Acton did not like it here, either.
The music was fine, but his ears were closed to it; all he wanted to hear was the undulating rise and fall of the gypsy ballads that chased him into dreams every night. The paintings he barely spared a glance for, and he could hardly watch the dancers at all without feeling something cold and knife-like gut him and twist. This wasn’t the kind of pain he was accustomed to. This kind lingered. It was proving resistant to every kind of medicine he tried.
But let it not be said that Acton was the kind of man who gave up easily. Dandelion wine he’d had, and honeyed mead, and some sort of silver-veined plant a golden and antlered stranger had offered him with a knowing smile he didn’t care for at all.
Still he ached, but his edges were dulled, and the flame in him that ate and burned was a low thing now.
He drifted aimless through the cloud, less like smoke and more like a rough log on a laughing stream. There was little grace in him at the moment, just a blurred kind of interest; the world around him seemed muffled, like he was separated by a veil. In a way it was pleasant, and it should have let him forget; instead he returned again and again to the thought of Denocte, a stray dog unable to do anything but worry at his wounds.
The buckskin did not notice the shape just behind him (which did move like smoke, which might have reminded him of Raum) until it spoke with a voice that was meant to echo through a canyon like wind.
Hello, Acton.
Oh, what luck he’d had, ever since Bexley Briar caught them in that cave. Tonight he felt close to believing in curses.
First he stopped, and it was near enough a stumble that his pride would be wounded under normal circumstances. And then he turned, smoothing his expression as he did, though maybe it was dark enough so that she couldn’t discern anything, anyway. Not that she knew him well enough (knew him at all) to tell when he wasn’t himself – though when he met those bi-colored eyes he remembered again the childhood myth. This time, he was too far gone for even a flicker of unease.
“Seraphina,” he greeted, and curled his lips into the beginnings of a grin. “You look well.”
@
these violent delights have violent ends
