Frost

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost


Narcissa Black hated Lucius Malfoy immediately upon meeting him; the sleek sheen of cold aristocratic disdain on his icy visage left a bad taste in her mouth.

They'd been introduced at a ball, and his eyes had touched on her briefly before sliding away and focusing elsewhere. She had been piqued that she had not been enough to hold his interest. She was Narcissa Black, and no man would ignore her. Her beauty was a weapon and to have it summarily dismissed like he had done was a grave insult, and she permitted no man to insult her.

Dinner had been served at a long mahogany table with sparkling crystal and elegant china which she had paid not a bit of attention to.. Such things were de rigeur in her world; they did not bear her notice. She felt that was how she appeared to Lucius—just one more elegant cut crystal glass in a set of twenty. She was not overly impressed with his formal, stiff personality, his perfunctory answers to her polite, uninterested questions. By right, it should have ended their association—neither being taken with the other.

Yet her gaze was drawn to him, eyes glancing over his hair worn just a little too long, his strange icy eyes taking in the scene with disinterest, a faint trace of a sneer on his mouth. Her sister was seated at the opposite end of the table, all but sitting on her new husband's lap, her laugh a trill of sound that bounced across the glasses and hurt Narcissa's ears. She saw Lucius narrow his eyes and turn away from the two of them in disgust, and it did not surprise her that he would find her sister and Rodolphus tiresome. Bellatrix was always too much no matter where you put her—too intense, burning in the chair on which she sat like some demented firebrand. If I am the goblet, Bellatrix is the fire in which it was forged. Malfoy seemed to be the type to prefer the crystal.

He was beautiful, Lucius, in the way that icicles are beautiful hanging off the eaves of houses in winter. For the first time she knew desire, felt it curl with spiky tendrils of need up her body. His mercurial eyes had bored into hers, and she felt she was falling; as if she'd been standing on black ice and it'd cracked, plunging her into the liquid cold with striking abruptness. She knew she should save herself from the descent, but she didn't want to…


****

He married her because she was wealthy and pureblooded, but he wanted her because she did not fall and simper at his feet. Narcissa would never allow him more than the lightest of touches in public, because they made her blood sing more than overt displays of affection ever could.

Their interactions at social functions were like cutting daggers, words and faint smiles biting and vicious in the way only the truly aristocratic could manage. As a couple they were pure perfection—blond, haughty, arrogant. They each hated the other for being equal, but it made the want grow until it was tangible between them, spicy sweet.

When he met with her father to discuss a possible betrothal, Orion Black had smiled and left them alone “to discuss things” with a wink, pulling the doors shut to lock them for a moment in a room of leather and dark cherry wood that spoke of privilege and wealth. Lucius bent her over the desk, hands eager on her body, speaking not a word as he took her. The only noise she made was a gasp as she came; his answering chuckle was warm where his body and his hands were not. He did not kiss her, and she gave him her coolly polite smile and fixed her hair when it was over.

***

They seemed to find a curious joy in being as distantly polite to each other as it was possible for two lovers to be.

At their engagement ball, the whispers of discontent and disdain followed them like a perfume through the ballroom. They stood next to each other in the receiving line, accepting congratulations on their upcoming nuptials, but did not look at each other once.

Her sister Bellatrix, ever at the mercy of her passions, clung to Rodolphus' hand when they entered the party and pressed herself against him, flushed and eager and looking for all the world as if they'd just fucked or murdered someone or both. Bellatrix, ever annoyed by Malfoy's affected sense of superiority, moved her body too close to his; all voluptuous curves and dark intoxicating beauty. He'd put her away from him with a faint trace of distaste marring his patrician features. Bellatrix had laughed and patted his cheek, and leaned in close to whisper something in his ear. Lucius had nodded, once, looking bored.

He never told her what she said, what he'd agreed to, but Bellatrix did.

“I told him he'd made a good match, Cissy. Nothing more.”

Narcissa hadn't believed her, but it did not matter.

