Page 19 of Veil of Blood and Bone

My fists flex, then curl back into stillness.

He stares ahead down the straight bridge of his nose, and his jaw tightens until his fangs punch clean through his lower lip.

Blood beads against his skin, dark and useless.

He doesn’t notice.

He glances my way once, his shoulders locked. “More piercings?”

“Oh, Nic. Keep staring at me like that, and I’ll get ideas.” I trail a finger along the line of metal to the newest loop at the tip of my pointed ear. “See? Under your murderously repressed longing, you care...”

He scoffs. “I don’t.”

I tried to suck his cock one time about a hundred years ago. The beloved of my beloved is my beloved, or some bullshit. He lasted about ten seconds before shoving me into a wall hard enough to crack plaster and threatening to slit my throat if I so much as breathed on him again.

Honestly? Mixed signals.

It’s pretty fucking difficult not to breathe when you’re railing the same woman.

“But you noticed,” I murmur.

Nicholas catches me looking at him and sneers. “Must you?”

“I’m sorry if my longing gazes do something to the bitterness etched in your bones.” I chuckle. “Would you believe me if I said I missed you?”

“No.”

“Fair.”

His weaponized silence stretches. His dusky skin hasn’t aged. He’s trapped at twenty-seven, lean and strong, a fighter, a soldier. There’s stillness in his posture but no softness.

I’ve seen him move. He always led with brute force. Now he wears shadows as a cloak and walks like a predator trying to pass as human.

And all the black...

Like he’s some kind of swarthy Vampire Lestat but without the charm. He’s all brood. The goddamn cufflinks he picked up in Victorian England. It’s black all the time. Helene, in a past incarnation, loved those cufflinks.

So I ate her out until she forgot his name.

I smile. I don’t mean it kindly.

The raven calls out a kraa and divebombs the troll, driving his sharp beak into squinty eyes. At least bird brain is doing his share. At least he’s present to provide backup, although we all know he’s not accomplishing shit in that body.

The scrape of metal on stone reverberates across the earth before Helene lifts her weapon overhead. Unfortunately, the troll swings, one hand against his wounded eye, the other making contact.

“How are your Bloodletters?” I keep my attention on Helene, falling on her spine with a furious growl, but lean closer to Nicholas with the question. Hidden where trees end and progress starts. “The queen still keeping them in line for you?”

Every spike in Helene’s heartbeat drags his attention back to her mouth, her pulse, the contour of her throat. “Hard to hear your sibilant tone with the ruckus.”

I glance to the left and right. Nope, we’re still alone. “Who are you trying to impress with your SAT studies?”

The man is resentfully loyal with rage issues out the ass. He refuses to process his grief or divert his gaze away from Helene.

“How are the Dökkálfar doing?” he asks, changing the conversion.

I count the heartbeats between her strikes, tracking the troll’s breathing. Weighing whether it falters or not.

“They’re leaning in hard to the mortals' new romanticism and have embraced the term ‘dark Fae.’ It’s fucking annoying.”