There was a part of him that was grimly satisfied to see her flinch, and a part of him that was sorry, and Acton did not try to measure which side was more. He had spent a hundred days and a hundred nights trying to untangle all the ways his thoughts and feelings were wound up with this beautiful, brutal girl and not a one of them had been rewarding.
Instead he lingered, and felt a little thrill when their shoulders touched. Almost he leaned against her, just for a heartbeat, but Acton thought better of it: there was something heady about the butterfly-feeling the contact gave him, but he knew how quickly it could turn to wasps, a blood-buzz that was a far darker kind of pleasure.
For once he did not care to make a scene. Not when he’d only just been exiled from one home.
“What for?” he echoed, mock wounded. “Even Dawn’s most sheltered scholars know they couldn’t have a party without me.” It was easier, much easier, to toss his head (all that wild hair, thick and dark and hot against his neck), to flash an insolent grin, to beat down the real reason for his presence. To pretend, if not quite outright lie.
Acton was not a liar, but he felt no need to share his truths with this sunstruck girl and her electric eyes. They gave each other scars instead, and maybe that was better. It was certainly easier.
Around them there was music and chatter and a dozen strangers all with flowers in their hair; it seemed impossible to Acton that anyone here could not know of them, could not look at them and see powder and flint. That they might look like anything other than what they are, angry and deadly and eternally wanting.
Even the way she avoided his gaze made his blood hot, made him want to press in closer. Instead his molten eyes only challenged hers, demanding to be met. He had never noticed before how close in height they were, how similar the colors of their burnished skins.
To be fair, it was hard to get a measure on such things when blood was in your eyes, or roaring through your head, or when you were on your knees.
“My turn, then,” he said, and leaned away like he was utterly disinterested in the answer – but his gaze on her belied any indifference. “Why are you here, Bexley Briar? If it’s a grudge to settle at least let me know so I can warn the poor bastard what he’s in for.” He smiled like it was a joke between them, the way they had almost killed one another – all that blood. Did she have nightmares, too? Did the campfires scattered through the picturesque meadow make her skin prickle with warning, make her heart beat hard hard hard like a bird’s in her chest?
He knew that she was part of the reason he stood here instead of drinking or gambling himself into a stupor with the rest of the Crows in Denocte, but he would never tell her. There was no potential reaction that would not make him seethe: not smugness or schadenfreude, and most of all not pity.
Any of those would make him want to lash out, and what a shame that would be, when they were having such a pleasant time.
@
whatever you feed me I feed you right back
