CHAPTER SIXTEEN: REVELATIONS – PART VII

(real date and time unknown)

The first thing Blaise did before leaving the castle was check the time.

It was nearing midnight.

But on what day?

That question plagued him as he and the others made their way through the underground secret passage to Hogsmeade. How much time had actually passed while they'd been locked away inside the game?

Along the way, Finnigan and his witch informed him and Ginny of what the others had discovered since the cards had been revealed as a horcrux, namely that others had played before them, including some of the worst of their kind. Eros had also attacked them, made the girls bleed when he hadn't liked something they'd done, and when they'd called the bastard on it, claiming the game null and void, Eros hadn't responded.

"Maybe kicking us out was his response," Ginny said.

"But why only us?" Lavender asked. "It's not like we're any more special than anyone else in game."

"Aren't we, tho'?" Finnigan pointedly asked.

Ginny turned so she could look over her shoulder at them. "Are you really both half-Fae?"

"Seems," Brown said, sounding quite despondent over that fact. "I'm at least some part, if Blaise is right."

"Me Mam was half," the Irish admitted. "Tho' I'll be askin' ya both not ta mention it ta anyone else, if ya don't mind."

The Slytherin within him had Blaise contemplating what and how much he could get for keeping such a secret. As if she'd read his mind, though, Ginny squeezed his hand and warned, "Don't even think of it."

His lips twitched with amusement. "Think of what, kitten?"

"You know perfectly well what, you sneaky snake." She gave him a baleful eye. "No blackmailing my friends."

"'Blackmail' is such an ugly word, love. I prefer to think of it as a 'well-advised business proposition'."

She held up her fist. "I'll give you the business, if you persist, mister."

His trousers became uncomfortably tight as she sassed him.

"You're reformed, Blaise Zabini," she informed him in a 'taking-none-of-your-guff' tone of voice. "No more devious scheming."

He sighed. "Shall I stop breathing next?"

"Only if that means I get to perform mouth-to-mouth on you."

His laughter echoed down the dark, empty corridor before them.

They were all quiet after that, the urgency and importance of the mission returning and impressing itself upon them. Blaise thought the darkness oppressive, and was glad he'd been paranoid enough not to let his wand out of reach throughout the game, for its light was the only thing keeping the tunnel from seeming like a tomb.

When they'd reached the exit at long last and popped up into Dogweed and Deathcaps' cellar, the air wasn't much better than what they'd left behind; the place stank of mouldy fungi and dessicated plant material, reminding Blaise very much of the cupboard that contained Snape's apothecary stores. Finnigan swore under his breath at the stench and everyone plugged their noses as they sneaked upstairs. At the front door, Finnigan rattled the handle, but pronounced it locked as expected. Blaise waved his wand, concentrating on the spells to carefully dismantle the wards and unlock it to let them out. Once they were on the street, he reengaged the security systems so no one would be the wiser as to their comings and goings.

Hogsmeade was pretty deserted at this time of night, but that was to be expected given it was a typical wizarding village: asleep by nightfall and up with the dawn. The only ones about at that hour were drunkards at the village's two pubs, one at either end of the long street.

"This way," Ginny directed and they followed her to a pub marked by an ancient wooden sign reading, 'The Hog's Head'.

Once inside, Blaise noted the place was nothing like the airy and bright interior of The Three Broomsticks. This pub's low ceiling, fogged glass windows, and dim candlelight made for a gloomy atmosphere, and the smell of burning cheroot and pipe stash was too much a reminder of the cellar at the apothecary's shop they'd just left behind. Combined with the scent of beer sweat and unwashed bodies, it was really quite a pungent place.

Ginny swaggered up to the bar to talk with a tall, grey-bearded fellow who looked remarkably like a feral version of their Headmaster.

Blaise took up at her side and played at lookout over the rest of the room, noting the glittering, curious eyes from among the remaining patrons that seemed to watch them with a bit too much interest for his tastes. With half an ear, he heard some of his witch's conversation with the old man, including some ridiculous excuse she'd made up on the fly about her and her friends getting it into their heads to play a prank on her brothers, those rowdy twins, by breaking into their shop in Diagon Alley and springing a surprise visit on them.

