"I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it."
— Anaïs Nin
London — 1975
Tonight, she was wearing red.
The long-sleeved, low-cut gown clinging to her every curve was not bright Gryffindor scarlet but the rich dark crimson of fresh blood, a stark wound of color against the whiteness of her skin and the blackness of her hair; matching the rouge on her lips. When she tilted her head back to laugh at something the Undersecretary of Muggle Relations, Nathaniel Jugson, had just said, a string of rubies at her throat caught the light and glittered, winking red and sharp.
I watched from across the room as she raised her glass of sparkling elf-made wine for a toast, standing at the center of a circle of society figures and Ministry elites. Her words were inaudible over the music and the chatter of the reception hall, but the admirers around her smiled and fawned, clinking their glasses together with a ringing clang.
I was far from the only one observing from afar. Bellatrix drew eyes to her as easily as breathing, pulling the rest of them toward her like a blazing black hole, inescapable and devouring. All the others gravitated to her and around her, and whether they looked on her with envy, hatred, lust, or admiration, they couldn't help but look.
"You're a lucky man, Lestrange." I tore my gaze away from the mesmerizing spectacle that was my wife to glance at the man at my side. Claudius Selwyn—recently named one of the youngest members of the Wizengamot after a Death Eater raid had killed his liberal, Muggle-loving predecessor—was watching her too, a slight smirk playing about the corners of his mouth. "Every Heir in wizarding Britain would have killed to make Bellatrix Black his bride—and you're the one who managed it." Selwyn looked sidelong at me, raising a brow. "How do you manage it?"
I smiled tightly, taking a slow sip from my goblet of firewhiskey before answering. "I suspect she would rather resent the idea of being managed."
Selwyn snorted. "Yes, I suspect she would."
Across the room, Bella was leaning in to whisper something in Jugson's ear—his eyes, which had been fixated on her décolletage, went wide. I took another sip of firewhiskey. Selwyn was watching me closely. "Speaking of eligible daughters of the House of Black, do pass along my congratulations on her sister's engagement," he said smoothly. "Lucius seems positively smitten."
"How fortunate for me," I said curtly, "that Lucius would seem to be the only Heir in wizarding Britain who desired a different Black bride."
Selwyn chuckled, indulgent. "Yes, well, no one could accuse you of the same taste in women. Madam Lestrange and the future Madam Malfoy are as alike as Lumos and Nox." That was one way to put it. "You know," he added dryly, "for all that the Blacks are... shall we say... as traditionalist as they come, their daughters certainly seem to have arranged their own marriages. One might even accuse them all of love matches."
The word choice was pointed: all, rather than both. Andromeda Black had eloped with the Mudblood three months ago, taking a good portion of her inheritance with her and ensuring her disinheritance was as scandalous as possible (standards for scandal were high, in a House with a runaway Heir, but somehow the Blacks kept topping themselves): she was, by all accounts, pregnant. 'Love match' indeed.
Bella's rage had been... obliterating. Only a bloody battle with the Order had been able to channel the force of her cataclysmic fury. They were still finding pieces of Benjamin Fenwick.
Selwyn was glancing innocently about the room. "Betrothal or no, quite unlike Lucius to miss an event like this... I would have thought he'd be here."
There was no chance of that: Bella had slipped a very potent potion into Malfoy's tea when her sister had come calling with her new fiancé two days prior. Lucius, I felt sure, was currently in no state to be attending Ministry galas. Hopefully dear Cissy was enjoying playing nurse.
"Rodolphus, darling, is my brother boring you?" Celia Selwyn, curvaceous and charming as ever, had swept in to save me a reply. I gave her a quick once-over, having seen her only in passing since Hogwarts, where I seen quite a lot of her whenever Bella and I had an estrangement or a particularly nasty fight. Her arranged marriage to much-older Wizengamot warlock Thaddeus Travers upon graduation seemed to have dulled her shine a bit; made her less vivacious, more subdued—if anyone could not be accused of a love match, it was Celia.
"These Ministry functions are always so dull," she was complaining. "I can't listen to another morbid lecture on the latest attacks or those ghastly Inferi, I simply can't. I don't know how you stand it, Claudius."
"With the help of alcohol, naturally. Lestrange here has the right idea." Selwyn waved over one of the charmed serving trays floating drinks around the room.
Celia gave her little trill of a laugh, turning to me with a coquettish look. "Firewhiskey, is it? May I have a sip? It's been so long; I've missed the taste." She raised the goblet to her mouth without waiting for an answer, then licked her lips, slow and provocative. "Delicious."
"Stealing other people's drinks, Madam Travers? How very typical."
I turned with a slow smile.
Bella had crossed the room and come up behind me, still surrounded by sycophants. Celia and all the others dimmed beside her, faded to nothingness against the magnetic intensity of Bella's presence. Having her so close by so suddenly was maddening—how enticing, how entrancing she was, close enough that I could rip that crimson gown to shreds and take her there in the center of the gala if I had a modicum less self-control.
Her Black-grey eyes were bright and canny, fixed on Celia with the same look she gave her prey. Celia shrank back, releasing the goblet at once. I handed it to Bella, murmuring in her ear, "You are far more intoxicating."
She downed the rest of the drink with a smirk, eyes never leaving Celia's until she had swallowed the very last drop. After shoving the empty goblet into the eager hands of one of her admirers, she entwined her fingers in my hair and pulled me close for a deep, electrifying kiss—firewhiskey still sparkling on her tongue.
"Remind me," I dimly heard someone drawl, "to ensure the two of you liven up all our little Ministry parties."
Bella and I disentangled ourselves with effort. We had attracted a bit of an audience: some amused, some scandalized. I straightened my dress robes, unfazed: I was used to the dazzling spotlight of Bella's attentions, both blinding me and causing everyone else to stare.
It took a moment to register who was now standing at the center of the cluster of guests around us: a tall, imposing man in tailored officiate robes; the very host of this Ministry gala.
Harold Minchum, the new Minister for Magic.
"Harold." Bella extended her hand like it was a gift, and Minchum pressed his lips to her ring as if paying tribute to a queen.
In a sense, he was, of course: the Blacks were not precisely wrong to consider themselves wizarding royalty.
"Delighted to finally meet you in person, Madam Lestrange," he was saying. "Photographs and portraits do not do you justice." He turned to me with a deferential nod and a firm politician's handshake. "I must thank you both for your unwavering support of my campaign. Your backing, I must say, was... invaluable."
The sum total of the Lestrange estate's donations to the Minchum campaign could, in fact, be valued: twenty-two thousand Galleons had left our shared vault and found their way to Minchum's coffers over the course of his bitter, protracted election challenge against the now-ousted incumbent, Minister Eugenia Jenkins.
Jenkins—a peacetime politician thrust quite suddenly into a war—had proven ineffectual at managing the violence and unrest. Her attempts to show herself adequate to the challenge of carrying out a crackdown on the Death Eaters had made life increasingly... inconvenient, resulting in the exposure and arrest of three high-profile Ministry moles. Minchum's campaign had been highly effective at painting this unmasking as a disaster, rather than a victory: how had three Death Eaters infiltrated the Ministry under her watch in the first place?
