In a hundred years there might be no earth to remember. Hell, all of it – from the crashing sea to the wailing wind at the final summit Veneror – could be vanished tomorrow. If the last months in Novus had taught him anything (and Acton had proven himself a slow learner, lately) it was all the things he’d thought so certain were no more real than his own illusions.
It was freeing, in a way.
She could burn him up now with the power in her veins – an offering of blood, of smoke, of flesh – and he wouldn’t mind. He might not even notice, so intent is he on the way their bodies fit and don’t, all that space that had yawned between them closed up like a stitched wound.
There was no way she could see the crooked smile that bloomed when she spoke, but maybe she could feel it against the smooth curve of her neck. Certainly she could feel his teeth, delicate, attentive, working to earn a shiver from her that had nothing to do with the winter around them.
When he laughed it was little more than a warm breath against the bright gold of her coat. “Impressed? With me? Maybe the world is ending.”
There was more he could say (it is Acton, after all; there was always more he could say), but for once he had no interest in words.
Acton did not think of an ending. They had already had fire, and a kind of death, a body abandoned to blood and dust – what was the worst that could happen, now?
It was not the future he thought of, then, but the woman in front of him. He made a study of her with all the intent and care he once gave to learning a new trick, as beneath the bare branches their bodies melted to nothing more than heat and burnished gold.
@
these violent delights have violent ends
