Evan had been smiling for approximately four hours. His face had started to feel like a mask he'd borrowed from someone else. Across the room, Lucius was talking to Madame Madeleine Malheur with the kind of attentive charm that cost him nothing—and Evan everything. Lucius had been built for rooms like this, the same way Evan had always been built for combat. This was Lucius's battlefield, and Evan resented being made to fight on it.
Three weeks of hellish high society had left him with the specific low-grade exhaustion that came from having to be charming—having to be something he wasn't. Smiling when all he wanted to do was tell every single person in the room to go fuck themselves, preferably with something sharp and pointy.
"Ma grand-mère's sister married into the Beauchênes," said Evan, answering the question Théodore Malheur had just asked. He tilted his head with a faint smile—the kind that implied regret, and was also entirely fake. "Malheureusement, we don't see each other as often as any of us would like—but you know how it is, with international portkeys being what they are."
Théodore laughed, delighted.
Evan knew he had a niece in England. He also knew the man hadn't set foot outside Paris in a decade. People liked it when you implied your failures were the same as theirs.
Pathetic, really.
"I am impressed," said Théodore. "Your father always spoke French with the most irrémediablement English accent. I am glad to see it did not rub off on you."
A small, knowing smile.
"Although I suspect that was your mother's doing. Your grandfather Bellamy had a very particular appreciation for his culture—even after he left France. I imagine she carried that with her too."
The smile shifted, becoming something heavier—the exaggerated gravity people deployed when they wished to convey seriousness without actually feeling it.
"Tragic, of course. We were all very sorry to hear of her passing."
There it was.
"Thank you," said Evan.
He kept his expression exactly as it should be, exactly as was expected, and hid how much he hated talking about his mother. Especially here. With people who knew perfectly well what had happened to her, and who was responsible, and had collectively decided that pretending otherwise was the more elegant choice.
Because the truth?
That was too garish for polite society.
"She would have enjoyed this evening very much," he said, hating the way the words tasted.
Théodore beamed. Evan raised his glass and took a long, slow drink.
In truth, he had no idea what his mother would have thought of any of it. His memories of her had been reduced mostly to snapshots: her singing while she brushed Pandora's hair; the way she smelled; the feeling of running into her arms after falling and skinning his knee. He didn't know what she thought. The sort of opinions she held. He'd never gotten the chance to learn. His father had taken that from him, like he'd taken everything else he could.
Evan forced himself to smile at something Théodore said without really hearing it.
And so it went.
For five more hours.
Until finally Lucius caught his eye over the thinning crowd and gave him a nod that meant it was time to leave.
Evan could have kissed him right there and then.
He kept his expression neutral as he began the long song and dance of goodbyes, and it wasn't until they were out in the darkness beyond the estate that he let the mask drop.
He lit a cigarette, tipped his head back to exhale towards the sky, and said—in English, the first English he'd spoken all night—
"Fuck the French and fuck the court, and fuck their parties. I've never wanted to kill so many people in one night."
Lucius chuckled beside him.
They began to walk. The bare skeletal trees of the Tuileries stood in neat rows like a funeral procession, which Evan found appropriate given the night he'd had.
"Théodore will join," Evan said after a while, still in English.
He'd quite had enough of French, which was a shame really, because usually he was better at expressing himself in French than he was in English. But tonight he was done with the language and everyone who spoke it.
"Yes. Madeleine implied as much," said Lucius, his breath misting in the cold air.
Evan hated the cold. Hated Paris in the cold. Paris was a city meant for summer evenings and overpriced wine on café terraces—not grey skies and frozen fingers. The weather was doing fuck-all to improve his mood. Though, admittedly, that might have had more to do with what they were here to do than the temperature.
Three fucking weeks of balls and dinners and stuffy conversations about fuck all. Three weeks of every day being a game of social and political chess. Three weeks of dress robes and having to store his wand in his sleeve or pocket because wearing a wand holster to a black-tie event was uncouth, as Lucius reminded him on a daily basis. Not to mention the fact that dress robes came with dress shoes, which you couldn't hide a knife in the way you could with a boot. Of course, in an ideal world, Evan wouldn't be wearing dress robes or dress shoes—or attending any place that required them at all. But given that it wasn't an ideal world, and he had to attend the sort of events that required both, he would at least like to be able to attend properly armed. Evan didn't like being unarmed. In fact, he hated it. It was right up there with the cold in his top five most hated states of existence.