Nothing like that, he assured the public, would happen under Minister Minchum.
In any case, the very public support of two of the most prominent Purebloods in wizarding high society had given Minchum something far more valuable than Galleons: legitimacy, as a striving half-blood among the Pureblood elite—who were very anxious, these days, about blood status.
"We look forward to you restoring order," I said mildly.
Bella looped a hand around my arm and nodded fervently, adding, "Things have gotten entirely out of hand." Could anyone else see the restrained delight in her eyes? I doubted it. "My family," she continued, smiling slightly at the way everyone in earshot leaned closer, listening intently, "met last month with a certain wizard from America who said their Magical Congress is considering sending Auror reinforcements. Is that true, Ambassador Greengrass?"
Everyone looked to a thin, distinguished man to Minchum's left: David Greengrass, Magical Ambassador to the Americas; recently returned from abroad. "I'm afraid not, Madam," he said with a heavy sigh. "MACUSA looks to be coming down firmly against further foreign intervention—He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is seen as an internal counterterrorism affair."
"So until he starts carrying off attacks on the continent like Grindelwald," scoffed Selwyn, "he's solely Britain's problem, is that right?"
Perseus Parkinson, a high-ranking official in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, laughed shortly. "Hence the travel advisory."
Several onlookers exchanged significant looks. Two weeks ago, the International Confederation of Wizards had issued a proclamation, citing safety concerns: Apparition into (and, more importantly, Disapparition out of) Britain was now strictly regulated, with international travel generally limited to diplomatic Portkeys. This was, needless to say, causing problems for the wizarding elite—whose personal properties and business interests had never been limited by borders.
Thankfully, most of them didn't allow laws to limit them,either.
"Allow me to assure you all," Minchum cut in pointedly, "that under new leadership, our own Aurors will be more than up to the task at hand." Cheers and toasts all around. Bella and I glanced at each other, each of us barely holding back a smirk. "In fact," Minchum went on, projecting his voice with an Amplifying Charm, "it is my great honor to announce to you tonight—dearest friends, colleagues, and supporters—that my first act as Minister for Magic..." He paused, savoring the room's hushed, anticipatory silence. "...will be to appoint Bartemius Crouch as our new Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."
Applause thundered down around us as Bella and I met eyes, frozen in mutual disbelief. This was an unwelcome surprise.
As the top-ranked judge on the Council of Magical Law, Crouch had been making quite the name for himself as a ruthless, relentless punisher of caught Death Eaters and sympathizers. His edicts were harsh; his sentences harsher. His religion was law and order, which meant we Death Eaters were heretics—and heretics, to Crouch, deserved no mercy. Heretics deserved to burn.
"Barty, where are you?" Minchum was calling. "Skulking in the corners, no doubt," he told his clapping guests with a wry smile. "Prefers his legal documents to parties. Ah, here we are!"
A group of Aurors and Magical Law Enforcement Officers was leading Crouch over to the center of the room, grinning and clapping him on the back. Crouch in the flesh was every bit as grim as his photographs in the Prophet: his pressed, tailored robes as neatly groomed as his greying hair, with not a lock or a thread out of place; his features stern and unsmiling.
"Barty here," said Minchum, shaking Crouch's hand as he attempted a grimacing smile, "has exactly the vision we need in these troubled times. When he first came to me with his proposals, I admit I found them a bit extreme. But it was Barty who made me see that in the fight against extremism, only extreme methods—extreme boldness, determination, and fortitude—will do."
Amid renewed applause, he nodded at Crouch and stepped aside, gesturing for him to address the gathered guests.
Crouch's glacial gaze swept the crowd, inscrutable, before he spoke in a resounding, steady voice. "My thanks to the Minister—for his trust in me today, and for his ability to see with clear, focused eyes what must be done."
He allowed another moment of polite applause before continuing, growing more vehement and forceful with every word. "The threat we face today is existential. The deranged, demented death cult terrorizing our neighbors and slaughtering our kin seeks nothing less than the destruction of our orderly and civilized way of life; wants nothing more than to shatter our security and drown us all in blood and chaos. It is time to meet these murderous masked cowards in the darkness where they hide: to draw them out from the shadows and drag them into the light of the law, where they will face justice."
I stole another glance at Bella. She was watching Crouch with narrowed eyes, intent and calculating. It took a moment to discern the exact expression on her face, and then I placed it: recognition. She had identified a fellow fanatic, on the other side.
"An additional two thousand Dementors," he was saying now, "will be sent to Azkaban—which will soon be filled with more prisoners, requiring many more guards." Murmurs of apprehension—and excitement—rippled through the room.
"Moreover," continued Crouch, unheeding, "when there are threats to the lives of our brave Aurors, they will now be authorized to act with the decisiveness required. We will fight Unforgivable acts with unforgiving action: under a new decree that shall be known as Lawful Return of Force, Aurors will be within their rights and within the framework of the law to redirect the Imperius and Cruciatus on attackers, and—if circumstances deem it necessary—to use the lethal power of the Killing Curse to liquidate Death Eaters on the spot."
A long, stunned moment of silence—and then the room came alive with roaring approval and a fresh, lasting wave of applause. If this initial reaction was any indication, the new regime would prove quite popular indeed.
As everyone in attendance descended upon Crouch and Minchum with questions and congratulations, wholly preoccupied, I wrapped an arm around Bella's waist and murmured, "I have an idea."
Slipping away from the reception hall and out into the main Ministry foyer was easy enough: the Aurors standing at the doors to this exclusive, after hours gala merely nodded and wished us goodnight as we walked toward the exit. Silently casting Disillusionment Charms once we had disappeared around the corner and then circling back past the guards toward the elevators was almost too easy. By the time we stepped out onto the second floor and into a hallway of empty, unguarded offices comprising the Auror headquarters, I was half convinced we were being set up.
Crouch had his work cut out for him, if this was the pinnacle of Ministry security.
"We may not have long," Bella said breathlessly, releasing her Disillusionment and rushing to the cubicles. I followed suit, moving to the nearest desk and opening the drawers: this had turned into a mission, and on missions, Bella was first in command. "Find their list of suspects if you can, and any intelligence related to Dumbledore, or—"
"The Order," I finished with a grin. Bella glanced up from rummaging through a stack of papers, eyes lighting up when she saw what I was pointing to: the symbol of a phoenix, on an envelope in a drawer of Auror Alastor Moody's desk. Inside was a photograph of perhaps a dozen smiling people standing around Albus Dumbledore. There was Moody, to his right, and several known Order members on either side of both of them: Marlene McKinnon, Edgar Bones, Caradoc Dearborn, Dorcas Meadowes, the Prewetts... A note was written on the photograph in a looping, elegant scrawl: Alastor — A reminder of why we fight.
"So," Bella breathed, "the Order has its own spies in the Ministry."
I Transfigured a copy of the photograph and slipped it into a pocket of my dress robes, replacing the original back in the envelope. No doubt the Dark Lord, or the others, would be able to identify the remaining figures in the group I didn't recognize, ensuring the Death Eaters now had a top-priority hit list. This little discovery should mitigate the sting of having to report Crouch's promotion.
