There is a wild keenness to Acton’s features. They are sharp, like knives and gleam like razor edges. There is nothing safe about this buckskin Crow, nothing that could ever fully put Raum at ease. Indeed, they were brothers, they would fight and kill and die together. Yet they would forever chafe as much as they bonded with smiles and love.
Attack. Strike now. The words slithered their way all around their small cave. It spoke in corners with a voice so similar and yet so different to Acton’s. Over and over the cave murmured his words, and together the Crows listened.
“Reichenbach will not be pleased if we strike without his knowledge. Shall we bring him into it, or keep this strictly Crow business?” His skull tilts, his electric blue eyes sparking, even in the darkness of this cave.
Acton, this boy of sly smiles and secret gestures, suddenly falls still. Listen. And Raum does. Both their breaths fall quiet, even as their hearts begin to race, to spike to thunder like a thousand feet.
A third heart beats, in the shadows, in the hidden crevices of the cave’s mouth. But she is quiet, even in her shock, and Raum knows nothing of her presence. His gaze falls back from the mouth of the cave, searching out Acton’s grin in the black. Only the Magician would still smile when their guards were up.
“What did you hear brother?” Raum murmurs, a voice as soft as a whisper that not even the cave can truly echo it. Thoughts of Torstein appearing from the shadowed recesses of the temple have Raum’s stomach twisting with dread. He had been lucky then, but surely the Warden was only buying his time?
In silence he turns, if only to ease his own mind, and walks toward the mouth of the cave. Were there listeners within the canyon? Only the Ghost was quiet enough to find out.
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![[Image: x341oLX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/x341oLX.png)
You're one microscopic cog
in his catastrophic plan
in his catastrophic plan