"Armand, on the other hand, is proving more resistant than I anticipated," said Lucius thoughtfully. "It seems he's grown a backbone since the last time I saw him."
"Do we think he'll make trouble?"
"I think," said Lucius, "it would be wise to be prepared for the possibility that he won't come quietly."
"Oh good," said Evan sarcastically. "I was just thinking this was too easy."
"Mm." Lucius glanced at him sideways. "You're not allowed to kill him, no matter how trying he is."
"Not even if I get him to issue a formal challenge?" he asked, only half joking.
Lucius snorted, somehow making it sound dignified.
"This isn't England. People know who you are here. Half the court was present when you won the Tournoi des Lames. No one with any sense is going to issue you a formal challenge."
A measured pause.
"I'm afraid you'll have to find another outlet. We don't have time for the paperwork attached to informal deaths. Besides, we need him."
They walked in silence for a while, their footsteps quiet on the damp stone of the Quai. The Seine moved below them, flat and grey and indifferent.
"We should think about the seating for tomorrow night," said Lucius after a while. "I want you beside Armand. I suspect he may be more susceptible to you than to me."
"What makes you think that?" asked Evan.
"Well, he's never been terribly fond of me—there was an unfortunate dispute with the Beaumont family over a property he argued should have gone to him through his mother's line and instead ended up with my father." Lucius's mouth curved slightly into a sly smile. "And there's the fact that he has a certain weakness for pretty young men." He shot Evan an amused look. "A weakness his wife doesn't know about, I might add."
"You think I'm pretty?" said Evan, raising an eyebrow. "Why, Lucius, I'm blushing."
"The question is not whether you're pretty enough to get the job done—it's whether you can manage to hide your disdain for him long enough for him to think you're interested."
The wind came off the river, cold and sharp. Evan turned his collar up. Somewhere behind them a church bell struck the hour, the sound flat and clear in the night air.
"Probably," said Evan. He took a drag, the cigarette ember flaring briefly in the dark. "Are you hoping I charm him into cooperation, or is extortion your preferred strategy?"
"I'll leave that up to you."
"How charitable of you," said Evan.
"Armand is a very attractive man." Lucius paused, then added, "When he's not talking, that is." He shot Evan another sideways look, this one positively evil. "I'm sure you could think of a way to keep his mouth occupied."
Evan snorted.
"I'm not that desperate."
The corner of Lucius's mouth twitched.
"I'm told he has a rather impressive reputation. Might even be fun."
"Sounds like you want to fuck him."
"I'm married."
"Historically," said Evan, "that has not always stopped people."
Lucius gave him a look that conveyed exactly what he thought of that sentiment.
Say what you would about Lucius, but he believed strongly in the sanctity of both matrimony and love. At heart, he was a romantic. It had always been one of Evan's favourite things about him.
Well, that and his excellent taste in Scotch.
"Be that as it may," said Lucius, "I simply thought a pleasant distraction might improve your current disposition—which is, and do feel free to take this personally, exceedingly unpleasant to be around."
"Thoughtful of you," said Evan dryly. "But unfortunately, being your rent boy isn't high on my list of mood-enhancing activities."
"No?" mused Lucius. "You've never objected to strategic seduction before."
"Strategic seduction?" repeated Evan, amused.
Lucius raised one shoulder in what passed for a shrug with him.
"Sounds better than 'political whoring', wouldn't you say?"
That made Evan smile.
"You do have a way with words."
Lucius was quiet for several long minutes.
Then—
"You haven't fallen back into old habits, I hope."
The words were delivered carefully, which, where Lucius was concerned, usually meant he was worried. And just like that, the conversation veered into territory Evan had absolutely no interest in discussing.
"Not recently, no."
"Define recently."
Evan sighed. He wasn't in the mood to dissect the particulars of his love life, but he knew Lucius well enough to understand that any attempt to shut the conversation down would only be interpreted as a reason to dig deeper.
"A couple of times after Reg," he admitted.
Lucius gave him a blatantly disapproving look.
