Page 167 of Veil of Blood and Bone

“Forest shouldn't have gone ahead without us.” I grimace.

“She shouldn’t have, either.”

No, not when the slow creep of the world's blending has turned this town into a mirror of Jötunheimr. We're in the dwelling place of the giants, the forests deep and dark, the mountain peaks too steep for summer to find a hold.

Forest understands Helene differently than we do. It’s an animalistic sense, a primordial bond. He saw her first. He staked his claim before the rest of us knew more than the way she moved across the expanse of a battlefield.

“I should have brought my skis.” Wren hikes through inhospitable drifts in this grim landscape.

The idea of her out here somewhere, trapped, sends another spike of panic down through my canines.

If I’m not the one to kill her, though...does that mean she’ll live? That she’ll be safe?

“Have you tracked her or not?”

Wren’s shadows slide south overtop the snow.

“Satisfied?”

My fangs ache hard enough to split my gums. “No.”

Ice cracks underneath us. Where one footstep lands solid, the next slips into nothingness. Shadows latch around my coat collar to pull me back from the shoulder of the road and my arms swing to steady myself.

“Unless you plan on going for the gold, Nicholas, I suggest you stick to the center of the asphalt.” Wren’s voice is breathless.

I shrug his shadows away.

Rather than slither free, they cling, sloughing off like wood ash in a hearth.

“Something wrong?”

“I don’t know. The shadows are behaving strangely. The closer we get, the harder it is to⁠—”

“Control issues?” I interrupt.

A sharp crack to the left sounds before a pine splits, frozen from the inside. Limbs crash to the side of the road but neither of us jump out of its path.

The worst part about my heart beating again? It reacts. Right now it’s clawing up my throat to freedom.

“I’ll show you control issues,” Wren snaps.

We sidestep the fallen tree, its glazed insides bleeding like a stomach wound. The woods are unnaturally silent, even for a snowstorm.

My nerves thrum tighter.

Somewhere in the distance, another round of thunder booms. Or another gumtree falls. Either way, the world rocks, and Helene’s scent has developed the strange habit of appearing and disappearing.

Chapter 34

Helene

Shock pins us to our seats. No matter how many times I force my foot down on the accelerator, the tires spin.

The engine roars.

My head aches where it slammed into the steering wheel, and when I touch numb fingers to the area, they come away smeared with crimson.

Through the clamor of my heart, there’s no mistaking the thunder of footsteps in the distance, unnatural. Something found us. And we’re trapped.