Page 6 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

The prostitute’s face was unchanged, though her makeup showed the evidence of her evening within the tavern. The smudged rouge from earlier was now gone completely, leaving behind pale pink lips that were just a bit too thin.

A pattern of bruises that looked suspiciously like fingers colored her pale throat. Were they new, or had I missed them in my perusal earlier?

They might not even be real.

I should have realized it sooner. My scalp did not prickle this time; my entire body sang with recognition. “Sister.”

Her features shifted as I watched. The heavy kohl-lined eyes flattened, taking on an entirely different shape above her rising cheekbones.

The teased brown curls morphed into a curtain of silky, straight black hair.

The bruises disappeared as the alabaster of her skin warmed to a pale olive with golden undertones that shone even in the silver light cast by the moon over the snow.

“Koryn.”

Her voice remained her own. If I’d heard her speak in the tavern, I would have known instantly. It was the only thing about her that she could not change. Like all witches, her active power was tied to the manner of her death.

Elodie died wearing the face of another, a lowly maid who’d disguised herself as her well-born mistress in order to rendezvous with a man that she imagined loved her. In immortality, she’d learned to wield those many faces and take revenge for the death blow paid to her.

But why was she here? And where were the others? My power churned within me, calling instinctively to my sisters.

No. I am not foolish enough to hope.

I willed my power to quiet within me. There in the deserted street, with the snow deadening all sounds, it actually obeyed. The ice in my veins thawed to match the temperature of my blood.

“Why have you come?” I tried not to let myself choke on the words, but the last one caught in my throat.

Sister—Elodie had been my sister once. Before I’d been cast out from my coven. But I was not certain what that word meant to me anymore… what she meant to me.

Without power and cosmetics distorting her features, I was able to see clearly as she raked her gaze over me in appraisal. And when it flicked over my shoulder, to the wreckage of what I’d done.

“Your power remains,” she observed, her voice carefully even.

The muscles in my abdomen tightened, heat rising in my cheeks despite the cold. “Why shouldn’t it?” I shot back, even though the same head witch trained us both. Maura had always warned that power faded the longer a witch was separated from her coven.

Elodie’s eyes paused at my forehead, in the spot just above my brows. “Your coven mark fades.”

My power was tied to my coven and should have faded as well. That was the sentence she did not say.

But minutes before, I’d felt the coven mark burn.

I’d seen the reflection of light on the faces of my attackers.

My power had surged, answering my call without hesitation or stutter.

Was that why she’d come—because my sisters could still sense me, and the strength of my power, even after all these months?

“You should have killed them both.” Her dark eyes were once again on the body behind me.

My mouth twitched, my entire being bristling at the suggestion—the expectation—that I follow the norms of a coven that I no longer answered to. That I’d been cast out from, without any chance of ever returning.

Punishment must be absolute. That was the way of the coven.

“I do not answer to the coven any longer,” I bristled.

Elodie’s gaze rested back on my face, still utterly devoid of emotion. Was that a consequence of having worn so many faces? Was she incapable of wearing her own? Or was she truly that immune to feeling?

That lack of emotion, that evenness, had always bothered me. How could anyone be that controlled all the time? And why couldn’t I?

Even before—I was not supposed to think of before .

That dictate had been beaten into me from the moment of my remaking.

For a witch, there is only the now and the future, the concerns of the coven over the concerns of the self.

Thinking about a past that is lost was the ultimate form of selfishness.

But I was no longer a member of the coven. Elodie, however, was.

“Maura sent you,” I said. My fingers curled at my side, frost tingling at the tips, but I kept myself under control. Barely.

“Yes.” Elodie nodded. And waited.

“I have followed all of her dictates.” To the letter. As if I actually believed that if I abided by the strict parameters of my banishment, then someday it would be lifted.

Without your coven, you are nothing. Maura’s last words echoed in my head as they had every day since my ouster.

Elodie’s eyes trailed back over my shoulder. “So I have seen.”

I did not bother parsing technicalities with her.

Maura had banished me from my coven—from seeking out any member, from attempting to enter the coven lands, or using any of the sacred artifacts.

I had not done any of those things. She had said nothing about practicing my active power…

probably because she thought it would fade to nothing in time.

It would. Everything in Velora would die eventually.

Which was why I peddled my spells in dark taverns where brutes like the ones behind us could too easily find me.

I needed enough coin to buy passage out of Velora.

On another continent, one rich with magic and power, I at least had a chance.

I could seek out another coven. Other continents had dozens of covens residing on them, instead of just one.

Soon, the dying magic and power of Velora would not even be enough to sustain the one that remained—the one to which I belonged. Used to belong.

Grief burned in my chest, where my heart no longer bothered to beat. Still, Elodie watched me with the damned impassive expression of hers.

Dark God, spare me these useless emotions.

Elodie had yet to state a reason for her sudden appearance.

Not so sudden, I reminded myself. She’d been watching me in the tavern while disguised as a prostitute for the last few nights.

Which meant she probably already knew where I’d been sleeping, too.

But where I could not rest tonight, because someone had sent those two buffoons.

I would not linger long enough to find out who.

There was an abandoned stable three blocks over.

The humans had eaten the horses decades ago.

It was just close enough to the forest that no humans risked it, empty enough that it hadn’t attracted any of the forest’s more dangerous occupants.

The hayloft was as good a place as any to pass the night.

Elodie could find me again if she wanted.

