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Chapter Text

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BELONGING TO THE FOG

You can fall ill with just a memory - Paolo Giordano

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PART ONE

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Chapter Text

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My re-emergence to consciousness was deeply disorienting.

Disturbing, surreal memories surfaced and sifted in my mind, of running through a fog-strewn forest, of being half-strangled, of being hissed at by a painting (really?)... And framing those brief slivers of skewed reality, an infinitely vaulting periphery of...blankness. Complete blankness.

I lay for some time, going over in detail everything I could remember, which seemed to span only a very few waking hours. Those scant recollections revolved slowly—rings within rings, like gimbals of a gyroscope—around a whirring, powerful central axis represented by a pale-haired, silver-eyed man who had called himself Lucius.

Who had nearly killed me.

The more I thought of him, the stranger and more spectral he seemed, until I wondered if I had merely dreamed him. Perhaps everything was a dream—perhaps I was in the middle of one right now... Yet I was fairly sure I was awake, that this was real. ...I think, therefore I am...

I am—who?

Alice?

I sat up and looked around. The first impression I had of the room was of emphatic grandeur. The bed and furniture were large and stately, the soft-furnishings heavy and costly, everything impressive and ornate. A guest-suite that was furnished, not to put its inhabitants at ease, but to put them at a disadvantage.

I pushed back the heavy bedding and slid out onto the floor. With a sudden jolt I realised that I was standing in only my underwear. An angry huff escaped me. Had he removed my dress? That pervert!

But then I remembered my sodden, muddy clothes and I was forced to admit that, as close to hypothermia as I had assuredly been, it would have been dangerous to sleep in them. Still, I squirmed at the thought of being undressed by the man and could only hope he had not taken advantage of my insensate state for any depraved purpose of his own.

A full-length mirror stood in one corner, and I gravitated apprehensively towards it. I had to see my reflection. I had to look myself in my eyes, to discover if I knew myself, even if I didn't remember myself.

Gritting my teeth, I stepped in front of the glass.

I hadn't realised I was holding my breath until I let it go in a loud relieved exhalation. Yes! I knew that face. I wasn't a total stranger. Thank god for that.

I wasn't a pretty sight, however. My hair was a matte mass of tangles, my eyes underscored with heavy shadows, they looked almost bruised against my unnaturally pallid skin. My bottom lip was gashed and there were other welts around my cheekbones and brow. A smear of dirt ran from temple to jaw down one cheek. The rest of me hadn't fared much better: my arms and legs were scratched all over and spattered with dried mud, bearing testament to yesterday's wild run through the forest.

I turned over my hands and inspected them. My right palm was no longer bound, and the gash appeared less raw than I expected—it wasn't even very sore, which surprised me. Yet my sprained wrist ached and was beginning to visibly bruise, and my fingers still twitched with the oddly incomplete sensation I had noticed yesterday.

I lifted my chin, expecting to see an ugly purple welt across my throat...but strangely it was unmarked. I touched the skin gingerly, swallowed experimentally, but there was no pain or tenderness. Surely, I hadn't dreamed that I had been choked by that man's cane? I frowned, confused. Even the few memories I did have seemed to be contradictory, unreliable.

Daylight was filtering through the brocaded curtains and I padded over, parting them a fraction to peer cautiously out.

I was on an upper floor, perhaps the second storey from the ground. There was not much to see. Just a wide stretch of gravel, bordered by bristly conifers. It wasn't raining, but the sky was a wintery, iron grey. It looked freezing out there. I shivered, remembering the relentlessness of the cold yesterday, the feeling I would never be warm again. I felt certain that, if not for the crow leading me out of the forest, I would surely have perished.

Well, I told myself, you're warm, and you're alive. The cold didn't get you. And the man didn't murder you in your sleep, either. I suppose you should be counting your blessings.

I spent several minutes searching through the various wardrobes and drawers for signs of my missing clothes and shoes, but they were all bare. An open door next to one of the tall dressers led through to an ensuite bathroom. I peered in, and was taken aback to see a bathtub inside, full of steaming water. I approached for a closer look. Like everything else, the bath was over-sized and ornamental. It appeared to be made from white marble, standing on baroque lion's paws, and by the looks of things the taps were gilded.

And yes, it really was nearly brimming with hot, sweetly scented water. Apparently, someone had recently filled it up for me.

A cloak-stand near the head of the tub bore a thick towel and a kimono-style bathrobe, both of which I supposed had been left for my use. I ran my fingers down the fine, silky fabric of the robe. It looked like the sort of sheer garment that covered much but concealed little...but it seemed a better option than skulking around in my underwear.

...The water did look inviting.

I dipped my fingertips in. It was a little too warm. I reached over to the gold taps, but oddly neither one would budge. The faucet handles were moulded to the spout, unable to be turned. How very strange.

Oh well, I thought. There's no denying you could do with a good clean.

I drew the ensuite door closed, wishing it had a lock. Self-consciously I peeled off my underwear, shielding myself with my hands, unable to shake off a deep-seated feeling of vulnerability. I quickly hopped into the bath and slid down into its enveloping depths.

For a while I just lay there, weightless, motionless, not thinking, just letting the water and heat cradle me, breathing deeply in the floral fragrance permeating the rising steam... But soon the gnawing, unsettling awareness of blankness intruded upon me again, and I felt myself tense up.

When would my memory return? What if it never—? But no, I couldn't dwell on that. That thought was far, far too frightening...

I ducked under the water, and when I came up I saw I had dislodged several leaves and twigs. ...What a complete mess you must have looked to that man, I thought, recalling how refined and expensive his unusual attire had appeared to be. Not that I should care, unpleasant and sneering as he was. But I did. ...Perhaps it was his undisguised contempt which made me care.

I scrubbed away the mud on my legs and my arms, flinching every so often when I hit a bruise or scratch. When I was clean I gathered my willpower and hauled myself out. Much as I liked the idea of spending the day immersed in hot water, I had a family and home to find. Presumably.

I dried myself off with the towel and slipped into the bathrobe. It was silky and cool, light as a whisper.

I went back to the mirror and spent some time teasing out the knots in my damp hair with my fingers. I grimaced at my reflection. Even after a thorough clean-up, there was no disguising my drawn, too-pale face, and the shadows under my eyes: eyes which stared with a somewhat wild fragility, like a startled deer.

What happened to you? I wondered of the young woman looking back at me. Why do you look so haunted?

Who are you?

"Alice Carroll," I said out loud. "You're Alice Carroll."

But I wasn't so sure. I didn't know exactly why I'd volunteered that name to the man last night, but it didn't ring true—I didn't feel the same certainty, the same recognition I had experienced upon seeing my reflection.

Come on, Alice, or whoever the hell you are. It's time to go and find some answers.

I was a little uneasy about leaving the room wrapped only in a thin slip of silk, and for a few further minutes I searched for my clothes, but eventually gave up.

I went to the door and stood still for a moment, trying to calm the sudden jangling of my nerves. What are you afraid of? I thought. If that man was going to rape you or lock you in a dungeon, surely he'd have done it last night.

Squaring my shoulders, I twisted the handle and pushed the door open. Peering out, I saw that I was halfway along a stone corridor, lit by a row of candles set in ornate brass wall-sconces. At the far-left end was an arched window letting in the bleak morning light; at the opposite end was a well of shadows where, I supposed, a staircase would lead me downstairs.

Slipping out of the doorway, I crept down the passage to the right. As I rightly supposed, I came to a flight of wide stone stairs, stretching both up and down. I made an apprehensive descent, hoping I would not get myself hopelessly lost. When I gained the bottom, I was reassured to recognise the corridor where I had fainted the night before. I coughed tentatively. All was still and half-shrouded in shadow.

"Hello?" I called, annoyed that the voice echoing back at me sounded like a frightened child.

As I made my way down the corridor, I found myself glaring left and right at the many paintings, almost daring them to come to life. The prevailing theme of the collection appeared to be scornful ladies and imperious men. I noticed that many bore plaques on their frames engraved with the name 'Malfoy'. I wondered if that was the last name of my mysterious host. It seemed probable, if his propensity for sneering was any indication of kinship.

Thankfully, none of these paintings showed the remotest sign of life or movement. It seemed ridiculous now. Paintings didn't move...but soon I was in sight of the portrait that had—had hissed at me, and I automatically slowed down, a numbing dread overtaking me. I edged forwards, feeling almost nauseous with fear, but determined to look, to see...

It was completely normal. No bloodied fangs, no vertically slitted pupils. Just a regular painting of an extremely haughty woman. Beneath it, a small, engraved silver legend read, 'Sidonia Malfoy née Slytherin'. I leaned closely in, fascinated despite myself. I could see the brush strokes, the texture of the oil paint. The portrait was certainly life-like, but not alive.

...Was it all in your head, then, Alice?

"Exquisite, is she not?"

I jumped, squeaking with surprise, and whirling around.

The man—Lucius—had materialised as if from the shadows and was standing a little behind me. He loomed large, his presence just as intimidating as I had remembered from the night before. The sharp, angular beauty of his face struck me afresh; it was almost cruel, in a way...

So he hadn't been just a dream, then.

His silver eyes gleamed iridescently in the half-light. "Tragically, she was barren," he added. Then—to himself, it seemed—he murmured, "How differently might things have otherwise transpired..."

"She hissed at me!" I blurted out.

His mouth curved slightly at the corners. "The portrait?" His voice was a masterclass of incredulous disdain. "Forgive me, I wonder if I heard you correctly. You say the painting, er, hissed at you?"

I flushed deeply. "Yes, it did, last night," I insisted, although my voice was by no means confident. "You were there, you must have seen it! The painting hissed and then I—I think I fainted."

"Certainly, you did faint," he replied, in such a way that made it clear my doing so had been an extremely tiresome inconvenience. "You were suffering from exhaustion and very likely concussed. It takes no great stretch of imagination to conclude that your mind was playing tricks on you."

He put a hand on my elbow, steering me away from the portrait, but I tensed and resisted. "No! I remember it clearly. Her eyes went like a-a snake's, and she hissed at me!"

He pursed his lips disapprovingly; I suppose at my stubbornness. "Miss Carroll, may I ask if your memory returned to you overnight?"

"Not yet," I admitted. "But that has nothing to do with it!" I turned and stared hard at the painting, willing it to come alive again. "I know what I saw..."

I reached out to touch the canvas, but the man caught my wrist mid-air. "Enough of this nonsense, young lady," he said lightly, but with a warning edge to his voice. "Breakfast awaits." He turned and headed down the hallway, pulling me firmly along with him and I was forced into a stumbling trot to keep up with his long strides.

I most definitely did not like being manhandled and by the time we entered the dining room I had tried and failed twice to squirm out of his grip.

"Do you mind—" I began crossly, but my protests died on my lips as I found myself being pressed into a seat near one end of the mahogany table, in front of an unbelievably delicious-looking spread of food. Croissants, pastries, preserves, fresh fruit...there was enough to feed several people, though only one place was laid. A silver coffee-pot wafted promisingly.

I suddenly realised just how famished I really was. I had no idea how long since I'd last eaten anything, but it was all I could do not to grab the nearest item and cram it in my mouth.

My host moved around to sit at the head of the table, a few feet away from me. "I trust you slept well, Alice?" he said. His tone was one of polite interest, though his eyes expressed almost the exact reverse.

"Um, yes, I think so," I replied. I sat with my hands lodged between my knees, nearly crying with hunger. "That is, I don't exactly remember." Then, feeling I should acknowledge some sense of gratitude, I added, "But thanks again for letting me stay the night."

He made no reply to this, but, with a dismissive wave of his hand, he leaned elegantly back in his high-backed chair and regarded me impassively. After a few moments he spoke. "Well? Are you ill? Why don't you eat?"

"I'm not ill," I quickly replied. "It's only...a-aren't you going to have some—?" I gestured to the food.

"No."

I suppressed a grimace. What was with this man? Not, 'I've already eaten, or, 'I don't do breakfast.' Just, 'No.' On the one hand, lavishing me with all this hospitality, on the other, seemingly determined to make me feel as awkward and uncomfortable as possible.

Well, if he wanted to sit there and sneer at me eating, that was up to him. I was too hungry to care. I reached for a croissant and wolfed it down defiantly. Then I poured a cup of coffee and drained it to the dregs, making no attempt at delicacy, clattering the china noisily.

There you are, Mr Arrogance Personified, I thought. You obviously wanted a display—I hope I didn't disappoint you. I pushed my plate away and turned to meet his cold gaze. "Thank you. I feel much better."

"I'm overjoyed to hear it."

I picked up a napkin and wiped my hands, determined not to be flustered by his drawling sarcasm, though my cheeks burned. I wondered if the man treated all his guests this way, or if I was the lucky exception. In a nonchalant voice, I said, "May I ask how far away the nearest town is from here?"

The man tilted his head back, not immediately replying. I didn't like the glint in his eyes as they fixed on mine. It could be mistaken for malice. "Have you the slightest notion as to where we are, Miss—er, Carroll?" he said at last.

I was uneasy that he'd answered my question with a question.

"I don't know," I replied. "I suppose this could be anywhere in Britain."

He smiled. "I would not depend upon that," he enunciated with icy clarity, "if I were you."

"What?" I stared at him, startled. "What do you mean? Are you saying we're not in Britain? But you're—"

"British, yes," he said drily. "How wonderfully observant you are."

I sprang up from my seat, all pretensions to nonchalance now completely abandoned. "Well, then where the hell are we?!"

The man also arose and took a step towards me, not in an exactly threatening way, yet still as if to assert—to remind me of—his physical superiority.

I didn't need reminding. I remembered very well his brutality on the stairs yesterday, how his body had slammed me into the hard stone, his fingers painfully wrenching my hair, the cane crushing my throat...

I crossed my arms defensively. "P-please," I stammered, "I just want to go home."

"And where is that, Alice?" His tone was mocking.

I shrugged helplessly. My lips felt numb. "I...I thought you were going to help me," I said.

He moved away from me, stopping before one of the tall, narrow windowpanes. When he eventually spoke, he did not trouble himself to turn around. "I'm afraid you won't be going anywhere for the time being," he murmured. "Look out the window."

I did, and my heart sank. Snow was falling thick and fast.

Great, I thought. Just great.

As if it wasn't bad enough to be lost and amnesiac, now I was stuck. Stuck with a man whose personality spectrum seemed to vary between sardonic, saturnine, and downright violent. True, he'd given me shelter for the night and provided quite a dazzling spread of food this morning. But he hadn't exactly been gracious about it. In fact, he'd been unutterably rude. And why was he so reticent about revealing our location? That, I thought, was distinctly ominous.

Aiming, not very successfully, for a casual tone, I said, "It doesn't look like the kind of snow that settles."

The man didn't even bother replying. It really was a ridiculous comment, given the thick, blanketing flurries completely obscuring the outside world. But I tried once more anyway: "Perhaps this afternoon we could drive—"

"No," he negated abruptly.

"But I need to find out who I am—"

"You are Alice Carroll, remember?"

"Yes, but—"

"Unless, of course, that was a name you simply invented."

"No, no—but still, I think I should—"

He silenced me by turning and fixing his eyes on mine. They told me in no uncertain terms that it was no use to continue.

I swallowed drily. I was going to have to try a different approach. "How long does a snowstorm usually last in—wherever we are?"

He made a slight, sarcastic smile. "Why don't you hazard a guess?"

"I could hazard one much more accurately if I knew where we were." I could no longer disguise the uneasiness in my voice. "But for some reason, you don't want to tell me that."

He offered no reply.

I peered surreptitiously at him. He cut a statuesque and daunting figure, framed as he was by the window, backlit by the glare of whiteness beyond. His robe was different to the one he'd had on yesterday, more like a cape. Beneath it, he appeared to be wearing a black double-breasted waistcoat and riding breeches, tucked into tall, black hessian boots. I would have taken the entire ensemble for a costume, except that he wore it with such unconscious grace and ease... He had the look of some Germanic prince of a bygone era: all black-clad elegance, refined ruthlessness. Prince Lucius, the Ruthless.

Yes, he certainly did look sinister. What if he was a psychopathic sadist, with a dungeon full of torture instruments? It didn't seem impossible. It didn't even really seem improbable, which was a bit of a worry, all things considered.

With this disturbing thought now uppermost in my mind, I said, "Is there—is there anyone else living here?"

The man's lip curled with derision. "You mean, to hear you scream?"

I blushed hotly because it was precisely what I did mean. "I didn't say that," I replied, my voice quailing.

"But that was what you were thinking, wasn't it?" He left the window and began to advance slowly towards me. "You're thinking it right now." Each step echoed, hollow and forbidding. I was rooted to the spot with equal parts humiliation and fear. He stopped mere feet away, looming menacingly over me. "Well?" he said, silver eyes taunting and agleam. "What do you think I will do? Outrage your honour upon the table, perhaps?"

"NO." The word was vehement and multi-faceted. (No, I didn't mean that; no, I don't think you will do that; no, please don't do that.)

He raised a hand and gently brushed a stray curl away from my cheek, smiling thornily as I flinched. "Do you really believe I wish to rape you, Miss Carroll?" His voice was soft, but cold as ice. "I ought to take exception to such denigrating aspersions. Is that a befitting way to repay a man for saving your life?"

"I never...I didn't—said—say anything about you raping me." It was a clumsy, mortifying, jumbled mess of a sentence. "I was just curious if you lived alone. I thought you might have a wife, or—"

His expression froze, his whole body suddenly tensing, and I fell silent. He stared down at me, yet somehow through me. "No," he murmured. "I have no wife. Not anymore."

Not anymore? I wondered what that meant. Are you divorced? Did she die? Did you mur—

He must have read the half-formed thought in my eyes, for his own blazed with a sudden, white-hot rage, all colour draining from his face. "Insolent mudblood!" he hissed. He lunged forwards, grabbing my upper arms. I cried out as he began to shake me, hard, making my teeth rattle, my head spin. "Do you know I have killed men for less than what's written on your face?"

He shook me until my legs began to buckle, then suddenly shoved me away. I stumbled backwards, yelping as I collided with the table. For a moment I was too giddy to stand, and I lay half-sprawled across it, my head reeling, desperately praying that he wasn't going to use the slab of mahogany in the way he had recently mentioned. But a second onslaught didn't come, and I recovered my balance to rise unsteadily to my feet.

The man had turned aside and seemed to be fighting to compose himself.

"I—I'm sorry," I said, my voice low and trembling. "I didn't mean to offend you, but you frightened me. How am I supposed to know what your intentions are? I d-don't know you."

I wasn't prepared for the naked loathing on his face as he turned back to me. It robbed me of breath, like a kick to the stomach.

"Your virtue is safe from me, I promise you," he snarled. His eyes raked me from head to toe, his expression brimming with distaste...no, with actual disgust.

I bit my lip, my eyes suddenly hot and prickling. Much as I was relieved that he didn't intend to rape me, he didn't have to make it so abundantly clear that he found me so repulsive. It was the sort of look someone might give a disease-ridden sewer rat. My stomach churned with insult. Nobody deserved to be looked at in such a way. I wondered about the word he'd hurled at me twice now. 'Mudblood'. Clearly an offensive term, but of what significance? ...It sounds derogatory, I thought bitterly. Even degrading.

Apparently mastering his composure, the man moved back to take his seat at the head of the table. I stood awkwardly before him, abased and resentful, wearing his disgust like a crumpled crown.

For some moments we silently faced each other, currents of hostility rippling in the air between us.

Finally, he spoke, his voice once again smooth and controlled. "Miss Carrol, I should like us to come to an understanding."

"I understand that you frightened me on purpose," I blurted out caustically, still badly frightened and smarting. "I understand that you nearly choked me yesterday! I understand that you won't tell me where we are. Can you blame me for being afraid of you?" I plunged recklessly on, "And now I understand that I'm stuck here with you, for god-knows how long!"

"Indeed, you are," he replied. "For which, might I add, you should be extremely grateful. You would survive mere hours, were I to turn you out of doors."

He paused, as if politely waiting for me to refute his words, but of course I could not. He was right, and we both knew it.

I felt he was relishing my discomfort as he continued. "Fortunately for you, I am, for the present, prepared to offer you asylum—which, I need hardly observe, you are in no position to refuse. Are we agreed on that point?"

I nodded grudgingly.

"Then let me make something quite clear. You may expect to be treated as my guest, nothing more, or less. I will provide you with necessities for the duration of your stay here. And I will not harm you. You have my word."

Huh, I thought, why do I get the feeling your next sentence will begin with, "However"?

"However," he said—and I felt a small knot of smugness—"there is one overriding stipulation."

"Let me guess," I muttered acerbically, "I have to laugh at all your jokes."

He actually smiled, but it was a smile desolate of warmth or humour. "All I ask is that you curb your curiosity," he said.

I blinked, taken aback. "Curiosity? A-about what?"

"Anything and everything, Miss Carroll. Whatever it is you have the smallest modicum of curiosity about. Curb it, or there will be consequences. Unpleasant ones."

Hmm...so much for, 'I will not harm you'...

"Do we have an understanding?"

"But why—" I began, but he cut me off by sharply banging the flat of his hand on the table, making me jump.

"Do we have an understanding?"

"But what—"

"I will not ask you a third time, Miss Carroll," he overrode me, his eyes glinting warningly. "A 'Yes, Sir' is all I require from you."

I glowered at him. "Yes," I mumbled sullenly, then, as his eyebrow rose ominously, I reluctantly added, "Sir."

"Good." His tone was unutterably supercilious, and I felt my temper rise.

"Thank you ever so much," I said, bestowing back upon him a fair dose of sarcasm.

"You ought to be thankful," he replied. In a softer voice, he murmured, "I have been more generous than you know."

I felt deflated. I had so badly wanted to at least start the process of discovering my identity. I really believed that once I was restored to my home and family, my memory would return, everything would be okay. ...But of all the places to end up, it had to be this strange, remote, backwater fortress, completely cut off from civilisation, no neighbours, no telephone, inhabited by some kind of domineering autocrat with violent tendencies and an apparent grudge against young women. Well done, Alice.

Tears of frustration welled up. Don't you dare cry, I berated myself. Don't give him the satisfaction! But I couldn't help it. Two hot beads escaped and trickled down my cheeks. I quickly turned, dashing them angrily away, but I had already seen the glimmer of amusement in my interlocutor's eyes.

"Now, now, there really is no need to snivel." His voice was maddeningly blasé. "Rest assured, if you follow these basic rules, you have nothing to fear."

But I wasn't convinced.

Looking back on the very brief history of our time together, I felt pretty-well convinced that there was at least one thing to fear...and that was him.

...

After breakfast Lucius directed me back to my room, with a brief instruction to find my way back to the dining room for meals.

I hardly knew what to think, or how to feel. My earlier assumption, that I would be assisted to safety and subsequent recovery, had been utterly demolished. I now faced the very disturbing probability of having to cohabit with the man for several days to come...perhaps even longer, depending on the severity of the snowstorm.

We certainly hadn't got off to a good start, and I was fairly sure that relations with the master of the house would not improve with closer acquaintance.

I lay on the bed, staring at the candelabra above me, wondering about...just everything. Who I was; who he was. Where we were, if not in Britain. What I'd been running away from, through that freezing-cold forest, dressed only in a summer frock. And exactly how my memory-loss had transpired...

And the longer I wondered, the further I felt myself sink down into the dark depths of fathomless blankness.

I dozed throughout the day, my mind filled with hissing portraits, stone corridors, mocking silver eyes. Each time I awoke I became more disoriented, more disturbed, and it was difficult to determine between reality, hallucination, and sleep-scape. I spent most of the day in this strange stupor-like state. Time itself seemed to warp, so that hours lurched past like the briefest moments and some seconds would stretch out and suspend like a small eternity. ...It wasn't until the light was beginning to fade that I vaguely realised I had missed lunch; that it must, in fact, be nearing dinner time.

Dragging myself out of the huge bed, I went through to the bathroom to splash water on my face and attempted to neaten my hair with trembling fingers. Then, feeling oddly as if I were sleepwalking, I left the chamber and descended the wide flight of stone stairs, following the long corridor back to the room I had spent such a strange morning, in such strange company.

I was met at the door by Lucius, who was now magnificently attired in a robe of dark hunter's-green velvet, intricately embroidered with silver motifs. Immediately I felt a pang of self-conscious vulnerability, appearing before him in only a thin slip of silk.

He greeted me with as little apparent pleasure as he had that morning, as if conforming to the demands of courtesy for his own sake, rather than mine.

"Good evening, Miss Carroll."

"Good evening, um, Lucius." I rather mumbled his name, once again tasting the strangeness of it on my lips.

He guided me over to the extravagantly laid table, seating me, then assuming his own unprepared place. The great variety of dishes laid out upon the long table looked as delectable as they were abundant, and having missed lunch, I was more than ready to eat. However, my enjoyment was once again inhibited by the man's inscrutable, icy gaze fixed upon me as I sampled the elegant fare.

Finding the silence awkward and his stare oppressive, I attempted to engage him in conversation. "This food is delicious," I said, by way of introducing a topic that might reveal something more about the household. "Do you employ a chef?"

Ignoring my question, Lucius poured himself a glass of wine and took a leisurely sip.

"It certainly is a very big house," I continued. "It's really almost a castle, isn't it? I imagine it takes quite a large staff to keep it in order."

My lack of subtlety clearly amused him, for the hint of a smile curled the corners of his lips. "Miss Carroll," he murmured, "allow me to curtail your charmingly indirect line of questioning by assuring you that there is not another living human in this house. I do hate to dash all your hopes of recourse and rescue, but it cannot be helped."

"Oh," I said stupidly, "but it—it's—it's such a big house..."

"The marvellous thing about the patently obvious," he said drily, "is that it really need not be stated."

I bit my lip, vexed as much by his words as by his delicately stinging delivery of them. Was I really all alone with this strange, formidable man? I didn't wish to believe him, but he said it with such impassive assurance, it was difficult not to.

"I'm sure people will be looking for me," I said, more defensively than I had intended. "My family must be missing me by now." Then, more quietly, "I...I wonder for how long I've been...lost."

Lucius drummed one set of fingers on the tabletop in a careless manner. "Oh, I've no doubt the countryside will be veritably crawling with search parties," he drawled.

"Yes, well, I'm sure you'll be well remunerated for your hospitality," I said, trying to cut through his sarcasm by sounding prim and pragmatic.

However, this only had the effect of twisting his smile into a thorny, spiteful curve, edged with teeth. "Oh, I am counting on it, Miss Carroll."

The rest of dinner continued in the same vein. My attempts to extract any more information about my whereabouts were rebuffed with emphatic silence or curt rejoinders; my endeavours to initiate polite conversation were met with drawling sarcasm or thinly disguised insults. It was confusing and frustrating. I just couldn't understand why he behaved so rudely to me, a distressed stranger whom he had pledged to help.

It was only when I had finished eating and sat with my arms crossed, having lapsed into angry taciturnity, that Lucius suddenly became more sociable.

"Have you recovered any of your memory yet, Alice?" he suddenly addressed me, in a light, almost caressing voice.

I shook my head and replied, "Not yet." I could feel a blush spread over my cheeks in response to his altered tone.

"Nothing about your family?"

"No."

"Not even your name?"

"No.—I—I mean—." I stopped, realising he had caught me out with embarrassing ease. His eyes glittered triumphantly but he didn't comment, supposedly preferring to watch me fidget uncomfortably beneath his meaningful silence.

Determined not to oblige him, I pushed my chair back and stood up. "I think I'll go back up to my room now, if that's okay with you. I'm very tired."

"By all means, Alice." He said the name with sneering emphasis, his voice regaining all its original hardness and derision. He left his place and moved over to the door, holding it open for me with a mocking flourish, in that overly genteel way he seemed to particularly favour, which served to convey contempt rather than courtesy. "Maybe tomorrow you will be able to recall things with more accuracy."

"Maybe tomorrow you will be able to disclose where we are with more accuracy," I retorted as I edged past him. Then I hurried over the threshold, not caring to encounter his expression.

...I spent the remainder of the evening divided between trying to remember something—anything—about myself, and trying to forget the maddeningly elegant sneer which permanently overspread the sharply-chiselled countenance of my silver-eyed host.

Chapter Text

...

And so, in such bewildering circumstances and mysterious surroundings, I began to establish a kind of daily routine.

There was no clock in my room, so my mealtimes were dictated by my hunger. It was something of a mystery that, however early or late I appeared in the dining room, the food was always as hot and fresh as if it had been served mere moments before my entry.

Lucius never failed to join me at the table, but he never himself partook of the meal, though he would sometimes take a glass of wine or spirits at dinner. He seemed to take a perverse satisfaction in watching me eat—or to be more precise, in watching me squirm by watching me eat. He was certainly no convivial host, barely a companion: more a sardonic kind-of superintendent.

Our conversations were usually curt and combative. Sometimes they would begin civilly enough: him asking me if I had recovered any memories, me asking him when he thought the snow might finally abate. But it never took long to descend into discordance.

"I don't understand why you won't tell me, at least, which country we are in. What possible harm can there be in telling me that?"

"At present, there is no need for you to know."

"If you told me where we are, it could help to trigger my memory about how I got here."

"A plausible theory. How unfortunate that you won't be able to put it to the test."

"Why not?"

"What did I tell you about curbing your curiosity, Alice?"

"It isn't idle curiosity! It's a valid question, absolutely pertinent to my situation."

"On the contrary, it has no bearing on your situation whatsoever. Let us suppose I told you we were in Alaska...what would you do differently if you subsequently discovered that we were actually in Siberia?"

"Are we in Siberia?"

"Perhaps," he replied, with a mocking flicker of a smile. "Anything is possible."

And round and round we'd go. Always, always, the sparring ended in his favour. He was unflappable, and had a knack for flustering me, so that no matter what point I tried to gain—however reasonable it might be—he managed to effortlessly twist my words and deform their meanings, then offer them tauntingly back to me.

But for all his maddening crypticness and drawling contempt, I could never quite hate the man. Worse, I could feel myself being somehow...drawn to him. There was something undeniably compelling about him, a magnetism comprising his strangeness, beauty, imperiousness...and something else. He seemed to radiate with...what was it, exactly? ...Power. Yes, that was it. It was both frightening and fascinating, tangible and treacherous. I didn't trust it, yet something within me seemed to thrum to it.

Indeed, the strange compelling draw I'd felt for him from the start seemed to intensify with every frustrating encounter. His presence was like a powerful magnet, messing up my already-so-damaged internal compass, so not only was I blank and lost, but I was becoming increasingly disoriented too.

I also remained afraid of him. Though he had never been violent since the altercation in the dining room, he did not scruple to physically intimidate me. A sudden step towards me, a clenched fist resting casually on the table, him stooping too closely over my chair...all these tacitly threatening gestures served to remind me that while in his house, I was to play by his rules.

And admittedly, there were times when I was tempted to disobey the boundaries he had imposed, for the house seemed riddled with secrets that I longed to investigate.

Strange, chilling occurrences kept me always on edge: inanimate objects that seemed to move in my peripheral vision, sibilant whispers that haunted my steps in the long, stone corridors, candles that silently ignited of their own accord, as evening drew near...and once I heard the echoing peal of a woman's voice—laughing or crying, I could not tell which—that made my hair stand on end. I tried very hard to convince myself that it had been a bird's strange cry.

It was like the place was...haunted.

Of course, some puzzles I was able to reason through: the bath which always stood full of clean, hot water could be on some kind of automatic timer, even though I never saw or heard it running. I presumed the robe and towel hanging in the bathroom each day were put there during the night, I hoped by a maid or housekeeper, for I certainly didn't like the thought of him coming into my room while I slept... And I didn't really believe Lucius lived completely alone. There must be staff to keep such a large house in order—to prepare the food, at least—not to mention the fact that my bed was always remade by the time I returned from breakfast each morning.

But I could never properly satisfy my reasoning with tangible proof.

I wanted so badly to ask Lucius the meaning of all these many unsettling, eerie things. But he had promised 'unpleasant' consequences to my curiosity, and having already encountered his brutality twice, I had no wish to incite it again. Although I no longer feared an unprovoked attack, I sensed that beneath the surface of suave sarcasm the man's temper was volatile. I still believed him capable of doing me harm.

He's like the man in that creepy fairy-tale Blue Beard, who warns his wife not to be too curious, I thought with a shiver. And she goes and discovers the murdered bodies of all his previous, too-curious wives... And that thought went a long way to keep my inquisitiveness in check.

The snow showed no sign of abating, and I began to wonder if we were somewhere Arctic. It was a marvel the place was so warm—and it was just as well that it was, for I was extremely under-dressed for the climate.

The miraculously appearing bathrobes were all I had to wear, putting me at a perpetual disadvantage, and I was certain Lucius intended it that way. I hated having to always appear before him barefoot and in a single layer of flimsy material, when he was always immaculately turned out, right down to emerald cufflinks and starched cravat. It felt demeaning. But when I complained, he politely advised me that if I objected to the robes I could always go without. The accompanying sneer of repugnance made it clear that such a spectacle would be rather a punishment, than otherwise, to him.

"But where are my clothes?" I demanded. "And my shoes? What happened to them, may I ask?"

He smiled witheringly. "By 'clothes' am I to understand you mean the pitiful rags you arrived in? "

"Yes." (Replied through gritted teeth.)

"Ah." He shrugged. "They have been disposed of."

"Great. Well, can't you lend me a woollen jumper or shirt, or something at least half-decent? You must have something I could borrow—"

"That is quite out of the question." And he had given me one of his unassailable 'conversation closed' looks.

It did cross my mind that the bathrobes were a kind of security against my leaving. I wouldn't get very far in three feet of snow clad only in a scrap of silk. But if that were true, if he didn't want me to leave, then why did he dislike my presence so much? Why did he go out of his way to treat me like a particularly stupid, annoying child? Wouldn't he be glad if I left?

...I just couldn't make him out.

The days had a surreal, dreamlike quality to them—a dark dream, the kind that warps and deforms the more you try to harness and control it.

There were long stretches of numbness and boredom spent alone in my room, punctuated by episodes of frustration and despair as I struggled to face the enormous chasm that was my lost memory. I would spend hours lying on the bed, cross-referencing the things I knew with the things I must therefore have experienced, and that way try to conjure up some shred of recollection. It became something of a habit, just before sleep, to whisper alphabetical lists of girl's names ("Abigail, Anna, Audrey...Bethany, Briony...Caroline, Charlotte..."), hoping my own one might somehow jump out at me; so far, without success. Before descending to breakfast in the morning I would stand before the mirror, just staring and staring at my reflection, trying to find...me, somewhere in my eyes...

But it was hopeless. All I saw were shadows. Shadows in the glass.

...

"This house must be very old," I commented one morning at breakfast, about a week into my stay. "Do you know when it was built?" I kept my voice neutral and my expression casual, staring at my breakfast with studied indifference. "Fourteenth or fifteenth century, would you say?"

Lucius did not reply, so I tried pressing on a little further. "I'm sure it has a very interesting history. Are there any records or books about it?"

I risked a glance up, and saw he was regarding me with an amused, if not very pleasant, smile. The slight cock of his eyebrow assured me that he saw right through me and had no intention whatsoever of conceding an answer.

I blushed, annoyed and nettled by his reticence. Exasperated words bubbled to my lips. "Exactly what am I supposed to do while I'm staying here?! Since this snow is apparently never going to end and you won't let me ask you anything about anything? I'm so bored that I'm thinking about playing skittles with those antique vases down the hallway. I don't know what I'd use as a bowling ball, though..." I held Lucius's gaze challengingly. "Any ideas?"

The expression in his voice mirrored the one on his face. "I'm sorry, were you addressing me? I had presumed, or rather hoped, that those incoherent ramblings were for your benefit alone. They could hardly be for mine."

"I suppose that knight in the stairwell could go without his head," I continued, choosing to ignore him. "It's not quite the right shape, and it will definitely leave scratches on the floor...but you wouldn't mind, would you?"

He did not even blink. "Why don't you go ahead and find out?" It had more of the resonance of a threat than an invitation.

"Well, can I at least get something to read? You must have a book somewhere in this house. Or is reading considered a violation of your rules?"

Lucius looked at me rather intently, a sudden interest lighting his eyes, as if a question had occurred to him that he would like answered. "I will show you to the library presently," he said, with an elegant wave of his hand.

This abrupt announcement took me entirely by surprise. I was divided between excitement and doubt, for the strange gleam in his eyes disconcerted me, and I spent the remainder of breakfast expecting him to revoke this concession.

But sure enough, after I finished eating, Lucius led me back down the hallway, coming to a halt outside a large set of double doors, near to the staircase, and opposite the knight recently under discussion. The huge slabs of oak swung silently inward at the merest brush of his fingertip, and with his usual mocking courtesy he handed me over the threshold.

I gasped aloud.

It was just so beautiful! I stared and stared around me, gravitating into the centre of the room, turning in circles, just marvelling in breathless amazement.

The entire interior was lined with row upon row of gleaming mahogany bookcases, stretching up to an impossibly high, vaulting ceiling. I counted six tiers of cases, each partially obscured by a baroque railing of gilded vines and leaves, behind which a narrow balcony stretched along each level. The cases were filled with hundreds—surely thousands of books, all exquisitely bound in dark leather. There were no windows; the light came from vine-like branched candelabras which seemed to grow out of the very walls, their ornate stems suspending lamps like glowing fruit.

Perhaps most breath-taking of all was a beautiful spiral staircase in one corner of the room, ornately carved with the same lovely motifs as the gilded railings, providing access to the desired balcony.

"How can anything be so beautiful?" I murmured, I thought to myself, but it seemed Lucius had heard my words.

"It is one of the finest in all of—." He stopped suddenly, recollecting himself. "In all of the country," he said.

Approaching the nearest bookcase, I selected a book at random, reverently opening the cover...then my wonder turned to confusion as I realised it was blank. Totally blank, inside and out. I turned it over, leafed through the pages, staring in growing consternation and dismay. Nothing. No title, no text, no embossing on the spine, just nothing.

It was the same with the next book. With every book I opened, in fact.

Lucius stood there, near the library doorway, silently observing me flick through page after page of blank vellum, his silver eyes fixed watchfully on my face, a smile deepening the brackets around his mouth, no doubt at the growing mutiny of my expression. Obviously, he was toying with me, and I was sorely tempted to hurl one of the heavy tomes right at his smirking face.

"Something the matter, my dear?" he said at length, his tone mockingly polite.

"Yes," I snarled, "with you, evidently. What sort of person keeps a whole library full of blank books? Because the answer is definitely not, 'a normal one'!"

"They are blank?" He sounded genuinely interested, and rather pleased.

"Oh, ha, ha. I suppose you think it's hilarious, do you?"

"It is somewhat amusing, I own."

"Well, I don't find it amusing." I raised my eyebrow pointedly. "I think you're stooping rather low."

His eyes glinted at this, but the smile never wavered. "Do you, indeed?"

"Playing mind-games with an amnesiac girl isn't exactly the epitome of good breeding, is it?"

Lucius chuckled, as if at some private joke. "Ah...that, my dear, is a subject for another hour. For now, there is something else that may, perhaps, engage your interest." So saying, he moved to the far corner of the room, beckoning me to follow. Glowering suspiciously, I moved over to where he now waited.

As I approached, he directed me to where a small, obscure cabinet stood, half-hidden by shadows.

There was an engraved panel fastened to its top. 'Profana, Propaganda & Sæcularia'.

With a last suspicious glare at Lucius, I knelt to inspect the books inside. Unlike the handsome tomes lining the walls in solemn uniformity, these books were dog-eared and mildewy, their edges frayed and bindings loose—but at least I could read the titles written on their cracked spines. They appeared to be an odd mix of classic works, fairytale anthologies, and antique scientific textbooks, in a variety of ancient and modern languages. They were crammed into the cabinet in no apparent sequence. 'Tables of Toledo'...'The Odyssey'...''Macbeth'...'Brüder Grimm Kinder- und Hausmärchen'...The 'Canon of Medicine'...'Le Morte d'Arthur'...'The Tempest'... And right at one end, 'Alices' Adventures in Wonderland'.

I reached for this one, opening a page at random, half-expecting it to be as blank as the previous books. But I was surprised and relieved to discover it contained the original text and accompanying illustrations.

"These, I suppose, you can see?" Lucius's voice was just as smug as before. I had the feeling that if I answered, "Yes" it would only serve to gratify him in some incomprehensible way.

Instead, I grabbed an armful of books, and muttering very ungracious thanks as I pushed past Lucius, I stormed up to my room. The blank covers and empty pages of those thousands of beautiful books had deeply disturbed me; their blankness seemed to mock my own. I hated the helpless feeling of not being able to rationalise the nonsensical things I was confronted with, before my very own eyes.

It was yet another baffling mystery to add to an ever-mounting pile.

...

I was eating my dinner that evening, as had become customary, under Lucius's disconcerting, lynxish gaze.

He had been watching me for some time, his head tilted slightly back, the usual disdainful curl playing on his top lip. He held a glass of some deep ruby-coloured liquid, swirling it slowly. His hand seemed too large for the delicate crystal vessel; it looked almost precarious in his grasp. But the elegantly relaxed lines of his fingers disproved the possibility of clumsiness, which was more than I could say about my hands, however much smaller and nimbler looking.

"What have you been reading this afternoon, Alice?" he suddenly enquired.

I stared up at him, surprised by his question. "I nearly finished The Tempest," I said, through a mouthful of food.

Lucius looked faintly pained by the fact I was still chewing. He waited pointedly until I had swallowed, then he said, "And? Are you enjoying it?"

"Yes," I replied. "I must have read it before, or seen the play. I recognise quite a few of the speeches."

"It has an interesting premise, don't you think?"

I looked at him dubiously. "You mean a bunch of people being shipwrecked on an island?"

"No, my dear, that is hardly a premise, is it?" His tone was light and drawling, but his eyes gleamed intently. "I mean a...sorcerer, using his powers to restore rightful dominion over his would-be usurpers. Did you not find that interesting?"

"Um...I suppose so," I answered hesitantly.

"You suppose so. What a refreshingly original reply."

My cheeks burned. "I'm sorry," I said acidly. "I forgot to prepare an essay."

He looked amused at my pique. "I don't require an essay. Merely an opinion."

"Oh, you mean I'm actually allowed one?"

Lucius's eyes narrowed at my flippant tone. "But of course," he murmured. He set his glass down and then bestowed on me a mocking smile. "So, tell me, Alice: what was it that interested you, if not the premise? Enlighten me."

I picked up a piece of bread and began to shred it. "I don't know. The way it's written, I guess. The beauty of the words."

A sharp, enquiring look passed his features. "Then your appreciation is chiefly...aesthetic? You felt no special interest in its themes—for example, the supernatural elements of the work?" He paused, leaning forward slightly. "The magic?"

There was something cryptic in his voice that made me feel like it was a trick question. His gaze had become a little too piercing, and I felt myself getting flustered and confused. "I suppose so,"—I flinched, aware that I'd repeated the words for which he'd already mocked me. "I'm not—I hadn't really thought—I mean...why do you even care what I think?" I finished snippily.

Lucius leaned back again. "Oh—I don't." He looked pleased, too pleased.

I frowned. I felt I had somehow conceded a point, without being party to its significance.

What a strange thing to be smug about, I thought. It's just a play....

...

...That night I dreamed...

I lay on the shore of a remote island—alone, cradled by soft, sun-warmed sand. I was naked but not self-conscious; daydreaming, lulled by the whispering waves and sweet breezes caressing my bare skin...

