If Acton was the spark then Raum was the smoke, following after, silent and lovely and suffocating. Deadly in its beauty, each rising twist on the wind, a thing you couldn’t hold in your hand but that glinted silver in the light like a knife’s edge.
How could Acton have ever thought a fire like him could be snuffed out? Smoke was a resilient thing, could be coaxed from embers thought dead, and quicksilver changed to fill any shape you put it in but retained its killing properties.
Are you ready, the Ghost said, and the buckskin shifted in the darkness. He thought of the burning gold of Bexley, of all the fire and passion of the sun court; how was it that Raum could be as cold and distant as the moon, yet quicken his heart all the same with blackwater words?
Was he ready? Acton had never taken well to change – it was such a different animal than simple chaos. A plan for a crime, that was something different; the magician could play a thousand roles, take a hundred routes, to meet a goal. But a change such as this, the only family he’d known for years burned away then vanished in the space of a day –
But what else could he be? This was all he’d known, all he’d wanted, and here at the top of the world those two things seemed like the only things that hadn’t changed.
“I’ll see you soon,” he said, and it carried the sound of a swear, bright as new blood drawn by a silver knife.
For a long while, there in the cool darkness, he looked after the place where his brother had gone – and for once Acton wore no expression on his face at all.
MOUTH IS MADE OF METAL
POCKET FULL OF YELLOW
@Raum a sucky closer
