Venus City 1

by Tabitha Vale

  Braya watched Page for a reaction, but he remained indifferent. They were nearly at the gate now, and Braya was losing her patience. She would not be able to handle a full day of de-hazing when he wasn't going to answer her questions.

  Chewing her bottom lip, she tried another tactic. “Or maybe you don't know? Maybe you never had a close relationship with your dear father. Maybe he got fed up with your broody moods and shunned you from the family.” The concept hit too close to home, and Braya's voice hitched. She wanted him to react, to show something other than a blank mask. “Maybe he hates you. Maybe he doesn't tell you anything, and that's why you can't tell me anything. Or maybe...you're just too emotionally distraught to find the courage to—”

  “Braya,” Asher warned.

  “Is that it?” She asked maliciously. Braya wrapped her hand around Page's forearm and swung him against one of the pillared statues near the gate. They were out of sight of the guards, otherwise Braya wouldn't have dared touch him.

  She leaned close to his smooth, linear face and glared into his magenta eyes. “Come on! What nerve you have to ignore me when I'm asking you these questions! Do you hate me? Is that why you won't ever talk to me?” She gripped the front of his shirt, shook him, pressed against him. He let out a small sound, but it was not what she wanted. Braya was growing almost hysterical—this guy wasn't going to crack, was he?

  Asher seemed to have had enough. He grabbed both of her arms and dragged her away from Page. They wrapped around her middle and encased her like rope. He held her close to his body and bent his head lower so that his lips grazed her ear.

  “Play nice,” he hissed. “He can't respond to you, so stop forcing him.”

  Braya struggled against his grip, but found little effort in her movements. Her body didn't want to wriggle free of him—it wanted more of him, much to her horror. His scent of flowers and soil was pervading her senses and making it difficult for her to form a coherent thought. “What are you talking about? What's wrong with him?”

  “I'd have thought that to be quite clear,” he murmured into her hair. “He has the same symptoms as your sister, does he not? But our dear Braya never sees anything beyond her own problems, does she?”

  Braya deflated in his arms, staring wildly at Page, who was shrinking against the statue, his hair concealing his eyes. “He has Tristant? That's impossible,” she whispered. “No one lives older than fifteen with that disease...and he's not from here. He's not a Venusian!”

  “How can you make claims about someone you don't know a thing about?” Asher asked, his ghost-thin voice sending irresistible sensations over her skin.

  “Are you saying he is a Venusian? That can't be! Look at his eyes, look at who his father is,” Braya insisted, desperate to prove them wrong.

  You don't need to drag him into this just because you can't defend yourself anymore. He's too weak to be any use to either of us, anyway.

  Asher had mentioned Page's weakness while they were de-hazing...

  “And what of his mother?” Asher prompted.

  Braya wriggled in his arms again, hoping to break free. “I don't know,” she said helplessly. “But I do know it's impossible for a Venus woman to ever have had children with an outsider like Channing.”

  I don't want to go with Page. You know he's the weakest one!

  That Locer, Griffin, had complained of Page's weakness before the Petti race...

  “And how do you know that to be impossible? Haven't we already established you know little about what's going on in the world, let alone with the other people in your life?”

  “It's just impossible!” She broke free of Asher's grip and stumbled away from him, somewhat disoriented. She could feel her smearing of desire that had been thickening inside her while in Asher's grip falling away like dried paint now that she'd been separated from him, clunking down into her stomach to create a heavy weight. She knew her argument was weak, but it was all she could stand by. Braya wasn't about to admit she was wrong.

  He's too tired and too weak to de-haze tonight.

  The night of their almost-kiss, Asher had also mentioned Page's weakness...

  But…

  Could she be wrong? Page—with Tristant? All the signs were there.

  “Impossible...” Asher said thoughtfully. “Impossible, because a Venusian woman would never stoop to marrying a foreign man? Your argument for the state of the men in this city is always the same thing, and clearly you know little of it. But what about the women? I think you know even less of them.”

  “Stop speaking in riddles!” Braya exclaimed. “Talking me into corners like that when I don't even know what you're trying to imply doesn't make you as big as you think.”

  “My bad,” Asher said sarcastically. “I forgot dear Bray needs everything spelled out in front of her with at least five different sources of support before she'll believe anything. Here I thought our argument was on that of Venus men, and it turns out you had no idea.”

  “This,” she said vehemently, “has nothing to do with Venus men. We were talking about Page and him having Tristant.”

  “Which leads back to our never-ending debate on the Venus men,” Asher said distinctly. “Everything leads back to that. Or did you not know that, either? Did you not know that everything is connected, that every little detail has a purpose?”

  “What I know is that you're making a bigger deal out of something small,” she argued. “All I wanted to do was ask Page about Channing and now you've turned it into something larger! Why do you think you know everything?”

  “I just happen to know far more than you,” he said, his tone measured. He was stalking closer to her now. Page had vanished—she had no idea if he'd merely gone invisible or if he'd actually fled—and now Braya found herself pinned up against the same statue she'd had Page on a few minutes ago. “I've had more experience than you. I've seen more than you could possibly imagine.”

