A sea of scarlet flowers rose from all the terracotta tree stump pots encircling the stone seat beneath the oast tower. They flooded the room with their fragrance, a gloriously full bouquet of soft sweetness mingling with the scent of the strawberries in the small white bowl on Harry's lap and the faint spearmint that lingered in Daphne's hair. The whisper of the breeze rustling down the terraces through those bright flowers, the delicate red leaves of the small acacia trees, and the vermillion-edged fern fronds came and went over the gentle burble of the steaming spring with such an air of soporific soothing that he found his eyes slipping shut. In the peaceful dark of that near-slumber, he listened to the steady sound of Daphne's breathing and felt the warmth of her resting against him.
'Are you awake?' Daphne murmured.
He opened his eyes.
She curled up against Harry's side, her bare feet tucked between his thigh and the heap of crimson cushions piled upon the stone chair, leaning her head on his chest, her blonde hair — all in slim braids bound at the tip by small dark-red dahlias with spiky curving petals — falling across his shoulder and down over his chest. The bottom of her deep burgundy skirt bunched high upon her bare thighs, clinging on just below her charcoal blouse's hem, and the little pearl-white buttons strained where the material twisted across her stomach and over the swell of her chest.
'Yes,' Harry said. 'But only just. I was enjoying how peaceful and pretty everything is here.'
'My garden is always beautiful,' Daphne whispered, 'but never more so than at the height of Summer or the resurgence of Spring.'
'It has you in it,' Harry said. 'It's beautiful all year round.'
A touch of pink rose on her cheeks and she picked half a strawberry from the bowl with her crimson-painted nails, holding the cleanly sliced fruit between her thumb and forefinger like a tiny red heart. 'Étayn's beauty is far beyond mine, even now, as it and Summer wane.'
'Not to me.' He kissed her on the cheek. 'All of the beautiful things you showed me, you showed me. I kind of feel like they belong to you.'
The little blush crept up to Daphne's ears and she snuggled herself further into him. 'I will show you my garden in Autumn and Winter, and again in Spring.'
'I would like that,' Harry confessed. 'Honestly, you could show me anything and I would like it just because you're showing me something important to you.' He scratched the back of his head. 'You said Étayn's beauty wanes. So it does happen? What her mother said would in the last bit of the story?'
'Yes,' Daphne whispered. 'As the days of Summer dwindle, Étayn searches ever more desperately for a way to escape her doom. But there is only a single hope for her…'
Harry slipped his arm around her and held her close. 'What hope?'
'That after her birthright beauty fades, she inherits another upon the death of a goddess.' Daphne bit the strawberry in half with her small white teeth and licked the drop of red juice from her scarlet-glossed lips. 'That Briganti's death elevates her to queen and all Briganti's beauty passes to her with the crown.'
'Her mum has to die for her to live?' Harry chuckled under his breath. 'Tell Étayn not to go and live with her aunt, uncle and cousin.'
'Hush, Harry,' she murmured. 'Étayn cannot bear the idea of her mother's death, so she searches for another way, hoping against hope, committing all her time and strength to it until Summer is spent.' Daphne ate the other half of the strawberry and buried her face in Harry's chest. 'How much she must have come to resent and hate her mother for her words, for the curse, for her eternal youth, but still Étayn searched, unwilling to accept her mother's death or her own.'
'Maybe a single hope is enough,' Harry promised, kissing the top of her head. 'There must be a way to get around the curse.'
'Not for Étayn.' Daphne stared up at him, her blue eyes full of soaring Spring. 'All that might have been tried, she tried. All those that could help, helped. There is no other escape. Not for her. And… not for me.' She glanced away down the terraces to the steam rising from the sauna. 'I will live here alone, educated just enough to be of use to my family from time to time, but never having more than half a life. Always craving, never satisfied. Astoria will have everything I yearn for, but even she cannot truly escape.'
'She can't?'
'No,' Daphne whispered. 'She must marry and have children, or our bloodline will end, and it cannot end before Dwyr Sy'n Tystio comes. But she will know that her children, and her children's children, will carry the same malediction of blood that I do.'
'But you're not alone,' Harry said. 'I'm here, aren't I?'
'Yes.' Her gaze dipped. 'I hope you will stay.'
'I hope you'll keep showing me amazing things.' Harry tucked that wild lock of gold back behind her ear. 'I won't leave. I don't care that you're cursed; I love you.'