Orion Black--beaming, proud, seemingly forgetful of the scandal with the daughter who had preceded her—gave the toast, calling them a perfect match, expressing his and his wife's pleasure in joining the House of Black with such a noble and respectable family as the Malfoys. Narcissa and Lucius stood on opposite sides of the room and clapped in response with the others; neither looked at the other.

Following the toast, they were supposed to have been leading off the dancing. She met him in the hallway on the second floor directly over the ballroom, and they fucked with the sound of the musical quartet playing below on their fine Italian-crafted instruments. She felt like one of those smooth, mahogany violins as he played her with as much practiced expertise as the lead violinist coaxed sound from his Stradivarius.

Her body was as taut as the downbows over the violin strings; the adagio tempo soft and sensuous, then abruptly rising through the hallway allegro appassionada as her passion built in tandem with the music. His hiss of pleasure was entwined with the low mournful cry of the cello, his furious movements within her echoing the rising crescendo of the music that flew through the hallway and drenched them with sound. Finally, her release sang over her skin as the wave of music broke at last, and she clung to him as he gasped out her name like a prayer in the hallway filled with a symphony of music and lust.

When it was over, after she'd righted her clothing and fixed her hair, they went to dance with nary a hint of the passion they had just shared. He held her at a respectable distance and she did not even bother to smile at him for the duration.

They discussed the whispers and the accusations afterwards, Narcissa draped nude over his lap in the study, laughing as they'd shared a glass of port. She'd tangled her fingers in the strands of his white-blonde hair, and he licked the sweet port from her lips with his tongue.


****

Their wedding was the social event of the season. Each and every detail boasted vast wealth and aristocratic elegance; crimson-red roses caught in the height of their beauty and displayed in perfect crystal vases, stiff pristine white linen encased in polished sterling-silver napkin rings, afternoon sunlight dancing merrily through the goblets on the table and reflecting off the diamond on Narcissa's finger.

They spoke only with covert, amused glances, gathering whispered protestations of their supposed marital discord before they even cut the wedding cake. During the toasts—Bellatrix's left scandalized gasps and embarrassed blush-stains on the cheeks of proper maidens in its wake—she sipped the expensive Champagne and inwardly laughed, though her expression showed nothing but the slightest hint of annoyance. She embraced Bellatrix as custom demanded, and her sister pressed a kiss to Narcissa's rosebud mouth, lingering a tad longer than propriety dictated.

Narcissa had excused herself to laugh in the hallway, her sister's audacity forgiven. It was worth it, to hear the talk that the reason she was so cold to Lucius was because she carried a tendre for her own sister . Bellatrix had raised a glass to her in mock salute and left with Rodolphus, with a wink for her newlywed sister and a laugh no one could understand.

That night Lucius took her for the first time in a bed, and she clung to him and sobbed out her passion, scratching her nails down the fair skin of his back, for once feeling as wild and primal as her sister. Her screams were of pure delight and it felt good to allow her body to consume her, to fall into that ice at long last, to give her dark excitement voice at last. He melted beneath her innocent yet eager caresses, as she learned his body and made it hers.

In the darkness afterwards he held her and murmured inane words of love, calling her his flower. She'd snuggled against him, soaking in his praise as she was now free to do, though he peppered his sweet words with bites and scratches. She was bruised, when it was over, and yet there was never a doubt in her mind that she was adored.

The flower turns its face to the fall of the frost.

Even though it kills.

****

Narcissa knew he was evil, long before she saw the Mark on his arm.

There was something so sinister about Lucius, more appealing to her than his money or his name or even the perfection of his face and form. She had sensed it that first night at dinner, when despite everything—the white hair, the pale eyes, the name that itself meant “light”—she saw beneath it, had felt it, that something that should disgust her. Darkness lingered on his kiss, it manifested in the pain he inflicted with even the lightest of caresses and it spilled from his mouth with every loving word he ever spoke.

The utter lack of expression he was capable of when he ruined lives fascinated her. Lucius could take a man's fortune and leave him with nothing with nary a flicker of conscience. At the parties they were required to attend, a cut-direct from either of them could destroy someone's social standing. It did not matter if the hapless man or woman were young or old, charming or kind, if Lucius wanted the wizard or witch ruined for whatever reason, ruined he or she became.

