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Chapter Text

James has been a blood sucking monster for as long as he can remember. Has been friends with Sirius Black for just as much. But it just so happens that he has never met Sirius’ brother before.

And he’s starting to realise why.

Regulus Black is beautiful. Smokey, slept in eyes that look half dead and half dreadfully uninterested, lips a perfect dark crimson, glossy and plump, hair long and pinned up into curly spikes and a thin black rope laced around his neck that holds a blood red crystal heart.

He looks exactly like what one would imagine when describing a “vampire”.

And that’s why Sirius has taken around a century and a half to introduce them properly— actually, he’s not even doing it properly. Regulus just came one night and they roused to him playing house in their manor. It would have been treason to force himself into an established coven’s home like he just did but he is given exceptions because he is Sirius’ blood and the coven’s wards recognises blood relations just as much as pact and sire relations.

Maybe they need to make a few alterations…

If Regulus was a muggle, James wouldn’t have held back because he just looks absolutely delectable. Hell, he’d take a sip or two if Regulus offered, nothing better than purelines’ blood after all, considering how pure the Blacks liked to keep themselves. Or… to themselves.

Now, Sirius is simultaneously cursing up a storm for his brother and also hogging him in spontaneous bursts of affection. He offered Regulus a racoon from god absolutely knows where— which Regulus had horrendously declined because he was, verbatim, “friend to the animals” or certain ones as he has established after picking up a rather pointy rock and throwing it half a meter’s length towards a wayward rat, skillfully puncturing it— and sometimes likes to hug him or trap him in a noogie as he rants off. Regulus is stealthy, however, so he gets away most of the time.

James is both surprised and dismayed to learn that Remus and Regulus have been acquainted a long time ago that it’s enough to call them good friends. He seems rather hostile to Peter, though. And yet, they’ve also already met.

James feels left out.

And challenged.

All this to say, Regulus is welcomed into their space— into their coven, really, if he wants it— because they don’t know why he’s here in the first place. He seems rather calm so there isn’t much to worry about because, as Sirius had made sure to let everyone know, Regulus had dealt with it if nothing else.

“So, why have I never been introduced to this one?” Regulus asks as they sit in the common room, eyes firmly on James.

James throws his hands up and looks to Regulus then to Sirius. “Exactly! Thank you!”

“Because I didn’t allow it.” Sirius says, simply, chin raised.

“Why is that?” Regulus asks, tone dripping in sarcasm as he dips his head, leaving a red gleam to his grey pupils from the reflection of his ruby heart. This seems to beset something in Sirius because he visibly rears back.

James suddenly remembers what Sirius had said about his family. The longer you stayed in it, the more… iniquitous one becomes. None of them are really sure when Regulus managed to escape the Blacks. If he ever did, if they’re being realistic. But if he didn’t, Regulus wouldn’t be lounging around, he’d be attempting to murder Sirius in a blood-thirsty endeavour for revenge.

Assuming this isn’t enough to keep Sirius’ doubts at bay, granted they are all morally ambiguous, but Regulus has despicable reputation trailing him like a tail.

Sirius gathers his ground when Remus’ hand settles on his shoulder. “You little shit.” He rolls his eyes and in turn, the wild and vicious intent in the younger Black’s eyes disappear. “Fine, I’ll tell you. But first, you tell me why you’re here.”

“Not that you’re unwelcomed.“ Remus adds in, hastily.

Regulus is not fazed. Instead, he leans back against the back of the couch, leaning only the slightest bit towards James. James can feel his senses rise. Why is he hyperaware of Regulus Black?

“Yes, your wards said as much.”

James feels the sigh he lets out through the vibrations of the leather skin of the seat. Regulus closes his eyes, not clenched, just closed like he’s somewhere safe and peaceful and not being interrogated by doubtful family. Which is fair, he doesn’t exactly have the cleanest record, what with what he got involved in in the last half-century.

James takes this as the chance to ogle. Not that he hasn’t already been ogling him ever since he arrived— rather, when they discovered him in their common room. But he’s only really been able to see from afar.

Regulus is lanky in build. Much like Sirius when James first met him. But that was more because he was transitioning into a new diet. Sirius is much fuller now, a lot less skin-and-bone. His brother, however, seemed to be naturally built like that. James is a hundred and one percent sure Regulus gets more than enough nutrition from whatever blood he’s feasting on on a regular basis. And yet.

From up-close, James sees the fibres of his pale, crystalline skin. It looks unnaturally smooth, from his cheeks, down to the column of his neck and the exposed forearms resting against a few pillows. He looks paper white and stoney. His bone structure looks very narrow compared to James’ own that he could pass as nearly sickly if not for the sheer strength in his fingertips alone.

From the high points of his cheeks and the knobs of his prominent jaw, the slope of his nose and the little bump in the middle, to his deep-set eyes that make him look… not kind, per se, but not unapproachable either, he’s very unique. Pretty. Not in the way Sirius is. There’s a feminine air to both brothers, the androgynous aspect of their features being the very points of their distinctive appearance that make them easy to point out in a room from the lush raven curls to the bow of their mouths. But Regulus is more… fictitious, James would say.

He is very hard to fathom, all in all.

As if defying time, James runs these thoughts within only a few handfuls of seconds because he zones back in just in time for Regulus to speak.

“I fought with Barty.” He announces, quiet, like this was a great deal to him. Which probably is, James wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know who Barty is (but judging from Regulus’ tone of voice, James doesn’t like him already).

Sirius mock gasps and follows it with a very insincere “Oh, how absolutely horrible, Reg. It’s Barty of course he’s the problem.” to which Regulus’ look returns. James doesn’t see, but Sirius clears his throat, only slightly but all ears pick up on it.

“Barty isn’t very great, I’m aware. But he is family to me.”

“Then… why did you fight. Or, what did you fight about?” Remus asks, tentatively.

“I wanted to become a coven.” All pairs of eyes go wide. This is not a statement that they ever thought would come out of Regulus Black’s mouth because one, Regulus doesn’t do covens. Two, Regulus doesn’t do commitment. And three, seeing as Regulus is the oldest among his peers, he is most likely to be head of house. Which… speaks for itself.

“But you’d imagine why Barty didn’t like that.”

Something clicks into place.

“Wait. Barty? As in Crouch? The head minister’s son?”

“Yes.”

James eyebrows furrow in confusion. He pleads for a second click of understanding but it doesn’t come.

“Wait. Why do we not like Barty?” Though he has not problems not liking Barty if Sirius doesn’t.

“Because he is thoughtless and impulsive and loud and he’s the reason Reg’s been getting into all sorts of things as of late.”

“I’ve been the reason I’ve been getting into things. Need I remind you that I would be head of coven. By face at least.”

“Face and teeth,” Sirius mutters under his breath, leaning back into Remus with all the drama of a wronged theatre maiden. “And cheekbones, apparently. Because that’s what matters when you’re the face of a coven—bone structure.”

Regulus shrugs, delicate and insufferable. “I’ve never pretended otherwise.”

James watches him like one might observe a particularly dangerous flower. Looks poisonous, smells too sweet. One touch and you’re done for.

“I think,” Remus says slowly, like he’s stepping around a bear trap in bare feet, “what Sirius means is that leadership, even in vampiric circles, generally requires more than a symmetrical face.”

“But less than a functioning moral compass,” Regulus retorts, and James swears he sees the corner of his mouth twitch. Maybe. Or maybe that was the glint of candlelight playing tricks on him.

“You’re one to talk,” Sirius scoffs. “You once seduced an entire Romanian nest just to get your hands on a singular volume of necromantic spells.”

“And I got it,” Regulus says mildly. “Your point?”

“My point is you’re a fucking menace.”

“Don’t be bitter that I’m more academically inclined.”

James blinks. “Wait, you speak Romanian?”

“Poorly. But I speak blood fluently. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

A beat. Silence hangs. James’ spine straightens ever so slightly.

He’s certain Regulus said that on purpose.

Regulus turns to him, as if finally acknowledging he’s there. “So. Potter.”

“Black.”

Regulus tilts his head, lashes half-lowered. “Which one?”

James’ lips quirk up despite himself. “Touché.”

He hates that Regulus smiles, just barely. Like he’s won something. Like James is a moth and he’s the flame and they both know how this ends but no one’s hitting the brakes.

Remus, ever the awkward family mediator, clears his throat. “So. The coven. You… actually want one?”

“I don’t want a coven,” Regulus corrects, stretching out along the couch like a cat ready to sink claws into the furniture. “I want the autonomy to form one. I want the safety. The recognition. The right to claim my own and protect them without answering to ancient names and decrepit traditions.”

“You want a family,” James says, before thinking.

Regulus’s face shifts, just a fraction. It’s gone before anyone else can register it. But James sees it.

He’s not sure if it makes his chest ache or his fangs itch.

“Don’t we all?” Regulus murmurs.

“Even the pure-blooded undead crave a little domesticity,” Sirius mutters. “Give ‘em a throw blanket and a murder diary and suddenly they want breakfast meetings and cuddle piles.”

Regulus ignores him. Instead, he looks to James, straight through him. There’s a deliberate sort of stillness to his posture now. “And you?”

James blinks. “Me?”

“Yes. You. Do you want a coven?”

He hadn’t thought about it. Not really. He’s always had the Marauders. Had Sirius, had Remus and Peter and all their ungodly, ridiculous chaos. He’s had enough blood and enough purpose to feel full. But there’s something in the way Regulus asks it—like he’s not talking about power structures at all.

“I guess I thought I already had one.”

Regulus nods. He looks at him too long. James feels himself getting pulled into the gravity of those too-dark eyes, drowned in soot and secrets. He’s suddenly too aware of how close they’re sitting.

Regulus is cold. Not metaphorically. Literally. Cold. Like marble. Like nighttime. Like something that stopped has never truly taken a breath.

But James doesn’t move away.

Instead, Regulus blinks slowly, lips parting. “Then you understand why I can’t go back.”

“To Barty?” Remus asks, gently.

“To any of them,” Regulus replies, eyes still locked on James. “The only way to survive their world is to be like them. And I’d rather die.”

No one speaks after that. The fire crackles. The shadows tremble against the walls. Sirius shifts like he wants to say something, then thinks better of it. Remus’s eyes are stormy with thoughts he won’t share.

James, for once in his long life, has nothing clever to say.

Only one thought loops in his mind like a cursed incantation:
This will not end well.

And then, Regulus stands, unfurling like smoke. “Thank you for the seat,” he says, like he hadn’t just split the air with something knife-sharp. “I think I’ll stay in the east wing tonight.”

“You’ll freeze your ass off,” Sirius mutters.

“I’m already half-dead. I think I’ll manage.”

James watches him walk away. Watches the sway of black fabric, the gleam of red crystal at his throat, the aura of a storm that hasn’t broken yet.

He doesn’t stop watching even when the door shuts softly behind him.

“Fuck,” James breathes.

Remus hums. “Yeah.”

Sirius groans into his hands. “I told you so.”

And James, still watching the door like Regulus might step back through it and ask for a drink or for his throat, thinks:

We’re all going to regret this, aren’t we?

Remus pats his knee. “Horribly.”

The silence after Regulus leaves isn’t comfortable. It sits in the room like fog, clinging to skin and fabric, heavy with things unsaid. James doesn’t break it. He just stares at the door, as if Regulus will reappear and smirk at him again like he knows something James doesn’t.

(He probably does.)

Sirius sighs eventually. One of those long, exhausted sounds that comes from the deepest parts of the soul — or what’s left of it, if you’ve been half-dead this long. Or your entire life.

