BEXLEY BRIAR
everywhere kassandra ran
she found she was already there.
she found she was already there.
The woman does not leave.
And Bexley’s disgust-anger builds in her like the rolling waves of so much salt, and the gold burns a track down her lips; as she gazes down at the gravestone, all the atoms of her body beg please, please, please, and are rewarded with absolutely nothing. There is no ghost. There is no kingdom to be conquered. The stranger’s presence still lingers, dark and rusty at the edges of her gaze. Her chest still throbs in dull pain. With a ragged breath she closes her eyes—
Far away there is the small, pretty sound of someone young laughing, and a soft, brief whisper of petals as they touch the cobblestone.
I am angry too. And sad.
She closes her eyes—
I was sacrificed for the good of the earth—
I was sacrificed for the good of the world, Bexley, you know that. Loving life is pitiful. Still, here you are. But, listen, sweet girl, death is assured to all those born, and birth assured to all the dead; when you get here I promise I’ll give you a good tour—
I was killed so you could live, Bexley, even if it looks a little wrong, even if it felt a little staged. There’s only so much to be done about. There’s only so far you can get with a mark like Cain’s. I know it’s been a while. But Aunt and Uncle are here and that kid with the club foot and the ear-wings you always cared so much about, and there’s someone new who says he knows you—
When you come to visit—well, I hope it’s not soon—
She spits a slash of gold onto the cobblestone, where it sizzles and dies. There is a pounding kind of pain just underneath her temples.
“Yes,” Bexley says. Her pulse slips. Her eyes are grey-dulled, transparent like a bad heartbeat. The air is thick with the smell of gilded blood and shed petals, and for a moment she does not move, does not breathe, does not do anything at all. Pain sears the inside of her chest as deftly as a sword-edge and each breath is filtered too-thin through grit teeth and oh, what is this, who is she who stands here and wallows in her grief instead of bleeding it out like the stuck pig it is?
I’m disappointed. You’re a Briar. Sister, you are not built for love; you know better—
“You are not wrong to wish that. Copperhead.” Bexley rolls her head to meet the stranger’s gaze. And now her voice is a little softer, a little less okay, a little less accusatory: and it clacks against her teeth in a most trembling pulse that tastes like rosemary, like soot and crystal, and her nostrils are saturated by gold and the old-smell of his long rotted skin. Resin. Jasmine. Blood-warmth.
There is no accusation in it. Just the simple fact. Copperhead.
And then she says, in a tenor wracked by struggle: “But he was not a hero.”
Just arrogant. Just impulsive. Just this, just perfect, just pretty, bright-eyed evil, and if only the heroes died young then even he had to admit he could not be correctly marked to die for that, in the name of a goodness he did not commit.
“I only loved him,” she says. Her voice is ice-hard. “That does not make anyone good.”
You are not built for love—
