Page 11 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

“Tomin, take her to Pava’s altar,” a calm voice ordered. The voice belonged to a swirl of deep purple velvet, the same one that had bodily shoved me away from the blood fountain.

She was too tall for me to see over her shoulder, but even those billowing purple robes weren’t wide enough to keep me from leaning around her to get at the fae female. A hand shot out. Unlike the acolyte, the priestess did not flinch at my snarl as she grabbed my arm.

She stared down her slightly crooked nose directly at me, her eyes sliding right past the coven mark on my forehead. “Supplicants are protected within the walls of the temple. If you kill another, they will kill you.” She nodded to the guards still flanking the doors.

I gnashed my teeth like an animal caught in a snare. “They could try.”

She looked vaguely amused. Like she would have enjoyed watching that spectacle. But she merely lifted her shoulders. “The gods will have their due.”

I twisted my arm away, and this time she let me go. My ears detected no shift in the sounds of eating and murmuring behind her. The other supplicants weren’t paying us any attention.

Good. She’ll never see me coming.

But even though she’d released me, the priestess did not move out of my path.

“You have entered the temple and taken the Oath of Atonement,” she said, still watching. “Attacking another supplicant in the temple is abhorrent to the gods. You will be in violation of your oath and you will be struck down.”

Not if the Dark God has anything to say about it.

But I kept that thought to myself.

The rage that sprang so violently to life didn’t die, but it banked.

I had to survive the gates. For Kyrelle, who I silently prayed would take the gold I’d given her and run.

And for myself. Maura’s offer to regain my place with my coven was no doubt self-serving; but it was also my only chance at survival.

Maura had never told us precisely how long a witch could survive without her coven’s power to sustain her, but it had already been six months.

My hope of escaping to another continent and finding a new coven had died when I handed over the gold to Kyrelle.

If I did not fulfill Maura’s quest, my power would wither away to nothing and I would die the second, eternal death.

That was not a path I could allow my imagination to trod.

For the first time in three hundred and seventy-seven years, my duty to my bloodline and to my coven were aligned. I can control myself.

“Take her to Pava’s altar to pray for guidance,” the priestess said to the acolyte. I’d been so focused on the fae female, and the priestess determined to stand in my way, I’d forgotten the young man entirely. He’d paled, his cheeks taking on a greenish tinge beneath his freckles.

He looked from the priestess, back to me, to what he could see of the supplicants seated around the fountain, and back to his dark-haired teacher. “But first they eat.”

She rolled her eyes. I blinked—not very priestess-like.

I regarded her again, noting each of her features: the rich jewel-toned amethyst of her robe, the olive skin, the dark eyes, and matching hair.

Her nose was slightly crooked, as if it had been broken, and in more than one place.

There was something eerily familiar about her, too…

My gut clenched. Elodie. Not again?—

“She’ll eat later,” the priestess ordered, and though her voice was melodious, that was its only similarity to my many-faced sister witch.

Elodie could change her face and body, but she could not change her voice. The priestess before me was just that—a priestess. Not my coven sister.

The tide of emotions in the past ten minutes threatened to fracture me from within. I did not even resist as the acolyte, Tomin, finally obeyed the order and led me away from the blood fountain. Witches prayed only to our dark creator, but perhaps the Goddess of Peace would spare a bit for me.

I followed Tomin around the perimeter of the temple, past the altars to the Gods of Mercy, Justice, and Sacrifice.

I marked the altar to Ramkael, the God of Devotion and doomed lover of Pava.

Then the altar to Memory and finally Peace, Pava herself.

Last was the Dark God, his altar shrouded in shadow, no flame of frankincense and palmarosa to light his cold corner.

The order of the altars matched the order of the Seven Gates. If I was going to take up praying to new gods, it would make more sense to start with Seraxa at the altar of Mercy, creator of the gate I’d attempt the next day.

But I desperately needed every one of those steps to steady myself.

Fighting off Kyrelle, entering the temple, seeing the fae female—it had unbalanced me.

I’d never reached that internal quiet and control that the other witches preached on and on about.

But this… the hum of energy and power under my skin was worse than usual.

As much as I tried to focus on the back of Tomin’s deep emerald robes, my eyes strayed back toward the blood fountain. To the shape of the female, now balancing the dagger in her palm.

Tomorrow, I will kill her.

“Here we are,” Tomin said, stating the obvious as we arrived before the ornate stained-glass window depicting Pava.

