Page 137 of Veil of Blood and Bone

“Don’t panic, Helene. Do. Not. Panic.”

Too late. I’m full-on panicking because I’m not alone. I’m also standing in the brook.

Me.

I know it’s me.

On a logical level, this is impossible and distant, hard to comprehend. I kneel in a shallow curve of the mountain stream with long golden hair wrapped in braids down my spine.

But I haven’t moved.

I’m me, and I’m her. The person in the river and the woman, both pieces of the same whole. Aspects of one picture.

Nope. One hundred percent, no.

I balk, body refusing to cooperate. Watching myself scrub clean brings chaos and disorder in my head. Something in my heart, though⁠—

It smoothes out. The gaps filled.

This might be Forest’s memory, but a piece of me...

There’s familiarity in the cool rush of water on my overheated skin. The brush of lush grass and moss over the riverbank.

It’s there. It’s all inside of me.

Shadows and sunlight part, tree limbs dancing softly overhead, and through the dappled shade, Wren is the first to arrive. The cocky set of his gait and the low slung hem of his pants are the same. His eyes, though.

His eyes are younger. His hair is longer in the past than it is now, and the crest of his pointed ears are bare of any adornment.

I don’t see him, but awareness ripples over my spine. I know he’s there but keep scrubbing coarse sand over my skin to clear it of the cracked and caked blood.

This is my place. When the European aspen goes molten, and the sky fills with big-bellied clouds, I come here.

To be unseen.

To be unhindered by responsibilities.

This audience is different, though. I scrub in slow, languid movements under Wren’s attention, attention sharpening to the intruder.

All three will come.

My heart turns over, and I push a hand to my throat.

Nicholas disguises his arrival in silence, but there is no way to ignore the clink of his armor. The scars of battle are written across his face and the wear and tear of his breastplate.

Forest is next, his face dirtier, black raven feathers blending seamlessly into skin and lines of runic tattoos along his spine. Light hair drapes, nearly translucent, down to his chest.

They’ve come to me, for me, different but identical to their current selves. Younger and more tired, filthy and hungry and exhausted, all brought to this place for the same, singular reason.

Me. Her.

There is no break in their collective attention.

Crowding closer, the three watch, content in their awareness of each other. And Hellevi bathes, removing the last of the cuisses across her thighs, a holster of rune-etched leather wide as a tree trunk.

None of them say a word.

Nicholas pulls the straps of his armor free and lets the pieces drop. They clatter to the forest floor, forgotten. The bracers strapped to his arms follow the chest plate, followed by rigid metal and boiled leather plates.