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  "WHAT THE FUCK was that?" Draco snarled the moment the door closed behind them; fingers biting into her upper arm. "—Do you have any idea the damage you could've caused?"

She glared at him, "Do you?"

"This isn't a game Seven, this is serious." He released her arm suddenly, as if her touch repulsed him. "You have no idea who Echo is, —what he's capable of..."

"—And you do?" She laughed humourlessly, not the slightest bit deterred by his tenebrosity , "Oh yes, that's right, of course you do! —This whole time you just forgot to mention that Echo was your friend!"

"It's not like that." Something strange and entirely deadly hinted at the corner of his eye, "You know it's not. I haven't seen him since the war... I thought he was dead."

She shook her head with a scoff, "It's not just that though, is it? —What else are you hiding from me..."

Draco didn't answer. His silence fuelled her dissonance, —filled it up to the breaking point and watched in silence as it overflowed at their feet. Seven doubted he'd answer even when they were entirely submerged and suffocating in the lie.

• • •
  —(Twenty minutes prior)

  FOR A LONG WHILE Echo only stared at her, his face an unreadable mask, before finally, he relaxed. "...You've changed a lot since I last saw you, Seven."

  She felt a weight in the pit of her stomach, "What?"

  "You're not frightened anymore." He said with a small smile, but he was wrong. Seven was terrified, in every possible sense of the word.

  At first no words found her, the handfuls of letters and phrases she'd spent her life gathering falling from her palms and scattering irreparably across the floor. Only one thing reverberated through her mind, deafening her to the rest of the world. "...You know me?" She said slowly, as if tasting the words for the first time, foreign and  strange on her tongue.

  "Of course I do..." Echo's brow furrowed in confusion, "Do you not—," Seven could see that something clicked in his head. He softened, "...You don't remember, do you?"

  Her face was pained by uncertainty; she found agony in her ignorance. Seven shook her head with a deep-set frown, one she'd worn a thousand times on a thousand different nights, but none quite like this. She swallowed, asking tentatively, "Echo... Who am I?"

  —But he wasn't looking at her anymore; he couldn't even meet her eye. Instead he stared at Draco. "It's not for me to say."

  "—Please," She was desperate, and the cry left her lips before she could stop it, "Echo please, if you knew me before... If you know who I am... —Please tell me."

  He ignored her. Face mottled with rue and the savage struggle to bite his tongue as he turned to the one he had once called a friend, "You'll find Gluttony at the Siren's Rest on the night of the twenty-seventh."

  • • •

  SHE STARED AT him, willing words but none came. Draco stood stoic, but unlike Echo he never once backed down from her gaze. He looked her dead in the eye, just as cold and calculating as he had always been. "Enough, Seven."

  —And then a moment later he sighed, raking a hand through his pale hair, "There's a reason I didn't tell him about Lust, you should've trusted me."

  "—Trusted you?" She said in disbelief, a sadness beginning to seep through her acridity. "He knew about me, —about who I was! Do you have any idea how much that means to me?"

  "Whoever you were doesn't matter." He snapped, catching her off guard, "Nothing matters unless we kill Gluttony."

Seven fell silent like a child scorned, what could she say? —Whilst to her true identity was one of the most important things in the world, to him it meant nothing; for why would it?

She stormed off, Draco following wordlessly through the warren of halls until they emerged once more relatively unscathed onto the streets of Lust, bidding farewell to Echo and his men once and for all.

The moon signalled the fourth hour, a strange kind of twilight purgatory hanging about the air. Music blared from somewhere far off in the distance, drifting through open windows and forced through thin walls, making the night seem a little less hollow and dampening the sharp edges of silence between the two travellers.

They walked for what felt like years, until the blackness faded and stars hid amongst a bed of violet hues as they found themselves before the Lust-Greed border.

  The border itself was a thick concrete wall, patrolled by Crawlers, two of which stood before the gate, staring at the two newcomers through hooded faces as they approached.

"Identification?" The thick faced Crawler demanded, to which Seven pulled both their passports from her purse and handed them over. The ebony leather refracted the light of the torches that hung burning above the gateway, and the guard flicked through them, periodically glancing back up at them. "Where are you going and how long is your stay?"

Seven struggled to stifle a flinch when Draco casually slipped his arm into hers; fingers intertwining in one fluid movement. His skin was warm, firm, and far softer than she had ever expected. "We're staying in Soho at my sister's for the weekend," The lie rolled off his tongue with ease, and he gave Seven's hand a small squeeze. "It's our anniversary."

She looked up at him, trying her best to feign adoration as in turn he smiled down at her. For a moment she debating kissing him, but then thought better of it. Less was more.

"Wands?" The second Crawler deadpanned, looking bored.

"Of course," Seven smiled sweetly, swallowing her disgust at the dirt under his nails as they handed their wands over and the Crawler took them between his grubby fingers. "Ten inches, hawthorn..." He squinted at the tip, "—Unicorn core."

He took his time with the second wand, studying it closely before saying, "I'm guessing eight inches, holly... And looks like a Veela core."

"It all matches up," The first Crawler nodded, and the latter handed back their wands. Seven dared not breathe her sigh of relief just yet...

"Hold our your wrist." Ordered the Crawlers, to which she did, rolling up her right sleeve to reveal the ugly scar. It looked like some sort of burn, about four inches long and half an inch wide, though much like almost all details of her previous life, Seven had no idea how she got it.

Then the Crawler pulled out his own wand and pressed the tip of her forearm. "Rahindi Osmato."
With his words a crude looking letter R carved itself into her flesh in thick black ink, though Seven knew that it wasn't a letter at all, instead a rune; raidho, meaning travel. A rune now placed on all entering and exiting the districts, used to track the individual.

They would have to figure out a way to rid themselves of the raidho runes relatively quickly, Seven thought to herself, if they wanted to stand any chance of escaping Gluttony's dead without capture.

She busied herself tucking away their passports into her purse as Draco pulled up his sleeve, but when she looked up again something felt off. The Crawlers stood a little straighter, their faces a little less bored-looking. Seven didn't know what had triggered the change, but she didn't dare question it as at once they swung open the thick iron gates, signalling them to pass through.

  "What did you do?" She frowned at him as they began to make their way towards the Siren's Rest at the heart of the district. Greed was far different from Lust, far more regal looking, yet less so than Pride. The city of Greed was what had once been London, and the previously dense population had been dispersed in favour of only those with pockets filled with gold and tongues lined with lies.

  The sun had just began to rise, casting the landscape a golden bronze colour. Seven couldn't help but think the light did nothing to soften Draco's harsh features, he still looked hellishly handsome, yet at the same time devilish beyond belief. Draco didn't answer, instead choosing another subject, "You need to cut your hair."

  "What?"

  He shrugged; unfazed by her glare. "You need to cut it, or dye it, —do whatever I don't really care, just change it somehow."

  There were no scarlet street lamps in Greed, no deep based music resonating through every pillar and plane, and at this hour, the district seemed dead. No life remained. That only made it all the more jarring when Seven's voice came out a little more forceful, than she had meant to, "Why?"

  "Keep it down." Draco hissed in a way that made her skin crawl and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. "—Because we can't have people recognising you," Then he stopped in the street as if suddenly overcome by some deep repressed emotion, towering down upon her with a face mottled with disgust,
"—And I can't stand to look at it anymore."

***
QOTD-Who do you think Gluttony is? -TFOA