Last time on what more is there to say really, I took a well-needed break and linked a bunch of mpreg for your enjoyment.

So, on to Ch15 for real.

We open with the three of them flirting with the rapist. Cecily’s playing the piano.

“That was beautiful, love,” Linden says. He sits on the couch with his arm around me. Jenna is curled on the armrest, and his other hand absently traces patterns on her thigh.
“We have a little concert pianist,” Jenna agrees, and works one of Linden’s curls around her finger
…
Cecily says, climbing into Linden’s lap. “I wrote it in the orange grove.”
“You wrote that by yourself ?” Linden says, surprised.
Jenna is still toying with his hair, and his head cants absently toward her.

The idea is to talk him into letting them back outside.

Jenna says. “The weather’s been quite nice. Wouldn’t you agree?” She’s looking at Linden, whose cheeks have become flushed. The adoration of three wives at once is more than he can handle.

Yes, how hard it is for the rapist to have these three manipulative cockteases! Poor Linden-chan, manipulated by his love for them!

Or we could consider that they have to prostitute themselves to be let out again. But I’m sure Cecily just wants to hang out in her rapist’s lap, and anyway it’s normal to only be treated decently if you offer sex in return.

They are incredibly manipulative in this section, actually:

Housemaster Vaughn is only trying to keep us safe,” I say. “That’s why he escorts us outside.”
“He escorts you everywhere?” Linden asks.
“It does get depressing,” Jenna admits. “We adore our father-in-law, of course. You know that. But sometimes a girl needs some time alone.”

The problem is there’s no clear reason why they’d need to lie constantly and pretend to be fine with it unless the rapist is a horrible person who would refuse a regular request.

I think this is related to what I was talking about yesterday. There’s this need for the characters to be forced to do things like this by circumstance, but at the same time the book wants to insist that they’re not forced into it because the guy’s bad. It ends up presenting it as how normal male/female interaction is supposed to play out, because it won’t admit that women shouldn’t ever be in the position they have to do it. And by making the women manipulative and the guy innocent, it serves to reinforce those bad stereotypes.

Cecily cups his face, kisses him, and asks if he thinks pregnancy has made her unattractive, it’s just about all he can stand. “Y-you’re beautiful,” he says.

I’m not sure if I can pinpoint exactly which bad thing this is playing into. The nymphet thing? Or the opposite, where Cecily’s been given a very adult statement to say to try to distract from her actual age.

On another note, I also don’t like stuff joking about pregnant women asking if they’re pretty. Pregnant women’s brains are fermenting in hormones because pregnancy requires many huge changes to the body. Some really will break down because they’re not pretty or over anything else. They weren’t trying to be manipulative. Given how common it is for a pregnant woman to be murdered by their spouse, and how incredibly common abuse is… it’s just not something to be thrown around lightly.

I can’t help enjoying this camaraderie. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like I’m in a marriage.

Another point in favor of the author really liking the whole multiple wives setup. Despite that, I really feel like the other wives are underused – they’re around all the time, they have a shared situation they’re dealing with but very different backgrounds and personalities, yet instead we spend all this time on Gabriel, who doesn’t seem to serve any purpose but to have a different colored set of pretty eyes than the rapist. All the servant-related info he gives could come from the other servants, and Rhine cultivating an actual relationship with them would help a lot at fixing the current problem of them just appearing to fawn over her for no reason.

Cecily’s contractions start, presumably not much later.

“They’re only Braxton Hicks,” Housemaster Vaughn assures her. “It’s not the real thing.”

Considering she’s thirteen and probably carrying a disproportionately large fetus given her food intake, lack of exercise and previous malnourishment, early labor should be a real worry. False contractions can be distinguished from early labor, especially for a doctor, but it’s a bit tricky in some cases and considering stress can induce early labor which she’s already at risk of…

But she is in real pain.

God damn Rhine, he didn’t say, “She’s not having real contractions, ignore her false bleating.” he said, “The real contractions she’s really having aren’t labor contractions.” Of course they still hurt.

She’s kneeling by the bed, clinging to the mattress, and I can see the terror in her eyes, and I know she isn’t just doing this out of spite.

You can’t induce false contractions out of spite, Rhine, so saying you only believe it because she’s obviously suffering just makes you look like a dick.

Also, one of the ways Braxton Hicks differs from real contractions is that you can make them go away by moving around or drinking something or such. They’re also usually not anywhere near as painful as actual labor contractions, with a lot of the worry usually being over if it’s labor. The fact that instead they’re just letting her curl up in a miserable ball raises the question of if these actually are or if he’s lying..

