Page 176 of Veil of Blood and Bone

I dive at the giant. He tips his head in acknowledgement when I make contact. Claws scrape crosswise over the frozen plane of his spine.

It senses my struggle.

With the weather actively working against me, the winds too strong, I’ll never reach them in time.

Come on, bird brain. Fight it. Give it everything you’ve got.

I tense, flapping my wings and managing to stay aloft and steady as it pushes me backward again.

Wren’s voice. In my head.

The bond between us flares once as the first creep of his shadows cuts across my vision.

I’m trying. It’s not enough.

It’s never enough.

Another burst of magic sends me flying, heading the frost giant.

It lifts an arm to swat me away, and the contact hurls me into the trees.

And Helene will pay the price for it, taken out before she fully understands the connection. Our love is one-sided. She doesn’t think we see it, the way she gave her body to us but nothing else. We know her.

It scares her.

I dive at the car as the skies open. Here the innocent white flakes are rounder, harder pellets of hail. Pellets shred through whatever they touch and batter my bones.

They bounce off the vehicle, off the giant.

Thunder claps, and sleet spirals, propelled by the wailing wind. It dives beneath my feathers and draws blood.

A massive stone of it lands between my wings and sends me spinning to the forest floor. Freezing my spine. Falling faster and faster, circling in a tight spiral.

I slam hard into a mound of ice. Eyes squeezed shut, I can’t breathe. I can’t move. A pulse of magic attempts to change me back into human and even that stalls.

Yes, poor bird. The man is trapped in the myth, and there’s no way you can battle your way out of this. One little jötun⁠—

Wings flap.

I turn on my side as ice shakes the limbs above. A piece of desiccated deadwood breaks off and spears the earth with the sharpened point of a javelin, missing my finger feathers by half an inch.

Fly, little bird⁠—

I take off, sweeping a foot off the ground and avoiding the next spear of pine. The next. They fall in random order and land upright, deadly. Tracking me.

There is no use fighting the storm in the sky. Or on the surface.

I leap to my feet as another limb jettisons to earth. The force of its hit sends me off center.

One after another, they strike and pin a trail of potential death.

I hop another foot and flap to take off. Audra screams in the car, the jötun stooping protectively over it. Hinging at the waist, bending to keep him eye level at the window.

The sound is an electric jolt to my organs.

Leave her alone!

The words vibrate the raven's throat. Ice pellets pounds, coating the spears of pine. Dodging them is a minefield.