When the bird (some grey-black desert thing with beady mean eyes, he was no ornithologist) approached him, Acton was surprised for a small multitude of reasons, but the first was this: how the hell had it found him? He’d barely admitted to himself that he was living in Dawn, much less anyone else.
For a moment he’d just stared between the letter and the bird, and the bird stared back. “Who’s it from?” he’d asked, but the bird had only darted in, bit the thin skin on the bridge of his nose, and flown off like a bastard before he could bite back.
“Yeah, fuck you too,” he’d called after it, but by then it was just a small black blur in a big blue sky, and he dropped his gaze back to the scroll, rolled up tight as a snake in the grass.
He was irritated to find his heart tripping in his chest, pounding out an uneven drumbeat. And he was almost ashamed to find he wanted it to be from Reichenbach. That he wanted to be begged back, courted for his favor like a wronged girlfriend. Who else knew he was here, anyway?
But as soon as he touched it, as soon as it unfurled with the bleached scent of sand and sun and sandalwood, he knew it was not the Night King. His nerves were still alight as he took in the blue, slanting ink, but already there was a little hint of a grin snaking across his lips.
It was in full bloom by the time he finished.
--
Conveniently, the Dawn Court had also received a heavenly courier bird, and a delegation was headed up to the summit. It was a large enough one Acton could join in with little fanfare, trailing along behind them, trying to sort out the razor-wire tangle of his thoughts. It stood to reason that Denocte had received the same invitation, that his king would be moving even now for the same destination as him. The buckskin kept trying to force his thoughts away from Reich; he much preferred the mess of feelings surrounding Bexley. The former was a dull, dark ache, but the latter – ah. Anticipation prickled like a sharp shallow cut, just enough of a sting to make him feel alive.
Probably he ought to have been worrying or wondering about the gods, but Acton had never had a head for religion, and little interest in third-party judgment.
It was a strange atmosphere that greeted them at the base of Veneror Peak. Half festival, half firesquad, the crowd was a livewire jitter of nerves, all flashing eyes and shivering skin. Acton slipped through them all, warring with his wants – to look or not to look? There was not yet the scent of jasmine, of cedarsmoke, and maybe he was grateful for that.
Finding the Solterrans was not difficult. Finding Bexley among them was even easier – sharp as a sword, bright as a sun, she carried her own kind of orbit, a glittering gravity. For a moment Acton only observed her – he had never seen her around her people, and there something fascinating about it, the thoughtless dance they did.
Gods, it made him homesick. Before the black wave could take him, before he changed his mind, he stepped forward. At first he had to fake his swagger, but as soon as her blue eyes found him it became real as a bad habit.
“Hey,” he said by way of greeting, very intentionally ignoring every face but her own. She looked like some bright burnished goddess, all her hair braided and coiled up tight as a vow; it made this meeting seem more different than their others than even the memory of the note she’d written did. “Some bird gave me a letter from someone pretending to be you. I knew it was fake, ‘cause it had the word sorry in it.” His smile was a half-sickle on its way to full weapon and a thousand tiny things with sharp edges seemed to have taken up residence just beneath his too-tight skin.
It was awful. It was amazing.
“Just thought you should know there’s an imposter before you get smitten, or whatever.”
WELL I SAW A SNAKE IN AN APPLE TREE
YOU KNOW I DIDN'T TRUST A WORD THAT HE HISSED AT ME, NO
@