“Alright,” he says, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Fine. You want to know why I never introduced you?”

James turns to him. “Yes, actually. I’ve wanted to know for about—” he checks a non-existent watch “—an hour and a half.”

Remus makes a noise. Somewhere between a hum and a warning.

Sirius ignores him.

“It’s not because I didn’t want you two to meet,” he starts, tone bitter in the way molasses is bitter — sweet, but cloying and burnt at the edges. “It’s because I knew you’d like him.”

James blinks. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not stupid, James,” Sirius says, leaning forward now, elbows to knees, hands hanging between them like claws. “You’re… unfortunately sentimental. You see someone who’s sharp and broken and a little too lonely and you immediately want to fix them. Or feed them. Or fall in love with them.”

“I—what?”

“And Regulus—” Sirius exhales sharply. “He’s dangerous when he wants to be. You don’t know what he’s capable of when he’s hurt. He doesn’t burn like the rest of us, he rots. Slow and pretty and silent. And he takes people down with him.”

James just stares.

“And,” Sirius adds, after a beat, “you’ve always had a thing for sharp, pretty things with bad tempers.”

“That’s—”

Remus cuts in, tone diplomatic. “Not inaccurate.”

James whips to glare at him. “You’re not helping.”

Remus shrugs. “He’s not wrong.”

“Thank you, Moony,” Sirius mutters, dragging a hand through his hair.

James, however, is still stuck on something else. “Wait. You thought I’d… what? Fall in love with him?”

“No,” Sirius says, then reconsiders. “Well. Maybe. But mostly I thought he’d do it first.”

James freezes.

There’s a pause.

And then Remus says, “Oh.”

James says, “What?”

Sirius leans back, like the worst of it is already over. “He used to ask about you.”

James’s heart does something unseemly.

“Back when we were still on speaking terms,” Sirius continues. “Before he got in too deep with the wrong names and the wrong magic and the wrong fucking promises. He’d ask about the coven. About Remus. About the war. About you. Always you.” He doesn’t look at James when he says it. “And I thought — I hoped — that he’d forget. Or lose interest. Or get over it.”

Remus leans forward now, brows drawn. “But why would that be such a problem?”

“Because James would’ve loved him back,” Sirius says simply. “And they would’ve destroyed each other.”

James exhales shakily. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” Sirius’ voice sharpens like a blade. “Because Regulus doesn’t know how to be loved. And you don’t know how not to.”

That lands like a stake to the ribs. Not fatal. Just enough to make James want to hiss.

Remus watches him quietly. “He’s… still not unwelcomed,” he says. “Despite all of this.”

“I know,” Sirius mutters. “I know.”

James gets up.

“Where are you going?” Remus asks.

James doesn’t answer. Not right away. He moves toward the door Regulus disappeared through. Hand on the wood. Fingertips tingling.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits.

Sirius doesn’t stop him. But he does say, “Don’t let him look at you too long.”

James glances back. “Why?”

Sirius’ expression is carved in stone. “Because you’ll start to see your own ruin in his eyes. And you’ll thank him for it.”

James leaves before he can ask what the hell that means.

The east wing is colder.

Not just in the drafty, manor-way that makes even the tapestries shiver, but something else. Something older. Colder in the bones. Magic that feels like breath held too long. Power curled like smoke inside stone walls.

James walks slower here. Instinctively. As if the house itself is reminding him: Tread lightly.

He finds Regulus by the window, just as expected. Sitting sideways in one of those armchairs no one actually uses, one leg thrown over the armrest, robe falling open just enough to bare the delicate stretch of a collarbone. There’s moonlight — where it came from, James doesn’t know, since the window faces nothing but endless forest — but it paints Regulus in silver, his dark hair and paler skin making him look sculpted. Unreal.

The crystal heart around his neck glows faintly, a pulse like something alive.

“Did you know,” Regulus says, without looking over, “that the wards in this wing haven’t been updated in over a century?”

James lingers in the doorway. “Can’t say I did.”

“Of course not. Sirius doesn’t come here.” He turns his head slightly. “This was our mother’s wing.”

The way he says our mother makes James feel like he’s standing on thin ice, waiting to see where it cracks.

“Did she love it?” James asks, unsure why. Just trying to fill the space between them with something.

“No,” Regulus says, smiling faintly. “But she haunted it beautifully.”

He tilts his head and finally looks at James. And for a split second — just one — James feels like his own heart stutters. Not romantically. Not emotionally. Biologically. Something ancient inside him shrinks back.

Because this is what Sirius meant.

The Blacks are old. Old in the way forests are old — rooted, tangled, dark beneath the surface. Theirs is the truest blood. Not in arrogance. In lineage. In how magic doesn’t just obey them — it remembers them.

And Regulus — Regulus is the last one born of that line before it fractured and fled and burned itself out. Which makes him something like a relic. Or a weapon. Or both.

“I can feel the house reacting to you,” James says quietly.

Regulus quirks a brow. “And?”

“And it doesn’t do that for the rest of us.”

“Because the rest of you don’t belong to it.” His voice is calm, but James hears the undertone. The buried steel. “You occupy it. You thrive inside it. But this house was built on Black blood. It doesn’t serve us. It is us.”

James takes a slow step forward. “Even now?”

Regulus hums. “Especially now.”

There’s something eerie in how still he is. Like he’s not just resting — he’s waiting. Coiled. Watchful. James gets the impression that if he blinked too slow, Regulus would be gone. Or worse — closer.

“You looked at Sirius earlier,” James says suddenly, voice too loud in the quiet. “And he shut up. You didn’t say anything. Just looked.”

“Did I?” Regulus blinks, slow and unreadable.

“Yes. And I’ve never seen him do that. Not even with Remus. Not even with me.”

“Because Sirius,” Regulus murmurs, tone soft as mist, “was born to be the heir of something he chose not to inherit. But I was born to become it. And I didn’t run.”

James doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Regulus tilts his head again, just slightly, and his lungs decide it’s safe to exhale.

“You’re afraid of him,” James says quietly, almost to himself. “Your own brother.”

Regulus’ smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “He’s afraid of what I could’ve been.”

A pause.

“What stopped you?”

Regulus rises, slow, deliberate, like the shadows cling to his skin just a second longer than they should. He walks to James — not fast, not threatening, just present. Fully, terrifyingly present.

He stops a foot away. Close enough for James to see the flecks of deep red in his grey irises. Not reflections. Not tricks of the light.

Bloodline.

“I didn’t say I stopped.”

James doesn’t move. Not away. Not closer.

He knows he should. He knows what this is — the quiet thrum of compulsion under the surface, the near-psychic pressure of a true bloodline vampire brushing against his own boundaries. This is the sort of thing they warn you about when you’re turned: Don’t look too long at an ancient. Don’t speak first. Don’t flinch.

He does all three.

And Regulus, of course, notices.

His lips part just slightly, a breath that tastes like winter, like marble and midnight gardens. “You’re still watching me.”

“Hard not to,” James says hoarsely.

Regulus tilts his head. “Why?”

James doesn’t answer.

Regulus reaches up — slow, gloved in restraint — and flicks something from James’ collar. A speck of lint. A gesture so intimate it aches.

“I’m not your ruin,” Regulus says, soft and final. “You’ll do that all on your own.”

Then, just like smoke, he steps away. The air warms slightly in his absence.

James stands there, staring after him. Still trying to remember how to breathe.

“Tell Siri not to worry. I won’t destroy you, Potter.”

 

Eventually, it’s Remus who brings it up again. Quietly. Days later. As if saying the name Barty too early might summon something shrill and hexed and too emotionally involved.

Regulus is polishing a blade.

James is watching him do it.

There are half a dozen reasons he shouldn’t be watching Regulus do anything — especially something as loaded as cleaning weapons with the same disinterest one might show in brushing crumbs off their lap — but here they are. Daylight dead behind the curtains. Fire low and humming. Regulus’ fingers gleaming faintly with oil and silver.

“You never said why they refused,” Remus says from the doorway, tone even, scholarly. “Barty. Evan. They’ve always followed you. In their own twisted ways.”

Regulus doesn’t look up. “Because they know me.”

James straightens slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Regulus pauses, glancing up. “You’re all rather new to me. You see the front. You see the robe, the jewelry, the lineage. You think I’m some cursed boy with a sharp tongue and old blood. They don’t see that. They see… something else.”

“And what’s that?” Sirius asks, arms folded as he leans against the stone arch.

Regulus’ smile is all lips and no joy. “Their leash.”

Remus shifts. “You mean because you’d be head of coven?”

“No.” Regulus sits back, blade still in hand. “Because I could make them follow me.”

Silence drops into the room like a sudden snowfall.

James frowns. “You mean compel them? Like siring—”

“No.” Sirius cuts in. “He means something worse.”

Regulus says nothing. Which is worse than confirmation.

Sirius sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do you know how old the Black line is? Not just socially. Magically. Our blood’s older than most coven roots. Older than the Pact of Dresden. Older than even the continental thresholds. There are wards across Europe keyed to our name. There are entire families whose bloodlines were bound to ours for protection, power, alliance—whatever. We didn’t make treaties. We made promises.”

“And those promises,” Regulus says gently, “have a voice.”

James is still watching him. “Your voice.”

“Not always. But I am the last. The strongest. The truest. My voice… carries.”

“You’re saying you can command them?” Remus asks, carefully.

“I’m saying,” Regulus says, as if correcting a child, “they’re afraid I will.”

 

The thing is — James has seen it now.

He saw it that night in the east wing. Saw how the manor responded to Regulus like a wolf recognizing the true alpha. Not in noise or violence. In silence. In submission. The air itself holding its breath.

He thinks about how Sirius fell quiet after one look.

And he thinks about what it must feel like — for Barty, for Evan — to grow up beside something like Regulus Black, watching him get quieter, colder, more aware of what he could do.

Of what his voice could become.

“They refused the coven,” Regulus says, gently returning the blade to its sheath, “because they knew it wouldn’t be ours. It would be mine.”

He stands, brushing invisible dust from his sleeve. “They don’t want a family. They want fire. They want freedom. They want bloodletting and ruin and ash. What they don’t want is to kneel, even if their blood already has.”

James breathes in like it’ll help settle anything. It doesn’t.

“So you didn’t force them?” Remus asks, softly.

Regulus turns his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

This time, he really smiles. A flicker of sharp teeth behind perfect lips. “Because I don’t need them.”

James feels a chill that has nothing to do with the weather.

Sirius scoffs, but it lacks real bite. “You were always like this. Even when you were small. You didn’t cry. You just watched. Like you knew you wouldn’t need anyone if you waited long enough.”

“And I was right,” Regulus says, serene. “You came back eventually.”

That makes Sirius flinch. Just slightly. Enough.

Regulus leaves the room with the elegance of someone who knows the shadows part for him.

James doesn’t follow.

 

Later, when they’re alone, James asks Sirius something low and uncertain:

“Did you ever wonder what he’d become, if he wanted to?”

Sirius laughs. Bitter and tired.

“No. I wondered what he’d become if someone tried to stop him.”

 

It’s Peter — of all people — who finally asks:

“So why do you want a coven, really?”

It’s not sarcastic. Not fearful. Just… curious.

Regulus lifts his gaze from the map he’s been redrawing — all of Europe etched in long, trailing ink. Not borders. Not rivers. Just bloodlines. Places touched. People burned.

“What makes you think I want one?” he asks, voice lazy, but not unkind.

