by Tabitha Vale
“Thanks! I'm her date, I'll give it to her,” Troy said obliviously. There was a tension in the air as Latham's magenta eyes burned into Troy and he wrenched the flower from his grip, albeit softly as to not hurt the rose, and then handed it back to Braya.
“It's my gift to her,” he countered, his tone dipping dangerously. Braya stared at him in surprise. She'd never expected him to act so forceful or...
Jealous.
“Latham! Don't you have a flower for me, too?” Maydessa whined, tugging at his sleeve.
“Oh.” He seemed taken off guard, scratching the back of his head. “I must have forgotten it. I'll get it to you when we return to the manor.”
“Agh!” Maydessa cried. “But you brought Braya's! I'm your date, not her! I can be mysterious, you know.”
“Um, yeah,” he said sheepishly. His eyes, imbued with a silent intelligence that made Braya feel like he was holding something back, met hers again and he nodded. “I'll see you later, Miss Braya.”
“Oh, you!” Maydessa hissed at her once Latham was out of ear shot. She reminded Braya of an old tea kettle whistling and blowing steam, ready to burst. Her face was flushed in fury and her hands were clenched at her sides. “You have to ruin everything with your prissy little Crown routine! Well, I'll tell you now Miss Braya—I won't let you get Latham—never. He's a Crown and I'm the most loyal and thorough Bride of our group, so I deserve the top pick!”
Braya shrugged, uncaring. “Whatever you say.”
Maydessa gave another angry snarl before she stomped away. Braya watched her go, somewhat satisfied with her anger. She herself wished she could express her anger like that, all the time. Because she was angry—angry with everything. Angry for being a Bride, angry for being Asher's 'slave', angry for not being able to expose the Locers, and angry for the mutinous urges that overcame her around certain members of the opposite sex. They were minor things, those urges, like feather-soft touches, but they were enough to slowly drive her insane. She had to keep face, though. Braya could not let anyone know what was eating her away on the inside. It went against all that Crowns were known for; wealth. And that extended beyond money to encompass everything about their mannerisms and relationships with others. Braya hadn’t been upholding her values as a Crown lately, and that realization stung her deeply. Her mother had been correct. She was becoming like the Finches, wasn’t she? That was not good, not good at all.
****
Aspen greeted her when she made it home. He informed her that Harmony was cooking dinner and he'd finished his Career Interview a couple hours ago. They were standing in the foyer, and Aspen ushered her into one of the small halls tucked into the corner, where they couldn't be seen. It made Braya feel like he wanted to talk to her about something they shouldn't be talking about.
“I've been made a Groom,” he said, his rain-drop tone belying something else. It was as if he were surprised, confused. “Braya, how is it I got my first pick when you did not?”
“I'd like to know, too,” she answered spitefully, arms crossed.
“Shall we find out?”
She stared at him, trying to detect any sign in his expression that he was joking. No, Aspen didn't joke.
“There's no way to find out,” Braya dismissed, unnerved by his suggestion. “I'll just have to find my own method of getting out of this Finch career. In fact, I already have one.”
“Do you?” Aspen asked, his eyes twin pools of curiosity.
“I do,” Braya hedged. “But that's all I can say. Very soon, I'll be done with Heartland and those stupid Finches that live there.” Well, if she was able to find the Locers’ weakness. She hadn't been having a lot of opportunities to dig deeper into their group since she never spent time with any of them except Asher, and last night with the race had not counted.
“But, Braya,” his features scrunched up in a delicate frown, his magenta eyes accusing, “You said you would get the Tristant cure. You said you would talk with Leraphone—”
“And I did, didn't I? But that blue frizz was hardly worth anything. All she gave me was some useless medicine and told me to see her again later. Aspen,” she said, her patience worn thin like tissue paper. “My appointment with her is in two weeks. Why would she make me wait so long?”
Aspen's eyes glowed like a stoked fire. “I told you to trust me. You can't just quit because things don't happen instantaneously.”
