Page 24 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

Rilk was dead. I had been so preoccupied with my own survival, I had not even noticed.

I certainly shouldn’t care. I should have killed him myself.

Instead of running, I should have sent spears of ice into their hearts.

Tendrils of frost through their mouths and noses to freeze their blood in their very veins.

I’d done it before. I would do it again.

But my stomach twisted once more, and this time it was not from the stench of Nash’s breath.

“Release her.”

Nash hissed through his teeth, the metal of his sword still flush against the back of my neck.

But Garrick must have had his own blade pressed somewhere vital on Nash because he withdrew.

I did not take another full breath until both his weight and that sword were gone; I did not trust Nash not to accidentally stab me with it and kill all three of us.

I hardly felt the burn in my tired muscles as I got my knees beneath me and pushed up to stand. The relief of freedom was so heady it wiped away everything else.

Until I caught sight of the two men behind me.

Garrick had grabbed one of Nash’s arms, twisting it behind him.

Nash’s sword stuck out of the snow several feet away.

One of the curved blades from Garrick’s bandolier pressed into Nash’s jugular.

It was hard to tell over the flood of Rilk’s blood, but I thought I detected the hint of a different tang. Garrick had already drawn blood.

Something I did not want to acknowledge as admiration spread through my chest. Garrick the Red was human, but he moved faster than any being I’d ever encountered. I was an immortal, and despite my active power and a thousand spells, I had never felt as powerful as I sensed him to be in that moment.

There was no indecision in the rough lines of his face. He was going to kill Nash without a second thought.

I envied that, too.

“I released her. Now you release me,” Nash demanded.

Unwise to risk moving his throat at all with Garrick’s blade that close, but I couldn’t say that I would have been able to keep my mouth shut, either.

Garrick twisted his arm tighter. Nash’s face contorted as he struggled to keep in the cry of pain.

“I made no such agreement,” Garrick said.

His face was unmoved. His expression had not changed at all in the last minute.

The night turned his turquoise eyes to a sapphire so deep it was almost black.

The line of his mouth, which had quirked up into a smirk more times than I could count in our short acquaintance, remained flat.

The lack of affect shouldn’t have been menacing; it should have been neutral. But my stomach clenched… and my thighs squeezed together. For fuck’s sake, I chastised my body.

“You can’t kill me,” Nash bit out.

“You probably shouldn’t tell him what he can’t do when he has you stuck like a pig for slaughter,” I said. Nope, definitely could not have kept my mouth shut. But at least talking served to distract me from my body’s very inconvenient reaction to Garrick.

“You’re a bounty hunter. I can pay you,” Nash said, trying to twist away from Garrick’s blade. But Garrick was exactly what Nash had pointed out, and he was far too comfortable holding someone at knifepoint to allow them such an easy escape.

Garrick chuckled. I could not help but mark the difference from the sound that had caressed my senses in the temple. There was no humor here. No amusement. Only threat.

But Nash pressed on. “I have gold.” No response. “Land. My father has plenty of it that he will cede on my behalf. Anything. Name it, and it is yours.”

Garrick worked his jaw, slowly distorting the line of his mouth. Then again… as if he was actually mulling it over.

I did not consciously decide to make the sound low in my throat. But there it was, nonetheless. Garrick’s mouth curved, just for me, before he shifted his eyes back to his captive. “There is nothing you have that I want badly enough to alter my course.”

I blinked in the darkness. What the fuck did that mean?

“We weren’t going to kill her,” Nash insisted. He struggled again. He was stupider than even I’d estimated. I heard a faint crack. Any tighter, and Garrick would snap the bones in Nash’s arm.

“What you wanted was worse than death,” Garrick said. “To enslave her. Belittle her.”

“Nothing is worse than death.” The words slipped from my mouth unbidden, a whisper in the darkness.

Garrick’s gaze remained on Nash, but a muscle tensed in his jaw. “Then death shall be his punishment.”

“Don’t!”

Garrick’s head snapped up, and that smooth affect was gone. He looked right at me—because I was the one who’d screamed the protest. Not Nash.

