Page 18 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

The ladder was anchored—at the halfway point. Maybe it was Seraxa intervening, but the first twenty-five feet of the rope ladder remained intact. But the final stretch was nothing but bare ice.

The girl at the front of the line turned. We all did, finding the dark-haired priestess behind us. She stood between the last set of acolytes, closing the channel they’d formed with their green robes. Behind her, the armed guards from inside the temple stepped into place.

We were trapped. The only way out was up.

Tears broke free from the girl’s round eyes, spilling in rapid streams down her sunken cheeks. I did not need the Dark God’s gifts to see her hands shake as she reached for the ladder.

She was petite, which gave her less weight to haul up using her non-existent muscles. I cursed the hearty meal I’d eaten the night before. I wouldn’t have that advantage.

But too soon she reached the midpoint, where the severed ropes fell away to dangle uselessly. We all watched in agonizing silence as she remained frozen.

“Begin.”

Again, we turned as one to look at the priestess. Everyone except Garrick. When I turned, he was looking straight at me. His unsettling turquoise eyes made no effort to pretend otherwise. But like nearly every time before, they were inscrutable in everything but their intensity.

I forced myself to look past him. Whatever he did or thought now, whatever attraction I’d felt for him, they were distractions that would get me killed.

The priestess stared back, her expression completely unchanged—brow smooth, eyes expectant, and a menacing guard at each shoulder.

The gods will have their due.

“Please start moving,” Nimra said under her breath as she stepped up to the ladder.

She began to climb, but slowly. Slower than her healthy body should have allowed, slow enough to give the petrified girl a chance to get herself off the ladder and up the wall—before Nimra reached her and was forced to choose.

An act of mercy.

Nimra could have overtaken the girl easily. But she moved up the ladder with purposeful slowness.

Would I have given the girl the same chance? My throat tightened. That heart that Garrick thought still worked said yes. But the determination to return to my coven, to save myself and Kyrelle… I did not have an answer.

Something that couldn’t have been relief seeped into my chest cavity as the girl reached up past the end of the ladder, found a handhold in the ice, and pulled herself up. She was painfully slow, but by the time Nimra reached the midpoint of the wall, the young girl was well out of reach.

Nimra did not hesitate, finding her own path and starting up the ice wall with impressive speed, given her humanity.

I stepped forward, expecting the priestess to direct me to begin immediately.

But she remained silent. Nimra reached the top.

The girl was still only three-quarters of the way up and barely moving.

“Begin.”

The climb was every bit as torturous as I’d expected.

My own body worked against me, the thickness of my thighs painfully apparent as I dragged them up rung after rung.

My weight had often been a hindrance in a world built to honor waifish figures.

But for centuries I’d had my power to bolster me.

I’d become dependent on it, and it was too fucking late to do anything about it.

My biceps and thighs screamed, and I hadn’t even reached the midpoint.

I cannot die here.

Not alone, without my coven sisters. Not so pitifully close to the beginning, as useless as Kyrelle had accused me of being.

Rilk started up the ladder as I reached the midpoint. I doubted he would show me the same mercy that Nimra had the young girl.

I assessed my options. The girl was about twenty feet above me but several yards to the left. Her path of hand and footholds had taken her off course and prolonged the dangerous climb. I could not make the same mistake. I needed to go straight up.

I allowed myself one glance down at Rilk. He was closer than I’d have liked, but I had to risk it. If I attempted the icy expanse on my quivering muscles alone, I would fall to my death.

I did not waste time looking for a handhold.

I summoned my power, and when my hand touched the wall of ice, I created one of my own.

It was still slow, and I still had to drag my body upward foot by agonizing foot.

But at least I did not have to worry about slipping.

I was far enough away that none of the supplicants waiting below could see what I was doing.

The girl to my left was too worried about herself.

The only danger was Rilk, and he was gaining on me.

I rallied my power, but it could do nothing for my tired muscles or the breath scissoring in and out of my chest. My lungs burned, but I forced myself up another foot. I was almost even with the girl, who’d stopped climbing completely.

I swung another arm up, channeling my power to form another handhold?—

Something caught on my foot, ripping it loose of the foothold and tugging my entire body down. I kicked wildly, my other foot coming free so I was dangling all of my weight by one hand. My body slammed into the wall of ice, knocking all of the air out of my already searing lungs.

Ice scraped across my face as my body twisted, pain shooting through my wrist as I tried to see what had caught me up.

Not what. Who.

Rilk.

He’d used a dagger to anchor himself into the wall of ice. The other hand clung to my booted foot, wrapped around my ankle with strength that belied his thin frame. Strength born of desperation.

I will not be felled by a man.

Both of my feet were dislodged. Instead of trying to find another foothold, I used the one he wasn’t holding to kick him directly in the face. The scent of blood filled the air in time with the crunch of his nose breaking. He released my foot, and that was all I needed. I kept climbing.

“I will kill you, fucking bitch!” he roared below me.

Bitch. Why were men all so disappointingly unoriginal?

I kept climbing. My cloak snagged. I didn’t stop to see if it was the ice or Rilk that had gotten ahold of it. I ripped open the clasp and let it fall away. I could not die of the cold, but if he got that dagger into an artery, I’d bleed out as uselessly as a human.

Ten more feet to the top of the wall. Nine. Eight. Tears of relief threatened to overwhelm me, but I froze them before they could fall. I did not know what—or who—waited on the top of the wall. Four feet. Three.

A scream.

I forced myself up another foot before allowing myself to look.

Rilk had given up on me, but he had not given up altogether. He’d set his sights on the young woman who’d preceded Nimra.

Two feet.

With the next swing of my arm, I grabbed the top of the wall. My power froze my palm to the perpendicular surface, making it impossible for me to lose my grip.

I looked again.

Just in time to see her fall.