Page 25 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

“You saved my life for no purpose other than mercy, when doing so put you at greater risk by exposing yourself as a witch. You would have been safer to let me die. A true act of mercy,” he breathed.

He’d gotten so close to me that I could see every detail of his face.

Not just the broad features, but the intimate ones as well.

A half-moon scar no bigger than a fingernail that framed his right eye.

The flecks of pure, clover green in his eyes that must be responsible for the turquoise they appeared to be at any distance other than this.

The moonlight changed them even more, making it seem like the ring of slightly lighter blue around his pupil was glowing.

He released my arm, increasing the space between us enough that I could actually breathe as he exhaled and added, “I cannot say the same.”

Right. He’d only saved me because it benefited him—because if I died, so did he. That wasn’t mercy.

“There is no escaping the Lifebind until its terms are satisfied.” His words were heavy—disturbingly so. They lacked the intensity or the menace that I’d come to expect from him.

“I could kill you, and then I would be free.” I thrust my chin out in challenge.

“You could try,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirked upward, that smirk back in place. “You’d risk the wrath of Seraxa after she’s shown you such favor.”

He emphasized the last word, infusing it with sarcasm.

But his heart was beating faster than before, faster than it had been even when he’d held Nash at knifepoint.

Despite the dark, I could see that the divot between his brows had not entirely smoothed.

For once, my heightened senses provided me with an advantage rather than overwhelming me.

They told me that Garrick the Red was hiding something.

I folded my arms beneath my breasts. “Why didn’t you accept his offer?”

Garrick huffed a soundless chuckle. “I do not need gold or land.”

How much of that acerbic humor was genuine and how much of it was a front?

“This is Velora. Those could be the very things that keep you alive from one week to the next?—"

“He tried to kill you,” Garrick said. “He does not deserve redemption.”

The biting edge of humor was still there, but so was something else. Something that I could not quite account for, but I could read just the same. The way his jaw worked around the words, the rough sound of him clearing his throat of unnamed emotion.

“And that would kill you, by extension,” I said slowly.

His smirk faltered.

He shifted forward, old snow crunching beneath his boots as he moved closer, trying to see me better in the dark with his human eyes.

I did not try to disguise my face. I let the confusion show, my lips parting slightly, my eyes widening, as the full force of him flooded over me.

The height discrepancy between us should have afforded more space, but his mouth seemed to hover mere inches from mine.

“You believe that our two lives are the only ones that hang in the balance,” Garrick said.

I swallowed. His eyes slid down, watching the movement of my throat. He could not see me clearly enough for that, I reminded myself. But he must have heard the sound.

If I died, Kyrelle would as well. That was the only other life I cared about, I told myself.

But who did Garrick care about?

He had to mean Velora’s citizens, didn’t he? But Garrick had built a life by exploiting Velora’s curse and those living under it. What reason could he have for wanting to lift it now? Yet he’d entered the temple and taken the Oath of Atonement, the same as every other supplicant.

What we did next, whether we survived the gates and lifted the curse, it was bigger than just the two of us. I could not deny that, but nor could I let the weight of all of Velora sit on my shoulders. If Garrick could, I pitied him.

Maybe that was how my coven sisters had always felt about me. It was too dark and cold to explore that line of thinking.

I sighed, my breath creating a cloud of mist between us as the world claimed the warmth my body surrendered. The sight of it sent another shiver through me. The layers of wool and linen and leather I wore just were not enough in that hour of cold.

Garrick moved again. Before I could make sense of it, a wave of pure darkness flashed before my eyes and something heavy settled over my shoulders.

It took me several seconds to comprehend what warmth felt like again. The scent of cinnamon and wine clung to the thick fur lining that brushed against my cheeks. The heat from his body still warmed the cloak as it settled into place around me.

I opened my mouth to thank him, but his words from earlier weighed my tongue down and kept it from forming the words. He did not want my thanks. Fine. That would not stop me from appreciating the warmth of his cloak. It dragged on the ground, but if he noticed, he did not point it out.

While I’d been busy reveling in the warmth, he’d already turned and taken a few steps, aiming slightly east of the direction I’d taken.

Maybe he’d found a better place to sleep.

Anywhere was an improvement on the stink of Rilk’s blood.

I did a quick sweep of the area with my eyes, looking for anything that I might have dropped in the attack.

Garrick was already halfway across the clearing when he turned back, smirk nowhere to be seen. “Let’s go. We are not skulking around in last place.”

I frowned, considering the meaning behind those words. He could not be implying that we keep walking, in the middle of the night. After the day we’d had at the Mercy Gate. And the attack I’d just survived.

“It is not a race,” I huffed.

Garrick turned and kept walking. “Says the loser.”

I stomped after him. “Is this a game to you?”

“These gates are dangerous. If you lose, you die. I would have thought you’d learned that lesson in the last day, if not the last hour.

The sooner we get to the next temple, the more time we have to eat, rest, and avail ourselves of their healers.

If you’ve failed to notice, I have not. You are a mess. ”

Any gratitude I’d felt for the cloak evaporated. The sooner we got to the temple, the less time he had to babysit me. That’s what he meant.

I was a mess, but I hardly needed him to point it out.

And I certainly did not need to be minded like a child.

I was the senior here. I’d put his age at thirty or forty years; a man in his prime.

But at three hundred and seventy-seven years since my resurrection, I was a witch in her full power.

Or I would have been, if I had not been ousted from my coven.

Which Garrick had no way of knowing. Humans did not know the ways of witches. He could not know that my power was diminished, my very life in jeopardy the longer I remained on this desolate, cursed continent without my coven’s communal power to sustain me.

Which meant he said all that just to irritate me.

I thought I had ice in my veins, but Garrick the Red made my blood boil .

Had I admired that smirk on his irritating face? Maybe I was na?ve, though not for the reasons he’d insinuated. His life depended on mine, but Garrick did not like me. We were not friends or even allies. We were prisoners in the Lifebind.

Any smiles or smirks he directed my way? They were to serve whatever twisted purpose he had for attempting the gates in the first place.

I pulled the cloak around my shoulders and stomped off through the snow. “Let’s go.”

That was when an ominous thought occurred to me. I had my reasons for attempting the gates. But I still had not heard Garrick’s. The more time I spent in his company, the less I was certain I wanted to.