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James is here only as a spy. Admittedly that sounds much more sinister than it feels. Perhaps it is better to say that he is here only as Sirius’ eyes and ears – for Sirius, with his father lying dead, has fled to the Marches with Remus and the rest. It is where James would rather be, plotting and gathering swords. Instead, he’s trapped in London with Prince Regulus, named regent by forged documents, and the indomitable Queen Mother for whom Sirius imports a specially-made pike from Bohemia, ready to mount outside the Tower of London with her head upon it. So long as James remains within the castle walls, they permit him to write, though he is certain they read his letters. He hopes that what Sirius has always said is true – he is the most intelligent of them. Given that the Queen Mother has gone to such effort to organise an extraordinary match for the clearly-disinterested Prince Regent, James decides to believe it. But now, upon reflection, it may be more reasonable to say James is only here as a hostage. Ultimately, it’s the same difference.
The court stands to await the imminent arrival of the Austrian princess, sister-in-law to the Holy Roman Emperor. People murmur. The Prince Regent – Regulus, James thinks, for it’s a foolish, ill-begotten title and James has known the boy since before he could lace his own breeches – stands tall and pale in front of the throne, his mother’s jewelled hand gripping his shoulder. Often, the court whisperings disquiet him, but today they are only his own thoughts ringing in his ears. Regulus and his bride have never met. The wedding is planned for the morning, after a night’s vigil in the chapel – because of course, they could not share a bed before they are bound in the eyes of the Lord, so the only solution is to stay awake until that time and pray to resist the temptation. And the lords and their wives press their lips to each other’s ears and wonder: will they resist? Will they be stuck together at all?
Some care not for the sticking, convinced an absence of passion is the solution to a stable, politically expedient match, and if some peasant flings themselves at a married woman, then it is treason and no matter to put him on the scaffold with a horrified noblewoman clinging to his filthy fingers. Generally, however, it instils a great deal of confidence in all parties if the bride and groom are to become enmeshed for the first rise and fall of the sun that they share. Less chance of betrayal, less chance of replacement, and an heir near guaranteed save for the Lord’s intervention. So now, James cranes his neck with the rest as the doors open and the trumpeters emerge, and waits to see if the prince and princess will clash together and promise an heir for the Black cause. Silently, James prays not. Sirius dreads the business of getting a child and if his usurper brother can be plagued by an unsuitable marriage, it will be all the better.
“Presenting the beloved daughter of the Duke of Austria and the sister to the Holy Roman Empress; the good and noble Lily of Innsbruck.” James bends with the rest as the Austrian ambassador strides forward and the lady enters. Lady, not princess, James thinks wryly. The Queen Mother must have been confused, for surely she would not so willingly mislead her gullible courtiers. The musicians strike a jaunty tune for her entrance, and James turns his eyes to the left, catching a flowing dark skirt and black slippers on the fine Moorish carpet that has been rolled out for her arrival. Regulus coughs gently, and the room sweeps to its feet.
She is beautiful. Beautiful beyond imagining. James’s breath catches in his throat. He has been fortunate enough to glimpse the portrait of her that had been sent ahead, but in that she had been sunken and pale and in profile, hands clasped in prayer and gaze lowered, her hair hidden beneath a jewelled net. Living and breathing before him, it is as though she has deigned to descend from heaven, God’s promises on her soft pink lips. A curve of dark red hair peeks out from under the velvet lappets that swoop past her shoulders, and it’s enough to clench his stomach. Her green eyes are sharp and skim over the crowd until they land on her betrothed. Regulus, pale to start with, has ventured somewhere beyond white to the snows of Scandinavia. The apple in his throat is the size of a melon.
The Queen Mother clears her throat. Regulus swoops into a low bow and straightens. James only spots the nervous twitch in his lower lip because Sirius does the same thing, and James and Sirius shared a bedchamber from when they were eleven and earning their spurs together until they were men grown with bloodied swords.
“My lady,” he says, words clipped and diction unimpeachable. “It pleases me to see your face after receiving so many good accounts of your nature and waiting most anxiously for this day. I pray this may be the beginning of a great new age for this kingdom.” There is not a hint of heart in his rehearsed speech, but he is trained well; his hands are still, he keeps his face turned towards her, and he does not sway or dig his foot into the carpet like James has seen some do. This is perhaps the most important moment of his life, excepting when the bells rung out to announce the death of his father. He is probably convinced there will be a moment of triumph – coronation or the reception of his brother’s head – to beat this, but James knows that is a fool’s dream. James will personally ensure that this is it.
“I would present to you my good nephew Prince Regulus, regent of England, Lord Protector of the Realm, and Duke of Clarence.” The Duke of Norfolk, Lord Cygnus, draws out every word, clearly relishing each brief second in the sun. James’s eyes snap to Lily, along with half the crowd, and his chest beats erratically. Fail, he prays, so that Sirius might eclipse. A man in love, even heirless, is a most dangerous creature. Love is the madness of the soul. If Sirius alone knows this power, he will prosper. If Regulus learns it, the realm will be ruined beyond repair.
In her infinitesimal hesitation, James knows victory.
And then she is running, skirts swirling, barrelling towards Regulus, who belatedly realises his role in this and stumbles forward, blinking and tensed. A sigh floats through the crowd; relief, adoration, disappointment for those who either noticed the delay and dread the consequences, or who did not but thought it might be amusing if the parties were to be mismatched and believe their hopes have been dashed. In a performance as great as any travelling player’s Lily wrenches back at the last moment, feigning only now-remembered propriety, and reaches shakily for Regulus’ hand. They touch, and it is sealed. They are, by God’s law, soulmates – but only if you blinked and fell ignorant of the anguished half-second which in truth is the only thing they share. A clap and cry goes up and James slaps his hands together, lips curving upwards. Sirius has won a battle he was not even present for. Who is truly our Lord’s favourite?
There is a buzz as the court talks of gratitude and praises and plans, and Lily encircles Regulus’ fist with her entire hand, a grim determination set in the sliver of teeth that peeks through her courteous smile. The next challenge is upon her, and it is one James will follow with great influence, in all honesty; can they fake their bond until this same noon hour tomorrow? The vigil serves a dual purpose; for bonded couples, it reduces temptation, and for those who are not, they might stay awake so that they are not caught out in the turns of slumber. After all, separation for more than it takes one to say a rosary is enough to kill; they must be bound by the beat of their hearts. Through cloth or skin it matters not, so long as it might be felt. When a prince wakes a bed away from his supposed mate without a hint of sickliness, the game is up. Kingdoms have been lost to a prince’s dream-drenched roll away from his prospective bride.
The ambassadors cluster round the young couple, the Queen Mother watching sternly, and the din turns incomprehensible. James drums his fingers on his belt, waiting. A bit of rearranging and introductions are in order. He isn’t at the front of the line, with the Rosiers and the Crouches and the rest, kin near and distant of the Blacks and those with green serpents sewn over their hearts. But James’s father’s cousin wed a Black, and he owns property enough that they cannot shuffle him to the back with the lesser gentry and the knights, to content himself with watching the tops of heads. He stands halfway down the reception chamber, swordless and hands clasped behind his back. The very picture of a pliant prisoner. The empty place on his belt rankles, but the Queen Mother has ordered all true arms be left behind as a show of peace-making to their guests. James supposes they didn’t know the girl’s disposition and don’t want to startle her onto a ship home.
Regulus grips her by the waist and steers her into introductions with his cousins and closest, flinching at each press of lips to her hand. James clenches his jaw as not to laugh. If her mate is truly amongst the crowd, it will not be a polite kiss that makes it so but the exchange of names. A cleverer man might declare a sudden calling by the Lord to sequester himself and his betrothed in prayer and avoid the treacherous introductions altogether. It would be impolite, of course, but would attract rather less suspicion than jumping back a foot as Lord Crouch squishes his mouth against her knuckles.
James only truly gets to hear the lady’s voice as they reach Viscount Crabbe, and it is rich and musical despite the heavy accent that drapes over it. At this distance, he can clearly see the twists of her lips and the subtle pattern in her sleeves. Crabbe fumbles over a compliment and she chuckles politely.
“My lord, I could never think to compare to the size,” and she pauses, gaze flittering over the swollen yellow cap upon his head, “of your immense kindness.” One of the ambassadors with her, a dark-haired man with a hooked nose who rather resembles an overlarge bat, cackles in a way that can only be turned into a cough with much forgiveness and blinded eyes. James himself must make an effort of endeavouring not to smile. Crabbe trips into another bow. Then there is Goyle, Parkinson, and –
James. Their eyes lock at once, and like a boy in his first spring he inhales sharply. That peeking triangle of hair shimmers in the torchlight, and her eyes sparkle like a waiting battlefield. In this proximity he could count each of her dark lashes if he cared to. A slender swatch of skin is bared between the end of her much-embellished white glove and the fitted sleeve of her kirtle, hidden beneath the draping black gown. His gaze darts up to her in a question. She only smiles, looking glazed. She is too skilful, he thinks. Playing the maid. Though her naivety is not all play if she dared leave that milk ribbon of truth free. Barricaded touch is well enough for one’s soulmate, so long as you can feel their heart beneath yours, but there is a little whine of pain unless your skins contact. She had prepared for Regulus to be her match. She is not all a cynic.
Just to taunt Regulus, he digs his nail the palm of his glove – it is a good thing he chose older ones for this day, worn already – and then reveals the hole.
“We must be careful, Your Grace,” he teases, drawing eyes to his hand. “Say they not that should a man touch another’s soulmate within that blessed time with his bare skin it should be agony for all?” Lily’s eyes narrow.
“A folk tale,” she says, all sweet smiles again, and squeezes Regulus’ fingers. “We have them too. But it is foolishness to believe.” She takes his measure. There is a heat in her gaze, searing through his satins. “Pray tell, my love, who should this storyteller be?” She is already offering her hand for him to kiss.
“The Duke of Peverell,” Regulus says, frowning frightfully. “Lord James Potter.”
Something snaps inside him, a mast falling, something burning and he grips her hand like it is a plank in a tormented sea and he is shipwrecked. His body runs cold then flushes hot, flooding, and Lily’s slender eyes flare wider. Her pulse jumps through the material separating them, beating against his heart. In a moment of courage – recklessness – his hand trails up her wrist, where he presses the flat of his palm to her bare skin in a test.
And it is the greatest feeling he has ever known.
