Chapter 24 Lena
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 to control her magic.
And whilst Lena wasn’t particularly eager to fulfill said 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 meant Lena’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 Dunstan had made 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 Finaen had been intimate.
A flash of Finaen, 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 Finaen and his Fateweaver.
He’d give her updates every once and a while, though.
Let her know that Finaen 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 find something that 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-damned infuriating.
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.
Time runs short. The bond must be severed before the Fateweaver Ascends.
May Fate Be Your Eternal Guide.
Lena was almost certain her heart stopped beating as she recalled Iska’s words. Your Rite of Ascension will take place at months’ end.
If that’s what the note was referring to—and Lena was frustratingly certain it was—then she had just over a fortnight left to sever the bond.
The heavy knock of the guards at her door had Lena shoving the book beneath her pillow. The mystery of who was behind the cryptic note would have to wait.
She’d just about managed to force the frustrated frown from her face and open Imperial Etiquette when Yana, one of the guards assigned to her room, strode into her chambers.
“Lady Lenora,” the guard said, her pale cheeks flushed, “I’m sorry to bother you, but you have a visitor.”
Lena didn’t have time to ask who it was before a familiar figure stepped into the room.
Finaen.
He looked nothing like the boy she’d known; his rough tunic and oversized cloak had been replaced by a tight-fitting guard’s uniform, and the stubble on his jaw had been cut away. He looked … comfortable. Relaxed in a way she’d never seen him before.
It should have made her happy, but it only made the sting of his betrayal worse.
“Lena.” Finaen didn’t move toward her, but his gaze traveled down her arm, stopping at the mark on her wrist. His throat bobbed. “Can we talk?”
She shrugged, looking anywhere but at the threads shimmering around him. “You’ll have to ask my guard.” She didn’t bother to hide the resentment lacing her words.
“Yana, could you give us a minute?” Finaen asked, his gaze never leaving Lena.
Yana gave him a glare that could have rivaled the fiercest of warriors. “Five minutes,” she said, “and then I’m escorting you back to the barracks myself.”
Lena cast her gaze down at her hands, trying to focus on something, anything, but the boy standing before her.
When the door to her chambers clicked shut and Lena didn’t look up at him, Finaen let out an exasperated sigh. “How long are you going to stay mad at me? I was only trying to keep you safe.”
Lena scoffed and rose to her feet. “That’s a lie and you know it. Nice uniform, by the way.”
She was being childish, but it was hard to care when the sight of him was a reminder of everything she’d lost, of the people she’d left behind.
Perhaps she’d never belonged with them, not in the way she wanted to, but she’d promised her mother that she’d carry on her legacy.
There were only a handful of storytellers left, and without them, the old stories would be forgotten.
There would be no one to bring hope to the hopeless.
No one to make people believe their lives might be something more.
“Lena, please—”
“You knew.” The words left her mouth before she could stop them. She didn’t care if the guards outside her door were listening. Didn’t care about anything but making Finaen understand just how much he’d hurt her. “You knew what being the Fateweaver would do to me, and you betrayed me anyway.”
“To protect you! To protect Maia.” He shook his head. “I didn’t make you the Fateweaver, Lena.”
“No,” she said, her throat tight. “You just helped make me a prisoner.”
Silence hung between them, as taut as the threads around Finaen. Pain shot through her at the sight of them, sharp enough for her knees to buckle. She held her ground, refusing to let him see how fragile she really was. How close to the edge.
“I won’t apologize for doing what I thought was right to keep you and my sister safe,” he said, voice thick. “I’d rather have you alive and hating me than dead.”
Lena bit her cheek to stop her tears from falling. She wanted to forgive him, to believe he’d only been doing what he had to in order to save his sister. To save her. But she didn’t have the strength.
Yana’s entrance saved her from having to reply. The guard cleared her throat. “Times up, AEspen.”
Finaen held her stare for a heartbeat longer.
The moment felt too similar to the one they’d shared on the outskirts of Forvyrg, when she thought they’d been saying goodbye for the last time.
His words from that night rang in her ears, as clear as if he were speaking them now: May the threads of fate bring us together again.
Had they been a coincidence, or had he been planning to betray her even then?
He was gone before she could gather the courage to ask him, Yana escorting him out and leaving Lena alone in the darkness of the Fateweaver’s rooms. Barely a heartbeat passed before the sob she’d been holding in escaped: it was like getting caught in a snowstorm.
Once inside, there was nothing to do but try to survive.
So Lena slid down to the floor, brought her knees to her chest, and let the storm take her.