Notes: Thank you all again for the support. I forgot how much I love little stories like this.
~*~ Six: Beauty and the King of Beasts ~*~
Tom caught her arm before she was even to the edge of the clearing. An owl shrieked in the distance and a chilling breeze swept the leaves into a frantic dance across the mossy ground.
"You can't run from this." His bruised lips pursed for a long moment before he spoke again. "I do wish I could tell you I was sorry. That I couldn't possibly kill you. But I will not lie to you, not now."
"Do I mean anything to you? Did what happened here mean anything to you?"
His grip tightened and he pulled her closer, until she could see nothing but the unnatural glow of his brilliant eyes in the unadulterated moonlight. "Of course you do. And of course it did. You are going to free me from my prison. I will always remember you and I will always remember what it felt like to be buried in your light."
Godric, she wished she could hate him. She wished her soul were darker and unable to fulfill the requirement of his sacrifice. But no matter how hard she willed it, the rage and fury remained muted, unable to rise to become the conflagration needed to inspire hatred. Worst of all, he was so clearly not Voldemort that none of her hatred for Harry's nemesis did her any good against this handsome boy. She could not hate him and that meant Tom was right. Her soul was exactly what he needed.
But the moon was still rising and he still hadn't lifted a finger to harm her. He'd even rescued her from the snake at the cost of his identity. Of course, he'd been preserving his sacrifice, but he'd still saved her life.
"Dance with me."
His head cocked to the side as he considered her request. Ebony waves fell haphazardly across his brow and into his eyes. Leaves and other debris were stuck in the unkempt explosion of silken black. He looked feral and wild and she was glad of it. It helped her remember how lethal he truly was.
After a silence filled only by the eerie rustling of the Forbidden Forest, he pulled her firmly against him. Unlike the waltz they'd shared before, her hands now twined at the nape of his neck and his rested boldly on the swell of her ass. Only his trousers and the loose shirt hanging from her petite frame separated them.
They moved quietly, the silence between them lingering but not heavy. This would be their last dance. Either she would succeed and he would be dragged back to Hell or he would kill her. Neither option was particularly pleasant as she swayed in his arms, but it was clear only the nonfatal outcome was an option. She might not hate this boy who had deceived her so masterfully, but she did not value him above her life. He had survived in Hell this long; he could endure eternity. After all, Tom Marvolo Riddle had blood on his hands that she could not pretend away.
The moss was cool beneath her toes, the forest suddenly warmer if only because he was wrapped around her. For a breath, she wished only that the moment would stretch to eternity. That she could forget a not-dead murderer intent on sacrificing her was the boy holding her so desperately. That the moon would never reach its apex and neither of them would be forced to make such a loathsome choice.
But then the owl screeched again and the air shifted, making chills chase across every millimeter of her skin.
His embrace turned stony in an instant and Hermione's gaze flew to the moon. They were out of time.
She didn't bother to stifle her shriek as Tom forced her first to her knees and then to her back. It was so different than before, when his mouth had been swallowing her breathless moans of pleasure.
Her cries echoed distantly throughout the forest, but Hermione knew better than to hope someone heard. It was up to her to save herself.
He murmured a foreign incantation and then her limbs were locked to the mossy loam, as if held by steely chains. She stared up at him in shock.
"I thought you said you couldn't do magic."
His eyes flashed to deep cobalt. "I lied."
"Godric," she breathed. "What did you do to me?"
"Earlier? Nothing. I could have touched your mind, but I was telling you the truth. For this to work, you cannot hate me and you could so easily have done so if I'd forced anything upon you. So no, clever girl, I did not make you do anything at all. But this will be easier if you're still and I can't count on you for that."
Her eyes tracked his every move as he retreated from her and shook one of his dress shoes. A glinting blade dropped into his hand and she barely stifled a gasp. She would not let him see her fear.
He returned to her side with the dagger in hand. The moonlight flashed brilliantly across its polished surface and Hermione's stomach turned sour.