Evan sighed again. "I was drunk and sad." A pause. "Barty was—well. Barty. It wasn't like before. I didn't want it to be." He shrugged. "It was just comfort, or something. All right? So there's no need to look at me like that."
"And now?" said Lucius. "Are you two still—"
"No."
Lucius held the look for one more pointed moment, then let it go.
"Very well," he said, with the mild grace that let Evan know he was being done a favour by not hearing any more of Lucius's opinions on his past relationship.
They walked on. The river moved below them, dark and quiet, and for several minutes neither of them spoke.
Evan had almost begun to relax.
Never a good idea around Lucius.
"But there is someone."
Not a question.
A statement.
"I didn't say that," said Evan, despite knowing it was pointless.
"You didn't have to."
Lucius didn't even look at him.
"You usually enjoy Paris. It cannot simply be the court—I have seen you tolerate it often enough to know that you are capable of it. Besides, you're only ever this moody when you're having boy problems."
"Boy problems?" said Evan. "Seriously?"
"You're positively itching to get back to England," said Lucius, ignoring him. "And given your longstanding and well-documented hatred of England in winter, I can only assume it isn't the country itself you're so eager to return to."
Evan looked away.
"And don't bother denying it," Lucius continued. "I've personally witnessed you turn down three perfectly respectable offers since we arrived—which, again, is not like you."
"Respectable," repeated Evan dryly.
"Yes. Well. By your standards, at least."
"I'm not telling you shit. Not when you'll just repeat everything I say to Cissy." He gave Lucius a flat look. "I am not in the mood to have my life picked apart by your meddlesome wife."
"I would never dream of betraying your confidence," said Lucius, with the serene conviction of a man who absolutely would, and knew Evan knew it.
"Lucius."
"Yes, Evan?"
"Fuck off."
Lucius tutted.
"Now, now. Don't be like that. You know I'll get it out of you eventually. You may as well tell me now and save us both the effort."
Evan considered that for a moment. It had been difficult enough—scratch that, fucking near impossible—to keep his thoughts clear since they'd arrived. That was probably the real reason for his foul mood. It was a constant, exhausting battle of wills to keep his mind in line; Legilimency was nowhere near as rare amongst the French court as it was in English high society, and his mental walls were only as strong as his concentration. If someone slipped past them and found a name they shouldn't know—a name he absolutely could not afford to have discovered—that would be a considerably bigger problem than Narcissa taking an interest in his personal affairs when they got home. The trouble was that Lucius had a habit of worrying at things until he got what he wanted, and having him prod relentlessly at the one subject Evan was trying very hard not to think about wasn't going to make maintaining those walls any easier.
The safer play was to give him the bare facts voluntarily. Give him enough to satisfy him until they left Paris.
"Fine, yeah, there's someone," said Evan.
Lucius looked immensely satisfied.
"You're not getting a name, but I'll give you three questions if you promise to drop it for the rest of the trip."
"Five," said Lucius.
"Three."
Lucius considered him with the particular expression he wore when calculating what he could reasonably get away with—which was, in Evan's experience, usually quite a lot.
"Five," he said. "And I promise it'll stay strictly between us."
Evan narrowed his eyes.
"Four."
Lucius nodded, satisfied.
"Deal. What is his blood status?"
Evan rolled his eyes at the predictability of the question.
"Pure."
"Is he…" Lucius's gaze dropped briefly to Evan's left arm, one eyebrow arching. "One of us?"
"No. But he knows."
"Is it serious?"
Evan shrugged. "For me? Yes." A pause. "For him it's… complicated."
"Complicated how?"
"He's engaged."
Lucius stopped walking. He shook his head. "At this point, I'm genuinely starting to wonder if you really are a masochist."
Evan laughed—short, dry, without any real humour in it. "Yeah. Me too."
"What are you going to do about the fiancée?"
"Nothing, currently. I want to see how the chips fall first. If it doesn't go my way, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it." He glanced at Lucius sidelong. "Come on. It's freezing."
Lucius started walking again. "Do you love him?"
Evan didn't answer for a while. Not until Lucius nudged him with his shoulder, impatient.
