Just a little more power, another surge to form the dagger. Aurienna pitched her voice higher, louder, and all of my sisters joined in?—
My power accelerated in a torrent I could not control. Instead of forming a dagger in my hand, frost shot from my fingertips, coating the man’s body, piercing into him through his nose and mouth. I could feel the blood in his veins freezing, the organs going cold.
He screamed in pain, fell down, and writhed on the ground. I had to stop it, had to pull it back, but I couldn’t. I’d gone too far already. He would die from the damage my frost and ice had wrought.
I had to kill him.
I had to harden that ice.
I channeled every fear, every agony I’d felt in the past hundred years into the ice that fanned out through his weak, mortal body.
He rolled to his back, one final scream echoing back and forth against the walls of the cave. Then he was silent.
I felt the life force leave his body. All of my sisters must have as well. They stopped chanting.
I fell to my knees. The layer of ice I’d formed on the ground cracked under my weight. My breath came in painful gasps. One by one, my sisters returned to their activities. I did not let myself look up to see Maura. Whatever I saw there, disappointment or pride or something else, it might very well break me.
Ruby velvet swished along the ground.
Elodie hummed pensively. “Who knew you would enjoy drawing it out as much as I do, Koryn.”
CHAPTER 41
I’d seenmy share of monstrous creatures during my time in the coven lands. But I’d never seen anything like her. Her scales were a lavender purple so light that it almost appeared white, with a pale green shine to them when she moved. The iridescent flashes were her, moving between the trees.
A dragon.
And she was watching us as closely as we watched her.
Garrick moved to my side, one hand going to the small of my back, the other casually fingering the line of hilts that crossed his chest. “There are many strange creatures in these mountains.”
“What do you expect me to say to that?” I breathed. The dragon cocked her head to the side, as if listening to us even though we whispered.
She was the size of a large dog—or what I remembered of dogs. The humans had eaten those not long after the horses. But with her tail and neck stretched out, I guessed she would be as long as Garrick was tall.
“Many of them are the creations of the witches, if the legends in Balar Shan are true,” Garrick said. He was close enough that I felt the words against my skin. But for once, I was too transfixedto do more than note the little flame that licked to life in my belly.
“Spare me your fae legends,” I said.
“Even if they are true?”
I shook my head, both to clear it and to dismiss his line of thinking. “Witch spells have wrought all manner of intentional and unintentional consequences over the millennia. But not the dragons. They predate even us.”
And they were exceedingly rare. To my knowledge, one had not been spotted in Velora since shortly after the curse. They were creatures who fed on the magic and power of the land. With Velora’s slow death, it was believed that the dragons had sought out a new home. They were not stupid enough to die on this continent with the rest of us.
She walked around the base of a tree, her tail curling around the trunk as she did. The muscles beneath her scales bunched as she moved, four legs working in a graceful symphony with the shimmering wings tucked in against her back.
“What do you want to do?” Garrick asked.
As if I had any idea.
Was he deferring to me because I was a witch, an immortal being like the creature before us? Or was it my experience? Despite his accusation of my naiveté, four hundred years had passed since my birth. Or was it something else? Did the half-fae part of him sense the thrum of power in the air, the taste that now rode on the slight breeze?
I watched the little dragon as she moved to stand between two trees. Two delicate horns twisted back from just over her eyes, framing the line of spikes that ran down her neck and back all the way to her tail. They bore a startling similarity to the curved blades that Garrick wore in the bandolier strapped across his chest.
But it was her eyes that gave me pause. They gleamed a bright yellow-green that I had not seen in the forests of Velora since my childhood. The color of new life.
“She’s a baby,” I said softly.
