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

I, for one, felt nauseated by her tale. I had never once considered how Elena might have been when she was younger. Truthfully, I couldn’t even wrap my head around the idea that she had ever been young. She seemed too sinister to ever have any qualities of childhood ascribed to her, even in her appearance.

“Thank you for telling your story,” said Amber. “I know how hard that can be.”

Vox straightened in his seat and opened his mouth to say something, but a sharp glance from Amber cut him short. He squinted at her a moment, and then, very pointedly, smiled at Amber.

“It was very brave,” he said, an encouraging smile on his face, and Amber’s expression went from irritated to considering.

Morgan shrugged and pushed her shock of dyed black bangs from her face. “Thanks, but it’s nothing. I’m not the same person I was, and I didn’t inherit the ‘blindly follow a psychopath’ gene, so… thanks, I guess. I mean, you deserved to know, in some ways. Hiding the truth won’t make it any less real. It’s a thing that will fester if kept inside for too long.” She looked around, her voice catching, and then looked back down, and I realized the poor girl had never had anyone to share her story with. She was beyond brave for doing it here and now for the first time—she was fearless. “Never mind. Nothing I told you changes the fact that Elena is out there with something up her sleeve, and we need to stop her.”

“I hate to be the guy who asks, but how do we know you don’t just want the throne for yourself?” asked Drew, leaning forward. “My country is on the brink of death because of your sister’s quest for power or control or whatever the hell she did all this for, and I, for one, don’t want to institute a regime change and replace one dictator with another!”

Morgan flushed bright red, her brows drawing together. She opened her mouth to say something, but I wasn’t able to keep my mouth shut. “That’s not fair, Drew. Based on what Morgan is telling us, she wasn’t even there when all of this stuff started going down. We can’t hold her accountable for the actions of the others.”

“For all we know she could’ve been planted here by her sister! You people cannot seriously be taking her word for what happened! If this is how you’ve been running things this entire time, you’re fools!”

Drew made to stand up, and suddenly Owen was on his feet, slamming his fist into the table, the promise of a fiery death in his eyes. “How dare you,” he bellowed. “This woman killed her own twin sister to help us! She blew her cover to help Violet track down Desmond. She has every right to be here, in this room, with us, especially after what she suffered at the hands of those supposed to take care of her. Just look at the date stamp on the letter! Do the math! You can’t tell me her sister managed to hack into her mother’s computer ten years ago to write that letter using her mother’s electronic seal, just so that she could have this opportunity ten years later!”

Morgan, still frozen from when I had cut off whatever she was going to say, flushed a deep pink and seemed to withdraw into herself for a moment. It would’ve been sweet, if we weren’t in the middle of an argument about her. Now it was just embarrassing, for all of us, and I was going to make sure Drew saw that.

Drew’s mouth dropped, and then slowly closed, disappearing behind his bushy beard. He looked over to Mags, clearly searching for support. “Mags, I—”

“Shut up and sit down,” she ordered. “I want to know more about this possible coup.”

Morgan looked around the room for a second, having regained her composure after Owen’s defense of her. “Before we get to that, may I say something?”

“Of course,” Henrik said. “We may still be making our minds up about you, but that doesn’t mean we are rude enough to not give you a chance to defend yourself.” He gave Drew a pointed look, and then smiled kindly at Morgan. “Go ahead, dear.”

Morgan hesitated, looking lost in thought for a moment, and then looked at Drew. “I don’t want to be queen,” she said coldly. “Never have. I am the sixth daughter. That means that, if I had been a normal girl, I would have been free to do whatever I wanted. I don’t want that kind of responsibility! I’m not worthy of it. People deserve someone brave to lead them. Not a coward.”

Everyone in the room sat still under the force of her haunted words.

“You’re not a coward,” Violet said softly, filling the uncertain silence with the warm strength and conviction in her voice. “You were a scared little girl. It wasn’t your fault.”

Morgan scoffed and shook her head, but didn’t reply. It was clear she didn’t believe Violet, but she would… with time. At least I hoped she would.

Morgan pushed off the wall and moved to take out the tiny disk with her mother’s letter in it. Clipping it back onto the chain around her neck, she moved back to her chair to sit down, biting her lip slightly when Owen slid it out for her before she sat. Drew stood for another few seconds, and then sat abruptly.

“I don’t want to rule,” Morgan calmly repeated. “Honestly, the only thing I want from this is to get Sierra away from Elena. She’s just a little girl, and has no place in all this ugliness.”

“So you’d walk away from the power?” asked Logan. “Just like that?”

Morgan’s face didn’t change as she met his gaze. “Just like that,” she agreed.

“Look, I hate to say this, Morgan, but you have to consider the possibility of taking the throne, at least for a short time,” said Henrik. “With Patrus so destabilized, we need a stable