MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.
At the top of the Summit, bodies crackle with cold fire. Electricity runs rampant in the icy air. No matter how close Bexley packs herself between Eik and Seraphina (always careful to keep a millimeter separating them for posterity’s sake), the warmth that should be seeping into her seems false and far-away, utterly unreachable no matter how she tries to grasp for it. The presence of the gods seems to have made Veneror unseasonably cold - so cold that the chain around her neck contracts, leaves metal bite marks at the curve of her throat. What power does pass through the air is come to life from metaphysical tension, not so much electricity as an omen pressed into the wind like a living prayer.
Still Bexley bites her tongue and waits. The massive wooden doors have not opened an inch, and there is no sign of any divine movement. The regimes, and the citizens that follow them like pack dogs, have spent hours now wasting time in any way they can - exchanging meaningless gossip, readjusting armor - but, prickling with white-hot anticipation and too tightly wound to socialize, Bexley stalks and glowers from her place next to Seraphina with little regard for social niceties. The blue of her eyes is fervid and inhospitable. Despite the elegant loop of her braids, the scintilla of glitter brushed over her shoulders, something about her still leaches venom. Anyone looking on would see a girl, become, in an indescribable manner, the physical expression of gold still being soldered: burning hot, melting and reforming, a painful sort of beauty.
And most of them would take it as a warning. But oh, not him. Never him.
The scent of smoke reaches her as easily as a wraith on the wind, and, disgusted and amazed by how easily anticipation overtakes her, Bexley’s gaze snaps away from Seraphina and up, up, up.
A bright, wolfish smile splits her white lips in two. He’s here, so close, and so real, and it sets her heart to running in double time, nerve-shreddingly quick and deep and loud. All the lines of him are so familiar - the luminescent orange eyes, the casually ruinous stance, the incorporeal cloud of something irresistible that is always on him like a damn leech - Bexley is still catching her breath when he begins to speak, and by the time he’s done the grin on her face is wider than ever.
Thank Una you’re here, she laughs, disregarding his comments with an easy smirk, and the glimmer in her eyes is so light-hearted it could almost be childish, if not for that small, deadly want omnipresent her the blue gaze whenever it catches him. Something rhapsodic winds like honey through her voice. I was so bored -
Dulcet and nonchalant, eyes incandescent with mischief, she saunters toward him, then past. There is no space between them when it happens: her shoulder brushing against his, mane trailing over his spine, hip bumping with practiced casualness as she steps the way he just came, tossing an almost degenerate look over one shoulder as a beckoning to follow, and even through the tingle that spreads through her skin, the ethereal feeling that pools in the pit of her stomach, the expression on her face is nothing but halcyon.
I didn’t say smitten. I guess you just heard what you want to hear, hm?
Bex bats her lashes at him unselfconsciously. The world around them seems inconsequential now - nothing but a smoggy Gaussian backdrop for whatever wild thing is setting all her nerves on fire, cranking up the temperature the longer she looks at him. For once she does not ignore it. She doesn’t even try.
For once, she lets it all overtake her: the warmth, the electric impulse, the butterflies, the slaughterhouse hum deep and constant in her bleached bones, and Gods, it feels good.
I’m glad you came, she adds, and it’s surprisingly sincere. Nice that I get to see you before Tempus beats me to a pulp like an overripe peach or whatever vigilante justice he’s in favor of. Will you miss me?
The edge in her voice - one that asks for honesty - might be the biggest dare she's ever offered to him.
@acton <3