"Yes," said Evan after a moment. A pause. "And that was seven questions. So you'd better hold up your end of the bargain. I don't want to hear another word about any of this for the remainder of this godforsaken trip. And when you tell Cissy—and we both know you will—you'd better do a damn good job of keeping her off my back."
"You know I have no control over Narcissa." Lucius's smile was entirely unapologetic. "Besides, the key to the success of our marriage is honesty."
"The key," said Evan, "is that she's got you wrapped around her little finger."
"Yes," said Lucius, unbothered. "That too."
It began to snow. It wouldn't settle—it never did in February—just turned the city from cold to cold and wet, which was, as far as Evan was concerned, a distinct deterioration.
"What do you say," said Lucius, tilting his head back to look at the sky, now grey with flurries, "do we dare Apparate from here, or are we still within the court's wards?"
The French High Court sat tucked behind the Place Vendôme, the surrounding streets laced with wards that had held since the Revolution. Everyone entered and exited on foot. No exceptions. Evan tilted his head and reached out with his mind, feeling for the edge of the magic. He shook his head.
"A bit further." He nodded ahead. "There."
They quickened their pace without discussion, footsteps sharp against the wet stone. When Evan was satisfied they'd cleared the boundary, they turned on the spot and the city folded itself away. They reappeared a second later on a quiet street bordering the Parc Monceau, the snow falling softly here too. The street was wide, pale, and completely still.
At first glance, the house—Mauvais Foi Mews, named by some distant Malfoy ancestor with a sense of humour—simply wasn't there. The eye slid past it without resistance, settling on the trees lining the street, or the lamplight, or nothing in particular. Up close, however, the house resolved itself: five storeys of pale limestone, tall shuttered windows, and a door so dark it was almost black, flanked by a pair of stone urns that had stood there, in all probability, since Louis XIV.
Lucius produced his wand and touched it briefly to the door. It opened without a sound. Evan shed his coat and followed Lucius through to the sitting room, where a fire burned low and steady, sending dancing light across the walls. The clock on the mantel read two forty in the morning.
Lucius lifted a crystal decanter and raised an eyebrow in silent question. Evan nodded. They talked briefly about the following day—logistics, names, what was expected of them—and when the grandfather clock in the hallway struck three, Lucius bade him goodnight. Evan poured another whisky, sat staring into the dying fire, and fought silently to keep his mind blank. Eventually, when the last of the embers had faded to grey, he stood and made his own way to bed.
Nights were the hardest. Lying in the dark, the house quiet and still around him—that was when his thoughts revolted against him most, pushing back from the depths of his mind where he'd shoved them for safekeeping. Tonight they took him by force. No doubt a product of his conversation with Lucius, they dragged him unwillingly to another bed, almost exactly a year ago. To waking up in a strange room, severely hungover, with a face full of brown curly hair which, despite its near-constant state of absolute disarray, had been unexpectedly soft.
He gave in to the memory. Let it envelop him. He'd regret it in the morning, when pushing it away became all the more difficult, but for now he didn't care. A want so insistent it was almost physical rose in him, an ache stronger than need. Not desire, though there was plenty of that too. No, this was worse. Decidedly more pathetic. He just wanted to be back in that room with its ghastly floral curtains and air that smelled faintly of the Cornish seaside. Back in that bed, with his nose buried in hair that smelled like everything he'd wanted since he'd first learned what it was to want.
In his mind, the memory shifted. Transformed from memory into fantasy.
One in which he stayed. Didn't untangle himself as quietly and gently as he could. Didn't leave.
No.
In his fantasy, he closed his eyes, pulled the warm body in his arms closer, and went back to sleep. Because in that moment, that was all he wanted.
Stupid, how much you could want something you'd never actually had. Evan had never just slept beside someone. Well, Pandora and Reg when they were younger, but that was different. He'd never slept beside someone he wanted—someone who wasn't his sibling, or the next best thing.
Most of the people Evan had sex with didn't even know his name. The ones who did, he didn't usually stick around to snuggle with afterwards. And Barty—even when they had been good, or as close to good as their romantic relationship ever got—sleeping hadn't been the kind of thing they did. Physical intimacy with Barty began and ended with sex.
The closest thing Evan had ever had to that kind of intimacy—the kind that didn't revolve around sex—with someone he was in love with was sharing a bed with James.
