Venus City 1 (31 page)

Asher gazed at her incredulously. “Why would I mention that?”

“Because I have to
marry
him! I thought you of all people would have the consideration to warn me,” she said scornfully. They were walking around the corner and toward the Entrance Hall now, so they kept their voices lowered in order to prevent the other Brides or Grooms passing by from overhearing them.

“I'm sorry,” he said wretchedly. “Things are getting out of hand, I never even thought about it. If I had known Latham was going to be there last night, I certainly wouldn't have brought you along.”

“Why? Because I don't deserve to know the truth?”

“No, but you don't react very well to the truth, do you?” He pointed out. They were stepping out into the sunlight. The birds were chirping in the distance, the water from the fountain ahead trickled loudly, and the freshly mowed grass was a bright, cheery green. It was such a contrast to Braya's mood that it made her want to go back inside where it was cool and dark.

“How would you feel if you were constantly manipulated and lied to?”

“I would kindly thank whoever it was who brought me into the knowing and leave it at that,” Asher replied, flicking off an imaginary speck of dust from his shoulder. “Life isn't about getting back at those who've wronged you, you know.”

“I don't want to get
back
at anyone,” she said haughtily. “I just want more answers. I feel like I'm trying to put a puzzle together but the pieces I've been given are for five different puzzles. What am I supposed to do with that?” Not to mention it was tearing her family, her life apart. But she wouldn't say that to him.

“Why are you trying to puzzle it all out now? When I first met you, you told me you didn't believe me. I was sure you just didn't care after I'd refused to answer your questions after so many times,” Asher said levelly. They were passing the fountain and Braya could see Page waiting for them on the bridge up ahead. His white-blond hair was glowing in the sunlight like the white light of the tree she'd seen last night.

“I have no choice,” Braya insisted. “I'm a part of this mess, so I want to know what's going on.” She’d more said that to herself than to him.

“Ready?” Asher asked as they approached Page. The silent boy appraised the two of them without a word. Braya could see the resemblance he bore to Channing now that she knew their relation. Similar eyes, though Braya didn't know if Channing's real color was the same hazel as Page's. Similar mouths and similar jaw shape.

“I met your father,” she said casually, crossing the bridge with the two of them on either side of her. “He bailed me out of jail after you two ditched me by the stadium.”

Page didn't respond.

Braya continued. “At first I never would have guessed he was your father. I knew nothing about him, and nothing about you. But that one phrase that you always say, the one about the darkness and the light...he said the same exact thing. It couldn't be a coincidence. So what I want to ask you is this; what's your father up to? Why does he have such a close relationship with Mother Ophelia? How does he know Leraphone, my mother, and all the other people he seems to have connections with?” She was talking so fast, so loud that her words were starting to run together, and she had to take a deep breath at the end. Asher placed a warning hand on her back, but she shrugged him off.

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.