Bella, I could tell, was thinking the same thing. She was looking at me with an elated expression, but there was something else in her gaze, too—something sensual and carnal. I knew that look. Blood rushed between my legs at once.
"Within a year," she said like a vow, stepping close to trail a finger up my chest, "every Order member in that picture—every Auror sitting in these cubicles—will be dead." She leaned in close, eyes alight with fervor. "Crouch wants escalation? We'll give it to him."
Before I could speak a word, Bella shoved me down into Moody's chair so forcefully she had to have backed it with magic. She was straddling me in an instant, hiking up her gown as she hastened to unbutton my robes, dragging her nails down my chest as soon as she bared it. She was always like this with me, now—hungry, ravenous, tearing at my clothes and skin as if desperate to reveal the blood and bone and sinew and soul beneath; kissing me with an insatiable thirst that made me feel desired and devoured all at once.
"We have an operative in Muggle Relations, too," she told me, licking the hollow of my throat. "I cast the Imperius on Jugson."
I smirked, remembering her whisper in his ear. "I saw. He was much too busy looking down your dress to have any sort of situational awareness. Though I can't blame the man for being..." I slipped a hand inside the crimson gown to find the swell of her breast, teasing a hardened nipple until she gasped. "...distracted."
What was it Selwyn had said? Every Heir in wizarding Britain would have killed to make Bellatrix Black his bride. It somehow made me even harder, now, to think of it: how many men had imagined fondling Bella's perfect breasts, knowing I was the only one who could?
Well, corrected an onerous voice in the back of my head, there was one Heir who could, if he wished. But I certainly wasn't going to think of that now, as she was unfastening my robes and positioning herself over me, about to descend. In fact, within moments I had stopped thinking at all. I lost myself in pleasure as she rode me, savoring the sweetly poisonous scent of her; the sensation of her teeth tearing at my skin, her fingers pulling roughly at my hair, the warm, tight, all-consuming bliss of her clenching around my cock.
Selwyn was right: I would kill for this, had killed for this, would continue to slaughter anyone and everyone that she and her Lord required of me, to ensure this terrifying revelation of a woman remained—in some way—mine.
"You're mine," she breathed into my mouth as if she'd read my mind. Perhaps she had.
"Yes," I rasped out automatically, coming nearly undone.
"Tell me you love me," Bella ordered, biting at my ear.
I let out a gasping laugh, fingers digging deeper into her hips. "You know I do."
"Say it," she hissed, grinding herself hard against me.
I could feel myself approaching climax; could feel her on the precipice with me. "I love you, Bella," I gasped out, pulling her close and seizing her shining black hair. "I love you."
Bella cried out as she came, as we came together; the chair hitting the desk so hard it shook the entire row of cubicles.
What a way to ring in a new era at the Auror Department.
We clung to each other for a moment, breathing hard—and then, we heard the ding of the elevator.
"Hello?" called an irked male someone, stepping out of the doors and walking toward the offices. "Is someone up here?"
Bella and I listened to the footsteps drawing closer, chests rising and falling rapidly with the speed in which we'd flung ourselves out of the chair and over to either side of the doorframe waiting at the end of the hallway. My dress robes were still unbuttoned at the chest; Bella's gown askew—but our wands were raised, and we nodded at each other in perfect synchronization.
"If this is you again, Robards, you have to use the scan charm after hours or you'll set the alarm off—as if I don't have anything better to do on my Saturday night than come into work because you forgot your—"
The unfortunate security official—a neatly coiffured man with a lined, exasperated face—cut off with a stifled gasp upon stepping through the doorway. We had hit him with an Impediment Hex, a Confundus Charm, a Silencing Spell, and a Choking Curse near-simultaneously, sending him slumping to the ground, dropping his wand to claw at his throat.
Bella bent down—eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed. "What a dedicated Ministry employee. We should reward such dedication, shouldn't we, Rodolphus?"
What we should do, as Bella knew as well as I did, was Imperius him home immediately after Obliviating all memory of ever being here.
But Bella never did like doing what she should do.
And I never did mind watching her work.
"I'm not sure he's deserving of your talents, Bella," I said lightly, stepping aside.
She was breathtaking when she smiled. Often literally. "Nevertheless..." The dazed official was regaining breath and movement, struggling to climb to his feet. "...I'm feeling generous." She cupped his face in her hand, sharp nails gently grazing his cheek as her other hand lifted her wand to his chest. Blinking rapidly, he stared at her in a blur of Confunded confusion, still off-balance from the Impediment Hex—looking at her as though she might be an angel. If she was, she was a fallen one—as he was unfortunate enough to discover moments later, when all of the veins and arteries in his body lit up from within, glowing red hot and inflamed through suddenly translucent skin.
I recognized it at once from one of our most memorable raids, when Bella and I had taken turns with a hostage for nearly an entire day, until I'd finally taken her up against the wall with both of us covered in blood that wasn't our own: Transmogrification Torture.
"Bella," I said intently, "that's not a spell for the Auror offices." Given enough time, those burning veins and arteries would burst in an explosive mess of viscera and gore, and I'd learned not to underestimate the time Bella could spend on torture once she'd started.
She wasn't listening, wholly focused on the task, seemingly transfixed by the way his insides were glowing through his clothes; the way his mouth and throat were screaming without sound. I wanted nothing more than to sit back and soak her in, my insatiable goddess of pain, but we'd gotten carried away enough already; this was hardly the place or the time.
"Bella, stop." I knelt down quickly and seized her wand arm, jolting her out of her focus long enough to break the spell.
She rounded on me furiously, sparks flying from her wand. "You don't tell me when to stop—"
"Have you forgotten where we are? How would you like to explain—"
Bella started an enraged interruption, then whirled around with a snarled, "Protego!" The official had used our distraction and his brief reprieve to crawl for his wand, and had tried to hit her in the back with a Stunning Spell. An outright duel in the Auror offices might actually prove worse than bloody torture, I thought fleetingly, raising my own wand, before Bella lazily flicked hers and sent him flying clear across the hallway, slamming into the metal doors of the elevator with a sickening crack before collapsing, unmoving, to the floor.
She looked at me—wide-eyed at her own strength, as if she wasn't the Dark Lord's most lethal warrior for a reason—then rushed through the doorway and down the hallway. I followed with a feeling of dreadful certainty: when I reached her, kneeling over her accidental victim as his eyes stared up at her, unseeing, she glanced up grimly and said, "He's dead."
Our entrance back into the reception hall attracted exactly the desired amount of attention: the guests had thinned out considerably, but the most important ones remained, and Minchum himself rushed over at once to attend to his most generous donors.
"Madam Lestrange, are you quite alright?"
"Oh, Harold, thank Merlin you're still here," Bella choked out in a wavering voice, leaning against me heavily and fanning herself as if she might faint. Her skills as an actress weren't nearly as good as her other skills, but they would do: she had plenty of practice imitating performatively helpless Pureblood girls, with Narcissa as a sister. "We've been attacked."
