Arafinwë is not yet a decade old when he learns the fundamental truth of his family: they lie. More accurately, there are things that no one dares to acknowledge. Everyone knows that Finwë will never love any of his children more than he loves Fëanáro, that Míriel will always be the favored wife. No one says, outwardly, that Fëanáro marries too young, just like no one says anything when Ñolofinwë marries someone not of noble birth (and judge him for it, but no one says that either). They were all raised in the royal court after all, and there are certain things you don't express, certain boundaries you don't cross.

Arafinwë knows this better than he knows himself. It's why when he finds his attention lingering on the silhouette of his eldest brother at festivals, and comparing the workmanship of gifts to the single necklace he has from him, that he doesn't say anything. He will marry for duty, and Eärwen is lovely. Not like she should be– or no, she is, but Arafinwë smiles and stands beside her, arms linked together and tries not to let his thoughts stray to places they shouldn't.

Their family says nothing. He doesn't know what goes on behind Ñolofinwë's door, because everyone knows not to ask. Perhaps nothing happens, perhaps everything. Those who marry into the family learn it all the same. The same can be said for Fëanáro, and they for him.

His children are born. His children grow. His children leave to cross the Grinding Ice.

And then, it's just him and his wife. Eärwen doesn't say anything when he returns to their marital bed, with robes just a little out of place. She doesn't say anything when she sees him eyeing the Noldorin smiths with sharp features and pure black hair. None of them are his brother. None of them are what he wants, they're all just pale imitations— but he doesn't say that. None of them ever ask who he sees in them, maybe because they know, maybe because they don't wish to.

In return, he doesn't say anything when his wife invites Anairë to stay with them, and spends more of her time in Anairë's company than his. He can't blame her. It is understanding he shares with her, the loaded knowledge of what lies between them, more than love.

It is a small mercy that Ñolofinwë is not there, because Arafinwë thinks his brother might consider himself honor bound to break their family's unspoken code in order to say something. To express some disappointment or distress, or disgust.

It's easier, after all, to smile and laugh with the palace courtiers at celebrations, and to gently reject their suggestions in one of the endless, endless meetings. He lets his smile freeze in place when the topic of his brothers arise, and lets it freeze until he thinks that some part of him might have been carried across the Helcaraxë, part of it embedded itself in the back of his throat. They are, or were, his fathers advisors, and they have only ever seen him as the child king. He is almost as old as Nelyafinwë, they are not wrong.

Usually, he does no more than look at those who remind him, startlingly, of Fëanáro. Usually. Sometimes though, one of them will tilt their head with just a note of challenge, a sharp note in their voice when they argue with an advisor, and it is hard to resist the temptation, the blood that flows through his veins, and Fëanáro's, indistinguishable from his tempered rage. And it is rage, Arafinwë knows. The same anger that makes Fëanáro and Ñolofinwë eternal opposites. It's his, just as it is theirs. His fathers rejected inheritance, because he learned before his first decade what sort of family he has been born into, and he can play the game better than any of them.

And if the hair pins he wears are sometimes studded with rubies rather than pearls, then it is hardly the sort of thing anyone notices, or comments on. He is king after all. He wouldn't call it rebellion, but perhaps it is a more apt word than he wants to accept.

At least, no one notices at first, except for Aulë's maia, the one with the flaming red hair, and the lilting way he says Arafinwë's name. He doesn't blame Eärwen for his choices, but perhaps her and her people's willingness to accept the Valar has rubbed off on him that he doesn't turn him away the first time he appears.

Mairon creates for him rings made of flawless gold and finely hewn gems that seem to glimmer in the light. He wreaths Arafinwë in the finest creations of the best of Aulë's smiths, and there is something wrong in that, a name, a lie, two things that don't line up. He sees the necklace his brother forged him, and means to tell Mairon that he- that they can't do this but then there are lips on the juncture of his neck and his shoulder and the protests vanish with a cut off gasp.