Like the frost to which she always likened him, he would strangle the most fragile of lives without a moment's hesitation.

She watched him kill, once, with utter indifference etched into every line of his face, his posture easy and relaxed. He may have been drinking a brandy, for all the tension about him in that moment. It fascinated and aroused her and she would think of it at night when she touched herself, when he was gone away to one of his meetings.

Of his dead eyes and impassioned face, of the ease with which he destroyed.

Narcissa knew what the Mark on his skin meant; she'd seen it on her sister's arm when it had first been placed there. Then, she had touched it with a light, caressing touch, whisper-soft, feeling heat pour off of it. Bellatrix's eyes had gleamed with utter delight as she proudly showed her sister what she had become.

Envy, there was the barest trace of envy, as she saw what Bellatrix had done. Never would she have been allowed, no, not for Narcissa. Bella the warrior, Andromeda the tortured heroine, the sacrificial maiden, and Narcissa, pale and beautiful, the adornment, the flower that grows in a garden to be adored and displayed.

That Lucius would support this Dark Lord Voldemort, Narcissa had no doubt. She would not have married him otherwise. That he should bear his Mark, as her sister did, pleased her even more.

In bed, sometimes, she would press her mouth to it, that symbol of his dark loyalty and murderous intentions. Her tongue traced the path of the serpent, and she licked at his skin, wanting to drink him in, all that perfect beauty and evil.

“I think you're a bit too fascinated by that,” Lucius drawled, watching her, eyes liquid and desirous as he took in her expression of delight.

“Maybe I'm jealous, and wish for one of my own,” she answered him.

“You would be like your sister? Mad as a hatter?” His back arched up off the bed as she nipped him with her small, sharp white teeth. “As if I'd permit anyone to mar your skin, Narcissa.”

She paused at that, looking up at him. “You'd kill the one you are sworn to, for marking me?”

He tangled his hand in her wheat-blonde hair and pulled, sharply enough to send pain sparking through her and making her aching, wet. “I'd kill anyone for you, Narcissa, you know that.”

“You would kill anyone anyway.” She pressed herself against him, breathing erratic, eager for him to take her. “Merely because you wanted to.”

“True. But for you, I would enjoy it.” He jerked her head back again; for no reason other than to cause pain, though with his eyes he adored her.

“Would you make it hurt?” She was now rubbing herself against him, the scent of her arousal rising between them, body suffused with languorous lust and skin shimmering with a faint sheen of sweat.

“I'd give them pain they never knew existed, my darling, for daring to put hands on you.” He kissed her, and bit her lower lip as he did so. “I would make them scream, and beg, and bleed for you.”

“Could I watch?” She was breathless, excited, nails digging into the Mark on his forearm. “Please?”

He nodded. “Of course you could.”

The idea of a symphony of screaming on her behalf with him as the conductor excited her. She rapidly lost the ability to speak, and clung to him, giving herself over to his pleasure, tumbling into his darkness so that it would wash her away, consume her… the scrape of his stubble on her tender breasts, the scratch of nails down her thighs all made her sing like a finely-tuned instrument beneath his capable hands.

“I suppose you shall have to bear this Mark for both of us,” she gasped out as he rolled her beneath him, driving into her with passionate ferocity.

“I'll try my hardest,” he said with a smirk, and pinned her arms with his long-fingered hands.

When it was over, she lay sprawled in repletion on his chest, absently tracing the Mark that fascinated her so. “Would you really deny me, if I wanted it?”

He paused, and she felt his heartbeat beneath her head. “It does not matter, Narcissa. It's just a symbol.” He tilted her face up to his, kissing her tenderly in the moonlight that spilled across the sheets of their bed. “You bear the Mark where it matters most, Narcissa,” he said softly, hand sliding down to press gently against her heart.

Satisfied, she entwined her hand in his, his even breathing lulling her into an easy, untroubled sleep.

~Finis