Page 109 of A Dawn Of Blood

“It will hurt,” she tells me.

Staring at the box, I grit my teeth. “I remember.”

But I don’t waste any time. I open the box, letting the piece of shadow fly out.

Nimueh takes a hold of it and we both use our powers to try to push it into the metal.

We fail.

It’s at that moment that his voice booms in my head again. He’s clicking his tongue. “Don’t you know when to quit, Freya darling?”

Gritting my teeth, I just ignore him and the two of us keep trying.

“You can do this, Anna,” I hear Dryden encourage me.

I push harder.

“You’ve already tried killing me, you know?” Baldur keeps trying to distract me.

Trying to shut him out, I clench my jaw so hard, it hurts. And I just keep pushing.

“Well, if you insist…” He chuckles. “At least you could come up with a new,originalway to do it.”

The shadow almost kills me, but I shove it in. Nimueh locks it inside, the sword emits a glow and everyone starts cheering.

Everyone except Cain and myself.

I’m trying not to show it, but I’m barely keeping myself upright. And we did manage to forge the thing, but…

“I guess I’ll see you soon then,” I hear Baldur’s voice again. “I mean, you do understand this ruins the element of surprise, don’t you?”

“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter.

But he’s right. I’m going to kill him if it’s the last thing I do, but I might need a second to rethink things first.

Chapter 75

I’m sitting in the Main Hall, staring at the newly forged sword we’ve placed o one of the shelves. There’s food on the table, music playing in the background, and everyone seems to be doing their best to celebrate the completion of the mission, despite everything that’s gone wrong.

But all I can think about is the man sitting in the corner, isolated from everyone else.

He’s glancing at me constantly, but it’s with resentment in his eyes that he’s doing it.

I look down at the food in front of me, but I just keep staring at it.

Raven tries to engage me in a conversation and fails.

And now that there’s no mission to distract me, I can no longer keep ignoring what happened the other night. I can no longer avoid thinking about the fact that he’s literally been raised to hate me.

If anything could make me seriously doubt love being able to conquer all, it’sthat.

And even when I still believed in it, I was failing at making progress with him, so now that I’ve lost my faith…

It startles me, when with the corner of my eye, I spot him get up and walk over to me. He sits in the chair next to mine and starts piling my plate with more food even though I haven’t touched the one already on it.

“Eat,” he orders when he finishes.

And it’s all my favorite food that he’s chosen, but the very thought of eating is making me nauseous, so I just shake my head and fix my eyes on the sword again.

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