Page 7 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

BEFORE

I was born the year of the curse. Not made.

Born. To a mother and father, in a stately manor house set close enough to the sea that the sounds of waves breaking against the cliffs were my lullaby.

My father certainly never sang me one. If my mother did, I did not recall.

The mind keeps very few memories before the age of five, and she did not live to see my sixth year.

In the beginning, no one understood what the curse truly meant. The fae had overreached their power and tried to set themselves above the gods. The curse was punishment—their punishment, not ours. What did magic or its loss mean to humans, when we had none to begin with?

Everything.

For the first few years, humans prospered in the void left by the fae. My first fully formed memory was of a party—a grand gathering that filled our home to brimming before my mother’s body was fully cold.

“Stay upstairs,” my sister insisted, pushing past me.

I grabbed for the railing but still stumbled. Two hands caught my shoulders and hauled me back, away from the landing.

“You ought to be in bed.” Janessa, my other sister. She didn’t release her hold until I was fully out of her way, leaving her enough space to stand at our elder sister’s side.

Their taller bodies blocked out the light but not the sound. Dozens of voices, laughter, even the hum of stringed instruments. And above it all, one boomed loudest of all. Our father. He laughed and laughed and laughed. How could he laugh like that when all I did was cry?

I pressed closer to my sisters, peering between their bodies to see. But they were arguing and shoving, and all I got were disappointing flashes of color.

“You should not be wearing that,” Janessa hissed at Rylynn.

Rylynn tossed her head. She was always tossing her head and throwing her beautiful dark hair over her shoulder. But she’d fastened it up in some kind of intricate coiffure. My mind twisted with wonder just looking at the plaits and patterns. Beautiful. Like my mother. She even smelled like her.

“And her perfume as well?” Janessa huffed, recoiling enough that I caught a glimpse of a servant carrying a tray of petit fours.

My mother made the petit fours. She was a baker. The best baker south of the mountains. If there were petit fours at the party… the physicians must have been wrong.

“I am the lady of the house now,” Rylynn said.

“The pendant is fae-made. Father will kill you if he sees?—”

Rylynn grabbed Janessa’s arm and yanked her close. I slid into the opening she left, unnoticed by either of them. My eyes followed the path of the petit fours across the crowded room.

“If I have it, then Father cannot sell it,” Rylynn said, cupping a protective hand over the ornament pinned to her chest.

I clutched the banister, one foot already reaching down for the next step, my little body fighting the forward momentum.

Mother would never let Father sell the brooch. It was given to her by her mother, passed from her grandmother and great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother…

“He wouldn’t,” Janessa whispered. Her body went limp beside me.

Rylynn sighed, the sound shakier than it should have been, coming from my confident eldest sister. “He would. Mother is dead. He will sell it or gift it to his next wife…”

Mother is dead. She didn’t make the petit fours.

Mother is dead.

My hand slipped on the banister. I tumbled down the stairs into the chaos before my sisters could catch me.