Page 3 of A Fate Unwoven
Ioseph’s words faded, drowned out by the roaring in Dimas’s ears. Without his Fateweaver, he would never be emperor. Time was running out.
She was the key to everything … and he was going to do whatever it took to find her.
“Gather as many hunters as the Fist can spare and meet me at the gates at dawn,” Dimas said.
Ioseph stared at him, brown eyes darkening. “Your Highness—”
“That’s anorder.” Dimas let the mask slip and ran his hands through his already disheveled hair.
I sound like my father.
He reached for Ioseph, his fingers trembling as they wrapped around the solid warmth of Ioseph’s wrist. There was no one else around to see, and Dimas was too tired to deny himself this small comfort. “Please, ’Seph. I need to do this.”
Ioseph’s eyes dipped to Dimas’s pale fingers against his wrist, then back up again, flashing with a tenderness that made the prince’s heart flutter with something other than fear.
Ioseph dipped his head in a decisive nod. “Alright, but I’m coming with you. We’ll bring her home, Dimas. Whatever it takes.”
Gone was the tenderness in Ioseph’s expression, replaced instead with a fierce determination that Dimas recognized with heart-aching intimacy. Like him, Ioseph knew what it felt like to live in the shadow of a parent. His father was long dead, but the shadow he’d cast as a member of Vesric’s personal guard still haunted Ioseph to this day.
Dimas gave a single nod, a silent promise. They would prove themselves worthy.
Together.
Ioseph stepped back, looking Dimas up and down with pinched lips. And then he was striding down the candlelit hallway, ebony cloak rippling behind him.
Dimas wasn’t sure how long he stood in the shadows outside of his father’s chambers before he finally strode to his own, his only focus the single, unrelenting purpose pulsing through his veins.
Find her.
His Fateweaver was the only way he could prove to his father—no, to the empire—that he was worthy of being their ruler.
He was Dimas Ehmar, future Emperor of Wyrecia.
And he was going to bring his Fateweaver home.
ONE
LENA
For the third time that month, Lenora Vesthir committed blasphemy.
The story that fell from her lips wasn’t true, of course. None of the old tales were, but in the eyes of the empire, telling one was considered heresy all the same. It was why she’d chosen the hollow cavern just outside of Forvyrg as her stage. Why she kept her voice low and her eyes sharp. Even out here, at the farthest edges of the Wilds, a heretic could never be too careful.
The few villagers who had come to listen to her tonight were drawn in close around a campfire. Lena caught the too-sharp angles of their cheekbones in the firelight, the bruise-like circles beneath their eyes. The measly portion of dried meat she’d brought back from her latest travels didn’t seem like enough.
It never did.
Her own stomach ached with hunger. Months on the road had left her body exhausted, and when the familiar wooden huts of Forvyrg had finally appeared on the horizon, Lena had wanted nothing more thanto crawl into the warmth of her best friend’s cot and sleep for a week. Instead, she’d taken one look at the fresh graves outside the village fence and decided sleep would have to wait. The people of Forvyrg—herpeople—needed something to give them hope.
“Centuries ago,” she began, “during the reign of the fourth Fateweaver, a small, poor village much like this one lay forgotten on the edges of Wyrecia’s deadliest forests. There dwelled the ancientkorupted, monstrous creatures believed to have been tainted by the Fateweaver’s darkening ambitions. Without the protection of the emperor’s guards, who only looked out for those they deemed worthy, the villagers were left to defend themselves against these monsters, and as thekoruptedclaimed the lives of more and more of their people, they began to lose what little hope they had left. Until one day, in the middle of a winter storm, the village elders gathered their people.”
Lena swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat and blinked the smoke from her eyes, searching the shadows for a familiar face. It took a moment for her to see him standing at the edge of the cave mouth, one hand resting casually on the hilt of his hunting axe, the other tucked into the folds of his woolen cloak.Finæn.
Why wasn’t he sitting around the fire with everyone else?
There was no time to think about it now. The cough of Finæn’s younger sister, Maia, brought her back to herself. To the curling smoke and crackling flames and the intoxicating thrill of her storytelling.
“ ‘The Fateweaver has cursed us,’ one of the elders said, ‘but does that mean we should accept it? There was a time when our people believed the paths we took, the choices we made, were the only things that had the power to change our endings! That belief was ripped from us with the creation of the Fateweaver, but does that mean we should stop fighting for a world when it can be true again?’ ” Lena’s voice thickened, her own anger rising as the words spilled from her mouth. “ ‘No!’ said the elder. ‘We must fight to break the shackles theempire has placed upon us! If we do not fight for ourselves, who will fight for us?’
