at the base.
Her heart—as dark and lonely and full of longing as his—beat a frenzied rhythm against his lips.
“I had the key to unlocking your heart all this time,” he murmured. “By telling you not to be with me.”
A breathy laugh escaped her lips. “That is not entirely incorrect.” She tugged him down for a long kiss until neither were laughing. When their swollen lips parted, panting breaths filled the narrow space between them.
“Are you sure, Cora?”
“I want to be with you. You make me feel… safe,” she said wondrously, as if realizing it for herself. “Besides, who else will cook for me?”
“Ah, the real reason you want to be with me.”
A smile lit up her face. “Why do you want to be with me?”
“You challenge me.” He kissed her soft, stubborn mouth. “You understand me. I'll never have enough of you and your beautiful, maddening chaos. Besides, who else will eat all my cooking?”
“High praise, indeed.”
“There will be rules for your safety, of course—don’t roll your eyes at me.
Your safety matters most to me, and apparently not at all to you.
Rule one, you must always wear the malachite ring, no exceptions.
Rule two, you will never go out alone, no exceptions.
Rule three, you’re moving back home, with me. ”
Cora considered him. “Your conditions are acceptable. Let the relationship begin.” She stuck out her hand to seal it with a shake. “Good luck, Malachy.”
“Good luck, Cora,” he said solemnly as he shook her hand. The corners of his mouth lifted in a grin. Tugging her forward, he kissed her, slow and deep. “The rules will be enforced by a Binding Agreement when you immediately disregard them and argue.”
“Hey, you’re putting words in my mouth.”
“That’s not all I’d like to put in your mouth.” A smile curved his lips. He turned to the stove and heated the chocolate ganache he had made earlier with Cora’s insatiable sweet tooth in mind. Her hand shot out to sneak a taste, and he batted her away. “It’s not ready yet.”
“I just want a taste.” The unrepentant heathen licked chocolate off her finger. Malachy watched the slow progression of her tongue with rapt attention.
“Maybe if you’re a good girl.” He hovered a spoonful of warm chocolate just out of reach of her searching mouth. With a teasing smile, he pulled the spoon back, chuckling at her pout. “Anticipation is its own reward.”