b e x l e y
oh honey darling, i'd love to kill you, load up my shotgun, you kill me too -
K
ill him kill him kill him -For the first time in many years, Bexley thinks of her brother.
She cannot quite remember what his face looks like, or looked like. Only that he was taller than her, and blue-eyed too, and beautiful: she remembers that the people wanted him dead like they wanted to breath, like a mortal sickness desires for a cure. Of course she had loved him, but it had not mattered. All her love could not have outweighed his wrongdoings. She wonders for the very first time, and with a little blink of dreadful surprise, if Laszlo had been evil too, and if she had simply chosen to disregard it with all the naive willfulness of a child.
Does that make her evil, too?
No, but he is not like Raum, because nobody loves Raum. Not anymore. Not after what he’s done, how he kills so casually. There is the lesson: love breeds violence as much as it excuses it.
Acton flashes in her head again, and her tears spill faster. Love breeds violence indeed - the scar on her face starts to pulse, and her heart constricts in her chest as though it is close to wilting, and for all her anger there is a brief, steeply black moment in which she can think nothing but I miss you. I miss you. It is a mantra Bexley has repeated so many times it beats like a tattoo now on her tongue. The words are more familiar than her own body. Than Solterra. Than her daughter. And the feeling, even, is more intimate than that. It is all she knows how to do.
She grits her teeth, jaw clenching until it spurs stars in the blackness of her inner forehead. The opiate glare of the sun makes her feel close-to-death. Alive, then, however unfortunate -
But all her misery cannot compare to the wonder in her eyes when Seraphina starts to float. Her heart rises against her throat and churns there like a storm, and oh, she thinks she can feel herself rising too, as Seraphina’s hooves leave the ground, and her braids unknit themselves, and a scimitar built of fire sizzles and spits at her side, and the slices of gold in her cheek seem to shimmer: she is a god, now, but better than a god, a girl with feelings and magic and mortal blood, more admirable than any deity. There is something so impressive about the honest goodness of a real person. More impressive than any religion. I love you, she wants to say, wants to say so badly, but does not. Only smiles. I admire you. I trust you - and for someone so badly damaged, that is the most valuable thing of all.
She does not fear the look of savage hunger in Seraphina’s eyes, though maybe she should: instead, she is utterly relieved to see the queen’s barbarity, if only to know a little better she is not the only one that has made insane.
And to know that Raum will not escape her.
Alive again. Bexley grins, an awful, too-sharp thing. A visible shudder wracks her body as Seraphina speaks, as if she has been possessed: something in her has woken, hungry and snarling, and she cannot hear anything but the thrum of bloodlust in her ears and an awful, deep-set buzzing in her jaw, as if her body is preparing to come apart at the seams. She could fall apart already for the severity of her relief. What she will feel when she finally sees the inside of Raum’s skull is unimaginable.
Yes, she says, with all the tearfulness and tender-caring of someone accepting a marriage proposal. Her mouth opens as if to finish the thought, but there is nothing else to say. Simply yes, I will kill him, and I will do it in the worst way I know how.
Randomly Bexley remembers that she is not the only person in the world. That her griefs are, in one way or another, shared. She glances at the tiger-stripes of gold on Seraphina's cheeks, the way her mane curls around her like a wave, the empty, feral hunger in her eyes, and still it is not fear that overcomes her, but, maybe, concern. Then, stilted like a puppet: Why did he come for you?
Just in case there is any rhyme or reason to hatred that she has not yet discovered.
@Seraphina | "speaks" | notes: <3