And wasn't that fucking pathetic.
Although, really, fucking pathetic was more or less the motto of Evan's entire history with feelings wherever James was concerned. He'd thought he'd come to terms with them a long time ago. The full, humiliating extent of them. Thought he'd known the depths of what it was to want James Potter.
He'd been wrong.
Because now—now that there was a real possibility James wanted him back—well. Yearning about summed it up. Yearning, which was a word Evan strongly resented having any personal relationship with, but was unfortunately the right one.
Because it was James.
And Evan had been hopeless where James was concerned for so long it might as well have been a defining personality trait.
He had never managed to let him go. Not when he should have. Not when he knew how fucked up it was. Not even when he'd desperately wanted to.
His heart had simply refused.
Because as far as it was concerned, James had been his first.
Before Reg.
Before Lily Evans.
Before Evan had even understood what the feeling was.
It had started with a trophy room and a tall boy with unruly brown hair and the brightest smile Evan had ever seen. A boy who had been funny and clever and had somehow left Evan thinking about him for days afterwards without understanding why. Then there had been enchanted Quaffles and a laugh he couldn't get out of his head. A train corridor. A grin he'd spent an entire summer replaying. The electric thrill of being noticed by James—really noticed—as he walked out to meet the Gryffindor team. The rush of knowing that James was going to have to remember him they were playing against each other. Then when James had tracked him down just to ask about Reg, and Evan had learned two things in quick succession: that people could care when they didn't have to, and that he wanted James Potter to care about him with an intensity so strong it felt like fire in his chest. Evan had figured it out sometimes around third year after watching Lily Evans turn James down for the first time. Then he’d spent that year and all of the next watching her continue to turn him down, while privately convinced she was the biggest idiot in the school because who in their right mind wouldn’t want James Potter?
And finally there had been the one and only time he'd worked up the nerve to get James's attention himself. An attempt at flirtation so catastrophically unsuccessful that it had ended with James in the hospital wing with a broken wrist. Which, in Evan's opinion, said just about everything there was to say about his personal history with love.
Because Evan had wanted James since before he'd understood what it was to want someone. James was the first boy he'd noticed. The first boy he'd wanted to notice him back. And Evan's heart hadn't given a shit that James didn't want him back. That he wasn't Evan's to want.
The feelings had remained no matter what he did—stubborn and completely immovable. Try as he might—and he had tried, consistently, for years—he'd never managed to stop them. Never managed to stop thinking of James as his in some small sense, even if it was only in a nickname. One Evan had given him before anyone else had a claim to him. One that belonged only to him. One Evan should have stopped using the second Reg had confided in him and told him what Evan had already known—because you don't spend five years secretly watching someone across the Great Hall and fail to notice when they start watching the person sitting beside you.
And yet Evan hadn't stopped.
Hadn't stopped calling James Tosspot.
Hadn't stopped wanting him.
Even when he knew his best friend was in love with James.
He should have stopped.
He'd wanted to—for Reg.
But he hadn't been able to.
Evan's two greatest failures in life were, in his opinion, inextricably linked: that he hadn't been able to stop wanting James for Reg, and that he hadn't been able to keep Reg safe.
And it was with that thought that he finally fell asleep. He didn't sleep well. He woke tired to the grey city and yet another day of fighting his own thoughts. Another day of wearing a mask that made his skin crawl. Another day of wishing his watch was on his wrist instead of back in England—and knowing it was a good thing it wasn't. Because all it would take was a glance. A glimpse of the watch. A concrete reminder of the very person he had to keep out of his thoughts during the day. And tired and frustrated as he was, his walls would slip. If that happened in front of the wrong person, he could lose everything that mattered to him.
The French court felt like a cage, its walls closing in on him the longer he spent within them—-Evan was growing closer to killing everyone in it by the day. He had hoped he and Lucius would be in Paris for a month at most. But the fourth week came and went, and then the fifth, and then the sixth. February turned to March. The snow disappeared, but the cold remained, and Paris sat grey and raw beneath suffocatingly heavy skies that made Evan feel vaguely claustrophobic. Most of the old families were slowly falling into line, but some—like the Beaumont-Voclains—were not.
