Don’t flatter yourself, she said, and his grin grew, expectant, waiting for the crash. This was what they did, wasn’t it? Slick words with killing edges, little threats that turned to physical blows. Almost it was a game and adrenaline itched through his veins now, quickening his pulse, ready to play.
It meant even locked outside Denocte, even a crow cast out, he was still himself.
When her answer came, the words were right, but the tone was all wrong.
It was the shame in her voice that caught him, made him pause. It was not a dare. It was far more unsettling than anger, than hate, and he tilted his head so his gaze might find hers, something black opening up inside him, empty and toothless.
“Am I not a monster?” he asked, his voice strange-soft like smoke from a dying fire, and his smile was strange, too, there in the summer sunlight. When her blue-blue eye at last met his, he held her gaze for a long moment, and then he stepped away with a careless shrug.
His skin felt too taut, his heartbeat too fast. Acton wanted to break, wanted to burn, wanted to make a demonstration of all the tangled wounded thoughts in his head. It was harder by far to refrain. But he had always acted on instinct, fed himself on anger, the very same way she did. What she had asked, the way she had asked it – that wasn’t him at all.
Maybe he was not honorable, but when she’d caught him meeting with Raum in that cave, his impulse had been to protect their secrets as much as to get revenge for her earlier slights. This was different – this was personal.
He realized now some sick part of him had thought she understood him as well as anyone; disappointment felt oily-slick and dark, like gasoline. It was getting to be a familiar feeling.
“I know the difference between love and war,” he said at last, and dropped his chin in a mock-bow to her, all easy arrogance, inhaling one last draw of the scent of dahlias. “Enjoy the festival, darlin’.”
And then, for what most certainly be one of the first times in his life, he walked away without a fight.
@
whatever you feed me I feed you right back
