We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from brand new romantasy The Wind Weaver by Julie Johnson—publishing with Ace on April 8th.
Fear of maegic plagues war-torn Anwyvn. Halflings like Rhya Fleetwood are killed on sight. But Rhya’s execution is interrupted by an unexpected savior—one far more terrifying than her would-be killers. The mysterious and mercenary Commander Scythe. In the clutches of this new enemy, Rhya finds herself fighting for her life in the barren reaches of the Northlands. Yet the farther she gets from home, the more she learns that nothing is as it seems—not her fearsome captor, not the blight that ravages her dying realm, not even herself.
For Rhya is no ordinary halfling. The strange birthmark on her chest and the wind she instinctively calls forth means she is a Remnant, one of four souls scattered across Anwyvn, fated to restore the balance of maegic… or die trying.
But mastering the power inside her is only the beginning. Desire for the Commander—a man she can never trust, a man with plans of his own—burns just as fiercely as the tempests beating against her rib cage for release. Rhya must choose: smother the flames… or let them consume her.
I wake with a start to the rumble of hooves. A lone rider, moving through the trees with speed.
The commander has finally arrived.
The ground beneath my bare feet shakes as the newcomer thunders into the encampment. Chain mail clanks, boots thud, as he dismounts. I can see nothing with the damned blindfold over my eyes, darkening an already black night to pure pitch. Straining my ears, I struggle to pick up snippets of conversation.
“Commander Scythe. It’s an honor to have you here, sir. An honor.”
“Burrows.” The response is curt.
“Sir, if I may say, your tactics at the Battle of Ygri last spring were simply inspired. Those Nythian scum fell like stalks of corn at harvest! I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years as—”
“Captain, if I wanted my ass kissed I’d be in a brothel. Take me to the prisoner. Now.”
“Y-yes, sir,” Burrows stammers. “Right away.”
The footsteps grow louder as they approach. I take a deep breath, bracing myself. Still, my heart gives a great lurch when a hand snakes out and rips the covering from my face.
Torchlight flares, searing after so many hours spent in darkness. I blink to clear the bright spots, but it does little good. Stars are bursting inside my eyes. Strong fingers fist in my dirty hair, dragging my lolling head upright with one rough jerk. His other hand curls around the noose and pulls tight, compressing my windpipe. Breath becomes an impossibility.
I thought I was past this—past the fear.
I was wrong.
Buy the Book
The Wind Weaver
The Wind Weaver
Buy this book from:
The face that slowly swims into view makes my heart fail. What I can see of it, anyway, under the heavy black helmet. A metal nose bridge bisects his features into two unforgiving halves. On either side, the thick slashes of his brows are furrowed inward and, just beneath them, a set of eyes so dark, they seem two bottomless pits glaring out at me. In the flickering torchlight, he appears more daemon than man.
“Where did you find this one, a graveyard?” His grip tightens in my hair until my scalp burns. “She reeks like a week-old carcass.”
“Frogmyre Bog,” the heavily bearded man standing to the commander’s left offers. Captain Burrows. I recognize him instantly—he’s the one who put the rope around my neck when they caught me on the cliff side. He tied the other end to his saddle as they led me back to their camp, forcing me to run behind him or else be dragged. When, after almost an hour, my bleeding feet finally failed and I collapsed into the dirt, he’d rubbed my face in his horse’s shit, laughing with unbridled glee.
My hair is still clumped with it, the pale strands stained the dull brown shade of dry manure. The odor is enough to make a steel-clad stomach curdle. Beneath his nose guard, the commander’s nostrils flare. Lips pressed into a stern line, his dark gaze sweeps from my face to my feet, seeming to commit every detail to memory—skin caked in bog, skirts stiff with filth, eyes wide with terror.
“In rather rough shape, isn’t she?”
“Point bitch kept us in pursuit for three days,” Burrows hisses, glaring at me with unleashed disdain. “She’s lucky we didn’t do worse.”
Several of the gathered soldiers make sounds of agreement. Their resentment is tangible—as is their impatience. They’re eager to see me swing.
