Acton

 

There was blood in the air and for once Acton did not welcome it. 

Oh, how familiar was the spark beneath his skin, like a storm on the horizon. The buckskin felt electric, kinetic; for the first time in a long time even his magic couldn’t sit still, and his markings shifted like a magician’s trick. To look at him was to look at a black mask with molten eyes, a smile that could hardly be called a smile at all. 

But there was no one looking as he made his way out of the city, the smoke of midnight bonfires still on his skin. He was a dampened flame as he walked, half-hidden beneath a clouded sky. The City of Stars had no such light tonight, and that was well enough, for Acton was back on Crow business. 

He had not yet untangled his barbed-wire thoughts after hearing about Raum’s latest sin. Acton could not decide if he was surprised, could not decide if he was angry, could not decide if he was disappointed or sickly proud or most of all afraid. The territory of thoughts was never one he walked well; that was always a strength of the Ghost. But surely, surely, his brother had not truly meant to kill Isra. (And if he had? Oh, Acton can not yet consider it.) 

As he walked in the silent darkness, his memory carried him away, another meeting with his brother-Crow on a mountain. That day on the peak had been the beginning of this long and twisting story, when Raum was a spy in the Sun God’s court and Acton was always starving for trouble. The buckskin never thought he would be the one to finally have his fill of blood. 

Despite the tang of pine, the thick sweet summer-smell of the mountain as he climbed, the taste on his tongue was only bitter. His eyes sparked at every movement, his ears shifted for each sound, but even so some dark part of his heart was eager to see his quicksilver brother again. And when the hillside turned to brambles and stones, when a copse of birch trees pale as dead faces in the night signaled he was nearing the cave (always a cave, he and his brother’s business) there was no denying the wolf’s-joy that lived in him, too. 

So it was he stepped into what had once been a stronghold, a hideaway, a home. He did not see Raum, but he did not need to, to know he wasn’t alone; he knew what it felt like, to be watched by the Ghost. 

“Has your hatred finally outweighed your sense, brother?” he asked - and how strange it felt, for he sounded more like Raum in that moment than himself. “Or is there something you’re not telling me?” 

Acton was not the praying sort, and oh, that was well - for he did not know what he would pray for, in that moment. Blameless hands, or bloody ones.



@Raum let's get ready to rumbbbbbbllllllle

Acton

 

For a terrible moment, Acton thought that Raum would not say anything at all.

That had always been the surest sign of where things stood; like a shark, the Ghost was most dangerous when silent. That is how he did his killing, not with the flash and glamour of the magician. It was why they made such a good pair; if they were a sliver more similar they would have killed each other long ago.

But that did not answer the question of why he was afraid in the first place. Not that one shouldn’t be, around Raum; even Acton could recognize that was the only intelligent way to feel. Maybe that was why he could never quite manage it. Now though - ah, something had changed, when he learned that Raum had tasted his new queen’s blood. Whether it was a fracture or a break, well…that was why Acton had come.

So he was relieved to hear the voice, not echoing despite the stone walls of the cave, and blew out a breath that eased a little tension he hadn’t known he carried. The moonlight finally caught Raum as he stepped forward, and trailed like fingers along his skin. It made Acton wonder how the man had ever survived so long in the court of the Sun; it was clear it was the moon that loved him.

“Only when they stopped making sense to me,” he returned, and his voice was not a whisper. It was flint and steel, a bite of flame that sought to catch. For once he was not smiling; for once his gaze was hard to read. The buckskin did not flinch or withdraw before unspooling quicksilver or drown in ice-blue eyes. The thing inside him was too molten, his skin always bright and hot as breathed-on coals.

Outside the wind moaned beyond the entrance, and clouds like field-furrows drifted past. Within, for a moment, there was only their breathing.

It wasn’t until Raum spoke of hatred Acton twisted a dark ear back, and he almost snorted in response. This was nothing like the war with Day, and all the blood between them; Isra had not earned what she had paid. Not after all the had done to help rebuild, and that as a stranger, after their own king had been the one to begin tearing Denocte down.

“She has not betrayed us or Night,” he said, and closed another step between them. That alone had been enough for him, but Acton could not forget the devotion in his brother he had always seen as curious; Raum had always been the pious Crow. So he swallowed, and added, “Caligo chose her.”




@Raum

Acton

 

“She was not the one who crumbled Denocte.” Acton met that stare, blue and cold and faraway as a circle of sky from the bottom of a well. His own was its opposite, though just as sure; it was ice and not fire but both felt like burning. How long since he had stood so close to his brother? Strange, now, to look at the smooth silver of his skin and wonder how such a man of moonlight could ever survive in Solterra.

Great as Raum’s other skills were, the most dangerous of them (more dangerous, even, than his lovingly-honed blade) was his resolve. Where Acton was a flame that flickered and leapt and drifted with the wind, hungry for anything at reach, Raum was determined as a glacier.

Acton could only hope that his mind was not made up.

