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Summary: In this chapter, Thranduil witnesses a spectacular display of ability and temper.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.
Chapter 2: Hell Hath No Fury
Thranduil watched with unabashed curiosity as Brinya, Princess Anoria's lady-in-waiting, used a scarecrow for target practice. He wondered absently how she came to obtain the specimen. There were no fields particularly near the palace. For her part, Brinya was aware she was being watched and she didn't care. Thranduil marveled not so much at her good aim, he had seen many talented knife throwers, but at her passion. He could feel the rage coming off of her in waves. It was intoxicating. After millennia on Middle Earth, his emotions had lost their vehemence. He no longer felt anger or sadness or joy in their full force. Mostly he felt cold detachment and disdain. He still felt a sense of duty to his people and their allies, but he no longer agonized about the how best to rule them. One day his son would take his place and he could make different decisions about how to run the kingdom if he chose. Until then, Thranduil would do the things he saw fit, as he always had.
It had been many years since he had entertained the thought of a wife or a mistress. Wife was a term the Eldar understood. He had a wife before she perished in the war against the serpents of the North. A wife meant a loving partner for life, which for an elf, was a very long time. Mistress was an Edain term. Thranduil did not like its connotations, but he understood its usefulness. A woman who would not, perhaps could not, agree to be his wife, might agree to be his mistress. It was not his nature to keep his love life private. He was a public figure and his people had a right to know a certain amount of what was personal to him. But he recognized that a mistress, especially an Edain one, would necessarily be a secret thing. He found the idea distasteful, but the longer he looked at Brinya, the more he was willing to compromise any and all of his principals if that was what it took to have her. He realized belatedly that what he was feeling was desire. It had been so long since he had felt anything that the Edain would call emotion that he hardly recognized it in himself. He watched her sink her daggers into the soft straw of her opponent again and again and he felt a deep longing in a place in his heart that he had long ago given up as dead.
Brinya felt the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She was so angry. She felt white fury pump through her body and her arms threw the knives on instinct, without pausing to think about where she was aiming. If she had been throwing them at a man, she would have killed him seven times before it was over. Of course, a man probably wouldn't be standing still or looking at her with a smile painted on his cloth face. She had been angry for as long as she could remember. It was life she was angry at, far more than any one person or deed. She was a bastard and that made her angry. She was never as good as the legitimate ladies at court. It didn't matter how much better she was at needlework or dancing or playing the harp. It didn't matter that she could fell any man with one blow with her knives or her arrows. It didn't matter how kind or patient or witty she was. She had no title or claim to land. That was all that mattered in her world. She wondered if it was all that mattered anywhere. She didn't know why the king was looking at her and she didn't care. She hated anyone who was part of this feudal system that kept her a dependent hostage to her sister's goodwill. Suddenly she turned around to make eye contact with him and just as suddenly turned back to sink a dagger into what would have been the jugular of the scarecrow if scarecrows had anatomy. It was a good thing for the palace maids that they did not. Thranduil was fascinated with this creature. The fury in her eyes and the ache in her heart made him long to draw her close. She was so alive and full of emotion. He wanted to remember what that felt like, if only vicariously. If she could make him feel again then he wanted to raise her to the heavens and make her his brightest star.
He was uneasy about how to approach her. Perhaps she would not relish his company. The fury she had displayed did not seem to be directed at any particular person or act. It was a sizzling rage that blanketed all aspects of her life. He would approach her tomorrow in the dining hall. Perhaps with music and wine to aid him he could melt enough of her icy exterior to glimpse what was truly in her heart. If he had the slightest inkling what she wanted, he would move mountains to attain it. He already felt a strange kinship with her. She was his complete opposite and he both loathed and envied the extreme love and hate she seemed to experience every day.
Brinya made her way back to her chambers drenched in sweat. She never meant to push herself as hard as she did. She always meant to stop before things got too out of hand, before she exposed her unladylike traits fully to the ridicule of others. She usually succeeded. For most of her life Brinya kept a tight rein on her emotions. She ruled them. They did not rule her.
The past few years had been difficult. When she was a younger woman, she had hoped to marry a nobleman. She had believed, as all young naïve women believe, that all that was truly needed to secure a loving husband was a good heart and a patient mind. This proved untrue. She had been approached by several gentlemen who wanted her for a mistress, but the thought disgusted her. The idea of crawling into someone's bed when they had promised to be faithful to someone else seemed to her the lowest kind of life. Her father had done his best to discourage offers of that kind, but since she was a bastard they couldn't be avoided entirely. Her father made it clear that in his mind she would always have a place in the palace and in Balinor. Her stepmother agreed and Brinya was so useful to her sister that the princess deemed her indispensible.
It wasn't enough. Her whole life was at the courtesy of others. If she stopped being useful to her sister or fell out of favor with her father, she had a claim to nothing of her own. For a while she thought of returning to the little fishing village of her birth. She didn't think too well of herself to be the wife of a fisherman. She was sure there were some good lads among them, but she wasn't the same person she was at eight years old. She had seen and learned too much to be content with such a small life now. The world was so big and such a tiny village would feel like a prison. She couldn't go back.
The older she got and the more she understood how the world worked, the more jaded she felt. She was still good and patient and kind, but not the way Anoria was. Anoria was good in the way only an innocent person can be good and she loved people in the way that only someone who hasn't been bruised by the world and its cruelties can love. She had no doubt that life would unfold all of its pleasures before her because she had no experience that told her it could be otherwise. Brinya loved her little sister, but there were times when she hated her, too. While her thoughts betrayed her more often than she liked to admit, her actions never did. She couldn't help feeling like life had dealt Anoria an unfairly good hand, but she never let it show in her attitude toward her. In all their interactions Brinya was anxious for her sister's comfort and well-being and eager to help in any way she could.
It never would have entered her mind that her life was about to change. She never would have believed that she could go from the bastard sister of an unimportant princess to the greatest love of an ancient and powerful king. It was too ridiculous.
