It was ironic that the world was turning to the fire and smoke of autumn when Raum was meeting the Crow’s very own wild fire. Acton was as changeable as the season and just as deadly.
 
Orange turns all leaves brittle and dry, and as his quicksilver body pours up the mountainside his feet whisper over wasted leaf litter. Raum keeps to shadow and crags in the rocks. His approach is as near silent as the dried leaves could manage and they herald his arrival with little more than a sigh and a rustle. It was a sound barely there, but Raum knew his brother would be listening.
 
The cold bite of the mountain wind lays its teeth upon the Crow’s neck and chases a shiver down his silver spine. The absence of his crystal blue scarf is a pertinent reminder of who this Crow now is: A Day Court civilian.
 
The heat and dust of Solis’ home turns his silver skin to rust and ruin. The heat is a smother, the dust abrasive, and as his eyes find the orange upon Acton’s skin, his smile is derisive. Never have the two brothers looked so similar. “He should have sent you.” Raum comments of Reichenbach.
 
He passes the Crow’s magician, the petals of his black rose the only thing swaying as they pass like ships. “Your messenger crow was a little too… loud. I knew before opening that the message was from you.” He lays the wilting rose in the writhing shadow of Calligo’s altar. His lips murmur a prayer, each word a mystery, each request a secret.
 
When his murmurs fall to silence, the Crow finally turns back to his brother. The blue of endless seas meets the fierce orange of Acton’s skin. “You are never afraid to make a spectacle.” He observes, those blue eyes passing, liquid smooth, up to his brother’s eyes hidden behind their permanent mask.
 
His eyes were not the only veiled thing between Denocte’s Ghost and her Magician. Acton’s words hang, still unanswered, their true meaning concealed. “You will be sorry for your lack of piousness when you find yourself kneeling for judgement before them.” If there was a hint of humour in Raum’s words, it is gone in the blink of an eye before the Ghost draws their topic of conversation on.
 
“Any news of Denocte, brother?”



@Acton yasss!!!
 

 
You smell awful, and you don’t look much better.
 
Through the red, red dust clinging to his silver lips, Raum’s smile is as sharp as a bloody knife. The smile is gone in the blink of an eye, little more than a glint of steel beneath the sun.
 
The Crow’s gaze is the tide washing in from the sea, sweeping from Calligo’s altar back to Denocte’s Magician. Here, Raum can not only feel the touch of Acton’s sparking gaze, but see the scrutinizing trail it makes across his silver skin. He does not ask what his brother Crow sees there, he does not care.
 
Where Raum’s gaze is the deep and restless sea, Acton is the immovable rock within its depths. “No.” The Ghost agrees, studying the brazen orange of Acton’s skin – there was never any hiding this flamboyant magician. He was unstable fire; the spark that would set a forest blazing and they would be lucky to ever put it out. “No,” Raum repeats, “You would be chained up in the desert awaiting your fate as fodder for the desert scavengers.”
 
With every word he had poured silver-slick toward Acton. Where Acton lures with his bright, bright colour, so Raum slips into darkness, unseen, unheard. He is impassive silver, a mirage upon the eyes. The Ghost’s murders are silent, swift affairs. But Acton… he impresses and confounds with every life he takes. The Magician leaves his every witness to even question whether a murder had ever taken place. Surely it was not intentional? Just a terrible, unfortunate accident… Are the whispers Raum would hear spectators wonder.
 
“Then again,” The silver Crow murmurs as he reaches Acton, his voice lowering to a whisper that holds itself in the small space between them. “You are the only one with enough balls to murder in front of an audience and play it off as unfortunate magic...” Raum pauses, thoughtful, considering, his lips curling into a smile as sharp as the knife it had once been. Blood dust falls like a cloud from his silver-scythe lips, “Do you think you could fool Maxence with your murderous magic?” His smile is the dagger he misses from about his throat. It is a promise of danger, but only that. The quicksilver assassin is, for now, just a shadow of what he should be. The Ghost is gelded with the loss of his scarf and his knife.
 
“I trust you are keeping my effects safe?” Those blue eyes glitter, the sparking of the sun upon the crest of a tsunami. He would trust only the Magician to safely magic away his most prized possessions.
 
Raum’s gaze turns impassive as his fellow Crow speaks of sackcloth and ashes, of girls weeping in the streets with the loss of Denocte’s Ghost. “I am sure you mistake tears of sadness with tears of joy. At least with my loss there are now fewer dead bodies to litter the cobbled streets.” The assassin’s smile and as hard as granite as he murmurs gently, “Maybe you should console them more, Reich cannot comfort them all.”
 
