And if I don’t move now, she will die.
CHAPTER 6
I would never makeit in time. The entire courtyard separated us, thick with snow and overgrown brambles crusted in ice. If she went through those doors, that was it. There was no going back. She’d be obligated to pass through the Mercy Gate. She would die.
All things being equal, I could outpace her easily. She’d learned to compensate for her limb difference, but she was also underfed and must have traveled for weeks to get to Canmar. But all things were not equal. She had a head start on me.
She was only a few heartbeats from reaching the door—and that brute of a man held it open for her. My mind did not have time to contemplate why a man like that, armed with weapons and reeking of brutality, would perform such a simple act of kindness as holding open a door for a young woman.
I ran.
But even as I did, I threw out my arms. Frost shot from my fingertips, coating the ground and turning to ice, racing atop the snow toward her. Faster, I urged the power in my veins. I ran harder, my body crashing forward over the ice.
The hulking beast in the doorway offered a hand to pull her in, but my ice was already there, rising up in spikes betweenthem and shoving her to the ground. I urged my feet faster, cursing the frosted ice that both helped and hindered, keeping her from the door but slipping traitorously beneath my feet.
I slammed into her, ice shattering and shards flying. Pain seared across my cheek, but all of my focus went to the slim body beneath me. I pinned her with my superior weight, making out her limbs and core. She was fully trapped. I exhaled a long, shaking breath.
But that was all the reprieve I got. She was already thrashing beneath me, trying to get free. She managed to roll, getting her back to the ground and bracing her hands on my shoulders so she could shove me away.
Her narrow fingers dug into my shoulders. “What the—you,” she hissed through her teeth. I was too close to get a good look at her face, but I could feel her rage.Fine, rage all you want. At least you will be alive.
“Yes. Me.” I plunged one hand into the snow, levering my body off of hers but maneuvering so that I was between her and the doors to the temple. The doors—where the man from the tavern stood, watching the entire spectacle.
I gritted my teeth, waiting for him to say something. There was warmth at my back. He was still standing there. Anger swirled in my stomach; we hardly needed an audience, and I was about to tell him so—no matter how fucking handsome and huge he was.
I clambered to my feet, slipping on the ice, resisting the natural urge to reach out to steady myself because he was the only thing I could have used to do it. The reprimand died on my lips. I was too close to him. Standing had brought us chest to stomach, because of our height discrepancy. But I could see his face just fine, and the confusion he wore there as well. His turquoise eyes moved from me to the other woman and thenback again. Whatever he saw, the quizzical angle of his brow softened.
Behind me, the young woman cursed. As I turned back to her, the doors of the temple clicked closed, the warm presence disappearing. Our value as entertainment had apparently run out.
The young woman in front of me had also gained her feet, and that was murder shining out of her honey-brown eyes as she stared me down.
“What…in the Dark God’s hell…” I panted, shoving out the words between breaths, “…are you doing in Canmar?”
Her anger didn’t disappear, but it softened slightly. For several beats, I thought she would not answer. But she finally opened her stubbornly familiar mouth to say, “My father is ill.”
“I don’t care,” I snapped back.
Her father had been a drain on her for years. His obsession with that fishing village had kept her in Velora even when they could barely bring in enough to feed themselves, let alone sell to anyone else.
Her cheeks had hollowed out in the last few months, making her high cheekbones even more prominent. Discomfort settled in my chest. She looked so much like my sister, especially when she glared at me like that.
I could avoid thinking of her name, refuse to acknowledge what she was to me. But the ache spreading into my shoulders and stomach did not care what my mind pretended.
Kyrelle was the last. Every other one of my sister’s descendants had left Velora at some point over the last four hundred years. All except for Kyrelle, Rylynn’s thirteen times great-granddaughter. She was just as fucking stubborn as my sister ever was.
She did not argue with me. Kyrelle knew exactly what I thought of her father. She tried to shove past me, reaching forthe door. But I shouldered her back. She may have a few inches on me, but I was wider and stronger. I was a fucking immortal, and she was a starving human. There was no way I would let her enter that temple.
I rolled my shoulders, positioning myself between the double doors, covering the handles. “I gave you a spell.”
“And it wore off.”
Of course it did. It had been the first I cast after I was ousted from my coven. Honestly, I was surprised it had lasted this long. Ever since her mother had fallen for her useless father and settled in that fishing village, I’d traveled to the coast every few years to cast another spell that would fill their nets. Then her mother died. I was cast out from my coven, and even the spells weren’t enough. I’d spent three hundred and seventy-seven years keeping my sister’s line alive in one way or another, only for Kyrelle to try something as reckless as attempting the Seven Gates.
There was no way in the Dark God’s eternal, frozen hell that I would let her through those doors. Anger started to replace the ache. Good. Anger was more comfortable than longing.
“I did not save you for this,” I seethed.
“I never asked for your help. I do not want it,” she countered.