Better than battle-lust, better than his first time abed, better than the moment Sirius first embraced him as ‘brother’. It is a salve on the sin of his soul. He looks upon her as if he might hope to consume her. A flush creeps up her fair skin, mottling her neck, spreading to the roots of her hair. Her lips press very slightly thinner, paling, and there is a shudder where their skin contacts. And then she is saying something that sounds like God’s own angels descending upon him and Regulus is looking at him and –
Oh.
Oh no.
It cannot be.
“A pleasure to meet you,” Lily says, with the manner of someone repeating themselves. He bends at the waist and brushes his lips against her knuckles. Lightning cracks through him.
“Your Grace,” he says, lingering. Inside, he is dumbstruck. Lily. Lily. She is fixed upon him, the tiniest frown crossing her features, a glimmer in her eyes, and he realises they must do something now. It crashes upon him like a falling star. The raise of his palm is trapped against her arm, and with each passing moment the likelihood grows that they will be discovered and sent to the sword. Lily.
Sirius would laugh to see it. James’s soulmate as Regulus’ betrothed. He would laugh himself into a stupor.
It will cost James’s head. And Lily, so beautiful and cleverer than him, has a flare of fear behind her eyes. Regulus clears his throat, and Earl Flint is leaning eagerly, and James must do something.
He must save her. A half-hour, or near enough – the length of a rosary - is all one can survive separated.
Unless their soulmate dies first.
“How dare you?” James shouts, fumbling for the dagger at his belt, looking at a simple baron in the crowd. “You maim me! You would maim me!” He lunges, and the crowd bursts into chaos. Screaming, shouting – the baron is running – Crabbe elbows Goyle in the face – the Queen Mother shouts for calm, Regulus draws back, Lily is attached to James. He steps towards her, exchanges his right hand for his left, presses his ring finger to her, and screams. The crowd surges and stumbles, Lily is pulled in, and James goes down, falling to the floor. Someone tramples on his legs. Regulus screams for the guards. Lady Malfoy faints. In the confusion, James leans forward and slashes his dagger.
The pain is unbearable. It is worse than any maiming he’s had on the battlefield – worse than the arrow lodged in his bicep, the cut that had been infected on his leg. He pulls away from Lily as one of Regulus’ knights grabs her around the middle and pulls her out of the crowd. Her eyes are wider than ever, her hand clamped over where he had touched her, blood rushing from her sleeve and soaking her snow-white glove. James holds up his hand again, ensuring all can see, and allows them to gasp and screech. Then the world burns white at the edges, and perhaps it is but melodrama, but his head hits the ground.
While ever she can feel my life’s blood beating, she is not separated from me.
While ever she can feel my life’s blood beating, she is safe.
James wakes with another folk tale on his lips. He prays it holds truer than the first he sprouted today.
His hand burns as though fevered, and he lay upon a table in an antechamber, Regulus and the Queen Mother and the knights and – Lily – all looking down upon him. Lily’s hands are stained with his life, and she clutches his dismembered finger, from which the pouring blood has slowed to a trickle. But still it trickles; there is something in there, moving and twitching. Enough to keep her for a little longer than he will last.
She is all but a stranger to him, but he must die for her. It is divinely ordained. There is a world and a war beyond her gaze but in this it is lost to him.
The price of being bound to another man’s wife. The Lord has his japes. Perchance this was always to be his end. He has known enough of God’s glories that he should have earned some downfall by now.
But it is a shame not to know her and love her. Even in this terror, even clutching all hope for her head in her bloody hands, she keeps a neutral, demure expression. She will eat Regulus, he thinks, and musters a smile. She will devour him.
“My lord,” says the physician, who has appeared in his cap and robes, “can you see me? Can you hear me?”
“You are seen and heard,” James replies, and to his alarm his voice is rattled by a croak. But the physician is relieved, and Lily piously makes the sign of the cross. He wonders at its authenticity. Does she fear for him? If she does, it must surely be born of obligation. One is obligated to pray for their soulmate, to hope for their safe tidings, even before an attachment is formed. James would have to put his life on the life for her regardless of his own heart. It is God’s law.
But it helps that she is very beautiful, he must admit. It helps that she was clever enough to throw herself at Regulus, it helps that she near made him laugh, and it helps that his lost finger might be a crucifix in the might with which she clutches it. She clasps her hand over her heart and he finds a solemness in her eyes he thinks is not feigned. He hopes.
“My lord, it is my greatest grievance to bestow you with such bad news, but I must tell you -” and the physician sucks in his breath until his cheeks are a regal, deathly purple, “- you have lost your finger.”
James raises his eyebrows, and is pleased at least that the pain in his head is not yet insurmountable. It is only a light ringing, as though he had been clouted around the head. “I have noticed, yes.” The pain in his chest is worse than that of the phantom finger, beating in double time and stabbing with every pulse, so that breathing becomes a matter of concentration.
“It is your heart finger, my lord, the third of your left hand. I am doing my best to staunch the flow of blood, my lord, we see these injuries upon a battlefield, if I could give you something for your pain, but the prince – that is, our beloved Prince Regent – he has questions he would ask of you, if you could be of clear mind – but we may call a priest -”
“I will answer.” He does not know how much time he lost in his unconsciousness, but he must draw them from Lily. The blood blossoming on her clothes is slowing with every second, and once that is up she will grow as ill as he is. He will not have it. He must find some way to ensure he is gone before she is at any risk of it, and before she is under any suspicion. He must make his peace and do it.
Fleetingly, he wishes for cowardice. Or courage. Cry out the truth and see what they may do. To save his head or take theirs both. There is a thin line, and even weakness must take a sort of bravery, to disappoint all those who have loved you and turn those in whom have trusted you. To give up.
Unfortunately, James Potter was knighted at sixteen by Sir Godric Gryffindor himself. He could not know Satan’s cowardice if he rode to the heart of hell.
They field questions – who was this villain, with what weapon did he strike, are there any whom you have given insult or injury? James describes a man with a bald head, a grotesque chin, mismatched eyes, and a striped cloak; that is, a creature who does not exist, but whom will necessitate quite a convoluted search. Each word is more difficult. His ribs hum with strain, and for all efforts, the flow of blood will not staunch at his hand. He had never thought he might know that he was dying. A quick death, he had prayed for, by the sword in battle or in his bed with a full belly and a love on the pillows beside him. It is an oddity to feel the life sap from him, and he knows more pity for those who have suffered lengthily than he had ever thought to have before. The Lord works mysteriously, and if this rush of introductions and love and death is to teach something, perhaps it is empathy.
“Very well,” says the Constable. “Thank you, my lord.” And he is gone and there is something else, but the edges of James’s mind are falling away into time as the sickness spreads. His toes and remaining fingers stiffen, heavier with each breath. He endeavours to retain his consciousness and sets his eyes upon Lily.
The blood has stopped dripping. Her lips and nose are red, her cheeks flaxen. There is a scarlet rim to her green eyes that stirs him. That he could touch her face, just the once. That he could stroke his thumb along her cheek. In the next life, he supposes, or whatever it is he will get when this is done. He searches for an anger in his soul but no fire is kindled. Only resignation. Only a sense of luck finally running out. Her gaze meets his, and a knot forms between her perfect red brows.
“We must pray over him!” she blurts out suddenly, drawing the attention of the room. In an instant, she is at his side, and she grabs his hand and places her other on his chest. It strikes like lightning. Life pulses through him from her touch. She has saved him. She is his redeemer. He jolts upright, able to lift his head, and her heart drums against his skin. He has never known anything sweater than these breaths of air.
“Princess!” The Queen Mother snaps, though Lily is not a princess but certainly is too important to be spoken to in that tone. “You are going to do yourself ill! You have detached from your love!” And in the swirl of vitality James has forgotten that til now. Lily looks up at the Queen Mother, rosebud lips pursed, and she blinks as though confused.
“Of course I have not. Only great pain may separate us – an injuring. And the Lord should never permit for my love to be injured nor taken from me, not from this moment til my very last.” She bows her head, and a terror spikes through James’s limbs until he realises she is looking down at something. He hefts himself onto one elbow and sees that Lily is standing on Regulus’ foot. Regulus smiles like a man who is constipated.
“We could never be separated, Mother,” Regulus says through gritted teeth. He grabs Lily’s arm and James can feel the firmness of it through the way Lily’s fingers stutter against his. “My love. We might pray for him in the chapel where God will better hear us. You would know that he is a dear friend of my brother’s.” Lily smiles so blithely James questions if she really doesn’t know what that means. Regulus’ eye twitches. “My ill brother. Who I must be regent for on account of his illness.”
“The rebel?” Lily asks, accent thicker than ever. The Queen Mother laughs with bulging eyes and joins Regulus’ hands on her arm. Lily grips James’s clothes, clinging to him. It is all he can do not to pull her down on top of him and shield her in his arms.
But that would be death. So he takes cold gulps of air and focuses on the prick of her nail in his palm.
“Come, girl,” says the Queen Mother. “We will escort you to the chapel. You may pray for whatever you like. Leave him.” And truly, she pulls, like Lily is a thorn to be tugged out.
“No,” Lily bites. James is so shocked that he coughs and laughs and coughs. His soulmate. The Lord has made a rare one in her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That -” Lily drops her voice, thickens the accent again, “- that is not how it is done in my country. We must lay hands on him to pray. Don’t you see?” The race of her pulse gives her fear away, and James shifts ever so slightly to apply pressure to her, a kind of comfort. Her fingers splay across his chest, over the gold threads that embellish his doublet. “God has given us a sign. He sees our marriage as – as a beacon of kindness, and mercy, and as an opportunity for healing across this country that I should take as my own. A unification of our ways. This man – he has been a victim of violence on the day we have had our heart’s greatest love realised. Perhaps we are meant to heal him.”
It’s quite the speech. Her forefinger curls around his – his stomach tightens – and she takes Regulus by the chain of his cloak. “My love,” she says, eyes gently imploring, and James is tumbling headfirst so quickly that it grazes him, to see her playing at love with someone else. “My love, I know I have but a woman’s heart, but if you could give me this favour, with the kindness I know lies within you, I would be so thankful. Even if I am wrong – I can be so foolish sometimes, I have not a man’s head for these things – might it not be favourable to have one with us who might ensure we keep our virtue, despite our locking together? For I have never laid eyes upon one such as you and I fear so greatly falling into this temptation that tugs on me…I know I must wait til we are wed, but to look upon you is so heavenly…”
James nearly believes it. If she didn’t trace a circle over the hollow of his wrist bones he would think her a lost cause. But she chooses the right words and in a flurry of muttering and hands and whispers of lust, that carnal cardinal sin they loathe except when it rears its head in the marriage bed, they are sitting James up and gushing over His Grace’s grace. Lily’s touch drifts from his hand over his hip and along his thigh in careful concern. It is Satanic. Feeling blooms from her fingertips and the quickest skim of the tender tendons of his inner thigh makes him want to drive a pike through the Prince Regent’s head for what he’s done, rip her gown in two, and fuck her on the sickroom floor.
