Page 27 of Daughter Of The Ninth Line: The Complete Book One (Lines Of Ebrus #1)
chapter twenty-seven
Vox
I drummed my fingers on my desk, trying to shake the girl from my head. My powers had failed against Eugene, of all people, and the shame was entirely consuming. The fact that the girl was hurt was disconcerting. The fear I’d felt when she was injured was… perplexing.
I didn’t know what to do about any of it.
Well, that was untrue. I knew what I was going to do about Eugene.
A small smirk curled my cheeks. He was a dead man and didn’t even know it yet. No one defied me, especially not some Fourth Line weakling. If it had been anyone under my air shield but Avalon Halhed?—
No. If it had been anyone other than Avalon being tormented by Eugene, I wouldn’t have even stepped in.
I didn’t interfere with the squabbles of the Lower Lines.
However, when I’d stumbled on her and the girl from the Twelfth being pelted with hailstones, I hadn’t even thought before acting.
I’d protected her like she mattered, but she didn’t. Not to me, not to Ebrus.
See. Perplexing. Even now, I had the urge to go and check on her wellbeing.
Sighing, I leaned back in my desk chair.
I had to write a missive to my father about today’s events, and I needed to get my shit together.
Weakness was not something that I could let my father see.
I might be his flesh and blood, but he wasn’t above exploiting my emotions in the name of teaching me how to be a leader, despite the fact it was unlikely that I’d ever be the ruler.
The title of Baron of the First Line would go to my brother, and I’d always been ecstatic to be the backup.
May my brother live a long, miserable life.
Shay slid into my room silently, her brows drawn together.
I wiped my expression from my face automatically, even though I trusted Shay with my life.
She was my closest friend, advisor, and more of a sibling to me than my own.
But she’d never had to stand against my father, and I would rather her be blissfully unaware of potential secrets, should that ever happen.
“Is it done?”
She nodded, her face twisting into a malicious grin. “Yep. It’s so cold in the dungeon tonight that if Eugene doesn’t have frostbitten balls by the morning, it would be a Goddess-granted miracle.”
It was just the first of many small ways I was going to make that fucker’s life a misery. He’d soon learn how insignificant he was in the hierarchy of true power, and he’d remember exactly who was in charge at Boellium.
I kept my voice light and my expression neutral. “And the injured conscripts?”
Shay gave me a look that said I was full of shit.
“Both resting in the bowels of Boellium under the watchful eye of the Twelfth Line.” She sat on the edge of my desk.
“What was that about, Vox? And before you give me some bullshit answer, remember I’ve known you since before you could shit in a toilet.
I can tell when something’s more than a passing amusement to you.
You carried that girl from the Ninth Line all the way to the infirmary.
You sat with her while the healer tended to her, then you carried her down to the lower level dorms. Have you ever even been below the atrium before today?
” I shook my head, and she gave me a hard look. “People will have noticed, Vox.”
The underlying warning was that if people had noticed, the information was bound to make its way back to my father, probably my brother too. Hell, I’d be surprised if my mother didn’t also have spies in Boellium.
“I was just angry that someone as insignificant as Eugene had bested me. Carrying the girl was my punishment.”
“Oh, your punishment?” Shay sat back casually, uncaring that her hands were scattering my paperwork.
She knew I hated that shit. “Is that why you stepped into their disagreement in the first place? Were you punishing yourself when you had me looking into her history?” Shay glared at me.
“Is it a punishment to look at her with moon eyes all the time, watch her wherever she walks, when she eats, when she trains? Don’t insult my intelligence, Vox.
We’re past all this. Your secrets are safe with me, cousin.
They always have been.” She dropped her voice low.
“My loyalty has always been—and always will be—to you. Not our Line, or our Baron, or even my own family. To you.”
I looked around, because her words were dangerous at best, treasonous at worst, and these walls had ears.
There was no love lost between Shay and the men in my family.
They’d tried to force her into a political marriage with someone truly fucking awful but incredibly influential, and it was only my insistence that she needed to come to Boellium with me that had saved her from being married and probably pregnant right now. Completely against her will.
In my family, the will of women wasn’t something to be considered. They were property, something to be bartered with, used, discarded. Not to me, though. Shay was worth a thousand of my brother. A million of my father. I would always protect her to the best of my abilities.
“I know, Shay,” I told her softly. “I don’t know what’s going on yet or what it is about her, but it’s something and it’s tormenting me. It’s like a song you hear in your mind, but you just can’t quite remember the whole tune.”
