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UNWOVEN

R ACHA E L A. E DWA R DS

PRAISE FOR A FATE UNWOVEN

“Edwards has woven a spellbinding debut—personal, political, and romantic. Every page crackles with tension. The atmosphere is icy and intricate, the characters are sharp-tongued and layered, and the worldbuilding is an utter delight. A must-read for those who like complex romances, suspect deities, and magic that bites back.”

—Mikayla Bridge, author of Of Flame and Fury

“An ambitious story about destiny, trust, lies, and devotion, A Fate Unwoven is a fast-paced debut that reminds us all that, in a harsh world, the most dangerous— and the most powerful—thing one can do is care.”

—Kamilah Cole, Lodestar ﬁnalist and bestselling author of The Divine Traitors duology

“Atmospheric, compelling, and fresh, A Fate Unwoven builds a fully original world of dangerous magic and terrifying monsters, layered characters each with their own motivation, and a gripping mystery that keeps you turning the pages. An outstanding debut.”

—Genoveva Dimova, author of Foul Days

“With a lush, folkloric premise, a high-stakes plot, and two main characters you can’t help but root for, Edwards has penned the perfect book for fantasy lovers. Set against a wintry, atmospheric backdrop, A Fate Unwoven digs deep into the question of what it truly means to be free. I absolutely devoured it!”

—Alex Kennington, author of Blood Beneath the Snow

“A sweeping adventure across a landscape of snow and frost, A Fate Unwoven cleverly examines the power of storytelling, and how fate doesn’t mean destiny. Lena is a beautifully wrought heroine—determined to forge her own path in spite of being a ‘chosen one,’ and the perfect complement to soft Prince Dimas, who I will protect with my life.”

—Lyndall Clipstone, author of Lakesedge and Tenderly, I Am Devoured

“With memorable characters, a dark lore, and a compelling mystery at its snowy heart, Edwards has paved the way for a thrilling tale. Set in a lush and dangerous world, A Fate Unwoven is a story that will captivate readers as sure as if fate itself had laid the threads for it.”

—Elle Tesch, author of What Wakes the Bells

“Threaded with action, intrigue, and tender romance, A Fate Unwoven reads like a dark fairy tale told on a cold winter night. Readers will fall in love with both Dimas and Lena as they ﬁght to shape their own destinies.”

—Allison Saft, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Starlight

“A beautiful story as intricately woven as the threads of fate. With unique magic, spellbinding prose, and a compelling cast of morally gray characters, fans of dark fantasy are sure to devour A Fate Unwoven.”

—Crystal Seitz, author of Inheritance of Scars

Published by Peachtree Teen

An imprint of PEACHTREE PUBLISHING COMPANY INC.

1700 Chattahoochee Avenue

Atlanta, Georgia 30318-2112

PeachtreeBooks.com

Interior map illustration by Arturo Gómez Martínez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher. Additionally, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artiﬁcial intelligence technologies or systems, nor for text and data mining.

Edited by Jonah Heller Design, composition, and chapter headers by Lily Steele

Please take care that this narrative does contain depictions and/or mentions of fantasy violence, gore, self-harm, death, chronic illness, nausea and vomiting, starvation, abusive and manipulative relationships, patriarchal monarchy, imprisonment, religious persecution and tyranny, foreplay, alcohol consumption, and swearing.

Printed and bound in August 2025 at Sheridan, Chelsea, MI, USA.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-68263-769-2

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

EU Authorized Representative: HackettFlynn Ltd, 36 Cloch Choirneal, Balrothery, Co. Dublin, K32 C942, Ireland. EU@walkerpublishinggroup.com

This one is dedicated to everyone who feels like destiny is against them—keep ﬁghting, surround yourself with support, and never stop trying to defy your fate.

—R. A. E.

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 and not because 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. Only bōden descendants of the ﬁrst worshippers of the Sisters of Fate were capable of receiving a Fateweaver’s power. Bōda were rarer these days, but if any young girls showed signs of having visions—either of the past, present, or future, depending on their a nity—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.

But the girl in Dimas’s divine vision had not been in a temple. Which either meant she had no idea she was a bōda—or that she’d been hiding from the empire all this time.

It had been two weeks since he’d gathered the courage to reveal to his father what he’d seen. Two weeks since he’d sent a small unit of imperial hunters, known as the Empire’s Fist, to ﬁnd her.

Dimas hadn’t heard a word from them since.

Now all he said to his father was: “She’ll be here soon.”

So far, his connection to his Fateweaver was . . . unpredictable. After that ﬁrst vision, which had happened over a fortnight ago, he’d seen nothing. But it was a start. He knew what she looked like, and he knew she lived somewhere in the Wilds, a frozen forest to the far west of Wyrecia. It was enough.

It had to be.

Vesric’s brows narrowed as he pulled away. “Good, because if the Rite of Ascension is not completed—”

“It will be,” Dimas said.

The rite was a way of solidifying the bond between the next emperor and his Fateweaver, a divine rite that both proved the worthiness of Wyrecia’s next ruler and kept the Fateweaver’s power in check. If Dimas could not complete it, the church would take it as a sign that their matron goddess, Næbya, had forsaken him.

Dimas couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen.

“My Fateweaver will be retrieved,” Dimas insisted, clenching his hands into ﬁsts to hide the fact they had started to tremble. “Trust me, Father. I’m going to be emperor—”

His father let out a rasping laugh. “In name, perhaps,” he said, his words cutting deeper than any knife. “But never in spirit. You are, after all, your mother’s son.”

A wave of rage and pain crashed into Dimas. He staggered to his feet, the silver and royal blue of his father’s chambers blurring together before his eyes. It didn’t matter what he did, or how hard he tried; in the eyes of Vesric Ehmar, Dimas would always be a failure.

“Why?”

