BEXLEY BRIAR
the heart of the king loves everything
like the hammer loves the nail;
like the hammer loves the nail;
At first she does not notice the shadow. The soft beating of wings. How the air shifts like a secret, how it comes down to kiss her hair with the lightest breath; she does not notice the shadow because the light, and what it uncovers, is a far more pressing issue.
That issue being the fragile hearts of men. Raum, Senna, Ipomoea. All of them frothing at the mouth, all of them arguing like children. (When Senna speaks to her, she can’t help grinning a little. Even Seraphina’s short reign was longer than Senna could ever hope to sit in power; the crown of blood did not guarantee life as much as it did influence, and Seraphina had found plenty of that.) There is not a man on earth, Bexley thinks with disdain, that is not, at heart, a brat. She wants to laugh. She would, if the situation weren’t so dire, because the way they conduct themselves is so feeble, so utterly pathetic, that there is nothing to be done but laugh. There is no appealing to reason or quelling their tempers. No, like Adam, they succumb without thought to the idiot belief that they are God’s most precious production (if God existed at all, he would be most proud of butterflies), filled with foolish righteousness, and like Lilith Bexley sheds her subservience and goes to cavort with Satan, and she is still the most reasonable of all of them.
(Like Lilith, she leaves the gardens and comes back a demon. Like Lilith, she does not know how to look into the night. Like Lilith she would rather die of black-rot, bleeding out, a holy curse or of God’s disdain than live under the thumb of another senseless, self-obsessed gentleman whose gene pool could use a little chlorine or who could stand to suffer a stroke. Like Lilith, she is half woman, half serpent, all devil. Like Lilith she will end them all with the simple word they pretend not to understand—no.)
There is not a man on earth who is not at heart a brat, and Bexley is fucking tired of baby-sitting.
At first she does not notice the shadow, but then it comes to land on her back. She flinches—her shoulders tense. She’s heard stories of Senna’s moon-white falcon, and she cannot imagine that it would take to her any more kindly than she took to its master. But when Bexley’s eyes turn toward it, they flash with recognition. And when the realization sets in, her body unwinds, and to the bird she smiles an ugly, savage kind of smile. “Ereshkigal.”
She is not afraid, though Ereshkigal’s grin is like sharpening a knife. Though she stands far larger than any bird should; though she smells like blood. (Haven’t they all, at one point or another?) She is not afraid, even though she can feel the pinprick of claws bright against her ribs. The weight on her spine is almost a comfort. Not alone. Not alone.
Ereshkigal’s soft, dark feathers and scaly feet brush against Bexley’s skin as she shifts. A momentary pause follows, awkwardly calm. Then an incendiary scream. The sound that comes out of the bird is awful—like sword against sword, like saying hello to death—but Solterra’s golden girl does not even acknowledge it, save for a lazy flick of her ear, as if the call of Hell is something she has heard a hundred times before. (And perhaps she has; who’s to say but for Bexley and her errant heart? She has seen blackness, she has seen grief. She has seen a heartbreak so vile it sent her to her knees. Is that so different from hell?)
Her face is flat as Raum speaks. No semblance of emotions, no subtle curl of the lips. Her eyes are as cold as his—black ice on the road. An oncoming snowstorm.
(Would Acton be proud? Or would he be scared?)
(Is she turning into the thing that killed her?)
Her head tilts, slow and calm, just like Ereshkigal. Every muscle moves like syrup.
The look in her eyes is the look of something dead or starting to rot from the inside.
“Oh, don’t pretend. You have no idea what would please Acton.” When she grins, it makes her face into a mask of villainy—the bright-sharp teeth, the moving scar. Her weight shifts lazily. “You forget we were in love. You forget we have a child. Pleasing him…” Now the smile turns into a smirk, all the wryness in her tone just barely repressed. “I promise I’m the expert.”
And everything that happens next happens far too fast, but she is a magic girl now, and, even better, she wants to live, and Bexley always gets what she wants.
The basilisk comes screaming down from the sky, blinking through his blindfold and reaching toward Ereshkigal with a mouth as big as a mountain; he is so close that Bexley can read the shine of the sun on his fangs and smell the horrible death-rot on his breath, and for a moment fear strikes her like a spear, lancing into every cell and knocking the breath from her chest; but gods will die before Bexley lets a fucking chicken kill her, and before it can touch her or Ereshkigal, into the thing’s open mouth she smashes a ball of the brightest, whitest fire.
Flesh sizzles. The air fills with the sick smell of a body charred. Now the the desert is blooming with spiny fists of cacti, and Bexley is reined in by their spines, but Raum is trapped here too, and she laughs. Liquid gold pours from her eyes, her nostrils, her teeth. “Bye-bye, Senna!” she sings as he tears off into the sky, jovial as a Christmas caroler, and winking all the while.
Then she turns to Raum, and the white of her eyes turns pure, molten gold.
