Page 6 of Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part Three

Six

Avalon

I felt like 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.

“Uh, not intentionally?” Lie. Definitely intentionally.

The quick flick of his eyes in my direction told me that he didn’t believe me, and I started to walk a little quicker, hoping to lose him in the mass of people.

But any thought of that escaped when he reached out and gripped my wrist. My skin prickled, like I’d just stepped into a snowstorm. We both stared down at the place where our skin touched, and Vox Vylan quickly withdrew his hand.

I kept referring to him in my head by his full name to reinforce the fact that he was a Vylan. Dangerous. Attractive. But wildly out of my league.

“You’re an Heir?” His words were haughty, imperious even, and although it was phrased as a question, his expression told me it really wasn’t. That he knew everything there was to know about me, about my life, right down to my favorite color.

“Yes. Of the Ninth Line, though an Heir is a bit of a stretch. I have a lot of siblings who’d have to die for me to take the mantle of Baroness.”

He frowned at me, like I was plotting something. Little did he know there was nothing I wanted less than to be Baroness of the Ninth Line. I’d rather flay my own flesh from my bones.

“Is that something you plan to do?”

My blood froze in my veins, because while his words were light, there was a knowing in them. A hint at a secret. He knew about my mother’s death.

I stopped and turned to him, making him halt.

No one passing by would wonder if we were talking to each other now; our bodies were close, and he stared down at me with an intensity that made my bones feel like jello.

His eyes were like shards of glass, cutting along the curves of my face as they wandered across my skin.

I couldn’t see Braxus, but experience told me that he’d be here somewhere, watching and waiting.

Clearing my throat, I straightened my spine.

“No,” I said with so much conviction, there would be no doubt that I was speaking the truth.

“I have no interest in killing my siblings—the only people in Ebrus who love me—or becoming a Baroness. If I can help it, I don’t even want to return to Rewill, or the Ninth Line Barony.

” I licked my lower lip, nervousness making my skin itch and my mouth dry.

What if I was just being sensitive? What if he didn’t know about my mother, and I was projecting my insecurities onto his words?

Because even if I hadn’t directly murdered her, I knew deep down that I was the cause of her death.

He put a hand on my arm, leaning down close to me, so no one around us would hear his words.

“I’ve lived around enough cold-blooded killers to know that you aren’t one, Ninth.

” His jaw tense, he straightened. With one last incline of his chin, he strode off like we hadn’t been conversing at all.

His black hair glinted in the sunlight, so dark it almost shone with a blue gleam, like the swans who migrated to the lakes around Rewill.

Something wet touched my fingers, and I looked down to see that Braxus had appeared at my side.

Burying my fingers deep in his coat, I leaned into his warm strength.

“Hey, Brax, there you are.” His tongue licked my palm, making me laugh, even as I wiped the doggy drool on my pants.

“Don’t tell your owner, but I’m glad you’re here.

I think I would’ve been lonely without you. ”

Although the loneliness might’ve been because as soon as people saw Braxus, they turned around and went the other way. It was like having a fluffy bodyguard. I’d miss him when he returned to Hayle. Pulling some jerky from my pocket, I ate a strip, reaching down to feed one to Braxus as well.

My dorm kitchen was fully stocked now, the shelves brimming with more shelf-stable food than I could possibly eat in a year. Hayle had even managed to get me a spelled icebox, which was filled with meat.

I didn’t know what to make of the gift, or what to make of the gifter. Hayle Taeme was a riddle that I wasn’t sure my heart was ready to solve. If I was honest enough with myself to admit that I was avoiding Vox, then I had to admit I was kind of avoiding Hayle too.

I hadn’t even gone up to the food hall last night, letting my exhausted muscles relax rather than climb the stairs on legs that could barely stand without quivering. If it had the added benefit of avoiding the stares and the too-intense gazes of Hayle and Vox, all the better.

But today, we hadn’t had anything but basic training, and I could actually still feel my thighs. I wanted to explore a little more of Boellium before I grew some ladyballs and went to the food hall, and I knew just where to start.

The library.

Looking down at Braxus once more, I scratched him behind the ear. “Do you know where the library is, Brax?”

He wagged his tail once and trotted off in the direction of the atrium.

I followed, appreciating my scary hound privileges as he cut a path through the bustling crowds of people.

The atrium was truly beautiful when it wasn’t filled with people and creatures, all baying for the blood of unsuspecting conscripts.

The dome of the atrium was glass and steel and magic. It almost hummed with the residual power that was so old, the methods of creation were lost to time. Some historians said that Boellium had stood before there was even a Line system in Ebrus.

Others suggested that Boellium had stood before there was even an Ebrus.

Walking down the halls, the only sounds I could hear were my own heavy footsteps and the light click of Braxus’s nails on the stone floors. After a confusing number of turns, he stopped outside grand wooden doors, though calling them merely doors was an injustice.

They were beautiful, at least twelve feet tall, with each door made from a single slab of some kind of ancient redwood.

Each one was intricately carved with a multitude of reliefs, depicting a forest scene filled with animals and hunters, towering trees and swirls of magic.

I could have stood at those doors and looked at them for hours, tracing the tiny faces of people hiding within the patterns, but as if they recognized that someone was waiting to enter, the doors slid open slowly.

Inside was paradise.

The room was as cavernous as the atrium, the same glass roof making filtered light shine down on the patterned wooden floors.

Rows upon rows of books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, which had to be at least three stories high.

Ornate metal railings wrapped around each level, and I could see one or two people perusing those high shelves.

And then there was magic. I could feel the hum of power as soon as I stepped across the threshold.

“Avalon Halhed. I wondered when you’d darken my doorway.” A woman who could have been an old thirty or a youthful seventy stepped into the entrance of the library. I had no doubt in my mind she was the Librarian.

“Uh, my apologies for taking so long, Librarian.” I felt guilty, even though none of my lessons or classes had even suggested I come here.

She looked down at Braxus fondly, who was gazing up at the woman with a doggy grin. “I see you had a guide. It’s okay, Miss Halhed. Every conscript makes it to the library when the Goddess feels it’s right.” She gazed at me with eyes that saw far too much. “What is it you wish to find?”

I blinked at the intense woman, my brain struggling to find a good reason to be in the library.

Or any reason to be in the library. “I just came from Battle History and wondered if you had any texts on recent battles?” I squeaked out, grasping the first idea that popped into my mind with both hands.

Something flashed across her face, something akin to disappointment, before it was once again fixed in that studious glare. “Of course. Are you interested in the general history of battles, or of those that include your own Line?”

Once she figured out what I needed, she quickly checked the books out to me.

I wanted to linger amongst the shelves for a little longer, but being in the presence of the Librarian was unsettling.

The feeling was only reinforced when I stepped toward the door, and her voice seemed to echo toward me unnaturally.

“Life is full of questions, Miss Halhed. I believe that this library contains all the answers you might require.”

I nodded, mumbling my thanks and rushing out those large, ornate doors as fast as my legs could carry me and my absolute cache of books.