[P] devil's in a rush

[Acton]

Acton these violent delights have violent ends It was colder, this far from the citadel, and the trees were nothing but black skeletons waiting ahead, and everyone wise was already under the covers – but Acton was a torch in the night. They were playing a dangerous game. The Magician Crow was an illusionist, which meant mostly that he was an actor – but he doesn’t know, beneath the wine and the growing burn of anger and distrust, that Bexley is playing, too. Soon it might get to the point where it doesn’t matter who is lying and who is telling the truth, because consequences are always honest. Her laugh is what does him in. It grated on him, sliced him more deftly than any knife. That and the insult he perceived to his countrymen, their limited options. The change in his breath was audible, and their rougher path did not account for it; he sucked the air in through his teeth, now, as though it might cool him. All he could hear was her giggle, the perfect auditory accompaniment to the flick of her tail against his chest, slapping the scent of her in his face. It would be so easy to catch her. His lips peeled back from bone-pale teeth and his heart raced, the blood so hot and swift beneath both their thin skins. Hadn’t he wanted a war? This was how it would start. Acton doesn’t know if he’s losing himself, in these moments, or finding his truest version. All he can see is red (but it isn’t red, it’s gold, it’s her) – And so he did what he has learned he must do, in these situations, when anger threatened to blind him and make him the worst kind of fool. He ran his tongue across his teeth and put himself back in that cell, back on that stage, a captive, a child. All those hungry eyes on him, and the old man’s pockets full of coin Acton had earned. And he lit the spark that would change his life. When he opened his eyes, it was with laughter full in his throat, spilling out into the cool autumn air. “By the gods,”  he said, his voice half-admiring (and his gaze still on her ass), “you’re more of a nightmare than anyone I know. Thank Calligo that you aren’t the one Reich went head-over-hooves for.”   His thoughts were his again, and still he followed her, letting her open up the distance between them. One length, two, more – it hardly mattered, now, with the soil starting to become sand beneath their hooves. @Bexley