Page 3 of Daughter of the Ninth Line: Part Two

A little foil-wrapped packet was at the end of the row of food, and my eyes went wide. It couldn’t be, right? Picking it up, I found it was heavy in my hand. Itwas.

Chocolate.

Just sitting there at the end of a buffet, like it was nothing. I forced myself to only take one packet, not even putting it on my tray, in case it somehow fell in my stew. Not that it would stop me from eating it.

We never had chocolate in Rewill. My father had banned its import, stating that it was a luxury our Line couldn’t afford. But Kian said it was because it had been Mother’s favorite food. It had been Kian who’d gotten me some for my twelfth birthday and who, along with my siblings, had sat around and shared it with me, hidden in the turret at the top of the fort so Father couldn’t find us.

Suppressing the thoughts of my father, of my life before this moment, I walked toward the back of the room. I’d made it halfway there when a giant hound appeared in front of me, its head cocked to the side. I knew this hound from my arrival earlier, so I knew it was from the Third Line. It was looking at me with large, intelligent eyes, the tilt of its head making it look like it was trying to figure out if I was edible or not.

When it curled its lip up, I realized I was frozen. I stared at it, not looking away, making myself bigger, like they’d taught me back home. We had huge mountain wolves, but even they weren’t as big as this hound. I stared it down until it turned away with a huff.

Sidestepping it with caution, I didn’t take my eyes from its face. Which only meant that I wasn’t watching what I was doing and tripped over the edge of my skirt. Falling backwards, I watched in depressingly slow motion as my tray went up, while I went down.

Fuck.This was almost more embarrassing than throwing up my food across the table. I braced myself for impact, but it never came.

Instead, I felt myself wrapped in ropes of air, my tray equally as suspended mid-motion. Not even a drop of stew had overflowed.

I turned my head and realized I was right beside the First Line table. Holding my breath, my eyes connected immediately with the sparkling blue ones of Vox Vylan. I’d almost thrown my food all over the Heir to the First Line.

So much for lying low.

The sheer strength of his magic had me dumbfounded, especially as his air pushed me back to my feet. I reached up and grabbed my tray from midair, feeling the moment that it was once again subject to the laws of gravity.

Clearing my throat, I turned and nodded my head respectfully. “Thank you.”

He flicked his fingers, a clear dismissal, and I took that one small gesture for the escape it was.

Three

Vox

The conscript from the Ninth Line stuck out like a fly in the soup. It was more than the near-ethereal paleness of her skin, indicative of her Line, or the fact she scowled at everyone who moved. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was yet, but the fact that one of Taeme’s damn hounds had cornered her last night had to mean something. I trusted my instincts, and whatever was bugging me about the girl from the Ninth needed investigating.

I turned to Shay, my cousin, who was also my second. “What do we know about the Ninth Line conscript?”

We were walking into the training ring, even though I had more swordwork experience than most of the instructors here. Back home, I’d been given a sword as soon as I could be trusted not to poke myself in the eye with it, and sent to train for at least an hour a day.

Shay shrugged, loosening up her muscles so she could do her formwork. “No more than you; only what’s in the ledgers. Avalon Halhed, fifth child, and youngest daughter of the Baron of the Ninth Line.”

I rifled through my memory, trying to pinpoint what I knew of the Baron of the Ninth Line, and mentally thanked my tutorsfor drilling this bullshit into my brain along with my ABCs. Roman Halhed was in his mid-sixties, a craggy-looking figure who spent far too often in the drink—to the detriment of his Line’s coffers, if my father’s sources were to be believed. It had made the whole Line weak, though there wasn’t a lot they could have offered the rest of Ebrus anyway. They had weak foresight magic, barely more than a gut feeling. They had no good farmland to barter with—nothing but inhospitable mountains and livestock as tough as the people who tended them.

“Find out more,” I instructed Shay.

She raised an eyebrow at me, but didn’t negate the order. She just disappeared, and I knew she’d know everything there was to know about the Halhed girl and her whole Goddess-forsaken Line before the end of the day.

“Lift your fucking sword higher, Ninth, or your enemy will chop off your fucking head!” Instructor Yarlow yelled at her. He was right; her form was sloppy. She wouldn’t last a day walking through Fortaare like that, let alone on the front lines of a war. I could see her arm shaking and knew she’d hit muscle fatigue. But the punishment for dropping your sword was missing three full meals in the food hall, and that was a powerful motivator.

She was gaunt, but not as bad as the Twelfth Line conscripts, who looked like too-tight flesh walking around on a skeleton when they arrived, especially if they were from villages on the outer rims of Ebrus. No, she looked like she’d missed more than a few meals, but wasn’t starved. Nothing that wouldn’t be solved by the regular meals offered at Boellium.

But her muscles were obviously weak, and for reasons I didn’t understand, I slipped a small cushion of air beneath the point of her sword. Barely more than a whisper, and only those highly skilled in elemental magic would even know it was there.

When Instructor Yarlow blew the whistle to signify the end of the session, I allowed the air to dissipate and watched her swordtip lurch to the sand. She glared at her hand, and I realized she’d locked her muscles around the hilt.

Unable to help myself, I walked over to her. “Do you need assistance?”

Her eyes flew to mine, wide and worried. I watched as she swallowed hard, shaking her head. She met my gaze with her own darker blue ones. “I’m fine, thank you.”

I couldn’t remember the last time anyone who wasn’t in my inner circle had met my eyes. Usually, it was beaten out of them by etiquette instructors and courtly manners. Guess they didn’t have either of those things up in the wilds.Or maybe…

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