The Gender Fall Read online

  I shook away the grim image of myself shouting over her body as I tried to force her to breathe again, and exhaled slowly. After a moment, I looked at Owen. “Did you remember to hide the—”

  “Of course I remembered to hide the bloody car,” the younger man spat back, his spine stiffening. “I’m not a moron, Viggo.”

  I grinned at him in reply, and after a long, hard look at me, he relaxed slightly. I wasn’t sure when this teasing had worked its way into our exchanges. Truth be told, I had been ready to hate Owen since day one. After hearing Violet talk about him… excessively.

  But after she had convinced me there was nothing between them, and after all the things Owen had done for us, the man had earned my grudging respect. I had even started considering him a friend, which was rare for me. I tended to be a loner, even before all this insanity had started. Apart from Alejandro and his wife Jenny… No, I preferred to keep my list of loved ones small.

  Owen had earned my friendship, however. He had been firm, fair, and honest, and had a depth of integrity I rarely saw in people. He may not have always done the right thing, but when he made a mistake, he took responsibility for it. The man had refused to abandon me and Violet in our hour of need—it had never even been a possibility to him. I was glad to have him with us.

  “Y’know,” Owen drawled, and I looked up to meet his gaze. “Getting into a fight in this position might only make things worse.” He looked pointedly at our guns.

  I understood what he was saying. I even agreed with it to a certain extent. Better to not have to start shooting, because that would only get us killed. Better to give in at first, then try to escape later. But then I looked back at Violet, at the damage to her face and body, and felt myself hardening as reason escaped me.

  “They’re going to have to kill me before they can lay a finger on her,” I replied, my voice as sharp as steel.

  Owen’s eyes widened in alarm, and I looked down and realized my hands were shaking with barely repressed rage. All the humor from earlier had evaporated under the force of my fury. I forced myself to take a deep breath. And another. And a third. It was enough, for the moment, to quell the seething anger that had built up in my stomach and chest, tense and raw.

  “Sorry,” I grated out after a moment. “I’m just…”

  “I get it,” he whispered back, his face softening. “We’ll get through this.”

  I glanced back at Violet and was surprised to see the twin silver slits of her eyes were open, glistening with awareness, catching a sliver of light that came in from the stairs. She feebly tried to push herself up into a better sitting position, and the cast on her right hand scraped loudly on the floor, making me wince. She didn’t seem to notice, her breath coming in shudders and gasps as she struggled to move.

  I squatted down, smoothing a hand over her hair. “Violet,” I whispered softly. “You have a fractured skull. You need to stay down.”

  She ignored me, her left arm shaking with strain as she tried to shift her position on the floor but failed weakly. I sighed and reached out, taking her under the arms and moving her slightly, until she was braced in the corner. She grew paler, and I saw clearly that she was resisting the urge to vomit.

  Her eyes glazed over, becoming unfocused and sliding left and right around the room. Then they fluttered closed, and a slight wheeze escaped her lungs. I hovered nearby, concerned she might still vomit in spite of her heroic attempt to hold it back, but she continued to fight it off. After a moment, her eyes snapped back open, awareness returning in them.

  Her gaze drifted down to the gun I clutched in my hand, and then up to me. She swallowed, her mouth working as if she were trying to speak. I waited, and Violet sighed in apparent frustration. She glanced back to the gun, then up at me again, and this time I noticed the fingers of her left hand twitching as she looked at me, the expression on her face imploring underneath the marring of her injuries, visible even in the dimness.

  I hesitated, questioning the wisdom of giving her a gun. She had a severe concussion, and she was slipping in and out of consciousness. Half in and half out of reality, in terrible pain… The last thing she needed was a weapon in her hand.

  I decided to let her touch one just briefly, hoping it would provide her with a thread of comfort. I reached down to the waistband of my pants, freeing my second pistol. I set it on the ground next to her before gently lifting her left hand, taking great care to avoid the bandaged cuts on her fingers, and resting it on the butt of the gun. The relief in her eyes was palpable as she gave me a fraction of a nod.

