Page 56 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

BEFORE

It would have been spring if such a season still existed in Velora.

Over the past century, marking the change of seasons had become impossible.

Maura kept the dates on the cave walls in the coven lands, marking them out for posterity.

As a creature of the Dark God, I tracked the cycle of the moon by habit.

The priestesses and priests still kept time in the temples, I was certain.

They’d be the last of us to abandon their rituals.

The religious zealots might be our equal in stubbornness, but witches were infinitely more practical.

It was that practicality that had led Maura to send us further and further afield each year to seek the herbs and ingredients that powered our potions and bolstered our spells. Those quests had allowed me to track Rylynn’s descendants when they left the once prosperous town where I’d been born.

Over the past hundred years, they’d all slowly left Velora.

Most took the Southern Fate, the closest route to salvation.

But a few traveled east or north. None again entered the coven lands, the warning that Rowellyn had whispered making its way through the generations until it became a family legend.

The Gallatins of Crenmea were protected by ancient witch power. Or cursed by it, depending on how fortunes went.

Only one of my sister’s descendants remained in Velora. And she was as stubborn as Rylynn had ever been. I’d had to do more than help from a distance. I knew her name, and unlike her predecessors, she knew mine.

“Are you hungry?” Kyna asked as I shed my cloak.

The cottage she’d inherited from her aunt was sparse but warm.

The spell I’d left her with two years before kept the water and mist from the nearby sea from seeping in.

She started slicing bread without waiting for an answer.

She knew I did not need to eat. She knew I would protest that she needed the food more than I did.

That would not stop her from spreading precious butter on the slice before presenting it to me.

“I would rather you eat,” I said, playing out the script. Shedding my cloak allowed me to access the leather purse strapped to my waist. Without preamble, I dumped its contents onto the worn wooden worktable.

Kyna’s hand froze over the brown seeded loaf, her grip on the knife slackening.

Satisfaction rose in my chest—a feeling that had eluded me for a long time, maybe forever.

I watched as her brown eyes, twins to my own, estimated the value of the coins I’d piled on the table.

The government of Velora had crumbled almost two hundred years ago.

But precious metals and gems still held their value, especially when it came to buying passage across the sea.

“It is enough,” I said. “We finally have enough.”

For the last ten years, since the fever that took her parents, Kyna and I had worked continuously toward one goal—saving enough money to buy her passage out of Velora.

I used my spells whenever possible to bolster her, saving her from spending on things like firewood or a new roof so she could save every coin.

She was as stubborn as Rylynn had ever been, but she was also practical. She knew there was no future in Velora, and she wanted to leave. With her departure, the last of my sister’s line would be safe.

Kyna did not speak. Her fingers tightened around the knife as she began slicing once again. One slice. Two. And then a third.

“I have invited a friend to join us,” she said.

My throat threatened to close. “Who?”

“He is called Merrick.” She kept her gaze down, avoiding my eyes as she opened the crock of butter and spread a thin layer across all three slices of bread. The crock was low. Suspiciously low.

“He owns the fishing boat down in the harbor,” she added, lifting her eyes over my shoulder.

I followed her gaze to the window, open to let in a slight breeze. The cold did not bother me, but I watched her shiver, the pain in my throat spreading into my chest. From the window, I could see the harbor and the small fishing boat—the only boat—floating there.

A small figure waded through the shallows up to the beach and started on the path that led up the bluff towards the cottage. Kyna tracked him with her eyes. She’d left the window open so she could watch for him. She’d exposed herself to chill, to danger, for him.

The block of ice solidified in my chest.

I forced myself to speak. “A fisherman. You know as well as I that the sea yields less and less with every passing season.”

“I am aware.”

I forced a swallow and then more words. “You will have to travel a day or two on the southern road to reach a port big enough to buy passage. I cannot go with you, but I can spell your traveling clothes so that they keep out the ice and snow.”

Kyna inhaled slowly, her thin chest lifting and then falling.

The frame of her body was more like mine than Rylynn’s, but where my curves were always generous and full, the lack of food kept her thin.