Peter shrugs. “You’re chasing something.”

Regulus smiles, faint and almost fond. “I’m containing something.”

 

The thing about Barty, Evan, and Regulus is this: they were never meant to survive this long.

Not together.

Not like this.

The last ten years were a kind of plague — a decade carved into the underside of Europe, in the quietest ruins of old covens, seedy blood-houses, black-market hunting rings, abandoned courts.

They moved like rot.

Barty with his recklessness, so charming it felt like an infection. Loud, political, too smart, too young. No patience. All fire.

Evan, colder. Precise. Poison with a smile. The one who made sure bodies vanished and no one ever asked why.

And Regulus, the quiet axis they orbited. The one who watched. Who never pulled the trigger, but decided where it pointed.

They weren’t terrorists. Not exactly.

They were corrections.

Barty believed the vampire world needed revolution. Evan believed it needed purification. And Regulus, he never said what he believed. Only ever moved them toward their next target with perfect calm.

High Lords disappeared. Families with centuries of power found themselves disgraced, drained, disbanded. One minor prince of the Germanic blood courts slit his own throat on his own throne after a whispered conversation with Regulus Black. No one knows what was said. Only that Regulus walked out and the prince didn’t.

They were followed by whispers, ash, unrest. Never staying. Always vanishing. Always one step ahead of the coven laws that could never quite catch up.

Because they weren’t chaos.

They were something worse: intentional.

 

And then Regulus stopped.

Just… stopped.

Said he wanted a coven.

Said he wanted to settle. Anchor. Form.

Barty laughed in his face. “You mean rule.”

Evan didn’t laugh. He looked at Regulus like he was trying to decipher a curse that had changed mid-word.

“We know what happens when someone like you sits on a throne,” he’d said, voice quiet and flat. “You won’t speak. You’ll just look. And we’ll all kneel.”

Because that’s what it always came back to. Regulus never asked for obedience. Never demanded loyalty. He just made it unthinkable to disobey. Because he could.

And Barty, for all his screaming ideology, couldn’t stomach the thought of handing the reins over to someone who never had to raise his voice.

Evan, perhaps more honestly, feared what would happen if Regulus chose to use what he had.

Not political power.

Not beauty.

Not intellect.

But Blood Command.

The ability to issue a single, ancient-rooted order, and have every bloodline tied to him directly or distantly, obey without resistance. Not from fear. Not from coercion. From ancestry. As if magic itself bowed.

They’d seen flashes of it before. Never deliberate. Never prolonged. Just… moments.

The prince who slit his throat.

The way rogue vampires in Bucharest once tore each other apart after Regulus looked at them.

The time Barty, drunk on something lethal, tried to bite Regulus in a show of posturing, only to find himself pinned to a wall by his own body, screaming not in pain, but shame. Regulus hadn’t moved.

Just whispered: “Don’t touch what doesn’t want you.”

And Barty hadn’t tried again.

 

So when Regulus told them he wanted a coven, they refused.

Not because they didn’t want to belong to something.

But because deep down, they knew: Regulus wasn’t trying to rule them.

He was trying to save them.

Contain them.

End the war they’d become by offering them a bond stronger than fear, a place to rest, an anchor in the chaos.

They refused because they saw it for what it was:

A leash they’d need.

 

Now, James watches Regulus from across the room, curled up in a worn armchair that makes him look unreasonably regal. The fire paints him in bronze and shadow. His hands are still, as if they’ve never killed.

But James knows better.

“You were trying to save them,” he says, softly.

Regulus doesn’t deny it. “You try living ten years with someone and not learn where they’re breaking.”

“And you didn’t leash them?”

“I could have.” He looks up. “That’s why they left.”

James breathes, low and unsure. “And now?”

Regulus tilts his head. The crystal heart around his throat pulses gently.

“Now I’m offering it to you.”

James’ blood goes cold.

Sirius was right. It’s not the power that’s terrifying.

It’s the way Regulus doesn’t use it.

And still makes you want to kneel.

Chapter Text

“Relax,” Regulus sighs, twirling a silver ring on his pinky. “I’m kidding. Gods, you’re all so dramatic.”

Peter physically hides behind a large armchair. Again.

“You said it with the same tone you used when you told Barty he had lovely jugulars and then bit him,” Sirius points out, tossing a blood pouch into the icebox with unnecessary force. “So forgive us if we don’t immediately believe you’re joking.”

“That was a compliment,” Regulus says mildly. “His veins really were quite symmetrical.”

Peter whimpers audibly from behind the armchair.

“Are you alright?” Remus asks, glancing over.

“I just don’t understand why he looks at people like that,” Peter says, peeking nervously. “Like he’s already measured your insides.”

“To be fair,” James says, “he probably has.”

Regulus preens a little. “Only yours.”

James nearly chokes on his drink.

“Regulus!” Sirius throws a cushion at his head. Regulus leans slightly to the left. It sails past him like he planned for it.

“Don’t be jealous,” Regulus calls, stretching like a cat and yawning. “I’d coven with you, too. If you asked nicely.”

“Again,” Sirius growls, “not funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” James mutters.

“It is not funny!” Sirius gestures wildly. “He’s doing the Black thing. The thing where he says something absurdly threatening but he’s so beautiful and condescending that no one takes it seriously until he’s already beheaded three Dukes of Bucharest.”

“I only beheaded one,” Regulus sniffs. “The other tripped.”

“Onto your dagger,”

“Again. Tripped. I wasn’t holding it very tightly.”

Sirius raises a brow. “You were meditating with it balanced on your knee.”

“It’s not my fault Eastern nobles lack grace.”

 

The week crawls in like fog. Regulus doesn’t rest, not really. He doesn’t feed around them either, which is suspicious on its own. He simply exists, gliding from room to room like some decorative ancestral haunting, occasionally offering unsolicited architectural criticism.

(“Your parlor is decorated like a taxidermy lounge.”

“It’s literally your house, Regulus.”

“Exactly. Tragic.”)

James catches him in strange places.

Once, standing barefoot in the snow-dusted garden at dawn, completely still.

Once, reading through their warding ledgers like he was memorizing them.

Once, whispering to the walls. And the walls whispering back.

By the seventh day, everyone’s gotten a little too used to him. Sirius even half-smiles when Regulus walks in once without dramatic fanfare. (Only half.)

But that morning, he’s gone.

No note. No sound. Just vanished.

Well, technically not vanished, because Sirius finds his cloak draped over one of the kitchen stools and his ruby heart pendant lying neatly on the counter, still faintly glowing.

“Oh no,” Sirius mutters. “He’s nesting.”

“Or plotting,” Remus offers.

“Or dead,” Peter squeaks.

James, staring at the pendant, says nothing.

 

They find the trail three hours later.

Not footprints. Not scent. Just subtle things.

The way the wards along the property line have shifted, slightly wider now, like they’re stretching, reaching outward.

The mark of ancestral blood magic burned into the northeast gate. Black crest, circled once, then crossed.

And one of the house’s older ravens sitting on the balcony railing with a scrap of parchment tied to its leg.

Sirius unties it. Stares.

“He’s chasing something,” he says aloud.

“What?” Remus leans over.

Sirius reads the note again. “‘Borrowed the east gate. Don’t wait. Not ready to explain.’”

“Not ready or unwilling?” James asks.

“Yes,” Sirius mutters.

They all stand on the balcony for a moment. Even Peter, who has finally come out from behind furniture.

The wind whistles through the old iron grates.

Regulus is gone.

And somehow, the house still feels like it belongs to him.

 

He walks east.

Not because it’s the way out, but because it’s the way back.

The wards still hum along his skin, faint recognition blooming through each step. Trees lean slightly in his direction, like they remember who used to walk this way barefoot, carrying spellbooks and storm water in crystal jars. The forest doesn’t make noise around him. It waits.

Regulus hums softly as he walks. An old song. Something his mother sang once, long before the world meant anything but hunger.

The last raven follows, silent overhead.

He left the heart behind, the pendant, because it’s not safe to wear it anymore. Not where he’s going.

 

There’s a house.

Not a manor. Not a castle. A house. Squat and made of river stones, sunk slightly into the earth. The roof is overgrown with moss. The windows are blind.

He hasn’t been here in decades. But his bloodline has.

He steps over the threshold, and something in the floor shudders in recognition.

The wards seal behind him. It smells like dust and ruin and lavender and regret.

There are three chairs. One is broken. One is covered in dried blood. One has his name carved underneath it in a language that’s only supposed to be used when speaking to gods.

He doesn’t sit.

He walks to the center of the room and kneels.

Not out of submission.

Out of memory.

Because this is where it started. The whole thing, the war, the trail, the ruin they made like a ribbon unraveling across the continent.

Barty’s voice still echoes faintly here, when the light hits the stone just right. Evan’s laughter is folded into the cracks between floorboards. And Regulus—

Regulus had bled here. Once. On purpose.

To bind something.

To seal something.

To forget something.

 

Now he’s back to unseal it.

He spreads his fingers along the dusty stone and whispers.

Not words. Not language.

Just… intent.

And the house breathes in.

The blood between the bricks hums in his throat, like old wine.

He feels it rise.

The power he left buried. The one Barty was right to fear. The one Evan would have killed to protect. The one Regulus has spent a century pretending he no longer remembers.

He breathes out, slow and steady, and says:

“Come home.”

The shadows in the corners of the room ripple.

And from the far wall, a shape begins to form.

Not a body. Not yet.

Just a shimmer. A memory. A promise.

It stinks of war magic and burial salt. Of oaths unfulfilled. Of hunger.

Regulus watches it. Calm.

“You were mine first,” he whispers.

The shape tilts its head.

It remembers.

It speaks without words.

The shape flickers, wrong around the edges, like a dream you wake up halfway through and then spend your whole life trying not to remember. Its face is blur and burn and beauty in reverse. A hollow of something once beloved now bound.

Regulus stays kneeling.

Not out of reverence.

Out of balance.

Blood magic isn’t about force. It’s about intention. Precision. Lineage. And this, this, is magic written in his bones. It can smell hesitation. It feeds on uncertainty.

“You’re early,” Regulus says at last. Quiet. Even.

The shape tilts its head again, as if amused.

“Or I’m late,” he amends. “Doesn’t matter.”

A long pause.

Then: “I didn’t think I’d have to come back here.”

There’s a flicker at that, brief, sharp, like the shape is laughing. Like it remembers just how often Regulus has lied to himself. How often he’s hidden behind that perfect, blood-bred calm.

He exhales slowly, and the lights gutter.

“Show me what’s left,” he says.

And it does.

 

It doesn’t move. But the room does.

Not physically. Not in space.

But suddenly Regulus is surrounded by it — memory as magic. The air thick with it. The scent of burning wax, of iron-rich blood in a brass bowl. The clatter of Barty’s too-loud voice echoing through the stone. The scent of Evan’s cologne, metallic and herbal, haunting.

They’re not here. But they are.

Because Regulus never let go of them.

He locked the memory of them, the truth of them, into this place when he bound the thing that’s standing before him now.

He thought he could separate them.

Memory. Power. Guilt.

He was wrong.

 

The vision crashes over him:

Blood on the floor. His hand over Barty’s mouth to stop the laughing. Evan holding the dagger steady, slicing a line into Regulus’ palm. A vow. A bond. A seal.

“We keep it here. No one follows. No one takes it.”

It.

The thing they found. The thing they couldn’t kill. The thing Regulus whispered to, once, and it whispered back.

