[P] our love is god

[Acton]

Acton these violent delights have violent ends He had waited a long time to see this – and he’d never thought he would. How many dusty dreams of sunlight on burnished skin, of sand and wind and the kind of heat that kept you in the cool dark with a drink making a wet circle of condensation on the bar? How much time, wondering and loathing, but always wanting to see for himself? At last he was here, and it was…hot. Even in autumn there was a thin sheen of sweat across the bright fire of his coat. Acton had to squint to see anything, but at least there was plenty to squint at – a technicolor dream coat of sights and scents and an enough sounds to make an orchestra of the day. People bustled past, though none bumped into him hip-to-hip as they always did in Denocte, careless and drunk.  Here each step seemed planned, a choreographed play nobody had given him lines for. And yet Acton did not feel out of place – in his knife-glint, blackpowder gaze and his bright-dark coat, the stallion did not stand out as much as he did in the muted tones of Dusk and Dawn. Nor did the bustle of merchants and shoppers, caravans and aristocracy bother him. Instead it felt familiar. And so, as he eased in to the tempo of the city like a hot bath, Acton began to enjoy himself. Once this betrayal might have made him guilty, or angry, or a potent mixture of both, but it was hard to think of Solterra as an enemy when the king he’d been fighting it for was gone. Maxence was just bones by now, anyway, broken up and digested by an oversized bird. And Reichenbach was…fled or smited or chased off or any combination of words that just meant gone. Where did that leave himself? Acton possessed the loyalty of a pit bull: he defended those that fed him. And Reichenbach had done that for a long time, in love and in work, but now his loyalties were to himself and to Raum and the little thing they might try to build into a big one. And he and Raum were not at war with Solterra. Quite the opposite. A hearty thud as someone blundered into his chest, and the dry-heat spell was broken. Acton stumbled back, startled and squinting against the glare and unwilling to start anything here quite yet. His gaze fell on Bexley’s at the same time hers caught him, and he was already grinning by the time she spoke. “Goldilocks.” Already he wished he hadn’t moved, that he might still be chest-to-skin with her breath on his cheek. This at least made it easier to look her over, hair like pale silk and true-blue eyes and the scar that still made his heart clench and shudder with an amalgam of feelings. The grin she wore, so different from how she’d looked at him in the past, but no less cutting. No less effective at giving him that ground-shaking, apocalypse, crash-and-burn feeling. “Not sure there is anything nicer than nothing,” he said, still grinning back. “Sorry to just drop in, but I was advised late autumn is the very best time to visit. Really brings out the smell of the sand. Wanna show me around?” He was surprised and a little alarmed to find himself near babbling. Was it nerves or heatstroke? Surely the latter. Acton didn’t get stage fright. @Bexley