When he closed his eyes, Acton could almost imagine he was home.
There was the music, there was the laughter, there were the scents of food and wine. Of course, Acton knew an illusion when he saw one, and to think Delumine could ever stand in for Denocte was a leap not even the greenest audience would make.
But the buckskin was also good at pretending, and so for Isra and Sabine’s sake he buried the rage that simmered inside him. Anger was nothing new, but he felt hurt – betrayed, even – by the man he had called king. It was a wound that would heal crooked, if at all.
Acton didn’t know who led the Night Court any longer, but it sure as hell wasn’t the Reichenbach he loved.
Still, there was nothing he could do about it at this moment. Instead, he performed a version of himself that wasn’t gut-wrenched, bone-weary, or badly homesick. Earlier he’d let Sabine twine blue flowers into the dark tangle of his mane, and now he stood before a gaggle of children, teaching them how to shuffle a deck smooth as water and pulling coins from behind their ears. They were a good audience: they couldn’t tell his laughter was fake, couldn’t tell his heart was a black bruise, couldn’t tell the rare moments of his dreaming lately were filled with smoke.
And then a flash of gold caught his eye, and the coins all vanished. Acton’s knee gave a sympathetic pang, and his lips curled out of muscle memory. He told the kids to run along and, shockingly, they obeyed; maybe it was the promise he’d show them more later, or maybe it was the wicked glint in his eye, a window to the blaze within.
He was almost grateful for the way his heart kicked when she said his name. It made him feel like himself again.
“Hey there, Goldilocks,” he answered, and his grin was a crooked kind of thing. There was a ghost of an ache in his jaw, but he managed not to limp as he closed the distance between them. The trek from the Night Court to here had been a hell of a thing, but it had at least made him stronger.
“Never thought I’d see you wearing flowers,” he said, and stretched out his muzzle to touch one but dropped it just before contact. All the while he watched her, mindful of her tongue, her teeth, her true-blue eyes. Waiting for impact. “Damned if it doesn’t suit you.”
He made no effort to draw away again; he was too fond of the way his blood raced hot hot hot under his skin when he was this close to her, too eager for the memory of chaos, even of pain. Anything but the numbness that so far defined his life in Dawn.
But he said nothing of the bet or the blood that stood between them, or why he was so very far from home.
@
these violent delights have violent ends
