by Tabitha Vale
Asher gave a choked laugh. “You'll find out later on. If you ever find a cause worth betraying others for, report back to me. You'll see it's very easy. But that's not the issue. Are you turning me down? You don't need my help....is that what you're saying?”
Braya swallowed hard. “That's not really what I want...I just want a Crown job. I want a cure for my sister. I don't want to run around underground for the rest of my life.”
“But are you being realistic?” His question came with an arctic sweep of his keen eyes. “I think the time has run out for you to change jobs. Time may have run out for other things as well, Bray...you need to take a stance before you're used up by someone else.”
“And by running out on my wedding with you, that's taking a stance?” She asked heatedly. “Or maybe you're trying to coerce me. You don't like the idea of me being with Latham. You want me all for yourself, so you're trying—”
“Braya,” he said pleadingly, clutching her hand, “Listen to yourself! This is not you talking. It's your fear, the fear your mother has raised you with. You need to stop letting it control your every move—”
“BRAYA!”
The two of them jolted apart. Brielle was running at them, her cheeks flushed as red as her hair and her blue parachute dress billowing wide around her legs. “Braya!” She called out again.
Braya jumped up from the bench and jogged to meet her friend. Brielle nearly collapsed on her, panting from exertion.
“Brielle, what's wrong?” Braya asked in alarm.
“Braya, they told me to find you,” she gasped for breath. “They said...” she choked on her own words. “They said that...your brother. He's in the hospital!”
“Aspen!” Braya struggled to steady Brielle on her feet. She held her friend by her shoulders and stared levelly at the girl, hoping her fear wouldn't show through. “Which hospital, Brielle? Did they say which hospital?”
She nodded frantically, red curls flying. “Calmay Hospital. They didn't tell me what was wrong. They want you to-to get there as soon as possible.”
“That's nearly an hour away!” Braya cried in distress.
“You can run halfway,” Asher's voice appeared behind her. “And then get on the Rail. That might take you over thirty minutes, though. However, there is another way.” His eyes were alight, and the suggestive lilt to his words made Braya pause, wondering what he'd meant. His gaze slid over to Brielle and then back to Braya, as if to warn her he couldn't speak of it in front of her.
Braya thanked her friend and hastened to have her go back to the manor. “Thanks so much for your help, Brielle. I’ll head there right away. Don’t worry, you can go back inside. You look like you could do with a glass of water.”
Once Brielle was on her way back to the manor, Asher started tugging her in the direction of the front gates.
“What's this miracle way you were hinting at?” She asked, slightly irritable for having to depend on him.
“We can use the Petti,” he said, eyes ablaze. “Flying in those suits and rowing the air with two batons like I did when we were racing—you'll get there in fifteen minutes, at the most.”
“But we'll have to go to the chapel to get the Moon Tamer gear,” she protested.
...she slaughtered every man in the chapel, including Tristant. In her rampage she stole the Sare and buried the chapel under the valley that had once concealed it.
That same chapel...Braya hadn't made the connection while Leraphone had been talking, but now it was horribly obvious. It made her never want to go back there again.
“Don't worry,” he shook his head, still pulling her along by her hand. “We have some stashed away at the tower, in cases of emergencies, such as this.”
“You know you helping me isn't going to change my mind about running away from my wedding with you,” she reminded bitingly.
“I know.”
They used their running enhancements to race to the tower in order to save them time. Asher unburied two floating suits, four batons, and a handful of orbs from a storage closet in the back of the tower. As they rode the elevator up, he helped her strap into the suit and tried to explain to her how to use the orbs to increase her speed with the batons.
“You'll get the hang of it really quickly, trust me,” he assured.
The elevator reached the top and the two of them darted out onto the platform. Braya gasped upon seeing the sky. It was a torrid, angry gray swirled with ugly clouds. She couldn't see the sun—everything was just one mass of gray. It looked completely different than the manufactured sky they'd just been sitting under, of the soft, light blue, and puffy white clouds.
“We need to go that way,” Asher said, pointing somewhere to his right. She was horrible with directions, and he seemed to know it, prompting his next statement. “Just follow me. If something happens, throw one of your orbs at me and I'll stop.”
Braya nodded. She wasn't in the right state of mind to complain. Her worry for Aspen was growing stronger by the minute, and making her less attuned to what she was doing as a result. He'd been in the hospital once before, with a broken leg. When she'd shown outward concern for him, her mother had scolded her, claiming that males were idiots and clumsy, and she should feel no remorse for her brother's accident. But now Braya couldn't help but feel that was wrong—everything that her mother had ever told her, it might all be wrong.
Not only that, but had he had the chance to speak to Leraphone yet? He'd promised he would after her bizarre declaration that there was no cure for Bellamine. All these things swirled around in her mind like a mist, and Braya found it harder to concentrate on rowing through the air in result.