As they talk around them, she smiles, a wicked glint in her eye. Unbecoming for the Empress’ sister. Unholy.
Ordained for him by God.
Unrepentant as she grips his knee.
They hurry up the procession to the chapel, passing over the supper they have slaughtered beasts and kidnapped cooks for, and a point arrives where they tell Lily, quite firmly, that she must let him go. Her eyes flick to his in question.
He pulls himself away. Of course she can go without touching him. The effect is instantaneous; his force weakens, his knees bend, and his blood flutters, uncertain whether it is worth the effort to keep beating. It matters little. James would have died for her once already this day had she not reached for him, and he would do it again without a care, for he has known her on his chest and his hand and what it is to be stirred by her and that is more than he might have dared beg God for. His concern is for her. His dagger has been lost in the fray and it will be more difficult to lose two digits in a day and call it bad fortune. She leans heavily on her betrothed, a shadow in her cheeks previously unforeseen. James clenches his jaw.
The palace chapel is a ricochet of rainbow light, thick with incense and candles. A choir heralds their arrival; the chapel’s priest stands at the altar. It is like a little wedding. James follows them in, flanked by guards, the Queen Mother breathing down his neck. Lily fingers the heavy cross around her neck. They take their usual seats for Mass, but the Lord must hear his prayers, or take some kind of pity, for there is not a proper service. Only a short reading and prayers for the to-be-wedded. A vein in his head throbs weakly as he clasps his hands. God is gambling with his life like the castle is but a card table. He fixates on Lily’s hennin, on the black frontlet that hides her hair, on the crescent moons of skin that rear their heads above her sleeves. The hem of her dress, scrunched around her feet, is stained with his blood. In her kneeling, she wobbles a moment, and his heart leaps into his mouth; he is ready to cry out, damn his life; he is not saintly enough to be a Becket and they will not slay him in the Father’s house.
Finally, finally, the farce is finished and they trickle out and Lily stands and spins to face him. The pallor of her waxen features only highlights the rouge of her lips, the emeralds of her eyes. Her frontlet has come askew very slightly, revealing a deep auburn hairline.
“My lord,” she calls, across the crowd. “Come now. Pray with us. For your health and healing, and for the healing of our good country.”
But it is the Queen Mother’s hand squeezing his upper arm. “My good daughter,” she says, all rich honey, “he is suffering. I might take him back to the physician. Your traditions are not ours and you would do well to remember and embrace our customs as your own. And he may prefer the tendings of a doctor.” Her long fingers are insidious on his silks, grey eyes narrowed. It is perverse that she might resemble Sirius so but be his devil-driven mirror. Their eyes meet. Her mouth twitches his challenge.
“I would place my health in the hands of the Lord,” James says, pulling from her grip. His strength lessened with every second, and only the promise of Lily’s touch held him together. “For all things are done in Him. I appreciate your concern, Your Grace. Your dear son has always spoken of your care and attentions.” And the wickedness in every touch. Her eyes crackle as he walks down the aisle to where Lily holds Regulus in one hand and her leather-bound psalter in the other. She bends, places it by her betrothed’s side, and extends her free hand to him. Regulus turns his head, and his eyes slide up and down James as though readying to tilt him. Regulus is a perfunctory jouster. James could not fear him if he took to dragonback.
“You do us a great favour,” Lily says, and Regulus stands beside her. He inhales, slips his psalter into his sleeve, and holds out his hand to James’s left, great emerald rings glittering upon his pale fingers.
“Ego autem dico vobis diligite inimicos vestros benefacite his qui oderunt vos et orate pro persequentibus et calumniantibus vos,” Regulus quotes dryly. James raises his eyebrows, giving him his bandaged hand. A profession of trust. Faith in his cowardice. James has never been one to memorise the Holy Book.
“Are we to pray for the French, then?” he smiles easily. “Those wicked souls who would persecute you, ancient enemies?”
“Let us,” Lily says brightly, a strain in her tones. Finally, finally, James might touch her. It is feather-light, hardly daring, but their fingertips brush over each other and his come to rest at the base of her wrist. He grits his teeth as not to sigh with the relief. At once, there is a current of liveliness pulsing through him. Lily exhales shakily through her nose. Her hand is smaller, rests primarily in the middle of his palm. Dark eyelashes flutter against the crest of her cheeks. Desire stirs in the depths of his being, but he must resist. When her husband-to-be stands watching them, touching both of them, he must resist. When she is a maiden fair.
They form a strange circle, like pagans. Lily is their goddess. He would forego church and priests and the splendour of Easter for a field if she called him to. But today, they kneel awkwardly, and Lily maintains soft words, telling Regulus how grateful she is, how this must certainly be an omen of what their union will bring, thanking James for being there to safeguard their virtue.
If you knew, he thinks gravely, as she looks up at him, green eyes round and the picture of innocence. The swell of her breasts are visible and heaving with each breath above the firmness of the black kirtle that peeks through the slash of her gown’s neck. If she is an agent of Satan – if this business of soulmates has only ever been Lucifer’s lie – he will gladly descend to hell for the chance to look upon her just this day. If he did not fear for her life he would confess and give himself over to justice.
Is it justice? To prevent a marriage of love? To condemn for a curse not chosen? To separate souls?
Then they are a triad; a triangle. James sits further back, Lily and Regulus’ hands are joined in front of him, and they kneel facing the altar. A long night is promised. Lily leads the prayer over him until Regulus’ voice grows louder and louder and she defers. James shuts his eyes so he does not stare at her in incredulity. It is such an absurd thing to be doing that he cannot believe she persuaded them. He, who desires her having only first met her, is to be protector of her virtue, and Regulus, whom not twelve hours ago he intended on smashing upon the battlefield, is entreating God for his safekeeping. The Lord is laughing at them all. They are but the mummers in his spring pageant.
Someone else comes in to tend to the candles, long after the rest of the court has left, and then James’s knees are starting to ache. He, like all at court, is a man of prayer, but admittedly he is not one for vigils. But this afternoon he will not complain. Their lips stop moving and their thoughts become only known to them, and James is still holding Lily’s hand, through it feeling her every movement. When she shifts her weight, his own centre changes, and at one moment her body gives a little quiver and she raises her arm and sneezes into her sleeve. It is a perfect, high-pitched sound, and she apologises with a sheepish smile. Regulus is quick to thrust an embroidered square into her hands, caring nothing to let go of James’s hand. She is forced to relinquish his too. The change is a king tide and he sags, a headache knotting at the crown of his head. She quickly takes hold once more. Regulus does the same with downturned lips.
Now it is all a matter of waiting. Waiting for the wedding; for the fall of night and the next day’s break; for his and Lily’s hours to be finished. The notion carves a hollow in his chest. When they have made a full day’s acquaintance of one another, this need shall cease. They will be free to live their lives as they had always intended; apart, and alone. She will wed and bed Regulus and he will continue writing pointless letters to Sirius and his companions. The two of them will revolve around each other as imprisoned ornaments of the Prince Regent and his mother. James tilts his face to the stained-glass windows, to the very top where Jesus ascends to heaven. How could this be Your will, Lord? To bring us together and divide us? To trial us for naught? The window only stares with its unseeing eyes, fragmented and aglow with the setting sun.
James peeks, and Regulus’ eyes remain shut; his grip slackens. He is still awake – his breathing is too quick, his brow too furrowed, and it would be a feat to sleep on one’s knees – but growing unaware. James turns his face to Lily. She is the portrait of piety, eyes focused upwards, demure and worshipful. Save for her busied hands. James breathes in and wonders if he dares. But has God not brought them together for a purpose?
So he does it, and it frightens him more than a bloodied Scot with an axe. Where their hands touch, where his thumb rests softly over her ring and smallest finger, he moves. His thumb circles very gently over her glove, pressing as to feel the ridges of her knuckles. Her hand jerks. Her shoulders rise as her stomach darts inwards. She does not look. James circles again. There is a ring of promise on her finger. It is more dangerous to touch. But he slips over it, passes his nail along the small gap where it is but a hair too big for her. He is only swiping fabric, of course, and Lily does not grace him with her eyes, but he sees the tiny give of her jaw. She feels him. He presses against the hard gold of the band beneath. It is a Roman custom, the Queen Mother claimed, to gift a bride-to-be a ring. James thinks it more likely the tradition is fabricated. Most women he knows would prefer sleeves or a fine cloak, or even a rare manuscript. What is the benefit of a ring? And on that finger, particularly?
Probing, he pushes the ring up her finger, underneath her glove. Still she does not look. Very well. He nudges again, guiding it over the knuckle, and presses it up the length of her finger, where it gapes. Another touch and it will fall off. He taps his finger against hers, considering.
She flexes her hand suddenly, and the ring slips back down. Her thumb darts to the back of his hand and squeezes. It is such a pulse of life that it threatens to overwhelm entirely. He squeezes back. She squeezes harder, never looking at him. Regulus’ head leans towards his far shoulder and he takes a loud breath that suspiciously resembles a yawn. As his grip slackens, James tightens on Lily. Her thumb slips between his middle and fourth fingers and strokes to their join. James clenches his teeth. She squeezes again, and then turns her head infinitesimally, so he can glimpse but a shadow of her profile. In the smallest twitch of an eyebrow, he is intrigued.
She lets go of him.
The cold smarts, but he is entranced by her as she takes her psalter in hand, opens it deftly, frowns. She lets go of Regulus’ hand – he does not so much as flinch – and clasps his shoulder. Regulus straightens.
“My love,” Lily says. Just to hear her voice again is sweet. “My love. I hate to disturb you to your prayer – forgive me, please, my love – but I thought to know what you might make of this passage?” James narrowed his eyes very slightly. Regulus exhaled.
“Yes, my lady?” He leaned to peer at her little book. Lily ran a finger along a line of black ink. “Well, I should say -”
In a swift movement the book rises to hit him square in the face. He opens his mouth, but Lily clamps her hand over it and pushes him to the ground. Regulus shouts against her palm and throws a fist at her. James launches. He grabs Regulus’ arms and wrenches them above his head, and Lily beats his head with her book, a supernatural fire glowing in her eyes. Like witchcraft.
