Page 54 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

By my estimation, we could not be more than a few days away from the Devotion Gate. We’d spent so long climbing through the mountains that it was easy to forget that was our goal—to get to another gate and try not to get ourselves killed.

Maybe we would get lucky. Other than Garrick and me, only Alize and Nash remained.

Alize was still alive. But when we sat beside our fire in various levels of tense silence, I indulged in the fantasy of Nash being eaten alive by one of the creatures that my ancient sisters had unleashed in the mountains.

The clearest sign that we neared the next gate was that Garrick no longer drove us upward.

We’d been afforded a map, though we rarely consulted it.

The mountains were guide enough. I was not looking forward to the temple, precisely.

But the prospect of an actual bed and bath was appealing, as was seeing Tomin again.

I did not let myself interrogate that urge. If a temporary friend was what it took to get me through the gates, then so be it. Getting through them was all that mattered.

Of all the gates, Ramkael was the only one I was not concerned about. I’d spent my entire immortal life devoted to my coven and the preservation of my sister’s line. I could face the Devotion Gate.

Garrick walked ahead of me, Isanara at my side. The forest had changed as we descended from the mountains. There were fewer straight fir trees, more spindly alders and sprawling maples. They had never seen the foliage of spring. Unless I made it through the Seven Gates, they never would.

My eyes drifted as we walked, scanning for any signs of life. I knew Garrick and Isanara watched as well, but I refused to be helpless. Alize had bested me in the end, but I’d felt her blood freezing in her veins under my hand. I could and would defend myself.

Light flickered in my periphery. It was probably nothing, just the movement of a leaf in the wind catching the light, but I turned reflexively.

“ The stained one,” Isanara hissed.

Garrick was at my side in the space of a breath, but all three of us came upon the scene at the same time.

The light I’d seen was not a leaf reflecting the watery sunlight.

It was a mushroom. Or rather, a ring of mushrooms. They spread out in a near-perfect circle wide enough that Garrick and I could have laid out end to end and still had space within it.

Their white stalks nearly blended into the snow, but the tops glowed.

Pale blue and green and yellow alternated in a seemingly random pattern.

Alize crouched at the edge of the circle.

Her close-cropped brown hair had grown out some since that first day in the temple of the Mercy Gate, the strands curling around her pointed ears.

I’d been too busy contemplating her death the last time I saw her to notice.

The wounds I’d given her only two days before were fully healed, no scars in sight.

My own arm boasted three stitches where she’d sliced it open. Fuck her.

Garrick stepped closer to the ring, but he did not crouch down like Alize. That now-familiar divot burrowed deep between his brows. He made no attempt to hide the worry that creased his face. “Is that a faerie ring?”

“Yes,” I said. “I have not seen one…” Since before I was made.

It took me several seconds to realize that neither Garrick nor Alize was looking at the ring of mushrooms. They both stared at me with varying levels of intensity. Alize’s hate was mingled with skepticism. Garrick… was that panic lacing his worry?

“My father traded in fae artifacts after they abandoned Velora,” I said slowly, carefully.

I was not sure what I wanted to reveal. Especially to Alize.

I’d decided not to kill her—not because I did not want to, but because I would not let my temper get the better of me until I was certain I could finish the job.

And whatever feelings she held for Garrick that kept her from throwing me over the mountain ledge also kept her hand away from the blade at her waist.

When neither of them spoke, I continued. “There were stragglers. We came upon the rings from time to time when we traveled with him to collect his treasures.”

Alize’s face twisted. “To loot fae relics.”

“Not all of us had a walled sanctuary to escape to after your kind sentenced our continent to death.”

“The gods sentenced Velora to death,” she seethed. “They decided the punishment.”

“And you were the reason they felt the need at all.”

Alize pushed to her feet. “Teach your little witch some respect, or I will put her on her ass again.”

Garrick did not move any closer to me. For once.

That faith in me—if that’s even what it was—had me lifting my chin in silent defiance.

That was why he’d let me fight Alize on the cliffside and why he had not intervened.

He needed both of us, her and me, to know that I was capable of defending myself.

“We are not in Balar Shan,” Garrick said.

Whatever that comment meant, the significance to Alize was apparent.

She straightened, wiping all of the anger from her face and replacing it with the beautiful, cruel mask she wore so well.

There was more pink than usual in her golden cheeks, but nothing else to indicate the threat she’d made moments before.

“This was not me.” She waved her hand at the faerie ring. “And I assume that it was not you.”

“Why should we believe you? You keep turning up wherever we go,” I spat.

Garrick might have some reason to trust her, but he hadn’t shared it with me, and he had tried to convince her not to go through the Seven Gates. Something about her being here bothered him, even if he wasn’t ready to let me kill her.

Alize gnashed her teeth, the pointed incisors flashing. “I thought you knew so much about our kind.”

Isanara displayed her own. I’d never been prouder.

Alize wrinkled her elegant nose but kept her pointed teeth to herself.

“There are only so many routes through the mountains, witch.” Then she crouched down again, reaching out to brush her knuckles across the glowing blue tops of one of the mushrooms. “Faerie rings are left behind by latent magic. Someone with powerful fae gifts performed an act of substantial magic here.”

I blinked down at her. What utter nonsense. “In this exact spot? So near the Devotion Gate?”

Garrick and Alize exchanged a look.

“You are keeping secrets.” Maybe I should have kept that realization to myself. But the surprise forced the words out. And the self-preservation had me turning inward. “Can you poke around in their heads like you do mine?”

Isanara growled aloud, reserving her disgusted scoff for me alone. “Thankfully, not.”

“So much for not being limited by the bounds of humans and witches.” I looked between Garrick and Alize again, but they’d both turned back to examining the faerie circle. “And fae.”

She nipped at my hand, but we both knew that if she really wanted to hurt me, those fangs would more than do the job.

Alize insisted she had not performed the magic that had caused the faerie ring.

Garrick had not been out of my company for long enough to attribute the ring to him.

It put the wind magic Alize had wielded in our duel into perspective.

While powerful, no mushrooms had sprung up to mark our exchange of magic and power.

Which meant whatever had happened here in the forest…

A new thought sprang into my mind. I spun so quickly I might have fallen if Isanara had not twined between my legs, providing a steadying force.

“Do you have magic?”

Garrick’s eyes blew wide, the clover green retreating into the cerulean blue and melding into a variegated turquoise.

“None manifested during my time in Balar Shan.”

I would know if he was lying to me. He wouldn’t lie to me.

Neither of us had shared all of our secrets, not by any stretch of the immortal imagination. But I’d never lied to Garrick, and as far as I could tell, he’d repaid that honesty.

“He is fae,” Isanara whispered. But even fae ears were not keen enough to hear the thoughts my familiar and I exchanged within the confines of my mind.

“There is more afoot here than we realize.” Alize crushed the mushroom she’d been examining under the heel of her boot, then ground it into the dirt a few times for good measure.

She wiped her hands on her tawny leather breeches, adjusted her pack, and started off in the direction we’d been heading before the diversion.

“The Devotion Gate is on the other side of that pass. I will allow you to follow me and avoid the tavern on the southern road, but don’t let me see you again. ”

The last was directed at me. Isanara let her know for the both of us that the sentiment was entirely mutual.

Garrick stared after her, his mouth moving slightly as if he were counting off the seconds and calculating how much of a head start to give Alize. But my attention had snagged on something else entirely.

“Tavern?” I croaked.