Page 42 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

“A witch. It has been many years since one of your kind made it to my gate.” Xyta rose for me, which I did not consider a good omen. They looked me over with as much interest as that cat once had its mouse, as if deciding which part would make for the most succulent first bite.

I willed the ice in my veins to hold me still, to keep me from twitching under their gaze. “You are Xyta.”

Their smile deepened until a dimple appeared in their right cheek. Right, but not left. A tingle of awareness started in my chest, directly between my breasts, where my heart had once beat.

Xyta motioned to the seat across from them.

I moved toward it but waited until they took theirs before lowering myself into the chair.

Like so many I’d encountered, it was too narrow for my frame.

The stone arms clung to my hips uncomfortably.

I tried to keep my face neutral, but from the sparkle in Xyta’s eyes, I guessed that I had failed.

I did not want their attention on me, not like that. Not reading me. They were a deity; for all I knew, they could read every thought in my head. But that did not mean I had to make it easier.

“Why this form?” I asked, stilling the impulse to shift in the chair to try and make myself more comfortable.

The deity shrugged their delicate shoulders. “I take whichever form pleases me—which is usually the one that will most unnerve the person sitting across this table.”

I blinked. They had taken this form… for me?

I looked over my shoulder to where Garrick waited near the top of the arena, watching me intently. Did he… did he see a different form of the deity than I did?

“Do you not recognize your mother’s face?”

I turned back slowly, certain I had misheard them. Xyta waited, legs crossed beneath the golden velvet dress, a warm smile on their face.

A smile I remembered so vaguely, I could not have put a name to it.

But that dimple… Janessa had had the same one, just on one side, just on her right cheek.

And the dark hair that hung in loose waves, not straight but not quite curled, was a very particular shade of dark brown.

The same as Rylynn’s had been, and then Rowellyn’s, and now Kyrelle. The same as mine.

“She died when I was very young,” I said.

“And you have walked this continent for many centuries.”

You have forgotten your own mother , Xyta’s cat smile said. You should be ashamed.

And I was. “I have.”

Xyta’s eyes lit with the victory. “Perhaps I should have chosen this form instead.” They waved their hand, and instead of my mother’s middle-aged form, now Rylynn sat before me, as lovely and beautiful as she had been on the day of her betrothal celebration.

“Or this? She scares you, though you would never admit it to yourself or any other.” Rylynn’s skin paled to an unnatural white, the texture and color of her hair changing and darkening until an unmistakable face looked back at me.

Xyta even got the condescending tilt of Maura’s mouth right.

I looked back over my shoulder. Garrick had not shifted, his expression unchanged. He watched me intently but showed nothing else. No flicker in his jaw, no lift to the half-moon scar by his eye. He had not seen Xyta’s change. The spectacle was for me alone.

Who did Garrick see? I could not let myself wonder. Not when everything I cared about hung on the next few words.

“Take whichever form pleases you,” I said, training my eyes forward. I would not let myself look back at Garrick again.

Xyta uncrossed their arms. This time, I stared down the thick form of my father.

Mistake.

What I felt for my father was the least complicated of the visages they’d shown me.

I had nothing but hate for the man who had sold my family to the fae.

The father who had abandoned his children after the death of their mother, more concerned with fortune than any of the three daughters left in his keeping.

But I did my best not to let Xyta see any of that. I let the hate shine out, they would expect that. But everything else, I kept at bay by folding my hands together in my lap. I told myself that it was not my own hand gripping the other, but Garrick’s. I imagined warmth instead of cold.

It worked well enough to cause the deity to sit back in their seat and reconsider me.

“You had two reasons for entering the temple,” they finally said.

“Yes.” I grasped my hands tighter together in my lap. The conversation with the Deity of Sacrifice was proceeding exactly as I had expected and feared.

Xyta shrugged as if our conversation covered nothing more controversial than the weather, and then said simply— “Choose.”

