S
omehow, Bexley remains relaxed.To be sure, she stiffens a little as Elena comes up to her. Her head rises; her shoulders tighten, pulling back until her body is configured into the senseless grace of a statue. She glances at the Terrastellan with a sideways gaze, and the blue of her eyes is less ocean and more flame as she wonders, her expression almost caustic, what this ghost-girl wants from her. (If Bexley has learned anything from her time in Novus, it is that everyone wants something. And whatever a stranger wants from you—that’s usually the biggest ask.)
But this is her element. This, all of it—the hot breeze of the desert blowing in through the windows; the inherent suggestiveness of the night, dripping in through the walls like ink; more than anything, the loud, charming elegance of this party—filled with girls she’s kissed, men she’s tried to kill, the nobles that have populated her life for half a decade.
Somehow, Bexley remains relaxed. The world is hers. And everything (she’s convinced herself) is just how it used to be.
She is quite good at evading, the woman says. Bexley can’t help wondering how old her child is; they seem about the same age, and yet she gets the sense that O is significantly older than the little girl that’s being asked about. Still, they sound alike—she remembers chasing O down at the Night Court’s masquerade, so long ago it seems like a dream now, and wondering how someone so young could already be so practiced at slipping away. (Her disappearing act, since then, has only improved.)
“I suppose,” Bexley muses. “I mean, I was raised somewhere else. But I’ve lived here half my life, so I guess—“
The distance between them folds in half. She regards the stranger’s lean-in with an expression not of surprise, but self-satisfaction: wearing a little smirk, one brow half-raised. Something in her almost burns at the acknowledgement of her magnetism, which has gone so long unused.
@Elena speaks
bexley
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