Page 69 of Veil of Blood and Bone

More pain spikes and splits the room into two blurry pieces. Images fly faster, darting behind closed lids. More and more of them. Lives and knowledge, stored away.

Someone has to mark them.

Someone has to seek out events, concepts. Ensure the collected wisdom is preserved.

A groan tears free, and I double over, clutching my head between my hands. No relief. A migraine rattles through me.

It can Farðu þar er smyl hafi þik.

Go where the trolls can have it.

The same black holes in my mind dot my vision when I straighten. The room goes dark, then light, the headache unrelenting.

“Forest? Are you okay?” Helene is near enough to worry but not to touch.

“Uh oh. You know what this means.” Wren’s voice sounds through a wall of water.

He’s not speaking to me.

“What does it mean? What’s happening to him?”

A brush of a hand up my chest, along the sides of my face. The second she makes contact with my temples I fall, hitting the floor with my knees first.

“Forest! Come on, talk to me.”

I push her hands away, on all fours. The coolness of the wood floor is nothing but a layer of gauze on an amputated limb. The migraine refuses to abate.

“I suppose we should get him comfortable. These memories are too much for him. Like clockwork.” Wren’s shadows link around my wrists and haul me upright.

“Step aside. You won’t be able to help him,” Nicholas warns.

Help me. There is no help.

No end.

“You wanna bet?”

Helene hasn’t gotten her answers. She’ll need them if she has any chance of fighting⁠—

Shadows thicker than night lift me higher and balance me on my feet. Nothing matters. Nothing erases the pain.

Why should it?

If Thought and Mind do not obey the All-Father, what is left?

The words scarcely form in my head before I’m doubled over again. I pry my eyes open. An anchor. I need something to tether me to the present.

“Where should we take him?” Nicholas carries the girl who now goes by Audra.

Her head rests on his chest, and his jacket lies forgotten on the desk.

He’ll need it against the sun. If the sun deigns to show its face in this forsaken place.

Helene worries her lower lip. “We’ll go to my house. He can have my bed. It’s only a few blocks over. Not a hard trip. Those shadows of yours, can they carry him?”

“It’s a hard trip if he can’t manage to walk himself,” Wren replies.

I grind my teeth down and take a step on my own, ignoring the crippling pain. It resists like a hungry snake. “I’m fine.”