  Then her eyes closed. I waited for them to open again, but her world had gone dark once more. Probably better this way.

  I replaced the second gun in my waistband, then straightened and turned toward Owen, who placed a finger over his lips. I held my breath, listening closely.

  I couldn’t hear much through the boards, but after a moment, my ears caught the distinct whine of brakes being applied and the sound of a car engine shutting off, followed by doors slamming closed. My hand tightened on my gun.

  We listened in silence as several reedy, thin voices carried through the walls. The owners of the vehicle were definitely female. Which meant they were definitely Matrian. Patrian women weren’t trained to drive.

  Then the distinct sounds of heavy boots filed into the room on the other side of the wall, and I had second thoughts about taking the gun from Violet. The thought of her having to face the Matrians defenseless sent a current of fear through me, and I looked down to notice my hands shaking again.

  Then the fiery rage was back, burning like a molten core in my gut. I resisted the urge to growl. Violet wouldn’t have to use any gun. If I had anything to say about it, they wouldn’t even get a good look at her. I’d be damned if anyone laid a hand on her.

  I gripped my pistol harder and ground my teeth together. As the sounds of crashing and clattering resounded through the house, I stared at the wall panel like my life depended on it. I would fight if I had to.

  Like hell they’d ever touch my girl again.

  3

  Violet

  I had closed my eyes, but I hadn’t given up my tenuous hold on reality. My fingertips had been resting gently on the butt of a gun, but then it had been pulled away. The movement had left me swimming in anxiety, but I felt incapable of expressing it.

  My stomach roiled suddenly, and I pressed my lips together, trying to quell the urge to vomit. It took a great deal of focus. Focus hurt—it made my head ache frightfully. An image floated across my mind, of a tomato growing inside a tin can. It grew and it grew, until the tin can became too small for it, and then grew some more, the red, fleshy fruit expanding, swelling… until it popped.

  I giggled a tiny bit in the back of my throat. That was how it felt: my skull was the tin can, and the tomato was my… Oh. The realization sobered me. The image was not as funny as I had originally thought. I was confused by my own morbidity. Confused and…

  My thought process stuttered out as the urge to vomit returned.

  I sucked air in through my nose. Sweat poured down my face and neck, making me shiver in the cool air. I focused on relaxing my body. It was hard—even breathing was its own form of agony. My ribs pinched with each inhalation, and I hoped to God they weren’t broken.

  The darkness was beckoning me again, trying to seduce me into its sweet release. I wanted to respond to it so badly.

  Stay in the moment, I urged myself, repeating it over and over until my breathing returned to normal, although the pain in my skull did not lessen. It was important I stayed awake, because something important was going on. I remembered that. I remembered something bad was coming. The thought tethered me.

  My eyes snapped open as I heard a faint squeak above me. Viggo and Owen were looking up overhead. I tilted my head back slightly, trying to find what they were looking for, and immediately the room started to spin, tumbling on its axis, becoming a blur.

  Were those voices nearby?

&nb
sp; I waited. Moving was distinctly uncomfortable in more ways than I could even begin to categorize. It was also dangerous, judging by the soft, desperate breathing of the two men near me. Movement carried the threat of giving away our position. Better to remain still.

  I squeezed my eyes together as I tried to gasp for air quietly. I dove a little deeper into the beckoning darkness—not quite all the way in, but not quite all the way out either. It was a halfway point, one that left me floating in gray. The floating was nice. It would be so easy to settle in deeper, close my eyes, and just drift.

  So I did. Only for a moment, I promised myself. Only a moment to settle my stomach and still the pulse of pain that seemed to be harassing my entire body. Only for a moment…

  The next thing I felt, besides a spike of agony, was movement. Whispered words torn harshly from mouths. A steady rocking that caused my pain to return.