A gasp from nearby onlookers: right on cue. Minchum immediately called over Crouch and the remaining Aurors in attendance, leading us quietly out the doors to the foyer we had snuck back through moments before and asking in hushed, urgent tones, "Who attacked you?"
"I don't know," Bella flailed helplessly. "I didn't see his face, but he was wearing some sort of... Ministry uniform..." The Aurors exchanged dark looks: another spy in their midst, already?
"This is his wand," I said curtly, holding it out for their inspection. Crouch took it. "I managed to Disarm him after he tried to Stun my wife."
"Rodolphus was so brave," Bella purred, clinging tighter to my arm. "I told him I needed to step out for some air, and thankfully he insisted on accompanying me. If he hadn't scared this madman off, who knows what he might have done to me."
"He got away?" Crouch said sharply.
Bella gave a short laugh. "Ran away, more like. It's just as you said, Mr. Crouch," she added, widening her eyes. "Those Death Eaters are nothing but cowards."
"Now, now," Minchum interjected with a tight, nervous smile. "We don't know just yet that this mysterious attacker was a Death Eater. We don't even know if he was truly a Ministry employee—"
"He was," snapped Crouch. Everyone turned to look at him as he raised the wand. "This is Edmund Blishwick's wand. Council of Magical Law clerk, recently promoted to Head of Security at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He had a different engagement tonight."
"Blishwick?" one of the Aurors repeated, stunned. "Blishwick did this? But... why?"
"Who can tell?" Bella said airily. "My family has many enemies... and I'm sure I've made some new ones by supporting you, Harold." Minchum had the grace to look vaguely embarrassed.
"Perhaps this Edmund fellow was Imperiused," I suggested. The Aurors glanced at each other again, looking grim.
"Perhaps," Minchum said, pressing his lips together tightly. "We have much work to do in rooting out the last of Jenkins' negligence." He clasped my hand and inclined his head solicitously toward Bella. "I hope you'll accept my sincerest apologies—I can assure you both we'll find Blishwick and uncover the truth of this incident."
That was unlikely, at best. We had Transfigured the body into a paperweight and set it on Moody's desk.
Before either of us could speak, Crouch said, "Did you fight back, Madam Lestrange?"
Bella stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"When Edmund Blishwick apparently cast a Stunning Spell at you for as yet unknown reasons, here on Ministry grounds, during an official event he made a point of telling me he would not be attending," said Crouch, "did you attempt to deflect it or return it, before your husband managed to Disarm him?"
"No," said Bella, furrowing her brow as if confused. "I was entirely too startled."
Crouch's voice was hard, and his gaze was even harder. "You placed first in the Hogwarts dueling club championship three years in a row, did you not? I seem to recall that as a highlight of your coming-of-age cover story in Witch Weekly."
Bella gaped at him a moment, taken aback, before managing to scoff out a laugh. "You don't strike me as the sort of man to read Witch Weekly, Mr. Crouch."
Crouch smiled tightly. "And you, Madam Lestrange, don't strike me as a damsel-in-distress."
Bella raised her chin with haughty impatience, the ruby-clad curve of her neck angling to show off the sharp contours of her face as she spared Crouch a look of well-bred disdain. "I wonder that you dare to think you know me at all."
"One would almost think, Mr. Crouch," I cut in with icy courtesy, drawing Bella to me in a protective embrace, "that you'd rather interrogate the victim than catch the perpetrator."
"On the contrary, Mr. Lestrange," he said with another tight smile, "catching the perpetrator is exactly what I plan to do."
"Barty," said Minchum tersely, placing a firm hand on his shoulder, "two of the most prominent Purebloods in wizarding high society were just attacked in the Ministry of Magic. I'm sure I don't need to tell you the sort of reactions that will get in the Prophet."
He needed Purebloods like us in the fight, that is, against the real extremists. Bella's eyes shone with triumph.
"Very well, Minister," Crouch said after a moment, pocketing Blishwick's wand and motioning for the Aurors to head back inside. He glanced back at Bella and I with a final hard look before following. "I expect I will be seeing you both soon."
Minchum himself escorted us to the exit this time, apologizing the entire way: assuring us he would send us an Owl if there were updates on the case, assuring us advanced security measures would be taken to prevent anything like this from happening again.
"I would certainly hope so," I said shortly, "given the fact that your Head of Security just attacked my wife."
Bella didn't say a word as we stepped into the Floo, but—"Crouch suspects," she seethed as soon as we'd stepped out of the fireplace in our manor, shaking soot and ashes from the hem of her gown. "We must go to the Dark Lord. Now."
We? The fact that she expected me to join her in reporting what had just happened was hardly a good sign for his probable reaction.
I had never briefed the Dark Lord personally after a mission before—as his first lieutenant, his favorite, that was Bella's job. Ordinarily, my contact with the Dark Lord was limited to meetings of his inner circle, we who knew each other without masks, and his occasional appearances at the Lestrange estate to speak with my father behind closed doors. He never came to the manor house I lived in now with Bella; in fact, there was only one occasion I could think of that the two of us had ever been alone with him together with no others present, and it had been a memorable one indeed—joint initiation into the Death Eaters three weeks before our wedding, when he had bestowed his blessing on the marriage by burning a crimson Dark Mark into each of our arms. Our first exchange of vows had been with him.
"Where is he?" I asked, resigned. Bella shook her head, linking an arm through mine.
"I don't know, and we don't need to." Pulling up her sleeve, she pressed a finger to her Mark as it went blistering black, and looked up at me with glazed, half-lidded eyes. "He knows we're coming. Think of him, and go."
To the Dark Lord.
We turned, and spun into darkness.
"So," said that piercing cold voice, coiling through the chilled night air and sending a different chill through my spine, "Minchum is no fool after all."
An expensive fool, would be my phrasing, but I kept that to myself as the Dark Lord turned.
Familiarity, I could tell, would never desensitize me to his eerie, serpentine appearance: the black of his hair and his high-necked robes cutting a dramatic contrast with the unnaturally bone-white skin of his face and hands; cheekbones and nose sharpened into knife-like edges; bloodshot eyes rimmed with red that seemed to gleam like coals when he was angered, pupils narrowing into slits and back again too fast to register whether they had actually changed. Taken all together, his strangely blurred, distorted features resembled nothing so much as a demonic mask.
To Bella, of course, that mask was a priceless work of art.
"Minchum can be managed," she assured him, catching her breath when he looked at her even as her voice remained steady and firm. "It's Crouch that is the problem."
Wind rippled through the isolated Highlands hill we'd Apparited onto ten minutes prior, to find the Dark Lord standing at the center of an ancient stone circle lit by moonlight. Whether he was already there for some Dark purpose or had arrived only moments before we did presumably wasn't for me to guess, but it made a fitting backdrop for his billowing black robes—and the Dark Lord, I had very quickly learned, knew the value of spectacle.
He looked out over the windswept glen, considering. "Does Crouch have children?"
"A son of the same name," Bella answered. "He's at Hogwarts, two or three years below Regulus."
