Chapter Thirteen
Months went by. My cowardice and crooked reputation kept me from society, so the summer faded on me cruelly. I lost myself in books, sometimes in writing them, but I lacked any real finesse or guidance in my stories. I had little inspiration, could not dip myself into the deep well of imagination I once had. I scarcely got out of bed. Instead, my brain seemed to wither in the isolation. Slowly, but surely, I became faded parchment paper. Blank and temporary. Ready to burst into flames. Or rot.
Our home grew tall as shadows, cobwebs folding over family portraits and expensive vases, the floor faded and dusty. Neither of my parents seemed to notice, and the three of us scarcely moved about the house we hardly unsettled the dust. We were mere ghosts until September when an owl arrived at the silent breakfast table. At first, we expected the worst. My heart hammered over my meagre breakfast of toast and eggs, the dredges of rationed earl grey we had in one of the final decent cups of china we had left. Our wealth was bare, blanched bones and exposed nerves. We were all but impoverished.
The envelope was thick and embossed in dark, glittering ink. Parchment of this calibre was nothing to its owner, but my eyes grew wide in hunger just to touch such simple luxury. Paper-like that inspired great words, I thought. I had only the thinnest and smallest sheets. When my mother opened the letter, her fingers trembled.
"We have been invited to a ball," she said softly, "Tonight."
"Is it a trick?" I asked, snatching at the parchment, but my mother swatted my hand away.
"It is…real," she replied, her voice hollow through from shock, "I would know Ophelia's signature anywhere."
Perhaps we were forgiven. I thought I buried any feelings I might have deep inside of me, but here it came, a single blossom bursting through a cracked, icy ground, and rooting itself inside of me. Hope. My family's investments might come back, our assets re-established. Our debts to the Lestrange family for keeping us afloat on the property (if only to secure it for their son) through the long months might be paid. Without them, we would have let the house to another family and secured ourselves much more modest establishments.
A foolish part of me considered this was a subdued message from Lucius or an act of his mercy. Perhaps he had grown bored of the gnawing melancholy in his normal life and wished to return to me? I had no notion of the Moonflowers—I had not called for a meeting since before his illness. No letters came for me, my stalwart flowers were traitors, every last one of them. The dreams we shared and the thoughts we had were no match for the burden of reality, I knew, but all I had were my dreams. Someone less desperate could be pragmatic.
I prepared for the ball so tied up with nerves my mother had to place a droplet of laudanum on my tongue to keep me from shaking. She fashioned my overlong, unkempt hair into a chignon to distract from my improper treatment of it. I knew I had a role to play tonight: the dutiful daughter, the virgin, the hastily embarrassed sister who disapproved of her elder sister's decisions. This image had to be so carefully cultivated until I was spun up in a narrative that did not belong to me.
Reader, I must admit I have always been sloppy. Something was always awry in my dressing; either I was not adorned well enough with jewellery or my hair was not combed out. I showed myself in public without a corset, perhaps not even in a dress at all. I smoked my father out in his cigar room and beat him at cards, I climbed up an ivy trellis to my best friend's room. I encouraged a group of women to go completely and utterly mad. I watched a man punished at my sister's hand and I revelled in it.
I would do it all again. But this night, I was agreeable. Doting. Perfect. I was everything none of my sisters had the patience to be. I would be everything my parents needed me to be to secure them money to live comfortably. When my mother fastened my corset and slipped a white gossamer dress over my body, I knew this was bigger than myself. Because I could not be a lady, I would have to be a weapon that could save us all.
We set off in the carriage just before dusk. My parents were too nervous to speak, only on occasion did one of them comment upon the weather or the state of the carriage and the other quietly shushed them, as if speaking would break the illusion and our transport would turn into a pumpkin. I crushed the silk gloves over my fingers until I thought I might leave a bruise, and then I moved on to pinching the meaty part of my palm to remind myself to be calm.
