Chapter 13
Thirteen
Avalon
S omething had changed since the party with Hayle. Before last week, the other conscripts of Boellium had been happy to let me live on the periphery. An anomaly, sure, but ultimately uninteresting. Now? Now they knew I was firmly Team Hayle, and the divide in the college was all the more pronounced.
People who’d never spoken to me before went out of their way to converse with me. I’d said hello to more people in the last week than I had in the month I’d been at Boellium. And it wasn’t just the Lower Six Lines, either. Even some of the Upper Six acknowledged my existence, especially the Third Line. Their Heir had all but announced that he was interested in me, and they let it subtly be known that they had my back.
However, the people who were loyalists to the First Line had decided to curry favor with Vox Vylan by making my life as miserable as they could. They aimed to maim me in battle practice. They tried to trip me down the stairs of the auditorium. They talked about me behind my back and sometimes to my face.
The ringleader of the new Avalon Halhed Hate Club was none other than the girl who probably still had cock breath from Vox’s dick. She was definitely trying to get in Vox’s good books by being an almighty bitch, and I even understood, kind of. There weren’t a lot of places for women to go in our society, especially if you were of noble blood. Other than being bartered through marriage or being good enough at Boellium to become some kind of high-ranking officer, you were pretty screwed. Literally. Just there to make Heirs.
What a conquest the second son of the First Line would be, the best thing outside the actual Heir, I guess. I’d heard rumors that Vox’s older brother, Yaron, was an utter manwhore and already betrothed to some powerful First Line daughter. I’d also heard that he cheated on her as often as he bathed, as was often the trade-off for a life of luxury and power.
So while I felt sorry for Ephily, she was still a raging asshole. As she tripped me once more by using the Fifth Line’s terraforma powers to create a divot in the training ring, I contemplated punching her in that cute button nose and burying her in one of her own potholes. I glared at the woman, then continued back to the large barrels that held the swords. It was hand-to-hand combat day, and she was making it all the more miserable.
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 was incredible. 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 before disappearing 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. “It is Avalon, right?” It might have 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.
Hatred mixed with the pain and fear in Eugene’s eyes as Lucio whistled, calling away his war cat. There were divots on Eugene’s throat, proof that it had just been a fraction of force away from killing the man.
A soft noise had me searching for Quarry, and I found the raven near the fence, his wing hanging loosely by his side. I fell to my knees in the sand, his soft caws filled with pain. “Oh, sweet boy, did he get you?” I stroked Quarry’s head, holding my breath. Blood dripped from his wing, and I hoped Eugene hadn’t done irreparable damage. “Does anything else hurt?”
“He says that it’s just his wing. But he’ll need to go to the healer,” Lucio informed me softly over my shoulder. “He also said don’t cry.”
I hadn’t even realized I’d been crying, but when I swiped at my cheeks, they were indeed wet. I looked up at Lucio. “He said don’t cry, or was that you?”
Lucio grinned down at me. “A little of both. Reach down, and he’ll hop on your arm. Or I can take him if…”
I was already shaking my head. “No. He got hurt protecting me. I’ll take him; I owe him that and much more.” The war cat huffed, and I smiled down at her. “You too. Thank you for defending me.”
The war cat just sat on her haunches, giving me an imperious glare as she cleaned the fur that was ruffled on her shoulder. I’d find a way to thank her later.
I leaned down and Quarry hopped onto my arm, his wing still hanging limply. “Come on, handsome.” I looked over at Lucio and Viana. “Thank you both too. I…”
Viana waved me away. “It’s what friends do. We have your back.”
I raised an eyebrow at Lucio, who shrugged. “Hayle told me to look after you. You’re important to him, so you’re important to all the Third Line here at Boellium.” He grimaced. “He’s going to kick my ass when he realizes how close you came to losing your head on my watch. I won’t let it happen again. I swear it.”
None of this made sense to me. Not why Eugene was so pissed at me, or why Hayle was making his Line look out for me. We had a barely casual friendship and a few kisses between us, that was it.
Those were questions for my insomnia demon tonight.
Sighing, I excused myself from battle training and went to the healer. The trainers didn’t even blink; they’d likely seen the whole thing and hadn’t lifted a finger.
For the first time since I arrived, I seriously wondered if I’d even survive Boellium.