Page 21 of Daughter of the Ninth Line: Part One

Viana appeared at my shoulder, giving Ephily a death glare of her own. Between us, we had almost zero magic, but I was pretty sure we could beat the crap out of her if it came down to it.

“That woman needs to pull the stick out of her ass and have some self-respect before Hayle’s hounds take a chunk out of her,” Viana said loudly. “Vox isn’t going to want to put his dick in you more, just because you can put some holes in the ground.” She wasn’t talking to Ephily directly, but there was no doubt she wanted her to overhear, as well as everyone else in the training ring.

I laid my hand on my friend’s arm. “Don’t. I don’t want you to become a target too.”

Viana crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not scared of them, Avie. They’re so full of themselves and their magic, they forget they’re just as susceptible to a knife to the throat as the rest of us.”

Before I could even comprehend her movements, she spun and threw a dagger.Where the hell did that even come from?It thunked into the tall fence right beside Ephily’s cheek. An inch to the left, and it would have been in her rapidly widening eye.

Hell, my eyes were just as wide. “Holy Goddess, Viana. That wasincredible.How?”

She grinned at me, dragging me toward the swords. “Comes from starvation. Not a lot of food or money in Eelrood, so a lot of us became excellent hunters. You should see me with a slingshot.”

“You never cease to amaze me, Viana of the Twelfth Line.” Shaking my head, I pulled a sword out of the barrel, which Viana quickly grabbed from me and discarded. She pulled a smaller, thinner sword from the selection.

“That one was too heavy. Try this one.” As I swung it, she watched me intently. “They use it like a crutch. The magic, I mean. It makes them overly confident. They could do with a reminder every now and then that the rest of us exist.”

Someone appeared with her throwing knife, and I realized it was Lucio, Hayle’s cousin. “I believe this is yours?” he asked lightly, and I didn’t need to have psychic abilities to see the interest in his eyes as he looked at Viana.

She stared back at him, absolutely zero fear in her eyes. “Thank you,” she purred.

“That throw was amazing. I saw it from across the ring.”

She chewed her lip, and I leaned in close. “I verified the rumors about the Taeme family attributes. One hundred percent true,” I whispered to her, and winked at Lucio beforedisappearing back into the crowd of conscripts. One of us should be getting laid by a guy with a huge… personality.

Hayle and I hadn’t been alone since the party; he’d been called back to Hamor, the seat of the Third Line, for some kind of political business. In fact, Vox had disappeared too. I wondered if they’d caught the same ferry back to the mainland.

Lucio had remained here, and so had Vox’s cousin, Shay, to maintain the status quo. The two glared daggers at each other, and I would’ve thought it was sexual tension, except Shay seemed to throw possessive looks at Ephily. Honestly, it was almost insane, the relationships in this place. One would need a full season and a blessed amount of patience to unravel it all.

“Avalon,” someone called, and I turned to see Eugene from the Fourth Line.

What the hell does he want?I frowned, suddenly missing Braxus and Alucius. I hadn’t realized how much of a security blanket Hayle’s hounds had become; they always seemed to know more about the people near me than I did, and they had far bigger teeth.

But the hounds had returned to Hamor with Hayle, because they were meant to be his bodyguards, not mine. Hayle hadn’t left me without a guard, though, as there was a raven who sat on the fence post even now, watching me with a disconcerting amount of intelligence. Quarry the raven seemed to watch everything, and even though roosting at night underground in my dorm must have been uncomfortable for the bird, he didn’t seem to mind.

Epsy, my stolt, loved him. I swear, he curled around Quarry’s feet like he was offering to be his very own living nest. So freaking weird. I’d already established Epsy had no survival instincts.

I realized I’d been staring silently at Eugene for too long, and he was looking a little annoyed. “ItisAvalon, right?” It mighthave been posed as a question, but his tone suggested that he was checking I didn’t have some kind of brain damage.

“Uh, yeah. What can I do for you?”

“Would you like to spar?”

Fuck no.From memory, Eugene was from the Fourth Line, and if he wanted to spar with me, it was because he wanted something. I bet he’d been practicing swordwork since he could walk. I didn’t feel like getting my ass kicked today.

“Uh, no, thank you.”

He lifted his sword and swiped half-heartedly at me, forcing me to block his sword with mine. “It wasn’t a request, Ninth.”

“Yet you posed it as a question, fuckface. How about you work on your language skills?” I snarled back, pushing off his blade and parrying into a strike of my own. He wanted to spar? So be it. He sneered at me, and I rolled my eyes. “We’re sparring now, so how about you get to the point,Fourth?” I used his Line instead of his name, because I could be a disrespectful ass too.

He lazily adjusted his grip and advanced, forcing me backwards. “I just wanted to see what was special about you to have both the First and Third Heirs panting after you. Whatever it is, I can’t see it. You’re magicless. You’re unskilled. You’re uneducated and have no etiquette. You’re fat and averagely pretty.” He swung at me, one after another, making me scramble backwards until I tripped over my feet and landed my ass. He stood over me, his sword to my throat. “You’re nothing. I don’t get it.”

A shadow blazed across my vision, and then Quarry was there, slicing at Eugene with his talons, his loud caws sounding like a death knell. Eugene swiped at the bird with his sword, clipping Quarry.

A giant war cat was there then, and so were Lucio and Viana. The war cat launched itself at Eugene and had his throat between giant fangs faster than should be physically possible.Lucio looked furious. He stomped on Eugene’s wrist that was holding the sword, and an audible snap echoed around the training ring.

He glared down at the man from the Fourth Line. “You were warned,” was all he said, as Viana helped me to my feet.

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