A deep divot had taken up residence between Garrick’s brows.

Tendrils of pale hair fell forward to frame his face, a face that was ruggedly handsome but just then contorted into surprise and disbelief.

It was still handsome, even so. Irritatingly so.

But most marked was the intensity in his eyes.

The same intensity I’d felt before now bored into me in a way that should have been impossible to detect in the darkness of midnight.

I could shape my frost into ice, but I had not used my power to freeze the three of us in the clearing.

Even Nash had stopped his squirming, staring at me in disbelief.

At least, what he could see of me in the dark.

I relaxed a bit. He could not see my face.

With his human eyes, the best he could make out would be my silhouette.

The uncontrollable emotions playing across my face were safe from both men.

“He was not going to kill me,” I said. I was just as stupid as every human in the tavern, every human who attempted the gates. So fucking stupid. “He understands now. Let him go. The gates will kill him for us.”

Us . That was the weapon I chose to wield.

I thanked the Dark God for his gifts, which allowed me to see how Nash’s eyes widened when he realized the implication of that word. That from now on, I was not alone. A witch and Garrick the Red. He would not attack again.

Still, his heartbeat thundered in the night.

For several beats, I thought Garrick would ignore my request. I understood that for what it was.

Garrick could ignore me and kill Nash. For more than one of those heartbeats, I thought he would.

Then his hold eased. He shoved the other man to his knees in the snow but did not restrain him any longer.

Nash swiped up his sword and clambered to his feet. The glare he cut in my direction was anything but grateful. But then he disappeared into the night and that was all that mattered. The ice I had not even noticed forming in my veins slowly began to thaw.

Garrick sheathed his blade, his head tilted ever-so-slightly in the direction that Nash had disappeared. Listening, I realized. He was determined to protect me even now, when the danger had passed.

Even when he no longer needed to. He’d saved my life, I realized.

That us I’d used against Nash was pure bravado, the Lifebind between Garrick and me was done. So quickly. Then why didn’t I feel relief?

Still, I took a few steps closer so he could see me easier in the darkness and inclined my head. “Thank you.”

His expression was anything but neutral as he turned and glared at me. “I don’t want your thanks. I want you to stop being so na?ve and thoughtless that you get both of us killed.”

Na?ve. I had walked this continent for nearly four hundred years, and this human had the audacity to suggest I was na?ve? He could rot in the Dark God’s hell.

“You saved my life, we are done.” I reached to pull my cloak around me as a shiver of cold prickled my neck. But I did not have my cloak. Rilk had seen to that at the Mercy Gate. He could go to the Dark God’s hell right along with Garrick the fucking Red.

He already has. Rilk is dead.

I could not bring myself to feel anything but relief about it. If I’d had a beating heart, it would have clenched and twisted at that moment. My stomach did the job instead.

I squeezed my fists at my sides and tried to ignore the shivers making themselves more demanding with every passing second.

We were approaching the deepest, coldest part of the night.

Without a cloak, the next two hours would be torture.

But first I had to find another place to sleep.

Rilk’s reeking body was not the sort of bedtime companion I enjoyed.

I turned north, lifted my hand to harden the snow and make walking easier, and left Garrick the Red to his own problems. I was not one any longer.

“Check your wrist.”

My feet stilled. Even my hand flicked, as if it too wanted to obey his command. What was it about this man that made all good sense desert me?

Whatever it was, I fought it hard. I refused to lift my arm, even as I realized that there had been no burn of magic or power. The dissolution of the Lifebind did not have to feel the same as the forming of it, I reasoned. The workings of the gods were rarely logical.

Garrick closed the space between us in two easy strides, grabbing my forearm with one hand and tugging off my glove with the other.

Even without my stronger sight, I could see that hateful tattoo on the inside of my wrist. The lines of the rune were straight and true.

A single line branched into three two-thirds of the way up.

Then, alongside it, the same shape was copied in inverse.

Garrick did not bother to pull down his own sleeve to show me that his was still intact as well.