My stomach jolted. I’d expected them to tell me which one they expected me to sacrifice. They were the Deity of Sacrifice. They must know which would hurt me more to lose. But they twisted a different knife instead.

For a little more than a week, for the first time in nearly four hundred years, the two competing interests in my world had been aligned. And just like that, Xyta set them against each other once again.

“I cannot,” I choked out. There was no hiding my distress from the deity, no matter how hard I clasped my hands.

My hands weren’t even clasped anymore, I realized.

They gripped the dark stone arms of the chair, and that was frost climbing down the legs, spreading across the ground.

I was perilously close to losing control again. “I… haven’t I already… didn’t I when?—”

“When what , Koryn?”

Haven’t I already chosen? My mind screamed. When I ?—

I slammed a dagger of ice down on that thought.

I could not even think it, it was too dangerous.

Whether Xyta had some special power that allowed them to see supplicants’ history or they were looking directly into my head, I could not let them have that memory.

There would be no coming back if they did.

Xyta watched from their chair. Reclined, but carefully noting every movement I made. When I did not answer, they shrugged their shoulders again. Strange, their mannerisms overlaid on the face and body of my father. It was enough of a distraction that I reclaimed a bit more control over my power.

“If you will not choose, then you are free to go,” they said. They looked up toward Garrick, already considering their next victim.

“Where?” I asked, even though I suspected the answer.

“I do not care. Follow your blonde friend from earlier as she bumbles her way through the mountains, back to her precious village. So precious, not even the fate of Velora was worth its destruction.” Nimra. She’d refused to make the sacrifice Xyta required, just as Garrick thought.

But… “You let her go.”

Xyta pretended that they were not paying attention to our conversation, but their smile deepened. “For now.”

“A gate is always near,” I whispered.

Xyta was not looking at Garrick any longer. “A god is always watching.”

“You will come for her.”

“She made her choice.”

Did Nimra understand? Even though Xyta had allowed her to walk away unharmed…

it was temporary. No one could walk away from the gates.

Xyta had gotten their sacrifice either way.

By refusing to sacrifice whatever—or whomever—Xyta had demanded, Nimra was sacrificing herself.

But it would not get her through the gate and onto the next. She would just be dead.

It was not just a choice between my coven and Kyrelle that Xyta had presented to me, but between those and my own survival.

I could try to get off of Velora before they came for me.

But this encounter had solidified in my mind what I’d been foolish enough to forget in my misery and desperation—there was no escaping the Seven Gates.

Not for the residents of Velora. We either lived under their curse or we died trying to break it.

The gods ruled us all, fae, witch, and human.

But who ruled the gods? Or what ?

My tattoos burned. I knew what I had to do next, dangerous as it was. Garrick had the right of it. Xyta was a bored deity. Now was my chance to be entertaining. I leaned forward in my chair, unflinching. I would have to be made of ice in order to brazen this out.

“I will make you a bargain.”

Xyta’s eyes shone. The pupils—my father’s pupils—dilated in his hazel eyes. The rough flesh of his cheeks flushed to a ruddy, excited color.

“You have dealt with my kind before,” they said, leaning forward to match me.

“As you said, I have walked this continent for hundreds of years. I have learned a few things.” I did not dare tell them how I knew. I would take that knowledge with me to meet my Dark God when my end finally came.

“If I allow you to pass through my gate now,” they said, tapping a finger against their lips, “I will demand two future sacrifices in return.”

I exhaled slowly. I should have had terms ready. But the idea hadn’t formed until I was there before them. I’d have to do what I could with what they’d presented.

“But neither of those sacrifices will be my coven, nor my… Kyrelle.” I did not have a word for what Kyrelle was to me.

Ancestor, relative, not sister or niece or—it did not matter.

So long as neither she nor my coven could be taken from me, I would manage.

There was nothing else that mattered to me.