The sun began to sink, and as the sky darkened, the island began to shrink around me. It shrank and shrank until it was mere feet in diameter...and I roused from my reverie to discover I was no longer on an island, but lying on a bed, inside the dark, stone bowels of a castle. I sat up, suddenly panicked, recalling that I was supposed to be looking for someone.

A flight of spiral stairs sprouted out of the ground—I jumped off the bed and began to ascend them.

...Dull lamps led me upwards, ever upwards, but as I passed, they sputtered and died, and everything behind me was plunged into deepest blackness. I realized the stairs themselves were falling away, and I began to run. I knew if I stopped running, I would fall backwards into the nothingness. As I ran, I tried to call out to the person I was searching for, but I couldn't remember their name... Instead, I cried, "It's me! I'm here!"—but I was answered only by the echo of a woman's eerie laughter, which turned into the mocking 'Kraa!' of a crow...

I was getting tired, and my legs couldn't keep up with the encroaching darkness—the faster I tried to run, the slower I became—and suddenly I tumbled back, my arms outstretched as I fell, my mouth shaped into an O of a voiceless scream...

...I landed softly on my back. I was in a shadowy, sparsely lit corridor stretching endlessly in each direction, the walls of which were completely covered in gold-framed portraits of sleeping figures. I lay there, afraid to move lest I awaken the portraits...I feared they would deride my nakedness. I feared they would mock my confusion.

A person appeared suddenly next to me, but it wasn't whom I had been searching for.

"What are you doing?" It was a man's voice, although his face was shrouded by the shadows.

"I'm looking for him," I said. My own voice was high-pitched, juvenile, distant.

"Who? Who are you looking for?"

"I can't remember." And I began to cry like a child.

The man knelt and gathered me up in his arms, pressing me against him. There was a sickening, squeezing sensation—then the corridor changed into my own room, and the man was laying me on the bed. His silky white-blond hair hovered just above me, and I reached up to touch the ends with my fingertips...he pressed something to my temple, and murmured a word...

...And my dream faded to blackness, like the dimming lights at the end of a play...

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

...

If Lucius believed his threats to have cured me of my curiosity, he was very much mistaken. If anything, it was stronger than ever.

I just wanted to know...something. Anything. I didn't mind which of the hundreds of questions I had was answered first, I just wanted an answer, just one.

True, I didn't exactly feel like rushing back up to the third floor to conduct a personal interview with wailing lady. But too often I found myself wondering when the next opportunity to explore (or as Lucius would say, 'pry') might present itself.

And although I was afraid of Lucius, with each passing day I became less so. Not because he was changing, but because I was. ...It was almost as if I felt buffered from his wrath by my own growing feelings for him. As if that somehow counted. It was a dangerous fiction to cling to, but it was proving an irresistible one.

None-the-less, for several days after the events on the third floor I did my best to behave myself for him. I made a real attempt to be civil, polite, even deferential. I was like a self-repressing Victorian child: only speaking when spoken to, seen and not heard. I even toned down the loud chewing.

But not once—not even once—did he meet me half way.

He treated me exactly the same as he had from the start, like some contemptible nuisance. And it didn't take me very long to resent it. Soon enough we were back to our old combative, antagonistic exchanges—except now I was taking his insults to heart. I wanted so much for him to show just the smallest sign that he was softening to me. But the man was made of ice.

And when the only person you know despises you, the world is a terribly, terribly lonely place.

...

"Emily, Eva, Fiona...Greta, Gwendolyn...Harriet, Helena...Isabel..."

I was in the library, sitting upon a pile of pillows I'd brought downstairs from my room and made into a kind of nest for myself, preferring it to the imposingly grand desk and its uncomfortable tufted-leather chair in the centre of the room.

I had started to spend more and more hours in the library. It had now been over three weeks since the snowstorm began, and my own room was beginning to feel too much like a cell. Despite the fact the books were almost entirely blank to me, I felt somehow comforted just being surrounded by them, as if I had a natural affinity with them.

Often I would read from my small hoard, or just curl up and think (more often than not about him), or doze;—or, like today, I would simply stare up at the chandelier suspended from the ceiling and whisper through lists of names, hoping against hope to recognise my own.

When finally I reached "Zara" I let out a sigh and let my eyes wander over the vaults of beautiful books. I couldn't help but be frustrated by so vast and great a treasure lying all around me, in plain sight, yet totally beyond my grasp.

I longed to investigate the secret of their silence.

Well, why don't you, then, Alice? The thought sprang up to tempt me, as it did most days.

Because, I argued with myself, if Lucius catches you prying again, you could get more than just a sore scalp next time.

He never comes into the library. ...Besides, he has given you permission to be here. That implies permission to investigate—or, lets say, to 'peruse'—everything this room contains.

I'm not sure why today the voice of temptation finally won over the voice of caution. Perhaps it was because earlier this morning Lucius had been particularly acerbic, making me particularly rebellious. Whatever the reason, one moment I was nestled quietly in my pile of pillows, the next I found myself furtively scurrying over to the double doors, tugging out the belt of my robe to wind around and knot up the twin door-knobs, as a make-shift lock. Then I went to the laden bookshelves, randomly selected a book, and brought it over to the desk.

First I inspected the cover. It was made of a handsome dark red leather, embossed at the edges with golden scroll-work. But where there ought to be the title and author, there was a blank expanse of red. I tilted it towards the light of the over-head chandelier, trying to detect an imprint of lettering, or the texture of dried ink—anything. But I perceived nothing.

It creaked slightly as I opened it to the first page. It was also blank. I thumbed through the first few pages. All blank.

Hardly daring to breathe (or to think, lest I stop myself) I slowly began to tear away a page from its spine. The ripping sound seemed horribly amplified to my anxious ears, and I kept halting to peer over at the doors, half-expecting an enraged Lucius to storm through it at any moment. My robe-belt suddenly seemed ridiculously inadequate as a lock, serving as nothing more than a blaring testimony to my guilt.

But the page came away at last—the doors remained firmly shut—and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Again I held it up to the light, peering at it closely. Again I found nothing. Rather self-consciously, I spat a small blob onto the paper, and smeared it across with my finger. Still nothing.

The branching wall-lamps were fixed too high to reach from the floor, so I dragged the heavy desk-chair over to the nearest one and clambered up. I pressed the paper against the glass casing, then held it over the open top, but the paper merely glowed opaquely, and there was no sign of oxidisation. Finally, I tore off a small corner of the paper and dropped it onto the naked flame. It flared for a moment, then a spiral of smoke curled upwards, and I held the page above it like an umbrella. The paper discoloured slightly, but revealed no hidden markings.

Sighing, I climbed back off the chair and dragged it back to the desk. I placed the page carefully back from the place I had torn it, and stood for a while, gazing down at it thoughtfully. If the invisible ink didn't respond to light, moisture, heat or smoke...I could only suppose it required ultraviolet light or developing solution to be seen.

...I wish you would reveal your mysteries, I thought. I wish...I wish...

And I was just about to close the cover, when I saw the page flicker over with a spindly writing, silvery and fine, like spider's gossamer.

I blinked, gasped, snatched the page up and peered at it closely—but it was gone.

I could only suppose that, as per usual, my mind was playing tricks on me...

...

"Lucius, may I ask you something?"

I had been mulling over the mystery of the books all afternoon, and now, come evening, I couldn't help but broach the subject with my ever-sneering dinner companion.

"I suppose I cannot prevent you."

"...Promise not to get angry?"

He didn't need to say 'No.' It was written plainly on his face.

"The books in your library. They're written in invisible ink, aren't they?—This isn't curiosity," I quickly added. "I'm just telling you what I think."

His cool eyes betrayed nothing. "And?"

"And I'm now waiting for you to confirm or deny my theory."

His head tilted back and his lips compressed in a tight, slight smile. "You may find yourself waiting rather a long time."

"So, I'm right?"

One eyebrow made a supercilious arch.

"So, I'm wrong?"

His gaze flicked over my face, lingering momentarily on my mouth before fastening back on my eyes. Again, that extrinsic, tender look made my stomach flip. "You are...consistently unwise."

"Why?"

"There's no telling why, my dear. I suppose it is a trait native to your kind."

"My kind?" I stared, genuinely confused. "As in—you mean—what do you mean? "

He waved his hand in elegant dismissiveness. "I mean, I'm not in the habit of indulging the caprices of foolish young girls, Alice."

"Oh." No wonder the man was so unpleasant. Apparently he viewed females as a completely different species. "Are you saying only men are allowed to read your books?"

"I do not recall having said so."

"Then why can't I? Just tell me, Lucius. I promise not to be shocked."

"You should not promise what you may not perform."

"Alright then—shock me."

His smile widened fractionally. "Suffice it to say, 'He who plucks out this great treasure, is right-wise born worthy'."

I grimaced. I could recognise an insult when I met one, whether or not it masqueraded as a flowery quote. "So, you're telling me that, somehow, only worthy people—of whom I am clearly not counted among—can read your invisible ink?"

"I'm not telling you anything, Alice. I have merely made a remark, from which you have chosen to construct certain inferences."

God, the endless persiflage...had the man never heard of a normal conversation?

"It must be hard work, being you," I muttered sourly.

"How so?"

I shook my head. "Has it ever occurred to you to simply relax? To...oh, I don't know...just be nice, for once?"

"I'm quite relaxed, I assure you. As to being 'nice'—that, I believe, is entirely subjective."

"It must be exhausting, maintaining that level of misanthropy all the time. Do you have a special journal where you compose your insults?"

This time, his smile had teeth. "On the contrary, they occur quite naturally," he returned. "With such inspiration as is daily provided, there really is no need for premeditation."

His words, couched in a suavely-mocking bonhomie, stung me more than I cared to admit.

I sighed. "I wish I could go home," I muttered sullenly.

"What a pity that is not possible."

"You have no idea how...how tedious it is, when your world in confined to only three rooms!"

"Oh, do I not?" The thorny smile vanished, and a strange expression clouded over his face. His gaze dropped to settle on his port wine-glass, staring down into it almost as if he could see something, some memory, reflected in the tawny liquid. Softly, darkly, he muttered, "...Yet I have spent far longer, in far smaller, and far less comfortable quarters than those you presently inhabit."

Does he...could he mean...prison? I could not help wondering. Was he some kind of escaped-convict, hiding out in the wilderness? Perhaps waiting to use me as a bargaining chip? Was I his hostage, without even knowing it? I remembered how cruel, how brutal the man could be. ...Had his rage ever got the better of him?

A deep shiver ran through me. I could not stop the question from escaping my lips. "Are you some kind of fugitive?"

His eyes snapped back up to my face. "What did we say about prying, Alice?"

"I d-didn't mean to pry," I stuttered, suddenly afraid of that fathomless darkness in the black of his pupils. Yet somehow I couldn't stop talking. "I just thought that...perhaps that's why you won't tell me where we are. Because you're in hiding, and you d-don't want me to be able to identify your whereabouts, when I go home..."

I gulped, fixing my eyes to my plate, bracing for the tongue-lashing my curiosity would certainly earn me.

But Lucius only quietly murmured, "Ah...when you go home. Indeed."

I was relieved to sense the atmosphere relenting. To my surprise, he continued where I had trailed off. "And so you imagine I am some kind of absconder from the law, do you?" He sounded almost amused, but yet there was something palpably menacing, lingering just beneath the surface. "I wonder what unpaid-for crimes your fertile imagination has ascribed to me, from which I'm currently 'at large'."

I shrugged noncommittally, not risking a reply, nor daring to meet his gaze, lest he read in my eyes the vivid recollection that was now playing through my mind, of him shaking me brutally, snarling, "Do you know I have killed men for less than what's written on your face?"

...It was, I thought, high time to excuse myself from the table, before I said something that really got me into trouble.

I was about to do so, when my eye was caught by a movement upon the stem of Lucius's port glass: the furtive upward-scurrying of a small black insect or beetle. I blinked, and it disappeared—yet just the barest ripple on the surface of the liquid made me think that it had actually dropped inside.

A second later, Lucius brought his glass up to his lips.

"Don't drink that!" I blurted out. Lucius's sharp, enquiring glance met mine over his poised drink. "Something crawled in your glass!"

Swiftly, he lifted it up towards the light, examining the contents. Even from where I sat, I could see the rich, still clarity of the dark liquid. Dismayed that he might think I was playing some foolish trick, I stammered, "I—I really thought—honestly, I could've sworn I saw something..."

Ignoring me, Lucius settled the glass on the table, and taking from his breast-pocket a fine silk handkerchief, he dipped half of it into the port. Nothing happened, but he held it there, watching intently, as if awaiting something to occur. And, after a few seconds, the liquid began to slowly stir, then bubble, then rapidly fizzle and hiss.

When Lucius withdrew the silken material, it was stiff and brittle, and slightly smoking, as if dipped in dry ice. Moments later, it crumbled entirely away.

"What on earth?" I gasped.

Lucius's mouth compressed in a grim line. He reached into his breast pocket and took out the black baton with the silver snake's head, the one that I had accidentally tried to take from his hand a little over a week ago. Standing up, he made a slight gesture over the table with it, then elegantly executed a full circle of the dining room, making sweeping motions with the extended baton. Before, I had presumed it was a weapon, perhaps an outer scabbard containing a very long, slender dagger, but now I wondered if it was some kind of scanner or thermal-imaging device.

"What was that?" I asked anxiously, as Lucius paused by one window to pull back the heavy curtain and peer out into the snowy darkness.

Lucius let the curtain fall back into place, and returned to the table. He reached down to pluck the yet-lightly-smouldering port-glass from its place. "Stay where you are," he muttered briefly, then he hurried out of the room.

I sat in my place as he had bid me, peering mistrustfully into my own wineglass, half-filled with white wine, lifting my plate and moving the dishes in case any more of those things were lurking about.

A few minutes later, Lucius reappeared with neither glass nor baton in sight. He moved back to his place at the table, looking cool and unperturbed, which annoyed me, for some reason.

As he resumed his seat, I addressed him, my voice high and strained. "Do you mind telling me what that thing was? Because I feel I've a right to know if there are poisonous spiders crawling about this place!"

"Just so," Lucius replied calmly, with the slightest of shrugs. "It was, as you say, a poisonous spider."

My eyes widened. "Oh, that's just wonderful! I certainly hope they're not a common variety—I'd like to be able to sleep at night, you know!"

"No," he murmured. "They are not common. You will not see another one."

"Well, thank god for that!" I glanced apprehensively at what remained of his corroded handkerchief. "I would hate to think what it could do to someone, if they accidentally swallowed one."

Lucius observed my consternation with a dark smile. "After suffering a considerable amount of pain caused by internal hemorrhage, organ failure, and paralysis of the respiratory muscles, they would most certainly die." He said it with utter composure, as if describing a trifling inconvenience, the symptoms of a stubbed toe, instead of a painful and gruesome death.

For a while I just sat there, picturing the horrific scenario, imagining the terrifying helplessness of watching someone expire in such a ghastly manner. Of watching him expire in such a ghastly manner. I shivered, my stomach churning unpleasantly at the thought. But then, suddenly, an interesting new idea sprang to the forefront of my mind.

"...So technically, that means I saved your life," I said. I experimented with a tentative smile, but it withered under Lucius's narrowed gaze. He did not look at all grateful for my preserving his life. If anything, he looked as if he deeply resented my taking such a liberty.

Irritated by his response, or rather non-response, I sat up straighter and met his eyes squarely. "I guess that makes us equal."

I wasn't exactly expecting effusions of gratitude. But I certainly wasn't prepared for the sudden, sub-zero glare of haughty disdain.

"We may be...equivalently obligated," he said with a supercilious sneer, like a prince begrudgingly beholden to a pauper. "But I assure you that we are far, far from equal."

A flush of angry colour mantled my face. "Oh, you're welcome," I replied sarcastically. "Please, don't mention it. Next time you're in immediate mortal peril, remind me just to sit back and enjoy the show!"

"There will not be a next time."

"That," I snarled, "is a very great shame." I scraped back my chair, stood up and threw my napkin into my plate. "Well, since I'm clearly so unworthy of your company, as I am of perusing your stupid books, I'll leave you to yourself. I'm sure the conversation will be scintillating. Goodnight."

I stalked from the room and made my way to my chamber, muttering adjectives. "Ungrateful!...Spiteful!...Hateful!...Arrogant!..." When I gained my room I threw myself on my bed and stared at the wall, biting my lip with vexation.

Would it have killed him to say thank-you? Or even just given me one kind look? One smile, untainted by mocking disdain? Anyone might expect that saving a man from a horrible death by poisoning might earn them just the slightest acknowledgement of gratitude.—But perhaps Lucius was already so full of poison, it would just have absorbed into his bloodstream like a vitamin boost.

I smiled bitterly at this thought.

Why was he so... so totally impervious? And why did I, fool that I was, keep trying to break through that marble exterior, only to hurt myself in every failed attempt?

Whose fault is that really, Alice? You know full-well what he is like. You have only yourself to blame for cutting yourself on his edges.

Chapter Text

...

"What have you been reading today, Alice?—Why, thank you for asking, Lucius. I have been perusing a very interesting book called, 'How To Be A Nice Person'. You should really read it some time.—How dare you speak to me that way, you uppity chit? Don't you know who I am?—No, actually, I don't. But I know who are aren't. You aren't a very nice person. Which is really why you should read that book."

I was sitting alone at the mahogany table, for Lucius had failed to appear at dinner. I had finished my meal some time ago, but had poured out a second glass of wine and was presently providing for myself the missing conversation.

"Talking to yourself is a certain sign of madness, Miss Carroll.—Yes, Lucius, but not half so maddening as conversing with you.—It cannot be helped if your understanding is unequal to your company.—Perhaps my so-called-company is unequal to making himself understood."

I took a large gulp of wine, finishing off the second glass, then placing it a little unsteadily back on the table. The wine was proving to be rather stronger than I had anticipated, and a pleasant warm torpor was spiralling through my body. My brain seemed to be gently swaying, as if suspended between my ears on a hammock.

If my calculations were correct, today marked the passing of a whole month since the night I arrived.

Thirty-one days, and I was no closer to leaving this place. Nor was I any closer to finding anything out about the man with whom I'd been forced to cohabit all this time. The man who consumed my thoughts and haunted my dreams. All I really knew was his name, and even that without complete certainty. A whole month and my brain was still as damaged and devoid of memories as when I first awoke into this strange existence, running through the forest and fog.

I reached for the bottle and poured out another full measure.

"Who gave you permission to drink all my wine, Alice, Miss Carroll, Miss ALICE Carroll?—Doctor's orders, Lucius. Strictly medicinal use. Prescribed to help you to forget everything." I hiccupped philosophically. "Or is it, to help you forget that you have forgotten everything? ...I forget." I chuckled bleakly.

"Drinking alone is such a pitiful activity, Alice. I hope you don't intend to make a habit of it.—Oh, but I do, Lucius. Feel free to absent yourself as often as possible. The atmosphere is so...enlivened without your presence.—Insolent rag-tag! Go to your room this instant!" I regarded my distorted reflection in the wineglass, then hiccupped again. "...We probably should go to our room this instant, you know, Alice," I murmured. "But...what the hell." I took another sip.

As my one-person tête-à-tête continued, my glass seemed to empty with surprising rapidity. I reached once more for the bottle, but my hand somehow took a veering turn and knocked over my glass, causing the rim to crack upon the hard wood surface.

"Uh-oh, naughty Alice..." I admonished myself. My lips were becoming numb and my tongue felt fuzzy, too big for my mouth. "Loosh...Lucius will be cross with you.—Clumsy girl!...That'sh two glasses you owe me now.—You can ssh...send me the bill, Luciush. But you'll have to find out mm...my real name before you address it. There'z-a-good chap."

It suddenly occurred to me that I would be much more comfortable on the couch, in front of the fire. Clutching the neck of the wine bottle, I stood up, flinching as my chair crashed backwards on the ground. "Woops!" The floor had begun to inconveniently see-saw, making the trip to the couch far more hazardous than I had expected. Finally gaining my destination, I practically fell into the plush velvet squabs, somehow keeping the wine bottle upright.

"You know...Looth..iush, you sshould really gedda more sh...stable floor. And a more shhh...stable personality, while you're addit..."

I propped myself against the high rolled arm of the couch and stretched my legs along the squabs. The fire, burning low in the marble hearth, crackled softly. For a while I gazed into its flickering flames, recalling its comforting warmth when, soaked through and half-frozen, a lost and frightened girl had cut her fingers on a broken glass and christened herself Alice.

I lifted the bottle up in a mocking toast. "Happy one-month birthday, Alithsss," I said, then took a deep swig.

Still frightened, still lost, still Alice.

Mustn't ask questions, mustn't pry. Definitely mustn't go upstairs. Can't bloody leave.

"But," I muttered aloud, "I don't recall any sssh-stipulations...against gedding...blind...drunk." I tipped my head back, and drained the bottle to the dregs, spilling a quantity down my chin and onto my neck and throat.

The chandelier above me appeared to be swaying precariously, so I closed my eyes, only to discover that the hammock holding my brain had turned into a fast-spinning merry-go-round.

"Ugh...shhhtupid girl." I didn't know if I was being me, or Alice, or Lucius. "Ssshtupid, brain-damaged idiot."

I hiccupped again, but this time it sounded more like a sob.

"He hates you..." I could feel wet warmth sliding down my cheeks. "...I hate you."

I was just so sick and tired of it. So...so very tired. I curled over onto my side, screwing my eyelids more firmly shut. I wished I had gone upstairs to bed, when my body still understood which way was vertical.

But even the darkness behind my eyelids was moving, swarming and swinging and reeling and my stomach had started churning horribly, bile forcing its way up my throat. I suddenly knew with complete certainty that I was going to throw up. The thought crossed my mind that Lucius wouldn't be too happy if I vomited all over his velvet couch. Better do it on the wooden floor.

"Well, well, my dear. Having a little pity-party, are we?"

I leaned over the edge of the squab and was violently sick on a pair of exquisitely-made patent-leather shoes.

"It'sh...Alith...Alithsh's birthday," I mumbled. Then I turned over and went promptly to sleep.

...

I woke the next morning to the wafting scent of strong coffee. My neck was stiff, my head was thudding, and I was cold. I realised I was still in the dining room, lying on the velvet couch where I had fallen asleep (or, perhaps more accurately, fallen into a drunken stupor) last night.

Experimentally, I tried opening my eyes, and was rewarded by a splitting pain, forcing a groan from my mouth. I blindly buried my head in the darkest corner of the couch.

"Ah, the little inebriate awakens," said a silken voice from somewhere behind me. I heard the familiar click of booted feet crossing polished flooring, then felt the squabs furrow with the weight of a person sitting down by my legs. "Here, Alice. Drink this."

I vaguely waved away whatever was being offered, my head still firmly burrowed in cushioned velvet. But the wrist of my waving arm was arrested by a strong hand, and I found myself being unceremoniously hauled upright by it.

I scowled resentfully through my tangled hair at Lucius's blurry figure. "I don't want coffee," I croaked, then smacked my lips at the terrible taste in my bone-dry mouth. My stomach heaved at the bare notion of trying to swallow anything.

"It isn't coffee." His fingers pushed aside the frizzled snag of curls, tucking it behind my ear in an unexpectedly gentle manner. Then he pressed a tumbler into my hand, and guided it up to my mouth. Too feeble to bother resisting, I took a sip, choked on its bitter flavour, coughed, retched, and wondered which part of the man I was going to be sick on this time. But the concoction miraculously stayed down, and moments later the painful thudding in my head began to abate.

Convinced, I took another, bigger gulp, wincing at the bitterness, but eager for more relief. Seconds later the awful taste in my mouth disappeared, and clarity was restored to my blurred vision. Blinking, I found myself pretty much staring straight up Lucius's perfect aquiline nose. I hadn't been so close to him since the altercation on the third floor, and was instantly aware of his solid body pressing against my legs, the intricate scent of his cologne, the formidable fact of his presence.

His expression was rather daunting.

"Thank you," I said meekly, surprised at this curiously benevolent gesture.

"Yes, well, we certainly don't want a repeat of last night's embarrassing little episode, do we?"

Oh, Alice, you arrant fool. He doesn't care about you, he cares about the state of his flooring.

Clearly, on his list of priorities, I figured lower than the ground he walked on.

Lucius's eyebrows were slanting enquiringly at me, as if awaiting an apology, and I had the distinct feeling that I wouldn't be going anywhere until I offered one up. "I'm sorry for ruining your obviously-extremely-expensive shoes," I muttered, a sullen sarcasm fraying the corners of my words.

"I cannot profess to any great transports of surprise at your...lack of decorum," he drawled in that haughty way he assumed whenever displeased by my tone. "It was, however, a regrettable waste of a very fine vintage."

I bit my lip. Why did he always have to be so cold?

"I was bored," I retorted bluntly.

"I see..." His lip curled into a sneer. "Miss me, did you?"

"No, I didn't miss you," I hissed, my eyes prickling hotly, angry and hurt that the cruel dart of his sarcasm. "I miss...I miss ME! I'm just s-so...lost, and so... so..." I wouldn't say the word. Lonely. I couldn't bear for him to mock my pain. "You don't know—how can you?—what it's like, to only know one single per-person, in the whole world!" I gulped, but couldn't stop the words and tears from bursting out at the same time: "A-a-and that one person hates you!"

Lucius observed my tears unsympathetically, then a sardonic smile flickered across his lips. "Try having the whole world hate you, my dear," he said.

"Why does the whole world hate you?" It was barely a whisper, for I knew the question was prohibited. But I was too depleted by loneliness not to try to breach his glacial exterior, in search of a human hidden somewhere inside. "Can't you...if you just tried to t-talk to me—tell me about yourself—maybe we could...maybe it would...help..." my words withered away at his changing expression. His eyes seemed momentarily to blaze with—was it anger? Or something else?—then settled into a molten glimmer, while the lines of his face assumed a suave smile that I wasn't entirely sure I trusted.

He leaned fractionally down, causing my pulse to spark into flurrying activity. "You really think you can help me, Alice?" His voice was strangely soft and caressing.

A prickling blush crept up over my wet cheek. "I just thought...if there was something in your p-past, something painful or—or difficult or... it might be good for you, to talk about it with someone..."

"And what leads you to presume there has been something painful or difficult in my past?"

"...I suppose because, you're always...always so..."

"Always so—what, my dear?"

I swallowed nervously. I detected treachery in the silkiness of his tone, and now wished I had never spoken. "I don't know," I replied, brushing away my tears with my sleeve. "Forget I said anything."

I straightened, intending to get up, but found my way barred by his suddenly-extended forearm, blocking me in between his body and the arm of the couch.

"Oh, no, Alice," he murmured, in that same gently-thrumming voice. "You brought up the subject, so let us continue it. You think I'm...bitter? Is that the adjective you were about to ascribe to me?"

Not quite daring to meet his eyes, I simply nodded.

"And, were I to confide in you, you imagine it will alleviate this, er, affliction, with which you see fit to diagnose me?"

I could sense the poison seeping through his words, but it was too late—literally, physically—to back out. With no option but to double down, I steeled myself to meet his gaze. "Yes," I said, as firmly as I could. "I do believe it would help you."

His shoulders moved slightly, his hand smoothly sliding off the couch-arm to rest upon my upper thigh. My whole body stiffened, confused, terrified, electrified at this unexpected touch. The heat of his palm seemed to scorch through the gauzy material of my robe. His warm breath ghosted over the V of my neckline, raising instant goosebumps upon my skin.

I stared up at him, desperately trying to read the meaning in his glowing eyes. I was afraid he could hear the wild beating of my heart. My eyes were drawn down to his beguiling smile.

For one stupid moment, I wondered if it were genuine. Stupidly wondered if he was finally thawing to me.

"Believe me, Alice," he murmured in that same soft, tender tone, "all nine circles of hell will freeze over, before I feel the slightest need to tell you anything about my past, so much as what I had for breakfast yesterday." His smile never once wavered, his gaze never once deviated. "Now, my dear. Why don't you run along and take a bath? You rather strongly smell like a tavern back-wall of a Sunday morning."

It took several seconds for his words to fully sink in. When they did, I could see the satisfaction in his eyes at my humiliation and hurt. I elbowed his chest, pushing him away from me. Wriggling out from under his arm, I sprang to my feet, rounding on him. He was sitting in a maddeningly elegant aspect, his charming smile replaced by a hard, taunting sneer.

"You are bitter and twisted," I hissed at him, "and, frankly, I'm not surprised the whole world hates you!" Then I all but ran from him, afraid that I might enkindle his rage with my words. But I needn't have worried. I could hear his mocking chuckle before I reached the door.

I slammed it as hard as I could behind me.

Chapter Text

...

After that incident, there was only ever a single glass of wine waiting for me at dinner. It was probably just as well, since I might've tried to drown myself into oblivion, purely to escape the oblivion I was already drowning in.

For several days afterwards, I barely spoke a word to my host, so angry was I at his callous response to my attempt to reach out to him, to help him. But the silent treatment only served to be a punishment to myself, for Lucius behaved as if he were perfectly content without my conversation, whilst I, on the other hand, only ended up all the more frustrated, lonely and bored.

Eventually, about a week later, out of sheer desperation, I begrudgingly initiated a conversation at breakfast. "Good morning," I mumbled as I took my place at the table.

Lucius had been perusing what appeared to be a letter, and he glanced up from it with an affected smile of surprise. "Oh, you have broken your vœu de silence so soon? What a pity."

I bit my lip, physically biting back the angry retort that he was so obviously wishing to incite. Don't rise to his bait, Alice.

After a few seconds of politely, mockingly, awaiting a response, and getting none from me, he went back to reading his letter.

I assembled a few items on my plate and proceeded with the meal, during which I sneaked several glimpses of my companion. His eyes moved over the paper without expression. I supposed he must've received it before the heavy snows started. I wondered what it contained. Family correspondence? A business letter? If so, what kind of business was he actually involved in? ...Perhaps it was something as mundane as an electricity bill for heating this gothic pile of bricks.

For some reason, this thought amused me, and a small snigger escaped my lips. At this sound, Lucius's eyes flicked up, and mine as quickly fastened down to my plate. I pressed my lips into a straight line.

Lucius folded the letter with a distinctly sarcastic snap, and I watched him slide it into an inner pocket of his morning suit. An idea was beginning to form in my mind, inspired by that piece of paper. After a few moments, I cleared my throat and said, "I was wondering if I could borrow a pen and some paper." Then grudgingly added, "Please."

"Planning to write your memoire, my dear?" he asked, with just the most exquisite acidity to his tone.

I flushed, angry yet wholly unsurprised that he did would stoop to mock my amnesia. "I don't really have any plans, actually," I said, careful to hide my vexation, as I knew he would use the smallest pretext of disrespect to deny my request. "I just wanted something different to occupy my time, until this snow thaws and I can finally leave this..." I was going to say 'prison' but a glint in Lucius's eye made me change the word, "...place."

"I see," he said coolly.

"It doesn't break your rules, does it? Because I don't see how it would. If anything, I'll be less likely to—"

"Really, Alice," he interrupted, "just because you have suddenly found your tongue, does not oblige you to overuse it. There is, and has always been, a supply of writing materials in the library desk."

I stared. "But I already looked through the drawers! They were definitely empty."

"Were they? Then I can only suppose one of us must be wrong." He didn't look like he meant himself.

I frowned, unsure if he was being facetious or sincere. I certainly didn't want to give him the satisfaction of confounding me again, as he had with his stupid blank books. Nevertheless, after breakfast, I headed straight to the library.

One by one, I slid open the drawers on each side of the desk. One by one, I found them as empty as the first time I'd inspected them.

Huffing, I threw myself into the tufted chair, my cheeks aflame and eyes prickling with anger. That lying snake! Did his spiteful arrogance know no bounds?

And I was beginning to make a long and comprehensive mental list of all the things I should like to call him to his face, when my eyes suddenly fell upon the leaf-embossed panel directly beneath the desk-top. I had thought it merely decorative, but now I noticed there was a shallow groove carved halfway along it. Leaning forward, I placed my fingers in the groove, and gently pulled. A shallow drawer rolled open.

Just as Lucius had asserted, it contained all the implements of an escritoire: several quills of varying size and colour, two glass bottles of ink, a stack of thick, glossy, cream-coloured parchment, and a smaller pile of blotting paper.

I picked up one of the quills to inspect. The feather was a beautiful, iridescent green, with a fine gold nib attached. I guess the invention of the plastic ballpoint has not yet reached wherever-the-hell we are, I thought a little sourly.

I set the desk-top with the writing materials, unscrewing the silver top from one bottle of ink. I dipped the nib of the quill, carefully tapped away the excess moisture, then began to write.

MY NAME IS

My hand paused, the quill hovering over the paper.

Not Alice, I thought.

I AM

Do not write 'Alice'.

I'M

I closed my eyes. Just write your real name. Don't think, don't try, just write.

I let my hand drop, and the nib scritch-scratched across the paper. Opening my eyes, I gazed in dismay at the scrawling signature.

And for the first time, I began to believe that my name really was 'Alice'.

...

"Will this snow never end?" I spoke aloud, to nobody.

I was standing by the largest window in my room, gazing out on yet another morning of blanketing snow.

My fingers brushed through the pile of hand-drawn playing cards I'd made from the writing paper in the library. There were only so many games of 'Patience' one could play, before completely losing one's patience.

The bright glare of the snow made my eyes smart, and I turned away with a sigh. This feeling of being trapped, shut in a cage, was becoming too much for me.

Although I was neither undernourished nor physically mistreated, I knew that I was not really well. My appetite had waned, I felt like I couldn't breathe properly, like I needed new oxygen in my blood. The anxiety of the lonely nothingness in my head and the stress from bearing the hostility of my host, were taking their toll on me. I was becoming paler and thinner, and there was no sign of my menses (for which I was somewhat relieved, not having discovered any provisions for such in the bathroom-cabinet that was otherwise well-stocked with toiletries).

I made my way downstairs to breakfast feeling strange—well, even stranger than usual.

At the table, I pushed my food glumly about with a silver fork. As always, it looked delectable, but I couldn't muster an appetite. I didn't even bother making my usual clumsy noises to annoy Lucius, too preoccupied was I by the thought of what lay beyond these enclosing walls...free air, open sky...

I cleared my throat. "May I go outside for a walk today, please?" I asked him, careful to keep my voice polite.

"If you wish to die from exposure to the elements," he replied, without missing a beat, "far be it from me to prevent you."

I bit my lip at the callousness of his jibe, anger starting to bubble inside, alongside the frustration and boredom. "I'm so sick of being cooped up like this!" I burst out at last. "I feel like an animal in a cage!"

"That is an interesting choice of simile," he said, a sudden intensity igniting in his eyes.

"What does that even mean?" I snapped. "Why must you always talk in riddles?"

Lucius smiled. Of course, his smiles were never comforting. "Call it an appreciation of irony, Miss Carroll."

"I would sooner call it an exercise in arrogance."

"As you please."

I rolled my eyes, and went back to toying with my food for another minute. Happening to suddenly glance up, I encountered Lucius's eyes fixed on me with its usual expression.

"You don't have to join me for meals, you know," I said sullenly. "I am perfectly capable of eating by myself, without the aid of your perpetual sneer."

"Really."

"Yes, really! I don't understand why you bother, quite frankly. It's clearly not for the pleasure of my society. And you never eat anything, yourself. You might as well save us both the aggravation and let me dine by myself."

"How interesting, that you feel yourself to be in a position to dictate to me, what I do in my own house."

I gave a resentful huff at this typical response. Scowling, I threw my fork down and scraped my chair back noisily, secretly relishing the clenching of masculine jaw muscles it provoked in my companion. "I'm not hungry," I announced, standing up and stretching.

"However, the meal is not yet over."

"Oh, isn't it?" I said, mutiny goading me to recklessness. "Well, I've finished, but you can carry on staring at my empty chair if you like."

His eyes narrowed warningly.

"What? It'll be a nice change for you. Give your eyeballs a rest."

"Sit down and finish your meal, Alice." His tone was patronising and parental, and it provoked me into further retaliation.

"I'm sorry," I said in an overtly sarcastic tone. "I didn't realise you were my father."

The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted uttering them. Lucius jumped as if scalded, and his face went perfectly ashen. His pupils contracted to black points and his irises gleamed cold and wide, like a snake's. He rose to his feet, staring down at me with an expression appalling to behold. "WHAT?" The word was barely a whisper, but the rage behind it was...deafening.

My heart pounded fearfully. I wanted desperately to run, but I was petrified by his terrifying gaze.

The muscles in his face were actually contorting with fury and loathing and—and pain?

"Never. Never. Never say that word. Again." He half-turned away and brought his hand over his eyes, spanning temple to temple, like someone with a migraine. The jewels on his rings sparkled in the light, and I realised his fingers were trembling. "Get out," he hissed at me. "Get out of my sight before I kill you with my bare hands, you disgusting little mudblood bitch."

I turned and fled.

...

I sat on the edge of my bed for the rest of the morning, shaken, shocked and numb, a hard lump in my throat making it painful to swallow.

Lunch time came and went; I stayed in my room, my stomach clenching in revulsion at the mere thought of food. His hatred...his hatred was too much for me, I couldn't cope with it, any more than I could understand it. Because I didn't hate him. How could I? He was all I knew.

In the afternoon I paced restlessly, from bed to window, window to bed, sometimes moving to the door; imagining, wrongly, that I heard his steps outside. I think I was feverish, the hours slipped by in a blur as his hateful words played over and over in my head like a broken record.

Evening came, and I watched the shadows gradually annex the room to night's dark domain. At some point the wall-lamps flickered to life, the glass-encased flames casting a dim glow over the chamber, that somehow made it seem larger and darker. Lonelier.

I moved over to the dressing table, where I kept a smaller stock of paper, quills and ink, taken from the library desk. From beneath the stack of blank paper, I pulled out a sketch I had made, the only one that had not ended up in the hearth. I was no artist: the drawing was neither assured nor perfectly accurate, yet I had captured a reasonable likeness in the sharp features, in the cruel smile and the light, cold eyes.

Gazing at that picture, I knew I ought to feel anger, disgust, fear—anything but what I did feel. And I understood, then, that I had to get out. I couldn't stay here any more, falling for a man who hated me.

You have to go, Alice. If you don't get out, you'll cease to exist. You'll drown in his shadow. You have to find out who you are, before you don't care anymore.

I screwed the paper tightly up, and threw it into the back of the drawer. Then, in the hushed gloom, I quietly readied myself to leave. Which is to say, I pulled the thick quilt off my bed, doubled it over, wrapped it around me and used one of the curtain cords to tie it in place. I looked like a giant marshmallow and I could barely move, but I didn't care. I was well past caring.

I waited, huddled on my bed, until I was sure it was after midnight. Then I quietly slipped out of the room and padded lightly along the corridor and down the stairs. All was dim and still, the only movement coming from the candles, flickering in some slight draught.

As I approached the front door, I began to have serious misgivings. You haven't thought this through, Alice, I chided myself. You've got bare feet. It's snowing. It's freezing. It's dark. God only knows what is out there.

But I couldn't stop now. If I did, it would be too late.

I was close enough to reach out and touch the huge brass door-handle. Oh-so-slowly, I curled my fingers around the metal ring and twisted it to the left. I felt the catch release, and the weight of the door shifted off my arm as it swung silently outward and open.

An icy blast of air hit me, forcing its way down into my lungs as I gasped with the shock of it. Lucius's sarcastic drawl replayed in my head, 'If you wish to die from exposure to the elements, far be it from me to prevent you'...

I stepped over the threshold and onto the outside landing, closing the door quietly behind me. The marble underfoot was as cold as ice, making the soles of my feet burn as I moved out from under the portico, across to the snow-covered staircase.

A waning crescent moon provided scant light, but clinging to the balustrade, I was able to slowly descend the steps, and with each step I became less and less convinced of my chances of surviving. Visions were arising in my mind, of blackened, frost-bitten extremities, of a blue corpse lying prone in an endless field of snow...

By the time I reached the bottom step, I knew it was no use. I took a single, futile step out into the knee-deep snow, which immediately soaked through half of my quilt, making it heavy and near-impossible to move, let alone walk.

Another day, I thought, as defeat made me slump back in a heap on the steps. It will have to be another day, another way. After a while I realised my teeth were chattering. I hauled myself glumly to my feet and turned back to climb the stairs.

There, at the top, was Lucius. Of course he was.

He stood in the doorway, his arms braced on either side of the frame, watching me with an unreadable expression, his features aligned with perfect composure, his face pale as an ivory mask in the wan moonlight.

We didn't speak as I slowly ascended the steps and at last regained the landing. Lucius didn't move from his place on the threshold, merely turned so that I was forced to brush past him on my way inside. He was as fully and impeccably dressed as ever, despite it being the middle of the night, and I found myself wondering, Does he sleep like that?

The door swung shut with an ominous, echoing click.

I began to make my way along the hall, but the sound of his voice arrested my steps. "Alice..."

I turned to him, turned to the silken imperativeness of his voice, like a snake obeying her charmer. He was close, within touching distance. Half-drenched and frozen as I was, I could feel the radiant heat of his body, and I had a rogue impulse to lean against him and let his warmth seep into me.

He made a slight movement and both quilt and curtain-rope fell onto the floor, around my ankles, leaving me standing in my flimsy bathrobe once more.

The absurdity of the situation was suddenly all too much. "Hello!" I blurted, and it came out as a half-choked giggle.

Lucius did not look amused, but neither did he look angry. Just...watchful. "Alice, may I request—or do I ask too much—that you give me some account as to what exactly you think you are doing?"

"I was going for a stroll!" I grandly announced.

"A stroll, in the snow, at one o'clock in the morning."

I was grinning so much my cheeks hurt. I couldn't stop it. "Well, if you must know, I was intending to run away."

"Run away from what, pray?"

"Oh, from you. Definitely from you," I tried to suppress a chortle, but it spluttered out anyway.

"I see."

And then I was totally out of control, just laughing and laughing and laughing until the tears ran down my cheeks. "Kkkkkkkkk—ha ha ha - ha ha haaaaaaa". I kept whooping and gasping as Lucius silently took me by the arm and pulled me along with him, back down the hall and up the stairs. He opened the door of my bedchamber and pushed me inside, following behind.

A fresh burst of hilarity ensued as I realised the quilt was back on the bed and the cord tied around the curtain, as if they had never left. Wordlessly I pointed at the quilt, sobbing with laughter, which at some point turned into sobs of a different kind.

Eventually the hysteria ran it's course, and I stood there trembling and hollow beneath Lucius's withering stare. Ow, my sides.

Only now, I registered that this was the first time I had ever seen him inside my bedchamber. His powerful presence seemed to take up all the space, make the whole room shrink around him. He positively loomed.

"I d-don't want to stay here any m-more," I said miserably, tears tracking down my cheeks. "I think I hate you. I know you hate me." A hiccoughing gulp. "...I'm leaving t-tomorrow."

"How far do you think you will get in this snow?"

I dashed the moisture from my cheeks with my hands. "I'll take my chances!" I retorted. "It's got to be at least several d-d-degrees warmer than being in the same vicinity as you." I took a deep, steadying, decisive breath. "So if you'll be so kind as to return my shoes to me, I'll be on my way tomorrow morning. You can leave them at the door. I'll see myself out."

I peered up at Lucius through wet lashes. A play of deep shadows emphasized his sharp features and he looked about as merciful as an avenging angel.

"No, Alice," he murmured at length. "I'm afraid I can't allow that."

He said it quietly, with polished restraint, but there was such an irrevocable finality to it, like the ringing strike of a judge's gavel. My mouth went instantly dry.

"What do you mean, 'allow'?" I tried to disguise my uneasiness with a combative glare. "It's not up to you, is it?"