The question was out of his mouth before he could stop it, before he could consider the weight of asking for a truth he’d wished to know his entire life. It’s your last chance, he thought, his heart ﬂuttering inside his rib cage like a bird. It’s now or never.

But his father rasped, “Why what?”

Why have you never believed in me? Why are you so sure I’ll fail?

Why did mother have to die whilst you got to live?

The fury of Dimas’s thoughts took him by surprise. He blinked at his father, who looked so small and fragile beneath the canopy of this bed—a mighty emperor no longer—and wondered why he’d ever feared him.

It hit him then just how much his father’s opinion had shaped everything in his life. Why he’d hidden himself behind walls with easels and paints, why he’d felt the need to sneak kisses from servant boys rather than assert his own desires and needs. Why he’d spent so long wondering why his father didn’t believe in him that he’d forgotten to believe in himself. But all of that was about to change, and Dimas was both exhilarated and completely terriﬁed of what the future would bring.

It was never going to be enough. He was never going to be enough.

No. Whatever the future held, he had to believe that fate was on his side. And so, instead of demanding answers, Dimas simply said, “I’m going to prove you wrong.”

But Vesric had already fallen back into a deep sleep, his son’s words going unheard in the silent chambers. Dimas lingered in the darkness, watching the shadows as they crept along the white stone walls, growing closer, closer—

A single knock echoed through the room. Dimas jumped, his heart in his throat as he ran a hand over his face. Fate dammit, he needed sleep.

Sinking into the chair by his father’s bedside, he didn’t bother to hide the exhaustion in his voice as he called, “Go away.”

There was a pause, and then a familiar voice said, “It’s me.”

Ioseph.

Dimas was up and opening the door within the space of a heartbeat, icy wind gusting into the chamber. “Did they ﬁnd her?”

Hope ﬂared in his chest, bright and all-consuming as a ﬂame. His Fateweaver was the answer. Once she was by his side—

“I’m sorry.” Ioseph’s soft words extinguished his hope. “We’ve lost contact with them, Your Highness. They were supposed to send word once they reached the northern outpost, but we—”

Ioseph’s words faded, drowned out by the roaring in Dimas’s ears. Without his Fateweaver, he would never be emperor. Time was running out.

She was the key to everything . . . and he was going to do whatever it took to ﬁnd her.

“Gather as many hunters as the Fist can spare and meet me at the gates at dawn,” Dimas said.

Ioseph stared at him, brown eyes darkening. “Your Highness—”

“That’s an order.” Dimas let the mask slip and ran his hands through his already disheveled hair.

I sound like my father.

He reached for Ioseph, his ﬁngers trembling as they wrapped around the solid warmth of Ioseph’s wrist. There was no one else around to see, and Dimas was too tired to deny himself this small comfort. “Please, ’Seph. I need to do this.”

Ioseph’s eyes dipped to Dimas’s pale fingers against his wrist, then back up again, flashing with a tenderness that made the prince’s heart flutter with something other than fear.

Ioseph dipped his head in a decisive nod. “Alright, but I’m coming with you. We’ll bring her home, Dimas. Whatever it takes.”

Gone was the tenderness in Ioseph’s expression, replaced instead with a ﬁerce determination that Dimas recognized with heart-aching intimacy. Like him, Ioseph knew what it felt like to live in the shadow of a parent. His father was long dead, but the shadow he’d cast as a member of Vesric’s personal guard still haunted Ioseph to this day.

Dimas gave a single nod, a silent promise. They would prove themselves worthy.

Together.

Ioseph stepped back, looking Dimas up and down with pinched lips. And then he was striding down the candlelit hallway, ebony cloak rippling behind him.

Dimas wasn’t sure how long he stood in the shadows outside of his father’s chambers before he ﬁnally strode to his own, his only focus the single, unrelenting purpose pulsing through his veins.

Find her.

His Fateweaver was the only way he could prove to his father—no, to the empire that he was worthy of being their ruler. He was Dimas Ehmar, future Emperor of Wyrecia. And he was going to bring his Fateweaver home.

ONE LENA

For the third time that month, Lenora Vesthir committed blasphemy.

The story that fell from her lips wasn’t true, of course. None of the old tales were, but in the eyes of the empire, telling one was considered heresy all the same. It was why she’d chosen the hollow cavern just outside of Forvyrg as her stage. Why she kept her voice low and her eyes sharp. Even out here, at the farthest edges of the Wilds, a heretic could never be too careful.

The few villagers who had come to listen to her tonight were drawn in close around a campﬁre. Lena caught the too-sharp angles of their cheekbones in the ﬁrelight, the bruise-like circles beneath their eyes. The measly portion of dried meat she’d brought back from her latest travels didn’t seem like enough. It never did.

Her own stomach ached with hunger. Months on the road had left her body exhausted, and when the familiar wooden huts of Forvyrg had ﬁnally appeared on the horizon, Lena had wanted nothing more than

to crawl into the warmth of her best friend’s cot and sleep for a week. Instead, she’d taken one look at the fresh graves outside the village fence and decided sleep would have to wait. The people of Forvyrg—her people—needed something to give them hope.

“Centuries ago,” she began, “during the reign of the fourth Fateweaver, a small, poor village much like this one lay forgotten on the edges of Wyrecia’s deadliest forests. There dwelled the ancient korupted, monstrous creatures believed to have been tainted by the Fateweaver’s darkening ambitions. Without the protection of the emperor’s guards, who only looked out for those they deemed worthy, the villagers were left to defend themselves against these monsters, and as the korupted claimed the lives of more and more of their people, they began to lose what little hope they had left. Until one day, in the middle of a winter storm, the village elders gathered their people.”

Lena swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat and blinked the smoke from her eyes, searching the shadows for a familiar face. It took a moment for her to see him standing at the edge of the cave mouth, one hand resting casually on the hilt of his hunting axe, the other tucked into the folds of his woolen cloak. Finæn.

Why wasn’t he sitting around the ﬁre with everyone else?