A small soft noise escaped Daphne and something warm and wet splashed onto his neck as her damp lashes brushed his skin. 'Even when Summer ends?'
'Of course,' he promised. 'You are definitely not the most dangerous thing I would have gotten close to at Hogwarts, and you are a lot prettier than the basilisk, the acromantulae, the troll and the Whomping Willow. Honestly that tree is a huge health and safety issue; it must have killed more students than the basilisk. That snake only got one in like a thousand years.'
'I do not know.' Daphne turned her lips up toward his, seeking soft long kisses as he held her close.
'You did miss that year.' Harry ran his fingers through her braids until she sighed and relaxed into his arms. 'You know, I never asked, but could the basilisk's stare kill you? Isn't it just garlic you have to avoid?' He flashed her a wry little grin.
'I am not a vampire, Harry.' Daphne turned her pretty nose up, but he bent and kissed her again, letting her melt against him with a quiet, content murmur.
'So no garlic?'
'I like the flowers,' she said. 'They are Spring flowers. And I like the taste.'
'What about stakes? Holy water? Crosses? Coming into peoples' homes uninvited?'
'You are so ridiculous. How many times have I told you that I am not a vampire?' Daphne's impish grin returned in a dazzling burst of dimples and bright blue eyes; it sent all the butterflies into a wild frenzy of fluttering somewhere inside, turning his stomach into a tingling, squirming mess.
'Probably quite a few,' Harry admitted. 'Hermione says I don't listen very well. She's wrong; I actually listen very well, I just then don't do what other people say. Unless it's you,' he confessed, 'whatever Lady Daphgrass commands, I do. Probably because I love you.' Harry clamped his mouth shut on the butterflies, but rather felt it might be too late at this point. 'Yes. That.'
'I love you,' she breathed. 'I hope you stay. I hope you stay so much.'
'I will.' Harry pressed his lips gently to hers again, but as he drew back, her mouth caught his in a hard, ardent kiss. 'Daph?'
'Sorry.' That little spark of craving burnt in the blue of her eyes, smouldering like a spark of the setting sun in a summer sky.
'It's okay,' he promised, between her hungry kisses. 'I'm supposed to kiss my girlfriend; it really isn't a great hardship for me.' Harry chuckled to himself. 'Well, not yet, it isn't. It might end up being a hardship if you keep kissing me too much...'
Daphne's cheeks coloured, but she stole another long, breathless kiss. 'Be careful, Harry, she whispered. 'You should not tempt me or...'
'Or I'll have to kiss you?' Harry grinned. ' Oh no.'
She turned her lips away, taking a deep breath.
He leant after her and pressed a lingering kiss to her lips.
'You like tempting me,' she breathed. 'You should not, Harry. I might hurt you.'
'I know, I know, you're really strong and you're worried you might get carried away with the biting.' He cupped her cheek and offered her a mischievous grin as he kissed her again. 'I guess we'll have to do something else to avoid you getting tempted to jampire me. I do quite want to go in the sauna. The idea of seeing you in a bathing suit doesn't hurt either. Very pretty girls always look good in bathing suits.'
'I remember.' Daphne uncurled from his side and stood up. 'But I do not have a fancy French bathing suit, Harry.'
'A shame, you would look amazing in one.' Harry tiptoed across the suddenly thin ice he found himself standing upon. 'And — er — much better than any other aforementioned but conveniently unnamed girls who might have worn one in a tournament at some point?'
'Are you telling me that or asking?' she demanded.
'Telling?' Harry frowned. 'I think?' He offered her a small grin. 'What's the answer that makes you not jampire me?'
Daphne stared at him for a long moment, then turned her pretty nose up and turned her back on him. 'I do not have a bathing suit, Harry.' Her fingers dipped to her waist and her skirt slipped to the floor; she stepped out of it and unbuttoned her charcoal blouse, shedding it behind her and gliding down the terraces in just her silk, satin scarlet underwear. 'So this will have to do.'
The butterflies stole all the words off the tip of Harry's tongue, melting into a swirling storm of tingling, tickling little wings and legs somewhere beneath his ribs. 'It will do,' he blurted. 'It will definitely do.'
Daphne dipped one bare foot into the steaming pool and sank in, leaning her head back to stare up the shallow steps at him. 'Are you coming in, Harry?'
