by Tabitha Vale
Judging by the reactions from the other girls, they must have recognized who the man and woman were supposed to be. Braya held back a snort of indignation. That sort of lovey-dovey display was misleading and offending. Nothing of the sort ever happened—romance was some stupid fairy tale dreamt up by bored high schoolers—so why were they getting these girls' hopes up? Everyone in the city was well aware of the fact the men were not born with the capacity to feel lust, desire, or any related emotions that might lead them to enjoy a sliver of romance with a girl. Really, what did these Brides think they were getting into? The Bride and Groom matches were made for optimum breeding, not true love.
Drawing nearer to the fountain, both paths dove under an arched roof. Thick, round pillars encased them, and Braya was thankful for the shade, though she suspected the random change in the path had been more to keep the girls from getting too close to the fountain than offering a nice patch of shade. She figured this must be what it was like to walk through a castle's corridor, her shoes clunking heavily against the thick stone.
Only twenty yards down and the corridor ended. A grand mansion rose before them, and for a moment Braya was taken aback. How had she not seen it in the distance? She must have been too busy gazing at the water and the fountain.
Sunlight enveloped her once more as she squinted up to take in the whole sight of the mansion. Braya lifted an eyebrow—could this be considered a mansion? She lived in a mansion—this was like ten mansions thrown together. It was the size of a castle, but Braya didn't know if she could peg it as such—perhaps a fairy castle would be more accurate.
As she expected, the girls swooned in delight upon seeing the Heartland Manor in all its glory. With its tall pillars, bulbous turrets, elegant balconies, spiraling towers, and glittering, shuttered windows, Braya supposed it was a Finch's dream come true.
After their allotted moment for gaping at the manor had passed—strangely enough, Braya got the feeling it had been scheduled into their day—the girls were ushered inside. They passed through the Entrance Hall and down several ornately decorated corridors until they reached two massive doors. Braya was slightly disappointed by the thick burgundy carpet—she had rather liked the sound of her shoes clunking against stone.
“This is the Grand Theater,” Pink-hat said, a gleam of excitement in her eye. “Please find your assigned seating and the Orientation will begin momentarily.”
Braya groaned inwardly. Assigned seating? She had hoped to sit in the darkest corner where no one would notice her. This would potentially ruin her plan.
The doors swung open and the girls swept into the room like a furious burst of wind.
Braya's eyes darted around to take in the layout. It was like the name of the room suggested—cavernous in its size, and set up with a stage, and rows upon rows of cushioned seats rising up away from it.
Braya didn't know who to thank for her stroke of luck, but she ended up exactly in the last row at the very end. There wasn't even a girl sitting beside her. She smiled smugly as the rest of the girls twittered around in search of their seats.
But alas, it took fifteen minutes for most of the stupid girls to find their spots. Because really, among all their chatting and giggling, how could they be expected to find them very quickly? Ugh. Braya had been ready to chew her own arm off and throw it at them if only for them to shut up and sit down in the nearest seat, assignments be damned.
Eventually the lights dimmed. A giggled hush filled the theater and then a bright light illuminated the stage. The curtains parted and a woman stepped forward. Whispers ignited through the girls like wildfire, and Braya herself scowled in wonderment. The woman's features were hard to make out from her seat, but that was not what stirred everyone's interest—it was her hair. Long, thick and frizzy, the woman's pale blue hair caught the light like an animal getting snagged by underbrush in a forest. She wore a thick pink headband with miniature white angel wings jutting back just above her ears.
“Good morning, girls,” her wispy voice filled the theater through the microphone she clung to. “My name is Leraphone. I'm the President of the Brides Training and I'll lead you through Orientation.”
The rest of what she had to say didn't matter to Braya. She zoned out, though unable to tear her eyes away from the blue frizz ball she called hair. If only her mother could see the kind of garbage that stupid Hera-bird and Mother Ophelia had reduced her to.
****
Brunch was after the Orientation. Braya had fallen asleep during the whole thing. Interestingly, she'd dreamed of fuzzy blue creatures chasing her and trying to chew off her leg—she figured it a punishment for wanting to chew her own arm off earlier.
