"magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk."
Bexley thinks the world has become calmer since they were born. Perhaps it is only that she feels, for the children’s sake, she must remain unfazed by even the things that used to terrify her—that she must show them how to be brave, while Seraphina shows them how to be cautious.
There are some things, some pains, that cannot be avoided forever. And Bexley has been through enough of them that she thinks it might be her job to show others where the line should be drawn.
She picks her way down the steep sand dune just above the Oasis, eager but unhurried to meet Ambrose at the spot where he is pulling himself up to standing. In the bright afternoon sun, his sandy-dun coat looks almost white in some places, as if Solis—his father?—has purposefully bleached him out. But still, from a distance, Bexley can see the royal gold of his eyes; the handsome darkness on his lips. When he grins, and calls her name, she grins back.
And if there is a part of her guilty that she cannot recall having moments like this with Apolonia, well—it is small, and overshadowed by the warm and mild joy that fills her when he presses his delicate head to her shoulder. She drops her nose to his withers, breathes in the smell that is so unlike his family’s, ink and sun-bleached parchment.
Bexley glances over her shoulder at the path the gazelle have left in the sand. It is fading by the second, but there are still little dished marks of hoof-prints in some places on the bank. “What are you reading?” she asks, gaze warm and dark on Ambrose’s, sparkling with a question. She knows it is the one he’s most likely to answer.