And when it called him heir, he didn’t correct it.

 

Regulus opens his eyes.

The shape is still there.

Less blurred now. Less like a ghost.

He can almost see a mouth.

Almost hear his name.

“Not yet,” he whispers.

He doesn’t stand.

He lowers himself further, palms flat to the ground. Not in submission, but preparation. This next part requires control. Not dominance. Not fear.

Intention.

He places one drop of blood, just one, against the stone.

The shape breathes it in without moving.

The walls flicker.

Then still.

 

It’s done. For now.

Regulus exhales, slow and steady. His hands are shaking, just slightly, the only sign of what it costs.

He stands. The shape recedes.

But it doesn’t vanish.

It waits. Coiled in the corner now. Half-asleep. Half-alive.

And Regulus?

He turns his back to it.

Walks toward the door.

Doesn’t look behind him when he says, “I’ll return when I’m ready. Don’t kill anything I haven’t approved.”

 

Outside, it’s still night.

He pulls on his gloves. Refastens the collar of his coat. Breathes once, deep, clear, grounding.

He isn’t ready to tell them yet.

Not Sirius. Not Remus.

Not James.

Especially not James.

He doesn’t know what James will do when he learns that Regulus bound a god once, just to prove he could. agreed to serve him.

The raven follows again.

He doesn’t stop it.

 

Regulus moves quietly, gloved fingers tucked into the folds of his coat. The pendant no longer swings at his throat. And the absence is both liberating and unsettling. Like walking without a shadow.

He can feel it, even from miles away. That heartbeat. Slow. Crimson. Thick with things he’d sealed away.

The god remembers.

So does Regulus.

He doesn’t hurry.

He follows the old streambed toward what was once a monastery, long collapsed. Beneath it is something older, a reliquary. Black magic, unmarked. That’s where he’s going. Not to retrieve. Not to fight.

To warn.

Because it’s waking faster than he planned.

And he needs a second piece before it remembers its full name.

 

Sirius hasn’t touched it.

He just watches.

The pendant sits on the stone countertop like it always belonged there. The ruby faintly pulses now and then, as if syncing to a rhythm no one else can hear. Not the ticking of clocks. Not footsteps. Something deeper.

Remus offers tea, then remembers who he’s talking to.

Sirius doesn’t answer.

James watches from the hallway.

He’s been watching all day.

He’s not stupid, not about this. He knows Regulus didn’t leave it behind by accident.

The ruby heart glows again.

Faint.

Soft.

Like breath against your neck.

“Does it normally do that?” James asks.

“No,” Sirius says flatly.

Another pause. James steps closer. Just enough to really look.

“It doesn’t smell like a charm,” he says. “Or a ward.”

“No.”

“Not blood magic either. Not just that.”

“No.”

James shoots him a look. “You going to say anything that isn’t ‘no’?”

Sirius exhales through his nose. “If I tell you what it is, you’ll touch it.”

“I might touch it anyway.”

“Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

James shrugs and leans on the counter. “You’ve thought I was an idiot since 1842.”

Sirius turns to face him. “That’s when you tried to fight a warlock with a table leg, James.”

“It was blessed maple,” James huffs. “And it worked.”

Remus enters the kitchen again. Sees them both eyeing the pendant. Stops. Immediately leaves.

James watches the ruby pulse once more, deep, red as blood, but thick like oil.

“What’s in it?” he finally asks.

Sirius doesn’t answer right away.

Then: “Everything.”

 

The monastery is gone.

But the bones are still there.

Sunken stone steps lead down into the earth, beneath moss and soot and a silence too wide to measure. Regulus walks them without torchlight. The darkness parts for him. Not as respect, as recognition.

This place remembers his him.

The deeper he goes, the colder it becomes. Not temperature, time. The walls ache with it. Old spells. Older sins.

The reliquary isn’t a room.

It’s a mouth.

Circular. Ringed with blackened columns. The center holds a raised platform carved from obsidian. In the middle, a hollow. Once, it held something.

Now it’s empty.

Regulus stops at the edge.

His heart doesn’t beat, but he feels something shift. Not fear. Something older than that.

He closes his eyes.

And across the world—
across the space—
across bloodlines and breath—

Someone touches the heart.

 

Sirius steps away. Two minutes.

James doesn’t even hesitate.

The moment Sirius leaves the room, James leans forward and presses his fingers to the ruby heart.

It’s not warm. It’s waiting.

And the second his skin makes contact,
he’s not in the kitchen anymore.

The world slams sideways.

He sees… A great winged thing, made of shadow and teeth and memory.

A stone circle under black stars.

Regulus. Younger. Kneeling. Eyes burning. Saying a name James can’t hear.

A scream, or is it music?

The pendant flashes red.

And James falls through it.

 

His knees hit the platform.

He tastes iron.

The air in the reliquary vibrates, then splits. A seam, opening not in space, but in meaning. He’s not alone.

“Who touched it?” he asks, eyes still closed.

The shadows don’t speak.

They don’t need to.

He feels it. Like a string snapped through his sternum.

James.

Of course it’s James.

Of course it’s—

stupid, brave, beautiful James, who never learned how to be afraid of the right things.

Regulus rises.

Not in panic. Not in fury.

In certainty.

Because the god now knows his name.
And James just gave it a way in.

He’s standing in the middle of a field.

Or maybe a memory.

The sky is red and gold. The grass is singing. The sound of wings echoes above him, though nothing flies.

In front of him is a door.

It’s made of bone.

Carved into its frame: You are not the heir.

Behind him: the sound of something enormous waking up.

“Fuck,” James breathes.

And then the door begins to open.

 

Not physically. Not like a door on a hinge.

It unfolds.
Like ribs.

Light spills through it, not gold, not clean. More like the color of dried roses, of old blood, of spells no longer spoken aloud.

James doesn’t move.

The inscription above the door burns against the sky:

You are not the heir.

But the door still opens.

That’s the terrifying part.

Something wants him to come in anyway.

He takes a step.

The grass beneath him curls in protest. Like it’s trying to pull him back.

He hears wings. Hooves. Bells?

He takes another step.

The air shifts. A whisper curls into his ear.

“What did he promise you?”

James freezes.

The voice isn’t real. It’s in his veins. It’s ancient. It knows Regulus.

And it knows James is not him.

“He bound me. You touched me. That makes us kin.”

James swallows.

He doesn’t know if he should run or kneel.

 

The seal is unraveling.

Not all at once, but in threads, like rope fraying under storm-tension.

Regulus doesn’t need to know the specifics. He felt the moment James stepped through. The moment the pendant recognized him, not as heir, but as belonging.

That’s worse.

He doesn’t run.

Running would waste power.

Instead, he rips through space, stepping between ley lines, bloodlines, fault lines. Magic folds. The world tears politely around him.

He arrives in the manor kitchen in a blur of black and frost.

The pendant is smoking.

James is gone.

Regulus places two fingers on the stone. Closes his eyes.

He dives.

 

There are mirrors inside the door.

Or maybe windows.

In each one, a version of Regulus.

But not the one James knows.

One is standing over a battlefield, eyes white with fury, covered in warpaint and ash.

One is seated on a throne of teeth, draped in red silks, unblinking.

One is kissing Barty Crouch with blood on his chin and a dagger in his hand.

James walks past them. Unsteady.

None of these are his Regulus.

If that word even means anything anymore.

Then, the mirrors stop.

And in front of him: the god.

Or what’s left of it.

It doesn’t have a shape.

It has a presence.

And it leans forward, curiously.

“What do you love most about him?”

James opens his mouth.

No sound.

“What would you give to protect it?”

Something cold touches his chest.

He flinches. Falls back.

And then—

Regulus is there.

 

He pulls James back like gutting a fish.

Fingers hooked into spelllight, teeth clenched around the edges of old oaths.

The god doesn’t resist, not yet. It watches.

Regulus lands hard in the center of the kitchen. James crashes into him like breath returning to a dead body.

The pendant slams into his palm, smoking.

He says nothing.

James is panting. Pale. Eyes wide.

Regulus doesn’t speak.

Not at first.

He stares down at James like he’s seeing not him, but through him. Like he’s counting bones, measuring distance to kill.

The air hums electric. Old magic. Something almost divine. Sirius instinctively pulls Remus behind him, which is absurd considering neither of them are killable. Peter hides. Again.

“Reg,” Sirius tries, carefully, “what the fuck—”

“Be quiet.”

It’s not a threat. Not a request.

It’s command, velvet-wrapped and venom-deep.

Sirius shuts up.

Regulus steps forward. Slowly. Like if he moves too fast, he’ll snap something inside himself.

James is still on the floor, trying to sit up. “What—what the fuck just—”

Regulus crouches.

Not human. Not gentle.

Just close. Too close.

And then, voice colder than winter, steadier than steel—

“What did you see.”

James blinks at him, sweat already forming across his collarbones. “I—I don’t know—”

“Try again.”

He’s not yelling. He doesn’t need to.

James swallows. “There was— a door. A bone door.”

Regulus doesn’t move.

“And—” James shudders. “A voice. It asked me— what I loved most about you.”

The words crack like lightning.

Sirius stiffens. Remus swears under his breath.

“And?” Regulus says.

“And what I’d give to protect it.”

Regulus exhales. Sharp. Soundless.

“And what did you say.”

“I didn’t,” James says quickly. “I didn’t answer. I didn’t—there wasn’t time.”

Something flickers in Regulus’s expression.

Relief? Regret?

Then: “Did it touch you?”

James hesitates.

“James.”

“…Yes.”

Regulus stands.

Fast. Controlled.

James doesn’t flinch, but maybe he should have.

Because Regulus begins pacing. One precise circle, slow, fingers twitching at his sides like he’s measuring something invisible.

Sirius finally breaks. “Regulus. What the hell is in that thing?!”

“It isn’t in the ruby,” Regulus says. “The ruby is just its leash. Its thorn. I carved it out. I sealed it. It can’t move without it.”

“It?” Sirius snaps. “What the fuck is ‘it’? Why did it ask James questions? Why did it know your name?”

Regulus stops pacing.

Looks at them all.

And says, not loudly, but enough:

“It’s a god. Or the bones of one. I don’t know what it calls itself now, but once, long ago, it called me heir.”

Silence.

Peter behind the armchair.

Huh, didn’t know vampires could even faint. Perhaps turned ones.

James’s voice is raw. “Why me?”

“You weren’t meant to touch it.”

“But I did.”

“Yes,” Regulus hisses. “And now it’s seen you.”

He turns slowly. Eyes locking on James like a blade clicking into place.

“And worse than that—now it knows your name, too.”

 

James pushes himself upright. “So what, it’s gonna haunt me?”

Regulus’s expression darkens.

“No,” he says. “It’s going to wait for you. Like it waits for me. Because you opened the door. And now you’re a thread in the spell.”

Sirius looks horrified. “You’re saying James is— what? Connected to it?”

“Tied,” Regulus says flatly. “Not possessed. Not cursed.”

“Yet,” Remus mutters.

Regulus says nothing.

Because it’s true.

Not dangerous. Not yet.

But the bond is forged now. And the god remembers him, Regulus. And now it remembers James, too.

Regulus closes his eyes. Hands twitching like he wants to rip time apart.

“I’ll sever the thread before it tightens. But you don’t touch it again. Ever. That thing— it doesn’t love. It recognizes. And that is infinitely more dangerous.”

Regulus doesn’t wait.

The moment James is upright, breath still shallow, shirt soaked in sweat, the ghost of the god still echoing in the air around him, Regulus turns on his heel and walks toward the east wing.