Scythe does not comment. Nor does his attention shift to his subordinates. Instead, it seems fixed on my wrists, where the irons have reduced my skin to a raw, unrecognizable mess of charred flesh. The agony of it is making me lightheaded. Or perhaps it’s the lack of air; his hold on the noose does not relent for even an instant.
Burrows grins, a flash of stubby teeth stained brown from chewing tybeae leaf. “Iron is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”
“In the future, keep in mind, Burrows… Executions are my jurisdiction, not yours. You bring me a halfling in this condition again, I’ll make certain you can’t sit properly in your saddle for a fortnight.”
A hush falls over the men. It is no idle threat, made all the more menacing by the tone in which it’s delivered: so carefully bland, he might be discussing seasonal weather patterns. His expression—what little I can see of it beneath the helm—is as empty as his tone and equally chilling.
The soldiers are scarcely able to look in the commander’s direction without cowering. Only my binds keep me from doing likewise. With the rope held so tight around my neck, I can’t move—not even when he brings his face a hairsbreadth from mine, regarding me as a wolf would its supper.
If I had the strength, I might head-butt him. Spit at him. Even summon a glare. As it is, just remaining conscious is becoming difficult. My lungs scream for breath. The starbursts have returned to my eyes, fragmenting the world around me into air-starved delirium.
If Scythe notices my discomfort, he doesn’t much care. “You said there was something…” he murmurs, “odd… about this one.”
“Yes, sir.” Burrows swallows nervously, sidling closer. “There’s some unnatural symbol inked into her skin. A mark of evil, you ask me. Never seen anything like it in all my time hunting points.”
At this, Scythe, already immobile, seems to still down to his soul. “What mark?”
“We thought it was a slave brand at first. It’s raised like scar tissue, but blacker than the devil’s cock.” Some of the men chuckle, but there’s a nervous edge to their amusement. “Could be a tattoo, I suppose,” Burrows continues. “But even the best ink-mavens in Carvage don’t have that sort of skill. See for yourself. There, beneath her dress, right between her—” Burrows chokes into silence when the commander’s head swivels in his direction.
“Beneath her dress?” He pauses and the very air holds its breath, as in the moment before a guillotine blade plummets. “I had no idea your prisoner inspection process was so thorough, Captain.”
“It wasn’t— We weren’t—” Burrows’s shoulders stiffen at the implication. He’s gone pale under the force of Scythe’s stare. “Saw it while we were putting the noose around her neck, that’s all. But when one of my men made the mistake of touching it…”
Burrows shakes his head, as if he still cannot quite fathom what happened when his second-in-command ripped open the front of my dress at the edge of that cliff and shoved down the thin shift beneath it, leaving me perilously exposed for the viewing pleasure of an entire company of soldiers.
Whatever that man intended to do to me—and I could plainly guess, from the leering gleam in his eyes—was rendered impossible as soon as his fingers grazed my strange birthmark.
“Here,” Burrows says abruptly, reaching a hand toward my bodice. “I’ll show you.”
Scythe’s formidable frame shifts directly into the captain’s path, blocking him before so much as a finger grazes me. “You will not touch her.”
“I’m just trying to help! If you’d seen what it did to my second-in-command—”
“You will not touch her.”
Surprise blooms on Burrows’s face, then quickly sours into seething resentment. He does not enjoy being scolded. He even less enjoys being outranked in his own camp. But he’d be a fool to question Scythe’s authority. Clenching his stubby teeth, he swallows his objections and steps back a pace.
Still held painfully tight by my bindings, I cannot shy away as Scythe tugs one-handed at the neckline of my dress, undoing the laces with methodical movements. The weight of many eyes from the gathered crowd presses in, though his mammoth form shields me mostly from view. My heart hammers so loud against my rib cage, he must be able to hear it.
Cold air brushes the top swell of my breasts as the commander pulls my shift down—no more than strictly necessary, merely an inch or so—to expose the top half of the triangular birthmark. Mortification and terror mingle within me. I’d gasp if I were able to summon enough breath, but the noose is still held tight by the hand that remains above my head, preventing all but the most narrow slivers of air from entering my lungs.
I watch his face as he examines the strange design, trying to read his expression. There is no expression to read. He is blank, his intentions as inscrutable as the interlocking whorls and spirals he stares at with such intent focus.
