[AW] thy kingdom come. [meeting]

[Acton]

Acton whatever you feed me I'll feed you right back   Acton tried very hard to wait until Reichenbach arrived before he spoke. It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. First there was the sheer disbelief of it all, the rats' scurrying of panicked citizens in the streets, the smoke that rose the same way it did in a thousand of his dreams (only much, much bigger). Acton was a busybody by nature and by trade, and while he was slower than he might have been – limping did that to a man – he still arrived in the square just before the decrees began, Raum a cold comfort at his side. At first he was even curious, but that evaporated as quickly as whatever poor bastards had been caught in the pass at the wrong time likely had. Still he tried to wait, though his curiosity turned to disbelief and then (always) to anger. Not secure safe passage for long? He remembered the day the gate had been opened – the celebration there had been. Acton had been hungover for days. To be closed in now, threatened with a dragon – no. He had spent the first part of his life in a cage under threat of punishment. He still bore a scar as a reminder (and the nightmares, but those were far more secret). Isorath was as elegant as ever, and Acton found that his previous apathy was quickly sharpening to disdain. He did admire the audacity of the kirin talking about games and petty squabbles they he had certainly taken an active role in – but in no world did Acton’s destiny begin behind a locked gate. No power-hungry prettyboy was about to tell him otherwise. He wanted to cheer when Rhos spoke, and Lyra, too, and wanted to spit at the kirin’s smooth-voiced retort to what they had said. He had a hard time believing Reich’s  lover knew nothing of the king’s beloved kin, but maybe the man had just been too busy polishing his jewelry to learn much of his new home.   Still he tried to wait, even as he felt himself bristling, distracting himself by searching the crowd for Isra, for Moira, for the twins or Rostislav. Anyone whose face might echo the sheer disbelief of his own. But then – Those of you who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear from this. Ah, Acton could never restrain himself in the end. He was too much tinder, looking always for flint. And here was a whole pile of fuel, and already the world smelled like burning. “Is that a threat?” The buckskin whistled through his teeth, and wore a grin as wide as a scythe. “You think the best way to stop rumors and whispers is to lock your people in and set fire to the door? I’m just a street bastard and I know that’s a stupid idea. Now they’ll just add cowardice and madness to our list of sins.” He paused to lick his lips, remembering the taste of blood; how much easier it had been, when all his problems could be solved with scuffles. Acton claimed no head for diplomacy (he avoided such responsibility like the plague), but this did not seem like politics to him – it felt more like theatrics. And oh, Acton knew what made a good show.   He stepped forward then, still favoring the leg Bexley had well and thoroughly injured a month or so before. “But you know, I am mad. If you’re so wise, you should know who’s done wrong. And if you’re so diplomatic, you should be able to fix it out without punishing the whole of Denocte.” His gaze did not stray to Aislinn; he’d always respected her (though he had always found her tendency to follow rules sadly tedious), but now he could only hope none of her gypsy family had been traveling through the pass when the dragon had done…whatever it was it had done. No; his eyes were only for the kirin’s, whose own looked so like a snake’s. Acton loved Denocte. He loved her wildness and her freedom, and he had fought for her, bled for her, done entirely idiotic, misguided things for her. And he loved his king like a brother, like a father. But this was not the Court he knew, and the king he loved was nowhere to be seen. If this was about sins committed, Acton knew well how black his ledger was. He leered at the kirin, and his gaze was a dare. “I’d tell you to come down here and make a threat like a man, but I’m still recovering from the last person I pissed off. Only she was three times scarier and twice as pretty as you.”