There was no time to think about it now. The cough of Finæn’s younger sister, Maia, brought her back to herself. To the curling smoke and crackling ﬂames and the intoxicating thrill of her storytelling.

“ ‘The Fateweaver has cursed us,’ one of the elders said, ‘but does that mean we should accept it? There was a time when our people believed the paths we took, the choices we made, were the only things that had the power to change our endings! That belief was ripped from us with the creation of the Fateweaver, but does that mean we should stop ﬁghting for a world when it can be true again?’ ” Lena’s voice thickened, her own anger rising as the words spilled from her mouth. “ ‘No!’ said the elder. ‘We must ﬁght to break the shackles the

empire has placed upon us! If we do not ﬁght for ourselves, who will ﬁght for us?’

“The villagers cheered, their hope rekindled, and when the korupted attacked again that night . . . they were ready for them.”

Lena met Finæn’s eyes as a heavy silence followed her words. She could have sworn she saw a ﬂicker of something like fear darken his expression. But then he blinked, and whatever Lena had seen was gone, leaving her feeling strangely unsettled.

She cleared her throat, thankful for the shadows cast by the campﬁre’s ﬂames as heat pooled in her cheeks. “The korupted crept toward the villagers with too-long legs, fangs protruding over their skinless lips, arms bent in ways that no human body could bend.”

A shiver crept down Lena’s spine. She had spent more time in Wyrecia’s forests than most, yet she had never come across the monsters she spoke of in her stories: wolﬂike creatures with bloodied fangs. Ghostly women with vengeance in their hearts and death in their souls. They’re not real, she told herself, even as goose bumps that had nothing to do with the icy wind rose on her arms. A dull ache had begun in her left wrist, the same one she’d been feeling on and oﬀ for moons now.

“The villagers pushed aside their fear. Together, armed with bows and arrows, pickaxes and spears, they met the creatures with a ferocity the elder had always known them capable of. The battle was not an easy one, for no battles worth fighting ever are, and many were injured . . . but still, they kept on fighting, forcing the korupted back. Until, finally, those who remained retreated to the protection of the forest.”

There was a cheer from the villagers around Lena. Some raised their tankards to their lips, drinking deeply, their bodies far more relaxed than when she had ﬁrst begun the tale, and Lena hoped the grin she ﬂashed them didn’t look as forced as it felt.

It was in these ﬂeeting, imagined moments that the people of the Wilds took refuge in a diﬀerent world, one woven just for themselves.

A world where their fates were their own. Where they could not just survive, but live. It was why she risked everything to tell her stories.

Her ﬁngers drifted to the dagger at her belt, the one that hadn’t left her side since she was twelve winters old. It had been with her through every story, giving her the strength to go on when doubt crept into her heart. Her mother had been planning to give it to her on her sixteenth namesday.

Instead, Lena had been given the blade by the innkeeper who’d found Kelia’s body in the aftermath of a village raid. Her mother had heard the screams as she and Lena journeyed through the Wilds and, after ﬁnding a tree hollow for her daughter to hide in and promising to return, had run oﬀ to try to save as many lives as she could.

It was the only promise her mother had ever broken.

Lena brushed her thumb against the pattern sculpted into the blade’s wooden hilt, letting the familiar ache ﬁll her heart. She continued, “When the sun set the following day, the villagers waited, weapons raised, for the korupted to return . . . but they never did. A night passed, and then another, and another. And ﬁnally, on the sixth night, the villagers allowed themselves to believe that they had achieved the impossible. That, together, they had changed their fate.”

Lena fell silent, the ﬁnal words of her story hanging in the air. For a moment no one spoke, until the village healer, Estryd, bowed her head. “A beautiful tale, as always. And a reminder of the strength our people hold.” She pressed two ﬁngers to her forehead, eyes drifting close. “Bless the Lost Sisters.”

Lena copied the motion with the rest of those gathered, the ache in her chest surging again at the sound of those sacred words. Now that her tale was over, the urge to return to the solitude of the forest and walk beneath the trees crept close. She was tired, and the ache in her wrist was growing increasingly worse, but Lena forced herself to remain by the ﬁre as the villagers laughed and drank in the aftermath of her tale.

When the laughter ﬁnally faded, and Niko, the innkeeper Lena had known since childhood, began to speak of the daughter he’d lost ﬁve years earlier, Lena considered sharing a memory of her mother. But every time she opened her mouth to speak, a warning would ring in her ears, reminding her that no matter how many stories she told, or how many nights she spent among them, her place would never truly be here. Not when the dreams she sometimes had of the past ended up being true, and not when the sacred sites of the Lost Sisters still remaining in the Wilds always felt strangely like home.

So Lena stayed silent, and whilst almost every other villager present tried to include her in their conversations, Finæn stayed by the cave mouth, his gaze drifting back to her every so often. Lena tried to catch his stare once or twice, but whenever he caught her looking, he would glance away, that same darkness from before ﬂashing across his features. He was putting distance between them—and Lena wanted to know why.

She had half risen from her place by the fire to go and ask him when Maia, eyes bright and cheeks flushed from the fire’s heat, grabbed her hand.

“You’re not leaving yet, are you?” she asked, her face softening into an expression she knew Lena could never resist. Her skin was paler than the last time Lena had seen her, her cheekbones more pronounced.

“No,” she said, unable to stop the smile that spread across her face when Maia threw her arms around her. She smelled of smoke and honey, and slowly, Lena relaxed in her embrace. “I missed you, little wolf.” It was the nickname she’d given her a few winters ago, when the smaller girl had begged her to teach her how to hunt.

“I missed you, too.” Maia pulled back. “How long are you staying with us?”

Lena tried to ignore the stab of guilt that came with the question. Thankfully, Finæn saved her from having to answer. He strode toward her and Maia, the ﬁrelight dancing in his hazel eyes.

