Page 5 of Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part Three

Five

Vox

“ D o you have a brain tumor?”

Shay’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Excuse me?”

She was staring at me, like she could see inside my skull. “I’m trying to find an explanation why you’re acting like… this.” She waved a hand, indicating my entire body. Rolling my eyes, I continued up the stairs to my room.

If I thought that would stop my cousin from following me, I was sadly mistaken.

She trudged up the stairs behind me to my dorm room, though calling the Dome something as mundane as a dorm room was a serious injustice to the magic and architecture that had gone into creating the giant glass half-sphere that made up the walls and ceiling of my bedroom.

Sighing, I turned toward her. “I’m not sure what you’re even talking about, Shay.” In this room, with my cousin, I could shed the ego that I had to wear like a constant heavy cloak.

“I saw you give the girl from the Ninth Line chocolate. You couldn’t drag your eyes from her the whole time we were in the food hall. She wasn’t especially pretty, or magical, or anything that I can tell would attract the spare Heir of the whole country. She’s not even your normal type.”

I didn’t really have a type, unless my type was available and willing to keep our trysts casual.

If I was honest, I had no answer for Shay.

I’d noticed the girl in the courtyard when she stopped to talk to Jackus, who’d been suspended as a warning to the new conscripts not to fuck with the First Line.

Someone from the Eighth Line stealing from my dorm was unacceptable, but killing someone so far below me was almost considered unsporting at Boellium.

Jackus would get my leniency once, and after that, he’d be hanging by his intestines rather than threads of air.

He was lucky it was me he’d tried to steal from and not my brother, who would have killed him, college rules be damned.

The girl was dirty and skinny, yet somehow braver than most of the other conscripts who entered through the gates of Boellium.

I wondered if Jackus’s answer had been something different, whether she’d have helped him.

If she’d have gone against me, in the defence of a stranger.

There was something about her that spoke to my soul, an airy concept that I hadn’t believed until I saw her today.

When she’d walked into the food hall with a bandage on her head and Hayle Taeme by her side, my interest had been drawn, whether I wanted it to be or not.

I hadn’t been alone; every person in the room had turned to watch them.

She’d skittered away from Taeme like she couldn’t escape fast enough, but seemed happy to be trailed by those untreated furs he called companions.

That should have been the end of my interest. Anyone with a connection to the Third Line was an automatic threat. But when I’d seen her stare at those chocolates, her face twisted with both longing and guilt, that had pulled at a muscle in my body that I’d long thought calcified.

No one except Shay would have been able to pick up the residual energy of me bundling something as small as those chocolates across the room, high over everyone’s heads until they landed in front of the girl from the Ninth. Obviously, I’d kind of hoped Shay had also been oblivious.

Still, I had to maintain my nonchalance. “I think she’s kind of pretty, and it's been a while since we’ve had any new blood here worthy of sticking my dick in. You’re overthinking it, Shay.” I paused. “She was with Taeme, though, so find out more about her. I want to know their connection.”

Giving me a droll look that said she wasn’t going to just let it go, she turned and perched on the edge of my couch. “Whatever you say, Vox.” She cleared her throat. “Your mother reached out to me with another suitable pairing today. Ephily’s brother, Caden.”

I screwed up my nose. Ephily was a persistent annoyance who’d warmed my bed once or twice and now had visions of being Queen of Ebrus. Like that would ever happen. Caden was worse, by all accounts. A social climber who would kiss your ass, then stab you in the back.

“Did you tell her that I need you here, unwed and not burdened down by some barely connected halfwit for at least another year?”

I was hoping that by then either I’d have a solution, or my mother would have moved on to trying to marry off my brother rather than me and Shay.

Perhaps if Mother acknowledged that Shay wasn’t going to be interested in any male suitors and tried to marry her off to Ephily instead of her brother, she’d have better success.

But the First Line was nothing if not closed-minded and hellbent on using the women of our Line to spread both our control and genetics.

“Did I suggest that reproducing with Caden would weaken the intellectual integrity of the First Line? Yes. Your mother isn’t nearly as terrifying as the Baron.”

Nearly as were the prudent words there, because whilst my mother wasn’t as violent in her retribution, she was still powerful in her magic and prone to forcing people to her will, whether they liked it or not.

“How’d she take that?”

Shay shrugged, and while she pretended as if she didn’t care, I knew it played on her mind. “She agreed in the end. She suggested that they got their dim-wittedness from their mother. No love lost there.”

The backstabbing and rivalries among the Court in Fortaare was legendary. “Another reprieve then?”

Sighing, Shay stood. “For now. I better head to bed.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Night, Vox.”

I lifted my chin, my smile coming easily for her. I hated that I couldn’t save her from her fate, any more than I could save myself from mine. “Night.”

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. One well-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 a rumor. 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.