  I slowly opened my eyes, taking care to open them a fraction at a time. Something had changed since the last time I’d woken. The light seemed dimmer this time, cooler, more natural. My vision was filled with warm brown stalks that were the tallest things I had ever seen. They were withered and dying, but I smiled when I looked at them, knowing they carried an important function, one I had enjoyed in the past. I was aware of the faint rustling sound of our passage, and turned my head to the right, slowly.

  The dizziness that accompanied head movement flared up, but I was prepared for it, and took my time. By the time I had finished moving, we were pushing through the corn stalks—That’s what they are, I thought victoriously—and into an open green area that led toward tall brown pillars crowned with green, looming out of the earth around us. Viggo hefted me higher against his chest, the movement causing the world to tumble. As soon as it evened out somewhat, those bigger brown-and-green objects had started flashing past my eyes, the whole scene shivering and rolling in many different ways at once, spinning me into even greater confusion. Still, I couldn’t help but stare at them, a strange sense of awe coming over me as the swaying shapes passed over my head, the tangles of their branches making intricate, snarled knots of greenery.

  Trees, my broken brain informed me. A forest. And we were moving through it. I tilted my eyes down and saw that I was close to Viggo’s face again. He was carrying me. Again.

  For some reason, that realization made me want to laugh. There was something… a joke… about us? Something we did together, with each other, for each other.

  My head sent me a warning throb. I was thinking too hard. I tried to focus on the trees again, but now they were moving too fast. The greens and browns blurred together, faster and faster. My insides felt like they were winding up, tighter and tighter, until my breathing intensified and I felt my stomach clench.

  It was too much at once. I couldn’t keep control. I gagged, and then retched. My body erupted in agony as I was forced to move, and I couldn’t stop myself. I vomited hard, and felt tears streaking down my cheeks as my stomach clenched again. A strange dizziness struck me, and I became aware of Viggo’s hands and body shifting and moving on me. It brought only the tiniest reprieve, which disappeared almost instantly as I retched again.

  When it was over, I sagged slightly, unbelievably relieved my body had given up. I didn’t want to, but I opened my eyes, peeling them back like the skin of an onion and squinting up into the forest’s cool light. It took a minute, but I realized we had stopped moving. My view of the light blue sky was obscured by green tufts that felt soft and slick under my fingers and were wrapped in damp black granules.

  Grass. It was the opposite of sky. I wanted to smile at my own cleverness.

  Instead, I frowned as I was suddenly moved, gently lifted back into Viggo’s arms. I realized his hands had been on me the entire time I was vomiting. They had been holding me up, keeping me from falling face first into my own mess.

  I sighed as my cheek once again came into contact with the familiar beveled curve that was Viggo’s shoulder. His hands held me tight against him, and I melted into him. He was so warm, and I shivered as a chill caught me unaware, causing me to burrow closer to his warmth. I stared at his face. He was so beautiful.

  Frowning, I squinted and took a closer look. He was sweating. His breathing was ragged. There was strain around his mouth and eyes. His eyes were hard and burning with something. Anger? Desire? Determination.

  That was it. He was determined. I struggled mentally, grasping at associations, and another face slid across my mind. It was the face of a young man. His hair was a dark brown mop of wavy curls, and his eyes were a familiar shade of glistening silver. He wore the same look as Viggo, but on him, I found it adorable and irritating at the same time. Like I didn’t know whether to hug him or shake him.

  Tim. His name came to me with the force of a wrecking ball, bowling me over with a wave of love, guilt, responsibility, and… a keen sense of loss.

  My brother, Tim.

  I couldn’t see him. Was he with us? Of course he was… wasn’t he?

  I hated interrupting Viggo when he looked this stressed, but I couldn’t trust my mind right now. My memories were jumbled and confusing, the headache caused by focusing so hard conflicting with my desire to know. Knowing won out.

  “Tim,” I said, and frowned at the croaking noise that erupted from my throat. I shook it off and watched Viggo closely.

  His mouth tightened into a thin line, but he didn’t respond. His face confused me—was he angry? Angry at Tim? No… he loved Tim. I was certain of that. Then what was it? I searched my memory—had I even asked the question I had wanted to?

