Page 19 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

I did not look down.

I could assume that Garrick was already climbing and that the fae female, Alize, was behind him or soon would be.

I could not look down at the girl’s shattered body.

I could not risk losing my nerve. People died attempting the Seven Gates.

No one had ever passed through all seven.

Which meant that every single person who had attempted them in the four hundred years since the curse had died.

Hundreds, maybe even thousands, had fallen to their deaths just like that doe-eyed girl.

But I would not be one of them. I could not.

I forced myself to turn and face what remained of the gate.

In the distance, I could make out another wall of ice, but instead of a ladder, there was a rectangular opening carved into its base.

That was the real Mercy Gate. Whether everything we’d done since climbing that ladder was a test as to whether we were allowed to pass through, or simply reaching it was the task… I’d find out when I got there.

But between me and that gate stretched a hundred yards of ice.

Ice fields that I should have run over without incident. Except that I could not use my active power without revealing myself.

It looked innocent enough, that expanse of white and blue. But I knew the same thing that everyone in Velora had learned since the curse settled the continent firmly in its grip. Ice was more dangerous than any flame.

I counted at least a half dozen crevices between me and the gate, but those were just the ones I could see.

The deep, crystalline blue cracks could appear out of nowhere, hidden beneath a drift of innocuous-looking snow.

One unfortunate step, and you’d fall down only to be impaled on spikes of icy death.

Ice crackled in my veins.

If I could stay far enough away from the other supplicants, perhaps I could use my power sparingly.

Nimra was already halfway across, but Nash lingered atop the wall.

Was his plan to throw us off as we reached the top?

But Nimra had gotten past, and he did not approach me, either.

Though that could have been because of the deep crevice that cracked the ice between us.

Though he’d been up there long enough to go around if he really wanted to target me.

What is he waiting for?

A few seconds later, I had my answer.

He reached down and hauled Rilk up over the ledge, and clarity shot through me.

He’d tried and failed to align himself with Nimra.

Rilk was his second choice. He had purposefully waited and pulled the other man up the last few feet.

An act of mercy. A twisted one—but Seraxa would be the judge, not me.

But that mercy apparently ended right there.

Nash left Rilk panting on the edge and started running.

He’d had plenty of time to regain whatever breath he’d lost in the climb, and his approach to the ice field seemed to be to move fast enough that he was over any crevices before they opened up beneath him.

Not a terrible strategy if one had the endurance to make it straight across the ice field, which I did not.

I couldn’t stay and think it over. Rilk had made it to his knees.

Garrick must be close behind. Two slender, golden hands gripped the edge a few feet to my right.

Alize. The urge to drag my dagger across her knuckles screamed through me.

But I fought to control it the same way I did my power—with middling success.

My own sense of self-preservation got me moving. I’d never best Alize without using my active power. I kept the first crevice between me and Rilk and started at a jog that I hoped I’d be able to maintain.

Without the priestess to direct the supplicants, the sprint across the ice field was a free-for-all. Ahead of me, Nash stumbled but didn’t fall. Nimra reached the gate and disappeared through it. I kept Rilk in my periphery. We were both moving at the same labored, slow pace.

A blur of earth tones flashed by on my right. I blinked, sure the gate was playing some trick on my vision. It was not possible for a human to move that fast. But it was Garrick, not Alize, who surged past me first, closing so fast that Nash looked like he was hardly moving.

Garrick came from my right, Nash had started from my left, but their paths were converging, the pattern of crevices they dodged pushing them closer and closer together.

Nature or a trick of Seraxa, it didn’t really matter.

Their intersection was inevitable. Nash looked over his shoulder, and for the first time that self-satisfied, malicious grin was nowhere to be seen.

He’d heard about Garrick the Red, too. I hoped he was regretting cutting the rope ladder. I hoped Garrick would reach him and punish him.

Nash was in shape, but Garrick was a honed hunter, and the extra few inches of height gave him an even bigger advantage. No wonder he’d refused my spells and any type of obligation between us. He was so strong and so fast that he did not need them.

Nash was almost to the gate. He leaped the last few yards, hitting the ice with an impact that reverberated across the ice field. A sapphire blue crevice opened behind him, and even Garrick was not fast enough to avoid it. Nash careened through the gate, disappearing from view.

Garrick disappeared, too. Down into the crevice.

My stomach tried to drop directly out of my body. Garrick the Red. That quickly, he’d been claimed by the Mercy Gate. What chance did I have? Panic bubbled through me, fighting with my power, fighting to take control.

The number of crevices had doubled. Tripled.

More opened with every footstep. I’d pulled ahead of Rilk, but just like Nash and Garrick, we would eventually collide.

I forced myself forward, tracking the crevices as they yawned open one after another.

My tired muscles moved me around and over, slower with every step, but still moving.

I maneuvered sideways as yet another new crevice opened, throwing all of my body weight to the side and hitting the ice with an ominous crack. A golden blur approached, moving in an unnaturally straight line. Alize .

I braced myself, power surging to my fingertips. I did not care what it would reveal to the other supplicants. If she tried to take me down, I would use every bit of power at my disposal to destroy her.

The fae had stolen everything from me. They would not get my life as well.

The ice beneath me shifted. I didn’t have time to get to my feet. I tucked my arms into my sides and rolled, praying to the Dark God that I’d be able to stop myself before I reached the next crevice.

