Page 175 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Losing her isn’t an option, not when I’ve finally found her again. The taste of her lingers on my tongue, along with the memories I’ve fitted into the fabric of my mind. This time, we can’t lose.

Panic batters at me harder than the wind. It wracks through the raven’s body as I swing into the canopy. Pine needles provide no reprieve from the elements.

The giant has reached the car. It drags frozen fingernails across the metal roof like a lover’s caress. Inside, the girls have stopped screaming.

The terrible sensation of eyes on my feathers follows me deeper into the foliage. I hop to the nearest branch and inch toward its edge, ducked against a blast of air.

There is something else here.

In the quiet, it calls.

Thor’s hammer, and now frost giants? The AllFather isn’t playing around this time, and if this is the last time, if Nicholas and Wren are right in their suspicions...

No!

I drop, plummeting to the next limb, gathering energy to push off.

But as my claws touch down on worn bark, another gust of wind snatches me. It sends the body of the raven spiraling up. It drops away as suddenly as it arrives. I angle my wings, catching myself before I hit a bank of snow as solid as iron.

Flap those wings, the voice in my head laughs. It’s adorable the way you fight. But bird or man, it makes no difference.

The storm’s gusts carry in them a song of sorrow. Women’s voices, trapped in endless suffering.

It’s not a herald. It’s a warning.

Both women scramble toward the backseat of the car like formless shapes behind a barrier. The frost giant looms closer yet, crouching over the vehicle.

I can’t lose her again!

Not when I found her again. When we are finally together again and the memories are coming back. My heart bends, threatens to snap.

I crouch on the lower branch of a barren oak and push. Wings flapping through empty air. The wind abates for a moment.

Then picks up, slamming me back into the tree.

My head slams hard against icy bark. Skitr. Dark spots bob when I blink my eyes open and panic throbs beneath my breastbone

Give up. You will never make it.

That’s how I know the voice isn’t my own. I would never⁠—

Helene is everything. She is the sun rising in the north, and the warmth of her soul is the constant of my life.

I knew it the first time I looked at her. Valkyries and ravens are in Odin’s entourage.

When her eyes marked my flight overhead on the battlefield before Odin’s orders reeled me home to his throne in Asgard. The cruelty of the tether, the call away, and the devastation written on her face⁠—

I hadn’t abandoned her. She thought I did. With her sword hungry and her armor heavy, she continued to fight the Battle of Clontarf. Her sisters chanted the fate of the fallen around her.

Yet the flaxen-haired warrior with a heart bigger than her blade...

She stayed.

She always stays.

I snap my beak at the wind and take off again. Tensing, I wing closer to the frost giant, throwing magic to magic.

Whoever you are, you are nothing, I scream to the emptiness where the first voice exists.