“Maia.” His tone was clipped. “I need to talk to Lena. Alone.”

Maia gave Lena a wicked grin. “Real subtle,” Maia said, stretching to brush a kiss against Lena’s cheek. “Come ﬁnd me later.”

Maia left to join in with the rest of the villagers, and Finæn called after her, “Don’t stay out here too late.” His brow furrowed when she waved him oﬀ.

And then he was looking at Lena, his gaze hard.

Despite the knots forming in her stomach, she lifted her chin and met his gaze with a glare of her own. “What’s wrong with you tonight?” she snapped, unable to keep the bite from her voice. She’d been gone for months, traveling the Wilds and telling her tales to any village who would trade with her. The weather had been unforgiving, and it had only been the thought of seeing Finæn and Maia again that had kept her going on the hardest days.

Finæn didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for her hand, entwining his ﬁngers with hers, and her wrist gave another twinge. A part of her wanted to pull away. To punish him the way he’d been punishing her all night. But another part, the part that had been alone for months, couldn’t tear herself from the familiar warmth of his touch.

“Come with me,” he said. When she raised an eyebrow and stayed ﬁrmly where she was, Finæn sighed, his expression softening. “I want to show you something.”

Her curiosity and her need to be away from the crowd winning out, Lena gave a sharp nod. Finæn pulled her forward, and then they were out of the warmth of the cave mouth, stepping into the icy darkness beyond.

Lena’s breath clouded before her. Without the heat of the ﬂames, the winter wind bit at her cheeks, and frost began to gather on the ends of the small braids in her hair as they crossed the village. They passed a half dozen wooden huts, each dusted with snow, before coming to a stop at the farthest edge of the village. There were no huts here. No signs of life.

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.

She hadn’t known, 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 was here, that he was safe. Because no matter how many times Lena left—no matter how many times she told herself she had to—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 so good to be wanted. To forget about the graves and the hunters and just exist.

“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 look

after 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 the bōden, 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—could never—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 was Finæn. 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.

But she couldn’t take the words back. The damage was already done, and Finæn was already moving away.

Lena’s ﬁngers twitched at her side with the urge to reach out to him. If she didn’t do something now, she feared he’d be lost to her forever.

Her mouth opened. Her heart raced.

And somewhere inside the village, someone screamed.

TWO LENA

Her footsteps slammed against the frozen earth as Lena made her way back through the village, frosted huts and darkened windows ﬂying by in a blur. Even though the scream had stopped almost as suddenly as it had started, the echo of it vibrated through Lena’s bones. Please, she thought, gripping the hilt of her dagger until her knuckles burned. Let me get there in time.

The village, which had been crowded with a dozen of her people just hours earlier, was now empty. No candles ﬂared to life beyond the darkened windows. No doors creaked open. And even though Lena knew hiding was the smartest choice in a place as unforgivable as the Wilds, she couldn’t ignore the rush of anger that went through her at the sight.

It stayed with her as she reached the far end of the village, where skeletal branches reached toward her like claws, and the familiar form of Maia Æspen lay crumpled in the snow.

No.

Lena kept running, even when the world swayed dangerously beneath her feet. Even when the panic threatened to swallow her

whole. She was three feet away from her friend when she ﬁnally saw the creature in the shadows.

At ﬁrst she thought it was just a wolf. It had the same lupine body. The same thick fur.

But as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Lena froze.

It wasn’t a wolf at all. Its snout was too long, with fangs that protruded over an almost skeletal-like jaw, and eyes the pure white of freshly fallen snow. And its ﬁngers, like the branches behind it, were twisted, skeletal things.

An awful, ancient truth tugged at Lena’s brain as she stared at those claws, her legs locked beneath her, her hand clutching the hilt of her dagger hard enough to hurt.

It wasn’t any animal Lena had ever seen, but she recognized it all the same.

Wylfen. The wolf-like korupted from her mother’s stories.

Flakes of snow hovered in the air before Lena’s eyes, and there was a roaring in her ears that sounded almost like the whispering crescendo of a dozen diﬀerent people all at once. She was hallucinating. Months on the road with little food had muddled her brain, conjuring visions from her imagination. The wylfen weren’t real. They were just metaphors for the corruption the Fateweaver’s creation had brought to their world. They were—

From her place on the ground, Maia let out a small, barely perceptible whimper.

The sound brought Lena back to herself. She drew her bow, ignoring the twinge her wrist gave in response. She had to get to Maia before—

“Maia!”

The wylfen’s pointed ears twitched at the sound of Finæn’s voice. In the space of a heartbeat, Finæn was between her and the creature, his axe raised.

“Wait!”

Her shout pierced the air. The creature crashed into Finæn, tumbling him to the half-frozen ground. Finæn’s axe ﬂew from his grip.

Lena notched an arrow and found her mark. But the creature . . . She froze, the howling wind stealing her breath.

The wylfen’s fangs were inches from Finæn’s throat, saliva dripping from them in thick, disgusting strings. Its white eyes were ﬁxed on Lena, every muscle in its twisted body pulled taut as it stopped itself from dealing the killing blow.

Was it . . . hesitating?

A sharp pain erupted from her wrist. The air around the wylfen shimmered, and a sickening dread began to ﬁll Lena’s veins as she saw the faintest glow of threads in the air.

Dozens of them, hovering around the creature like a tapestry waiting to be unraveled. They were faint. Faint enough that Lena could almost convince herself she was imagining them as well as the shadows surrounding them. But then there was a voice in her mind, a whisper, telling her to reach out and—

Finæn’s axe ﬂew through the air and embedded itself into the korupted’s side with a sickening thud.

“Lena, shoot it now!”

She’d taken a few steps closer to the creature without realizing it. The hand holding her bow had lowered to her side, and the other one— the one she’d felt that spark of pain in—was rising to reach out toward the creature.

The creature hesitated long enough to blink at her, as if acknowledging her mercy, before bolting into the darkness of the trees.

