The Spare Princess, Chapter Six
The Spare Princess
The one called Lord Voldemort rose, and the pureblood circles shattered, struck through with change and new politics. The families realigned, reformed, two new rings of power in the elite, smaller and more tightly bound. The first, the larger of the two, bowed and scraped to the rising black, the new dark lord. The second, the smaller, was subdivided in itself; the majority-the Macmillans, the Bones, the Greengrasses, the Potters, the Longbottoms, the Prewetts-found the whole situation deplorable. The rest of the second comprised itself of a few families, namely the Princes and the Blacks, who had more objection to the bowing and scraping inherent in any ‘lord’ than with the creed of blood purity and domination he espoused. As Everard Prince so coolly and condescendingly told Abraxas Malfoy, “I do not know about Malfoys, but even the lowest of Princes is too high to kneel to anyone, especially such a self-aggrandizing creature of uncertain blood and no respectable family as this so-called 'Lord Voldemort'.
Everard Prince, in his ancient and unshakable pride, would bow to no one. Walden Macnair had been bowing most of his life, it was no hardship to bow to this new master, to pledge himself to this new allegiance, especially as it seemed to offer him the most for his trouble.
But still. He would have stayed true to the high and unworthy Princes if Evangeline had asked it of him.
Bright, rare sunshine made her a silhouette in her window seat in the west-facing sitting room and he could not read her face. The shadow was as black as her hair and they bled together. “I would be defying your family, Evangeline-they would make you feel it.”
There was nary a pause in her reply. “You are my family,” his shadow replied, not even looking up from the book in her lap. “Do whatever you think is best. I do not doubt your judgment.”
He followed Abraxas Malfoy, though he knew the man had only invited him into the circle to spite old Mr. Prince; it didn’t quite matter. The new master was a horror to behold, more serpent than man, but Walden was quite accustomed to ugliness and he didn’t flinch at the subhuman figure he knelt before. Something pressed at, pressed through his mind and that he flinched at. The Dark Lord pulled at memories of torture, of murder, of hate and lust and loathing and resentment and rage and jealousy…and grinned. Then he pulled at one of Evangeline; Walden snapped in response, trying to pull away. The creature laughed at that and pulled a hundred more, a hundred moments that Walden had once thrilled in the sole ownership of.
Lord Voldemort withdrew, his gash of a mouth drawing into a cold-blooded grin. “Your loyalty will win great things for her. And you are a loyal one, aren’t you, Walden Macnair?”
The Mark burned into his arm, and he gritted his teeth against the scream he wanted to unleash. He Apparated into a forgotten clearing deep in the Forbidden Forest after the meeting and brutally exterminated the two giant spiders who had the poor luck to cross his path before he went home, too afraid of how he might injure Evangeline if he returned in such a wounded animal rage. His arm still burned, as though the Mark was searing down past flesh and into bone and out the other side, but worse still was those hundred pieces of Evangeline that were stolen, jealous greed over what was no longer solely his. That burned worse than the Mark.
He hacked at the spiders until his hands stopped shaking, and then he went home to her. She was still awake, waiting for him, and he sat up all night with her, his back against the old, carved wood of the headboard, Evangeline in his arms, her featherlight fingertips tracing the Mark as he told her about everything he had been promised, everything he hoped for.
It was under this lord, he hoped, that he might give her back all she had lost when her grandfather had thrown her to him: her status, her wealth, a grand, beautiful home, beautiful clothes at her whim, and new jewelry that Walden could admire her in without Everard stealing into his thoughts and washing her out. “I swear, Evangeline, I will build you a name worth carrying and our children will have a family to be proud of. No one will ever pity you again,” he swore to her in an unnecessary whisper.
She remained quiet throughout all of his words and promises, and she remained so, but she trembled in his arms and pressed her face closer into his neck. “What is it?” he asked her, his rough hands combing through her hair, the strands of it catching on the axe-worn calluses.
“Nothing,” she whispered.
When his hands crept up under her nightgown, her own followed them to stall his path, and she drew herself ever-so-slightly away. “Not tonight,” she said softly. “I’m bleeding,” she added, quiet and humiliated.
“Again?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
“…Yes,” she replied slowly, hesitation and fear creeping into her voice. Not pregnant. Another month gone by and she still wasn’t pregnant. “I’m sorry.” Her voice came low. Her hands slid from where they clung to his shoulders, and she curled them close to her chest, drawing into herself.
They didn’t speak any more words after that. He fell asleep somehow angry with her. Didn’t she see? Everything he was doing, all he was suffering…it was all for the family they would have, the one she was so slow in giving to him. He was trying to give her everything she had once had and more, and she couldn’t give him this one thing he wanted? Couldn’t give him children, a line of descent to build a name for? Immortality, really; that was what it was to found a family, for his name to endure.
He was quiet in the morning, as well, not speaking to her until he finished a cup of Teapot’s too-sweet tea. He felt calmer after it, and the fearful rigidity in Evangeline’s posture thawed as his quiet anger faded. “I’m sorry,” he apologized carefully, between sips of tea. Evangeline looked entirely relieved, a smile on her face as she shook her head to say no need, no need, it’s nothing. “There’s no hurry, really,” he continued on. “You’re so young, we have years,” he assured her. She nodded along in quick, appeasing agreement.