The head of the Beaumont-Voclains, Sébastien, for instance. Not opposed exactly, merely waiting. Comfortable enough in his own position to take his time about it, which was the most irritating kind of resistance because there was nothing to push against directly. Then there was Armand Delacroix-Feuille, who had enough influence to bring two or three of the smaller, less important families with him if he committed. Instead, he was playing all sides simultaneously with the breezy confidence of a man who believed himself more indispensable than he actually was.
Evan was fairly certain that particular problem was going to resolve itself badly.
And soon.
Especially if he had anything to do with it.
At the end of the seventh week, Sébastien Beaumont-Voclain finally committed. That made nine of the twelve major families. Two had never been realistic prospects. Both had retreated to their countryside estates within the first fortnight of Lucius and Evan's arrival.
That only left Armand.
Armand's townhouse was on the Place des Vosges—the oldest square in Paris, a fact he introduced into conversation with intolerable frequency. The house occupied the full width of one of the great arcaded pavilions: four storeys of pale stone and symmetrical windows that had belonged to his family since before the Revolution, a fact Armand also never missed an opportunity to mention.
Evan had now been to this house four times.
The first time had been a reception. Twenty people, impeccable food, Armand charming and attentive in the way of a man who had decided he was interested and wanted you to know it.
The second time had been a smaller dinner. Armand's hand had found the small of his back twice, both times a fraction too low and just long enough that it couldn't be written off as accidental.
The third time Armand had cornered him in the hall and suggested, with the confident vagueness of a man accustomed to being understood, that some arrangements were better made privately. Evan had smiled and said he wasn't sure he followed, which was a lie. Armand had known it was a lie, and they had both pretended otherwise because that was how these things were done.
The fourth time was tonight.
Armand's dining room was everything his address suggested: candlelight on old silver and a much smaller guest list. Lucius was at the far end of the table, being effortlessly charming to Armand's wife, Marguerite, who Evan could say, after two months' acquaintance, was one of the silliest and most wilfully ignorant witches he had ever had the misfortune to meet.
Evan sat beside Armand and smiled and made conversation and drank wine and counted, with increasing precision, the number of times Armand's knee brushed his beneath the table.
By the second course he needed to escape, if only temporarily.
He had barely cleared the dining room door with the excuse of the bathroom when he heard footsteps following. Evan kept walking, pace unhurried, jaw set. He made it to the hall—high-ceilinged, dark-panelled, lined with portraits that watched him pass with ancestral indifference—and then Armand's voice came from behind him.
"Monsieur Rosier."
Smooth. Unhurried. As though it were entirely coincidental that he'd followed him out.
"My library, I think—just here."
Evan stopped, stood with his back still turned, wrestling his expression into something that would pass for pleasant rather than the snarl he wanted to aim at Armand. It took longer than it should have.
The library was lit by firelight and the soft amber glow of a dozen small lamps—the sort of room decorated specifically to feel intimate. Books lined the shelves. A chaise sat angled near the window in a way that had definitely been deliberate. Armand closed the door behind them and turned, dropping entirely the pretence of coincidence that had never been convincing to begin with.
"You know," he said, crossing to the drinks cabinet with the ease of a man on his own territory, "I have been patient."
Have you? thought Evan.
"A man like you understands, I think, that certain commitments, such as the ones your Dark Lord is requesting, should not be taken lightly."
Armand poured two glasses from a crystal decanter and carried one across. He passed it to Evan, fingers lingering briefly against his.
"You are," Armand said, tilting his head, his gaze travelling slowly down Evan's body, "a very striking man, Monsieur Rosier. And I am a man of particular appetites. I like to know I am getting something I want in return."
His smile widened.
"I think we understand each other, no?"
He stepped closer. Close enough that Evan could smell his cologne. It had been applied with a heavy hand.
"I will give you my commitment tonight." His eyes moved over Evan with a slow, deliberate appraisal, the way a man looks at something he has already decided belongs to him. "If you get on your knees and earn it."
Evan considered the man standing before him: salt-and-pepper hair, strong jawline, dark eyes. In other circumstances, Evan might have got on his knees voluntarily for a man who looked like Armand. If he hadn't been hopelessly in love with someone else. If Armand hadn't been utterly devoid of any appealing personality traits. As it was, Evan was hopelessly in love with someone else. And everything he'd seen of Armand's character disgusted him.
