Tonight was the night.
She fingered the interior of her left arm where her flesh was soft and smooth, come sunrise that delicate patch of skin would run through with the mark of a commitment to last a lifetime.
She would not wed, twenty years behind her, and she knew she would never wed, no matter the intentions of those boys her mother was so fond of. They could not own her, only one could own her, she would not treat her commitment with betrayal. Tonight she would make a marriage of a different sort, and her oath would be her companion and lover and infidelity was not an option. A vow to become soldier and disciple not to a mere man but to a cause, so much more than a man, a god.
"You are ready", his voice was textured like frost upon a window pane and soft as falling snow. He moved without sound, gliding across the ground like the creeping chill of winter and she had not heard him enter.
"My Lord", if he was the cold wind of the breathing winter and timeless and untouchable as sparkling crystal her body was fluid, flowing magma with red blood in her veins. Her words fervent and heated as the glide of flesh upon flesh, she knelt before him.
For a long moment there was no motion and no sound and only her prostrate at his feet, her neck barred as animal would show its throat in a show of submission, for him to do what he would.
And in those breathless seconds a touch was bestowed with the trace of fingertips upon her nape, floating above her skin and long, dexterous fingers pulled the pins from her hair. It had taken her nearly an hour to to smooth her stubborn curls to her satisfaction and in a moment her hard work was undone and she sighed in delight as he coaxed her hair down her back.
"Not so formal Bella. Here onward you will not fritter away hours with such things. No longer are you a lady of your house, you are a soldier and you need not concern yourself such triviality as appearances", his hand abruptly knotted into the curls at the base of her skull and he jerked her head up sharply to meet his pale, blood shot eyes, "I will not tolerate such things any longer, your time is mine and you will not waste it".
"Forgive me My Lord", she answered with the soft, contrite tones of an automaton but his hand was still caught in her hair and her breath was hot as her breast heaved and she prayed that from his vantage point that he might see what she offered as she continued to exhale warmth against his hip. She did not dare touch him and yet she longed for him to acquiesce to the unspoken request. Her nails drove into her palms with the effort not to tempt fate.
He stared for a moment in a sort of innocent bemusement and she could feel him, weaving through her mind, seeing what she saw, feeling what she felt and she was uncertain whether it was by accident or subconscious design that she imagined the taste of the white flesh beneath the black robes.
His large eyes flared, the livid, blood sclera ever bright around the pale iris, "Bella", he breathed. A warning.
"Forgive me", she reiterated and he took back his hand as if she had burned him.
It was a for a fraction of a moment that he seemed to reel before his face returned to a perfect mask of cool apathy. Indifferent as clear crystal ice over the river, but for a moment his reddened eyes had seemed to burn the way she wanted to and in a flash of insight she recognized what she had done to him.
The legilemency that he employed to protect himself against falsehooods had turned against him and barraged him with desires hat were not his own and he was certainly struggling to shake her emotion from his own mind just as she was desperately attempting to cool the mortified flush that had risen to her cheeks.
She had no right to to inflict her desires upon him, she was a woman, not a silly little girl with a crush and she knew however futile her attempts might be she must force herself to try each and every time to crush the notion that he would ever feel as she felt. Hope was not a saviour here, only an instrument of torture that she had created and employed upon herself.
Across the small room he observed her stone faced, waiting. Several long, disquieting, moments passed and when she was certain he was simply selecting the most pleasing way to punish her, and certainly he was within his right to punish, he said simply "Be in The Great Room in twenty minutes, not a moment sooner or later. Lucius will have taught you what must be done, I'm sure".
With a final hard look, tinged only just with disappointment, he swept away, but paused in the door way for just a moment, his long, beautiful, fingers curling around the edge of the frame as he glanced back over his shoulder. "Business before pleasure, always Bella. Do not ask for something you have not earned".
He was gone and she was alone with her stunned silence. Her humiliated tears leaking down her face and dripping over her lips which where curled into a triumphant smile, laughing quietly.
He did see. He had seen as she wished him to, and one day, perhaps if she could prove herself the most useful, the most faithful, then she would have something better than a dream, not reality because ordinary women did not find pleasure in the bodies of gods, but tangible nonetheless. If this hope, this unbreakable line of hope that he had just offered her was meant to be her punishment it did not matter. Her skin felt flushed and fevered and she struggled not to lose herself behind her minds eye and the spinning fantasies.
And then when eighteen minutes had elapsed she stared deep into the mirror, and inhaled slowly until her expression had been wiped from her face with the dampness and her mind was blank and smooth, so he would find nothing human there.
The Lestrange brothers went first, the elder giving her obvious looks that she was too remote now to notice, she stood beside her brother in law, a portrait of composure. And then it was her and she vaguely felt her feet carry to the place before him where she knelt until he was satisfied she had displayed ample subservience and he instructed of her, "Come My Bella" and his voice was a richer timber than she had ever known him to use, she so longed to look into his face and watch him watch her but she kept her eyes lowered until bidden otherwise when he offered his hand and she slid her sleeve back and gave her forearm over to his hard grip, she could see, just out of the corner of her eye his wand raising to the spot where he would sear every stroke of his emblem into her skin.
She knew what was coming, had heard too many stories not to, but unlike the others she did not flinch with the first touch of the smooth yew to her flesh, though it burned, as no ordinary stick would burn and her mouth opened and closed in a scream that never left her body. She breathed the pain in and out, focusing on the mark appearing on her skin and even when her arm was trembling in his fingers her mind remained quiet and unbothered until at last the final flourish was complete and he bade her raise her eyes and the silent approval and gratitude passed between them as pure as they were not.
And she only just caught the tiny flash of desire she was certain he did not know had reached his eyes.
She smiled then, her mind impenetrable but her joy authentic as anything, before her respectful facade resurfaced and once again formed upon her features a mask of dispassion.
"My Lord".