Page 68 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

On the first day after waking, I managed to sit up, walk the perimeter of our small camp, and relieve myself without assistance.

On the second, I walked for an hour before Garrick decided he did not care about my pride or my protests and scooped me up in his arms.

By the third, I was ready to strangle my bonded or take a knife to my wrist and scrape out the Lifebind tattooed there. They both seemed like perfectly viable options.

More frustrating than Garrick’s insistence that he carry me whenever he detected I was wavering was his absolute refusal to touch me at all other times.

He cooked all of our meals—not a new circumstance—but once I proved I could feed myself, he sat on his side of the fire while I remained on mine.

Every time I moved closer to him, he found an excuse to move in the opposite direction.

But when he carried me in his arms, I knew I wasn’t wrong.

He wanted me as badly as I wanted him. Maybe he was still hindered by the unspoken understanding we’d shared in the tavern.

An outcast witch seeking redemption and a half-fae mortal bounty hunter were not bound for happiness.

That had not changed. But something else had.

In that liminal space between life and the second death, a new understanding had emerged.

Garrick and I were bound for as long as Seraxa saw fit.

The Seven Gates were a microcosm of the rest of Velora, a strange and ubiquitous shadow that held us in its thrall until we emerged victorious or died trying.

What happened between the Seven Gates was separate from the rest of the world. For this brief moment in time, amid centuries of pain, we could have each other.

If he did not realize it yet, I would make damn sure he did before we reached the Memory Gate and had to share a barracks with Alize.

But every time I turned my face up to his while he carried me, hoping to distract him or press a kiss to his jaw, Garrick avoided my gaze. My strength grew by the day, as did the unsated desire that ratcheted up every time I looked at him.

Isanara took to flying off for extended periods that she called patrols. We were annoying the teenager. What a mortifying turn of events.

The mountains in this part of the range were more spread out, with large valleys and meadows dipping between them.

It gave her the opportunity to spread her wings and soar.

Watching the pale gray light from the overcast sky shining through her wings was the only relief I felt from the tension building with every step that I—or we—took toward the Memory Gate.

“We should reach the Memory Gate tomorrow morning,” Garrick announced as I rinsed out our bowls and he snuffed out the night’s fire.

I’d managed to walk under my own steam for the entire previous day.

And then I’d fallen asleep approximately two seconds after lying down on my bedroll. But that was beside the point.

I was healed.

I reached up to pull my unbound hair back over my shoulder, a little tremor of pain emanating from the star-shaped pink scar on my forearm. Mostly healed.

“I’ll scout ahead. I have not yet seen the stained one.” Isanara did not wait for a response before launching into the air. I flinched as she swerved sharply to the right to avoid the top of a barren alder. But a few blinks later, she was out of sight.

I knew she could still hear me, a new bit of information we’d gleaned over the past few days. No matter how far she went, her voice remained clear in my mind. But we both knew that when she flew off, it was because she didn’t want to be exposed to my lust-filled brain.

I tucked the bowls inside my pack but did not reach for the strap to heft it over my shoulder.

“She’ll be gone for an hour, at least,” I said.

Fire reduced to smoldering coals, Garrick straightened. “We can make good headway on that mountain in an hour.”

That mountain was over my shoulder, and while it wasn’t as tall as those we’d crested between the Justice and Devotion Gates, I sighed audibly. I immediately regretted the sound. It would not help the point I was trying to make.

Garrick mistook it as worry for Isanara.

“She always seems to find us,” he said, shouldering his own pack but still avoiding my eyes.

Instead of pulling my fur over my shoulders, I tossed it on top of my pack.

Garrick was too busy scanning the camp for any last items to notice. So, I sent a wave of ice toward him. It hissed as it consumed the remains of the fire, melted and then reformed into spikes that hemmed him in with a half-circle that I commanded to stop well before they posed any real danger.

It felt good to release my power after so many days. It had been building inside of me, waiting. I’d formed snowballs and thrown them for Isanara, but all that did was dull the edge of the frost coalescing inside of me.

Garrick froze. Pride surged within me that had nothing to do with the ice in my veins.

“What are you doing, witch?”

This time, I was the one who avoided his eyes.

It was damn hard when all I wanted to do was look at him.

Even with his eyes pulled together and his mouth turned down in a suspicious frown, the rugged lines of his face called to me.

It was slightly warmer here on the southern edge of the continent, and he’d unknowingly done me the favor of packing away his traveling cloak, which meant I could truly enjoy the breadth of his shoulders and thickness of his arms.

“Sparring.” I rolled my shoulders, testing my muscles and trying to loosen the last of the previous night’s stiffness. Too bad I hadn’t had the foresight to leave the neck of my gown unfastened. I’d seen the way he stared at my breasts when he thought I was not looking.

He stepped around the wall of jagged ice. “You should save your energy for the Memory Gate.”

“You were the one who taught me the importance of building my endurance.” I pulled out the smaller of my two daggers. The blade was shorter, but it fit better in my hand.

He did not put down his pack, but he did not begin hiking for the mountain, either. His frown did deepen. “I am also the one who spent the last three weeks keeping you alive, against all odds. Driving yourself too hard, too fast, is a poor way to repay my devotion.”

My reply caught in my throat. Surely he hadn’t meant?—

“I will not fight you, Koryn.”

Except that he was, just on a different front.

But I suspected that more than me, Garrick was fighting with himself.

Even from across the camp, I could see the way his eyes shifted and brightened as he watched me caress the hilt of the dagger in my hand.

I saw that glow in his eyes now for what it was—desire.

Finally, after torturing him for several more long, drawn-out moments, I slid the dagger back into my belt. Garrick’s throat slid, his chest heaving. He was as affected as I was.

I held his gaze as I spoke. “I am in full possession of my mind, Garrick.” I echoed back his words from the tavern. “I know what I want. And this time, there is no chance I am going to forget.”