[P] it feels good to be running from the devil;

[Acton]

 
He couldn’t get the trick quite right.
 
Acton blew a frustrated breath through his teeth, stirring the wild tangles of his forelock that draped across his eyes, down the black mask along his nose. It had been a long while since he’d worked at a new card trick – his attention had been focused on…other things. Bloodier things.
 
And now he was out of practice.
 
After a few more tries that kept turning up the wrong card – the queen of hearts when he’d wanted spades, or a two in place of an ace – he set down the deck with a thwack. The buckskin stretched, glancing as he did so out the window, where weak spring sunlight tried to coax growing things from dark soil.
 
Caligo bless the arrival of warmer weather. But he wondered (not with worry; Acton was not a fretful nor guilty creature) just what skeletons the melting snows might reveal. He’d usually been able to slip away from punishment like the magician he was, but rarely had it not come for him at all.
 
A gathering in the courtyard caught his eye, beyond the usual rag-tag symphony of life in Denocte. He recognized a few of the horses from the Dawn Court festival, back before the snows, and a smile creased his dark mouth. He’d heard that they were coming, Oriens’ merry group of mediators, and though he scoffed at the idea of it (and the need; they could solve their own problems, they always had) he was curious as to just what they knew.
 
Like a swaggering shadow he breezed down the corridors, intending to join a few of his fellows in the courtyard, but in the yawning mouth of the entry hall a sheen of silver caught his eye. Acton tilted his head toward the stranger, finding eyes are fire-bright as his own, a spark waiting for powder. The eye he ran deftly over her was practiced but not unimpressed. Her coat, when it caught the sunlight that slanted in through wide doors slung open to welcome the spring, reminded him of the harbor he’d grown up alongside, white sails and the shimmer on the water, sailors with colorful curses who were happy to teach.
 
Luckily he did not think she would be altogether much like the sea: she did not look like she smelled of fish.
 
It was a thought verified when he crossed to her, heedless of anyone she was with. Instead, there was something warm and sweet about the scent of her, something like summer. He didn’t have to fake the grin he wore.
 
“Are you one of the Dawn peacemakers, come to tell us to behave?” His tone was not outright mocking, though there was a laugh in it – a hint of that laugh there, too, in the quirk of his lips and the shine of his eyes.
 
Maybe he wouldn’t mind being reprimanded by someone like her. In either case, it was more entertaining than spending his day failing at card tricks. 


@Liesel 

these violent delights have violent ends

[Liesel]

LIESEL

she stole the thief's heart

The Night Court was charming and dangerous — and so much rowdier than Dawn. Liesel had already decided she liked the roughness of it, the abandon and joyousness with which many of the Night Court folk lived their lives. It was so different to the scholarliness of Dawn, where most of the citizens were more interested in discussing politics, healing arts and whatever else more intelligent minds than hers got excited about. 

There were so many things to look at, too many, her warrior's mind murmured, even as her golden eyes slid over every nook and cranny, every bright-eyed resident. She had not been entirely on board with sending a group of Dawn's finest as mediators between the other Courts — not when their own Court was so undefended. Her voice of warning had been swallowed by Dawn's hatred of war though... and so here they were. She, however, was not her to mediate. 

She was here to protect. 

To show that though Dawn might have been interested in aiding their fellow Courts, they would not tolerate mistreatment or misbehaviour from their brothers and sisters. She was a swift blade of justice, prepared to shut down any thought of trouble swiftly and silently. 

Speaking of...

She felt his eyes on her before she saw him, a swaggering figure of gold and black, his grin as arrogant as it was charming. Her own gaze flicked over him swiftly before turning back to the group huddled in the Courtyard, their voices menial as they tried to discuss ways to better the relationship between Night and Day. She'd lived in Novus such a short amount of time and already she knew that Day and Night had been, and always would be, on rocky footing. They were too different, and both Courts had tempers that ran swift and true.

“Are you one of the Dawn peacemakers, come to tell us to behave?”

A knowing smile touched her soft lips as she turned, silver hair shifting in the new spring breeze to send the scent of vanilla and coconut wavering through the still-cold doorway. 

"Why? Are you misbehaving?"

Lupine eyes touched each sharp corner of him, the razor edge of that grin, the striking colour of his skin, the chaos shrugging off his shoulders in waves. Handsome, and reckless. He appeared to her as the perfect representation of the court, his night-dark hair shining like crows wings, his eyes bright and far too confident for comfort. This was the arrogance of Night — they knew they were beautiful and enchanting, they knew their spell could transform even the hardest of hearts. 

But he did not know her, and she would not be fooled by the charm of a Night boy. 

---

@Acton ma boiiiii so keen! <3

space

[Acton]

 
Already his distraction as proving effective; Acton felt his earlier frustration washed away as soon as her leonine eyes turned on him.

He has never had trouble talking to women – certain women, anyway. It was the keeping that proved difficult; he was too brash, too immature, too reactive. Beyond that, he was just uninterested in a relationship that carried more than a couple days; he’d seen Reich and his lifelong string of lovers, had watched the way that relationships could make a fool out of even the most stolid, logical horses (Raum, for instance; a fact that he’d never let the Ghost live down).

No – Acton had no interest in any of that. But he loved to look, to talk, to touch. That first smile was always a little like the feeling he got on stage after performing his first trick, a rush of applause that warmed his blood.

And hers was no different.  

The buckskin was pleased by her response – the irreverence of it that matched his own – though he only let it show through a quirk of his brow. “Not by my standards,” he answered her. Oh, if she knew he was the source (or one of, anyway) of much of the strain between Denocte and the others – how would her striking, setting-sun eyes see him then? “But nobody has told me what our honored guests might consider disobedience.”

Care to enlighten me? the spark of his amber gaze asked her, but this time it didn’t linger long; he looked past her to the bright courtyard, where early spring light fell on the stones and the green beginnings of wildflowers. It was not a day for staying indoors, not with a breeze this warm, not with a stranger this intriguing.

“Have you had a tour yet?” His gaze swept back to her, lingering again on the tones of her coat, the silver of her hair. Acton was reminded of the bruised, rich colors of storm at sunset. Certainly he could feel something like electricity just below his own skin. “I could show you anything but the library. Not sure I remember where that is.” Another teasing grin; no sense in waiting to find out which Dawn Court stereotypes were true.




@Liesel terribly keen xD

these violent delights have violent ends