Page 39 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

“No,” I groaned at the hand shaking my shoulder. I’d only just gone to sleep. And by some mercy from Seraxa, it had once again been dreamless. Actual sleep, not the charade that Garrick and I had put on the night before.

Someone whispered, and there was that bony hand again.

“No,” I growled, rolling in my bunk and throwing an arm over my shoulder. The back of my hand connected with someone’s face, a yelp echoing off the carved walls. No one was grabbing my shoulder anymore. That was all I cared about.

I started to roll back to my stomach?—

A strong hand caught my wrist. I recognized the size and breadth of that hand, even half-asleep. Which meant I wrenched away harder, even as my back arched in a completely involuntary and wholly humiliating attempt to get closer to him.

“It appears our first sacrifice is sleep,” his voice rumbled, still husky and rough from slumber. My stomach flipped over inside of me. Is that how he would sound?—

“Stop!” I screeched, to no effect.

Garrick dragged me upright and to the edge of my bed. I was so disoriented, I did not fight him half as hard as I should have. But reality was slowly sliding into place. The other supplicants already stood at the door of the dormitory, each flanked by an acolyte in their customary emerald robes.

Nash had arrived in the late afternoon, Nimra an hour after him. The time of making small talk had passed. We all kept well clear of one another. Except for Garrick, who lurked behind me like a shadow.

Garrick only allowed me to shake him off once I put my feet to the stone floor and started dressing.

A mass of green hunched over the end of the bed, rubbing at their eye.

I recognized the other acolyte, rubbing the injured one’s back and murmuring something about Xyta.

But this time, Tomin did not look at me and wink. He did not look at me at all.

I am alone.

Which was exactly what I deserved.

I begrudgingly joined the procession of supplicants, Garrick at my back.

There was no parade around the temple this time and certainly no breakfast. Varian and her minions marched us out of the dormitory and into a dark hall that challenged even my heightened senses.

I reached out a hand to find the wall that I could sense but not quite see.

Like the rest of the temple, it was roughly hewn.

I kept my hand there, letting the solid rock anchor me as we walked deeper and deeper into the mountain.

Eventually, we started to climb. The ancient power in my veins increased the flow of blood to my organs, but my breath was still coming fast by the time the path leveled out. At least it did not burn like it had when Garrick dragged me through the mountains.

Twin pinpricks of golden light appeared before us. They grew with each step until I could recognize two torches burning, an expanse of dark stone about the length of a man between them. Varian led us directly to them, the acolytes guiding us into a line.

The emerald robed acolytes turned as one to Varian. She bowed her head, “The Sacrifice Gate awaits. Only the supplicants may pass.”

We all turned back to the torches, expecting something to happen. But it remained a wall of solid stone. Retreating footsteps told me that Varian, as usual, would not be any help. I glanced over my shoulder, noting Tomin at her side. He did not look back.

“What now?” Nimra wondered aloud.

Alize was already at one of the torches, examining the flame and where the metal bracket anchored into the stone.

Nash yelled back at the retreating parade of acolytes. He had his greatsword out. I wasn’t afraid of him, exactly. Wary, certainly. But with Garrick at my back… and that sound…

That sound. It was fuzzy and indistinct, hard to detect over the voices of the others. A low hum that lurked beneath everything else. It set me buzzing, the combination of voices and the pulsing sound grating against my sharpened senses. The need to make it stop overwhelmed every other thought.

The wall.

Alize manipulated the flame of the torch using her wind magic. But she was wrong. I felt it in every bone and every thrum of power in my body. The humming came from the wall.

I laid my hand against the stone. Everything went silent. For one blessed moment, my senses were not accosted by what the Dark God called gifts.

Then a collective gasp of awe echoed behind me. It took me a few beats to understand. I was too distracted by the flood of power inside of me, yawning awake after a night of slumber. But it was not just flooding inside of me, it was flowing into the wall itself.

Cool blue light spread out from my hand across the wall, etching patterns that had been invisible before. I recognized the curved lines and geometric shapes. Runes. I’d been thrice marked with them.

But the others…

“What is she doing? What are those markings?” Nash snarled. “She’s trying to bring down the wall on us!”

I felt the shift in the air as his greatsword moved, but I could not pull my hand away. A wall of strength and menace solidified at my back. Garrick.

If he killed Nash for his threats, I was powerless to intervene. All of my attention and power focused on the wall, on the still spreading runes. The mountain itself pulled the power from me, demanding it as the price of passage. I was nothing more than a conduit.

As suddenly as the flow of power had begun, it stopped. A border appeared, a limit. I stumbled backward, but Garrick was there. He caught my elbow, just enough to steady me.

I straightened, coming back to the world around me. Garrick’s hand lingered on my upper arm, his warmth pressing in at my back. I took another step backward from the wall to get a better look at what my power had wrought.

Garrick did not anticipate the move. He remained in place, the curve of my bottom and the softness at my sides pressing against his hard lines. Another hum, so low I could barely hear it, slid past my senses. Almost a groan. Almost certainly Garrick’s.

I found myself turning away from the wall—less impressed by its strange power than by the change in the man pressed against me.

Garrick’s face was nearly impassive. He had not exclaimed with the others. But he wasn’t smirking either. He watched me with… expectation. His eyes had narrowed ever so slightly, and his usually decadent mouth settled into a straight line. And that muscle in his jaw ticked.

For once, the intensity in his turquoise gaze did not overwhelm me. For once, it felt like I was the one holding the power, holding him in place with my own intensity.

I felt his chest move as he breathed in and out, and the softer lift of a soundless chuckle as the corner of his mouth curled up in that infernal smirk. “Well done, witch.”

My eyes followed the angle of his mouth up to his eyes, still expectant and fully focused on me. “You knew.”

He lowered his chin a fraction of an inch in acknowledgment. “Power calls to power.”

We were too close. My backside was no longer pressed against him, but my front. The curve of my breasts against the hard muscles of his chest and abdomen. My stomach pillowing out beneath the edge of my laced bustier, rubbing against—more hardness.

Before I could process that, Garrick’s hands landed on my shoulders. Even through my cloak, I could feel the interminable heat of him. But he did not give me long to savor it. He turned me around to face the glowing wall of runes and then pulled his hands away.

The runes spread out from where I’d laid my hand in a spiraling pattern. The golden spiral. I recognized it instantly, even etched in blue rather than gold. Alize skimmed her fingertips over the pattern, but she said nothing. She must recognize it. She was fae.

Nimra moved closer, leaning in to examine the runes, though neither she nor Nash made any move to touch them.

I began to pick out shapes I recognized.

There were the symbols for earth, air, fire, and water, the four bounds of the witches’ power.

My eyes found one that appeared to be a corruption of the mark now tattooed on the inside of my wrist, the symbol of Garrick and I’s Lifebind.

And there was the same rune that was tattooed upon my forehead, though in this context it took on another meaning.

“They chase their will beyond all bounds, and reap the debt they sow…”

“In loss they find the cost of pride, to sacrifice the soul,” Alize finished.

Our gazes collided, her magic, my power. For a single beat, I forgot to hate her. I was too distracted by the overlap, the congruity between us when none should exist.

But the sound of stone scraping against stone dissolved the moment.

The wall before us shifted, the runes hollowing out, rocks the size of my fist falling to the stone floor of the tunnel, until nothing was left but an arched passageway with a single glowing rune at its apex.

The message was clear—step through.