How good it felt, the sun hot enough to make his coat shiny with sweat, the sand in his teeth. Acton had never been made for the cold. 

Neither, of course, had Solterra. Just to see it back to the way it ought to be (painfully bright, each eye he met glittering with challenge) felt like a good omen, like maybe everything could go back to normal. Never mind that normal had once meant war. 

All this to say Acton felt more alive than he had in months as he clattered his way across the bazaar, looking for Bexley. 

He missed her more than he missed the Crows, more than Reichenbach, more than knowing his place in the underbelly hierarchy of the Night Court. He missed her the way he missed who he used to be, before everything went sideways. 

What a relief it was to feel his heart kick back into that battle-drum rhythm the moment he saw her, talking to some poor messenger with a look that could singe a lion. It was a lucky thing whatever business they had concluded by the time Acton arrived at her side; he wasn’t the kind to stand politely by. 

Nor was he worried about the stares of others (more likely that he enjoyed them) as he pressed his muzzle to the crook of her neck like he needed to touch her, breathe her in, just to make sure she was real. 

“Been a while, Goldilocks,” he said at last between his grin, pulling away only enough to meet the bright glass blue of her eye. “Figured you’d been missing me long enough.”

the moth don't care when he sees the flame
he might get burned, but he's in the game

@Bexley

 

He hadn’t been quite near enough to make out her words, but the gist of them was clear enough - the way she made herself into some new and shining god, promising retribution and wrath. For a moment, when he watched her walk, it was her approach through the Night Markets he thought of. Only then it had been torchlight and not sunlight she shimmered like new-wrought gold under, and he had been the sole subject of her rage.

Sometime he should ask her what kept her from killing him. Sometime he should ask her how close she had come.

But not today. Instead his heart stuttered when her blue eyes found him, instead he was laughing at her retort. Good thing thing Acton wasn’t the religious type, because right now he’d be wondering how the hell he got so lucky (never mind her scar, never mind his knee, and all the burning and breaking they had done), and who he ought to thank for it.

“There’s that loving welcome I came all the way for,” he said with a grin, and when the spark of her magic leapt across his skin, too, he didn’t even jump. He was sure it would have felt the same even without her gifts; touching her was always like passing your hand through a flame. “And I never flatter myself.” The little lie, too, felt familiar on his teeth; like he was the Acton of the old days, where anything could happen, and the only disasters were the ones of his own doing.

For a moment he let himself just enjoy it - the press of her against him, her familiar scent, the sun beating down on them both. But Acton could never stand still for long, and a moment later he was nibbling at her ear, blowing a warm breath where the slim gold circled her throat. “I like watching you work. Got anymore poor merchants to threaten?”

The moth don't care if the flame is real
'cause flame and moth got a sweetheart deal

@Bexley

 

He did not tell her that he had met their daughter in the desert, wandering beneath the same ribbon of starlight as himself; Acton was not sure he intended to. He wanted something of Apolonia to keep for himself, to hold in his heart like a secret, only the bright, good kind.

But oh, they laughed the same way, his girls with their bright eyes and their golden skin and their twin grips on his heart. The ache he felt at hearing the similarity, like a concentric ring of ripples on a lake, or the second tolling of the same bell, was not a kind of pain he’d felt before. The buckskin did not want to wonder what it meant.

So he pushed it away with the same skill he’d always had, for putting off the kind of thoughts that went below the surface and waited somewhere in the dark heart of him. Much easier, much better, to walk along with her, shoulder and hip and tail and muzzle all touching and un-touching like they are one thing made of two parts.

Acton reveled like a housecat in the warmth of it all.

One ear flicked sideways to catch her words, followed quickly with a cat’s self-satisfied grin. “I’m a reformed man, Bexley,” he said, even as the amber-eyed glance he shot her promised wicked things. “In fact it’s a good thing you live here and not in Denocte. You’d be bored to pieces of me.”

There was a laugh in his words, but as he thought back over his recent months in the smoke-and-starlight of the Night Court (rebuilding, discovering, helping ward off oversize thunder-turkeys with a queen and a god) he couldn’t help but think it might be true.

The moth don't care if the flame burns low
'Cause moth believes in an afterglow

@Bexley

 

His love for Bexley Briar had once been the most complicated part of him, but that, too, had changed for Acton.

Now it was simple, particularly in the face of gods and monsters and scattered flocks of Crows. He loved her, he wanted her, he was happy being with her and thinking of her. That beat-sun day in the canyons might never have happened; the jagged scar that marked her perfect face could have been any old accident.

The past was never complicated if you never thought about it.

Would not, his girl said, and as his skin shivered and shuddered beneath her touch he chose to believe her. The buckskin leaned into her, that comfortable warmth that just bordered on pain (when she either forgot the strength of her magic, or intentionally let it slip), and she leaned against him too, and it was everything Acton never thought he’d have and never thought he’d wanted.

Sometimes being wrong didn’t make him want to start a fistfight. Maybe that was another sign of his growth.

Even as close as they were he had to duck his head nearer to pick up her voice; not quite a whisper, but like she’d dialed the volume down. Bexley quiet - when had that meant anything but danger? He could see no anger, though, when he met her gaze, and no sorrow either, and not anything he could read. But then he could never tell what she wanted - love or revenge or teeth or tears. He could only make his best guess.

“Nah. It’s just that all the trouble these days is bigger than me.” He spoke wryly, like all the storms and killer birds and goddesses had been a joke, too, and not a plague or an apocalypse. But then he smiled, and flicked his tail at her, startlingly dark against her spun gold. “But you should come and see for yourself. There’s going to be a party on Midsummer’s Eve - be my date?”

They were no longer attracting looks, the regent and the magician bold as a bonfire in the marketplace, and Acton once more turned his gaze to the rhythm of life around them. He, too, was ready to move on - from the bustling streets, from that hard-to-read look in her eye. When he spoke again he dropped his voice, dark smoke like an offering. “If you are done for the day, I can think of a thing or two to keep us both occupied.” His grin then was as wicked as the first time he met her and twice as knowing; Acton thought he could still manage to make her yell, if she needed a reason to. When he leaned close and nipped at the bright gold of her neck just above her throat, the heat of his breath suggested as much.

“If you’ll still have me,” he added, low, and stepped away toward the keep and her quarters like he walked it every day. Maybe in his dreams, he did.

with a fuse that's so thoroughly shot

@Bexley <3