Your votes keep this climbing.
Thanks!
After Voldemort delivered his verdict, the hall went so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.
The family heads kept their faces neutral, but inwardly every one of them was astonished.
That young Malfoy kneeling on the stone steps, he was a bit prettier than most, spoke a bit more smoothly than most, and the Dark Lord had actually offered him a word of praise?
Among the younger generation, he was the first.
Abraxas frowned.
Something felt off.
The Dark Lord’s mood today was a little too good.
The praised party himself, however, felt a hot surge of mortification.
The cold touch still lingered on his face, and it burned.
Jiang Fengyue bit down on the soft flesh inside his lip.
Frivolous words.
A light pat, like teasing a cat or a dog.
What exactly did Voldemort take him for?
Not even a servant, then.
Just a kitten to toy with on a whim.
His face gave nothing away.
His eyes, held wide open through sheer will a moment ago, were now faintly wet.
He tilted his gaze upward, wanting to read this Dark Lord’s expression, and froze the instant he caught it, that look, hovering somewhere between amusement and something else entirely.
Voldemort had already lowered his wand.
One hand propped his head up, elbow resting on the throne’s armrest, his whole posture lazy and slightly angled.
Dark curls fell half across his face, half-concealing the cold light cast by those scarlet eyes.
It was only now that Jiang Fengyue noticed Voldemort’s lips were red, the only color in all that black and white.
He obediently bowed his head, hiding the naked, predatory gleam in his eyes.
His hands trembled faintly.
His core pulled tight with excitement.
Two lifetimes, and this was the first person who had ever made him feel both awe and hunger at once.
Like standing beside a trash can at seven years old, staring at a KFC.
Like looking up at the provincial top-scorer banner at sixteen.
Like watching the NASDAQ opening bell at twenty-two.
Like seeing the Davos inner circle at twenty-five.
And now, at this exact moment, Voldemort was the thing he was staring at.
“I am deeply honored, my Lord.” Jiang Fengyue bowed his head.
Voldemort let out a low laugh.
“I have not permitted you to keep addressing me that way, child.”
Jiang Fengyue’s chest tightened.
He had no intention of calling him Master.
That word carried too much, control, servitude, ownership.
It sat wrong in his mouth.
Bowing his head for now was a tactic, not a surrender.
But the Dark Lord didn’t press it.
He shifted his gaze toward the far end of the hall.
“Avery.
Then — in front of young Malfoy — say it again.”
The sound of knees hitting stone rang out sharp and clear in the silence.
The Parkinson family head launched into his account of everything Jiang Fengyue had done to Argus.
His voice was impassioned, his glare venomous enough to bore through the back of the youth kneeling on the steps.
Jiang Fengyue didn’t bother listening to a word of it.
He kept his eyes down, looking at Voldemort’s legs, and let his gaze drift slowly upward.
His head stayed respectfully bowed.
His eyes did not.
They moved upward, tracing every visible line of Voldemort’s body, and only when they reached the edge of his field of vision did they finally drop again.
Jiang Fengyue licked his lips.
The corner of his mouth curved up, barely perceptible.
“Do you have anything to say?” The Dark Lord’s voice came from above.
Quite fair-minded, actually.
Asking both sides.
Jiang Fengyue reined himself in and lifted his head with a fragile expression.
“I couldn’t bear it…
Argus insulted me.
I know I disappointed you before, but he went further, he reviled the Malfoy name.
My father has been graced by your power.
The Malfoys reached everything they are because of you.
How could I stand there and let him insult that?
And besides…”
He trailed off, as if embarrassed, and glanced carefully up at the figure on the throne.
The look nearly made him dizzy all over again.
He dropped his gaze fast.
“Besides what?” Voldemort asked, unhurried.
The platinum-haired youth raised his left hand and gathered the long hair falling beside his face, tucking it behind his ear.
The striking butterfly ring caught the light as his fingers moved through the silken gold strands, and the tiny black serpent coiled around the white moon brushed against a wisp of hair as it passed.
Jiang Fengyue lifted his face, presenting his pale features to the Dark Lord.
The corners of his eyes were red.
His gaze was wet with grievance.
“He said I had disappointed you terribly.
He said you left in anger because of me, that you didn’t even stay to watch the entire hunt.” His voice dropped.
“I was so heartbroken.
Every time I think about how my loss of composure made you disappointed in me — how it made you angry because of me, I feel such anguish.
Such dread.”
The youth’s adoring gaze rested entirely on Voldemort.
His eyes held unmistakable pain and fear, as if he were terrified of losing the only thing he believed in.
Voldemort looked at those glistening eyes, hovering on the edge of tears, and raised an eyebrow.
Below the dais, Avery was staring with his mouth open.
The glib-tongued, truth-twisting little beast.
He slammed his left fist against his chest and roared.
“Master!
He is lying!
Argus told me, this young Malfoy used a family ring to set up wards!
He used dark magic on my poor Argus!
He planned to kill my son from the very beginning!
Such insolence!”
“I only didn’t want anyone to see and cause trouble for you.
Everyone knows the Malfoys are your most loyal servants…”
“Preposterous!” Avery was beside himself, veins standing out on his forehead.
“Master!
He admits to harming Argus!
He wanted to kill my child!
I beg you to punish him severely!”
“I did not!” Jiang Fengyue raised a hand.
Color had risen in his pale face, like the moon draped in a thin red veil.
“I only wanted to teach him a lesson!”
“He was the one who insulted me and the Malfoy name first, and he invoked your name in public!” Jiang Fengyue’s voice went urgent, his lashes glittering as if dusted with broken stars.
“How dare he.
How dare he throw your name around so carelessly, in front of everyone!”
This time it was the family heads who were dumbstruck.
This young Malfoy was a true Slytherin, how was he this slippery?
What exactly had Abraxas been teaching him?
“You little mongrel!
Master, don’t let him deceive you, ” Avery was so furious his neck had gone crimson, his face, never handsome to begin with, now thoroughly contorted.
But the words died in his throat, cut off by the crack of a cane striking the floor.
“Insolence!”
Avery flinched and turned toward the sound.
Abraxas hadn’t stood.
He had simply brought his serpent-headed cane down hard against the stone, and now he looked coldly at the man before him, his gaze carrying all the weight of someone looking down from a great height.
“In the Master’s presence.
At a Death Eater assembly.
And you dare conduct yourself like this, spewing filth from your mouth.”
Avery’s eyes went wide.
He stared at the Malfoy patriarch, jaw tight.
But the Dark Lord had not said a single word, and so Avery had no choice but to swallow everything back down, furious and unwilling.
Everyone was waiting for the Dark Lord’s judgment.
The figure on the throne had not spoken.
Had not moved.
Not once, from the beginning until now.
Jiang Fengyue quietly lowered his eyes and let out a soft, restrained sob, as if afraid to disturb him.
Inwardly, he sneered.
This was the end of it.
There was nothing left to say even if they kept going.
A sharp glint passed through his downcast eyes.
Voldemort was no impartial judge.
Matters between juniors had no business being raised at a Death Eater assembly in the first place, the only reason this had gotten this far was that two pureblood families were involved, and one of them was the Malfoys, Voldemort’s most trusted.
He just hadn’t expected Avery to be this stupid.
Abraxas’s rebuke had landed at exactly the right moment.
What had been stirred up here was already enough.
But.
The Dark Lord still hadn’t said a word.
➤ Next: Grace