Page 8 of Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part Three

Eight

Avalon

H appiness had always felt like a fleeting sensation, something so warm and bright that it briefly chased the chill from the cold, dark crevices of my life before disappearing again. I felt like I was forever chasing just a taste of sunshine.

Right now, though, I was basking in that happiness, lying on a blanket in the middle of a forest with a man I barely knew, but who somehow felt like home. In fact, he felt more like home than any other place or person ever had, and I didn’t understand why.

At some point, the hounds had joined us in the clearing, and the stolts hadn’t been even remotely fazed about the apex predators in their midst. A lack of self-preservation must be a stolt trait, because they played up and over the wiry fur of Braxus’s coat, hiding beneath Alucius’s legs, and generally playing, like a mass of purple fur.

I laughed as one ran up my torso to curl up on my chest. Within seconds, it was asleep, like someone had flicked an off switch. Hayle stared down at me indulgently, lifting a strawberry to my lips so I could eat without dislodging the stolt. It seemed… intimate. Frighteningly so.

Not because I was scared of Hayle; I was just terrified by the whirl of emotion that had lodged in my chest as I watched him. The joy, the desire… the something else I couldn’t name because it would make no sense, but it was there , resting deep in my chest.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” The question burst from my lips before I could swallow it back down.

Hayle froze, the berry pausing inches from my lips. He cleared his throat. “Yes. The concept of a soulmate is revered by the Third Line. We call them Soul Ties, though.”

I hummed a thoughtful sound, reaching up to take a bite of the strawberry. “What’s it like? Being part of the Third Line?”

He chewed his lip, his gaze running all over my face like he was memorizing the lines of it. “It’s like the comfort of strong arms. Like having someone you trust at your back, so you can rest.”

I closed my eyes against the words, trying to imagine what that felt like, to be able to trust like that.

“Sounds nice.” I tilted my head toward a small patch of sun, feeling the warmth on my face, the light turning the world pink behind my eyelids.

“I don’t think I’ve ever trusted anyone that much. ”

“Not even your family?” I could hear his frown.

My lips turned down. “Maybe my siblings. Kian especially—he’s the Heir. He cared for me the best he could, I guess. He was older when my mother died.” I cut off the words. The sun and good vibes were making me a little more free with my past than I should be.

“What about your father? Surely he protected you?” Hayle asked, and I shook my head once.

“Anything you tell me stays with me, Avalon Halhed. I swear this on the honor of my Line.” His voice was soft, so filled with compassion, that I opened my eyes.

He was right there, staring down into my face with an expression that I couldn’t understand, but made my heart race.

I believed him. “My father hates me.” It was the truth, one that I’d expressed to myself and my siblings many times, the one that was generally accepted by the people of the Ninth Line Barony.

The Baron of the Ninth Line hated his youngest daughter because she’d murdered his wife, the great love of his life, his only guiding light.

Hayle didn’t negate my words. Didn’t smooth them over with gentle denials that a father could never hate his daughter. “His loss,” he said gently. Then he dipped forward and brushed his lips along mine. The kiss was so soft, I wondered if it was just a dream, a desperate hope.

But when he deepened the kiss, something settled in my chest. This was happening, and when I kissed him back, he groaned into my mouth. He leaned over me, pressing his chest to mine, his arms bracketing my shoulders. Pulling back, he stared down at my face as if I wasn’t real.

“You feel so fucking perfect. How can you feel this right?” he whispered against my lips, before diving back in and kissing me again.

The stolt that had been asleep on my chest wiggled out from between our bodies, then it was just me and Hayle and no space between us.

My body curled up toward him, like no space was still too much space.

One of his hands reached down to slide along my side, gripping my hip with firm fingers and dragging me closer, like he too wanted to crawl inside me and be one person. It wasn’t my first kiss, but kissing one of the stable boys when I was fifteen had been nothing like this. This was so much more.

Finally, Hayle dragged himself away, moving back a little, his forest-green eyes almost glowing, wild and uncivilized. “I swear this isn’t what I brought you out here for.”

