Page 37 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

BEFORE

As a human, I’d always struggled to rouse in the morning. My earliest memories were of Janessa’s voice, chastising me for still not being dressed for breakfast. But as a witch, I found solace in the dawn.

Our power was strongest at night, with the moon high and the Dark God reigning. When all of my sisters retired, their power spent, I ventured out.

The coven lands held on to life longer than the rest of the continent, drawing on our vestigial power.

But the curse tightened its grip with every passing year.

Autumn was harsher than I remembered, the frost holding on longer into the day.

But on that morning the sun gilded everything in gold tones as it slipped above the eastern horizon.

It was not a long walk to the glade, but I took the steps slowly, savoring the quiet.

Within me, my power found stillness as well.

I knew if I opened my hand, I could have summoned anything my imagination could fathom.

Only when I was alone, without my senses invaded by the sharpness that was supposed to be a gift, did I feel a true sense of control.

My coven sisters spoke of their heightened senses with reverence, used them to enhance their active powers.

They’d all adjusted to the change from human to immortal without difficulty.

But for me, everything was too loud, too bright, too tactile.

My enhanced senses created a cacophony of sensation that overwhelmed me to the point of near helplessness.

But in the dawn, everything softened.

I reached the glade just as the sun’s lower curve crested the eastern mountains.

I slipped between the trees, following the bubble of the natural spring hidden in the copse of alders.

The tall, straight trees created a near-perfect circle around the spring, leaving space only for the wide, flat rock on the edge of the spring that was my favorite seat.

But it was already occupied.

A lithe figure crouched on the flat rock, her fingers threaded around a bow with an arrow already notched in place. I froze between the alders, holding my breath so that not a single sound could escape my lips.

She was not a witch. There were still a handful of covens in Velora beside my own, but they were scattered to the west and north.

One had taken over a section of land abandoned by the fae in the far east. But all of them knew where one another’s coven lands were—and what the punishment was for entering them uninvited.

There was a familiarity to the lines of her body and the tilt of her head as she peered past the spring to the thicket behind the alders.

I had not interacted with humans in decades.

Maura had confined me to the coven lands, citing my struggles to control my power.

I knew it was because of that ill-fated flight to my family home all those years before.

My sister was long dead now. There was no family for me to return to.

Perhaps it was her youth that was familiar, so different from the trenchant immortality of my sister witches.

Though our faces and bodies reflected our age at death, there was an acute difference to the way hundreds-year-old witches held those bodies.

An assurance and a resignation. None of the hopeful spring that characterized the young woman’s crouch or the eager twitch of her fingers on her bow.

Neither would remain once we were done with her.

But the others still slept. For this brief moment in time, we were alone. I could spare her.

I stepped into the glade. “You cannot hunt here.”

She did not move at first, holding that impressive stillness as if hoping that I was speaking to someone else. As if she was not fully exposed there on the flat gray rock where she’d perched.

I moved further into the glade, feet close to the edge of the spring. I either had to step into it or onto the rock. I did not want to risk her bolting deeper into the coven lands. The cold water stung, but I’d survive.

She shifted her stance quickly, spinning on her heel but remaining in that crouch with her arrow notched.

“I saw a boar,” she said, though she pointed that arrow at me.

“Then it belongs to the coven lands.” She needed to understand the danger she was in. Her brown eyes were unflinching in their intelligence as she took me in. She still did not lower her weapon.

Death might be a mercy. But an arrow to the chest was a painful way to die.

“My grandmother told stories of your kind.”

“Then you should know that my power could destroy that arrow before it ever reached me.” Not quite the truth.

Though without the overwhelming sensory input of my coven and the weight of Maura’s toxic expectations, there was a chance I’d manage it.

But I did not want to kill this girl. “You should have heeded your grandmother and stayed away.”

Finally, she lowered the bow. “We need to eat.”

I considered her again, noticing that the high cheekbones were made sharper by the hollowness in her cheeks. She was muscled but thin. A huntress who never had quite enough to build anything beyond the essential layers of muscle. Not starving—not yet. But eventually.

“Entering the coven lands is death to mortals,” I said, trying to steel my voice. Sympathy would only get her killed. The longer she lingered here, the more danger of her discovery. If my sisters found her, there would be nothing I could do. Nothing except… a new thought occurred to me.

“Unless you are willing to pay the price.”

The bow notched up a few inches. “What price?”

“The price is determined by the witch, not the mortal. If you are willing to pay my price, then you may walk away unscathed.” Maura had been drilling the covenants into me for decades.

I’d never imagined I would exploit this one.

I had little interest in torturing humans the way some of my sisters did.

“What price?” the girl repeated, her mouth curling into a sneer that looked just like?—

No. It can’t be.

“Who are you?” My throat tried to freeze around the words, but I managed to force them out.

“I should not tell you,” she said, lifting her chin in a subconscious act of defiance. Because her grandmother had told her stories, and many humans believed that telling a witch your name gave her power over you.

“That is my price,” I said. For once, my power was quiet. A frozen weight sat in my chest, colder than the spring water that had begun to freeze around my toes.

The girl considered, her eyes appraising. She looked past me, to one of the gaps in the alders. Her escape route. But she also must have seen that she’d never make it past me without some kind of intervention. She could shoot me with that arrow. I could use my power against her.

She straightened, letting the bow fall to her side. Preparing to run.

“I am Rowellyn, daughter of Karlyn, granddaughter of Rylynn, of the House of Gallatin.”

The House of Gallatin. She had not needed to list my father, her great-grandfather, as one of her ancestors, because he’d renamed the entire family line after himself.

Rylynn’s granddaughter.

It was a miracle. After what I’d done to my sister, to her fiancée… still, she’d managed to have a daughter and then a granddaughter. A granddaughter that she warned about witches.

Rightfully so.

Rowellyn was already springing past me, her price paid. I should have been thankful—Dark God, I was thankful that she was finally heeding my warnings and getting the hell out of the coven lands. But?—

“Wait.” I spun to face her, already slipping between the trees.

Her brown eyes collided with mine, and I recognized why she’d felt so familiar.

They were my sister’s eyes. I’d damned Rylynn to a life of misery.

But I could offer something to her granddaughter.

“When bow draws near to water’s edge, let creatures heed this silent pledge. ”

Whenever she hunted with the bow near a body of water, animals would be drawn to take a drink. She would find enough prey to feed herself and her family.

For a brief second, Rowellyn’s bow glowed with soft blue light. Her eyes widened, a million questions in them. But I shook my head. The sun was tracking higher overhead with every passing second.

“Go.”

Rowellyn did not ask any of those questions. Nor offer thanks, though I could not have accepted them. This was the least that I owed to my sister.

I started the walk back to my sisters, my feet heavier than before, my chest, too. I would never return to the glade. There was no peace to be found there anymore.