BEXLEY BRIAR
everywhere kassandra ran
she found she was already there.
she found she was already there.
Once, on the mountains—
Once, when the mountains were frigid with god-magic and carpeted in changing leaves, he had said, in a voice sore with something like love: I knew the letter was fake cause it had the word sorry in it. And she had laughed.
But how sorry she is now. How really, truly sorry.
Sorry she couldn’t keep him alive, and sorry that she still is. Sorry the world is still turning without him. Sorry that there is nothing left of her to give, and that his group of ragtag Crows has gone, and that while he rots in the ground, Denocte still sings and dances on top of his grave, as if it has not noticed his disappearance at all.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Once, when the mountains were frigid with god-magic and carpeted in changing leaves, he had said, in a voice sore with something like love: Are you tempting me up here so you can use me as a sacrifice? And she had not laughed.
Because she knew the universe, watchful and heinous, would make good on whatever fucked-up promise it overheard, and all the sorries festering in her stomach and crawling out of her nose, all the sorries in the world didn’t (wouldn’t) mean a thing in the face of the snarling, rabid, petty bitch called providence.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, and when the voice sounds behind her all those sorries explode at once.
Something like hunger gnashes at her. It tears apart the ribbons of her muscles and it sinks its teeth into every cell in her body and suddenly she is shaking with unfettered rage, kicking like a kid held underwater, and though at first she manages not to turn, she simply cannot keep it from happening: the thin, hot stream of molten gold that pours from her nostrils to splatter against the gravestone.
She turns, and is beautiful, is always. Feral, as always. When her eyes meet Boudika’s they are clear and dark. But the lines of her face are cold and unimpressed, flat, even, and when she speaks it is like a queen’s voice, an order: “I don’t."
With a blink she turns away again.