Jaw tensing, she nodded. “Fine. But I’m getting you a tal that wards against psychic manipulation. She’s Ninth Line, after all.”
I snorted. “They have basic precognition, Shay, not mind control. Even then, there hasn’t been someone in their Line that could predict the future in nearly two hundred years.
My thoughts are my own.” I slumped back.
“Maybe it’s my dick being led astray. Maybe I just need to get laid.
I’m sure Ephily would happily warm my bed.
She’s been hinting at it for six months. ”
“Probably. Want me to tell her that all her dreams have come true?” Shay’s voice was light as she slid from my desk, but something that looked like resentment flitted through her expression.
A normal person might have missed it, but I’d been trained since I was a child to read micro-changes in body language.
“What?” I asked softly. She shook her head as she turned to leave, but I gripped her wrist. “Shay, after all that talk of honesty and trust, you don’t get to stomp out of here like the injured party. What is it?”
She sucked her teeth. “Ephily and I hooked up at one of the Line parties a few months ago.”
I blinked, a little shocked. Not that Shay had slept with a woman; I’d known she was gay since… forever. No, the real shock was that Ephily was her type. “Ephily from the Fifth Line, that Ephily? The one who offered to blow me on her first day?”
Scowling in my direction, she snapped, “Yes. There’s only one Ephily in this Goddess-forsaken shithole, Vox. It was only once, and when she got out of my bed the following morning, she told me that she’d had fun, but I was the wrong Vylan.”
My lip curled in anger on my cousin’s behalf. “Shay…” She’d suffered so much by being the wrong Vylan. The wrong gender. The wrong branch of the family tree. The wrong orientation.
Shay shook her head. “Sometimes, I think perhaps the Twelfth Line has it right. A life of love and community, not this political backstabbing bullshit where everyone’s trying to climb over your corpse to the top.
When you’re at the bottom and you can’t see the pinnacle for the clouds, you can just convince yourself that life on the ground is better. There’s something simple in it.”
She tugged lightly, and I let her arm go. “It won’t always be like this, Shay,” I promised.
The pity on her face made my chest feel tight. “Won’t it?” She strode toward my door, but paused at the threshold. “You should know that while I was in the library looking for information about Avalon Halhed, I wasn’t the only one.”
I stilled, my eyes snapping to hers. “Who?”
“Hayle Taeme.”
What the hell did Taeme want with a girl from the Ninth Line? He was no more likely to pursue her as anything more than a bedmate than I was; we were both manacled by our Line.
I thought about how he’d gotten in my face when I was carrying the girl to the infirmary, and while his words had been the normal goading bullshit, if I thought back on the moment, looked past my panic that the girl in my arms was maybe dying, he’d looked just as frantic.
His eyes had drifted to her repeatedly, like he cared if she lived or died.
What the hell did that mean? Was she a spy?
So many fucking questions without answers.
Pulling out a sheet of the official First Line monogrammed paper, I wrote a brief account of the events of today for my father, from Eugene’s insubordination to my plans for his comeuppance.
I only put a brief note about two conscripts from the Lower Lines being injured, as dismissive of them as I could make it, without not mentioning them altogether.
I put in a little lament for my failure, in case anyone else snitched about how I’d carried the injured girl to the infirmary personally.
A throwaway sentence about good optics to build better bonds with the Lower Lines, should I need them.
Anything but the truth I couldn’t face. There was something about Avalon Halhed that spoke to my soul. She was a weakness that I had to exorcise immediately for both of our sakes. There was one sure way to do that, and it would kill two birds with one hailstone.
“Elliott!” I yelled, and the most personable of the First Line conscripts appeared.
He wasn’t from the Vylan line, merely a kid with big ambitions who’d volunteered so he could raise his station through the Dawn Army.
He didn’t have a lot of magic, but enough to enhance some pretty impressive weaponry skills.
“Yes, sir?” he said.
“We’re going to have the first Upper Line party of the new conscript year. I want to have it tomorrow night. Make it happen.”
He grinned at me. Fucking kid hadn’t had the joy beaten out of him yet, but I found him kind of endearing, like a big, dumb dog who just wanted to please. “Yes, sir!”
A party would help two-fold. I could fuck away some of this tension that was riding my body and clouding my mind, and I could corner Hayle Taeme. He was overly interested in someone who should be an inconsequential conscript, and I wanted to know why.