Page 15 of Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part Two (The Lines of Ebrus #2)

Fifteen

Avalon

B oellium without both Vox and Hayle was a different beast. Simultaneously more volatile and relaxed. No matter what happened while the cats were away, the mice could never rise up and change the system in which they lived. But there were more parties, and more fights, and nothing felt as serious.

To me, however, it felt wrong. I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but I was looking forward to them returning.

I was excited to see Vox again. The memory of his kiss was never far from my mind, and I found myself daydreaming in class about the taste of his lips.

I’d thought of hardly anything else, because I knew even if nothing else could come of it, I wanted more.

I wanted to taste his skin, feel his lips on mine again, watch his eyelids close heavily in pleasure. I just wanted.

I wasn’t a fool. It couldn’t go anywhere, and I couldn’t be more than a notch in what I was sure was an impressive bedpost, but I didn’t care. I was so tired of being alone. If I could have him even for a moment, I was going to take it.

He’d been gone five days, and I found myself watching the horizon for the ferry from the mainland.

I chastised myself for acting like a lovesick cat.

I needed to cultivate a more worldly persona.

Mature. Aloof, even. The last thing I wanted to do was throw myself into his arms like some desperate clinger.

It didn’t help that every night I was having filthy fantasies. The dirty dreams were getting intense, and I felt needy. Those dreams sometimes featured more than Vox, though.

Last night, I’d dreamt of making love to Hayle, and it had felt so real, I’d woken up sweaty and aching. It was like I could smell his woodsy scent, taste the salt of his sweat on my tongue. It was the most vivid dream I’d ever had, and left me feeling riled up.

Hayle Taeme was off limits. There was no way I could trust the way my heart raced like it was going to beat out of my chest, or the panic in my veins whenever I was near him. I didn’t understand it, but I trusted my gut. Hayle Taeme meant pain. I knew that in my soul.

So I’d wait for Vox to arrive, then I’d tell him exactly what I wanted.

Someone whacked me in the shoulder with one of the training blades.

“Girl, you better concentrate, or Instructor Wallred is going to beat your ass,” Shay hissed, and I looked over at the First Line’s second-in-command.

She was beautiful, in the same haughty, cold way as Vox.

It left very little doubt that they were related.

“Uh, thanks.” I went back to forms, hoping not to draw the ire of the instructor.

They said his last name came from the time he’d taken on a battalion of rebels and painted the walls red with their blood.

It sounded like a rumor you’d perpetuate just to ensure new conscripts were terrified of you, but I applauded the creativity.

Another whack to my shoulder. “ Fucking hell, Ninth. You have to be the most addle-brained conscript I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. It’s like you want to get the shit beaten out of you.” She grumbled something about Vox and duty.

I frowned at her. “Why do you care?” I remembered her from the first day here at Boellium, and now that I had a better handle on the strength of people, I knew it had to have been either her or Vox suspending that guy, letting him bleed out on the cobblestones.

Shay ran her tongue over her teeth. “Because my Heir told me to watch you. He’s never asked that of me before, and I’m not about to fuck it up.

” She paused, stepping closer. “Because he’s never looked at anyone the way he looks at you.

He deserves this small taste of happiness, before the rest of his life becomes a jail cell.

You wouldn’t understand, but his life isn’t gilded thrones and grand banquets. ”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “You know jack shit about my life.”

She shrugged. “And I don’t want to. He deserves his happiness, but anyone with half a brain knows that this will end in disaster.

I don’t want to get attached to you, but I can ensure that you keep your head on your shoulders until Vox returns to do it himself—or he gets sick of you, whichever comes first.”

Damn. She didn’t hold back, but I could respect that. In Boellium, the cloying fakeness was everywhere. “Fair enough.”

I returned to my forms, Shay continuing her own beside me. She moved like liquid, and I was so jealous, I could actually spit. She must’ve had the same tutor as Vox, because they had that same smooth style. I could only dream of being that lithe and deadly.

Huffing an annoyed sigh, she turned to me. “He returns on today’s ferry. I’ll be glad to be off babysitting duty.”

