[P] r.i.p. to my youth;

[Acton]

Acton these violent delights have violent ends   “She was not the one who crumbled Denocte.” Acton met that stare, blue and cold and faraway as a circle of sky from the bottom of a well. His own was its opposite, though just as sure; it was ice and not fire but both felt like burning. How long since he had stood so close to his brother? Strange, now, to look at the smooth silver of his skin and wonder how such a man of moonlight could ever survive in Solterra. Great as Raum’s other skills were, the most dangerous of them (more dangerous, even, than his lovingly-honed blade) was his resolve. Where Acton was a flame that flickered and leapt and drifted with the wind, hungry for anything at reach, Raum was determined as a glacier. Acton could only hope that his mind was not made up. At Raum’s insult the buckskin lifted his teeth in a skull’s sort of grin. He could not disagree, not with his hands so dirty with soot and sin, not with the way he’d always gloried in their work. It was not until the Ghost said soft that Acton’s gaze flicked back, sharp. “You're the one who asked if I was shedding my feathers, Raum. I didn't think this was the something new you had in mind.” Left unsaid was what he saw as the bloody beating heart of the matter, the thing that had started the fracture: the Crows abandoned us.   Maybe that was all the story came down to. Orphans abandoned and clinging to what family they could. In the dark of the cave Acton thought about meeting Isra on the docks, as alone and hungry as he had once been; he thought of Isra as he’d left her in her rooms, and the space between the two memories. “Oh, pious brother,” he said, and for the first time tonight his smile was true (and leering, too, just a little). “I knew there was a little heretic in you.” When Raum did not move (of course, his cold stone, his glacier ice) Acton stepped forward, his footsteps quiet as ones from a very different cave, a very different day. It was then that he caught the scent of blood, a copper separate and darker than the dank mineral smell of the cave; his eyes fell to the cuts along Raum’s sides, to the missing daggers that were almost obscene in their absence. His brows rose in surprise, but not as great as it might have been - sharp in his memory is Isra in her castle, clothed in rage. Isra who could turn wood to silk to gravestone. “I'm not so sure she needs me,” he said, lifting his gaze again to Raum’s, and his smile has gone crooked and strange. The words were spoken mockingly, but the truth of them struck him like a fist. Acton tossed his head, disguising his unease, summoning again his gunpowder grin. “You’re the one hidden away in a cave, bleeding and skulking.” @Raum