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With an intense look on his handsome face, he asked, “What else?”

Jade debated how far she should go, but she suspected there wasn’t h he’d innately know she was keeping so from him

Reaching out a hand to hier”

His expression turned skeptical and a bit concerned

Jade laughed softly “I’ll ad to attempt to stab you in the heart”

“Are you sure about that?”

She smirked at him

With much reticence in his voice, he said, “Actually, that’s not at all my worry”

Regardless of his tentativeness, he unsheathed the dagger at his hip and laid it in her palers of her other hand around the handle and slowly drew the sharp blade over her flesh, slicing it wide open

“Jade!” Darien lunged forward and wrested the knife frorasp

The pain in her hand radiated throughout her body It was excruciating, a fact that never failed to astonish her The agony was tenfold, or more, what it should be Even aAnd the e away froh she’d been run through with a sword

She gripped the wrist of the bleeding hand as her body treers closed around her biceps and he tried to direct her to a chair

“Sit,” he demanded

“Just wait,” she ground out as tears flooded her eyes

She fisted her injured hand and rotated it several degrees, so the blood streamed to the stone floor A few tense minutes slid by and the flow became a mere trickle Her breath still came in heavy pulls, but the pain ebbed into asensation She suspected a good ten le drop fell Opening her hand, she extended it toward him, palm up