Page 17 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

The acolytes came for us at first light.

I was already awake. Judging by the surrounding sounds, most of the other supplicants were as well.

The man I’d mistaken for Garrick the Red might have been the only one who’d slept well.

I’d listened to him snore loudly most of the night from four beds down.

They lined us up in the dark. I was placed fourth, between Nimra and Rilk.

Garrick was at the back, his looming presence impossible to ignore, though I did my best. He created a solid wall that separated me from the fae female who came last. At least if he was close, he’d have no chance to whisper my secret without my realizing it.

I trusted his vow to keep it about as much as I did the cowering man behind me not to shove a dagger into my back.

The cowardly could be just as dangerous as the cruel.

I scanned the acolytes as they led us out of the dormitory and into the temple proper.

But they all had their hoods up and heads bent.

I was only looking for Tomin because I wanted any last-minute information he might impart about the gate.

I certainly was not looking for a friendly face I did not need.

We circled the perimeter of the temple, passing each altar as the acolytes began to chant. I sighed. My headache from the night before had only just faded.

“I was wrong,” Nimra whispered over her shoulder. “The red-haired one is named Nash.”

My gaze snapped to the front of the line, where a head of wine-red hair was easily visible over the hoods.

“I tried to stay away from him, but,” Nimra paused, looking away. “But he was insistent.”

So far that morning, my emotions had been limited to grim exhaustion and mild dread. But as suddenly as a lightning strike, rage unfurled in my stomach, sending icy spears of power shooting through my veins.

“What did he do?”

Nimra’s head whipped back over her shoulder. Her eyes widened enough that panic surged up alongside the rage. If my coven mark was glowing, even the priestess’ thick paste might not be enough.

But her attention focused on my eyes—and the dagger that was suddenly in my hand. I did not even recall pulling it from the sheath at my belt.

The procession slowed to a shuffle as the violet-clad priestess paused to perform some religious nonsense at each altar. Nimra’s eyes jumped between me, the acolytes on either side of us, and then ahead.

Human senses were too weak to smell fear.

But I was not human. When she looked to the front of our line, it peeled off of her in waves.

The warmth of the temple, the chanting of the acolytes, the scent of her fear…

they pressed in on me, taking over my too-sensitive senses, making it hard to think, but too easy to feel.

I grabbed her arm. “What did he do?”

Nimra bit her bottom lip, but she did not flinch away.

She might be scared, but she was far from a coward.

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure she would not trample on the person in front of her before looking me directly in the eyes as she said, “He told me that if I came to his bed last night, he’d make sure I made it through the Mercy Gate. ”

Every flame in the temple went out. The temperature dropped quickly, too fast to attribute to a passing draft. Power was thick in the air.

The acolytes went silent, the emptiness made even more stark by the sudden lack of chanting. Behind us, a low chuckle slid over my senses. I did not turn to look at Garrick the fucking Red.

I crunched my hands into balls, fighting for control.

A voice boomed in the dull light of dawn leaking through the stained-glass windows.

“The gods have made their presence known,” the priestess decreed, drawing every set of eyes to her even in the dim light. I could see her clearly, standing directly before the altar of Seraxa, the Goddess of Mercy.

“Darkness consumes Velora,” she continued. “Yet Seraxa compels us to remember that even a single act of mercy can be a light in the darkness.” As the last word left her lips, she relit Seraxa’s altar.

Whispers of awe rippled through the acolytes. Slowly, so slowly, I uncurled my fists. The air around us warmed, but neither the priestess nor the acolytes moved to relight the remaining altars.

“If I hadn’t believed before…” Nimra whispered.

I watched the clever priestess, reassessing my estimation of her.

She’d given me that paste and suggested I cover my coven mark.

She had not so much as glanced in my direction, but I would have gambled a spell or two that she knew the real source of the power still fading from the air around us.

But she’d attributed it to Seraxa before anyone could even wonder otherwise.

Why? To elevate the gods? To bolster her own prestige? Or to help me ? Why?

The word echoed around in my head as we resumed our procession. But when Nash turned back, looking over the supplicants behind him with lazy perusal, my stomach turned. He found Nimra and a smile crawled up his face, a smile that I recognized easily.

Men had been looking at women like that far longer than my four hundred years. Suddenly, it did not matter that Nimra was neither my coven sister nor a descendant of my long-dead sister. She was a woman, and that was enough.

“You turned him away,” I said, already knowing the answer.

Nimra nodded but said nothing more. The procession began to move again.

Nash’s eyes found mine. I kept my frost in check, but barely. I let all of the rage flood my gaze. I held it as I sheathed the dagger back at my waist.

