Page 124 of Veil of Blood and Bone

A surge of anger stings past my throat and down my windpipe into my lungs. The cry stalls there.

The magic is too pretentious. It’s a show, the pieces thrown together in a clash and whatever resulting bastardization released on the world without a care.

I blink beady eyes into the belly of the gale. This reeks of Dökkálfar.

What the hell are they up to now? Has their bastard king, the pagan fool, decided to test his boundaries again?

Of any ruler of the nine plus realms, he is the one to watch. What’s his name? The one who banished Wren⁠—

The unease in my gut refuses to settle.

Another spear of lightning crackles above the riverbanks like punctuation. I’m right.

After centuries, I should be better with the Dökkálfar than I am now. Wren’s kin are less than a pile of skitr.

Ambivalence allowed me to carry their history in my head. Yet the years passed, and their kind continued to spawn from the darker domains, left on their own for too long.

Their magic warps the further it gets from the base of the tree. And Wren, well, I’m forced to admit he’s something apart from his kin.

He’s guided by a love more profound than they’ve ever experienced. It’s the kind of love written in the space between stars and made from the atoms of whatever creature greater than the gods that created the universe. It’s the stuff powering the nine worlds.

As much as I don’t want to trust him, begrudgingly, I do.

He’s imprinted himself in the runes on Helene’s soul the same way I have.

I’ve seen him fight for her. I’ve seen him lose it all for her.

That, if nothing else, inspires an even more begrudging respect for the man.

The wind dies down, thunder and lightning twining together in the cloudy snow-swollen sky.

I grip the bag of journals again and take off toward town.

A dim glow between flakes is a beacon. The spikes of a church cut up into the storm while the rest of the one-story buildings nearby hunker down, clinging tight to an unforgiving, cold ground. The shell of the bookstore is a gray spot among its brighter neighbors.

Someone nailed a long piece of plywood across the broken door with crisscrossing wood over the windows. That won’t keep the chill away. It won’t protect the treasure inside.

Soon, it won’t matter.

None of it will. The retailer is a piddling, trifling thing. That part of Helene’s life is done. It was relegated to the past the moment the four of us connected again.

Does she realize it?

I angle away from the store, carried past snow-mired streets toward the listing Victorian. The bones of the house hold firm against the storm the way it weathered the others over its hundred years.

Now, I remember it going up. The builders who worked tirelessly managed to erect the shell in a few months while the rest of the intricate pieces, like the windows and the corbels, were ordered and shipped in from overseas.

Something guided me to this town before it ever had a name, and I’ve been waiting since, alert and patient.

Held in position by an inner knowing.

Eventually Nightshade Hollow would harbor and shelter my love's next lifetime.

Shelter is an awkward word, though.

She hadn’t been sheltered since her arrival. She'd been carved from circumstance and forged into the current version of herself. Gruff, vulnerable. Resilient and loving.

A survivor. Battle scarred. Trust has never felt safe or sustainable.