The Dark Lord turned with a slow smile. "Then I believe we've found your next recruit."
Bella's red lips lifted in a smirk. "Understood, my Lord. I look forward to meeting little Barty next weekend in Hogsmeade."
The Dark Lord nodded, satisfied, and simple as that, Crouch was soon to be made a neutered threat.
That was always his way, wasn't it? Get to the parents—control the parents—through the children.
Bella was briefing him on other snippets of intelligence gleaned from the gala, building to the news of her successful Imperius, but I was no longer listening—I was back in my father's enormous study at our ancestral manor, seventeen years old with no red Mark beneath my sleeve; no knowledge, yet, of what it even meant to be Marked.
I remembered my father calling me in and motioning for me to sit in the grand carved oak chair before his desk as if it were yesterday.
"I have come from an audience with the Black elders," he informed me, summoning an expensive bottle of brandy from a nearby cabinet and charming himself a large glass.
I could not blame him: over three tumultuous years of courting Bella, I had never been given the distinct privilege of being alone in a room with the highest branches of her family tree, but I could well imagine the daunting prospect of their collective undivided attention; the sheer intimidation of having all those eyes of flashing, sharpened steel on me all at once.
Even a man accustomed to dealing with the Dark Lord would need a drink after that.
"They are prepared," my father continued after a long sip of brandy, "to accept your proposal to Bellatrix Black."
I kept the elation from my face—my father despised overt expressions of emotion. (Another reason, perhaps, that the Blacks—never inclined to hold back any degree of emotion; in fact disposed toward dramatic displays of them—unsettled him so.) "How generous," was all I said out loud.
My father snorted. "Oh, they had... requests." Another gulp of brandy. "As did I. We arrived at a suitable compromise." He threw back the rest of his drink and raised the empty glass to me in triumph. "You may consider yourself betrothed."
I feigned sudden interest in my cufflinks, examining the charmed gold as if fascinated by the spellwork. "I assume you didn't tell them whose blessing we'll need next?"
I heard him set the glass down on the desk. "As I understand it," he said slowly, "the Dark Lord would prefer that the Blacks remain unaware of your bride-to-be's involvement with the cause."
That was most definitely the case. For over a year now, Bella had been stealing away in secret, as the Dark Lord personally trained her in the kind of magic that her family had not seen fit to teach her. They had raised her as all the old Houses raised their daughters: to be the perfect Pureblood society wife.
Lord Voldemort, needless to say, had a very different vision for Bella's particular passions and talents.
She returned from their private meetings with new fire blazing in her eyes, new wounds marking her body, new darknessseeping through her magic. Her newfound skills and savagery only made me want her more, but I felt her slipping away from me with every new bruise and scar, every new spell and curse.
It took me longer than it should have to realize why. I suppose I found it ludicrous, at first—the idea that she could want him, the way she wanted me. A man my father's age, disfigured and grotesque... a man who ruled my father and the rest by fear, not anything approaching love.
What I didn't understand, then, was that Bella didn't love the Dark Lord as a man. She loved him—served him, worshipped him—as her god.
How could I, or anyone, hope to compete with that?
"It is not that they disagree," my father was saying. I refocused on his words; refocused on the fact that she had agreed to marry me.She would bind herself to me in a way she could never be bound to the Dark Lord. I would possess her in a way he never could.
My father was still speaking.
"It is only that the House of Black considers itself above such..." He gave a vague wave. "...methods." Above him, you mean,I corrected silently. Thankfully, my father was no Legilimens. He went on. "The Dark Lord has never been precisely pleased about that fact."
"No," I agreed with a scoff, "I'm sure he hasn't." I rushed on, unable to stop myself. "I'm also sure the House of Black wouldn't be precisely pleased about the fact that he's made their firstborn daughter his secret pet."
"Watch yourself, Rodolphus," snapped my father, flicking his fingers toward his wand: I winced at the resulting Stinging Hex. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "I believe he considers Miss Black to be a sort of... special project." He eyed me sharply, seeming to carefully weigh his next words. "You might view it as an honor, to have the Dark Lord taking such a personal interest in the girl."
I couldn't hold back a scornful laugh at that—cut off when my father slammed his hand down on the desk.
"Listen to me, boy!" I stared back at him in stony defiance. He clenched his hand together in a fist, absently stroking the forearm of his sleeve as he lowered his voice with effort; speaking quickly and intently. "He will call you to him soon, and Rabastan after that, and there is something you must understand: the things that man is capable of defy description. You cannot deceive him or defeat him. He possesses unmatched mastery of the sorts of Dark magic that still have the capacity to shock, repulse, and terrify even the most cold-blooded among us. Most critically of all—he cannot die."
I felt my eyes widen, mouth opening uncertainly. I had never seen my unflinching, stoic father so agitated or disturbed; had never heard him say anything quite so...
"I saw it myself, once, many years ago," he said, so softly that at first I wasn't certain if he'd spoken. "A Killing Curse to the heart." He wasn't looking at me, now, fixated on his hands, on his arm. "He was still standing, after, still breathing, entirely untouched. And he... smiled." I saw a shudder run through him, and could not suppress a shiver of my own. "Another died that day," my father finished quietly, "but he did not." He shook his head and drew a deep breath, eyes coming back into focus as he looked at me, as if he had forgotten I was there. "I do not know how, and it does not matter. All that matters is that you, my son, tread carefully."
The torches on the wall were flickering madly—my father shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the flames had settled, and his tone was crisp and flat. "If the Dark Lord wants the Black girl, he will take her, and you will take that without complaint if you value your life. Do I make myself quite clear?"
My entire being felt frozen to the chair—Stupefied. I forced myself to speak. "Quite."
I staggered up and strode quickly to the door, needing to get away from this stifling study, needing to get outside and seize my wand and slash something—or someone—to pieces. My hand was on the doorknob when he spoke again, so low it was almost a whisper.
"Rodolphus—I am sorry." My knuckles were white on the doorknob. I did not turn around. "Neither of us," said my father in a strained, strangled voice, "have a choice."
I hadn't fully understood it until that moment, the devil's bargain he had made as in an old, dark fairytale: Sign me your life, and you sign your firstborn child's as well, and every child after.
There was one thing I was certain of, one choice decided that day in my father's study, sealed with a secret spell, and clung to deep within my bones ever since: if Rabastan did not marry and produce an Heir, the Lestrange line would end with me.
I, unlike my father, would never give Lord Voldemort a child.
"Rodolphus."
I returned to the present with a jolt, putting the memory out of my mind immediately. Bella was looking at me, expectant and impatient, holding out a hand. "The photograph?"
Ah. We'd gotten to this portion of the proceedings. I retrieved it from my robes and handed it to her so that she could hand it to the Dark Lord. She watched, anxious and exhilarated, as he perused it with a narrowed gaze. "I see," he said at last, looking up as it vanished from his hand to some unknown place of safekeeping. "Valuable indeed..." He grazed Bella's cheek with the back of his fingers; it was impossible not to notice her flush, her glowing, sanctified expression: a kind of rapture. "Well done, Bella."