Sirius goes after him.

“Regulus.”

No answer.

“Reg—”

“I have to sever it now. If I wait, it becomes aware.”

“You said it wasn’t dangerous.”

Regulus looks over his shoulder.

“I said it’s not dangerous yet. There’s a difference.”

He doesn’t wait for permission. Just pushes open the old ritual room, a circular, stone-lined chamber Sirius had seen once as a child and never again. Dust leaps into the air. The floor is carved with ancient sigils, Black magic, family magic, some even older.

James leans into the doorway, still pale. “You always keep a demon surgery room this close to the kitchen?”

Regulus ignores him.

 

He strips off his gloves.

Rolls up his sleeves.

Sirius steps in. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“Yes.”

That’s what makes it worse.

Regulus kneels, murmurs to the stone, and the sigils flare to life, not red, not gold. Just dark. Lightless. Like negative space pulsing from beneath.

He draws a circle. Then another. One for himself. One for James.

“Sit.”

James hesitates. “Is this going to hurt?”

“No.”

“Will I remember it?”

“Unfortunately.”

James sits.

Regulus pricks his finger. The blood isn’t red, it’s black-glass-dark, viscous and iridescent.

He draws a single rune on James’s collarbone.

Then, calmly, he reaches into his own chest, fingertips phasing through skin and sternum like slipping through cold water, and pulls.

Sirius lurches forward. “Regulus—”

“Don’t,” Regulus snaps, low and sharp. “If you interrupt me now, he dies.”

Silence.

The thread comes loose like silk drawn from a wound, pale, fine, almost invisible, connected to James’s shoulder like a marionette string.

It vibrates once.

Hard.

James cries out, more from shock than pain and Regulus tightens his grip.

The air shifts.

Sirius hears it before he sees it: a second heartbeat.

But not in Regulus.

Not in James.

Beneath the floor.

Like the god is listening.

 

Regulus’s eyes snap open. His voice drops into something deeper than language.

He speaks in the Blood tongue — not Parseltongue, not Latin. Not even a dead language.

A buried one.

The thread snaps.

The silence that follows is worse than sound.

James slumps.

Regulus staggers, just once.

Sirius is at his side in a second, gripping his arm. “What the fuck was that?”

Regulus breathes shallowly. “The tether. It’s broken. For now.”

“That thing tethered itself to James, Regulus—what are you playing with?”

Regulus looks at his brother, face unreadable. “I’m not playing.”

“Then what is this? What have you bound? What have you been keeping under your skin for the last hundred years?”

James blinks up at them from the floor.

“…You’re welcome, by the way.”

Regulus doesn’t answer. Just turns his back and begins cleaning the blood.

The runes remain glowing.

The god is quiet again.

But not gone.

And Sirius knows, knows, that this is only the beginning.

 

No one says anything for hours.

It’s Remus who breaks the silence first, not with words, but by putting tea in front of everyone like that will fix it. James stares at the cup. Doesn’t touch it. Peter hasn’t come out of his room. Sirius hasn’t moved from the hearth.

Regulus is in the corner chair, the one no one sits in because it faces away from the windows and into the fire. He hasn’t looked up since he came back from the ritual room. He’s just sitting, perfectly still, fingers folded around the pendant like it’s not the thing that almost destroyed everything.

“Reg,” Sirius says eventually, voice low. “You said you were leaving.”

Regulus doesn’t move. “I changed my mind.”

Sirius raises an eyebrow. “That’s rare.”

“Yes.”

More silence.

James finally looks up. He hasn’t spoken since the thread was severed. His voice comes hoarse.

“You left it on the counter.”

Regulus nods, just once.

“I thought…” His fingers tighten slightly around the pendant. “If it’s hidden, it calls louder. If it’s visible, obvious, it just waits. And none of you would be foolish enough to touch it.”

James snorts bitterly. “You’re a terrible judge of character.”

“Apparently.”

Sirius sits forward. “So it calls out when it’s hidden?”

“Yes.”

“Like it wants to be found?”

“No,” Regulus says, eyes still on the fire. “It wants to be chosen. There’s a difference.”

That makes the room go still again.

 

“You severed the tether,” Remus says carefully. “So what now? Is James still in danger?”

Regulus finally looks up. At James. Not like a brother’s friend. Not like a mistake.

Like a question he hasn’t answered yet.

“No,” he says, but the word is weighted. “He’s not tethered. The god can’t use him. Can’t see through him.”

Sirius leans in. “But?”

Regulus doesn’t flinch.

“But it remembers. The moment someone touches it, it learns them. Name, shape, scent, possibility. And it called him kin.”

James straightens. “Why? You said no one else is connected to it.”

“I said no one else was meant to be,” Regulus answers. “I never said it couldn’t… expand.”

James’s mouth is dry. “So it thinks I’m like you.”

“No,” Regulus says quietly. “It thinks you could be.”

And that, somehow, is worse.

 

Later, when the others have gone to their respective quarters, James finds him again, still in that chair, the ruby now tucked away again beneath Regulus’s collar.

He doesn’t say anything at first.

Just stands by the door, watching him.

“I’m not leaving,” Regulus says without looking.

“I know.”

“I thought I could protect you all by staying away. But now…”

James leans against the doorframe. “Now you’re stuck with us?”

Regulus finally meets his eyes.

There’s something else there now, not just guilt, not just fear. Something older. Something cracked open and showing its teeth.

“No,” Regulus says. “Now I have to make sure it doesn’t try to finish what I started.”

James’s heart knocks hard against his ribs.

“You started something?”

Regulus doesn’t blink.

“You touched the first bone. There’s two more.”

Chapter Text

There was a year when they were everything.

Three of them, cloaked in borrowed titles and bad decisions, feet muddy from the swamps east of Essex, hearts sharp with ideas that were too big to say aloud. The war hadn’t ended. Not really. But the battles had quieted for a time, and in that silence, something older began to stir.

They weren’t enemies of the coven yet. Not officially. Not in daylight. By moonlight, they were something else. Practitioners. Explorers. Scholars of what should have stayed buried.

Regulus Black. Evan Rosier. Bartemius Crouch Jr.

Sons of nobles who were too righteous to listen.

The ones they whispered about. The ones who’d go too far.

The ones already halfway gone.

 

They first heard of the old prince in Wiltshire.

Not a real prince. Not even close. Just a story, a ritual mentioned once in a scroll Evan stole from a burned-out manor, written in a dialect no vampire should’ve remembered.

He read it anyway.

“Something about a rib,” Evan said, nose wrinkled. “Belongs to a god. Or used to. Or is the god. Hard to tell. Very poetic. Something-something offering blood, something-something eternal flame.”

“Eternal flame,” Barty repeated, throwing his boots on the desk, “sounds like a pub that serves shite liquor.”

Regulus didn’t laugh. He was already reading it over Evan’s shoulder, quiet. Tracking the curve of the glyphs with his thumb. He wasn’t trying to decipher it, not yet, just trying to see what kind of mind wrote it. It wasn’t a vampire. He was sure of that.

But it wasn’t human, either.

And it wanted to be read.

 

They found the bone six weeks later.

South forest. Rainy night. Smelled like rot.

It wasn’t buried deep, only just beneath the roots of a dead tree, like it had pulled the thing up through the ground. Evan tripped over it first. Barty made a show of nearly vomiting. Regulus said nothing.

It didn’t look like a rib. Not at first.

It looked like a sliver of polished stone. Clear. Gleaming. Warm to the touch, despite the cold.

It pulsed. Once.

And Regulus heard something in his left ear.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t say anything either.

Later that night, while Evan was lighting one of the sigil candles and Barty was swearing at the mud in his coat, Regulus sat with it in his lap and tried to pretend he wasn’t listening. He hadn’t told them yet that it spoke. Not because he meant to keep it secret.

Just because he was hoping it would stop.

It didn’t.

It never really had.

 

“You know,” Barty said one night, sitting on the edge of a half-collapsed tomb with a lit cigarette and a silver dagger hanging loose in his hand, “you lot are lucky I’m here. If it were just you two, this would be insufferably serious.”

“I think we’d do fine,” Evan said, lounging in the dirt with a book he’d already read five times.

“You wouldn’t laugh. No one would make jokes. Regulus would spiral.”

“I don’t spiral.”

“You spiral like a star dying.”

Regulus didn’t look up. “Stars explode outward. That’s not spiraling.”

“Exactly,” Barty grinned. “You’d take out half the sky with you. Like a proper drama queen.”

Evan made a noise like agreement, even if he hadn’t looked up. “We wouldn’t be reading resurrection rites from the book of a blind necromancer if not for Barty. That’s the only reason I put up with him. He’s entertaining.”

“And charming,” Barty added, tossing his dagger and catching it again.

“And deeply unstable.”

“Flatterer.”

 

They weren’t trying to resurrect anything. That wasn’t the goal.

The goal, if there was one, was understanding.

They’d grown up in a world where vampires were supposed to behave. Keep to the old laws. Feed discreetly. Form neat little covens. Serve the line. Protect the name. Never speak of what came before.

But Evan had never been discreet. And Barty didn’t believe in names. And Regulus —

Regulus didn’t know what he believed. Not anymore.

Only that there was something inside the god’s rib that hummed when he was near. Something that quieted the chaos in his head. Something that made him feel—

Not whole. Never that.

But seen.

Not as Sirius’ brother. Not as heir of the line. Not as the last thing the old ones were clinging to.

Just as something… sharp enough to matter.

 

“You could lead them, you know.”

The voice came one night when he was alone. Regulus had been tracing the second glyph on the rib, index finger hovering just close enough to burn. The others were gone. Barty chasing something reckless in Cardiff. Evan off with his books again.

“You could fix everything,” it said. “They would follow you. Even the ones who say they hate you.”

He didn’t respond.

Not aloud.

“You know the laws. You have the blood. You have the mind. All you need is the will.”

He wanted to stop listening. He really did.

But it said something he hadn’t thought in years.

“You could be king.”

And because the rib was too unstable, they damned it into their little house, buried it deep into the old stone with Regulus’s blood and Barty’s laughter.

But even then, the god was restless.

It kept whispering.

 

So, the first time they burned a coven, it wasn’t personal.

It was in Prague. Underground. A forgotten sect that fed too openly, turned too many fledglings, clung to rites so decayed they left teeth marks on the world. There were whispers of trafficking. Ritual degradation. Darker things.

Evan confirmed it with a letter still damp with blood.

They did not wait for justice.

They made it.

Barty set the first fire with a smile. It was magic, yes, but he struck a match anyway. Said it smelled better that way.

“They were decay,” the god said. “You are the knife.”

Regulus stood at the edge of the alley while flames licked the heavens, silent. His eyes shimmered faintly silver in the firelight. Not ash yet. Not god-touched yet. Just—listening.

Not to the screams.

But to the whisper curling in his skull like a crown.

They left before dawn. The basement collapsed. The archives burned. The name of that coven was scrubbed from every stone it had touched, like it had never drawn breath at all.

That was the first.

It was not the last.

 

In Lyon, they didn’t kill anyone.

That, at least, was Evan’s justification.

“They needed cleansing,” he said. “Not extinction.”

The Cravant family held humans like lapdogs. Donors, they called them. Painted like dolls, drugged and smiling, blood thinned to sweetness.

Legal. Technically. Centuries of influence ensured that.

But Evan uncovered contracts. Rites. Unlawful tetherings. One child kept past ripening, stunted in mind, fed like livestock.

