Page 2 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

Three hundred and seventy-seven years later…

Desperation had a taste. Some people tried to season it to make the flavor more palatable. They spiced it with anger or sadness or bravado. But it was a futile effort. It always tasted the same in the end.

In the last four hundred years, desperation had become the national dish of Velora.

Though calling what remained of the continent a nation would be overly generous.

Four hundred years ago, the gods sentenced the continent of Velora to death.

She’d taken her time about it, but there was no mistaking it now.

The once prosperous, viable land was in her final death throes.

Those who lingered here were either stupid or desperate. Most were some combination of both.

Not me.

I was perfectly aware of the gravity of my situation. Alone. Abandoned by my coven. Unlike the humans mulling around the dark hovel of a tavern where I’d taken refuge, I would not starve to death.

I forced myself to eat a bit of the gruel that I’d purchased from the gaunt proprietor.

His bluster was apparent even from the dark corner where I sat.

He wore it like armor, glaring at every person who blew through the door, bringing a gust of frigid air with them.

The skin around his face was loose, his neck even worse.

The thick woolen scarf he wore wrapped around it did little to disguise the slack skin.

Once, he had been a bull of a man. Muscular, strong.

Intimidating, even. But the gods had stolen that vitality from him, leaving a decaying husk.

It was not even a metaphor; the comparison to the landscape and continent beyond was too direct for poetry.

The gruel stuck in my throat, but I forced it down.

Witches needed no such mortal sustenance; we were already dead, after all.

My body was sustained by ancient power, not by nutrients.

But I could still feel hunger and cold, even if they would not be enough to kill me.

The gruel was noxious enough I would have preferred the hunger, but it comforted the humans to see me eat.

It was one of dozens of small adjustments that I’d learned to make.

My hair was braided instead of loose around my shoulders, the way I’d prefer it.

No part of a witch was meant to be constrained.

My nails were trimmed to points, but they did not curl around to kiss my palms, like the witches of the ancient covens.

I’d even softened my coven mark—though too soon, it would begin to fade.

My connection to my sisters was weakening.

I forced down another bite of gruel, studying the other occupants of the tavern.

I could tell by looking what most of them would ask for, though who would summon the courage—or desperation—to approach first was not as clear to me.

Would it be the young mother in the corner, squalling child at her empty breast?

She would ask for a spell to increase the supply of her milk so that her child might live another week.

There was a reason so few children were born in Velora.

The land could not sustain them, nor their mothers.

Perhaps it was a bit of mercy from Seraxa, that instead of allowing the children to be born only for their mothers to watch them die, the women of Velora hardly ripened with child at all.

Or perhaps it would be the farmer. Two hundred years ago, farmers were easy to spot.

They were lean, like all the others as food became scarcer, but they still had muscle.

Even as crops declined year after year, they fed themselves and their families.

They had families. But over the last century, that had changed.

The crops dwindled to nothing. With neither crops to tend nor food to sustain them, their muscles disappeared.

Their wives were now gone, their children unborn. Stolen by the gods.

A hundred years ago, I’d had a coven around me. My existence had been fraught in many ways, but at least I’d had my sisters. I’d had something .

A hundred years could change everything.

The farmer in the corner ordered a watered ale instead of wine. He saw me waiting. He would spend his last coin on a spell in hopes of coaxing some bit of life from Velora’s fallow, worthless ground. And I would take it from him.

My shoulder blades drew together, my body protesting the decision my mind had already made. Any kindness died when I did, I reminded myself. My heart was too dead to protest the lies that I told myself in order to keep moving forward.

The fae were the first to leave, retreating beyond the mountains to their walled refuge. No one had seen or heard from them in more than three centuries. Good riddance. All of this was their fault. Not just the curse— all of it.

The rich were next, booking passage on ships across the ocean in all directions. Anywhere was better than Velora. That left the middle and poorer classes, those who could not immediately afford to flee, along with those who were stupid enough to hope.

Many covens left, but not mine.

If we had fled to richer lands, where power still grew up from the ground with the crops, would it never have happened? Would I be with my sisters, still?

A useless thought.

I ought to have learned by then that the past did not matter. If I had not learned that lesson by now, maybe I was doomed to never learn it at all.

The mother or the farmer. One of them would be the first to approach me that night.

There were more that would come to me. It was my third night in this tavern on the outskirts of Canmar, what was once a thriving capital city at the heart of a prosperous continent. The old fae palace in the center of the city was deserted, as were most of the larger residences.

Three nights was the maximum, I’d learned. Enough time for the desperate to pass word from mouth to ear and muster the courage to come to me. Any longer and I would attract the wrong sort of attention.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to dispel the tension building in the center of my back. Remorse for what I was about to do, what I’d been doing for months, paired with the flood of sensations that accosted me from every direction.

Even the sparse tavern was almost too much to bear.

Wood crackled in the hearth, the warmth spreading relaxation through the haggard patrons.

Watered wine and ale were enough to intoxicate these days.

Voices grew louder. The heat pressed in.

The power thrumming in my veins grew to a rush.

I flattened my palms against the table, fighting for control.

I might have been the only non-human in the tavern, but desperation makes humans do stupid things. If I was anything less than the hardened, ruthless witch they expected to see, there was no telling what the desperate patrons around me might convince themselves to do.

I forced myself to continue scanning the interior of the tavern, looking for prospective customers. It dulled the edge of tension, but only slightly.

A prostitute emerged from the shadows at the rear of the tavern.

Her rouge was smudged, the kohl that lined her eyes expertly covering the heavy bags that should be beneath them.

Comely women were harder and harder to find in Velora.

Most of them had escaped with the more affluent, selling themselves as mistresses and broodmares.

The ones left behind were those born too late. Unlucky to have been born at all.

She sauntered to the bar top, crooking her finger to call for wine.

No man nor woman appeared from the shadows behind her.

She must have sent her most recent customer off through the back door.

The gaunt proprietor slid her a goblet. There was an arrangement between them.

But I did not have any interest in her. She wouldn’t seek me out.

Prostitution was one of the few professions that continued to thrive in Velora.

A hacking cough filled the close space, reminding me that the patrons I’d marked were far from the only occupants of the desolate corner of the world I inhabited.

The tavern was a beacon of warmth, and unlike many such establishments, the proprietor had managed to procure a stock of wine.

The price was exorbitant, but desperation…

well, desperation and stupidity. Even those without money for the next night’s lodging will spend their coin on the escape alcohol can bring.

The door stuttered, protesting against the contrast of frigid cold outside and insulated heat within. It was the only redeeming trait of the dark, noisy establishment—warmth.

But even that might not be enough to keep it full.

As one, the occupants of the tavern held their breaths. I exhaled into the blessed silence, even knowing it would not last.

Sometimes, desperation outweighed stupidity. Instinct took over. The will to survive overpowered all else. Right then, every person in the tavern was calculating the threat posed by the new arrival.

It was not just the greatsword sheathed across his back or the full quiver of arrows, though the weapons said enough. Why carry a bow and arrows when there was so little game to hunt?

There was no doubt this man was a predator. Violence peeled off of him in curls as visible as the cloud of breath he huffed into the cold air he let in.

“Close the door!” the proprietor yelled without looking up to see who he accosted. Desperation and stupidity could look eerily similar.

I braced my hands flat on the scarred tabletop in front of me, a surge of power centering in my palms.