It was a strange and lonely evening he spent, walking the hallways of a castle he knew so well.
How many times, in how many states of sobriety, had he covered this ground? There was something soothing about the sound of his feet echoed back at him, muffled by the familiar tapestries along the wall. Around each turn he expected to meet Mila, her grin curved like one of her knives, or Raglan on some errand, or Reichenbach himself, asking if he wanted a drink.
But there was no one to drink with him tonight, and Acton had been sober since Solterra. That did not stop him from feeling like this was a dream-maybe-nightmare, some game of déjà vu, an evening plucked from his memories and made strange.
It was too quiet for this castle, and his shadow stretched along the walls behind him, the only part of Acton that lingered anywhere. He moved like a ghost through now-empty rooms, pausing only in what had been his own. Everything was as he’d left it months ago (strange, how that could be), but the buckskin couldn’t bring himself to do so much as shuffle a deck of cards. The noise in his head wouldn’t let him rest yet, and so with a last glance he was gone again, stalking the halls.
When he found Isra it was nowhere near the quarters that had been the king’s, and for that he was grateful. She was about as alone as she could expect to be, anymore, and the buckskin drifted toward her with a languidness he didn’t feel. His eyes still caught like sparks, but lately he felt like little more than damp coals.
Still he smiled at her, even as he dipped his muzzle in as much a gesture of respect as he’d ever shown anyone.
“Long way from stealing apples now,” he said, and though his voice was uncharacteristically soft it still echoed strange and full against the smooth stone walls. “And you’re about to have a whole lot of new friends, too.” He’d seen the way they looked at her, there on the castle steps with blood and saltwater still drenching them all. It had made something tighten in him, dark and unsettled, because it was not so different than the way they had looked at Reichenbach, too. The way he had looked at the fled once-king, not so long ago.
People were always looking for a savior. How often did that work out for either side? But the unicorn was wary and world-wise, and he did not worry for her as much as he might have once.
“I’m glad it was you, Isra.” The words were quieter yet, small hushed things in the semidark space, and he meant them all despite the way his heart beat its fists against his ribcage and called him a betrayer. “Congratulations,” he added like an afterthought, but what he really meant to say was I’m sorry.
Seraphina was right – he had abandoned his home twice over now, once on purpose and once on accident. And maybe the shape of it was all different, after fire and flood and the abandonment of an entire regime, but Denocte was still his mother all the same. He would not make himself an orphan again.
oh, good lord, they've all gone belly-up
@Isra
