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Traitor.
The roar of fire echoes in her ears. She had let her mind go blank for hours, fleeing on foot with sweat dripping down her back as her dress came unraveled and stained, gradually separating from the others Agarwaen had managed to cut free… but now the screams of orcs and foul beings have gone quiet, and her thoughts are getting away from her.
They go back, of course, to Agarwaen. To Túrin, son of Húrin, of the House of Hador and the Dragon-helm.
The blood of thousands is now on his hands.
She can't be surprised. She’d always known that the strange Man wasn’t who he said he was, that there was more to his story. But her heart hurts more than her feet, and her eyes sting and her throat hurts—
Finduilas stumbles over a fallen branch and hisses a curse.
She collapses.
And she screams her rage to the skies.
Nargothrond has fallen. Her father is dead. Gwindor is dead. And Agarwaen is a liar and a bastard and alive and guilty.
The River Teiglin is a welcome relief. She’s wandered far enough north that she’s reached the river and is finally able to wash her feet, coated black in grime.
How long has she been traveling for?
She ignores the way her stomach rumbles. She’s forgotten what hunger pangs and sore feet feel like long ago.
The cool water pooling around her ankles, at least, reminds her to drink. Finduilas lowers herself by the water’s edge and scoops a handful to her mouth, grimacing as it slips down her throat. It's become a foreign feeling— unwanted, even. She can only take three mouthfuls before feeling bloated; she lays down on her side, trying not to let the queasiness overcome her.
She lays like that for hours. The sun sets above her brow, and still she cannot force herself to move.
When night falls, Finduilas curls on her side beneath a tree and tries to think of the bugs that crawl beneath her skirts. Anything but the face of her father marred in blood and ash and—
Finduilas does not sleep.
Finduilas stays by the River Taeglin for three nights and two days before the stranger arrives.
She does not sleep. She does not eat. She is skin and bones; she is not herself. She is grief and an overwhelming loss of self, and a lifetime of memories stolen in a day, and betrayal and confusion and anger and bitterness and numbness.
The stranger arrives and does not see her. He steps down to the River Teiglin and sees skin and bones.
“Wait—”
Finduilas wakes up in an unfamiliar bed.
Parts of it she recognizes. The texture of the sheets is soft, and smooth in a way that her own in Nargothrond had been. The patterns curling around the corners are not, though. The Nargothrond style favors angular borders and simple motifs; these sheets are vibrant in color and were delicately fashioned. Figures from their history—Maiar?—dance along the edges, limbs extended in elaborate dances.
Finduilas pushes the blankets off and struggles to pull herself out of bed. It’s a difficult maneuver to even plant her feet on the ground. Her knees are weaker than she’d expected, and she nearly ends up sprawled on the ground.
Someone catches her before she can. Their hands are wrapped around her midsection, fingertips curling into her ribs.
It hurts. It feels like fire and ruin and ash and screams and her head is throbbing—
And they let go immediately, step back hastily. “I’m sorry—”
“Good,” Finduilas snaps. She’s too exhausted to think much else, though guilt hovers in the periphery of her foggy mind.
“You’re tired,” the stranger says. A healer, maybe? They offer Finduilas a hand: smooth, wan, and hesitant.
She doesn’t take it. She crawls back onto the bed on her own, though refuses to pull the blanket back over herself. As soon as her vision evens out, Finduilas peers up at her visitor and realizes almost immediately that he isn’t a healer. His features are too smooth, too relaxed. His ears curve further back, too, indicating some Finwëan blood.
Not to mention his heavily dyed clothing and the multitude of metal and jewels draped around his neck and dripping from his ears. Nothing on his hands and arms, though. A craftsman?
“Who are you?” Finduilas asks after making her assessment. She reaches for the cup on her bedside table and is relieved to find water already inside.
“Maeglin, son of Aredhel, the daughter of Fingolfin.”
“I know her name,” Finduilas says slowly, taking a small sip of her drink. Now that she looks closer, she can see his relation to the House of Fingolfin. Maybe. “Who’s your father?”
“None of your business,” Maeglin snaps, though it’s a half-hearted attempt. Finduilas has a feeling that she’ll find it out sooner than later. “Who’s yours?”
“Orodreth, King of Nargothrond.”
