Page 12 of Daughter of the Ninth Line: Part One

Neither did the pain in my chest when I saw her from the top of the dunes, kneeling in the water, crying into Braxus’s fur. I’d flown down the sand and had her up in my arms, safe against my chest, before I’d even consciously thought about it.

I’d carried her away from the unpredictable ocean, away from the temptation to walk into the waves and just keep going. I carried her to the long, flat rocks that the people on BoemoutheIsland used as seats when they came down to this beach. The conscripts of the college had used this very bay as a place to party more than once.

There was room beside me, but I couldn’t bring myself to put her down. Not yet. Her clothes were plastered to her body, her shoes a soggy mess around her feet. The cool sea breeze was whipping around us, and I worried that she would get sick if she didn’t get back to her dorm room soon and change.

Even with all that, I couldn’t let her go. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t fight the urge. Her pain was so thick in the air that I could almost taste it on my tongue.

“What’s wrong, Avalon? Why are you crying like your heart’s breaking?”

Her sobbing increased, and she murmured so quietly, I wondered if I misheard her. “I’m cursed. I murdered my mother, and now I’m cursed.”

What the actual fuck?I thought about what I’d read in her enrollment ledger, about her witnessing her mother’s death, but it had mentioned she was a toddler. I didn’t know much about the powers of the Ninth Line, but I’d met my fair share of toddlers, and they couldn’t shit by themselves, let alone murder their parents. “What do you mean?”

She just shook her head. “I don’t remember it. But she fell off a cliff and into the ocean.”

“That sounds like a terrible accident, Avalon, not murder,” I said softly, and she shook her head, crying harder.

“They said I pushed her.” Shock had me blinking in stunned silence, but I didn’t release her. “Her maid said I lured her to the edge, then pushed her off.”

What the hell did I even say to that?I’m sure you didn’t mean it? You were basically a baby.Something about this whole thing seemed off. “I’m sure she was mistaken, Avalon. She was agrown woman, and you were a baby. I’ve never met any toddler who could push me over, let alone right off a cliff.”

She was shaking her head again. “Doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It’s what everyone believes, and it’s followed me through my life, like a cloak of darkness I can never emerge from. I thought coming here would be different, but it’s followed me here too.”

I looked at Braxus, who was licking the salty water from the pads of his paws, and my companion sent me an image of Instructor Perot, followed by flashes of pictures that I deciphered to mean that Perot and Avalon’s mother were related, and he held some resentment for her death.

I was going to kill him. I didn’t care if he came around by the end of the conversation or not. He’d caused this turmoil in Avalon, and that was an offense I wasn’t sure I was willing to let go. I couldn’t explain this feeling in my chest, this urge to protect a girl I barely knew.

Alucius gave me an eye roll like I was still an errant pup and not her master. Well, kind of master. To the rest of the world, they followed my commands; in reality, our goals merely aligned and they did what I asked out of respect.

Alucius sent me an image of two wolves licking each other’s muzzles and then her and Braxus fuc… “Alucius!” I snapped, and she gave me a toothy grin.

Avalon sat up, startled, and she looked over at my hound who looked completely innocent, lying on the sand like a stuffed toy and not a killing machine.

I got Alucius’s point. She thought we were mates. Or at least that I was attracted enough to Avalon that I should fuck her. It would explain the ache in my chest at her pain, I guess. It was pretty inconvenient, though.

My parents would not be impressed if I brought home a mate from the Ninth Line. It would be like bringing home a seacucumber and telling my parents we were soulmates. Still, we respected the Goddess and her plans more than any other Line, so they might dislike the idea, but they’d still accept her.

I gave into the compulsion to breathe in her scent. She smelled really nice when she wasn’t covered in sweat and dirt from the arena.

I sat her up. “I haven’t known you very long, Avalon Halhed, but I’ve been watching you enough to know a little. Someone who’d murder their mother would not save a stolt from being eaten. In fact, they’d probably stay to watch. A person who would purposefully harm another would not share their food with the conscripts from the Twelfth. Or with my hounds. You might pretend to be an ice queen, but you have a big heart that you’re trying to hide.” She snorted disbelievingly, and I wondered if she didn’t actually see it. “Your family… They don’t believe that you murdered your mother, right?” Anyone with two working brain cells would know it would’ve been an accident.

But the darkness in her eyes told me that they did. “My father—” She broke off, like she didn’t know what to say, and honestly, if she told me that he believed a tiny toddler could push a fully grown adult anywhere, I would run all the way to Rewill and kick his ass myself.

“Your father?” I prompted.

She sucked the back of her teeth, looking back over the ocean. I held her tighter around the waist, the fear of seeing her neck-deep in the water earlier coming back full force.

“He believed the maid. He went crazy. He stopped everyone from taking care of me from the moment she died. My brothers told me he’d scream that I’d murdered my caregiver, and I’d never have another.”

Shock made me stiff again. Well, shock and a rage so strong that I could feel it singe my veins. “He ordered everyone to neglect an infant?”

The idea was insane to me. In the Third Line, family waseverything.Community was everything. Our bonds were our very lifeblood, and central to that was the idea that every child was a gift, to be loved and cared for by the whole Line. There was nowhere inside Hamor that a child could not go by itself and be one hundred percent cared for and protected. Anyone who committed violence against someone vulnerable would die a very painful, drawn-out death.

The idea of a father ordering their child to be neglected, despite the chance of death, was abhorrent to me.

She was nodding, no self-pity in her eyes. Like she believed she deserved it. “My eldest brother, Kian, defied him. He took care of me, with a little secret help from the staff, until I could care for myself. Kian stood up to my father, as his Heir, even though he was only ten.”

I tried to imagine how much courage it would have taken a boy to stand up to his father. I wanted to visit her family, to shake her brother’s hand and murder her father slowly. There would be no doubt who killed him.

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