Evan set his glass down on the nearest surface, a decision made. He was done with this. Done with Paris, and definitely done with Armand. The more time he'd spent in his company, the less he'd liked him. The man was one of the most superficial, hypocritical, greedy people Evan had ever met—and given the circles he'd been raised in, the people who had surrounded him first in Slytherin and later amongst the Dark Lord's followers, that was really saying something.
Evan closed the distance between them, stepping in close. Armand barely had time to look pleased about it before Evan's hand was at his throat, fingers wrapped in the precise way that restricted airflow. He used his bodyweight to shove Armand backwards and was rewarded with the satisfying crack of skull meeting stone as the back of Armand's head collided with the wall. The fire in the grate rose, its flames turning green as they spilled out across the carpeted floor in answer to Evan’s silent call. They licked at Evan's feet, climbing past the mantel, racing up shelves and walls and through the air towards the ceiling until all four walls of the library were crackling with emerald fire.
The portraits screamed in their frames. Shadows lunged and stretched across the shelves. Armand's eyes bulged. His face had begun to turn red. Evan relaxed his grip just enough for him to drag in a desperate breath. With his free hand, Evan flicked out the knife concealed in his sleeve. He pressed the tip to the hollow of Armand's throat. Then, slowly, without any particular hurry, he drew it down. Across the collarbone. Down the sternum. The blade caught the fabric of Armand's robes and opened them in one clean, quiet line. Armand had gone rigid, his back pressed against the shelf as though he could somehow force himself through it. The fire climbed higher, the room bathed in the flickering green light of Vellfire.
Evan trailed the knife past Armand’s stomach. Slower now. Watching his face. He didn't stop until the knife rested between Armand's legs.
"I'm not for sale," said Evan.
Then he tilted the knife slightly. Just enough that Armand could feel exactly where it was resting and precisely which part of his anatomy was most immediately at risk.
"But here's my counteroffer. Your commitment, tonight, and I won't remove anything too important as retribution for you trying to buy me like a common whore."
Armand was shaking. A fine, uncontrollable tremor running through his entire body.
"Of course," Evan continued, and this time he let some of the distaste he'd spent seven weeks swallowing seep into his voice, let it sit there plainly, "if that isn't sufficient motivation for you to decide where your loyalty lies, I'm more than happy to add further incentive by burning this house to the fucking ground with you and your wife inside it."
He held Armand's gaze.
"I suggest you make the right choice."
A beat.
"And quickly."
"Yes," said Armand immediately. "Yes. I commit."
Evan held his gaze for another moment, long enough to be certain. Then he stepped back. He slid the knife into his sleeve. The fire receded, colour bleeding from green back to orange, back to ordinary, as though it had never been anything else.
Evan straightened his jacket. Retrieved his glass from the shelf. Finished the whisky in a single swallow. Then he turned to leave. He paused in the doorway and glanced back. Armand had slid down the wall and now sat half-slumped against it, pale and sweating.
"I'll send Lucius up to settle the terms of your service," he said.
Then he headed back down the hall towards the sound of conversation, crystal, and Lucius's unhurried laugh, and felt—for the first time in almost eight weeks—something that was almost, almost like satisfaction.
They left Paris the following morning by international Portkey.
Ministry customs was as grating as it always was. The particular bureaucratic tedium of wizarding border control, which somehow managed to be both invasive and inefficient simultaneously.
Then Malfoy Manor.
Where Narcissa was waiting.
She was not alone.
Evan kept his mind blank. Forced it with every remaining bit of will power he had. He was exhausted in the bone-deep way that came from two months of sustained performance, and exhaustion was when mistakes happened. He could not afford mistakes. Not now. Not when he was so close to everything he’d ever wanted. He let Lucius do the talking, spoke only when directly addressed, and kept his eyes lowered and his expression neutral.
"You have done well."
The voice was high and cold—not loud, it never needed to be loud. It moved through the room even when he whispered. Moved the way cold moved through a draughty house, finding every gap, sinking into your bones, settling there no matter how much you fought it. Evan kept his breathing even. Kept his face still. And when the red eyes turned to him, he looked up, because you had to look up, and met them, because you had to meet them, and it took everything he had not to let the shudder that moved through him reach the surface.
