Page 55 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

“Disarm me and we will spend the night in the tavern instead of on the ground.”

It had taken me hours and hours to get those words out of him. He’d been in a temper ever since the faerie ring. There were no more lingering touches and no genuine smiles. Whatever that ring meant to the two of them, it had unnerved Garrick.

That should have unnerved me. But the prospect of an actual bed in a room that wasn’t shared with Nash or Alize was more diverting than I would have estimated.

I eyed the weapons strapped to him. Greatsword at his waist, bandolier of knives across his chest, and bow and quiver strapped to his back. Plus, the curved knife he currently gripped in his hand—the one with the braided silver handle. His favorite.

Would he count disarming him as getting that knife, or did he honestly expect me to pick off all of those weapons one by one? If so, I might as well start digging down for a bed in the dirt now instead of later.

I had just the two blades to my name.

“Use your power to complement what I’ve already taught you.”

Logically, I knew the only one who could poke around inside my head was Isanara, busy flapping eagerly from side to side at the edge of our makeshift sparring ring—a slightly sloped riverbed that had long since gone dry. But damn if Garrick did not make a good show of it.

“And what in the Dark God’s frigid hell does that mean?” I threw the curse into the wind and charged forward, aiming for his knee. He had an easy nine inches on me; it was the most reliable target I could reach.

Garrick deflected me easily, using the weight I’d put behind my attack to send me sprawling. “Alize uses her wind to push aside her attacker’s blade and then shove her own into the opening.”

I forced myself up, cursing every delicious meal my bonded had cooked over the past several weeks and every bit of muscle he’d forced me to gain with his endless uphill slogs. “Continue comparing me to that fae bitch, and you will see exactly how I can use what you’ve taught me.”

There was another target within easy reach of my height. While I’d spent more hours than I cared to admit dreaming of that particular appendage, I’d happily shove my knee into it if it shut him up.

He held up his hands between us and curled one in invitation. “Please do.”

How the fuck was I supposed to beat him when every maneuver I knew he’d taught me? Garrick was not going to let me win. Not ever. I knew that much about him with certainty.

“Go for the bow,” Isanara urged from the sidelines.

I refused to take Alize’s advice on principle. So, I threw myself forward into another ill-fated attempt. I got my hand around his wrist, but he dislodged me before I could apply enough pressure to dislodge his blade.

I landed hard on my elbow, the impact ricocheting through my bones.

“Your power is part of who you are. Why are you afraid to use it?”

Because I cannot control it! My mind screamed.

Isanara’s feet hit the ground, snow spraying across the dirt between me and Garrick. She’d heard what I said even if I hadn’t meant it for her.

I glared at Garrick. “We keep our own secrets.”

My eyes dared him to call me on those words and acknowledge his own hypocrisy.

“And that need to keep secrets will get you killed, and then me killed. And not only will we be dead, but whoever that woman was who you convinced not to enter the temple—she will most likely die too.”

I was less worried by the moment about controlling my power.

He knew my motivation for entering the temple.

But he still had not trusted me with his.

What were we doing here, really? We would not be together at all if not for the Lifebind between us.

I’d attempted the Seven Gates to save Kyrelle and restore my place with my coven.

Neither of those goals had anything to do with Garrick the Red.

“By all means, spend the little time we have left before the Devotion Gate digging around in your own insecurities.”

I did not think. I threw out a hand, spears of ice the size of my forearm flying through the air in a deadly attack centered at Garrick’s chest.

He dodged them with irritating ease.

“You wield the ice easily enough.”

“It isn’t ice,” I said through gritted teeth. Damn it all to the Dark God’s hell.

Garrick tipped his head to the side, a smirk tugging at his mouth. Despite his admonition about wasting time, he stared at me and waited.

“My active power is frost,” I admitted begrudgingly. “I can shape it as I need. I can soften it into snow or harden it into ice.” I’d give him that much in the interest of self-preservation. He did not need to know that my active power derived directly from the manner of my death.

“And those clever little rhymes you think you’re whispering?”

“Spells,” I seethed between my teeth.

He nodded, his eyes catching the light between the trees and sparkling. “Like the one you offered me at the Mercy Gate in exchange for my silence.” He cocked his head to the side. “Why don’t you cast a spell to kill the other supplicants and be done with it?”

“Why don’t you kill them with the bow you carry around but never use?”

Garrick’s face hardened. Too bad for him, I’d gotten better at reading his expressions. “I have my reasons.”

“So do I,” I bit back.

“You’re afraid to do it.”

Wrong. “I have killed plenty.” Truth.

