Page 7 of Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part Two (The Lines of Ebrus #2)

Seven

Avalon

“ M aybe we should take her to the healer again?”

“He said she just needed to rest.”

“He was here, in our dorm. I almost pissed myself.”

The voices in the room were hushed, but frantic. I felt like my brain was mush in my skull, and the pain of it sloshing around in there was astronomical. I tried to drag my eyelids open, but they refused to cooperate.

“An Heir to the First Line, here , in the bowels of Boellium. I doubt that’s happened in a hundred years,” a familiar voice said, and the mention of the First Line had my eyes opening.

There were five people in the room, all talking softly.

They may as well have been shouting with a big brass band as background music, because it would make no difference to the pain in my head.

“Where am I?” I croaked out.

Viana was there immediately, staring down at me with worried eyes.

“Hey there. You’re down in the Twelfth Line dorm.

The healer said you had a concussion and had to be watched, but there was no one else on your floor, so we said we’d watch you.

You know, because we unofficially adopted you.

” Her face was smiling, but her eyes were worried. “How do you feel?”

I groaned. “Like someone dropped an anvil on my head.”

Someone snorted, “Close enough,” in the darkness of the room, but I couldn’t tell who it was. My vision felt off, and my thoughts were slow.

Someone appeared with a small bottle. Acacia.

“A spoonful of this should help with the pain. The healer gave you something and said you’d be fine, but honestly, I’m fairly sure the guy learned to heal on horses or something.

Even in your sleep, I could tell you were in pain.

That’s what happens when you get your job through nepotism and not actual skill,” she muttered angrily, then held up the bottle. “This will definitely help.”

Fuck it. What did I have to lose? I opened my mouth, letting her spoon some foul-tasting elixir between my lips.

I swallowed it down, and it tasted like an asshole, stuffed with rotten fruit and rancid meat.

Someone poured a chaser of strong fruit juice down my throat directly after it, but still, I could taste the medicine on the back of my tongue.

“Ugh, that’s fucking disg—” Almost instantly, the pain went away. “Ohhh…”

Someone laughed, but I didn’t care, because I didn’t even feel my body any more. I was a discombobulated consciousness, floating through the air. Huh. “I take it back. This is nice.”

Viana fixed something over my left eye, and I realized it was a bandage. “Yeah, I bet you do. We have a lot of good medicine out in the Twelfth Line. Acacia is learning from one of the elder healers, and she’ll continue to learn more when she goes back. We take care of our own out there.”

It felt nice, this care from other people. Foreign, like so many things, but the fact there were so many of them tending to me like I mattered? It made something ache in my chest.

Viana sat down beside me and grabbed my hand. “That was scary,” she whispered. “I thought we were going to die today.” I could see how pale she was, her eyes tight and worried.

Flashes of what had happened echoed in my brain. The hail. Eugene and Vox. But it was just that. Flashes. Any real memories seemed to have been knocked from my head and lost in the swirling darkness of pain. But I remembered the lightning. The fear.

No, that felt wrong too. That hadn’t happened, had it? It had been hail. And thunder.

Only one person could tell me for sure. “What happened?” I asked Viana, and her jaw went tight.

Face solemn, she cleared her throat. “Eugene was trying to make a statement, I guess, really throwing everything he had at Vox Vylan’s defenses.

The hail coming down was bigger than my head, Avalon!

Vox must have lost concentration or something, because right at the end, they were piercing through the air veil.

We dodged what we could, but it was too much.

You shoved me out of the way, and one got you in the head and half your shoulder. Your collarbone is broken.”

I looked down, and sure enough, my arm was strapped to my side.

I just hadn’t felt the pain of it over the absolute agony of my skull.

I wiggled my fingers, relieved they were fine.

However, it was like now that I could see the bandages, it unlocked the far-away ache in my shoulder. Damn, that was going to hurt later too.

Viana continued. “After you were injured, Vox stopped trying to flex, and instead kicked Eugene in the face and knocked him out. The hail dried up almost immediately, and the Heir himself scooped you up to take you to the healer, though I thought he and Hayle were going to throw down about it. Their argument looked intense.” Her eyes glinted with intrigue.