Suspecting the old goat wasn't buying her lies by the pregnant pause that followed, Blaise put his hand on Ginevra's shoulder in a silent message to leave off. The man's bright blue eyes snapped to him, and behind his rectangular spectacles, in that sharp look there was a Slytherin's cunning combined with a Ravenclaw's intelligence. Blaise felt skewered by that look; it seemed to tear into him and read all his secrets. When the man moved on to take in Blaise's companions in silent contemplation as well, it felt as if he'd received a reprieve from the axe-man.

Shite, he thought, wiping his brow of the sweat that suddenly beaded there, that's Dumbledore's brother? What the fuck is he?

The old geezer's aura read as completely human, but he was powerful, and not just in white magic. There was enough darkness in him that it was like looking at a perfect yin-yang.

For some unfathomable reason the pub's proprietor seemed to have been convinced by their tale—or, more likely, he knew they were lying, but he was letting them go anyway—and he grunted as if satisfied and pointed to the Floo on the other side of the pub. Ginny thanked him, promised to bring him back something from her brothers' shop, and then headed off. Behind her went Brown and Finnigan. Blaise brought up the rear.

"Tell Sabrina hello for me."

Blaise stopped and turned at that, the hairs on his arms standing on end. "What?"

The Headmaster's brother gave him a nasty smirk and those eyes of his twinkled with vicious glee. "Seems she's finally all out of time."

Three successive flashes of brilliant green behind him signaled that Blaise's mate and her two friends were gone on to Diagon Alley. Yet, rather than immediately join them, Blaise stood there a moment longer, wanting to ask Aberforth what he knew. By the look in the older wizard's face, though, it seemed the man wouldn't be able to speak of it, even if he'd been inclined. An Oath of Silence was, after all, a lifetime gag order.

~.~.~.~.~

As if fate had stepped in on their behalf, Tom the Barkeep at The Leaky Cauldron barely gave the four of them a glance as they came through the fireplace on his end. He was, Blaise noted, too busy dealing with shooing out customers and getting ready to close up the till for the night.

Working with one mind, Ginny, Brown, Finnigan, and he all headed for the back door into the Alley without further ado, not wanting to press their luck by lingering. Blaise tapped the magical bricks in the right order with his wand, and then they were through and breathing free air.

"Thank fuck," he sighed, looking back over his shoulder as the way in bricked itself back up. It was once more a smooth surface, indistinguishable from the wall on either side of it. "At least that part is over."

"Now onto the really tough stuff," Ginny stated. "I wish I had my wand."

"Are you any good at wandless magic?" Brown asked.

Ginny shrugged. "Not really. Things tend to go 'boom' when I try it."

The Irish chuckled. "I hear ya, darlin'. It's th' same fer me."

A growl escaped Blaise's lips before he could stop it. His inner Veela apparently didn't like Finnigan flirting with its female anymore than he did.

At the sound, Brown's eyebrows shot into her hairline and Finnigan's jaw dropped open.

Ginny fought to contain a grin. "Better watch it, Sea," she warned her friend in a teasing tone. "My man's got a jealous streak a mile wide."

"Does he now?" The Irish pulled a honey-coloured lolly from his coat pockets, unwrapped it, and gave it a good, long lick. "Sounds ta me like someone may have a mate problem, yeah?"

Bloody hell, he should never have copped to knowing Brown and her boy-toy's real heritage. He'd given them both an opening into guessing his own secrets now, and that just wouldn't do. Good thing he could lie and distract almost as well as he could fuck. "My problem is with your undecided cock, Finnigan. Or have you finally settled on Brown? Only took you seven years."

The guy took a step forward, putting himself between Blaise and Lavender. "And how would ya know she was me Fae mate, unless ya be Fae yerself?"

Blaise rolled his eyes and feigned disgust. "Fairies were covered in our classes and the signs were all right there in front of your nose. It's not as if you two have been discreet in your attraction over the years. Anyone with a brain could have put it together."

The guy stepped in close, getting up in Blaise's grill and humming for a fight. "Ya callin' me stupid?"

Well, if he wanted it so badly... "I believe the term is dim-witted."

Finnigan's eyes narrowed.

"Let's see 'bout that, yeah?"

He moved faster than expected, and then something cold and sharp slammed through Blaise. It began at the back of his hand, zinging a painful electric current right up his arm, through his shoulder and spine, slamming into the back of his head. He couldn't even cry out, all he could do was feel the ice-cold magic shoved under his skin and into his veins. He collapsed to his knees.

