The Gender Plan

by Bella Forrest

  It was a moment before Thomas responded. “Violet, all of our cameras have been down for a while. We did have reports from Drew’s team of a vehicle coming up after the initial assault but before you got there, though not the same one that she took from us. The likelihood that this was Desmond—”

  I cut him off. “I’m near the UV treatment ponds. Could she be there?”

  I pictured Thomas’ thinking face before he responded, “There is a ninety-three percent likelihood that if Desmond hasn’t been reported elsewhere, she will be there. But Violet, that area is the most likely spot for heloships with reinforcements to land—”

  “Thanks, Thomas,” I said firmly. I couldn’t think about all that now. No matter what was out here, I had to stop Desmond. Nothing he could say would change the fact that I was going in.

  I tugged my jacket tighter around my shoulders and exhaled, my breath fogging in the frigid night air. In spite of the glow from the fires just around the corner, shadows and pockets of darkness lingered, long and ominous, across the yard. It was there my eyes had searched during the entire conversation, looking for any sign of Desmond or Cody.

  It was hard to resist the urge to turn or look over my shoulder every few seconds for fear of finding her standing there, like the boogeyman come to life. It was difficult not to think of her that way—she’d been there at every step, anticipating our moves, throwing more and more awful things at us to try and overcome. I was almost glad she’d escaped so we didn’t have to find out if her threat with the boys was legitimate.

  The thought made me pause, and I felt a deep anger that helped solidify my courage. I was tired of this, and I was tired of her—and while I wasn’t going to stop being afraid, now that I had the chance to end this, I wasn’t going to hold back.

  “Desmond!” My shout carried loudly across the wide space. I waited for several heartbeats, and when there was no response, I shouted again. “Desmond!”

  I strode across the yard, completely ignoring the hair on my neck and arms standing on end in warning. I was too angry that I had let the fear Desmond inspired in me have so much control over my actions to even allow myself a moment of doubt.

  “Desmond!” I shouted again, and then stopped when I heard the distinctive sound of the hammer of a gun being drawn back. I turned, and saw Desmond leaning heavily on a cane. I paused at the sight of it, wondering idly where she had gotten it from, and then pushed the thought aside. She stood forty feet away—an easy shot for her—by the edge of one of the ponds. I searched the area around her, and then met her eyes, their glitter looking even more menacing in the dark. “Where’s Cody?”

  Desmond gave me a considering look, her eyes narrowing on the gun in my hand, the barrel pointing right at her. “Are you here to kill me, Violet?” she asked.

  The anger writhed in me. “That depends,” I said, arching an eyebrow. “What I want is Cody.”

  Her eyes glanced around me, and she frowned. “You’re stalling,” she announced. “For what, I wonder? Is Owen out there?” I felt a stab of fear that she was onto us, and then paused, the realization washing over me as I looked closer. She wasn’t onto us; she was afraid. There was a vulnerable curve in her shoulders, and she looked… manic, somehow. Although I hadn’t really noticed it before, being taken prisoner must really have had an effect on her.

  “I’m not stalling, and I have no idea where Owen is,” I told her flatly, and it wasn’t even a lie. “I want Cody. That’s it.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” Cody announced, stepping out from the shadows behind Desmond. “I’m happy with Desmond. You guys suck.”

  I ignored Cody, not giving in to the twinge of anger his jab left me with, or my impulse to try to coax him back. I was relieved to see the young man alive, but I knew that, ultimately, this was one thing I was not going to give him a say on.

  “You see, Violet? He doesn’t want to be with you.” Desmond smirked knowingly at me, and I resisted the urge to just shoot her. Forty feet wasn’t a far distance by any means, but with my left hand… it might as well have been a mile. If I fired and missed…

  Where is Morgan? I wondered, fruitlessly searching the long shadows a few feet behind Desmond. Certainly we had been talking long enough for her to get into position. It already felt like too long. “I’ll go with you,” I announced. “If you leave him behind, I will go with you, and I give you my word I won’t fight you.”