'Give me a moment,' Harry said. 'I'm trying to remember how to breathe.'
A soft pink blush climbed her cheeks. 'Hush and come here, Harry.'
'Yes, Lady Daphgrass.' He set the bowl of strawberries down on the arm of the chair and hopped up. 'I don't have a bathing suit either, so…' Harry tried to wrestle the butterflies back down as he kicked off his jeans and pulled his t-shirt over his head, but they escaped sometime around when he pushed his glasses back up his nose and went fluttering through his veins all over the place. 'How warm is it?'
'Very warm.' That little spark of hunger swelled in Daphne's blue eyes as she watched him drift down toward her.
He paused at the stone edge and poked a toe into the water, admiring the pale curve of Daphne's cleavage below the water where her breasts nestled in her scarlet bra. The heat soaked into him, just a little shy of scalding — a not quite burning warmth that seared all of Harry's aches away.
'Sit down, Harry,' she murmured. 'You can see just as well from here. And I can kiss you.'
'Sorry.' He dropped down next to her, relaxing into the warmth of the pool.
'It is okay,' Daphne breathed. 'I am your girlfriend; you are meant to think I am pretty and everyone likes to look at pretty things.'
'I'm not quite sure pretty really covers it,' Harry said. 'I'm genuinely not sure I would remember how to breathe if you took off any more clothing.'
Daphne's dimples flashed across her flushed, pink cheeks. 'You keep saying such nice things to me.' She leant closer. 'I always want to hear more.'
Beneath the still, clear water and the wisps of white steam, Harry spied lines of little dark runes on her smooth pale skin. They ran, twisted into spiralling knots all interwoven together, across Daphne's stomach just above the hem of her crimson underwear.
'Is that…?'
'The mark; for those who hold the Old Ways to heart, marking ourselves in permanent fashion carries great meaning and we never do it lightly.' She lifted herself out of the water to sit on the edge, brushing little drops of water off the complex swirls of glyphs. 'It prevents Astoria from having any daughters, but I am cursed and cannot conceive or carry children regardless.'
Harry shuffled along the seat, leaning around Daphne's left knee, and pressed a soft kiss to the centre of the mark, his lips grazing the scarlet hem of her underwear.
A little shiver swept through Daphne and she caught his head in her hands, tangling her fingers in his hair. 'Do that again,' she whispered. 'Please.'
Harry kissed her mark.
Daphne shuddered, letting out a little gasp and a shaky sigh. 'More—' she parted her knees, pulling him between her thighs '—more, Harry.'
The butterflies crumbled into a hot little flame that burnt with greedy abandon somewhere in the pit of Harry's stomach; the heat of it raced through his veins with every beat of his pounding heart.
'More,' Daphne pleaded; her blue eyes blazed with hunger, a spark of some red sunset burning in them. 'Harry…'
Harry stole another kiss, his heart hammering against his ribs. 'What do you want me to do, Daph?'
'To touch me,' she whispered, turning pink from her cheeks to the tips of her ears.
He let his right thumb slip across the smooth, hot silk of her underwear. 'Here?'
Daphne's crimson-glossed lips parted with a soft gasp. 'Everywhere.' She leant forward, pulling his mouth back to the mark. 'Everything.' She buried her face in his shoulder; her teeth bit into the side of his neck, leaving a stinging little pain there. 'Sorry,' she whispered, sinking her teeth into him again. 'I am sorry.'
Harry drew his hand back and ran his fingers through her hair as the last little shudders swept through her, wincing at the soft throb of pain. 'It's okay, Daph.' He breathed in the faint fragrance of spearmint mixed with the warm steam of the pool and the fevered heat of some soft musk. 'I love you.'
'I hope you stay,' she whispered. 'I hope you stay with me.'
'Silly,' he murmured. 'I already said I would. Are you… good?'
'It will always be wasted on me,' Daphne murmured. 'I am cursed.'
'Silly.' Harry kissed her on the tip of her pretty nose. 'Nothing I do with you is a waste of anything. Every moment is magic .' He laughed to himself. 'Even the bitey moments. And if they weren't, I'd still trade a hundred of them for a second with you here where everything is so beautiful. I love you.'
Daphne stared at him with wide blue eyes full of soft but soaring hope, then buried her face in his chest. 'Please stay,' she whispered. 'Please. Please. Please. I love you.'