Asher had been right, though. She quickly got the hang of it. At first, Braya couldn't help but feel ridiculous flapping through the air with the batons as leverage. She had felt like a bird whose wings had grown in backward. But seeing Asher disappear further in the distance had scared her into changing her form. Asher didn't look like he was flapping at all—no—the deep, wide movements made it seem like he were propelling a boat through a thick, heavy mass of water, and once Braya matched the same design of his movements, she found herself catching up to him. It took less effort to row than it did flap, and Braya discovered she liked it. The long, measured strokes were rhythmic and calming. She nearly forgot about her anxiety for Aspen. Nearly being the operative word.
The tower they exited at was only ten minutes from the hospital. After hiding their gear under a car that looked like it had been sitting in that one spot for years, the two of them sprinted to the hospital. They made it in three minutes, and nearly crumpled against the reception desk in exhaustion.
“I'm here to see my brother, Aspen Vace,” she announced to the receptionist.
They told her only family could visit, and Braya was thankful it meant that Asher couldn't join. It wouldn't matter since he could always turn invisible and follow her in, but Braya was still relieved to hear it. It was like a chip off her shoulder, albeit a small one.
After Asher said goodbye, someone arrived to escort her to Aspen’s room. It was on the fifth floor and almost immediately across from the elevator. The woman who escorted her did not enter the room with her, but informed Braya she could only have a short visit because he needed his rest.
When Braya stepped around the divider in the middle of the room, she nearly gasped in relief. Aspen didn't show any outwardly signs of being hurt—as far as she could see from first glance—but he was strapped to a few machines and he was tucked into white sheets and a thin blanket. He wore the usual hospital gown—a light blue color, prompting her to wonder if it was the first time she'd ever seen him wear any color than white in the past several years—and his hair was rumpled.
“Aspen,” she sank into the chair at his side. “Why are you...why are you here? What happened to you?”
He gave her a weak grin. “You're worried about me?”
She scowled. “Of course I am.”
He stared at her for a moment, his
grin growing. “Something about you has changed, then.”
“What do you mean by that!” She asked indignantly.
“Just that if Charlotte was here, you normally wouldn't have said that to me,” he said with a casual shrug.
“My God! Is Mother here, too? Did someone attack you guys at home?”
Aspen laughed, though he didn't sound amused. More sad than anything. “Braya,” he shook his head. “Don't play this game with me. Don't pretend you don't know what's going on. I can see it in your eyes. You just don't want to admit to it. You want to act as if this isn't real, don't you?”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” she insisted, her face flushing.
Aspen sighed. “Braya. It's okay. Change is good. Change is what we need. I can't even begin to explain what happened if you won't admit your suspicions to me.”
She stared at him for a long second, debating with herself, and then sagged into the chair. “Mother didn't do this to you, did she?” She asked warily.
“Thank God,” he murmured. “I'd almost felt you wouldn't come to your senses. Yes, Charlotte did this to me. She attacked me with a knife. Sliced my arm open. I'm sure she would have torn me into pieces if Harmony hadn't intervened.”
“Harmony? She saved you?” Braya asked in disbelief.
Aspen nodded, the slightest flicker of pride crossing his expression. “She knocked her out, smashed glass over her head. I'm worried what might come of her now that I'm gone...”
“I don't get it, though,” Braya frowned at him, “Why would Mother do that to you? Why would she—”
“Harm her own son?” Aspen finished for her. “She might not, if she had a son of her own.”
Braya's face scrunched up as his words registered with her. “Are you telling me...you're not her son?”
“No, I'm telling you she's not our mother, Braya,” he said gravely. “And before you debate me on this, let me tell you how I know this.” He adjusted his pillows, and then resumed. “Four years ago on my fifteenth birthday I realized something was different about me. I was at school, and it was an ordinary day for me until lunch. That was around the time when you had started experimenting in the kitchen for your school project and you made that delicious garlic pasta that I loved. I brought it to school every day during lunch in a re-heatable container and I always bragged how my sister was such a good cook. My classmates knew well that I loved that pasta. But it was on that birthday when someone knocked it over and ruined it. I had thought it was intentional; I lost my temper. All of the other students were confused—why was I able to show such passionate anger? It wasn't normal. And only later did I realize that someone had knocked the pasta over by accident, and that I had overreacted. That's not the point, though. That moment of lost control, it helped me to see that I was different than the other boys around me.
“I started looking into it, researching what was wrong with me. Can you believe it? I thought something was wrong with me because I was unlike all my peers. My answers came to me in an anonymous letter. This person explained to me that I'd been saved from a procedure at birth, a procedure that inhibits half of the males' dominant emotions. I didn't believe that person at first. It took a lot of convincing, and many letters later I began to accept it. This person warned me that I had to hide my secret, though. They told me there would be an opportunity for me to help the others, but until that time came, I would have to act like nothing was abnormal about me. So I played along, but I quickly grew restless. I wanted to tell someone my secret. More specifically, I wanted to tell you. I thought you might like me more, accept me. But I knew you were already too infatuated, too married to the ideals that Charlotte was force-feeding you. I didn't tell you. Instead, I ranted to my secret pen-pal about how I couldn't win you over our mother.
“That's when my correspondence suggested that I look into our parentage. To make a long story short, I've found out that Charlotte is not our mother. We were given to her by the Court. I don't know who our real parents are, though, but I was hoping you would be willing to search for them with me,” Aspen finished, watching her carefully.