“My lady,” he blurts, clamping Regulus’ wrists against the ground with his good hand. Lily pauses in her administrations, book held but a breath from Regulus’ face.
“Do you presume to stop me?” she demands, and rises as to hoist one leg over Regulus’ torso and sit down upon his stomach. Regulus groans. James stares. He had not thought to find her astride any man in any circumstances.
I knew I would be a poor guard of your purity.
“What is it you are trying to achieve?”
“Unhand me!” Regulus works his lips so that they peek through Lily’s fingers. “Potter! I command you! Beware this vile witch, assassin of Austria, hoodwinker!”
“For Heaven’s sake, shut up!” Lily smacks him once more on the forehead with her psalter, and his head thuds against the marble floor and he falls still. James’s jaw slackens. The Prince Regent – this usurper, puppet of the Queen Mother’s, villain of all England – lays unconscious before him, bleeding slightly from his nose and split lips. What James has not had the courage to do in months this foreign woman has fearlessly done within hours. With the fabric Regulus earlier gave to her, Lily wipes the red stains from Regulus’ face, and tosses it aside with her book. Then she stands.
Something in her manner draws James up, slowly, cautious. His body longs to touch her, to feed on that lifeforce which she emanates. But now there is an unknown quality. An unaccounted ferocity. Her clothes are rumpled, her hennin askew, more of her dark red hair shining, and perfectly aligned above her is the Lord himself upon the cross, in his agony. This woman, this stranger, is who James would have let himself die for. Is who God has chosen for him.
“You would kill him?” James says softly. His dagger weighs heavily upon his belt. A slit now and the war is but won. Whom would they turn to with Regulus gone? The Lestranges would reach, but it might embolden Baron Tonks –
“I would speak with you,” Lily corrects, and she pulls off her reddened gloves. They fall too to the ground, of little merit. She holds out her bare skin to him. The creases of her soft palms invite his touch. James’s head swirls. He gently, gently, touches the point of his finger. Lily inhales sharply, and James’s heart riots. Her skin on his is an antidote. As if the world has been spinning fruitlessly, waiting for this moment, and now time should cease forevermore. Her lips part very slightly, her tongue pink and tempting. What he would do to that mouth. What he would have her do to his.
“We must check that he lives,” she says, very quietly. “It will not do to have him dead yet.” She wraps her hand around his finger and kneels, with her other pushing the Prince Regent’s sleeve up. She clutches his wrist, eyes shut, and nods. “Praise the Lord.”
“You wish him to live to tell the tale?” James asks, frowning at the unconscious man. Lily stands.
“I wish him to live to attest to a spiritual attack in which he had terrible visions,” she says. “Or perhaps that I beat him into sleep. It depends on whether or not I am here to receive punishment.” She takes both his hands, again, and the touch still startles him. Her clear eyes meet his, and his chest contracts rapidly.
“Where would you be, if not here?” he asks carefully. Lily presses her lips together.
“I thought perhaps the Marches,” she says. “Or have they lain a false trail?”
James feels as though his tongue has been eaten. Her meaning is clear, and daring beyond measure. Has she concocted this plan in just the afternoon since their hands first met? What of her family, her fortune, her position? James is, admittedly, a man who does not spurn his baser impulses, but he has never yet met a lady of the same persuasion. She would leave the only souls in this realm that she knew for – for him. He could be a murderer, for all she knows. Hell, he has killed, if only in battle.
“You do not know me,” he says cautiously, stepping back so that his arms are at their full extension. Her grasp on his injured hand is a gentle comfort; the pain is only a muffled whisper.
“No,” she agrees. “But it seems today we are in the business of making life-changing decisions without consulting the other.” Her tone takes on an unexpected edge. James blinks.
“I fear I misunderstand.”
“Perchance you do.” Her face hardens. “We were even greater strangers when you decided to maim yourself and hurtle towards death. Do you recall?” Lightly, she closes her hand around the remaining fingers on his left hand. James’s brows furrow. He huffs indignantly.
“I did that to save you,” he says. “Perchance it is different on the continent, but here if a lady is bonded to another man the both of them might find themselves lacking not a finger but a head!” Lily lurches forward and James stumbles back, the two of them tied by the gravity of their grasps.
“You gambled!”
“I did no such thing! Why do you think I lost the finger? The flow of my blood in your hands might have given you moments longer to live, and that would be all it would take for me to die. Then you would be preserved!”
“You had no right!” Lily’s voice echoes through the chapel, cracking, and she falls silent. James breathes hard. Fury sparkles in her damp eyes. “You had no right,” she repeats. “You decided you ought to die to save my life. Who were you to know which of us was worth saving?” James opens and closes his mouth. Lily sniffs hard, and looks to the ceiling.
“I’m afraid there was little time for consulting when we were watched by every Black supporter in the country,” James says. “What would you have had me do? Discuss it in front of your beloved betrothed?”
“I did not ask for you to cut off your finger for me,” Lily says. “I did not ask for you to attempt to die for me. What life did you hope, my lord, of giving me? You are no friend of the Prince’s. Would Prince Sirius have captured me and executed my husband before my eyes?” Her gaze burns. It is all James can do not to look away. “I would have spent the rest of my life knowing that my soulmate had died before I had the chance to speak a true word to him. What unhappiness would you have condemned me to, my lord? In the name of your sacrificial love?” James’s throat bobs.
“I had to save you,” he says softly. “What unhappiness would you have condemned me to, in hell after this life, for letting mine own love be slain because of my cowardice?”
“Do you think only of your own conscience?”
“Well, it would seem you do not wish for me to make assumptions on yours, so what more would you want of me?”
“Opportunity.” Lily’s eyes fall to the unconscious prince. “As I have now created.”
“The opportunity to have the both of us arrested for treason?”
“The opportunity for us to talk and decide what we are going to do. They warned me the English were barbarians,” Lily says, “but I did not think you so backwards that you saw no way of solving problems without the use of your fists.” It is a rich sentiment from a girl who has beaten her betrothed’s head with a psalter. This girl the Lord intends for him. It seems as though she does not even like him. God’s trick had been cruel enough when James assumed it would be love at once, but this is a greater mockery than he had conceived of.
“Let us talk, then,” James says.
They sit awkwardly, cross-legged and opposite one another like children. Lily bites her lip and then shakes the hennin off entirely, letting go of his good hand to take down the lappets. When she is done, she looks as fresh as a milkmaid in a summer field. Despite their snipes, James is taken with her, a flutter bursting behind his ribs. Her auburn hair shines in the coloured light, falling around her face, and her green eyes adopt a hitherto uncertain honesty. It provokes something in him. He takes off his round hat and sets it down beside him. Hair falls into his eyes and he brushes it back.
“You believe in it, then?” Lily asks, trailing her fingers along the stone floor. James laughs.
“Do I believe in God?” He hesitates with the truth, picking at his doublet. “Mine own parents were soulmates. The rarest kind, matched for fortune and fortunate enough to find love.” There is a reason he is twenty-five and yet unmarried, when men his age easily have their own broods.
“We are both well-acquainted with rarities, then,” Lily says. “My sister, would you believe, is the Emperor’s true match. You may recall he was pledged to a Portuguese princess, and negotiations were close to completion before he did lay eyes upon my sister, upon a winter day at court. If he had not sent his own sister to marry the princess’s younger brother there would certainly have been war.” She tilts her head. “The Portuguese ambassador referred to us as frog-swallowers.” James raises his brows.
“And do you?”
“Do I?”
“Swallow frogs?” An important thing to know, he thinks, lips curling softly. Lily glares at him and for a moment he fears he has only further crossed her. Then she smiles, looking down.
“Only to frighten him.”
Her relaxed countenance in turn eases his nerves. He squeezes her hand gently. She taps her thumb over his.
“Father seeks an alliance with England,” she says carefully, her tapping growing insistent. “As does the Emperor. They care not who sits the throne so long as the King will join in the fight against France.” She glances up. “There was talk your Prince Sirius intended to take up with France if we took up with Prince Regulus. That that was his cause for remaining unwed. That he might marry some French princess.”
James has met the cause for Sirius’ remaining unwed, and he is neither French nor a princess.
“I daresay the talk was on the speculative end of the truth,” James says. “As far as I am aware Sirius has not yet entertained so much as a French merchant.”
“But it remains his intent to retake the throne?” Lily asks archly. “He will not bow to his brother?” Regulus lays on the floor, still unconscious, but barely bloodied. He is no warrior. In past battles the boy has struggled to command even the rear.
“He is the elder,” James replies, “and the throne is his right. He is unpopular with the nobles because he is untraditional.”
“If he takes the throne, wouldn’t that provoke rebellion? If his people hate him, he will wear the crown only for a moment.” The question surprises him. He frowns, considering.
“They loathe him for his rejection of tradition,” he says finally, slowly, “but they shirk tradition in their favour of the younger son over the elder. They dare not declare openly for Regulus – they are cowards all – but throw their support behind him all the while. I do not know that their bowings and scrapings at court will necessarily mean thousands of men under their banners. If Sirius were to concede to their points, they would not waiver. It is the ideology they value, not the man.”
Lily inhales, fingering the cross at her neck. “Will he concede?” James laughs.
“He will win. That is what he will do.” Her fingers close over the glinting rubies and her lips close, face straining in thought.
“Believe it or no, my father is fond of winners.” She lets go, and for a moment her hand falls past her neckline. His eyes catch on the swell. Lily coughs gently, drawing his attention back to her face, and he nearly apologises. But she is smiling in a way a maid by her battered husband-to-be should never.
“My lady,” James says carefully. “What opportunity is it you wish to take? I would gladly help you in any endeavour. I am bound to you.” He shapes a star on the rise of her palm. She closes her fingers, ensnaring him.
“And I to you,” she says. “But you must win. I will not be impaled on the false flag of a loser.” James wrests his hand from her grasp and grips her the exposure of her wrist. Lily gasps. He pulls her closer.
“I never lose,” he promises, voice low. She shies from him, flushing, and it is a torment. He leans down. “Might I be so bold as to ask to look upon your face?”
Lily lifts her head, tilting her chin ever so slightly, and he drinks in her. He will do this for her. He will do anything for her. His hand snakes up her body and cups her cheek, and she leans into it, pressing her head into his palm. His thumb traces her cheekbone. Then her hand is brushing his sleeve, following the curve of his shoulder, and reaches his face. He exhales suddenly, the intensity of her touch buzzing through him. His mind is on fire.