Braya recoiled. “I can do whatever I want,” she hissed. “And what I happen to want to do is get a Crown job. Work for the Fair Lady's Court or the Hem Line.”
“Are your desires more important than Bellamine's life?”
His words were as stinging as an accusation and as pained as a confession. Braya stepped back as if slapped, and stared at him, the hard silence pressing around her with an inescapable heaviness.
“Don't you ever think that!” Braya declared, unable to disguise the tremble in her voice. “I'll do whatever it takes to get her that cure, even if I have to force someone to help me. Listen Aspen, you better tell that blue frizz ball that if she doesn't have that cure when I visit her in two weeks, I'll force her to give it to me.”
Aspen's tone was chilling, “How can you stand up to her if you can't stand up to Charlotte?”
A resounding thud followed his question, and then another series of banging sounds came a moment later. Braya and Aspen paused, sharing a concerned look. Voices floated down from somewhere upstairs, but it was hard to distinguish who they belonged to.
Someone cried out, and Braya and Aspen raced to the stairs, taking them two at a time. When they reached the second floor, they paused to listen. It sounded as if it were coming from the back of the left hall, toward Bellamine's room. Alarmed, the two of them darted around the corner and ran in the direction of their sister's room.
Mother and Harmony were there. Mother was towering over Harmony, who was crumpled on the ground, her face stained with tears, and the door to Bellamine's room stood ajar. Something thorny and heavy sunk into the pit of Braya's stomach at the sight of Bellamine's door cracked open. What was going on? Mother never went into their sister's room!
“Please, Miss Malister!” Harmony was crying. “I must attend to the young Miss Bellamine. She needs to take her medicine.”
“Since she's my daughter,” their mother sneered, “I decide who comes and goes from her room. From now on, you're banished from here. Get out of my sight!”
Harmony cowered, not making any move to leave. She was curled up in a fetal position and her body was quivering violently. She choked on a sob, and Mother let out a disgusted sound. She lunged forward and attempted to wrestle Harmony to her feet, but the Maid Bride was surprisingly strong, and resisted her, nearly pulling Mother to the ground in the process. Mother straightened up and kicked Harmony in the side. Once, twice—
Braya let out a gasp, and Mother stopped suddenly. Harmony rolled to her side and Aspen rushed forward to help her up.
“Well, isn't this nice,” Mother sneered, pushing back the black hair that had fallen into her face. “I can take care of all the garbage in my house in one clean sweep.”
“Mother,” Braya's voice hitched, and her eyes flickered once more to Bellamine's door. “What's going on? What happened?”
“Oh, something that's been long overdue,” her mother laughed mirthlessly. “I'm tired of things happening around this house without me knowing about it.”
“Mother, what are you talking about?” She could feel tears stinging her eyes, threatening to spill over her cheeks. Her mother was different, frightening. The thick, heady feeling that something was amiss hung in the air like a fog. “D-did something happen to Bellamine?” She almost didn't have the stomach to ask.
Aspen had helped Harmony down the hall, and now reappeared at Braya's side, his hand resting protectively on her elbow.
“Not to worry, my chitlins,” she said in a derisive tone. “I'm just seizing control, as it were. All these days I allowed too many things to go by, unche
cked.” She withdrew a small vial from her jacket pocket, and Braya realized it was the vial of blue medicine that Leraphone had given her. Their mother opened it and tipped it sideways, letting the contents drain into the carpet. “Did you think you could actually cure that little creature? How many times did I drill it into your stupid head? That girl cannot and will not be cured and you need to stop thinking you can save her! It simply can't be done!” She was shrill now, and Braya took a step back, the tears falling, mixing into the same carpet where Bellamine's medicine soaked.
“Mother, no, please,” Braya fought uselessly, still staring forlornly at the blue stain. “This will help her. She can be cured, I'm sure of it.”
