Page 72 of Veil of Blood and Bone

“I'm still waiting for your name," she fires off quickly, looking at me rather than an unconscious Forest.

“Ah, a situation where you scratch my back and I scratch yours, huh? I like the idea.”

She pushes a lock of honeyed hair from her forehead to give me the full weight of her scowl. How many people does she make squirm with that look?

The I’ll-chop-your-balls-off-and-feed-them-to-you-if-you-don’t-do-what-I-say look?

I fucking love it. She’s too nice to throw it at anyone else, though. Only me.

We turn to face each other.

“I caught your name in the bookstore but I want to hear it from your mouth,” she adds.

“My mouth—” My gaze dips to hers. “—is built for better activities than talk.”

This cycle is moving faster. I feel it, the difference, the speed. I’m not sure why or how.

Also, fuck that bird for kissing our girl first. Stupid oversized chicken.

Even without his memories he focuses on one thing only and it’s not duty. It’s dick.

She blushes when I reach for her, then stalls when I lift her hand to my lips to brush them across her knuckles.

“Wren Stonebreaker.”

She adjusts the hold and grips my hand, squeezing to prove her point. “Helene Blake.”

Yes. It’s her. After years of waiting for her to make an appearance, I’m touching her again, and the soul shining in her eyes is the real deal.

"It's a pleasure.” It always is.

“Leave the bird and get your ass out here,” Nicholas calls.

The walls might as well not exist. His agitation cuts right through the rickety plaster.

I smile at her. “How about you make us something to drink and we’ll check on your sister?”

Letting go of her hand steals the last warmth from my body.

Dramatic, but unfortunately true.

Helene nods, glares, and stomps out of the room hard enough to rattle the entire house. But the mention of Audra does the trick and erases any sort of irritation at my suggestion of coffee.

Nicholas has Audra settled on the small couch with a pillow beneath her head this time. The girls’ chest lifts and falls in a steady rhythm, and her hands loop on her lap.

Helene pauses to swipe the hair from the girl’s face before heading into the kitchen. A muscle in Nicholas’s jaw jumps.

She promptly ignores both of us.

Nicholas catches my gaze.

Ah. Here we go.

An arched doorway separates the compact living room from the smaller galley and she stands there for a moment, watching her sister sleep.

There are pieces of her in this iteration. I see some of Hellevi in Helene’s long straight nose and the pertness of her lips, now turned down with worry.

Being around her is coming home, leaning into the familiar embrace when a time in life wasn’t tainted by loss and grief and suffering.