Chapter 11
Regulus Black stepped out into the night to find both the full moon and the French Minister at his eyeline.
He welcomed the former over the latter, tucking chin to neck to press past Piere Ancout unseen. Wizarding society had dwindled to a point where any high family in the British pantheon had been deemed an enemy to the surviving ministries across Europe. Though, not all prominent names had joined up with the Deatheaters or Vitruvian. The others were simply dead, or hiding. Hell, even some of the sacred twenty-eight had packed up and moved to higher ground. Regulus didn’t venture to assume that his face would be engrained in Piere Ancouts memory, but he did have his father's eyes.
They would pass each other once more at the Delavore’s ball the next evening, wearing an intricate masquerade and skimming champagne flutes from floating platters. Tonight, they brushed past each other without a singular glance shared.
Once the Deatheaters gained enough ground in Britain, be that six or ten months time, the black tendrils would expand beyond the English Channel and lay waste to France from Avignon to Paris. There was a viable chance that it would be Regulus himself who drew Piere Ancout to his deathbed and slit his throat.
It hadn’t occurred to him prior that such things would need to be done. Not that he hadn’t considerably thought of the bloodshed that it would take to bring Europe to its knees. He had spent a night or two wide awake with magical Russian Oligarchs in his mind, images of Italian aristocrats weeping at his soles, the Greeks crumbled in rubble and ash. However, they were only names. Arbitrary titles assigned to leaders who he had not looked boldly in the face.
Keeping his head tucked low hadn’t vanquished him of Ancout’s pouted lips and aging fine lines. Regulus would remember the man now, in a plainer light. And when he killed him, he might even feel a bit bad about it.
Then again, by that time, death would be a mercy.
Paris was oil-slicked in a vastly different way from London. There was no smoke, only steam which ruptured out of drainage gates. Psychedelic music hummed from the rafters of a bar across the street. There were people, well, muggles, sauntering down the street in drives with their eyes to the skies. The puddles that stagnated in the valet line were reflective enough to give Regulus a sure look at himself. He was exhausted. The carriage overtipping had cracked a rib that he wasn’t concerned with enough to pop back into place. But, when he lit the end of a cigarette he had plucked from Avery’s nightstand, the sharp intake of air sent a pain through his abdomen.
Regulus needed to be better than this, to be beyond the quells of mortals, to not feel an ounce of anything, let alone, pain. It wasn’t sleep that would help, but the absolute lack of it. He needed, only once, to feel awake when his eyes were open.
Mostly, he needed to disband the purple under his eyes before Sebastian made him swallow down another herb leaden healing potion.
Regulus flicked the cigarette into the gutter and turned to his right. Avery was the sneaky one, Sebastian did well enough in disguising himself since he rarely allowed anyone to gaze upon his face. But, it was Lucia who seemed to be more black cat than woman.
She had appeared at his shoulder in a puff of smoke. Her dark curls were wild, billowing about her face as if their only task was to keep her even darker eyes from shining through. Tired as she may be, she wore it better than he did. A hint of peach remained in her sapped cheeks.
Regulus burst forward in the lead. Seconds later she was locked shortly behind him. This was the game; the same one they had been playing since they had learned to take flight. The two wove cat and mouse over the illuminated city like bandits on the flee of a heist.
Lucia wouldn’t catch him, she never did, and he briefly enjoyed that accomplishment as well as the feeling of being completely alone beside someone else.
A bell on a clocktower chimed midnight down below. That stir, along with the dogs that barked down the seine and set the eve alight with howls from further hounds became a sort of symphony. Up there, in the cloud bank, Regulus was suddenly more awake than he had been all day.
They flew low over the river, then high above the rafters of the Delavore cathedral. Caterers bustled through the back door, already in the throws of preparation for the ball. It seemed an extravagance beyond merit in these times - when so many others were floundering their way through life in attempt to simply stay alive, let alone stir cherries in their flutes and pluck lemon seeds from sweet tartes.
If Regulus hadn’t grown up in the throws of such opulence, he might despise it. But, the regret of one's own birthright had no place in the war. Princes, however nicely dressed, needed to become soldiers in times of war.
There wasn’t enough time for apologizing.
Lucia touched down on a penthouse roof and allowed her hair to fly free. Regulus did the same on an opposing building. Her tiredness had become evident. She wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, and laughed like a hyena.
Regulus didn’t return her smile, but he did say “goodnight,” and tried to make it sound like permission.
Lucia nodded, and was gone.
He could count on one hand the amount of words she had exchanged with him over the last year. Each passing month had stolen a speck of her vocabulary, though that reticence was reserved for only him. She spoke to Caius, to Sebastian, to anyone else who stood in her path and ears to listen. Her solemnity toward him had to do with what he assumed was a serious case of lover spurn. After proclaiming such a thing to him, and having it gently thrown back in her face, there hadn’t been much room for idle conversation.
