Page 40 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

Just like each of the previous gates, we were transported.

There was magic and power at work here, too.

I turned, looking over my shoulder and then up, up, up to the craggy mountain peak that rose overhead.

The archway sealed behind us, leaving the five remaining supplicants standing on the side of a frozen mountain, with matching peaks in every direction.

The sky overhead was a cloudy white that matched the snow-capped peaks.

It was a wonder of nature, and the frosted power within me reveled at the brutal beauty.

But there was nothing natural about what spread out below us.

Just as the temple had been carved from the dark stone of the mountain, so was the arena. Multiple tiers descended, each about the height of my waist. Seats for viewing whatever was about to take place. My skin crawled with dread at the prospect of facing another crowd of not-real people.

There were no nooses at the center of the area, at least. It was totally bare, except for a singular round table carved of the same dark gray stone as the arena and the mountains. The table looked eerily like an altar. And this was the Sacrifice Gate.

Nash began climbing down. Going first had given him an advantage at the Mercy Gate.

Alize and Nimra followed.

But I found my eyes straying away from the arena to the passes between the mountains.

They would be difficult to navigate, but I had my active power to help me.

The temptation to leave was nearly as powerful as it had been outside of the temple two days before.

If I made straight for the coast, I could be there in less than a week.

I had no money for passage, but I could wait until night and sneak aboard a ship.

Use spells judiciously to keep myself hidden.

I might exhaust what remained of my power, as Maura had always warned, but if I got away, I would pray to whatever new gods awaited on a different continent…

Except Garrick would never let me go.

And with the curse still looming, Kyrelle would die.

Garrick reached for my elbow again, but I jerked forward, avoiding him. I was afraid if he touched me, I might shatter.

Nash was almost to the center of the arena, just one level of seating left to climb, when the air around us heated suddenly. A pulse of power rolled through the air. A singular figure appeared at the center of the arena, along with two chairs on either side of the stone table.

The dark-haired figure tilted their head back, scanning each of us with their gaze. And then settled, a smile curving the pale face.

“Alize.”

We all stopped exactly where we’d been. All except for Alize, who climbed gracefully down with sure, unhurried movements. Nash glared at her as she moved past him, but made no move to reach for the greatsword he’d sheathed at his belt.

The moment her feet touched the stone center of the arena, another pulse of power moved outward and over us. I braced myself against the stone, but none of the others reacted. Was I the only one to feel it? Because I was an immortal?

The dark-haired figure motioned for Alize to sit, taking the other chair for themselves.

The shape of her body declared her as female, well-clothed in a rich copper gown and matching mantle trimmed in white fur.

Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders, but sections were braided back from her crown.

My sharpened eyes allowed me to judge her as somewhere in her thirties, even at this distance. But I could not hear what she said.

Her mouth moved, but the sound did not reach us.

That second pulse of power had been some sort of a shield going into place. Or maybe a ward… though the female did not have the pointed ears of the fae. Maybe it had been Alize who set the ward, or some nuanced use of her wind magic.

Beside me, Garrick sat on the stone, his legs reaching the ground easily. I mimicked the movement, mine dangling. I drew them up beneath me instead, irritated by the comparison.

Garrick’s mouth quirked, but he said nothing.

Neither Nimra nor Nash spoke, though each eventually sat. The conversation between Alize and the female stretched on.

Usually, I found silence a relief. The lack of input to my heightened senses was a rare balm.

But this silence was too charged to be calming.

The pull of the mountains and the escape they offered…

the weight of what awaited in the arena when the female called my name…

the heat of Garrick just a scant foot to my right.

It was as oppressive as any sound. I rolled my shoulders, trying and failing to dispel the tension building there.

“Is this it? Just talking?” I said, quietly enough I could have been talking to myself.

But Garrick responded, just like I’d secretly hoped he would. Damn my nerves and the lurch in my stomach when he did.

“Would you prefer hanging or running over ice fields?”

My hands curled at my sides. “I would prefer to know what I am facing.”

