Page 72 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

I woke in the hour before dawn, cocooned in warmth on both sides.

Garrick at my back, his larger body enfolding my own, and Isanara at my front, her steady breath moving her glimmering scales.

Up and down, and up and down, and up and down.

The sight was so mesmerizing I lay there as the minutes passed, just watching her, almost forgetting why I’d woken at all.

But eventually the pressures of my body got the better of me.

I sidled carefully from between the two of them, and they both did me the courtesy of pretending to still be asleep as I slipped into the forest to relieve myself in privacy.

I cushioned my footsteps with fresh snow, not out of necessity, but because I did not want either of my companions listening in.

I’d had precious little privacy before my beating at the Devotion Gate.

Since then, one of them had dogged my every step.

The least I deserved was to take care of my normal bodily functions in peace.

I was returning through the forest when something rustled overhead. Wind moving through leaves, my mind told me. A sound I’d heard thousands of times. Except that, held in perpetual winter by Velora’s curse, none of the trees in this forest had leaves.

But I knew a witch who could summon them.

“Aurienna.”

At first, nothing changed. The leaves overhead continued to rustle, deceptively harmless as they moved in the breeze. I glanced up, noting that only the few trees nearest to me bore leaves. It was too dark to see their color clearly, but the scent of lush new growth came to me on the wind.

The red-haired witch stepped from between the trees, her black cloak swaying in time with the trunks.

My power swirled beneath my skin, a mixture of frost and ice that formed and then melted and reformed again.

It felt as if my power could not quite decide how to react to my sister witch’s presence.

She had been there at my resurrection, and because of that, our power would always be linked.

But she had also chanted in unison with the rest of my coven when they cast me out.

The moon had already begun its descent, but I could see her clearly enough thanks to my heightened eyesight. Just like she could see me.

She examined me openly, starting at the feet I’d shoved into my boots and the cloak I’d thrown over my shift to go relieve myself.

“I am glad to see you walking under your own power once again,” she finally said.

My mouth fell open. I may have gotten better at controlling my power, but I had yet to master my own face. “How did you know I was injured?”

An echo sounded deep in the recesses of my mind. I’d heard Aurienna’s voice in my fever dreams. But I could not quite recall her words.

She did not answer my question. Nor did she plan to. Instead, she jerked her chin side to side, her fringe of copper hair swaying across her forehead.

It was just so typical of Maura to send another witch to check up on me and then to be evasive about it. She’d played mind games with me from the beginning, encouraging me to use my power and then leveling my fragile nerves with condescension when I failed.

In four hundred years, not a single one of my sister witches had tried to figure out why I struggled to control my powers.

Only Garrick had reached out, giving me the stability to anchor myself.

Only Tomin had offered concrete strategies for quieting the endless overwhelm from the heightened senses I’d been gifted by the Dark God.

I had conquered four of the Seven Gates without any help from my coven. But now that I stood on the precipice of the fifth, about to do what only one being in all of Velora had ever managed, now Maura wanted to interfere.

Fuck that.

“Why are you here? Does Maura have another message for me? Am I not conquering the legendary Seven Gates of Velora quickly enough for her?” Anger rose in my chest in time with my power.

I’d gotten this far on my own, despite everything Maura had inflicted upon me over the centuries. Not because of it. Loyalty to coven—but when had the coven ever been loyal to me? They’d risen me from death, but even that I had not asked for.

The frost threatened to burst out of me, but I forced it back down. I imagined Garrick’s warm hands curling around my own. I anchored my feet into the ground, inhaled a deliberate breath of cold air, and grounded myself like Tomin had taught me.

Meanwhile, Aurienna opened and closed her mouth. The expressions on her face were impossible to discern because they changed that quickly. There even appeared to be—was that pain?

“Maura does not have a message for you,” she finally said, her throat sliding visibly. It looked like she was about to cough or choke.

My hands went to my hips, power still present but palatable. “Then why are you here?”

She exhaled slowly. I noticed the vines curling around her feet, spreading across the ground thick as a carpet.