I could smell the hint of honeysuckle, the peeps of white flowers through the bristled hedgerow outside of the iron gates. And I sensed too the stench of nature's slow decay. My eyes were fixed out of the window of our carriage, memorizing the moss and lichen growing up an oak tree. When we were brought to the front door, neither of my parents moved to exit first. We were still wraiths in our darkened home, people patterned to little movement.
"Cygnus," My mother intoned, "You have to go first."
"Oh, yes," he muttered and shifted his weight from the bench seat toward the door.
"We have dissolved into barbarians," she muttered, following him, her fingers clutched so tightly against her reticule her knucklebones were white through her flesh.
I was last. Sweeping from the carriage, I looked up at the mansion looming over me. Walls stood for centuries but never took part in lives they witnessed. A thousand hearts could shatter under that roof; the house would be no more aware than an onlooker from the road. Children birthed, people, falling in and out love. Dances. Second chances. It was strange that a place so complacent with me felt like home.
"Cissy!"
Snapping to attention, I followed my parents through the front doors and into the manor. It looked the same except for the sweeping array of fresh-cut flowers, no doubt planted by Lucius, brought to blossom by season for the affair. I had a mind to steal one of them just to feel something he had nourished in my hands, but I resisted the temptation.
The foyer opened to the larger ballroom, and though there was no one arranged to guide us to it, nothing could have kept us from following the sound of frivolity, the warmth of society, and acceptance. Like moths drawn to light. I thought of my sister, Andromeda, tucking her dresses into her trunks as if she might have need of them again one day. She might have left, but it stayed in her heart just the same.
Warm candlelight, great bursts of laughter and frivolity, the clinking of glasses, and dancers. All these brought a familiar rush of warmth to my body and cheeks. In my white faery dress, I was neither an abomination of womanhood or particularly noticeable—white was in season, mixed in with several girls whose dresses reflected the changing of leaves in various muted and bright hues. I suppose the only difference between myself and the many other girls in white was that it was me in it.
"Behave," My mother whispered into my ear, as her hand clenched down on my wrist bones.
She released me into the wild by myself, and I watched her and my father disappear amongst the fabrics and folds of cloaks and dresses, determined to find the hosts.
First, I took a turn about the room. I made references of where my enemies (everyone) were and calculated if any might chance fate to be my friend again. Since no one dared, I found a place by the window near the long flowing curtain. Before Andromeda's disaster, I was popular enough to have never sat out a dance should I have chosen to participate. Now I was watching from the sidelines, a hungry lioness. Waiting. I had never waited before. I was, for all my impropriety, never scorned. I never had much in the way of patience either. Things either happened or they didn't, and while the Malfoy's might have been altruistic, the rest of society clearly had not moved on…
My eyes finally settled upon the worst of my betrayals. My Lost Boy was just coming from the dance floor wearing an all-black suit, his white hair glowing beneath the light. He must have grown it out magically, as the ends of his hair dusted down his back. His eyes were clear, glass lakes of mirth. His cheeks were bright from health, the strange sunken in appearance he possessed last I saw him mere memory. On his right side was Candra Zabini, on his left was Mara Parkinson.
He stumbled, his hand briefly touching Mara's shoulder, who steadied him with a laugh of her own. Lucius was drunk; I stifled my laughter because it was so predictable of him to be incapable of holding his liquor.
Pain erupted inside of me in a brilliant flicker. He was the flint and I was the flame, bursting inside of myself. He would always be mine; the transitory, loathsome people he called friends were nothing compared to me. Rage threatened to break the surface of my body, roll across my shoulders. Settle in my face. I couldn't let it, couldn't let that imperfect part of me be seen. Each of my sisters shamed my family in some way; I could not do the same.
However, I am not without dramatics. I quickly crossed the perimeter of the room. By that time, Lucius had amassed quite a few of the Moonflowers in his entourage, and they hovered around him softly as fireflies, waiting for his glow of affection. I realized at once what had happened. My dissent from society left an opening—he took the Moonflowers from me. However irrational it was, the only thing I could think of was that the Moonflowers had stolen him from me.