“No mother?”
“None of your business,” Finduilas says.
Maeglin presses his lips together. Fiddles with his many earrings. “I found you by the River Taeglin. You’ve been unconscious for a day and a half, now.”
“Have I missed much?” Finduilas asks dryly.
“You’re in the hidden Eldar kingdom of Gondolin,” Maeglin continues, ignoring her. “Our king—” and he says this sourly, to Finduilas’ mild interest, “Turgon rules. As part of his decree, you may not leave the kingdom until the exterior is determined safe.”
“It’s never safe out there.”
“Relatively,” Maeglin amends.
“I need to search for and collect my people,” Finduilas insists. She sits up in the bed and tries to pretend that she has dignity left. That she’s strong, and that the world isn’t spinning beneath her, physically and metaphorically. “We need to rebuild. I need to be there for that.”
Maeglin, unfortunately, is not convinced. “As Lord of the House of the Mole, and the scout who found you, I’ve decided to take full responsibility of you.”
“I can take full responsibility of myself, thank you very m—” Finduilas starts, suddenly and inexplicably angry, fists balled up and nails digging into her veins, but Maeglin shakes his head and she deflates.
Eru above. She’s too tired for any of this.
“You can barely walk. You have no friends here—”
“Turgon is my father’s cousin,” Finduilas tells him coolly.
“King Turgon is busy with the affairs of his kingdom,” Maeglin says, words sharp as ice, “to ensure it does not fall.” Like some others.
Finduilas is tired and she is lost and alone and afraid and she hisses at Maeglin, throws her meager, plain cup at him with all the strength she has left.
He catches it, places it on the table by the door, and leaves.
He does not come back.
The healers help her relearn to walk. Finduilas nearly lets herselt sink into the cool sheets and forget to try, but there are people counting on her. Her people.
So she pours herself into each step. Into each breath she forces herself to take even when it feels easier to just lay in bed and curl in on herself and pretend she’s decomposing into the dirt again.
If she doesn’t keep her mind busy, it wanders to dangerous places. She sees dragon-fire and falling rubble. Her father’s face and Gwindor’s twisted limbs. Agarwaen’s deep, dark, dangerous eyes—
So she takes her steps and she lets the healers coo condescendingly over her as she ignores them and makes herself impossible promises.
On the third day of her stay in Gondolin, Finduilas finally brings herself to look out the window. Up until then, she could pretend, maybe, that she was still in Nargothrond. That the healers’ strange accents were slips of the tongue, and the blanket was a fluke.
These things aren’t true, of course. Finduilas needs to look out the window.
Gondolin is different from Nargothrond: it is so much more open. Nargothrond, a series of caves and caverns and backdoors is different from the open, expansive layout of Gondolin. Where Finrod Felagund had favored practical, glimmering metal and dark stone, Turgon obviously preferred cool, white marble. Gondolin feels less cramped—perhaps because it’s above-ground, but also because it is so quiet.
Finduilas does not enjoy it. Seeing the expanse makes her feel cold and small. Naked.
She’s pulled from her thoughts by a knock at the door. Finduilas frowns; the healers had left only ten minutes ago. Had they left something behind?
“Come in!” she calls out, sitting back down on the bed to give her sore legs a rest. “Healer Glordil, I don’t understand why—”
Finduilas stops suddenly, words dying in her mouth. They taste sour.
“Princess Finduilas,” Maeglin says, giving her a small bow. He’s wearing less jewelry than he had in his last visit, and his tunic is a more modest mid-tone shade rather than the deep indigo he’d worn previously.
“Lord Maeglin,” Finduilas greets him cautiously. “Though I’m not sure you can still refer to me as a princess.” Her kingdom is fallen. Her people are lost. She feels the failure with every passing second, ticking away at her slowly cracking heart.
“It’s your title by birthright.” He steps through the doorway at her nod. “Would you like to leave the healing rooms?”
Finduilas nods, and he walks over to her to offer his arm.
The last time a man had offered her his arm, she had taken it without hesitation. He had guided her around the gardens she’d already walked a thousand times, and his hand had drifted lower and lower down her back as he whispered the names of the flowers blooming in the crevices to the curve of her ear, to the slope of her neck—the stubble along his jaw burning a trail to her heart, thumping wildly to a strange new beat—then found his way down to her—
The garden is gone now. It’s burnt, ruined, lost, forgotten.
