Page 8 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

The hayloft was covered in bird shit. I slept there anyway. At least the crows would alert me if anything more perilous came near. But aside from the occasional caw, they let me sleep right through the night and well into the next morning.

Black night gave way to gray day. The sun rarely broke through the clouds anymore, but at least it wasn’t raining. Or snowing. The cold couldn’t kill me, but it could make me damn uncomfortable.

I planned to get up, eat the heel of cheese I’d shoved into my pocket the night before, and get the hell away from Canmar.

Instead, I found myself in front of the temple with Elodie’s offer echoing around inside of my head.

At some point, the words transformed. They were no longer in Elodie’s melodic voice, but Maura’s sharp, abrasive one.

In her voice, the words morphed. Not an offer, but a threat.

Go through the Seven Gates, or else.

An unhinged laugh bubbled up out of my throat. Maura had already banished me from my coven and sentenced me to a slow, excruciating demise as the Dark God’s power deserted my veins. What else could she possibly do to me?

The snow swallowed my laugh.

Plenty.

She was a thousands-year-old witch in command of the last remaining coven on the continent. The fae were gone. The humans had never had power or magic to begin with. Maura might well be the most powerful individual in all of Velora.

And she’d ordered me through the Seven Gates.

I inhaled an icy breath and refocused on the courtyard sprawled out in front of me.

The stone edifice rose several stories overhead, seven of its faces ornamented with colorful stained-glass windows depicting each of the gods.

Even with the rest of the continent in shambles, the temple rose out of the ice and decay, still standing strong.

I hadn’t frequented temples in life, let alone in death.

I could hardly report on whether the inside had changed in the four hundred years since the curse.

But while the stones stood strong, the altars beneath each stained-glass window were depleted.

No more flowers grew in Velora. Food was too scarce to be left as an offering, candles needed for their meager warmth.

But food and warmth were plentiful within those walls. That, I knew. Everyone in Velora knew. Enter the temple, fill your stomach, rest your head, and pay the price.

Just as I had the night before in the tavern, I surveyed everyone who entered the courtyard.

I’d been watching for half the day and only two people had approached the temple.

One only made it halfway across the courtyard before veering left and disappearing at a run.

The other was unremarkable at this distance.

But he entered the temple, so he was desperate enough.

Not much in the way of adversaries.

They’d only be adversaries if I entered the temple. If I accepted Maura’s offer and attempted the gates, I’d face not only the challenges set by each of the gods but also the other desperate supplicants trying to get through them.

Death was not certain. Everyone said that. People did survive the gates—for a while. One. Maybe two. But eventually, one of the Gates or their fellow supplicants would kill them. No one was ever going to get through all seven. No one was going to break the curse.

Velora would die.

This was a fool’s errand.

I could go without fixing the hole in the sole of my boot.

I shifted my weight behind the embankment of snow where I watched, noting the comforting heft of the purse strapped to my belt.

Another month and I would have enough coin to buy passage off of this cursed continent.

Maura, Elodie, and all the rest of them could stay here and rot.

But I had to get out of Canmar. I would go south.

There weren’t any cities left, but the villages that remained mostly clung to the coast, scraping an existence from the sea and the passengers buying their way to safety across the water.

I’d be more careful this time; no more than one night in a village, and I would move erratically to prevent detection.

Smaller taverns, too. Two months, then, to account for the less than direct route.

Two months, and I could leave Velora forever.

I shook out my cloak, dislodging the snow from the bank where I’d crouched. The blue and gray stones of the retaining wall at my back kept me relatively camouflaged as I did a quick inventory of supplies.

But movement on the other side of the courtyard froze me in place. Another person approached the temple, and this one did not hesitate. This one, I recognized.

The hulking beast of a man from the tavern.

Everything about this man screamed a warning.

The hair that had appeared blond the night before was almost silver now in the grayish light of day.

Platinum blond, the rich had once called it, when such precious metals were still traded from across the sea.

It was half-tied back, but loosely. Carelessly.

Whoever he was, he did not need to worry about impressing anyone.

Leather gloves covered his hands, but I knew they’d be powerful.

Violence wafted off of him as surely as any true scent, discernable even at this distance.

I marked out the weapons strapped to his body the same way I had the night before: bow and quiver of arrows over his back, greatsword at his waist, a bandolier of wickedly curved knives over his chest. I doubted that was the sum of his weapons.

They moved with him as his long strides carried him through the snow and tangled, dead bushes that marked once fruitful garden beds. He walked directly across the courtyard toward the temple.

He can’t be… but he was.

He was going to enter the temple.

Why would a man like him, well-fed and dripping with expensive weapons and thick furs, attempt the gates?

They’d long since stopped being a source of preening pride. The gates were a death sentence.

He wrenched open the nearest of the double doors. But he paused, looking over his shoulder. Right to me.

I was too far away and too well camouflaged for him to see me easily—unless he’d known I was there all along. Cold that had nothing to do with my power curled in the pit of my stomach.

His eyes lingered. Even at this distance, I could feel the intensity of his gaze just as I had the night before. He saw me. Neither of us could pretend otherwise.

But just as suddenly as he’d caught me in his stare, he broke it, swinging away to the nearest corner of the courtyard. My gaze followed his, tracking the crunch of footsteps in old snow. A third person had entered the courtyard.

Positioned as I was, I heard more than saw for the first few seconds.

The snow crunched but didn’t give way entirely; either a slight woman or an emaciated man.

Their steps were steady, but something was different about the rhythm.

Maybe they carried a heavy pack of some kind.

It could be the mother from the tavern the night before.

Surely her milk hadn’t run out so quickly that she’d needed to seek out the temple?—

I don’t care, I told myself.

I pulled my cloak tighter across my shoulders and maneuvered around the snowbank. It was past time to get out of Canmar.

The woman—it was a woman—was halfway across the courtyard by the time I reached the corner.

I’d closed the space between us without hurrying.

She was moving slower than she should have been.

Some reckless, soft-hearted part of me turned.

Fucking ironic, considering my heart did not even beat anymore.

If it had still been beating, it would have stopped in that moment.

I recognized the braid. The hitched gait that suggested an injury. But I knew it was a feature she’d carried from birth, born with legs slightly mismatched in length.

Still, my mind protested what my eyes could see clearly in the gray afternoon light. She shouldn’t be in Canmar. She lived in a small village on the coast, near the Southern Fate.

She can’t be here.

But she was. That was a string of tiny seashells woven into her plait. Her brown hair wasn’t just brown. It was a deep umber with strands of chestnut that would lighten to blonde in the summer—a summer that she’d never seen. That she would never live to see if she entered that temple.

The only person on this entire fucking continent who I cared if they lived or died was walking toward the temple.

She can’t be here, my brain screamed.

But she was.

And if I don’t move now, she will die.