She hastily brushed her chin clear of any drool—God, if anyone saw her drooling, she'd be humiliated—and filed out of the Theater after the rest of them. Braya had no idea if they'd have assigned seats for brunch, but she figured if the same person who had arranged the seating for Orientation were in charge of it, she might be lucky enough to have her own table in another lonely corner.
That thought cheered her up, and she strode toward the Great Hall with a spring in her step.
The instant she made it to the Entry Hall she was assailed with the smell of something hot and sweet. Her stomach grumbled and she could swear her mouth watered a little. She didn't even know what they were serving and she was already salivating like an animal.
The grandeur of the hall was lost on Braya when she entered. She was so hungry that she only had eyes for the trays of biscuits, pastries, and finger-sandwiches delicately arranged at each table. She made a beeline for the farthest table at the end, but she had not been placed there.
Brushing off a few looks of bewilderment from the girls at that table, Braya started wandering between the dizzying maze of chairs, eyes darting around at the place cards. Her appetite slowly diminished as her eagerness to find an isolated place to sit shrunk into nothing but dread. There were no tables set for one. Good Lord, didn't they know who she was?
She finally found her name at a table in the middle. Three other girls were already sitting there, though none of them had touched the food yet. One seat remained empty. Her seat.
For a moment Braya hovered there, silently debating whether she should sit down and eat—her stomach grumbled insistently—or whether she should just run home. This would have all been a waste of time if she left now, but on the other hand—
Her arguments with herself were void, anyway. She'd been noticed. Braya felt like a criminal caught trying to jump the prison's fence.
“Are you Braya Vace?” One girl asked.
Braya swallowed hard, smoothing her dress, then caught herself. Why the nerves? These were just Finchies—she was a Crown. There was nothing to be timid about. Really, her nap must have thrown her off.
Straightening, Braya adopted her best sneer and shrugged. “So I am. Did you all wait for me before eating?”
“It's not like we really had a friggin choice,” one of the other girls grumbled. “We're here starving and you were flouncing around the room like some ditz who'd forgotten her name.”
Braya was shocked. She stared at the blonde haired girl with narrowed eyes and took a step from her chair. “Then maybe I should just leave if that's how you want it. Happy starving.”
She turned on her heel, silently seething, when another girl called out, “Wait.”
Braya had half a mind to keep walking—that's what they deserved. No one insulted Braya Vace and got away with it. If she weren't so achingly hungry she'd have torn that stupid little birdie apart, feather by feather. But in the end, it was her hunger that made her stop, crane her neck, and take in the girl who'd called out to her.
She had bright red curly hair chopped to her shoulders, wide gray eyes, and wore a parachute of a dress. It was so pink it made her hair look like an ugly carrot color. “I think your dress is really pretty, Braya. And I love your hair. I think it's the longest hair I've ever seen!”
Braya instantly deflate
d. Her dress? Her hair? She looked down at herself. The skirt of her dress maroon, the simple bodice knitted with vertical stripes of maroon and pink, the sleeves maroon. Well, yes, those were praise-worthy, Braya had no doubt about it, but hadn't they just been in a tiff over food?
The girl who had originally asked her name was smirking. “Brielle Daniels,” she indicated the redhead, “is the queen of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I've come to learn this after only knowing her for the briefest time. Anyway, Braya Vace,” she said in a tone that made Braya think of a sophisticated professor, “will you care to join us? I dare say we're all famished.”
If it weren't for her own hunger, Braya would have stalked away. But she sat. She sat, and she sulked. In particular, she glared at the blonde girl who had snubbed her. Braya was the one who snubbed people, and yet this girl had beaten her to it.
Slowly, she began eating a cucumber sandwich. She studied this girl, caught her name card—Emma Watts—and willed her to make eye-contact. She had golden blonde hair arranged in a braided halo atop her head. Long wisps that didn't fit into the braid fell down her back and over her shoulder with flowers clipped onto the bottoms and placed intermittently through her braids. Braya had never seen a more humorous hairstyle.
