Venus City 1 by Tabitha Vale

insisted. “I only have the power to make you follow a command. Last night, you heard my voice inside your head because you meant to disobey. If you don't fight it, nothing will possess you like last time. This link we have, it doesn't allow me to read your mind, implant ideas into your head, control your thoughts, or even talk to you inside your head.” He seemed somewhat upset about the last point.
    “I might have to jump off a cliff if that were the case,” she grumbled under her breath.
    Asher pursed his lips. “Be as negative as you want, Bray. I know somewhere deep down, you have a soft side. In fact, I was getting better acquainted with that side of you before you woke up. Who knew you had a secret...weakness of will, let's call it, for your own hair. What were your words...oh, right. Touch it, play with it... nuzzle it.”
    A blush swept over her expression of outrage. “Shut up about that.” She threw the almost-empty water bottle at him, but he deflected it without so much as a flinch.
    His winter blue gaze rested on her with infinite patience. The corners of his mouth twitched. “Oh, Bray. I had hoped we could be the type of master and slave who got on well. Became friends. Built trust. Braided each other's hair.”
    She glowered at him, but didn't grace him with a response. Instead, she started inspecting the small room they were in. Braya had the feeling she was in the same room she had woken up in last time she'd been knocked out. Aside from the blankets she was sitting on and the gold plastered lantern propped up in one of the dingy corners, the room was bare. She wasn't sure where he'd slept, but it didn't matter. He could have curled up on the cold stone floor and swallowed a nest of spiders for all she cared.
    “Is that a no? Would you change your mind if we changed the name to master-friend link?”
    “You think you're funny,” she sneered. “But I think I'd like to campaign for a new master.”
    She had no idea how that would help her, but she wanted something to rebuff him with. And it worked. His gaze was glacial as he let his eyes rove over her for a moment.
    When he responded, his voice was snow on her skin. “You can, if you'd like. Ness won't like that, though.”
    She remembered that name from last night—the Locer Sharks’ captain.
    “I don't care,” she said. She moved to stand. Talking to him was unsettling. In regards to emotion, he had every capability that she and all the other females in Venus City did, but he was definitively male. Braya didn’t know exactly how to describe it, but having an equal range of instincts as him served only to make her feel lesser than him. Vulnerable.
    He sprung to his feet. “Hey now, did I say I'd release you yet? I still have loads to tell you about de-hazing.”
    She scowled. “De-hazing?”
    “That's why we need you,” he said, his tone severe. His stare was so cold, so blue, and so heavy as he peered down into her face that a shiver passed over her. “It's a sort of...war preparation. Your city is in danger if we don't go through with it.”
    Her brows knit together. “What are you talking about? I think my city is pretty capable of taking care of itself. Besides, there hasn't been war for over ninety years, and Venus City has never been involved in anything like that.”
    “Venus City has been isolating itself from the rest of the world for the past ninety years, and that's the only reason it has managed to go unscathed. But don't assume there isn't war. The world beyond these city walls is torn apart by it. That's the real world, and in here—” he faltered as if he couldn't find the right words, “Here is just not reality. On the outside we call Venus City “The Haze City” because no one here has a clue about what the rest of the world is going through. You're living in a haze.”
    “So, de-hazing means...” She prompted.
    “It's sort of like...” his face scrunched up in thought, “We're bringing you out of the