Finæn was already moving toward his sister, his breath coming in short, heavy gasps. He cradled Maia’s head in his lap, stroking her damp hair with shaking hands. “Maia, Maia, can you hear me?”

At the sight of Maia, whatever force had been keeping Lena at bay loosened its grip. She was at Finæn’s side before she even realized she was moving. Maia lay still, her skin as pale as the frosted ground

beneath her. Lena’s gaze swept over her. There was no blood that she could see, but there was a faint, plum-colored bruise forming at her temple that made Lena feel sick. Lena was no healer, yet she’d heard tales of people bleeding from the inside, their life fading away without anyone even knowing. If the wound to her head was a bad one, then they’d need to move fast.

She was about to snap instructions to Finæn when Maia’s eyes ﬂuttered open.

“Oh, thank the Sisters.” Finæn breathed out.

“What happened?” Maia asked.

A sob escaped Lena’s lips. She’s okay. She reached out to take Maia’s hand. “Are you alright?” she asked through the lump in her throat. It was only when Maia nodded that some of the tension in Lena’s shoulders released. “Can you stand?”

Maia gave another nod. “I think so.”

Together, Lena and Finæn helped Maia to her feet, their gazes drifting back to the tree line. There was no sign of movement. No indication the creature she’d allowed to escape was coming back to ﬁnish the job.

Still, Lena’s stomach twisted.

“What in fate’s name was that?” Finæn hissed at her under his breath. “Why did that thing—”

“Later.” Lena’s voice shook. “We need to get Maia to healer Estryd.”

But Maia shrugged out of her grip. “I’m not going anywhere until one of you tells me what in the name of the Lost Sisters that thing was!”

“It was just a wolf,” Lena said, before Finæn could speak.

She hated lying to Maia; even with her frail body, she was one of the strongest people Lena knew. If anyone would be able to handle the truth, it was her.

But telling her the truth meant admitting it to herself.

“Come on, let’s—ah!” Another wave of pain in her wrist cut oﬀ Lena’s words. She grasped her arm to her chest, eyes screwing shut

against the pain. Ice burned through her veins, the cold creeping closer and closer to her heart.

“Are you alright?” Finæn’s voice was thick with worry.

She let out a breath as the chill began to pass and tenderly opened her eyes. Her skin tingled, as if someone had taken a hot blade and carved a circle into her ﬂesh, and Finæn was looking at her in a way he never had before.

“Your eyes, they’re silver. And that creature . . .” He glanced down at the wrist she’d been cradling. “Lift up your sleeve.”

“What? No, I said it’s fine.” She made to move past him, but his fingers curled around her wrist. She gave a single tug, anger and panic flaring. “Finæn, let me go.”

But it was too late. He’d already turned her arm over and slid up her sleeve, revealing the pale ﬂesh beneath.

And the faint outline of a familiar symbol etched into her skin.

Lena’s heart gave a single, nauseating thud.

Finæn opened his mouth to speak, but something over Lena’s shoulder must have caught his attention. Lena followed his gaze, her heartbeat a wild, erratic thing in her chest. In the distance, the unmistakable ﬂicker of torchlight cut through the dark, illuminating a half dozen silhouettes riding toward Forvyrg at an alarming speed.

Maia swore under her breath. “Is that—”

“The Fist,” Finæn cut Maia oﬀ, conﬁrming Lena’s initial assumption. He turned to her, and the world shifted beneath her feet at the look in his eyes.

Don’t say it, she thought. Please.

But if Finæn could sense her need to pretend for just a while longer, he showed no sign of it. He knew the truth as surely as her own heart did.

She was the reason the Empire’s Fist was here.

“No.” She shook her head, taking an unsteady step back. Away from Finæn. Away from the truth.

“They’re here for you,” Finæn said, and Lena could see him putting the pieces together. The raids on villages in the Wilds, as if the Fist were searching for something—someone. The appearance of a creature that should have only existed in stories. A creature that had listened to Lena when she’d begged it to stop.

She took another step back, inching toward the safety of the tree line. If the Fist found her here, she’d be trapped, forced to serve the son of the man who had left her people to rot.

As if sensing what she was about to do, Finæn’s eyes widened. He reached for her, hands that had once held her with such tenderness now wrapping around her wrist in an iron grip.

“Finæn,” Lena whispered, her voice steady despite the thundering of her heart. “Let me go.”

The moment stretched before her, and for a second Lena saw the ﬂicker of silver threads, encasing her and Finæn in a web of glistening silver. Then he released her, his expression crumpling.

“Will someone tell me what in the Sisters’ name is going on?” Maia snapped, ﬁerce even with her chattering teeth and blue-tinged lips. Her golden curls were weighed down with frost, and a strand was stuck to her cheek. Lena’s ﬁngers twitched with the urge to brush it away. To hold her close and tell her that everything was going to be alright.

“I—”

“She’s the next Fateweaver,” Finæn said before she could ﬁnd the words. He cast a glance over his shoulder, to where the ﬂickering light of the Fist’s torches moved at an alarmingly quick pace.

Lena was running out of time.

Maia blinked up at her with wide, glimmering eyes. “Is that true?”

“No,” Lena said, even as her heart whispered yes.

It was impossible to deny it. The dreams of the past she’d always had, the ones she’d always known were due to her bōden ancestors, had

been increasing over the last few moons, the details of them steadily becoming more and more vivid. Dreams Lena would wake from with an ache in her wrist she couldn’t explain.

“It’s true. Why else would you have that mark?” Finæn asked.

When Lena didn’t reply, he took a cautious step toward her, as if he were approaching an animal that might ﬂee at any second. And Lena wanted to run. From him, from Maia, from the truth.

“The empire will never stop hunting you, Lena,” said Finæn. “You know that. If you go with them, maybe you can use your power to do some good. To . . . to help our people.”

