Page 31 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

The acolytes sent us on our way with a small parcel of food each, enough for four days’ worth of meals between the Justice Gate and the Sacrifice Gate.

Hopefully, the packs would get larger when we reached the later gates, where weeks of travel would stretch between one gate and the next.

If we had to hunt or depend upon our own resources, the gates might not be the thing to kill us.

Garrick moved easily with his pack attached to his back.

I was slow. He did not seem to care. He set a grueling pace as we turned northwest, following the curve of the mountains toward the Sacrifice Gate.

The forest thickened as we moved into the foothills, providing cover from the falling snow that started midafternoon.

At least it did not add to the deep layer that already covered the ground.

“You could use your power to make it easier for yourself,” Garrick suggested about midday.

“You could keep your mouth shut about things you know nothing about,” I shot back.

I could have used my power. But touching it felt abhorrent. After everything I’d put my sister through, after the death I’d condemned that woman to in the Justice Gate, I did not deserve to have things easier.

My own misery kept my mouth shut for the rest of the day, even when Garrick pushed us through dusk and did not stop to make camp beneath a knot of evergreens until the sun was well below the horizon.

Garrick made a fire. I created a bed for myself using the thick cloak and the pack of food. My muscles ached, but not quite as badly as they had before the Justice Gate. I settled into my nest and told myself I was watching Garrick to judge his reaction to what we’d endured.

He moved with precise movements that spoke of experience.

He’d built a thousand fires. His pale blond hair had come loose over the course of the day.

Once the kindling had caught, he paused to loosen the knot at the back of his head and retie it.

He left half of it loose, as usual, falling just to his shoulders.

Despite the fact that we’d both spent the day hiking into the mountains, those shoulders were solid and moved steadily. No quakes of tired muscles for him.

I cursed my immortal body.

Fae could live for nearly a thousand years.

Not true immortals, but for that span of time they enjoyed unnatural strength and speed, heightened senses, and swift healing abilities.

Witches could live forever. True immortality.

Our organs never wore out, our faces did not age from the time of our resurrection.

But while the Dark God gifted us with power and sharpened senses, we could die as easily as humans.

We suffered their ailments as well—sickness, exhaustion.

Because while fae were born with their gifts, witches carried a curse of our own — the legacy of humanity. We were all born of woman and man.

I was so busy watching Garrick’s mortal body and lamenting the faults in my immortal one that I did not actually track what he was doing until he shoved a bowl into my hands.

The confusion must have shown on my face.

“You have not eaten at all today,” he said, crossing his arms over his body. He stared down at me expectantly. Like a child.

And like a petulant child, I placed the bowl untouched in the snow beside me. “I am not hungry.”

For once, it was true.

Since heaving my breakfast on the ground of the fortress, the thought of food was impossible. Even if a headache was beginning to form at the base of my skull. I sipped some water instead.

Garrick turned that intense stare at me, like he was trying to see into my soul. Which he could not do, I reminded myself. Even if he could, my insides were in such disarray even I could not make sense of them.

For once, though, I stared right back. He’d been at the Justice Gate, too. He’d heard the crimes. No matter which one he suspected belonged to me, they were all heinous.

But one of them belonged to him. Maybe he felt as turned around as I did.

The longer he stared, the more I doubted it. Despite my earlier ruminations on the state of his soul, the events of the day had me wondering if Garrick the Red felt anything—except annoyance with me.

He was the one who broke the stare. He picked up the bowl from the snow and walked back to where he’d set his things on the other side of the fire. But instead of sitting down to eat, he swiped up the bandolier of weapons he’d dropped to the ground earlier and buckled it across his chest.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he returned to my side of the fire, dragging his foot through the snow in a wide arc.

“If you are not hungry, then you will work up an appetite.” He stood at the edge of the circle he’d drawn in the snow. “Get out your knife.”

He wanted me to fight him. After a day of trudging through the snow, after the hell of the Justice Gate, with only breaks to relieve myself? Not fucking likely.

“I have plenty of reserves,” I said. Without thinking, I rolled my shoulders, putting my full breasts on display. As if they could be hidden.

Garrick shifted his weight, looking away quickly. The firelight reflected off of his hair, turning the blond nearly silver, and into his eyes as they scanned the clearing he’d selected. I’d never seen a color like that, where the turquoise almost glowed when in the right light.

If I did not know how much he detested being saddled with me, I might have mistaken that glint for interest, especially given how quickly he looked away.

You could be attracted to someone and still detest them.

The way my stomach flipped as he reached his arms overhead, the muscles of his chest shifting beneath his shirt and vest, was an infuriating example.

“You should learn to use your size to your advantage,” he said, selecting a curved blade the length of my forearm from his bandolier.

I actually laughed aloud. But I also came to my feet.

“I barely reach your shoulder.” I stepped closer to him to prove the point.

He did not move, nor lift his blade from where it hung in a deceptively loose grip at his side. “Opponents will underestimate you because of your height.”

I’d been underestimated my entire life. Human, woman, witch.

“Use your weight as a weapon. Put it behind your punches and your stabs, and you will be able to take down opponents much taller than you.”

My fingers tingled with power, but I did not reach for the dagger tucked into my belt. “Like you?”

His eyes narrowed, the turquoise flaring impossibly between cerulean and emerald. “The day you can take me down is the day your Dark God walks upon Velora.”

I forgot that I was determined not to use my power. It was so much a part of me that I summoned it without thinking, letting it form the dagger of ice in my hand from just that morning. How had so little time passed, and yet so much occurred?

I let the hilt melt just a little, reforming around the shape of my palm. “Cocky words for a human.”