I will the mark to strike out at him, as it did the man on the cliff side; wish for that snake of unpredictable power to come uncoiled once more and maim this new enemy standing before me. It does not comply. It sits cold and still within my breast, its fangs sheathed and silent, its existence as much a mystery as its origin.
According to Eli, I’ve had it since the day he first found me—a newborn babe with a crop of white hair, strange eyes, and a mysterious brand on her breast of such dark tint, it seemed infused with night itself.
Best keep it covered, Rhya, he told me again and again, so many times I grew weary of hearing it before my fifth naming day. There are those who might think it a cursed mark, child.
After the events on the cliff side, I fear they may be right.
Scythe doesn’t touch me, wise enough to heed Burrows’s warnings. But his gaze is so heavy, I can almost feel it scoring into my flesh as he slowly sets my dress to rights, his dexterous fingers making easy work of the ties. I’m not certain why he bothers—in a few moments, I’ll be a pile of embers—but I’m oddly relieved I’ll not spend my last moments on this earth with my body exposed for the amusement of strangers.
“The torch,” Scythe barks suddenly, his free hand extended blindly to his left. “Bring it here. I need the light.”
A young recruit steps forward, arm shaking as he extends the torch. I try to struggle as Scythe brings it close to my face, but my bindings hold fast. The flame is unbearably bright and scorching hot. My skin prickles with the promise of pain and, for a moment, my mind blanks with panic.
He’s going to set me aflame, right here, right now.
My eyes close involuntarily, shutting out my enemy’s face, my inescapable fate. Yet the torch never moves closer. Instead, there is a low growl of exasperation as Scythe finally releases the noose at my neck. Air floods down my throat, bursting into my screaming lungs. My ragged gasps are met with chuckles from the watching soldiers.
“Hardly worth hanging her,” Burrows remarks. “She’s half-dead already. Waste of perfectly good rope, in my opinion.” A gob of spit shoots in my direction. I do not bother to look and see where it lands. I’m too busy trying to catch my breath.
I’ve barely had time to pull in a full gulp of air before a large hand clamps down on my left shoulder and shakes. Scythe’s impatience is evident in every snap of his wrist. My bones rattle with the force of it.
“Your eyes. Open them.”
His command hardly registers over the roar of my pulse between my ears. The grip on my shoulder tightens to the point of pain. I’ll have more bruises by dawn—if I am still alive at dawn.
“Open them.”
I do as I’m told, peering at him through narrow slits. Torch held aloft, the commander glares down at me, frightening in his intensity. He’s massive—barrel-chested and so tall, he blocks my view of the rest of the world. A nightmarish figure. It takes every bit of my faltering courage to hold his gaze as it burns into mine.
Does he want to look me in the eyes as he strikes me down? Watch the light leave them as his blade slides between my ribs?
I refuse to blink. If this is my last moment, I should live it eyes wide open. I brace for the pain, but then—
Scythe’s stern-pressed mouth goes slack, just for a moment, a slip he covers so fast, I wouldn’t have seen it at all if he weren’t standing so near. However fleeting, I see… something that looks almost like shock.
Can it be shock?
“Impossible,” he whispers with a bleakness that sends a chill skittering down my spine.
“What was that, sir?” Burrows asks from a few paces back. “Couldn’t quite hear you.”
“Nothing.” Scythe’s voice is back to its normal brusqueness, but he does not turn to face the captain. He’s still looking into my eyes, searching for some hidden revelations encoded in their depths. His own eyes are unreadable. Two dark pools, reflecting nothing but flickers from the flaming torch in his hand. It would be easier to guess the thoughts of a statue.
Our gazes hold for a prolonged beat. His fingers, still gripping the torch, tighten infinitesimally. In the stillness, I feel, rather than see, him take a bracing breath.
“Shall we string her up, then?” Burrows asks tiredly. “It’s nearly midnight and we’re off to the southern front at first light. King Eld has called for reinforcements. Seems some Nythian rabble at the borderlands are making troub—”
The captain never finishes his sentence. The word trouble is halfway out his throat when the commander’s sword enters it, severing his windpipe in one clean stroke.
Excerpted from The Wind Weaver by Julie Johnson Copyright © 2025 by Julie Johnson. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
