Page 46 of A Fate Unwoven
It was too much. She could feel his emotions as if they were her own, flooding her until she didn’t know where the prince ended and she began, and this time, no foreign presence came to sever the connection.Her eyes screwed shut, her nails digging in hard enough to draw blood.Stop. Please, just stop!
Blood, warm and wet, trickled from her nose and into her mouth.
“Lenora!” the prince shouted. “You have to stop fighting it.”
She couldn’t. She was suffocating, drowning in her power. Visions flashed behind her eyelids. Faces of people she didn’t know. Towns and villages she’d never visited. She tried to let them come, tried to breathe through the onslaught, but her every instinct told her tofight.She thought of her mother. Of the hungry faces of the people she’d lived alongside her entire life. Every Fateweaver who had previously wielded the magic inside of her had done so much harm; how was she any better than them if she let it consume her?
Her knees gave out beneath her, and as her vision faded, as consciousness began to fall away, the memory of Venysa warning her what would happen if she continued to fight the bond echoed inside of her head.
The consequences of resisting it are… fatal.
Lena only just had enough time to pray Venysa was wrong before everything went dark.
Something cold pressed against Lena’s lips. The taste of honey and something floral coated her tongue.
“Drink this.”
Lena’s mouth instinctively clenched shut, but whoever held the drink up to her mouth didn’t relent.
“It’s just tea. It’ll help you relax.”
All of Lena’s instincts told her to keep her mouth shut. But she could feel nothing beyond the Fateweaver’s power now, roaring through her blood like a blizzard, and she knew if she didn’t find her way out soon, she never would.
With what sense she had left, Lena parted her lips. Warm liquid coated her tongue, sharp and sweet and bitter all at once. Heat spread through her veins, chasing away the ice-cold of the Fateweaver’s magic.
Lena opened her eyes to find a familiar, pale face just a few inches from her own. This was the young woman she’d seen with Dimas in her vision.
“Better?” the woman asked.
Lena swallowed, the taste of the tea still bitter in her mouth. “Yes. Thank you …”
“Iska,” the woman offered, bowing her head, “and it is my pleasure, Your Worship.”
Someone must have carried her after she’d passed out, because Lena was now lying on one of the long, fabric-covered seats in the reception room, her head propped up by pillows. She sat up slowly, heat rushing up her neck at the sight of Dimas and his guard, Ioseph, watching her with clear concern.
Dimas cleared his throat, his shoulders rigid beneath the fabric of a navy cloak.
“What did you see?”
He was cleaner than he had been during their journey together, but the circles beneath his eyes were more pronounced. They made her wonder, briefly, if she was the sole cause of his anxiety, or if there was something else. Something he didn’t want her to know about.
Lena looked everywhere but at the tunnel entrance hidden in the Fateweaver’s hearth. There was no indication in the prince’s expression that he’d seen her during their brief connection, but if hehad, she couldn’t risk giving herself away.
Keeping her emotions as calm as possible, she asked, “What do you mean?”
“You looked like Lady Sefwyn did whenever she was having one of her visions; she was particularly adept at seeing the future, but eachFateweaver has their own affinity. If you tell us what you saw, we will be able to determine yours.”
Lena tensed, years of fighting to hide her visions making her tone sharp as she replied, “I don’t know. Whatever Næbya was trying to show me, it was too chaotic to make sense of.”
Dimas frowned. “That’s because you’re still fighting your power. Once you begin your training, it’ll be easier to sort through the images, to figure out what they mean.”
The emperor ran a hand through his hair, mussing up the curls. The gesture reminded her of Casimir, his eyes dancing in challenge as they’d questioned one another in his hideout.
She pushed away the memory. He was yet another person better off without her in his life.
“When do we start?” she asked, pushing to her feet. The quick movement made the world sway, and it took her vision a moment to clear. Already, she could feel her magic stirring. See the faint lines of threads in the air.
“Your first session with the head priest of theZværnaOrder, Brother Dunstan, will take place this evening,” replied Dimas, “but there are … other matters we must attend to first.”
