Page 56 of A Fate Unwoven
Lena awoke drenched in sweat, a scream dying in her throat. It took a moment for her to remember where she was. For the softness of the Fateweaver’s bed and the moonlight spilling through the windows to chase away the shadows of her dream. She sat up, her heart thundering wildly in her chest.
Venysa?she asked, searching for the faint whisper of the first Fateweaver’s voice.
Nothing.
Lena ran a shaking hand through her hair. If what she’d been seeing in her visions was real, then the old stories were true. Venysa was never a willing tool of the empire, but a prisoner cursed with a burden she did not want.
Just like Lena.
She got to her feet, her legs aching from walking the tunnels all night. She hadn’t returned to the locked door with the strange symbols, still too wary of triggering the pain that might activate Dimas’s connection and tip him off to her activities, but had instead mapped out the other fork in the tunnel. It eventually led her to a small wooden door in the wall, which had opened up to a large set of overgrown bushes,on the other side of which lay a small courtyard somewhere on the northern side of the palace. Unlike the rest of the palace, this courtyard appeared … older, somehow. The shrubs and vines grew wild and the small water fountain at its center was dry and covered in moss. Other than that, the courtyard was empty. There was another wooden door, one that opened up into what looked like a small prayer room, but Lena was more interested in the rusted iron grate half hidden in the north stone wall. Lena had pressed her face to the bars, her breath catching at the sight of the city beyond. An escape route, just like Lena had hoped. If everything went to hell, the grate would be her way out.
But she wouldn’t go until she’d done everything in her power to free herself of her bond to Dimas.
Her gaze settled now on the horizon beyond her window. On the dark sky and the distant mountains looming over the imperial city. Somewhere out there, the people she’d sworn to watch out for were fighting to survive. Battling against cold and hunger. Against fate itself. Lena could not—wouldnot—abandon them. Not when she had the chance to finally give them the world her mother had always hoped for.
If Venysa couldn’t reach her, then Lena would do this on her own. She would learn to control her fear. Her power.
And when she did, she would do whatever it took to make sure no one else had their fate decided for them.
TWENTY-FOUR
LENA
After almost a week of practicing her control with marginal improvement, Lena still didn’t feel any closer to accomplishing her goal.
Her days had been spent split between learning to control the threads around her, etiquette and manners training, dance and history lessons, and learning what duties she’d be expected to fulfill once the coronation and corresponding Rite of Ascension had been completed. Duties which, Brother Dunstan kept reminding her, relied firmly on her being able tocontrol her magic.And whilst Lena wasn’t particularly eager tofulfillsaid duties—blessing new imperial troops and granting boons to fussy nobles? No, thank you—she was eager to figure out a way to summon her visions at will.
Which was why, on the first “free” day she’d had since arriving at the palace, Lena had sat herself down in her usual chair beside the window, closed her eyes, and tried to call on the Fateweaver’s power. Normally, she had Brother Dunstan or Iska to guide her, but today was the royal funeral. Both would be expected to attend, which meantLena’s usual lessons had been canceled. Iska had suggested she take the day to rest, but the moment Lena had awoken that morning, her mind still empty of Venysa’s voice, she’d strode over to the chair and begun her usual breathing exercises. They came naturally to her now, in the same way she held her breath before firing an arrow.
Except this arrow never seemed to find its mark.
She inhaled, waiting for the familiar surge of the Fateweaver’s power. No matter how prepared she was for it, the sensation still always managed to catch her off guard. It was like being dunked into a frozen lake, and fighting her natural instinct to struggle against it was almost impossible.
She could manage it for a few seconds at best before it overwhelmed her. Before the fear and hatred she’d always associated with the Fateweaver burned away everything else. Whatever vision the magic was trying to show her always remained just out of reach.
And so did the first Fateweaver.
Frustration coursing through her as she waited for her heartbeat to return to its normal rhythm, Lena found her gaze drifting toward the hearth. She’d been down in the tunnels every night since she’d arrived, staring at the symbols in the stone door until her head hurt badly enough to make her stomach churn. Her training with Brother Dunstanhadmade ignoring the pain of resisting the overwhelming surge of magic easier, but Lena still hadn’t been able to fight it off entirely, and all of Maia’s attempts to find out something useful in the acolyte’s library books had ended in failure.
She was restless, her body jittery with an energy she had no way of ridding herself of. In the Wilds, she was always on the go, never staying in one place long enough to grow too comfortable. The longest time she’d ever spent anywhere was in Forvyrg, the first night she and Finæn had been intimate.
A flash of Finæn, his arms around her, his voice in her ear, left Lena momentarily breathless. Once the thought of him had brought her comfort.
Now it only brought her pain.
Thankfully, she hadn’t seen him since their first night at the palace. Dimas had kept him busy with his guard training, either out of necessity or because the emperor recognized the tension between Finæn and his Fateweaver. He’d give her updates every once and a while, though. Let her know that Finæn was thriving in his new role. And though it hurt her to know that the price of his newfound happiness was her freedom, she couldn’t ignore the slowly increasing glow in Maia’s cheeks. There was a lightness to her that Lena had never seen in the Wilds, one that made guilt churn in Lena’s gut whenever she thought of her plan to sever the bond. But then she would remember her mother, and Silah, and all of the freshly dug graves outside of Forvyrg, and her guilt would burn away.
Maia deserved to be happy, but so did the rest of the people suffering under the empire’s rule. And if Lena severed the bond … if she freed the Fateweaver’s power from the empire’s control, then maybe they could be.
Lena’s magic flared like it always did whenever her emotions ran high. She sucked in a deep breath through her nose. Held it in her lungs until the power rising inside of her shrank back down. Not gone—never gone—but quieter. When her mind finally felt stable enough, she began flicking through the latest pile of history books Maia had been studying in an attempt to findsomethingthat might help Lena learn more about the elusive first Fateweaver.
A Comprehensive History of Wyrecian Customs; Imperial Etiquette; Wyrecia: A Guide to the Fated Lands.Lena’s frustration only rose as she read each title. She and Maia had been through dozens of books already, and there’d been nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that stepped Lena closer to unlocking the acolyte’s hidden chamber—just more of the same historical drivel Iska taught her in her lessons. And how was she even supposed to access the books in Brother Dunstan’s collection, the ones containing information on the Fateweaver’s powers, if only he knew where they were stored? It was all so Sisters-damnedinfuriating.
She was just about to give up, to head back down into the tunnels and try to force a vision again, when she came to the last book.
It was a worn leather tome Lena was almost certain hadn’t been there before. Its spine was adorned with the old Wyrecian symbol for Fateweaver. The cover was blank, giving no indication of what the book might be about, but Lena had the vague sense that she’d seen it somewhere before.
Heart in her throat, Lena flicked open the first page. Like the cover, the writing inside was written entirely in old Wyrecian. Most of the symbols were foreign to her, but scrawled on the first page, the ink barely dried, someone had written a message in the modern language.
