Page 90 of Veil of Blood and Bone

I can’t...

It’s too much.

I collapse on the sofa shivering, visions swimming in my head. Sigrún paints a picture of lives not necessarily well-lived but necessary. They all build on the last.

Struggle. Hardship.

And before them all, a battlefield, with the acrid metallic tang of blood congealing in the sun. A dry wind rips over the grass and rattles the strands. The dead lie still, and the ravens circling overhead are brethren, my kin. My kind.

I was chosen.

My arms ache to shift, but my mission is clear. I’m tasked to commit this to memory, the great battle of man.

To learn it, remember it, nothing else.

But her...

She’s there, a vision. A warrior of skill but compassion, which is rare. Women are no stranger to war. They are often as brutal as the berserkers or more so. And Helene, my god, she tends the wounded. She flashes me a smile, and the image of her lips, her lifted cheeks, brings another memory to mind.

Those lips on my neck the night before.

Her hands wrapped around my cock and guiding me into her body like a welcome to sanctuary.

It’s all coming back.

Centuries of isolation and loneliness, remembering, only to lose it all.

Sweat beads along my forehead. The journal falls open on my abdomen, bucking with the uneven tick of my lungs.

The loss lives inside of me. I’ve always felt it and never understood why. The love, yes, always the love as well. Need, joy...and sorrow. Without fail.

Why, though?

Rolling to my side brings no comfort and the book slides back into the trunk, landing on an angle. A few more pressed flowers fall free, and the rune etched into the spine is a dull reminder of…

…everything.

The glyph, Ansuz (ᚨ)—memory, breath, divine messages. My curse makes me forget her with every death.

Another lock clicks open inside of me. The curse, skitr. That’s it. The ancient symbols, the patterns I missed, the omens, they lead back to the same singular event.

A silver haired man stared hard at me through his one eye, the orb burning an unholy blue. “You would ask this of me?”

His bellow rattles the rafters of his golden hall, and I cower.

Knees aching from kneeling, I latch my gaze on the mosaic floor, as though it’s the only anchor in this desolate space. As though it’s capable of shielding me.

It isn’t.

“Don’t give her away,” I begged it of him, throat dry, voice cracking. “Don’t send my Valkyrie to be with a human. The marriage is a sham, and you know it. How could you order it? He’s unworthy. He is Níðingr.”

Odin laughed. “Your Valkyrie? You would claim her?”

My guts tightened. “She’s mine. She pledged herself to me.”

“The woman is not yours if she can’t be faithful.”

“The others—” I began.