The new supplicant frowned, shook her own head, and then pushed her gaze past the acolyte to me. “I don’t think they’ll talk to us.”
I kept my eyes from rolling upward. Why was everyone in this cursed place determined to talk to me?
“It appears not,” I said.
“There are more women than men.” As she spoke, she scanned the perimeter of the fountain, pausing for only a moment on the girl before deciding I was more interesting. “Is that usual, do you think?”
I had another weapon at my disposal—nearly four hundred years of experience with life. They would never know me, but I could learn as much as possible about them. And I supposed that started with the nervous-talker to my right.
“I don’t think desperation discriminates based on gender,” I said, softening the syllables of my voice from their usual sharpness. Covering another part of myself, just like I had with my coven mark.
“No, I don’t suppose it does,” the woman hummed in agreement. “I am Nimra. I don’t know if they will introduce us.” She didn’t offer a hand, which I was grateful for, but I couldn’t very well keep staring straight ahead.
I bobbed my head, taking in more details about her appearance. Her clothing indicated she was familiar with struggle—like everyone else in Velora—but her upright stature and the ruddiness in her cheeks indicated general health. She was a bit thinner than the width of her shoulders might have called for were food in abundance, but her eyes were clear. She’d fill out nicely—if she lived through enough of the gates to take advantage of the food the temples offered.
“Koryn,” I offered, and no more.
The corner of Nimra’s thin lips quirked, but she didn’t push for more. We turned in unison as the third and fourth supplicants arrived. First, the thin man who’d cowered while eating. Then the fae.
The blood in my veins chilled, my rage frosted with ire and a cold burn as deadly as any flame. I clenched my fists at my side, determined to keep my power in check. The woman at my side—Nimra, my mind filled in—was still babbling on. I should be listening to her observations; she’d been here longer than me, days, perhaps; who knew what information she could offer on the other supplicants, including the fae female.
“Garrick the Red is here.”
That earned her back my full attention.
“The bounty hunter?” I asked, managing to close my mouth after the question left it. But there was no disguising the surprise in my tone.
Nimra nodded, her mouth flattening into a grim line.
My mind flashed to the man with the wine-red hair who’d been busy staring down the fae female. The lanky man had flinched away from him. He must have already learned who he would be facing in the gates.
Not that supplicants needed to take one another out, really. The gods would do it for them at the gates. But what did I know? Each of the gates represented a different god. Pava, the Goddess of Peace, would hardly require murder to pass through her gate. But Edravos, the God of Justice? Or even the witches’ own creator, the Dark God? Who knew what price they would demand.
My gaze swept over the supplicants arrayed around the fountain. The thin man, the doe-eyed girl, the fae female, Nimra, and me. Five. That left two—and I already knew both of their faces as they appeared one right after the other.
The hulking beast of a man from the tavern the night before, who’d almost pulled Kyrelle into the temple instead of me. My stomach turned, the rich food inside of it threatening to revolt as I realized how close I had come to losing her. Even as I looked over his shoulder, past him, I felt his eyes land on me. Lessintensity than before, but why me? I was the shortest female, the softest and roundest. I bore no visible weapons.
But he’d seen me in the tavern the night before, when I’d been selling spells. He knew I was a witch.Dark God, be with me.
Before I could come up with a solution to that, the other man appeared. Garrick the Red. If his deep scarlet hair had not been enough to convince me, the expression on his face would have. He looked around the group of supplicants like a vicious mountain cat ready to pick off a human who’d wandered too close to the village’s edge.
He was smaller than the man from the tavern, several inches shorter, not quite as wide. But still taller than me. And unlike the brute from the tavern, whose face was unreadable, Garrick the Red did nothing to hide his ruthlessness. His dark eyes paused on each of us in turn, his grin growing a bit wider with each supplicant he appraised.
This was the man who’d gained such notoriety over the past twenty years that even my coven stayed clear of him. A man who had come to Velora, rather than fleeing from it. Where others had run, he’d seen an opportunity. If a tenant farmer fled his lord after failing to pay his tithe, Garrick the Red was happy to hunt him down. If a lordling needed to find his wayward daughter, running away from an arranged marriage for the farce of true love, Garrick the Red would locate her and escort her home. And he’d kill anyone who delayed him for sport. There were even rumors he’d been a guest at the fae fortress beyond the mountains.
What reason could a man like that have for attempting the Seven Gates?
When that cruel smile landed on me, I believed every word and rumor I’d heard.
I shivered despite the cloying heat of the temple.
He saw it, his mouth stretching over his teeth. They were crooked, but all there. And it looked like he’d sharpened a few of them to points. I wished my power was earth-based. I could have whispered a spell to make every one of his teeth fall out. But my active power was water-bound. Without access to my coven sisters to share power, any spells I cast on my own would have to draw on the water that in my veins took the form of frost and ice.
I will get as creative as I need to.For Kyrelle. And for myself.
The debates I’d had with myself back in the courtyard outside the temple did not matter now. I was in the temple. There was no alternative but to attempt the gates. I would get through them, and I would get back my coven. My sisters. I would protect my power and myself.
And I’d pray to the Dark God that the gates took out Garrick the Red before I had to.