Ginny was there in an instant, shoving Finnigan back...and then she was the one writhing and falling to the ground next, giving a little cry before she was lying flat on the cobblestones, twitching.

"Shit! Sea, what did you do?" Brown demanded, and hurried to Ginny's side.

The Irish went still and as silent as the grave, clearly as stunned as the rest of them by what had happened.

It took Blaise a few seconds more to fight past the pain, feeling it wash through him like an acid bath, and then he was launching himself at his mate, taking her into his arms and assuring she was unhurt. As he brushed the hair from her face, he noted she looked dazed. He called to her, dragging her back from that dark edge where he could tell by her expression she hovered.

Slowly, the light of recognition returned to her dark eyes.

"Wha- What was that?" she asked, sounding afraid and a little shaken.

"Gin, you okay?" Brown worried about her friend, rubbing a hand over her friend's arm, unsure as to what to do. "Should we take you to St. Mungo's?"

Blaise was thinking along the same lines. If she'd felt anything like what he had... With more strength than he'd thought himself capable of right then, Blaise lifted his lover into his arms again and got his feet under him. They wobbled a moment longer, but by sheer force of will, they held.

Disapparition was out, given how he felt, for he was sure to splinch one of them, if not both if he attempted it, but he could walk back inside the Leaky and take the Floo to the hospital.

"I'm fine," Ginny argued and struggled to be let down, her strength quickly returning. "Just stupefy'd for a few seconds, but I'm okay now."

"You're not okay." He redistributed her weight in his arms. "You have to go-"

"You're Unseelie."

Finnigan pushed forward to stand in Blaise's way.

"This amulet...its been passed down in me family from me Gran," he told them, holding up an odd amber-coloured pendant on a leather cord. "Its got cold iron sealed inta its heart. Only th' Unseelie Court canna touch it without pain." He turned to Brown. "I brought it ta prove ta ya tha' yer no Unseelie, Lavender. Yer Seelie Court, like me. Never thought..." His green eyes narrowed, shifting between Blaise and Ginny. "What are ya then, th' pair o' ya?"

Next to him, Brown gasped. "Sea, you can't be serious!"

"I am. They both touched the amulet, and were harmed by it. Tha' only happens with one o' th' Unseelie Fae."

"Seamus," Ginny sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "You don't understand-"

Worried that Ginevra would spill their secrets to her friends, with as quick a stride as he could manage, Blaise started back towards the exit to the Alley, determined to put as much space between them all as possible. Ginny fought him every step of the way, unfortunately, until she eventually squirmed out of his hold and her feet hit the ground. "I don't need a healer," she quarreled with him, holding her hands out to prevent him from grabbing her up again. "What I need is for us to get to Madam Aset's to find a way to save our friends!"

"And what I need is to take care of you," he countered. "I could give a fuck about anyone else right now!"

She openly gaped at him. "You aren't serious? What about Theo or Malfoy? You said they were your friends, like brothers to you!"

He snarled, knowing she was right, but the thing inside him was a pushy S.O.B. and all it wanted and cared about was her. Nothing else mattered to it, and its desires had a way of swamping his. Always had done. In this, it was no different. In a heartbeat, it came forward within him once more, taking some of his well-fought control with it. He could feel his eyes change, felt his gums and shoulders tingling where fangs and wings should be, but had never fully formed, and felt the pressure in his mind where it exerted its influence upon him. Finnigan's amulet had spooked it, that much he sensed, and that the magical item's touch had hurt its mate, too... Well, now it was amped up and exerting its influence.

His beast moved him forward until he was backing Ginny up a step at a time, until her shoulders hit the wall. He crowded in on her to prevent her escape, slapping his palms against the bricks to either side of her to create a cage around her to prevent her escape. "Nothing in this world matters to me as much as you," it growled at her through his mouth. "Nothing. I will protect you, I will die for you...and I will kill for you, mate."

Ginny's hands pressed against his chest, her nails digging into the flesh beneath like talons. A long blink, and then her golden eyes were staring up at him with a matching determination reflected in their depths. "And I you," she told him, pulling him in and on tip-toe meeting his mouth with her own. "Mine!" she growled against his lips.

"Holy balls on a stick," Finnigan swore from somewhere behind them. "Yer both Veela!"

