Page 5 of Daughter of the Ninth Line: Part Two

Avalon

I’d never known exhaustion like this. All of my limbs ached in a way that made me want to vomit, but still, I had to keep going. They’d been testing our skills and fitness for the last two days, and it became blindingly obvious that I lacked both.

I was becoming helpless, and I hated it. Struggling with the tongs in the lunch line, my fingers lacked the strength needed to close them after pulling back a bowstring for seven solid hours. I couldn’t even feel my fingertips, and there was a place on my cheek that was burned raw from the amount of times the fletching had hit my cheek as I loosed the arrow.

I was seriously contemplating using my fingers, but a girl behind me from the Twelfth Line came to my rescue. “If you grab the meat with your hands, the Upper Six will cry. Goddess forbid you sully their food with your watered-down bloodline,” she muttered, picking up a slab of meat easily and putting it on my plate. “What else do you want?” She nudged me down the line, since we were blocking the flow of the dinner service.

I wanted to protest. No connections. No friends. In and out—that was the aim. But starvationwasn’tthe aim, and that was a very real possibility right now.

“Vegetables, please?” I asked pathetically, and the girl smiled. Her cheeks were little round apples, and her clothes fit her well, those bright, ornate colors associated with the Twelfth Line. Clearly, she wasn’t a new conscript, because she’d had time to fill out after starvation.

“Yes, good choice. Filled with nutrients. You’ll need those to survive.” She put some on my tray, followed by her own. Then she grabbed a couple of pieces of dried meat and dropped them into my pocket. “For later. More than vegetables, you’ll need meat. Otherwise, your muscles will ache something fierce tomorrow.” She did the same with bread rolls. One went on each of our trays and one into my pocket, though it bulged a bit more than the jerky.

Finally, we reached the fruit and some kind of frozen dessert. We both stared at it, like it was something poisonous.

“The Upper Lines call it ice cream. They have a special elemental-magicked container to keep it like that.”

I grabbed a little bowl of it for my tray. It looked like snow.

“Look at them, staring at ice cream like it’s going to attack them,” someone snickered, and I looked over my shoulder to see a girl from the Fifth Line—Effie or Emilee or something. I ignored her, but the girl beside me turned and glared.

“When they told me it was kept in cold storage, no one told me it was your frigid vagina, Ephily. It does smell a little sour. Better put it back,” she quipped, pulling it from my tray and putting it back on the table. I mourned the ice cream, but I could appreciate the stand.

The girl from the Twelfth hustled me to the back of the room, where their table sat, packed with smiling, laughing people from her Line. I went to veer off toward my table, but she shoved me in their direction.

“It’s unhealthy to be alone.” That’s all she said, the only warning I’d get that I was about to be adopted into the Twelfth Line.

There was a pretty girl sandwiched between two large guys. “Acacia, who did you find?”

“This is the Ninth conscript. She’s sitting with us,” Acacia said easily, like I’d had any choice whatsoever in the matter.

The sitting girl waved. “Viana.”

I gave her a tight smile. “Avalon.”

Viana gave me a big smile before looking down at the table. “Shove along, guys. We have a guest.”

No one seemed particularly perturbed that they were being squished to make way for an interloper. Viana climbed into the lap of the guy beside her, making room for both me and Acacia to slide onto the bench. They looked very friendly, and my cheeks flushed. The way his hand rested on her thigh, too high to be considered appropriate, let me know these two were clearly having sex.

Casual touching was definitely not allowed at home in Rewill. Not amongst spouses or lovers—hell, Father even discouraged hugging amongst his children. If he could have banned it altogether, he probably would have. If he was miserable,everyonehad to be miserable.

I tried to act like I was unfazed by it, but I could feel how pink my cheeks were. I’d just blame sunstroke.

“So, what’s it like living up on the Ninth Line floor by yourself?” Viana asked. It was weird to consider itup.It felt like I had to descend into the depths of Hell every night to sleep.

“Uh, quiet?” I stabbed at my meat, resisting the urge to wince as I curled my fingers around my cutlery. With a tsk, Viana took my cutlery from me and cut my meat into tiny pieces like I was a toddler. The gesture was bossy, but undeniably sweet.

My throat felt thick with emotion, and when she handed me my fork back, I swallowed it down to say, “Thank you.” She waved a hand as if it was nothing, and maybe to her, it was.

When was the last time a person had ever helped me like that? My brothers, maybe, when they could get away with showing me any kind of softness.

“Sounds lonely.” My eyes shot to Viana, like she could read my mind, but I realized she was still talking about living alone in my dorm.

I shrugged. “I’m kind of used to it.”

Shaking her head, Acacia was chewing her food with relish beside me. “That would be miserable for someone from the Twelfth. We were made to be many parts of a whole. We like to say that our community, our family, is our magic.”

The Twelfth Line was magicless, the reason they were ridiculed amongst the other Lines of Ebrus. But there were a lot of them, and they stuck together. It made them fearsome fighters, I thought.

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