“You are not sure of anything,” Mother screeched, shattering the vial against the wall. “I spent years teaching you, mentoring you to be the perfect Crown daughter, and it's all ruined by that damn sick girl in there. She's your weakness. Along with your brother. The two of you...” she shook her head. “Get out. Leave my house. All of you are a shame to this family. No, no. You're not part of this family. Go! Get!”
Neither Braya nor Aspen moved. The air rang with with mounting tension, and the expression on Mother's face was twisted and gray like a thicket of storm clouds.
“Don't just stare at me! GO! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” She yelled hysterically. She advanced on them, and Aspen yanked Braya down the hall, calmly ordering her to run.
They hurried down the stairs and flew out the front door, their mother's voice still echoing through the foyer. The sky had opened up and rain was falling down in torrents. It was a sheet of smeared gray and the two of them got soaked as they ran to the garage. They got rain once in a while, but it was almost as rare as Braya watching a Moon Tamer game.
“Why didn't you stand up to her?” Aspen asked, his voice as chilling as the rain on her skin. They got in the car and told the driver to take them to Heartland. As the rain pelted the windows, Braya wrung her hands in her lap, trying to regain her composure.
“I couldn't!” Braya admitted. “I just couldn't. You saw her!”
“But Bellamine's in danger—”
“You don't know that,” Braya shook her head vehemently, as if to convince herself as well. “Mother was just upset. Everything will be fine tomorrow.”
“Don't fool yourself,” Aspen bit his lip. “Charlotte doesn't care about Bellamine and never has. You heard what she said. She called our sister a creature. With us gone, I fear there isn't a lot of hope left for Bellamine.”
“What are you talking about?” Braya asked, horrified. “Of course there's hope! Nothing will happen to her.”
“You keep doing this,” Aspen sighed. He was looking at her with a look she couldn't discern. “You keep defending Charlotte even though she does these awful things. When are you going to wake up and realize there's no good to come from that woman?”
“How could you say that?” She asked, aghast. “She's our mother!”
“It gives her no excuse.”
“It gives her all the excuse!” She yelled fiercely. Aspen didn't respond to that, which forced the two of them to endure the entire ride back to the manor in terse silence.
****
Everything didn't prove to be all right tomorrow. Two weeks blurred by and their mother was still refusing to let them return to the house. That's when the panic finally started settling in. The morning after Braya and Aspen were kicked out, all of their belongings arrived at Heartland, with a note from their mother saying they were forbidden from returning and they had no more use of their car or driver.
Brielle was happy that she was living with them, Emma was indifferent, and Maydessa found every chance she got to gloat about the fact that she'd been kicked out. Braya hadn't told them that was the reason she was living in the dorms, but Maydessa's teasing jests happened to hit the mark by coincidence, and it only made Braya feel worse.
Maydessa also made it a priority to win over Brielle and Emma. She would bribe them, give them gifts, and invite them out at night to explore the lively Heart District with her. She figured the girl wanted the other two to leave their hands off of Latham so that she would have a higher chance of getting him. While they all got to rank the boys from first to fourth pick, they weren't guaranteed their first choice, but they had a higher chance if no one else had chosen that guy.
Other than dealing with her roommates, she felt like she attended her classes with a rain cloud over her head. They had their final exams on the last week before their weddings, but she didn't plan on studying for them. On top of that, she had to endure listening to Grade Three Brides twitter around in excitement for their upcoming weddings and Grade One Brides gossip about their upcoming dates. It meant that she was now a Grade Two Bride—it angered her because she wasn't ever supposed to be Grade One. Now she was already at level two?!
Braya met her brother every day, but his presence did little to soothe her worry that grew with each day that passed. She couldn't help feeling like she was the cause of this whole mess. If only she'd gotten her Crown job in the first place, her mother wouldn't have snapped. Braya must have put too much stress on her.
Her concern for Bellamine was the greatest problem. Braya wasn't sure how well the medicine had been working for her, but what if Bellamine had grown an addiction, or a dependence on it? Two weeks without it could turn out to be worse than never having it in the first place.
