Page 5 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Things are fine.

Fine is a blanket dismissal for everything bad.

Most people hear the word and think you’re doing remarkable, so they don’t ask more questions. There’s safety in fine.

“They did not want her thrown into Helheim which would be a dishonorable afterlife for a legendary warrior,” Audra intones.

“Helheim might be enjoyable this time of year.”

We have our own brand of warriors at the Longship Festival. They mingle with the crowd now, middle aged men in borrowed outfits swinging fake rubber and plastic weapons around in the air like fire jugglers.

By the time we reach the first line of tents, Vikings have overtaken the pedestrians.

I hold up my wrist to one of the security guards, a young man with a harried expression. He gives an exhausted nod at the mustard colored vendor band.

“I don’t know how you lose yourself in your stories,” I mutter, dragging the chair off the path and onto soggy ground.

I don’t know how, but I’m damn grateful for it. She deserves the distraction. Little takes her mind off the limitations of her body these days.

She shrugs one bony shoulder high, her dark curls stacked on her head. “I like them. They’re cool.”

“Lucky thing we work in a bookstore.”

The stench of burned popcorn and oily fake butter scalds the inside of my nostrils. Someone calls out a greeting, but if I lift my hand from the handles, I’ll never build forward momentum again. Audra will be stuck in the mud, and I’m not in decent-enough shape to carry her to our booth.

Paths snake through the tends, emergency routes maintained by vendors and neighbors.

A pile of boxes block the quickest trail, and I pull my sister left, toward a cluster of technicians on the field making sure we’ve all got power.

She reads aloud the rest of the story on our mad trek. The trees are somber here, the forest stealing the light. The black bark and lichen-covered edges are a hell of a lot better than the Toss an Axe game with its trailing line of kids waiting to hit the bullseye.

My gut takes a deep dive when the shadows part, a flicker of movement darker than natural. I freeze, the movement snagging my attention for a moment, and stare, squinting through the blur.

“The tale remains a stark reminder to never cross the gods—” Audra adds.

“Something's over there,” I interrupt. “In the woods.”

A tall, handsome someone, rooted at the edge of the forest. The silhouette solidifies further, a glint of light on metal and shaggy black hair.

She glances up. “Yeah, people flock to the festival, Helene. This place is packed. Oooh, seventy-five points. The kid with his nose buried in the cotton candy.”

I sigh. “I’m not running over a child.”

The wheels snag in a combination of mud and leaves and I heave Audra through them until my legs scream for a break.

By the time I lift my gaze again, the man is gone, present one moment and a hallucination the next.

“Okay, fine, what about this guy? He’s wearing some kind of stupid feather cloak,” she says. “He’s too bulky to miss, but I’d say if you manage wheel prints on his shoe, it counts for at least twenty-five points. And he’s seven-feet-tall so...”

I’m close now.

He can’t fire me. Mr. Barnes knows. No one else stocks the shelves the way I do. He maintains a strict order to his store, to reader expectation. He owes it to me, to my mom⁠—

“I was joking!” Audra screams.

My attention fragments long enough for her screech to drag me to the present moment and the adrenaline surge to sicken my stomach. I pull up short as we collide with the massive man wearing a feathered cloak.

But not before the front wheel bumps over his foot.