Chapter 23 Lena
TWENTY-THREE
LENA
Lena was dreaming again.
This time, the ancient stone of the temple had been replaced by the forest. Even in sleep, her body relaxed at the sight of its twisted trees, their skeletal branches reaching over her like a shield of thorns. Frost coated the earth, mud crunching beneath booted feet that were not her own.
The body she was inhabiting sucked in a breath of ice-cold air. “We’re almost there.”
“How can you tell?” a voice asked from somewhere behind her. Lena didn’t recognize it, but to the girl whose memory she was reliving, it was as familiar as the sound of the wind whistling through the trees.
“I can feel them,” she said. “Their threads. They’re … getting stronger.”
“Incredible,” the voice said, closer now.
Lena urged her body to turn, to look over her shoulder at whoever stood behind her, but it was no use. Instead, she found herself looking through the trees, toward the shadows beyond, where the faint glow of threads flickered like stars on a cloudy night.
“We should get there before nightfall,” she said with a decisive nod, burying her chin into the fur of her cloak.
Finally, the other person came into view. A boy with a shock of dark hair, his eyes a heart-wrenchingly familiar shade of brown. Their father’s eyes, and the sight of them never failed to punch the girl in the stomach. “And if he gets there before us?” Her brother—Kaelar—asked.
Lena felt a rush of fear. “He won’t.”
The girl was sure of it. She’d covered her tracks. Left no trace of their movements. There was no way the High Priest could know where she had gone.
And if he had, well, she’d made sure the creatures of the forest would buy them some time.
Still, the girl’s fear would not fade. “We should keep moving.” Anticipation fluttered in her chest, and the threads in the distance flared a little brighter. “Come on.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Lena wanted to ask the boy more, to find out who he was, and who’s body she was inhabiting. Was it Venysa’s again? Or another Fateweaver this time? And what was it about this particular memory that made it so important?
The questions bubbled up inside of her, trapped behind lips she could not control. It was almost dark by the time the girl reached the edge of the forest, where a small village surrounded by a frozen lake came into view.
Home.
She stood there for a moment, drinking in the sight of it. The blacksmith’s hut on the corner, just a stone’s throw from the windmill. The gathering of wooden huts in the center, built around a square that had seen dozens of celebrations.
And at the farthest edge, half hidden beneath a canopy of snow-tipped branches, was the healer’s hut.
It looked exactly the same as the girl remembered. As if time had frozen this small patch of land, preserving it just for her. For a moment, she could pretend like nothing had changed. That she and her brother were simply returning from a morning of foraging for supplies.
“I can’t believe we’re finally home,” the boy with the dark eyes said, echoing her thoughts. Lena’s own heart ached at the emotion in his voice.
Despite the constant thrum of magic in her blood, a smile tugged at the girl’s lips. Her mother was waiting for her inside that hut, her threads calling out to the girl like a song written just for her.
She’d barely taken a step forward when the sound of a sword being drawn turned her body to ice.
“Hello, Venysa.”
Venysa’s hands trembled, her fury and fear churning like a storm about to break.
She turned slowly, her hands raised in a show of surrender. If she could just get him talking, distract him long enough to alter his threads—
“It won’t work,” the Zvaerna priest said, his blade pressed to the dark-haired boy’s throat. “His fate is too woven with your own, and that is the one thing even you cannot control.”
Again, that simmering fury Lena was becoming so familiar with. The mark on the girl’s wrist burned hot enough to hurt, but she did not flinch from the pain. It was a welcome distraction. An anchor in the storm.
“You won’t hurt him, Iulian,” she said, her chin raised.
He tilted his head, the hood of his robes shifting just enough for her to see the flash of dark eyes. The same eyes as the boy he held in his grasp.
“I will, if that is what Naebya has woven. If that is what it takes for you to do your duty as Fateweaver of this empire.”
Her duty. It was always about her duty.
“What about your duty as our father? Or does that not matter?”
Iulian’s lips thinned. “My duty to Naebya comes before all else. As should yours. You can keep fighting. You can even attempt to take your mother and flee. But if you do, there will be consequences.” His tone was deadly, filled with warning.
“Come back with me now, and Kaelar and your mother won’t be harmed. ”
“They’re your family,” she snarled, tears burning her eyes.
“That woman has not been my family for a long time,” Iulian snarled, “and my son absconded with the empire’s Fateweaver; he is a traitor to his empire.
” The hand holding the dagger at Kaelar’s throat didn’t flinch.
Venysa searched the Zvaerna’s eyes for any sign of the father she’d once known, but there was nothing left of him in the hard lines of his face, in the dark, frantic swirl of his eyes.
She knew then that he’d do it. Kill his own son to ensure her obedience. The roaring in her head silenced, the fear and fury in her veins fading until all that remained were her father’s threads, bright and fierce—
—and hers to control.
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Lena felt the surge of the Fateweaver’s power, only this time, there was no fear to stop it. Iulian’s movements slowed to an almost stop, and Lena could feel the essence of his threads as Venysa’s eyes danced along them, searching for the one thread she was not supposed to seek out.
Venysa knew she’d found what she was looking for the moment her power locked onto it.
A single thread, its essence stronger than the rest. She channeled her entire focus onto that thread, all the fear and fury she’d locked away since the night her father had used her for his own gain.
He’d taken her life from her, her choice, and now she would repay the favor.
The sharp edge of an arrow pierced through her shoulder just before her power could fully take hold. She gasped, falling to her knees in the snow. Lena felt the familiar wetness of blood trickling down her arm. The taste of copper in her mouth.
And beneath it, the cold, seeping sensation of being dragged into the dark.
“You think I would come alone?” he asked, his eyes dancing with triumph. He tightened his hold on Kaelar, the knife digging into his skin hard enough to draw blood.
“Please!” Venysa tried to crawl toward him, but the pain was too much.
“You have made your choice,” he said, his face as hard as stone.
In one quick motion, the dagger sliced along Kaelar’s neck, leaving a thin, crimson line in its wake.
“No!” Venysa roared.
And then the world went dark.
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—would not—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.