Rhine considers staying with her, and evil mad scientist says there’s still two months before the kid’s due. That’s another tick in favor of her going into premature labor, Braxton Hicks usually gets worse as time goes on, so if she was going to suffer some particularly painful form, you’d expect it to be closer to the due date.

I don’t trust him. I imagine Cecily being rolled through the basement on a gurney, screaming in agony as the baby is born dead, and Vaughn going to work dissecting it for an antidote. He’s a merciless beast; there’s no humanity in his eyes as he cuts the infant apart.

Rhine apparently wants to be there just to ensure Cecily doesn’t go to the basement where the medical equipment is, and that her dead baby is left intact to rot in the ground instead. But she knows he’s evil because when she imagines him doing things he has an evil expression.

Evil mad scientist then convinces Cecily not to insist the rapist stay by telling her that he might sell a house and it’ll be built and she can visit, which could be a sign of evil or it could be a sign the rapist is really annoying to have underfoot at times like this. Considering he was all but glued to Rhine, I must go with the latter.

“I’ll be fine here. This is my job, after all. I’m happy to contribute.”
Strangely, there’s no malice in the way she says it.

Rhine has no comment on how utterly horrible it is that a thirteen year old girl just said that, she’s just snarking that oh my Cecily wasn’t being bitchy about it how unusual.

Anyway, horrified by the fact evil mad scientist successfully comforted Cecily and calmed her down with distractions and promises before she dissolved into panic, Rhine makes sure to tell Jenna to keep an eye out.

“I don’t want him alone with her.”
“No,” she says. “Of course not.”

But they have no problem encouraging her to spend time with the rapist. Just the guy who doesn’t show any signs of wanting to fuck her.

Of all things, Linden leads me to the same limousine that brought me here in the first place.

See, I can see her not expecting this, but on reflection she should realize her mistake. Of course it’s the same limo. He’s the kidnapper who bought you.

Also, it’s snowing.

I’d always thought Florida was a temperate state

Oh for fuck’s sake. New York is considered “temperate”. “Temperate” means “possessing real seasons instead of being the fucking tropics”.

Also, there’s snowing and then there’s “snowing”. If you are from New York in Florida, and they start going on about the fact there’s a couple white flecks in the air as if that counts as snow, you laugh at them and tell them to stop living in the pansy state.

Instead, Rhine apparently agrees that the Floridian’s concept of cold is completely valid, and tries to convince him that cold air’s good for you so he’ll let her keep the windows open.

the heated leather seats
…
I breathe in the frozen air

So. Given Rhine’s an idiot who, despite the book’s claims she knows about the world, seems to have just looked at the pretty pictures, there’s no evidence that things like “Florida” and “Manhattan” actually match up with what those mean to us. We know her version of Manhattan is quite different from how the actual city should be. And both nuking the continents and nuking the ice caps should have caused some major changes in coastline.

So this probably isn’t Florida, and even if it’s anywhere near the area, it’s looking like it has a very different, far more volatile climate. Not sure how the oranges are handling things, but perhaps they’re a new, frost-hardy cultivar. (They seem to be entirely ornamental, and Rhine doesn’t know much about plants, so it’s quite possible they’re not actually oranges but one of the various related citrus plants, some of which can survive ten degree weather.)

I am still unconvinced this is safe. Knowing Vaughn, he’s probably arranged for me to be knocked out just so I won’t find my way to the gate.

I don’t see why you’re assuming the rapist didn’t decide that. He was the one who knocked you all out the first time.

She manages to get the sunroof open and pops her head out. I want to compliment her for her foresight, but she doesn’t make any attempt to figure out where the road is and why she hasn’t been able to find it before, she just watches everything flash by.

Then they get to the city.

Bright lights and blurs of people laughing and talking. It’s a wealthier place than where I come from, by the looks of it, and money has given these people the illusion of time. Maybe they’re hoping for an antidote to save them, or maybe they’re just happy to have a comfortable home to return to. There are no traces of desperation, no panhandling orphans.

Apparently one of the lesser known effects of the virus was it causes the homeless to migrate north. Or maybe this was an unrelated tweak someone threw in.

You know, that’d be an interesting story. A bunch of social engineering viruses get released into the population, and they were all created by assholes, so suddenly cold weather makes you want to migrate north because someone was trying to kill off the homeless.

Anyway, the rapist is worried she’ll get pneumonia and wants her to stop sticking her head out of the car, and Rhine apparently considers this plausible. She doesn’t care about the actual disease but she figures if she gets sick she’ll get trapped at the house.

Vaughn had to convince him that I was as strong as an ox (like his dead son, I thought when I heard the comparison) before Linden considered taking me out tonight.

