“Yes.” The word was bitten off, hard as scorched and dried earth, daring her to question him further.
What Acton knew was that loyalty was a two-way street, and his love for Reichenbach did not matter a whit if his king’s love had shifted to something else (something smirking, with scales of ivory and gold, and eyes that glinted like a snakes’). For years the Crows had laughed at their leader’s wayward heart, but none of them were laughing anymore. Reichenbach had been a home for all of them, bastards and orphans and misguided children, and he had made a home out of the Night Court.
And then in the space of a handful of decisions, he had let that home become a cage.
Acton remembered what it was like, to live in a cage. To be punished for doing the only things he knew how to do. He remembered what it was to be taken advantage of, to be manipulated, to be promised his freedom someday. Soon, soon, if only he listened and did what he was told.
He had tried to obey, and it had changed nothing, and so freed himself the only way he could.
It had been harder the second time, but he’d done it all the same, and he’d rather drink himself to death than allow himself a second to regret it. Besides, if it was only him he might yet have stayed – but there was Raum, and Sabine and Rhoswen, and Isra and her endless fear. The stakes had been too high.
And anyway, Acton would never have been able to keep his mouth shut. The thought twisted his lips into a brief, incongruous smile. “I suppose I could have stayed and been eaten by that oversized lizard. Would have solved problems for a few people.”
What would he have done, had Seraphina voiced her disappointment then? Laughed, maybe, at how wildly different they were – a point her next comment only drove in deeper. He felt something like the same disappointment, the same lack of understanding.
“There is always a choice.” To run, to fight, to say fuck-all to the gods and burn the current way of things to the ground. Of this he was certain. She could have done any number of things, just as the Night Court regime could have, and he shook his head at her almost dismissively, like a wave of his hand. “Not making it doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”
Her next question followed him like a ghost, and when the words finally caught him he paused like a boat at the end of its tether. Acton barely took the time to consider it, just shrugged a burnished shoulder before replying.
“I want what everyone does. I want the people I care about with me, and the freedom to do what I want.” Of course there was more to it than that, but he was too hazy-drunk for details, and anyway that was the bulk of it. The buckskin had never cared much for power or prestige; he wanted to have fun, wanted to be good at what he did, wanted the brotherhood of his little rag-tag family.
But his family was fractured, he was purposeless, he was miserable. He felt his lip curl in something that was between a sneer and a snarl, and forced it away with a swallow.
“And I want another drink. So unless you’re planning on buying me one…” He threw her a last burning glance, wondering at the way her skin seemed to drift and shift like smoke under the moonlight. If he was looking for something in her gaze, he did not find it. “Have a lovely night, Seraphina.” When he turned away from her, he could still feel the weight of her gaze settled like an spear-point between his shoulder blades, and he did not care for it one bit.
With the right mixture of liquor and luck, maybe he could forget this conversation had happened at all.
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