Bexley leaves the Night Court when the sky is at its deepest black, a fitting time for her to be leaving the court of dreams - as tens of bodies slumber around her, too deeply entranced to notice the delicate clicking of her hooves across cobblestone, the white-hot flash of her curls in the darkness. All hips and golden skin, she weaves her way toward the base of the Arma Mountains and away from the warmth and the jazz and the flickering candlelight of Denocte, and though she’s spent a beautiful day here - talking to Reichenbach and Raglan, reveling in the strange woodsmoke-mystery of their markets and bonfires, and glowing semi-silver under the moonlight - she moves with a quick step and a sense of quiet urgency toward Solterra, drained by the lack of sunlight, over-eager to return home. In the gauzy blackness she is naught but a flame, a flash of gild that crosses Denocte almost like a fish underwater, in so many swift, staticky movements.
Through bone-white lips she hums a childhood tune, something sweet and simple that floats through the black air without pause. Each step is carelessly placed, yet somehow she traverses the roads with nary a trip. Perhaps the blessing of Calligo - perhaps merely the practice she’s gathered from years of dancing and acrobatics, blessed with a center of gravity perfectly set.
If he was wiser, he’d have gone to bed about three drinks ago.
But it was autumn, and the nights had grown long, and every evening great bonfires were lit and the people of Denocte did what they did best. The world was a stage and they were all performers, each citizen actor or audience, and Acton would never, ever grow tired of it.
Tonight he’d done none of his own tricks, but he’d watched dancers and throwers, fortune-tellers and fire-swallowers (though none of the last as good as their king). Now he felt languid, veins cooled by wine, the spark of him soothed to a smolder.
Sense said to find sleep – though it didn’t have to mean alone.
His blood hummed slowly, sweetly, as he wound his way through the streets, and at first he thought he imagined the true humming that accompanied it. But then there was a flash of gold, a spill of blonde hair – a girl, always a girl. He felt his smile draw across his lips, and quickened his pace to catch her.
“That sounds like one of Reichenbach’s,” he said, and fell in step beside the golden girl as the notes worked their way beneath his skin. For a moment the sound of his hooves on the cobblestones joined them, a percussive counter to her hum, but then the scents of Denocte began to diffuse.
Beneath the campfire smoke, most pungent of all, and beneath the dry-leaf smell of autumn, and beneath the perfume and the sweat and the sweet-sharp of wine, Acton smelled something else. Something that made him think of his meeting with Raum on the mountainside, and of sand and bleaching bones, of long-buried pharaohs and the endless, blazing stare of the sun.
His half-drunken interest sharpened to something different than that initial attraction, and the buckskin looked at her - really looked at her. He wondered how he could have missed it, when she wore the desert all over her.
He never faltered in his steps, and his smile blazed on. “But it’s not quite right, is it? You’re no crow.” He paused to nod at a group of revelers, ones he half-recognized from past audiences, and used the opportunity to slip in closer to the mare. They were nearly touching, now; heat to heat, if not skin to skin. Sulfur and sand and ah, he did not feel drunk and sleepy any more.
His anger is a flame inside him, and her presence alone has breathed it to life.
“So,” he said then, low and sweet, and his eyes were molten gold. “What’s a vulture doing here?”
The night is hot and deep around her, and were Bexley paying more attention she would notice the promise that hums deep inside it - the promise of something dangerous, a tumult at best, a disaster at worse - but so preoccupied is she by her trek back to Solterra that she hardly notices the set of footsteps that starts up behind her, much less the subtle tick-tick-tick of a time bomb creating itself in the air at her side. In the space between her and the stranger. In the touch of her hooves to stone. In the black sky overhead, stippled with smoke and clouds, glowing with stars.
That sounds like one of Reichenbach’s.
Bex glances toward the voice, unsubtle, uncaring. In the dark, her blink is languid - silvery lashes curling, sweeping against the sharpest, highest rise of her cheek. Her step doesn’t slow, but she also doesn’t veer away. It isn’t, she says flatly, exhaustion limiting her interest in lies. The tune has faded out, but she continues it in her head: the few warm notes repeating themselves, a relic of her childhood, the many years she spent in Greer-Briar, taken care of by trees and streams. There is nothing like that here. Just patchwork stone and brick - brown rather than green.