…So, evil mad scientist, who you’ve been bitching about nonstop, who you were just minutes ago rambling about having some sinister plot to drug you, is actually the one who convinced him to go out with you.

Rhine does not consider this further. I doubt the author considered it further, I’m pretty sure the line is just there to justify her being out.

Rhine asks what Rose did at these things.

there will be lots of toasts and attendants carrying glasses of wine on trays. “After the alcohol came to be too much, Rose would only pretend to take sips.

This strikes me as odd because this doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you where you want people puking all over the floor, yet it seems you get alcohol pressed on you the whole time.

Then again, he makes no comment about running into this problem himself, so maybe it’s just the wives?

But why would they be getting them drunk when they’re all potentially pregnant?

“She laughed at everything anyone said, and she looked at their eyes when they spoke. And she was always smiling. At the end of the night, when it was just us, she said her cheeks hurt from all the smiling.”

But why would she do this?

It’s not like she could make friends who’d visit her outside of the parties, because from the sounds of it big parties are the only time brides are allowed to see outsiders. It’s not for social climbing reasons, because there’s nowhere to climb. Her own position can’t be improved and Linden only works because he likes doing it.

And shine like a star, I add to the list, because it also seems like something Rose would have done.

No, as I’m explaining, it doesn’t. Now, she might have her own reasons to be talking to people, but at least what we’re getting here is someone who’s charming and flattering for no reason.

Not only do the wives serve no social purpose, but there isn’t even the expectation they’ll interact. Rhine’s description of them is that most are miserable prisoners just there because they’re pretty to look at.

I feel myself entering her world. I feel like her replacement, which is what she said to me on the day we met, and I hadn’t wanted to believe it then. But now, with the warmth from the leather seats and the sweet smell of Linden’s aftershave, being her replacement doesn’t seem so bad.

Rhine quickly corrects herself a moment later that she means in a temporary way… and says that the only issue is she misses her brother. So the book’s given up even on even the freedom business.

Anyway, we find out there’s no more Christmas, it’s just a winter solstice celebration, and this predates the first gens. I wonder if this is meant to imply that the reason things went wrong is America became godless. The winter solstice is exactly like Christmas, down to Santa Claus ringing a bell while people drop money into a red bucket as his feet.

It’s actually kind of nice. I was hoping for worldbuilding fail, not endless rape apologism, so this sort of bullshit is an improvement. Is the author just such a fucking moron she thinks this is super clever worldbuilding, or is this lazy shit because she didn’t give a damn? Who can say.

Back to our more usual issues, although the rapist claimed the expos were boring that would get in the way of her being a pretty princess at the beautiful party full of beautiful aristocrats.

inside there is a large and well-dressed crowd. There are holograms suspended around the room, with images of houses that spin and swivel. Windows open, and you’re taken inside for a sweeping tour of the rooms. Architects stand beside their holograms and eagerly explain them to anyone who will listen. Even the walls and ceiling of the expo room are a sweeping illusion of a blue sky with meandering clouds. The ground looks like swaying grass full of wildflowers, and I can’t help stooping to touch the floor to be sure the grass isn’t real. I feel the cold tiles, though it looks like my hands are digging into the soil.

And nothing will get in the way of her being a beautiful princess going to the almost as beautiful ball. The rapist says the expos always do something differently and the last two sucked. Sure is convenient they suddenly improved in time for her.

I’m tempted to connect this to how Katniss was always saying the fashions sucked except somehow she’d get a cool outfit, but it’s probably a pretty common thing. Then again I get the impression at times that it’s deliberately trying to copy bits of the Hunger Games, so maybe.

The dessert table is set up like a cityscape. There’s a bio-dome cake that’s already been cut into. There’s a wobbly gelatin swimming pool with chocolate chip concrete, a chocolate fountain. Frosting flowers have been swiped, mutilated, and it’s like Dorothy’s Oz after someone has bitten into it.

This legitimately interests me. I want to make these things.

Oh, and at the last second the rapist warns her that random strangers will kiss her hand. Considering she’s fine with random strangers stripping her naked or sleeping in her bed, I doubt this will be an issue.

someone has snatched my hand and kissed it. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

God damn Rhine, could you make less sense.

The terrifying hand-kisser is a guy younger than she is.

he’s dressed in a suit that would cost more than a month of electricity in the mansion.

That’s right, she’s trying to do the “omg he is so much richer” only she considers the mansion her standard. How the fuck would you even know how much mansion electricity costs, and also I imagine it’s fucking enormous so shut up.

Also Rhine’s clothes are diamond encrusted most of the time. So really.

Anyway, the handkissing is so awful she gulps wine to dull things.