That someone had discovered their secret made Blaise's inner beast positively feral. Yanking his mouth from Ginevra's, he turned and flashed his teeth in warning at the Irish, hissing.

The man looked like he'd been hit with one too many Bludgers.

Next to him, Brown was rapidly blinking.

Both were staring.

"Well," Lavender finally said with a quickly exhaled breath. "That explains so much."

She laughed then, and everyone looked at her like she'd lost the plot.

"Don't you see?" She made a circling gesture that indicated all of them. "This might be why only the four of us were kicked out of the game. We're all magical creatures to some extent. Not fully human."

Blaise's Veela was confused by the turn of the conversation and the change in tone. It gave him a chance to sneak back in and regain full control. "Why would that matter?" he asked as his vision returned to normal. "That information would have given Eros more fodder, not less."

Brown tapped a pretty, painted fingernail against her bottom lip as she considered that. "Yes, I suppose it would. But it also made it harder for him, too, didn't it? Because we have mates—I'm assuming you two are mated?"

"We are," Ginny confirmed, grabbing hold of Blaise around the waist and resting her cheek against his arm. "He's mine. I'm his. To the end."

"I think Sea and I feel the same for each other," she admitted, sending a quick look over at her partner. He nodded and she seemed bolstered by that admission from him. "So what if Eros figured it out, too? We have to assume he'd been listening in on every conversation we'd had when we were in the game, and I know Sea told me about his Fae side tonight while we were in our private room. Did you talk about being a Sex-Witch and a Sex-Wizard?"

Blaise kept his mouth shut, as he felt he'd divulged enough.

Ginny, however, nodded.

"Then, Eros would have known we'd all rather forfeit than touch anyone else or harm each other. He wouldn't be able to control us through his Deeds and Forfeits as he could the others," Brown continued. "We were no challenge for him once things came out. So, maybe it is all about playing a game."

"Yeah, one wit' our heads," Finnigan said around a mouthful of lollipop.

"And our hearts," Ginny added.

"For our souls," Blaise finished, realising that Lavender was onto something. "Which is what Malfoy said a horcrux did. It ate the energy of other souls to replenish itself." He snapped his fingers as he recalled what his best friend had said on the subject earlier. "Draco believed the horcrux needed something from us specifically, but there's no way it could have known who else he'd pick to join in the game tonight, which means-"

"Whoever gave him the cards in the first place was after him," Brown deduced.

He nodded. "Madam Aset, and it seems she's after his soul."

Ginny stirred in his arms. "Why him, though?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" He turned to face back down the Alley, towards Knockturn. "We'll have to find that out."

"Before it's too late for him," Finnigan added. He crunched up his candy, swallowed quickly, and tossed the naked stick in a nearby refuse bin. Then, he strung his hellish amulet around his neck and tied it off. "Well, 's what we came for, innit?"

As Blaise hesitated, his eyes latched onto the pendant with the cold iron core, Finnigan sighed. "I promise not ta use it against either o' ya again. I thought... Fuck-balls, but I thought ya were Seelie Court, Zabini! Honest ta Jim, I dinna know it would hurt ya. And i had no clue 'bout Gin's Fae side. I'm sorry, a'right?"

Blaise sniffed, still not fully trusting the Irish, but knew his lover had been right when she'd reminded him that they were on a time schedule if they were going to save Draco and Theo from whatever the game was doing to them. He turned to reassess his lover in his arms. She seemed hale and healthy again, but...

"Tell me true: are you well enough to go on?"

She tweaked his nose and tossed him a wicked Weasley grin. "Well enough to shag you into the earth, lover boy, especially if you keep on with the caveman routine. Sure, it might ruffle my feminist feathers, but damn, your overprotectiveness makes me horny!"

Behind them, Finnigan snorted. "Effin' Veela."

~.~.~.~.~

The sign above the door leading into Madam Aset's home-slash-personal brothel was elegantly carved from ancient, stained wood and etched with gold gilt.

It read simply: Netherworld.

"Cool name for a shop," Brown said, trying to peek through the closed front window curtains. "It's dark. She's put up for the night."

Ginevra cracked her knuckles. "Looks like we're breaking in!"

Blaise was preparing to cast a ward check when Finnigan sauntered up and once more simply tried the knob first. This time, it turned and the door opened. "Always best ta check first before ya go blowin' down someone's wards and alert the Hit Wizards," the guy stated. He stared into the darkness just beyond the door. "Seems someone broke in before us, tho'."

