BEXLEY BRIAR
everywhere kassandra ran
she found she was already there.
she found she was already there.
She has never been a patient girl.
And now her patience is running out. By nature Bexley is capricious; it is the only natural result of a childhood unmarked by poverty, loss, or unfulfilled desire. Change takes her, and that’s fine. Want fuels her, and that’s fine. She has never had to wait for anything, nor has she ever been made to do something (except, perhaps, grieving) she did not want to.
So the fact that this girl is still here—this girl who thinks she knows everything, who talks as though she is supposed to be Bexley’s guardian angel—is beginning to fray her nerves.
There is the crunching of flowers. There is a closing of distance as the dancer steps forward. And now the heat in Bexley’s cheeks rises until it hits a fever pitch, and her blue eyes almost glow: she is seething, seething, seething, it is the only thing she knows how to do—rage and refuse, refuse everything—Acton’s death, Boudika’s advice, the knowledge that she is alone, now, and does not belong here or in Solterra or anywhere else in the world.
You are right.
Of course I am right, Bexley wants to say; is righteousness not hereditary?
Her mouth is hot, and dripping, dripping, dripping gold. It burns a strange circle around the line of her gums. It fills her nose with the smell of her magic, something like ash and jasmine that she has begun to associate with nausea as much as with power. How has the world gone so dark—? She is bristling, now, trying to light up the night, or maybe it is just subliminal. A thing she cannot stop, like the blood she can feel pulsing in her ears, or her heart pounding in her chest, or the part of her that wants to kill, or die, or maybe both.
Her stomach turns. Vinegar, acid, rises to the back of her throat. Bexley meets Boudika’s eyes unflinchingly, almost without blinking: she is a statue now, like Solis waiting at the top of the mountain or standing, shrouded in stilled fire, inside Solterra’s chapels.
Boudika is speaking, and speaking, and speaking. Only half of it registers.
Bexley’s lips curl. It is a smirk, almost, but—dead, and ugly. Impatient.
It is strange a girl-soldier feels the need to talk so much.
His shade is gone, now, the shimmering suggestion of it absorbed into the dark of night around them. And she is not sad, anymore. Only angry. Only awful. A lazy swish of the white tail; Bexley steps forward until she is nearly level with Boudika, and smiles at her—faint, dry. Disinterested.
“When I was told of you,” she says, almost musing, “I was given the impression our meeting would be interesting.”
The air between them vibrates. The world is still. So still. Bexley tilts her head like a dog; her gaze is blackened, unamused. “Yet you speak an infinite deal of nothing.“ Her lip curls. A frozen snarl. “Your stories, Boudika, are spectacular only to the uneducated. I am not an audience they will impress.”
And she leaves and leaves and leaves. Like a ghost.