Embarrassment flooded my cheeks. Was he regretting the kiss? Was I bad? I narrowed my eyes, hiding my self-consciousness behind bravado that felt like a mask. “Why did you bring me out here then, Hayle Taeme?”

His eyes were running across my face again, and he slumped down on the blanket beside me, gathering my stiff body into his side until I was tucked along his own like I belonged there. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it too?”

His rock-hard bicep that I was using as a pillow?

I felt that. The way he curled my body over his so my hand was resting on his abs, and my knee was resting on his thigh?

Those things I felt down to my core. But I didn’t think that was what he meant.

I had a feeling I knew, but I didn’t want to guess and look like an idiot.

Because what if he didn’t mean this thrumming energy in my chest? I would be devastated.

“Feel what?” I asked lightly.

Grunting softly, he tugged me until I was blanketed over his body. “This connection between us. This feeling like fate has put us together, that we’re meant to be one.”

My thighs slid to either side of his waist as I pushed up to look down at him. I did feel those things. Like a golden string was attached from my chest to his.

Vox Vylan’s face appeared in my mind. I felt that draw to him too. How did I tell Hayle that I felt that connection too, but not just for him?

Maybe we were feeling different things.

Maybe I just had wind?

But when he buried his hands in my hair and pulled me down to kiss me again, I realized that it wasn’t gas or any other bodily function causing this. It felt like my soul was reaching for him; there was no denying it.

I just had to work out why it was reaching for Vox Vylan too, and who I was supposed to choose.

And I had to choose, right?

We kissed and kissed, as the sun set and the stolts returned to their burrows, and the calls of the day birds gave way to the night creatures. Until I knew the taste of his lips, the feel of his body, the sounds of his pleasure.

He stopped me from taking it further, though. He twined my fingers in his when I tried to unbutton his pants and pulled my hands up until they were caught between our bodies.

Finally, the cold was permeating the air, making me shiver, and Hayle pulled back. He looked… ruffled. His lips were swollen, even as they curled into a satisfied smirk, his eyes hooded and his hair standing up at odd angles.

“I could kiss you forever,” he murmured, brushing a hand down my back. “But we should get back.”

Nodding, I rolled away from him, curling up on stiff muscles.

Hayle glided to his feet like he hadn’t spent who even knew how long pressed between my body and the hard ground.

Reaching down, he lifted me to my feet with ease.

I stood as he gathered up the blanket, along with the remnants of food—which had some suspiciously Epsy-shaped nibbles around the edges—and put it all back in the pack.

Wrapping my hand in his larger one, he walked us slowly back toward the gates of Boellium War College. I ran my hand down my hair, trying to smooth it so I didn’t look like I’d spent the better part of the afternoon dry humping in the woods like a horny rabbit.

As we stepped through the gates, I expected Hayle to drop my hand, but he didn’t. He walked beside me, his chin raised and a smirk on his face, no matter how many people turned in our direction to openly stare.

I knew what it was. It was a claiming.

Eyes burned against my skin, and when I looked up at the second floor of the atrium, I could see Vox staring down at me, his expression turned down into a frown. My heart clenched in my chest, but I pushed the feeling down. I meant nothing to Vox Vylan, and he meant nothing to me.

Liar, my brain rebelled. I didn’t understand it, but I was drawn to the Heir of the First Line the same way I was drawn to Hayle. No, not the same, but equally as intensely.

As we walked down the stairs toward my dorm room, I pushed thoughts of Vox from my mind. That wasn’t fair to Hayle, who’d just given me the happiest afternoon of my life.

Stopping outside my door, Hayle leaned down, kissing me gently once more. I gripped his shirt in my fist and leaned back. “Hayle?”

“Mmm, yes, Avie?”

I smiled at the nickname. I didn’t think anyone had ever given me one. Though Father had called me a murderous demon regularly, I doubted that counted.

“I feel it too,” I whispered, and he sighed happily against my lips.

“I know.”