"Or maybe she just forgot to lock the door," Brown offered with a shrug. "It could happen."

It was up to Blaise to point out the obvious. "No, we were expected."

"What makes you think so," his mate asked him.

"Sabrina's the cautious type. She'd never leave herself this vulnerable. Even if she'd been attacked by someone trying to force their way in, she'd have had secondary security in place to stop them. Both have been dismantled without any violence." He pointed to the doorjamb, which was in perfect condition and showed no signs of forced entry. "She was expecting someone, and I'm almost positive it was us."

"Sounds like ya know this Madam personally," Finnigan said, glancing at him with suspicion. "Well enough ta be on a first name basis, anyway."

"I hired her once."

"Ta teach ya how ta control yer Veela."

"No wonder you're so good at sex!" Brown stated, seeming impressed.

Both Finnigan and his Ginevra threw warning glances at the blonde, who put up her hands to ward them both off. "I'm just saying. Geez, calm down, both of you."

Blaise turned back to the door to Madam Aset's shop, getting his game face on. "I'm not sure what to expect once we go in. Before tonight's game, I'd have said Sabrina was trustworthy, now... She gave the cards to Draco, and I'm starting to believe it wasn't for the reason of winning over Granger." He looked at each of his companions on this quest. "She's a Sex-Witch, rumoured to be one of the strongest in the world. Just...be careful, and don't let her touch you."

It was the best he could offer them, unsure if they were walking into a trap, or if Sabrina intended to help them instead. He'd thought he'd known her, having known her in the Muggle Biblical sense of the term, but now he wasn't so sure it hadn't all been an act for her to get at him, Carmen Zabini's son. His mother was, after all, Sabrina's biggest competitor in Europe.

And he'd willingly gone to her for help, rather than his own mother.

Not that he could have learned from dear, old mum what he'd needed, obviously. Still, he could have talked to his mother about the magic he'd inherited from her, learned from her experiences that way. Instead, he'd run in the exact opposite direction. Had doing so allowed Sabrina a tie to his soul as well? She knew his magical aura now, intimately. Could that be used against him in this confrontation to come?

Ginny's hand on his arm got his attention. "Hey," she said, and he looked down into her concerned gaze. "Tell me true: are you good to go on?"

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her on the top of her carrot-coloured head. "I'm fine."

When this is all over, I'm going to hold you like this forever, he thought, bolstering his confidence with that reminder. His lioness was his, at long last, and their bond was for life. They would never be parted, not even by an evil card game set to destroy them all.

~.~.~.~.~

Blaise led the way inside Madam Aset's shop, his wand's tip lit with a Lumos, since they were obviously anticipated and there was no longer a need for stealth.

The place looked exactly the same as it had the first time he'd been there: opulent and plush, with French damask furniture upholstered in pink velvet and decorated with an assortment of matching pillows, a thick Aubusson carpet with pink and gold tones, and cream-coloured silken, sheer curtains tastefully hanging from the walls. Fresh cut roses of pink, cream, and white were in silver and crystal vases on every flat surface, and their beauty was mimicked by the multitude of oil portraits on the wall. The ceiling was white, etched with fleur de lis tiles and there was a small four-candle chandelier made of pink crystals that hung down in the middle of the room.

"It looks almost exactly like a smaller, swankier version of the main room in the game," Brown pointed out the obvious. "There at the end, I mean, before we were booted out."

At that observation, something flipped over in Blaise's belly, making it go tight. How could Eros have known what this room would look like to be able to mimic it in the game? He'd been dead long before Madam Aset had been born, so he couldn't have visited it... Unless she'd bought the house like this. Perhaps this had even been the brothel where Psyche, the card's owner, had once worked, and Sabrina hadn't done much more than maintain its decor over the years since she'd occupied to suite?

That could explain it, he supposed.

Maybe.

"Looks like the house tha' the Pink Menace built," Finnigan countered with a grimace. "Minus th' cat fetish."

"That cinches it," Ginevra pronounced. "Dolores Umbridge's twin lives here. We pound her into the dirt!"

"Gotta find her first, tho'." The Irish moved further into the room. "Where is she, if we were expected?"