“So have I.”

I didn’t doubt it.

If he had his reasons not to bring the other supplicants down in one fell swoop, so did I.

Yes, I’d killed before. But only when my own survival depended upon it.

I could whisper a spell that froze the blood in their veins.

Without my coven to sustain me and bolster my power, the effort might very well kill me.

Or sap me of the ability to use my active power, which was my most reliable weapon.

I had to use my power judiciously. The frost would always come the easiest, and it was the gift that belonged solely to me, given by the Dark God himself.

But the uncertainty of my power was not the only thing that kept me from killing the other supplicants. It was my fickle human heart, still in my chest even if it refused to beat. It refused to die. It was perhaps the most stubborn part of myself.

“You can defend yourself without killing anyone,” Garrick interrupted.

That would require control. I was not about to tell Garrick that the only times I felt some semblance of control were when I meditated with Tomin and when Garrick himself held my hand and met my frigid cold with his steady warmth.

I’d rather sleep on the ground for the rest of my immortal life.

So, I gave him a truth that cost me less. “There is a price to power. Without my coven, without Velora, I will fade like the land beneath our feet. The longer I am separated from them, the less power I will be able to access.”

Except…

That divot appeared between Garrick’s silvery brows. “You were just as powerful yesterday as you were a month ago.”

Except.

“You extinguished every flame in the temple before the Mercy Gate. You saved me by using your frost to make a path to safety. And yesterday, you would have frozen Alize from the inside out if she hadn’t managed to get out of your grip.

” As he spoke, he moved closer, the intensity of his gaze building.

What he said was true. I’d noticed it but not thought about it.

What did it matter, really? Maybe it was the Dark God bolstering my power long enough for me to lift Velora’s curse.

Maybe Maura and the others had performed some sort of blood spell that worked even at a distance to keep my power strong while she sent me on this doomed quest.

There had to be a reason the coven mark still burned on my forehead, just as visceral as the Lifebind inked on the inside of my wrist.

Wingbeats sounded overhead as Isanara launched into the sky, gliding over our heads and circling around the barren trees, her small size giving her just enough room to maneuver.

My stomach pitched inside my gut. “Are you the reason my power is still strong? Are you giving me your lifeforce?”

She did not even pause her circling. “What a ridiculous question. Of course not.”

“But then… why would you choose me? If I do not make it through the Seven Gates and return to my coven, my power will fade and I will eventually die. Familiars do not choose weak witches.”

“Strength takes many forms,” she said, her voice taking on that strange gravity that made her seem older than she was.

A hundred years might be a short time for a dragon, but for mortals it was more than a lifetime, I reminded myself.

Isanara had not shared what the first hundred years of her life in Velora had been like.

If I’d had a beating heart left to me, it would have ached for her.

Garrick had already moved on, unwilling to let me linger in my own insecurities, as he’d so irritatingly pointed out.

“You don’t want me hovering over you.” He advanced a few steps as he said it. “So learn. Master your power and you won’t need my protection.”

Master my power. Like I hadn’t spent nearly four hundred years trying and failing to do exactly that.

“It is not that simple,” I insisted, but he barely gave me time to finish before launching himself over the frozen riverbed.

I got my arm up just in time to deflect the blow, but the fresh stitches in my forearm screamed at the impact.

Frost shot from my hand, my power rising to protect me without my calling it.

Out of control, again. Damn it all. I was so sick of Garrick being right.

I wanted him on his ass, just like he put me on mine again and again.

The frost heard my frustration. It curled around his feet, solidifying into a rope of ice that cracked with his next movement. But it was enough to distract him. I couldn’t reach the blade in his hand.

I wanted him on his ass—literally. I pulled the residual moisture from the riverbed, forming a sheen of slippery ice beneath his feet.

He tried to use it to his advantage, pitching himself in my direction.

But I used my height—or lack of it—to dodge underneath him.

My knees screamed as they hit the ice, but I got my hand around what I wanted.

My wrist protested the angle, but I forced myself to my feet and used frost to fuse my skin to the metal hilt.

Garrick cracked the ice with a sharp stomp of his heel, regaining traction as he spun in a graceful arc, his blade swirling with lethal precision. But for once, I was ready.

I had no idea how to wield it. The blasted thing was as long as my legs. But I forced the quivering muscles of my arms to lift Garrick’s greatsword into the space between us.

It started as a smirk. Then it curved both sides of his mouth, lifted his stubbled cheeks, and lit his eyes as a true, full smile took over Garrick the Red’s face. And took my breath away.

“That’s my girl,” he breathed.