Mairon runs a hand along his side, and kisses a burning line across his shoulders. His hair is supposed to be red, but he wears it black when they meet, and Arafinwë doesn't need to know that it's supposed to target the things he wants, so desperately.

And Mairon makes it ever so easy, he is a replacement better than even the best of the dark haired Noldor. He whispers into Arafinwë's ear, and promises everything he aches to hear. Love, and lavished affection, never of power or the kingship. Mairon whispers, sometimes, about his brothers, about how cruel it was to leave him, how much better he could be if only he allowed Mairon in…

And Arafinwë means to disagree, to explain, to protect his brothers– but he never gets the chance, not when Mairon leans down with his ebony-spelled hair, and softens his words with a promise never to leave. Mairon is endlessly talented at finding the unspoken cracks in Arafinwë's facade, the shadowed corners of desires he refuses to say aloud, and even better at keeping Arafinwë from protesting with his kisses that swallow his thoughts.

He says nothing, and no one says anything to him.

Tirion is a city devoid of red.

Is, could be, should be. It doesn't last. Not forever.

Not when the first of the dead return from the halls. Some in blue, his brother not among those. Some in red, and oh how he yearns when he sees them. How he sees the brilliant sparks of his brother's mind reflected in his followers, even beyond what Mairon offers him, for it is Fëanáro still, that colors his affections.

And still, Eärwen says nothing. Not with their children gone; and his brother, and his brother, and all their sons, their family so fractured and splintered apart it's hardly a family at all. He thinks it had been once, maybe, it had been different before the silmarils. Then, he had hidden his desire behind the veneer of the peaceable brother, the one that stepped in between Fëanáro and Ñolofinwë, and refused to let his hand rest on Fëanáro's chest when he raised them to keep them apart. It was not a luxury he was allowed then. It still isn't, but Fëanáro is long gone.

Anairë, he thinks, might say something, if she didn't share his wife's bed more nights than not.

He thinks that Nerdanel knows more than she lets on, because all she says to him, standing at his elbow, tucked in a corner of a banquet, is that Fëanáro burns brightly, extravagantly, and that it is hard to look away from something that bright. He wonders if she knew he would burn himself out in such a manner when she married him. He doesn't ask. He doesn't ask if she regrets it either.

She smiles sadly at him, and he remembers that she watched as her husband and all seven of her sons marched off to their dooms, and she stood unflinching. She so rarely attends court functions, but there was a time when she should have been Queen, and he thinks, looking at her now, that perhaps it may have been best had she been.

He would have offered her a place to stay, if he only thought that she'd accept it. Instead, she walks away, and when, two days later, she returns to her fathers house, it is only then that he thinks about red hair vanishing between the press of bodies. Red– like Mairon's is when he hasn't chosen to look like Fëanáro. And suddenly he remembers the hesitation, and the incomplete pieces fall together. Aulë's prized maia, best of his smiths.

Sauron.

Whom he had invited into his bed willingly, time and time again, who he had let himself be swayed by, with pretty words, and promises and golden jewelry that flickers at his throat even now. He feels sick, and hides his shaking hands in his sleeves while Eärwen looks at him concerned. His mistakes, his choice… in a family that says nothing, he is almost glad for this secret, twisted around his throat, because it is a secret he will never know how to explain.

He thinks about the once again growing Feanorian quarter of the city, and tells himself that this is the way that things must be. He shall be king, shall purge his rooms of the cursed gifts.

Nerdanel doesn't return when Feanor does. Arafinwë is more grateful for that than he thinks he should be.

His wife says nothing when the bed he comes from isn't just someone that reminds him of Feanor. His advisors say nothing when he wears a golden crown, adorned with rubies, and the people say nothing when he sets it on Feanor's head, his brother's chin held high as he is declared king.

Perhaps they should, but no one would dare risk the king's ire, and it is, after all, the truth that everyone has always known, a long held tradition.