But I had not even reached the alley before she spoke. “We are not far from the Mercy Gate.”

I turned slowly. “A gate is always near,” I recited.

“A god is always watching,” Elodie parroted back.

The words had been instilled in me from birth, in every citizen of Velora. It was an invocation. If a gate was near, so was a god. Always watching, always waiting to see the provenance of their punishment.

Most citizens of Velora—were we citizens, if the government had ceased to exist? — lived their entire life in proximity to a gate without ever passing through it. The years of people hurling themselves at the gates in hopes of lifting the curse had long since passed.

Seven gates. Seven gods. And a promise that had never been fulfilled.

But the witches did not answer to seven gods. We answered only to one—the Dark God who’d created us.

Elodie lifted her chin, her curtain of inky hair skimming her sharp cheekbones as it fell back to frame her expectant eyes.

I frowned at her. It was late and I was tired.

Being immortal was exhausting. Sleepiness settled in my chest, threatening to dull the edges of my reflexes dangerously if I did not find a bed soon.

I shifted, trying to dislodge the feeling.

This much exhaustion was unusual. I’d only performed a half dozen spells in the tavern.

Was it the use of my active power? Still strong, but at a cost?

“If Maura has more to say, then say it,” I said, rolling my shoulders. That was why Elodie was here. Her words were not her own, just like her face.

Her impassive fucking face.

“The priests and priestesses offer bed and board to anyone who plans to attempt the gates,” Elodie said.

Millions of words—in the language of the Dark God and the common tongue—and never in three hundred and seventy-seven years would I have expected those particular ones to exit her mouth. She could not possibly be implying… no. Impossible.

“Walking through the doors of that temple is a binding promise,” I said. Anyone could enter the temple and enjoy the safety, warmth, and food therein. But there was only one way to leave the temple—through the Mercy Gate.

Elodie knew that. She was older than I was, had already been a witch in the Dark God’s keeping when the curse was placed on Velora.

A deep, rumbling roar echoed from the woods beyond the city.

Gods, it might be in the city itself, now.

Without humans to populate the continent, the monsters that dwelled in the mountains had become bolder.

Once, I had not given the monsters a second thought.

Most of them were created by the witches at one point or another.

Spells gone wrong—or horribly right. But I no longer had the protection of a coven.

Elodie did not react to the sound. Her dark, unreadable gaze held mine as she twisted my entire world on its axis. “Pass through the Seven Gates, lift the curse that is killing Velora, and you will be welcomed back to the Midnight Coven.”

Welcomed back to the Midnight Coven. The weight in my chest lifted instantly, replaced by something light and shining and impossibly bright. Hope. That was hope.

And I was just as much of a fucking fool as every human in that tavern, because the condition was impossible.

For nearly four hundred years, fools had been passing through the gates in futile attempts to lift the curse.

Some made it through one. Fewer still conquered two.

There were stories that one person—a fae, before they disappeared—had passed through five gates before meeting his gruesome end at the Memory Gate.

“Maura asks the impossible,” I bit out, anger filling my chest, determined to murder that reckless, foolish hope.

It was a cruel trick, even for Maura, to dangle the prospect of return before me like this.

She’d actually sent Elodie to seek me out and make this impossible offer. “Was my banishment not enough?”

Elodie gave me nothing. Not a quirk of an eyebrow or quiver of her lips.

The anger in my chest burst into a frigid flame of blue and white that matched the ice in my veins. No sooner I’d thought it depleted than it rose to meet my fury. I didn’t pause to analyze that development. I was too fucking angry.

Frost formed at my fingertips, crawling over my skin beneath the layers of my clothing. I felt it lick at my collarbones and then my throat, curling around my ears.

I watched as it drew swirls of sparkling power over my cheeks and framed my eyes—watched—how was I watching?

Elodie.

She’d changed, showing me my own face. Her body was a perfect mirror of mine, her dark blue cloak identical, the same purse tied to her belted waist that now matched the width of mine.

The power inside of me contracted. Elodie’s face changed back to her own.

She lifted two fingers, her middle and index, and drew familiar lines in the air. She traced the lines of the pentagram, inverting the symbol so that the tip pointed toward the snow-covered ground. As if I needed a reminder that my spirit was out of control after that horrifying display.

“Pass through the Seven Gates, lift the curse, and you will be welcomed back,” Elodie repeated, word for word. Words mattered, and she’d clearly been told to report Maura’s precisely.

Crows cried in the distance. Scavengers made to survive in a dying land.

Was I really any better, waiting around in a tavern, preying upon the woes of the dwindling, desperate occupants of Velora for my own gain?

With my coven, I would live. My power would be restored, rather than dwindling to nothing until my blood ceased to feed my organs and I succumbed to the second death.

I cannot lift the curse. No one can.

No one had ever made it through more than five gates, if the most outrageous of rumors were true, let alone seven. It was impossible.

I opened my mouth to tell Elodie so. To send her back to Maura with a curse of my own, little power though it would have without my coven to bolster me. But she was already walking back in the direction of the tavern, the curve of her hips no longer her own.

This time when my power rose, it was nothing more than an icicle in the empty cavern where my heart had once been.

Returning to my coven was impossible. My sisters were lost to me, both those of blood and those of power. Anger, hope, they faded away until I was empty. Nothing, no one, alone on a dark street in a dying land.

I’d had everything, and I lost it. Not just once, but twice.