Page 159 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Audra lurches forward toward her seatbelt and my forehead snaps against the steering wheel. Pain splinters through my skull as the tree buries us in more snow, and the wind seems to cry.

Chapter 32

Forest

Helene isn’t in bed.

Awareness crashes like a blow to the head. My eyes pop open, breath lost.

Her loss is immediate, visceral, my heart shredding my ribs. Beyond the mattress, beyond the other men sleeping at my flank, an all too familiar crash outside rattles the foundation of the house.

Thunder cracks, unnatural in the silence outside of us. Thor’s hammer.

But it’s not Thor wielding it.

I know it without having to look.

Something stirs, and she’s gone, and those two things are linked.

“Get up, bikkja.” I nudge Wren toward the side of the bed, swinging my legs around. “Niketas!”

His name roars out of me.

“Don’t you fucking dare call me that.” Nicholas comes alive with a start, shifting seamlessly from stillness to motion. “Where is she?”

And where the hell are my clothes?

A glimpse of white on the floor and a bit of feather answer the unspoken question. My vestments and the rest are mingled in a pile like so much dirty laundry, shucked aside and discarded in favor of skin on skin.

My throat constricts with an invisible noose.

“She’s gone, hundr.” I shove my legs in my pants and drag them high, looping the ties at the front. “They’re both missing.”

The sister’s absence leaves a palpable silence in the tomb of this place. While we were sleeping, they snuck out.

A hit of familiar loneliness lands like a punch.

Wren stretches his arms overhead like he’s got all the time in the world, his cock hanging out like an exhibition. “They won’t have gotten far.”

“Not with Thor’s hammer thundering over the entire damn town,” I growl. “Do you hear it?”

I drag my shirt over my head, limbs sore and tense. It’s not a great time for Wren’s bullshit attitude. It never is, but today of all days⁠—

She ran out on you rather than staying. Poor Muninn. What do you think it says about you?

The voice in my head has enough ring of truth to mark it as mine. I stop. Slap a palm to my temple.

“Thor’s hammer? A little early for him to have a crack at this world, isn’t it?” Wren works his shoulders, loosening knots from sex. “Usually he can’t be bothered to wake before noon.”

I stalk toward the door, grabbing the knob and wrenching it clean off its hinges.

“Fucking hell! Don’t destroy the building, Forest,” Nicholas yells, trailing me to the pile of clothing.

A second behind.

I drop the door without fanfare, its dusty edge digging into the plaster wall on its fall and crumbling pieces free. They drift in disorderly piles to the warped floor. “Helene!”

“If she’s not here, then what’s the use in calling for her?” Wren asks.