The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

Drew gave her a surprised look, clearly having expected Mags to try to take command herself, and her grin grew. “I lead only when I have to, Drew. When there’s someone more capable, I step aside. Henrik knows his stuff—it was his and his team’s planning that made it possible for us to succeed. Even you have to give him credit for that.”

Drew looked over at Logan, who gave a little shrug. “I have no problem with it,” Logan announced. “I asked around, and Henrik here used to be a warden back in the day—one with a stellar record.”

Frowning, Drew laced his fingers across his chest and tilted his head up to think about it. After several heartbeats, he nodded, and I felt a burst of relief, followed by the thought of We should have more meetings when everyone’s tired. It seems to move everything along rather quickly.

“Well, glad that’s over,” grinned Henrik, who seemed to have no objections to his new position—and no ego, either. “And I’m grateful for your trust in this. I promise I’ll do my best to listen to what you all have to say, but we’re all leaders here in one way or another, so I don’t expect you to make it easy for me to get my way.” He winked comically, and it seemed to defuse some of the strain that had settled into the room. “Violet, I’ll hand it off to you now.”

Violet took a breath, and I could see her mustering her thoughts, trying to decide what to tell everyone first. Logan and Amber, who’d seen the tower firsthand, looked out at the others with expressions of smug anticipation, which would have been more amusing if I hadn’t watched them bicker for an entire heloship trip.

Finally, when the quiet was getting a little jarring, Violet spoke, and I could see she was going for broke. “Guys,” she said, “we’re not alone out here. There are people living in The Outlands.”

The reactions across the table were a mix of disbelief, shock, wonder and curiosity—I could see the idea breaking across people’s faces in waves, as Mags’s mouth dropped open, Morgan’s eyes widened comically, Drew fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat, Owen’s hand opened and closed a few times… Henrik stroked his beard, his eyes narrowing in intensity.

“Don’t just leave us hanging like that,” Ms. Dale finally said, breaking the silence. “Tell the rest, Violet!”

Then the whole story had to come out—and even summarized, it was impressive. The flight with Solomon, Desmond’s death, the tense situation with two Matrian wardens who wanted to take her back to Matrus and execute her—it sounded like something out of an action comic, even to me. At Violet’s description of the tower, the people and their strange greetings—and then, their horribly powerful light beam that weaponized the sun—people’s faces got even more intense. We’d all been tired; but this put new energy in the room, if only for a moment.

“They healed Solomon’s bullet wounds?” Morgan said. “Do you think that they… Do you think they fixed his brain, too?”

Violet stretched out her own healed right hand as if considering. “I don’t want to dare to hope that,” she said. “But if they could heal my arm in 24 hours…”

“What I’d do to get my hands on a weapon like that,” Drew said wistfully. “Do you think they are really not open to trade? We could learn so much from another society. I can’t believe they’d just let you guys go, frankly.”

“Sounds like bad news to me,” Ms. Dale said, shaking her head. “We’ve already seen what one mad queen can do to a group of people. But forcing them to stay in their tower and never even acknowledging that you were there? That is a dangerous amount of control, and it sounds like a ticking time bomb if you ask me. People can’t stay in these kinds of situations forever. They start to want answers. We should know.”

Violet nodded, her eyes solemn.

“I regret,” Henrik said finally, “to say that we have to move on to the things that are actually going to affect our situation here. While this is all fascinating… fascinating… it’s just too big for us to even deal with right now, I’m afraid. So here are our next items on the agenda: one, coordinating a vote to see if the people in Patrus wish to continue letting King Maxen rule over us, and two, the ongoing threat that is Queen Elena.”

Slowly, we all settled back into having to deal with the world we faced just outside our doors. “We can’t deal with Elena until we have a leader,” grumbled Drew. “We need to set up a provisional government and alert the people about it.”

“Which is why I think we should table this discussion, for now,” announced Ms. Dale, leaning forward. “What you’re talking about is going to take a lot of time, and that’s something we don’t have right now. Elena is coming, and you can bet that she’ll be using enhanced humans to try to finish the job.”

“She’s going to have a pretty easy time of it,” announced Mags tiredly. “We haven’t completed a full census yet, but a rough estimate based on the numbers we have so far is that there’s only about two thousand people left in Patrus—and that was before the groups left to go back to the farms around the city. Not to mention, most of them are women, which means they’ve had no education in self-defense or fighting.”

“Just another way the Patrian… lifestyle has made this fight exceptionally difficult,” remarked Amber.

“I’m surprised Elena’s forces aren’t here already,” commented Logan. “From what you all have been saying about her, it seems like she would be pressing the advantage. We’re not much of a threat at the moment, sad to say, although the fully stocked and loaded heloships will certainly help to act as a deterrent.”

“Well, I have a theory on that,”