He simply looked at me.

A suffocating realisation was slowly, inexorably dawning on me. "...It is up to you." I said the words clearly, tasting the bitter truth of them on my tongue. "I'm not your guest. I'm your prisoner."

Chapter Text

...

I read the confirmation in his eyes.

My mind was awhirl with spinning, disjointed puzzle pieces. But some of them were snapping together, as if drawn into place by a powerful magnet.

"You know who I am, don't you?!" I gasped. "You've always known!" My voice was getting shriller. "You've been watching me d-drown in this—this blankness, this nothingness, and you've just sat back and—and enjoyed it, haven't you? Haven't you?!"

To my disbelief, Lucius actually smiled, a tight, cruel, exultant expression to match his eyes.

"You bloody bastard!" I cried out in anguished fury, and before I knew what I was doing I was leaping towards him, my hands curled into claws, intending to rake them down his loathsome, beautiful, insufferable face.

It didn't happen. In my blind rage I didn't see or even feel the hit, but none-the-less I was sent flying backwards a full several feet, colliding with the wall and dropping to the floor. I knelt there, winded, trying to catch my breath, as Lucius strode over, his face twisting with venomous ire.

He crouched down, his fingers clamping painfully about my upper arms. "Oh, I know who you are, Alice," he snarled, a furious incandescence lighting his eyes. "And if you knew who I was, you would have a care how you dared address me."

"I - don't care - who you are!" I cried out through panting gulps of breath. "You - can't stop me - from leaving!"

"Oh, can't I? We shall see about that." He hauled me up to my feet and shoved me against the wall.

I struggled wildly, but to no avail. His body was plastered the length of mine, and if his superior strength had not already precluded resistance, his sheer height and weight would have easily done so. I brought my hands up again for a second attempt at his face. With an angry grunt he caught my wrists and jerked them down to my sides, pinning them against the wall. I wriggled against him, trying to bring up one knee, but he quickly jabbed his own into my thighs, preventing me from reaching the intended target. "Try it," he growled warningly, "and I'll make your ears ring."

I was crying, almost hyperventilating, sucking in wet tendrils of my hair, crushed as much physically by the man as I was by his revelation that he knew my identity, had known it all along.

He pinned me there in place until the fight drained out of me and my violent sobs had subsided to trembling shudders. Despite his rough handling, I could not help welcoming the warmth, that forbidden warmth of his body, thawing out the chill that had sunk into my skin after my recent excursion into the frozen night. ...So much for the snow being warmer than him, Alice.

I could hear the strong thud of his heart, close to my ear. I'd often debated whether he had a heart. But perhaps it was a mechanical one, made with cogs and clockwork and steel valves and rivets...

"You can't s-stop me," I insisted again; ridiculously, given my present position, squashed between the wall and his solid frame. My voice was muffled by the velvet lapel of his coat. "You c-c-can't."

"Of course I can, Alice," he softly replied. The vibrating resonance of his voice was strangely comforting. "I can do whatever I want with you."

"What do you want with me?" I asked.

He did not answer. Just the deep thud-thud-thud of his heart resonating through me, so I could not even feel my own.

"Do you really know who I am?"

Still no reply.

"Who am I, Lucius?" I asked desperately, craning my neck to meet his eyes. "Why am I here? Please, just tell me my name! You - you owe me that, at least!"

His grip suddenly tightened, pulling my arms tautly behind me, causing me a sharp inbreath. "For what possible reason can you imagine I owe you anything, Alice?"

"I saved your life!"

"A fitting repayment for my saving yours. Thus far, do our obligations negate each other." He stooped over me, bringing his lips level to my ear. "...But you don't really expect me to be grateful to you, do you?" His breath was hot on my wet cheek. "When all that has ever mattered to me has gone from this world—do you actually think I care to prolong this...paltry existence, let alone be grateful for it?"

"I don't expect you to be grateful," I said, my voice cracking as more tears spilled down my face. "I...I just want to go home! And if you're really don't care about anything, then you won't care that I've gone."

Abruptly, he released my wrists, stepped fractionally back, and straightened to his full, imposing height. Looking haughtily down his nose at me, he coolly said, "I'm afraid you're not going anywhere, my dear."

He spoke with such antagonising certainty, the flame of my recent fury leapt back to burning life. "Are you going to lock me in a dungeon?" I asked, my hands balling into fists. "Because that's what you'll have to do, if you want me to stay!"

"There is no need for such measures," he replied. "Nor for these histrionics. You will stay of your own accord."

"If you think I'm scared of you—"

He made a sudden, slight movement with his shoulders, making me flinch. His eyebrow lifted fractionally, as if to say, Oh, yes, you are.

"All of this is beside the point, Alice. You will stay."

I glowered up at him. "What makes you so sure?"

"Because if you leave, you will never recover your memories."

My eyes widened with disbelief and horror as his words sank in. "I don't believe you!" I hissed. "You're bluffing!"

He shrugged. If this was his poker-face, he certainly looked as if held a Royal Flush. "Perhaps I am," he replied. One of his hands raised to cup my cheek. "But the question is, are you willing to take that risk?" His thumb gently wicked my tears. But I knew that tender look and gentle touch: from experience I knew that it only ever preceded some stinging word or cruel remark.

Well, not this time. I swivelled my head and bit his hand as hard as I could; he gave a brief grunt of surprised pain and slammed me bodily back by my shoulders, causing my head to knock against the wall so hard that I bit my tongue. A spurting metallic taste filled my mouth even as Lucius's fingers clamped about my jaw, and seconds later a stream of blood spilled down from my lips, onto his hand. Even at such close proximity I could see the bright scarlet vividly striping his strong, pale wrist.

I heard a sharp intake of breath and immediately, reflexively, Lucius pulled his hand away and wiped it down the front of my robe. His palm, hot and hard, seared through the sheer fabric of my robe and connected with the curve of my breast, brushing to instant tautness the sensitive tip. His gesture had been automatic, even accidental, and his hand jerked back as if scalded. As it did, one of his rings snagged on the fabric of my silk robe, and then the entire upper part fell open, leaving me naked to my waist.

For a moment we stood, locked together in a terrible parody of a passionate embrace. Then, with a kind of reluctant compulsion, his gaze dropped downwards, grazing my throat, skimming over my shoulders and clavicle, and at last falling to linger on my exposed breasts. I gulped, holding my breath, trying to curb my heaving, panting gasps...and I became aware of an unmistakable rigidity pressing into my abdomen.

Our eyes met, and I don't know what he read in mine, but his were plainly expressing shock, disbelief... With a hiss of discomposure, he quickly stepped back, releasing me. I fell in an ungainly heap at his feet.

He stood over me for some moments, staring down with a fierce, riveted look in his eyes, watching me attempt to pull my robe back into place and stem the flow of blood with my sleeve. Tears were running freely down my face and I knew I was a complete mess.

Then abruptly, he turned on his heels and strode out the door, slamming it behind him. I heard the echo of his booted footsteps hurrying away down the hall.

I sat there, trembling with shock and pain...and something else. ...His touch had electrified me, not in the brutality of his violence, but in the startling, unforeseen force of his sudden desire...and there was no denying my own response to him. A blaze of euphoria was coursing through me: my whole body thrummed and tingled with it.

And through the messy jumbled confusion of my mind, I kept thinking, he knows who I am.

And suddenly, unexpectedly, I was relieved.

Relieved that someone knew, anyone. Even him.

Now I just had to get him to let me in on the secret.

...

All night I lay awake, unable to sleep for the dizzying confusion in my head, the relentless thudding of my heart.

I couldn't quite believe what had happened and was, as usual, inclined to doubt everything—except for the all-too-real pain in my back ribs and the throbbing of my swollen, bitten tongue. I stared into the darkness, trying to somehow tether and subdue my wildly careering thoughts.

He knows who you are, Alice, I thought. Unless, of course, he is just toying with you. ...Just like everything else, I couldn't be sure.

Fervently I hoped that he did know. For some reason I felt that if he were to reveal the truth of my identity, my name, then my memory would come flooding back, everything would make stark, sudden sense, like a lightbulb switched suddenly on in the dark chamber of my brain...but then, what if he didn't tell me, or he didn't know? Would I be forced to remain in this infernal darkness forever?

He must know who you are, I decided. It was the only rational explanation as to why he would prevent me from leaving.

...Something I had kept well-suppressed inside me was forcing its way into my consciousness—that I had always known that he knew me. That from the very moment I first saw his shocked, incandescently angry eyes, there had really been no doubt about it.

Why had I been so determinedly blind? Was it simply a kind-of false device of self-preservation? That if he didn't know me, he couldn't really wish to hurt me?

Probably. Yes, in fact. From the very first, he had made me afraid of him—threatened me physically, insulted me verbally. Of course I had wanted to detach myself from personalising such hatred and contempt. I had wanted it to be his flaw, his fault. I hadn't wanted it to be about me.

Alright, Alice, then let's say he knows you. Now what?

What did he have in store for me? Why keep me here? Did he believe I owed him something? Technically, he had saved my life—but I had likewise saved his. By his own admission, our debts in that regard were nullified. Then perhaps I was here to serve a purpose? To solve a problem—settle a score? Perhaps he had plans for a ransom, perhaps he had been negotiating with my family and friends all this time... My family...maybe it was an old family feud. What had really happened?

So, you're a prisoner. His prisoner.

I tried to understand what that actually meant. How did a prisoner act? How was I supposed to act? Had he always treated me like a prisoner, and I, subconsciously, had always acted like one?—I supposed I had, in a way. I hadn't really had much choice in the matter. Did the fact it was openly acknowledged really change anything?

What was the etiquette? What was the accepted form of interaction between captor and captive? Hopefully he wouldn't get any worse. He was already unpleasant enough as it was, with his mocking jibes, his rules, his threats, his sporadic violence. The last thing I wanted was for 'consequences' to become 'punishments.'

I thought about the traditional forms of punishment for prisoners. Beatings, torture, starvation, rape...were such things what I now had to look forward to? Was that what had happened to the wailing lady? Was I going to end up locked in the same room as her, wailing my wrongs to the unheeding walls?

Or maybe he was planning to turn me into his slave, make me call him 'Master', crawl on my knees, kiss the hem of his robe... Well, that was never going to happen. His power over me—his physical advantage, as well as his compelling magnetism—did not, and never would, extend to my subjugation. He might be able to bully me and manipulate me, but he wasn't going to degrade me. That much I knew for certain.

Well, what's the worst he really can do to you, Alice? I wondered—but I didn't care to look too closely at the answer.

Escape. I had already tried and failed. But that didn't mean I couldn't try again. My hasty, fool-hardy attempt had been doomed to failure, I could see that clearly now. Perhaps I had wanted it to fail. Perhaps I had been merely trying to force some kind of crisis on my stagnant situation...and if so, it had worked. Albeit against me.

But now—now I knew that he knew who I was—I wasn't sure if I wanted to escape anymore.

If I ran, I could lose the answers I was so sure he had. That was what he had said, wasn't it? "If you leave, you will never recover your memories." Was I willing to pay such a price for my freedom?

But if I stayed...

...The danger lay in my frighteningly snowballing feelings for him. It was like his power had somehow wrapped its tendrils around me, at first silently entwining, and now rapidly pulling me into a place of complete, inextricable helplessness. I was falling for him.—Not falling in love—"love" wasn't the right word. Love couldn't be this—this fixation, this craving that I was experiencing, that I could no more understand than I could deny... This was more like...like hunger-pangs of an oncoming starvation...and he was the only form of sustenance available to me. Poisoned, but irresistible.

You're a fool, Alice.

I was clinging to him because he was all I had, he was the only thing that was real in this surreal, this unreal existence. The lighthouse in the dark. The beacon in the fog. Because if I didn't, perhaps I would never find my way out. And yet I knew I was in danger of being dazzled by that very same light. That I could wreck myself on the rocks surrounding him.

What is the greater risk? I wondered.

Stay, and risk being blinded by the light?

Escape, and risk forever belonging to the fog?

...

Thankfully, my fears of slavery and subjection proved unfounded. Things went on pretty much the same as before. We still sat together at meal-times. We still exchanged less-than-pleasant pleasantries.

Perhaps the most obvious difference was that Lucius stopped staring at me while I ate my food, instead perusing various letters, or gazing out of the window. I suppose I ought to have viewed it as a victory, but it was rather a hollow one, for in some ways his undivided attention was all I had as a buffer between myself and complete, annihilating loneliness. When his eyes did happen to accidentally meet mine, their expression never varied from the most arctic disdain.

He was more frequently absent than before, often gone during the day, occasionally in the evening. Sitting at that huge table by myself was... unnerving. His presence, however antagonizing, had always provided me with something to distract myself from the enormity of my missing memory. Without it, that black chasm loomed large, threatening to swallow me whole.

Blankness and loneliness, two circling vultures, waiting to consume whatever scraps of me remained.

Even worse, my courage was slowly but surely failing me.

I couldn't bring myself to form the questions I so desperately wanted to ask. I couldn't bring myself to demand the answers I was so sure he had. Words stuck in my throat, dry lumps I could neither spit out nor swallow away, gradually constricting my vocal chords so I could hardly speak for congestion...

I hated this new reticence and could hardly understand it. It wasn't fear of his anger, for his sporadic fits of violence no longer held much terror for me, beyond a certain apprehension of pain. But I could cope with pain.

No, it was something quite different to physical fear which held me back...it was his hatred. I didn't want him to detest me any more. Seeing his eyes glint with that unfathomable expression of loathing made me almost ill with anxiety. And I knew that to broach the subject of...me...would be to throw petrol onto that ever-burning flame of his hatred, when all I wanted to do was to stamp it out, extinguish it altogether.

And so I persuaded myself that I ought to wait. That it was the sensible, rational thing to do. I told myself that first I had to break through the granite armour of his antipathy, and then—only then, would it be safe to pursue the secrets of my past. Our past.

So, we went on much as we had before, but now it was with my complicity.

Until one night, when everything changed.

Chapter Text

...

There was something different about this evening, I knew it even before I descended to the dining room.

Perhaps it began with the two sharp 'Cracks!' that startled me away from the mirror, where I had been trying to tame my hair in readiness for dinner. They sounded like nearby gunshots, the echo of them resounding the air, usually so still and quiet. But, peering out the window, I could see nothing but inky dark shadow, striped with white where the inside lights spilled out upon the outside snow.

I could only suppose Lucius had decided to shoot at something, perhaps a fox or rabbit. It was the only non-alarming explanation I could muster up, despite the fact I'd never seen any sign of a shotgun in the nearly-eight weeks of my stay here.

But although I tried to shrug it off, I was unnerved. I sensed something had changed in the very atmosphere of the house, there seemed to be a kind of humming tension I could not identify, but which made my fingers tremble as I returned to finish the task of smoothing down my hair.

The feeling of strange foreboding haunted my steps all the way down to the dining room, actually increasing the nearer I approached. I could feel the throb of my heart in my throat as slowly I pushed open the door...then froze on the spot, unable to quite believe what I saw.

Lucius was not alone. There was another person sitting at the mahogany table.

She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Not that I could actually remember any others, but I didn't need a catalogue of comparisons to be certain that she would surpass them all.

Luminescent, almost translucently pale skin, delicately flushed like a pale rose. Lustrous, abundant hair, piled high in a coronet of raven-dark curls. Full, red mouth and features so fine they looked like the idealized imaginings of a Renaissance master-sculptor. She was young—or rather, ageless—almost shimmering with health, and brimming with a kind of poised, taut vitality. There was a tangible intensity and force about her, especially manifested in her dark eyes, which scintillated like black sapphires in the light of the chandeliers.

She was dressed in what could only be described as a ballgown, the colour of midnight. It was full-skirted and swept to the floor, with a tightly-fitting bodice, the neckline of which plunged daringly to display a seductively curvaceous figure. Such a dress would make a plain woman striking; on such a stunning beauty as she, the effect was almost painfully dazzling to behold.

I was so utterly confounded that I began to back straight out of the room again, but Lucius softly commanded, "Come, mudblood—come in."

And, in a trance, in a daze, I drifted over towards them, so astonished that I hardly registered his derogatory term of address, which would usually have me up in arms.

I was struck immediately by three things. Firstly, the lovely woman was sitting in my place. Secondly, the pair were dining together: both places were set, both plates were filled. Thirdly, there was no place set for me.

Lucius beckoned me to him and my breath caught as I realised how...different he looked. His silken hair was drawn back and tied at the nape in a curiously formal way. Although his clothes were always immaculate and expensive, I could see his present attire was of an even more luxurious "evening" variety—albeit an evening belonging to some century long past. He was as resplendently handsome as she was devastatingly beautiful. As I neared, I saw that the woman's extraordinary gown was, in fact, made entirely of glossy black feathers, gleaming in the low light.

Once I would have thought both of their elaborate, antiquated costumes bizarre. Now all I saw was them. Perfect, harmonious equals.

When I reached Lucius's chair he placed a hand on my side and turned me to face his mysterious companion.

Addressing her, not me, he murmured, "Allow me to introduce you to Alice. Alice—ah, Carroll. She is...staying with me, for the time being." He did not supply her name to me.

I don't know what I expected—that she would offer some kind of greeting? At least make a basic acknowledgement of my sentience?—But she did neither. The woman's dark eyes travelled slowly over me, over my whole body, taking in my gauzy, thin bathrobe, lingering on my bare feet, my tangled locks, my unmade-up face.

I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair. To be confronted and scrutinized by two such exquisite examples of masculine and feminine grace, in all their rich finery and elegance, was a mortification I was ill-equipped to bear.

Suddenly, the woman's eyes flicked up to meet my own and my blood turned to ice as I saw her pupils dilate horribly, enlarging until there were no whites left in them, only terrifying, glittering blackness. The same nightmarish feeling swooped over me which I had experienced when the portrait in the hallway had hissed at me, or when I heard the wailing behind the third-floor door. It was something like knowing real terror. Hair-raising, bone-chilling terror. My legs started to wobble, and my breathing constrict.

I felt Lucius's hand grip me a little tighter, steadying me.

But then her gaze left my face, I blinked once and saw that her dark irises were perfectly normal. My terror evaporated, replaced by confusion as I wondered what the matter was with me to imagine such a thing. She wasn't horrible. She was beautiful. Too, too beautiful.

The woman turned to Lucius, and a gradual, sultry smile curled her ruby lips. "How charming," she said. "Most...befitting."

Lucius made a slight nod of agreement.

"Alice, my dear, go and sit over there." His voice was supremely dismissive as he pointed to a place near the fire.

Like an automaton, I did as he bid.

I had been so unprepared for such a thing to happen: for the population of my world to be—so suddenly and without warning—just doubled like that. It robbed me entirely of my self-possession, my very sense. I was completely blind-sided.

All I could think was, how can anyone be so beautiful? They both are. They're both so beautiful.

And while the pair dined, my eyes went back and forth, back and forth, between the half-profile of the man and the quarter-profile of the woman. I just sat there staring and staring and staring. Everything around them had dissolved into soft-focus, and there was a muffled thudding in my ears, which I dully registered as my own heartbeat.

Gradually the haziness began to clear, and I found myself tuning into their conversation.

The woman was part-way through a question. "—notice it displaying any sign of its former...precociousness?"

Lucius chuckled urbanely. "None at all," he replied. "Although it appears to have an innate tendency to inquisitiveness and disobedience."

"I'm certain it does," rejoined the lady. "Such predilection may be observed in any monkey."

"Was it not Geronimus who said, 'there is no discernible difference between the muggleborn and its tree-dwelling cousin'?"

"Oh yes! He was wrong, of course. The biggest difference is, a monkey will aim to steal one's lunch, where a muggleborn will aspire for one's entire birthright." She laughed prettily. "But this one, at least, will never again nurture such insolent aspirations." She simpered, then sighed. "How I've missed our tête-à-têtes, Lucius. ...This reminds me of happier days—long, long ago. Before everything...happened."

Although I could not understand the drift of their discussion, I felt a pang at hearing his name on her lips. It sounded so easy, so intimate. ...Could that be his wife? I wondered, with a second pang. He had said he no longer had a wife. But they looked so compatible. Almost inevitable.

Lucius took a sip of wine, and even at this distance I could see his eyes caressing and complimenting the woman in such a way that they had never done when fixed on me. And, to my dismay and chagrin, I felt a lump forming in my throat, and hot tears prickling my eyes.

"Remember what fun we used to have?" she continued. "Oh, Lucius, I do hope you have some lovely designs in store for it. You always had such a creative flair for amusing yourself—and your friends—with those pitiful creatures."

He smiled. "I was younger then."

"Does creativity dull with age?"

"I should say it merely refines. I am no longer to be so easily gratified. My tastes tend to exploits more...subtle and prolonged."

Another tinkling laugh. "What luck that you find yourself in the position to indulge them, then."

"For that, I can only thank you."

"When the time comes, I doubt not that you will." She paused, then in a low voice she murmured, "You know I'm taking a great risk in coming here, Lucius."

He replied by taking her hand and brushing it briefly with his lips. I felt myself trembling. Those lips—to me, only ever the conveyors of countless cruel words—imparting something so gentle and reverential as a kiss?

...An intricately tangled knot of emotions twisted my stomach: a terrible longing, born of the emptiness of my alien existence—a hopeless desire, to be acknowledged, to be respected, to not be hated—and a gnawing envy, as I watched these unattainable things being paraded before my eyes... How I craved to feel such things. How he had made me crave such things...

Suddenly the woman's back straightened and she made a little noise of pleasure. "Oh! It's the Dragon Waltz! It was once a favourite of mine."

Only then did I realize that the sound of supple, dreamy piano music was gently rippling throughout the room. I was in such a daze I hadn't noticed it before.

With an amused, playful smile—such as I had not believed him capable—Lucius stood and held out his hand to her. "Shall we shun convention and have this dance?" he said. The woman sprang gracefully up to meet him, and in one impossibly elegant motion, he spun her into his arms.

Get up and leave this room, I said to myself. There's the door. Walk over to it, and leave them to it. You're not wanted here.

But I couldn't. I couldn't do it.

They danced beautifully, naturally. Although the space was not large, somehow the floor seemed to augment, the lights to dim, the volume of the music to increase...it was mesmerizing. Enchanting. But then I couldn't see any more, because my foolish, foolish tears were now fully fledged and escaping down my cheeks.

The feminine laugh rang out again, but this time it sounded metallic and derisive. "Look, Lucius. There seems to be something the matter with it."

There was a pause, then I heard Lucius reply, "It makes a spectacle of itself with tiresome regularity."

They're not talking about you, Alice, I thought. They can't be. They just can't.

But it seemed that they could, and they were. When I dashed away the tears from my eyes they stood side by side, hand in hand, gazing down at me like I was some kind of circus sideshow freak.

"Maybe it wants to dance," the woman said. "Go on, Lucius, ask the little mudblood to dance. I want to see it try."

For a second I thought I saw Lucius's eyelids flicker warily, as if he were trying to calculate or interpret her motives. Then he stepped forward, grabbed my arms and pulled me roughly up against him, and began to swing me around the floor, bathrobe, bare feet and all.

The humiliation was sickening. I could hear the woman giggling, and Lucius himself was smiling down at me in a hard, horrid way. His steps were lithe and assured, but deliberately complex and fast, and there was no way I could keep up with him. I stumbled clumsily about, totally unable to gain my centre of balance, dragged and tugged this way and that, feeling more like a rag doll than a real person. And I hated him for it.

"Let me go," I said through clenched teeth. I tried to wrench myself out of his grip, but it seemed he expected this, for he held me very tightly, his fingers bruisingly clamped around my wrist and shoulder.

"No," he murmured. The light caught his eyes in such a way that for the first time I noticed his silver irises were sharply edged by a fine, slate-dark outer ring. "I enjoy dancing with you."

"Let me go this instant or I'll—"

"You'll what, my dear?"

"I'll tell her everything," I hissed. "How you're keeping me here against my will. How I'm your prisoner."

"She will be most gratified to learn it, I assure you."

I blinked, suddenly unsure. He must be bluffing, I thought. And, determined not to let my courage fail me yet again, I stared straight into his eyes and loudly spoke out, "This man has kidnapped me and I ask that you notify the police immediately."

The burst of laughter from both of them was not the reaction I'd hoped for. "I'm not j-joking!" I cried furiously, fuelled by shame, desperation and rage. "He really is keeping me here against my will!"

"But what an impertinent little poppet!" I heard the woman exclaim. "I forgot how adorable it is when its being naughty."

Lucius suddenly whirled me outwards, jarring my shoulder joint painfully and making me almost lose my footing. As I fought to keep my balance, he suddenly pulled me back, so hard that I fell against his chest.

Cheeks burning, I once again attempted to tug myself out of his grip. "Let me go, you—you bastard!"

"You let it speak that way to you, Luci? You ought to take your cane to it, for its insolence."

"The thought has crossed my mind more than once," he drily replied.

"Let me go!" As I tried again to wrench out of his grasp, Lucius suddenly opened his hands, so this time I went reeling across the room, tripping and sprawling heavily on the floor.

Again, the sound of tinkling laughter.

"You're sick, both of you!" I cried, pulling myself onto my knees, and intending to run as soon as I was back on my feet. But I didn't make it to my feet.

I heard the Woman say, "Oh, Luci, I really must insist on a little discipline—stand back—"

—And then all I knew was pain, all I was, was pain, I was screaming uncontrollably, my body had been doused in petrol and set alight, and I was being hacked at with knives, and sawn with ragged-toothed blades—or was I being boiled in oil?—torn by wolves, gouged by razor-sharp claws—

Then it just stopped.

I lay prone on the floor, all my muscles convulsing, retching helplessly, a cold sweat drenching my body. I was making strange whimpering noises, like a wounded dog.

"Oh, how disgusting, it seems to have wet itself."

Lucius made a quiet tsk-ing sound.

She's right, Alice, I realised, you have wet yourself. But I was too faint and far-away to care, and I simply curled up, closed my eyes and just shivered and shivered.

I heard Lucius say, "You do not deem it unwise—?"

"Only obliviation needs to be avoided," the woman replied brightly. "Its memory is weakened to the last point before total irretrievability. Its body, however..."

And then I was writhing and shrieking again, this time I was being shredded and skinned alive, broken glass was driving under my skin, iron nails rammed into my flesh, my bones were being smashed, crushed, crunched—and was that acid being poured into my eyes, down my throat? And fire—fire again, consuming flames, blistering, charring my body—

No human, no living thing, was meant to bear such pain, such agony. My screams seemed to be getting further away—I was tumbling down a dark hole—my arms stretching upwards—and for a split second all the pain dissolved away and in the empty, falling stillness I saw above me the ghostly figure of a young man, reaching down to catch my hand with slender fingers...I heard the echo of a voice whispering, HOLD ONTO ME...

...but just as our fingers met, my body shut itself down and delivered me into blissful blackness.

...

I drifted in and out of consciousness.

The hum of lively conversation seeped into my brain...then blackness...then the sound of convivial laughter...then blackness again...

Gradually, I recovered a grainy, double-visioned awareness. I ached all over, as if cramp had seized every single muscle of my entire body, and I was shivering, not with cold, but with continuous involuntary spasms.

I neither moved nor spoke, for fear of another—another what? I wondered. Another seizure? Is that what had happened?

Through the deep throbbing in my head, I registered the chime of crystal glasses and the sound of low, amiable discourse, and I realised that the sophisticated two-person soirée continued, seemingly unhindered by my prostrate presence.

Don't mind me, I thought bitterly. I'll just stay here on the floor, half-dead, wracked with pain and soaked in my own pee—but do please continue enjoying yourselves...

...You're a fucking prick, Lucius. Letting me lie here like this.

I couldn't quite believe he was being so callous. Despite his coldness, despite his cruelty, I hadn't credited him with this level of hardheartedness. It hadn't crossed his mind to take me to hospital, then, despite the fact I had suffered an obvious trauma? And it wasn't because the roads were impassable, because she had got here, hadn't she?

Something so terrible happened to me that I had literally passed-out with pain, but there he was, eating his dinner and playing the charming host, like it was the most natural thing in the world for an unconscious girl to be lying on his dining room floor. ...Maybe it was. Maybe he made a habit of it. Maybe this was some sick, perverted sex-game he and that—that Woman played, to get them in the mood. Was that it?

I winced, remembering the intolerably insulting way she had spoken, not to me, but about me—as if I didn't count as an actual, breathing, thinking person.

Who the hell does she think she is, calling me 'it', like I'm a dog or something?

And who the hell are you, Lucius? Who the fucking hell are YOU?

I went through a list of suitable words to describe the man. Pig, arsehole, wanker, son-of-a-bitch, bastard, bastard, BASTARD. And because their wasn't a noun to really do justice to how I felt about him, I began crying—but silently, silently.

What had happened to me? Where had that unendurable pain come from? Was it some kind of a stroke, or an epileptic fit? ...But no, it was something to do with the Woman, she had told Lucius to "stand back", and then—and then just agony. What had she done to me?

There was a scraping of chairs and I quickly closed my eyes, although I was facing away from them anyway. I heard them remove from the room, there was a bustling in the hall—him helping her on with her coat, soft laughter and the sound of the heavy entrance door opening and shutting.

Once again, I heard the two sharp gunshots. Perhaps there were hunters in the area, who could help me. All I needed to do was get up, run outside, scream for help.

All I needed to do was move.

I couldn't move. I could hardly breathe. Every intake of breath was a painful gasp. Just blinking hurt.

So I just lay there, immobile but for the spasms wracking my body, for an hour—two?—until gradually they abated, my vision unified, and I could breathe properly again.

Get up, Alice. Do you want to be here still when he, or they, return?

With a cry of pain, I forced my protesting body off the cold, hard floor, and clutching the nearest chair, I dragged myself to my feet. The bathrobe was stiff and chafing my legs. I looked down at the obvious wet patch. "It makes a spectacle of itself with tiresome regularity." That's what he had said. And that's exactly what I had done.

Well, no way was I waiting around to be humiliated further.

Slowly, wincing and perspiring with effort, I staggered over to the door, opened it a fraction and peered out into the hall. It was empty and still. I wondered if Lucius was driving her home. Perhaps they were spending the night together. I hope they skid in the snow and crash, I thought. I hope they maim their beautiful, horrible faces.

I limped along the hall and dragged myself up the stairway, never stopping my stumbling, painful steps until I had reached the sanctuary of my own room. As soon as the door was shut my legs gave way and I slid down against the oak panel. For some time I just stayed like that, hunched over, shocked to incapacity, one hand still grasping the brass handle above me, like a drowning person clinging to a rock...

And all I could think was, how could he? How could he?

And then I was blindly stumbling over to the mirror.

Don't look, Alice, I pleaded with myself desperately. You'll only regret it.

But of course I looked. And of course I regretted it.

Today's bathrobe had been a light dove-grey hue, and there was no mistaking the large, discoloured patch of wetness. My hair was a fright, both frizzy and straggly, and my face was ashen, marred with ugly blotches from crying. There was a kind of strained, frozen horror in my eyes.

I shuddered with self-disgust. I thought about the Woman, how she looked, dancing with Lucius: graceful and superb and so right. Then I thought how I must have looked, barely dressed and barefoot, staggering and tripping ridiculously, a jarring, incongruous joke. And that was before I wet myself.

Sick to the heart, I turned my back on my reflection and limped through to the ensuite.

As usual, the bath was full and hot. I clambered in, bathrobe and all. I wanted to wash away all evidence of this evening. If only I could wash away the memory of it too, consign it to the darkness where the rest of my memories were locked so securely away.

I closed my eyes and let the hot water cradle me. But my fraught, warped mind kept replaying everything, over and over: them dining—waltzing together—insulting me—forcing me to dance like a circus animal—her scornful laughter—his cruel smile—then that pain, that pain, that all-shattering pain...

And you thought you weren't afraid of pain, Alice, I sneered at myself. Turns out it's pretty high up on your rather-long list of 'Things To Most Definitely Be Afraid Of.'—Oh, and you might like to add 'Incontinence' and 'Utter Humiliation' to that list.

The worst thing about the pain was not knowing where it had come from. If it was something he had done to me, or she had done to me, or I had done to myself. Or if, for that matter, it was all in my brain.

My damaged, unreliable, miserable brain.

I hauled myself up to stand. The sodden material of my bathrobe clung to my body like a second skin and I peeled it off and balled it up. For a few moments I stared at it, a kind of burning rage and despair building up inside me. Then, with a sudden explosive screech, I threw it savagely across the room, into the farthest corner.

Standing there, naked and dripping, stripped of the loathsome garment, I felt suddenly stronger. Freer.

I looked at the clean robe hanging on the towel-stand—a wispy lavender one—and I experienced an intense wave of nausea. I hated it. What it represented. My helplessness. My worthlessness. And suddenly my mind was made up. Never, never again was I going to wear another bathrobe as long as I lived.

Damn Lucius. Damn his secrecy, damn his rules. And double damn his 'consequences.' So, he was out gallivanting with his lady-friend was he?—Well, good for him. Good for them.

I was glad he was out of the house. Out of the way.

I was going in search of some clothes.

Chapter Text

...

I wound one of the large towels around me and tucked it firmly in place. My body was still shaking, my limbs weak, but a rush of adrenaline was flowing through me, dulling the residual pain and spurring me into action. Under its emboldening influence, I ventured out of my room.

Once in the corridor, I decided to be methodical. Starting on this floor, I would try each door I came to, going left and continuing around.

The first one was locked. I rattled and twisted the handle to no avail. I even tried shoving my shoulder against the wood, as if I had a hope of breaking the hinges with my inadequate frame. But weakness and pain prevented me from keeping that up for very long, and soon I moved on to the next one. There were three more doors on my side of the passage, but all proved impenetrable as the first.

I reached the end of the passage and turned to try the doors along the opposite side. Like the others, the next door I came to was shut, but it wasn't a lock that prevented me from opening it. There was a very strange sensation, a kind of cushion of air which actually stopped my hand from touching the door handle.

What on earth? I wondered. Is this even possible? I tested it again, quickly dashing my hand out, but with the same result. I simply couldn't penetrate the invisible wall.

I stared at it for a while. Maybe it was some kind of high-tech security system using a magnetic-field, or something? Had such a thing actually been invented? And why this door? What was so important about this door that it warranted something other than a simple lock? Could it be...his room?

On impulse I brought up my hands and tried pressing them palm-forward into the cushion of air. "Just open, damn it," I whispered. My hands were tingling strangely, and I could feel the air stirring...indenting...almost bending around my palms...

I leaned in, closing my eyes. My hands were really hot now, burning rather than tingling, and I was certain they were slowly breaching whatever it was that was shielding the door...

Open open open open open open open open, for god's sake, just bloody-well OPEN—

There was a brief whooshing sensation, and I suddenly collided with the oak panelling. Gasping, I quickly went for the handle again. This time my hand closed around it, turned it and the door clicked off its catch. "Yes!" I hissed triumphantly.

Momentarily I stood still, listening for sounds of Lucius returning, but all was perfectly quiet and dark. Believing I had, in all probability, been abandoned for the evening, I slipped in through door and closed it gently behind me.

It was his bedroom. I knew it instinctively and with complete conviction. It smelt like him. That unmistakable, expensive, masculine scent he exuded.

A sumptuous chamber fit for a prince: imposing, grand and uncompromising.

Like him.

The bed was preposterously large. Daunting, even. Like a fort. It was hard to imagine it as a place of repose, let alone one of tender intimacy. I seriously doubted any visitor to those plush sheets would have much say in what went on between them. Despite myself, despite my bitter fury with the man, I felt the colour rise to my cheeks, as certain images arose vividly to mind. I grimaced angrily at myself. This terrifying power he had over me...it had to stop...

"It is stopping," I said aloud. "Right now."

I took a deep breath. Right, I thought. Clothes.

It was hardly surprising that the wardrobes were many and large. Deliberately, I marched over to the nearest one and tugged open the door.

Bingo! It was full of shirts. White, black, silver, green, burgundy. Mostly white though, and no two the same. Some outlandishly frilled, some intricately embroidered, all fashioned from the most luxurious of costly fabrics.

I took out a kind of long tunic and quickly slipped it over my head, afraid my courage would fail me if I hesitated. It came down almost to my knees. I pulled my towel off from underneath it and just revelled in the lavishness, the substantialness of the rich, heavy twill against my bare skin, after so long in flimsy silk.

It smelt subtly of his perfume, but I was not going to let that unsettle me.

I turned to the next wardrobe. This one contained hanger after hanger of neatly pressed black trousers. I selected a pair at random and stepped into them. They were absurdly big, like oversized clown pants. I rolled the cuffs up at the ankles, folded over the waist and then bowed at my reflection in the mirror lining the wardrobe door. It was just so glorious to be wearing actual clothes again.

I felt almost dizzy, knowing how recklessly insubordinate I was being, after his callous treatment of me. Too long I had danced submissively along to his tune, and what had I got? Precisely zilch. Negative zilch, if you counted my steadily eroding confidence and self-esteem, slowly withering away under his continued contempt, insults and threats. Then add to that the humiliation and pain I had endured tonight...I was glad he had left me lying there on the ground, wet through and barely conscious. It was the wake-up call I needed.

With an almost painful clarity I realised that the feelings I had developed for him—that he had forced me to feel, by keeping me in isolation, confusion and fear—were as unsubstantial and demeaning as the silk robes he had me wear. Attractive and sensual, but really only serving to keep me in my place. Helpless. Tame. Which I suppose was what he had intended all along. He had woven me into a web of infatuation, wherein every attempt to struggle only bound me all the tighter. But I wasn't going to entangle myself any more, while he sat back and waited for me to stop moving...

I could tear myself out of such a web. I must tear myself out.

My despairing rage was fast converting into a frenzy of rebellious glee. I wrenched open door after wardrobe door, pulling on garments as I went—socks, cashmere jersey, satin waistcoat, white evening scarf... Coming to the last, tallest wardrobe, my eyes widened at the impressive array of exquisitely tailored robes, capes and cloaks. I freed a heavy velvet cape and wrapped it around me.

It was very thick and warm and suddenly I thought, You could escape in this, Alice. Really escape. You could survive in the snow. You could.

The thought brought me to an immediate standstill. I was panting a little and my expression in the mirror was rather wild. This could be my only opportunity to run...my jailer away, warm clothes at my disposal...

I hurried over to the window and peered out into the darkness. I could see very little: just a dark world of inky shadows edged by slivers of moonlit snow. I could do it. I could run back across the moor to the forest and then follow its edge until I came to a road, or a house, or...

Do it. Just do it. Go on.

My blood seemed to surge through me. Before I knew what I was doing, I was already halfway across the room, headed towards the door through which I had come. But a few feet from the threshold I lurched to a stop.

Wait, wait, wait! I thought. You found clothes, but what about clues? Clues about YOU?

There were several items of furniture I hadn't even looked at yet: the large walnut dressing-table near the bed, the ancient, domed casket in the corner. The tall mahogany bureau next to the window. They all looked likely to contain things other than clothes. More important than clothes.

I couldn't leave yet, not until I had at least attempted an investigation.

Indecision and frenzy melted away, leaving me curiously detached, but equally determined. I took a couple of steadying breaths, then moved back over to the dressing table. With trembling hands, I drew open the drawer directly under the highly-polished top. I gasped. It was absolutely brimming with glittering jewelry.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, remembering the seemingly-endless variety of sparkling cravat-pins, rings, cuff-links, and lapel-jewels I had seen Lucius wear. But I just hadn't been prepared for quite such a horde. It was like a treasure-trove belonging to an extremely fastidious pirate.

I picked up a huge brooch in the shape of a snake's head, fashioned from emeralds and pearls. I had seen Lucius wear it once before and it had suited him, it had looked normal, befitting. Up close, I realised that the massive gems were almost hideously ostentatious. In a kind of awed daze, I pinned the brooch to the neckline of my tunic, trying to imagine the kind of wealth of arrogance and arrogance of wealth that one would have to have, to be able to wear such a thing without compunction, as part of one's everyday attire. That was the kind of man he was.

I slid the drawer closed and drew open the one directly below. This compartment contained three velvet cases. I opened them in order from smallest to biggest. The first, a dark green one, contained a beautiful old-fashioned gold watch, with a winding key and long fob-chain. It's outer casing was engraved with a Latin motto: Sanctimonia Vincet Sempe. Something along the lines of "the pure will always win." I sneered. As if he were so pure-hearted! I snapped the box close and reached for the second case. This one was very long and narrow, but the quilted interior was empty. I wondered what it usually contained. A letter-opener, or slender dagger? I suddenly recalled the slim baton which he had threatened me with, that time he caught me up on the third floor. It looked like it would fit perfectly. I closed it, and my hands hovered over the last box—a square black one—but I hesitated to open it. Unaccountably, I didn't want to touch it. ... It's probably empty anyway, I told myself. I grasped the lid and prised it open.

It was not empty. It was the necklace. My necklace. The one Lucius had ripped off my neck on that first day.

A strange queasiness washed over me as I gazed down at the small bird-skull pendant. I felt as if those empty, black eye-sockets were gazing up at me...watching me.

Shuddering, I quickly shut the lid. As I did, the case moved a fraction, revealing beneath it the corner of a piece of paper.

Carefully, I slid the paper out. It appeared to be a newspaper clipping, folded in half. It was crinkled, as if at some point it had been screwed into a ball, then flattened out again.

I unfolded the paper and was met with a large headline in bold lettering. 'TRAGEDY AT TRAINING COLLEGE'. There was a photo underneath it, showing a group of smiling young men and women in what looked like graduation gowns, and, unless my eyes were deceiving me—and I seriously believed they must be—it was actually moving: the people were silently laughing and chatting with each other. The caption beneath the photo read, "The Auror Cadets Class of 2000, taken moments before tragedy struck."

My eyes were soon drawn to two figures, standing side by side, smiling happily outwards. One was a tall, slender young man, with blond hair gleaming brightly in the sunshine. His features were sharply chiselled, somewhat fox-like, and bore a striking resemblance to someone else I knew. His arm was slung amicably around the shoulders of the young woman standing beside him.

And that young woman was me.

I don't know for how long I stood there, utterly transfixed, gazing at that piece of paper. It might have been minutes, or hours. I might've remained there all night, if a dull thud had not pulled me abruptly out of my stupefied daze. Panic and horror seized me as I identified the sound as the front door.

Had he returned? Had they?

Shaking, fingers fumbling, I folded the paper and hurriedly stowed it beneath the black velvet case.

As I did, there was a loud cracking sound behind me. The drawer slammed on my fingers.

Lucius was all over me.

...

"HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?"

Lucius grabbed my shoulders and thrust me over the dressing-table, shoving my face so hard down onto its surface that my cheekbone made a nasty cracking sound as it collided with the glossy walnut top. It was painful, but nothing to the agony of my fingers crushed in the drawer. I wailed incoherently, unable to think for the pain. The first shattering impact had rendered me winded and nauseous, but now his impellent weight was forcing my own body against the drawer-jamb and I could both feel and hear my bones cracking and splintering—any more pressure and they would surely detach.

My howl rose in decibel and pitch to a piercing scream, but then he wrenched me backwards, releasing me from my snare and sending me sprawling onto the floor some feet away from him.

My fingers throbbed so excruciatingly that I shoved them in my mouth, but Lucius was already striding over to me and I was forced to scrabble away. My be-socked feet kept slipping on the highly polished oak flooring and I only succeeded in propelling myself a couple of feet backwards before he was crouching over me and dragging me up by the front of my—his—clothes. "Tell me how you got in," he snarled, his knuckles pressing bruisingly into my chest where he grasped the bunched material in his fists.

