zeus acts as zeus ordains. do you think the gods ignore a man who steps on holy things?

omething was going to happen tonight. Or that’s what she’d heard. In the markets there had been a ripple of uneasy interest—the slow shifting of eyes back and forth, whispers swelling on top of the whining violins—she’d noticed it as soon as she stepped into the streets and felt them closing in around her like a vice. It was packed even more than usual; Bexley could hardly wiggle through the crush of bodies as they floated heat into the atmosphere. They had all been tilted toward a figure standing on top of a box in the middle of the square. His hair floated wild around his face, a scarab tattoo shone from his ribs, and he had been shouting into the still air with a ferocity that turned his eyes white and sent foam running out of his mouth. She had only been able to catch the tail end of his invitation before someone grabbed at his leg with their gnashing teeth and pulled him down, down, down until he disappeared into the mass of bodies.

She had stared at him, or the space that he had occupied only a moment ago, with a horror that chilled her to the roots of her teeth. Her whole body made an attempt to seize. The rest of the crowd didn’t notice, or pretended not to, and that was almost worse: she could see on their faces that they were used to this kind of violence, and by now she should have been used to it, too, but something in her was still too soft. Still hurt in ways it shouldn’t have been able to. Coming to Denocte was supposed to be something that healed her, that removed her from Solterra’s teeth and claws and vibrant violence, and yet the trouble had followed her all the way here, nipping at her heels like a hungry dog. Maybe it wasn’t Solterra. Maybe it wasn’t even Raum. Maybe Bexley was just a magnet for disaster. (It would explain quite a bit, actually.)

The incident had happened hours ago, and she’s still thinking about it, curled up in her tower, soaked in lamplight, as rain pours against the windows. The room is woefully quiet, and cold leaches in from the spaces between the bricks. Her heartbeat is too slow and too sticky for her to feel completely awake. Get up. Wind howls outside. Get up and go look. She keeps seeing it—the way he fell backward into the stone, how he had yelled for help and been met with only silence. She’s not even sure what he had been talking about, only that it had been something important, something that brought a big crowd together just to divide it again. Something worth checking out.

And he’d had the same tattoo as August, the same tattoo as Minya. That had to point to something.

Bexley grits her teeth and hauls herself to her feet. Her joints protest stiffly against the cold and the time she’s spent pressed up against the floor, but she moves through the inflexible pain to the top of the stairs and slowly, as if afraid of the dark, starts to descend. The whole tower seems to groan as she moves through it; the darkness that streams in from the windows is thick and suffocating. The staircase is utterly silent except for the frost of her breath and the click of her hooves on the stone. Even the foyer is empty, as mute as a still life painting, and she is almost glad to emerge into the muggy blackness of the rain-glazed streets, if only for the shadow that she sees moving toward her from an alleyway to the left.

[b“Hi,” [/b] Bexley calls to it, and tries not to be self-conscious of the way her voice rasps from disuse deep in her throat.

zeus acts as zeus ordains. do you think the gods ignore a man who steps on holy things?

he rain comes down in sheets and sheets, and despite herself Bexley does not hide from it. The night is warm and summer-thick; she turns her head up to the sky, breathes deep-deep-deep and exhales. Like a breeze coming from off the ocean. The world is pretty and silent but for the beat of Bexley’s heart inside her chest and the soft chrrr of the rain as it floods the cobblestone. It should be peaceful—would be—if she could just stop thinking about that man’s face as he went down into the waves, and what the omens of his mouth might spell.

Thankfully, she is distracted by the appearance of the shadow, girl-shaped. Her eyes turn down the street. It’s hard to make out any details, but hanging in the air above her is a slice of golden light hanging in the shape of the axe, shedding stars on the wet ground, shrouding her in a deep-yellow gleam. (I could make that, Bexley thinks, though not unimpressed.)

The light dims to a soft glow. Now the alleys around them are cast in shadows soft as a storybook, and the woman that comes into focus looks as though she herself might come from a fairytale. Eyes bright as bluebells, striped like a tiger, and the axe that she holds must be something godly for the way it glows and winks like a wild thing. Bright-red paint stripes her hooves and dots the skin under her eyes. In the soft, warm rain, the colors of her face melt into one another like watercolors.

She is overwhelmingly pretty, and powerful even moreso; Bexley can smell it on her, a perfume as obvious as a brand. The thing that tells you be careful. She wears it too. (And people don’t often listen.)

“I thought so,” Bexley answers wryly, “But…” Her gaze flits upward, to the sweeping curtains of rain, and a half-smile flashes her teeth white against the soft glow of the axe. “I may have been mistaken. Though you don’t seem to mind it either—“ Her smile deepens, and subtly enough, one eyebrow rises. It could easily be lost in the white fog of her hair or the mist of the rain, but Bexley guesses (knows) it is not completely secret.

zeus acts as zeus ordains. do you think the gods ignore a man who steps on holy things?

exley wonders what they would look like painted.

It would make for a good piece in oils. The silvery sheen of the lazy rain, how the hovering axe makes a foggy kind of light against the cold, and how their silhouettes stand strong against the backdrop of the sleepy court. Smudgy and saturated with all the colors of the earth and sky. The glow between them gilds the lines of this girl’s pretty face, and as Bexley watches her, a kind of nervous warmth builds against her chest and seeps into her stomach. Her pulse picks up a little.

What a long time it has been.

