Oh that bow was an extravagant and horrible thing. It happened so slowly, even as she begged Bexley to stop: too late, too late.
Too late. Bexley puts voice to Florentine’s thought with a smile that splits the sky. It is a terrible thing, that smile. It is a ghost, a mockery of the smile Florentine has seen before. There is nothing genuine in that smile, nothing except a resentment that rubs and abrades.
Out Florentine looks, beyond where the two girl’s stand. She looks at this place of lovers and secrets and laughter is upon her tongue, it forces reluctant lips to smile. The laughter does not come, and that fragile smile, so alien upon her lips falls away, broken and beaten by sorrow.
Maxence. The king she loved to hate. The boy who made her climb a canyon just to have an audience with him. There is a sadness in her heart, but it is a mere drop in the ocean of Bexley’s. “I did hear…” Flora says softly, her heart aching for this girl. Their every meeting had been tainted by sorrow: her brother, them, Maxence.
A breath, emboldening and steeling, floods Florentine’s lungs. “I sent healers and condolences.” But she did not go herself… If she had, would it have made a difference?
She sees the smile, the casual shrug and the words race out unbidden. “You don’t have to be strong. There is no weakness in sorrow.” And she thinks of when Rannveig left her, when her heart shattered. She is a girl changed – a girl who sat upon a cliff and comforted a girl in love with the boy who loved her. Oh what a wretched world.
And you?
The words hang, they are heavy and her thoughts even more so. “I am… well.” It is both lie and truth. He heart is not the full, unblemished thing it was when she first met Bexley. It bore scars and wounds. Upon her head, the Dusk crown was a heavy weight, stooping her shoulders toward the ground.
She sighs and opens her eyes, unsure when they had ever closed. But the world floods in, Bexley, gold in a blanket of white. The snow settles along her spine, decorating her pale mane and its many snarls.
“I miss you.” The words creep out, soft and wary. This beautiful Solterran girl hides a viperous tongue, and that threat is not enough to keep Florentine from this olive branch.
@
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