The hope in Finæn’s expression was enough to make Lena’s heart ache. She wanted to share it. To believe, just for a second, in a world where the Fateweaver could be a force of good. But she couldn’t.

Because as long as the Fateweaver’s power was bound to the empire, it would be nothing but a weapon.

“I wish I could believe that. I really do,” Lena said, her fingers closing around the hilt of her mother’s dagger. The sensation was an anchor against her fear, a reminder of all she had to lose. She took a deep breath, the copper tang of blood in the air coating her tongue. “They can’t find me here.” If they did, they’d assume the villagers had been hiding her all this time. Lena’s gaze darted to the woods at her back, and then to Maia, who gave a fierce nod.

“Go,” she whispered, tears lining her eyes. “We’ll handle the Fist.”

Finæn made a low noise of protest. “Maia—”

Maia whirled on him. “This is Lena we’re talking about.”

His expression softened. “I was just going to tell you to go find Estryd; I’ll deal with the hunters.” Maia hesitated for a heartbeat, her gaze finding Lena’s one final time.

Lena was used to goodbyes. As a storyteller, she said them often, traveling from village to village, leaving the people she cared for behind. This time was diﬀerent, though. This time, she wouldn’t be coming back.

Lena looked away before her grief could take hold. And then Maia was gone, disappearing into the shadows, and she was alone with Finæn once again.

“I can’t convince you to stay, can I?” he asked quietly.

Lena shook her head, blinking back tears. “No.”

“Where will you go?”

Her mother’s face surfaced in her memory, grim in the darkness of the forest as a younger Lena told her about the dreams she’d been having. It was the only time they’d ever spoken about what it might mean. Kelia Vesthir had instructed her daughter on two things that night: the ﬁrst was to never tell anyone about her visions, a lesson Lena had abided by ever since.

The second was that if she was ever in trouble, she should head to a place called the White Bear in Deyecia and ﬁnd a man by the name of the Raven.

She’d heard whisperings of him over the years. Rumors of a man helping heretics escape the empire. In the ﬁrst few years after her mother’s disappearance, Lena had thought about seeking him out herself. Of ﬁnding a home in a place where her fate could be her own. But the idea of giving up on her mother’s legacy, of leaving the people of the Wilds behind, had always kept her from doing so.

Now she didn’t have a choice. She could either leave her homeland and the people she loved behind, or she could stay and let the Ehmar heir turn her into a monster.

“Somewhere the emperor can’t follow,” she said. “There are . . . rumors of a smuggler working out of Deyecia. If I can ﬁnd him—”

Realization dawned in Finæn’s eyes. “You’re going to leave Wyrecia? Lena, you can’t! It’s too dangerous.”

Lena shook her head. “What choice do I have?” she asked, knowing he wouldn’t be able to answer.

Finæn stared at her for a heartbeat, and then his expression hardened. “Maia and I will come with you—”

“No.” The word was out of Lena’s mouth before her heart had the chance to agree. Her selﬁshness had put the siblings in enough danger already. “It’s too dangerous. And the village needs you here. Maia needs you here. You have to make sure they’re safe.” She’d been a fool to ever think she had any control over her fate. A fool to think Finæn and Maia would always be in her life. “I’m sorry,” she whispered through the tightness in her throat. “I have to go.”

The Fist were at the village gates now. Lena could just make out the silhouettes of a half dozen armored hunters. She was out of time.

Finæn seemed to realize it, too, because he closed the distance between them in one stride and pulled her ﬂush against him, his body crushing against hers with a ﬁerceness that stole the breath from her lungs. It was the kind of embrace that chased away the lingering pain of their earlier conversation. The kind of embrace that reminded her that no matter what, Finæn would always be on her side.

It ended too soon.

“Safe travels, Lena Vesthir. May the threads of fate bring us together again.” His jaw clenched, and something in his expression made Lena’s heart ache.

She’d heard those words a dozen times during her travels. It was a saying all Wyrecians uttered when leaving someone behind, whether they worshipped the Fateweaver or not. So why did the sound of it coming from Finæn’s mouth send a shiver down her spine?

There was no time to dwell on it. The Fist were already in the center of the village. They hadn’t noticed her and Finæn yet, but it wouldn’t be long before they did.

It was time to leave.

With a ﬁnal brush of his lips against her cheek, Finæn let her go.

And when Lena stepped into the forest a moment later, she did not allow herself to look back.

THREE DIMAS

The Goddess of Fate was testing him. It was the only explanation for why she’d sent Dimas to such a miserable place. Beyond the window of his carriage, the Wilds stretched before Dimas in an endless sea of muddied snow, stormy skies, and a haggard expanse of emaciated trees.

The prince pressed his forehead against the window, letting the ice-cold surface soothe the headache behind his eyes.

He and Ioseph had arrived in the Wilds three days after leaving Novobyrg, and so far they’d found no sign of the heretic who was to be his Fateweaver. Even the Fists he’d sent to search the forsaken place ahead of his arrival had been unsuccessful. A snow eagle had brought word of their failure just hours before Dimas left the palace: they’d raided the ﬁrst of two major villages so far, and whilst they’d found plenty of heretics, none had been a stormy-eyed girl with a scar on her cheek.

Dimas had crumpled up the parchment and tossed it into the ﬁre before anyone else could read it. And then he’d penned his reply, ordering the hunters to stand down.

On his arrival to their camp, Dimas, exhausted and more than a little irritable, had met with his cousin, Milos, a hunter who had been appointed the Fist’s leader. They’d sat around a small campﬁre that did little to ease the chill in Dimas’s bones as Milos had conﬁrmed what he’d written in his letter: whilst they’d found plenty of evidence of people worshipping the Lost Sisters, there’d been no sign of the girl from his vision.

Dimas was running out of places to search. According to the map he’d found in the palace archives, there was only one village left before they reached the edge of the Wilds.