“Might I be bold?” she asks, eyes never leaving his. His bandaged hand makes a hesitant touch at her waist. Her body rises to it, and cautiously, he encircles her with his arm. They are dangerously close together – this alone is treason. But they are well past that point.
“We are soon to look death in the face,” he tells her quietly. “You may do anything you like to me.”
Lily hesitates, closes her eyes a moment, and then leans forward. His consciousness flickers. He must be in a daze. Her lips press against his curiously, uncertainly, and apply the tiniest amount of pressure. It is clumsily done and painfully endearing. He kisses her back. His lips work slowly, guiding her through the motions, his only daring being in the skitter of his tongue along her lower lip. She sighs against him, her grip tightening, and their bodies come together. She retreats at the full flush of contact, eyes a little wider, gathering her breath. James is robbed of speech. He has known many girls, highborn and low, experienced and naïve, but none have ever shattered him so wholly in all their doings as Lily has with a single kiss.
“Lily.” He can barely breathe her name. “Lily.”
And she is on him again, kissing him, and on this occasion it is her tongue on his lips. Their mouths fall open against each other and she kisses hungrily, her face reaching into his hair and clenching, her body rolling softly against his. He wants to pick her up and carry her to the nearest wall. But it is obvious that she is inexperienced, and he will not debauch her unless it is her wish. They may have but hours left in this world. Instead, he runs his hand up the length of her spine, and she shudders against him, making a gentle mewling sound that nearly fells him. James shakes. Her lips are hot on his and insistent, occasionally darting from his mouth to press a kiss to his cheek or nose or jaw. He firmly guides her head up and then takes his own opportunity to lavish his lips upon her. He presses them to the corner of her mouth and trails up her cheek, then is against her forehead and down to the curve of her face. She gasps, fisting his curls, and tilts her head upwards as to expose her neck. The soft, endless expanse of skin he has so feared will be cut in two. His self-restraint is fraying. He follows the line of her throbbing vein, flicking his tongue against it, and she rocks against him so vigorously that she must feel his excitement. He presses a languid kiss just above the gold of her necklace and she cries out, arching against him. He scrunches his face, focusing for a moment on maintaining control. They may kill us. They may have our heads. If Regulus wakes – but it is a fool’s deterrent, and it only ignites a hunger in him for the matter to be done quicker, harder.
He manages, against all odds, to step back. Their fingers tangle. Lily pants, flushed from the straight line of her kirtle up, her skin nearing the shade of her hair. A thin strip of linen peeks from under her gown, and her hair is but a cloud. His head spins, and it takes him many a moment to reclaim his breath.
“If that is your boldness,” he says, finally. “You need not have asked.” His voice lowers, roughening. “My lady, you may do that to me whenever you like.” Her eyes sparkle, and she laughs.
“You are mistaken,” she informs him, in tones that stroke a shiver down his spine. “That was not the culmination of my courage.” He arches an eyebrow.
“You have done it before?” Not in a long while, he thinks, if ever. Her kiss was more passion than skill, but he cannot fault her for that, would never dream of it, for it has nearly undone him.
“Of course not,” Lily says dismissively. “Do you take me for a common wench?”
“Of course not,” he replies, in echo. “But there are women…”
“Not me,” she says shortly. “Only more prized than my bloodline was my virginity. I did not have the freedom to gallivant about kissing strangers.”
He thumbs her cheek. “Not until now.” Her eyes meet his, and in them lies a hunger so lusty he cannot draw breath. She opens her mouth and he indents softly, until his thumb is between her teeth through the flesh of her cheek. She closes on it gently before letting him go free.
“You are not a stranger,” Lily says. “You are my soulmate.” She twists the gold signet on his middle finger, biting her puffed lip. Lord save me, he prays. You must send her for my destruction.
“My boldness,” she says slowly, thumbing the engraved P, “is in asking you, my lord, not to dishonour me.” He opens his mouth to promise, but her eyes flick up. “Do not have me die unwed for a man of no import.” His mouth dries. She cannot be – it is ridiculous – “Marry me. Here and now, in the light of the Lord, take me to wife.”
James chokes, mind muddled, and she smiles like a cat descending upon a room full of mice, like a trickster god, but he is the mouse and he is the hopeless devotee and he will walk the path to hell if it is paved with her lips and promises.
“We have not a priest,” he manages, finally. She twists the ring.
“We have hands,” she says. “Surely you have noticed them. And a witness.” She raises her eyebrows at Regulus. James barks a laugh at the absurdity of it, at the ceaseless pounding of his heart.
“It would be reckless.” Marry me. Lily, marry me. God. For all the world, marry me.
Her eyes dart to his missing finger.
He clenches his jaw and makes the decision. He pinches the end of her glove and slowly peels it from her skin. Each fine hair, each vein, each tremulous line in her skin only strengthens his resolve. There is no other option. He cannot be parted from her. Not now. Not ever. Breathless, he slides the betrothal present from her left hand and presses it into her empty palm.
“Foolishness,” she says, and lets it fall to the floor as though it is nothing. He strips her of her other glove. His own have been lost in the scuffle and the treatment of his wound. Now they are skin against skin, life against life.
“Of that are we not well-acquainted?” James replies. They share in each other’s looks, and James, for one, can scarcely believe that this afternoon he should be married. But he would not have anything else. Not for anything. It is reckless and hurried and Sirius will goggle when he hears the news – if they live to tell him – but James has seldom been certain of anything but a fire in his belly, and her dancing eyes wash it all away. He brings her hands to his mouth and kisses them. And then he does what needs doing.
“I, James,” he begins, standing in the long shadows and the pooled candlelight, “take thee, Lily, to my wedded wife, til death us depart, and thereto I plight thee my troth.” It is said. She trembles.
“I, Lily,” she says, and she is crying, suddenly, and he is terrified that she might have decided she will take death or dishonour instead of him. He opens his mouth and she shakes her head. “I, Lily,” she repeats, “take thee, James, to my wedded husband, til death us depart, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
He could not say who moves first. It is of no consequence. Their bodies are intertwined, her lips are on his, her tears wet his cheeks, he holds her in his hands, kissing her forehead, kissing her nose, murmuring.
“Lily.” He says his prayer. “Lily. Lily. Lily.” Her breath on his neck, her fingers on his back, on his wrists, wiping his face.
“I did not imagine it like this,” she confesses, as his hands are dropping lower than her waist, cupping her.
“Do you not wish it like this?”
“I would want nothing else,” she says, green eyes honest. “I could have it no other way.” She buries her face into the crook of his neck. “I had not imagined that I could feel like this. I had not known it could happen so quickly. I had not thought it would happen for me.”
And he is the same. In every way.
They collapse into each other a while, just holding on to one another and their sense of the shifting, spinning world. Faintly, James knows they must be hurrying, that at any moment, some well-intentioned servant will come to bring the Prince Regent a cup of wine or a wheel of cheese and they will be discovered. They must be ready to run the moment they are seen, if they cannot devise some way to escape before. He ought to say this, but he cannot lift his head from her shoulder. She smells of soap and incense, and she wraps her arms around his head, stroking his hair, murmuring in a language he cannot understand. Latin, French, English, Italian and Spanish are all at his command, but she chooses the one he could never make sense of. The rise and fall of her body is like the gentle swell of the sea on a clear night, and he could sleep here and gladly never wake. Perhaps she is the Devil, and he plighted to her wickedness. He will damn his soul for this embrace. And their souls were twixt before they ever knew of the other, so together they will go, birds chained and tossed in a lake.
“James,” she says, and that much he knows. He sets his mouth against her neck, and she loosens against him, a short little breath puffing in surprise. He hesitates. It is a bridge of intimacy reserved for the lusty and she a maiden still. But she is his wife. She is his wife.
He withdraws. “My love,” he says, and her eyes are shut, her nose crinkled, lips tauntingly parted. Slowly, she peers at him. He thumbs her brow. “What would you have us do? I would not linger if our business is done.” An iron bar of fear impales him. He cannot allow himself to entertain the idea that this is it. That they should run and be caught and never have more. There is a life murkily forming itself in the front of his mind, with a garden and chambers at court and a wedding feast in the mountains and the only way to make it is to take the risk. The risk of having nothing at all, ever again.
Her brow furrows. “I would have us wed. What else?”
“I have pledged,” he reminds her, though that he could proclaim it to the thousands, that he could sign their names into the books in a trail of black ink. The thought that, if they are killed, she will be written into history as the betrothed and soul-bound of Regulus Black is enough to fell him then and there.
“I did hear you,” she says, and he laughs softly. Her hands come to rest at the back of his neck, slipping beneath the neck of his doublet. “Surely, husband, you can discern my meaning. It is you who is more experienced, I am supposing.” Husband. His heart bursts through his chest.
“Your meaning?” he asks, hoarse.
“Is it not your wish?” she asks. “For I had thought it customary. Whether I was wed on this day or the next, I had been warned to anticipate it.” She lengthens herself, standing on the pointed toes of her painted poulaines. “Take me as your wife,” she whispers, heat smouldering on his ears. “I have seen half a hundred marriages annulled for less and I will not have us questioned.” She lowers herself, green eyes fierce. “I will not die in this liminal world between maiden and wife. Do not allow me to.” James could never. He can scarcely hold himself together now. His hands find her waist and pulls her against him so that their bodies are alight, brimming with life, with the hymns of harmony meant for only those whose souls have aligned.
“Wife,” he says, squeezing her, and her breath hitches. “Have no fear of illegitimacy.” He is starved. Wife. Wife. She is his. He is hers. They have been since their first touch. Since God’s first design.
Her nails lightly scratch his neck, and his hunger is mirrored in her pinked face. “Take me, then,” she challenges.
There is a primitive urge roaring in his stomach to rip her gown from nape to navel and plunge himself beneath her skirts until she is fucked beyond speech, but he will not overcome her with such desires when she is looking at him like he is the sun and the beacon of all knowledge in the world. When this is but their first time. God, let there be more. God, let us have every night to do to each other as we may wish. The fire in her eyes does not belie the innocence in her soul, but he knows it is there and is damned if he will frighten her. No. Instead, he presses his mouth to her ear.
“What do you want?” he asks. “What is your desire?” Her fingers pull on the lowest of his curls.
“Play not the fool with me,” she snaps. To his shock, one of her legs wraps itself around his waist, and his hand drops to support it. Her lips smash against his, wild and fearsome. He moans against her. Her hips buck, driving her core against his breeches. The brief pressure robs him of coherency. His bandaged hand glides down her back and questioningly rests on the curve of her arse. Her grip on his hair tightens and she rocks again, with such force that he must step back. His three remaining fingers and thumb curl around the round of her and squeeze. Her eyes shut tightly, and she ruts herself against him. The leg around him tightens and suddenly he is staggering backwards as all her weight comes upon him, her thighs clenching above his hips. It takes all his strength to carry her and he stumbles, looking for some place to come down upon. Her tongue wets his lips.
