25. Forest
Forest
Will the books help her remember? Will they help me?
The raven’s claws clutch the handle of a duffel bag, a handful of volumes nestled within.
I hope they will. I hope, if I go back to Helene with her sister’s journals, something will spark inside of her the way it did in me.
Optimism is fickle. As nebulous as the wind battering me closer to the ground.
Decay and sourness battle with the freshness of snow, the air unseasonably cold. Kari’s doing, no doubt.
The weather has been strange and unusual lately. The sun hasn’t shown its face in more than a week, small glimpses of gold like stolen treasure.
This place, the thinning veil, the leaking mist from Ginnungagap, it all means something.
Why can’t I figure out the way it fits together? It’s right there within reach, but somehow It’s not fitting.
Memories of the past and present blend into an interwoven disarray.
Pellets of hail drive against my eyes, and a chill ruffles my feathers, sending me off course.
I fly sideways, ducking underneath the protective dome of an elm tree missing most of its leaves. Ahead, the river Heath churns, unsettled. Its current sends small rifts of ice clacking downstream.
I loop the strap over a broken nub of branch and settle on the thicker limb. The storm has only begun. It will worsen in the witching hours until snow devolves into a wintry mix no one is foolish enough to fight.
Except me.
I’m nothing but a fool.
A bolt of lightning crashes across the black horizon beyond. Sleet and spark.
Realization settles in following the crash, and I see the storm for what it is. It’s magical, yes, but it’s not Kari’s this time.
This is elemental. This is powerful and potent and not even Norse.
A surge of anger stings past my throat and down my windpipe into my lungs. The cry stalls there.
The magic is too pretentious. It’s a show, the pieces thrown together in a clash and whatever resulting bastardization released on the world without a care.
I blink beady eyes into the belly of the gale. This reeks of Dokkálfar.
What the hell are they up to now? Has their bastard king, the pagan fool, decided to test his boundaries again?
Of any ruler of the nine plus realms, he is the one to watch. What’s his name? The one who banished Wren—
The unease in my gut refuses to settle.
Another spear of lightning crackles above the riverbanks like punctuation. I’m right.
After centuries, I should be better with the Dokkálfar than I am now. Wren’s kin are less than a pile of skitr.
Ambivalence allowed me to carry their history in my head. Yet the years passed, and their kind continued to spawn from the darker domains, left on their own for too long.
Their magic warps the further it gets from the base of the tree. And Wren, well, I’m forced to admit he’s something apart from his kin.
He’s guided by a love more profound than they’ve ever experienced. It’s the kind of love written in the space between stars and made from the atoms of whatever creature greater than the gods that created the universe. It’s the stuff powering the nine worlds.
As much as I don’t want to trust him, begrudgingly, I do.
He’s imprinted himself in the runes on Helene’s soul the same way I have.
I’ve seen him fight for her. I’ve seen him lose it all for her.
That, if nothing else, inspires an even more begrudging respect for the man.
The wind dies down, thunder and lightning twining together in the cloudy snow-swollen sky.
I grip the bag of journals again and take off toward town.
A dim glow between flakes is a beacon. The spikes of a church cut up into the storm while the rest of the one-story buildings nearby hunker down, clinging tight to an unforgiving, cold ground. The shell of the bookstore is a gray spot among its brighter neighbors.
Someone nailed a long piece of plywood across the broken door with crisscrossing wood over the windows. That won’t keep the chill away. It won’t protect the treasure inside.
Soon, it won’t matter.
None of it will. The retailer is a piddling, trifling thing. That part of Helene’s life is done. It was relegated to the past the moment the four of us connected again.
Does she realize it?
I angle away from the store, carried past snow-mired streets toward the listing Victorian. The bones of the house hold firm against the storm the way it weathered the others over its hundred years.
Now, I remember it going up. The builders who worked tirelessly managed to erect the shell in a few months while the rest of the intricate pieces, like the windows and the corbels, were ordered and shipped in from overseas.
Something guided me to this town before it ever had a name, and I’ve been waiting since, alert and patient.
Held in position by an inner knowing.
Eventually Nightshade Hollow would harbor and shelter my love's next lifetime.
Shelter is an awkward word, though.
She hadn’t been sheltered since her arrival. She'd been carved from circumstance and forged into the current version of herself. Gruff, vulnerable. Resilient and loving.
A survivor. Battle scarred. Trust has never felt safe or sustainable.
Suffering does strange things to a person.
I wing my way to the turret of the Victorian and settle on the top of the weathervane, its bronze horse worn by age. I can’t go in yet.
Because across the street, Wren stands, his head ducked, his spell in place.
He’s not alone.
Acid churns beneath my breastbone. Why on earth would he meet with a Himfrey, Norse coding Fae of the ice court?
What the hell are you doing, Wren?
Questions pile up inside me in a litany of voices. Not all of them are mine.
Look at that. A vile laugh scalds through me. Hours and he’s ready to stab in the back. How will this cycle be any different with him already playing both sides against the middle?
Instincts screech. Confront him. Shift and interrupt the conversation.
What holds me back?
My heart thuds hard enough for them to make me out in the night.
A Hrimfrey in this world is a signal of the end. Will you let him drag you down again? Forest. Be rational. Be vigilant.
Betray him before he betrays you.
I shake my head. This isn’t me.
Lightning cracks, and I tighten my hold on the bag.
I can’t allow the Hrimfrey to know who I am, an imposter masquerading as the beast I used to be, or the man I used to be, the one who only emerged once a warrior woman smiled at me.
With a squawk, I take off around the side of the house, mind filled with Helene rather than the odious voice of nerves.
