Page 5 of A Fate Unwoven
Lena didn’t need to look down to recognize where Finæn had brought her. She’d come here often enough over the years to know the place almost as well as her own heart.
“Why did you bring me here?” she managed to ask through the lump in her throat. Her gaze skimmed over the graves, each one topped with a pile of off-white remembrance stones and marked with a simple wooden cross that had been engraved with the name of the person buried beneath.
Too many,she thought. Three more than there had been when she’d left all those months ago. Three more lives taken by the cold and hunger that constantly plagued her people, while the emperor and his Fateweaver ruled behind the safety of their gilded walls. Lena had visited a half dozen villages this winter, and more than half of them had greeted her with the same sight: freshly dug graves and the hopeless people who had been made to dig them.
“Did you know a group of the Empire’s Fist raided Rekavyrg two days ago?” Finæn’s voice was low.
Shehadn’tknown, having been traveling through the forests for the past few days, and the news chilled her heart like a shard of ice. The Fist, hunters loyal to the imperial family, rarely came this far north. The climate was too cold, the terrain too unforgiving. The last time they’d risked it had been to quell what they believed was a rise in the number of people worshipping the Lost Sisters. They’d gone from village to village, executing anyone who refused to swear featly to the imperial family and their matron goddess.
Including Lena’s mother.
Before Lena could say anything, Finæn continued. “They were searching for heretics. The people there were forced to dig twice as many graves when the Fist finally left, and I … I had no way of knowing if you were in one of them.” He paused, and the raw emotion in his voice had Lena pushing aside her own grief and reaching for his hand.This was why he’d been acting so distant. Why he’d barely looked at her since she’d returned. He must have thought he’d lost her.
It was a fear Lena knew well. Her eyes traveled along Finæn’s familiar face, drinking him in, from his hazel eyes and broad nose to his brown hair and chapped, thick lips. He looked different. Older, somehow, as if she’d been gone for years rather than months. There was a new scar along his jaw, smaller and less obvious than the one that curved around Lena’s left eye and down her cheek. She fought the urge to trace her fingers along it. To feel more of his skin beneath hers, just to convince her thumping heart that he washere,that he was safe. Because no matter how many times Lena left—no matter how many times she told herself shehadto—she was always afraid that when she returned, one of the graves outside of the walls would belong to him or Maia.
But she knew, even as he turned to face her with pleading eyes, that it wasn’t enough to make her stay.
“I’m safe,” she whispered, letting him gather her in his arms. He wasn’t much taller than her, and when she looked up, his nose, ice-cold from the wind, brushed against hers. “I’m here.”
Finæn’s eyes fluttered closed. He let out a breath, the honeysweet scent of it flooding Lena’s senses. His arms slid around her waist, pulling her close, until she could feel his heartbeat against her chest, beating just a little faster than her own.
The world fell away. She’d been alone for months, and it felt sogoodto be wanted. To forget about the graves and the hunters and justexist.
“Stay.”
The word cut through the moment like a knife. Lena pulled back, a weight settling in her stomach.Not this again.
“Finæn—”
“Please, Lena. I can’t handle not knowing if you’re alive or dead for months on end. It was bearable when the Fist’s hunts didn’t venture this far, but now …” He shook his head. “If you stay, I promise I’ll lookafter you. I’m going to try out for the city guard in Kostyre once winter has passed, and—”
Lena took another step back. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold traveled along her spine. “Tell me you aren’t still thinking of joining? After everything the imperial family has inflicted on our people?”
His silence was all the answer she needed. When Finæn had first told her of his plan to join the guard so that he could climb the ranks and use his status to keep her and Maia safe, Lena had thought it a childish fantasy. She’d believed he’d outgrown it after his parents had succumbed to a nasty sickness they didn’t have the medicine to treat. Had believed he hated the Ehmars and their false goddess as much as she did.
“It isn’t just about me.” His fingers flexed, as if he was thinking of reaching for her again and then decided against it. “It’s about you and Maia. Her lungs are weak, Lena. I … don’t know if she can survive another winter out here.” He swallowed hard, his gaze flickering to the fresh graves. “Just … think of the life we could have together if I became a guard. There’d be no more hunger, no more fear. There’d be no more burying the people we love too soon.”
Lena stared at him. How could he be so naive?
“Fate isn’t that kind to the likes of us,” she said, not bothering to hide the resentment in her voice.
She turned her back on him and began the short walk back to the village, the weight of their conversation suddenly too much to bear. A low humming had begun in her ears. A soft, constant sound that was both familiar and foreign all at once. Finæn’s heavy footsteps followed, the leather of his boots crunching against the frozen mud.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
She kept walking, her heart racing furiously in her chest.
“Lena, I’m sorry, alright? Please, I don’t want to fight.” He darted in front of her, blocking her path, his hazel eyes wide and pleading. “Let’s just go home.”
Home.
The word shattered the last of her resolve as her mother’s face, gentle and smiling, flickered in her mind. She’d never told him about her mother’s warnings that her dreams and her connection to the forest were more than just a coincidence. That they marked her as a descendent of theboden, people born with the ability to foresee the future who, in the old tales, wielded magic that had become as cursed as the Fateweaver’s own.
Lena didn’t know if she believed it, but she knew one thing for certain. This place would never—couldnever—be her home.
“This isn’t my home.” Her voice cracked, and Finæn’s expression darkened, as if her words had broken something in him, too. They stood like that for what felt like an eternity, until finally, Finæn tore his gaze away, leaving Lena with a tight feeling in her chest that made it hard to breathe.
The look on his face … she couldn’t handle it. This wasFinæn.Finæn, who had held her whilst she’d cried after her mother had left and never returned. Finæn, who, alongside Maia, had been the only constant thing in her life these past few years.