Bella. Her pet name like a forbidden incantation on the Dark Lord's tongue, unspeakable and shocking.
Bella. Only her family called her that—her family, and her husband.
I didn't stop to linger on the implications. "I found it," I snapped. Bella's head spun around to look at me—as did the Dark Lord's. I was regretting this already.
"Yes," Bella said through gritted teeth, "Rodolphus found the photograph, my Lord."
Having the full weight of the Dark Lord's attention focused on me was a highly unpleasant sensation I ordinarily avoided at all costs. "In an Auror's desk, is that so?" he asked slowly, without breaking eye contact. Splendid. He'd been in my head. I managed to nod.
"Bella," he said, soft and dangerous, ignoring the way I involuntarily tensed again at the name, "I sense there's something about this break-in you've declined to tell me." He turned back to her and seized her jaw so suddenly that she gasped. "Why is Edmund Blishwick dead?"
Bella's mouth moved helplessly as she registered the question, darting an accusatory glare toward me before her eyes snapped back to stare pleadingly at the Dark Lord. "My Lord—" He tightened his grip, and she cut off with a whimper.
"A Ministry official," he hissed at her, "killed in the very headquarters of the Auror Department with the Minister himself in the building—and from a Pureblood family, no less—"
"The Blishwicks aren't among the Sacred Twenty-Eight—" Bella interrupted desperately, stopping short with widened, horrified eyes when she realized that it had, in fact, been an interruption. "Forgive me, my Lord," she whispered at once. Something poisonous and vicious sparked within his red-rimmed eyes.
"By all means," he said in an ice-cold, deadly voice, fingers digging into her skin so hard that tears sprang to her eyes, "lecture me on sacred bloodlines, Bella."
Suddenly I couldn't stand it, standing there watching him hurt her, toy with her; watching her eyes fill up with tears while knowing that his cruelty would only make her strive to please him more. She would strive for the impossible aim of his approving adoration until her last, dying breath, and then somehow find a way to still serve him from the grave.
"It was my fault," I heard myself say loudly, feeling both of them turn to look at me again, sensing their surprise. "I suggested the break-in, and..." I steadied myself; readied my mind for his intrusion. "...I was the one who killed Blishwick." It wasn't hard to tweak the memory; to place the fatal final straw in my hands, rather than hers. I imagined it with crystal clarity, and looked up to meet those demonic bloodshot eyes.
He held my gaze a long moment, then released Bella's jaw. "Perhaps," he murmured, stepping closer as I suppressed a shiver, "your father never made clear my feelings on wasting Pure blood."
Only mortal terror could have allowed me to hold back a laugh at that.
"Apologies, my Lord," I said with unflinching boldness that felt perilously close to defiance. "I hadn't realized Pure bloodlines mean so very much to you." The subtlest emphasis on you—beside me, Bellatrix inhaled a sharp, strangled gasp.
The others had effectively deluded themselves about the Dark Lord's bloodline. He was twice a Gaunt, most claimed, ultimately raised by Muggles after the last Gaunt's ignoble end: the illegitimate product of relations between the two siblings, or perhaps father and daughter. It was unsavory, certainly, but not much more than any of the other incestuous pairings so common among the Pureblood elite, and when the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin remained within a single family, well.
I held no such delusions. I had seen photographs of my father with the teenaged Dark Lord, long before whatever Dark horrors had caused his monstrous transformation, and I had sought out photographs of Morfin and Marvolo Gaunt in Ministry custody, and I felt quite confident in my conclusion that the fine, sculpted features of that dark-haired, dark-eyed boy had not come from... that.
The Blacks, of course, had arrived at the same conclusion—but even the considerable persuasive powers of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black had not been able to stop Bella from serving her half-blood Lord.
(The real trouble with the Blacks, I had long ago realized, was that none of them could stop themselves from doing anything, if they wanted it enough—and when the Blacks wanted something, they wanted it with obliterating, single-minded fervor, scorching anything and everything that stood in their way until it was theirs.)
Lord Voldemort held my gaze for another long, menacing moment, something volatile shifting behind those pitiless red eyes—and then the corners of his mouth turned sharply upward in what might have once been a smile. "Bella," he said, slow and sibilant—drawing out each syllable without releasing me from the piercing scrutiny of his gaze—"you may go. I require a word with your husband."
"Yes, Master." Her voice was uneven, shaking—startled, I broke eye contact with the Dark Lord and turned to look at her. She had paled considerably, looking as white as the Dark Lord himself. Red marks in the shape of his fingerprints were the sole spots of color on her cheeks, and the expression on her face was striking in its unfamiliarity: fear.
Bellatrix Black Lestrange was never afraid, but she was now.
For me.
I moved toward her, reaching out instinctively, but she dug sharp nails into my arm, over my Mark, and hissed, "You fool."
She released me—glaring—and prepared to Disapparate, gathering the crimson skirts of her gown with shaking hands. Crimson, I thought suddenly, like our Marks. Like the Dark Lord's bloody eyes.
"Oh, and Bella?" She looked up at the sound of his voice, ashen with apprehension. The Dark Lord raised a single finger, tracing it quickly through the air as if flicking away a fly. Blood prickled to the surface of her skin in a ghastly, shallow line above the ruby necklace, following his movement: the macabre imitation of a slit throat. Lord Voldemort gave a slow, dangerous smile, red eyes boring into Bella's widened grey gaze, and finished softly, "Crimson is your color."
Bella swallowed hard and lowered her head—blood dripping down the pale curve of her neck and over the rubies. "Thank you, Master," she choked out in a whisper, then turned and spun without another word, disappearing with a crack.
When she had gone, I was alone with the most feared man in the wizarding world. He turned to level me with a cool, appraising stare: his entire demeanor was calm and composed, even relaxed, but that spark of malice in his eyes was perilous. Too late, perhaps, my father's warning echoed in my head: Tread carefully.
"Master," I said without hesitation, swallowing the bile rising in my throat, "I ask that you not punish her for my transgressions."
"Your transgressions..." The word was serpentine and venomous on his tongue: poison in every elongated s. "I know full well that your transgressions do not include murdering Edmund Blishwick." I cursed internally, considering how best to address the lie, but the Dark Lord was already continuing. "There will be consequences, for her—for her carelessness, and for allowing you to lie for her. Bella always takes her punishments." Another chilling ghost of a smile flickered across his features. "Currently, however... I am more concerned with you."
I said nothing. The wrong word, now, might be fatal. "It was a mistake, perhaps," he went on with deadly patience, "to wait so long to have this conversation. I see now that I was wrong... to think we had an understanding."
I kept my face blankly neutral. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, my Lord." Say it, then, I thought, nearly vibrating with restrained adrenaline—not knowing whether he was in my head again; hardly caring if he was. Make him say it. Make him finally admit it. Make him speak it aloud.
"Allow me," said the Dark Lord, "to enlighten you."
I didn't hear the spell—didn't need to. The annihilating inferno of pain blazing through my every vein and igniting my nerves into hellfire could only be the Cruciatus.
Bella had learned from the best.