I was upon him before his bleary eyes could settle and comprehend the rush of a woman appearing before him. It was my destiny, I thought, to take him by surprise, and so I did once more, appearing suddenly and blocking his path. I watched his face contort in confusion at the unfamiliar sight of me. He almost recognized me, in his drunken state, but have rarely seen me immaculately dressed, he hardly had a notion of what to expect.
So, I did the last thing he might think I would do, and I dipped into my best, flourished, practiced courtesy. My governess would have been proud.
"Mr. Malfoy," I said, keeping my eyes shifted from his gaze, "It has been so long."
"Cissy?" he slurred.
I glanced up at him through my eyelashes. The uneasy smile from Mara suggested nervousness, but I caught the nearly imperceptive slink of her protective grasp over Lucius's arm.
"Yes," I said, sweeping into another curtsey, "Your mother invited us. I just wanted to say how grateful I am."
Part of me should have accepted my fate. I should have stood with the other unwed girls and waited for a man to come by and ask for my hand. I had sunken so low many would no doubt wonder why I was invited at all. This was not my home.
But he was.
"Leave us," Lucius remarked, lifting his arm from Mara's.
He had all the authority of a prince and to my shock, both turned away from him without rebuttal. Something was different in him, haughtier and more refined. Power could do that to someone, I thought, though he had always possessed that. I doubted the revels of leadership in the Moonflowers would have caused him to become quite like this.
His arm twisted onto mine.
"I'm still too weak to walk long distances," he murmured, "My lungs have little capacity for it."
"Shall we sit?" I suggested.
He shook his head, his eyes pale and far away. "No," he decided, "I'll speak with you out in the garden."
Bemused, I could only consent to this new version of him which gave commands without consideration. I curled my arm around his elbow like a gentleman and held my body closer to his than propriety might allow, but with the bustle and groupings of people, no one would notice. I understood then what the rouse was; he feigned inebriation to keep others from noticing his weakened state. In most ways, it appeared he recovered from the illness, but there were lingering effects he did not wish for others to see.
As we passed through the crowds of mingling people, I wondered which of them might have danced with me tonight if I had been good. I had to wonder too which one of them would have married me because, despite the folly of my name, I was well-mannered and not like my sisters. At least, I could try to pretend. Instead, by finding Lucius the moment I arrived, I proved one thing: I was just like them. In my isolation, I found no consolation or mode of reform. There was only me and this wildness inside me, holding onto things I could never have.
He opened the glass-paned garden door and we swept out onto the veranda. The garden glittered with sinking blossoms of flowers and lights wound among the hedgerows, partially in and out of summer. The smell of pine rose from the forest beyond the gates, so familiar its scent that I was momentarily transported there in the clearing on the rock with the Moonflowers. Lucius might have quit me, but I exited out of my entire life. Freedom, I understood, just meant that one had nothing else to lose.
We walked away from a few of the stragglers. Lucius appeared to gather more strength about himself, for our pace quickened toward the east of the garden. My dress trailed beyond me on the stone pathway, just wide enough to allow the bustle of women's skirts. I did not know this small, intimate portion of the garden tucked away from where most visitors would not venture out to. He led me to an enclosed area, walled in by brick and trailing ivy on the tree sides, a stone arbour arching as the entrance. As I glanced around, I noted each species of plant were marked.
This was the poison garden. Many families had them, as poisons were not merely used to kill others, but were instead often brilliant foliage or useful for less insidious things. Still, they were dangerous to handle and care for. I knew Lucius maintained it for it was just precisely the amount of danger he craved, but it lacked the rest of the garden's public expression designed for examination. We were in the darkness, pitch black except for the shimmer of moonlight that pierced the veil of shadows all around me. Lucius's hair grew nearly luminescent.
"Just what the fuck have you been doing?" he hissed.
He wrenched me toward him by the arms and held me in place. From our proximity, I could smell a hint of wine on his breath. Perhaps he had done more than pretend.
"Whatever do you mean?" I asked him, recoiling. "I've been at home."
"You never came back," he accused, "You never wrote to me. I scarcely saw you while I was ill. Do you really care so little for me you would rather never speak to me again?"
