With any luck he wouldn’t remember this encounter.
The problem wasn’t that he didn’t like Seraphina; the problem was he did. From everything he’d heard and seen, she was easy to admire, easier still to respect, and Acton was cognizant enough to know this wasn’t a good look on him (or anyone, for that matter).
Then again, neither was conspiring to spy on her kingdom, or very nearly murdering one of her subjects. So really, how much worse could his position be right now?
The buckskin took the thought as a comfort, and swayed a little on his feet like a limb in a breeze. At least until he asked her (well, not asking - the desert queen had perfected the statement-as-question) the inevitable.
Somehow, impossibly, it had felt like a secret so far. Hardly anyone had spared him a glance; aside from the other Denoctians, nobody seemed to know or care about the masked stallion with the glint in his eye.
“They are,” he answered, and that dark smile bloomed into a grin. There was something wrong about it, a twist at the corner of his mouth. He thought back to the trek here, days of sun and dust, how he couldn’t coax a word from Isra until they were well beyond the scarred and ruined pass. For a long moment he said no more, running his tongue across the back of his teeth and thinking of Raum and his family. He wondered how many times they’d faced the same conversations.
“I am home,” he finished at last, and laughed the harsh, black, humorless laugh of a crow. Oh, how the words hurt him, and how he welcomed that pain.
As abruptly as he’d stopped (but with a little more grace), he turned and began to walk again. He couldn’t remember, exactly, what it had been he was heading toward, but he sure as hell preferred it to standing still.
He spoke again before she could do too much with his response – namely ask him to elaborate. “You’re a long way from your desert, yourself. I take it that means you successfully put down that rebellion. I’m not surprised – I could tell you were capable.” He flicked her a look, but kept moving. The faintly sober part of him wondered if he’d slurred any of his words; he had the feeling he had, but couldn’t seem to drum up some concern.
Surely that was no way to talk a queen, but he could remember a hundred hazy nights across a scarred and beer-sticky table from Reichenbach, drinking and laughing and scheming toward dawn. Gods, how he missed those riotous, unburdened days. He was certain now he would never see them again.
This is what he had instead: weaving drunk through a crowd of strangers (in Denocte, even the crowds had felt like family), making mistakes he was sure to regret in the morning.
@
Yeah, well I saw a snake in an apple tree
You know I didn't trust a word that he hissed to me