Which meant he only had three more chances to ﬁnd his Fateweaver.

They’d set out that dawn, just as the sun was beginning to rise and a fresh flurry of snow started to fall, and had come to a stop less than a mile outside of the next village—a small, unremarkable dot on his map by the name of Forvyrg. Ioseph had insisted Dimas stay out of sight whilst the Fist carried out their search, claiming his presence would only raise questions he couldn’t answer. Not without confirming the rumors that for the first time in over a century and a half, the heir to Wyrecia was without a Fateweaver.

“This is impossible,” he muttered, the fog from his breath obscuring his view of the gray world outside. By this point, the snow had stopped, but there was a ﬁerceness to the gusting winds that rattled the walls of Dimas’s carriage.

“Nothing is impossible,” Ioseph said from beside him, the fabric of his uniform rustling as he tried to get comfortable in the small space. “We’ll ﬁnd her, Your Highness. I know we will.”

The conviction in his best friend’s voice eased some of the tension behind Dimas’s eyes. When Dimas had been ﬁfteen, and Ioseph Arness—

just a few winters older—had been assigned the position of his personal guard, the heir had found it inﬁnitely frustrating. But as the years passed, frustration had turned to familiarity, and now Dimas wasn’t sure what he’d do without Ioseph by his side.

Which was why, as the silence of the carriage closed in around him once more, he found himself whispering, “I’m afraid, ’Seph.”

The understanding in Ioseph’s gaze was worse than pity. Dimas looked away, his cheeks ﬂushing. Pathetic, he heard his father’s voice say. Weak.

But he couldn’t take the words back. Ioseph opened his mouth to say something, his sharp intake of breath slicing through the silence, at the same second the carriage door swung open.

“Your Highness,” Milos said, the formality of his words barely hiding the contempt underneath.

Despite their relation, Milos had never hidden the fact that he considered Dimas as unﬁt to rule as the late empress, a belief that had only grown in the years Dimas had spent without his Fateweaver at his side. No doubt Milos thought him just as incapable of bringing her home as Dimas’s father did.

Still, the prized hunter was not stupid enough to call him out in front of all these people. He stood sti y at the prince’s side, the muscle in his jaw ﬂuttering in a clear eﬀort to keep his thoughts to himself.

“We’ve searched the village, and there’s no sign of the girl from your vision.”

I’m too late.

Dimas couldn’t breathe. The walls of the carriage were suddenly too narrow, and his palms were slick with sweat despite the icy storm blowing through the village.

Keep it together! He’d come too far to fail now.

Milos was watching him. Waiting for Dimas to give his next orders. Dimas bit down on the inside of his cheek until blood coated his tongue. Until the sharp sting of pain cleared some of the fog in his mind.

Think, Dimas.

This was the only village left to search. He couldn’t keep hiding in his carriage whilst his father’s hunters did the work. No, he’d come here for a reason. His connection to his Fateweaver had shown him the Wilds for a reason. And if he couldn’t trigger another vision, well, then there had to be someone in this fate-forsaken village that knew where his Fateweaver had gone. All he had to do was get them to talk.

“Gather the villagers,” he said, a plan forming in his mind. “Tell them their prince wishes to speak with them.”

Something like surprise ghosted acr0ss Milos’s green eyes. But then he bowed his head, said a quick “Yes, Your Highness,” and scurried away toward the village.

Dimas was halfway out the carriage door when Ioseph’s hand wrapped around his arm. Dimas looked back at Ioseph, his stomach ﬂuttering. “What is it?”

“I know ﬁnding your Fateweaver is important, just . . . don’t lose sight of who you are.” The unspoken message beneath Ioseph’s words lingered between them.

Don’t become like your father.

“I won’t,” Dimas promised.

He stepped from the carriage, and the wind hit him with a ﬁerceness that stole the breath from his lungs. He let his gaze roam over the small wooden huts with their thatched roofs, a strange sort of familiarity settling over him. Was this the place he’d seen in his vision? It seemed the farther into the Wilds they ventured, the worse oﬀ the people were.

Dimas’s thoughts drifted back to his Fateweaver. To how diﬀerent their lives were. He had known the luxury of warmth and food all his life, whilst this girl he was searching for had carved out a life in this forsaken place. The vision Næbya had given to him had shown her to be ﬁerce and strong, with eyes as wild as a storm and a constant scowl marking her sharp features. All he’d been able to do at the time was wonder how someone so young had become so hardened.

Looking at the villagers being herded around a derelict wooden well, with their painfully thin faces and grief-stricken eyes, it was easy to see it had been her fate that had made her that way.

We let this happen to her, he thought, his throat suddenly tight. We let this happen to all of them.

An apology lingered on his tongue. But Milos spoke before he could utter it, and the word died on his lips. Stupid. His father’s snarling face ﬂashed in his mind. An emperor does not apologize to those lesser than him.

“You all know why you’re here. Emperor Vesric Ehmar has issued a new law that anyone worshipping the Lost Sisters is to be punished, and that anyone with bōden abilities who has not declared as such to their nearest temple will be detained immediately.” Milos’s hand rested lazily on the hilt of his sword, the threat behind the gesture clear: play nice or things were going to get ugly.

Dimas knew about the lives the hunters had taken during their search. Heretics, Milos had explained when the prince had questioned him about it the night before at camp. Each one had resisted arrest. They’d given him no choice. Dimas wasn’t sure he’d believed Milos, and judging by the look of hatred in these people’s eyes, the villagers of Forvyrg were just as wary.

The prince stepped out of the shadows, coming to a stop at Milos’s side. What Dimas was about to do . . . it was a risk. But it was one he was willing to take if it meant ﬁnding his Fateweaver.

“There’s no need to be afraid. I am Dimas Ehmar, son of Emperor Vesric Ehmar, heir to the Wyrecian Empire.”

A ripple of sound went through the small crowd at his declaration.