“Nothing is as it seems,” she choked out, the harshness of the words cushioned by the greenery sprouting up all around us.

Dark Lord fucking spare me. “Helpful as always, Aurienna.”

I’d had enough of this. I did not bother softening my footsteps any longer. If Garrick or Isanara wanted to come save me from the green witch, I’d welcome it.

“I prefer Auri.”

I paused, and not only because of the vines that curled around my boots. I waved my hand as I turned, and the vines withered as I froze them to death. “What?”

Her lower lip quivered, but the words seemed to come more easily than they had before. “I’ve always preferred to be called Auri.”

A hysterical chuckle bubbled out of my chest. This was ridiculous. What a conversation to be having in the woods in the middle of the night, with barely any clothes on. “In three hundred and seventy-seven years, I have never once heard one of our sisters refer to you as Auri.”

She blew out a breath between her lips, lifting the fringe of red hair from her forehead again. “No one ever asked.”

Something about the way she said those words made me pause. The contrast in her face, in her voice and throat…

An idea formed inside of me, cold and confusing and just barely possible.

“Why are you here?” I repeated, watching her closely.

Aurienna looked to the side, then up at the sky, just beginning to change as dawn edged closer and closer.

Her lips trembled as she repeated herself again, word for word, each syllable strangled as she forced it past her lips. “Nothing is as it seems.”

Cold surged inside of me, power and realization competing. Those were the only words she could say in response to my direct question because she was under a binding spell that prevented her from saying anything more.

The only witch left in Velora capable of casting one was Maura—and she would have needed help from other members of the coven because Maura was a fire-bound witch, and such a spell was not within her bind.

“Nothing is as it seems,” I said softly.

Relief flooded Aurienna’s eyes. She knew that I understood.

Even those five words had been difficult to get out.

She was bound from answering certain questions, most likely, or from giving certain information.

That was how I’d seen binding spells used.

Nothing is as it seems —that was just vague enough not to violate the terms of the spell that bound her.

What could it possibly mean?

We were weeks away from where Alize, Garrick, and I had stood outside the faerie ring. But the weighted looks the two of them had exchanged were burned into my mind.

Only three gates remained—Memory, Peace, and the Unknown Gate that belonged to the Dark God. Three gates and three supplicants.

That could not be significant, could it? Witch lore spoke of the power of three. The triskelion and the triquetra were among our most powerful runes, linking the power of maiden, mother, and crone, and of past, present, and future.

Maybe it was a warning about the gods themselves.

Xyta had tricked me, using their twin’s gate to call in the sacrifice I’d promised.

Perhaps Ramkael and his lover, Pava, the Goddess of Peace, had some similar trick waiting for us.

But the Peace Gate was more than a month’s travel away, whereas we would reach the Memory Gate tomorrow.

The leaves around us rustled again, drawing my attention back to the green witch.

With a wave of her hand, she withdrew the vines from beneath my feet. She left the ones on the trees, even though I knew they would wither and die in a matter of hours, no match for Velora’s cold without Aurienna’s power to sustain them.

She pulled her cloak around her, covering her hands once more. “I cannot linger.”

Whether that meant that Maura was nearby and expecting her to return soon, or she did not want to risk encountering my companions… I was not sure I wanted to know.

She inclined her head, but did not try to offer any more words, if she even could.

But before she disappeared into the night, one more question burst out of me.

“Auri… why did you come?”

She might not be able to answer, not if the question violated the parameters of the binding spell. Even then, she might not want to.

It had been at Aurienna’s urging that my power had exploded out of me at the guild hall on the night of my Rylynn’s engagement celebration, permanently injuring her betrothed.

Our intertwined power would always tie us together, and to the Midnight Coven. But beyond that…

“I am your sister,” she said quietly. “I always have been… and I always will be.”

She melted away into the rising dawn, the trees answering to her command as they whisked her away.

I watched until I could not hear or see or sense her with any of the Dark God’s gifts.

You must not give in . That is what the Auri in my dreams had whispered. But it was only a dream, brought on by infection and riddled with nonsensical hallucinations.

But paired with her words tonight… it made an ominous warning.