Honestly, I hadn’t known she was on babysitting duty, so either she was a terrible babysitter or a scarily good spy. Nodding, I tried to concentrate on the rest of the forms, and not what I’d do once Vox was back in the grounds of Boellium.

I’d wait for him to find me—that much was clear, because there was always the chance that I was reading too much into this. Maybe he’d gone back to Fortaare and realized that I was some rough-hewn rock next to all those glittering diamonds.

Yeah, I’d wait for him to track me down first.

It wasn’t Vox who found me first, though. It was Hayle Taeme’s hounds. Everyone was scared of those giant dogs, but not me. I felt we had an understanding, and whenever they came up to me, I always gave them a little bit of my pilfered jerky.

I wasn’t above bribing them to like me.

However, it was odd for me to see both of them at the same time. Usually, one was always with Hayle. Braxus came over, and I squatted down on my haunches. “Hey, handsome, how was Fortaare?”

Braxus huffed a disgruntled noise, and I laughed. Yeah, that was pretty clear.

“I think I’d feel the same way about that place. Give me wide-open spaces and clear blue skies any day.” I stood and went to walk away, but Braxus gripped my fingers in his mouth. Not hard, but he definitely wasn’t letting go. “Uh, I don’t have any more jerky, big guy.”

The other hound, Alucius, nudged my butt with her snout, and I realized they wanted me to go with them.

“I get the point. You can stop slobbering on my hand now,” I said to Braxus, who gave me an unamused glare, but let go of my fingers and trotted ahead of me. Following him through the halls, I ignored the wary looks of the other conscripts. They looked at me like I was walking to the gallows.

We ended up in the library, and I was embarrassed that I still hadn’t been here in the months that I’d been in Boellium. In a past life, it would have been the first place I’d have visited. Even now, the sweet smell of old books and leather was like a warm hug.

I saw Hayle over in the corner of the reading room and walked toward him. The hounds stopped by the door, taking up guard positions. That seemed kind of ominous.

“You know how weird it is to be fetched like a stick?” I asked Hayle, who grinned at me. Fuck, he was so handsome, it was like a punch in the gut.

“The Third Line are beastmasters. I absolutely know what it’s like to be fetched like a stick.

” He snorted loudly, and it echoed around the library.

“My father has a lion companion, and once, when I went out in the woods without telling my mother, Lazlo came and collected me, carrying me by the scruff of my neck like an errant cub.”

I shuddered. That would’ve been horrifying. “Fair.” I looked over at the hounds. “You guys are terrifying enough, but I’m glad you aren’t lions.” I pulled out a chair and sat across from him. “What can I do for you, Hayle?”

His lids dropped, and he looked at me with so much heat, my body flushed. It was the exact same expression as he’d had on his face in my dream last night. My mouth went dry, and I crossed my legs, pressing my thighs together.

Sucking in a deep breath, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the heat was gone, and he cleared his throat. “While I was in Fortaare, I found myself in the library at the Hall of Ebrus.”

I’d heard about the library at the Hall of Ebrus.

It was a giant, cavernous space, with shelves that went right to the ceiling and endless rooms of knowledge.

I dreamed of going there one day, just to soak in the knowledge, right down into my bones.

“Well, I’m jealous, but I’m not sure what that has to do with me. ”

Hayle’s jaw clenched. “While I was researching, I found the account about your mother’s death.”

My blood froze in my veins. I waited for the disdain, the hatred, that had poured from my father all these years to spill out from between Hayle’s lips. I tried not to flinch as he covered my hand with his own.

“Avalon, you were three. There is no way that was your fault. It was a terrible accident, and the word of a distraught lady’s maid trying to save her own skin shouldn’t cloak you with such sadness.

You were a baby. It was not your fault. Do you hear me?

No matter what anyone else has told you, it was not your fault. ”

I was shaking my head, but he squeezed my hand.

She’d just fallen off the cliff. My brother Kian had told me that over and over as I’d grown up, but the insidious words of my father were strong.