Xyta nodded, though their muddy blond brows drew together. They’d hoped I would not figure out that loophole. “And what shall your punishment be if you refuse either of the future sacrifices I demand?”

I knew there was only one answer they would accept. “My life.”

Xyta’s smile made my stomach turn. Not just because it belonged to my father, a man I’d longed for in life and hated in death. But because of the joy they found at the prospect.

Even in the rage I’d felt after maiming Rylynn’s betrothed, I had struggled with the covenants of my kind. The revulsion that filled every pore of my being proved that, even now, I was less than. I might gain my place back with my coven, but I still would not fit with them.

Garrick was right. My heart still ruled me, even if it did not pump the blood through my veins.

It did not matter.

They were the only sisters I had left. There was no place for me but with my coven . A witch without her coven is nothing .

Xyta licked their lips. “Do you agree to my terms? Even knowing the price will be twice as painful?”

I did not tell them that nothing could be more painful than what I’d already endured. That this bargain saved the only two things left on this cursed continent that I cared about. If they could not see that in my mind using whatever power or magic they possessed, I would not give it freely.

“I agree.”

Xyta waved their hand, and the passageway opened.

I braced my hands on the arms of the chair, shoving it down past my hips as I stood. I finally let myself look to Garrick. He was closer. When had he gotten closer? How had I not heard it?

He waited just above the lowest level of the arena, his intense gaze focused wholly on me.

I tried to reflect back the words he’d give me.

Xyta is a bored immortal. All they want is entertainment.

I’d given it to them in the form of a bargain.

I hoped for Garrick’s sake that whatever they asked him to sacrifice, he could give it.

Then I turned and walked through the passageway before the bloodthirsty deity could take back the bargain we’d made.

I waited in the darkness on the other side of the passageway. I could see the light at the other end, smell the cold mountain breeze that beckoned me to freedom. A false freedom, at that. It would take at least a fortnight to reach the Devotion Gate, but reach it I must.

Garrick would appear. If there was anyone suited to go through the gates, to conquer all seven, it was Garrick the Red. The legendary, half-fae bounty hunter.

I’d asked for his motivation for attempting the gates, and he’d given me a damning secret instead.

Alize no doubt knew about his birth. He’d been sent to Balar Shan so that he might know his father… a father who had done unspeakable things to his mortal mother… a new rage formed in my veins, as bright and sharp as any frost I’d ever shaped for myself.

I was not the only one in Velora who blamed the fae for the death of the continent and loved ones. If the world knew of Garrick’s parentage, he would be killed. If Nash learned of it… Garrick could take Nash. He’d proved that again and again.

But Nash had also shown that he was able to convince others to join his cause. If he could convince Alize to ally with him, it might be enough. Enough magic, enough malice, to kill a witch and a half-fae bounty hunter.

The odds were infinitesimal. Alize did not like Garrick, that was clear from their exchanges, but she’d never shown any violence against him.

And yet.

I would keep Garrick’s secret.

There was more at play here than I was able to fully comprehend. The gods themselves had a stake in whether a supplicant made it through the Seven Gates. If I was playing games with the gods, then it was possible the other supplicants were as well.

I leaned my head back against the dark stone, letting my eyes fall closed as I waited.

A minute or an hour or an eternity later, the stone shifted and heavy footsteps I would have recognized anywhere approached.

Any softness or concern that had been in Garrick’s face before was gone, the cold mask back in place. He’d retied his hair, the pale blond now tight where earlier the tendrils had fallen forward to soften the severe lines of his jaw.

Not blond, I realized. Silver. Like a fae.

I swallowed the observation.

“What did they ask for?” I said instead.

Garrick paused only long enough to look me up and down, the way he did each morning before we started out. His customary check that there was nothing about me that would slow us down. The acolytes must be waiting somewhere ahead with our provisions for the next stretch of the journey.

He did not meet my eyes before turning away. “We’ve told each other enough secrets for today, Koryn.”