Page 2 of Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part Three

Two

Avalon

“ D o I know you?”

The guy had a weird expression on his face. “No. You don’t.” One corner of his mouth curled up. “Not yet, but you will.”

Not if I had anything to do with it. His expression was predatory, like he’d scented his prey, and that unfortunate creature was me.

I said nothing, just backed away toward the door that sat off to the side of the atrium.

The animals throughout the tall, glassed entryway made it feel more like a zoo than a war college, but I didn’t fool myself that they were normal animals.

No, they were tools of battle, just as much as the humans in the room.

One look at those huge hounds told me everything I needed to know. They were watching me with the same careful expression as the man they’d come to stand beside.

No, not a man. An Heir.

Hayle Taeme.

Rumor had it, he was as vicious as the beasts he commanded, and given that they were licking someone’s blood from their muzzles, I should have been terrified.

Yet, I wasn’t. Not really. Carefully cautious and apparently stupid were better adjectives.

As I backed carefully away, never taking my eyes from the Heir to the Third Line, I paused beside the door, almost tripping over the large war cat that was licking its lips and cleaning something—which I didn’t want to think about too hard—from its paws.

I needed to get out of this atrium right now. Slipping through the door, I breathed a sigh of relief. Just down the hall, I found the admissions office and knocked quietly.

“Come in,” a woman’s voice grumbled.

I hesitantly opened the door, surprised to see there were two people in the room.

A scarred woman with a shaved head and only one arm, and an older man with a solid jaw and wispy white hair combed straight back.

He would’ve been a hell of a looker once upon a time, but now, he was probably a little older than my father, although three times as fit.

He was leaning close to the woman, both of them looking down at an old ledger that they snapped closed as I entered.

“Ah, the conscript from the Ninth Line. Avalon Halhed, I believe?” the man asked quietly, but didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m Master Proxius, the director of this institution. Welcome to Boellium War College.”

Well, that was off-putting. Had Father sent a message ahead, indicating I would be this year’s conscript? Maybe he’d wanted to insist that I be killed in the first training session, so he could kill two birds with one stone: fulfill the Line’s conscription quota and get rid of me at the same time.

As if he could read the question on my face, the man gave me a kind smile. “You look like your mother. We were friends, once upon a time.”

I froze, the blood in my veins turning to ice. My eyes felt too wide in my face as I waited for the derision, the accusations that I was a murderer, or at least a cursed child. However, Master Proxius’s face didn’t change from the gentle expression.

I cleared my throat. “I, uh, didn’t really get to know her, and we don’t really speak of her.”

Sadness flashed across his face. “Indeed. Fate can be cruel sometimes. Her cousin is an instructor here, if you have questions about her.” He looked down at the woman sitting at the large desk.

“I will leave you in the capable hands of Svenna.” He patted her shoulder, and they shared a look I wasn’t even going to try and decipher.

“Enjoy your training here, Avalon.” He left quietly, while my eyes lingered on the door.

Svenna stood, grabbing another large ledger from the shelf with her good arm. She flicked it open to the Ninth Line page, and in long columns, written in deceptively neat script, was a list of the conscripts who’d come before me.

Avalon Halhed, Daughter of the Ninth Line, she wrote in the same blocky writing.

“Your dorm is the third sublevel. There’s no one in there at the moment.

Enjoy the serenity. Don’t be late to your classes, or you won’t like the consequences the instructors will concoct for tardiness.

” She pushed a timetable across the desk toward me, then looked back down at her ledger, making it clear that I was dismissed.

Opening the door, I hurried back through the atrium, over to the staircase that I assumed would take me to the subfloors.

I could feel eyes on me, but I ignored them as best I could.

It didn’t help that someone was screaming, or that the scent of blood and sweat perfumed the air, or that I viscerally knew it was Hayle watching me.

I wanted to flick my gaze around like a scared rabbit, trying to find an escape route.

Instead, I straightened my spine and walked toward the stairs with my chin up. You didn’t run from a predator. Everyone knew that.

And I refused to be prey.

But once I made it three floors down, I finally let out the breath burning my lungs. How had I managed to catch the ire of two of the most powerful Heirs in the country? My bad luck knew no limits.

Pushing open the door, I found the air smelled stale and empty, the communal space cluttered with discarded furniture. There was still a bowl in the sink, like the conscript who’d been here before me had just gone to class and not been killed in a training accident.

I’d clean when I wasn’t so exhausted. Picking the furthest room from the door, I placed my pack on the bed. It felt so heavy after all the days I’d carried it from my home in Rewill, all the way down here to Boellium.

However, when I flicked open the flap of my bag, I realized that perhaps it wasn’t just exhaustion making my pack heavy. Hiding beneath my clothes and the solitary book was a light purple stolt, the same shade as the epsirialle flowers that had been my favorite in the garden at home.

I shook out my bag, and the stolt fell onto the bed, shaking out its fur. It was odd that it was even inside the college—they were forest dwellers—and I wondered if the Third Line had brought it into the atrium for bloodsport.

“You’re safe now. Off you go. Back to your home,” I murmured, hoping it could find its way back to the surface. There weren’t any windows down here for it to escape from.

I expected the stolt to be terrified, but instead of skittering away, it walked up to my pillow, curled into a ball and went to sleep.

Well. Okay then.

Honestly, I could use the company down here. I briefly wondered if it wasn’t some kind of Third Line sacrifice, and instead an animal companion for one of the beastmasters. It seemed pretty tame, after all. It was either a pet or stupid.

I needed to shower, but my stomach was gnawing at itself. Food first, then hygiene; otherwise, there was a chance that I’d just pass out beneath the water. Then I would rot here in this empty dorm, until I either decomposed and oozed down the drain, or the stolt ate me.

On that depressing thought, I reached out and grabbed the little rodent. “Come on. You must have an owner somewhere. I need to give you back before the Third Line thinks I stole you and feeds me to those hounds.”

The small purple creature looked like it rolled its eyes as it yawned, but it let me pick it up, not even trying to bite me. Definitely not a wild animal. It ran up my shoulders, then wrapped itself around my neck.

I scoffed. “Make yourself home there. Don’t mind me.”

Shutting the door to the dorm, I slowly climbed the stairs, the muscles in my thighs screaming at me. As I willed my legs to lift, I could hear the voices of people climbing the stairs behind me. They were laughing, and I wondered what Line they were from.

I was halfway between the first and second subfloors when my head began to spin from either hunger or exhaustion, or maybe both.

I clutched at the neck of my shirt, pulling it away as it began to suddenly feel like a noose.

Black dots edged through my vision, and I swallowed back the bile threatening to claw up my throat.

The room spun, making me moan a pitiful sound, as my thighs turned to liquid and I made a grab at empty air.

Fuck.

Well, I guess I was going to go down in the family histories after all—as the conscript with the shortest stay at Boellium War College. Father would probably be happy.

My legs stopped working entirely, and no matter how hard I clutched at the rough stone walls, I couldn’t grip them. I fell backwards, and fortunately, hit my head on the step below, knocking me out so I didn’t have to feel every stone step all the way back down to the bowels of Boellium.

Darkness was a pleasant escape from my reality.

I dreamed of Hayle Taeme. His overheated skin against mine, his strong body between my thighs. He kissed me and called me his Soul Tie, whispering the sweetest things against my lips.

Lights swirled, and then he was Vox Vylan, who held me still with bands of air as he buried his face in my core before grinning up at me with an expression that made my heart pound in my chest.

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.

“Of course she 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.