“Please,” she murmurs, pulling back. “I need you.” He could lose himself here and now, before any such deed is done. His foot finds the stair, and another, and he sets her down upon the white cloth which covers the altar. She sits on the edge, lips puffy, hair messed. Lord forgive me. He keeps his lips against hers as the measure to keep their lives and with one swing of his arm he clears the table of unlit candles and then holds her again, gently easing her backwards until she is lying on her back, absolutely delectable. A strangled noise escapes from his throat. He is losing the ability to think.
“Are you certain?” he asks once more, planting his hands on either side of her. Her hips jerk upwards into thin air.
“I need you inside of me,” she whines, eyes shut. “That’s how it is, isn’t it? You entering me. You inside of me. I need you.” She reaches down and hikes the skirt of her gown, lifting herself and desperately trying to hitch the mass of fabric. James slides his hand beneath her and lifts her, using his injured hand to help push the skirt up to her waist. In another world – at another opportunity, he thinks firmly, because there has to be another – they will undress and bare themselves to each other. He will unlace her gown and press a trail of kisses from the underside of her chin to her collarbone and he will take her breasts in his mouth, flicking the hardened nipples with his tongue, and she will explore him from end to end.
But this is desperate and political and personal both, and at any moment guards might burst through the door and arrest them. It would not be too great a surprise if they were slain on the spot.
He will not let Lily die unsatisfied.
They both scrabble at the skirt of her kirtle, pulling upwards. In a rush of fabric, she lifts her arms and he tugs. Any semblance of the original dressing of her thick auburn hair is gone, as it falls unkempt around her face, as feathered as if he had fucked her beyond words already. Her round breasts fall, and she is covered now only by the thin white linen of her shift. He takes one last moment, one breath, and takes the measure of her. Of her legs through the thin white linen, of the shadow between her thighs, beckoning him. Tenderly, he places one exposed finger against the inside of her ankle. Skin against skin.
Lily arches her back. “Hurry,” she tells him. “They will be on us at any moment. Make me your wife.”
He will not hurt her. His hand trails up the inside of her calf, beneath her hem, and he is so dizzy he might faint and join the Prince Regent on the floor. Her skin is warm and supple, arching against him at every inch. His bandaged hand takes her other leg, his remaining fingers tracing the round of her ankle, the sinew of her calves. They move to her knees, clutching them, tickling their backs. Lily bends them slightly. James slowly draws back down, catches the hem of her shift, and rolls it up. Her lower legs are exposed to the light, all soft skin and gentle hairs. She lifts her hips higher. James holds her firmly by the calves and prises her calves apart, opening them wider. His cock is rigid. He wants to see the core of her, he wants to taste her on his tongue, he wants her to dissolve in floods of pleasure. His pulse throbs in his neck. Two fingers brush the bottom of her thigh, and Lily shifts.
“Please.” Her voice breaks.
His hands trail up her skin, making gentle indents on the flesh of her thighs, At once, they snap shut. Lily’s hips jerk, her legs clenched around him, and she groans, trying to ride his hand. He bites down hard, resisting the urge to let her, to have her come apart on his fingers.
“Be patient,” he tells her, though it is as much a warning to himself. He parts her thighs once more. Lily props herself up on her elbows, glaring.
“Without your touch, I will perish,” she says. “Quite literally.” She lifts her left leg, exposing a flash of her sex to him, and in one instant he hooks it over his shoulder. His mouth dries. Her green eyes narrow. “I have heard tell of what men do in the whorehouses and I am led to believe it does not usually take so long. Hurry up and make me your wife. Fuck me already.” The coarse word from her tongue is shocking and hungry. He needs her more than he needs air, than he needs the Lord. His palms race up her thighs until his fingers find the thatch of hair that – he finds, spreading her legs, moving his shoulders so her feet are higher in the air – is a deep red. She cries out at the softest touch to her lips.
“Are you well?” he asks, raking his gaze over her. She nods and lets her head fall back, arms slackening. James pushes the skirt of her shift higher, over her thighs and to her waist. Her entire lower half is bared to him – the expanse of naked skin, the thicket of red hair, the rose of her lips. He chews his tongue.
“You must tell me what pleases you,” James orders, and Lily nods, eyes heavily lidded. He begins by cupping her sex, and that alone elicits a moan. She moves her legs so that her thighs grip his arm, holding him between her curves. He probes gently, sliding his fingers through her slickness, and she moans once more with greater volume. If this is enough to make her moan, they will surely be discovered by the time he enters her. He is scarcely doing anything to her. Her legs tighten and she rubs herself against him, needy.
“Please,” she murmurs, voice close to breaking, “please, please, I need – I need -”
He moves gently, feeling for the point of pressure, and circles. Her hips move furiously, body rolling. Her chest heaves with each breath, her nipples hard through her shift. Her face pinks with the effort. James flicks. Lily gasps.
“My lord,” she moans, squeezing him tight. “My lord -”
“James,” he corrects. She has a steady speed now, body bouncing, and he longs to pull her breasts free of her gown. Her mouth falls open, head tilting back. With each rock of her body her hair grows frizzier. James’s blood courses with fire, and he touches her carefully until she cries out, legs beginning to shudder. Abruptly, he withdraws. She hisses at his absence. He hasn’t even been inside her.
“Please,” she cries, face scrunching. She grinds into the empty air, shutting her thighs. He places a firm hand on one, and she falls open again. “Please.”
“Lily,” he says, and bends to press a gentle kiss to the inside of her thigh. She sucks in her breath. “Lily, may I kiss you here?”
She nods. “Please, please, please. Please.” He kisses a little higher, lavishing the feel of her soft skin. He drags his tongue up her leg. “No,” she blurts, and James at once pulls away. She shakes her head and reaches for him clumsily, grabbing his hair and tugging him down. “Faster, I mean. Kiss me there. Hurry. I need – please.”
James stands over her and leans down, aligning himself so his face is directly above hers. Her pupils widen, and she whines again. He teases his finger up her torso and over the curve of her breast, stopping where he can feel the firmness of her nipple through the fabric. Experimentally, he flicks. Lily’s eyes shut and she lets out a little moan. His hand closes over her breast and kneads the supple flesh. It fills his hand, warm and doughy, and lets out his own low groan of desire. The pad of his thumb rubs her nipple again, and her pants come quicker, almost pleading. He moves himself until his lips are almost touching hers. He starts on her nipples, pinching one and rolling it between his fingers. He can feel every breathy little noise she makes, every wordless beg. In one movement, he closes the gap, strokes his tongue along hers, and withdraws. She wriggles.
“Do you want my head between your thighs?” he asks. Her fingers tighten in his hair and her eyes open, flashing dangerously.
“Hurry up,” she growls. He chuckles.
“Wife, I asked you a question.” Her eyes narrow. She lurches forward, surprising him, and catches his lower lip between her teeth, nipping. At once James moves to deepen the kiss, but it is her turn to pull back. Her ghost lingers on his mouth, and his muscles instinctively continue the aborted action, desperate for her. He squeezes her nipple, and in her arch of pleasure he recaptures her lips, kissing her so fiercely he robs her of her breaths.
“Yes,” she tells him when he withdraws, in a pointless attempt at sharpness. “Hurry up.”
James obliges his lady wife. His lips skim the rounds of her thighs and her calf twitches over his shoulder, pulling him closer. He means to make a good husband, and he listens. He presses a kiss to the join of leg and sex and then presses his mouth to her centre. She tastes not of berries or some extravagance but of heat and headiness that leaves him spinning. His sharp exhale of cool air makes her shiver. James prays his inexperience does not here damn him and starts on her, hungering, famished like a man at war. Her legs envelop him, narrowing the world to only him and her, only this moment, this heartbeat. James laps, taking her in and savouring each touch. How can this be real? How can he be here, face pressed to her apex? He pauses his efforts to suck, concentrating on her nub, and she squirms, thighs clenching around his ears. He chuckles. Lily whines, squeezing him again as though he is a horse to be bid. James smiles into her.
“Does that please you?” He drags his tongue over her soaking entrance, spit mingling with the evidence of her arousal. Her body trembles around him.
“Husband,” she pants, and he ceases his ministrations to look up at her, over the rumple of her skirts and the breast peeking from her lacings. Her forehead wrinkles. “No, continue, continue. Please.” He makes no move. Lily groans in frustration. “I need you – your mouth – I need you –"
James moves his mouth so close to her skin that he can feel his own breath on his cheeks. “What do you desire?”
To his surprise, her fingers find his hair and grip. Ferocity blazes in the green fires of her eyes.
“Your mouth,” she manages, trying to ride any piece of him she can secure. “Your – tongue.” There is almost an authority in her words, innate, imbued. He would not dream of disobeying. He only likes to do things in his own time. “I need to –” But she does not yet possess the word for it. He intends to change that. He moves to her breasts, kissing the exposed stretches of skin before he takes the laces in his mouth. Slowly, he pulls them. The fabric sweeps over her breasts and falls to the side, revealing them in their perfection, as plump and gentle as the rest of her. Candles gutter on the edges of his vision, and sweat pools on the white altar cloth beneath her.
He balls his hand between her thighs, and uses the other to dance across her collarbone.
“I know you want to,” he whispers, bumping his knuckles against the wetness of her sex. Her face scrunches, thighs trapping his hand, and she begins to buck. His free hand wraps around her to support her back, taking some of her weight, and he bends to kiss her. Her moans grow insistent as she slides herself against his hand, madly trying for friction, and James loses himself in her breasts, planting a line of sloppy kisses in the plain between them. As she finds her pace, he moves his mouth over her peaks, tongue gliding, lips smearing against her. His own want is desperate, hurting, and this is something beyond heaven. Lily. He rests his head against her and listens to the hammering beat of her heart, proof of life, flooding through them both with the touch. Their bodies intertwined as their souls are bound to be. His Lily. Her James.
He withdraws his hand. For a moment, confusion flits across her features, and then she is staring him down.
“Husband,” she says, somewhere between annoyance and surprise.
“Yes, dear?” Is it wrong to enjoy this moment of teasing, is it wrong to smile? Lily scowls.
“You are slow.”
“Am I?”