When Emma finally did look up from her salad, her big brown eyes were indifferent. “You got a problem?”
Braya was taken aback by her frank question, but quickly recovered. She smirked, excited to be able to show off her polished wit to this dull-eyed Finch.
“I do, in fact,” Braya said while she examined her hands in her lap. “But don't let my discomfort get in the way of your food. After all, you did have to wait a few minutes to dig in before I found my seat.”
Emma didn't reply at first. She stared at Braya with an unnerving calmness, and then took another bite. “Whatever,” she muttered.
Braya felt somewhat stunted. That hadn't been the response she'd been hoping for. Couldn't she at least defend herself? Braya let out a tiny sigh.
“Oh!”
Brielle's sudden cry made Braya jerk in surprise. She shot a sharp look at the redhead, who looked up from something in her lap with a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I was just surfing the feeds.”
“You know those are not reliable sources of information,” the black-haired girl—Braya glanced at her name card—Maydessa Waters, said in clear disdain. “Just gossip.”
Brielle looked ashamed, color blotching her cheeks. “I'm sorry. I just like reading the news sometimes—”
“There are news channels, you know,” Maydessa said reproachfully. “Trustworthy sources of information that don't embellish anything.”
“Well, sometimes these feeds have some interesting things. And you know...those news channels cost too much to read, so...” Brielle seemed trapped between being apologetic for disagreeing with Maydessa and being embarrassed for admitting she couldn't afford the news channels.
“You have a strangely emphatic trust in those news sources,” Emma commented to Maydessa, still eating her salad. “If you ask me, no source is trustworthy.”
“We did not ask you,” Maydessa glared at Emma. “You may enjoy being stoically critical, but none of us want to hear your dry remarks about every little thing.”
“Do you have a tech pad with you?” Braya cut through the imminent argument—or at least, it seemed like it would escalate into an argument. Emma, though, was hard to predict. She had this sort of lethargic element about her that made Braya think an argument might take too much energy for her. “I thought they banned those for the Orientation day.”
Brielle's blush was like a rash now, spreading down her neck and blooming at the top of her ears. “That's true, but mine...well—”
She lifted her arm and pulled her sleeve back. In a rare display of genuine surprise, Braya's eyes widened. The girl had the tech pad engineered into her skin. Along the inside of her forearm familiar symbols glowed like flash tattoos. She was the tech pad.
“I've lost my appetite,” Emma announced. She pushed her salad away.
“How-how barbaric,” Maydessa exhaled. “I mean, how could you disfigure yourself like that? I've never seen that before. That's taking tech-head to a new level.”
“Wouldn't she be a tech-arm? Imagine if she had that operation on her head,” Emma shook herself in wonderment as if she were really picturing it.
Brielle quickly tore her sleeve back over her arm and folded it against her chest. “Well...it's really expensive. And not so common. I saved so long to get it. My parents helped me pay for it, too.”
“I guess that's why she can't afford the news channels,” Emma dead-panned. She'd resumed eating her salad.
“That can't be legal,” Maydessa continued, as if the tech-arm had personally offended her. “I studied the laws those tech-heads are battling against lately. I've read every volume in the Technology Syndicate, I've subscribed to all of the news channels and their corresponding email updates and I've never heard of anything like that.”
“They aren't even real tech-heads,” Braya grumbled under her breath. “It's all run by magic.”
Everything in the city was powered by magic, but people tended to forget about that fact because nothing about it seemed magical. It all appeared to be technology.
“I'm sure if you read the gossip feeds you would have chanced across something,” Emma added sarcastically.
“Then it must be illegal,” Maydessa said with every semblance of a courtroom judge. Brielle was shrinking away from Maydessa, looking incredibly small in her large parachute dress.
“Please don't tell on me! Really...I wasn't supposed to show anyone, but you girls seem so nice. We're Bride Sisters now. We watch out for each other,” Brielle said, her voice so pathetically tiny that even Braya began to feel a sliver of sympathy for the girl.