But I couldn't form a reply. The world was on spin-cycle, my fingers were on fire, and my head lolled back like a broken-necked bird's.

I heard him growl with anger; he slapped my face sharply, but not hard, although it hurt my bruised cheekbone. "Answer my question, mud-blood!" he demanded, with a second stinging smack.

"What question?" I mumbled. My fingers, my fingers. The pain was so overwhelming I wasn't quite sure how I was going to deal with it.

"How did you enter this room?"

I frowned blearily, trying to filter his words through the blanketing pain. "Through th-the—the door." My fingers. God help me.

For a moment he looked like he would like to strike me in earnest, but he restrained himself and through clenched teeth he said, "Yes, through the door. Of course, through the door. How did you open the door?"

I tried to remember. It seemed like something I'd done years ago, not within the last hour or so.

But then I forgot to answer the question, because—because—my fingers again. My fingers, my fingers...I brought them up in front of my eyes and cried out with horror, my whole body beginning to quake violently. They didn't look like fingers at all, they looked like squashed caterpillars—purple and black, bloody, mashed, flat, broken. Some nails were missing, several others were split and hanging by threads of skin.

"Help me," I choked out, staring up at Lucius, just trying to somehow reach him through the haze of agony. "The pain. I can't. Please."

His expression was impassive and I thought, he's not going to help you, Alice. He hates you, remember? But then he half-turned away, murmuring something I couldn't hear, then moments later he was pulling me up into the crook of his arm and holding a small vial to my lips. "Drink," he commanded softly.

I would have drunk poison at that point, if I knew it would numb my fingers. Obediently I opened my mouth and let him tip the liquid in. It was very bitter and made my tongue and throat prickle—but then wonderfully, miraculously, the pain slowly began to reverse, to unwind, spinning into itself like a self-consuming vortex, diminishing and subsiding, until it simply disappeared, and I could see, could breathe, could think again.

"Thank you," I whispered, relaxing, almost nestling against him, willing, in my euphoric relief, to dismiss from my mind the fact that he was the cause of my pain in the first place.

I wasn't allowed to get too comfortable though. Lucius stood up quickly, tipping me unceremoniously back on to the floor. "Clearly it's the only way I'm going to get a word of sense out of you," he drawled, moving back to the dressing table.

Oh, that's right, I thought. You're a bastard who doesn't give a shit about me. Thanks for reminding me.

I clambered shakily to my feet and watched as he slid the drawer smoothly back to click into place, blood visibly smeared on its outer veneer. I met his gaze in the reflection of the mirror above it. "You may answer my question now, Alice," he said. "How did you enter this room?"

I couldn't quite make out if he were still angry. His voice was calm, but those eyes...I licked my lips drily. It felt so strange to be at one moment in utter agony, the next to be quite pain-free. That disorienting feeling of stumbling out of a dark room into blazing sunlight. Concentrate, Alice. "Um, I pressed my hands against that...that air-shield," I told him truthfully, for I could see no real reason to lie. "And it just disappeared."

He turned to face me and I noticed that his face was quite pale. "The door?"

"The air. It disappeared and then I opened the door, in the usual way."

He was watching me intently, piercingly, though without his customary sneer. "And why, may I ask, did you—for the second time, and against my explicit warning—decide to breach the conditions of your stay?"

If I needed a reminder that I had much greater cause to be angry with him, than he with me, then that last word did the trick.

"My 'stay'?" The expulsion of that enormous pain had left a great space within me, which was quickly filling up with a deluge of fury. "As in, my enjoyable little adventure here? My pleasant visit amongst kind friends?—Come on, Lucius, let's call a spade a spade. My custody! My imprisonment!"

With his hair drawn back Lucius's features seemed sharper, even more severe than usual. I quailed a little under his icy stare, half expecting him to lash out at me again. But he merely pursed his lips and said, "Call it what you will, it does not change the fact that you deliberately disobeyed me—yet again."

I glanced down at my hands, blissfully numb, but still horribly misshapen and broken. My rage swelled, then solidified.

"Of course I did!" I spat, anger absolutely trumping fear. "You forced me to, didn't you? I've been sitting back all this time like a perfect idiot, just waiting for you to throw me the tiniest scrap of information about who the hell I am, and what the hell I'm doing here—and you've given me nothing. Nothing. The only thing I have from you are these!"—I held up my poor, mangled hands—"AND A ROYAL PAIN IN MY ARSE."

I knew my words would incense him, but I couldn't stop myself; I wished, I needed, to hurl all my frustration, hurt and infuriation at him before my courage failed me, or he put a physical stop to it.

Lucius's eyes narrowed, glittering dangerously. "You risk much speaking that way to me," he said hoarsely.

"Oh, go on, threaten me some more, you bully!" I snarled at him. "What do I have to lose by breaking your stupid rules, Lucius? Nothing. I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. I know that you know who I am—there's a picture of me in that drawer you mashed my hands up in!" He was no longer pale, but lividly white. It was a sure sign of violence to follow, but I plunged recklessly on: "But since you're too much of a coward—or maybe just an arsehole—to tell me anything, then obviously I'm going to have to find it out for myself—"

"Be silent!" he hissed warningly.

"I WON'T!" I had finally found my tongue after so long: the floodgates had opened, and nothing was going to stop me now: not the look on his face, not the fact that he was advancing threateningly towards me, or that I was having to dance speedily out of reach. The words tumbled out in an unstoppable torrent: "At the very least you could have the decency to tell me what I did to you that was so terrible that you treat me like THIS!—Yes, and while we're on the subject, you might like to enlighten me as to what it was that evil cow did to me in the dining room this evening—"

"I warn you, mud-blood—"

"Deserved that too, did I? Gosh, I must have done something really awful to you at some point—"

"You will be silent—"

"—to make you want to hurt me that badly, to—to behave so viciously to me, like—like vicious animals—"

"You will not continue—"

"—not to mention whatever you've done to that poor lady you've got locked away upstairs—"

"SILENCE!"

"I suppose one of them must be your wife, though I wouldn't presume to venture which—"

He lunged forward and struck me hard across my face. I staggered back a few steps, slipping and nearly toppling over. Twisting awkwardly, I managed to maintain my balance and I straightened up, cradling my cheek, glaring at my assailant. "Why don't I just stick my hands back in that drawer and you can have another go, you pig?" I said, my voice low and shaking.

"Do not tempt me," Lucius replied testily. He was breathing hard and a strand of his long hair had come loose from its binding.

He took a steadying breath, deliberately composing himself. He tucked the loose strand carefully behind his ear, then adjusted the wrists of his shirt, straightening them beneath the wide cuffs of his black jacquard tailcoat. When he finally looked at me again, he appeared quite calm. "Now..." His voice was smooth and light, as if we had been engaging in no more than a polite chat. "You will take off every single item of clothing belonging to me."

A sudden sickening fear clawed at my heart, but I held his eyes defiantly. "No."

His mouth curved into a thorny smile and I knew he sensed a crack in my courage. "But yes, my dear. Come, Alice. Either you will execute the task yourself, or I will do it for you. And please believe I will not take kindly to being forced to perform such a chore. "

I did believe him. But I sure as hell was not about to back down now. "What's wrong with you?" I spat.

He took a step towards me. "Oh, there's nothing wrong with me, my dear. You may begin with the brooch."

"Why don't you just tell me why you hate me so much?"

Another step and he was close enough to touch me, though he didn't. He leaned in and murmured, "The brooch, Alice."

I held up my ruined, useless hands. "I can't, Lucius. You broke my fingers, remember?" In an elaborately polite voice I continued: "You do remember, don't you? It was about th-three minutes ago, we were standing over by that dresser—"

"Would you like another slap, mud-blood?" Lucius cut in roughly.

"Oh, yes please," I returned sarcastically. "But only if hitting a girl makes you feel all big and powerful."

We stood, eyes interlocked and sparking with reciprocal rage—not touching, and yet somehow clashing, colliding.

A strange look flickered over Lucius's features, similar to his expression after our altercation against my bedroom wall...a kind of abrasive, resentful desire, thoroughly interlaced with abhorrence and loathing.

My breath caught as I sensed a dangerous new dynamic in the air...but then he dropped his gaze, and, stooping over me, he began to unpin the heavy jewel from the neckline of my shirt. He was gentle, unexpectedly so. As he released the catch his fingers brushed my bare skin, it seemed caressingly, sending goosebumps all over my body.

I stood absolutely still, cursing my surging blood, my racing pulse. As usual, his near proximity was playing havoc with my senses, and I could not control my body's almost chemical reaction to his physical presence, to the electrifying charge he radiated...

After his heavy-handed brutality, his suddenly-soft touch had a lulling, almost tranquillising effect.

"Please, Lucius," I whispered, my face mere inches from his. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. "Just tell me my name."

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...

Lucius's mouth hardened, and he did not reply.

Instead, he freed the brooch and raised his arm, at first I thought to touch my face, but then I realised he was reaching over to place the jewel on the tall bureau just behind me. Still avoiding my gaze, he brought both hands up to my collar bone, and, hooking his thumbs under the edges of the heavy cape, he slid it off my shoulders.

I felt the costly material billow around my ankles. Wincing regretfully at the uselessness of hindsight, I thought: There goes your chance for escape. You should have just run for it.

I didn't quite know what I was going to do. Obviously I wasn't going to let the man strip me naked. Sweet-talk? Beg? Negotiate? A kick in a sensitive area?

There was a brief tug on the back of my neck, as Lucius pulled away the white opera-scarf, again letting it drop in a pile at my feet. There was a palpable, wired tension in his body, like a tiger ready to spring. I realised we were both waiting for me to react in some way. And neither of us quite knew what to expect.

How many layers, Alice? I wondered. How many layers before you crack?

"Lucius," I whispered again, afraid to speak louder, lest he hear the quiver of desperation in my voice. "Why won't you tell me my name?"

Still no reply. Encircling both my wrists with one strong hand, he lifted my arms slowly above my head, using his other hand to peel the cashmere jersey up and over. For a moment I was blinded and bound by the plush material, and the intense vulnerability of my situation left me flushed and trembling when at last he freed me from it.

I was paralysed with indecision and confusion. It was too, too much like a bedroom ritual, an act performed by lovers—but it was not an act of love, it was one of hate; an unsoundable, incomprehensible hate, spun through and through with delicately twisted skeins of desire...

After his extreme, blazing violence and rage, I wondered if Lucius was really as in control of himself as he now appeared. Somehow I doubted it. It was always so close to the surface, his anger, like smouldering coal hidden beneath a layer of bone-dry tinder. One spark was all it ever took.

His fingers worked open the buttons of the satin waistcoat leisurely—tauntingly.

Still I could not bring myself to react. What's the worst he can do, Alice? He can't very well hurt or humiliate you more than he already has. Unless. No. He can't be intending to—to—

The waistcoat fluttered to the floor. Only the shirt, trousers and socks remained and I was excruciatingly aware that beneath them I was completely naked.

As if reading my thoughts, as too often he accurately did, Lucius drawled, "Tell me, Miss Carroll...do you think it wise for a young lady to enter a man's bedroom, alone and at night?" His voice was silky. Treacherously so. "Might not she have reason to expect certain...repercussions, for such indiscreet behaviour?"

My heart seemed to have launched itself into my throat. "No, I d-don't," I stammered. "I mean, I th-thought you didn't—didn't—you said you would n-never..." I trailed off, cheeks burning. What could I say? You promised not to rape me? I couldn't say it—not that word, not with the huge baronial bed mere feet away from us, not as I was: cornered, wounded and helpless.

Not with that glimmering light in his eyes, blue flame encased in ice.

Lucius leaned forward, an almost-imperceptible curve touching his mouth. "A man's actions do not always coincide with his assertions, Alice. Surely you know that."

"A gentleman's actions should," I countered, in a voice rather higher than I wished.

The curve deepened. "How little you must know of gentlemen."

I glowered up at him. "I know what they ought to be. And clearly you are not one."

"Am I not? How fortunate. Then I need not concern myself by disappointing your expectations."

I bit my lip. My only real defence against him were my words, and he always, always managed to twist them against me. A cold, clammy anxiety was creeping over my body now, usurping and quashing the magnetic pull I had felt only moments ago. "B-but I thought that you. That I. I disgusted you."

The fiery gleam in Lucius's eyes flared and intensified. "Indeed," he murmured softly. I drew in a quick breath as he brought his hand to my face, lightly placing his fingers on my cheek, brushing my lips with his thumb. I pressed them firmly together, but they tingled at his touch. His pupils had dilated fully, like a night-hunting predator's."...And yet perhaps...perhaps I can perceive...a certain...appeal..."

My heart thudded wildly. This was uncharted territory. Uncharted and terrifying. For so long I had craved the man's approval or—or anything, rather than endure his prolonged, wearying campaign of contempt and hatred...but now I felt like a non-swimmer plunged into waters far too dangerous and much too deep. I wanted respect, not...not...this...

I suddenly twisted my head away, attempting to duck past him. Lucius's arm shot out to seize and sling me backwards into the bureau, its handles punching into my back, my head knocking against the hard wood. I sagged, momentarily winded and dizzied, but he closed in, holding me up by bodily crowding and trapping me against the tall unit. In a subtle, fluid motion one of his hands tilted my chin upwards, forcing me to look at him, while the other slipped under the hem of the shirt and came to rest on my hips, between the layers of overlapping material. He fixed his eyes on mine and within their liquid, smelted-silver depths I could plainly read the mocking query: which garment shall I divest you of next?

I had to do something. Say something to stop him. Anything.

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" The first unedited words sprang to my lips in a hoarse whisper.

Lucius's shoulders stiffened. His pupils suddenly contracted, his expression hardening. "What?" It was a like a snake's hiss. "What did you say?"

I could see my words had distracted him from the task in hand and that was good enough for me to repeat them. I summoned a sturdier, stronger voice. "I said, 'you're afraid of me, aren't you?'"

Lucius's lip curled into a snarl. "That is rather an extraordinary question for a girl to put to a man twice her size and strength." The grip spanning my jaw tightened, his fingers digging into my cheeks.

"You might be b-bigger and stronger than me, but you are afraid. It's obvious." It was a gamble, deliberately reigniting his wrath, but I couldn't see an alternative which didn't leave me stripped naked or forced into some kind of activity I was by no means prepared to engage in. Or both.

His eyes narrowed and suddenly he pulled me against him, stooping to murmur in my ear. "Afraid, am I? Afraid of you?" His arms wrapped around me in an enveloping embrace. "How easily I could crush the life from you, pathetic little mud-blood." As if to illustrate his point his arms squeezed me painfully, and if I ever doubted the muscular power hidden beneath the layers of expensive tailoring, I had no reason to do so any longer. "How equanimously, how unrepentantly, could I accomplish such a deed."

I was stifled and overwhelmed to the point of faintness. My ribs felt like they were about to crack and I couldn't breathe, his hold was too restricting, consuming...too close...

"If you're not afraid, then tell me my name," I gasped out.

His grip loosened. For a moment I thought he was going to release me, but then to my dismay and horror I found he had caught a wrist in each hand and was now manoeuvring me over towards his bed.

"Stupid girl," he muttered and I had time neither to resist nor protest, for he was already gathering me up and propelling me backwards onto the brocaded quilt. "I have no reason to bestow favours upon you." And he used his weight to press me down beneath him.

"No—wait, Lucius! What are you—let me go!" This wasn't going at all to plan, his rage seemed only to have fanned the frightening flame of purpose in his eyes. Instinctively I brought my hands up to his chest to push him away, then nearly gagged at the pain which shot up from my fingertips—apparently they were only numb when not touching anything—and I had to throw them wide to avoid blacking out for a second time.

Lucius's hands tangled in my hair, pulling it back so I was forced to arch against him. Again he brought his mouth to my ear and he hissed, "Stop me. Prove to me what you can do. Show me."

"What do you mean?" I cried. How could I stop him? I couldn't even attempt to claw his face. "Please don't—I don't want—I can't—"

"Try, Miss Carroll." And then his mouth was on mine, hard and bruising; his tongue was parting my lips, choking away my pleading and protesting cries.

For a moment I froze, incapacitated by a sudden claustrophobia, overriding both fight and flight instincts. But then the crushing pressure, the smothering invasiveness, became too much to bear, and I began furiously kicking, squirming, twisting away. I attempted to bring up my knees, but Lucius merely used his own to part my legs and settle his weight more heavily upon me. I could feel the pressing rigidity, the heat of his desire—but unlike the first time, in my bedroom, my body was not responding in kind—the thrumming elation I had experienced then was completely antithetical to the pure, glacial terror I felt now.

He lifted his mouth a fraction to speak, his lips grazing against mine. "You are not trying to stop me, Miss Carroll...does that mean you do not wish me to stop?"

I was prevented from replying by a second suffocating kiss. One hand disengaged from my hair and was sliding down my side, down to the hem of my shirt, and then under and upwards. My whole body convulsed at his touch on my bare skin. I jerked my head away, scraping my bottom lip on his teeth as I did so, then I gulped a lungful of air and screamed with all the force I could muster.

I knew it was useless. Who was there to hear me? The wailing lady?

The wailing lady and the screaming girl, both helpless as each other.

But my screams did have an effect. Lucius relinquished his grip on my hair, and his hand was transferred to clamp across my mouth. He waited until I stopped thrashing before he spoke again. "Well, Miss Carroll, have I sufficiently demonstrated my abject fear of you? You see me, quaking before you."

He took his hand away from my mouth, as if interested to hear my reply. I glared up at him, my chest heaving, gulping back panicked tears. I burned with rage. So that's what all this was about? Him trying to teach me a lesson? "I hope you f-find yourself incredibly amusing," I snarled at him. "Because I certainly don't."

I tried to sit up, but he pushed me roughly back down on the bed. "Amusing? Ah, perhaps you think I am playing a joke on you, Miss Carroll? Proving a point? No, I'm afraid not."

My stomach churned. "What the hell are you doing, then?"

"I should imagine that to be fairly obvious, my dear."

"Do you mean r-raping me?" I forced the ugly word out, spat it at him. "Because—because that's what this is, you realise! Rape. I'm not a willing partner. I consent to nothing."

"'Rape' is such a tawdry, inelegant term, Alice. The English language is so rich; you really should learn to be more creative with it."

Now I was sure he was mocking me—playing with me. But not quite sure enough. "Screw you!" I blurted out furiously.

He smiled at the futility of my response. "Well, that would be another way of putting it—not elegant, but a start—"

"NO, LUCIUS—SCREW YOU!—I know you are afraid of me, you coward!" The smile disappeared instantly, but I ploughed determinedly on, "Why are you so scared of my name, Lucius? Don't you know that, fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself? The very fact you refuse to tell me it, proves that you're afraid."

I expected some kind of reaction, but not the one I got.

Lucius recoiled back from me, as if burned, releasing me from his grasp. He pushed himself up to stand, and for some moments just stared down at me with an incredulous, even dazed expression. He had paled discernibly and the liquid heat in his eyes chilled and hardened, like molten lava turned suddenly to granite.

I hauled myself up and as I did so Lucius turned and moved away from the bed.

Relief coursed through me, awash with gritty sediments of confusion and fear. I didn't know what it was about those words which had produced such a sudden, startling reaction from him, but I could only be glad that they had.

...Had he really been intending to rape me? ...No...surely not. And yet I couldn't truly know. In fact, I couldn't be sure I was out of danger, even now.

How long does a cat play with a mouse before its killer instincts prevail?

I slid off the bed and eyed the door. There wasn't much point trying to make a dash for it, he would certainly catch me. And I had had enough physical contact with the man for the time being, that much I knew. I gravitated away from the bed, unwilling to be too close to that, either, and ended up standing, shaky and uncertain, in the middle of the floor.

Lucius's profile was stony, unreadable. He had moved over to one of the wardrobes and I watched as he produced what appeared to be a bulky, brown blanket. He shook it out, and I now saw it was a kind of long, thick robe.

Without further ado he threw it at me. It landed in a heap at my feet. "Since you scorn to wear the finer garments I provide for you, you may make use of that."

It wasn't exactly "proper clothes", but it was a step in the right direction. I could see the material was heavy and substantial and quite the opposite of revealing. "Thank you," I mumbled awkwardly, still rather reeling with confusion and fear, and not a little suspicious of the sudden change in his manner.

Lucius raised an eyebrow. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

I think we both remembered my broken fingers at the same time: I gave a frustrated sigh, and he made a low growl of annoyance.

In a small voice I began, "Can't I just—"

"No," he cut in shortly.

He strode back over to me, jerked me around so my back was to him and before I had time to register what was happening he had whipped the shirt over my head. I crossed my arms defensively over my bare chest, but he had already retrieved the robe and was wrapping it around me, with a few brief, perfunctory movements. Then he knelt down, grabbed the fabric around the knees of my trousers and simply yanked them down to the floor.

There was nothing to do but step regretfully out of them. My toes caught on the material and for a second I wobbled unstably and was forced to put a steadying palm on Lucius's shoulder. He took the opportunity to grasp one foot at a time and peel away my socks. For some reason, this gesture felt oddly tender, almost parental. But there was nothing tender or parental in his expression when he stood up.

The old Lucius—the all-too-recognisable, deriding, arrogant Lucius—was back.

And I was relieved. This Lucius did not perceive in me a "certain appeal". This Lucius detested me, was repelled by me. This Lucius I could—not control—but at least predict. Mostly.

For some seconds we stood, eyes locked, exchanging unspoken insults. The curl of his lips, the harshness of the lines bracketing them, told me in no uncertain terms that I should not dare to aspire to the honour of being afraid of his intentions now. My own thoughts were less intricate, but I hoped as clearly conveyed: merely that he was a bullying pig.

He was the first to break eye-contact, but I wasn't allowed to feel victorious, for with the subtlest of grimaces he managed to express that he no longer wished to offend his eyeballs with prolonged exposure to my revolting visage. Just like that, I was put back in my place, somewhere lower than his heel.

I watched silently as the man made a graceful round of the room, gathering up the items of strewn clothing. When he had collected them all, he strode over to the fireplace and heaped them directly upon the flames.

An involuntary cry escaped my lips. "What are you doing?" I gasped. Of course, I could already pretty well anticipate what his answer would be.

Lucius bestowed upon me his iciest of sneers. "You don't really expect me to wear those...polluted items again, do you?"

My cheeks burned and my throat ached with insult and anger. Yes, that was him alright. The familiar feeling of resentment flooded into me—but it was now accompanied by a strong, oppositely-flowing undercurrent of reassurance. How ironic that I was comforted by the loathing in his eyes. How strange I could feel glad for the cutting note of contempt in his voice.

I sensed I was dismissed.

I made a hurriedly stumbling retreat from his room, neither daring nor wishing to catch his eyes. My own were half-blinded by tears. Tears of confusion, frustration, anger, but above all...relief.

Chapter Text

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...

I was running again—but this time I knew why, from what, from whom.

Thud—thud—thud—thud—my feet struck the ground with rhythmic urgency,—thud—thud—thud—thud—my heart struck my ribs with synchronous fear.

I was puffing noisily, unfit from weeks of confinement, weakened further by my recent spell of illness and injury.

The moment I had broken through the copse, a sudden disorientation had made me halt in my tracks. It had taken me some moments to work out what was wrong with the scene before me...and then I'd realised. There's no snow.

It was as if I had simply slipped from one world into another. Even the temperature was noticeably different, still cold but not really bitter.

In that moment it seemed as if the whole incredible episode might never have taken place at all, that if I turned back to look, the man and his manor might simply have vanished, along with the snow. In fact, nothing would have surprised me less. But I did not turn back. I simply ran.

The grassy plain stretched out before me, rippling in the moonlight like a silvery sea. In the distance I could make out the great dark cloud of forest from which I had run so long ago. Now I was running back into its shadowy embrace, seeking shelter where once I fled unknown danger.

It seemed to take forever to traverse that exposed plain: every second seemed laden with the probability—almost the inevitability—of being discovered, seen, pursued. I forced myself to go faster, faster, as fast as I could without tripping over the restrictive bulk of my woollen robe.

Finally reaching the perimeter where meadows melded to trees, my relief was somewhat diluted by a newly rising fear...it was just so dark; darkness saturated the forest, seemed to suck the very night into it and bleed it out in a deeper rendering of blackness. As its huge, forbidding shadow fell over me, I slowed right down then stopped, panting hard and stooping over, hands bracing my thighs, trying to catch my breath.

My gasps seemed to echo all around, amplified and circulated by the relentless darkness and the stillness of the trees.

Suddenly the idea of losing myself inside the forest seemed...not so wise. Who knew what kind of nocturnal predators lurked inside? Wolves? Bears? I didn't even know which country I was in. For all I knew there could be leopards or something, silently stalking through the shadows, looking for a midnight snack.

I turned to look back at the copse, now but a barely-perceptible black smudge in the far distance. ...What have I done? I thought wildly. I had abandoned shelter for exposure, safety for wilderness.

Captivity for freedom.

Freedom? Did darkness and danger really equate to freedom? Was I not simply exchanging one kind of peril for another, perhaps a worse one?

It wasn't too late to return. I could go back now, sneak back inside. If Lucius caught me, I could plead him for mercy and forgiveness. Beg.

Ugh—no. Never.

But neither could I just keep standing on the spot, letting indecision and fear knit my muscles into complete paralysis.

...Come on, legs.

I forced myself back into action. Sticking to the edge of the forest, I settled into a steady jogging pace. All I could do was pray that it would lead me on to some kind of civilisation, before the morning brought to Lucius's attention that his unwilling boarder had taken her unsanctioned leave of him.

I ran through the night, ran until every last part of me was shaking and sore.

My feet were burning, my calves aching, my lungs ragged. Worst of all was the horrible jelly sensation in my legs, every time I stopped to catch my breath.

I was running from him and yet he was with me every second of the way. My fear, my exhaustion, my pain, did nothing to dull the indelible image of him in my mind, the silken sibilance of his voice in my ears—he seemed so vividly before me that I had the strange idea I was running towards him, and not away.

The wilderness seemed to go on forever, the forest to one side of me, endless plains on the other. I remembered that Lucius had once said we were many hours drive from the nearest town, and I began to despair of ever finding my way to help.

Then, just when I was reaching the point of total collapse, I saw lights.

I think it was a little before dawn. The darkness seemed to have lost its inky intensity, the moon's lustre was fading, although the sun had not yet started to rise. The plains had begun to slope downwards and in the distance I could clearly see a cluster of twinkling lights moving in a swift, smooth line. It could only be a vehicle. A dull rumble confirmed it. I had found a road!

A burst of adrenaline sent me sprinting down the slope. The lights of the vehicle were already disappearing into the darkness, but it didn't matter—I was sure another one would come along eventually, if only I could make it to the road...

In another ten minutes I was there. I collapsed in a heap on the rough tarmac, overcome with sheer exhaustion. But I wasn't prostrate for very long: already I could see a second cluster of lights, tiny twinkling pinpoints growing steadily larger, accompanied by the deep rumble of an engine, as another vehicle approached. Within seconds the dark outline of a large freight-lorry loomed into visibility.

I scrambled up off the road; I hadn't come all this way to be flattened by a juggernaut. But I didn't know how to alert the driver to my presence in the darkness. I doubted I'd be noticed waving from the side of the road, and I didn't dare take the risk of flagging it down by standing directly in its path.

I had no time to lose; the lorry was nearly upon me. Quickly I stooped over and grasped a patch of grass with both hands, yanking it forcefully upward, pulling out a large clump of roots and mud.

The roar of the approaching vehicle was frightening, but I steeled myself and moved as closely to the road as I dared, and took aim. Three—two—one...I threw the clod with all my might, hitting the darkly-glinting glass of the lorry's cab windscreen.

Seconds later I jumped into the road, waving my arms wildly in the vehicle's fume-filled wake, hoping the driver would check his rear-view mirror for what had caused the impact.

It worked. The brake-lights flared; the lorry slowed then rumbled to a stop.

I ran towards the front cab, reaching it just as the figure of a man sprang down from the elevated compartment, silhouetted by a bright light which had automatically triggered with the opening of his door. For a moment the light blinded my night-accustomed eyes and I brought my arms up to shield them—but my wrists were roughly grabbed by a pair of strong hands and I was slammed into the side of the lorry.

A very angry, very foreign-sounding torrent of words was being directed at me, then suddenly I was spun around and pulled into a tight head-lock. The man was shouting towards the fields now, and I realised that he thought me to be part of a gang of troublemakers or thieves.

"No, please—I'm alone—I'm lost!" I gasped out, pummelling ineffectually at the thickly-muscled arm around my neck. But this only served to enrage him further; he grabbed my left ear and wrenched it hard, making me cry out in pain. "Ow! Let me go!" I yelped furiously, trying to writhe out of his grip, but he was much too strong and restrained me easily. He continued to twist my ear cruelly—it felt like he really meant to tear it off my head—until, in utter desperation I simply screamed out one word: "ENGLISH!"

Almost immediately he let go of my ear, though his arm remained around my neck. He was silent for a moment, breathing heavily down my neck, then in a deep growling voice he said, "En-glay-za? ...Engleesh?"

"YES, English! I AM ENGLISH! I need HELP! Police! Take me to the police!"

He released me from the headlock and pulled me around to face him, his fingers digging painfully into my upper arms. He held me tightly, peering suspiciously down into my face. Then he uttered a rapid sentence, ending with one word: "Poleet-zee-a."

"Yes—police!" I nodded frantically. "Police! Take me to the police, please!"

His grasp loosened and his whole demeanour relaxed. He spoke again, and though I couldn't understand what he was saying, his actions were a sufficient translation—he was propelling me towards the open door of the lorry's cab and helping me clamber up into it.

I scooted over to the far side as the man climbed in beside me. My heart was hammering with a mix of relief, gratitude, wariness and fear. I knew all too well the kind of strife a solitary female could find herself in, when accepting "help" from a strange man...but I had little choice. I had to get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible.

The door slammed shut, plunging the cab into darkness and the man muttered something unintelligible. I drew back in fear as he reached over towards me, but he was only pulling a seat-belt out from behind me and handing it to me to fasten.

I did so, although I noticed that he didn't bother with his own seat-belt. He leaned down to turn the ignition and the engine roared into life.

The driver didn't seem inclined to talk and after I had attempted a few tentative questions as to our whereabouts and destination—which he clearly did not understand, nor appeared interested in trying to—I fell silent.

I stared out the window in a daze, the oh-so-familiar feeling of blurry unreality descending over me.

Where am I? I wondered for the millionth time. And more to the point, where am I going?

The interior of the lorry was musty and stifling and very warm. I felt almost nauseous with tiredness, and sore to my very bones. My eyelids seemed lined with lead. But going to sleep in the company of a strange man seemed downright dangerous. No, I mustn't sleep, I thought. And just as soon as my brain had made that sensible resolution, it was overruled by my exhausted body—and I was out like a light.

I don't know for how long I slept, but it was fully daylight when I was shaken awake.

My eyes flickered stickily open and l jumped in fright when I encountered a pair of black irises staring down at me, instead of the gleaming silver ones I had been dreaming about.

The man drew back, holding up his hands palms-outwards, as if to show me he meant no harm. I sat up and peered out the window. I saw we had come to a halt at some sort of a service station or truck-stop: a shabby, squat little building surrounded by a wide parking area. We were in a new kind of terrain now, mountainous and craggy, rows of pines rising steeply upwards on either side of the road, woven through with wisps of mist. The sky was an unvarying steel-grey and there were a few spots of rain spattering the window-screen.

The door on my side was fastened shut and the locking switch missing, so I scrambled out on the driver's side, accepting the man's assistance down from the cab—although I didn't much care for the lingering touch of his steadying hand around my waist.

The air was crisp, stirred by a bracing wind. For a moment I stood still and let it buffet the drowsiness out of me, wishing it could likewise banish the pain from my aching joints and cramping muscles.

The driver had already disappeared into the building, which appeared to be a basic kind of cafeteria and I limped stiffly over towards the door. A little bell tinkled as I pushed it open. I saw the man was speaking to a frowsy but attractive waitress behind the counter and the pair of them turned to watch me as I entered. I was met with a frown by the woman, who obviously did not like the look of me—though I could hardly blame her. I knew I must be a sight indeed, with my long muddied robe and bandaged, shoeless feet.

I stared curiously around me.

The place was empty and had a run-down, tired atmosphere, although it seemed clean enough. The tables were made from formica, chipping at the edges, each bearing a plastic tray of condiments with a dog-eared menu card propped up in the centre. Wood panelling on the walls made the whole place dingy and several cheaply-framed prints of hunting scenes hardly improved the gloominess.

A couple of faded signs hung beneath the counter, of which I could make no sense whatsoever. It didn't seem to be a language I was the remotest part familiar with: there were strange little squiggles, dashes and curving lines above and below many of the letters.

A doorway in the far side had a hand-written sign above it: 'Toaletă'.

That's got to mean "toilet", I thought.

The lorry driver was still occupied with the waitress, so I headed over to the door and slipped inside, drawing the thin bolt across to lock it. It was a small, concrete-walled cubicle with a toilet to one side and a sink and mirror to the other. I used the toilet first, then went to the sink to wash my hands and splash my face with water.

I peered into the black-splotched mirror and confirmed what I already suspected...I was a complete mess.

My face was white as a sheet, my lips bloodless and dry, the discolouration of my bruised cheek contrasted exaggeratedly against the surrounding paleness. There were huge dark smudges underneath my eyes and my hair was matted into thick snarls and tangles. I didn't bother trying to comb it with my fingers. There really wasn't any point, I would only be fighting a losing battle.

I looked more like a wild animal than a person—and yet, there was something new in my eyes which I had never seen before, glancing through the layers of my perpetual confusion and fear...something infinitely bright and irrepressible—something wonderful. I knew what it was. It was hope. Hope that I was finally on my way to discovering my identity, my memory, my whole lost life...

Hope that I was finally going to find me.

When I emerged, the driver was sitting at one of the tables, his legs stretched carelessly out. He was pouring a stream of sugar into a cup of coffee with one hand and stirring it in with the other, a lit cigarette dangling between his lips.

He looked up as I made a hesitant approach and gestured for me to join him. I saw that there was also a coffee for me and I sank gratefully into the seat opposite him, smiling my thanks at him. He shrugged and nodded briefly, his dark eyes flicking over me before they dropped back down to his task in hand.

I did my own furtive inspection of the man.

Whatever the country we were in, he was the embodiment of a typical lorry-driver, very brawny and thickset, with a rough-hewn face and a rather surly expression. Beneath the loose wrists of his leather jackets I could see that his arms were heavily tattooed and the end of some unidentifiable word stretched up one side of his neck. ...I was struck by the difference between him and the man I had just fled from. I'd become so used to Lucius's refined, sharp features and elegant bearing, that this man seemed almost repulsively coarse, though he wasn't actually ugly—in fact, he was good-looking in a swarthy, brutish kind of way. The waitress certainly seemed to think so: her eyes were fixed admiringly on his profile as she ferried over a large tray to the table.

She chatted coquettishly to the man as she unloaded two plates of food and a wicker basket of bread rolls. Then she looked me over with a disapproving expression and muttered something in a very different tone—presumably about my feral appearance—before stomping unceremoniously off. Whatever she said had clearly amused the driver, for he grinned to himself as he stubbed out his cigarette in a cracked glass ash-tray.

My companion was already making short work of his food and I decided to follow his taciturn lead. Despite its unprepossessing look, the dish was surprisingly tasty, although the seasoning seemed quite unusual—foreign—and once again I wondered where we actually were. The coffee was very strong and there was no milk on offer, but it tasted like heaven to me, parched and fatigued as I was; I gulped it down as if it were nectar.

When he had finished eating, the driver reached into his jacket for another cigarette. Knocking one out of the packet, he casually proffered it to me and just as casually lit it for himself when I declined. He leaned back and watched me finish my food and I was uncomfortably reminded of countless meals under the inscrutable gaze of another man...a man who had surely discovered my truancy by now. ...Is he looking for me? I wondered.

Finally, the man finished his cigarette. He took out his wallet and slid two notes under his plate, then stood up, beckoning me to follow. I longed to inspect the currency but I didn't want him to think I was trying to steal it, so I decided regretfully to leave it be. Having already sampled a rather-painful dose of his anger, I didn't want to foolishly cause any misunderstandings between us. He didn't exactly look like the kind of man who would be easily placated once provoked.

Following him out to the lorry, I watched him stoop to pick up a stone from the ground and hurl it rather spitefully at a crow that had settled on top of the cab. The bird fluttered up with a loud 'Caw!' of alarm, darting to the safety of the nearby trees.

A shiver of insecurity stole over me at this casual display of viciousness. I wondered if I should simply refuse to go any further with him—if I should just wait here for someone else to come along who was a little less...masculine. I'd had quite enough of oversized, intimidating men.

...But there was no guarantee that such a person would come along. And if they did, there was no guarantee they would agree to take me with them, given the state of me. Could I really afford to be choosy? I had no money, no words, no idea where I was. And I needed to get to a town or city as soon as I possibly could.

Quashing my anxieties, I climbed up into the cab and fastened my seat-belt, comforting myself with the fact that, so far, the man had treated me with kindness.

I just hoped he didn't expect anything in return for it.

...

...The figure of a tall, pale-haired man darkened the threshold of a sumptuous chamber...his eyes were fixed upon a high-arched window, around which two heavy curtains stiffly billowed, stirred by a sharp breeze swirling in through the paneless frame...the man's form was motionless but for the tense rise and fall of his shoulders, bespeaking his deep, agitated breathing...his expression was as stony and cold as the flagstones beneath his feet, but his silver eyes glistered with white-hot fury...

A bump in the road shook me out of my reverie, and I blinked the real world back into focus.

We were making our way over a winding mountain pass. The driver steered his vehicle confidently, but more aggressively than was warranted, I thought. I hoped he might put on his radio, not just to relieve the silence, but to give me another chance to glean whereabouts we actually were.

But he seemed to be content to listen to the noisy rumble of his truck. Occasionally he would glance over at me and I would smile encouragingly—for I really wanted to engage some kind of conversation, even if I could barely make out one word in fifty—but he would simply fix his eyes back on the road again, leaving me biting my lip in frustration.

In the end, I resigned myself to staring out the window.

The scenery was really quite breath-taking, despite the overcast weather...or maybe because of it. There was something compelling about the towering trees and jagged, pale rock-faces, although there was nothing gentle about its precipitous, brooding beauty. I thought we could well be in some Nordic country, although I couldn't guess which one.

The zig-zags of road gradually lengthened and at last unspoolled from the mountain, until we were once more on flat terrain, though still hemmed in on both sides by trees. The looming periphery created the impression of perpetual twilight. A silver orb of cloud-veiled sun hung high in the meridian and occasionally a stream of light would pierce through the murky stratus.

I half-shut my eyes and drifted back into hazy-edged daydream...

...The pale-haired man's arms braced the window, the muscles spanning his shoulders were tautly bunched, and his balled fists rested on each side of the frame, as if he had recently thudded them against it in sudden rage... a piece of paper was crumpled in one clenched hand. ...T hrough barely-moving lips, he gritted out two hoarse syllables..."MUDBLOOD!"...

This time a change in the light brought me out of my doze. The trees were thinning out, and the road soon melded with another much-busier one. We followed it all afternoon, passing through several towns which straddled the highway.

These towns seemed quite peculiar to my eyes, telling two discrepant stories. The more traditional buildings mostly comprised double-storied houses: old, picturesque, if somewhat dilapidated, like they belonged in some ramshackle fairy-tale village. The architecture was not exactly quaint or pretty, but, like the landscape, distinctive, characterful and slightly melancholy. Then jarringly, these houses would be suddenly interspersed with ugly multi-storied apartment blocks, bulky and relentlessly generic, from beneath which rows of gloomy shops peered out at street level.

There was also a greater mix of new and old cars on the road and we even passed a couple of horse-drawn carts being driven slowly up the highway, piled high with produce. It's like history hasn't quite let go here yet, I thought.

It was difficult to remain alert, as one hour stretched into the next, especially as I was determined not to think about—him. For what else did I have to think about? Everything that I knew, everything that I could remember was inextricably entwined with him. Jailer, keeper, saviour, tormentor—whatever his true role, he had filled my entire existence.

Telling myself to forget about him was like telling myself to forget about breathing...

I gazed out the window, watching the shadows lengthen and the setting sun burnish the landscape. He hated you, Alice, and he hurt you. Let him go...

Chapter Text

...

Finally, we reached the outskirts of a city.

I knew immediately that it was a large one. The sheer volume of traffic, the multi-laned roads, the scale of the buildings—everything indicated a place of great size and importance. Maybe it's a capital city, I thought hopefully, one that contains a British embassy.

The traffic seemed impossibly noisy and confusing to me, cars pulling out in front of each other with no apparent regard for traffic lights or even basic courtesy. The lorry-driver seemed unfazed by the chaos, only occasionally banging on his horn, or muttering what were clearly expletives under his breath.

The street-lamps were already lit, though it was not yet fully dark. A thick grey dusk leaked in between the dark shadows and the artificial lights. The apartment blocks which had so jarred on me in the smaller towns had a towering inevitability here—and there were many of them, street upon street, as if sprung up from a stark dystopian vision of some humourless bygone era. Suddenly I wasn't so sure this was Scandinavia...but where? Russia, perhaps?

Then rather suddenly, in a matter of only a couple of turns, the traffic dropped away and we were pulling up near the side of a lake, isolated from the road by a thick row of dark trees. It most certainly wasn't the bustling port or terminus I'd been expecting. My stomach did a nervous flip-flop.

I sat up straighter, darting an anxious glance at the driver. He was staring straight ahead, leisurely finishing off a cigarette. He seemed as relaxed and indifferent as ever, but instinctively I felt the dynamics in the cab change, become laden with...something.

My mouth was suddenly awfully dry, my heart thudding, as all sorts of unwelcome scenarios leaped into my head. What the hell have you got yourself into, Alice?

I tried to size up my chances against the man, if it came down to a physical altercation. Somewhere between zilch and zero, I decided grimly. The powerful hands resting casually on the steering wheel looked capable of all manner of grievous activities. I peered surreptitiously about me, in search of a weapon, if things headed that way. But the dashboard was completely empty.

Well, I told myself, if he attacks then...knees to his groin, fingernails to his eyes. If he grabs your wrists, bite his hands, struggle, kick. Then I revised: Unless he has a weapon. If he's got a knife or something, lie still, let him do what he wants. Just survive, then run when you can.

I could hardly believe I was having this conversation with myself.

Whenever I had envisaged successfully escaping Lucius, it had always been straight into the waiting arms of assistance. Words of comfort, spoken in English. A reassuring female hugging me, telling me it was over, that I was in safe hands now. A pragmatic male wasting no time to notify the proper authorities. Whispers of worry over my obvious distress, a hurried discussion about whether it would be better to take me to hospital first. Me urgently pleading to be driven straight to the police. ...And, in my mind, that was the end of my ordeal. My imagination could not furnish a reunion with family and friends; it had always simply curtailed at the point of rescue, like the ending of romantic story, with an abrupt yet vague, 'And she lived happily ever after'.

That was what was meant to happen, wasn't it? The traditional risk-to-reward ratio? This had never figured in any scenario. This was unfair.

The driver flicked his cigarette out of a small gap in the window and turned to fix his dark eyes on mine. His mouth was curving into a slow smile that sent a shiver to my very soul. I knew straight away what such a smile meant. It meant the ride was not free, after all. The coffee and food were not complimentary. It meant it was time to pay up.