Blaise pointed towards the narrow, well-concealed passage just past the settee. "If she won't come to us, we go to her. I know that way leads to a corridor that splits at the end. One side goes up to her bedroom, the other down to the kitchen and dining." He took point, as he was the one with the wand. "Follow me."

The four of them headed through the corridor that was only wide enough to accommodate one person at a time; another security feature, Blaise thought, as magic could easily be used to expand the corridor if Sabrina had wanted. It made sense, though, not to do so. As a registered and licensed Sex-Witch practitioner, even one as powerful as Sabrina, there was a certain danger inherent in the work. People frequently fell in love with a Veela as a result of their magical ability to induce a chemical high in a person in the bedroom. All those hormones and pheromones, aura stroking, and physical touch could convince people that the happy high they were feeling was really love, when in fact, it was just a reaction to an amazing round of sex. Some clients didn't take rejection of their feelings well, though, and obsession and violence was occasionally the outcome. Hence the need to make it difficult for such people to reach the object of their dark fascination with narrow corridors, trick stairs, and blood wards.

Was that what had happened with Eros, he wondered. Had the man become unreasonably obsessed with Psyche, and when she'd rejected him, had he killed her rather than face her dismissal?

Said like that, shit, maybe 'obsessed' didn't cover the insane degree of possessiveness going on there by the guy, regardless of the exact scenario that had led to the poor woman's death over her card deck. Eros had clearly stepped off the level in killing the witch and making a horcrux to trap her soul with his. Only someone truly fucked up would play with that kind of dark magic.

As they hit the end of the corridor, Blaise used his senses to try to 'sniff out' Sabrina's magical signature.

To the right, heading up the stairs.

Wand at the ready, a barrage of hexes and curses mentally prepared, he led the four up to the bedroom area. The door at the top was also open, inviting them in.

Yes, Sabrina had been waiting for them, he could feel it.

How would she know they'd come, though?

The Slytherin within Blaise was screaming that they were walking into a trap. Although he'd once trusted Sabrina as much as anyone he could trust, he was now convinced that she'd given Draco the card game for reasons not at all altruistic. It kept coming back to the fact that she had to have felt the dark magic they'd held and purposefully masked it to prevent anyone else from sensing it too, for Blaise hadn't noticed a thing wrong about the cards when he'd touched them. Nor had Finnigan or Brown or his Ginny, it seemed. Like cold iron, most Fae were sensitive to such things.

Sabrina had to have known what the cards would do. There was no doubt in his head any longer. The only questions remaining began, once more, with 'why'? Why give out the deck in the first place? Why hand it off to Draco? Why now? Why invite them to come visit her after they'd been kicked from the game?

Actually there was one question he had that didn't start with 'why' so much as 'how': How had Sabrina known that Blaise and the others were no longer in the game?

He pushed the door open, stepped up into the sitting room and moved to the left to let the others by, keeping his wand aimed at the strongest source of magic he could sense nearby. It was coming from the next room, just beyond a set of closed French doors.

Sabrina's bedroom.

When the others took his cue and stepped to the right of the door to give his wand arm a clear aim in case of trouble, only then did he call out.

"You called, Madam, and we came. Now tell us why."

The Madam of Dawn, as she was sometimes called by her most fervent admirers, did not respond. The French doors opened and the sheer drapes hanging on the other side parted in the middle with a ghost's touch, however, indicating the woman had performed a non-verbal spell to move them in an impressive display of magic.

"We're good right here," he told her. "This isn't a visit for pleasure, anyway, as you already seem to know. This is business."

"In my line of work, the both are as one," the mistress of the house answered as she seemed to step out of the dimness of her bedroom and into the doorway, her presence a rolling, black thundercloud entering the room, "as you are already well aware, Blaise Zabini."

"Shit," Finnigan swore next to him. In his palm, he was holding his amulet in a white-knuckled grip. "Me hand is burning just from her being this close. She's Unseelie, too."

With a tinkling laugh that sounded like song birds in the springtime, Madam Sabrina Aset fully stepped into the room. She was the loveliest creature Blaise had ever seen, honestly. Long, wavy hair that was the colour of a Galleon and shimmered with the same light, dark eyes with amber chips that sparkled, charming red lips that pouted just enough to draw the eye. Her face was perfectly symmetrical, as if the gods had sculpted it with their own hands, and her slender body with its graceful, long legs and well-rounded breasts was the shape of a young woman barely into her womanhood, built to call to a man's teenage fantasies. She was an exquisite example of the feminine. Her beauty, however, was as a porcelain doll's, cold and remote for all its perfection...or so Blaise thought.

