Page 35 of A Fate Unwoven
And then the world went dark.
The first thing he saw was his Fateweaver.
Lenora was kneeling in the snow, her face tilted to the sky, lips whispering words he couldn’t hear. The air around her practically crackled with untapped magic, raw and dangerous and desperate for escape. Had she used it recently? Was that what had triggered the connection between them?
Slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, Dimas took a small step forward. Lenora’s surroundings were blurry, but he could see enough to know his Fateweaver wasn’t in Deyecia. She was surrounded by half-rotted, wooden huts, the ground beneath her thick with snow, and behind her, just clear enough for Dimas to make out, was a sign.
Redwood.
His attention shifted as Lenora got to her feet, her movements heavy with exhaustion. She paused, shoulders stiffening, as if she could sense something behind her. Something flickered in the space between them. A single thread, tethering them together like a chain.
The image faded before he could look at it too closely, ice-white snow shifting to shades of gray and black. Shadows, he realized, unable to move as they rushed around him like a storm, the constantwhooshingof their movements drowning out all other sound.
It wasn’t the first time his shadows had appeared whilst he’d been trying to make contact with his Fateweaver. Up until Dimas had begun his journey to the Wilds, he’d been under the assumption that the darkness plaguing his mind was the start of the same mental ailment that had plagued his mother. But there was no denying that his episodes had increased during his search for Lenora. That the shadows seemed to be growing stronger each time he tried to reach out to her using their bond.
As if reacting to the thought, the shadows writhed, causing the pressure in Dimas’s head to grow until he couldn’t think. Couldn’tbreathe.
No.He’d fought the shadows for so long he’d be damned if he gave in to them now. He needed an anchor, something to bring him back to his physical form—
His blade!
It took every ounce of his strength to lift his hand. To reach for the weapon at his belt and unsheathe it. Sucking in a deep breath, Dimas wrapped his free hand around the blade.
And squeezed.
Pain sliced up his arm, stealing the breath from his lungs. There was a flash of light, and within it, as blurry as his Fateweaver’s surroundings had been, the outline of a familiar symbol—
Dimas awoke on the frozen ground, mouth gasping in lungfuls of fresh, icy air. Someone was leaning over him, a blur of dark eyes and even darker hair against a sea of white.
Ioseph.
The sight of him made it a little easier to breathe. He forced himself to sit up, his limbs aching as if he’d just been forced to spend the morning running drills with the new recruits. Something wet and warm dribbled into his mouth, the tang of copper coating his tongue.
“Are you alright?” Ioseph asked. Now that some of the dizziness had cleared, Dimas could see Milos standing just a few feet away, hisfist tight around the hilt of his sword. His gaze was fixed on Dimas, expression a mixture of wariness and concern.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
Dimas’s mind was a rush, pieces clicking into place: his lack of a vision on his fifteenth namesday, theHæsta’s attack on their carriage, and the apparent return of the mythical Corrupted—these all couldn’t have been a coincidence. Neither could the fact that his shadows—stronger than ever before—had appeared just as he’d almost gotten through to Lenora. They’d been too purposeful, their frantic attempts at trying to stop him from solidifying his connection with his Fateweaver so obvious Dimas almost laughed at himself for not having realized it until now. They weren’t just random attacks. They had apurpose,which meant that something—someone—was controlling them. And Dimas would put coin on it being the same people responsible for Aldryn’s death.
TheHæsta.
This time, Dimas did laugh. A sharp, bitter sound. It seemed he wasn’t going mad after all; he was just at war with an ancient, powerful cult.
“Your Highness?” The concern lacing Ioseph’s voice was barely concealed. He shifted closer to Dimas, his arm twitching as if he wanted to reach for him but knew Milos was watching.
Dimas opened his mouth. Closed it again. There was no way he could tell Ioseph the truth of what he’d seen with Milos so close by. His cousin was still recovering from his wounds, but he was back on his feet, determined to do his duty no matter how much Dimas tried to convince him to rest. If Milos learned there might be something wrong with the bond between Dimas and his Fateweaver, if he thought theHæstahad corrupted it in some way, his cousin wouldn’t hesitate to take them both into custody. They would be judged by theZværna’s highest priests, deemed unworthy of harnessing Næbya’s gift, brandedheretics, and sentenced to death to pass her powers onward to the next successors.
No.If Dimas was going to find out what was wrong with the bond between him and Lenora, he had to do it without theZværna’s help. But first, he had to get to his Fateweaver before it was too late. And so, forcing himself to his feet, Dimas met Milos’s cautious gaze.
“I know where she is.”
FIFTEEN
LENA
It had been too easy to let the prince infiltrate her mind.
After fleeing the trader’s home, Lena had ran back to the forest she’d walked through earlier with Casimir, where, shaking and exhausted, she’d collapsed to her knees, the fear and frustration she’d been keeping buried since that night in Forvyrg surging through her like a storm. She’d curled her fingers into the frosted earth, desperate to feel something other than her own emotions. Something besides the constant hum of power in her veins.
