Page 136 of Veil of Blood and Bone

I dip my head. “Then take my hand.”

None of us move. Tension throbs between us like a second pulse.

Wren leans back in his chair and taps his foot on the bowed floor and cracked linoleum. He memorizes the angles of her face and the blush on her cheeks, then looks at me like he’ll skin me alive if anything happens to her.

He’ll never say it out loud. He’ll never admit to anyone but her, in their private moments, what his true feelings are.

And in my periphery, I catch Nicholas's hand gripped tight at his side, his knuckles white. He meets my look with a glare that pins me to my seat.

“What? Are we waiting for something? I said let’s do this. I’m ready. And anybody who thinks I can’t do it will be in for a rude awakening,” Helene supplies.

Her grin spreads, but she doesn’t mean it. The smile refuses to go any higher than her nose.

Nicholas lifts his hands in a truce, but he isn’t convinced.

“I have no doubt you’ll kick our asses with glee, pretty monster.” Wren’s shadows whip around him, tendrils of agitated darkness.

My feet remain glued to the floor as Helene bears down on us, her expression goading us into action.

My memories will help her fill in the gaps, and I won’t let anything happen to her. They should know it. There’s no way to cheat the progression of this curse, but if I can help her connect the dots in any way, if I can satisfy in the voids with certainty...

Her fingers tremble once before they touch mine. She doesn’t pull away.

Chapter 28

Helene

Ipress my hand to Forest’s waiting palm.

His callouses graze my skin. Silence. One heartbeat, then two.

Tendrils of cold lift from the floor and suddenly there’s motion. We stand at the center of a tornado, the room dimming. I catch a flash of Nicholas, his cool concern, Wren’s devil-may-care curiosity.

Then the apartment vanishes, along with the rest of the air in my lungs.

My heart lurches into my throat, and the pit of my stomach goes to the pit of the earth.

I’m torn in two directions, away from the whole of what I know and into the universe of Forest’s mind.

Lights dance and I squeeze my eyes shut.

Everything is going to be all right, little shieldmaiden. Trust me.

His voice is everywhere, but I can’t breathe. I can’t exist in this nothingness.

Memory: Norway, 1050 CE.

There’s no crash. No boom of arrival. Only the roar of my pulse subsiding and relief coming on the first twitter of birdsong. My eyes refuse to open. Not yet. Not until the writhing in my gut subsides.

But Forest is not holding my hand anymore.

One deep breath follows another. When I rise from a crouch, gaze watchful, I’m standing by myself. Chirps and tweets, the tickle of a breeze and the softness of cushiony green underfoot. That’s it.

Where the hell are my shoes?

Moss covered stones like giant’s teeth cut up from a rushing river. Hazel and elm line its banks, grass and hardy conifer. Beech and aspen sway and scatter sunlight.

Water churns, white against a dark stone riverbed.