His expression was both exhortative and edgy, as if he preferred my cooperation but would just as readily relish my resistance. Instinctively I realised that my best chance would be to play along, play willing, then...well, I'd think of something. Whatever you do, don't panic, I told myself.

I smiled back at the man, hoping my paper-thin veneer of composure was adequate to concealing my terror. I knew I couldn't get out of the broken-locked door beside me, my only escape was through the driver's side.

Damn you Lucius, I thought erratically, damn you for making me run from you! Damn you for forcing me into this situation.

The driver leaned over and released my seat-belt catch, the same lazy half-smile curving his mouth.

I had to act quickly, if I were to get the upper-hand. Too well, I recalled how crushing, how conquering, the weight of a large man was; how impossible to escape, once trapped beneath it. At all cost, I must not let him overpower me.

I moved across the long bench-seat towards him, clambering awkwardly onto my knees to face him. Then, steeling my nerves, I put my hands on his shoulders, closed my eyes and quickly pressed my lips to his. In seconds he had hauled me up to straddle him. It seemed like his hands were everywhere, running over my hips and thighs, up my sides, roughly squeezing at my breasts. I ran my fingers through his hair—short, black, coarse—and did my best to seem enthusiastic, trying not to wince as he shoved his tongue aggressively into my mouth. I kept wriggling and manoeuvring until I was pressed against his door, then I pulled back a little from him and reached down to pluck suggestively at the buckle of his jeans. He grinned and began to fumble with his flies.

As soon as his hands were busy I reached behind me, grabbed the door handle and pushed. The door swung wide, and I threw myself out, tumbling to the ground. I landed badly, twisting my ankle, but quickly scrambled back up to my feet. The man was already jumping out after me, and I sprang forward, slamming the door as hard as I could against his body, heard his angry yelp of pain.

Without a backward glance, I took off towards the trees.

I barely noticed the twinge of my ankle or the sharp pebbles under my feet as I raced across the stretch of exposed ground. But my robe hindered my pace and I could hear the heavy thud of the man's running tread behind me, relentlessly gaining on me. I screeched as he grabbed the scruff of my neck and hauled me backwards against him, his arms tightly wrapping around my shoulders. I struggled wildly, clawing and biting at his thick forearms. "LET ME GO, YOU BASTARD!" I shrieked. "DON'T TOUCH ME!"

There was a sudden pressure on the back of my legs and my knees buckled, striking the ground painfully. My arms were jerked behind me and I was shoved face down into the dirt. He straddled me, muttering furiously. One hand clamped about my wrists, the other scrabbled with my robe, tugging it up my legs, over my hips, then roughly yanking my underwear down my thighs. His fingers began prodding painfully between my legs. I struggled and fought, screaming at him to stop, screaming out for someone to help me... But my cries went unanswered, I was immobilized by his brawny bulk; I knew there was nothing I could do to prevent him from forcibly taking the payment he had decided was owing to him.

He let go of my wrists and his arm wrapped beneath my stomach, dragging me up to kneel on all fours.

"Nu te mișca, cățea," he growled in my ear, pulling down his jeans, repositioning himself over me, readying himself. Desperately, I threw my head backwards, colliding it with his face.

"Argh! Căţea mică!"

Momentarily, he let go of me, and I propelled myself forwards, scrabbling out from under him. But his fingers clamped around my ankle, dragging me back. I felt him grab a fistful of my hair, jerking my neck back, then in one horrible pitching motion the ground seemed to rise to meet me, my forehead striking it with violent velocity.

The world reeled horribly, my body sagged, and I was only dully aware of being wrenched over onto my back. The man's form loomed darkly over me and I felt him ripping open the neck of my robe, his fingers pinching and mauling at my breasts. Coming around, I began once more to shriek and thrash, but then his large hands suddenly raised to clamp about my throat, instantly choking off my screams.

"Blestemată curvă," he viciously snarled, squeezing tightly.

I clawed desperately at his hands, trying to prise them away. The throbbing ache of my throat was soon superseded by the burning agony of my failing lungs. I could hear myself making odd clicking sounds. Abandoning his vice-tight grip, I went instead for his face and eyes, scratching and hitting. But I was already too weak; he merely shook his head away from my flailing hands and continued to dig his thumbs brutally into my trachea.

A blurry grey darkness frayed the edge of my vision then started to close in. Is this it, then? I wondered. Am I going to finally be returned to my family in a body bag, the victim of a savage rape and murder?

And suddenly it wasn't fear I felt anymore, but rage. You fucking bastard, you deserve to die!

Not me. YOU!

A bright, forked strobe of light flashed before my eyes, the man's face contorted briefly with shock, his muscles stiffened, and then he collapsed, his body slumping heavily down upon me, as if someone had struck him from behind with a club.

At first I could not move, crushed beneath his weight, coughing and gagging, my lungs spasming as I sought to regain my breath in gasping gulps. Finally, with a great heave, I managed to push him off me, and he rolled onto his back, as heavy and motionless as a corpse. I didn't know if he was dead or alive; I did not check. Perhaps he'd had a heart attack. Serves him right, I thought grimly, tugging my underwear back up and pulling my torn robe as best I could into place with my violently-shaking hands.

I tried to stand, but an intense nausea suddenly overwhelmed me; I doubled over and threw up what little I had in my stomach. I could hear my teeth chattering, and I thought, You're going into shock, Alice.

After a while the nausea passed, and I climbed shakily to my feet, beginning a stumbling march towards the line of trees. Dusk had been nearly swallowed by nightfall, the temperature was plunging, and I had no idea where I was going to spend the night.

You should have grabbed his wallet. Better go back and get it. But when I turned to do so, the motionless dark lump on the ground filled me with a clammy horror, and my feet refused to budge.

I turned and pressed on towards the tree-line.

Beyond the trees was a busy, noisy road, teeming with a steady stream of blinding headlights. Unable to see inside the passing vehicles, I didn't dare try to flag one down. Knowing my luck, I'd probably find myself in the clutches of another violent rapist. Instead, I limped my way along the footpath, towards the silhouette of a tall building in the distance. As I walked I became aware that I was crying, tears coursing down my cheeks, husky sobs issuing from my aching throat.

A car abruptly pulled up beside me. I heard the buzz of an electric window rolling down, and a man's voice addressing me.

"Bună seara domnișoară. Unde te duci?"

I did not answer, did not stop my limping gait. I was going to get to that building, and that was all there was to it.

"Ea este beată."

The sound of two car-doors opening propelled me into a stumbling, half-blind run.

"Oprește! Sunt polițist!"

A hand seized my arm, wrenching me to a standstill. There was a loud click and the snap of cold metal at my wrist, and the scream forming on my lips faltered, as I realised I had been handcuffed. Through my tear-blurred eyes I saw that the two men facing me were dressed in identical dark uniforms.

A blaze of desperate hope flared within me. "P-p-police?" I stammered hoarsely out. "Are you the police?"

Oh, god, please, I thought. Please.

...

You're going to be okay, Alice.

Perhaps it was a strange thought to have, sitting as I was in the back of a foreign police car with my hands cuffed in front of me, being driven through the streets of a totally alien city at night.

But I really did finally believe it.

The city lights looked like fuzzy orbs through my wet lashes. I listened without comprehension to the low murmurs of the policemen in the front of the car. They seemed relaxed, even cheerful and there was a lack of urgency which I found comforting.

The policeman in the front-passenger-seat turned to me. He had short sandy hair and a friendly face. "Okay, Eeng-leesh geep-see?" he said with a reassuring smile. Both men appeared to have a very little English and they had immediately latched onto this epithet for me, after I had kept repeating over and over, "I'm English, I'm English!"

"Yes," I replied, my voice still husky from the assault. "I'm okay, thank you. But I'm not a gypsy."

The policemen laughed, as if I had said something amusing.

"Um, excuse me," I said, leaning forward, "but where are we?" I tried to gesture out the window with my cuffed hands. "Russia? Norway? Um...Finland?"

Then the sandy-haired man cottoned on to what I was asking. He nodded and said, "Ah, da.—Bucureşti."

It sounded like "Book-resht" and at first I was at a loss. Then, tentatively I said, "Bu-Bucharest?—Romania?"

He chuckled at my expression. "Da—ahhh...yez...Romania." He pronounced it "Romma-neeya." Then, I suppose seeing the confusion in my eyes, he smiled quite kindly and said slowly, "You be okay, leetle Eenglish geepsy."

I smiled, nodding my thanks, but I was really quite shocked. Romania. What on earth was I doing in Romania? What could have brought me here in the first place? Had I been on holiday? A work conference? Or was it somehow because...because of Lucius?

Finally the car slowed, then stopped and I was extracted from the back seat by one of the policemen. His touch, firm but not aggressive, reassured me, although my knees shook as I was led in through the main entrance of the police station.

Beyond the electric doors was a stark unwelcoming reception room, glaringly illuminated under fluorescent tube-lighting. The floor was laid with mottled red linoleum, but everything else was painted cream: the walls and curtainless window-frames, the rows of bolted-down chairs and the long wooden benches lining the sides. There was a large desk marked 'RECEPTIE' behind which sat a uniformed custody-officer, looking supremely bored.

His expression didn't change as I was escorted over to him by the two policemen.

The three men spoke for some minutes, occasionally glancing and gesturing at me, then finally the custody-officer turned his full attention to me.

"You are Breet-teesh?" he said in a slow, thick accent.

"Yes I am," I said, my voice shaking with a mixture of urgency and anxiety.

"What you do here, in Romania?"

I blurted out, "I was kidnapped!" Although not quite true, it seemed the easiest way to sum up...well, everything.

He was holding a pen and he tapped it a couple of times on the desktop as he regarded me with unimpressed green eyes. "What happened there?" he said, pointing first to his throat, then to his forehead, evidently meaning my own injuries.

My lips trembled as tears threatened to spill again. "I was attacked," I whispered. "By a man."

The custody-officer raised an eyebrow. "This man. He was a..." he paused, searching for the right word, "...customer of you?"

At first I stared at him, uncomprehending. Then a flood of enraged colour rushed to my face as I realised exactly what he was implying. "No, you bastard! He was not a customer, he was a fucking rapist! I am NOT a prostitute! I am a British citizen, and I—I—I demand your assistance!"

"Okay, okay, please calm down yourself, meess." He reached for a piece of paper, some kind of form. "State what is your name."

"I d-don't know," I stammered. "I—I can't remember." As I spoke, I knew how utterly implausible it sounded.

The man's irritated expression suggested he thought so too. "Of course, you don't know," he said, with a sardonic flicker of a smile. "Every time, nobody can remember his name."

"Don't I get to make a phone call?" I said, trying to sound assertive, but unable to repress the quaver of panic in my tone. "I want to call the British Embassy."

The man held up his wrist-watch, indicating it was too late. "Tomorrow," he said, tapping the watch face.

I was unsure how to proceed. There seemed little point in arguing my case, the man seemed entirely unmoved by my plight. My hope of invoking immediate consular protection was quickly crumbling and I was facing the dismaying realisation that I would very likely spend the night in a Romanian police holding-cell.

"State your name to me, meess," the custody-officer repeated.

"Alice Carroll," I said resignedly, my voice reedy with disappointment.

"Passport?"

"I don't have one.

...

Lostness.—Was there such a word?

I was alone in a tiny room, surrounded by three concrete walls and a door made of iron grating. There was no window, but an overhead bulb cast a perpetual dim light around the grey-painted interior. It hummed faintly. The room—the cell—was absolutely bare; no sink, no bed, just a metal plank riveted to one wall, long enough to lie down upon. On this I sat, staring dazedly at the opposite wall, clutching a coarse blanket that I had been given by way of bedding for the night.

Although I sat still, my heart was beating loudly and my breathing was shallow and fast. I couldn't relax, trying to separate out each thread of tangled emotion that twined around me in a suffocating tapestry. Shock, from the traumatic ordeal with the lorry driver. Frustration, that I must spend one more night in captivity. Relief and hope, that I was safe, and would soon be going home. Anxiety, that somehow, something might yet go wrong. And a strange sense of...bereavement, which I was afraid to inspect too closely...

And, of course, this—this lostness. Always, this lostness.

So, I thought, you've escaped one prison and ended up in another, less comfortable one. In eastern Europe, for heaven's sake. Wonderful going, Alice.

No, not "Alice", I corrected myself. You won't be Alice for much longer.

This thought cheered me slightly. Somehow I couldn't let go of the notion that my memory was inextricably connected to my name—my real name. It seemed that once I discovered that, everything else about me would surely illuminate, reveal itself to me.

I curled onto my side, pulling the blanket over me. I was shivering, although it wasn't really very cold. My twisted ankle throbbed uncomfortably and I ached in the many places the lorry driver had meted out his ferocity: my throat, my wrists, my knees, my breasts were bruised and sore. There was a hard lump forming where he had smashed my forehead into the ground. When I closed my eyes, his face loomed terrifying and large in my mind, contorted with fury and lust.

...Was it terribly, terribly ironic that the only way I could obliterate his hateful image was by thinking about another man, who had also once violently threatened me with rape? Yet, strangely it was so. Perhaps, deep down, I believed that, no matter how cruel and intimidating he had been, Lucius had never really intended to carry out that particular threat.

I made a conscientious effort to slow and regulate my breathing. The quickest way to see this night out, was to do it asleep.

As I waited for oblivion to come, my thoughts became entwined with the lists of girls names that it had been my nightly ritual to sift through since my earliest days with Lucius. ...Amelia, Arabella...Ava...You might be in a prison cell, but at least you're safe, I told myself. ...Beatrix, Blanche, Britta...The British Embassy surely will be in contact tomorrow...You'll be out of here in no time...Chloe, Christine, Claire... Tomorrow, you'll be going home...

By the time I reached 'Daphne', exhaustion crept over me like a shadow, and I slept.

...

Text translation: Please note I don't speak Romanian, although I have visited the country and learned some basic words and phrases. I am not 100 percent certain that the dialogue is correct. If you know otherwise, please send me a PM and I will change it accordingly. Thanks, artful

Nu te mișca, cățea—Don't move, bitch
Căţea mică!—Little bitch!
Blestemată curvă—Damned whore

Bună seara domnișoară. Unde te duci?—Good evening, miss. Where are you going?
Ea este beată—She is drunk
Oprește! Sunt polițist!—Halt! I am a policeman!

Chapter Text

...

I woke the next morning to the sound of a door clanging and the echo of footsteps approaching. My eyelids flickered reluctantly open, gritty with sleep. I was stiff, sore and horribly confused.

"Lucius?" It was the first word to escape my lips, then I sat up with a lurch. I rubbed my aching throat, shivering as confusion gave way to a disturbed recollection of the previous day's events.

I looked around apprehensively. My deep warm bed had transformed to a cold metal slab. My elegant room was now a grey concrete-and-metal cage. The man opening my door was neither silver-eyed nor pale-haired. It was the same custody-officer from the night before.

"Good morning, meess," he said through the bars. He looked just as blasé as he had yesterday. "Are you well?"

"Yes," I replied shortly, determined to cut to the chase. "Can I get my phone call now?"

"There is a visitor to you, meess."

I was caught completely off-guard. "A v-visitor?" I stammered. "From the British embassy?"

"No," he said, with a slight smile, "not from the Breet-teesh embassy."

Immediately I began to shake, backing into the far corner. Had Lucius found me already? Had this all been for nothing? "I don't want to see anyone," I hissed. "I don't know anyone!"

But then—then I heard a voice, a female voice, ringing with worry and impatience. "Where is she? Where is my girl?"

I froze. My heart seemed to stop, and there was a strange buzzing in my head. Or was that the light-bulb above me?

The words filtered slowly through my brain like a liquid echo, but I couldn't quite grasp them, I couldn't quite make them out, although they were spoken in clear, perfect English. ...Where...is...my...girl...

"M-Mum?" My voice was high as a child's. And then I was half-running, half-stumbling over to the grated door, but my legs weren't working properly, and I ended up on my knees, clutching at the iron bars. "Mum? Mum?"

"Darling..." There was the sound of hurrying footsteps and a slender female figure emerged next to the custody-officer, then swiftly knelt down in front of me. "Darling, I'm here."

A strangled sound issued from my throat, part joyful gasp, part despairing sob. For I didn't recognise her.

My heart felt as if it were being rent in opposite directions by dizzying elation and wretched disappointment. I stared and stared at her through the bars like a caged animal, desperate to forge a connection to my memory, to force an illumination upon my past... But the spark didn't ignite, the nexus failed; all remained dark and closed.

Finally, I blinked. "Are you...my mum?" I whispered.

The lady smiled at me. Her soft-gloved hand reached through the bars and gently traced the line of my cheek. "Yes, darling," she said. Suddenly, nothing, nothing, nothing else mattered.

The custody-officer unhooked a large bunch of keys from his belt and noisily unlocked the door, gesturing to her, to my mum, that she could enter. Moments later I was in her arms, just shuddering and crying like a baby and she was rocking me and crooning sweet nothings in my ear.

"I c-can't remember a-anything," I stuttered between sobs. "I can't even...r-r-remember you."

"It's alright, darling," she said soothingly, stroking my hair from my brow, gently touching the bruise. "It's alright, you will. I promise you will."

"I love you," I blurted out abruptly, fiercely. I couldn't help it, I needed to say those words, to unstopper them from my overfull heart, to give them to someone who would not fling them contemptuously back in my face. "I love you, mum! And...I'm just so...so s-sorry. I got l-lost...I'm sorry..."

She pressed me tighter to her. "Hush, now, darling," she murmured quietly against my wet temple. "I've found you. I'm taking you home. You're safe now."

Safe now... The knowledge of it spiralled slowly through every part of me, warming and calming and comforting. ...I'm going home.

Finally there was a tap on my shoulder and the officer indicated that we should leave the cell. I wiped my swollen eyes and gulped down some steadying breaths of air. For the first time I noticed a numbness in my left forearm, and I wondered if I had slept on it awkwardly. I rubbed it through my sleeve, trying to coax the circulation back into it.

"Come, darling," my mum said softly, helping me to stand. "It's time to go." My legs were wobbling so much I had to lean on her to keep my balance.

Hand in hand, we walked behind the officer down the long hallway and back out to the questioning room, where I had spent the best part of two hours the night before, trying to explain my situation to a skeptical audience.

Everything seemed to happen in a surreal blur. There were forms to fill, more questions to answer, this time via an interpreter, blue-uniformed people flurrying everywhere... It was as if time sped up all around me and I sat alone on pause, just nodding and uttering the occasional single-syllable word, unwilling to take my gaze away from her. I was afraid that if I did, she might somehow disappear.

I tried to etch her image into my brain. My mum. She looked like an angel to me. Her hair was a rich chestnut brown, her complexion was paler than mine. Her eyes were hazel, large and mild; and she was calm, so very calm, speaking to the interpreter, answering for both of us, squeezing my hand every so often as if to reassure me that this was real; really, truly real.

I was finally shaken out of my strange reverie when a small burgundy-coloured booklet was handed over the desk to me. I blinked, gasping with surprise. It was a British passport—surely, my passport. Mum must have brought it with her, I thought. Finally, finally I'm going to find out who I am...

Hands trembling, I slowly opened the cover and gazed down at the passport photo.

It was me alright.

But...but it was too much like me. The lost me. My too-pale skin, my too-wild eyes, my shadow-marked, drawn features. The same bewildered, frightened girl that had haunted the gilt-framed mirrors of the house I had so recently fled. I felt my whole body stiffen and there was a kind of dreadful coldness in the pit of my stomach. I dragged my eyes over to the small block-capitals spelling out my details, terrified of what I might read.

And there it was.

ALICE CARROLL

"No," I gasped. I couldn't seem to breathe properly. Cold, skeletal fingers of dread crept up the back of my neck. There was a high-pitched ringing in my head. "No. No. This is the wrong passport. You have given me the wrong—the wrong passport—" I turned to my mum, fraught with panic. "Tell them, mum! Tell them it's the wrong passport!"

Her brow furrowed with concern. "What do you mean, darling?"

"I am not Alice!" I cried vehemently, gesturing frantically at the passport. "I know I'm not Alice. Who am I? Please, please, who am I? Just say my name once—quickly, please!"

She shook her head, her eyes full of worry. "But you are Alice, darling," she said in her sweet, chiming voice. "You're my little Alice."

The high-pitched ringing was getting louder. My temples were pounding and my left arm was tingling, prickling. "I'm not Alice!" It was a piercing shriek, almost a scream. The bustling activity of the room suddenly ceased, as every head turned to me, every pair of eyes fixed upon me.

I lurched to my feet and my chair tumbled backwards with a dull thud. "I'M NOT ALICE!" Blindly I turned and staggered towards the door. I couldn't breathe, I needed—needed air—

There was a series of bright flashes behind me and a noise like lightning striking a tree. Screams, shouts, paper flying, splintered wood, thick black smoke all around—I reeled into a wall and my mum was suddenly there, next to me—but she wasn't my mum, how could she be?—she was Alice's mum, and I wasn't Alice—

She grabbed my arm tightly with her ungloved hand, and I screamed in agony as a sizzling burn shot up from my wrist to my elbow, as if I were being branded along it by a red-hot iron. The loose sleeve of my robe fell back and I stared in horror at the jagged letters appearing along my pale skin, one by one, spelling out in indelible scarlet: M—U—D—B—L—O—O—D—

As the last letter formed my eyes turned up to her face and I saw that her hazel irises were changing colour, darkening and enlarging, darker and darker, wider and wider, until there were no whites in her eyes, only horrible, gleaming blackness.

Just as my legs gave way, she made a jerking, turning movement and there was that sickening, squeezing sensation I had felt once before...

...Then I was on a freezing cold stone floor, panting and twitching and dizzy and sick. The passport was still clutched in my hand, open to the photo-page. A pretty, plump, blonde girl now stared back at me. The words were no longer in English, but, presumably, Romanian. 'YLENIA MIHAILESCU', it said. I threw it from me and began to crawl away, to nowhere, to anywhere.

A brutal blow to my ribs sent me sprawling onto one side. I thought I heard the crack of bone, although I could feel nothing but the unbearable burn in my arm.

She stood over me, an indescribable smile on her mouth. I couldn't tear my eyes from her face, for it was changing, it was literally changing, as if it were made from molten wax, not flesh. I felt myself retching and retching as her features bubbled and blurred, then refocused and coagulated...until finally, she stood there. The Woman. Resplendent in a ball-gown of glossy black feathers, just as beautiful as she had been on that night, when I had watched her dancing in the moonlight with Lucius.

Her voice was as dulcet as it was deadly. "Luci ought to be more careful with his playthings," she said.

...

Terror and pain coursed through my veins like a fast-acting poison, paralyzing my muscles. I screwed my eyes tightly shut. Please let this be a dream, I prayed. Please let this not be real. But I couldn't block out the horrific pain in my arm, or the annihilating realisation in my heart. I'm not going home. I don't know my name. She isn't my mum.

There was another sharp blow, this time to my stomach, driving the air from my body with a sickening thud.

"Mummy, I love you!" she mocked me in a high, childish exaggeration of my own voice.

My eyelids snapped open and I nearly choked with rage. I wanted to scream at her to shut up, but I had no breath to give the words voice.

"Don't leave me, Mummy!"

"You...monster," I managed to gasp out.

The Woman's eyes narrowed. "So speaks the little mud-blood abomination," she said. I could feel rather than see her pupils moving over me, indistinguishable from their black-saturated surrounds. Her expression was different to the one I had become so used to beholding on Lucius's countenance. It was deeper than disgust, more twisted than hatred. It was...malevolent. As if she would like nothing better than to watch me being flayed alive.

"Where is Lucius?" The question tumbled out of its own accord and I was aware that I fervently wished him near. That I would rather spent an eternity in his captivity than a minute more in the demonic presence of this...this fiend.

"Why?" she said tauntingly. "Do you think he will rescue you?" Then, more quietly: "As if he could give two sickles whether you live or die."

Icy, numbing despair swept over me. "He didn't send you to find me?"

The Woman's lip curled. "Do I look like I run errands, mudblood? Do you imagine me to be at any man's beck and call?"

"No," I whispered. My heart was drumming heavily. Lucius hadn't sent her. "Then you're...you're not his wife?" I said faintly. I wanted to move, to get up, but felt pinned like a butterfly to a board by her frightening stare.

She laughed, and once again I was reminded of silvery bells. "His wife..." she said the word scornfully. "His wife was a traitorous bitch who deserved every misery she brought upon herself. I only wish I had been present to witness her demise. I would have laughed in her lunatic face."

Immediately I thought of the wailing woman locked away on the third floor of the house I had so recently fled. Prisons within prisons, I thought. I remembered Lucius's silver eyes looking distantly through me as he murmured, "I have no wife...not anymore." ...What had he really meant by that?

"What do you want from me?"

The Woman's ghastly black eyes glittered with malice. "How sweet of you to ask," she murmured. For a moment she seemed to be giving the matter real consideration. "...Well, I should very much like to smash you like a vessel, mudblood, and grind my heel into your aggravating little face. How does that sound for starters?" She smiled at my fear-filled grimace, then added, "Luckily for you, however, your master simply hates it when other people break his toys."

I sat up with a lurch, my anger suddenly usurping my fear. "He's not my master," I exclaimed furiously, "And I am NOT his toy!"

CRACK!

White stars shot before my eyes as my head collided painfully with the hard floor. For a moment everything swarmed darkly around me. When I regained focus the woman was standing over me, the tip of her pointed boot stabbing into the soft flesh under my chin. "Do not dare raise your voice to me, you filthy little worm!" Both her arms were outstretched towards me, fingers splayed and slightly curled, like the talons of a bird-of-prey bearing down on its quarry. The black feathers of her dress only added to this disturbing impression. "You only live because I have decided that death is too good for you."

I felt a hot trickle on my upper lip and realised my nose was bleeding. "Why?" I croaked, my voice breaking on that one, pivotal, ever-futile word. "What is so terrible about me? What have I done to you? I don't know what I've done wrong. I don't even know who I am."

She pressed her boot harder into my neck, forcing my head back so I could barely breathe. I could taste the blood from my nose in the back of my throat. "That, mudblood, is half the fun."

Fun. Fun? What kind of evil psychopath are you? I was certain she could read that thought in my eyes, for her own glittered with maniacal pleasure before she removed her boot from my throat and turned to move away from me. The rush of air and blood in my windpipe caused me to nearly choke and when I wiped my face with my hand it came away smeared with bright scarlet.

Even in my fear and pain I could not but help notice the grace of her steps, her lovely curvaceous figure and the ringlets of waist-length hair, black and glossy as a raven's wing. With those horrible eyes no longer connected to mine The Woman was beautiful beyond measure...so beautiful she hardly seemed real.

Perhaps she wasn't real, perhaps she was some spectral figment of my own broken brain, along with all the other impossibilities: my suddenly altered surroundings, the letters branded into my arm, her grotesquely-morphing appearance...surely these could only be the things of dark dreams?

But the pain was all too real. And my blood was all too red.

"Get up, worm," The Woman said over her shoulder. "Such pitiful crawling offends my sensibilities." Wincing with pain, I obeyed her command, though I half-expected her to strike me down again. Cradling my still-searing arm, I hurriedly took in my new surroundings for the first time.

I was instantly reminded of the strange dream I had once, of waking up in the bowels of a castle. The walls were bare stone and arched over to form a ceiling, the floor was paved with great flags of unpolished stone. Black, wrought-iron lamps jutted irregularly, flaring with naked flames, providing the only source of light, for there were no windows. There was no way to gauge if I was above or below ground, although the cold, damp atmosphere certainly felt subterranean. The worst thing was the absence of a door. It was as if I had been walled alive in my own private nightmare.

"What is this p-place?" I stammered, unsure I wanted to know the answer.

The Woman turned back to me, locking me into another of her frightening stares. "This was once a special kind of kennel, shall we say. Quite fitting for the use to which I intend to put it."

A sickly, smothering claustrophobia was descending over me. She was going to keep me here? "Please," I said desperately, "let me speak to Lucius." I could hardly believe I was saying those words, but now he seemed like the last glimmer of light in a swiftly-enveloping darkness. "I have to see him."

Her ruby lips curved. "May a dog demand to see its master?"

"I'm not a—" I began heatedly, but she made a quick gesture with her fingers and my voice suddenly died in my throat. My lips were still moving, I could feel my vocal chords vibrating, but nothing came out. I clutched my throat, attempting to cry out, then to scream—but there was no sound, not even a whisper. Finally I gave up, panting with exertion, my throat aching and raw. I let my hands drop to my sides, bowed my head and waited.

"That's right, mudblood." She sounded pleased at my submission. "You will curb your brattish tongue or I will cut it from your mouth. I'm sure Lucius would appreciate such an improvement, wouldn't you agree?" She giggled, evidently much entertained by the prospect. "You would do well to adopt a respectful tone when addressing your betters." She made another gesture, and I felt my voice released from its unnatural aphasia. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," I croaked hoarsely. I hated the feeling of debasement as I yielded to her, but my survival instincts had gone into overdrive, warning me against bravado. Too well I remembered that devastating agony that I had already endured once at her hands—for now I was certain it had been her hands—and it was something I never wished to experience again...that I surely could not survive again.

For god's sake don't anger her, Alice! I cautioned myself desperately. Be careful, be docile....

"Tell me, little mudblood," the Woman said suddenly, in an insinuating tone, "what did you and Lucius get up to, all that time together?"

Almost blind-sided by the unexpected question, I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. For a moment I was so confused that I simply couldn't form a reply. "Nothing," I said at last.

"Nothing? You never went to his bed?"

"No," I said. I couldn't help flinching at the memory of that night in his bedroom, of those frightening, bruising kisses... Trembling, I dropped my eyes to the floor, afraid that she could read every unbidden thought.

"But you wanted to, of course?"

"No!" I repeated fiercely.

"...Did you fall in love with him, mudblood?" Her voice was now caressing. Dangerous.

"Of course not!" I said, but my voice sounded strange, strangled. As if I did not quite believe my own words.

"Why not?"

I gulped. "What do you mean?"

She waved her hand impatiently. "All that time, all alone, with a handsome, powerful man... I should think it rather strange if you did not fall in love with him."

Perhaps because it brushed too near some complex, ever-distorting truth, I felt my hackles rising. "He was arrogant and cruel a-and I hated him," I spat angrily.

"You hated him?" Her eyes seemed to pour into me, extracting and scrutinizing my very thoughts.

To my dismay, I heard myself involuntarily amend, "I mean...he...he hated me."

"But of course he did," she said, sounding faintly amused. "But that would not preclude your falling in love with him, would it? Nor would it prevent him taking you to his bed. For some men—perhaps I may say most men—hatred is even more enkindling than love."

I did not know how to reply, and so I stood silently, tongue-tied, face burning.

"You know," she murmured softly, "there is something quite...beautiful about you, mudblood." She began to drift gracefully towards me and it was all I could do to keep my knees from buckling. My arm throbbed excruciatingly as she neared. "Really quite beautiful," she continued. "Oh, I don't mean your appearance—that is commonplace unto insipidity..." She was close enough to touch me now. My insides clenched and twisted with dread. "No..." she murmured, "...no...it isn't your face or figure...it is your fear. It is...irresistible. It...almost...shines..."

"I'm not afraid of you," I said through gritted teeth. It was so absurdly, obviously untrue that when I heard her silvery laugh I actually had the urge to join in.

"It is an amusing little creature," she said with a sigh, reverting to the infuriating third-person. "I can scarcely see how Luci could resist it."

"Perhaps I resisted him," I said combatively.

"Oh, no," she said, with a dismissive gesture. "If it had pleased him to have you, you could not have resisted."

"You don't know me!"

Again, that beautiful, horrible smile. "Wrong, mudblood," she replied. "I know much, much more about you than you do...don't I, little worm?"

I could feel my eyes prickling hotly at the truth of her words. It was unfair, so absolutely, overwhelmingly unfair. "You might know more about me," I countered determinedly, "but you don't know me."

I winced as she raised her hand. I held my breath as, slowly, with the very tip of her pointed nail, she traced a line over my lip and chin, I suppose following the smears of drying blood.

"Strange isn't it," she murmured quietly, almost dreamily, "the things we women do for the men we love. We bleed, we suffer, we lie...sometimes we even die." At the last word her black eyes flickered and glowed with amber veins, like surging flames. "We make of them our gods, and of ourselves their fools and slaves."

"I don't love him," I insisted urgently, although whether my conviction was for my own benefit, or hers, I could not quite tell.

But she seemed not to hear me. "And yet, how rarely they deserve our devotion," she continued. "How often they merit our contempt...even our wrath." Her hand moved from my face to lightly caress a strand of my tangled hair. "...You are so perfect..." she said, in the same, dreamy voice. "So hungry for affection, for love...so full of beautiful fear. You will break him very soon...oh, yes."

Though I had no idea what she meant, her words ran through me like a rapier. Hungry? I wasn't hungry for affection, I was starving. Wasting away. A sudden, gasping sob escaped me and I staggered away from her, unable to bear those black-saturated eyes, reading me, knowing me, any longer.

"Why are you doing this?" I could hear the despair of my cry echoing around the dank walls of the chamber.

"In time you will know the truth," the Woman replied serenely. "And it will destroy you."

The purity of her hatred branded me deeper than the letters searing my arm. "What have I ever done to you?"

"What have you done?" she snarled suddenly, turning on me with such ferocity that I reeled back in terror. With a flick of her wrist an invisible force sent me hurtling backwards through the air to collide with the stone wall behind me, where I crumpled to the ground in a broken heap. For some seconds there was only darkness and the thud of my heart.

...Then her icy-cold breath on my cheek and her voice whispering in my ear. "What have you done, mudblood? ...You dared to exist. And for that alone, little worm, you must be punished."

"I'm n-not a worm," I mumbled through the throbbing, swimming darkness. "I'm a p-person...with a brain and a...a heart and a n-name—" I stopped.

A name? What name?

She was laughing again. I could feel hot tears escaping my closed eyelids, sliding down my cheeks.

"But you have no name, have you?" she said mockingly. "You are still imaginary little Alice, a borrowed identity, a fictional account. Indeed, you are not a 'thing'. You are nothing."

I heard the rustle of her feathered dress as she moved away. There was a thunderous, frightening crack, like a gun-shot, and when I finally managed to haul myself up from the floor and blink blurring vision back into my eyes, I saw that she had simply...disappeared.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

...

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Despite my fine words about "finding answers" I did not immediately act upon them.

Chapter Text

It was what I had needed, to wake up—really wake up.

To be shaken out of that dangerously lulling, perpetual daydream I had fallen into...I was not going to wait any longer for my subconscious to do my mystery-solving for me. Lucius had been true to his promise: that he meant to protect me, that he did not intend to punish me anymore. At last I could believe it, truly believe it—no longer just in my head, but also in my heart. And the knowledge elated and exhilarated me, for I took it as permission. Permission to explore.

As I made my way to breakfast my thoughts were filled with the previous night's shadowy, hazy recollections, of Lucius holding me in his arms, of his gentle words... "I will not hurt you..." and of his lips so close to mine, so beautifully close I had been certain he would press them against my own...

I shook my head at this image, unwilling to be seduced by it. I was still so conflicted, so confused about what it was I felt for him, although my heart whispered sweet, beguiling things that I was steadily losing the will to fight or ignore. And as for what he felt for me—? That was as dark and indistinct as any of the secrets locked within these mystery-laden walls.

...Besides, I reprimanded myself, he did not kiss you, so how about you just stop thinking about it?

But as I made my way down the cobbled path and through the archway of tangled foliage, I couldn't help thinking about it. I couldn't help wondering what it would be like to be kissed by him—not in that cruel, wounding way he had before (for that did not, could not count as a kiss)—but tenderly and...and properly...

My illicit musings were curtailed as the small pavilion, fluttering and pristine, came into view through the greenery.

My heart skipped as I saw Lucius, and I paused for a moment to compose myself, for I was rather afraid of showing my excitement.—Of all things, I was afraid he would be amused by it.

However, I needn't have worried, not about inspiring his amusement, anyway. Lucius smiled at my approach, but it was a collected, slightly detached smile, of a kind I had not seen for some time. "Good morning, Alice," he said as I took my usual seat opposite him. "How are we this morning? A little tired?"

"No," I said, rather too hastily. "I'm not tired at all. Are—are you?" I cringed at myself, at the awkward way the question sounded out loud.

"No, my dear," he replied calmly. "I am quite well, thank you."

His formality could not dim my elation. If he didn't wish to speak of last night, that was fine with me. What mattered was that it happened, and that it was real.

During breakfast I tried my best to act normally, but I did not feel normal, and finally I could contain myself no longer. "I've decided to explore the house today," I blurted out suddenly.

Lucius betrayed no surprise at my words, not even pausing in stirring his tea. "Have you, indeed," he murmured, fastidiously tapping the moisture off his silver teaspoon before placing it on the saucer. His voice was neutral, as if I had simply told him that I intended to read a book after breakfast, and he was replying merely for courtesy's sake.

The thrilling elation surged again, that he was actually sanctioning what he had once expressly forbidden. My own voice was breathy with barely-contained excitement. "You won't stop me?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "I won't 'stop' you."

"Does that mean I may go anywhere at all?"

Now he did turn his eyes to me, and in their depths I detected a sardonic glint. "Would you listen to me if I advised you otherwise?"

I mulled the question over for a moment, unsure of the truthful answer but unwilling to lie. "Maybe," I said at last.

"That would make a refreshing change."

I was too pleased to let the slight sarcasm of his words sting me. "Well, change can be good." I arched an eyebrow at him meaningfully. "You should know."

"There is an old adage that a leopard may not change his spots, my dear."

"No, but he may be—" I stopped short. I had been about to say 'tamed', but a flicker of something in Lucius's eye prevented me, and I quickly back-pedalled. "He—he may change his mind."

A second smile trailed over his mouth, but his expression was still a little flinty. "Ah," he said, raising his teacup to his lips and taking a sip. "I suppose he may."

"Well...then what is your advice?"

Lucius placed his cup back in its saucer and levelled his gaze to my face once more. "I do not believe you are well or strong enough, yet."

I was disappointed by his words, but determined to brush them off. "Oh, I feel fine," I said, with a kind of stubborn, forced brightness. "Really, I feel quite strong today."

There was a slight pause.

"...So?" I said at last. "Do I have your blessing?"

"I have already avowed not to stop you, Alice," Lucius replied softly—perhaps too softly. "What more do you require?"

"I just wanted to be sure that you don't actually mind."

"Who is to say I do not mind?" The sudden sharpness of his voice took me aback. "I do not recall having said as much."

"No, but—"

"Just because I will not stop you," he overrode me, real anger in his voice, in the flash of his eyes, "does not mean I do not mind." The hand which had been so elegantly preparing his tea now balled into a fist on the marble table top.

"Oh," I said, crestfallen, blinking rapidly. I couldn't understand this sudden change...after his tenderness last night, after the weeks of slowly-building accord between us, I was almost blind-sided by this venomous turn. I bit back other resentful words which were making a reckless bid for escape. ...I thought you said that you wouldn't hurt me...

My confusion and hurt seemed to register with him then, and his tone relented. "You do not understand."

"Evidently," I returned sarcastically. All my initial excitement had withered away at this backwards step in our relations.

I stood up, intending to leave, but Lucius quickly rose to detain me, without touching me, with a quietly uttered, "Wait—wait." Immediately I felt the tug of his physical presence, that irresistible draw which made me long for contact, irrespective of my emotions, of all other considerations. His expression was much softened. "Ignore me, my dear. I do not mean to hector you. ...Of course you will be safe. By all means, invoke my protection...just do not ask for my blessing."

I looked up at him questioningly, and, reading the lines of his grim countenance, I suddenly understood. In my quest for self-discovery I was also pulling him down a path which would—which must—end very differently for him.

Lucius stepped nearer to me, and the closer we stood, the more I ached for his touch. "Listen to me, Alice," he said. "You must do whatever you must do. Even if it is despite my wishes. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," I said, afraid lest he hear the need reflected in my voice, "...but I don't want to do anything despite your wishes."

He gazed down at me, as if searching for something in my eyes. Whatever it was he appeared to find it, for the storm-clouds cleared from his own, and kindled with a breath-taking, engulfing warmth. "Courage, my dear," he murmured. "We must each of us find our own way through this—this—" For the first time I could ever recall, he seemed unable to find the right word.

Alternatives flitted interchangeably through my head—this maze?—this trial?—this hell?—

But a very different word escaped my lips. "This dream?"

"Yes," he replied slowly. "This...dream." Again he smiled, but this time without reserve, and its brilliance was almost painfully dazzling to me. "Take what you need from me, Alice—my permission, my consent, I surrender it to you freely. If you must have it, I even give you my blessing. Now—go."

I was overfull, brimming with emotion. Impulsively I stretched up on tiptoes, and, clinging to his shoulders for balance, kissed his cheek. "Thank you, Lucius," I whispered, and, not daring to look at his face, I quickly turned and practically ran away, my heart pounding, my face suffused with colour, my body thrilling with exhilaration, happiness, and the sweet relief of physical connection.

...

I returned to my bed chamber, a new feeling of determination buoying my steps. My lips tingled from that stolen moment of contact, and the smooth warmth of Lucius's close-shaven skin and the dizzying scent of him crowded out all peripheral thought.

In my room, I searched the wardrobes for a change of clothes. I wanted something less restrictive and voluminous than the twill robe I was wearing, but more substantial than the delicate gowns taking up the majority of closet space. At last I discovered a simple tunic-dress made of a light and durable cambric, its only embellishment being a trim of gold ribboning around its wide sleeves and square neckline. I slipped it over my head, breathing in that pleasant scent of sweet herbs which permeated every garment. It was a little loose and long on my frame, designed for a fuller, taller figure than my own, and I tried not to think about to whom it might once have belonged.

My breath caught as I surveyed my reflection in the the wardrobe's mirror-lined door. ...I thought I looked like some medieval maiden...but one who had tired of waiting to be rescued, and was about to go and fight her own dragon.

Is that you? I wondered. Not 'Alice' you, but the real you?

My chin lifted as I contemplated this different pair of amber eyes, not luminous and dreamy, but glinting with purpose. I think I like you, I decided. Whoever you are.

I moved back over to the door and paused outside the threshold, wondering which direction to take.

Immediately I thought of last night's adventure, of the iron-barred room. But I quickly dismissed the idea of revisiting it. It was too melancholy and too...too personal a place. Whatever suffering that had gone on in there—and I felt that the prisoner of that cell had not suffered alone—it didn't feel like something I had any right, or need, to intrude upon. If I ever set foot inside it again, it would be at Lucius's invitation, if ever he wished to tell me its secret, sad story.

My thoughts turned next to Lucius's bedchamber, but almost as soon as the idea flitted to mind, I balked at it. It was quite possible that he would now be there. My cheeks flamed when I thought about our last encounter inside the room... No, I wasn't ready to return to that dangerous lair...not yet...

Well, you've got to start somewhere, Alice, I thought. How about the ground floor?

It was the most accessible and least forbidding part of the house, and it seemed the most sensible choice, given that I was still weak and easily tired. It would be a little pointless to go rambling up into the ramparts only to collapse with exhaustion.

I made my way back downstairs, and stood for a while on the bottom step, gazing around the hallway with new eyes, no longer seeing it through the filter of desperation of a prisoner, nor yet through the enchantment of a starry-eyed 'guest'—but, I fancied, with the sharply-focused lens of a detective. I eyed up the several doors interspersing the familiar dining room and library. I had never so much as seen a glimpse behind any of them, although I had tried their handles often enough. A quick test of the nearest one confirmed that it was, as before, as always, locked. I grimaced, annoyed at so immediate an impediment.

