Page 69 of A Dawn Of Blood

This time, I actuallydoscoff at the show of virtuousness. Her eyes dart to me, she frowns, but she almost immediately shifts her focus away from me.

“I know it’s only because you’re scared that you’re even considering this,” she continues firmly but softly, “and it’s for all the right reasons that youarescared in the first place, it’s why I love you all as people, but youwilldo as I say, and everything will be alright. Understood?”

There’s a moment of silence before, one by one, I see people nod,contently. “Understood,” the leader says.

I fix my eyes on the witch again. “Alright then, I guess it’s meeting adjourned,” she says with this warm smile.

Everyone gets up and starts chatting while leaving the room, but I keep my eyes on the witch. She gets approached by the fae male, with some question I don’t hear, but before she turns to answer, she throws me a look seemingly filled with hesitation and relief.

I narrow my eyes at her, but I can’t help but be impressed. I mean, I don’t believe it for a second — that it’s principle, let alone concern formethat made her fight them on the issue of torture. But she hasn’t just managed to convince them to drop it. She seems to have managed to fully reassure them, breaking any and all tension that had been filling the room before her arrival.

Whatever I do, I can’t let her succeed in foolingmelike that. I don’t believe it will take me more than a couple of days to escape, but it seems no one will be coming to look for me in the meantime — I heard them say they left a note telling my men I’ll be gone for a while, which was pretty clever, since it wouldn’t be the first time I’d done it.

Still, even if she comes to see mebeforeI manage to execute my plan, I just need to remember…

One, she won’t be catching me off guard anymore.

Two, I’m a sword.

And a sword can’t be fooled because a sword doesn’t care either way.

Chapter 52

Once the meeting is over, I find myself wanting to go straight back to where we’re keeping Cain. Instead, I fight the urge and spend some time looking for the right classroom to hold the first meeting of the Bones Quest Team, for which Nimueh and Dryden have volunteered.

Now I’m sitting at the professors’ table, looking around with my eyebrows pulling down.

Sure, it’s great that the Embers have agreed to my proposal. And Alaric has already left with his orders — to take advantage of his position for the purpose of learning anything he can about Baldur’s ancestors.

My own two missions, however, aren’t that clear to me. There’s the problem of the Bones Quest and there’s the problem that made me postpone going to talk to Cain again.

If I let myself do what I really wanted to do, I’d march straight over there and just stare at him and talk to him until I figured him out.

I can’t get him out of my head anyway.

But there’s the slightly inconvenient fact of him seeming to hate me, which wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that it’s getting to me.

Alright, to be honest, it’s making me feel as if a very part of my soul is being ripped out of me.

Even thinking about it is agonizing.

So it’s with a sigh of relief that I welcome Dryden’s knock and him and Nimueh walking into the room.

“So,” he starts as they take their seats opposite me, “finding our mortal enemy’s ancestors’ bones, huh?”

“Should be interesting,” Nimueh says.

“Yeah,” Dryden drawls, “but where do we start?”

Nimueh raises her eyebrows at him. “Are you sure you need to ask that question?”

“Old Norse temples and graveyards, Dryden,” I explain. Then I tease him a little. “You know, Baldur being Norse and all that.” He rolls his eyes at me. I shake my head, turning serious. “No, it’s not where we start that’s the problem.”

“Now I’m lost as well,” Nimueh says.

I lean forward. “The way I see it, we have two options. We can try to get information from books, risk taking too much time and fail to stop Baldur from achieving total world domination. Or we can visit the actual temples and graveyards ourselves, risk getting killed before we’ve even started and fail to stop Baldur from achieving total world domination.”

I lean back, waiting for reactions.

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