The face those eyes belonged to might once have been handsome. High cheekbones. Strong jaw. Dark hair. The ghost of something that had been, a long time ago, a man. But whatever had been done to it since had made it wrong in a way that was difficult to look at directly. It wasn't only the red eyes, or the unnatural pallor, or the too-sharp angles of bone beneath the skin. It was something harder to name than any of those things. A stillness that wasn't right. The stillness of something not quite alive. Like a marble statue cursed to move and speak and pass for living, and almost managing it.
Almost.
There was a smile. It was a terrible thing. It used the right muscles, arranged itself into the right shape, and yet meant nothing at all. There was no happiness there. No emotion at all.
"It pleases me," said the Dark Lord, "to see the son of one of my oldest friends show such potential. Your father would have been proud of you."
Your father would have been proud.
It was meant to land like a compliment. The gracious reward for loyalty, passed down through bloodline and legacy. But Evan knew what his father truly was. And he knew what that sentence actually meant, even if the Dark Lord didn't. Marcus Rosier's approval—his pride—was not a prize. It was a condemnation. And it settled in Evan's chest like a stone dropped into cold water.
It wasn't until he was well clear of the Manor grounds—until he'd been spat out the far side of Apparition's suffocating darkness—that he took his first real breath. That he finally let himself relax.
The air was slightly warmer in London.
He made quick work of the stairs leading up to the North London flat. He wasn't in the mood for Rosier Estate tonight—or his sister. He'd go tomorrow, he decided. Inside, the air still carried that peculiar stillness of a place left empty for too long. Evan headed straight for the bathroom and into the shower, letting the hot water wash away the last of the bone-deep chill that seemed to come from spending any length of time in the Dark Lord's presence.
By the time he got out, the mirror had fogged over. He wiped a hand across it and frowned at his reflection. His hair was getting long. Longer than he liked it. He needed a shave too. He opened the mirrored cabinet above the sink in search of a razor and shaving foam. His eyes landed on Pandora's toothbrush beside his own and he briefly considered squirting shaving cream all over it.
She probably deserved it.
No doubt she'd found some way to meddle in his life during the two months he'd been away. Her record for staying out of his business was, at best, a fortnight. In the end, his better nature prevailed and he refrained from sabotaging her toothbrush, which Evan felt proved once again that despite what most people seemed determined to believe—largely on account of Pandora being a girl—he was, in fact, the nicer twin.
He considered his options while he got dressed. He had a vial of memories for him concerning everything that had happened in Paris that he deemed important enough to pass along to the Order. That was his excuse, and it was a good one. The information was genuinely important, and it wasn't the sort of thing you sat on.
Of course, Evan didn’t actually have any particular burning desire to get the information to Mad Eye Moody. It was simply a convenient reason to contact James. A reason to see him now. Tonight. That was what Evan wanted—despreatly—after two months it was like a physical need. He checked his watch, now firmly back on his wrist. Eleven forty-five on a Tuesday night.
Most of the pubs in London would be closing soon. He supposed he could, theoretically, try to summon James here—the way he had after Leandro—half-dead and convinced he was dying. But the truth was he didn't actually know how he'd done that. It had just sort of happened. His desperate need to see James one last time, to say goodbye when he was certain he was about to die, had apparently done the work for him. He could, now that Evans knew about him, technically go to the cottage. But given the scene he'd walked out on in the Potters' living room, that seemed unwise. He had no idea what the situation between James and Evans currently was, and he wasn't particularly eager to stumble blindly into whatever fresh catastrophe had followed. A pub was probably his best bet—if he could find one that was open. He headed downstairs in search of the Yellow Pages they used to locate the various Queen's Arms.
Evan made it as far as the coffee table in the living room before stopping. Because there, on the table, sat a single piece of parchment. The handwriting was Pandora's. Or rather, it was hers in the way so many things about them were hers—virtually indistinguishable from his own at a glance.
Just one line. And address. Not one he recognised.
Evan stared at it for a long moment and wondered exactly how much meddling she'd managed in his absence.