The ballroom was a cathedral of decadence, its vaulted ceilings dripping with the molten gold of a thousand flickering candles, their light pooling like liquid amber upon the marble floor—black as a starless midnight, veined with silver, cold and unyielding beneath the delicate tread of silk-shod feet. The air itself was thick with the cloying perfume of enchanted roses, their petals trembling in time to the ghostly strains of violins that played themselves, their bows drawn by invisible hands, their melodies curling through the gilded haze like smoke from an opium dream. It was a tableau of calculated opulence, a stage set by generations of careful breeding and sharper minds—two ancient houses, their bloodlines unbroken by the taint of lesser stock, now bound in a union that would send ripples through the very foundations of wizarding society. The papers had called it strategic. A merger. A move in the endless game of power and legacy.

You had known each other too long, too well—since childhood, when your rivalry had been a thing of sharpened quills and stolen books, of whispered insults in the hallways of Hogwarts that hid something far more dangerous beneath their barbs. The first year had been a dance of disdain, the third a tempest of clashing wills, and by the fifth, something quieter, far more treacherous, had taken root—a slow, insidious thing that curled around your ribs like ivy, tightening with every glance, every accidental brush of fingers in the library, every midnight encounter beneath the indifferent stars. When he had finally slid that ring onto your finger—a band of silver and onyx, enchanted to glow with a faint, otherworldly light when your skin met his—it had not felt like obligation. It had felt like surrender. Like the earth tilting on its axis, like the sea yielding to the pull of the moon.

His hand rested at the small of your back, a brand through the layers of silk and lace, his fingers splayed possessively, as if he could map the contours of your spine through the fabric. The other cradled yours, his thumb tracing idle circles over the ring that bound you to him, the metal warm against your skin. You moved together in the silence, the whisper of your gown against the marble barely louder than the distant, haunting melody of the violins. Regulus, ever the picture of aristocratic composure, looked as though he had been carved from the very shadows that clung to the edges of the room—his curls a riot of ink-black waves, his grey eyes catching the candlelight like shards of polished steel, his mouth curved into that infuriating, knowing smirk that had haunted your dreams for years.

"Just so we're clear," he murmured, his voice a velvet scrape against your ear as he leaned in, his breath warm against your skin, "I still think your veil tried to kill me when you walked down the aisle. Nearly tripped on the damn thing." He twirled you then, deliberately slow, the world tilting in a dizzying rush of candlelight and shadow before he pulled you back—closer this time, so close you could feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat through the layers of fine wool and brocade. His voice dipped lower, softer, a secret meant only for you. "You look beautiful, by the way. Not that you didn't already know."

Classic Regulus. A prince draped in the trappings of a gentleman, his words laced with poison and devotion in equal measure—a tongue that could flay a man alive with a single sentence, a heart that had always, always belonged to you, even when he pretended otherwise. And as the violins swelled around you, as the candles burned themselves into oblivion, as the world beyond the ballroom faded into insignificance, you knew—this was not a beginning, nor an ending.