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The platinum-haired youth lay draped across his lap, long hair spilling over cool wool trousers.
Those grey eyes half-lidded, watching him as though longing to speak but holding back.
“Will you use Crucio on me?”
Cunning as a fox, the youth tilted his head back, lashes trembling faintly, like a butterfly poised at the very edge of flight.
The low amber light traced the too-perfect line of his jaw.
Yet the corner of his mouth held something almost like innocent amusement.
“Not enough, my Lord.”
His voice was soft, but it cut through the dead silence like honey laced with poison, every syllable reaching cleanly.
Each word carried devotion.
Each word concealed a madness too subtle to catch, and an unmistakable provocation beneath it.
“Please seize control of my life.
Please take hold of my destiny.”
He offered himself willingly, meeting Voldemort’s abyss-deep scarlet slit-pupils without a trace of fear.
Then Jiang Fengyue lowered his head gently onto that knee.
His grey eyes fixed on the fireplace flames leaping in the dimness nearby.
Deep in them, invisible to the one seated above, lay ice and contempt.
Endure.
Just a little longer.
He mapped his path with cold clarity.
All he needed was one chance, one crack, and he could wind upward like the hardiest vine, silent and certain, not to cling but to feed.
To grow until he smothered that which bore the crown of sovereignty.
Or replaced that shadow entirely.
In the fireplace’s shifting darkness, the scarlet slit-pupils gleamed with coldness, with scrutiny, and with a thread of newly stirred, purely cruel interest.
The Dark Lord studied the seemingly harmless little snake before him, and twisted pleasure surged up from somewhere deep.
Such a depraved invitation.
It pulled hard at his cruelty, at his need to control.
But Voldemort saw clearly what lay behind those eyes, sheened now with the faintest moisture, something more dangerous than what showed on the surface.
A wild ambition, stretching hungrily upward.
This little snake flicked its tongue and lay prostrate only to coil around him for something greater.
An ambitious Slytherin, yet possessed of the extreme courage to discard everything.
Clever enough to choose a path that would never kneel in the dirt forever.
Reckless enough to display, openly, a self and a loyalty worth keeping.
How very suited to Hogwarts, the Dark Lord marveled.
So dazzling.
So precious.
Such a creature deserving ten thousand deaths, and he ought to die at the Dark Lord’s hand.
The Dark Lord granted his wish.
A large pale hand closed around that slender throat, then tightened with a force that nearly cracked the cartilage.
Jiang Fengyue’s pupils contracted to pinpricks.
In that moment, Voldemort truly wanted to kill him.
But Jiang Fengyue let go.
No pushing.
No struggling.
He released his grip on the Dark Lord’s wrist without instinct, without protest.
His long white hands simply fell, trailing down along Voldemort’s thigh in a slow, dragging caress, all the way down until his fingers caught the loose hem of suit trousers hanging above the leather shoes.
He crumpled the fine fabric in his fist.
His pale hand, wrist white and skin flushed, skimmed along the Dark Lord’s calf, like a kitten bumping its round head against you, softly begging mercy.
The Dark Lord watched him intently.
Those scarlet eyes seemed to want to lick clean the last stubborn ember flickering in the depths of his soul, and it only made him look more beautiful, more dangerous.
Grey met scarlet.
No retreat.
No fear.
In those nearly unfocused eyes, there was only a searing, almost-shattered madness.
Like a dying man gripping the last thorn-covered branch.
The harder the grip, the more blood ran.
And still he would not let go.
The crushing force vanished all at once.
Icy air slammed into lungs that burned like a furnace.
The large pale hand withdrew slowly and came to rest on the velvet armrest.
Fingertips drummed a lazy, even rhythm against it.
Jiang Fengyue collapsed forward, coughing without pause, hauling air in desperate gulps.
Then magic poured into his throat, smooth as a breeze, dissolving the damage as though it had never been.
He was surprised.
The Dark Lord, who made the whole wizarding world tremble, knew healing this refined.
A shadow fell over him.
Voldemort leaned forward slightly, tall frame looming above.
“How could the Malfoys — so careful, so calculating — produce someone like you, who’d stake his life on a goal?” the Dark Lord said.
“Probably because I knew you wouldn’t kill me.” Jiang Fengyue straightened, cupping Voldemort’s wrist with both hands in a posture of reverence, allowing himself to be touched at will, while his nails drew pale, shallow lines along the Dark Lord’s pallid arm.
“I’m still very afraid of death, my Lord.”
Voldemort curved the corner of his mouth, withdrew his hand, and settled back against the chair.
“A reckless little snake whelp like you — afraid of something?”
“That was before I met you.”
The Dark Lord’s gaze deepened.
On that handsome face, neither amusement nor anger showed, only the scrutiny of someone who controls everything.
“The Malfoys have never had a talent for absolute loyalty.
And you, a Malfoy to the bone, are no exception.”
“But Lucius does, my Lord.”
Jiang Fengyue pressed forward.
Boldly, he worked his way between the Dark Lord’s legs and settled his head into the crook of that arm.
The Dark Lord’s scent hit him then, like snowfields at the edge of the world, with something rawly, powerfully male beneath it, filling his lungs.
“Lucius is utterly loyal to you.”
The scarlet slit-pupils narrowed.
The kitten’s hair, fine as silk, spilled across his pale arm and black robes.
Then those eyes lifted.
The heat in them nearly illuminated the room’s dim corner.
“Everyone hates the Malfoys.
Guards against them, fears them, let alone someone like me, so cunning and treacherous, so two-faced.
Everyone knows I stop at nothing, that I have no shame.
None of them like me.” A breath.
“But you’re different.
You are tolerant.
Magnanimous.
Willing to accept any kind of existence.”
The kitten extended a soft paw and pressed it to the Dark Lord’s chest.
One finger traced slow circles directly over that cold heart.
“Only you are willing to shelter me.
The greatest Dark Lord in the wizarding world.”
A glib little snake.
Faced with a power he could not resist, he’d simply thrown on a coat of soft fur and called it submission.
The Dark Lord had seen through his true nature from the very first moment he laid eyes on him.
With his free hand, Voldemort wound the cascading platinum hair around his fingers, then pulled, sharp and deliberate.
The kitten, stung, let his head be drawn upward along the force.
His clear, moon-bright face creased with a faint frown.
“What do you want?” the Dark Lord asked.
Jiang Fengyue smiled.
Boundless heat erupted in his eyes in an instant, like a thorned rose splitting open all at once.
His soft lips parted.
“Everything.”
“Greedy child.” The Dark Lord’s low laughter rolled through the air.
He straightened beneath that fervent gaze.
The scarlet pupils fixed on the person before him.
Sharp eyes.
Tremendous nerve.
Ruthless heart.
Agile mind.
Swift and decisive.
Utterly without scruple.
A blood-soaked flower of thorns, blooming from the marrow outward.
The Dark Lord’s fingertips stroked slowly over the top of his head, voice carrying the cold, settled weight of a promise, watching the person before him with quiet amusement.
“Be good,” he said, “and you shall have everything you want.”
➤ Next: Soul Reeling — Words Unspoken