Regulus studied the texts with unblinking calm.

Barty infiltrated a ball and charmed the youngest heir into boasting.

The next day, the house fell.

What followed was not scandal.

It was collapse.

“The old blood is spoiled,” the god said.
“Clean it with fire, or ruin it with truth. What matters is the undoing.”

Evan left a single phrase inked on the cravat lord’s mirror: The purity of blood is not in its keeping, but in its spilling.

Regulus said nothing.

But the next night, he walked the empty Cravant hall and the walls listened.

 

In Budapest, the god grew bolder.

There was no plan. No names. Just anger.
Just hunger.

The blood-house sat beneath the opera. Velvet walls. Silk chains. A performance above, while humans were auctioned below.

The god hummed as they descended the stairs.

“Sing me a scream,” it whispered. “Feed me the salt of wicked throats.”

Barty smiled too widely. Evan moved like a blade already sheathed in blood.

And Regulus?

He let his hands fall to his sides.

He didn’t raise a spell. Didn’t burn or slash or break. But the room stilled.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the ceiling cracked.

One woman turned to look at him and dropped dead without a mark. Heart stilled. No magic. No curse.

Only presence.

“They bow to nothing but kings,” the god whispered. “So become one.”

Afterward, Regulus didn’t sleep. He sat on the chapel stairs as Barty cleaned blood off his cuffs, and Evan catalogued names they had already ruined.

There were no dreams that night.

Only memory.

 

Berlin was worse.

A minor prince of an old Germanic line. Well-dressed, well-fed, centuries-old, and drunk on a throne of silence.

He invited them for negotiations.

Regulus went alone.

They gave him an hour. He returned in five minutes.

Eyes white. Voice even.

“We are done here,” he said.

No one else entered that room.

Later, the prince’s body was found with his own blade in his throat, mouth open in horror, blood congealing in antique rivulets down his marble steps.

One word had been carved into his skin with something ancient and thin:

Remember

“He saw himself in you,” the god said. “And what he saw terrified him.”

“That is the correct fear.”

 

In Warsaw, someone tried to stop them.

Old coven loyalists. Bounty hunters. Warlocks raised on law, not mercy. They thought they understood who they were chasing.

They expected chaos.

What they found was precision.

Barty led the charge, fire curling from his fingertips, teeth gleaming like it was a feast.

Evan moved through shadows and struck before hearts could beat.

Regulus stood at the edge of the battle. Not fighting. Not hiding.

Judging.

And when it was over, when there was blood on every stone and not a name left to whisper, he walked among the corpses and spoke a single word in a language no one had spoken in centuries.

The ground cracked. Not loud. Not violent.

Just final.

“They were never meant to touch you,” the god said.

“Now their names are mine.”

 

They kept moving.

Paris. The Black Forest. A frozen court in Novgorod where Evan seduced a highblood noble into handing over his entire house in exchange for a whisper and a kiss.

The god was always there.

Not present. But pressing.

It praised them in silk and venom.

“You are not criminals,” it whispered.

“You are the verdict. The blade. The remedy.”

And Regulus—Regulus let himself believe it. For a time.

He wore darker robes. Walked taller. Magic drifted from him like mist. People stopped breathing in his presence—not from fear.

From awe.

He never killed.

But he no longer had to.

He was beyond spell and fang.

He had become the correction.

Until the day the god asked for devotion.

Until the day it whispered:

“Make me a body. Make me a door. Let me see through your eyes, Regulus Black.”

 

Regulus never told Evan and Barty what it said. Not in full. He gave them the pieces.

He watched how it spoke to them too, different voices, different promises. Barty started writing in his sleep. Evan began to forget what was his and what was shared.

They all changed.

None of them noticed.

 

He offered to coven once. Just once.

Regulus asked them.

It was quiet. Not desperate. Just, an attempt. A way to keep them together, keep them close, keep them real.

Barty laughed in his face. “We know what happens when someone like you sits on a throne,” he’d said, voice quiet and flat. “You won’t speak. You’ll just look. And we’ll all kneel.”

Evan said, kindly, “We’re already more than a coven, Regulus.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Barty added, eyes wide and greedy. “It’s us now. You just haven’t accepted it… And if you can’t accept it. You can go. And you can take your blood command with you.”

 

That night, Regulus took the rib, severed their threads from It.

They never felt it.

He made sure they wouldn’t.

He did it cleanly. Bloodlessly. Just a twist of the rites and a drop of his own blood in the fire.

It hurt more than he expected.

And then he ran.

Not out of fear.

Out of clarity.

Because the god hadn’t wanted to use him.

It had wanted to be him.

And he’d said yes.

Not with words. But with the way he listened.

 

There was no moon when he made it.

Regulus chose that on purpose. No light to interfere. No audience in the sky. He wanted the dark to be absolute. Wanted it to feel like a tomb. Not for the god. For himself.

He stood in the chapel ruins of the old Black estate in the north. Marble cracked. Ivy like veins over the stone. No one had lived here in two centuries. But the walls still knew his name.

They whispered it as he entered.

Regulus. Regulus. Regulus.

He removed the rib from the velvet pouch with bare hands. It pulsed once. Dull red. No longer crystal. No longer quiet.

“You do not need to do this,” it said.

The voice was louder now. No longer whispers. It spoke like thunder curling in bone.

“You were perfect. You were already breaking the world—”

“Be silent,” Regulus said.

He placed the rib on the altar stone.

It was cold. It was burning.

He did not light a circle. He did not chant.

He commanded. A single word. Not in Latin. Not in any tongue that lived. A word he had never spoken before but had always known. It came from his throat like a wound tearing open.

The stone beneath the rib cracked. The rib shrieked. Not sound, sensation. Like something being flayed from the inside.

Regulus did not flinch.

He poured blood from his palm into a basin of molten glass. His blood. Old blood. Black blood. The bloodline of a house that had ruled, ruined, resurrected.

He poured until his vision swayed. Until the basin pulsed in rhythm with the rib.

Then he dropped the rib into the heart of it.

The scream shook the chapel. Shattered the windows. Shook dust from the rafters like falling ash.

“You cannot bind me,” it said.

“You are me. You are what I was. You are what comes after—”

“I was never yours,” Regulus whispered.

“You were mine.”

“You were mine first.”

The molten ruby churned. The rib vanished inside it, swallowed whole.

He carved his ambition into it next. A memory. A vision he had once had of himself standing on a citadel of glass, a calcium throne and crimson silk, ruling the unruled, cleansing the bloodlines, a Black name that silenced all others. It was what the god had promised. What he had almost wanted.

He poured it in. All of it. The want. The pride.

The hunger to fix what was broken by becoming worse than the thing that broke it.

Then he folded his magic over the basin like a seal. Not gentle. Not sacred.

Final.

The ruby heart rose from the ashes.

Solid. Heavy. Alive.

He laced a black rope through it and hung it around his own throat.

His hands were shaking.

Not from fear. But because he could still hear the god’s last breath inside it. Still feel it watching. Still feel what it saw in him.

The ruby heart is not one thing.

It is a god’s missing rib. It is Regulus Black’s forgotten ambition. And it is the bloodline of a dying house, trapped, sealed, named.

Not for anyone else to hold. Not for anyone else to touch. Just one thing, one last thing, that he could still control.

Chapter Text

After he made it. After the altar cracked open beneath his hands. After the rib melted like wax and the basin hissed with blood, after he poured in his ambition like it was something separate from himself and sealed the god away with a magic so old it didn’t care about rules, Regulus Black expected to feel lighter.

That was, after all, what the ritual was for.

Liberation.

Cleansing.

Control.

But of course that was foolish. Or optimistic. Or both.

Instead, what came was hollowness. A strange, deep quiet that began at the centre of his chest and echoed outward, not empty exactly, but loosened, like his bones had been rearranged without his permission and now nothing quite sat right inside his skin.

It wasn’t pain. He would’ve preferred pain.

This was worse.

He felt slightly off-centre. Like gravity had taken a step to the left and forgotten to bring him with it.

No god. No whispering. No smug commentary curling behind his thoughts. The Heart went quiet the moment it cooled. Hung warm and weighty around his neck like a newly minted sin.

It should’ve been a relief.

It was not.

By dawn, the first symptom arrived, soft as a bruise.

Hunger.

Not thirst, not craving, not that low, familiar ache behind the teeth that came with being a vampire and a Black and a spoiled product of an ancient house that always fed first and asked later.

No, this was different.

It was starvation.

It gnawed. Not at his throat, but beneath the ribs. Where the other rib used to be.

There was no warning. No crescendo.

He simply went feral.

 

It started, somewhat nobly, with livestock.

A string of deer carcasses near a farmhouse in the south of France.

Then a goat.

Then five goats.

Then a shepherd who made the mistake of trying to pull him off one.

Regulus didn’t kill him, but he wasn’t exactly proud of what was left either.

The man ran off screaming about a banshee and Regulus took that as a sign it was time to move.

But the hunger didn’t ebb.

It didn’t even dip.

It seemed to grow teeth.

He found himself unable to concentrate. Couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t look at his own hands without thinking about the pulse in someone else’s wrist.

And then one night, walking through a narrow town with too many windows, he smelled blood that wasn’t animal. Wasn’t wild.

Wasn’t wrong.

He fed on three humans in a single night.

Killed them all.

Didn’t even mean to take that much.

But the moment their blood touched his tongue, something in him sighed.

Something remembered.

He vomited all of it back up in an alley behind a church and cursed himself for twenty straight minutes. Not because it was immoral. But because it hadn’t helped.

At all.

 

Then came the fledglings.

Poorly made. Unguarded. Newly turned by sires who vanished before the second night. Regulus didn’t hunt them, exactly. He just happened to be near.

It was easier. Faster. No guilt. They never knew who he was anyway. What he had done.

One he drained entirely without meaning to.

Another he lured with promises of old secrets and never let speak again.

The third he let live.

He watched her stumble away from him on shaky legs and considered feeling sorry.

But the hunger didn’t allow it.

He didn’t feel anything but cold.

Even the shame was muted. Distant. Like it belonged to someone else.

The only thing that burned was the hunger.

It hummed.

It ruled him.

He tried purebloods next.

That was the real mistake.

They tasted correct. Like being remembered. Like home. Like every story he was ever told about what Black blood was supposed to mean.

He drank from one and almost wept.

The euphoria lasted until sunrise. Then came the crash, teeth aching, skin buzzing, eyes too wide and too empty.

He sat in a dry riverbed for a day and a half and tried to convince himself he still existed.

 

This went on for years.

He didn’t sleep indoors. Couldn’t. The walls were too loud.

He made camp in forgotten catacombs and ruined temples, crouched like an old god, feeding on rats and low magic.

He tried to stop entirely. Went three months without feeding and blacked out on the roof of a chapel. Bit through his own tongue. Didn’t notice.

His reflection grew gaunt. Ghostly. Unrecognizable.

He stopped checking it.

Every time he touched the Heart, it pulsed.

Not warm. Not alive.

But waiting.

He wore it anyway. Didn’t dare take it off. Not out of reverence.

Out of necessity.

The one time he removed it, he collapsed in the street like his spine had gone missing.

It took hours to crawl back to it.

 

Eventually, he adjusted.

Not to peace.

Not to balance.

But to survival.

He learned how to feed slowly. Methodically. How to stretch a single ounce of blood over several days. How to carve hunger into discipline.

He learned how to appear in control.

Even if the truth was always this:

He was hungry.