Another month went. And another. And another. Once he began to notice the time, it seemed to pass so much more quickly. He didn’t even need to ask anymore. Evangeline got nervous around him every month, skittish, waiting for the question and having only the same answer, the same disappointment.
And then, at the cold, awkward Christmas dinner that they had somehow still been invited to at the Prince estate, Everard cast a cruel, devious glance between his granddaughter and her husband, a malicious plan forming. The dinner was sparsely attended-Eris, Eirene, and Emmeline had all married into families that, for varying reasons, no longer kept company with the Princes. Everard held court only over his spinster sister, his two sons, their wives, Edmund’s son Edward, and Evangeline and Walden. He had a limited number of victims, and seemed to be calculating the best way to extract as much possible amusement from them as possible.
“A sad Christmas, with no children to brighten the hall,” Everard remarked with exaggerated disappointment. Evangeline went grey in her seat and next to her, Walden tensed. “Surely next year, Evangeline, next Christmas?” he asked facetiously, another great show. “Surely! A Macnair son to carry on such a worthy name!” It was so laced with sarcasm and mockery and malicious amusement that it was impossible to misunderstand. All the pieces fell into place, heavier than Walden ever could have imagined, and the delicate framework of the life he had been engineering buckled under the weight of it all and his vision went black.
The wedding. The jewelry. The marriage contract. This was the great punch line and it felled him.
Evangeline sat frozen next to him, fear scrawled into every broken line of her body.
They had given her to him because she was useless, she was the end. Everard had given her the jewelry because she would have no children to inherit it, it would be back in the Prince vault the moment she died with no blood of hers to lay claim to it. Everard had not bothered to disinherit her like her sister, like her cousins, because whatever little things she troubled herself to claim from her Uncle Edmund or cousin Edward would revert when the jewelry did.
Walden thought he had been gifted the beginning of a line, of a name. He’d been given the end of one. Old Mr. Prince gifted no one a rose…here were the razor thorns for his lovely little shadow.
If Walden had been able to see past his blinding rage to notice anyone but his petrified wife, he would have seen the cruel, pleased expression on Everard’s face. Evangeline’s father was wretched, somewhere between complete and utter hate and unadulterated terror for his daughter’s sake.
(The next morning saw Elliot Prince brought in by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the use of the Cruciatus curse and attempted patricide. He was later sentenced to life in Azkaban.)
But Walden could not see past the damnation of every plan he had so carefully cultivated. He nearly dragged Evangeline out of her seat, pulling her along behind him as he thundered to the door, past the anti-Apparition boundary. Everard's demonic laughter followed them all the way.
Evangeline collapsed on the floor of their kitchen, clutching her bruised wrist, silent but for the shallow, panicked breathing of deathly terror, a tangle of black hair and evergreen silk on the ugly wood floor.
Walden could not speak. Or think. Or move. There was only fury. It burned.
No. That was his arm, his Mark. It burned vivid, calling him to service. He thrilled to it-his hands itched to wreak disaster and ruin as effortlessly as Everard’s words had toppled all his grand plans and ambitions. He left her there on the floor, Apparated straight out of the kitchen, away from the remains of his crumbled hopes.
The night quelled some of his rage; the screams and the blood and the pleas for mercy, for life, for husbands, wives, children, parents. It felt good to destroy, ruin, steal, spoil, maim. He reveled in it, destroying lives under the emerald green glow of the Master’s conjured constellation.
The grey, overcast morning light crept across the kitchen when he returned, casting long, vaguely defined shadows over the floor. Evangeline still lay where he’d left her, her face a few streaks of washed out white between the thick, obscuring shadow of her hair. She was asleep.
He took tea at the kitchen table-Teapot hopped nimbly over his unconscious mistress to deliver the sick-sweet brew Walden was actually beginning to prefer.
Though she didn’t move at first, he knew the moment she woke. The slack in her muscles tightened up, her breathing quickened-she was an animal hunted, cornered, once again the vixen in the trap. He set down his tea cup and, in a few strides, crossed the floor and carefully gathered her up, trying not to pull at any of her scattered, tangled hair.
Settling into his favorite armchair, he pulled her close against him, trying to soften her fright-frozen form. “I told you,” he whispered gruffly, pressing his nose into her hair, “You will never have a reason to fear me, Evangeline. I promised you and I am not so low a man to not keep my word.”
She looked up at him with wide, unbelieving eyes. “I thought you were going to kill me,” she managed to say, almost choking on the end of it.
“No,” he whispered. “I could never…” he trailed off. “No.”
She curled in closer, pressing her face into his neck, still breathing through her fading panic. “That’s what my family thought you would do when you found out.”
Some faint flicker of rage flared through him, but Evangeline’s slowing breathing, the delicate fragrance of her hair, the weight of her against his chest gave him pause, cooled the blind passion into something more useful.
“Your family,” he began carefully, calmly, certainly, “They are going to pay.”
Evangeline was quiet a long moment and then, in a strange, new steel and venom voice that was not quite unfamiliar, she said simply, “I know how to make them.”