Slow creeping anger coiled up from my belly, threatening to lash out. The last time we argued, I ruined us.
"You told me you didn't want to be my friend," I answered, hollowly.
He laughed coldly. "Merlin's beard, Narcissa, you didn't even stay long enough to hear the rest of what I wished to say."
"You said plenty!" I shot back.
He sighed heavily and brushed his hair back with his fingers, gliding through the pale strands angrily.
"You headstrong, obstinate girl," he murmured.
I clenched my fists at my sides. "You don't get to just quote—"
His fingers were around my neck, pulling me to him, and then his lips were against mine. Where my body was stilled and taut from anger, his was full of warmth. His lips were soft and supple, almost as I had imagined a thousand times before, and dreamt of it too. His tongue brushed against mine and I tasted elderflowers and the dry, sourness of wine. My hands tangled through his hair, wrapped the strands through my fingers, relishing its softness. I pulled lightly at the nape of his neck and delighted in the soft moan he elicited against my lips and the palpable beating of his heart against mine. He parted for air and moved down my neck, and now it was my turn to sigh, to feel my heartbeat quicken against my ribcage.
Many people relish the wickedness of breaking a rule. Snog a boy in a garden. Swipe an extra sweet when mother's not looking. Cheat on a spouse. Murder. But nothing compared to being a ruined, worthless girl in the imaginations of others, and kissing their beloved faerie prince.
Hands went to my waist, wound around my back to touch my spine. His teeth were on my shoulder. I sucked in air as his hands went down my back and he marked me up to my neck. If I died, this would be the last thing I felt. It would suffice.
"Does this mean we're friends again?" I asked, as his lips roamed down my neck to the low collar of my dress.
"You have a very odd definition of what friendship looks like," he remarked.
His fingers plucked at the strands at the front of my dress and I said nothing as he untied them and exposed my abdomen to the shadows or the garden and his mouth, traveling down my chest to my navel. I would have let him kiss any and every inch of me.
I was reminded that I was wearing white to symbolize my innocence, but here I was with him, partially exposed to the moon, wanting whatever adventure he would have with me. As if this also seemed to cross his mind, he stood up and retied the front, careful to match the same threads on my dress as before.
"You've stopped," I said, to my surprise, my tone came out in a partial whine.
He replied, "You're in white. You look like a ghost."
"Are you a coward, Lucius?" I asked, words coiling from my tongue heavy as wine.
"Yes," he agreed, pressing his lips to mine again, engulfing me in sensation. "And also, a pragmatist. I'll ruin your gown."
His fingers drifted down my arm, covered in gossamer and entirely see-through. Much of the bodice was the same, nearly translucent, with just enough white etches of lace and ribbon to not be indecent. Much of my back was exposed, and the skirt was white silk.
"Would you ruin me too?" I asked him softly, "If I wanted you to?"
"Don't tempt me, Miss Black," he replied.
His fingers found mine and he twisted through them.
"You cannot disappear tonight," he said, with a sigh kissing the top of my hair. "My parents thought this whole affair ridiculous, they wanted tonight to prove your family deserved to be here as anyone else. If you've gone missing, it won't improve your odds."
"I hate them all," I said, "I only came here to see you."
"And see me you shall," Lucius replied.
He guided me from the poison garden, properly escorting me back down the garden path we came from. I had no idea how he managed to retain his sense of decorum, for I was a wild, spastic, breathless thing, full of urges and wants. My heart yearned for the notion that he was mine before he was anyone else's, but there was society to be dealt with. Lucius was always better at rules; he exemplified this tonight.
When we walked back inside, he queued us in the line dance and engaged in conversation with both couples to our left and right, gradually pulling me into it as if I were anyone in the world. I knew he was remarkable when he wanted to be, but he had never shown me this side of him before. I believed Lucius was not particularly fond of his charismatic counterpart, the honeyed tongue ease in which he could coax, appease, and soothe others into looking at an imposing figure like me and deciding I was worthy of them.