  “Violet…” Desmond trailed off and shook her head at me, her smile curling up farther. “You really do have a flair for dramatic timing.”

  My brows drew together in confusion, and I took a step back as the wind began to shift, at first swirling the smoke in the air gently, but then faster and faster, until I could feel it along my scalp under the short layer of fuzz that had grown on my head. I looked up in time to see a matte black heloship that seemed to fade in out of the night as it lowered itself into the yard several hundred feet behind Desmond.

  The bay door started to extend, and before it was open even a quarter of the way, a girl appeared through the growing gap, coming up and over the door in swanlike fashion. The moonlight caught her hair, making it a silver beacon in the night—doubtless in the sunlight it would have been royal gold. She landed on her feet with liquid ease and began moving toward Desmond.

  She might have reminded me of a deer, but there was a lethality to how she moved. I watched her draw near and met Desmond’s eyes. “Another princess?” I asked tiredly.

  “Lena,” Desmond confirmed with a lazy smile. “She and her twin were my best pupils. I would say it’s not a boast, but why not take pride in my work?”

  I absorbed that knowledge robotically, keeping my mind strategizing on the matter at hand. I had an ace up my sleeve with Morgan—wherever she was—and my blood was boiling for a fight. I’d reached the point where everything was terrifying, so I had to continue as though none of it mattered. Cold fire rushed through my veins. I had already killed my fair share of the seven Matrian princesses. What was one more at this point?

  “Do we have a deal, Desmond? Does Elena still want me enough to warrant taking me alive?”

  Desmond’s mouth pulled tight, and I realized with a start that she didn’t agree with Elena about how to handle me. That was interesting, but not at all reassuring. If she just wanted me dead, she could shoot, but now that Elena’s younger sister was here as a witness, Desmond risked angering her queen. I could almost see the calculation in her eyes as she weighed the pros and cons.

  Finally, she nodded. “Drop the bag and throw the gun on the ground,” she said with a wave of her own gun, clutched almost carelessly in the hand not holding her cane. “Walk over slowly.”

  I obeyed, dropping all I carried and then moving over to her in the way she had asked, with both hands raised. The princess was closing in on her as well, and as we drew close, I slowed when I began to make out the details of her face, coming to a complete stop a few feet away, reeling from the likeness in front of me. The hair was different in style and color, but the resemblance was there.

  “Desmond, what happened to you?” asked the princess, the husk in her voice making it surprisingly deep in spite of her slim, delicate form. Her turquoise eyes flicked over to me, and a smile licked the corner of her wide lips. “Is this her?”

  The name dropped from my lips before I could stop it. “Morgan?”

  Lena—or was she?—blinked at me in surprise, her lips popping open. “Morgana is here?” Her head snapped over to Desmond, her eyes blazing. “You said she’d been taken care of! Where is she?!”

  The breath caught in my lungs as Morgan snapped into view a few feet behind Lena, her gun pointed at the princess’ blonde head. “Here,” she said calmly.

  The next moment seemed as if it had been scripted somehow. Morgan pulled the trigger, the gunshot echoing loudly, but Lena had already sidestepped, her body spinning gracefully around as she leveled a fist at her twin’s face. By the time the punch would’ve connected, howe
ver, Morgan was out of range, her hands appearing out of nowhere to deflect the blow and deliver an attack of their own.

  I could only watch, stunned. The fight was a graceful dance, their moves fluid yet strong. More often than not, they didn’t even touch, their limbs coming within an inch of each other as they anticipated and blocked one another’s moves. It looked effortless, but I could hear that each of them was straining as they let out grunts and harsh breaths. The battle was beautiful, but it was deadly, and the precision and ruthlessness of the two fighters was terrifying. The gun went off once, then twice more, to no effect that I could see—Morgan was not pulling her punches. She was trying to kill her sister.

  I stared for what felt like too long, but must have been less than a minute. Then my eyes flicked back to Desmond. I saw her turning her eyes from the fight toward me at the same moment, and I lunged toward her, trying to take the advantage. But I was weaponless, and she swung her gun up toward me again, shaking her head like a teacher scolding a naughty child. “Are you reneging on our deal?”

