b e x l e y
MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.
You follow Turhan.
Bexley has to physically choke back her incredulity. She feels it like she’d feel the threat of crying, in the back of her throat - rough and saline and overwhelming. It pricks at her nerves like a razorblade pricks the end of a finger. And even as she watches him unravel, lose his rabid behavior bit by slightest bit so that he returns to an almost-lucid state, she does not relax. She can’t.
It would be stupid, and Bexley has been fighting all her life not to act stupid.
He’s come for medicine, he says, and as suspicious as she is of his intention, she’s not doctor or healer enough to prove him wrong. Her gaze catches as easily on the bioluminescent walls as anyone else’s would, but who knows if it’s medicine or poison - who knows if it could kill her even from here, leaching into her skin like a snake leaches venom? (Her lungs tighten then, but it could just be panic.) She squares her shoulders and for a moment thinks about slinking away, but Turhan is (knowingly or not) blocking the easiest path out, and for all her stubbornness Bex thinks she might have to work her way out with strategy instead of her hard head for once.
It’s been a minute since that’s happened, hm? But the Regent is as lost in these caves as anyone possibly could be, and she can’t afford to lose any more advantages. One wrong turn, one slip of the step, one misplaced stride and Solterra’s golden girl will be nothing but bleached bones and festering skin turned to wet green grunge in the darkness of this subterranean hell-complex.
The thought sets her heart sputtering like an oxygen-starved candle.
Yes, she answers finally. Child of Solis. You can take me there -? Surprise colors her voice bright-yellow in the dimness of the cave. Perhaps she’s misjudged him. If he really can find his way from this dungeon all the way to Solterra - where she can’t be sure he’s ever even visited - then he’s smarter and bolder even than she, and she knows her life hangs in his hands as loosely as the feathers fluttering from his dreads. Bexley inhales forcefully.
Then she follows.
@turhan <3
