The whole of Denocte shines in moonlight. Bexley cannot be sure if it’s meant to look like that or if it's simply a trick of the night, but something in the stone reflects the silver as pure as water and washes it into the street. Even where the lamps shine from their sconces, the light is… cold, somehow wrong. Though the night is warm, the Solterran shudders; her pulse ratchets high, quick and loud in the depths of her chest, and turns her blood black in her head so that she almost can’t see where she’s going.
Her steps are unsteady on the pavement, and each stride sways. The strangers in the street glance at her up and down with derision — is she drunk? Ah, if only. Bexley’s dark ears are pressed flat against her skull as she lowers her head and goes slinking through Denocte’s narrow alleys. She moves like a snake, quick and quiet, and the cloud of pure white hair that is her tail goes snap, snap snapping against her back legs in a warning. She is a formidable sight, Solterra’s golden girl.
(Not much longer.)
Moira, Moira, Moira. The girl’s face plays in her head over and over, like a perfect, terrible mirage. No matter what Bexley does she only thinks of Moira and all the ways she needs to be fixed — all the ways the world has broken her since the day she met Moira that night at the festival and all the new cracks she sports like scars. Nothing is the same. Nothing will be the same. And of course Bexley is old enough to know this is only the way of the world, but that does not make it hurt any less.
The streets are perfectly quiet. It is deep-dark, so that the stars shine with all the light in the world, and Bexley’s heart aches and aches and aches as she remembers the last time she was here and the reason for the path she walked. Her ears ring with the sound of his voice. Moira, she scolds herself, Don’t think about him, think about Moira. Think about Isra. Think about how you’re going to get your life back.
Think about how you’ll get to kill Raum.
And her lips twist into some ugly facsimile of a smile, just barely. Finally the citadel rises up above her, looming ominously tall and close with all its windows woefully dark but one. In her eyes shines the pure dead of a girl with nothing else to lose. Her face is beautiful in stone, Grecian as ever, but something in it is — incorrect, unsettling.
She knocks on the door of the keep.
Her steps are unsteady on the pavement, and each stride sways. The strangers in the street glance at her up and down with derision — is she drunk? Ah, if only. Bexley’s dark ears are pressed flat against her skull as she lowers her head and goes slinking through Denocte’s narrow alleys. She moves like a snake, quick and quiet, and the cloud of pure white hair that is her tail goes snap, snap snapping against her back legs in a warning. She is a formidable sight, Solterra’s golden girl.
(Not much longer.)
Moira, Moira, Moira. The girl’s face plays in her head over and over, like a perfect, terrible mirage. No matter what Bexley does she only thinks of Moira and all the ways she needs to be fixed — all the ways the world has broken her since the day she met Moira that night at the festival and all the new cracks she sports like scars. Nothing is the same. Nothing will be the same. And of course Bexley is old enough to know this is only the way of the world, but that does not make it hurt any less.
The streets are perfectly quiet. It is deep-dark, so that the stars shine with all the light in the world, and Bexley’s heart aches and aches and aches as she remembers the last time she was here and the reason for the path she walked. Her ears ring with the sound of his voice. Moira, she scolds herself, Don’t think about him, think about Moira. Think about Isra. Think about how you’re going to get your life back.
Think about how you’ll get to kill Raum.
And her lips twist into some ugly facsimile of a smile, just barely. Finally the citadel rises up above her, looming ominously tall and close with all its windows woefully dark but one. In her eyes shines the pure dead of a girl with nothing else to lose. Her face is beautiful in stone, Grecian as ever, but something in it is — incorrect, unsettling.
She knocks on the door of the keep.
Bexley
and love doubled is madness
and love doubled is madness
