The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)

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?!”