How many nights have I dreamed of returning to a home I couldn’t find?
How many days did I wake to burning eyes and an acrid taste along my tongue, grasping at ghosts?
She’s here now, and so am I. There’s comfort in that. A shaky breath sends a tremble through me. The worst time for weakness is when none of us can afford to break.
I claw through the night’s embrace and land on the crumbling porch that rings the exterior of the house, transforming with the hazy town lights behind me.
A sneer in Wren’s direction does nothing. He can’t see me around the angle of the house. What is he up to?
I grip the duffel and kick down the door. It swings open, creaking in greeting. Another nudge pushes it shut, and I take the stairs two at a time, pausing on the footstep-worn walkway outside the apartment.
Is this the right thing to do?
Has Wren always walked in circles with beings who make their lives a litany of dishonesty? Wariness creeps closer and threatens to replace trust.
The apartment door opens, Helene backlit by lamplight and her eyes dark. “What are you waiting for? Come in.”
She steps aside with her gaze dipping to the duffel bag. Boots shake the floor, rattling Christmas lights strung from slender nails on the wall.
Nicholas stands in the shadows of his long leather trench coat with a look raking Helene top to bottom.
I know the look. I know what it does to her. A flash of jealousy lands before I stifle it. “Ah. I’ve interrupted something?”
My grin stretches and hides a sharp edge.
It seems no one is sleeping tonight.
A sustained silence unfurls.
“No, you haven't,” Helene replies, stepping further out of the way and not looking at Nicholas.
My little shieldmaiden doesn’t realize it yet, but she will. With these journals, she’ll see. There’s nothing to hide when it comes to her appetites. She’s hungry for multiple men.
Not even when Nicholas grants me the most dramatic eye roll of his life.
“Good, then. I come bearing reading material. Gods willing, it will get us all on the same page.” I glance behind me. “As soon as we’re all here, we can get started.”
Whatever Wren hopes to get from his clandestine meeting, I hope it’s worth it. If he disappoints her, if he does anything to jeopardize this cycle, I’ll tear him apart.
“Get started with what? What kind of reading material did you bring, Forest?” Helene stifles a yawn, her question working its way through my thick skull. “It’s a little late for research.”
She swallows, her brows furrowed and her lips a thin, resolved line.
“Something you may not like. Something you need. Ah, good, the warrior is awake.”
I push a fist to my heart when Audra sidles from the kitchen with a plate of something sweet in her hand.
“Leif Erikson,” she greets.
Helene pinches her nose. “That’s not his name.”
“He was a good man but only a shade of his father. Now he was strong. Capable.” A pinnacle of warriors past, and yet Helene would have put both men to shame at one time.
Norse explorers had no clue of the greatness that came before them.
I’ve seen her kind and empathetic. I’ve seen her determined and full of righteous anger. She bites and claws and smiles in the same breath.
I adore each part of her through the heartbreak and the resignation and the horror of what faces her, a curse even death cannot erase.
Every side of her, I’ve marked and memorized and forgotten.
“If we’re going to do some hardcore studying, then I think another pot of coffee is warranted. How do you take yours, Forest?”
From the opposite side of the room, Nicholas blanches.
“Oh, ah, ale will be fine. Whatever you have,” I reply.
“Half a bottle of cooking wine?” Audra offers.
Helene sighs. “I’ll bring it.”
Tonight, there is something in her eyes, something she tries to bury beneath heavy shields, hidden in chaos. It’s a different kind of armor.
She sets a cold container of white wine on the console table without attempting to draw a joyful smile across her face. Her frown remains when I hold up a journal.
The rich, warm scent of something chocolate lulls my senses.
“What do you have? I love reading,” she says softly, “but those look more like Audra’s speed.”
Helene sinks beside her sister on the couch and the hollow caverns beneath her eyes deepen. She needs sleep.
I’d much rather sprawl on a bed, entwined with Helene with her legs flung over mine and her hand resting on my heart, there to watch the movement behind her closed lids, the rise of her chest, lost in a tangle of limbs and lust.
Instead, we’re here. Her big hazel eyes are calm but her bright smile lacks fire. It’s too mired in exhaustion.
“Yes, they certainly are.” I grin at Audra. “They’re written in her hand, after all. Lifetimes of information. Whatever you want to know, it is here.”
She chuckles. “Me? You’re serious.”
“Certainly. Once we’re all gathered, we can proceed. There are answers here. I’m sure of it.”
Her fingers skim over the cover of a journal and she stops. "Hel." Her gaze lifts. "Where are the rest of Mom's journals? You know, like the one I was reading the other day?"
"Still in your bag. Why?"
"Get it. Please."
Her urgency spurs Helene into action. She returns seconds later with her sister's satchel, and from the depths, Audra draws another bound book.
Oh. I forgot one.
"It's the same," she crows. "I wasn't reading from Mom's journal. She was reading from one of mine. It was a map. Oh, Hel."
Helene has gone pale.
She might fear us. It’s sensible to stay wary, to observe. But there is enough trust for her to let me see her truth beneath the walls and the defenses.
Her anguish remains.
Yet she always handles it.
She also doesn’t shift her eyes from me. “Why wait? If Wren is busy then we can start without him. I’m sure he already knows all of this. Ah, shit. I didn’t make the coffee. Hold on.”
Nicholas clears his throat, a clear and wordless warning to not push her too far tonight. He understands the pain, too, her exhaustion at pretending to keep it together. And tugged between duty and worry, I wonder if he’s not right.
When was the last time I felt this way? I can’t remember. There’s never been enough room to do anything but fight.