Well, what did you expect, Alice? That Lucius was suddenly going to make it easy for you? Throw open the doors, empty the drawers for your perusal?

I scanned the hallway for something with which I could prise open the door, but amongst the fragile curios and antiques nothing looked suitable. My eye caught the suit of burnished knight's armour at the far end of the hallway, next to the stairs, and I wondered if he might have something useful that I could employ as a lever.

Advancing towards him, I was surprised by how really impressive and menacing he was at close proximity, how truly daunting a foe he must have made on the battlefield. I had a sudden vision of some fair-haired ancestor of Lucius's, astride a champing charger, wielding that great sword, ready for battle and blood...slightly awed at this vivid impression, I found myself reaching up to touch the tip of his pointed visor...

And then I saw the door.

It was set in under the stairs, completely obscured by the knight's burly mass. It was smaller and narrower than the other doors, more in keeping with the original ancientness of the house. It seemed as if the suit of armour had been deliberately placed to block it off from access and from view.

I looked around, half expecting Lucius to be standing somewhere behind me, watching my movements, perhaps preparing to stop them. ...But no. The hallway was quite empty, and there was no-one to witness my proceedings but the portraits gazing haughtily down at me from the walls. The knight was held up by a heavy iron cross-frame, set on a wheeled platform. It took a good deal of manoeuvring, heaving and tugging, but at last I moved him far enough away from the door to let me slip in behind him.

The door was unlatched—even now a slight draught was causing a slender crack of darkness to appear, as if beckoning investigation. Yet there was also something ominous about that darkness, which caused my heartbeat to thud as I reached for the handle and tugged.

There was a cold rush of air, blowing the loose tendrils of hair back from my face, and I saw before me a winding staircase, leading both up and down into darkness.

A shiver ran over me, as I was distinctly reminded of my recurring nightmare, of running through an endless maze of long passages and winding stairs... But as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I realised it was not completely dark, that a light source from somewhere down below was coiling murkily upwards.

Well, Alice, I thought, I guess we'll go down.

Taking a determined breath, which sounded a bit too much like a frightened gulp, I began to descend the sunken steps.

The flight of stairs was wound tightly around its central pillar, making it both narrow and very steep. As I made my way carefully downwards, the gloominess steadily abated, and the light was of a reassuring pale quality, indicative of natural daylight.

Then, just when my leg muscles were beginning to protest, the staircase abruptly ended. I found myself standing in a low stone passageway, flooded with a bright, almost-blinding light which spilled inwards through an archway beyond. At first, this light was all I could see, but as I advanced towards it I began to make out a dark tangle of silhouettes, and when I gained the threshold at last I understood what I was looking at.

A beautiful greenhouse extended upwards and outwards before me, scintillating with sunlight, refracted through hundreds of intricately faceted panels of glass. This, I realised, must be attached to the back of the house, which I had never been able to see before, as it was blocked on the exterior from both sides by a dense, impenetrable wall of thorny briars.

My first, immediate impression was of a serene but sparkling elegance, but as I stared about me, the atmosphere tangibly changed. The life, the sparkle, came entirely from outside, it was in the play of light alone; everything within was hushed and still with the absolute muteness of death.

Most of the floor-space was taken up by four long, narrow trestles, each table laden with what looked to have once been neat rows of potted plants, but which was now one matted, brown tangle of dried vegetation, withered and wasted for want of water and care. Tendrils of longer-limbed plants had drooped off the tables and coiled across the pale stone floor, like the brittle remnants of long-shed snake skins, and the whole mass was enshrouded by a fine layer of gossamer web, thickly layered with dust, as if even the spiders had given up and left, or simply shrivelled up and died along with the plants.

It was a strange place, too beautiful to be really eerie, too deathly-silent to be serene.

Hesitantly, I moved further inside, intensely curious, but also unwilling to disturb that solemn silence with my intrusion.

I approached the nearest table and cleared the spider-silk off the first plant. Its withered stem was neatly tied to a small stake, and adorned with a small, white label. I peered closely at the tag, and was wholly unsurprised to discover that it was blank. As blank as the books in Lucius's library.

A stale waft of sweet-herbs permeated the air, and I realised it was the same scent which clung to the clothes in my wardrobe. I looked down at my dress. I could still smell the gentle perfume which the fine fabric emitted, and it did not seem improbable that the wearer of it had spent hours carefully potting, labelling and nurturing hundreds of herbs and plants beneath the dancing sunlight of this chrystaline sanctuary... Something had happened to her—something that Lucius had been "too late" to save her from. Something so awful that she had been locked away, until...until what? Had she recovered and left? Been moved elsewhere? Or was she...gone forever? I wondered if I would ever know.

Sighing, I straightened up, and as I did my eye was caught by a flash of brightness. Sunlight was glancing off a silver object at the far end of the room. I made my way over to it, carefully stepping over the dead plant-tendrils, clearing away fragile sheets of cobwebs as I walked.

It was a cuckoo clock. Small and highly ornamental, its casing covered with engravings, but instead of the usual whimsical depictions, these etchings were macabre little skeletons of different kinds of birds, and across its face the Latin saying, 'MORS CERTA, HORA INCERTA' was painted in black, gothic lettering. I believed it to mean something like, "Death is certain, but the hour uncertain."

Near the base of the clock three initials were inscribed into the silver: 'N.C.M'. I could only suppose the "M" stood for "Malfoy", but as to the other letters?...I had not the faintest clue.

The clock had stopped at five-to-twelve, and I noticed that instead of minute and hour hands, the time was pointed to by two little skeletal wings. This strange, compelling mix of beauty and death seemed very much in keeping with the desolation of the rest of the room. The door through which the cuckoo would presumably appear was tightly shut, and though I tried to prise it open, I couldn't make it budge.

After a while, I left the clock and wandered around the glasshouse again, opening drawers and looking in cupboards, but discovering only more dead plants and bowls of withered seeds. One cabinet proved to be filled with stores of dried herbs; their pungent aroma was so heady and strong it sent me into a frenzy of sneezing, and I had to quickly shut it up again.

As I paced about, my eye was repeatedly drawn to the glint of the silver cuckoo clock, and something about it niggled at the back of my mind...but for the life of me I couldn't think what it was. I returned to it again and again, but the longer I stared at it, the less certain I became of its significance, and at last I decided that it was simply its unusual engravings and mysterious initials which had caught my imagination.

I would have liked to explore outside the glass perimeter, and indeed, there was a sliding door on the back panel, but the briars beyond the threshold had encroached so far that they had swallowed everything up, and blocked the exit like thick coils of barbed wire. I supposed that in time they would completely engulf the glasshouse and extinguish the dancing sunlight altogether.

With this thought, a feeling of intense sadness came over me. This house was just riddled with suffering, overshadowed by death and despair...I felt it everywhere, leaking from the pores of each stone, hanging heavily from the cobwebbed rafters, saturating each glinting particle of sunlit dust...

That I had played some part in the sadness, there was now no doubt. But I knew, deep down I knew, that darker forces had been at work in the obliteration of this family—and that somehow the raven-haired Woman was involved in its orchestration, whether or not Lucius realised it. I recalled Her eyes glittering with triumph when Lucius had picked me up off the floor and enfolded me in his robe...even now, in this airy, light room, the noxious residue of Her seemed to haunt me like a shadow...and I began to wonder. Did Lucius really need to protect me, or did he need to protect himself against me? Could it be that I was simply being used? As a pawn, an instrument...a weapon, that She was wielding against him?

The more I thought about our strange, terrifying encounter, the more I felt convinced of it. "...You will break him very soon...oh, yes..." I could hear that sweet, poisonous voice as if she were standing just behind me, and the mere thought of it made me turn hot and faint, then cold and nauseous. Perhaps the safest course of action would be to pull myself back from Lucius, to renounce this confusing infatuation... Surely it was wiser to safeguard us both against such evil machinations, if such existed? To thwart them, by denying my feelings for him altogether?

...Impossible. It was too late. There was no going back for me now, whatever the repercussions. I could no more extract Lucius from my feelings than I could break into my own rib-cage and extract my heart...

Sighing, I decided it was time to leave, and moved back to the archway through which I'd come. I felt...I wasn't sure what exactly, but the place had subdued my initial excitement, and made me pensive and a little depressed.

I came to the foot of the spiral staircase, and suddenly a wave of exhaustion swept through my body, sucking away all remaining vestiges of energy, as I felt how daunting a prospect was the task ahead of me. How, how would I ever find what I was searching for, when I didn't even really know what it was? I might as well wear a blindfold while I was at it.

Overcome with weariness, I slowly forced my leaden limbs to make the steep ascent back up to the ground floor.

Chapter Text

...

I did not tell Lucius of my discovery of the glasshouse, and he did not question me about it.

As he had foreseen, the expedition, along with my recent spate of sleep-walking adventures, overtaxed my strength. But he did not admonish me with the "I told you so" that I did, perhaps, deserve. Instead, perceiving my renewed frailty, he treated me even more gently than before, making sure to keep me warm and comfortable, encouraging me to eat when my appetite waned and sleep when my energy flagged, offering me tonics to promote recovery, but never encroaching upon my autonomy. ...When I compared this to the humiliating treatment during my first illness, when he had spoon-fed me and forcibly kept me in a medicated stupor, I could scarcely believe he was the same man, or I the same woman. I began to think of those days as no more than a half-remembered bad dream, if I thought of them at all.

I realised I was a fool to have hoped this the beginning of a new era, where I fearlessly roamed the house, digging up daily discoveries to bring me closer to finding out who I was and what I was doing here. Instead, I found myself weaker than ever. Too well, I recalled those interminable weeks of recovery, after that first hellish encounter with The Woman.

I knew that I would have to be patient, but patience, it seemed, was not a strong suit of mine. It was frustrating, to have finally rediscovered my curiosity and independence, only to find that I was still too debilitated to utilise them.

But my frustrations were sweetly mitigated by a new, subtle change in Lucius. There was a discernible warmth to his voice and a tenderness in his demeanour which had not been present before. His smiles were less bitter, and more frequent, and when those smiles were directed at me, they caused my stomach to clench and my pulse to flurry with a secret, strange delight.

...

One evening, at the end of dinner, I found myself staring into my wine-glass, fidgeting with the slender stem, distracted by a particular train of thought. When I looked up, I discovered Lucius's gaze fixed quizzically upon me.

"You have been far away, these past ten minutes," he said. "Dare I ask where you went?"

A flush crept over my face. "I-I was just wondering about something," I said. "Something about you, actually." He did not ask me what, but merely tilted back his head, waiting for me to continue.

I swallowed nervously, but forced myself to meet and hold his gaze. "Are you...or were you...some kind of white supremacist?"

A flicker of a smile graced his lips. "I'm not certain I know what that is," he replied.

I was unsure if he was being facetious. "You know: someone who believes that the white European race is better than all other races of the world."

"Ah..." he murmured, "...come to think of it, I believe I have heard of such a term. A curious doctrine, whereby superiority is measured by the paleness of one's skin." He grimaced dismissively. "Utter nonsense, of course." Then he peered down his nose at me rather haughtily. "You don't imagine that I hold such primitive, irrational views, Alice?"

I bit my lip at his obvious chagrin. "I...I just...well, I thought it might be why you...that word...that name you used to call me. 'Mudblood'. Isn't it a racial slur?"

For a moment he stared in genuine surprise. Then he glanced abruptly away. "No," he said.

I hoped he would elaborate, but he did not volunteer anything more, instead reaching for his wine-glass and taking a sip. The muscles had tightened in his jaw, and I sensed his displeasure in discussing the subject. But now that I had broached it, I was determined to extract an answer.

"So it isn't to do with race at all?" I prompted.

He frowned. "I don't think I wholly understand your line of questioning. Do you mean to imply that you are not of European descent?"

"It...it could be possible," I said, somewhat dubiously. "I suppose I could have mixed ancestry. My skin is quite olive...and my hair..." I trailed off, turning my head away instinctively to hide the sheared side, hidden though it was by my plait. A little lamely I finished, "...So it isn't that?"

"Certainly not," he said. "One's race has nothing to do with one's blood purity." As soon as the words were spoken, he looked as if he wished he had bitten his tongue.

"Blood purity?" I immediately jumped on the strange phrase. "What does that mean?"

An unfamiliar expression crossed Lucius's face. I believe it was the closest I'd ever seen him looking uncomfortable. "It doesn't matter, now, Alice," he murmured.

"It certainly sounds like something a supremacist might come up with."

His eyes narrowed, and I quickly bent my own to the table, afraid I had angered him at last.

There was a long silence as I sat awaiting a terse word or stinging reply. But when I finally risked an upward glance, Lucius was regarding me thoughtfully. "And how would you measure superiority, Alice?" he asked suddenly.

It was my turn to look surprised. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he replied, "what, in your opinion, distinguishes a man from among his inferiors?" A rather hard smile formed across his mouth. "His intelligence? ...Or, perhaps, his bravery?"

I considered the question solemnly. "No..." I said. "Intelligence and bravery are admirable, but I don't think they necessarily denote superiority. Someone can be intelligent and fearless, yet still cruel and unjust."

"Ah, so it is chivalry that you prize."

"I...I would say... I suppose I would say, compassion."

"Some would consider that as a weakness, rather than a virtue, my dear."

"Yes, I suppose some would."

Lucius was momentarily quiet again, but the harshness in his smile had relented and he seemed to be contemplating my words. "Then," he said, "you would not make any correlation between precedence and its outward manifestations? Wealth, for example, or a high position in society?"

I shrugged. "Fortunes can be lost, and pedestals may be fallen from," I said. "But compassion is...enduring. And anyone may attain it, no matter their position, or wealth, or ancestry."

"Anyone may attain it? If it be so common, surely it elevates no-one?"

"Just because anyone can attain it, doesn't mean it's common." It was strange, speaking what I knew to be a truth from my heart, yet without the reference of memory or remembered experience.

Lucius slanted an eyebrow, as much to say, Go on, I'm listening.

I felt my blush intensify under his attentive gaze. "To...to acquire compassion," I said slowly, "a person must have empathy and understanding...a kind of nobility of spirit, I think, and generosity. And...and the ability to...f-forgive." I stammered a little over the last word, with its weight of personal meaning between us. "It is..." I sought for the right words to express what I meant, "...something even greater than itself."

"Indeed?" Lucius murmured. "How so?"

"Because it enriches both the possessor and the beneficiary. It reduces neither, and uplifts both."

Lucius leaned forward, his smile now as sphinx-like and enigmatic as the expression in his eyes. "What of those deplorable souls who do not possess this rare mark of distinction, which you so greatly admire?" He spoke softly—almost, but not quite, a whisper. "How may they attain it?"

Our eyes remained connected, and I could feel that ripple of energy always present between us—once upon a time only ever crackling with angry volatility, but now, gently tingling and pulsating. "By opening their hearts," I said.

It sounded trite, school-girlish, and I expected Lucius to sneer at me.

But he did not sneer. "And what if their hearts are irredeemably hardened? Or irreparably damaged?"

"...I expect those people need compassion more than anyone."

At this, Lucius laughed softly.

I drew my shoulders up, piqued by his reaction. "May I ask what's so amusing?"

"You are, my dear," he replied, the same, mesmeric half-smile lingering on his lips. "With your noble, naïve ideas of compassionating those who would despise and resent you for it. A charming notion—but equally amusing."

My cheeks burned at his gentle taunt, but he spoke so caressingly that I could not feel really affronted.

Later, as I was lying in bed awaiting sleep, I mulled over the phrase he had used, "blood purity," and aligned it up against his former insulting moniker for me, "mudblood."

With a painful twinge, I understood that Lucius's slur against me wasn't about the colour of my skin, or texture of my hair. It was about the purity of my blood. Mudblood. Blood of mud. Dirt. Dirty. Impure. Disgusting.

No, he might not be a white supremacist, but his former contempt for me had clearly been couched in bigotry. It had been something tangibly separate from his rage, though thoroughly entwined with it: a poisonous accelerant fuelling the flames of his hatred.

Thankfully, it seemed to have extinguished along with his resentment.

I hoped I would never encounter it again. I doubted my heart would take the strain.

...

Gradually, my strength returned, and with it, the foolhardy desire to embark on a second exploration of the house. I decided I would try my luck with the upper branch of the winding stairwell, taking a lamp from one of the downstairs sconces to light my way.

That morning, I took my customary bath, and my thoughts turned back to the discovery of the glasshouse. I could still vividly picture the crystalline beauty and hushed sadness of the place, recalling the braids of overgrown and long-dead vegetation, the little blank labels on the dried-out plants, and the silver cuckoo-clock which seemed to preside over all that death, with its macabre depictions of skeletal birds engraved on its shining surface. There was something about that clock that had captured my attention, had reminded me of...something, but I had not yet managed to puzzle it out.

I mused on the clock's unusual engravings of little bird skeletons. How unnerving, the repetitive and sinister imagery that had haunted me from the beginning: the bird in the forest, the recurring nightmares of the crow, the Woman in her black-feathered ball-gown...and, of course, the bird-skull necklace Lucius had torn from my neck, and which I had last seen in the drawer of his bureau, right before he slammed it on my fingers...

With a loud gasp, I lurched forward to sit bolt-upright, splashing water over the sides with the violence of my movement.

The bird-skull necklace! The cuckoo-clock! That was it! The pendant looked as if it somehow belonged to those very etchings which covered the clock's silver facade. That was what had triggered such a strong sense of recognition when I laid eyes on it! ...In fact, I was willing to bet that, if I could prise open the little door through which the cuckoo was meant to emerge, the bird would be missing its head.

My heart pounded and my mind raced as I sought to understand the significance of the connection.

The pendant seemed to have been secured to me like a tag, a kind of calling card, I could only suppose from the Woman. After all, I had heard from her own lips telling him that I was, '...my gift to you, to do with what you will...' Undoubtedly, Lucius had recognised the necklace. Even now I remembered the astonishment of his expression upon seeing it and the way he had urgently hissed, 'Where did you get this?', dangling it before my eyes from one fist as he cruelly wrenched my hair with the other.

But...but if I was correct, if the pendant did come from the cuckoo-clock in the glasshouse, then...then what?

My excitement faded as I failed to extract any sense from my revelation. I might have joined two dots together, but the rest of the picture remained stubbornly blank. Soon enough my inner voice began to mock me for it.

...So the pendant might, or might not, belong to the clock, Alice. And? Does that bring you any closer to solving the mystery of your identity? Or recovering your memories?

It might well bring me closer, I countered angrily. All these things may be related in some way, if I can only figure out how. At least it's a start.

Wonderful, Alice! Glad to know that after all this time you're finally getting off to a "start".

I've been unwell!

Oh yes, poor little invalid Alice, can't take two steps together without tiring herself out.

"Today will be different," I murmured angrily at myself. As if to prove it, I dragged myself out of the bath and briskly began drying myself off.

I found the same cambric dress I had worn on my first exploration, and slipped it over my head, breathing in the pleasant, sweet-herb scent which still imbued its soft folds. I was just in the process of rolling up its cuffs as I moved over to the door, when a sound like a gun-shot from the hallway brought me to a shocked stand-still. A second later the door was flung wide.

Lucius stood on the threshold, his face deathly pale and his eyes blazing with a frightening intensity. Fear flooded through me. My heart began to hammer wildly against my chest, though the rest of me remained petrified. But before I could speak, he brought his finger to his mouth with a shake of his head, warning me to be silent, then he turned to noiselessly shut the door.

Shivering, I awaited his explanation or instruction.

I had never seen him so breathless and agitated before. He took a couple of steps towards me, paused, stepped back, then almost unwillingly he strode forwards again and pulled me closely against him. For a moment, he seemed in the midst of some agony of indecision. His hand gripped my chin and he gazed into my eyes, the muscles of his jaw working, his features strained and taut. Then a terrible, almost a ghastly expression, of bitter self-loathing and defiance crossed his face. He looked like a man who would risk hell rather than let fate take its course.

He bent over me. "Do you trust me?" His voice was low and hoarse and urgent.

I stared up at him. "Yes," I whispered. "But you're—" I gulped, "you're frightening me."

"You should be frightened," he muttered, "and you should not trust me." Then he released me and, reaching inside his robe, he drew forth a small glass vial, filled with a dark muddy-coloured liquid. He held it up, and the light of the overhead chandelier set its sharp facets sparkling. "Now I have warned you—will you drink this?"

"What is it?"

"It won't hurt or harm you."

"Is it meant to...protect me in some way?"

He gritted his teeth before replying, "You will be safe."

I was aware it did not quite answer my question. "And if I refuse?" I asked him, although I already knew I would do as he requested. "Will you force me to drink it?"

He drew closer to me again, and his mouth brushed my ear as he spoke. "Please," he said, with genuine entreaty in his voice, "do not make me force you."

"...Alright," I said, though my voice shook audibly. "If you say I must, then I will. I...I do trust you, Lucius."

He seemed almost to wince at this, but made no reply. Removing its diamond-shaped stopper, he put the vial into my trembling hand, murmuring, "Do not drink yet. Hold it still."

Lucius took hold of one of his emerald rings and flicked the stone up, revealing a locket-sized chamber. Carefully he extracted a single, fine, pale strand of hair— perhaps his own, perhaps belonging to another. Then, steadying the vial by wrapping his other hand around my shaking one, he carefully dropped the strand into the liquid. It immediately fizzed and dissolved, and the contents began to effervesce and change colour. After a few seconds it settled and stilled to a pale-rose tint.

"Now, drink," Lucius said. "Quickly—there is no time to lose."

But I could not comply, for, even as he said the words, he did not release his grip around my hand. I looked at him questioningly, and with another grimace he opened his fingers.

I brought the vial to my lips and tipped it back.

The taste was not unpleasant. It was both tart and sweet, tingling on my tongue, and I finished it in one gulp.

I barely had time to wonder what I had imbibed and why, when my stomach began to lurch and spasm sickeningly. I dropped the vial with a gasp, coughing and retching. I would have doubled over if Lucius had not held me firmly upright. My vision blurred up with tears as I uncontrollably choked and spluttered, hardly able to snatch a breath, certain that I was about to be sick, or pass out, or both.

Distantly I heard Lucius murmur, "It's alright, Alice...breathe...try to breathe," but I couldn't breathe, I couldn't stop coughing; I was hot, burning all over, I could feel my skin literally blistering and bubbling, and somehow stretching, everything was wrong, horribly wrong—and I cried out in horror and fear.

What have you done to me? I could not form the words, and a suddenly-flaring rage against Lucius made me strike out at him, and writhe angrily against his grasp, but he pressed his hand to my temple, murmured a single, strange word...and I was aware of him catching me up as I crumpled.

...

Voices.

A deep hum of male voices brought me swimming back to the surface of consciousness.

It took me a moment to grasp the enormity of what that could possibly mean. I tried to sit up, but my body refused to comply. Then, with a start of alarm, I realised I could not even open my eyes.

"Lucius?" I called out, or tried to, but all that escaped my lips was an awful, animalistic groan. "Help! Help me!" I frantically cried again—but again, the only sound I could make was a strange lowing.

My breathing became erratic as panic took hold. What was happening to me? Why couldn't I move, or speak, or see? And why did I feel so alien, as if I didn't fit in my body?

Worse than paralysis was the crippling possibility of a betrayal. My soul shuddered, I felt myself withering, curling up like the plants in the glasshouse, I wished to howl, to scream, but all I could do was moan... But then Lucius's unmistakable scent washed over me, I sensed him beside me, and I felt a hand—his large, warm hand—curl around my own, and gently caress it. Comforting me. Calming me.

With calmness came focus and clarity, and my brain seized on the words now being spoken.

"You must understand, Mr Malfoy," an unfamiliar voice was uttering apologetically, "that this visitation is a mere formality. It is neither our wish, nor intention to intrude."

"Oh, I understand perfectly, gentlemen," Lucius replied icily. "I'm sure the spectacle of a Death Eater's lunatic wife will furnish you with endless anecdotes around the Ministry water-cooler."

"Be fair, Malfoy," a second, older-sounding voice said. "We are only following policy—"

"I am well aware of your policy," Lucius interrupted bluntly.

"Then you are also aware that we have significantly—and, may I say, generously—reduced the required visitations in consideration of your misfortune, and of your wife's...err, condition."

"We are both much obliged, I am sure," Lucius snarled sarcastically. "Well? Are you satisfied that we continue here in suitable affliction and misery? Or would you prefer to interview my wife personally?"

"No, no, of course that will not be necessary."

"Are you sure? Perhaps you would like to interrogate her on her recent activities? ...Because I dare not hope you have any progress to report on discovering our son's murderer."

The man cleared his throat with apparent embarrassment. "...It is very unfortunate... You are to be greatly—"

"Pity me at your peril, sir." Lucius's voice was dangerously quiet.

There was a pause, which, even in my incapacitated state, sounded awkward and uncomfortable, and I even discerned the nervous shuffling of feet. "Well then, we will leave you in—in peace, Mr Malfoy."

I heard the tread of their footsteps retreating and a door opening, but then it seemed as if the men paused upon the threshold, for the door did not shut. "Ah—Malfoy," I heard the elder voice say, as if in afterthought, "there is, perhaps, one last thing. It concerns the young lady with whom your son—"

"Stop!" Lucius barked sharply at them. "You will not speak of them before my wife!" Then he bent over me, and I felt his lips press briefly to my forehead. "I will be back soon, my dear." He said it loudly enough for the benefit of the visitors, but a pressure on my palm indicated that he really meant to reassure me.

He let go of my hand, and I heard him impatiently usher the men out of the room, with a curt directive to follow him to his office. The door shut, and all was silent.

...

Time passed in crawling increments, and all I could do was lie still in the imprisoning darkness, and wonder.

I wondered who the men were, and why they believed I was Lucius's wife.

I wondered if I was his wife. His lunatic wife.

No. I knew it was not possible, just as I knew that I was probably the 'young lady' of whom they had spoken.

Soon enough, I stopped wondering and started seething. So this was what Lucius had meant by not trusting him! This—this was why he had looked so haunted when he produced the vial and told me to drink. The liquid was not to protect me, but to protect him! Not to help me, but to hide me in plain sight! To prevent my discovery, my recovery—prevent me from leaving him—again! My heart swelled with silent fury, my eyes burned with sightless rage, but I could not even relieve my emotion with tears.

How could he? Why? Why would he?

But then, from out of my dark, wrathful despair, a sudden question blazed a silvery trail across my mind, like a star shooting across the blackness of night.

...Would you have willingly gone?...

The words suspended in the surrounding darkness for a long, long time. ...And gradually the rage seeped out of me, until all that was left was the tingling of my brow where his lips had brushed against it, and the throb of my hand where his own had pressed it.

And I accepted the truth. I would not, I could not leave him. Just, it seemed, as he could not let me go.

...

At some point I registered a change in my body, as if I belonged in it once more, although I remained prostrate and blind. I breathed a little more easily, but I was haunted by the notion that something might prevent Lucius from coming for me, and I couldn't understand why he stayed away so long.

As hour bled into endless hour, this fear slowly matured into a real terror. Once more, I was forced to question my trust of him. He had said he would be back soon—where, then, was he? He must know what I was suffering: the fear, the confusion and loneliness, and the terrible, terrible claustrophobia of confinement. Was he inflicting a deliberate cruelty? Could he still be capable of such a thing? ...My heart would not convict him, but my mind doubted and suspected.

Lucius came for me at last.

As easily as he had disabled me, he released me, and at last I could see, and move, and speak. At last I could cry.

He held me as my relief and frustration burst forth in great, wracking sobs.

He did not deflect the punches I hammered on his chest, nor did he try to restrain me, or attempt to justify or excuse himself. He held me until I had vented all my vehemence, and wrung out every tear, then he held me even closer as I forgave him, and clung to him, and told him the secrets of my heart.

And finally, finally he kissed me, as I had so long wished to be kissed by him: his lips seeking and parting my own, softly and searchingly, his arms wrapped securely around my shoulders, locking me into a deliriously spinning, infinitely beautiful world, where I was safe and warm, where I knew that I truly belonged...I was filled with the serenity of certainty; the heat of him became the warmth of me, my heartbeat slowed and trained to his...I only wished the moment would never end, and for a while my wish seemed possible...everything, anything seemed possible...

Then he gathered me up into his arms and carried me downstairs.

The door of my room opened as if to his mere presence, and he conveyed me inside, laying me gently down upon my bed. He stooped over me to catch my lips in one last, lingering kiss, sweet with his gentleness, salty with my tears.

Releasing me to stand, he gazed for some moments down at me, the flames from the hearth reflecting in his eyes, rendering them a strange, glowing amber.

"Sleep, now, Alice," he murmured softly. "We will talk tomorrow."

Chapter Text

I was afraid to see him again. Afraid of encountering some obstacle, some insurmountable barrier of coldness or hardness in his eyes.

The last defences around my heart had crumbled, and I felt vulnerable, exposed and raw, as if a layer of me had been peeled quite away. I was also dazed, and full of wonder. The memory of his lips on mine filled me with fluttering happiness and stabbing doubt. Confusing everything was the shock of information I had received during that brief exchange between Lucius and the two strange visitors.

His son had been...murdered?

Why, then, the profound guilt that pervaded my own fleeting visions of the young man?

And where, where was Lucius's wife? She, who he had spoken of as no longer being his wife, as having gone, before I ever came—? The men had mistaken me for her, that was clear—but it was also clear that they had expected to see her there, in that iron-barred room. Why had it been so important for Lucius, not only to hide me from them, but to present her to them?

...Could he have done the unthinkable to her? After all, he was, or had been, a man of resentful, changeful temperament. I had learnt first-hand of the cruel, occasionally violent streak which discoloured his nature... And the frankly sinister epithet he had given himself ('Death Eater'?) was suggestive of things which made my hair stand on end...

Had he simply...snapped?

Or, looking at it from a more pardonable perspective, had he put her out of her misery?

I shuddered, and rejected both ideas. Not because I had any proof to the contrary, but because they were simply too awful to suspect of the man who I...I was in love with.

The questions, the doubt, the fear and the wonder all held me hostage in my room well past the time I would usually appear for breakfast. Time and again I made it out into the hallway, only to panic and rush back inside again. I might have stayed there all day, but at last the decision was taken out of my hands with a sudden knock at my door.

My heartbeat pounded arrhythmically. As I moved over to the door and turned the handle with fumbling fingers, I braced myself for the rejection I had pretty much convinced myself to expect.

Lucius immediately, decisively put my doubts to rest.

Before I could so much as greet him, he drew me firmly to him and caught my lips with his...and he did not release me until I was dizzy, breathless and melting inside; pressed pliantly against him and barely able to stand. The same sweet warmth of last night coursed through me, making every nerve, every particle of me, thrill to his closeness and tingle to his touch.

Looking up into his eyes, I was sure I detected an answering glimmer of relief, and it occurred to me then that he was not only allaying my fear, but a parallel one of his own.

"I have heard your door open and close ten times this morning," he said softly, brushing my cheek with his palm. "How much longer did you intend to keep me in suspense?" The caressing note in his voice was indescribably enchanting to me.

Unable to form a comprehensible explanation, I simply replied, "I'm ready now."

His gaze flickered over me lightly, taking in the pretty, lilac robe I had chosen, and I blushed for the compliment reflected in his eyes. "Come, then," he said, holding out his hand with a disarming smile which made my breath catch.

As my fingers met his, I was struck by how entirely different he appeared from the man I used to liken to a ruthless Teutonic prince—that brittle marble mould was broken away, and the man who emerged was as vital and receptive as he had once been inflexible and cold. His aura of power now seemed alight with a new radiance, erasing all traces of harshness, enhancing the intrinsic harmony of his high-bred features, so I felt almost astounded, blinded by his brilliance and beauty...

...But there was still a gleam of the devil-may-care of yesterday lingering in his iridescent irises, which reminded me that, however elated I felt, however tender he seemed, I ought to wade cautiously into the unknown depths stretching out before me.

...

The hours passed in a haze of sweet unreality.

There was a winsome, beguiling facet to Lucius which I had never seen before. ...No, that wasn't quite true. I had glimpsed something like it before, the first time he had dined with The Woman, when I had wept in despair of him ever treating me in such a way. ...But, whereas that time I had sensed something of pretence behind his captivating manner—this felt real. There was nothing guarded in his voice, no insincerity to trace in his expression...at any rate, I couldn't detect it. And when he kissed me, I could no more doubt him than I wished to resist him.

But at some point during the day, when the whirlwind of elation had finally calmed, a sharply-serrated realisation cut through my delirium. I ought to, I must, once again broach some of the questions which he had thus-far refused to answer. After what he had put me through yesterday, he owed me some kind of explanation, and I owed it to myself to extract one from him—or at the very least, to try.

But the hours slipped by, exquisitely ephemeral, and as evening drew in I still had not managed to submit even one single question. I became anxious that the right moment would simply never present itself, and that if I didn't manage to speak now, perhaps I never would.

It was getting late. We wandered in the garden and came to a standstill in the shadows of the bordering conifers, silently watching the canopy of bright stars overhead. Lucius stood behind me, his arms crossed about my shoulders, and, cocooned in his embrace and lulled by his persistently gentle demeanour, the words seemed to slip naturally from my lips.

"What happened to your wife, Lucius?"

He was silent. I felt his body tensing along me, the muscles in his arms stiffening.

"Please," I said, bringing my hands up to press his forearm entreatingly, "please, Lucius, I—I need an answer. Just this one question."

He let go of me then, and an instant chill pierced my body. I saw that he had turned to face the house, his gaze fixed on the third storey. Though I could not interpret his expression, a light from the house caught his silver eyes, and they glittered strangely. "Be specific, Alice," he said quietly. "What exactly are you asking me." It sounded more like a resigned comment than a question.

A sudden uncertainty shivered through me. Did I really want to know? Wasn't it better, safer, to not know? But I gritted my teeth and told myself that for better or worse, I must. I must.

Slowly, hesitantly, I said, "Last night, those men mistook me for her...they seemed to believe—to expect that—that she was alive... But she's not, is she? She's not alive."

Again a silence. Then, "...No," Lucius said at last. "She is not alive."

"How did she die?" I asked it quickly, aware I was trespassing with a second question.

"What do you believe?" he said, turning back to me suddenly.

I was at a loss for an answer. I heard myself stammering, "I...I don't know."

"Come, my dear—you must have given some thought to the subject. What conclusions have you drawn? Do you think I have her blood on my hands?"

"No...I mean, I don't...that is, I don't think so."

"Your confidence is overwhelming, my dear." His tone was contaminated with bitterness. "Of what monstrous things must you believe me capable."

"I didn't mean that," I said hastily. "It's just...I know that when a person is very sick, sometimes it is—sometimes it's kinder to—" I faltered, and was silent. I wished wholeheartedly that I had never spoken.

"Ah, I see," he murmured. "You think I may have...assisted nature in her merciful works, so to speak." I was relieved that he sounded thoughtful, rather than angry. His fingertips lightly tipped my face up to his. "Would you understand, if I admitted to such?"

I looked searchingly in his eyes. Slowly, I nodded. "I think so," I said.

"Thank you." It was impossible to tell if those two words were sarcastic or sincere. "But you may rest assured on that point. I was—I am—too selfish a man to voluntarily part with whatever is dear to me."

Yes, I thought, I know you are.

After a pause he said softly, "Perhaps it would have been kinder to...help her find peace. But I had already lost so much, and I was damned if I was going to..." He stopped, and turned his face towards the dark, veiling shadows of the conifers. "...Of course, I had already lost her. Most of her had disappeared into the ground with our only child. ...But in the end, she took that decision entirely out of my hands." He spoke impassively, as if he had reconciled himself to the fact. "She deteriorated so quickly, so completely," he continued. "Towards the end she did not even recognise me. I tried to keep her safe, as safe and as comfortable as possible, but one night she—." He made a resigned gesture with his hands, which I found unbearably pitiable. "I discovered her the following morning. She had... utilised various noxious plants from her collection. I believe you found the place a while ago?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"My wife was a talented botanist. She did not err in the efficacy of her concoction."

As finally I understood what happened, my heart throbbed painfully, both with sorrow, pity and a horrible sense of guilt. For if I was somehow responsible for the loss of his son, was I not also indirectly responsible for this subsequent tragedy? No wonder he had hated me so deeply...

But one thing still confused me. "But why keep it a secret? Those men—"

"Those men," he cut in over me, and I could hear anger return to his voice, "those men..." He gritted his teeth, and seemed to be undergoing some kind of difficult, internal struggle. Then suddenly he turned and began to stride back over the grounds, from where we'd come. "Come, Alice," he said over his shoulder, "I'll get you a drink."

I hurried to catch up with him. "I don't need a dr—"

"I need one," he said bluntly.

He led me back to the pavilion, which was, as always, beautifully warm, and now softly glowing with ambient candlelight. It was enchanting, like a fairy's grotto, and for a moment I wished that he would simply gather me to him and kiss away all my unanswered questions, and I kiss away his tragic revelations, and we could simply exist together in the present moment, without past, or pain, without sorrow or memory...

But he did not kiss me. He installed me in one seat, and took another opposite me.

After offering me a drink, which I declined, he poured one for himself, knocked it back, poured a second, then reached inside his robe for his embossed cigar case. His hands were slightly unsteady as he extracted one of his slim cigars and lit it, though his face remained perfectly composed. Silently, we both watched the coils of smoke drifting upwards and slowly dissipating. At last he murmured, "There was a war, Alice. Do you remember anything of it?"

I actually gasped with shock, so unexpectedly did these words strike me. "A war? As in—we—Britain? Against whom?"

An unintelligible expression flickered over his face, and he replied, "I suppose you could describe it as a civil conflict."

I stared at him, though his face was tilted up, his eyes still following the spiralling plumes of cigar smoke. "I see..." I said, as the dreadful truth slowly dawned on me. "And...we...we were on opposite sides."

"Indeed."

I tried to digest this news, but without any context, I had no way to understand what it really meant. "What was it about?" I asked.

A grim irony told in the brackets of his mouth and he shrugged. "Power and dominion. Fear and greed." He raised his glass, almost as if in a toast, then swallowed a mouthful of the amber liquor. "The usual dogs of war, dressed in the trappings of a noble cause."

"Good versus...?"

Lucius levelled his gaze at me, with a directness which made me tremble. "War is never so simplistic as that, Alice," he said, taking another draw of his cigar. "However...only recently have I discovered that I have been...mistaken in many of my long-held beliefs."

I could not know what it cost him to make such a concession. The subtext was clear. He was admitting to me that not only had he been on the opposite side—he had been on the wrong side.

Suddenly a piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and I blurted out, "You're under some kind of house arrest, aren't you?"

He took a moment to consider before he replied. "It is a little more complicated than that, but essentially—I am."

"What for?" I felt nauseous as I formed the next words. "...War crimes?"

"Yes."

I couldn't bring myself to ask exactly what that entailed. Terrible images flickered through my imagination, like a whirring reel of old footage, documenting unspeakable atrocities committed in the name of war...and I thought, I'm in love with a war criminal. God help me.

"And if it was known that your wife was...no longer alive?"

Another hard, humourless smile. "Then those men will escort me back—back to a country that despises me, to be yoked and monitored, treated like a... They might as well throw me back into..." He grimaced, and did not finish the sentence. Then, softly, he added, "It would be insupportable." With this, Lucius finished off the remainder of his liquor and turned his glittering eyes on me again. "So, what do you make of me now, my dear? Please, be frank. I should like to know."

I scrabbled about for an honest answer amongst the chaos of my thoughts, intent on being truthful, but desperate for the truth to conform to my feelings. "I think that...the fact you are not in prison means that your...your c-crimes can not have been so very terrible. They could not have been...unforgivable."

As I said the last word, Lucius visibly started, and a strange sequence of expressions passed over his features: doubt, something like shame, then a slowly-spreading gratitude which lit up his face and eyes with a beautiful glow...and I felt my own cheeks flood with responsive warmth. He was up and next to me in seconds, gripping me tightly, and he bent over me and muttered in my ear, "You don't know what you say, sweet, wild little creature—judging me with those serious, amber eyes; recklessly absolving me of my wrongdoings..."

Then he was kissing me again, but it was different this time: deeper, fervent and filled with meaning...truth be told, a little frightening.

I was on the verge of struggling for breath when he finally released me. "One day you will hate me," he whispered darkly, but his arms remained fiercely wrapped about me, as if he did not intend to let this ominous prediction interfere with his present wishes and desires.

...

That evening I lay in my bath, submerged to my shoulders in deep water, watching the floral-scented steam curling around me through half-closed eyelids.

My body was tired, but my mind was, as always, a kaleidoscope of images, thoughts and questions as I replayed the day's events in minute detail...and across these fluid, ever-changing abstractions, Lucius's image was indelibly stamped, while his recent words echoed in my mind, deeply troubling to me.

'You don't know what you say...recklessly absolving me of wrongdoings...one day you will hate me...'

He had sounded so certain about that.

I had to suppress the urge to ask myself, 'Well, what's the worst he could have done?'—for I knew it could only leave me tormented, but wholly unaltered. Because love didn't work that way. It wasn't founded on rational thought, it wasn't convenient, or conditional...it was absolute.

You're wrong, Lucius, I thought. I won't hate you, because it isn't possible to hate and love at the same time. Not truly. You can hate certain things—perhaps everything—about the person you love, but you cannot hate THEM.

I recalled that first day of my stay, when Lucius had grabbed and brutally shaken me, snarling at me that frightening sentence, impossible to forget. 'Don't you know I have killed men for less than what is written on your face?' …Taking those words at face value, he had killed, perhaps more than once. He was a killer.

He was a killer, but love was absolute.

...Well, what if he killed your family, Alice? Would you still love him then? Yes or no?

I told you, I'm not playing that game.

...It's not a game, Alice, it's called "facing unpleasant possibilities". ...Admit it: you're scared to answer that question.

Yes, I'm scared. I'm scared because I already know the answer.

I sank further down into the bath, covering my shoulders and neck with the swirling, comforting warmth, until the water tickled the line of my mouth. My lips were still tender, chafed and tingling from the kisses they had received, even a little bruised by the fervency with which they had been imprinted.

My tongue traced lightly over my top lip and I fancied I could still taste him, that strong, bitter-sweet mix of brandy and cigars and a subtler sapor of indefinable spices. My eyelids drooped almost closed and my hands moved weightlessly over me—the curve of my chest, the dip of my stomach—as my mind lingered luxuriously on those exquisite, precious moments of ardent contact...

Vaguely, a little reluctantly, I allowed myself to wonder where this new, physical connection between us might lead...and how quickly. Reason told me that Lucius was not a man to take things slowly. That once his mind was set on what he wanted, nothing would hinder his obtaining it.

...But what did I want? Did I want him to—to touch me? To...take me?

One hand drifted further downwards, and my fingertips delicately combed through the wisps of downy curls between my legs.

I didn't even know if I had ever...?

...And even if I had some, any, experience (although something told me it would not be much), I couldn't remember it. All I knew was him. Lucius. He had been the sole player in my few fantasies and my many, many dreams. How far did I wish those dreams to become a reality?

My eyes shut fully and my fingers became his. Slowly, gently, stroking...

I bit my lip, imagining him kissing me again, fiercely, deeply...only this time I was beneath him on a bed and one of his arms was wrapped possessively around my—naked? yes, naked—body, while the other was caressing me...with exquisite finesse...just...like so...

I pictured his lips leaving my mouth and trailing leisurely down my neck, then further down to the swell of my breast, teasing the sensitive tip with his tongue, making me gasp...I could almost, almost feel his silken hair spilling in a feather-light waterfall over my shoulders, arms, across my chest...

