[P] DO THE HUNGRY EVER SLEEP?

[Acton]

Acton whatever you feed me I'll feed you right back   The fear, the raw animal panic, didn’t set in until after it was all over. That is the way of such things. As soon as she turned on those pretty pale heels, as soon as she left curved prints dark with ash and wet with blood, Acton was seized with nausea. He shook like a pine cone rattling on a dead limb, empty and edged but useless, useless. The air was not thick with ash and smoke and the sweeter scents that still cut through, not for him – it was as thin as at the top of Veneror Peak and he sucked it in in ragged gasps, burning over his bloody teeth and tongue. But that is getting ahead of things. - She drifted closer, like a ghost. As if she were one, Acton shut his eyes, but he knew there were no illusions between them. That this was real, in the way that only these kinds of moments could be real: pain and fear and each drumbeat of his pulse urging live, live, live. At the sound of her voice he opened his eyes again, and would have swayed if he weren’t already down. I kneel for no one, he remembered telling Raum once, when they met to trade secrets at the shrine of the gods – but here he was, because life (the only god he claims) preferred irony over ichor. Acton could feel the heat off her skin, this close, or maybe it was his own. Her breath on him was almost a balm and he met her mad gaze, over the red blur of her scar, that new feature that would never be what he remembered her by, no matter that he gave it to her. (When he pictured her it was always on that first night they met, gold and defiant, or in the last moments of the cave, gold and defiant – a brazenness he wanted to break or to own, though maybe those were the same things). Last of all, as she stepped away, his gaze dropped to the chain that still glinted, dimmer now, around her burnished throat. If we’re both still alive by the end of the night… His grin was broken, but the meaning behind it was still there. He even nodded, when she spoke her final words, like they were making another deal. And then she turned, and faded away in a haze of smoke. Only then did he think he might die, his stomach dropping sickly, his muscles turning through strange alchemy to liquid. He tried to stand, once, but his legs shook worse than a foal’s and the stone below rebuked him when he hit it. He tried to scream for help, once, but his jawbones ground strangely and his throat was choked with smoke and ash. In the end he only watched as the fire sputtered and died, leaving him in the dark. At last there was the sound of hooves, of a voice, an approach – but Acton did not hear it. In the end, he gave up after all, his lashes fluttering closed to lay him in the arms of black dreams with blue eyes and starving red smiles. @Bexley thank you for the thread! can't wait for pt. 4, Revenge's Revenge xD. ending this here unless @Moira or @Isra wanted to find him?