Page 92 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Odin should not have forgotten this, should never have forgiven it, let alone rewarded it.

Or perhaps he remembered, but it was a sickening joke he chose to play.

Hellevi stood before the Yarl in his finery, still wearing her Valkyrie armor. Our eyes locked and this time her eyes held terror and a low-burning fury.

I tried to shake my head and tell her to run. To wait for my cue to detach free and we would fight against the gods themselves, damn them all.

My own anger burned the hottest fuel. Never had I hated the man who owned me, who worked me. I did that day.

Hellevi scoffed in Odin’s face. “Marry a man without honor? To do so would run counter to everything I am, will ever be, make a mockery of my life. An Argr." She spit. “He cannot pull his own weight.”

Odin bristled with power.

The bridegroom opened his mouth, his fat cheeks ruddier as he struggled to his feet. “You’d refuse me?”

A public embarrassment. The AllFather never stands for it. Odin would punish every single body in this room to maintain his pride. His magic pulled at me, a tide ebbing away from a black shore.

“Ek ann þér, Ulfson” Hellevi shouted, pulling her attention from me a final time and in the same breath⁠—

Her sword.

It couldn’t end this way. She wasn’t the only one refusing. I tore free of the thrall but it was too late. Dealing with Odin, it was always too late.

The curse...

A shout drags me out of memory. Mine.

I swallow past the rawness in my throat. No amount of compulsive swallowing soothes the burn. Waking from the memory is like swimming through tar. Emotions drown and bind me in suffering.

With a low swear, I swipe my palm to my sweat slicked face.

The details specific to the curse swim at the periphery of my awareness. Somehow, she was cursed, and I lost my position as Odin’s raven.

Muninn. The raven of Memory. My job was to carry Odin’s memories across the realms, to maintain his fountain of knowledge. Without a Muninn, the AllFather had nothing. I’d been chosen.

How does it tie into Hellevi?

No, Helene.

The ache has returned unrelieved. Whatever the specifics, that is where my answers are. Wherever it hurts the most.

Chapter 19

Wren

Audra rests through the night. The sleep of the sick, the healing. Although Nicholas’s blood surges through her veins, with everything the prophecy took from her when she spoke, it will be hours before she rises.

I stayed awake watching Helene. Who needs slumber when there’s her? Her eyes, scent, the round pink of her lips...

There’s no greater madness than the desperation for a woman. It turns males into fools.

Her chest expands and contracts evenly. At least in sleep, there are no beasts to bother her. No memories, either. Nothing to scare her or take from her.

I make sure of it.

She curls beside me on the bed with a crocheted blanket wrapped around her body, golden hair swept into a messy braid, the escaping tendrils at her cheek.

What’s the cost of hope? I twist one of the strands around my index finger, rubbing the piece like gold silk. How can it exist when it’s fused with failure, with control? With power and sadness?