He watched the door dissolve to silk and pearls, a night sky hung with distant stars, and wondered at the way she remade everything she touched. Her magic was nothing like his own - all flash and illusion, nothing but a lie that would dissolve as soon as he wasn’t there to keep it.
For the first time Acton wondered if she was remaking him, too. And if so - into what?
It was lucky she said his name then; his thoughts were leading him down a path he balked at, a spiral away into the dark where he couldn’t see the landing. Not that Acton had ever thought much of leaping before he looked, but things had changed. Like a door into a curtain that parted around him like a dark sea.
Acton thought nothing of the pillows when he stepped into her quarters, his body bright and hot as a new-stoked forge. His lit-fuse gaze was only on Isra, searching her as thoroughly as a doctor’s hand. What he saw there was nothing worse than what he’d seen after a hundred back-alley brawls; how many times had he or one of the other Crows limped home with blood crusting hard, with bruises blossoming like night-blooming flowers? Yet it made the buckskin set his teeth.
Finally, finally, his eyes found hers, and what he saw there caught him by surprise. Better than anyone he could recognize rage, the want that burned like a fever and cried out for blood.
Acton did not smile then, but neither did he ask the question that had been beating along with his heart - how are you?
Instead he considered her, appraised her the way he might have the Twins after a fight, or Reichenbach, or Raum himself. Instead he wondered if his queen had changed herself, too.
“What did he say?” the magician asked at last, and his voice was still rough with smoke. Within him that fire was feeding and building, and the scent of blood still hung in the air between them.
And Acton wondered where the Ghost was, and if they were still brothers, and if Raum bled, too.
@Isra