Alize darted past me, dodging the spreading crevice easily. Her feet hardly touched the ice—no, they did not touch the ice at all . They moved as if she was running, but made no contact with the ground, the air itself providing traction to her steps.

She was wind-gifted.

Even as my mind struggled to understand the implications of her magic, my instincts buried the thoughts. I could worry about that if I survived to the next gate. I shoved my hands underneath my shoulders and pushed up. My thighs roared at the demand to bunch and strain and take my weight.

Ahead of me, Alize dashed past the crevice that had claimed Garrick. She did not pause; did not look back; did not say a word, unless she carried that away on a magical wind as well. If she said a prayer for the man she’d known, however they were connected, I could not hear it.

She disappeared through the gate.

Rilk and I were the only ones left. My fall had cost me. He’d closed the gap between us, the crevices driving us together for a second round of what had begun on the wall. Except now we were both more exhausted and more desperate.

I pushed every bit of stubbornness and anger into my legs and lungs. Kyrelle would not die because my body was not strong enough. Maura would not get the last laugh, sentencing me to death in the gates. I deserved more and I would take it.

I will fucking take it.

But my foot stuck in the first crack of a new crevice, sending me sprawling across the ice. I scrambled for purchase, trying to slow my slide, but the ice was so slick. What was left of my fingernails ripped, blood leaked down my cheek, the cut from earlier ripping even further.

Dark God, save me.

By his gift or some other, my belt snagged on an uneven chunk of ice. My body jerked back, the inertia of every pound protesting the yank. A sound perilously close to a sob broke from my chest.

My right arm dangled over the edge of a crevice.

But the rest of me was on solid ice, for the moment.

For a half second, I contemplated just letting the ice have me.

The bravado of a few seconds earlier was gone.

It would be so much easier to just stay there and give in to the exhaustion.

The cold had already claimed my life once before. It was a fitting end.

I felt that dangerous numbness of disassociation begin to spread through my body as I stared over the edge into the abyss.

From the deep crevice, a pair of blue-green eyes stared back.

“Hello, wicked witch.”

“You’re alive,” I rasped, the words scraping over my throat. Even that was raw—which reminded me of every single place on my body that was, as well. So much for giving in to the numbness.

An ominous groan echoed from the depths of the crevice.

“Not for long,” Garrick said.

I almost laughed. Which would have been cruel.

But it was Garrick’s fault, because he was right.

He dangled from a ledge about two feet below the top of the ice where my body lay, ignoring my directions to get the fuck up.

If I did not manage to get myself moving, either Rilk or the ice would claim my life.

Knowing all of that, there was no accounting for what I did next.

I reached down my hand.

Garrick didn’t give me time to second guess myself. He swung up one of his arms, latching on to my wrist with his much larger hand. His fingertips dug into my arm so hard I could not have released him if I’d wanted to.

I thought my muscles were screaming before? Garrick had a foot of pure muscle on me. Even with him clinging to the side of the crevice, trying to help haul himself upward, every muscle and joint in my body protested.

“You’re too fucking heavy,” I groaned. I wasn’t going to drop him. He was going to rip my arm right off.

“Brace your shoulder so it doesn’t pop out of the socket,” he demanded.

Demanded, as if he was not the one dangling over a certain death, and me, his savior.

The ice groaned again. We were out of time.

I just was not strong enough, at least not physically. But another part of me was.

I freed my other hand from bracing my shoulder and threw it down, nearly colliding with Garrick’s face.

But he did not flinch as power filled the air.

A ledge of solid ice formed beneath his feet.

Then another, six inches up. And another and another.

I built him a staircase, and he climbed right out.

Most importantly, he did not rip my arm off.

Nor did he release it.

He pulled me to my feet, head whipping side to side as he assessed our situation. Even that was too much time. The ice beneath our feet splintered. “Run.”

My body obeyed his command without question.

Even so, it wasn’t fast enough.

He had every reason to release my hand and run on.

I’d seen him before his fall. He’d have made it easily without me slowing him down.

We weren’t allies or friends. I’d pulled him out of that crevice, but he did not owe me anything.

Getting me moving from that ledge was surely enough of an act of mercy to appease Seraxa.

He did not let go.

“Faster, Koryn,” he demanded.

I couldn’t go faster. I was going to get us both killed.

I looked back. Rilk was only a few yards behind, but even that would be fatal. The entire ice field was disintegrating.

We weren’t going to make it.

I threw out the hand that Garrick did not hold. Bright power so cold that it burned flowed from my veins, but to me it was not pain. It was release. It was right.

Frost solidified into a thick, solid layer of ice, creating a path to safety.

Rilk was close enough for me to hear his gasp.

But I let the consequences roll past me. Life, first.

Another few yards, that was all that stood between us and the gate. My legs pumped beneath me, mustering the last dregs of life-saving energy.

We slid through the gate as the path of ice I’d created crumbled and a crevice opened beneath our feet.

We were too late. I was certain we would die.

I’d risked it all—my chance to return to my coven, my quest to protect my sister’s legacy, my own life—for a bounty hunter who’d imagined me dead as easily as breathing.

My last thought as the ground fell away was that maybe Seraxa would take mercy on me before the Dark God got ahold of my soul. I fell and fell and fell. An eternity of falling. Then my back crashed into the ground.