“Then we’ll meet it,” he said, and it was Reichenbach he thought of then - the Crow King as Acton had loved him best, blood in his teeth and wild hair all a tangle, the way his booming laugh could quiet a room. Reich had loved a challenge, begged the world to bring one on. For the first time since the Wall, the thought of the formed, vanished king brought something different to Acton’s face than a bitter twist of lips - a smile. “Always.”
Memory softened all things, it seemed. And for one of the first times in his life, it felt almost good to not be angry.
There was still an apology, living somewhere between his gut and his throat, black as charcoal and dry as ash and willing to be said. Like he’d swallowed a moth that flew up and tapped its chalky wings against the back of his teeth. I’m sorry I left.
Did he owe that to her? He remembered still that first night they’d met - follow me, those words again, and how when he’d turned around she was gone as surely as if she’d never been. Only an apple core in the dirt was left.
Maybe they didn’t owe one another anything. Maybe they could just begin from here.
This time she followed him, and his smile in the dark was hidden from her as she tapped her horn against the bold plane of his shoulder, like a backwards fairytale. He knew even then that he would never be a knight - his courage, his skill, was of a very different sort - but he had always loved to pretend, anyway.
So he did, as they walked, as Isra brushed by him in the narrow hallway and he answered with a gleam of a grin the dare in her eyes. He pretended it was not strange at all, that it did not hurt even a little (old scars, festering wounds) to walk a path he knew so well through stripes of moonlight and shadow and end up outside the king’s quarters.
Acton only paused once, to cast his amber gaze to her and try and guess whether she had been in this room, whether she had made it her own. He realized then he did not know where she slept, now she was a queen.
And then he shouldered open the door, and breathed in the incense and smoke, scents like ghosts he couldn’t see that carried him away. Almost he spoke, but instead he shook his head, the black cloud of his mane settling again around him, limned by moonlight, then headed for a dusty bookcase in the corner adjacent to a bay of windows.
“He was never much of a reader,” he said, half to himself, wearing a grin like a sickle-moon of memory. And then he nosed along the row of books until he reached one that was not a book at all, and gave it a sharp pull. With a groan the whole case slid away, and Acton slipped through the open space and into a brief but consuming darkness.
Only a moment and it was over, and he stepped into a little rooftop garden, a mosaic of stars under his hooves and a river, a flood, a world of stars above him. Night jasmine bloomed, climbing up a cedar trellis, wild and tangled with no one left to care for it but smelling all the sweeter for it. And Acton turned back to watch the unicorn slip into the blue and silver light of the night, and almost had to catch his breath.
Safer, then, to joke.
“I hate to think of how many trysts this garden has seen,” he said, arching a brow. “But I don’t think there’s anyone left to remember it now.”
Except for Raum - but Acton pushed those thoughts away almost roughly. The Ghost had no place in this moment. It was only for them.
oh, good lord, they've all gone belly-up
@Isra
