Page 64 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

Xyta took the form of my mother once again.

They stood before a massive hearth, the flames licking high enough to reach my shoulder. I could have walked into the stone mouth without bending. The rest of the cottage was bare, the scent an illusion.

The warmth was not. The flames threw off an unnatural amount of heat.

From the corner of my eye, I could see the sweat already beading on Garrick’s temple.

My own temperature remained steady, the frost rising in my veins to counteract the brutal heat.

But that was not the only oddity. As I watched, they shifted color.

They were at once blue, then bright gold and red before shimmering purple.

Beautiful and dynamic, like Isanara’s scales.

But while I felt drawn to every detail of my familiar, my instincts warned me against those enticing flames.

“You are looking well,” Xyta said, and though they’d met Garrick at the Sacrifice Gate as well, I knew their greeting was aimed at me.

I lifted my chin. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”

“You owe me two sacrifices,” they said, crossing my mother’s arms across their chest.

“I did not imagine that gods were so given to mortal vices like impatience.” I forced my hands to remain at my side, but my fingers curled in on my palms. “This is not the Sacrifice Gate,” I reminded them.

Xyta smiled, apparently delighted by my impertinence. “My twin is always happy to share.”

The flames behind them surged, transforming into a vivid red as another figure emerged.

Ramkael.

The God of Devotion, doomed lover of Pava, the Goddess of Peace, and twin to Xyta, the Deity of Sacrifice.

His appearance gave hints as to what Xyta’s true form might look like.

Ramkael was tall and thickly muscled, his arms left unclothed by a sleeveless tunic.

But they were not bare. Every inch of his exposed arms and neck was covered with swirling dark tattoos.

I thought I saw runes, like the ones on my forehead and wrist, but they shifted before I could decipher them.

His brows were dark, but there was no hair on his head at all, only more shifting marks that followed the curve of his skull.

Despite all of that, his eyes were not unkind. They glowed bright red, like the enchanted fire he’d emerged from. If anything, I thought I saw sympathy in those unnaturally bright orbs a second before he began to speak.

“Devotion and sacrifice are irrevocably linked.”

“The only meaningful sacrifices involve those people and things that we are most devoted to,” Xyta finished for their twin.

Realization landed in my stomach, heavy and painful. I should not have brought Garrick with me. I owed two sacrifices. And this was a tidy trap that Xyta had laid. If I refused to sacrifice Garrick, my own life was forfeit, and he would die anyway.

“He should not pay the price for my mistakes,” I said the thought aloud.

“Koryn.” Garrick stepped closer to me, as if he would intervene. As if he could possibly stop the gods from taking whatever they wanted from me.

“That is precisely what the Lifebind means.” Xyta laughed. “Did you think it was a gift? Seraxa certainly does. But the rest of us know better.”

Ramkael shot his sibling a reproving look. Apparently, siblings were just as fractious even when they were both deities. Though Xyta stopped laughing aloud, their smile still showed all their teeth.

“This is the Devotion Gate,” Ramkael said. “Your Lifebind is not our concern. It belongs to Seraxa.”

Even as he said it, the tattoo on the inside of my wrist burned. I looked to Garrick, but if he felt it too, he did not react outwardly.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“No matter what decision you make, the bounty hunter will face his own trial and his own consequences,” Ramkael said, the tattoos on his neck moving in time with his words.

I exhaled slowly, shakily. “You are not asking me to sacrifice Garrick in order to pass through the Devotion Gate?”

“No,” Ramkael confirmed.

But Xyta’s smile chilled my blood more than my ice ever had. “I want your dragon.”