DISCLAIMER: Love 'em, want 'em. Don't got 'em.

***********

The Fellowship were fascinated darkly by the fey's resignation to their final battle against the orcs. There was no way the Nine could leave Siobhangé now; the city was surrounded by a multitude of deadly troops, and any attempt at escape on their part would be inconceivable folly. Anemosi spent many hours closeted with Gandalf within a closely guarded planning chamber, with muttered incantations and words shouted in freezing languages making the walls whisper and strange images appear at the edge of one's peripheral vision. Some final defense was being planned, it was certain, of a magnitude unknown, but it drained both its workers desperately. They would stagger out of the room after their work was finished, weak and shaking, and the door was locked so that none but the wizard and the Lady Radika was able to peer inside.

When Anemosi was thus occupied, Sam worried. Frodo's company was the only force that could distract him from his anxiety over Anemosi, and yet again, adversity was drawing the pair closer together. As she watched them through the precarious days of planning, Kerra became intimately aware of the defining characteristics of the hobbits: a single-minded devotion to each other, and the Quest. At first glance, it seemed that the depth of friendship was one-sided, in Sam's favor, but Frodo was just as attached to Sam as Sam was to him. They were heart-friends, or "tanhu", in the fey tongue. It was a beautiful sight to see that friendship, deep and silent and content, and Kerra was left in wonder of the halflings that were able to give so much of themselves in love, and yet end more whole than they had begun.

Contrary to her fears, Kerra found that a warm friendship had grown between Anemosi and Frodo as well. In spite of the warring influence of the Ring upon both of them, the two of them were still able to relate to each other's suffering and find an affection for the other through their love for Sam. There was joy in the midst of the hardship, but Kerra could take no part in the rejoicing. She simply could not resign herself to letting Anemosi love another. Her devotion to Anemosi and her passion for Anemosi were at a mortal war. There seemed to be no escape for her tormented heart, until one night, she heard a whisper in her sleep that beckoned with an answer. There was a way, it seemed, to have both Anemosi and save the fey.

At this most delicate moment, the Ring took Kerra.

She slid through the halls of the great house, silent and imminent. She knew where the Ringbearer slept, of course, she knew where all of them slept. She would take the Ring, and become great!

She would no longer be Kerra Ojona, leader of the fey armies. She would become a creature of more than flesh and bone and spirit...she could echo in every breath of every living thing! They would worship her, fear her, adore her...fall at her feet in frenzied multitudes, begging her for mercy and singing her praises in the same breath. Oh, the joy! And, through it all, as she rose above Middle-Earth, great and unknowable, she could have Anemosi by her side. Anemosi, to be her own, with those piercing mercury eyes lighting on her with passion and servitude! She, Kerra, would be called Eternity! The Lady of the Fey herself would fall to the side, weeping her outcast state as Kerra walked by, immense and powerful, with the Lady Radika bowing low to her. It would be glorious; Sauron would be defeated in a sweep of her hand, and she could laugh in Sam's face as he tried to catch a last glimpse of Anemosi! Oh, how she would laugh!

There it was! The door to Frodo's room...it was too easy! She slipped under the curtain, her eyes wide with excitement and her breath coming heavy and sour in her throat. Kerra stole to the bed, her hand groping over Frodo's body in search of her prize. In her haste, her delicacy of movement was lost, and her rough movements awoke Frodo.

With a cry, he sprang away, clutching the Ring in his hand as he stared in wild disbelief at Kerra. She was wilder than ever, with her curls spilling out of their usual braids to form a blood-red corona around her head, and her eyes were glowing with a lust more deadly than any sword.

"Give it to me, halfing!" she hissed, creeping forward. Her face had shriveled into something small and hard, like a old chunk of coal, and her hands were grasping towards him. A sickening sense of no escape hit Frodo as instant before her fists did, and his cries were choked off as her strong hands embraced his throat. He tried to beat her off, but she merely slammed his head back into the wall and knocked him unconscious. With a moan, he slipped into darkness and Kerra, with a low laugh of satisfaction, drew the Ring from around his neck and dropped it around her own. As the heavy Ring settled between her breasts, it seemed to freeze against her, and the heat of her fevered skin could not warm it. A chunk of ice lay both over and where her heart should have been.