At Raum’s insult the buckskin lifted his teeth in a skull’s sort of grin. He could not disagree, not with his hands so dirty with soot and sin, not with the way he’d always gloried in their work. It was not until the Ghost said soft that Acton’s gaze flicked back, sharp.

“You're the one who asked if I was shedding my feathers, Raum. I didn't think this was the something new you had in mind.” Left unsaid was what he saw as the bloody beating heart of the matter, the thing that had started the fracture: the Crows abandoned us.  

Maybe that was all the story came down to. Orphans abandoned and clinging to what family they could. In the dark of the cave Acton thought about meeting Isra on the docks, as alone and hungry as he had once been; he thought of Isra as he’d left her in her rooms, and the space between the two memories.

“Oh, pious brother,” he said, and for the first time tonight his smile was true (and leering, too, just a little). “I knew there was a little heretic in you.” When Raum did not move (of course, his cold stone, his glacier ice) Acton stepped forward, his footsteps quiet as ones from a very different cave, a very different day. It was then that he caught the scent of blood, a copper separate and darker than the dank mineral smell of the cave; his eyes fell to the cuts along Raum’s sides, to the missing daggers that were almost obscene in their absence.

His brows rose in surprise, but not as great as it might have been - sharp in his memory is Isra in her castle, clothed in rage. Isra who could turn wood to silk to gravestone.

“I'm not so sure she needs me,” he said, lifting his gaze again to Raum’s, and his smile has gone crooked and strange. The words were spoken mockingly, but the truth of them struck him like a fist. Acton tossed his head, disguising his unease, summoning again his gunpowder grin. “You’re the one hidden away in a cave, bleeding and skulking.”




@Raum

Acton

 

When those eyes closed, extinguishing that burning blue, Acton thought he might have succeeded (even as Raum’s silver turned to shadow-black, even as he melted further into the dark of the cave). He blew out a breath, felt something like guilt simmering beneath the adrenaline-burn of his skin. He was about ready to agree with Raum, for he knew in his soot-black heart that the silver stallion was right. He was softer. He was softer and he didn’t know if it was wrong or not, no matter how strange it felt. The buckskin even opened his mouth to say so, and leaned forward -

but then Raum’s eyes flickered open again.

Acton had always wondered (less like a scholar, and more like a little brother who enjoyed pushing buttons) what would happen if he ever succeeding in goading Raum too far. On some level he had considered it impossible; the Ghost had always been unflappable, too cool and distant to be barbed by Acton’s joking. And why should they ever reach the edge? They loved one another. There were a hundred bodies dead between them. They were brothers.

So when that cold, curved claw pressed against his throat, for a heartbeat Acton did not believe it.

But it was hard to argue with a knife to your throat - harder still when it was one wielded by Denote’s Ghost. Especially when it wasn’t really a knife at all, but a literal extension of Raum himself.

At first he was nothing but wide eyes, caught off-guard for one of the first times in his life. What an awful feeling that was - worse than anger, worse than pain. He swallowed and it felt sharp against the bob of his throat. After that he was only ears, listening and still as Raum spoke. In the cold arms of the cave his voice was like velvet, wrapping around him, an embrace. Acton could still feel the warmth of the summer night as his back; what breeze could reach him twined his tail as though trying to tug him away.

Acton did not like the idea of running - but he minded it less than the idea of dying. And there was no reason written in the empty blue of his brother’s eyes. There was, too, the memory of Isra and her terrible wrath; how much greater must Raum’s be? It had been burning for so long.

Slowly, slowly, Denocte’s erstwhile magician drew a breath.

“All this time,” he said, and felt that claw prick against the soft skin of his throat, a vampire kiss. He could feel the blood beading, slick and warm and coppery in the dank of the cave, and thought Isra and I will have matching necklaces. “All this time and I thought I was the mad one.”

And then Acton set the cave alight.

Or rather, he filled it with the illusion of an explosion, all the smoke and smell and black choking feel of it, blinding eyes and choking throats. Ricocheting off the walls was a terrible roar, not so different from the sound in a canyon-cave in a desert long ago. Thick, foul-smelling smoke curled between them so that Acton could not see the white tip of his nose.

Lucky thing he didn’t need to. From that first shattering noise he was already wheeling, back and away, expecting Raum to falter for a moment and no more.

He nearly failed; one small miscalculation and he was scraping his shoulder and his ribs against the side of the cave, leaving skin and hair and blood on the stone like an offering. Billowing black spilled out from the mouth of it behind him, rising into the air, and there was a part of him that gloried in it for oh! it didn’t look like an illusion at all.

But Raum would know that just as well as he, and so there was no time to watch his work. There was only time to run, and so Acton did, knowing the devil might be on his heels, and even if he wasn’t tonight he always, always, would be until one or the other of them was dead.

And for once there was no burning in his veins, no bright joy that came from living in its purest form. There was only sorrow like an empty hole in his chest, and the strain of his heart and lungs and sinews as he ran like a rabbit from the man who’d known him best.





@Raum