blood must shed for time to reset

chapter 5

( Neck on neck, fist to fist, we seethe and fume like animals. As long as you're the one to purloin my heart, will i forever be undone. Death by contrasting enmity. )

—"WHAT?" CIRCE ASKED, THE
colour diminishing from her face. She'd had her fair share of shock for the week, and so in this peculiar situation, she went into a state of incredulity. It didn't make sense, none of what he was saying added up. How? How could he have known? Even if Regulus was to understand Praesidium and it's true intentions, he couldn't...shouldn't be able to speak her real name. Einar. The words jumbled and scattered in the girls head. Einar. Einar.

Regulus raised his brow, moving towards a sofa that'd been conjured by the room. "Sit down. I'll explain everything."

"I have to—" she dug her hands into roots of her hair, "I have to get rid of him."

Regulus' lips remained stationary until Avery was nothing more, his pupils widening slightly as the girl chanted an unknown spell, causing skin and bone and blood to tangle together and disappear into nothing. As if he was never there. As if Vincent Avery didn't exist.

But he did. At one point in time, he had been alive and pulsing. And now he was dead.

The Black should have cared, and if it was a year prior, he might've. Albeit since then, he'd witnessed death in its nasty, raw form, and so the body of a rapist didn't unsettle him. In a way, it made him assuaged; someone had finally taken equity into their own, crimson hands. So he stayed there, fixated on her until there was no more obstacles between them and the truth. He sat there and he bathed in her presence, and it didn't matter that she'd murdered someone, because quite frankly, he wouldn't have done anything different in Circe's situation.

It was a moral thing, but it was also a them thing. The pair of fated souls were mirrors, and really, nobody would know them better than each other.

"Okay." she sighed, "Okay." and thus, she lowered herself onto the basil settee, able to turn and face the boy she'd been tasked to kill, and he could do the same. The exact same. "Speak." she ordered; this wasn't the time for riddles and hazy explanations.

"I guess this begins with Tom Riddle, the dark lord. He wanted to recruit me, and assumed I wanted to join... that's what I told him at least. What I told everyone. You see, my parents care about blood purity—"

"Regulus, I know this. I know everything about you."

He laughed, "Of course you do, shame I can't say the same — i didn't have time to do my homework. Anyways, before the start of this year, he told me of Praesidium, and what your organisation was trying to do. Riddle said there was likely a traitor in the school, and that they might come after me. I didn't think much of it until I got to Hogwarts and you were there. The ironic thing is, I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for your little sidekick. I just expected it to be a student who'd been here for years—!for fuck sake, I thought it was Snape."

"Mateo? You found out through Mateo?"

"Yeah, he hasn't got as much control over his mind as you do. I wanted to know why you'd come here, to this shitty school, and when I was unable to get into your head, I turned to him. He didn't even put up a fight, he wasn't expecting it. And I found out everything. Gradually."

"So? How did you get tasked to kill me?"

"I told Riddle," this caused Circe to stiffen, her eyes narrowing, "don't look at me like that, if the roles were reversed, you would tell Praesidium. He ordered me to 'take care of you' and if I did so, I'd become a death-eater....early. He makes all of his recruits preform a task, and I suppose your demise was mine."