Page 70 of Daughter Of The Ninth Line
More swirling, and it was Hayle again, dancing with me at a party.
Vox once more, holding me as we looked at the stars.
Back and forth and back and forth, their faces morphing one after another, until they blurred together and light threatened to blind me.
No, shit, that was actually a light trying to burn my retinas straight out of my eyeballs.Ugh.
“She doesn’t have uneven pupils, despite the large bump on her head. We should probably still take her to the healer, though,” a stern voice said.
“Ofcourseshe needs to go to the healer. Can you imagine if one of the conscripts died because of our ‘primitive healing’?” another voice replied with a huff. “Like they don’t just use magic to do what we do with skill and knowledge. Polus, lift her?”
I felt myself being lifted weightlessly. “Fuck, she’s skin and bones, Viana,” a male voice murmured, and I tensed.
“She’s the Ninth Line conscript,” another male voice said. “She probably walked down from the mountains.”
There was a murmur of conversation I couldn’t quite grasp, and I pulled open an eyelid. My head was pounding as I looked up into the face of a man, who smiled down at me.
“Hey, she’s awake. You fell down the stairs, so we’re taking you to the healer,” he told me quietly.
A girl dressed entirely in eye-searingly bright blue peered over his shoulder. “Any pain, other than your head? Arms, shoulders, ankles?”
I shook my head and immediately winced.
“Leave her, Acacia. The healers will ask her those questions.” Another girl appeared in my line of sight, and I realized she was dressed just as vividly, though her dress was more of a deep ochre color. They were the Twelfth Line.
I’d always envied their vibrant fabrics. In the Ninth Line Barony, we all wore black. Unending black. But the Twelfth Line dyed their clothes with the plants and minerals that ran through their Barony, giving them a bright, happy wardrobe.
The girl smiled gently at me. “I’m Viana. The big guy holding you is Polus, and that’s Acacia.” She indicated the girl in blue. “Link is behind us, but don’t look for him, in case you’ve hurt your neck.” She squeezed my hand comfortingly, and I tried to think of the last time someone had comforted me.
Ten years? Fifteen?
Viana didn’t seem fazed by my silence. “We’re from the Twelfth Line. We were just behind you when you fell.”
“Avalon,” I croaked out. “From the Ninth.”
She smiled once more. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Avalon.”
She didn’t let go of my hand, and her fingers were warm. Giving in for just a moment, I closed my eyes and just basked in their sunshine.
chapter forty-four
Hayle
My Soul Tiewas here at Boellium. I still couldn’t believe it, but I’d known instantly that she was the one. She was the other half of me. My mate. It had hit me like a bolt of lightning to my chest, a deep knowing that was indescribable.
I hadn’t known it could happen that way; from what my grandparents had told me, it wasn’t an instantaneous thing. It was like two magnets moving toward each other, pulled by invisible strings until it grew into a longing to be in their presence, to know everything about them. Eventually, when the time was right, the Soul Tie snapped into place, and you were helpless to resist.
Maybe it was different because she wasn’t from the Third Line. Avalon Halhed of the Ninth Line, that’s what she’d said. I needed to know more about her. I needed to know everything.
My first stop was Svenna’s office. She’d have the basic information, and from there, I’d have my own sources look into her.
I was just stepping up to the door when I scented blood. Not unusual in a war college, but still, I paused. When some conscripts from the Twelfth Line emerged from the stairs, one was holding some girl in his arms.
No, notsomegirl. My girl.
A growl rumbled up my throat, and I was striding across the atrium before the thought even took hold in my mind. “What happened?” I snapped at the wide-eyed Twelfth Line conscripts.
These ones had arrived last year, but the Twelfth Line had sent triple the amount of conscripts this conscription day. The drought in their Barony was brutal, and I didn’t blame them for sending their half-starved teens to Boellium to be fed and trained for a couple of years. Hopefully, by the time they were done, the drought would have broken.