Arrayed around her was a kaleidoscope of races and creatures, all staring up at her with love and adoration.

There were no witches. Either this temple predated our creation by the Dark God, or we were the one race of beings undeserving of peace.

“You can place anything you’ve brought as an offering at the foot of the altar,” Tomin said, nodding to the rectangular pedestal that held the basin burning frankincense and palmarosa.

I blinked down at the space of stone floor he’d indicated.

A half-dead bunch of weeds tied with twine and a singular opal the size of a pea made up the entirety of the offering.

I bit back a hysterical laugh. The people of Velora were so destitute, all we had to offer were weeds.

The opal, no doubt, had come from the fae female.

They still hoarded wealth in their fortress beyond the mountains.

The gemstone could have come from the mountain of a man who’d entered just before me, my mind argued. In sighting the fae, my mind had skipped over him entirely. Had he been there at the blood fountain?

I turned my head to check, only for Tomin to unleash another onslaught of words.

“Your prayers are a sufficient offering,” he said quickly. “The gods understand the consequences and trials of the people of Velora. They offer the Seven Gates as redemption so that we may prove ourselves truly worthy. Blessed are they…”

I returned my eyes to him in a hard stare I hoped would shut him up.

It failed.

“…and honor the Seven Gods by conquering the Seven Gates.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you think any of these supplicants will conquer all seven gates?”

Tomin’s dark curls bobbed in time with his throat as he swallowed.

I rolled my eyes and turned to the altar. The gods and I weren’t on speaking terms, with the exception of one. But I lifted my eyes to Pava anyway.

Before I could come up with some nonsense to utter, footsteps announced the return of the priestess. She ignored Tomin altogether, focusing all of her intensity on me.

She placed a round tin into my hand, showing none of her acolyte’s reticence. For some reason, I did not open my mouth to tell her off for touching me. But I did look down at the palm-sized tin with skepticism.

“Cover that mark,” she said, her eyes lifting to my forehead.

Her gaze remained steady, but the acolyte at her side paled.

His eyes flew from my forehead, down to my hands and the pointed tips of my nails and back again, understanding and something between horror and fear dawning on his face for a fraction of a second before he blinked back to a facade of neutrality.

That was the reaction I’d expected. And the one I planned to use to my advantage.

I shook my head. “I will not hide.”

“Then you will die.” The priestess did not even blink as she said it. “Even your kind must sleep. And there is no protection offered between the gates. Those guards stay here.”

I did blink, processing her meaning. While I resided in the temple, the armed guards would prevent any violence.

But while the Mercy and Justice Gates were only a day apart, the others spread out at increasing intervals of distance.

And there would be no one to stop the other supplicants from banding together and murdering me in my sleep if they saw me as a threat.

Dark God save me. My best weapon—my only weapon, really—was my power. And I could not use it without sentencing myself to death.

Because even though I was an immortal being whose body would never age nor organs tire, I could be wounded. And unlike the fae, I did not possess the gift of rapid healing. If I received a mortal wound, I would die with all the indignity of a human.

I curled my hands into fists to hide the points of my nails.

“If you cannot control yourself, then stay clear of the other supplicants,” the priestess advised. Or ordered. Her tone was unchanged.

No comment on the fact that the fae were the reason all of this had happened. Their greed was the source of everything terrible that had happened in Velora over the past four hundred years.

As if the witches and humans haven’t taken full advantage of their absence, my conscience argued.

I wouldn’t feel guilty for what I’d done to survive. I refused.

“Pray at each of the altars and then you may eat.” By which time the fae female and other supplicants would have left the blood fountain, her order implied. She did not wait to see if I would comply. But the guards on the other side of the temple tracked her every movement, awaiting her orders.

My course was set. What I wanted did not matter. It never really had.

“Acolytes are allowed to accompany supplicants while they pray,” Tomin offered.

I hadn’t exactly forgotten the boy, but I certainly didn’t want him hovering at my side for the next hour.

“No.”

His mouth twitched for a few seconds before he plastered his smile back into place. “As you wish.” He hurried off after the priestess, presumably back to monitoring the temple doors.

My chest twinged, right between my breasts. I rolled my shoulders to dispel the sensation. He reminded me of someone, too.

But that was inevitable when you’d spent four hundred years walking the same continent, I told myself. It was possible I’d met one of his ancestors at some point. And I cared as little about the acolyte as I did every other person I met.

I did not want or need friends. I had my coven sisters. And I’d pray at a thousand altars if it earned me back my place with them.