Page 31 of No One’s Daughter

​“We don’t have a choice,” I said. “If she is who we think she is—”

​“She could change everything,” Marlette finished quietly.

​“Yes.”

​“Her appearance now can’t be random,” I went on. “Think about it. Those attacks are probably linked too.”

​It’s too much of a coincidence.

​Marlette’s brows pulled together. “You think she’s our unsub?”

​“No,” I said, exhaling sharply. “Not directly.”

I dragged a hand down my face, trying to steady the thread of thought before it slipped away entirely. “I mean something is stirring, don’t you feel it? We’re on the cusp of change. He always said this would happen someday, and that I’d feel it and know it to be true. I think this is that. It’s all tied together.”

She didn’t answer.

“We’re on the edge of something,” I continued, quieter now, the certainty settling in a way I couldn’t ignore. Cathal’s voice echoed in the back of my mind, distant but as persistent as ever, reminding me of my purpose here. “I think this is it. It’s all connected.”

​“You’re not making sense, Davien,” she said carefully. “You’re worrying me. I still think we should hand her over to the Ninth. They’ll handle it.”

​“No,” I said, because it wasn’t up for debate. If there was any chance that she was the woman Cathal had always talked about, then I couldn’t take the chance. “You’re either with me or against me. Decide now.”

​“You’re asking me to go against the Ninth?”

​“I’ve done worse for you.”

​This time there was no hesitation. “With you. I’m always with you, you know that.”

​I held her gaze for a moment longer, then gave a single sharp nod.

​“Good.”

​Because there was no turning back from this.

​This would likely expose me.

​There’d be no coming back from that, and it would get dangerous.

​But I really had no other option. If Valerius got his hands on Ailsa, it could be the end of everything.

We’d never get back to the old ways.

Back to the way things should be.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ailsa

THE SUN HAD only just slipped beneath the horizon when I saw the house for the first time. Dusk was closing in, holding the last traces of light, bruised purples and fading gold stretched across the distance, but the ground had already been surrendered to shadow. I wrapped my arms tighter around my waist as I looked around. The air felt cooler here and cleaner, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and distant tree sap.

​We weren’t in the city anymore, that much was obvious. The house sat apart from everything else, no neighbouring lights or passing cars, no noise beyond the low rustle of hedgerows and the gravel that shifted beneath each of our steps.

​It was… strangely peaceful. In a way that felt at odds with my situation.

​I took it all in with a strange sense of detachment. This was where they had brought me. Where I had been—what? Held? Kept?

​Unconscious on arrival and locked away since.