The Treaty

Chapter 2

The sound of tittering giggles were what woke her and, for a blissful moment, Artanis felt as though everything was normal and then, in that horrible instant of waking cognizance, she remembered that yesterday had been her wedding, last night her (uneventful) wedding night, and that today was her first day as the wife of Doriath's crown prince.

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the oncoming tears burning at her eyes, trying to will them away. Artanis was not usually prone to weeping but this… this whole situation was so heart-shatteringly wretched that weeping was all that she wished to do.

She sat up in bed, keeping quiet so as not to disturb him…her husband in name only, and thankfully so. That, at least, had been some blessing, some providence of the Valar. Yet, strangely enough the thought made her both sad and glad.

Of course she was very happy that she had not been forced to lie with him, just the very thought of it turned her stomach. She found nearly every aspect of his personality despicable, and then there was the fact that he was a Moriquendi. She shuddered at the very idea of being touched so intimately by one of them. Having to hold his hands during the ceremony had been horrid enough, but the idea of him overtop of her… taking his pleasure in her body. She could feel her skin crawling at the perversity of it.

And yet… it could not be put off forever. Eventually they would have to…they must… her family and his family would begin to ask why she was not with child. But at least they had managed to delay it for a while. That had certainly surprised her. After all of the bawdy jokes, crass gestures, and uncouth conversations she had heard him having over various feasts and banquets, she would have expected a man like him to be overly eager to consummate his marriage. And yet he had been the one to call it off.

For some mysterious reason, that irritated her. She wanted him to have been left longing. She wanted him to have been left yearning for even a glimpse of her shoulder. She wanted him to have begged her to sate the lustful hunger gnawing at his belly and, in the same moment, she would have utterly and irrevocably refused him. Instead, he had not desired her in the slightest, and it had injured her pride most horribly. She wanted him to want her while she did not want him, perhaps because she wanted to destroy him.

She crossed her arms over her chest primly, glancing towards where he lay. The oaf, even the way he slept was inelegant and uncouth, spread eagled, his long limbs going this way and that, his long silver hair a tangled mess, mouth open. She uttered a soft sound of disgust and looked away. Still… when he was properly dressed and presented he wasn't bad to look at. He could even be called handsome… in a way… in a way that Moriquendi men could be called handsome… which of course was to say in a far inferior manner to the princes of Aman.

The giggling voices were drawing nearer now and Artanis's eyes opened wide with terror. No! They were coming for the bed sheets…the bed sheets that were still white as snow! She elbowed her husband hard and he jerked awake, glaring at her angrily and rubbing his ribs where she had hit him.

"Vixen, you don't have to assault me to get my attention," he spat.

"They're coming for the sheets!" She hissed and he looked at her as if she had lost her mind completely.

"Why are they taking the sheets?" He asked.

"You idiot!" She cried, losing all patience with him. "It was my cousins. They wanted proof of the marriage."

"A stupid and pointless Noldorin tradition," Celeborn grumbled, rolling over and pulling a pillow over his head. "I doubt you even have a maidenhead to lose." Her eyes flew open even wider at the perceived slight and she tore the pillow free of his gasp, staring him down as a bull might.

"I will have you know," she said, trembling in rage, "that I have never lain with a man and I will not allow the likes of you to call my virtue into question!"

"That's not what I meant!" Celeborn retorted, equally as furious. "I just meant you're athletic! Only lazy girls who sit around doing nothing bleed the first night!"

"Oh I bet you know all about that!" Artanis hissed.

"Well excuse me!" Celeborn fired back. "I have some standards. I'm not the lecher you think I am!"

"Give me your knife!" She demanded. She knew he had one. All of the Sindarin men carried them, armed to the teeth like savages.

"Happily if it means you're going to put me out of my misery!" Celeborn retorted, retrieving the curved blade from a small table nearby. "I'd prefer death to another instant of your incessant dramatics."

"Me?" She asked, snapping up the knife from his hand and unsheathing it. "You're the one asking for death! You're the dramatic one!" Taking a deep breath to prepare for the pain, she positioned the blade at her inner thigh.

"What in Eru's name do you think you're doing!" Celeborn hissed, halting her cut just in the nick of time as he grabbed her elbow and held her arm still. Silence prevailed for a long while in which they both attempted to recover from the shock. "You've an artery there, Artanis! You'll bleed out!" He whispered frantically. She glanced up, her eyes meeting his, and they stared at each other for a moment, not in hatred this time, but in fear. Hand trembling, she released the grip on the knife.

"Somewhere…somewhere no one will see…" she said softly. Celeborn nodded in understanding and gently lifted her foot, pressing the blade to the sole. The knife was so sharp that she barely felt him cut her, but a moment later she was bleeding profusely.

"The foot is vascular," Celeborn murmured, pressing the bed sheet to her foot to quench the bleeding, "and thus produces a great deal of blood if cut, but it is not a critical wound, not the way it would be if you nicked an artery."

Now here she was looking the foolish one of the two of them and Artanis's pride rebelled against it. "And what are you?" She sneered, mocking him, "some sort of healer?"

"No," Celeborn replied, dabbing at her foot now that the bleeding had stopped, "but I am a soldier and I have seen enough of my wardens cut down that I know which wounds will kill and which will not."

"Oh," she said softly, feeling duly chastised now. It was easy sometimes to forget that Celeborn's obnoxious overabundance of confidence was not the result of a lack of tragedy, but existed in spite of it. She had heard stories… about what had happened to his parents…

"Hurry," Celeborn muttered, "they're coming. Let's make it look like we have actually done this." He pulled the sheet from the bed, draping it over the corner, and then drew the blanket overtop of them, pulling Artanis in close and holding her tightly.

