Ouroboros II | The Wolf

4 | Bezel Confesses His Sins

Bezel didn't mind awkward silence. Not that it felt particularly silent (or awkward) anyway, not to him. His ears were still ringing with the insults Mayvalt had slung at him. She'd screamed at him until she'd run out of curses, and until his skull was full of fuzz--more than it had been to begin with--but he had never relented. He'd left her behind. 

Something that maybe the boy next to him regretted more than he did. His heart was thumping harder than a rabbit's, singing his nervousness for Bezel to hear. He picked at the fabric of his pants, he tapped his fingers against the car door, he shifted his hips every three minutes in the passenger seat. Restless, burning up beneath Bezel's scrutiny. Bezel was content to leave him that way, but the boy broke first. He cleared his throat and dragged his shaking palms through his hay-yellow hair. 

"Why couldn't we bring Mayvalt?" Ira asked. He had a habit of speaking to the space between them. His gaze grew distant, his tone indifferent, as if he was only entertaining the dust floating around the interior of the car. 

Bezel answered anyway. "Why? Am I less fun without her?" 

"Yes." 

"Ouch," Bezel winced playfully. "Hurtful." 

"Somehow," Ira muttered, "I don't think you mean that." 

He was right. Bezel couldn't be hurt by words or by steel--but Mayvalt was flesh and blood, Ossein bone and sensitives that Bezel had not yet mastered his way around. It was for that reason that she had been left behind. She was a weakness--his weakness. One centimeter of gooey pink flesh beneath his impenetrable shell. Her death wouldn't sadden him, but it would certainly be inconvenient. 

"She has her own task." He answered instead. As tactless as he was, he knew the Bishop beside him would flare up if he suspected Bezel didn't trust him. Not that that meant the Bishop trusted him in return--but well, Heimrians were like that. 

"Convincing the He-Goats to give up their blessings and go back to Hell?" Ira guessed, a small shrug rising in his thin shoulders. 

"It's a sacrifice beyond anything you could imagine--giving up their entire way of life. Only Mayvalt could convince them." The atmosphere inside the car frosted at those words, turning from merely stale to outright hostile. Bezel winced with his shoulders, sparing a slight glance at the Bishop beside him. "You don't like them." 

Ira made a show of looking down at his black attire, pausing to trace the red trim of his coat with his ocean-blue eyes, and scoffed. "Isn't that just implied? An occupational hazard?"

"You don't mind Mayvalt." Bezel pointed. To pass the time, his fingers thrumming against the cold leather of the steering wheel. His hollow golden eyes drank in the sights of the heavy New York traffic, absorbing the red tail lights and pedestrians slipping around the sleek black body of his car.

"She's. . . different." He muttered. 

"And doves are just pigeons." 

"No." He corrected, his tone as sharp as rock salt. "She really is different. She saved my life. She fought with me."

"Ah." Bezel nodded. "It's about that then. Last summer."

"Isn't everything?" Ira scoffed. He perched his elbow against the inside of the car door and made his knuckles a bench for his chin.

"It does seem that way, doesn't it?" Bezel sighed. "You blame the Faun for not fighting." 

"Is it that obvious?" He mumbled, folding in on himself against the passenger seat of Bezel's car. 

"You've made no attempts at subtlety." Bezel agreed with a small and fictitious laugh.

The Bishop shrugged apologetically, a gesture that seemed just as genuine as one of Bezel's best imitations. "You're right. I don't like them--I do blame them. It isn't fair. They want New York, but they let us die to save it. They didn't help. They probably wish more of us had been wiped out."