The problem was not that Regulus wasn’t fond of Lucia Mulciber. There were few things about her that one could find trouble with. Pristine lineage, a beautiful face, powerful capabilities that most witches at her age were not even aware of, let alone, had mastered. It was a deeper problem, that being; that she was her. When she looked at him he felt as if she was seeing a different version of himself, a better, cleaner, kinder caricature of what he actually was. It made him sick. There was no honor in lies.
When he looked back at Lucia, it was not that he felt some aching chasm of what might be at the end of this war. A picket fence. Two noble houses survived. Children in the garden and only half the amount of nightmares. It was that he didn’t think there would ever be a true end to it. Surely, not a curtain call that suddenly molded him into the better version that she yearned for. That problem being; that he was him.
When her hazel eyes slipped through the waves of her onyx hair, he didn’t see himself in her gaze as he wanted to be. He saw absolutely nothing. He experienced, absolutely nothing.
He certainly didn’t feel wide awake.
A market had been set up on the banks of the river. Regulus landed under the walking bridge with water up to his ankles. Boots sloshing in the scent of algae and moss, he moved up the bank, cloak tight about his jaw, and into slow dwindle of purveyors leaving the market.
Their coach doors were open, fine ornately crafted interiors set on brim to display jewelry, totems and blown glass. A young man slammed a trunk closed, sitting on the lid to keep it latched, and loaded into it his vessel. A woman across the street pulled bread from a skewer and dropped it into the mouth of a lazy dog under the back wheel. Children screamed in delight, fighting off bedtime, which annoyed him greatly.
Regulus hadn’t been attracted by the matryoshka dolls sat in a line on the stalls entrances. He had caught the whiff of magic floated up through the stacks of a carriage, salt and petrichor, mingled with the lingering scent of that bread and some herbs he recognized.
The market travelled together, that much was evident by the camaraderie shared around a glowing fire. But why? Half of them were muggles. Why would anyone with the means to have anything they wanted sell seashells on the banks of the Seine and sleep aside growling terriers?
His half-answer was a woman in the furthest carriage. She was around his mothers age. At that point in her life where her lips had grown tight and rarely cracked for a smile. She wore a waistcoast and tendered to a vessel of tea leaves, seeking the fates at the bottom of a porcelain cup. Regulus left her to her pointless work. Divination was only interesting if one had something to look forward to.
“Brave,” she cooed in French as she passed.
“Excuse you?” He whipped about, eyeing down the velvet tresses that grew to her hips. It briefly reminded him of Tommy Crane. But, to the young girl's credit, she was miles easier to look at.
“To be out so late,” she responded, setting down her cup and eyeing him. “Especially with what you intend to do. You work too much in the dark, you know? You’ll need the sun to see the light.”
“I am not buying what you are selling,” he huffed, and made to continue on.
The woman laughed, which irked him, as it sounded pointed. “She’ll forgive you, in time.”
Instinctually, he snapped his eyes to the cathedral. Lucia had long vanished, she was probably tucked safely into her bed by now.
“Stop it,” he ordered.
“What?” The woman tsk’d. “You’re afraid she wont?”
“I’m not concerned either way,” he shrugged and carried on.
“Typical,” she cooed, and again, “typical.”
Regulus peered over his shoulder at the sheer audacity of her. She must have been in her mid-forties, a wild-haired, wandering-eyed woman with her gaze plastered on the future, unaware of the threats of her present. She reminded him of the first diviner he had ever met. One that didn’t live very long at all once Voldemort had found disfavor in his fortune.
The woman’s presence enraged Regulus, the coil on an already dissatisfactory day. So much so that he couldn’t recall why he had landed in the river to begin with. She was taunting him with considerations that he didn’t wish to have drunk and bed-bound, let alone sober as a whistle and in a foreign city.
“You call me brave,” he shot back, meandering toward the stall. “Bravery is not it, no. I have sense. I certainly do not go about gallivanting with them during a war. I suppose you have lost your fucking sense. Can you find it in your cups, dear? Is it in your seeing cards? Or do you simply have it stored up your arse where you pull the rest of your tricks from?”
She hardly batted an eye. “You’re fighting a war you know nothing about, little boy. Of course, you’ll do anything to be seen as a man. Does that make your father proud?”
“You don’t know me!” He screamed, “I am no child, and you haven’t the slightest idea of what I have done and can do!”
The diviner chuckled, swirling the contents of her cup around once more before taking a sip of the little remaining liquid. Once she had spat toward his boots, Regulus moved forward to breathe into her ear.
“I will afford you mercy, as your insolence appears to be a chronic condition,” he pulled the mug from her grasp, turning it over on the table. “There are so many ways that I could kill you.”
“There is,” she settled on, mouth going straight and eyes cloudy. Genuinely perturbed by the idea, she snuck her gaze over his shoulder and sighed. “But, you didn’t let me finish telling you your prophecy.”