As hot and red as the desert he left, Raum finally steps away from his Crow brother. His thoughts return to Solterra, “Maxence has recently tried to steal a youth from the Dawn Court. It seems he seeks no alliances beyond Rannveig in Dusk…” He pours like liquid towards the edge of the cliff, each step as silent as a ghost – the moon frames him so. His eyes drift north, north towards the desert, north towards that too hot sun and its viperous brood of serpents with their weapons of teeth and poison.


@Acton it has been an age. i am so sorry my lovely <3 <3
 

 

“A wonder indeed.” Raum muses from where he stands upon the edge of the mountain. The drop below and its bed of jagged rocks beckon him down, down, down to a violent end. His eyes, unperturbed by his perilous place upon the mountainside and the devilish push and pull of the wind, gaze out towards Denocte, framed by the sun, Calligo’s shadows banished by the height of day. When would this assassin ever feel those cool shadows of his homeland upon his skin again?
 
With a sigh Crow turns from the mountain’s edge, his gaze becoming hard where only moments before it had been the ragged softness of a wound. “Have any of your tricks gone correctly lately Acton?” Raum asks like silk, the mockery is so subtle upon his tongue that one might almost not feel the barbs beneath it. “Careful, or Denocte may begin to think you an incompetent Magician, as well as a murderous one.” The smile is back, wicked sharp and a steel mask for the rawness of Raum’s homesick heart.
 
His brother’s talk of home, of their Crows, their family is as healing as it is bruising. “Lavinia knows better than to take my knife.” But even as he said it he knows how sly the girl can be. “Just… if she does take it, remind her that I will know when I get it back. I know how many deaths it has seen, no matter how well she may believe she has cleaned it after.” The blade could gleam like a mirror, barred of scars and scratched but its master would still know of any new blood it has shed. It would sing for him as loudly and plainly as a comet falling from the sky.
 
“You hear, you don’t know?” The silver Crow chides quietly. “You are slacking on your spying skills, Acton. Have I been gone that long?” It is a mockery of the Magician, but Raum at least expected him to know not hear whether his King had entangled himself in the affairs of a girl.
 
“It is the Dusk Court’s Emissary.” Raum informs, his eyes as sharp as ice as he takes in the hot glow of Acton’s skin. “I would have preferred a Denoctean. Keep an eye on them. That relationship has the potential to drag us all into shit. I would have been surprised - had I not known it was Reichenbach. He has about as much control over his heart as a rabbit does a fox.” His lips tip into a smile, affectionate, amused, despite the ramifications of his words. Raum had grown up with their King of Thieves, he knew Reich’s nature, he knew the kindness there, the waywardness of his gypsy nature.
 
For all Raum’s mockery, for all his jest, it seems the romance of his king was not the most important information Acton had picked up. The Ghost’s spine falls rigid, his nape arching as the quicksilver Crow falls as still as a statue. He drinks in the warning, blue eyes glittering. “Maxence is wise. He has not spoken any of his concerns to the rest of the Day Court – that I might have heard anyway…” The words are a murmur, deep and dark and as dangerous as a knife from the black. “Maybe I have not kept pace with Torstein enough… He found Rhoswen, Freya, Mila and I here a few months ago… He was suspicious, even then.”
 
There is no space for fear within this Denocte assassin. No shadowed corner that he allows for it to find and fester and grow. He is mercury pouring across the rough mountain shrine as he scans the area. They were still alone.
 
“Bexley.” She was the only girl of gold, with her blue eyes and a necklace about her slender throat. “What do you want with her? She is close to both Maxence and Reich, I know you favour risks, but even I had thought you wiser than that.”


@Acton <3 FUN
 

 


 Do you suggest, brother, that Reichenbach would be so foolish as to let his feelings for a girl threaten us all? I trust him more than that. 
 
It was clear, after those words, just how caustic the Solterran desert had made him. Raum’s gaze shuttered, his ears falling against his skull, where each movement would normally feel as easy as liquid, now he was just sand and sun and friction.
 
He sighed, feeling the distrust his words so openly exposed. He clearly did not hide it well enough. Silver lips, craving moonlight not sun, pulled into a grimace, his teeth clenched tight. “I think love can make anyone do foolish things.” 
 
It cannot be trusted.
 
I, cannot be trusted
 
The last thought is a knife in his gut and he is no longer sure he speaks of Reichenbach, but himself.
 
Acton’s talk of Bexley is a welcome, if troubling distraction. He thinks of the girl with a vipers tongue and vibrant curls. “I do.” He agrees, as he watches the clouds press in upon the mountain. Their descent would be shrouded, harder and yet more concealed.
 
 “Keep an eye on her visits to Denocte brother and I too will keep an eye on her in Solterra.” He turns from Acton his lips bearing a phantom of a smile at Acton’s parting words. “Indeed, it is a wonder the gods have not chosen to smite you yet. Kerah.”
 
And with that Raum turns his silver skin disappearing into the silver clouds pouring down the mountainside.


@Acton FIN - I could not help myself with the Kerah xDD