  I couldn’t remember. It would be best to repeat it, I decided. I had opened my mouth to ask Viggo about Tim again, when his lips moved. I zeroed in on them, studying them intently as he spoke.

  “We don’t know,” he said.

  That… That wasn’t right. Tim was… He was with two others… Thomas and Jay, right? That felt right, so I decided to trust it.

  But then… why wouldn’t Viggo know? He must know. Or be mistaken. That was wrong—Viggo was never mistaken.

  A wash of fear came over me as I tried to piece together the two concepts. I could only come up with two choices. Either Viggo was confused about where Tim was, or he didn’t know where Tim was… which meant something was incredibly wrong.

  The fear grew in my mind, tearing it apart with images of the bulldog woman, plunging her knife into Tim over and over, and laughing at me.

  I fled into the darkness, trying to hide from the returning panic, destroying any last trace of who I was.

  4

  Viggo

  I bit off a curse as we ran through the forest that bordered Mr. Kaplan’s fields, my mind whirling furiously, the front of my shirt still damp from Violet’s vomit. The air was still cold, the sun struggling to chase away the chill of night as it rose overhead. Violet was heavy in my arms, but her limbs drooped again, slack. She had slipped back into unconsciousness, and I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad, given the circumstances. The fact she kept passing out like this was alarming, spurring in me the desperate need to move faster. Despite the impulse, I forced myself to maintain my even pace. Racing blindly ahead would only get both of us hurt, and Violet was already suffering enough. I hated the idea that I was hurting her by moving her. Hated that I had to run with her through the forest in a mad dash to try to get her out of the area. But we couldn’t afford to get captured. Her least of all.

  The circumstances filled me with an anger that was almost impossible to control. I felt feral and raw, more beast than man. And yet, I knew under that, deep down, I was afraid. My heart ached for the idea of life without the woman in my arms. It protested this possibility fiercely, rejecting any thought that she could die.

  The world was a crueler place than the one my heart seemed to yearn for. If anyone needed evidence of that, they needed only to look at my past. At how I had failed as a husband. At how I had failed to keep my wife safe, which had culminated in her execution.

&nbs
p; It was selfish and greedy, but I couldn’t go through that desolation again. If I lost Violet… I didn’t know what I would do. And I couldn’t trust luck, couldn’t trust the environment we now lived in to be safe for her. I couldn’t trust anyone with her but my own damn self.

  So I ran, racing around trees, kicking up dirt and leaves, spurred on by my fear of a future without her jokes, her smile, her killer instinct, her charm, her eyes…

  Owen ran beside me, his face red from exertion, his eyes wide. We knew it was only a matter of time before the Matrian patrol returned and started sweeping the edges of the woods. If we were caught out in the open like this, they would have us. They would have her.

  I knew it was true because the patrol had taken Mr. Kaplan with them after they had torn apart his home looking for us. We’d waited far too long—for the silence that had reigned after the crashing and shouts. But nothing had happened. We’d had to push the painting off the secret entrance to our hiding place, and it had seemed sad to see it fall to the floor—until we’d seen the destruction wreaked by the Matrian wardens. As terrible as it sounded, I was glad Violet had passed out before the women came into the house. And I was glad she had stayed that way as we’d picked our way out of the overturned dressers and broken furniture in the hall, sneaking out into the fields, then to these woods, unsure whether the Matrians had truly moved on from the area yet.

  It was clear the wardens hadn’t known for certain we were there—if they had, maybe they would’ve burned the house down, or worse. I’d seen enough to know the kind of violence the Matrian wardens were willing to stoop to. I could only guess what lies Elena was feeding to her people to maintain her control on them… or if the fractured stability, as false as it was, that had settled over the land could even withstand the bombing of the king’s palace. A part of me wondered if Elena hadn’t just told the truth about who bombed the palace. Tabitha was a princess, after all, and Violet had attacked and—hopefully—killed her. The populace could easily side with the queen on this if they believed the “facts” they’d already been given.