Trigger warning: implied marital rape.
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He cornered her after her father died, so quickly that Míriel is still left to reel. She has no friends and allies in Armenelos who can not be bought, she sees, and any in other cities who might have proven true are too remote, too far away to help her. He cornered her, she was left friendless. He declared that Míriel, daughter of Tar-Palantir, was incompetent to rule, and that he, as the old king's closest male heir, was the only choice to rule. Calion, called Pharazôn in the Adûnaic tongue, proposed to usurp the throne of the rightful queen, Tar-Míriel, and no one lifted a finger to defend her. Then, he proposed to usurp her body, and no one batted an eye.
So it is the day of the wedding of Ar-Pharazôn to his unwilling bride, Míriel, daughter of Tar-Palantir. The guests at their wedding feast all smile and laugh and behave as though this is a happy day, as though nothing as wrong. He calls her Zimraphel, a base name of a base tongue that she does not wish to have. He calls her by a name she does not want, and no one cares.
But if there is anything Míriel, Tar-Míriel had learned in the past few weeks, it is that no one cares what she wants. She was always a quiet child, and was inclined to quietness as a woman grown, but now she sees that the people assume that she has no independent thought in her head. She can have her will run roughshod over and no one will care, for she never voiced them, and they never cared—they thought her vapid and mindless in her silence, and do not care for the wishes of a vapid woman.
Her cousin looks at her, Ar-Pharazôn to the world, Calion in her head. This is the only defiance she is allowed, to call him by the true name he rejected, if he will not call her by hers. Míriel has felt his eyes on her since they were children, grasping and hungry—he had come to her when they were young, singing praises of her beauty and she had felt cold under his eyes, and had felt cold under them ever since.
The wedding feast is stifling and dizzying, but when it's past Míriel wishes it would last forever, for what occurs in the dark behind closed doors is cold and clammy and vile, unwelcome beyond all of Míriel's ability to articulate, but Calion does not care for his bride's objections, and his strength outweighs hers by far.
Finally it is over. Calion is not one for drinking—it almost would have been a relief if he had been; he might have left her be sooner—but eventually even he must succumb to exhaustion, and roll over to the other side of the bed, in deep, untroubled slumber. Míriel lies awake, wishing she could peel her skin away like a snake ready to molt, and suspecting that even that would not make her feel as the mistress of herself again, after control and free will were stolen from her.
She is trapped.
This is all wrong.
This was to be the day of her coronation.
Míriel tries to will herself to believe that this is a dream, and that she will wake to a world where Tar-Palantir surrendered his scepter still living as did the Kings of old. Then, Calion tosses in his sleep next to her, and Míriel believes in dreams no longer. She picks at her skin listlessly, and turns her ears to the rain pattering on the window, the only voice she ever wishes to hear again.