  I froze. “No,” I said, not bothering to hide the regret in my voice. “Just… testing your reflexes.”

  Desmond took a couple steps and shoved the gun into my side again, dropping the cane and wrapping her arm around my good arm. “Best not to get involved in a family squabble,” she said with a flick of her head toward the sisters, pushing me forward. “It’ll be over soon enough.”

  I stumbled forward as Desmond prompted, painfully aware of her gun in my side. My mind struggled to rework our plan, frantically improvising as Desmond pushed me closer to the pool, angling us toward the heloship. Two women clad in sky-blue uniforms—indicating they were royal guards—were already heading toward us, rifles in their hands, but they were still a fair distance away. I took them in, and then looked back over my shoulder to see the twins still intertwined in their delicate and deadly dance. Cody was trailing along behind us, and I focused on him.

  “Wait,” I said to Desmond, coming to a sudden halt. “I told you I would come quietly… if you let Cody go! He’s still here. You’re breaking our deal!”

  She started to scoff, but I stepped into her, bringing my face so close to hers that I could count every wrinkle. “Don’t you dare,” I grated out, meeting her eyes. She pushed the gun deeper into my ribs in warning, but I brought my left hand up to the muzzle, ready to push it away from me. “If you break your word right now, I will fight you tooth and nail. I know I’ll lose, but I don’t care as long as I do as much damage as possible. You’ve got a broken leg. And you’ve already seen what I can do.”

  Desmond stared at me, and then gave an irritated tsk and turned around to look at Cody. “You heard Violet. Go.”

  Cody’s eyes widened, and he frowned. “No,” he said, his voice high with alarm. “I want to go with you!”

  Desmond watched him, bored and impassive, as tears welled up in his eyes and he began to cry. “Cody, you’re acting like an infant. You’re useless without Benuxupane.”

  At her words, his tears turned to sobs, and she rolled her eyes and turned away. “Let’s go,” she said, nudging me forward. I tried to ignore the sickness in my stomach that was adding to my anger—if Desmond hurt his feelings, maybe Cody would finally believe us about her… Maybe it would be for the best…

  Cody’s cries grew, and I gave up and turned back to see him still following us, fat tears rolling down his cheeks and snot dripping from his nose. “Please,” he begged hoarsely. “Please don’t leave me!”

  “I’m not your mother!” Desmond snapped, whipping around. “I have no interest in being your mother! You are a weak, spineless thing, and I could never be a mother to something so pitiable. Now go away!”

  Cody’s face fell, devastation and heart-rending disbelief on his face. “You’re lying,” he stammered, his voice coming out at a high-pitched warble that made it sound like his vocal cords were frozen. “You’re lying because of Violet. You want me to meet you somewhere—”

  A gunshot followed by a loud splash cut off whatever Cody was going to say, and Desmond jerked me farther around, using me as a brace to look back around the curved edges of the pond. Morgan stood at the edge of the pool, her foot planted in Lena’s limp back, and as we watched, she pushed her sister’s body farther out into the water, a look of grim triumph on her face. Then she looked over at us, the satisfaction on her face vanishing, and she spat out a curse.

  “Shoot her!” Desmond screamed over her shoulder just as the guards began to fire in Morgan’s direction. The dark-haired woman sprang into action, seeming to move through the bullets, her body twisting around impossibly as she raced across the ground toward us.

  Desmond tugged my arm, propelling me forward a few more steps, then paused, turning to where Cody was still following us, tears pouring down his face. She made an irritated growl and whipped around, her gun leaving my side and aiming for the little boy behind us.

  I saw Cody’s eyes flash up toward her face, and his name was barely a consonant in the back of my mouth when a shadow darted forward from the left, slamming into the boy and pushing him into the pool we stood next to.

  Desmond’s gun went off with a loud bang, and my heart stopped as I saw Jay look up at me from the spot where the younger boy had stood a moment ago, a hand fluttering to his stomach and blood rushing between his fingers, his mouth opening in an ‘O’ of surprise.