“Then watch long enough to find out.”

Frost spread along the stone despite the heat that lingered over the arena.

Garrick chuckled, the sound so low and deep I felt it more than heard it. “Patience, witch.”

But he was right, Dark God damn him. A few minutes later, Alize stood. She inclined her head to the female as a passageway appeared to her right, carved right into the stone of the levels where the rest of us sat. Alize walked through it, and then the stone stairs reformed, the exit gone.

The dark-haired female reclined in her seat.

If it wasn’t so far-fetched, I’d have described her expression as bored.

She twirled her hand, and a golden wine goblet appeared in her grasp.

She took a long, unhurried drink before finally deigning to turn her gaze up to those of us waiting in the upper levels of the arena.

“Nimra.”

Nimra kept her gaze forward and focused as she climbed down from her seat about halfway from the base of the arena.

The series of events repeated itself. The female motioned her toward the empty seat, Nimra took it, and the two began talking.

Again, we could not hear what they said.

So, the silence was endemic to the gate.

Even so, I found myself bracing my hands on either side of my wide hips and leaning forward. It was difficult at this angle to see Nimra’s expression, only that her mouth moved every now and again. The female across from her, however, I could see clearly. And she was no longer bored.

My family briefly kept a cat in the aftermath of my mother’s death.

Janessa found it outside, and my father had been too distracted with building his own wealth to bother telling her not to bring it into the house.

Once it started catching mice and leaving them on her bed, my sister’s interest in the animal had evaporated.

The expression on the female’s face reminded me of that cat, one paw holding the tail of the mouse, the other pawing at the poor creature as it tried to squirm away.

Nimra’s mouth hung open. The angle was wrong. I could not tell if it was shock or anger or something else.

But when she pushed out of her chair and started climbing, I knew what emotion it was that had my own mouth dangling open.

The passageway did not appear. Instead, Nimra climbed the oversized stair levels of the arena. We all watched, even Nash, as she crested the top level. She paused, looking not at us but back at the female still seated in the pit. The gold-clad figure lifted her wine glass in silent toast.

Nimra turned away and started hiking for the nearest pass between the snowy peaks. Her shoulders were shaking.

My own quivered as a shiver snaked down my spine. “Why would she leave?”

Garrick’s voice was grim. “Xyta asked for something she was unwilling to sacrifice.”

Xyta.

The dark-haired female at the center of the arena was not a female at all.

And not a make-believe creation of the gate, like the human crowd from before, but the creator of the gate.

It was Xyta, the Deity of Sacrifice. Twin to Ramkael, the God of Devotion.

Their gates were one after the other, the siblings never truly separated.

If that was Xyta… a form of Xyta. The gods were too big, too expansive to be contained in a single form, mortal or immortal in frame.

Xyta themself was there in the arena, speaking to each of the supplicants in turn.

Not just speaking… but asking for the sacrifice that would allow them to pass through the gate.

Whatever it was, it was not pain—at least not physical, visible pain.

Whatever the sacrifice was, Alize had been willing to make it.

But Nimra had not.

What would be such a sacrifice that Nimra was unwilling to make it?

She had not told me her reason for attempting the gates during our brief stint of pseudo-friendship.

But it was not so difficult to deduce that she must have been motivated by the needs of a loved one.

She was relatively healthy, clothed in worn but lovingly crafted garments.

She came from a home with others who cared for her.

Those people—her family—had to be her impetus for attempting the gates.

What sacrifice could Xyta have possibly asked for that was monumental enough for Nimra to forsake her family? A family where true love was present, like that between Kyrelle and her father.

Kyrelle.

My blood pounded in my veins. The power that I’d thought exhausted by the runed wall roared back to life.

There was only one sacrifice that would have made Nimra walk away from the Seven Gates. Her family. Xyta had asked her to sacrifice the very thing that had driven her to try to lift the curse on Velora in the first place.

I dug my fingernails into the mound of my palm, trying to hold back the torrent of power that fought the meager restraints within me.