She was startled by his sudden proximity, by the warmth of him, the scent of him like fresh pines, by the way she could feel the beat of his heart in his chest. She swallowed hard. "I'm sorry," she whispered, because she still felt bad about mocking him a moment earlier, "about what I said." It seemed to take him a minute to realize what she was speaking about.

"I didn't know you were capable of an apology," he replied quietly, his tone a bit bitter, but not entirely unkind. The conversation lapsed into silence for a moment.

"Do you…do you think the blood is too fresh to fool them?" She whispered, looking into his eyes, but his face was so close that she quickly looked away again.

"I don't think they'll much mind how fresh it is," he said, "so long as they have their proof and their damned treaty. Besides, who in their right mind would believe I didn't do it?"

"So you admit it," she said, a sense of satisfaction welling in her stomach, a small grin curling her lips. "You think I'm desirable."

"I don't want to talk about this," Celeborn mumbled gruffly. The servant girls had entered, crowned in flowers still from the wedding festivities. The parties must have gone on to the very early hours of the morning. Giggling and casting curious but bashful glances, they mounted the stairs.

Celeborn pressed his forehead to his bride's, smiling and softly kissing her cheek, an action that earned another volley of giggles from the ladies. Artanis tried her best to play along, gazing into her husband's eyes in what she hoped was a loving manner, reaching up to brush his silver hair behind his ear. His hair really was lovely, like the stars.

Celeborn shifted, rolling onto his back and gently pressing Artanis's head to his chest as he pointed to the sheets. "There," he said, with a laugh and a grin at the handmaidens, "you'll find your proof, though I can't fathom why they need it. Have you seen how beautiful she is?" And Artanis suddenly found his lips pressed to hers, which earned them shrieks and giggles from the ladies. But Artanis felt as if she were underwater, the silence of the ocean rushing into her ears, time slowing, slowing further still, creeping to a stop. His lips were warm, yielding, and then in the next instant they were gone and she found herself suddenly short of breath.

She heard the door close behind the girls and took a deep breath, confused, her mind spinning, wondering why she wasn't furious with Celeborn for having kissed her. But of course he was only keeping up appearances, putting on a show, and….and…it had felt…nice… so long as she didn't think about the fact that it was him, a Moriquendi. But, from a purely objective point of view… if she closed her eyes and pretended it was someone else… it had been an excellent kiss. Celeborn seemed not to have noticed her confusion, but now, pressed up against him, she had noticed something else.

"Are you…" she pushed herself away from him, scurrying to the other side of the bed, "are you….er…are you… hard?" She swallowed, embarrassed that she had had to give voice to that word.

Celeborn laughed as if it were no matter. "It's nothing to do with you in particular," he told her, his eyes meeting hers, an infuriating grin on his lips. "it would happen to any man who had any mostly naked woman pressed up against him."

"That's vile!" Artanis hissed with a shiver of distaste. "Absolutely revolting!" The Sindarin style of humor did not suit her at all and Celeborn's humor was particularly crude. He rolled out of bed, stretched, and then promptly reached into his breeches and scratched himself, as if he were a common woodsman instead of a prince. Artanis recoiled in disgust. He was positively foul.

"Let us make at least some attempt to be civil towards one another in public," he said, turning towards her, "for the sake of appearances. And, I'll have one of the spare rooms prepared for you today," he told her. "As for the rest of it…come to my bed when you see fit, perhaps every two weeks, no maybe every week…so it looks like we're actually trying." He shrugged, his expression grim. "You have my assurance that I will not touch you."

"I'm honestly surprised you could resist," she said, unable to resist baiting him. "What with your crudeness I had half expected you'd be… eager to have me."

"I don't believe in that," Celeborn said, his voice low and angry, his eyes flashing with ire. "Even if you had been willing, purely for the sake of the alliance, it still would have felt…wrong. If I am with a woman in that way then I want it to be because she desires me…not because she is being forced."

"They sold me as if I were…. as if I were an animal," she stammered, the words coming loose from the wall of her soul, falling out into the open.

Celeborn turned, looking at her for a long moment. "They did the same to me," he said quietly.

"Then why did you agree to it?" She glared at him with accusing eyes. All along she had thought that it was because he desired her, that it was merely a convenient way to have her as he wanted, but last night she had been proven wrong. He had been true to his word; he had not touched her.

"To prevent war from coming to Doriath," he said quietly, sliding his hands into his pockets as he faced her. It was, she noted, perhaps the first honest conversation the two of them had ever had. "Thingol…he is my king, and I am loyal to him, but he wanted to avenge the kinslaying at Alqualondë, Artanis. He wanted blood paid for in blood. With you married to me he has ample assurance that the Feanorians will not repeat their actions." He shrugged. "Had I not agreed, war would have come. So many would have died… but you did it for the same reason, did you not?"

She nodded stiffly. The Feanorians had been clamoring for blood, paranoid that, now that Thingol knew what they had done, he would wage war upon them, seek to drive them from their lands. Long had they desired some sort of political leverage over Thingol, some strong tie to bind Doriath to them; now they had it. And then… of course they had wanted the proof. Trust Caranthir to demand such a thing. They never would have believed Thingol's word otherwise, had to see for themselves that the bargain had been signed in her blood.

She drew a shuddering breath, feeling the tears coming on again as they had last night, but she would not cry, not in front of Celeborn. That was an embarrassment she would not suffer. But Celeborn seemed to have sensed her unease and caught her gaze. "About the sheets," he said, "that was barbaric and I'm sorry they made you do it." Then he turned on his heel and was gone.