Chapter 1
Harry had stopped believing in salvation a long time ago.
He had been missing for weeks—maybe months. Time blurred together between pain and exhaustion, between the searing agony of Voldemort’s Cruciatus Curse and the cold, empty stretches of silence where he was left alone in the dark, bruised and broken.
But in the darkness, there was one light.
Draco Malfoy.
Voldemort’s right hand. His most trusted Death Eater.
At first, Harry had hated him, loathed him for standing there looking down at him with unreadable grey eyes while the Dark Lord carved pain into every nerve of his body. But then, when no one was watching, Draco had slipped into his cell, quiet as a ghost, carrying water, bandages, whispered reassurances.
And somehow, impossibly, Harry had fallen for him.
He knew it was wrong. Knew Draco had chosen this path willingly. But there was something in the way Draco’s hands trembled when he touched him, in the way he never met Harry’s eyes when he wiped blood from his face, in the way he murmured, I’m sorry under his breath as he undid the chains around his wrists every time he came to visit Harry but had never freed him of his suffering.
So when Draco finally leaned in one night, his breath warm against Harry’s chapped lips, his voice hoarse with something that sounded like regret—Harry let himself fall.
Because Draco’s love was something he could cling to even in the darkness.
Perhaps Draco Malfoy was not what he seemed.
Perhaps Voldemort’s right hand had secrets of his own because when Harry touched him, all he ever felt was warmth. Draco Malfoy was warm, he wasn’t made of hatred and insanity.