we are the ones who don't slow down at all
Apolonia is not quite afraid, but she is apprehensive. The feeling of it is electric, sitting coiled in the bottom of her stomach like a viper ready to strike, the tension of it pulling at every muscle in her body.
She tells herself: This isn’t paranoia. I am not being paranoid. I am not paranoid. It’s only smart to be suspicious at a time like this. In a place like this, where everything is bright and sharp and hot, hot, hot. When O swallows, she can feel her heart pounding in her throat; the pulse of it throbs hard and fast, like the beating wings of a hummingbird, perhaps scared suddenly into flight. It all feels like a knife’s edge. A tightrope balancing act. She is about to fall over, about to cross the invisible line.
Then she crosses it.
She crosses it with a smile buried into the slope of her own shoulder, head pulled down to her chest to hide the biting edge of it. She crosses it with shining dark eyes, a playful tug at one of the Emissary’s curls: she crosses it and then pulls back. Isn’t that politics? The heat of Aghavni’s skin against her own is like an animal’s. The glow of her green eyes is as bright and savage as the radioactive end of the world. She is beautiful in the way of all things ferocious and ever-hungry, with raging eyes and teeth like pearls: beautiful in the same unsettling way O is, and Anandi, and every other almost-woman on the planet. That’s why she cares for them so much more than stupid boys. They’re dangerous. They’re far more interesting.
In part this is what makes her stomach sink when she turns and finds Anandi accompanied by some milksop suitor, a lanky, awkwardly built chestnut whose proximity to the Dusk Emissary makes O’s teeth itch, mouth swimming with an unpleasant vinegar. All at once her body has gone tense. Her chest tightens, as if struggling for breath. The room is closing in. The crowd is swirling, becoming denser in different pockets. In the ocean of movement, Anandi and her little friend might very well be lost by anyone who isn’t looking. But oh, they are looking. She and Aghavni are always looking. Always planning. Always careful.
O steps back. She shifts her weight a degree, knits her hip against Aghavni’s. Two girls made of sand, dissolving in a court made of water. Now they are a united front, two for one, twins connected literally at the hip—twins in loyalty and royalty, at least, though (thank the gods) not in blood.
The distance is closing, folding in half, over and over again. O blinks, long and slow, feline, her stance tightens in preparation, hooves planting deeper into the ground, coiled like so much wire ready to go live. But she wears a hint of a smile. A mischievous glint flashes in every eye. By the time the crowd parts, she is relaxed again, weight leaned off a back hoof, looking Austin up and down with an unabashedly derisive gaze. Acid sparkles in the blue of her eyes. She only turns away from him when Anandi and Aghavni exchange their stilted political introductions: this O feels an intense need to watch, filled with complete fascination, for she has never understood this kind of half-measured violence and thinks she never will. It’s like watching aliens.
How lovely to see you.
Who’s your stunning friend?
You neglected to tell me you were acquainted with Dusk's very own emissary.
“Neglect implies it was purposeful. I just…” O licks her lips, curls them into a lazy smile. “Forgot.”
She says it not because it’s true, but because she knows, as certainly as she knows the sky is often blue, it will make Andi terribly angry, unforgettably jealous. She says it because she knows it is her job to start trouble. When O meets the Emissary’s gaze, her eyes say as much, swirling dark and tempestuous, the deep-blue and the drawling curve of her mouth saying: I dare you. I absolutely dare you.
Finally O sighs, glances at Austin. “I don’t drink,” she responds indifferently. “Thanks. So—“ with a nod for each of the girls at her side— “It seems you two have a lot in common.”
No one can say she doesn't have a type.