  My throat felt frozen, the muscles in my chest so tight, it was as if the scream that refused to come from my throat was trying to rip the flesh from my bones. Jay dropped to his knees and sagged back, sitting on his heels. “Mom?” he asked, his gaze jerking to Desmond, his eyes those of a young, frightened boy.

  Desmond expelled a little breath, the gun in her hand shaking. My eyes dragged over to her, as hard as I tried to stop them. I knew I couldn’t see her look guilty. I wouldn’t forgive her for it. She had no right to that feeling anymore—it was her fault all of this was even going on! I knew that if she looked guilty, nothing would stop me from strangling the life out of her right then and there, no matter who tried to stop me, no matter how many times they shot me. But my eyes went to her face anyway.

  Guilty wasn’t even the word for it. The look on Desmond’s face was the truest emotion I’d ever seen on her countenance, and it was twisted into a grotesque mask of raw horror. The gun in her hand was trembling so violently that her grip would give out soon. Jay gave a strangled breath, and it seemed to break the spell she was under. “Jay?” she gasped, moving toward him.

  Jay saw her coming and recoiled, painfully dragging himself across the ground away from her, blood spilling from the wound in his stomach.

  “Jay, we have the heloship! Let me take you to Matrus! The hospitals there are intact, I—”

  “NO!” rasped Jay as he whipped himself around to glare at her. He held himself up by his arms, and I could tell by the way they quivered that even he was running short on strength. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Desmond turned to where the wardens were standing. They had stopped firing, uncertain. I looked around for a sign of Morgan—or her body—but saw neither. Too many things raced through my mind, and I couldn’t stop staring at Jay—Jay—I needed to help him—

  “You. Get him on the ship,” Desmond said to the wardens, and in spite of the panic radiating from her, her voice held the weight of command.

  “Ma’am—”

  “DO IT,” Desmond bellowed, and the warden blinked, and then moved toward Jay, her jaw clenched tightly.

  Jay watched her come, his expression thunderous through the pain in his face, and then directed his gaze back to his mother, shaking his head. “You don’t get it!” he stated bitterly. “I’d rather be dead than go with you.”

  He stared at her for a heartbeat longer, and then, with the wardens approaching, pulled himself over the short distance to the pool, throwing himself into the water with a splash.

  The fugue of fear and anger that had rooted me to the spot wher
e Desmond had left me was suddenly broken as he disappeared into the water, and I leapt forward, searching it for him. My eyes didn’t find him in the ripples of dark water—but there was Cody, splashing several feet deep inside, his limbs swinging awkwardly.

  “Jay!” Desmond screamed, rushing over to the water’s edge, and I changed tact—I would push her into the pool if it was the last thing I did—when one of the wardens gave a shout cut short by a bullet. I looked over to see Morgan charging for us from just past where Desmond stood, her body springing forward across the grass.

  The remaining warden fired on her, and Morgan weaved and dipped, her progress slowing as she was forced to find a less direct route. I felt the gun jab into my ribs again and bit back a curse, turning to see Desmond back at my side—the moment I’d been distracted by Morgan had been a moment too long. Desmond pushed me forward, and I resisted weakly, torn between all the things that needed my attention right now.

  “I’m not going anywhere without Jay!” I shouted. “He needs our help! How can you just leave him!”

  “It’s his choice,” she grated out through a tight larynx, her voice cold and deadly. “Now move, or I shoot Cody next. Believe me, I can hit him.”

  I ground my teeth together and began to move, tears springing up in my eyes, blurring my vision. Desmond jabbed the gun harder into my ribs, and a stabbing pain radiated from the spot, making me cough, but I kept my feet heavy as the heloship drew nearer. My mind was barely on Desmond anymore—how could I save Cody and Jay? Everything in me was screaming that I needed to go to them right now.

  I could see Morgan, still weaving her way through the hail of bullets, coming closer in spite of the heavy fire. How had I never known she could move like that?

  “Morgan!” I shouted over my shoulder as Desmond continued to shove me forward. “Get Cody and Jay! You have to save them!”