  “In that case,” she said derisively, and not at all serious, “enlighten me.”

  “Thank you for the invitation,” he said, the slightest hitch of amusement coloring his somber tone. His breath washed over her like a blizzard, and Braya noticed that his eyes had flashed back to blue—she figured it was some sort of reflex contact lens, the same that Page, Latham, and Channing must use—which completed her feeling of being caught up in a snowstorm. “I'd been waiting for you to bend to my will, actually, so I could put an end to this debate we always have. See, I might not know exactly how your city does it, but make no mistake it certainly has something to do with the Venus Sare. Someone with power is tampering with the Venus males, and has been doing so ever since Camille founded the city.”

  “Tampering?” Braya scoffed. “That's your big hypothesis?”

  He held a finger up to pause her. “Nevertheless, that is not my point. I want to bring to light the other side of this argument. No matter what it is your city is doing to inhibit its males, that does not mean you should treat them less than you. They are not beneath you. I'm sure someone must have drilled those ideals into you when you were young, but you're old enough to discern what's right and wrong now, and surely you must see that everything about your beliefs is wrong.”

  Braya shook her head vehemently. No, there was nothing wrong with her beliefs. Never mind that earlier she'd been doubting the principles her mother had indoctrinated into her ever since she was a child. That didn't matter. Her mother's ideals were all that Braya had....

  Since when had she referred to them as her mother's ideals, and not her own, not theirs collectively? The thought was bothersome.

  Asher continued. “Can you blame a child for the family they're born into? What if every one of his family members is someone to be ashamed of? Liars, cheaters, criminals. Does that mean he's one, too? He'll have a higher chance of becoming one, but why can't we view him as an individual first, instead of fixing him with the expectation to fill his family's stereotype?”

  “I don't think I get your point.”
>
  “Then let's make it personal,” Asher said, the cool sweep of his breath tickling her skin. “What about your sister? Sick with Tristant. Was that her fault? Certainly not. But does that mean we have to ridicule her, make fun of her for it? Do we have to treat her lower than us? Do we have to fix her with the same stereotype as others we consider below us, because she's born like that? Is it fair?” He asked, his voice softening, a snowflake melting into her skin.

  Braya's heart shook in her chest. She felt tears spring to her eyes as a mental image of Bellamine locked away in her room came to memory. Of all the efforts she'd had to put into overcoming the way people ridiculed the Tristant victims. Of all the pain Bellamine had had to live with...

  “And the men in this city,” Asher was leaning closer, peering into her face with those sympathetic jewel-blue eyes, “Isn't it unfair to place them below you? They didn't choose to be born the way they were.”

  Braya faltered. Her mouth opened to reiterate her argument, to throw forth the same things she'd been saying all along, but she couldn't. She didn't want to give up, didn't want to unravel in front of him. She wanted to persist, to prove that she was right. But—he was right. She felt like she was fighting fire with paper.

  It didn’t take much for her to break. After all she’d been through in the last couple weeks, this might’ve even been overdue.

  Braya trembled, and the tears overcame her. This was what he wanted, this was the reaction he must have been seeking. When she caught his gaze, she was startled by the tender apology etched into his features.

  Asher pressed in close to her, collected her in his arms. She cried, allowing him to hold her. With the remains of her mother's beliefs burning with her pride, she finally let herself release all of her pent up frustrations.

  Normally she'd never permit herself the embarrassing weakness of crying in front of another, but Braya couldn't find the energy to care this time. Likewise, she couldn't find the energy to resist the sense of comfort his familiar scent of flowers and soil gave her. Couldn't resist the swarm of sensation that his touch brought. Couldn't resist the way her heart swelled at that apologetic expression feathered over his beautiful face. Couldn't resist the tendrils of warmth deep within her when he whispered into her ear. And it was all of those tantalizing elements—of which were the threads, the essence of Asher—tied together that she realized she'd been capsized by each of her senses; smell, touch, sight, sound. All of them had been usurped by this boy, this foreign boy who she had been quite certain she was meant to hate. Even when she tried to feel nothing for him—in the same manner her hatred had been wore away by an invisible sheet of sandpaper—her attempts to remain a blank sheet around him were already useless. She'd unwittingly formed a neutral foundation that made it easier than ever for her to be drawn in by his charms. With all of the qualms of her mother's old ideals stripped away like old scraps, Braya was left raw, new, and vulnerable, wondering what it might be like to compromise her last sense to Asher. Her sense of taste.

  Braya moved her head from where it was resting on his shoulder and she brushed her cheek against his jaw, the trail of her tears glistening on his skin. Asher withdrew a little so he could look down at her, and Braya let him consume her with his heady blue stare, let him ravish her with those eyes. He brushed away her tears, the pads of his fingertips sending hot glades deep into her blushing cheeks. They leaned forward at the same time, his eager hands cupping her face, her shaking hands fumbling to grasp the front of his jacket, an unspoken desire passing between them. Braya could feel their emotions intermingling again, could feel the seeping of hers with his in the semblance of watercolors. They reached the same point they'd stopped at while on the roof the other night, and Asher filled the gap without hesitating.