His face slowly runs over her body, pressing a kiss below her breasts, above her navel, and finally at the edge of where her hair begins to grow. He can pace himself a little better now, having had one taste. Lily’s whole body rises with the depth of her inhale. He finds a path through her hair and down to where her legs are parted for him, her core glistening, wet and ready from his earlier efforts. Her scent intoxicates him. His head spins for a moment as though on the verge of drunkenness. He must keep it together. First, he lifts his knuckles to his mouth and wipes it across his lips, licking them clean. Then James leans forward and runs his tongue over her. A strangled little cry pierces from her lips.
“Please.”
He licks again, tasting every part of her.
“James!”
He moves faster than before, pressing his nose to her body. With every desperate kiss, with every swirl of his tongue, he is wanting her, needing her, and his breeches are so tight that he curses. Lily’s grasp struggles against his scalp, and shivers strike his spine. He laps at her, with slow, languid strokes until she kicks her feet, and then increases his pace, flicking. She is the very apple of that garden that cast them all into sin, and at this moment he cannot hate Adam, cannot loathe their fallen nature, for he has never tasted anything so divine. He sucks and presses further, more intently, and he can feel her coming closer to her edge, with no built tolerance.
The wave breaks, and Lily cries out, bucking against him. James is thick with her scent, with her taste, and he presses through as she falls around him. If I should die this day, let it be now. When she quietens and stills he straightens and looks over her. Her eyes are half-shut, her cheeks as rosy as the first blush of spring. He brushes his fingers against her cheek, feather-light. She gazes up.
“I knew not it could be so,” she whispers.
“It should be so,” he says. “Each time. Our spirits could not join without.” Laying upon the altar, she is lamb and lion both, and he thinks if the whole world beyond this chapel should be razed he could not find it within himself to care. Not at this moment. Not if she were still beneath him, painted in the vivid colours of the stained late-evening light. Purple and blue and red and green dance over her bared skin, and she might be in portraiture. If she were a painting, he would live and die by her frame. He knows that now, the stump of his finger pulsing against her knee. Perhaps this is all fever, infection of the blood setting in, but if that is the truth he will prostrate himself for this sickdream for eternity and not once regret it.
Her fingers have fallen to his back, and round over his hips to his laces.
“Then now it is time,” she says, red hair spread over the stone top, breasts heaving with each breath. Deftly, her fingers work the lacing. His heart beats in his stomach, with bat wings and a griffon’s liver.
“You are certain?” he insists. For him, he is to die either way most like, when these hours are up, whether they are caught or not. He was condemned before he ever laid eyes upon her, by virtue of his allegiance. Lily’s sole misfortune – sole crime – at this moment is only in her attachment to him. And, he reflects, looking at the splayed form of the heir to the English throne, perhaps in incapacitating dear Regulus. But that could all be made James’s work, if need be. Nothing of Lily’s is beyond explanation, but this should be, if her maidenhood does not remain. This is the point of treason beyond measure.
She sits up, face tilted up at him. Her head is level with his navel, and her legs fall from his shoulders around his waist. His breeches are all but undone, and he is certain she must feel the firmness of him pressed against her, wanting, needing.
“If this should kill us,” Lily says, and her every word is an exercise in restraint, her hands shaking over the tent of his leathers, “then I should gladly die for love.” Her thumb pulls him open, and she inhales sharply.
“Lily -” Her hand closes around his cock and pumps experimentally. A groan wrenches from James’s throat. She does it again. His hips buck, his release already building. His balls ache with wanting, and he is so hard it hurts.
“Ah,” she smiles, eyes glittering. “So that is how it works.” And again.
“Fuck,” he says, and winces. “Forgive me. My mouth is -” She kisses him, her tongue hot and desperate. She works him steadily. He moans against her lips. Wings beat in the base of his neck, pleasure choking the breath from him.
“Take me,” she whispers, and that is all that needs to be said. She sits on the edge of the altar, her knees bent, and he moves between her thighs. The head of his cock grazes the slick folds that obscure her entrance, and she gasps. Already, he leaks with need. He presses against her and Lily spreads her legs further.
“Tell me if I hurt you,” he says hoarsely, holding on to the last of his resistance. “If you wish it to end, tell me immediately, Lily, you must.”
“You won’t.” He grips her thighs tightly, holding back.
“Promise me,” he says. “Or I shan’t do it.” Lily moans. James’s breath hitches in his throat.
“I promise,” she says hurriedly. “I swear. James, please –” He enters her. She cries out.
“Are you hurt?” He grits his teeth, doing all he can to still. If any man should be listening outside – they are dead and caught. Gladly. He will die, literally, without her. He can feel the ties of the bond between them coiling within, pulsing with fervour.
“No,” Lily assures him, carefully leaning forwards. She stretches out and clasps her hands at the back of his neck. “It is… only unlike anything else. Continue. Please, please, James, I need you inside of me.” He does as his lady wife bids and thrusts himself inside her, moaning through his teeth as he does so. Her mouth opens wide, her breasts heaving as she pants. “Keep going,” she manages. “Please.” James tightens his grasp of her soft, fleshy thighs and withdraws himself near entirely, before pressing deep again. She nods. Experimentally, shaking with the effort of control, he strokes twice more.
“You are not in pain?”
“No, Lord Potter, I am not. For the sake of the Lord above, hurry up and fuck me.”
“Fuck.” James lets himself go. His pace quickens, moving into her with hard, fast strokes. Lily’s face scrunches and she cries out at the apex of each stroke. Her nails scrabble at his back and into his hair, and she hooks her legs around him, crossing her feet at the ankles. It takes all of James’s strength to keep his eyes open, to watch the rock of her body as she takes his cock, thighs squeezing his hips. He sends himself as deep as he can reach, her body anchoring his. Already, the pressure builds, and at this moment he does not dare hold it back. He will make the most of this short time they have been allotted by God, by fate, by that red string which pulls them to their deaths. He kneads her breasts with one hand, thumbs the hard rises of her nipples. He carries her weight and shifts her so that he can bend and take one in his mouth, sucking marks across the contours of her chest. If this is our only chance, he thinks, our only opportunity. She tightens around him.
“James,” she moans. “James – James.” Her breath hitches. Her hand brushes against his arm, and he laces their fingers together, holding onto her, touch warming him to the bone. Nothing has ever felt like this before. How could it? The meeting of their skin very literally breathes life into him. They will burn without the other. All that matters is the push of his body into hers, and the way she pulses around him, and her nails gripping the rises of the veins that criss-cross his hands and raking her nails over his skin. He shudders, entranced, enchanted. His breath brushes the tips of her breasts. A gentle, testing flick of his tongue confirms that her nipples are as stiff and aching as his cock.
He is determined that she must enjoy this marital act as much as he – James refuses to have it any other way. He presses a kiss to the hollow of her chest, losing his face and mind in her embrace. Her spare hand twists a loop of his hair and tugs. He jolts into her, surprised, and she cries out.
“Good,” she clarifies, before he can even pose the question. “Please, keep going.”
“If that is your command, my lady wife.” She grips his hair like the rein of a horse. Yes, he thinks. I am yours. Body and soul. Your will be done. She is more than God, than country, than life itself. There is a reason she is splayed naked across the altar. Her being is sacred. James knows, with each stroke, that this is the true hand of fate. There could be no sweeter curse. If he should die for the crime of worshipping Lily of Innsbruck – well, it will be near as enjoyable a little death as the one which blossoms within him, building as though he were the blushing virgin, for Lily moves her hips with such an enviable pace and surety that it is truly as though they have been crafted for one another, from the earth’s first clay.
His good hand slides between her thighs, the pads careful against her sensitive nub, coaxing another peak from her. His left, where the remainder of his severed finger splays uselessly, throbs as blood pumps through him. The pain cuts sharp and pushes him closer, crystallising all sensation. She tightens around him. His lip curls as he grunts.
“You feel so –” Pleasure strangles the voice from him. “I need you. I need you, Lily. Lord.”
“James,” Lily moans, almond green eyes sparkling. He murmurs a curse. His fingers work faster, determined to bring her with him, even as his jaw aches with the effort of keeping himself in control. She moans, wrenching at his curls, and that is all he can manage. James loses himself inside her, consumed, burning through like one who has looked directly into the eyes of God. She clamps around him. Her fingers tangle. Her hips roll, pulling him in. He dissipates. Her lips part; she cries his name. He is falling, becoming ash; spending himself within her. He buries his face between her chest, holding onto her for the sake of his life, for his truly does depend on remaining tethered to her. A wave of fatigue cascades over him, but Lily squirms against his hand and he musters the last of his efforts to trace delicate circles, whispering against her skin as he does.
“I need you,” he tells her. “I worship you. Lily.” He kissed her. “My wife.”
“More,” she commands, though the whine is evident. “James, please.” His fingers flick against her.
“I need you. I am yours.” All he wishes to do is collapse into her. He is still inside her, growing weaker, and he could remain like this forevermore. Nothing matters but her. His fingers quicken, and her chest heaves with every breath. He skims the most sensitive part of her, stilling just beneath, and her thighs squeeze desperately, imploring. “I am yours, Lily. Now and forever. Til my last.” And he touches her again.
Her back arches as she cries out, and she spasms, body pressing through her pleasure. James works her through it, never slowing, until she flattens against the altar, panting hard. He is curled against her, arms wrapped against her bare skin, and their hearts beat in time, connected through whatever curse or spell or act of God their connection is, their necessity for touch. How strange, in so few hours, the twists of fate that have come. The fae tales prove true. Her touch tickles the back of his neck.
“James,” she whispers, breathless, warm around him.
“Lily.”
“I never knew.” The confession is appropriate for the chapel, as though she is remembering where they are, as though the stone beneath her skin murmurs its true purpose. Worship, James thinks. Has he not done just that? The Virgin Mary overlooks them from her stained-glass solitude, eyes swimming with the rain outside, a voyeur of an act she is barred from for eternity. Supernatural. Lily’s heart pounds beneath the divots of her ribs and the ridges of James’s lips, and he decides that he much prefers the natural kind of conception, of love, of feeling. He is not God and he will not try to understand God’s reasons or actions or anything else. He is a man. Lily makes him glad of it. God brings them together, shows His hand, the cards of destiny in clear red ink and the magnetism of attraction, but it is James inside Lily that cements it. James feels something God never will. Lily cradles his face. “I never knew it would feel that way.”
“Do you compliment me?”
“I register my shock.”
“In a complimentary way?” James’s smile broadens. Lily returns it, pink in her cheeks, dew-eyed. Gently, he slides from her, straightening up. His skin stings in her absence. Lily stretches an arm out.
