She looked up into his dark eyes, searching for the source of it all. "What did you give him in exchange for me?"

His jaw tightened. The pull she felt for him, like a string vibrating, tugged as she waited for him to tell her the truth or a lie.

"The one thing he wanted more than you."

Her heart pounded and her breath left her as her mind worked through all the possibilities. "Why? Why buy me? Why bid on me?"

He took a breath, and she prepared herself for the range of answers he could give. She thought of her face in his drawer, her bedroom close to his, the way he sucked poison out of her arm. She thought of the esteem she brought the Malfoy family, the way Voldemort had cackled when Draco boasted about the money spent to obtain her.

But she thought about the answer she most hoped to hear, even for all of her logic, as his eyes turned to a spot over her shoulder and his lips pressed tight together.

"It was the right thing to do," he said.

His grey eyes slid over to her, and she studied them as the words swirled inside her ears and her chest. That wasn't an answer. Another evasion.

She clenched her jaw. "When have you ever been concerned with doing the right thing?"

His left eye twitched, but the rest of him was still. "What kind of answer would you prefer, Granger?"

"I'd prefer the truth, but I don't assume I'll get that from you anytime soon." She grabbed for her extra books on the bench, and marched past him.

She was boiling, just reaching the steps of the gazebo before she heard, "Granger—"

Spinning back to him, she growled, "Doing the right thing, Malfoy, would have been coming to the Order in sixth year." His jaw snapped shut, and his eyes turned to stone. "Doing the right thing would have been standing up to your father at any of the millions of times he's done evil in the name of that monster." She felt a crackling through her veins. She stepped toward him again, watching him breathe deeply through his nose. "The right thing would have been stopping the Auction from taking place altogether, or helping us escape, or buying Luna—"

Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. He lifted a brow, and the haughty look he sent her sizzled her nerve endings, firing up her blood.

"But if I'd fallen on my sword, Granger," he mocked, "who would have set you up in a private suite?" He prowled forward, his injured arm hanging uselessly across his chest. She felt her skin buzzing. "Who would allow you privacy, and fetch your books, and feed you pumpkin soup—"

"I didn't ask for any of this, Malfoy—"

"—certainly not Dolohov."

Her lips curled back, baring her teeth at him. "Is it gratitude, you're looking for? You want me to say 'thank you?'"

"It'd be a fucking start."