Viana loved to gossip. “Anyway, the rest of my Line brought me back down here to patch up my war wounds.” She pointed to some scrapes of her own that were bandaged up.

“And an hour later, Vylan reappeared with you still in his arms. He ordered us to take care of you, threw in a few threats about how painful our deaths would be if we let you die, then left again. Honestly, it was kind of hot. Terrifying, but hot.”

I didn’t know why he would do any of that. Maybe he felt guilty or something. I was kind of glad I didn’t remember being cradled in his arms, though. How embarrassing.

“And Eugene?”

“Being punished for allowing his battle to spread outside the designated battle zone. He’ll get a slap on the wrist, even though you almost died,” she muttered angrily.

“If it had been one of the Upper Lines getting clobbered with hailstones, he’d be expelled in disgrace or sent to the dungeon or something.

But not someone from the Ninth and Twelfth. ”

Yeah, I’d probably be pissed about that later too, but right now, I didn’t have it in me to do anything. The echo of the pain was there, but almost like it was happening to someone else.

I’d never been more thankful for Viana and Acacia. “I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” I told Viana softly, and she just shook her head.

“The vanity of the Upper Lines isn’t your fault, Avalon.

We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he’s a petty little man who has to use his magic, because he has a tiny little dick.

” She huffed. “I think Eugene might be a psychopath. There’s something definitely wrong with him.

My money’s on too much inbreeding. Some of those Lines like to keep them pure, you know? ”

Ew.

Was that what I was picking up from Eugene that made me hate him so thoroughly, without any real cause? Could I sense that he had some kind of mental malady? Well, I guess I had a real reason to hate him now, but I’d still do my best to avoid him for the next two years.

Viana stroked my head in an almost maternal way, and I sighed. No one had touched me with care in so long. Maybe not since my sister was shipped off to be wed, back when I was a child? My brothers had been there for me, but displays of affection weren’t permitted by the Ninth Line Baron.

It was… nice.

“You should rest now,” she said softly. “You need sleep to heal.” She left, softly closing the door behind her.

I noticed that this room had two beds and was bursting with stuff, and I wondered who I’d displaced from their room.

But I’d worry about that later, along with every other problem that seemed to be cropping up during my conscription.

This was why I should’ve kept my head down and faded into the background.

I’d forgotten what my purpose was: to be completely unremarkable.

But no one was going to forget what had happened today. Being in the gravitational pull of Vox wasn’t going to help my cause either.

A sudden scratching noise on the floor had me opening an eye. What was that?

I opened the other eye and watched a fuzzy blob appear in my vision. Shit, I’d forgotten about Epsy. Had he tracked me down because he was hungry? I wondered if I could push my friendship with Acacia and send her to feed him.

As the fuzzy blob got closer, I realized it was significantly smaller than my stolt. I mean, the stolt. He wasn’t my stolt.

Instead, it was a tiny mouse. Recognizing its speckled white-and-black coat, I gave him a sleepy smile. “Oh, it’s you.”

It came right up to my face, its whiskers twitching as it sniffed softly. I couldn’t even feel the weight of it on my chest, it was so small.

“Have you been sent to check up on me?” Its tiny ears swiveled around, listening. “You’re pretty cute, actually. You can tell your master I’m okay.” I scratched the little mouse between its ears with the hand strapped to my chest. “Actually, could you get him to feed my stolt?”

How much did a mouse understand? Could it understand my words, or could it just transmit images?

I wished I knew how the Third Line’s powers worked.

So I did my best stolt impression with one arm; I held up a hand like it was an ear, and maybe I cleaned myself with an imaginary paw while I mimed eating.

Hopefully, he got the point. Otherwise, the stolt was just going to have to wait until I was up and around tomorrow to eat. He’d be pissed, but I’d bring him some of the jerky he loved.

The little mouse scurried away. I hoped he’d gotten everything he needed, because my eyes felt like they were being dragged down by heavy weights.

I was glad to be falling into the darkness, where I didn’t have to think about why Vox Vylan had personally carried me to the healers and stayed with me.

Or why he’d ordered people to take care of me.

Or why Hayle Taeme had sent one of his tiny, furred minions to check on me.

Just blissful silence, where I didn’t have to think how close I came to dying.