Then the vision changed...Lucius was over and above and around me, his eyes glittering like diamonds in the surrounding darkness, his teeth slightly clenched as he parted my legs and readied himself to—

I snapped my eyes open and hauled myself up to a sitting position. I wrapped my hands safely about my knees and began to berate myself for indulging in so dangerously seductive an image...I needed to be able to think clearly, to know that I was going into things with my eyes open, my brain switched on.

Oh, which brain was that, Alice? You mean your amnesiac, confused, damaged one? The same brain which has fallen in love with the man who imprisoned and abused you—a man who is a self-confessed killer and war-criminal? That's the brain you wish to think clearly with?

I had no defence to present to that taunting inner voice. All I could do was offer an honest reply: Yes. That brain. My brain.

Sighing, I climbed out of the bath and dried myself, then wrapped the large, plush towel around me before moving back through to the adjoining chamber to flop down upon my bed.

I lay there for some time, teasing out a particular thought which had struck me. Finally, Lucius was becoming...real. He was no longer the frightening, unfathomable spectre who had only ever proved his existence through the pain he inflicted upon me, and the evidence bruised on my skin in the shape of his hands. Nor was he the all-absorbing, fascinating apparition who, after rescuing me from the clutches of darkness, seemed even more disqualified from the realms of reality, by the very suddenness of his changed demeanour.

No, both insubstantial figments were gone—at least nearly gone—and the real Lucius seemed to be taking form in front of my eyes, his touch no longer marking me with its brutality, but defining himself with its tenderness. With each caress he stepped further out of the shadows, with each kiss he was brought more clearly into focus before me.

And now...now that he had relented and finally made that first revelation about himself, I told myself it could only be a matter of time before he made one about me.

Perhaps even my name.

Chapter Text

The next morning as I dressed for breakfast, I found myself blushing at the temptingly sensuous thoughts I had entertained in the bath the night before. ...What if Lucius could somehow read them? He had always had a knack for knowing exactly what I was thinking and I knew very well that my much-too-lucent eyes could hide nothing from him.

And if my eyes didn't betray me, I was afraid my body would. There was a new pliancy and suppleness which had smoothed and softened its wasted lines; the outward luminosity which falling in love had given me was now heightened even further by a bright inner flame, which had blazed to life with Lucius's physical reciprocation; his desire had soaked through to the wick of me and set it alight...everything about me looked so glossy and—I mentally flinched at the word which sprang to mind—ripe.

Chapter Text

I listened to the fading click-click-click of Lucius's boots as he retreated down the stone passageway. His tread sounded perfectly measured and calm; neither unduly hurried nor unusually sedate, and I could easily picture the innate grace of his movements that no amount of emotional turmoil could divest him of.

Chapter Text

Sleep was hard won and came fitfully that night, as I tossed and turned in my bed, my mind reeling sickeningly with splintered fragments from the day's devastating events. ...Glossy feathers, cracking mirrors, visions in a clouded glass...snarling portraits, kisses on the bed, eyes in my head...tap-tap-tap, 'our special secret, little worm'...'where were you today?' ...'one cannot so easily escape one's memory, conscience, and regrets'...

Chapter Text

...I was running, running, running...down great, stone halls and twisting corridors, melding into a fog- twined forest strewn with great loops of briar, desperately searching for something, or someone.  Naked, cold, and crying, I fought my way through the ever-morphing terrain, my skin torn and bleeding from jagged letters carved into me by the briars' vicious thorns...

W herever I ran, a  long shadow was cast over me from above in the shape of a giant, swooping bird,  slowly but surely descending, turning everything to blackness behind me...the shadow became larger as the bird came lower until finally I felt the cold scaly skin and sharp claws of a bird's feet upon my shoulder, and I screamed and screamed and screamed...

A huge rift in the earth opened at my feet, and I saw the bird disappear down into its dark depths. When I looked up again, a man with silver eyes stood on the other side of the rift, holding his hand out to me to take. I reached for him, but as I did, I slipped and stumbled forward, tumbling down and down into the ravine's gaping maw, my arms stretched upwards as I cried out a name, and a voice in the darkness called back, "Hold onto me!"...

I landed softly on my feet, at the bottom of a flight of winding stairs. The shimmering, pale outline of a small fox was disappearing around the first spiral. Immediately I ran after it.

Round and round, up and up, I followed the unworldly creature, but I could never quite catch up with it, only ever glimpsing the swish of its ghostly tail. Finally I saw it melt through a door at the top of the stairs, which swung open, letting in a blaze of sunlight. Instead of disappearing when hit by light, the fox became embodied, its spectral outline forming into a substantial, real animal with deep, white fur and beautiful grey eyes.

The fox began pawing at something in the ground, whining softly. As it scrabbled, pieces of the stone floor began to fall away, and I peered down into the dark hole it was uncovering, filled with dread at what might appear...then a pair of eyes suddenly opened in the darkness and I reeled away in shock, the fox yelped and skittered away—

—I awoke, my heart thudding madly against my ribs, breathing hard.

I was standing in front of a door, my knees trembling and thighs burning from what must have been a steep, upwards climb. My hand was clasped around a cold, brass doorknob that I had evidently turned, for the door was slightly ajar.

Panic hit and I let go, whirling around to see only a twisting stairwell sunken in darkness behind me. The only light came from the crack of open doorway through which I had been about to go.

For some minutes, I stood in a petrified paralysis, torn between following this beckoning sliver of light, or retracing my steps back down into that ominous well of black shadow.

"You've come this far," I muttered at last, although I did not know how far that actually was, or indeed where in the house I could possibly be.

Turning back to face the doorway, my fingers closed again around the brass knob; I pushed and the door yielded outward with a dull groan.

I was almost blinded by a stream of daylight and I tripped on the top step and stumbled forwards, sinking down onto a plateau of stone paving, confused and dazed and still half-asleep, but nonetheless relieved to be out of the inky confines of the stairwell. For a while I just sat on the stone paving, the effort of trying to properly wake up conflicting oddly with the sensation of recovering from physical exertion.

Gradually I became aware of my new surroundings: I was sitting in kind of large courtyard, enclosed on all sides by a stone wall. It was morning, but only just, the sky overhead dim with a cloudy dawn, and the air still biting with the chill of night only recently departed.

The delicate nightdress I was wearing provided little protection from the coldness and hardness of the paving on which I sat, and soon motivated me to clamber to my feet. Immediately a raw, blustering wind almost knocked me over again, stinging my cheeks and whipping my hair into my eyes, causing the nightdress to flap wildly around my legs.

"Oh!" I exclaimed aloud, with a mixture of exhilaration and wonder, pushing the tangles off my face as I took in the amazing vista.

I was so, so very high up! Only now did I realise what perhaps should have been obvious: that I was standing on the very rooftop of the house, and that the enclosing wall was, in fact, a chest-high stone parapet over which I could see right across the tree-tops to the countryside beyond, and the distant demarcation of dark woodland overlaid by a thick, clinging mist.

...There.

Moving over towards the ledge, I stared out at the smudged line of forest and fog. It looked almost like a roiling sea-tide, slowly and inevitably swallowing everything in its way.

...Somewhere out there, in that forest, you awoke into this strange existence.

A shiver stole over me, which had nothing to do with the biting wind.

...Something in there set you on this twisting path. Something...or someone...

Perhaps what I was looking for wasn't inside the dark, sorrow-soaked walls of this house, but out there, in the dangerous wilderness beyond. I recalled Lucius's words, the morning after he brought me back from Her lair. '...You may leave now, if you want. But I believe it would be tantamount to suicide, if that's what you wish for...'

Were the answers I sought worth dying for?

No. Of course not. But then again, was a meaningless existence, without context, without hope, without...love, worth living for? Was this pain worth living for? ...Maybe the only way forward was to go backward...perhaps...perhaps I would have to retrace my steps, right back into the thick of the fog I had fought so long and hard to escape...

I shook my head, shivering again. Fervently, I hoped it would not come to that.

Slowly, I began to make a circuit around the perimeter. The panorama was similar on each side: wide, sweeping moorlands bordered with mist-threaded forest, except on the west side, where a wall of steep, craggy mountains visibly pierced through the billows of low-lying cloud.

The parapet was too tall for me to see directly down into the grounds below, but I was overtaken by a desire to glimpse the terrace and pavilion. I told myself it was only to gauge my surroundings; that it had nothing to do with rekindling the memory of those dizzying, dangerous kisses Lucius had imprinted on my lips the last time I was there...

Tell yourself whatever you wish, Alice, mocked my inner voice. Only don't expect to convince anyone else.

Ignoring my better judgement, I grasped the top of the parapet and jumped, hoisting myself up to peer over the ledge and down the side of the house.

With a lurch of sickening fear I saw that I was easily twice as high up from the ground as my bedchamber on the second floor, the ground far, far below. A sudden horrible dizziness swooped through me, then a star-bursting whiteness exploded through my mind—and I was tumbling over and hurtling downwards, plummeting in a kind of spiralling death-fall—the ground rushing up to receive me even as blackness closed around me—grey eyes—a long-fingered hand clamping around my wrist—"Hold on to me!...Hold on...to me..."

With a strangled cry I let go of the parapet, scraping my hands as I slid back down to the flagstones, my knees giving way so I ended up awkwardly crouched against the cold stone wall, panting and gasping, my brow clammy with cold sweat.

Well, that was awfully clever, Alice.

My whole body was trembling with surging adrenaline, my mind reeling from shock. I already knew from my window-escape that I was no lover of heights, but that falling sensation was something entirely different than a simple case of vertigo. It felt like something far more tangible, almost like a...a memory? And even now the echo of those words rang in my ears, with all the detached familiarity of déjà vu...

As my clammy hands brushed across the ground, my fingers connected with something brittle and flimsy, which I at first took to be one of the many leaves which had gathered over time and piled in the corners. But my eyes widened as they beheld, instead, what looked to be the corner of a thin book, which seemed to have been pushed into one of the crevices where the parapet joined the flagstones. Suddenly, the odd dream of the little fox scrabbling for something under the ground rushed back into my head.

Quickly turning onto my knees, I inspected the object more closely. My fingers shook as I began to carefully clear away the dirt and moss in the surrounding cracks until I was able to gently tug it free from its hiding place. It was a little notebook, the sort a woman might keep in her handbag to jot down reminders or record incidental names in. It was bound in what appeared to be cream leather, but was faded to whiteness in places and blotched with mildew.

Carefully, I opened the cover. The notebook was missing most of its pages—except for a few intact at the back, all that remained was a column of tattered paper near the sewn spine, as if they had been roughly torn away.

On the inside of the cover was an ornate book-template, stencilled with the words "PROPERTY OF"  with a line beneath to be filled in by the owner. Upon this line a name was written in faded black ink, in a very pretty, feminine kind of handwriting: "Narcissa C. Malfoy".

Narcissa...I gazed at the name, as fascinated as I had been when inspecting Lucius's dynamic signature. It seemed so absolutely right, suggestive of beautiful and fragile things...easily-bruised pale petals, fair faces reflected in water...How perfectly it fitted that lovely, sad face in the locket under my pillow.

I peered more closely at the fluttering pages which remained attached. My whole body froze as I saw that they were entirely scribbled over with nonsensical words and childish scrawls, almost identical to the marks I had made on the surface of the bathroom mirror, after my horrible encounter with the crow. Had Lucius's wife also fallen victim to The Woman's evil manoeuvres?

There were five remaining pages in total, all completely filled with this indecipherable jargon; except one...the very last page, across which I could make out five torturously written words, smudged and irregular though the letters were...

"...I kN ow...yO u...aR E...Al icE.."

The hairs on my neck stood on end as I stared at the sentence.

...I know you are Alice...

For a long while I sat, stunned to total stillness, unable to break my gaze from those five contorted but clearly legible words.

What could it mean? Was she, Lucius's wife, somehow trying to reach out to me, through the invisible divide of time and—and even death? Could it really be a ghostly message from beyond the grave?...or was it simply the remnant ravings of a mind deranged by grief?...

I tucked the little book inside the sleeve of my nightdress—her nightdress—and slowly stood up. The surreality of the whole situation was disorienting and draining, adding to the sadness and loneliness which gnawed like a rat on my heart. I longed to find comfort and respite in the warmth of human connection, but I was forbidden to seek it from the only person who could give it to me.

Subdued, tired and cold, I made my way back over to the arched entranceway through which I had come. The door itself was closed, but it was only when I approached that I realised there was no doorknob on the outside.

"Damn," I whispered, annoyed at myself for not having thought to check before letting it close behind me. I clawed at the doorjamb, trying to winch it open with my fingernails, but after several minutes all I received for my pains were broken nails, and splinters in my fingertips.

At last I gave up. There was nothing to do but call for help.

"Lucius?!" I called out, hammering on the rough oak, hating to think I might be disturbing him from his sleep. "Lucius, please help me! I'm stuck!" I felt both foolish and frightened, wondering if I might be stuck up here for hours to come. Although the days were generally quite warm now, it would be some time before the atmosphere heated up enough to feel comfortable in it.

I moved back to the east side of the ramparts where I thought Lucius's room faced out upon. Standing on tiptoe, I was just about to try calling out again when a sharp bang made me jump, and the door flew open to reveal the master of the house. Unlike me, he was as fully clothed and impeccably groomed as ever.

"Lucius!" His name tumbled from my lips, and reflexively I took two running steps towards him before stopping myself with a lurch.

Despite the tension that had driven like a wedge between us, there was amusement in his eyes as he beheld my crumpled nightdress, tangled hair and, very probably, the sheepish expression on my face.

"Sleep-walking again, Alice?" he asked me softly.

I merely nodded. But I was aware of something inside me, a kind of fierce, fervent joy that swelled within my heart and made me almost giddy, that he had indeed come to my call of distress, that he was finally speaking to me, acknowledging me, and perhaps not all was quite dead between us, after all.

His lips curved wryly. "You ought to start sleeping in warmer clothes if you intend to make a habit out of it."

"And shoes," I managed to reply, smiling faintly in return.

"Indeed," he murmured, stepping over the threshold and gracefully moving towards me. Somehow the wind, which had so tousled and disordered me, only whisked Lucius's long hair behind his broad shoulders in an elegant stream.

I blushed as his silver eyes moved lightly over my thinly-clad frame, wondering if he was as aware as I was of my nakedness beneath the gossamer-fine fabric of the nightdress.

How typical of you, Alice, I thought. There you are: dishevelled, underdressed and lost. And there's Lucius, immaculate, soigné, and ever to your rescue...

Perhaps sensing my embarrassment, Lucius lifted his gaze and looked about with a kind of contained interest. "I have not been up here for a very long time," he said. "Not since my youth."

"Oh!" Immediately an image of a youthful Lucius sprang into my mind, but the picture was rather unsettling, his silver eyes looking out from the portrait of the young man in the locket. "Then...this is where you grew up? In this house?"

"No," he replied. "It belonged to our family and was used as an occasional retreat." He moved next to me, though he maintained a purposeful distance. He gazed out at the arresting panorama; the clouds were lifting, the wind dying, and a rosy tint diffused over the early morning sky as the first rays of sun spread across it. I had the feeling that he was reliving some old memory...with a pang I wondered if it involved his beautiful wife. Narcissa...

I crossed my wrists, guiltily aware of the notebook hidden in my sleeve. Ought I show it to Lucius? ...But I decided against doing so. For whatever reason, those words had been left for me, I believed I had been led up here to find them, although I could not understand them...yet.

At length Lucius spoke, his voice now quietly meditative. "It is easy to forget that there is a vast world out there, beyond our own limited perspective. We are, as a rule, selfish creatures; wont to think the sun rises only for us."

"...Perhaps each person has their own sun, around which their world revolves," I said, my voice vibrating with the emotions I was struggling to repress. I could not help but look at him as I spoke, the heaviness of my heart was becoming too burdensome, I needed to express something of what I felt or risk being crushed beneath its weight.

Lucius turned and gazed down at me, his eyes iridescent in the glow of the golden sunrise. I could read the question in them, but it was a question too dangerous and too tempting to risk replying to. Resolutely I turned my head and broke off our connection.

For a few moments all was silent. Then Lucius spoke again, in an altered, somewhat resigned tone. "Come, Alice. I'll take you back downstairs." He moved towards me, extending his hand for me to take. I drew quickly back and he shook his head, exasperated by my apparent caprice. "Really, my dear, do you trust me so little?"

No, I thought. I trust myself so little. The mere thought of slipping my cold hand into his large, warm palm made me shake with a strange feverishness.

"I can manage alone," I said, rather too emphatically. "If you'll please open the door, that is."

I began to head towards it, then gasped as a strong hand clamped around my upper arm, quickly followed by the horrible squeezing sensation I had experienced twice before, as if I were being dragged through a tight vacuum. Reflexively I screwed my eyes shut and bit my lip, determined not to cry out this time.

When the sensation passed and my eyelids flickered open, we were both standing in my bedroom, Lucius's hand still firmly encircling my arm, though no other part of him touched me. For that, I was equally thankful and...disappointed. My body yearned for the prohibited closeness and heat of him; cold, tired and dizzy as I was, that craving became almost irresistible.

A kind of thrumming silence entwined us; Lucius's eyes gleamed in such a way I thought he really meant to continue refuting my wishes to "manage alone" and pull me into the embrace I so desperately craved. ...I don't know what I would have done if he had; my defences were hopelessly low, and I doubt I could have found the means to resist him had he decided to test them.

Perhaps it was for this very reason that he did not test my defences. He let go of my arm and took a step back, his expression hardening over and his pupils contracting back to small pinpoints of blackness in their icy silver depths.

"You are very pale," he commented in a dry tone, "and have lost weight, I think." He frowned. "Are you sickening again?"

"No," I said. "I'm just..." I trailed off with a shrug.

...desperately unhappy...dying inside...

He pursed his lips. After a moment he seemed to have reached a resolution. "I apologise, Alice," he said in that same clipped tone. "I had a duty of care, and I allowed it to lapse."

I don't want to be a 'duty', I thought wretchedly, my head sinking to my chest.

I heard a quiet hiss of indrawn breath. I looked up and was confused to see that he was now staring at me oddly, his eyes fixed somewhere above my face, and for a moment I simply stared back in consternation, wondering what it was that had captured his attention. Then suddenly I realised.

With a cry of dismay, I clapped my hand to my head, over the area of shorn hair where The Woman had hacked it off.

"Don't look at me," I gasped, turning quickly away, aghast. "Please, leave—leave me—"

It was the first time Lucius had seen my hair loose; I'd always taken care to keep it tightly plaited in such a way that hid the disfiguring patch; I hated the sight of it so fiercely that I often slept with it that way. But the buffeting wind this morning had unravelled it, and I had completely forgotten... Rushing over to the mirror, I began to comb my fingers through the tangled birds-nest, frantically trying to cover the shorn area and re-secure my plait.

I felt sick, hot, numb; paralysed by the mortifying memory of my total subjection, when—naked, bloodied, bound and broken, stripped of my pride and convinced of my worthlessness—I had been forced to grovel on my knees, to beg for my life...

My fingers didn't seem to work anymore, my hair was a stubborn mass of knots, my eyes were blinded, not by tears but by a white haze of panic. A blurry figure moved behind me in the glass; my hands dropped from my hair to cover my face. I couldn't, I couldn't bear to let him see my humiliation. Not again.

"Go away," I whispered. "Please."

But he didn't go away. Instead I heard him murmur under his breath; a warm serenity washed over me, and all the tension and anxiety flowed from me like an expelling sigh. There was a very strange but painless tingling sensation in my scalp. I did not dare drop my hands or peer through my fingers, but somehow I knew...I could feel...

"You need never hide your face from me, Alice," Lucius said quietly, all the warmth and tenderness restored to his voice. "You do not have any reason to be ashamed. You never did." I heard his steps as he retreated; the door closed shortly afterwards, leaving me alone.

Lowering my hands, I blinked the clarity back into my vision. My hair was as snarled and tangled as ever, but no longer did it bear the evidence of The Woman's vicious, debasing attack upon me. I touched the new-grown lengths wonderingly.

But it was not the impossibility of my regrown hair that filled me with wonder. It was the release of something dark and damaged that I had hardly realised I still carried with me all this time; a deep-seated belief that I was, in fact, perhaps as worthless and unwanted as I had been schooled to believe, not only by my traumatic encounters with The Woman, but by Lucius himself, in the days before my escape.

The wonder I felt was not for his healing works, but for his healing words.

Chapter Text

I returned to bed and slept deeply and dreamlessly for several hours, waking only once to the sound of footsteps passing by in the hallway outside. Vaguely I wondered if Lucius had come in to check on me but I was so tired that this thought barely registered before I returned to the warm sanctuary of oblivion.

Chapter Text

For a long, long while, I stared numbly at the space in the window-pane that Lucius's reflection had filled. All that was left was a dark, closed door. 

Chapter Text

...

I was falling, falling off the edge of the world.

There was no sumptuous room, no flickering firelight, no shadowy bed.

There was only the darkly spinning universe and Lucius...his lips on my lips, his skin against my skin.

I tingled and arched to his slowly-caressing touch, my body pliant as wax in his hands. The sinuous strength and heavy heat of him seemed to enkindle and enflame every part of me, my blood surged around my body and my pulse pounded a wild syncopation against the strong, resounding thud of his heartbeat.

I drank his kisses like wine, inexpertly twining my tongue to his surer, deeper plunges; but rather than quenching, each sweet draft seemed only to make me hotter, thirstier, until I was delirious with need and with desire.

...Is this truly happening? Can this be real?

After so many long months, fraught with discord, the gnawing loneliness and frightening lostness...could I really be entwined in the arms of him, who, in spite of everything, I had fallen in love with? The man who I had once called my captor, whose brutality had marked my body and cruelty scarred my mind—he, who had once trapped me, injured and helpless, on this very same bed, taunting and terrifying me with those insulting, hate-fuelled kisses...never could I have imagined that I would one day return to it willingly... But all was different now; he was a changed man—I, a changed woman; the hate and antagonism, which had spurred that frightening incident so nearly to an irreversible conclusion, no longer existed...now there were only those invisible bonds that wreathed and enlaced us, and the dark world fallen far, far away.

Lucius's arm slid beneath my shoulder blades, pulling me closer as his lips began to sear a path down my neck, my collar-bone, the upward swell of my breast...his breath skimming hotly over my skin, raising goosebumps in the wake of his trailing kisses...I gasped as his tongue flicked across one nipple, while his left hand enclosed the other, his palm rubbing it gently, while his thumb stroked the undercurve of my breast, creating a kind of tightening tension somewhere in my stomach, and a thrumming between my legs. The gasp turned into a moan as Lucius's lips now enclosed the peak, his tongue softly moving and massaging, while his fingers gently pinched the other to corresponding tautness.

...If this is a dream...never, never let me awaken from it...

A tremble ran over me as I felt Lucius's hand begin to slide further downwards, over my ribs, my stomach, resting momentarily on my lower abdomen...and then lower again, his fingers tracing along the edge-seams of my knickers and his thumb now lightly brushing over the lacy fabric, following the barely-concealed line of my sex. His touch was so gentle, so caressing, that I found myself arching to it, my thighs parting and my hips pressing upwards to receive each stroke—but then his fingers dextrously brushed aside and slid beneath the lacy material, and connected with me, the most personal part of me, immediately causing my body to stiffen and my breath to catch.

In the same moment, Lucius unbent his head from my chest, his wide shoulders shifting as he once again sought and claimed my mouth with his, imprinting upon them a kiss that scorched away all encroaching anxiety, his lips slowly moving, his tongue deeply probing, as all-the-while his fingers continued to caress with such skillful, insinuating subtlety that I relaxed and let delirium overtake all else.

"Beautiful..." he murmured hoarsely, his mouth barely lifting from mine, his expression as strange and enigmatic, as burning and intense as it ever was.

As our gazes connected, something within me seemed to stir and shimmer, something far more visceral than the sensations coursing through my body or the elation flooding my mind...but I had no time to try to understand or identify what it was, for Lucius was once more slowly kissing his way down the length of my body, retracing the path already traversed, but this time instead of lingering on my breasts he kept moving down and down towards the place where his fingers wrought their sweet proficiencies.

I was electrified, petrified; desperate for him to stop, fervently wishing him to continue, words of protest over-ruled by gasps of need. My head fell back, my eyes fell shut, and all peripheral thought was crowded out by the sensation of his silken hair spilling over my outer thighs, the faint scratch of his jaw rubbing against the tender inner skin, the hotness and nearness of his breath ghosting over and between those masterful fingers. Then I was crying out, my body arching as he splayed me wide and his lips melded to my sex, his tongue softly flickering into my yielding flesh, as he kissed me there, there, as sweetly and as scorchingly as he had lately kissed my mouth.

Lucius gave no quarter, allowed no resistance; he held me firmly though I weakly struggled against the all-too-saturating pleasure, each lick and lap of his tongue bespeaking his claim and avowing my capitulation, each lingering kiss an indelible and indissoluble writ that he, who had allowed me to spurn him once, would never allow me to do so again... I barely felt his fingers sliding down my thighs, taking the last, lacy item of clothing with them...the darkly-spinning universe seemed somehow to be growing and expanding, I was spiralling upon a crescendo of sensation towards something imperative and unattainable; a plateau of perfect euphoria—and then I was there, on top of the plateau, and it was diamond-bright and blinding, like a sea under full sun; I was born aloft and carried swiftly away, as waves of bliss crashed over me and I felt I might drown in its beautiful, shining depths.

..Seeking some kind of anchor, the fingers of both my hands grasped and bunched in the hair, eliciting a deep growl from him which seemed to vibrate through me as I cried out over and again... then the plateau gave way, the brightness flared and receded; I tumbled dizzily downwards, down into the humming darkness once more...

When my eyes flickered open again, Lucius lay next to me, gazing down at my face, his expression no longer enigmatic. Plainly engraved across those sharp, unearthly features was a kind of hungry, possessive desire which might have frightened me if not for the tenderness also manifest in his iridescent eyes.

"So beautiful..." he repeated in the same, hoarse tone. He reached over to softly brush a curl from my now-damp brow. Then, even more quietly, he added, "...and I, so blind...so cruel..." His fingers trailed over my breathlessly parted lips, then cupped my cheek almost reverently, as if he were compelled yet afraid to touch me. "How could you possibly want...this...want me..."

I closed my eyes again and pressed my cheek to his palm. "I do want you," I whispered. Then, raising my hand reciprocally to his cheek, I looked up into his eyes and again experienced that strange shimmering which vibrated through to the very nucleus of me. "I want you so much it...it hurts, it hurts more than anything you've ever d-done to me, or could possibly do to me. I want you, Lucius...I need you."

I tilted my head to receive his lips, and shivered deliciously as his hand moved down to gently caress my body again. My own hands wandered pleasurably over his smooth, solid chest and shoulders, then down his back—and, with something of a shock of fear and a rush of warmth, I realised that he, too, was naked, though I had not seen him removing his clothes.

Gradually, Lucius's kisses became less lingering and more insistent, his touch less wandering and more sensual, and I could feel a heavy, hot rigidity pressing into my thigh which both alarmed and aroused me. As his hand once more dropped down to nestle between my legs, I pulled back from his kiss and, stammeringly, I said, "I... I want to touch you..."

For a moment, Lucius simply gazed down at me, his eyes dilated and heavy-lidded with desire. Then, slowly, he reached over to cover my hand with his, then guided it downwards to curl around his rigid length. I could not help gasping as I registered the throbbing heat and silken hardness, the heavy substantialness of him—looking down, I saw that my hand did not even properly encircle him.

Then, with his large hand still wrapped around my much-smaller one, Lucius began to slowly pump himself against my palm. I watched, transfixed, a tingle of fearful fascination trembling over me as I tried and failed to imagine how he could possibly fit inside me. A hiss of breath in my ear brought my attention back up to his face; I drank in the evidence of his pleasure, the beautiful flush of colour on his usually-so-pale cheeks, and sheen of exertion on his marble brow, his Adam's apple moving as he shallowly swallowed. His eyes...his eyes...

Suddenly, in a fluid motion, Lucius unfurled my hand from him and pinned it up above my head, his body shifting to move over me, while his other fingers caught my left wrist and pinned it next to my right. As he bent his head to kiss me with deep, fervent plunges of his tongue, his hands unclamped from my wrists, and I felt him reach down between us as his legs parted mine, pressing wide my thighs.

The heavy heat of him aligning himself to me triggered a flood of returning panic. Bringing my hand to his chest, I pushed him back, breaking our fervent kiss. "Wait...Lucius...please..." I whispered.

He stopped immediately. "What is it, my darling?" he murmured. His pupils were dilated to fathomless oceans of silver-ringed blackness.

...'My darling'...he had never called me that before...

He waited patiently as I stuttered out the awkward words sticking in my throat. "I'm... I don't think that I've ever...ever done this before..." Lucius did not reply, but I thought I saw something like astonishment cross his face, and to my dismay I heard myself begin to nervously stammer, "I-I mean, I don't know for certain—that is, I can't be absolutely positive, because—but...but I'm fairly sure...well, I think..."

Slowly, softly, Lucius leaned down to kiss my lips, bringing my ramblings to a stop. Then he lifted his head, his fingers tilted my head up and he gazed searchingly into my eyes. "Do you wish to?" he asked me. "Answer me truly, Alice."

Again the strange synergy between us stirred something deep and restless inside me. I wondered if he felt it too. I took a steadying breath. "Yes," I said solemnly. "Truly. I mean, if you don't mind...that..."

At this, he smiled. "No," he replied, with a slightly sardonic gleam in his eyes. "I don't mind that."

"But, is it...is it...safe? Do we need..." I flushed deeply, "...protection?"

Lucius bent his head, this time to brush my flaming cheek with his lips. "It is safe," he said. "I promise."

I nodded my unspoken trust in him, and noticed a shadow flicker across his face, that same, dark self-detestation that he had worn moments before warning me to go back to the safety of my room. But seconds later it was gone, and there was only the all-consuming, smouldering desire of a man who had found what he wanted within his grasp and had only to reach out and take it. Those recent words echoed through my mind'...I am a flawed man, Alice...I am selfish, avaricious, impatient...'

But what mattered his selfishness, when it matched my desperate need? Why deny him what I so vehemently craved myself?

"I'll try not to hurt you," he said softly, his weight shifting again as he re-aligned himself to me. "But you need to help me. Relax, my darling...try to relax..."

He gritted his teeth and pushed gradually forward, his body trembling with the effort of being careful. But, despite his efforts it did hurt—my breath drew sharply and I bit my lip, trying to stop myself from crying aloud. It hurt, god, it hurt—and yet it was a beautiful thing, the pain, something exquisite and perfectly sublime—

"Please..." I gasped, my fingers clawing into the bedding, "please, Lucius..."

His body tensed and he halted; he thought I was begging him to stop. "No, don't stop!" I whispered urgently, "—please, I want you to—"

For a moment he stared down at me, his eyes glittering with silvery intensity, then he closed them and, brow furrowed with concentration, he surged forward, over me, into me.

I cried out, and for a suspended moment I was overtaken by a deep, throbbing pain inside me—too much, I couldn't—couldn't take this—but then almost in the same second it had peaked and subsided, replaced by a strange but not unpleasant feeling of...I don't know...a kind of pressure and fullness. For some seconds Lucius was quite still, leaning down to softly croon in my ear, "Breathe, Alice...my own, my darling...just breathe...breathe..."

Only then I realised that I was holding in my breath, and I let it go in a shuddering gasp which made Lucius's curtain of hair flutter. I turned my head and pressed my forehead against his quivering bicep, inhaling his opiating scent, and somehow my body seemed to unwind, to stop its protesting resistance, and simply accept.

Slowly, with infinite care, Lucius drew back and then pushed forward again, this time eliciting a small cry from my lips, neither of pain nor pleasure, but an inescapable synthesis of both. The hurt was no longer acute, and was sweetened by other, more pleasant sensations: a bewitching friction, an incredible satiation, and the profound and indescribable connectedness of us.

Tears flowed down my cheeks, but they were not of distress, rather a resurgence of the overwhelming relief I had experienced earlier, when that unbearable barrier between us had finally crumbled and Lucius had folded me to his heart. To be this close was everything. So close that nothing could ever come between us again.

He was so gentle. It was not easy for him, and perhaps somewhat painful too: I felt and saw the exertion of his self-control in the straining of his muscles and tension in his face, I heard his low growl through clenched teeth. He carried his weight so as not to crush me, although the sheer size of his body caused my hip-joints to jar. I clung to his shoulders, my nails digging into the taut skin, my body shaking with the torrent of new sensations...the scorching heat of our fused bodies...the heavy push and dragging pull, deep within the very core of me...the excruciating, wonderful sting of being too-widely stretched, too-deeply filled...perhaps it was too much, after all...

"Am I hurting you, Alice?" Lucius's strained voice brought me back from the frightening inundation that threatened to overpower me.

"No," I gasped. "Yes!...A-a little..."

"Wrap your legs around me, my darling," he said, stilling to let me move. I did as he said, bringing up my trembling legs up and locking my ankles around his strong thighs. Immediately I felt the difference, the angle taking the pressure off my hips and somehow bringing Lucius even deeper, yet more comfortably inside me.

"Now..." He eased back carefully, "...move with me, if you can..."

Slowly, slowly he sunk himself inside me, patiently waiting for me to arch against him before drawing back again. "That's right, darling. Breathe with me...move with me... Again..."

Unhurriedly in...and out...in, and out...I caught his rhythm and was soon moving and responding to each long, leisurely stroke. That winding, tightening sensation was returning to me, tying my stomach in knots, making my channel clench around the intruding thickness. Gradually, as I relaxed, so did he, relinquishing his rigid self-control, developing a steadier rhythm that slowly increased in pace and force, as he began to make surer, deeper plunges, filling me more fully than I had ever imagined possible, the friction making me writhe and press up to him, my mouth spilling out gasps and moans, in duet to Lucius's deeper litany of tenderness and reassurance.

My ankles unhooked from Lucius's thighs and raised to clamp around his lower back, the tilting of my hips bringing him deeper again, and causing his pelvic bone to rhythmically rub against the most sensitive part of me, making me cry out as he plunged harder, deeper, quicker, pounding into me with long, full thrusts that brought me careering dangerously close to that slender precipice between agony and ecstasy... then the world was quaking and on fire, the stars were falling down around me—or perhaps I was falling, falling upwards into heaven—and I was crying out his name. Beseeching, invoking, requiring, again, again, and yet again.

As my channel frantically fluttered around his stretching, filling thrusts, Lucius captured and entwined my fingers with his, bringing my hands up to either side of my head, then he bent down and plunged his tongue into my panting mouth, and I felt a shudder run through his whole body. With a low groan, he heaved heavily forward; I felt his length spasm inside me, and there was a spurting, viscous warmth that seemed to seal us even more tightly together, as we both came to sweet, shuddering completion.

And in that moment there was a rush of crackling energy; a shimmering light momentarily swarmed over and around us, bathing us and the entire room in a beautiful, silvery glow...

Or perhaps it was only the moon, briefly breaking from her shroud of dark clouds, for when I blinked the light was gone, and all was as dark and dizzy as before.

Chapter Text

...

That night I went to sleep, enfolded in the arms of my lover. The following morning, I awoke alone.

As my eyelids flickered open, I did not wonder where I was, or if last night had all been some incredible, wonderful dream. I still tingled with his touch, his taste. My body ached, but the soreness was sweetly mitigated in remembering the pleasure that had occasioned it. His scent was everywhere, on the soft, deep pillows on which I laid my cheek, on the unfamiliar quilt that was so heavy I could barely move beneath its weight.

"Lucius?"

I slowly sat up, bunching the sheets around my torso. The room was hushed and the dark forest-green curtains now closed, keeping at bay what promised to be a bright morning. The green-tinted daylight made me feel as if I were in some enchanted, underwater cave.

I realised I was alone. I supposed Lucius had woken early and did not wish to disturb me, but nevertheless I experienced a pang of disappointment and even slight anxiousness. But a moment later my eye was caught by something on the pillow beside me. It was a single, thornless, white rose.

Smiling, I picked up the beautiful flower and breathed in its delicate scent. There was no message attached, but it seemed message enough.

I sank back down into the deep pillows, overcome by a languid, luxurious kind of happiness. My eyelids closed and the smile on my lips remained. I could not remember having ever felt so serene, so content. For now I knew, knew beyond any shadow of doubt, that I was not only wanted and desired, but loved. He loved me.

I daydreamed a little longer, indulgently dwelling on the exquisite minutiae of the previous night, blushing at the sensuous memories, while constructing a pleasantly indistinct narrative for the future...Lucius and I, learning to trust in our love for each other... him, eventually helping me to regain my memories; I, slowly helping him to dispel his past demons...the light of love strengthening and securing those chains first forged in the darkness...

It would take time, I knew that. But it would surely happen.

I became restless to see him again. I sat up, this time pushing back the heavy sheets from my body. I slid to the edge and climbed out, my feet encountering the thick, plush rug on which the bed stood. A hasty inspection revealed a stripe of dried blood on each inner thigh. Suddenly self-conscious, and afraid to be seen naked in the light of day, I sought about for something to cover myself with.

I found my nightdress on the arm of the couch, and hurriedly slipped it on. As the aroma of sweet-herbs gently billowed around me, I couldn't help wondering if he had noticed it last night, and been reminded...

A beam of infiltrating sunlight glanced off one of the long wall mirrors and I moved towards it. I wondered if I looked somehow different. Perhaps Alice would be gone, thawed quite away by Lucius's burning touch, and the real me would be standing there, only waiting to meet my eyes to reveal to me the secrets of my shadow-fallen past ... But no. If anything, I looked even less like someone I recognised. Flushed, glowing, tousle-haired, starry-eyed. Who was this young woman, with a secret smile curving her kiss-chafed lips? Was she me? Or was she Alice?

For a few seconds I stood still, overcome by a sudden and intense feeling of displacement.

What was she—Alice—I—doing here, in this sumptuous, forbidden room? What right had I to feel so happy, when the woman whose husband had taken me to his bed, had suffered such terrible grief that it had ended her life? ...I thought of the beautiful face in the silver locket under my pillow. What would she have to say about it, if she could?

I shivered and moved back to the bed. Picking up the rose, I sank down to sit on the quilt and stared about me. A strange dual narrative played in my mind, of those two separate occasions which had brought me here.

...There was the wardrobe, which, in a fever of rebelliousness and pain, I had rifled through and donned sundry of its contents. There was the bureau drawer where I had discovered the bird-skull pendant and the moving photo, moments before Lucius had slammed it shut on my fingers. There was the tall dresser against which he trapped and stripped me, before dragging me over to his bed to terrorise and humiliate me with his brutal, mocking kisses...

And yet, there, too, just by the door, was the place that Lucius had kissed me last night, but this time with deep and passionate fervour. There was the couch, where I had stood before him, naked and trembling, in the low, flickering light of the fireplace, and where he had scooped me into his arms and carried me over to that very same bed, not with force or violence, but with utmost tenderness, laying me gently down upon its deep, quilted cover...

I twirled the delicate, slender stalk of the rose slowly in my fingers, then lifted it again to inhale its sweet scent. Another memory sifted to the surface of my thoughts, one of dagger-like rose-thorns tearing into my skin as I scaled the walls of my prison. ...Funny how something so beautiful could, in another context, be so cruel. ...But perhaps all life was made up of such strange symmetry, a mysterious tapestry woven in equal threads of darkness and light, fear and joy, pain and pleasure. Of hate and love.

...

I waited a while longer, but still Lucius did not appear.

Briefly, I wondered if I should take the opportunity to look inside the bureau, perhaps glimpse the moving newspaper-photo again and read the article beneath. ...But I could not bring myself to do it. It wasn't fear which held me back, for I did not truly believe that Lucius would punish me for a repeat of that transgression. It was the breaching of trust, which put a stopper upon my curiosity. Trust could not be a one-sided thing; to gain, I must earn. Then, when the time was right, I would simply ask him to show me.

Eventually, I decided to go back to my room to bathe and change.

I took longer than usual to select my clothes. Perhaps it was foolish, but I wished to find something special, something which somehow expressed how special I felt. Of course, all the garments were breathtakingly lovely, but I wanted to find one which suited me, and did not altogether make me feel like a scrawny sparrow borrowing the elegant plumes of a dove. Something that perhaps would make Lucius's eyes light up and his smile soften when he saw me.

My gaze was drawn to one of the few gowns which was not green, but rather a soft shade of antique-rose. I brought it out into the light, and was filled with a sense of reverence for something so delicate and ethereal. Unlike the medieval design of the cambric dress I usually wore, this seemed closer to something from the Regency era; having a high, Empire waist, a neckline cut wide and low, and skirts made from layers of some impossibly-gauzy material which felt almost weightless in my fingers. Tiny gold roses, exquisitely embroidered in thread as fine as spider's lace, shimmered across the bodice, and at the scalloped hem of the skirt.

As soon as I stepped into the dress, I felt it was right. My reflection in the mirror confirmed it. The gentle, rosy blush of the fabric complimented the natural warmth of my skin-tone, while the muted colour made a flattering contrast to my hair, making it appear glossier, darker, and—with its new-grown lengths—more lustrous. The golden embroidery seemed to emphasise the tawny lights in my eyes, adding an aureate glow to their new-lit radiance.

I took the white rose and nestled it behind one ear.

I felt special, and...yes...even beautiful. I believed that Lucius would think so too.

...

The dining-room door stood ajar, and I pressed it open, hesitating on the threshold to peer inside.

At first glance the room seemed empty. It was dark and still, the heavy curtains closed and excluding most of the morning light. The mahogany table stood unlaid and bare. I thought that Lucius must've gone to the terrace—but seconds later I realised he was standing on the far side of the room, facing the hearth.

He was wearing a floor-length black cloak that seemed to meld into the surrounding shadows. Usually he favoured morning suits early in the day, and I wondered if perhaps he had received another summons from his case-workers, and was preparing to travel. It would explain why he had risen earlier than I.

Apparently he was deep in thought, and had not heard me enter.

Quietly closing the door, I moved into the middle of the room. My heartbeat was fluttering pleasantly and I could feel a blush spreading over my cheeks. I wished to go to him, to throw my arms around him, and receive once more his ardent touch and beguiling kisses, but a sudden self-consciousness—at the memory of our intimacy, at my choice of dress, at...at...everything—kept me somewhat bashfully at bay. Nervously, I smoothed down the diaphanous folds of material, feeling a little tongue-tied. But I was too happy to be flustered into total silence. "Good morning," I said softly, smiling as I waited for him to turn.

He did not turn. He did not so much as move a muscle to indicate having heard me, and I began to wonder if I had spoken too quietly. I was about to repeat my greeting when he finally spoke. "Good morning, Alice."

An odd chill, like a single drop of cold water, tingled on my nape and slipped slowly down my spine. I couldn't quite make out the tone of his voice, it sounded so strange...so hollow.

It must be the echo of the fireplace, I thought, making him sound like that.

I stood uncertainly where I was, wondering what next to do or say.

Then I saw his shoulders lift in an elegant shrug, and he turned to face me.

I was not prepared for the ice in his eyes. It froze me in place, so I could not move or speak, but only stare mutely at him. In the dimness his face had a deathly, bone-white pallor, his cheekbones as sharp as shards in the falling shadows. His gaze swept me from head to toe, but instead of the admiration I had hoped—even expected—to enkindle, there was only glittering hardness.

"L-Lucius?" I heard myself stammer.

He made a slight bow. "As you see."

