Acton had ever been a man of simple pleasures.
He was a bachelor because it didn’t seem very interesting to be anything else; what fun could there be, in the same thing day after day? Love was nothing more than a fetter and the kind of neck-nuzzling affection Reichenbach so often displayed with his paramours made Acton gag like a preteen boy.
But this was different (of course it was different; love always was). There was nothing boring about Bexley Briar. In fact, the magician didn’t think he’d ever encountered anything so difficult, so fist-clenchingly obstinate, so likely to drive him to madness or violence.
It was wonderful the way a car crash was, all glisten and noise.
Raum was not wrong (when was he?): she unfocused the hell out of the buckskin.
So caught up was he by the same glitter-and-gold that he did not notice quite the interest with which the Ghost was studying her, and that was probably for the best. She always made his bloodiest emotions rise red to the surface, and not even his brother would be safe from his wrath if Acton had interpreted the glint in those ice-blue eyes.
As it was, he licked his teeth as Raum’s gaze dropped to his silver-scarred knee, but he lifted his dark chin, too, and his eyes burned like a tire fire. “That was just the buildup, brother. Now comes the payoff.”
He noted the shudder, but Acton misinterpreted its source. Oh, they were a murder of Crows with blood on their hands, but their violence could not be more different. Acton had all the discretion of a Molotov cocktail; he was spark to explosion in thirty seconds. Raum…
Well, there was a reason premeditated crimes carried a heavier sentence. But not even the buckskin could guess how dark twisted the thoughts of the silver stallion.
But with a word Raum drives all thoughts of women and gods from Acton’s head.
Gone. The stallion’s eyes fasten on the silver man’s, hot with fire and wide with surprise. “Gone?” He felt like he’d been pushed from the hilltop; if he were walking he would stagger. Suddenly he could not have named where his insides lay; everything in him was just a black hole.
Reichenbach had been Acton’s gravity. Without that –
He shook his head, their holy surroundings swimming back. What a joke divinity was, what a laugh life was all together.
There is Raum, silver as a knife, shifting like deadly mercury. The kind of man you could not hold for long without poisoning yourself – and Acton’s closest brother.
But gone --
He blew out a breath. He narrowed his eyes. He felt a yawning, directionless anger, familiar as any of his friends – the Crows who’d fled the nest they’d built.
“I told you, Raum. I worship no god.” Almost he looked away, cast his glance back over the milling regimes and the crowds that hung around them, hungry for scraps of attention like a flock of starlings. He pulled in a long breath, and did not look for a flash of gold amid the dusty chaos. “But I will go back with you, to see what remains.”
But oh, Acton was not the kind of boy made for building – not when everything in him wanted only to burn.
MOUTH IS MADE OF METAL
POCKET FULL OF YELLOW
@Raum BOY SAY WHAT