Finduilas’s eyes burn hot but she squeezes them shut, forces herself to take a breath. Forces herself to take his arm.
If Maeglin notices, he doesn’t say anything.
He walks her to the courtyard in silence, perhaps guessing correctly that she has been cooped up inside for far too long. Finduilas fears, for a half-second, that the sight of the gardens will send her someplace she can’t recover from—but Gondolin and Nargothrond are different kingdoms. There are few flowers here; fountains and weeping willows decorate their public spaces. She can breathe.
Maeglin guides her to a vacant stone bench and they rest there a while.
“Why are you helping me?” Finduilas asks him when the quiet is too much to bear.
He raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“I’ve heard things about you,” Finduilas says.
Maeglin looks away. “And I about you,” he says, voice painfully even.
“My father knew your mother in Valinor,” Finduilas tells him, laying a hand on his forearm. He glances down at it but doesn’t comment. She can feel him go stiff beneath her touch. “He said she was a brave woman. And that she told the worst jokes,” she adds, and he huffs a small laugh at that. “He admired Aredhel very much. My father was never much of a hunter himself, but he knew of her prowess.”
“It wasn’t enough to save her.”
“Maybe not,” Finduilas says. “But it was enough to save you.”
Maeglin’s gaze slips down to her and Finduilas realizes, then, how much taller he is than her. Even sitting beside him, she can feel his presence overwhelming hers. It’s a strange feeling. And just a little too familiar.
He opens his mouth, about to say something, when the color suddenly drains from his face and he grabs Finduilas’ hand without thinking, hissing, “We need to leave.”
“What?” Finduilas struggles to her feet, her dress suddenly too heavy upon her shoulders. “Why?”
“Cousin.”
The voice is thin, cold, and—to her surprise—afraid.
An Eldar woman with silver blonde hair and an Édain man with curly flaxen hair round the corner, her hand clutching his arm and his brow furrowed with something indeterminable. The Man nods to her curtly but ignores Maeglin.
“Cousin,” Maeglin replies. His face has gone dark, crossed with shadows and tight features and barely repressed words.
The woman looks like she wants to say something, but the man whispers something in her ear and she nods, squeezing his arm.
They leave them be and Maeglin is left staring after their retreating backs, his facial features wound up in something strange and ugly.
His grip is too tight on her hand. It’s starting to hurt.
“Please let go of my hand.”
Maeglin hardly registers her words. His shoulders are shaking.
“My hand,” Finduilas reminds him, this time tugging it away.
He looks down, eyes widening, and takes a sudden step backward, releasing her hand and clutching his and blinking hard. “Oh—”
“It’s fine,” Finduilas rushes to say, noticing the panic growing behind his doe-like eyes. It makes her feel frightened in turn. “Really, you let go when I asked. It’s fine.”
“I-I didn’t mean to,” he stutters out, wringing his hands and stepping back again. “I’m sorry. I’m—”
He's blinking too hard and his shoulders are slumped and he looks far too small. It makes her feel wrong.
“I forgive you,” Finduilas says.
This finally seems to calm him down. “You do?”
“Yes,” Finduilas lies.
Maeglin blinks and Finduilas can see the tears slip from the corners of his eyes. She fights back a shudder. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“It won’t happen again,” Maeglin promises. He wrings his hands a final time, then shakes them like he’s shaking something off and offers her his arm, again.
“I know,” Finduilas says.
She takes his arm. Again.
Finduilas stays in Gondolin for three more days before realizing there is something terribly wrong with her patron.
She should’ve known from their walk through the gardens. From the worry in his cousin’s eyes. But suspicion hadn’t crossed Finduilas’s heart until she caught a glimpse of the midnight-black sword he had unsheathed in his bedroom and held up to the lamplight, unaware that he’d left the door open a crack.
Finduilas had seen it. And she thought of the last man who’d brought about the downfall of a great kingdom, and she knew, somehow, that history would repeat itself if she did not act.
Maeglin runs his hand down the cool, black metal, his blank expression reflected back to Finduilas in a mirror. He hasn’t noticed her presence, entranced as he is by the strange sword that resembles so closely another.