He laughed soundlessly before turning back to follow the priestess out the rear entrance of the temple. He had no idea that he’d just made an enemy of a nearly four-hundred-year-old frost witch. But that did not matter.

My power would kill him just the same. And this time, I would not let myself hesitate.

Warm breath lifted the hair from the back of my neck, the looming wall behind me moving closer.

“I won’t even have to spill your secret. You seem determined to reveal yourself all on your own,” Garrick said, his cinnamon and wine scent overpowering the altars of burning herbs.

“I can manage myself just fine.” A lie, most likely. I’d struggled to manage myself even with the help of six powerful witches. In fact, I’d done the opposite of manage myself . I’d lost control and gotten myself cast out from my coven.

But I’d rather spend the next three gates listening to my own stomach growl from hunger than admit that fact to him.

“There won’t be a priestess in the gate to pass off your power as an act of divine intervention,” Garrick said.

I stumbled over his words, the toe of my boot catching on the hem of my cloak as we moved to the next altar in procession. But before I could hit the ground, a hand caught my shoulder. Engulfed it.

That first touch was as intense as his gaze and more than I’d imagined lying alone in my bunk the night before. But it was his words that had tripped me up.

His tone was acerbic, but the thrust of the words themselves… they sounded like a warning, not an admonition. That was almost as unsettling as the warmth radiating from where his hand still gripped my shoulder.

Thanks to the Dark God, he removed it and I was able to breathe again. But thinking still eluded me. That could be the only explanation for the words I let slip.

“Sometimes the use of power is justified,” I said over the rush of my own blood in my veins. I could not stop my gaze from lifting with the words, my chin with it, until I found the back of Nash’s head.

Garrick shifted behind me. I hadn’t realized how close he’d gotten, moving in so that no one else could hear our whispered words. Even though he was no longer touching me, the weight of his presence was inescapable.

The heat from the night before returned, hotter than before, kindled with the anger already simmering in my veins.

But if Garrick felt that same burning attraction, he gave no sign I could detect, even with my heightened awareness.

I allowed myself to look over my shoulder long enough to confirm that his gaze had followed my own.

He glanced from Nash, to Nimra, and then back to me. The grim tilt of his mouth told me that he’d heard Nimra telling me about Nash’s threats.

“A witch with a functioning heart. Who knew such a thing was possible,” Garrick said.

I opened my mouth to tell him that he clearly knew less about witches than he believed.

But I doubted Garrick the Red would have made such a mistake, which was even more unsettling.

My heart was nothing more than a decaying, atrophied organ in my chest. To believe anything else went against everything Maura and my coven had taught me. To wish anything else was doom.

“I like it better when you do not speak,” I hissed between my teeth.

Again, his warm chuckle filled the space between us. “What you like does not concern me, witch.”

I could not keep his mouth shut, but I was done running mine. I pressed my lips together and spent the remainder of the procession imagining possible ways to stage Nash’s death without revealing my power to the other supplicants.

I was so busy plotting that I almost missed the incongruity before me. The Mercy Gate was located in the heart of Canmar, the capital city of Velora. There were very few humans left to populate it, but most of the buildings remained.

What certainly did not exist was a fifty-foot wall of ice that expanded as far as I could see in either direction. A single, precarious-looking rope ladder ascended up the sheer face before disappearing over the top.

We’d reached the Mercy Gate.

I had no doubt my muscles would be screaming for mercy by the time I hauled myself up that ladder. Beside me, even Nimra was speechless. Whatever I’d imagined… it was not this. And I doubted the gate required nothing more than climbing a ladder.

“You will ascend in the order you now stand,” the priestess said.

I glanced side to side and over my shoulder. We’d maintained the same order since leaving the dormitory—Nash, the doe-eyed girl, Nimra, me, Rilk, Garrick, and Alize.

None of us moved toward the ladder. The priestess looked up and down our line, but she offered no final prayers or hints about what awaited us atop the wall of ice.

“Surviving supplicants should proceed to the Justice Gate,” she instructed. “Begin.”

The acolytes moved swiftly, forming a pathway around us, their green robes lining either side. At the end, the rope ladder swayed in the breeze. It was not even affixed to the wall. Fuck. This was going to hurt.

Nash threw a malicious grin over his shoulder and started climbing.

I counted under my breath as he rose, rung over rung.

He never paused to catch his breath, and he did not slip.

The highest rungs were difficult for even me to see, but as he climbed over the top of the wall, his pace remained steady. He’d reached the top without injury.

But instead of disappearing over the edge, he reached into his cloak, withdrawing something in his hand. Then he crouched down and cut the rope ladder loose from the wall of ice.

So much for mercy.