He would always be hungry.

Not just in body.

In blood. In soul. In memory.

Because the god didn’t only take power.

It took ambition.

The fire.

The inheritance.

Everything he once wanted, all of it locked inside the ruby, beating softly like a second heart, somewhere outside himself.

It wasn’t a curse.

It was the price.

And he had paid it.

Willingly.

Which made it worse.

 

Because nothing could stop him when he was properly starving now.

And anything goes.

Chapter Text

Sirius had just come in from a hunt.
A clean one. Two donors, well-fed, laughing. Remus was upstairs, music on, something vinyl and old. James was complaining about blood temperature again.

It was a good night.

Simple.

Peaceful.

He was halfway through unbuckling his boots when the front door creaked open behind him.

Not the warded one. Not the new door they’d installed when they reforged the coven crest and swore their oaths.

The old door.

The original one.

The one that only opened for blood.

Sirius turned around, one boot in hand.

And there he was.

Regulus.

Standing in the doorway like a fucking ghost, Like he hadn’t vanished for decades. Like he hadn’t once tried to rewrite the world and nearly succeeded.

He looked terrible.

And Sirius knew better than anyone how good his brother was at looking terrible on purpose, but this wasn’t that. This was wrong.

He was too pale. Too still. Hair tied back and styled but not neat enough for it to be intentional. Clothes black and crisp yet travel-worn. Something in his posture that reminded Sirius of old statues, beautiful and ruined and exactly where you left them, except now they’re looking at you.

And the necklace. A damned heart. Still on him. Still pulsing. Still warm.

He may not have been there when Regulus made it but he’s heard of it. Stories of the dead Black and the ruby pendant on his throat that breathed.

 

The moment Regulus stepped over the threshold, the wards flickered.

Just the faintest hum. Like they were trying to decide whether or not to attack. Like they were remembering.

Sirius had helped write those wards. Blood-bound and pact-tightened, layered in runes and logic. They were meant to protect against everything. Even family.

Especially family.

But Regulus passed them like smoke under a locked door. Because of course he did. Blood recognizes blood. And more than that,
Regulus remembered things.

Things he was never told.

Not just magic, but intention. The shape of the spell. The memory of it. The echo of Sirius’s own hand carving it into stone.

That was the worst part.

The Black Allusion. Inherited memory. The cursed gift that let Regulus absorb anything ever written, whispered, bled into a wall. He didn’t break the wards. He understood them.

Like the house itself whispered to him as he stepped inside. Like he was listening to the wood groan beneath Sirius’s sins.

Sirius put the boot down.

“Are you here to curse me, or is this one of your dramatic redecorating entrances?”

Regulus blinked. Not slow. Not soft. Just once. As if reorienting himself to speech.

“I didn’t know you’d redecorated,” he said at last, eyes glancing up the stair rail, the sconces, the stone freshly reworked.

He didn’t look impressed. Or disappointed. Or anything at all.

Sirius crossed his arms. “You look like you haven’t fed in weeks.”

Regulus tilted his head.

“I fed yesterday.”

“On what, cobwebs and guilt?”

Regulus didn’t smile. But his lip twitched like he wanted to. “I didn’t come to fight.”That was almost worse.

Sirius stepped forward.

“You disappeared for decades,” he said, tone low now. Controlled. “You let the world think you were dead. You let me think you were dead. And now you walk in through the front door like this is still your house.”

“It was always my house,” Regulus said. Calm. Not cruel, just stating a fact. “Even when you were living in it.”

That shut Sirius up for a moment.

Because it was true. The house was built on Black blood. The old wards answered to him first, even now. Regulus walked further in. He didn’t ask for permission. Didn’t need to.

And Sirius saw it then, the way he moved. Like something heavy was pressing down on him from the inside. Like he was carrying something under his skin he couldn’t quite cage.

His fingers were shaking. Just barely. He had always had surgeon’s hands. Now they looked like they ached.

Sirius took a slow breath.

“What did you do, Reg?”

It wasn’t an accusation. Not exactly. It was a plea. The kind only older brothers are allowed to ask.

Regulus turned to him fully now. And Sirius saw the hollowness. Not just physical, not the hunger, not the too-sharp cheeks or sleepless eyes.

But spiritual. Something missing. Something he once had and had buried so deep even the god could no longer reach it.

“I contained it,” Regulus said.

Sirius stared at the ruby heart.

“It took something from you, didn’t it.”

Regulus didn’t answer.

Didn’t need to.

Sirius could smell it. The control fraying at the edges. The quiet that wasn’t peace but suppression. The hunger that hadn’t been fed, not really, not for years.

And underneath all of it, memory. Other people’s memory.

“You look like you want to tear someone apart,” Sirius muttered, and then added dryly, “Try Peter first. He won’t shut up about your aesthetic.”

Regulus finally did smile. Just a little.

“I’m not here to feed.”

“Then why are you here?”

There was a long pause.

Regulus’s gaze wandered to the walls again, to the high ceiling, to the place he used to read alone by the second fireplace. His fingers grazed the edge of the hall table.

The god didn’t whisper. Not yet. But the Heart pulsed once.

Steady.

Hot.

They didn’t get to finish their conversation. Not when the rest of Sirius’ coven has now roused and are curious to see who the visitor was.

 

The thing about Regulus is, he doesn’t show up until you’ve let your guard down.

Until the house is warm, the blood is fed, and someone’s put on a Miles Davis record like it’s a normal goddamn Tuesday night. That’s when he appears.

Like mildew.

Like a curse you thought you outran.

The last time Sirius really saw him, Regulus had ash on his shoulders and no Black coven left to speak of. A century ago. Maybe two. He can’t remember anymore. Only that his brother had left. Chose silence over allegiance. Chose Rosier and Crouch over his own brother.

And now?

Now he’s on their couch.

Wrapped in silk and sarcasm. Wearing that ruby abomination around his neck like it isn’t thrumming like a living thing. Like it isn’t breathing right along with them.

James is already half in love. Sirius can see it, that doomed, dazzled look he gets when he’s intrigued and suspicious in equal measure. It’s the same look he gave Sirius once. Back when they still thought immortality was glamorous.

Poor idiot.

Sirius watches them from the edge of the fireplace, arms crossed, mouth tight.

Regulus hasn’t fed.

He knows it. Knows that look, the hollow edges of his cheeks, the blue veins like old ink under skin too thin. He hasn’t fed in at least a week. Maybe more. And yet—

“I’m fine,” Regulus says when Sirius tries to push a goblet of raccoon blood into his hands after he refused the damn animal

“You look like death.”

“I am death. You’re romanticizing.”

“Don’t make me shove it down your throat.”

Regulus quirks a brow. “Kinky.”

Sirius almost hurls the cup at him.

Instead, he breathes through his nose. He’s been working on this, the anger, the fear, the urge to scream until the house cracks open.

But Regulus is calm. Distant. Not detached, no, just deliberate.

That’s what scares him most. Because his brother was never thoughtless. Never wild like Barty. Never cold like Evan. Regulus was the balance. The knife between them. Beautiful, and curved just right for slipping between ribs.

And now he’s back.

Alone.

Sitting among the people Sirius loves most. Petting the cat (taxidermied). Borrowing inks. Walking through the warded halls like he belongs.

Like he’s always belonged.

Sirius clenches his jaw as he watches James talk to him. Watches the way Regulus’s eyes flicker, amused and unreadable. Watches the way he refuses to answer any question directly, always a little to the left of the truth.

 

That ritual he performed was enough to have Sirius’ black blood boiling beneath his veins.

Especially after he’d used his blood command on him. Telling him to shut up.

Regulus had silenced him.

Not with a look, not with a hand, but with blood.

Sirius doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the sound of it. Not the word. He couldn’t hear it.

Just the effect.

 

He’s perched on the edge of a windowsill, staring out into the garden like it might offer him forgiveness. Or directions.

The room smells like burnt sage, dried blood, and regret.

Sirius breaks first.

“Why are you here?”

Again. The same question. The one he asked at the door. The one he’s been asking since the moment Regulus stepped back into this house like a ghost with a key.

Regulus doesn’t turn. Just says, “You already asked me that.”

“And you didn’t answer.”

Silence. The old kind.

Then: “I didn’t come for you.”

The admission slaps harder than it should.

Sirius doesn’t move. “You could’ve lied.”

“I thought it would hurt less if I didn’t.”

“Well, you were wrong.”

That gets him a flicker of a glance. Regulus, sideways and sunken and still infuriatingly poised.

“I stayed away because of you, Sirius.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t pretend it’s noble. You disappear for ages, you don’t write, don’t explain, let the world rot in rumours of your doing, your death, and then you show up with a haunted necklace and no fear for the blood command in your voice—”

“Would you have let me come back if I’d told you what I’ve become?”

Sirius stands. His chair doesn’t scrape, he’s too graceful for that, but the shift in weight is sharp. The room feels smaller now.

“What have you become, Regulus?”

A pause. Regulus presses his fingers to the glass. Watches condensation gather on his skin. “I’m a cage.”

“For what?”

Sirius knows the answer. Dreads it anyway.

Regulus finally turns.

There’s something broken behind his eyes, not cracked, not splintered, just… taken. Replaced.

“There’s another bone here,” he says.

The words feel like an earthquake, not loud, just deep. Like the house heard it too. Like the walls are listening.

Sirius blinks. “Another—what?”

“Another rib,” Regulus clarifies. Quiet. Calm. “The god’s not complete. The first rib was just the beginning. I thought it would quiet things, slow it down. I knew another one was around here, I can feel it— I just didn’t think it would be… here. Ever since I brought it into this house—something’s… shifting.”

Sirius’s voice drops. “You think it’s here?”

“I don’t think,” Regulus says. “I know.”

He walks to the center of the room. Stands above the old floorboards. Looks down at them like they’re something he’s seen in a dream before it ever happened.

“There’s something in the ground. Under the manor. Something buried by blood. Old Black blood. Possibly even before Mother’s Sire.”

Sirius doesn’t breathe for a moment.

“You think our family hid it.”

Regulus gives the softest nod. “Maybe not even knowingly. Maybe they just thought it was sacred. Or cursed. Maybe it whispered to them the way it whispered to me.”

“And now?” Sirius asks, the words dry in his throat. “Now it’s whispering again?”

Regulus’s voice is flat.

“I went to our house. Mine and Barty’s and Evan’s. We kept it there. It still is, even though its bone is here,” He taps the ruby.

“I woke it up—“

“Reg, why would you—“

“Because I had to know if it was still there. I may have its rib but it doesn’t whisper to me anymore. It still thinks I’m heir. Now it’s calling. I can hear it in the walls.”

And suddenly, everything makes sense and nothing makes sense. The hunger, the hollowness, the way Regulus looks stretched too thin across his own body, it’s not just what he gave up. It’s what he’s standing on. What’s waking up underneath them.

Sirius swears under his breath. “You shouldn’t have brought it here.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

Regulus shakes his head. “Not when the god is remembering me.”

Sirius runs a hand down his face. “You think digging up the second bone will stop it?”

“I don’t know,” Regulus admits. “But I think ignoring it will be worse.”

A silence settles again. This time heavy. Settling deep in the lungs like old dust.

Sirius finally exhales.

“You came here thinking this place was safe. But you think the house itself might be part of the god’s grave.”

Regulus nods. “If I’m right, then we were raised on its bones.”

Sirius laughs. Not because it’s funny. Just because of course. Of course.

“Brilliant,” he mutters. “A cursed god buried in the basement. How very Black of us.”

