Page 187 of Veil of Blood and Bone

We have to get him away from the vehicle. Away from the girls.

Isvargr hasn’t moved, hasn’t released his hold on the wreck. With each new taunt he bears his weight against the already cracked and caved hood.

“I’m over here.” Wren waves to the frost giant.

And in the space between his words and my next breath⁠—

“Nicholas!” Helene’s voice tears through the gale, and I turn before I stop myself.

Big mistake.

Isvargr bears down, and the car door gives beneath him with a metallic screech. The door cracks open, the window shattering. Her arm. She had her hand on the door.

Blood streaks down her forearm where the glass tore at her skin, and Helene flinches, shocked. The sharp triangle slides easily across her wrist, the ooze blooming slowly.

The world dulls, the storm narrowing, and everything inside me stops.

Her heartbeat spikes.

Hunger detonates through my entire system at the thin line of red running down her jacket. I already taste it on my tongue, the sensual glide of it, the sweetness of her heat filling the cold core that should contain a heart.

Control slips, and I take a step in her direction.

Wren’s head snaps to me and his shadows freeze mid-motion. “Ah, shit. Nicholas. Are you serious?”

He knows. The shift. The creature wearing my face. He sees it all.

So does Isvargr.

In my distraction he moves, targeting the girls intentionally. Frost collapses more trees around us as Isvargr stretches a hand through the windshield. Reaches inside to grab one of them.

Shame tears through me.

Wren’s shadows interact with frost, freezing the giant’s hand before it can touch them.

“Do something, you blood-sucking fool!” he yells.

I shake loose the image of Helene’s blood chilled on snow. What am I doing?

Isvargr bears down, unable to move his hand but the rest of him is free. His legs tense, bunch, and the car creaks when he steadily nudges it up from the ground.

I throw myself on his back. Wren’s shadows crack Isvargr’s wrist like glass as I climb higher, cresting his shoulders.

Helene’s face, the fear when she looks at me. The way Wren sees too much⁠—

I almost let her die for blood.

Self-disgust has me clinging tighter to the ice wolf’s neck. Claws gash through frosted flesh. The moment the runes beneath the first layer brush my hand, they scald.

“You can’t just tear him to shreds!” Wren yells instructions. “Otherwise, it would be too easy.”

Too easy…

There is nothing simple or clear about this, about Helene seeing me become monstrous. I fight through the burn, worse than sunlight, punching past runes to get to the heart of the beast. I can do this.

For her, what won’t I sacrifice?

I’ll heal. Until I don’t.