He walked me around the ballroom as if reintroducing me to people I grew up with. He selected mostly Moonflowers for this display to show others that I was not entirely a lecher, and once or twice, his hand pressed against the small of my back as we went across the room, one singular suggestion that told the entire room one thing: I was his.
At dinner, we sat next to each other, surrounded by Moonflowers, Candra Zabini, and Theodore Nott. I let Lucius lead me, for once the stranger to a bright new world I had grown unfamiliar and cautious about.
When dancing and dinner was over, much of the men left to Mr. Malfoy's salons to smoke cigars. I followed him in a group of Moonflowers and Candra, whom if I wasn't mistaken, was either knowledgeable of our secrets or fully collected. Lucius had promised to collect him once before he took ill. Perhaps he was a man of his word.
The younger group gathered in Ophelia's loungeroom, specifically the room the girls of my age gathered for our society literary group. A warbling Victrola was spinning a record I didn't recognize. Lucius passed me a cigarette and didn't seem to notice none of the other women were smoking, and before I could protest, he lit it for me. While we were in a room full of people, I understood we were all coupled in various parts of the room, none mingling in more than groups of two.
"I saw my sister," I blurted, as I exhaled smoke from my mouth and lungs, while Lucius furnished an ashtray from the mantle of the fireplace we stood in front of.
He leaned his arm against it, but this was for the benefit of his recovering body as much as it was to appear effortless.
"Andromeda?" he asked.
I nodded and wrapped my arms around myself. "She has a tiny flat in London, you know. A space to paint and cook. I think her husband actually loves her."
He tilted his head in a familiar way, his eyes flickering down my face. He drank me in but never knew how to read me the right way. Not when he tried too hard—if he did not think, just react, he saw me without pretense.
"The feelings are duplicitous then?" he asked, gesturing for the cigarette in my hand. When his lips pressed to the tip, it was the only way we could publicly kiss. "You are happy for her, but also seem disappointed."
I nodded and swallowed. "I thought I was mad at her for all this but…months have gone by since then. Now I don't know what to think."
"You don't have to define it," he said.
Letting out a strangled laugh, I quipped, "Yes, Lucius, I really do."
He did not understand what it meant to be a writer. There was a constant need to unravel, to investigate. To understand, classify, quantify, and reinvent. Half the prospects of living were to churn those moments into metaphors, all those feelings draped over the fabrics of my stories. Infuse, inject, define. I wanted so much to understand the world without knowing I was failing to live in it.
"You don't," he insisted, "You can have a complicated mixture of emotions about something and never fully understand it. But you may have to accept it."
Was this how he felt for me?
"I'll concede your point, Mr. Malfoy," I said.
"Never call me that again," he snapped, but his eyes were still warm and lips turned into a smile, "You know I detest this version of you."
"I did not, actually," I said, "Though now you must know how it was to talk to you for so long, with your cravat and frightened stare."
We were closer together than we had been before in public. Our shared cigarette left abandoned on the ashtray, his arm curled along the mantle, our heads inclined toward one another. His body was a magnet I could not help but come close.
"You know I never meant to hurt you," I whispered.
"Yes," he replied.
"I—" I stammered and stalled.
"For a writer," he interjected lazily, "You're very bad with words."
"When did you become so intolerable?" I asked, biting my lip to keep from smiling.
"Yesterday, I suspect," Lucius said.
"And when did you become so enchanting?" I asked again, unconsciously reaching for him, my fingers touching his jaw, caressing down his neck.
I was enveloped in him. My soft touch turned to a delicate kiss, muted of the passion and the chasm of electricity passing between us. He was conscious of the people around us and I was blinded by the sublime feeling welling inside of me.
"Marry me," he whispered softly when our kiss broke apart.
"Yes," I murmured back, "A thousand times. Yes."
Yes, the hollow, ghostly word floated off my lips every morning I woke up from the same dream on repeat. It was the ending to the story I wanted so badly my hands shook and my heart ached. This story, a draft my dream-self wrote repeatedly, was a coping mechanism to distract me from reality.
Reader, of the traits you can attribute to me, you may add liar to the list. Someone should have told you first: I am unreliable.