  Their mouths touched; it was light, barely anything, like the tiny overlapping of two flower petals. He tasted of apples, sweet and tangy, and she was reminded of the scent she'd detected back in the chapel after waking up. Reminded of how Hera-bird had compared her to a rotten apple. Oh, how she hated apples.

  Yet...coating his lips, it was delicious. Appetizing.

  Asher's hand dipped to the back of her head, and his pinky grazed the mark on her neck. It was the trigger they needed. She plunged forward, hardening the kiss. Asher was responsive, and the gentle fluttering of a kiss grew into something damp, hastened, and exciting. She couldn't sense where he ended and where she began, so was the power of their link. Arousal cascaded over her in such an overwhelming tumult that Braya's hands shot down to graze his stomach, and his edged along the collar of her dress.

  Asher pulled away suddenly, when her hands had traveled too far up his abdomen. He stared down at her with heavy breaths whooshing into her face. He removed her hands from under his shirt, and as Braya tried to gather her bearings, she wished horribly that she hadn't been so reckless about it. Was that what little control she had over herself? Was that what feeling nothing was like? If that were the case, Braya had never experienced a more beautiful nothing.

  ~Chapter 17: Ugly Act~

  “Your wedding is tomorrow,” Asher said quietly. They were sitting in the gardens munching on breakfast toast. They could see the manor from their point of view, and a small pond rested at the foot of the bench, just behind them.

  “As if I forgot,” she mumbled. Braya was more worried about her brother than the wedding; he hadn't returned from his visit with their mother the previous day, and he hadn't contacted her at all to let her know what had happened.

  “You seem to be quite accepting of it,” Asher said, a slight hitch to his voice.

  “So what? Do you expect me to have some elaborate escape plan?” She asked with a snort.

  “Kind of,” he shrugged. “I didn't know you were resigned to this.”

  “Believe me, marrying Latham and having kids with him is the last thing I want to do right now, but what other choices do I have? Where would I go? What would I do?” She asked helplessly, tossing the remains of her toast on the ground, appetite lost.

  “So you're just not going to try anything?” Asher asked, aghast. “You told me last night when we were de-hazing that you were tired of people manipulating you and lying to you. Didn't that mean anything, or was it just big talk?”

  She glared at him. “Aren't I allowed to voice my complaints? Just because I don't like a situation doesn't mean there's a way to get out of it.”

  “Just grin and bear it, huh?” He asked, shaking his head. “If you ask me, you're making excuses, setting yourself up to fail.”

  “I'm not a fan of martyrdom, if that's what you're implying,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “But why don't you look at it realistically? I'm still enslaved to you. Whatever genius escape plan I may choose to undertake could be ruined by you and your stupid little gang.”

  “Actually,” he sighed, “You won't have to worry about us for much longer.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. He looked dashing in his dark blue blazer edged in silk, but she wouldn't tell him that. She especially wouldn't mention how the dark blue shades of his clothing offset the lighter tones of his eyes and made them seem ever more alluring. “What are you trying to imply?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, throwing her a look. “Tomorrow is when it's coming. When our plans finally reach its end. After tomorrow you won't have to serve us and you can do whatever you want.”

  “Tell me,” she said sarcastically, “Do these plans occur before or after my wedding?”

  “That's not the point—”

  “You're right! Anyway, it doesn't matter,” she interjected. “I don't have any means to escape. I'm not cut out for living underground and hiding from the law, like you.”

  There was a long pause. His eyes trained on her, and for a moment she wondered what he might be thinking. “What if I helped you?”

  Braya was at a loss. “Help me...in what way? I don't know what this thing is that's coming, or what it means for me and this city, but doesn't it mean you'll be
free of this...plan? You can go, leave.”

  Asher heaved a sigh. “It's really complicated. I still don't know a lot about what's going to happen. I think Channing is fashioning something that will make a big scene—”

  “Channing? So you're telling me he is part of your group?”

  Asher shrugged. “I never said he wasn't, did I?”

  “You were awfully silent on the issue, I recall. Why the change of heart?”

  He gave her a meaningful look, and reached over to brush a strand of hair behind her ear. A prickle of heat traveled down through her chest. “There's no harm in telling you at this point, as far as I can see.”

  “And what if you're wrong?”

  “Then I'm wrong,” he murmured, his eyes flicking down to her mouth. He was awfully close. “But I don't ever regret being wrong as long as I'm wrong for the right reasons.”

  Her lids felt heavy as he inspected her mouth that way. She felt the urge to bend into his touch, to surrender her mouth to his once more. But she fought it, and said foggily, “Then you're willing to betray the Locers?”

  Asher's blue gaze frosted over. “Only if it's for you.” He cleared his throat, and retreated back to his spot on the bench. “Like I said, I'll help you, if you want to get out of your marriage.”

  “Is that a foreigner thing?” She asked, searching his expression. She knew he hated it when she asked that question, but she was genuinely curious this time. “Betrayal. Why does it come so easy?”