Braya had tried to visit Leraphone for the first whole week that she'd lived in Heartland. Most of the times she traveled to the West Wing to knock on the woman's door, she wasn't there, or simply did not answer. When she finally did, the stupid frizz ball acted as if she didn't know her and told her to come back next week. Overall, the woman was not helping and she couldn't get Aspen to help, either. He repeated the same thing as before; that she had to trust Leraphone.
Latham, he continued to give her flowers with secret meanings and it only served to draw her closer to him. Amid her mess of worries, he was the only one who didn't tease, bother, prod, or upset her, and she couldn't be more thankful about it. The attraction she felt toward him was still something she wasn't willing to accept, though. She told herself it was a lapse in judgment, something for her to cling to while she got through this time. She liked him in a meaningless and petty way, she decided.
Her time with the Locers over the two weeks proved as fruitless as ever. She barely got any time to be around them as a group and there were still at least four members whose names she did not know. Asher had noticed her irritable moods, and had asked her why she would snap at him whenever he asked her a question. Braya hadn't been specific with him, and she'd been grateful that he hadn't forced her to tell him. She figured he didn't want her to pass out on him again, which was fine with her.
The worst thing, however, came a couple days after being banished from home. Asher and Page had inserted themselves into Heartland as Grade One Grooms—the same grade as her brother. They claimed it was for undercover work, but Braya had no idea what they could possibly accomplish from lounging around with a bunch of giggling girls and “zombie” men, as Asher had called them. They had even managed to do something to their eyes to make them magenta. If there was anything that unnerved Braya the most, it was seeing Asher's jewel-blue eyes masked by that common magenta color.
As it was, Braya could not escape Asher. Not his scent of flowers and soil, not his touch that awoke something alluring and unknown inside her. He was everywhere. When he wasn't parading around in his Groom disguise, he would stalk her while invisible, or together with Page they would resume their de-hazing. He even favored skipping his own classes to attend hers, invisible.
That was something. Even though she hated working for the Locers, and she still had no idea what the boosters were meant to do, she started enjoying the de-hazing, which only added another thing to the growing list of things to hate about herself. How could she enjoy such a damaging activity? But she did, because it allowed her to feel that rush of adrenaline that had been so s
weet, so consuming, so good to her the first time.
Their de-hazed areas soon grew. They covered the South Valley and North Valley where the Finches lived, and had begun in the Moon District and Diamond District, where Mother Ophelia and the rest of the Crown jobs were headquartered.
Braya was counting down the days until she could speak with Leraphone—it was only tomorrow, now. Even if that blue frizz ball didn't have a cure, Braya was hoping for anything, even more medicine.
****
Brielle bounced into their room with four envelopes, shouting with delight. Braya groaned. It was too early in the morning.
“I've got our husbands! Come on, wake up everyone!”
Braya scowled, pulling her blankets up higher to hide her face. It was too real. She'd never thought this day would come when she'd actually be assigned a husband.
“Braya, come on! We have to open them all at the same time!”
Brielle was at her bedside, pulling at her blankets. Braya relented, accepting the envelope thrust into her hands. In the long run, this wouldn't matter, she told herself.
“One, two, THREE!”
Together, the four of them opened their envelopes.
~Chapter 11: Missing Past~
There was a moment of silence as the girls studied the contents of their envelopes. There were several pages of instructions, congratulations, and wedding information. Apparently the wedding was a week from today, and the papers explained that there would be group weddings. Braya had no idea what that meant, but shuffled through the rest of the rambling files to find the name of her future husband imprinted in swirly letters at the bottom of the last page.
Latham Featherwood.
It was as if her heart wanted to react in two different ways—sink to her stomach in dread, and leap into her throat out of relief. As a result, it felt swollen and strained, like a rubber band that had been stretched too far and snapped back into its original position. It was hammering in her ears, and her face flushed with an uncomfortable heat.