There are other wives, but they all seem happy with their husbands.

Okay, I think I’ve figured out how the original story went.

Rhine lives in the general historical period of the Disney castle. One day she’s kidnapped because her special eyes mean she’ll fetch a high price from some nobleman. She heard many scary stories of how cruel and scary noblemen are, but found her husband to be kind and the real evil was the eeeevil dad, but remained suspicious. Now at her first party, she sees the other happy wives and realizes that the stories about cruel noblemen are baseless.

Then the publisher asked for it to be set in the future and for a nice dystopia coating on top. The early chapters were most changed, but the author only changes things initially, so it doesn’t occur to her that now that the bit about scary noblemen and sad brides has gone from baseless rumor to objectively what Rhine saw on the television a billion times, Rhine can’t meet other wives only to find out everyone’s happy.

None of the wives mention the security guards by the door, who will probably tackle us to the ground if we try to leave without our husbands.

You might think this is the author trying to compromise, but nope. There’s a pregnant wife making a big production of how she can’t drink because it might hurt the precious ball of love, and besides, we know the wives don’t pretend to be happy because again, she saw them.

The rapist’s design, naturally, is a Victorian house, complete with ivy.

I cling to Linden’s arm, and he keeps me steady, places a light kiss on my temple. And after all the strangers handling and kissing me, I find myself relieved that he’s the only one who’s touching me now.

Yes, thank goodness it’s the rapist instead of all those other people who just want to touch your hand.

When she’s asked about her eyes by the people who exist only to talk about how awesome she is, she says she got them from her parents, and suddenly the rapist is all surprised because he thought his toys just sprang fully grown out of the brows of the gatherers or something.

What’s more, I think his surprise is genuine. “Come on, sweetheart,” I say

His inability to consider you as a person is not a sign he’s cutely vulnerable, Rhine.

They finally go and Rhine realizes the security guards are only blocking the exits (sort of like they’re not there to deal with the wives at all) and she totally could escape right now because the rapist is a frail pushover unlike strong, manly Gabriel.

But when Linden opens the door, I climb inside the limousine, where there’s warmth and light. It’s offering to take me back home. Back home, I think, and it feels strange but not that strange.

I’m telling you, this story was originally a noblemen are actually your sexy friends story.

he’s a little bit drunk, which I guess is my fault, because he was following my lead. I wonder if Rose used to take the glasses from his hand and tell him when he’d had too much.

Yes, because he’s totally helpless without someone else. Rose was surely the one in charge. You can tell by how he followed her lead on every other oh right absolutely never.

Anyway, he crawls into bed with her because when doesn’t he.

“Please don’t go.”
“Mm?” I say.
He’s breathing against my neck, putting little kisses there. “Please don’t run away from me.”

And then a single perfect tear falls from his face onto her cheek.

And he kisses me. It isn’t a forceful kiss. It’s soft, his lower lip gathering mine with a gentle lapping motion.

See, it’s okay because he’s so timid.

Rhine is just oh Linden-chan, did you think I was Rose yet again?

“I know you’re not her,” he says. “But I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where you came from.”
“Didn’t you order that van full of girls?” I say.
“My father did,” he says. “But before that, what made you want to be a bride?”
I choke on my next breath.

We all did, Rhine. We all did.

He really doesn’t know.
And I know who does. Vaughn. What did he tell his son?

Nope, sorry Rhine.

See, if he knew and was deliberately trying to keep this from his son, he’d have put effort into it.

One of the things I didn’t like about the opening was how utterly cowed the girls are. No one cries or fights or tries to run. Although Rhine later claims she fought when they were first throwing her into the truck, she has no injuries from this. Apparently none of them cried either. And no one begged to be let go, or for Linden to pick them because at least it meant they wouldn’t die.

People react different ways. It’s possible that there could be a group of girls where none of them do anything but stand there in shock. But all it would take is one to violate the fiction and he’d find out. Yet Vaughn makes no effort to prevent this, and isn’t even there in case things go south.

No, if we’re accepting the impossible idea that someone could not realize a bunch of crying terrified girls weren’t willing, that they never run and get dragged back screaming, then there’s no reason for any of the wealthy to know. It’s just as likely the insulated upper class just put in a request for girls and don’t think anything of it. Sort of like prostitutes, actually, only without the part where there’s any reason for the girls to act nicely and avoid upsetting people.

If anything was actually being arranged to keep the truth from him, they wouldn’t have shot the girls while he was still around to hear it. Or most of it, really, but that’s the part that makes it really obvious no one was even trying to keep things secret.

That there are bride schools where eager women devote their childhoods to learning to please a man?

