to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
The birds’ melodies sound more like something that might drift and tremble high on the bonfire-smoke of Denocte, aimless and vivid as a thrown spark, and all at once fall back to silence. More than that, constant as the now-dead heartbeat of the wall, is a livewire hum that he seems to catch only on the backs of his teeth or the cords of his throat. It is magic, it must be, but the boy in him is surprised to find it is no pleasant feeling. No fairy tale described this, the way dread mingles with beauty.
He should be less naive, by now.
Her smile catches him the same way, beauty and dread, because he recognizes her as soon as she turns. Bexley Briar, exiled Regent of Solterra, lover of a dead man. August hadn’t known Acton, but like most of Denocte he’d known of him - he’d eaten up stories of the Crows’ exploits like bread, as a boy. Them and their roguish king, back in the brief glory days when the stars might just have been another set of diamonds for the stealing. How darkly their story had ended. And here before him the last remnant of it, save for the killer himself. Finding her feels like its own treasure, though the thought sinks and settles in his belly heavy as sin.
“By me,” he allows, with a little dip of his chin. “Alas, I am far less interesting, and likely less dangerous, than everything else on this island.” All the while he watches her, eyes as silver as the backs of mirrors, as cool as his skin beneath shadows. But not you, that gaze says, and try as he might the boy can’t feel guilty for his sharp curiosity. Knowledge is one of the few things he allows himself to both want and have.
He wants to grin at her comment, her easy wryness, but at first he only lifts a brow. “I’m told it makes me look more dashing,” he answers, and the line of his mouth curls somewhere between demure and impish. It is no lie - he had been told that, once, and had pretended to be well-pleased instead of rolling his eyes - but in truth the piercing had been the result of too many drinks and a dare in the back rooms of the Scarab one evening, years ago. “Though it’s got nothing on that scar of yours.” For a moment his breath catches, holds, a fluttering thing behind his teeth as he wonders whether her expression will turn sour or sad or angry, and he is surprised by how much he hopes it doesn’t.
Then August steps forward through the undergrowth, ferns brushing soft against his belly and legs, into the orbit of her unearthly glow.
@Bexley | <3