She watches his strange ritual for a moment.
She thinks of his cousin—a woman she knows now as Princess Idril Celebrindal—and of the broad Man who’d whispered to her so intimately.
Thoughts of returning to her people—scattered, lost as they are—begin to fade from her priorities, because now she sees clearly the grim fate hanging over this hidden kingdom.
Finduilas continues down the hallway to her own quarters. Ignores the fear that begins to threaten to swallow her whole.
She tries. For weeks.
Finduilas knows that she’s desirable. That isn’t the problem here. Gwindor (sweet, wonderful, wise Gwindor) had called her Faelivrin for the sunshine that glimmered on the Ivrin. And she’d had other suitors besides; the memory of her father’s exasperated expression as she took yet another young Elf lord or lady’s hand to dance resurfaces, and she smiles for the first time in days.
The smile fades when she remembers her task.
Finduilas had tried dropping hints. She’d let their hands brush, she’d sat closer to him than appropriate, she’d laughed a little too loud at his straight-faced sarcasm, and she’d even learned to make his tea.
But it hadn’t worked. If anything, he’d held her further away and become more withdrawn.
And so she’d tried to trace her fingers along his collar and down to his sternum. Had pressed her face to his shoulder and breathed him in. And linked their fingers together, and bit the lobe of his ear and heard him inhale sharply and she drops his hand in favor of the front of his pants, hard beneath her air-light touch—
He’d stood up abruptly and left without a word, without looking back. Left her cold and humiliated and afraid.
The black sword and silver blond hair and strange, dark eyes continue to haunt her dreams. It feels different, more real and cold than any dream she’s ever had—it’s a sign, she knows, from Irmo, Master of Visions.
And so she keeps pursuing, because her efforts aren't based on nothing.
She can feel Maeglin’s heated gaze when he thinks she doesn’t notice. The way his dark eyes catch on her thick, golden hair and outline her curves. The red flush of guilt that stains his cheeks when he realizes what he’s doing.
They’re sitting at dinner with Gondolin’s royal family when the shift happens.
King Turgon sits at the head, with Princess Idril on his right and the Man, who she’s learned is called Tuor and Idril's betrothed, on his left. Maeglin is seated next to Tuor, to his discomfort, and Finduilas sits across from him by Idril.
It’s been nearly two weeks since Finduilas arrived in Gondolin and this is the first time she’s seen Turgon. But his eyes are rimmed by heavy bags, and so Finduilas does not complain.
“Have you met my daughter, Idril?” Turgon asks Finduilas politely as he cuts the venison on his plate.
Finduilas glances at Idril, who’s absorbed in her own thoughts. Idril uses her spoon to push the cooked grain around her plate, eyes unfocused and jaw clamped shut.
Finduilas says, “I had the brief pleasure.”
“Yes,” Idril says distantly. “The garden.”
Turgon eyes his daughter with no small amount of worry. He turns to Tuor instead and smiles diplomatically. “Then perhaps you’ve met my future son-in-law, Tuor?”
“Also briefly,” Finduilas says.
Tuor is stiff in his chair. He has shockingly bright blue eyes, and they’re currently pointedly avoiding Maeglin’s.
“He’s descended from Hador, you know,” Turgon says, smile still plastered on. “Related distantly to the great warrior, Húrin. An honorable lineage.”
The food in Finduilas’s mouth turns to ash.
“I wonder, sometimes,” Tuor muses, “what happened to my cousin, Túrin. I hear about him from time to time. Never good things.”
“I heard he died when the Enemy’s forces took Amon Rûdh,” Turgon comments.
“No,” Finduilas croaks.
Turgon and Tuor turn to her.
“No?” Tuor echoes.
The memories are always in the corner of her mind, the pain on the tip of her tongue. Her throat constricts and she can’t breathe—
She takes a sip of wine and it eases ever so slightly, and she pretends to smile. “I heard he got away,” Finduilas lies carefully, “is all.”
Idril scoffs and Finduilas’s gut curls in on itself, but Turgon and Tuor buy it.
“How strange,” Turgon says.
