The manor had been unnervingly quiet all day in that deliberate, watchful way old houses possessed, as though centuries of lineage were holding their breath, listening.

Abraxas had not told the manor you were coming.

He had told his parents, yes—in flawless ink, sealed in green wax, composed with the gravitas of a diplomat arranging a treaty. But the house, the ancestral weight of it, he’d left untouched. He wanted to see if it would recognize you. Accept you.

It had. The wards hadn’t bristled. The portraits had not turned away. Even the floorboards had been quiet beneath your feet.

You’d arrived with your usual composed grace, your trunk levitating behind you like a trained shadow. His mother had kissed both your cheeks, a rare gesture of warmth that even Abraxas rarely received. His father had said little, but Abraxas caught the subtle arch of approval in his brow—the silent acknowledgment that his son had, for once, made a choice worthy of the name he bore.

The tour of the estate had lasted all afternoon. You’d seen the portrait gallery with its endless procession of pale, grim ancestors; the wand vault beneath the east wing (locked, of course); the old greenhouses overrun with flora long banned by the Ministry. He’d shown you the Malfoy Library—not because you asked, but because he wanted to watch your fingers brush over the spines, reverent but unafraid.

Now, at dusk, he walked with you in the garden.

The sky was molten with the last of the light, amber bleeding into violet, and the air was thick with the scent of roses that had been bred to bloom only once a decade. Their petals were the color of old blood. The kind of thing his mother had loved planting.

Abraxas said nothing for a long while. He walked with his hands behind his back, shoulder brushing yours every so often in a rhythm too precise to be accidental, but too infrequent to be confident.

He wasn’t afraid. Not of you.

But he was afraid of the truth.

He paused near the statue of Eleonora Malfoy, a seventeenth-century ancestor who’d once poisoned her husband’s mistress with a smile and never been caught. The marble still gleamed. The smile had been carved faintly on her lips.

Abraxas turned to you slowly. The light hit his features in fragments—cheekbone, jawline, the cut of his mouth.

“I used to think love was a transaction,” he said, voice low. Not cold, not tonight. “A measure of power, disguised as affection. Something to win, and then manage. Tame.”

He looked away, briefly. The first time he had ever done so while speaking to you.

“But you…” His voice caught, then steadied, “You made it… quiet. Not less dangerous, just less performative. I don’t know what to do with that.”

A long pause. He reached for your hand and held it like it might vanish.

“I loved you before you permitted me to court you,” he said, plainly. “Perhaps before I admitted you weren’t a threat.”

Another silence. Then, he added — voice nearly a whisper, like if he said it any louder the moment would dissolve:

“Je t’aime.”

A beat.

“I do not expect you to say it back.”

His eyes met yours then, clear and unguarded in the golden dark.

“Mais c’est cela l’amour,” he said softly, carefully, as if reciting something sacred, “Tout donner, tout sacrifier sans espoir de retour.”

He said nothing else.

He just stood there, your hand in his, the warm summer air thick with the scent of old roses, and the ghost of every Malfoy who had never once in their gilded lives loved like this.