Braya stared him, numb. “I-I don't know what to say...”
“You don't have to answer me that now,” Aspen amended.
Braya furrowed her brows. She felt like she was trying to swallow something too large for her throat. Charlotte, not their mother? No...could that be possible? It was such a ludicrous idea that Braya didn't know how to react. Sure she’d been doubting her mother lately, but did that warrant this kind of revelation? Her chest had literally lost all feeling, but she could still hear the dull beating of her heart in her ears. “Procedure...” she trailed off. “What procedure are you talking about?”
“Leraphone informed me that she told you the history of Venus City,” Aspen said. “But she also told me she left out one crucial detail. You see, Tristant wasn't the only...revenge she created against the males of this city. That disease was minor. Less than one percent of boys suffer from it. Her real punishment was the Pink Plug. She created an extremely powerful plug and had it stamped into the bottom of every male baby's foot from then on. It's the cause of our magenta eyes and our lack of anger, lust, jealousy, ambition, and all those other feelings. She felt it was the perfect way to lower the importance of a man's role in her city, and she hoped that no other woman would have her heart broken as badly as she had.”
“Leraphone told you that?” She asked incredulously. “When did you talk to her? Did she say anything about the cure?”
He shook his head somberly. “No. Braya...” he let out a shuddering sigh. “It turned out Leraphone was my mysterious pen-pal. She told me these things a long time ago. But I didn't find out that she was my pen-pal until very recently. When I moved into the manor, she approached me directly and told me who she was. She warned me, though, not to ever seek her out in the manor. If I ever needed to contact her, I should continue to send her letters. She thought it wasn't safe, but I never found out why.”
So she hadn't been imagining it when she saw familiar handwriting on those papers in Leraphone's room. They'd been letters from Aspen. And the notebook that he'd always carry around...it was beginning to make sense; fall into place.
“Then how did you know I had to talk to her about the cure?”
“She told me in a letter, before your Interview,” Aspen replied, his voice retreating into his usual soft rain tones. “She recommended that I send you to speak to Leraphone Vacelind at the Heartland Manor. She recommended herself.”
“And you...” she said uneasily. “You don't have that-that Pink Plug?”
“It would seem like I do, wouldn't it?” He asked, his magenta eyes trained on her. “My eyes are magenta, but everything else about me is normal. Free.”
“But why don't you have it?”
“Leraphone saved me from receiving the plug,” he said on a sigh. “She won't explain to me why she did it, though. Apparently she replaced it with a fake one when I was born, one that merely changed my eye color but nothing else.”
Braya clutched the armrest of her chair. All along, Asher had been right. He'd been right that the men had been unfairly victimized and changed. And Braya had been brainwashed by her mother—no, that woman—to believe that it was normal, that she should scorn them for being inferior. Her body was racked with tremors as the full implications of what her brother was telling her actually sunk in. She'd lived her whole life duped. Had anything been a truth? Her knuckles were growing white, her grip on the chair almost numbing. How could a woman pretend to be a mother? How could all of the good things that Charlotte had ever done for her mean nothing?
That made her wonder…
Had it all been a pretense? Did Charlotte only ever go through the motions of being a mother—minus the actual raising—with no real intent, no real investment in what happened to her or Aspen or Bellamine in the future?
“Bellamine!” Braya gasped. “What about Bellamine? Is she all right?”
“I'll be frank with you,” Aspen cautioned, “I do not know how well she is. I didn't see her while I was there.”
“How could she be left with—” She couldn't finish the sentence. What was Charlotte to her now? That thought might have shattered her days ago, but she felt relieved at that wonderment. Relieved, and also cold. Seeing Aspen in the hospital because of her—it made it so much easier to believe. Who was Charlotte? Certainly not her mother. Then her real mother—who was she?
“I advise you not to go there, Braya,” Aspen was saying.
Braya shook her head viciously. “No, no. I need to check on Bellamine. She cannot be left in danger!” She was on her feet now, darting for the door.
“Braya!” Aspen shouted. “Braya, stop!”
“I'll be back soon,” she promised, whisking out the door.
~Chapter 18: Begonia~
Braya was frantic as she exited the hospital. She was half lost to the mental images of Charlotte harming Bellamine that cropped up in her mind and half flustered trying to figure out the fastest route to her house. In a split moment of desperation—the hospital was too far from her house to take the Rail—Braya decided to use the Petti again. She had no idea which direction to go, but she figured she might be able to trick her tech pad into giving her directions without having to use a road.
When Braya arrived at the tower that she and Asher had come from, she searched around the abandoned car they had stashed their gear under. She didn't know if it was because of her half-lost attention span, but the gear was no longer where they'd put it. She considered she wasn't looking in the right place—no, this was definitely the same car. There were none other nearby. No one could have stolen them, could they?
“You know the way?” Asher asked, appearing on the other side of the street. He was crossing the road, his hands shoved into his pockets and his long tie fluttering in the breeze behind him.
“You were in there the whole time?”
He shrugged. “You should stop acting surprised. I follow you most places.”