Maybe one day, if Maura eventually let our coven leave Velora’s shores, I would get the chance to see Kyna’s body reach its full potential.

She set down the knife, no more butter left to spread, and met my gaze with her equally stubborn one. “I am with child.”

My mouth fell open. “How can that be?”

She pursed her lips. “I would have thought someone of your advanced age would be well aware of how a woman comes to be?—”

“That is not what I meant, and you know it.”

“It is a miracle,” she said softly.

And it was. Women in Velora so rarely quickened with life.

It was the only way I’d been able to keep track of all of Rylynn’s descendants for nearly four hundred years.

If they’d reproduced at a normal, healthy human rate, I’d never have managed to monitor them all.

But then, if Velora was normal and healthy, maybe I would not have felt the duty to watch over them.

If the fae had not overreached their powers, angered the gods, and brought down the curse.

If my mother had not died, and my father had not become obsessed with wealth and selling fae objects.

Maybe I would have grown up in a loving home.

Maybe my sisters and I would have grown close instead of apart.

Maybe I would never have become a witch.

But I was a witch, and Kyna was pregnant.

I loosened the strings that held the wrists of my pale blue wool dress closed.

They were meant to make it easier for layering in the cold Velora weather.

Now they provided me access to shove my hand up past the wrist, past my elbow, to the circlet of gold on my upper arm.

It took me a few turns to work it down, but I managed to get it off.

A quick glance out the window—the man had disappeared from sight as he followed the curved path around the bluff. We had only a minute or two more.

“Take this. Sell it if the ship’s captain will not accept it in trade. With what we already have, it will be enough to buy you passage across the Southern Fate and provide a start wherever you land. But you must go now, before your pregnancy is apparent, or they will charge you for two fares.”

Kyna did not reach for the gold circlet. She showed no sign of recognizing the family heirloom I’d carried with me for nearly four centuries, the one I’d stolen the night I ran away. But her face was far from blank.

Sympathy. That was the emotion lining her eyes. She felt bad for me.

I felt the blow before her words delivered it. “I will not go without him. And he will not leave behind his family’s legacy.”

“Kyna,” I rasped, the ice in my throat making it hard to speak. “You cannot stay here. You will die. Your child will die.”

She raked her teeth over her lower lip, but it was not a mark of indecision. She’d already made her choice. Now she was deciding how to deal with me.

“We appreciate any help you can give us. Spells or such. But I cannot take your coin. It would be in bad faith, as I would not spend it the way you intended.”

My keen senses alerted me to the man’s footsteps. Merrick. A poor fisherman cursed to fish a dying sea and drag Kyna down with him towards its pitiless depths. Anger rose within me, and my power with it.

I could kill him. I should kill him. There was nothing to be done about the child in her belly, but without the man who’d put it there, she would have no option but to flee across the Southern Fate.

I felt the whorls of frost as my power coated my skin. The temperature in the cottage dropped several degrees. Kyna crossed to the window, but she lingered before closing it, listening to her man’s footsteps.

We .

It no longer referred to me and Kyna, but to her and her man and the child they’d made together. We had always been an illusion. Kyna might know my name, she may welcome my help outright in a way that her predecessors had not. But we were a lie.

I was alone, just as I always had been.

I tossed my mother’s golden bangle into the pile of coins, so carefully collected. “Keep it.”

I could not stay. Maura’s orders were strict. Each sister was to fetch her appointed items for the coven and then return posthaste. I’d already diverted to come here, risking dire punishment if the head witch ever found out where I’d been.

If I watched that man walk through the door, I might kill him.

I grabbed my cloak, not pausing to pull it on. “I will return when I can.”

“We will be here.” I knew she meant it. That scared me more than Maura’s threats ever had. “Goodbye, Koryn.”

Kyna leaned her head against the window frame, her hand drifting down to caress her still-flat belly. I thanked the Dark God that my heart no longer beat, for I was certain in that moment that it would have cleaved in two as I forced myself to walk out the door.

It was the last time I saw her alive.