A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Ansel's POV

Ansel's POV

Dietrich let her go.

He dropped the knife and put both hands in the air, and said something about the truce.

I didn't hear it.

I walked through six Saltmarsh swords, took Cora by the waist, and carried her up the hill with her blood running down my own arm.

Nobody touched me.

Bram told me later that he had never seen so many armed men look so carefully at the ground.

I put her on my bed and the old woman came, the one with the white braids who had judged half of Dunmarrow's quarrels since before I was born.

She cleaned the cut on Cora's arm with wine and bound it.

Then she cleaned the cut on mine.

She did it in silence, and I let her.

"You'll say it," I told her, when she was done. "Whatever it is."

"You know what it is."

"Say it anyway."

She sat down on the foot of the bed and folded her hands over her staff.

"The first-face," she said. "Once in a life, when an Urekai is in mortal fear, he binds to the first face he sees. The body chooses, not the heart. It cannot be broken. It does not ask."

"I was ten."

"You were ten, and shut in the dark, and you saw a face." Her eyes didn't leave mine. "Whose?"

I didn't answer.

I didn't have to.

I had spent eighteen years seeing it every time I closed my eyes.

I saw the slats of the ice house door again, the gray dawn between them and the shape of a girl behind them.

← Chapter 8 · All chapters · Chapter 10 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend