Page 112 of A Fate Unwoven
Venysa was waiting for her when Lena opened her eyes.
Lena was no longer in theHæsta’s chamber. Instead, she was on her knees in what looked like an old Wyrecian village. Charred wooden huts with straw roofs. A circular, frosted well at its center.
The scent of ash in the air.
The fire was long gone, its flames burned out, but somehow, Lena could still feel the ghost of smoke in her lungs. Could still feel the heat against her skin.
She didn’t need Venysa to tell her where they were. The sense of longing, ofhome,told her everything she needed to know: this was where Venysa had grown up. Or at least, the memory of it. And despite her anger at Venysa for tricking her, Lena couldn’t help the sympathy she felt for the first Fateweaver as she took in the burned-down remnants of Venysa’s childhood.
Venysa watched her silently. She looked mostly the same as she had the first time Lena had seen her; dark hair in a cascade of wavesdown her back, a small, slim figure far too delicate for the power lurking beneath. Her eyes, which had been brown before, were now a misty, brilliant silver, the same shade Dimas had said he’d seen Lena’s turn when she’d been close to losing control.
But it wasn’t Venysa’s eyes that sent shivers down Lena’s spine. No, it was that the web of threads surrounding the girl were not the same bluish-silver Lena was so used to seeing. These were a dull gray, their light dimmed by the same shadows that surrounded theHæsta.
“I really am sorry it had to be this way, Lenora,” Venysa said, and Lena could feel the truth behind her words, “but I’m afraid there’s only room for one of our spirits in this vessel.”
Roston’s ritual was draining Lena’s strength by the second; she was too weak to fight. Too weak to do anything but ask the one question that had been plaguing her all this time. Nearly breathless, Lena rasped, “Why?”
Venysa tilted her head, eyes flashing with power. She looked more solid than Lena had ever seen her as she closed the space between them. “I have shown you what this empire took from me: my home, my freedom, mybrother.And then they sought to control my power.” Venysa’s lips curled. “The Fateweaver was not created to be put in chains. I knew it, and so did Næbya. It was Her Sisters who wished for our power to be limited. Without Her knowing, they linked the Fateweaver’s power to the Ehmar Emperor, ensured that the Fateweaver could only ever have full mastery over one affinity in a lifetime, and that she could never alter her own fate. When Næbya discovered what they had done, She sealed them away and came to me. So that I could help Her make the Fateweaver what she was always meant to be. Her avatar in this realm, an unlimited being worshipped not just by Wyrecia, but theworld.”
The same vision Lena had seen earlier flashed behind Lena’s eyes. Of Venysa in a dark stone room, kneeling before the shimmering form of Næbya. Of Venysa, years later, looking into a mirror and seeing the face of Lady Aalys staring back.
The vision shifted to Venysa in Lady Aalys’s body, surrounded by theHæsta,their chants ofFurybringerreverberating in her ears and the intoxication of triumph running through her veins. And then she felt somethingtugaround her chest, a cord pulled taut. Venysa’s magic began to dim, the hold she had over Lady Aalys’s body growing weaker and weaker until she could do nothing but let go.
And then—darkness.
The vision started to fade, and as it did, Lena saw the flash of another memory. A dark cavern, its walls the color of the night sky. Two women asleep in stone coffins, their lids being sealed shut by chains of shadow-tinted threads.
The Lost Sisters.Her mother’s stories said that Næbya had sealed them away. That the location of their prison had been lost to time.
Lena tried to cling onto the vision, to find something that might tell her where the cavern was. But it was already gone, replaced instead by the overwhelming surge of Venysa’s fury.
“It took me months of influencing Lady Aalys’s mind before I could seize control. And when I finally did, I went straight to the chamber where the severing ritual had been sealed, only to find that I could not open it.” Another wave of anger went through Lena as Venysa shook her head. “There was a step to the spell to unseal the door that I was missing, one that could only be found in the memories of the accomplice I’d had seal the chamber. But Lady Aalys’s affinity was for the future, not the past.” Venysa sighed. “I asked Næbya for Her help, but the Fateweaver was created by Her and Her Sisters, and as the gift of seeing the past and the present came from Læda and Awyla, Næbya had no control over them. If I wanted to see the past, I needed to grow stronger, to train my power. And so that is what I did. I gathered followers. I sought the old magics to gain more power. But I was betrayed.”
Venysa’s threads darkened. “One of my followers revealed to the imperial church that I was behind Lady Aalys’s corruption, and because of this, they found a way to block my connection with the Fateweaver.”
A new memory now, of Venysa, trapped inside a half dozen girls, forced to watch as each of them underwent the Rite of Ascension and the connection she had with them was broken over and over again.
It was too much. Lena stumbled to her knees, fingers gripping her wrist as pain seeped from the symbol on her skin. “The magic of the rite must be instilled in each new vessel,” Venysa explained. “That is why anybodaare required, by law, to become wards of Næbya’s Church. It has taken mecenturiesto put my plan into action. To wait whilst my followers gained enough power to intercept the emperor’s vision of his Fateweaver. And finally, to wait for abodaborn with an affinity for the past, one who had escaped the notice of the empire and thus had not been corrupted by their lies. A girl who, like me, would do anything to earn back the freedom taken from her.”
Lena was panting now, her breaths coming out in sharp, shallow gasps. She couldn’t think. Couldn’tbreathe.All she could do was lie there in the dark and wait for her spirit to fade.
And as she did, a new voice rose amidst the darkness.
You must fight, Lenora.
A myriad of memories flashed through her mind as Lena saw the pasts of all the Fateweavers who had come before her. Of all the young girls taken from their lives and forced to live with a power the church and their emperor had known was corrupt from the start. Each Fateweaver’s sorrow was barely a ghost amidst the storm of Venysa’s fury, but it was there, as real and as powerful as Lena’s own.
The former Fateweavers were not her ancestors—not by blood, at least—but they were still a part of her. A part she had spent so long fearing she’d never considered they might actually be trying tohelp.
She tried to gather the strength to fight, to reach the power they offered to her, but it was no use. The ritual had already weakened her too much. And now there was nothing Lena could do but hope the former Fateweavers forgave her as she waited for the darkness to swallow her whole.
FORTY-NINE
DIMAS
Fighting the Corrupted was like trying to catch smoke.
Every time Dimas managed to get close, the creature would move out of the way, twisting around the ritual chamber as if it were made of shadow. Dimas was barely keeping up; the wound in his side was throbbing, and there were two claw marks on his thigh from where the monster had rended his flesh.
