Page 75 of Daughter Of The Ninth Line
Turning off my lamps, I lay down in my bed and stared up at the stars. When I finally drifted off to sleep, it was to dream of the girl. Of holding her in this room, in my arms, and staring at those same stars as they burned across the sky.
Should Ebrus ever go to war, it would be over in minutes, if this was the quality of citizens we were trying to turn into soldiers. Father insisted that every child in the First Line begin training in hand-to-hand combat as soon as they entered the schooling system, silently building his own little army, should the other Lines ever turn on him. I knew that the Third Line did this too, evidenced by the smooth way Hayle Taeme fought, both hand to hand, and with long-range weapons.
But from the Fourth Line downwards, the reliance the conscripts had on their magic for defense was abysmal. Onewell-stocked army with enough talismans to go around, and they’d be as helpless as civilians.
I knew the conscripts from the Upper Lines; most had come to see me last night in the food hall and metaphorically kissed the ring, and my ass. Watching them try to swing a sword at each other now was both humorous and disheartening. Some were already vomiting over the rail of the training ring from exhaustion and the hot summer sun.
Surprisingly—or perhaps not, considering they had no magic to speak of—the Lower Lines were proficient in mid to long-range attacks. Throwing knives, bows, and crossbows were all handled with practiced precision rather than magic. They relied on their bodies to survive, and that was never clearer than in the practice ring right now.
The Eleventh and Twelfth Line conscripts seemed to deal best with the exertion, despite being half starved. It was obvious that they toiled away in the overbearing heat of Western Ebrus every day, just to survive. They went through the simple forms with ease, not even breaking a sweat. No wonder Master Proxius was accepting them all without complaint. They probably would make good soldiers, as long as they never had to go anywhere too cold.
My eyes kept drifting to the girl, though.
Shay stood next to me, her expression mocking. “No, Shay,” she said in a faux-baritone. “My interest in the girl isn’t unusual. I just want to fuck her.” She was definitely mocking me. “You’re full of horse shit, Vox Vylan.”
Huffing a sigh, I dragged my eyes from the girl, back to my cousin and second-in-command. “What do you want, Shay?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked over the training ring with me. “Just providing the information you asked for, my Heir.”
Oof.She’d used my title, which meant she was annoyed. Squeezing her arm, I apologized with my eyes. I couldn’t do it out loud, not here, where anyone could hear. A Vylan never apologized, because we were never wrong. It was basically our family motto.
“And what did you find?”
Lowering her voice, her eyes drifted to the girl. “Avalon Halhed, youngest daughter of the Baron of the Ninth Line. I guess that explains her ladyballs—she’s some pampered little heiress from the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“What else?”
“No connection to the Third Line that I can find. Other than Hayle, none of the Third Line conscripts know who she is, at least according to Lucio.”
I didn’t understand the relationship Shay and Lucio had, but it worked in our favor. They shared intel, so Hayle and I could be outwardly antagonistic.
“And you believe Lucio?” She nodded, and I left it at that. I trusted Shay’s gut. “Anything more?”
She hesitated. “This isn’t a fact, more of a rumor that I picked up in the hallways. One of the new conscripts from the Fifth Line was telling Ephily that Avalon Halhed murdered her mother in cold blood. Rumor has it that her own father sent her here because he feared for the lives of his other children and the people of his Barony.”
My eyes flashed back to the girl in question, who was staring at the tip of her sword like it was personally betraying her as she tried to drag her arm up and complete her forms. She was talking to a conscript from the Twelfth Line; their colorful clothes made them easy to distinguish from the rest. Swinging too hard and overbalancing, she landed on her face in the dirt.
“You want me to believe that girl committed matricide?” I snorted my disbelief. “Look into it, and see if it’s more than arumor. We both know how quickly these things can spiral out of control.”
I watched as the girl dragged herself to her feet, her arms shaking with the effort. Hoping that Shay didn’t notice, I sent a small pulse of air to sit beneath the tip of her sword, taking some of the weight from her straining muscles.
But Shay was not an idiot. “You should go over and say hello. Getting women into bed happens to be my specialty, and I have it on very good authority that the first step is talking to the person you want to fuck.”
Shaking my head, I turned away from Avalon Halhed and went through my own forms quickly. But I continued to help her hold up her sword, at least until she could hold it high enough herself.
chapter forty-seven
Avalon
I feltlike a bug under a microscope for the entire first week at Boellium. No matter where I was, there were eyes sitting heavily on my skin. Most of the other conscripts seemed to look at me like a sideshow, but the really searing gazes were those of Hayle Taeme and Vox Vylan.
It took the Heir of the First Line eight days to finally corner me. I wouldn’t say I’d been avoiding him, but I wasn’t actively trying to hang around in the spaces he occupied.
Okay, I was avoiding him.
But as I came out of Battle History class, he stepped up beside me. “Are you avoiding me, little dirt scrabbler?”
Shit, he’d read my mind. I wouldn’t have known he was even talking to me, except for that pleasant nickname. He wasn’t looking at me and was walking at least a foot away. To outside eyes, it appeared as if we were just both walking down the same hallway at the same time.