Regulus doesn’t smile.

He just looks back at the floor.

And Sirius, exhausted, angry, terrified, stares at his brother and realises something even worse than what’s been said:

Regulus hasn’t come to stay.

He’s come to dig.

Chapter Text

The crypts had been sealed for centuries.

Not just with stone or spellwork, with memory. The kind of ward that didn’t hiss or burn when breached, but sighed. Like the house was saying: Oh. You again.

Sirius felt it the moment he touched the lock.

The wards didn’t resist. They remembered him. Or worse, remembered Regulus.

He descended alone.

Torch in hand. Boots silent. Dust stirring in lazy motes, disturbed for the first time in generations.

They used to play here, once.

Not in the catacombs proper, no, their mother forbade it. But the threshold. The stairwell. The shallow antechambers where old portraits wept blood and whispered curses. Regulus was never afraid. That should’ve been Sirius’s first clue.

Now he moved through the airless dark with something far colder than dread in his bones.

He didn’t want to believe it.

That another rib might be here.

That their ancestors, brilliant, deranged, too powerful for their own good, might’ve taken it for safekeeping, or study, or penance. That something buried had been calling his brother back home.

He didn’t want to believe it.

But the ruby heart had shuddered when Regulus stepped into the estate.

And the soil beneath the cellar had grown warm.

Somewhere, deep in the earth, a second god-bone might be dreaming.

 

“Tea?” Remus offered, because he was very good at being terribly British in times of emotional tension.

Regulus looked at the cup like it had personally offended him. “I haven’t digested leaf-water since 1823.”

“It’s chamomile.”

“Oh,” Regulus said flatly. “So a useless leaf.”

Remus sipped his own, unbothered. “Calms the nerves.”

“Mine are long gone.”

They sat in the east drawing room. Fire burning low. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty but full, like a page that had been written on, scrubbed clean, then left smudged with the ghost of the words.

Remus watched him for a long time. Not rudely. Not even curiously. Just the way a man does when he’s seen death too many times and still can’t look away from its newest form.

“You look worse than you did during the famine,” he said at last.

“I’m flattered,” Regulus murmured.

“Back then, you were only slightly unkillable. Now it’s like you’re something else entirely.”

Regulus didn’t respond. The fire cracked. Wind slid against the windows like it was eavesdropping.

“I was watching, you know,” Remus said after a while. “When you performed the ritual.”

Regulus stilled. Remus didn’t push. Just said, quiet: “That wasn’t a spell. That was command.”

Silence again. Then, slowly, Regulus turned his head.

“It’s a blood right,” he said. “Old. Obscure. Useless, unless your lineage goes back far enough.”

“It does,” Remus said.

Regulus didn’t ask how he knew. They both had too many buried things in common. Be it vampire or werewolf.

 

The second door wasn’t locked.

That was the worst part.

Just an archway carved in bone-white stone, lined with sigils in old Latin. Sirius paused at the threshold, pulse slow.

The air beyond wasn’t stale. It was warm. It was humid.

Alive.

And under the moss and bone dust and peeling spells, he could hear something.

Thump.

Thump.

It wasn’t heartbeat. It was something deeper. Older. Calling.

He stepped through.

 

“I watched you silence Sirius and plunge your own claws into your chest,” Remus said.

Regulus flinched. Barely.

“You didn’t tell him what the heart is, James.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because knowing isn’t safety. Distance is.”

“Doesn’t seem to be working.”

Regulus laughed, dry and exhausted. “No. It doesn’t.”

Remus leaned back. “Then try something else. Try honesty.”

Regulus turned to him. And for a moment, he didn’t look like a war criminal, or a myth, or a monster in silk.

He looked like a boy.

A boy who’d buried his own ambition in crystal. Who’d sealed his hunger into a ruby and worn it like penance.

“The god is stirring,” Regulus said.

Remus didn’t ask which one. He only asked:

“Is it here?”

Regulus closed his eyes.

“Yes.”

And like afterthought, “I’ll tell James.”

 

The air was thick. Heavy with something like rot, but sweeter. Familiar, in the wrong kind of way. The walls weren’t brick, or carved stone. They were etched.

Hundreds of lines. Thousands, maybe. A web of text, circling inward, all in that old Black cipher, the one they were forbidden to speak aloud.

Some of it he could read. Enough.

The first sentence made his stomach twist:

In the first bone, It dreamed us.

The god. Not a name, not a title. Just It. Always It.

Further down, the next line bled into the stone like a prayer carved with fingernails:

Two ribs, one spine. Given in trust, returned in blood. One to hold. One to bleed. One to awaken.

And then, scrawled in a different hand. Less careful. More desperate.

Buried below. Buried beneath the burial. Waiting.

Sirius staggered back.

The god’s other rib.

Not buried in some ancient tomb halfway across the continent. Not lost to history. But here. Under the crypt. Under the estate.

He let his hand touch the wall. Something in it vibrated faintly. Like a heartbeat below the stone. Like a secret that remembered him.

And then he saw it: A sigil.

Half-faded.

Drawn in dried black, blood that had burned into the surface. The Black family crest, stylized.

But… no. It was warped.

Not the crows. Not the skull or the hand. Not the runes of ascension. It had been replaced by a heart. Cracked down the center. Ribs curling out like thorns and a spine down the middle like a sword.

Sirius stared.

And whispered, “Regulus… what have you done.”

 

Regulus was attuned to the god by now. Always waiting when it’d stir, think, whisper.

And whisper it did.

After decades of it in silence.

“Black,” it claimed. Malicious and cursed, familiar in a way it isn’t.

A different bone. Not the same one in his pendant.

Something stirs.

And then he could feel it.

He could feel Sirius in the walls.

Could feel the moment his brother’s hand brushed the script. Could feel the second recognition snapped into place, like a sword pulled free of scabbard.

He had not come here to save Sirius.

But now that Sirius knew, now that he’d read it—

Regulus closed his eyes.

“Where’s Sirius?”

“He went down to the cryp— Reg?”

 

Sirius never got the chance to scream.

One moment he was in the tombs, staring at ancient scripture scrawled into a wall of bone, the next—magic.

Not cast. Not spoken aloud.

Just done.

A thread caught his spine. A line snapped taut. The air shattered. The stone beneath his feet crumbled like powdered salt—and the earth reversed.

Something tore upward through the black, grabbing him by the ribs and heart and dragging him back through the soil. Like claws made of will, pulling with every ounce of fury Regulus had spent years locking away.

The world spun. Blood roared. Then—

Light.

Cold air.

Stone giving way to polished marble.

He landed hard, gasping, in the center of the upper corridor. Dust and mud raining down behind him.

Standing over him: Regulus.

His hand still raised. Eyes white-hot. Breath sharp.

And voice like something too old to be angry.

“Will everyone stop doing things without my permission.”

It was not said in jest. Not yelled. It was delivered. Like gospel. Like a warning.

Like a memory Sirius didn’t know he’d buried.

Peter felt it from the gallery. James heard it from the west wing.

Regulus’s fingers trembled once, then steadied.

Magic still buzzed in the air, thick as smoke. The walls had cracked. A mirror had shattered two rooms over. The ruby heart on his neck pulsed once, then fell quiet.

Sirius coughed, dirt in his mouth, then looked up, furious.

“You dragged me out.”

“You were digging.”

“It was writing!”

“It was screaming.”

A pause.

Then: “You nearly woke it.”

Sirius froze.

Regulus lowered his hand slowly.

“I didn’t go down there for a reason,” he said, quieter now. “I didn’t explain it well enough, apparently, but I wasn’t expecting you to go sniffing— ”

“You were right.”

Regulus halts. “What?”

Sirius pushes himself up with no effort, standing upright like his own shadow helped him up.

“Our crest was in those walls, Reg. It was sigilized— but it was different. It was ribs and a spine in our crest.”

“What?”

Regulus didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.

Just stood there, hand still half-raised like the spell might need to be recast at any moment, like he was bracing for something to lunge up the stairwell behind Sirius and drag them both back down.

“Our crest,” Sirius said again, slower this time. “But it wasn’t the standard one. It was the original. The unaltered version. The one Mother’s Sire struck from the house grimoire before I was even born.”

He shook his head. Wiped the mud from his mouth. Didn’t bother brushing the rest from his coat.

“I always thought it was a myth,” Sirius continued, quieter now. “Something about the foundation of the bloodline. About how the first Black was never named. That he was born with broken ribs, and they never healed. They say he buried something under the house. Something old. Something the family fed with blood and silence.”

He looked at Regulus again, truly looked this time. And saw it.

The panic. Not wide-eyed. Not fragile.

Buried.

Heavy. Dense. Like it had settled inside Regulus’s chest and fossilized there.

James had stepped into the hallway now, fully. Still barefoot, still shirtless, the remnant of ritual blood smudged against his collarbone.

“It’s buried under our family crypt. Our sires chained a divine ribcage under the nursery where we were born.”

“Not a ribcage. Just one rib.” Regulus muttered. No longer hearing the whispers. It faded after he pulled Sirius from under the crypts, quieting down like a dog being muzzled.

 

There was dirt on the floor. Cracks in the walls. Peter had disappeared somewhere with a look on his face that said he was going to throw up and/or find salt.

Remus was the one who finally said it.

“You were going to melt the second rib into the ruby,” he said, sitting half out of shadow, his gaze never quite leaving Regulus. “Like the first.”

Regulus didn’t deny it.

He was seated now too, spine arrow-straight in the wide chair near the hearth, looking for once like he might collapse in on himself.

“I thought it would work,” he said quietly. “Containment through consolidation. The same vessel. The same blood. I thought—”

“But the bones aren’t the same,” Sirius finished for him.

“They’re… individual,” Regulus said. “Sentient. Or close enough. I think the rib I carry — it’s dormant because I broke something in it. I broke its reach. I starved it. It can only communicate when reached for.”

“Starved it how?”

“My blood. My ambition. The part of me that wanted to use it. I gave that up.”

“That’s what the hunger was.” Sirius cuts in. “That’s why you’re starved, for how long, Reg? How long have you kept hungry?”

“Too long. I was feral for a few years.”

“Just years?” James interjected, shuffling. “And then what, you… you controlled it?”

“Yes.”

A silence settled like dust.

“And now?” Remus asked.

Regulus looked at his hands. The tips of his fingers were still faintly stained from the ritual. His nails chipped, raw.

“Now I know better,” he said. “If I try to take the second bone before I find a way to bind it—really bind it—it’ll wake up. It’ll whisper. It’ll find you. Or James. Or the house.”

“And you can’t bind it in a different ruby?” Peter asks, holding a rock of salt.

“No. I have nothing else to seal it with.”

Sirius leaned against the window frame, arms crossed.

“And if it already has? Woken up.”

Regulus looked at him then. And for the first time, he didn’t look like a godling or a martyr or a walking execution sentence.

He looked like a man who didn’t have a solution.

“Then we’ll have to bury it again,” he said. “Or feed it something worse.”

James, from where he stood curled under the remnants of a blanket and Remus’s silent hovering, exhaled.

“You’re not exactly inspiring confidence.”

“I’m not trying to,” Regulus said.

There was a long, grim pause.

Then Sirius said, dryly, “You know, I’m starting to miss when the most dangerous thing in this house was James using the wrong blood temperature again.”

Regulus didn’t smile.

But he did say, “There’s still time for that to be the worst thing.”

The heart at his throat pulsed once, as if it agreed.

But it didn’t glow.

Not yet.