“I hope he isn’t still out there,” Tuor says. And he locks eyes with Finduilas, and he suddenly looks so much like Agarwaen. His hair is flaxen and his eyes are as blue as the ocean, and his skinner is sunkissed where Agarwaen was naturally dark in complexion, but it’s something about the way his eyes narrow and his lips move and he straightens his back, because suddenly, he could be Agarwaen and it makes Finduilas want to cry.
Maeglin stands up so quickly his chair scrapes along the stone. It jerks Finduilas out of her thoughts.
“We have business to attend to,” Maeglin says curtly. “Finduilas. It’s time to leave.”
Finduilas looks up at him and her breath catches. His dark eyes are dead and silent.
Maeglin is many things: Finduilas knows this well.
But for the first time, he looks dangerous.
She looks to Turgon and he nods that they may be excused, though he looks confused. Idril and Tuor, on the other hand, appear relieved.
Maeglin offers her his arm and she takes it without hesitation.
They do not talk on their long walk back to Maeglin’s quarters, located in the far corner of Gondolin’s castle, but they both understand.
As soon as Maeglin locks the door behind them, he grabs her by the shoulders and she lets him push her up against the wall, the stone digging into her back in a wonderfully painful way, and he breathes, hard, unsteady, eyes dark and pupils blown wide and her skin is on fire.
“Please,” she whispers, voice already hoarse. She lifts her hands, trembling, to drape across his neck and leans up towards him and finally, finally—
His thigh slips between hers through her thick, heavy Gondolin skirts and he presses his lips to hers. It’s chaste, light.
But she opens her mouth slightly, and then it’s not.
It’s like he’s eating her raw, hungry for her whole being. She can feel his teeth scrape along her lower lip and she can’t help the moan that claws its way out of the back of her throat, and she retaliates by scraping her nails across the back of his neck and he jerks like he’s been electrocuted.
He’s grinning. Her teeth are bared. Neither of them are happy, but they’re hot and heavy and it’s dark and he could be anyone.
She could be anyone.
He rakes his fingers through her thick golden hair and Finduilas knows he’s thinking of silver blond hair, a willowy body, wide brown eyes. Not her tall frame and olive skin.
She tells herself it’s okay and kisses back with as much force as when they started, wrapping her legs around his midsection and clutching his face in her hands and pretends that she doesn’t see another angry young man with stubble and round ears. That the way she cups his face isn’t to hide his pointed ones.
They tug and bite and groan and lie and hate.
When they finally tumble into his bed, unmade and still smelling like him (like pine and burning wood all at once), her dress is on the floor and his tunic is tossed to the side. She shoves him down on the covers with no resistance and his lips are shiny and his eyes are dazed and there’s a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
She’s already wet and he’s already hard. It’s too dark to see his features clearly and she likes it that way, likes that he could be the man she hates. Likes that she could make him happy if he doesn’t strain his eyesight.
Finduilas crawls on top of him and pulls down his pants. Grabs him and revels in the way Maeglin hisses, scrabbles at the bedsheet, chest gleaming with sweat. She slips a finger between her legs to make sure she’s ready, humming when she does, and baring her teeth in a sharp-edged grin when she catches Maeglin watching greedily.
“Almost ready,” she whispers, and her voice is even more wrecked than before.
“Want you,” Maeglin groans. Like he's not thinking of another Eldar woman. Like he can see Finduilas clearly.
“I know,” she says.
And then she pulls her fingers out, wet and sticky, and lets the tip of him in.
Something changes along the way.
Finduilas isn’t sure exactly when, because her mind is blissfully blank up until she climaxes. Her thoughts are quiet and the memories are far away and she can simply be. It is so peaceful she nearly cries, but she doesn’t, because Maeglin is still there and he’s sucking at her neck and it all hurts beautifully—
And he bites down and it ends for them both.
He spills into her quietly and she gasps, cracked and broken and beautiful, into the darkness.
And somehow, even though she’s climbed off of him and her heartbeat has slowed to its normal pace—
It’s still quiet.
She wakes up to the sun peaking over the horizon, and his arms are still wrapped around her middle, pulling her close to his chest.
It feels foreign. It feels like something old and nostalgic.
Agarwaen never did this, she realizes. It feels like Gwindor had. Like comfort and home and warmth, and security.
And suddenly she is dizzy with something that feels like relief.
She closes her eyes and dreams, blissfully, of nothing.