That infernal smirk curled the corner of his mouth, lifting the little half-moon scar near his eye as well. “You have not yet shown me a part of yourself that I fear, witch.”

He swiped up with his blade, catching my wrist and knocking the ice dagger loose with ease. I cursed, jumping backward just in time to prevent that dagger from coming down on my shoulder.

I did not have time to create another before he was on me again. I sidestepped, but Garrick used his height to yank me back by the neck of my leather tunic. I was so grossly overmatched that it was pathetic. Unless I was willing to unleash my full power, he would always best me.

He might even then , a small, hateful part of me whispered.

I had already proved myself a coward once today. What did it matter if he thought me one now? His next jab skated off my cheek. I’d barely tried to sidestep it.

Garrick pushed into my space, annoyance building on his face. The tightening of his jaw. The flicker by his eye. I did not even flinch as he pulled another blade from his bandolier and pressed it into my palm. “Fight me like you mean it.”

I curled my fingers around it because I was afraid that if I didn’t, it would fall to the ground and stab me in the foot. Not because I liked the way it felt to have a blade that close to him.

I should have been cold. I’d barely moved, and the fire wasn’t throwing off much heat. But my entire body tingled with awareness. Another natural reaction. And instead of hating myself, I turned that hate back on Garrick. How dare he make me feel alive when I’d sentenced that woman to death?

“I don’t want to fight you at all,” I hissed, my breath clouding the cold air between us.

He did not retreat, lifting his curved blade so that it was positioned just beneath my ribcage. With one shove, he could have hit a vital organ that would have me bleeding out in the snow.

“Because you blame yourself for their deaths?” he pressed the tip of his blade into my tunic along with his words.

I did not move. Let him fucking kill me. He’d die, too, thanks to the brand inked on the inside of our wrists. And maybe the world would be a better place because of it.

But Kyrelle would die. The curse would linger over Velora. I would die a disgrace and disappointment to my coven.

When that wound did not work, Garrick pressed against another. He understood perfectly what Alize had meant. “Aren’t you afraid? You’re too clever not to have figured out that those crimes belonged to the supplicants.”

He should be scared of me. I’d ruined my sister’s life—a sister who’d ignored me for years, but who had lost just as much as I had.

Rylynn had not been innocent, but she certainly had not deserved the life I’d condemned her to.

A man she married out of love, who would forever blame her for what had happened to him.

A marriage that turned to duty and then to something much darker.

“You cannot kill me,” I reminded him, even as he pressed the tip of his knife through the first layer of clothing with precise pressure.

Past the leather, then through the wool underdress. “The other supplicants can.”

I shoved him away, two fists to the middle of his chest. He moved quickly enough to avoid the end of the dagger he’d placed in my hand. I tucked it into my belt. I did not need a blade to do damage.

I ripped off my leather gloves, throwing them down into the snow. I did not technically need my hands bare to access my power, but it always felt more real, more visceral. More powerful.

I threw my hands out, plumes of ice flowing from my palms to encircle his legs and hold him in place.

But Garrick moved quickly, anticipating the move like he’d seen it before.

He shifted his center of gravity lower to keep his balance and used the same ice I’d laid down to increase his speed, sliding toward me with inhuman speed.

He wanted me to fight? Fine. I’d fucking fight.

If it could wipe that self-satisfied smirk away from his face, I’d drive one of my ice daggers into his gut.

But before I could summon one, he’d reached me, delivering a punishing blow to the back of my knee.

My leg gave beneath me. I did not even have time to soften the ice on the ground, pain screaming as my full weight landed on the joint.

But now I had rage to fuel me. I did not aim for his feet, but his chest. A blast of frigid wind knocked him back long enough for me to invade his space.

He recovered too fast. I swiped the new blade from my belt, determined to draw blood.

But Garrick grabbed my belt with one hand, dragging me forward and throwing me completely off balance, while his other hand swung up and caught my wrist, holding it tight over our heads.

I hadn’t even noticed him dropping or throwing or sheathing his own blade. He had me, one arm pinned between our bodies, the other overhead. Fury raged through me, ice cold. I tried to rip my hands free, but he held me tight.

“That is what I meant,” Garrick breathed, our faces too close for the words to form a cloud of condensation. The fury inside of me threatened to melt with the heat of his body, flush against mine. “Good girl.”

My blood thrummed wildly through my veins, my pulse points pounding with a new, hotter fire than the cold power that had hummed through them seconds before.

Garrick’s eyes flared wide, his mouth curling upward. Not a smirk, but a smile. The first genuine smile I’d seen on his face. His fingers were folded right around the pulse point on the inside of my wrist, right beneath the tattoo that marked our bond.

“Good to know,” he murmured.

For a second, I considered closing that space between us.

I’d challenge that infuriating smirk. I’d take what I wanted from him—his mouth, his touch, to have him as out of control as I was.

I would drive him there, make him experience all of the agony I did.

But… why? What would I gain? What would I do, other than make the impossible situation between us worse?

I ripped my arm free, and this time he let me go. “What is the point?”

Without asking, I knew that he understood the question was bigger than this moment of ill-conceived training he’d tried to force upon me.

He didn’t answer, and he did not try to regain the space I’d put between us.

He reached down, retrieving his curved blade from the ground and tucking it back into place across his chest.

“You will die,” he finally said, dropping down on his side of the fire and picking up the bowl of food I’d turned down. “We will die.”

I watched him eat through the flames. My stomach rumbled, but I had no desire to feed it.

The weight of the day pressed in on me, making even sitting up too painful to bear.

“You were at the Justice Gate. You heard the crimes,” I said as I settled in, pulling the fur-lined cloak up over my shoulder. “Maybe we don’t deserve to live.”