It’s unsettling. Disturbing. And this strange, heated presence at her side is doing nothing to settle Bexley’s frazzled nerves.
Yin and yang, they continue down the slope, Bex listening with calculated disinterest, ears flickering to catch his words but never really registering. Wind rushes past them with the cool touch of humidity; starlight speckles the puddles at their feet. His voice is a hum that never reaches the gray matter of her brain. What use would it be anyway, listening to some stupid boy hand out his two-karat opinions?
If I’m a vulture, you’re a gods-damned rat. For once Bexley has lost her interest in playing nice, even in playing dirty. Her voice is low and smoky as it usually is, but it’s also cold, uncharacteristically flat. The gleam in those blue eyes is icier than it is inviting. There’s no way for him to know that her usual brand is preppy and cute and overtly flirtatious, but had Reich seen her, or Eden - anyone who’s ever met her - they would have known immediately that the night has brought out something terrible from her shadowed insides, something that roils and claws now at her yellow skin. You want me to say I’m scavenging, then, but I’m not. Her lips split into a hard, sharp smile. I’m hunting.
Solis help this poor boy. His bad timing and unfortunate luck.
She was terribly bold, this golden girl, to walk Calligo’s roads so carelessly. Acton could admire that, even as her terse responses rankled him, working the burr of his anger and suspicion deeper into his skin.
Bold, and foolish, and beautiful. It was like looking in a mirror.
A very angry mirror, that wanted very little to do with him.
“Better a rat than a snake,” he answered her, amiably enough – save for the last syllable, bitten off with relish. His smile outshone the hazy stars, the distant bonfires.
He felt wonderfully alive.
He felt it even as he felt the coldness roll off of her, a frigid desert night. His initial plan, before that realization, had contained rather less finesse. Now, as he took her in – that smile like a knife, the gleam of her eyes – he buried the anger than ran ragged and hot through his veins, and shifted his stride to something rolling and languid.
Hunting. But the Night Court could hold no prey for her.
“You’re right,” he said, and flicked his tail so that the rich dark strands of it met briefly with the golden spill of hers. “You’re far too lovely for a vulture. Forgive me.” Briefly the buckskin ducked his masked head, the picture of contrition. Crickets sang around them, and the humidity had curled his hair.
“May I ask, then, what you are hunting in Calligo’s great dark? I make a good guide.” The heat in his eyes was a dare, the curve of his lips a promise. He did not ask if she was hunting for a drunken Warden, even though he wanted to.
If he’d known how she felt, known the thing that clawed from within her and begged to be a beast wearing her skin – oh, he would have understood. Acton had long had a monster curled within his own gut. It whispered him promises, it waited for sleep or distraction. It wanted. And most of the time, he managed to ignore it. Managed to appease it with wine, with women, with performing.
Because it was such a hideous thing, when it got out. Such a glorious thing.
Better a rat than a snake. Shut up, says that thing in Bexley’s head, murderously violent. Her steps grind the slate edge of the cobblestone to dust that swirls and chokes up the cool night air. A crescent moon hangs in the air at her shoulder, the split of this stranger’s lips into a smile, hovering, glowing, incessant in its folly: the cerulean eyes set deep in Bexley’s face follow it with uncontained venom, the sides of her lips dragged downward into an isolationist frown. This is not how she wants to be spending her night. With a boy? Sure, maybe. But not this one. He smells too much of smoke and cedar, walks too close for her to feel any interest. With a neat crossing of those dedicate hooves, the Solterran steps once to the side, widening the rift between them, and continues without a word of acknowledgment.
Even his compliment won’t draw a noise from her. She merely rolls her eyes, unsurprised at the admission, having grown up with that word - lovely - carved too deep into her brain to elicit any affection when it comes from others’ mouths. Maybe practice flirting with someone more easily impressed before you try anything with me, she deadpans, fluttering those lashes at him a few times in a row, simultaneously bitter and coquettish. Irritably she flicks her tail against her legs and extends her strides, slender body moving quickly now, not with fear but annoyance, too hot-blooded, too exhausted, to have any interest in this stupid boy. Maybe another day, another time - or maybe not - he hasn’t really shown any potential.