There was no sardonic smile, no sarcastic sneer. Just ice.

Still I stared. I wondered if I had not woken up. Perhaps it had all been a pleasant day-dream, just now starting to curdle into one of my all-too-frequent nightmares.

"Wh-what is the matter?" I gasped. "Why are you looking at me like..."

"Like?"

"Like that." My heart began a heavy, painful hammering. "I don't understand."

Leisurely, gracefully, he started moving towards me, his eyes trained to mine in an unblinking stare. "Don't you?"

He came to a stop within touching distance, standing straight to his full, imposing height. I felt no fear, though he towered over me. His presence, his stature, his scent—these were all so familiar now, that I was physically comforted rather than cowed by his proximity.

But my mind was a chaos of confusion.

Was he playing a terrible joke on me? I clutched at this theory as at straws, and tried to summon a smile. It quivered momentarily on my lips, and died as he bent down to murmur, "Don't tell me you've already forgotten last night?"

I was finding it difficult to breathe, let alone to speak. "No, of course not." I said. Then, stutteringly, "We...we... m-m-made—"

"Made love? Is that what you were going to say?"

I couldn't reply; I only looked at him with mute supplication, desperately seeking some warmth, some protection from the icy wasteland of his eyes.

Yes, we made love. ...Didn't we?

His hands lifted to cup my face, his thumbs gently stroking the planes of my blood-forsaken cheeks. His touch was so warm, so caressing, that I momentarily closed my eyes and allowed myself to be lulled. But when I opened them again, there was nowhere to hide from his arctic gaze. "You were such a willing little whore," he murmured.

I physically recoiled with revulsion and disbelief. "What?"

At last he smiled, but it was full of cruel contempt. "Do you deny coming to my bed willingly?"

I could only stare at him, paralysed with rising horror.

"Come now: you didn't think it was anything more than that, did you? You don't imagine a pureblood could ever care for a mudblood, do you?" The word, softly-spoken though it was, stabbed horribly at my heart. It had been so long since he had last called me that hateful term, I had truly never thought to hear it again. "No, indeed," he continued mercilessly, "to make love implies some measure of mutual feeling, or at least mutual respect, impossible between a pureblood and a base-born inferior. He may make use of her easily-corrupted nature for his pleasure, of course. But love...love is...quite out of the question, I'm afraid."

His words poured over me like dry-ice, burning, freezing, withering away the life-source within me until I felt but an exsiccated husk; one touch away from crumbling into nothingness.

"No," I whispered. "It's not true..."

"Oh, then you weren't willing? You think, perhaps, you are a victim?"

"A v-victim? Of who?"

"Of me, you little fool." His lip curled at the blank confusion in my face. "Need I spell it out for you, Alice? If you didn't come willingly to my bed, then it must have been rape."

That horrible word, so laden with history between us, made my stomach churn sickeningly.

"So which is it, mudblood?—I shall let you decide. Are you my victim, or my whore?"

I turned, stumbling blindly away, but his fingers clamped around my wrist, pulling me back, his arms encircling and trapping me against him. "Where are you going, my pretty little whore?" he murmured softly in my ear, stroking my hair in a horrible parody of tenderness. "I haven't finished with you yet."

"Stop it," I said flatly, without conviction or force. It was as if all energy had drained out of me, along with all happiness.

He grasped a fistful of my hair and twisted, pulling my head back to bare my neck with one hand, caressing it softly with the other. I felt the white rose dislodge from behind my ear and tumble to the floor.

"Stop it," I repeated dully. My body was limp, my mind blank. If not for his tight embrace, I should have fallen to the floor, like the rose. I had no spirit, no will, to fight him. There was no stamina for anguish or despair. I just wanted to die.

I heard the crunch of the flower being crushed beneath boots, and vaguely I registered that Lucius was pushing me backwards. I recalled that night, when he had waltzed me around this same room, to the amused giggles of his beautiful "guest". Then, I had resisted and defied him. ...Why couldn't I do so now? ...But resistance and defiance required anger, and anger was a hot emotion. I didn't have any heat. My heart was a frozen glacier, off which my veins coursed cold rivers.

My back struck something solid; seconds later I was sprawled across the mahogany table, crushed beneath Lucius's body-weight, my wrists trapped by his hands and pinned above my head.

He smiled down at me, evidently amused by my silent prostration. "Is that all it takes to break you, mudblood? One night, to entirely master you?" I could feel his arousal pressing against my stomach, and bile burned in my throat.

...He really is going to rape me this time, I thought emptily. He...he really does hate me.

Lucius bent his head, his mouth so close to mine I could feel his breath brush my lips. "You're mine, now, aren't you?" he murmured. "Mine to take. ...Mine to break. ...Mine to throw away. ...I could do anything to you now, couldn't I, little worm?"

A heartbeat. A blink.

Little worm...

A shuddering gasp.

(...Little worm...)

And then a crashing tidal-wave of realisation and relief.

Not him. It wasn't him. It wasn't Lucius.

It was Her.

White-hot fury blazed through me, restoring the heat to my blood, the life to my limbs. I began to struggle and kick for all I was worth. Gulping a huge lungful of air, I screamed at the top of my voice.

"LET ME GO, YOU BITCH!"

The man—or rather, the demon—grinned down at me. Still gripping my wrists, he threw back his head and shook his white-blond tresses, his eyes momentarily rolling back in his head. When he looked down at me again, the silver eyes were now gleaming dark lodestones.

It was Lucius, yet not him; a diabolical, onyx-eyed twin.

"Oh, but I was just starting to enjoy myself," he—she—it—said. Its voice was terrifying: a hellish hybrid between Lucius's silken baritone, and the Woman's chiming descant. "You're rather delectable when your spirit is broken. I can't begin to imagine why Luci took so long to finally bed you." So saying, the demonic doppelgänger let go of my wrists and, gripping the neckline of my dress, rent the delicate material with its fists, exposing my chest to its gloating gaze.

I threw my hands up to try to scratch at those heinous black eyes, but my attacker swatted them away like flies. "Careful with your claws, darling..." it growled, "...or I shall pluck them out."

Now the first rush of rage was receding, a new emotion threatened to overtake me: sheer terror. My left arm had gone dead, except for the tingle of welts beginning to rise on my skin. I knew that burning agony would soon follow. Desperately, I screamed again, but this time I could hear the naked fear in my voice. "Let me go!"

The fiend laughed, and I shuddered at the sound of the Woman's girlish giggle filtered through Lucius's deep voice. "Do calm down, mudblood. You don't really suppose I would sully myself with you? Although, I own, it was rather fun to watch..." My horrified gasp inspired another laugh. "Oh, yes, Lucius showed me every disgusting, delightful little detail. Not that he had any choice. The selfish boy would keep it all to himself, but I made him share like a good brother."

Brother? Could it be possible? "Where is he?" I cried. "What did you do to him? Lucius!? LUCIUS!"

"Really, mudblood," the mocking voice rejoined, "there's no need to scream down the house. He's right here, you know."

Hauling me suddenly to my feet, the doppelgänger spun me about, pulling me backwards against its chest. The large fingers of its left hand clamped about my neck like a collar. Then it lifted its right arm and made a gesture at a place in the middle of the floor, muttering a single word in some foreign-sounding tongue:"Revelio."

It was as if an invisible curtain had been drawn aside. Where before there was nothing but polished floorboards, now there appeared a figure, on his knees, bound by what could only be described as slithering ropes...ropes of live, dark energy, which crackled and sparked as they twisted and twined about him. His face was deathly-pale and he gazed at me with something like despair in his silver eyes. With a cry of horror, I saw that his lips were stitched shut with a zigzagging line of black thread, although I could not see any blood.

"Lucius!" Desperately I struggled, but the thing holding me only tightened its grip on my throat, making me choke.

"Ah-ah-ah, little worm," it hissed in my ear, in its demonic, dual-tone voice. "Patience is a virtue, you know."

"What have you done to him?" I sobbed. "Let him go! Please! PLEASE!"

"Ah, how prettily you beg..." I shuddered with disgust as the doppelgänger's free hand enclosed upon my left breast, moulding with its palm and caressing with its fingers. The real Lucius—my Lucius—jerked wildly against his bonds, his face contorting with helpless rage, his silver eyes smouldering and a vein throbbing in his brow.

"I do wish you could feel the little mudblood's heartbeat, Luci," my captor addressed him tauntingly. "Drumming like a quivering rabbit's. So young...so beautifully alive... Such a shame that it won't be for much longer..."

Suddenly I was flung to the floor, so violently that, in trying to catch myself, I felt both wrists sprain painfully on impact.

When I next looked up, Lucius's dark twin was gone, and in its place stood The Woman; smaller in size, yet somehow infinitely more monstrous; as lovely and loathsome as ever in her black-feathered ball gown.

"Now..." she said in her sweet, bell-like voice. "We're all going to have a little fun."

Chapter Text

...

I scrabbled on my hands and knees to where Lucius knelt, filled with horror at his sewn lips and the ropes slithering like black eels about his bare chest. He shook his head at me, warning me not to approach, but I was desperate, maddened, to go to him, to somehow free him.

Staggering to stand, I grasped a rope encircling his neck, and tugged it with both hands as hard as I could. There was a sizzling noise and I shrieked in agony, letting go and stumbling backwards. I heard the Woman giggling as I stared down at my palms and fingers, welting and blistering as if I had pressed them upon a hot stove-top.

"I'm sorry!" I gasped, cradling my shaking hands against my own exposed torso. "I'm s-sorry!"

"Why on earth should you apologise to him, mudblood?" the Woman asked in a playfully-puzzled voice. "He's the one who broke his word. Remember how he told you he could look after himself? How he promised he'd look after you? ...Well, I hate to break it to you, but he was quite wrong on both counts."

She waved her hand gracefully, and one of the heavy fire-side chairs scraped heavily across the floorboards, coming to stop beside her in the middle of the dining-room. The Woman dropped down into it, assuming a carelessly-elegant aspect, her booted feet neatly crossed at the ankles, like a spectator waiting for a pantomime to begin.

"...It's rather typical of a man, isn't it?" she continued, resting her lovely chin on one ivory hand and regarding us both with leisurely amusement. "Despite what they would have you believe, it is men who are really the weaker sex. They labour under a great misapprehension: that their physical advantage must equate to a superiority of mind. In actuality, it only serves to inflate their egos, and ill-prepares them for the moment when a woman wages war against them." She arched a taunting eyebrow at Lucius. "Isn't that right, my loving brother? Didn't you sadly misjudge your powers against mine?"

Lucius violently thrashed against his bonds again, his muscles convulsing, the tendons in his neck straining.

The Woman seemed only the-more amused. She tutted mockingly. "Ah...such impotent rage. Is it because I speak the truth? You know, it really is a pitiful thing, how easily a woman can manipulate a man, through his ingrained sense of mastery over her. All she need do, is pretend to fear and admire him in equal parts—to simper at his gallantry and tremble at his displeasure—and he is like putty in her hands."

Suddenly bending her diabolic black gaze upon me, she beckoned me with a curl of one finger. I shrieked as a powerful magnetic energy dragged me, like the chair, across the floor towards her, throwing me to the ground at her feet with such force that my forehead violently struck the hard-wood floorboards. Head reeling and hands burning, I lay, panting and prone on the floor, limp and dizzy with pain.

"As for you, little darling," I heard her murmur softly, as she prodded my chest with one of her sharp-pointed boots, "...you didn't need to pretend, did you? You've been like a poor, beaten spaniel, ready to lick the boot that kicked you, since the moment you first arrived. I don't suppose any man could have resisted such a delectable display of reluctant submission, slaves as they are to their carnal instincts. ...I'll say this for you, Luci, you held out much longer than expected. Your self-control is almost—almost—laudable, given it is not a strong suit of yours. Indeed, I really thought you might buckle that very first night, when Miss Mudblood fainted in your arms so charmingly. I know it crossed your mind."

Dully, through a dark fog of dizziness, I recalled the painting that hissed at me on the night of my arrival. Had those snake eyes belonged, not to the 'Sidonia Slytherin' in the portrait, but to Her?

"It was ever so entertaining," she continued, "watching you struggle against the impulse to violently avenge yourself, there, on the hallway floor, like a common ruffian. Remember how you tore her dress? How you put your hands around her throat? (You didn't know that, did you, little worm?) ...But your good breeding—or was it your pride?—got the better of you that time, didn't it, brother-mine?" She gave a contented little sigh. "I'm ever so glad. This would not be half so much fun, if you hadn't gone and fallen in love with the little bitch."

Blinking vision back into my eyes, I saw Lucius's gaze levelled to hers, his narrowed eyes burning with a white-hot fury. If such a look had been directed at me, I would have shied from it in terror, but the Woman merely laughed. "Now, now, Lucius, there's no need to put yourself in a pet. Just because you don't like the truth, doesn't make it any less true. ...Ah, how enraged you are! You look as if you should like to murder me, and we've barely even started! ...But that only proves my point, you know. Men are all brag and bravado, storming and brandishing their wands—whilst we women bide our time quietly, and strike but once, when we know the curse will be fatal."

I flinched as her boot moved up to my throat, the point stabbing into the soft flesh under my chin. "Oh yes..." she said, gazing down at me, although still speaking to Lucius, "...it is we women who play the longer, deeper game... Even our little worm here refused to acquiesce to you, until she had you grovelling on your knees. Which puts me in a rather curious position of respecting her, more than I do you." A horrible, tender smile curved her ruby lips. "Don't let it go to your head, darling," she whispered to me. As she smiled, I was disorientingly reminded of the beautiful woman in the locket, and something clicked. The Woman wasn't Lucius's sister, she was his wife's sister. I should have seen it before: it was almost like comparing a black-and-white photo with its negative.

I was so distracted that at first I did not notice her gaze begin to penetrate the periphery of my mind. Only when I became aware of a strange sifting sensation, like tentacles softly shuffling through my memories, did I realise what she was doing. A shuddering breath expelled from my lips and I jerked my head to one side, breaking off her intrusive stare. "Get out!" I whispered fiercely.

"Oh, come now, sweetie, I only wanted a little peek," she said with a teasing pout. "Just one or two juicy little details, to satisfy my curiosity. Did it hurt very much, when he took you?" She sighed. "...I remember my first time; a girl always does, of course. I'm sorry to say my husband was rather rough with me. He didn't know the first thing about pleasing or preparing a woman; nor did he care. I was younger than you, mudblood, and I barely knew him..." Her gaze detached and a slow smile spread over her face, as if indulging some nostalgic reminiscence. "The brute made me bleed quite badly," she mused, "...but I returned the favour in kind." Her fingers flexed and her vicious, talon-like nails drummed upon the arms of the chair.

After a moment, she shook her glossy black curls and her obsidian eyes fastened upon me again. "But you...you had quite the enjoyable experience, didn't you? He was so gentle, so chivalrous with you. It really is enough to make one sick to contemplate. Of course, I never doubted it would happen eventually. Men are such predictable creatures. Throw a helpless girl into a man's clutches, and a thousand times to one, he will either ravish, seduce, or fall in love with her. And sometimes," she added with a little yawn, "he will do all three."

She leant back in the chair, the toe of her laced boot still digging into my throat, the heel uncomfortably pressing my collar bone. "Cissy must be rolling in her unmarked grave," she said. "Just imagine, one's own husband fucking a mudblood, when one is barely cold in the ground! What a cheap desecration of twenty years of marriage...it really is too, too bad."

As she commenced this taunting speech, her skirts fractionally shifted, and there was a glint of silver at her ankle.

My breath caught. It was her dagger. I was sure of it.

In the single blink of an eye, my mind was crowded with countless thoughts, possibilities, consequences. Grab the knife. Jump up and plunge it in her heart. Simple. But nothing is ever simple. What if the knife won't come out of her boot? What if I miss her heart? Maybe she has no heart. Then what? What happens to me, to Lucius, if I try and fail?

...What happens to us if I don't try?

She will kill us. We will die.  There is nothing to lose, Alice!

I lunged for the dagger, barely noticing the pain of my burnt fingers as I gripped the handle and wrenched it upward, pulling it free. Rolling over, I threw myself toward her with a screech of determination, aiming the knife for the exposed upper swell of her alabaster breast.

A burst of light blinded me, there was an explosion of pain in my forehead like the strike of a hammer, and I reeled backwards, into blackness.

...Pain took me away from myself, and pain escorted me back again, drilling down into my skull, throbbing through my hands and shooting up my arms. The rest of me felt heavy, immobile, a block of wood nailed to the floor.

There was a cheerful, tuneful humming from somewhere above me. So, I had not killed her, then. So, she had not killed me.

"Wakey, wakey, little wormy."

A playful slap to my cheek. My eyes blinked reluctantly open. I was lying face-up, my arms stretched out, and She was kneeling over me, smiling down into my face.

"Ah, there it is!" she said. "You're missing all the fun, darling. I've just finished." She held something before my eyes, so close that it took me some moments to focus upon it. It was her dagger, and the silver blade was covered with blood. A large bead pooled upon the point, then slowly dripped onto my cheek. It was warm.

With a rustle of silk and feathers, she stood up, looking me over appraisingly. "Much better," she said. "See, Luci? I've added some more decoration, just for you."

There was an excruciating, burning rawness in my right arm, the exposed pain of a newly-inflicted wound.

I didn't want to look, I didn't want to know. But I had to. Turning my head to the right, I beheld the red-stained sleeve of my dress bunched up above my elbow, revealing a row of large, jagged letters spanning the length of my inner forearm, smeared and oozing with fresh blood.

W-H-O-R-E

I stared at it, comprehension fighting with disbelief. In some strange way, the absolute monstrosity of that word numbed me, dulling the pain. I turned my head the other way and discovered that I was now lying quite closely to Lucius, in fact only a few feet away. He looked ill, his skin as white and lustreless as chalk, his eyes fixed stonily ahead.

"It doesn't matter," I said in an odd, flat tone. "I don't care." But he did not respond.

The Woman advanced to where Lucius knelt, smiling down at him.

"Did you hear that, Lucius?" she murmured in a conspiratorial tone. "The mudblood doesn't care. But you care, don't you? You care ever so much." Her head tilted thoughtfully. "What's worse, I wonder?—That you cannot defend yourself, or that you cannot protect her?" She reached out to stroke a tendril of his hair back from his temple; he did not flinch, but his sewn lips pressed in a hard line. "...It's so humiliating to lose your powers, isn't it? To be as weak and worthless as a little muggle whelp. Believe me, I know what it's like. After the Weasley sow cursed me, I could not even Accio a crow's-quill for a year."

She began to circle him, taking slow, predatory steps as she spoke.

"At least my sacrifice meant something," she said. "At least I believed in my cause, and was loyal unto the very last. But you...you always took the coward's path, didn't you?" Her lip curled with contempt. "Using your gold coins and your silver tongue to curry favour with whomever held the whip-hand. Oh, yes: the only conviction you ever subscribed to was the Preservation of Lucius Abraxas Malfoy and his glittering empire. ...But it was all for nothing, wasn't it? You still lost everything. Your wife, your son, your career, your home..." She glanced over to where I lay on the floor. "And now you've lost your power, too." She laughed. "The funniest thing about it all is, you have no-one to blame but yourself. It's one of the first lessons we learn as children, isn't it, brother-dear?" In a childish tone she chanted,

"If one plays with cursed ob-jects,
One will end up hurt or hexed!"

I knew she was talking about me. I was the cursed object.

"Do you want to know something else that's terribly funny, Lucius? How needlessly cruel you were to your precious little mudblood. She was so very convenient a target for your blind rage. First, you blamed her for darling Draco's tragic death, then for Cissy's oh-so-pathetic demise. But it wasn't really her fault they died, after all." She came to a standstill behind him. Leaning in, eyes shining diabolically, she murmured, "It...was...mine."

For a moment, Lucius became deathly-still, as if her words were a paralytic venom poured into his ear. Suddenly his face contorted, his body arched, and he began to thrash with frantic violence, struggling and writhing against his bonds, until his hair clung to his face and neck with sweat, and his chest heaved erratically with exertion. Then all at once the fight seemed to drain from him, his shoulders slumped forwards, and his head bowed to his chest in defeat.

The Woman tsk'd mockingly, then moved back to resume her seat.

"If only you could see yourself," she said after regarding him for a moment. "So gloriously pitiful. I've waited so long to see you break, and I want to do it properly. After all, it was really all your fault we lost the war. Your incompetence and Cissy's betrayal. You deserved to lose everything, both of you—not least your worthless lives. Imagine my chagrin, when I returned to discover that not only were you alive and well, but you had slithered your way out of punishment, once again! That my nephew had turned muggle-loving blood-traitor! He even saved the little worm's life, did you know that? She would have fallen to her death, if he hadn't heroically swooped in to the rescue..."

At this mention, I recalled that recurring image, of tumbling down and down, of a hand reaching out to catch mine, and the echo of words, "Hold on to me..." So, those grey eyes had indeed belonged to Lucius's son...

"I was there that day, watching from the treetops," the Woman continued. "That's all I could do for a long, long time. Just watch, and wait, and plan how I was going to destroy your lives, as you had so thoroughly destroyed mine. I can't tell you how much satisfaction I derived when I finally had the chance to kill two birds with one stone. Cissy's little mummy's-boy and the Weasley sow's ugly brat! I was even there at Draco's burial, Lucius. I had a lovely view from the old oak by the Malfoy mausoleum. The funeral rites were ever so touching. ...I remember it was snowing, and your faces were just as perfectly white. I knew it wouldn't take much to finish Cissy off after that. I visited her regularly, you know. I always made sure to bring a gift: a nice, vivid dream for her to dwell on. My favourite was her darling son, being eaten alive by maggots. Remember how she would wake up screaming? How she would beg you to exhume his body?" She gave a short, cruel chuckle. "It wasn't long before she was afraid to go to sleep. And once someone stops sleeping altogether, it's really only a matter of time before they shrivel up and die...or, better yet, kill themselves."

There was a pause, then with a little gasp of mock-surprise, the Woman said, "Oh dear, you - you're not crying, are you, Lucius?"

From my place on the floor, I could see the moisture dripping down his cheeks and onto his bare chest. If I could have moved, not even the scorching heat of the black ropes would have prevented me from throwing my bleeding arms around him.

But I couldn't move. All I could do was choke out a few strangled, futile words. "Please, stop it." My own tears trailed wet warmth down each temple. "Please."

"Begging again, Little Miss Mudblood Whore?" she said airily. "Since trying to kill me didn't work, you thought perhaps that asking nicely might do the trick?" She regarded me with her horrible swivelling-black gaze. "You know, don't you darling, that this isn't about you? It never has been. You are nothing more than an object of which Lucius and I have both made our uses. He has used you as a plaything, for his vindictive amusement and selfish pleasure. Whereas I... I shall use you as a tool, to mete out his punishment and pain." She smiled. Then, straightening up, she clapped her hands sharply, twice. "But first things, first!" Holding out her left hand as if ready to receive something, she called loudly, "Accio necklace!"

Seconds later, a glinting object flew through the door and into her waiting palm. With one long, curved nail, she lifted up what proved to be a silver chain, from which dangled a small pendant. Although I could barely see it in the gloomy darkness of the room, I knew that it was the bird-skull necklace which Lucius had ripped off my neck, the evening of my arrival. The same one I had glimpsed in his bureau six weeks later, moments before he had slammed the drawer on my fingers.

She stared intently at it. "Ah, how I've missed this pretty piece," she said. "But of course, it had to stay close to you, mudblood, for the charm to stay as strong as it did." She turned and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "I think I'll take it back now, if you don't mind...but we had better empty it out first, hadn't we?"

She closed in, and I could feel my prone body quaking in response to her nearing proximity, though I could not physically recoil from her.

"No!" I cried out. "Don't!"

She stood over me, the necklace still dangling from her talon-like fingernail. "Don't what, little worm? You want to remember, don't you? After all, you're going to die very soon...don't you want to know the truth first?"

There was a moment of strange stillness, as if my heart had abruptly stopped its savage beating, and my breath had died in my lungs. All was silent, within and without me, except the echo of that question—You want to remember, don't you?—reverberating around the great empty chasm in my mind, where my memory used to belong.

My eyes fixed with fascination and terror upon the silver pendant, swinging slowly above my face. I could not even hear my own voice as it left my trembling lips. "I...I...don't know..." I whispered. Then, slipping from my mouth on a shuddering breath: "...Yes."

And the silence fell away. My heart resumed its heavy drumming, I could hear the shallow, puffing gasps I was making.

A condescending smile curved her mouth, like one might give a stupid child. "But of course you do. It's all you've ever wanted, since the moment I ripped your memories out of your swotty little head. Although, going by his expression, I'm afraid our dear Luci is not quite so enthusiastic about the idea. Oh! I can hardly wait to see the look on your face! I wonder with whom you will be more disgusted: him, or yourself. Perhaps Lucius will even have the decency to be ashamed of himself. ...I shall hardly know which of you to look at."

She made an elegant swiping motion of her hand, and I felt the muscles of my body spasm as they were released from their invisible bonds. "On your knees, mudblood," she murmured.

I obeyed her with difficulty, shaking badly, the room swaying as I sat up and turned to kneel. I could not bring myself to look at Lucius, afraid of what I might see in his eyes, so I kept my own glued to the empty sockets of the little silver bird-skull. Could such a small thing really contain an entire life's-worth of memories?

The Woman bent forward, tilting my face upward with her right hand, and my eyes were drawn as if by magnets to meet the black void of her gaze. "You had such a wonderful experience being deflowered by your handsome, mysterious inamorato," she said softly. "It was like a dream, wasn't it? You, so helplessly besotted. Him, so tender and gentle." She sighed, the ice of her breath swept over my cheek, raising a prickle of goosebumps over my skin. "However, I doubt you'll find it quite so enchanting, once you discover who he really is."

"You're wrong," I whispered. "I love him. Nothing can change that."

She laughed at this. "Oh, sweetie. I'll remind you of those words, a little later on." Straightening, she held up the pendant to hover between my eyes. "Now, whatever you do...don't move."

She began to make a series of mesmeric, rhythmic gestures with her right hand around the pendant. Her ruby lips moved slightly; she was murmuring something under her breath. The bird-skull began to vibrate, emitting a soft hum. The silence between each beat of my heart stretched into a measureless eternity of suspense, and I thought, 'This must be what it's like to await execution. To wait for the axe to fall.' Because no matter whether I somehow survived this ordeal, no matter if I miraculously lived to breathe another day, Alice was about to die.

'MORS CERTA, HORA INCERTA.' Death is certain; the hour uncertain...

Alice's hour had come.

And Alice was me, she was me, and I didn't want to die.

...'Goodbye, Alice. I'll remember you, I promise. I'll never forget you...' But I didn't even know if that was true.

Then the fingers holding the pendant opened, the silver bird skull dropped onto my forehead and—

Time was rewinding, uncoiling, I was moving backwards through scenes in my mind... limbs entwined on an enormous bed, a windy rooftop at dawn, a crow pecking on a windowpane... The scenes played faster and faster until they were nothing more than flashes in my head: a truck cabin, a wall of vines, bandaged hands, a cruel kiss...a rattling door, a room of blank books, a drink spilled down a muddy dress...

Then one image, brighter and more enduring than the rest...a tall man with snow-blond hair standing in the rain, hatred burning in his silver eyes...

Then I was running again, running through a forest, fog blanketing and billowing all around me, running  towards a distant hazy orb of white light, towards the echo of faint screaming and chiming laughter... the light grew brighter, the laughing grew louder, the screaming became more and more piercing, saturating the air with maddening shrillness, until there was no place left for it to go but inside me, down my throat, and I was the one who was screaming, screaming, screaming...

...

END OF PART TWO

...

A/N Thank you for reading! Please leave a morsel of comment for me to nibble on :) Now go and read something really fluffy!!!

Chapter Text

...

PART THREE

...

"Hermione? Can you hear me? Please wake up. Please come back to us. We need you. I need you. Please."

I try to open my eyes, but I can't feel my eyelids. I can't feel anything.

"I saw her eyelids moving! – Hermione! Wake up! Oh god, wake up, please!"

No pain, no sensation of any kind. I am weightless, floating in darkness in gradual circles, like an astronaut lost to the infinity of space.

"If you can hear me, Hermione, just…just know that you're safe now. No one will ever hurt you again. I swear it…"

It's Harry speaking. His voice sounds ragged, as if he's worn it out with yelling or crying. Oh, Harry. Don't you cry. I've wept enough tears for the both of us.

I'm home, then. I'm alive.

But what about Alice? Where is Alice?

...I'm here, too.

Oh, hello Alice. You're still alive.

...Yes, I'm still alive. 

What happened to us?

...Don't you remember?

No.

I want to speak to Harry, but I can't move my lips, can't open my eyes, can't find my way out of the slow-spinning vortex of darkness, dragging me inexorably back into oblivion...

...

When I wake again, it's night and I'm alone. Well, not quite: Alice is here too.

She tries to talk to me about things I don't want to discuss, things I don't want to remember, so I lure her into a box in the far corner of my mind and shut her inside. I can hear the faint hammering of her fists beating at the walls. I can hear her muffled pleas to be let out.

But I won't. Not yet. Maybe never.

...

I start to feel again. A tingling in my toes, an itch on my knee. Pins and needles in my fingers. Other senses are returning; I gradually become aware of the scent of cut flowers nearby, and an underlying, pervasive odour of sterilizing chemicals. There is a constant, comforting click-clacking of nurse's oxfords on polished linoleum.

Once or twice, I feel a prickle of pain on my face.

...

Alice escapes when I'm distracted. I've floated back to the surface of consciousness, and I can hear Harry calling for me again.

In my hurry to get to him, I forget to snib the lock on Alice's box and she sneaks out.

...You can't ignore me forever, she says. You have to face what happened. I'll help you.

No, I tell her. I don't want your help. I don't want to face anything.

...We'll do it together.

No, I don't want to remember! No! I said—

"NO!"

My eyelids fly open, my gasping lips shaped around a silent scream.

"Shhh…shhh, Hermione, it's okay, you're safe. You're safe."

Everything's blurry, but I can make out the outline of Harry's face and his huge green eyes, brimming with a kind of agonised joy.

I squint up at him. "Hello, Harry," I whisper, and try to smile.

He gulps, his voice cracking. "Oh, my god, you're really awake. I thought...I thought we'd lost you... I thought you were..."

I want to reach out to touch him, but those few seconds have cost me every particle of energy in my body, and I'm sliding backwards into the dark again, away from Harry, down and down, until I can't hear his voice anymore.

...

Alice promises to keep quiet, if I don't put her back in the box. And, because she's so sad, and so scared of being imprisoned, I agree.

I'll give you one chance, I tell her. But I'll put you back in if you break the rules.

She laughs rather bitterly. ...Don't worry, I'm used to obeying rules.

You're also used to breaking them, I retort.

...No, she says. That was always you.

...

The next time I open my eyes, a healer is leaning over me, wand poised above my head, monitoring my status with a diagnostic spell. She smiles when she sees I'm awake.

"Good morning, Miss Granger," she says, pocketing her wand, evidently unsurprised by my coming to consciousness. "How are you feeling, dear?"

"I don't know," I croak in reply, because I really don't.

"You'll be thirsty."

I nod. My throat is parched, and it aches. The ache is unrelated to the dryness; it feels bruised when I swallow. (Like the time the lorry-driver tried to throttle me to death—but no, that wasn't me. That was Alice.)

"I'll get you some hydrating potion," says the nurse. Off she click-clacks.

She comes back moments later with the potion in hand and Harry in tow. "We have a visitor eager to see you, dear." There's a hint of disapproval in her voice. "But he can always come back later if you're—"

But Harry has already thrown himself down beside my bed, both his hands catching and clasping one of mine.

"Gently, Mr Potter, she's in a very fragile state." Another few clacks brings the nurse to my other side. "Here, Miss Granger, your potion. I've added some drops of dittany; you'll need it for the pain, now you're awake."

I try to turn my head, and groan. She's not wrong. Pain has been waiting at the periphery of consciousness, lurking like a predator.

She brings the bottle to my lips. "Open up," she commands, in that bright, brusque tone healers use to gently bully their patients. The pain is soon banished by the cool kiss of crystal upon my lips, the sweet drop of potion on my tongue. (Like the time, after he broke my fingers, when he held me in his arms and tipped a painkilling potion in my mouth—no. Not me! That was Alice!)

...It was both of us, says Alice.

"Hermione..." Harry's voice, trembling with unrestrained emotion. The painkiller is working quickly, and I'm able to turn to look properly at him. He looks different, I think, older than when I last saw him – when I last remember seeing him. He's dressed in the grey leathers of an Auror, and he's no longer a gauche young adult, but a full-grown man. Grief has etched fine lines between his eyes and around his mouth, and he's lost the rounded freshness of youth; his features are now square-cut and strongly defined. In fact, I might not have recognised him, except for those great green eyes, and unruly black mop of hair.

He is, I realise, quite handsome. I notice it with a kind of sisterly detachment.

...Handsome... But not eerily striking, not strangely beautiful...

I smile at him, and I'm touched by how overcome he is. Tears pour down his cheeks, steaming up his glasses. He fervently squeezes my hand. "Hermione, Hermione, oh my god, Hermione!"

How odd to hear my name so readily repeated, when I – when Alice – spent so long trying and failing to discover it.

"How long have I been here?" I whisper.

Harry takes off his glasses, wiping his face with his sleeve. "Three weeks," he replies, "and two days."

My eyes widen. That long? It seems only hours ago since... since...

"And how long have I been...gone?"

He chokes on a sob. "Nearly t-two years."

This time I'm not surprised; I'm shocked.

I had thought it would be no more than six months. But then I recall the way time would always warp and stretch and contract, when I was...Alice. And there are two grey gaps in my memory on either side of that time, bracketing Alice's Adventures in Heaven and Hell, that neither she, nor I, can account for.

...I can account for some of it, Alice volunteers. If you'll listen to me.

No. Shut up, I tell her sharply.

I want to ask Harry so many more questions, but I'm too tired.

Too afraid.

Alice whispers pleadingly, ...Ask him. You know what. We need to know, both of us. 

But I shut her down, overrule her.

I'm not strong enough to ask that question yet.

...

Over the next few days, more visitors come, bearing flowers and chocolates and kind words and endless tears. They're allowed to stay only briefly, but it's always long enough for me to witness the same expression in every pair of eyes: behind the loving relief, the sympathy and concern, there is a kind of horrified pity they can't quite disguise.

I wonder what they see. What I look like.

But if I were to ask for a mirror, I might see everything else. Everything that happened.

I might see Her.

...

Harry visits me the most frequently. He's the only person I can talk to. He's also the only one who doesn't shy away from looking at my face. If anything, his eyes rarely leave it.

At first, he is patient, tender, extremely emotional. But gradually, I sense a restlessness in him, I notice his conversation gently prodding the periphery of certain subjects. He wants something from me – answers, I suppose. Or perhaps he wants to tell me something. Maybe he has the answer to that question Alice so desperately wants me to ask.

I can tell he's been given instructions not to upset or overtax me. No doubt, the magical diagnostics are reading a precariousness of mind as well as body. He'll have been told to let me lead any conversations. That's what my grief counsellors used to do. Let me direct the discussion, to give me the impression that I was in control of something in my life.

But it's hard to believe you're in control of anything, when you've lost so much. When you've lost so many people you love.

...

A few days later, when I'm strong enough to sit up, and even walk a little with assistance, the ward nurse asks me if feel up to speaking with the Lead Auror investigating "my case."

I start to sweat. I seem to have forgotten how to breathe: it's like I'm trying to suck in air through a thin straw.

Mutely, I shake my head.

"It's alright, dear," the nurse reassures me, "I'll tell them you're not ready yet."

I can only nod my thanks, because I'm shaking too hard to speak and my tongue is cleaved to the roof of my mouth.

No, I'm not ready yet, and I don't think I ever will be.

...

Alice cries all the time, now, although she tries to hide it. Her constant sniffles keep my mind in a continual state of irritation, so I can't sleep.

…Please, just ask Harry, she begs me. I just need to know.

And one day, when I think I'll go mad if I hear one more muffled sob, I take pity on her.

Harry and I are walking outside in the sunshine, arm-in-arm, making a gradual circuit of the hospital gardens. Conversation has waned; the only sounds are the twittering of birds and the slow crunch of our shoes on the gravel pathway.

Suddenly – so I don't have time to rethink, to renege – I stop, turn to him, and ask Alice's question.

"Is he dead, Harry?"

Harry jumps, his face blanches, but then flushes with a strange, feverish animation. This is the conversation he's been waiting for me to begin ever since I regained consciousness. His green eyes scintillate like brilliant-cut emeralds in the sunlight. "No," he replies tersely.

Alice's relief is so intense, so overwhelming, it causes me to stumble.

Harry catches me before I fall. "Easy, easy, Hermione – I've got you." He gently guides me over to a cast-iron bench, and helps lower me onto it, then sits down next to me. He holds me against him, while I wait for the dizziness to subside.

I realise Harry's heartbeat is thudding wildly. Glancing up, I see the naked rage contorting his features. He presses his lips to my temple. They're dry, burning. "Don't worry about him, Hermione," he whispers fiercely. "He'll never touch you again. I'm going to kill him."

At these words, Alice becomes frantic. A strange, disorienting panic rises within me, too. "No, Harry." My voice is husky, shaking. "Not yet. Not you."

A muscle in his jaw works furiously, his hands are clenching and unclenching. I can feel his turmoil, feel the wrath pouring off him.

But he nods solemnly. He thinks I want to do it.

"Where is he?" I ask at last.

"Azkaban. Guarded by Dementors."

Alice is appalled. I feel my body stiffen. "I thought Dementors were prohibited now."

"They are," he says bluntly; then, with a grim smile: "Let's just say, a special exception has been made in this case. It wasn't–-." He abruptly stops, bites his lip, looks unsure whether to continue.

"It wasn't what?"

"It wasn't just you, Hermione. We also found his wife's body, buried in the back garden. We believe he poisoned her."

Alice starts frantically begging me to vindicate Lucius. To explain what really happened to Narcissa. I'm getting dizzy again, a clammy perspiration is creeping over my body. I can't bear Harry's hate-filled expression. It physically hurts me to witness his usually-so-kind face disfigured with such black rage. "Harry," I blurt desperately out, "there are things that you don't understand. He's not as bad as you think. He didn't kill his wife; he's not responsible for m–my–my injuries—"

Harry leaps to his feet, rounds on me, stares down at me with a kind of incredulous revulsion, which makes me even more desperate, and even less coherent. "I'm not saying what he did was – I mean, I'm not trying to excuse his – but he didn't intend – I can't explain, but—"

"What the hell are you saying, Hermione?" Harry harshly overrides my disjointed stuttering.

"Harry – please, listen to me!" I cry out. "You mustn't kill Lucius!"

He visibly winces, I suppose at my using Mr Malfoy's first name. His chest is heaving; he's gone deathly pale. "For god's sake, Hermione," he grinds out hoarsely, "have you any idea what that – that sick fucking bastard did to you? You were in a coma for three weeks! When I first saw you, you were so—." He stops, chokes on the horror of it. "I didn't even recognise you! I couldn't even tell if you were alive! I didn't think anyone c-could lose that much blood and still s-survive."

It's impossible to witness his distress unmoved. I feel tears slipping down my cheeks, taste them on my lips.

"I'm sorry, Harry. I know it's hard to understand, but—"

"Hard? HARD?" His voice explodes with outrage. "For three weeks I've sat by your bedside, swearing to avenge you! The only reason that vermin isn't already dead is because I wanted to give you the choice between letting me kill him, or doing it yourself! And now you tell me you want to let him live?! “HARD to understand” doesn't even fucking touch it, Hermione." He balls one fist and punches it violently into his other palm.

I flinch. I can't help it.

He sees it, and seconds later he's on his knees, crying, begging my forgiveness. "I'm sorry, Hermione, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you – I'm sorry for swearing at you. But can't you see what he's done to you? That...animal cut you to pieces. He broke every single bone in your body!"

"He was Imperiused," I whisper.

Harry shakes his head vehemently. "It's impossible, Hermione! We've searched the whole place with a fine-toothed comb; there's no sign of anyone else, no other magical signature or residue, nothing! There are Ministry wards preventing apparition in and out of the grounds. All we know, is your blood was all over that room, and all over him!"

…It was The Woman! Alice screams in my head.

I want to scream, too: IT WAS BELLATRIX – but I don't, I can't – that block she put on Alice has locked my tongue, too. Of course, Harry has no idea; as far as he's concerned, Bellatrix has been dead for years.

Harry takes a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. "It's not your fault, Hermione," he says more gently. "Your brain is finding ways to cope, it's very common with victims of prolonged abuse." He grits his teeth. "Especially rape victims."

I press my lips. "He didn't rape me."

"He did, Hermione, whether you remember it or not. You've probably blocked it out; it's called a trauma re – re –" he struggles to find the word.

"Trauma response," I supply quietly.

"Exactly. The hospital did tests. They found his DNA...inside you." He physically shudders, looks nauseous.

"Yes, I know," I reply. Then, steeling myself, I add, "but it wasn't rape."

The realisation at what I'm implying spreads over his ashen face. But then his expression softens again. "You can't be the judge of that, Hermione. You were his prisoner. There's a condition which causes abductees to sympathise with their kidnapper, even to develop…feelings for them. It's all part of the survival instinct."

I'm irritated by his tone, like he's explaining to a child. "Yes, I know, Harry. It's called Stockholm Syndrome. But it doesn't change the fact that it wasn't rape. It was consensual. Alice consented."

He looks confounded, and I realise I've made a mistake mentioning her.

"Alice? Who the hell is Alice, now?"

"No-one." I try to sound nonchalant. "Just a name I...gave myself."

He frowns, processing my words. Then it dawns. "You mean, you were amnesiac the whole time?" His face twists. "That fucker Obliviated you?!"

I swallow painfully. Tears of frustration and confusion are welling up and that horrible suffocating is beginning to overwhelm me. "I don't know! I don't think it was him."

I start to hyperventilate, and Harry quickly rises to sit next to me again, gathering me into a bear-hug, rocking me gently, crooning in my ear. "Shhh, shhh, breathe, just breathe, Hermione. It's okay, it's not your fault. We'll figure this out."

I sink against him, closing my eyes, letting myself be comforted and calmed by his warmth, and the sun on my cheek, and the breeze in my hair.

"Harry," I murmur, "just promise me you won't kill him. Not until...not unless I ask you to."

He's quiet. Eventually he replies, "Alright. I promise... for now. But some day, very soon, someone's going to pay for what happened to you. And Malfoy's staying exactly where he is until that day comes."

I sense he's reached the limit of concession. Even Alice knows it will have to suffice.

After another silence, I feel Harry's body start to tremble; he's crying again. "Do you know what this has done to me, Hermione?" His voice is raw with grief. "After everything we went through in the war? To lose Ron, and then you, too? I feel like I've been dead for two years. The only thing that's kept me going was knowing that I had to find you. Even if you were—." He gulps, doesn't finish that sentence. "...We never caught Ron's killer, you know that, don't you?" Then, recollecting, "No, I guess you wouldn't. …All this time, Ron's murder is still unavenged." He hugs me closer to him, as if he's afraid I'll slip out of his grasp, that he'll lose me all over again. "...I'm not going to let that happen with you, Hermione. Someone has to pay."

I nod. A tremor runs through me.

He doesn't know, and I can't tell him, that Ron's murderer and my torturer are one and the same. That avenging me will avenge him too.

And Draco.

And...and my mum and dad.

Harry's not the only one who wants vengeance.

...