blankly unreadable.
'I'm sorry,' he said.
'It's not your fault,' Harry said, although without much feeling. His tone was flat and dead. 'I just feel so… stupid.'
'You couldn't have known,' said Sirius.
'I could have figured it out,' Harry disagreed flatly. 'I just didn't want to think about it. When we got back here — when I came up to my dormitory -
I found something on my bed, wrapped up like a present.' He reached into a pocket on his jeans and drew something out of it. He reached his hand forward and opened it. On the palm of his hand was what looked for a moment like a broken toy. Blinking, Sirius realized it was a chess piece.
A knight, made of green stone. It was broken in half.
'I thought…' Harry's voice had taken on a slightly ragged edge. 'I thought it was from Draco's father. I thought he was trying to say that my move was over, it was his move now. It seemed like something he'd do. But now I don't think it had anything to do with me or Draco at all.'
Draco's eyes flicked from the chess piece to Harry. 'You didn't tell me,' he said.
'No,' Harry admitted. 'I'm sorry. I didn't think it was important. Is it one of your father's?'
Draco frowned at the chess piece. 'It looks kind of familiar,' he said. 'But I'm not completely sure where I've seen it before.'
Harry looked entreatingly at his godfather. 'Sirius…'
Sirius sighed. 'Let me have it,' he said, and reached out from the fire to collect the chess piece from Harry. It had been snapped in even halves, as if a knife had cut it cleanly in two. The marble was smooth, weighty and expensive. 'So someone sent you a veiled taunt,' he said. 'Lucius, or one of his Death Eater cronies, or even — '
'Voldemort himself,' said Draco, his voice toneless but intent. 'But it doesn't make any sense…'
'No,' Harry agreed. His own voice was tense with fear and something else.
There was a dark light behind his green eyes. 'No, it doesn't make any sense. After everything that's happened… what would the Death Eaters want with Ron?'
It took Ron less than an afternoon exploring the castle to realize why Wormtail and Rhysenn had laughed at him when he said he was going to take a walk.
The castle was full of beautiful things, that was undeniable. Silver serpent pillars with topaz eyes and swords for teeth. Walls of books bound in bronze and agate. Heavy velvet curtains held with jade clasps. Huge leaded windows paned in blue and gold and scarlet. They looked out on a countryside of tinder-dry winter mountains, jagged as teeth. The sky was an arched blue bow overhead, and far below Ron could see a fast- moving pale silver river, as thin as one of Lucius' smiles.
But there were two things that were missing. Nowhere in this vast jewel box of a castle were there any other people. And nowhere were there any doors or windows that opened to the outside.
'Hello again,' Ron said wearily, walking at last back into the room he had come from, with its gold cage and chessboards. He looked around: Wormtail was gone, although Rhysenn still sat quietly inside her shining prison. The scattered chess pieces on the floor had been cleaned up and placed back on their boards.
Rhysenn looked up. 'They brought you some food,' she said, a bit listlessly, and pointed at a silver salver set atop one of the tables. Ron almost ran over to the table and flung himself on the food there. It was extremely simple: bread, cheese, some chocolate. He didn't care; he was starving. 'I get why you were laughing at me, by the way,' he said between mouthfuls. 'There aren't any doors here that lead outside. Are there?'
'There are no such doors at all here,' Rhysenn said, twirling a lock of silky black hair idly around a finger. 'The only way out of this castle is to Apparate.'
Ron laughed shortly. 'And you can't?'
'I could leave this place,' said Rhysenn, a slight frown puckering the space between her eyebrows. 'But then I would have to leave Lucius without his permission, and that I cannot do. I am bound to him.'
'Then why the cage?' Ron asked.
'The cage restricts my ability to use certain powers of mine,' said Rhysenn, with a moue of distaste. 'Lucius, I suspect, fears me, although he should perhaps know better than that. Gold is the metal most unloved by demons, for it resembles the sun which we despise. It also affects our abilities.'
Ron did not hear this last sentence of hers; his mind was whirling. 'You're a demon?' he demanded.
She simply smiled.
'I've seen demons before,' he said. 'They don't look like you.'
'I am demon only by half,' she replied. 'My other half is mortal, entirely.
My mother was a demon herself; my father was a Malfoy.'
'Right,' said Ron, picking up the nearest chess piece. It was a rook. 'So, you're all demon, then.'
She frowned at him. 'I do not think you understand the honor I do you, telling you the truth of my nature. I have told none before.'
'Then why me? Why now?'
'Because there is no one here for you to betray me to,' she said simply.
'And never again shall you return to tell this story. Like a mortal man who has walked into Hell, there is no road back for you from this place.'
'That's not true,' Ron said, and tightened his hand around the chess piece until it hurt. 'I'll escape.'
'There is no escape.'
'Then Harry will come and find me,' Ron said.
She raised her eyes and looked at him. He saw how gray they were: had seen it that first day when she had come down the stairs with Charlie. And now that she had said she was a Malfoy, he could admit it. She had Draco's eyes. But where Draco's eyes were the color of moonlight seen through a silver shade, hers were moonlight seen through fever. They had a scarlet cast and inside the pupils burned tiny flames.
'After what you did,' she said, 'he will not come for you.'
'You don't know Harry,' Ron replied.
'Oh, don't I?' Her voice was amused, curious. 'You imagine he will come for you because he loves you. He gives love out carelessly, that one, and often where it is undeserving. I am a demon and perhaps you will think I do not understand, but I do not see what your love for him or his for you has done for you besides bring you to this pass. I have lived six hundred years and I have seen the results of love. Pain and terror, conflagration and despair. Fate may be impartial and Justice blind, but Love hates mankind and knows well that the best way to make him suffer is to kiss him with her sickness.'
Ron did not look at her. He looked instead at the chessboard, with its repeating squares of light and dark. When he spoke, his voice was even.
'Harry will come and get me if he has to walk through fire to get here. I know he will.'
'You have faith in him, then,' Rhysenn asked, her tone a question.
'Love is faith,' said Ron.
For a moment, she looked almost startled. 'Where have you heard that?'
she demanded.
Ron hesitated a moment. Then he replied with the truth, because after all, she had had a point. There was no reason to lie. 'In a vision,' he said. 'It was something I saw in my head.'
'You mean just last night?' Rhysenn asked curiously. A moment before she had seemed both ancient and evil; now she seemed a curious, ordinary girl. Ron trusted this incarnation of her even less than the last one.
'No,' he said slowly. 'Last night wasn't the first time I've ever seen anything. I know I'm a Diviner. I've known it for a long time. I knew sometimes I could see things other people couldn't, or I would make guesses that came
