Page 1 of A Fate Unwoven
PART
I
“It is a cruel sort of life, to control
everyone’s fate but your own.”
PROLOGUE
The Emperor of Wyrecia was dying.
Dimas Ehmar sat at his father’s bedside with his hands clasped in his lap, his fingers still stained gray from the painting he’d finished earlier that night. It had been a painting devoid of color, gray trees casting shadows that, at the right angle, looked like monsters. The image had plagued him for over a week now, shadows creeping into his vision when he least expected it. He’d thought getting it down on canvas would help.
He’d been wrong.
Those same shadows were with him now, his only companions as his father slept, frail chest rising and falling in an unsteady rhythm. Dimas’s fingers twitched. For a second, he considered reaching out to take his father’s hand, just as he had the night he’d lost his mother, but the emperor’s eyes slid open before he could make the choice.
“Dimas.” Emperor Vesric’s voice was a rasp against the room’s oppressive silence. His face, which had always been strong and full of life, now reminded Dimas of the skeletal wraiths in his mother’s paintings.The ones she used to tell him stories of when no one was listening. Something cracked in his chest, like ice breaking on the surface of a lake. The memory of the late empress was not what he needed right now.
“Have some water.” Dimas reached for the copper jug at his father’s bedside. He’d dismissed the servants hours ago, insisting that he could tend to his father’s needs and trying to convince himself he was doing so because it was his duty andnotbecause he wanted to gain Vesric’s approval. But now, as Vesric’s hand shot out to wrap around his wrist, his mouth twisting in displeasure, Dimas could not ignore the rush of disappointment that went through him.
“I don’t need water,” his father said, even as a cough racked his body. “I need … to see Lady Sefwyn.”
Dimas should have expected this. After all, the bond between an emperor and his Fateweaver was one stronger than family; a bond that transcended life and death, it had been created by the ancient acolytes of their matron goddess over three centuries ago. Of course it was Lady Sefwyn, and not his own son, who Vesric wanted at his side.
Still, it stung.
Schooling his expression into the mask he’d become so accustomed to wearing, Dimas said, “She’s resting, Father. Just as you should be. Now let me—”
Vesric’s fingernails dug into Dimas’s skin, and the sharp sting of pain stole the rest of Dimas’s words. Dimas’s chest tightened. Suddenly he was a child again, and his father was dragging him down, down, down. Into the dungeons. Into the dark.
He sucked in a breath. Let it out again. It was strange, how even on the verge of death, his father was the thing he feared most.
“Where is your Fateweaver?” Vesric’s eyes were wild and feverish. He pulled Dimas so close that the prince could smell the wormwood medicine on his father’s breath. Could see the spittle on his lips. At Dimas’s silence, the emperor’s lips curled back from his teeth. “She is not here yet, is she?” his voice rattled.
She should have been. Every heir before Dimas had secured his Fateweaver before the reigning emperor’s death, so that he could be by her side when her powers began to manifest. But in order to find her, Dimas had needed the one thing the Goddess of Fate hadn’t given to him.
A vision of who his Fateweaver was going to be.
It was a gift every Ehmar heir received on their fifteenth namesday, meant to ensure the empire was never without a Fateweaver to protect the destinies of his people. And for centuries, that vision had never been late.
Until Dimas came along.
Two years had passed since that day. Two years in which the Goddess of Fate, Næbya, hadn’t given him a single clue as to who his Fateweaver was meant to be. He’d spent most of his nights locked in the church, his bones numb from hours of kneeling before the statue of the empire’s goddess, his mind tainted by the whispers of his father’s court.
Dimas Ehmar is heir of nothing.
A son born of madness!
No Fateweaver in sight. He is not the rightful heir.
Dimas had been starting to think they were right, until, a fortnight ago, the divine connection with his Fateweaver finally began to manifest. He had been painting the snowy horizon from his window when he’d been overcome with a vision: a vast, icy forest, and then … a girl, her eyes the same gray as the sky above, her form shrouded in twisting shadows as she loosed an arrow at something Dimas could not see.
He’d painted her without even meaning to. The stubborn set of her mouth. The crescent-shaped scar on her left cheekbone. When he’d come out of the vision, the snowy forests he’d suddenly found himself in had faded to the familiar silver and blue walls of his chambers, and night had already fallen. His clothes were stuck to his skin, and all he could do was stare and stare at the image he’d painted of her. His Fateweaver.
At last.
Dimas should have been overjoyed, but as he’d stared at his painting, all he’d felt was dread. Onlybodendescendants of the first worshippers of the Sisters of Fate were capable of receiving a Fateweaver’s power.Bodawere rarer these days, but if any young girls showed signs of having visions—either of the past, present, or future, depending on their affinity—they were to be turned into their nearest temple. Should they be chosen as the next Fateweaver, they could be easily retrieved once the subsequent heir received his vision.
