Page 32 of Veil of Blood and Bone

I take the steps off the stoop and stop below her, Helene perched near the door. Close enough to reach up and touch, hold, carry off.

“Thank you again for what you did.” She huffs out a breath. “I’m not sure I can reconcile what happened, but I know if you weren’t there, I’d be toast.”

My hand curls at my side and I leave it there. “You would have had it handled.”

“Oh, absolutely, me.” She clamps down on her lip before saying more.

“Yes, you.” Leaves scatter around our feet in a whirlwind. “I only provided the last shot. Otherwise, you had the situation under control.”

A smear of blood forgotten on her temple does nothing to hide her beauty, the simple, seductive curve of her chin. And the way her pants hug her body.... damn me.

I’m done without feeling the slip or the slide off the edge of the cliff.

“It’s cold.” My voice drops. “Go inside before you catch a chill.”

She shivers but when our eyes lock, it’s not the frigid blast that bothers me. It’s the heat and the sudden spike of it shooting straight down to my cock. “Goodnight, Forest. And thank you.”

“Goodnight, Helene.” My pleasure.

Beneath the watchful gaze of the other, the one hidden across the street, I turn to leave and a fresh wave of pain slices through my head. The image of Helene and her final smile, her posture unbent and proud, shifts.

It changes into something different. A memory I had no idea I’d lost until now.

The same woman, in another time, dressed differently. Blood soaked through her leathers and the metal breastplate dented over her heart. She lifted a sword with a fierce battle cry.

And this one stays rather than disappearing.

I clutch my head and stop dead center of the sidewalk. The rough ground beneath my boots, the frantic calls from the others still fighting—it’s real. It’s here.

Panic lodges in my breastbone because I don’t know what it means.

Chapter 7

Nicholas

Ineed her.

The moment I see her, something in me answers before I do, wrong and familiar. Inevitable. Her blood beckons like it recalls every sip I've stolen. The power in it, the rightness⁠—

She’s mine.

The curse remembers before I do. My body reacts like it has already decided what she is for me. The beat of vitality in her veins makes it worse, pushing the scent at me, forcing me to acknowledge it.

I meant to reach her first this time. Before the others. Before they can get inside her life and start naming what I am to her again.

She’s mine, except she never survives being mine.

Evening trickles away into the soothing balm of full night, and I step from the tree line, drawn toward the ruins of the Longship Festival.

The celebration shuttered after the troll attack. Yellow and black tape bites into the rubble like a warning no one will respect. The humans call it hysteria. They always do. Anything too large for them to survive becomes a story they can digest in tiny pieces.

Features schooled into stone, I slide my hands into the pockets of my high-collared jacket. The ground squelches underfoot but the din of the news crews absorbs the sound.

Helene is as beautiful this time as she was in her first life.

My eyes shut, and her face is there, her eyes, the light fading from them over and over and over. Whatever face she wears, whatever color those eyes, the chronicle ends the same.

It is her underneath, and she always dies.