Page 96 of A Dawn Of Blood

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I open my mouth to apologize, but he doesn’t wait for an answer.

“You’re forbidden from doing any more healing on me,” he spits out as he starts turning around.

I come to block his way. “You’re not being serious, you’ll need quite a lot of rounds of—”

“No.” His tone is pure ice.

And he does seem so serious, but I’m not buying it any longer. “You know what I think? I think you’re very subtle and clever, but youaredrawn to me.Thatwas the reason you wanted to go for that run, wasn’t it?”

He throws me an incredulous look. “That was me manipulating you,” he explains as if to a child.

“And today, you saved my life,” I point out, not planning on giving up.

He grits his teeth. “I only saved you so I could bring you to my father to kill.”

His resistance is making me want to pull my hair out, but I quickly collect myself. I take a step forward and he takes one back. I smile. “Alright, but youareattracted to me, and that doesn’t mean anything in and of itself, but itcouldgiven how hard you’re trying to hide it.”

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he drawls in a dangerous, warning voice. “There’s nothing you could do that would make me lay a single finger on you ever again.”

I back him up to the wall, my smile only growing. I catch his eyes drop to my mouth for the briefest moment. “I didn’t hear no,” I purr at him. “So this is what I think. I think you enjoyed kissing me the day before yesterday, I think you enjoyed that little glimpse of my mouth you just got, and I think you’re finding yourself imagining it wrapped around your co—”

It’s a sudden, loud sound that cuts me off, my eyes only registering the act after the fact — his fist connecting with the wall behind him and breaking through it. He pulls it out, his chest falling up and down. “Stop. Talking,” he punctuates through gritted teeth.

But I only manage to blink at him before he comes to tower over me, in the blink of an eye back to being so completely cold and sneering. “And why are you still here, hm? I have training to do and you’ve already taken up too much of my time.”

Chapter 66

Acouple of days later, we return to Uppsala to try again. Only this time, there’s no excitement permeating the air. And I’ve had to bring Cain with us and surprisingly, he does look perfectly fine, but the fear for him is messing with my brain.

So it’s as if heading for our own executions that we march over to the runestone. Yesterday, we had a meeting about this, concluding that there’s a good chance this particular shadow can only be fought with a shadow.

It would make sense, considering Baldur would want to make it so that he’s the only one who can enter the tomb.

And since we don’t have Shadow Magic at our disposal, Dryden has spent the last couple of days working non-stop, creating a magical artifact that will suck the shadow in and trap it there.

Just like last time, we all come to a stop in front of the runestone, Nuala uses her magic to move it aside and the shadow bursts out.

Dryden is already in position when it does, his hands held out with the artifact open in his palms.

My heart leaps in my chest when I see the shadow get sucked in.

But then, almost instantly, it bursts back out.

Dryden goes straight back to executing plan B — dropping the artifact and trying to envelop us all in a bubble in the hope of hiding us.

But to our disappointment, the shadow can’t be fooled that way.

It heads straight towards us, and in that split second before I’m supposed to do what we’ve planned — use my fire and thunder powers to try to keep it at bay, something occurs to me.

I fix my eyes on the shadow, trying to imagine wielding one. And the next thing I know, there’s one slithering out of my fingers and slamming into the one attacking us.

My eyebrows shoot up when they freeze and then start wrapping around each other as if in a lovers’ embrace.

The attacking shadow stills and then disappears.

After a moment of stunned silence, I look around to find everyone staring at me.

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