For Acton there has never been a difference between magic and love.
Both set his body alight with their peculiar chemistry, that flutter-rush of blood in the veins that crowed alive alive alive. The world was a stage but so many stages had also been Acton’s world, and even before there had been real magic it had felt the same, a promise made again and again and never broken.
What was real magic, anyway? What was real love? It only mattered to those who could see the difference.
Only –
In that moment after he touched her he could tell the difference. There was nothing of a god in their own strange alchemy; Bexley was her own religion, blazing light for illumination, for rage, for burning everything clean.
He had to close his eyes against the bright flash; for a moment his mind told him it was a reflection of sunlight off her necklace, nothing more, but the fire that washed through him what belied that. So quick, so strong it felt more like cold than burning, and Acton jerked away, startled.
There was no comfort in her gaze (but when had there ever been?) nor any across her skin – just light, just heat, just moving, molten gold. He made a little noise of surprise, of something just short of understanding.
Acton had already forgotten about the gods (the fact of their summoning, not his twist-mouthed jokes about such things as sacrifice) but the prayers he’d had on his mind had never been for them, anyway. You couldn’t be accused of sinning when you didn’t believe.
She spun to face him and he stopped short, a little cloud of dust rising up, coloring his black-flecked legs with touches of gray. He was still too surprised to say anything, and when his vision tripled in a drunkard’s mirage he was reminded of nothing more than that night in the markets, vision dizzy, cloudy-brained, wondering if Bexley Briar was really truly going to kill him.
“So it seems,” he agreed, and there was something both frightening and exhilarating about this girl in triplicate. His own magic – rarely used since his departure – seemed like nothing better than a parlor trick in comparison. “Hell of a trick.”
Maybe there was value in being devout, after all.
Even when the figures faded, even when her bright-burning dwindled like the sun slipping behind a cloudbank, the brightness lingered for a moment, hazy in his vision, a little echo of her light.
He blinked once, twice, and was grateful for the tone of her voice, a return to familiar ground. Acton’s lips started to shape a grin, all muscle memory. “Your dazzling wit, obviously. And all the things you could teach me…”
Acton thought of the last time they had been this close, near enough her breath stirred the fine hairs on his cheek, the bridge of his nose. He thought of the time before that, and before, and before. Each time a little closer, like circling, dying stars – but each time, just maybe, a little further from violence. Headed for a different kind of crash.
The realization of his nervousness is as surprising to him as the reveal of her magic; how much easier it is, to disguise the truth with a crooked grin, with phrases with double-meanings. For all his swagger and bravado, for all his chasing thrills, Acton is just a Neverland kid, the little orphan boy who defied the world to make him grow up.
“Like insults, and how to bring a man to his knees.”
YOU'VE GOT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER
BUT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER'S MINE
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