Page 20 of Daughter of the Ninth Line: Part Two

I lifted an eyebrow and left it at that. She was right; they probably would, but I didn’t want to give Taeme and his band of feral animals any more enjoyment than they deserved. Which was none.

I stood and went to the telescope, adjusting it to point at the darkest part of the sky. The air around her seemed to shimmer as she stood, setting the bowl on the side table and walking toward me. “It surprises me that you’re a stargazer, Vox.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

She shrugged, her warmth beside mine as we stood shoulder to shoulder. “Why would you be searching the stars when you have everything you need right here?”

I almost laughed at her words. She would see it like that, I guess. I couldn’t blame her for believing the visage I projected to everyone. “The sky shows us that there is more than Ebrus, more than the Lines. More to the Goddess’s plan than this. It’s humbling.”

I waited for her to quip something back, but instead, she tipped her head back and watched the sky. “Do you ever feel like there’s something planned for you out there, and you aren’t sure what it is yet, and all the trials are just leading you to where you have to go?”

Every single day.There had to be more to life than what I’d experienced so far: political jockeying, familial expectations, and finally, death. That couldn’t be the sum total of our lives, right? Sometimes, when I looked at the stars, I wondered if we’d done all this before. That yearning in my chest had to be for something.

Instead of telling her all that, I simply said, “Yes.”

She sighed softly. “Me too.”

We were silent for a long time, and then a flash of light across the sky heralded something special. Something that was as rare as the woman beside me. Wrapping my hand in hers, I tuggedher over to the telescope, where she stood on her tiptoes to see in the eyepiece. She let out soft, sweet noises as she saw shooting star after shooting star, pieces of meteor raining down.

As I stared at her while she watched the sky, I was suddenly very aware that she hadn’t let go of my hand.

Thirteen

Avalon

This had been the most confusing night of my life, but also one of the best. Vox Vylan was surprisingly good company, once we’d settled on how we were supposed to act around each other. If he wanted me to fawn over him like his biggest fan, he was probably going to be disappointed, but he seemed happy with comfortable silence.

Was it depressing that I could be so easily won over with ice cream and chocolate? Absolutely. Even now, I could remember the creaminess on my tongue, the sweetness still clinging to my lips. The pure pleasure of a mouthful. Fickle I might be, but I had no regrets.

He was a surprisingly knowledgeable guide about the stars. Passionate, even. His face lit up as he explained that this meteor shower was caused by debris left behind by a larger comet, which had been a huge rock hurtling across the stars last week. What we’d see were tiny bits of rock caught in the sky and burning up, making it look like it was showering shooting stars.

The comet that had left behind this meteor shower was called Sucreid, and it moved across the sky only once every hundred and seventy-three years. Some of the Lines’ magic users believedthat the comet itself heralded a time of great change, and a lot of superstitions were born from its appearance in the sky.

I didn’t think we had any superstitions about them up in the Ninth Line, though our library was depressingly grim. There was very little about anyone further back than my father’s grandfather. The histories of my ancestors before that were all gone, lost in a fire long before I was born.

Now, I lay on Vox Vylan’s bed, watching the stars streak across the sky through the giant glass dome that he had instead of a ceiling. There were so many shooting stars now that we didn’t even need his telescope to see. It was magical.

He lay beside me, on the other side of the bed, an appropriate amount of mattress between us, and watched it just as intently. We didn’t need to speak. Words would ruin the moment.

Finally, the meteor shower lessened, and my eyelids began to droop. It was time to leave, even though I was almost sad to do so. Last week, I would’ve been desperate to get out of a space occupied by Vox. Now, I found myself dragging my feet.

I raised myself up on my elbows. “I should go. It’s late, and I’m sure your dorm mates would like to return to their beds.”

He shrugged. “They’ll return when I tell them they can.” His nonchalance really was abrasive sometimes, and I wondered if he knew how pompous that sounded.

I chewed my lip. “Even so, it’s time for me to go.”

He rolled onto his side and watched me with those ice-blue eyes. I felt their weight on my face like a physical touch. His shoulders were broad, and his chest was muscular from the amount of swordwork he did. He might be a rich, bored Heir, but I couldn’t say he didn’t work as hard as the rest of us—harder than some, even—though there was never any chance of him failing. Of going home in disgrace, broken and useless. Or worse, dead.

His dark hair fell across his forehead, and I wanted to reach out and rub the silky-looking tresses between my fingertips. Wanted to bury my fingertips against his scalp. And more.

So, so, so much more.

They were dangerous thoughts that couldn’t lead anywhere good, but my brain and my lady parts were very much in disagreement about what we should do right now. My brain said to get up, walk to the door, and thank him for a very pleasant evening. Then run all the way back to my dorm room, like the coward that I was.

My lower parts—the ones that clenched when he spoke in that deep, husky voice close to my ear while explaining about the meteor shower—said I should push him onto his back, throw a leg over his hips, pin him to his bed, and kiss the hell out of him. Then fuck him. They were pretty adamant about that last part.

“Your words say one thing, Avalon, but your body is saying something very different.”

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