Casting it, she'd told me once, entire face lit up with veneration, is effortless for him, like Accio or Lumos. Like nothing is easier, more natural, than causing agony beyond compare.
Pain tore through me in writhing waves of torment, lacerated all my insides into shreds, and clawed its way out of my mouth in excruciating screams until I thought I would die, hoped I would, and when it stopped and I was somehow still alive, the Dark Lord released a cool sigh, as if torturing me with the second-most notorious spell in the world had been a tedious chore.
"That," I heard him say flatly, sounding almost bored, "was for your insolence." I had time to draw a single, shaking breath before another wave of pain erupted, and my mouth filled with blood as I bit down on my tongue, choking down more screams. "That was for your insubordination."
Wandless magic forced me up to my knees from where I'd been convulsing on the ground, and I realized he wasn't finished yet. My muscles were spasming wildly, my throat was bloody and raw, and both my brain and my chest felt as though they were about to explode: I wasn't at all sure I could take another round without expiring like Blishwick.
He was speaking. "And this, Rodolphus Lestrange..." The look of malevolent amusement spreading across his waxen features was somehow more frightening than any of his outward expressions of anger. "Consider this a warning."
He seized my jaw the way he'd seized Bella's, and I felt my entire aching body freeze, trapped in his grip and in his bloodshot gaze. The moonlit hill melted away into torchlight and stone, and I would have gasped, if I could: a much younger Bella was standing in front of me, in a shadowed stone room, gazing at me with reverence written all over her features and saying, in a voice thick with desire, Master.
It was as though I was seeing through the Dark Lord's eyes. A memory, I realized, dazed, as this younger Bella—naked, I saw now, and glistening with lust—reached out with daring desperation to try to undo the clasp of the Dark Lord's robes. He moved so swiftly I hardly registered the action: catching her wrist in a flash and throwing her against the rough stone wall; pressing himself against her and—
I couldn't watch. This was torture beyond the Cruciatus, beyond anything I had ever done or suffered, beyond what I or anyone could reasonably bear. Hot rage surged through me, physical pain forgotten, as I attempted to tear away, to extract myself, to move at all, but his magic held fast, and I could do nothing but stare with wide frozen eyes as she writhed against him and begged, Master, please.
The stone of the room shifted into the stone of a cave, and there was Bella in her Slytherin uniform, thrilling as the Heir of Slytherin removed her robes. I recoiled at how young she was, remembering their early meetings outside Hogsmeade over the course of sixth year—before I'd even thought to suspect he was doing anything but teaching her magic too Dark for class. He was certainly teaching her: whispering direction into her ear as he stripped her and stroked her, placing his fingers over hers as she held out her wand with a shaking hand. She looked like a child, next to him, was a child—a pliant underage schoolgirl, putty in the careful, guiding hands of a man older than her father, as her Hogwarts sweetheart slept unknowing back at the castle.
I was going to be sick. Please, I thought near-hysterically, desperate enough to do some begging of my own. Don't do this. I don't want to see. I don't want to know.
I could hear cold, savage laughter as the scene changed again, as he immersed me in another paralyzing memory as if plunging me into ice water, drowning me in shock and horror.
Bella, older now but not by much—my wedding ring already on her hand; his Mark already on her arm—laid out on a table as if it was a ritual altar, surrounded by spellbooks and vials of potions. She watched me—him—with blazing eyes as he approached, alight with awe and veneration—calling out my Lord like a sacred invocation when he threw the books aside with magic, fastened a hand around her throat, and thrust inside her.
Bella, kneeling naked at his feet with her hands folded behind her back and her head bowed in submission, passively awaiting his instructions with a rapturous look on her face: a supplicant before her beloved deity. It was a lewd perversion of the usual Death Eater posture—all knelt before the Dark Lord, all awaited his commands, but no others displayed such depths of worshipful devotion... and no others, I was sure, did so nude. The Dark Lord was, as ever, fully clothed: he ran his long white fingers through her hair and said with cold satisfaction, Good girl. Bella shivered with pleasure.
Bella, again and again immobilized—restrained with ropes, or chains, or invisible magic—as he penetrated her body and her mind, took possession of her will, lashed out at her with magic, bruised her with his hands and bloodied her with his wand, exerted absolute dominion over her entire being. He took her with unfeeling savagery before having her crawl to her knees, having her kiss his robes and thank him for it, euphoric at the chance to honor her Lord.
It was stunning, staggering, to see her like this: surrendering all power and control.
Oh, how he must savor it, dominating and demeaning her—a half-blood, turning the dazzling crown jewel of the oldest and proudest Pureblood line into his devoted slave.
If I'd been imagining a passionate affair, I'd seen enough to disabuse me of that notion. He would never allow her to touch him, I now knew, the way she touched me—to kiss him or embrace him, to entwine her hands in his hair, to drag her nails or tongue along his skin. He would never allow her to see him in any state of undress, any state of vulnerability or weakness; as anything less than her cold and distant Lord and Master, always in command and in control.
He would dole out pain regardless of how much it pained her, and Bella would take what she must; he would dole out pleasure as it pleased him, and Bella would take what she could.
Was it any wonder, that she would devour me as if starved?
I retreated into numb, resigned revulsion as he sent each image spinning rapid-fire through my skull, lingering only long enough to convey the essence of each memory; as all my worst imaginings were exceeded and surpassed in a few nauseating moments, as Bella's wildest dreams were laid before my eyes as my wildest nightmares, whirring by too fast to fully process.
When it stopped—when I could finally move again, and look away from the Dark Lord's gleaming eyes—I sank to my knees and hurled, vomiting until I had nothing left in me but bile and fury.
Then, I reached for my wand.
"That would be exceedingly unwise."
I froze of my own accord this time, sanity returning in a mad rush of rationality and reason, breath catching hard in my throbbing throat when I realized exactly how close I had just come to death. Slowly—carefully—I removed my hand from my wand, wiped my mouth, and climbed to my feet. My eyes stayed lowered to the ground.
"I want you to remember," said the Dark Lord, dripping cold contempt, "that look in her eyes when I claim her, and I want you to know that she will never—never—look at you that way."
In a sudden lurch he was standing inches from me, so quickly I hadn't even seen him move. He forced me even closer, putting a burning cold hand around the pulse point of my neck. I felt the scorching heat of his power wash over me, the very air around us rippling with Dark energy, and he was so terrifyingly close I was sure I would suffocate and burn alive within it. How did Bella do it? How did she stand to be so near to that incinerating concentration of Darkness, how did she take it inside of her, without bursting into flames?
"I own her," he hissed directly into my ear, "as I own you, and your father, and your brother, and the Heirs of every other Pure bloodline in Britain, and your vows to each other fade to triviality against your vows to me." His fingers found the skull and serpent on my skin, setting my entire arm on fire as if burned by hot iron: Mark searing into flesh like the cattle brand it was. "Do we have an understanding?"
I nodded—unable to speak through the pain without crying out, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of more screams.