“That's only true when we're all law-abiding citizens,” Maydessa hissed. She was glancing over her shoulder now, as if to make sure no one could hear the scandalous talk at their table.
“So, what was so surprising?” Braya edged in. She looked at Brielle with a look as neutral as she could muster—she didn't want this birdie to latch onto her. She seemed like the type to jump on anyone who showed her the slightest interest. “You know, when you cried out.”
She could feel Maydessa glaring at her.
Brielle sprung up, glad for the change of topic. “Oh! You won't believe this! Apparently there's been more sightings of foreigners. Foreign men with blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes! Can you believe it?”
Braya regretted asking. There was no such thing as men with any color of eyes other than magenta. This foreigner gossip had been cropping up for the last month and Braya was tired of it.
“The best part is,” Brielle continued, “that one of the conspiracy clubs is riled up about this. They don't believe it at all! So, they're offering a huge cash reward to anyone who can find one and prove it.”
“Why don't you try it?” Emma intoned. “You could pay for some better news with that reward.”
Brielle pouted, her blush reappearing across her cheeks. “I dunno...I've never seen one. I don't think I could catch any of them...” She glanced up and gasped. “Oh, please. Maydessa! Don't turn me in for my arm! Please! We're Bride Sisters!”
Braya had no idea what this Bride Sister talk was, but she didn't care, either. By the look on Maydessa's face, though, it seemed she had no sympathy for the redhead.
“I'm sorry, but I can't let this go on. Rule-breakers are rule-breakers. I'll have to report you,” Maydessa pronounced. As if to prove her intentions, she stood abruptly, jostling the silverware.
“And busy-bodies are busy-bodies,” Emma commented as she examined an egg-salad sandwich.
At that, Maydessa slammed back into her chair and leaned closer to Emma, her eyes aglow and her cheeks flushed, clearly embarrassed. “What do you mean by that? How can you just sit there while a criminal eats with you?”
“I just don't care. But you care en
ough for all of us,” Emma said as she slowly took a bite of the sandwich. She chewed excruciatingly slowly, as if she weren't sure she liked it. “So go run along and tattle.”
“This is not tattling! It's turning in a criminal—upholding the law!” Maydessa was on the verge of hysterics. Braya had to keep herself from laughing.
“Mhm,” Emma murmured through another bite.
“Oh, please...let's not fight,” Brielle whimpered.
“You,” Maydessa fumed, her pointing finger moving so close to Emma's sandwich that that blonde girl finally made eye contact, “are just trying to play some stupid role here. The stoic girl who can act bitchy or heroic—whichever one suits her at the moment!”
Emma raised an eyebrow. “So what? And you're an uptight busy-body. Get your hand away from my sandwich.”
“Who would I be?” Brielle asked, as if she didn't notice the tension at the table.
“The idiot who doesn't know when to shut up,” Emma muttered.
“And Braya would be—”
Braya held up her hand. “Don't you dare bring me into this.”
“The stuck-up girl who thinks she's better than the rest of us,” Maydessa finished, a look of triumph coloring her features. Well, she was right about that—Braya was indeed better than the rest of them—but who was this stupid Finch to act all vindictive about it?
“I told you not to get me in on this crap,” Braya glowered.
“Why not? Too good for our argument? Too cool to make it to the table on time so the rest of us have to starve? Let me guess—you have to be an only child. Spoiled rotten, always gets what she wants. Your parents probably had enough money judging by your clothes—”
This girl was mental. Braya's first impression of Maydessa had been completely wrong. She wasn't sophisticated. She wasn't calm and calculating. She was exactly what Emma had said—grudge it all that Braya had to agree with that creepy emotionless girl—uptight, nosy, and a know-it-all, albeit a poor excuse for one.
“Just stop there,” Braya interjected coolly. “Contrary to what you birdies might think you know, I'm not one of you. But, by Camille, since I won't even be here tomorrow, why not tell you a little about myself, since you’re so curious?”