I won’t melt, the stranger says, and she smiles her own sheepish kind of smile. The softness of it is unfamiliar. It fits like a piece of clothing she hasn’t worn in a long, long time. But for some reason she is not as embarrassed as she should be. There is no hiding here, in the empty, open streets, and no reason to hide, anyway: Bexley thinks that, of all people, she wants this one to really see her. Look. Look.

She watches the strands of hair fall from Antiope’s buns and oh, how can such a simple gesture be so utterly perfect, so disarmingly pretty? Just her movement throws Bexley off. Just the way she smiles, beautiful and dangerous. Just the way she blinks, how her lashes beat so dark and thick and sure against her cheeks. Very little can keep me from what I desire, she says, and—

Solterra’s golden girl has never been the kind to ignore her own wants, nor the kind to plan ahead, and so she can hardly be disappointed that she finds herself moving yet another step forward without even really thinking about it.

Can hardly be disappointed that now there is even less separating them, and from here she can see each individual stripe across the stranger’s fine-boned face. Can hardly be disappointed in the way her whole body buzzes with warmth like a warning, like a wanting.  “There was a commotion this morning. I thought—I heard something was happening to night. And I’m not quite the type to leave my desires untouched, either.”

Her breath holds in her chest unwittingly; the gleam of her eyes and the sweet darkness of her voice could be a predator’s.

zeus acts as zeus ordains. do you think the gods ignore a man who steps on holy things?

ome part of her is strained. By the wanting, by the waiting, by the way Antiope’s blue eyes burn into hers, stronger than iron, smoother than stone. Bexley’s pulse is fluttering in her throat; her body feels not tense but live-wire, coiled to pounce, ready and ready and ready for a thing she cannot know will happen.

The rain is still coming down around them in a fine mist. Patches of it are bluish silver, while others glow gold from the light of the axe. She is half-dizzy with the way everything looks, the way it feels—beautiful and blurry as a fairytale, like her memories of home. Glitter-gauze on the wet streets. The cold, frail threat of a thunderstorm. And oh,  the feeling of magic—a strange, pulsating heart in the middle of the city, just like the gold that runs through her blood.

There are no gods where Bexley is from. She is still not sure she believes in them, scientifically speaking: her meeting with Solis proved little of his omnipotence and much more of his capacity to be a piece of shit. But if the stories are to be believed—if there is a creature, mortal or otherwise, with the kind of power people want to believe in—Antiope would be close to it.

Bexley lets out a soft, uncertain breath, one which fogs in the air as if the rain has turned to glass around them. She glances briefly down; a puddle has begun to form under her feet, shimmering and rippling, and the light of Antiope’s axe rolls like golden ribbons over the surface of the water.

And what are your desires?

An exhale, a tiny smile; she is pleased, though unsurprised, and a brow arches faintly as she meets Antiope’s eyes with a blink of dark lashes and a minute tilt of her head to one side. Water sloughs from her curls, off her shoulders. “Oh,” Bexley says with a shrug—maybe exaggerating the thoughtfulness, the airiness. Maybe not. “I don’t know. Everything?”

A real smile, then, a quick flash of bright teeth, surely sharper than necessary. “And what do you desire, besides to move?” Bexley slashes her tail behind her. She is a lightning strike in the dark, a curve of shining, stuttering gold. And her eyes—they  burn against the dark.

zeus acts as zeus ordains. do you think the gods ignore a man who steps on holy things?

exley has not felt this way—whatever “this way” is—in a long, long time.

It is a dark, growling heat in the pit of her stomach; a rush of electricity that starts in the corners of her mouth and rides up her spine; it is the way her heart beats faster and faster until it feels as though it has grown wings; around them the night has become impenetrable, and with the light of Antiope’s axe gone there is nothing to reflect over the wet cobblestones.

Solterra’s ex-regent licks her lips, casts her eyes up at Antiope. Something in the blue gaze is fervent. Rain frosts her thick, dark lashes. It casts the rest of the world into shining, glittering, blurry hexagons, a strange warping of the world. It becomes something like the paintings they keep hung in the citadels, or like statues in the churches—a kind of art she feels unworthy of, but cannot escape.

Antiope steps closer.

Bexley does too.

She is not afraid of anything. Especially not this. Not the tight, dark hungriness in the way Antiope looks at her, not the way her own body tenses in response, not how the space between them closes and heats up at the same time until it’s burning, like salt in a wound, a halo around Bexley’s heart.

Then—

There are lips against the shell of Bexley’s ear, and breath stirring the fine white curls laid against her neck. Warm. Electric. A searing, spine-tingling kind of pleasure. Her pulse, now, is beating faster than ever. It is making her a little faint: the blood is rushing to her head, and it rushes even faster as Antiope’s touch travels the length of her neck, down to her spine.

The world is strange, and dark, and cold with rain, and Bexley is not scared. Only thrilled. In a criminal way. To an outlandish degree.

Her eyes grow dark and darker and darker. But Antiope cannot see it, because Bexley has reached out now to run her own lips from the warrior’s neck to the base of her cheek, the sheerest part of her throat, where the pulse is the strongest. When she breathes in, Antiope smells like petrichor, of course, and the scent of Denocte, and something else—something warmer than a mortal has any right to be.

Bexley smiles, and for just a moment her teeth slide against Antiope’s neck.

”If you insist,” she says. Her voice is somehow different, has become newly sweet and rough, and if there is a little tremor in it, or a little uncertainty in the blue of her eyes, it is hard to tell.

So she steps back, into the dark.