Rhoswen had guided him through the canyon, Rhoswen and her fire, as the snow fell thick and fast around them, heaping walls of white far above their heads. It was a strange and solemn echo of his first journey through Elatus, and he did not try to find any caves in the cliffs, not even for brief shelter.
Even knowing the strange weather (a plague, a punishment) that had befallen Solterra, he did not expect the wreckage that was Denocte when first he reached the city of starlight.
Acton might have wept, but all his tears had long ago been burned to ash, and were dust only in his throat. So it was, dry-eyed, that he walked through the streets of his home, dread and silt dragging at each step.
It was a bombardment to the senses. His eyes did not know what to make of it, his nose was overwhelmed by brine and blood, and horror grew in his heart – and that was when he heard her voice like a mourning bell, a drawing bell. So Isra lived – how grateful he found himself, for that mercy. What could he do but follow her voice to the steps of the castle, site of so many sharp-edged memories?
It took him until the end of her speech to realize what she meant, by lead. It was not until Moira called her Queen that he understood that Caligo had at last made her choice among the wreckage of a city of dreams.
Acton could not disagree with the goddess’s choice. It was something else that made his stomach clench, his thoughts churn dark.
Anyone who touches you will pay in blood. Isn’t that what he’d told the unicorn, there in the markets so long ago, when she was nothing but a slat-ribbed stranger thieving to eat? But Acton had let his words become a lie. When the regime promised punishment and burned the pass, what had he done but flee like a rat off a ship?
He did not like the way shame felt, heavy in his breast as a rockslide. He did not like how he still felt pulled in a dozen directions and none of them seemed quite right. He did not like the way his heart beat against his ribs, fierce and fine as ever, but he did not know who it beat for.
And he looked at them now – so few, so few – covered in blood and dust. Only a remnant of what had been, with the weary-wide eyes of refugees, and Acton’s rage then for the king that had abandoned them ran white-hot through every last capillary beneath his burnished skin.
Still he said nothing, but he stood solid among them, and when his gaze met the tender ocean-blue of Isra’s he smiled.
I know the good die young
so let's let it pass, let's grow old and wither