Sure, he found Sabrina stunning, but her attractiveness couldn't hold a candle to his mate. Furthermore, the woman's voracious sexual appetite wasn't based upon any genuine desire, but the hunger of the Veela within her, which made what happened with her between the sheets less sexy, more base and mechanical. Whereas his mate's girl-next-door, tomboyishness and brash, sincere attitude were the exact opposite of the Madam of Netherworld, and comparing the two side-by-side, there was no debating which woman he'd always choose.

On the other side of the doorway, directly across from him, Ginny gasped. "It's you! The woman on the back of the cards. You're Psyche!"

Sabrina's ruby lips curled with amusement, and as her gaze alighted on Blaise's mate, the woman's eyes flattened like a snake's sensing its first prey of the night.

Blaise was too busy reeling from Ginevra's accusation, however, to act.

Sabrina was Psyche? No, that... How was that even possible? The woman who'd owned the cards was long dead, had been for nearly two-hundred years. There was simply no way. No one could live that long.

Not naturally, a little voice in the back of his head whispered.

"She's the one on the back of the cards, the one holding onto Eros," Ginevra insisted, pointing at the Madam. "I'm positive of it. The artwork...it drew my eye."

"Like calls to like, does it not?" Sabina asked her with a knowing tilt to her smile.

The sense of dread that had been following Blaise around since Malfoy explained the dark magic that had ensnared them that night increased. He felt and saw his wand arm shake, and for the first time in years, he was truly scared.

"The cards aren't Eros' horcrux," he said, putting the pieces together. Sabrina glanced at him and his hand shook harder. "They're yours."

"I'm surprised you're only now figuring that out," she confirmed, playing with the glittering diamond bracelets on her wrists. "I thought I'd taught you better, my young lover."

At Ginny's growl, Sabrina's smile widened—a cat preparing to pounce.

"Although, you've been quite distracted tonight," she taunted. Her teeth gleamed with a feline viciousness. "Not that it surprises me. Like most men, you're easily led around by your cock."

From the corner of his eye, Blaise saw Ginny's body tense and her fingers curl into claws. "Don't," he told her, anticipating her desire to physically attack the witch. "She's goading you on purpose." Sabrina's intent was clear: she was trying to lure his lover in so she could hurt her. Fury at the thought had his arm straightening and aiming true. "She wants to harm you because you're mine. She senses it. You're mine, and it galls her that she'll never have me again," he said, stating the obvious now that the puzzle was coming together in his mind. "Or rather, she'll never have a way to get at my mother again with me no longer her cat's paw."

Sabrina gave him a slow clap. "Not quite as sex-fogged as I'd anticipated, it seems." Her expression shifted into one of regret. "Pity. I had hoped to spare you the pain. You were, after all, one of my favourites."

Right there and then, as Blaise stared back into Madam Aset's orange-gold eyes—old eyes, he realized for the first time; eyes that had weathered time's passage without fear—he knew as assuredly as he knew his own name that someone was going to die tonight.

It was only a matter of time.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Working on finishing up this story by year's end. I won't spoil how many chapters are left, but we're not long now. Things are culminating and answers are forthcoming (at long last). Hang in there with me to the end, won't you?

XOXO,

- RZZMG

.

Musical selection for this chapter: "Savior" by Danny Worsnop. Lyrics are as follows...

I slipped up, I fell down.
I laid there with my back against the ground.
I've reached out, all I found,
My own reflection floating up into the clouds.

You helped me out of my madness.
You pulled me out of my grave.

I'm alive,
Breathing deeper than I've ever breathed before,
And I owe it all to you.
I'm coming home.

I found my heart,
I thought was dead and gone,
Safely in your hands, and it will stay there forever.
You keep me up, you keep me up. You keep me sane.
You taught me love. You saved me.

You helped me out of my madness.
You pulled me out of my grave.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm alive,
Breathing deeper than I've ever breathed before,
And I owe it all to you.
I'm coming home.
The distance can't haunt us anymore.
I'm coming home!
I'm coming home!

I'm alive,
Breathing deeper than I've ever breathed before,
And I owe it all to you.
I'm coming home.