"Say it," he snarled in a twisted echo of Bella's earlier command. Tell me you love me. Tell me you belong to me. Neither of them satisfied with anything less than total possession and vocal compliance.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing: forcing steady air, rather than screams, into and out of my lungs. The nails of my left hand were digging into the palm hard enough to draw blood. "Yes, Master," I managed at last, hurling the words at him like spells.
The fiery pain ebbed away in a cooling wave of relief as I collapsed to the ground. He had released me.
I lay on the grass for what might have been seconds, or hours, thinking of nothing but breathing as my blood slowly settled and my heart slowly ceased racing; as lingering phantom pains eased out of my skin and nerves. I could feel him standing above me, waiting impassively, still as stone, and as soon as I knew I could, I dragged myself upward with shaking limbs and stood again to meet his eyes.
"We have an understanding." My vocal cords felt, and sounded, like broken glass, but no fresh horrors assaulted my body or mind: the Dark Lord, it seemed, was satisfied.
"Good," he murmured softly, moonlight gleaming on the sharp waxen edges of his cheekbones. "Her mind, her body, and her soul are mine because I've claimed them—because I will it so." I tensed, those obscene images racing again behind my eyelids, and the Dark Lord laughed a low, harsh laugh, waving a dismissive hand. "You may continue to share in the delights of her body so long as she wishes it; that makes no difference to me. Pleasure is hardly my primary concern—or her primary appeal, for that matter." His red eyes glittered with derisive ridicule. "Surely you don't think I spent all those years, all that effort, training myself a mistress?"
No, I thought silently, seething—but as he'd just made very clear, the fact that his personal protégée, his special project, happened to be a staggeringly beautiful young woman who worshipped him was certainly a convenient bonus.
Too late, I remembered I was still holding his gaze. Breaking eye contact at once, I lowered my head in what I hoped could pass for humbled deference, heart pounding.
"I have never been opposed to convenience." I could hear the smile in his voice. He had heard me. Of course. "The truth remains the same, Rodolphus Lestrange: mind, body, and soul, Bella is mine."
I kept my eyes trained firmly on the ground, not trusting myself to look at the Dark Lord, let alone to move or speak. "The irony," Lord Voldemort continued softly, "is that there is another part of her I have not claimed and will not claim, a part of her I have no use for... and though it is the part of her you want most, she offers it only to me. Can you guess what it is?"
I forced the words out with deliberate and concentrated effort. "No, my Lord."
The Dark Lord's smile was keen and sharp. "Her heart."
I stood frozen, stunned into silence. My own heart felt as though he'd stabbed it through with ice.
"I will never love her," he went on without any particular cruelty, any particular feeling at all, as though commenting on the weather, "and she will never love you."
I was shocked to realize, suddenly, that there were hot, stinging tears rolling down my face—and even more shocked when the Dark Lord reached out almost gently to wipe one away.
"I can take it," he said, stroking one cold thumb across my cheek, voice caressing and beguiling. "I can reach into your mind and erase it all—all of that pain, all of that love. The new memories I forced on you tonight; the old memories that have created your passion for her and your feelings that will never be returned; all of them can vanish into shadow as if they never were. That's all it is, this love that pains you so: a series of memories brewing physical reactions in your mind like a potion."
"Why are you saying this?" I heard myself rasp, stepping backward out of his grip, head spinning.
He eyed me, contemplative. "Despite all, you have served me well, and would serve me better if unburdened by bitter resentment. Now that we understand each other, there is no reason for further suffering. Will you let me free you, cure you? Lord Voldemort can be merciful... I am giving you the choice."
I let myself imagine it: going home to what might as well have been an arranged marriage, with a wife I had no memory of ever loving. Noting with a sort of remote observation that she was beautiful, but not particularly caring: there were many beautiful women, after all, and as an attractive Pureblood scion, I had my pick of them. If Bellatrix preferred a hideously deformed Dark wizard more than twice her age over her handsome young husband, that was her own concern—it was no matter to me, when I could have Celia or any number of other eager young witches in my own bed in an instant. We would do our duty in public, as well-known members of the wizarding elite, and we would do our duty in private, as secret members of the Death Eaters, and that was all she would be to me: another duty.
And Bella? Bella would sink deeper and deeper into her obsession with the man who had stolen every part of her and given nothing in return; the man who had so masterfully shaped her into both a fearsome weapon and his favorite toy. She would continue to be a conduit for his power and a vessel for his pleasure; would continue to give him everything she had until he finally drained her dry and discarded her broken corpse. Without me to act as a vehicle for her unfulfilled desires—without me to love her, wholly and unconditionally, painfully, the way she loved him—Bella would have nothing. Nothing but self-immolation in the service of her Lord.
Which of course would suit him just as well.
"You cannot possibly think I would choose that," I bit out, unable to keep the harshness from my voice.
"No," the Dark Lord said with calm indifference. "I am well aware you would not."
He glanced up, and I followed his gaze to the starry sky.
"Bella," he said distantly, "had I granted her the same mercy—had I proposed to take the useless heart she offers me and crush it into powder, dissolving all those frustrated passions, all that agonizing longing, leaving only cold, detached ferocity and unfeeling, clinical precision—leaving her as heartless as you see me..." His white lips twisted upward. "...would make the very same choice." He tilted his head with an odd, quizzical expression I had never seen him wear. Puzzlement, perhaps. "Why is it, that weaker creatures like yourselves prefer to suffer, prefer to anguish, prefer to sacrifice yourselves on the worthless altar you call love?"
I could only assume the question was rhetorical.
"Everyone makes sacrifices," I answered nonetheless—adding silent, Even you.
What had he sacrificed, that striking, fine-featured boy, on the altar of his own power? What had he lost, to gain his immortality?
Whatever it was, it had left a void, a chasm, a bottomless abyss that the rest of us would have to fling ourselves and others into for so long as we lived—a demand for many more sacrifices.
"True," said Lord Voldemort. "I am more than willing to make sacrifices. And should you forget the lessons you have learned tonight..." My father's face, and Rabastan's, appeared unbidden in my mind, and I knew with a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach that he'd put them there. "You will not be the only one to pay a price."
"I understand, my Lord," I said, low and measured, and the Dark Lord nodded.
"Then leave me," he said with finality, dismissing me at last, "and mention none of this again. You've made your choice."
I paused for a single precarious moment, processing the fact that he was going to let me go; hardly able to believe he was willing to release me, after all of that, with no permanent bodily damage and a hurricane of hatred swirling in my head—because he liked it, I realized. He liked knowing that I knew I was above him in blood but would be forever bound below him in servitude; knowing I was silently simmering with loathing and revulsion but unable to lift a finger against him; knowing he could have my Galleons and my property and my wife and my life and I could not do a single thing about it; knowing that if terror was ever not enough to keep me loyal to his cause, loyalty to my father and brother—and love of Bella—would be.
Shaking myself into movement, I bowed, then turned away and thought of home, preparing to Disapparate away from the fiend I called Master—to where the woman I loved, who loved him unto madness, was waiting.
She would follow him, and I would follow her, knowing that the only cause that mattered to me was already lost: knowing it would be a futile, fatal task, attempting to unravel the strangling crimson thread woven through the web of Bella's heart.