Scars

They met, once, long ago. They never exchanged names, never saw each other again; they were only the Beauxbatons girl and the Durmstrang boy who shared three dances at the Yule Ball.

Now, five years later, Aleksandar Petrov is twenty-three, a Bulgarian Pureblood, graduate of Durmstrang Institute. Some part of him always expected his father to arrange a marriage for him; theirs was a family obsessed with purity and lineage and strong magic, set in the old ways that even now were falling. And so his bride-to-be made the journey to the Petrov estate high in the mountains. She was beautiful, quiet, submissive- and oddly familiar, as well. Aleks couldn't quite place where he'd seen her before...but he was determined to unravel the mysteries woven in a dark web around the girl who seemed so harmless, so silent, so subdued.