"Don't worry, it's razor sharp. It will be quick, if not entirely painless."
He said the words without any affect at all, which was perhaps more menacing than the blade itself. She searched his chiseled features desperately for the boy she'd known, for any sign of humanity at all. But he was nothing but marble perfection in the cursed moonlight. The ultimate deceiver.
How much had been a lie? All of it? Even the heat of his mouth against her skin? Even the heady completion of his body within hers?
The sudden blur of his devastating features and the cool chill of the breeze upon her cheeks told her the tears she'd tried to valiantly to conceal had betrayed her. She ground her teeth and refused to give in to the despair they represented. Her fight was not over yet. His blade had not yet burrowed deep in her flesh.
Moonlight flashed, sharp and metallic and then it was too late. But no… she wasn't bleeding out. The cut he'd made was shallow, barely parting the skin as he traced a series of intricate designs into her trembling flesh.
Her lips were barely able to part as she gasped, "what are you doing?"
He looked up from his work with the deadly blade, the smile cutting across his lips sharp and dangerous. "Claiming you."
"Why?"
"If I don't tether us together, another soul could use you to escape. This prevents such an intrusion into the ritual." He returned to his carvings, moving from her forearms to her thighs. Seemingly satisfied with his bloody work, he shifted to unbutton his shirt from her shaking frame. He might have been able to secure her to the ground, but nothing could stop the terror vibrating through her.
His warm hand pulled aside the fabric on her left side and he set the tip of the blade just above the curve of her breast. She tilted her head forward in a vain effort to see what he inscribed upon her already scarred flesh. But it was no use, so she watched him instead, willing his humanity back to him. Willing him to be anyone else.
She could feel the faint trickle of her blood seeping across her exposed chest, but there was no pain, no further sting of the blade.
Tom cupped her head in his hands, his thumbs wiping away her tears before the cold blade settled against her cheek. "I am grateful for what you will do for me, Hermione Granger."
"I don't want to die this way, Tom."
She didn't know if she was still trying to distract him or if she had accepted this horrible fate and only now understood how much she stood to lose. The forest was too silent now, only her ragged breaths and Tom's steady ones filling the void.
"I don't want to die," she repeated, the terror slowly washing over her, paralyzing in a way his invisible bonds hadn't been.
"Shh," he soothed, dropping a kiss upon her temple. "This isn't the end. I promise you. You are light and that will guide you to a better place."
"I don't believe you," she hissed, the horror of it all nearly sealing her throat. "If you're using my soul to free you from Hell, then it's going to be used in the exchange. And since it's an exchange with Hell… that's the only place I'm going."
She saw the flinch before he could conceal it. The ugly truth he'd still been trying to avoid. His eyes fractured to liquid sapphire in an instant and the marble façade dropped away. "I'm so sorry you don't get to find peace."
"But you aren't going to stop."
Tom flinched again. "No."
She caught sight of the orb of the moon out of the corner of her eye. She looked back to him, letting her fear and terror consume her trembling features. "At least kiss me goodbye."
The blade shook against her cheek as he stared down at her. She begged him to see her, to grant her this last request. Holding her stare, he drew the sharp metal away from her cheek and down to her throat. Her breath caught and she didn't dare swallow as the dagger rested gently against her thundering artery, able to erase her with the mere twitch of his fingers.
Then he kissed her, hard and desperate. Her mouth opened to him on instinct, a reaction to the now familiar heat of his lips against hers, the sharpness of his teeth and the wicked stroke of his tongue. She wanted to surge upward, to drown herself in the pleasure of him, but the chill of the dagger kept her frozen in place, only her lips drawn into the frantic heat building between them once more.
She needed more. Wanted what they'd shared in this very glen mere hours ago, but that was long gone. His identity and his deception had destroyed that already. But if she was going to die here—if he was truly going to send her to the depths of Hell—then she would take whatever he could give. And she would hold on as long as she possibly could.
Tom's hand moved and the blade sank into her throat.