“You must touch me.”
“So you did enjoy it?”
“You know you must touch me.” She sits up on her elbows, a cascade of dark red hair tumbling over her bare shoulders. The jewels of her necklace hug her clavicle, ending in a cross of pearls that hangs obscenely between her exposed breasts. Her emerald gaze shimmers. His hand traces her thigh. “Or else our lives are forfeit. In any case,” and she smiles, catlike, “you are my husband now, and you must do as I say.”
“I thought man was to rule over his wife.”
“You could not rule me if you tried.” A giggle bursts from her lips, showing the adorably crooked teeth in her beam and the rosiness in her cheeks, and the world swims before him like she is ale and he is drowning in her. “Truth be told, I would have made Prince Regulus a poor wife. There is a reason the Emperor bid me to the English backwater.”
“My God.”
Lily screams. James, in his panic, throws a fist wide. It makes contact. The voyeur stumbles backwards, crying out, holding a hand to his bloodied face.
“Treason!” the Prince shouts, pointing a finger. “You have deflowered my wife! You – you -- !” Prince Regulus has risen, somehow, from his induced slumber. Blood pours from his nose, and marks well on his forehead. They are all but done for. In the fray, James has lost hold of Lily – a potentially fatal mistake. Either way, now, they are in danger.
Thank you, Lord, for giving us that once.
“You are wrong, Your Grace,” James says, stalling, looking to Lily. Her green eyes flare, her fingers hurriedly working at her laces, covering herself. The Prince Regent’s eyes roll with panic and injury. James grabs him by the shoulders, reefing him further from Lily.
“Wrong?” The Prince hisses. “Wrong? You – you treacherous bastard, you traitor of blood, you conspirer – she is my betrothed. My lady! I know what I saw.”
“You missed something crucial.” Each pound of his heart weakens him, Lily’s absence seeping his life. He is running out of clever ways to mutilate himself and to ensure she outlives him. His mind flickers to Sirius. For all of it, he has never really wished his younger brother dead. James’s list of options grows precariously short, but he will not devastate his dearest friend with his dying breaths.
“What, when that woman attempted to kill me?” The Prince Regent’s eyes are bloodshot, wounded, watery.
“Careful,” warns James. “That is my wife you speak of. I am no deflowerer. I take pride in the noble duty of consummating a marriage.”
“A marriage.” The Prince Regent’s laugh is strangled. “My marriage.”
“By Jove, you really are thick-headed.”
“Give me a reason not to call the guards,” the Prince Regent pants, blood slipping over his lips, catching in the scraggles of his facial hair. For all his bluster, he is barely grown. “I should have hanged you.”
James feels Lily before he sees her, her proximity flooding his body with warmth – the promise of life dancing, taunting him. His lips part, ready to bid her to run. He will fall on the Prince’s sword if it will save her. He will not step aside, will not let her face him. Her fingers brush his elbow, startling him. Go, he needs to scream. Run.
“Do you believe in magic?” He struggles to keep his voice even. The Prince Regent narrows his eyes. His dark hair falls into his eyes, his rich clothes skewed.
“Witchcraft?” His voice rises, eyes bulging. “Agents of Satan? You – GUARDS!”
“I know a spell to send you to the floor,” James says pleasantly. “Goodnight.” And, as intended, in his panic the Prince never sees James’s good foot sweep across his shins and kick his legs out from under him. The Prince Regent collapses in a heap, cracking his head. There is no time to rue it. Another sleep is all. James swirls. Lily is dressed and panting, eyes wide, and grips his hand. “Run!”
Pulses synchronised, they bolt, fingers intertwined. His strength draws from her. He smacks the bolts of the chapel door and wrenches it open, pulling Lily through. She slams it behind her. In the dead of night, he is momentarily disoriented. The torches have been extinguished. They stop, breaths ringing in their ears, and then it comes: the distant pound of feet, the shouts of someone who heard the Prince’s cries. From the east.
“Come on,” he urges, and runs west down the corridor.
Doors blur as they pass, and the castle stirs to life, frantic screams echoing like birdcall on a spring day in the country. Pain shoots through his bad leg and bandaged stump. James rushes down a set of stairs, Lily trailing, skirts hitched in her free hand.
“Where are we going?” she asks. He expects to find fear in her face, but her eyes blaze with determination.
“To Sirius,” he breathes, “if we escape, we will go to Sirius.” His brother is safety. Perhaps he will laugh at the ridiculousness of James usurping Regulus of his wife. Perhaps he will rage, because James has forsaken his position as spy for the sake of stealing a princess-to-be. No, he thinks. I steal no-one. If Lily would have preferred to become the Prince Regent’s bride and leave him to die, he would have gladly met the gallows. “You are certain?” he says, stopping on the landing. Lily skids into him. Her red hair tumbles around her shoulders, unbound, and her green eyes sharpen.
“You imbecile,” she says, brows furrowing. Her mouth twists in a wry smile. “This is fate. Hurry up.” And she rushes forward, leading him. James follows. Of course he follows.
With relief, he recognises where they wind up, in one of the castle’s main thoroughfares, broad and made of newer stone, rushes scattered over the floors and a proud tapestry hanging on the far wall, fighting the draughts. James takes control, making for a narrow door. The unfortunate part is that the rest of the court knows this thoroughfare too. A dozen men burst in to the left of them, in thrown-together armour and quilted jerkins.
“The princess!” One points a stubby finger, a helmet swinging in his grip. “Seize her!”
“Halt!” Lily shouts back, and her authoritative tone gives them pause for a crucial second, trained as they are to obey. James throws all his weight to the door and smacks it open.
Cold air slaps him; the night is freezing but fire burns in his blood. His gaze darts. Men-at-arms spill onto the ramparts, hoisting crossbows. In the courtyard, a terrified messenger in a feathered cap scampers towards a hastily-readied steed. A stableboy slings a saddle over its back and struggles with the buckles. Guards charge down every staircase descending into the courtyard, and a roar at his back spurs James forward. There is only one way out. He crosses the cobblestones and shoves the pliant stableboy out of the way. James grabs Lily by the waist. In one movement, he lifts her and thrusts her atop the horse. She seats herself expertly, eyes bright, understanding him perfectly. God – fate – has chosen well. James twists at the high song of a sword unsheathing.
“Halt!” A hulking man – Sir Rosier, James realises, and hates him more for it -- screams, pointing his blade. Even the brief separation from Lily stings. “Halt in the name of the Prince Regent! In the name of the Queen Mother!”
James leaps, grabbing the reins and stamping one foot into the stirrup, throwing himself upon the creature. His missing finger throbs, hands clumsy as they grasp. He swings his tender leg over.
“Hold on,” he tells Lily.
“I did think that wise, myself,” she retorts, wrapping her arms around his waist. Shouts roar in his ears, punctuated by the screams of drawing steel. He allows himself one breath, one moment, one silent prayer. Let us get through this. Lord, let me see another night with her. God save us.
And then he is guided by the beat of his heart, by the indent of Lily’s fingers. Men swarm, and he urges the horse forwards, barrelling through them. They curse him, and one slashes; his sword catches James’s calf and James swears, slipping in his seat. Lily grabs him hard and rights him, grunting with the effort. Then she screams. James twists round and one man has grabbed her leg, trying to pull her off, and she kicks at him madly. Her fingernails rip through James’s doublet.
“You swine!” she screeches, and finally kicks him in the face. Blood spurts from his nose and he staggers. Lily pants and presses her face between James’s shoulder blades.
“Go!” James yells at the horse, squeezing his legs. It quickens, and snorts with fear as men jump from nowhere. The courtyard crowds, and someone hollers, pointing upwards. James looks. On a balcony is the Queen Mother, hysterical and half-mad, eyes deranged, headdress askew.
“TRAITORS!” she screams, clutching her face. “THEY’VE KILLED MY SON!”
That secures their fate. No, he thinks. No – Sirius --
“The prince is harmed!” the men shout, the retainers and the manservants and the men-at-arms, and a sudden panic thickens the air. Lily moves forward in the seat, her entire body pressing against James back, and he kicks frantically with his uninjured leg. The horse whinnies in protest but leaps over a man on his knees who wails for the Prince Regent. Ahead, the gate is beginning to fall. James’s heart leaps into his mouth. There is only him and the gate. They must get through. They must. They must.
They do.
James flattens himself against the mare’s neck and they skid beneath the falling spikes.
“The Duke!” someone shouts. “The Princess!” It is all the same, all their cries. James kicks again as they spill onto the city streets. London is full and mad and he cannot stop to think as they surmount townsfolk and dart around carts and donkeys and playing children. They launch into the air again, knocking a pile of melons to the ground, where they splatter pink like smashed brains on the cobblestones. The great dome of the cathedral looms to the south, and if they can just escape this maze of streets, they might be free. Lily breathes hard against his neck.
“I’ve always wished to see London,” she whispers, and he laughs, despite the insanity. Every corner they turn could bring their death. He will go to it happily, nine-fingered and guilty of treason, if only Lily is at his back. A line of laundry tumbles in their wake and they are sloshed with water and ale both as they startle passers-by. He dares to look back. Armoured men run behind them, shoving women to the side, brandishing weapons. Distantly, a Goyle sits upon a horse, jowls quivering as he barks orders. It does not require much imagination to know what words may be slipping from his mouth.
“It isn’t too late,” he manages, as townsfolk scatter from their path. “Tell them I kidnapped you. Tell them -”
“For God’s sake,” Lily hisses into his shoulder, “I have married you.” She tightens her grip around his waist. “I will not leave you. Not now. Not in this life or the next.”
“Get them!” Sir Rosier screams. “Get them! Traitors!”
James throws his weight back in the saddle, stopping their mare short, and makes a sharp turn down a narrow alleyway. It is scarcely big enough to hold the horse, but if this leads where he thinks it may – if this takes him where he hopes –
They emerge into blinking sunlight, but two streets from the common. A creek gleams in the gaps between the teetering buildings stacked along the lane like coins in the Royal Treasury. On the other side comes the cluster of villages that cling to London like louse on a cloak, and a chance to disappear. He spurs them forwards, Lily’s breath hot on the back of his neck. A chance. Just one chance for their freedom.
For life, with Lily, as his wife.
Hooves clatter on the cobblestones, ringing with opportunity. Houses and inns and blacksmith’s and baker’s fling past in a blur of stone and smoke. No more spying. He has God’s honest truth on the back of his horse, her fingers knotted over his navel, and that’s all he needs.
They leap over the stream.