Page 183 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Nicholas goes still beside me when I start to laugh. “Oh.”

“What?” he snaps.

My hand presses to my heart. “He remembers us.”

Chapter 37

Nicholas

Never again.

No matter what happens, she's not slipping through my fingers again. I refuse to let her go this time, to watch the light fade from her eyes and know I’m the one who caused it.

I love her too much to be anything less than selfish.

I’ll never let her go.

A dull ache slices through my head, and I clutch it, temples throbbing. “Goddamn it!”

The pain undercuts immortal numbness, a pinprick of feeling in a bleak ocean of nothing.

And the memory of my blade sliding beneath her skin, cradling her on my lap while her heartbeat stopped for the first time, the sheer horror of immortality…

It’s never stood for shit before. It does now.

Because Wren is right, and I hate it. The jötun undoubtedly recognizes us because of all the frost giants to walk through the door into Midgard, of course. It would be him.

Isvargr. The Ice Wolf.

It takes all the gold of Asgard to set this creature loose, a bestial version of Fenris without the world domination.

His grin sends hoarfrost down into places hoarfrost has no business going and coats me in cold, threatening to freeze my balls off.

Runes flare beneath Isvargr’s translucent skin before he speaks again, smiles wider, his words a garbled mess in a giant tongue I barely remember. He tightens his clawed grip on the car. An ice wolf indeed.

Each wicked fang in his mouth stretches the length of my arm.

I can’t make out the words.

“Sorry, I’m a bit rusty, friend,” Wren calls out. “Can you repeat that? Because right now it sounds like you said you’re a little bitch who wants to have his ass kicked for threatening my woman.” He turns to me and shrugs. “Loose translation.”

The weather haunts, kills, and Forest is out there dying. Snow eats sound.

Ice obliterates my senses.

And somehow Wren has the audacity to make jokes.

His shadows swirl like shields, but they won’t be thick enough, strong enough, to stop Isvargr from attacking. Not when they freeze at the edges.

Frost cracks across Wren’s magic.

“Assassins are expensive,” I mutter.

“Especially this one. Do you know how much someone had to pay to get a giant with Isvargr’s reputation?” His lips round. “When was the last time you came out to play, bud? Two centuries ago? Three?”

Longer than most memories.

The last time a jötun assassin arrived, it was no ancient war, but the Black Plague.