Reich should really let you boys get out more. The sound of her voice is sudden, gilded but sharp - breaks open the atmosphere as she flicks him a disinterested look, so that the night at once goes darker, goes quieter, more dangerous. Those social skills need a little sharpening, hmm? I don’t need a guide, babe. I’ve been here plenty of times.
She hops her way down a tiny ledge of rock, curls floating into the air for a milli-second before she makes contact with the ground. And besides that, she continues, a pitying look cast over her shoulder at the masked Crow, I’m not dumb enough to tell you what I’m doing here, especially not for free.
Even in the mostly-dark, he can see that her expression is as venomous and bitter as one of Mila’s poisons. He was starting to think it would be a challenge to keep his own from mirroring it. This Solterran was blacker than Calligo.
It’s an easy thing, to lengthen his strides when she does, enough to keep within a length of her as their hoof steps echo on the stone. As they passed further into the wilderness, it became a lonely sound. Maybe he imagined the way she rolled those blue eyes, but it doesn’t make a difference.
“Ah, that’s the trouble,” he said, molten eyes on her, though he made no move to close the space she’d opened between them. “Denocte mares, they’re full of passion. You are my practice – I’ve never tried to seduce someone with a stick up their ass. Did Maxence hand those out when he was made sovereign, or have you always had one?”
The smile he wore was clearly a mask, now, but he’s no longer trying to make it look like anything else. How thoroughly she has riled him, how little effort she has had to use to do it. Acton felt like the air before a storm.
The sound of his king’s name so casual from her lips made something inside him rumble a warning, but it also made him consider her anew. The wind had picked up, after they left the buildings behind; it was difficult, a bit of a stretch, but he thought he could catch Reichenbach’s scent on it. Hadn’t that been part of why he’d mentioned the man earlier? His ears flicked back as she ignored him, and he followed her languidly down the ledge, fluid as any showman.
He ignored this next look she shot at him, kept his gaze on the darkness below his hooves – it flicked up again only as she was turning forward. Once she was looking away, his eyes swallowed her up.
The buckskin couldn’t tell if the thing inside of him was more hungry or angry, now, or if there was a difference.
“Fair enough. You won’t mind if I guide you back to your border – both our kings would want me too. You hear such terrible things these days about how dangerous Denocte is.” His smile was a sickle.
There is a point in which they will cross the line from annoyance to danger, and Bex is expecting it with a nauseating mixture of excitement and unpreparedness. Just one wrong word, one side-step, and the energy will change. The world will stop. The scents of Denocte will dissipate, leaving them in a vacuum of anger and mutual dislike. The night will grow blacker and blacker.
It’s something she’s orchestrated tens of time, and yet she still looks to it with hidden anxiety. For all her smart talk and catty smiles she is still smaller and weaker than Acton, and besides that, more alone here, nevermind the Shadow King’s love for her. It cannot stretch this far - to the path they are walking now, gravel that descends to dirt, to moss, to empty forest smelling of blood, pockmarked in places with bones and molted feathers.
A shiver races up her spine. Acton’s voice sounds through the cold air, and there it is, the change, the spark, the electricity that crackles suddenly and painfully.
Ohhhh, Bexley laughs. Honey. Over her shoulder she throws him a pitying smile, one that reeks of derisiveness, and the glimmer in her eyes is something carnal and uncontained. Just cause I don’t want to fuck you doesn’t mean I’m uptight, just means I have standards - she giggles then, a low, sultry thing that would seem seductive in any other position - ifthe Denoctians love you, it’s because their options are limited. Her tail snaps against his chest for one quick moment, and then she’s unbothered again, flouncing down the mountainside in a flurry of hair and golden skin, all jewels and fire in the darkness.
Let him come after her, his gunshots and silver knives - for now she feels untouchable, buzzing with energy, with adrenaline, with boundless overconfidence.
It was colder, this far from the citadel, and the trees were nothing but black skeletons waiting ahead, and everyone wise was already under the covers – but Acton was a torch in the night.
They were playing a dangerous game. The Magician Crow was an illusionist, which meant mostly that he was an actor – but he doesn’t know, beneath the wine and the growing burn of anger and distrust, that Bexley is playing, too.
Soon it might get to the point where it doesn’t matter who is lying and who is telling the truth, because consequences are always honest.