Regulus turned, heels in a storm down the cobbled stone. Through the cry of another child and the bustle of cars leaving the roadway, he heard her say something about foxes, and then more clearly. “She will forgive you, but it will be much too late.”
When Regulus awoke it was late in the day. He found that he had been sharing a bedroom for some time now. And by sharing, he actually meant that Caius had managed to drag himself into the elevator of the Maison Rose, but hadn’t found the path to his own chambers. He had, of course, been allotted the brain function that it took to magically flick the lock on the Regulus’s door. Yet, his slumbering place of choice was a path of gaudy rug between the bathroom sink and the lounge chair.
Caius was so large in stature that lying face down on his stomach meant that he took up the bulk of the room. His waistcoat had been discarded, shirt unbuttoned and flapping at his sides. His hair was less so plastered to his cheeks as it was glued and he smelled as if a shower might only scrub away the first ten sins he had committed the night before, the rest would require holy water, or an exorcism.
He looked a lot like Regulus who always awoke in the same state; annoyed, purple-eyed and starving. The hunger that threatened his abdomen didn’t feel as if it would be satiated by food. Tonight was the Delavore’s ball and he was going to ensure that Tommy Crane got her eyes locked on Vittra. Then, he would assist Crane in dispatching her at the next location. One more day. Perhaps two if the travel went poorly.
Regulus used Caius as a floor rug to get into the bathroom. “Wake up. I have told you on multiple occasions that your overindulgences will not impede our missions. Not that you listen, but today you need to be at your best.”
Caius groaned in reply.
The water that shot from the shower head was baltic. Regulus didn’t mind, chucking his boxers on to the floor and stepping into the basin to feel his bones turn rigid. For thirty seconds he was lost in the act of trying to survive the chill. When the water went scalding, he missed the rote exercise of breathing.
“Get up!” Regulus shouted, pulling the curtain to the side to get a look at the heap which was Avery.
Caius groaned, this time in a minor chord. At least they were making progress.
The ball did not start until the evening. However, by the time Regulus had managed to threaten Caius into the shower and back into his waistcoat, it was already high time to start moving the others into action. As Regulus knocked on doors and took multiple trips to the window for cigarettes and coffee, Caius swept back and forth from the base of the toilet to the water on the mantle.
Regulus himself donned the suit that he had worn to Gawain’s funeral. Not that he had actually been in strict attendance. The attire was only used long enough to stand at the edge of the Riddle manor and watch the remnants of Gawain dropped faintly into the dirt. For this occasion, he had added a boutonniere. It didn’t offer any cheer. Though, Vittra’s throat was probably soft enough to drive the needle end of the rose into her esophagus and twist.
As the boys stepped into the long hallway, they were immediately greeted by Sebastian and Lucia. The former was already wearing his mask, a stark black porcelain piece covering the entirety of his face. The silk scarf wrapped around his neck should have done well enough to keep him warm, but he shivered.
Lucia wore a black dress. It had pearls. Or buttons. He didn’t look that closely.
“And the others?” He asked as Atlan Baatar meandered out of his room. Caius’s gaze seemed to linger on the man. Regulus paid little attention to it. Like a once favored son who didn’t care for his step-siblings, Caius was annoyed by anything new and shiny.
“They’re coming,” Atlan yawned, rocking his head on the door frame.
Regulus placed a hand into his pocket, “at a more exemplified pace would be welcome.”
Atlan shrugged, “rouse them yourself, then.”
Regulus nodded to the Kallizov’s door. Caius beat his fist against the knocker and was returned with muffled, “hold on a moment, you big cunt.”
Atlan laughed.
Regulus missed the humor in it.
He checked his watch.
“Fucking Crane,” he mumbled.
Atlan sighed, “Try her room then if you’re in such a hurry.”
Regulus nodded toward the furthest end of the hall. He had purposefully stuck her as far from his as the space would allow. Her vision could traverse continents but it had given him some minute amount of reassurance that she couldn’t place her ear to the wall and listen him sleep.
Caius took his punishment, moving at a snails pace down the corridor to rap on her door. There was his incessant knocking, and then nothing. The Kallizovs propped their door open and lounged on it like two long stick candles threatening to topple over and start a fire. Sinai joined them through her own threshold.
“Try again,” Atlan said.
Caius tried. Nothing.
“We have to go,” Lucia murmured, her eyes pleading toward Sebastian, who pleaded in turn toward Regulus. A nice system they had set up to keep Lucia from ever having to address Regulus directly. It only added to his annoyance.
“Well!” Atlan called, “you’re not even trying!”
This time when Caius beat on the door it nearly came off the hinges. Regulus, thoroughly disavowed of his will to wait any longer, palmed his wand and used it to turn the knob.
Caius propped the door open and sighed so deeply it broke the sound barrier. “She’s not in there.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Atlan said in mock recall. He wiped a hand down his face, “she’s been in the lobby for hours!”
Regulus could kill them all. Truly, it wouldn’t be that difficult.