It was not quite desperation that drew him at last to the gauzy tent door, but maybe it was a cousin. 

Acton was well accustomed to enjoying parties, especially the kind that spilled into the street and across the city, the kind with bonfires and shouting and free-flowing wine. They had always been his favorite kind of chaos, a world he could be a king in, and he’d never even minded the wicked hangovers that always woke him with a groan the next day. But tonight was different. 

Tonight he’d not had a drop of liquor, a sip of wine. He had no eye for the dancers, no interest in his fellows on the stage. Absent in himself was the age-old itch to perform, that hunger for applause like a thunderclap that had been with him since his birth, sure as a thumbprint from god on his forehead. 

The only thing alive in his blood tonight was unease, more bitter than any awful brew he’d laughed over with Reichenbach a lifetime ago. Acton haunted the festival as he had a hundred others, but the only thing he watched for was Raum. 

The sound of drums had followed him out of the castle, spilled into the night, ragged as his own heartbeat. He could still hear them echoing in his ears, in each muscle and movement, as he considered the tent flap, his jaw working back and forth. Acton had always been a strangely suspicious sort, something that must have traveled by blood from his mother; he did not care for witches. 

But he needed certainty, and he could not longer get it from himself, or from the Ghost, or from his King, who had fled. The Magician sucked in a breath and stepped inside, and the silks rustled against his sides as he crossed into shadow. 

Sit, the old woman bid him, but for a long moment Acton did not. He only studied her (what he could see, in the flickering and fluid candlelight), his chin toward his chest in something like respect. The tent smelled of incense, thick and cloying, but at least it did not smell like fear.

At last he did sit, though the pillows may well have been made of chain mail for all the comfort his expression showed. Acton’s blood felt like syrup, viscous and too slow. He cleared his throat, and then in a low voice he asked his question. 

“How will this end?” 

 

@Official Night Account