Dimas held up a hand to silence them. “No one is going to get hurt if you cooperate. I’m looking for a young woman accused of practicing the Old Ways. Her last known location was somewhere in the Wilds.”

Dimas withdrew a folded-up piece of parchment from inside of his cloak. He’d sketched his Fateweaver as many times as his hands would

allow, afraid that the hazy image of her face would slip away, leaving him with nothing but the memory of a featureless ﬁgure in the snow. Now, as his gaze fell on the sharp, charcoal angles of her face, he was certain he’d been stupid. There was no way he could ever forget the way she’d looked in his vision. Fierce and wild, as if she would ﬁght the Old Gods themselves if they remained in this world.

The same ache he’d felt when he first saw her began to spread through his chest again. A longing he couldn’t explain. He had to find her. He would find her.

Holding up the piece of parchment so that the villagers could see the drawing, Dimas said, “Do any of you recognize this girl?”

Silence settled over the crowd, but it did little to distract from the faint glimmers of recognition on some of the villagers’ faces.

His Fateweaver had avoided her bōden heritage being discovered all these years, either because she’d hidden her visions, or because these people had learned the truth and chosen to keep it secret. Dimas was willing to bet that even if the people of the Wilds knew where this girl was, they were never going to tell him. To them, he was the enemy. The son of the man who had ordered hunters to raid their villages. Who had stood by as their loved ones were killed by his family’s soldiers for spreading lies and heresy about the empire’s matron goddess. He didn’t blame them for hating him. Not when a small, festering part of him hated himself, too.

Dimas’s gaze passed over each of the villagers. Over their worn clothing and gaunt faces. These people knew hardship, knew fear, in ways Dimas and the Fist never could. Threats weren’t going to work. No, he had to try something diﬀerent.

“The ﬁrst person to tell me where I can ﬁnd her will receive a Boon of Fate of their choosing.”

The crowd remained silent, but Dimas didn’t miss the ﬂicker of yearning in some of their eyes; boons were rarely granted to anyone outside of the imperial city, where people from across Wyrecia would

travel to ask for the Fateweaver’s favor. In all his time at court, Dimas had only ever seen Lady Sefwyn grant a boon to someone of non-noble birth once.

And it had been his mother’s doing.

The skin on the back of his neck rose at the memory of his mother standing tall and ﬁerce before a court that did not believe her ﬁt to rule. A young woman had knelt before Lady Sefwyn, a babe in her arms as pale as winter snow; its small chest had risen and fallen in too-shallow gasps. His father and Lady Sefwyn had refused the woman’s request to ensure the child survived the illness plaguing her lungs.

But Dimas’s mother had stood from her throne and taken the woman’s hands in her own.

“I will pay the price of the boon,” the empress had said, stunning the court into silence. And then she had met the emperor’s eyes with such deﬁance even an eight-year-old Dimas had understood the danger it put her in. “Will you refuse me, husband?”

Vesric’s lips spread into a dangerous smile. “Of course not, my love.”

Lady Sefwyn was ordered to grant the village woman’s boon a moment later, and for weeks, the empress’s bold outburst was on the lips of every palace servant.

His mother had died two months later.

“With all due respect, Your Highness.” A boy stepped forward from the back of the crowd, pulling Dimas back to the present. “Only the emperor can oﬀer a Boon of Fate. And if I’m not mistaken, you are not yet emperor.”

The boy couldn’t have known his words would be a hard blow— another reminder of Dimas’s failures as heir.

“Watch your tongue,” Ioseph snapped.

“It’s alright,” Dimas said, not breaking the boy’s stare. “What is your name?”

The boy paused, and then said, “Finæn Æspen.”

Dimas gestured to the parchment still clutched in his hand. “And do you know where this girl is?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s long gone. Fled into the woods the second she saw you coming.”

“Finæn!” hissed a young, fair-haired girl with a bandage wrapped around her head. She had the same hazel eyes as Finæn. The same ﬁerce brows and bow-shaped lips. “What are you doing?”

Dimas ignored her. His heart was a drum inside of his chest as he whirled to face Milos, the order already on his lips. “Find her. We’ll rendezvous at the hunter’s outpost not far from here.”

They’d passed it on their way to Forvyrg. It had been a small, wooden cabin, run-down and covered in layers of frost, but it was a better alternative than bringing his Fateweaver back here, where she could reveal the truth of who she was.

The boy—Finæn—took another step forward. “You won’t ﬁnd her. And if you do, you’ll never convince her to serve you. Not without my help.”

Dimas had spent long enough in his father’s court to know that anyone could be tempted by their greatest desires. His father had been weak to his desire for Lady Sefwyn, and most of the emperor’s court members and high-ranking soldiers had betrayed someone in their lives to get to where they were.

Dimas would bet his crown that this boy was no diﬀerent.

“And what will your help cost?”

The crowd of villagers before Dimas was no longer looking at him. Instead, their attention had turned to Finæn and the girl at his side, regarding them with a scrutiny that hadn’t been there before. The girl grabbed onto Finæn’s wrist, her eyes wide and pleading, and something in Finæn’s expression shifted with the slightest hint of hesitation. Of guilt.

But then the boy took another look at the soldiers still at Dimas’s side. At the hands resting on the hilt of their swords.

“A position in the royal guard. And a place in the palace for me and my sister. I’d say that’s a fair trade for a heretic as . . . unique as this one.” He knows.

Dimas’s palms grew slick beneath his gloves. Somehow this boy knew why he was really here, who he was really looking for. Would he reveal the truth if Dimas didn’t agree to his terms? There were already rumors of a heretical cult rising up somewhere in the north; if the people knew the empire’s future Fateweaver was on the run, it could cause a full-on rebellion.

He couldn’t let that happen. He would ﬁnd his Fateweaver, and he would prove to his father—to everyone—that he was worthy of being emperor.

“Tell me what you know,” he said.