Her laugh is what does him in. It grated on him, sliced him more deftly than any knife. That and the insult he perceived to his countrymen, their limited options. The change in his breath was audible, and their rougher path did not account for it; he sucked the air in through his teeth, now, as though it might cool him. All he could hear was her giggle, the perfect auditory accompaniment to the flick of her tail against his chest, slapping the scent of her in his face.
It would be so easy to catch her. His lips peeled back from bone-pale teeth and his heart raced, the blood so hot and swift beneath both their thin skins. Hadn’t he wanted a war?
This was how it would start.
Acton doesn’t know if he’s losing himself, in these moments, or finding his truest version. All he can see is red (but it isn’t red, it’s gold, it’s her) –
And so he did what he has learned he must do, in these situations, when anger threatened to blind him and make him the worst kind of fool. He ran his tongue across his teeth and put himself back in that cell, back on that stage, a captive, a child. All those hungry eyes on him, and the old man’s pockets full of coin Acton had earned. And he lit the spark that would change his life.
When he opened his eyes, it was with laughter full in his throat, spilling out into the cool autumn air. “By the gods,” he said, his voice half-admiring (and his gaze still on her ass), “you’re more of a nightmare than anyone I know. Thank Calligo that you aren’t the one Reich went head-over-hooves for.”
His thoughts were his again, and still he followed her, letting her open up the distance between them. One length, two, more – it hardly mattered, now, with the soil starting to become sand beneath their hooves.
She hears the change in his breath - the grittiness of each inhale, the way his lungs suck in oxygen like a vortex - and smiles to herself. A vicious slice of white teeth, self-satisfied in the difficulties she’s brought him. Ah, what a stroke of luck: to have found this stupid boy on the almost-frosty roads of nighttime Denocte, another one of her conquests handed to her on a silver platter, another bite of sweet sugar dissolving on the tongue, a satisfying ending to a tumultuous episode.
The night is gold and burnt orange, the torchlight, the turning leaves, their bodies always switching spots. Bexley hums under her breath, feeling it roil through each muscle and bone. She is all electric. All adrenaline. Heat simmers in the lowest pit of her stomach.
It would be so easy for Acton to catch her, to take her, to keep her. For her to be found in a couple days bodied at the river, gory and quiet. Yet somehow she knows he doesn’t have the guts to be so bold, to exercise what little power he does hold over her, contained in lines of muscle and rough-hewn bone. He won’t. Not man enough, not strong enough. Bexley huffs a snort under her breath, derisive.
He’s not my type, anyway. She shrugs. The one Reich went head-over-hooves for…
Her mind turns to Florentine - to the scent of jasmine and bubbling alcohol - the bag of tinctures Bex still keeps at her bedside - hundreds of veiny, delicate petals wound through silky threads of hair and drifting to the sand. And for a moment Bexley’s jaw grits, her flat teeth grinding, pulse blooming in her cheek - but she says nothing, and, turned away from Acton, retains her image of stoicism, of flirtatious ambivalence. Solis damn it.
The soil has suddenly turned gritty under her feet, to sand, almost. It’s somewhat startling to realize. With a glance down at the golden grains that have started to surface under her hooves, Bex blinks, a strange kind of disappointed, and then turns over her shoulder - Get lost, honey! - and with a brilliant smile disappears over the border, descending into the pit of the mountains.
The night was just a night, after he’d smothered those embers inside him. One day he won’t – his willpower was strong, but not as strong as his anger. Not as strong as his hunger for more and louder.
It did not seem impossible that this feminine viper with her poison tongue and actions placed carefully as arrows might somehow be involved, when it happened. The buckskin did not grin at the thought, but he guessed (rightly, it would turn out) that the possibilities might play out in his dreams tonight.
“I shudder to think what your type might be.” Maxence, probably, though if tonight was any indication she didn’t go for assholes.
He was thankful when they reached the border, his muscles and mind both dull. His thoughts had turned toward his bed, his companions. When she gave him one last look over her shoulder, he gave her a last too-big smile in return – though he did wonder, briefly, what would happen if he continued on. Probably she’d claw his eyes out as soon as they were on Solterran soil.
“Fuck you too, Goldilocks,” he answered not-unpleasantly, and turned to look down the long road home.