Furthermore, why aren’t there? I mean, that’s what I’d assume under the circumstances. Rhine can’t shut up about how awesome all the luxury is, why do they need to be kidnapped?

Although obviously none of them were taught to please men, so I guess he should notice that hole in the story. Jenna’s the only one with sexual experience and it seems to just comprise not sighing loudly in boredom while she waits for him to finish and go away.

I could tell him right now. I could tell him that Jenna’s sisters were executed in that van, and that the last thing I’d ever wanted to be was a bride. But would he believe me?
And if he believed me, would he let me go?

Well, he’s not letting you go now, so I’m not seeing what you have to lose. But then, I don’t see why you didn’t ask him to tell your brother you weren’t murdered months ago either.

I ask, “What do you think happened to the girls you didn’t choose? The others.”
“I suppose they went back to their orphanages and homes,” he says.

There’s only one explanation for this.

See, Rhine heard the first gunshot before the gas knocked her out. Innocent little Linden-chan not only heard that gunshot, he heard the dozen that came after. Between that and the final one, he also heard the screams.

But let’s consider. Innocent Linden-chan loves Rose, yet never lets her go. She doesn’t want to get pregnant, and he fucks her anyway. She hates his father, yet he keeps her in the same house, in fact, he doesn’t even seem to let her have any private area at all. She says his father murdered their kid, and he does nothing. No matter how much she screams or begs, he keeps medicating her so she’ll stay around.

And consider what Rhine says about how Rose’s love for him was all that kept her going. She never blames him despite the fact he’s not only the source of everything bad that happens to her, but consistently refuses her everything but the most trivial things. After losing the baby she can’t stand her assigned servant because it’s a young girl. She can’t even get a different one on her own, she has to beg Linden until he’s convinced to swap servants. Yet she loves him?

She even says it was all her idea to get the wives, because she was so worried about him and his happiness.

Now consider the opening of this chapter, with those wives pretending to appreciate how they’re caged while steering him toward letting them out. Now consider Linden sitting with Rose going on about how his father says he should have other wives, but he only loves her, he’ll just never leave the mansion again after she dies. He doesn’t care about how everyone laughs at him for only having one wife. He doesn’t mind he’ll never have a kid of his own. Oh, but it’ll be so awful when she dies, he doesn’t know what he’ll do… He can’t even think of drawing, of course…

And she tells him she couldn’t do that to him, he should get other wives. In fact, he doesn’t even have to wait for her to die, she wants to make sure he’s okay.

Once he gets them, of course, there’s the problem that the older, more fuckable two are old enough to hate him. But he can use his father to play the bad cop and make himself look good by comparison, and he’s so good at playing the sad, limping puppy with big eyes. He just has to make sure to dress up all of his control of them as concern.

But how to get over the final hurdle, the grudges they hold from how he got them? Why, claim he had no idea. Never mind it doesn’t make any rational sense – by now he’s already convinced them of any number of equally irrational things about how he’s as much a victim as they are.

And it works. Rhine just starts talking about how Prince Linden’s evil magician father cast a spell on him to hide the real world. It worked so well it covered “miserable, bruised girls who’ve obviously been crying are just so excited to be your wife!” and “no you can totally fuck thirteen year olds”. OMG HE’S NEVER EVEN BEEN FREEEEEEEEE

It is better out there, isn’t it?

She basically admits that no, it isn’t, because the whole rape thing continues to not be a factor. Also she claims her sister-wives are like real sisters!!! Which makes me glad she never had any. Even her treatment of Jenna is pretty awful because of how the book frames all their interactions as being about Rhine. But she still wants to leave because that’s the plot.

“I’ve been thinking, sweetheart,” I say. “I haven’t been a very good wife, have I? I’ll try to be better.”
“Then you weren’t running away from me that night, with the hurricane?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course not,” I say.

It’s actually nice to just see some garden variety terrible writing. You can almost feel the author telling rational thought it can go fuck itself, she doesn’t want Rhine to ask to leave so Rhine doesn’t ask to leave and that’s final.

The chapter ends on Rhine saying why she wants to leave – because she’s not free. She can’t think of anything else. Seriously, all he has to do to keep her forever is open the door and let her roll around for a bit, maybe sharpen her claws on a tree and chase a chipmonk, sniff a few other cats. She doesn’t even seem to mind everything else about her life being controlled, and admittedly, from the sound of it it’s not like her brother didn’t make every decision about her life before this point.

Also he’s still a rapist, book. Your first clue this wouldn’t solve your problem should have been when I explained what happened to Cecily is rape despite your big deal about how she totally wanted it, the little thirteen year old minx.