When your only remaining parent hated you so much that he did terrible things to you, you tended to believe his words.

I cleared my throat. “Thank you for your kind words?—”

Hayle shook his head. “Not kind words. The truth. Not the venom of a grieving family, or a distraught husband, or a scared servant. The words of an impartial party. It was not your fault.”

Nodding, I stood. “Thank you. I should go.” My words were rushed, but my heart was pounding.

But Hayle didn’t let me go. “We aren’t done, Avalon. Sit down.” He tugged my hand, but his voice softened. “Please. I won’t mention your mother again.”

Sucking in oxygen until my lungs felt like they’d explode, I sat down again.

Hayle didn’t wait, nor apologize. “I’d been thinking about your words, about the powers of the Lower Lines dwindling.

Did you know that until five generations ago, your family never gave birth to female children?

They were notoriously all males, and it was a sign of a strong bloodline.

Then Ellanora Halhed was born. They treated her like a jewel in their crown, and by all accounts, she was beautiful. ”

I snorted. Apparently, it wasn’t only our powers that had dwindled then.

Hayle continued. “She was also extremely powerful. She saw visions—more than just immediate futures, far into the unknown. She was revered and coveted. She had requests for her hand in marriage from the First Line all the way down to the Twelfth. Everyone wanted her in their Line.”

Ellanora was barely a scratched name in our family bible. I’d never heard all this before.

“Then she disappeared. They investigated, assuming a spurned consort captured her and murdered her in a fit of jealousy, or that her visions sent her crazy and she threw herself from a cliff.” He winced.

“Her body was never found. A month later, there was the First Line uprising, and they killed off the Second Line, and a missing woman from the Ninth Line got lost in the insanity that followed.”

What did that even mean? This was centuries ago—what did it even matter anymore?

Hayle grabbed a folder from in front of him.

“From that point on, the Ninth Line continued to have sons, but they were interspersed with daughters. Their powers dwindled, but as you said, so did a lot of the Lower Lines, and it was so gradual, no one really noticed. They likely believed the old accounts were exaggerated, until your magic is as it stands now.”

He meant almost non-existent.

“But while I was researching, I found this. It had been sent directly to the Hall of Ebrus library, and they figured it had gotten caught up in the uprising chaos and was sent before Ellanora went missing. I’m not so sure.”

He pushed a piece of parchment over to me. On it was beautiful, flowing handwriting.

The Ninth. The Ninth. The Ninth.

Well, that made no sense. “So she did actually go insane?”

Hayle shrugged. “Perhaps. But look at the date.”

Up in the corner, in a tiny, neat script, was the very date of the uprising. She’d sent this letter on the day that the First Line murdered the Second Line and secured their power. She had to have been alive then.

I shook my head. “It’s nonsense, Hayle. It means nothing. She could have just picked that day and dated it wrong.”

He grabbed another book and dragged it between us. “This is your official Ancestral Lineage. This is Ellanora Halhed.” He pointed to the middle of the parchment. “Let’s call her the First Daughter of the Ninth Line.” He pointed down to the next row. “Her brother’s daughter would be the Second.”

He pointed down, down, down. Third, Fourth, Fifth were all in one family. My great-grandfather had a bastard, also a daughter, who was Sixth. My aunt, who’d died when she was twelve from the fever, would be the Seventh. My sister was Eighth.

Lastly, Hayle pointed to my name. “Avalon Halhed, Ninth Daughter of the Ninth Line.” He looked at me like I was suddenly meant to sprout another head and start breathing fire or something.

“It means nothing, Hayle. She’d obviously lost her grasp on reality.” Even as I said the words, something niggled in my chest. “Thank you for researching this. It’s more than I’ve ever known about my Line. But it means nothing to me.”

I stood and moved away from the table before he said anything else, backing toward the door of the library. Past the hounds. Past the Librarian, who was looking at me with a blank face behind thick glasses.

“Avalon!” Hayle called, and I paused. “I think it means something.”

I fled the room before he could say anything else that would alter my life.

The Ninth. The Ninth. The Ninth.