Hello guys, gals and non-binary pals!

Back again with a new chapter!

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Be advised, though, I've warned you that angst was coming ... and here it is.

24. A blast from the past

It was getting late.

The moon had risen late in the evening, glimmering in a faint silver glow, climbing steadily higher and higher with every passing hour, its light growing ever stronger and stronger until it was a ball of silver light shining down upon the palace by the sea. But that point in time had been hours ago and by now the moon was long past its zenith, sinking deeper and deeper, ever closer towards that distant point to the west where the sky and the sea met at the horizon. Soon enough, one wouldn't even be able to call it late anymore … that's how late it was by now. Despite that, the gala thrown in honour of the arrival of the king and queen of Rohan seemed to drag on and on and on, with not an end in sight.

Éomer tried to stifle yet another yawn, but failing miserably, while he took another sip of his glass of apple cider – he had abandoned the wine quite some hours ago, and needed to take only one apprehensive look at the different variants of "beer" and "ale" they offered at this party, to immediately switch to non-alcoholic drinks. Well, Dol Amroth may produce the best wines in all of the South, but apart from that, their choice of other alcoholic products was pitiful at best, and the king of the Riddermark had decided that it just wouldn't be worth it to risk a hangover for sub-par booze. Also, he was well aware that getting helplessly drunk probably wouldn't make too great of a first impression, neither for him as a king nor for him as a new in-law, and so he had chosen to cut back on his liquid enjoyment of the South to spare himself and his wife the embarrassment.

Speaking of that wife of his, Lothíriel was currently standing next to him, holding on to a glass of wine that she had been nursing for half an hour now – clearly, she was trying to cut back on that booze, too, to avoid having to nurse a hangover of her own in the morning or, perhaps, she only wished to keep a cool head so she could remain in control of the situation – while just finishing off a conversation with an elderly couple who had been reminiscing about her mother and her family and the whole damn family tree for the better part of an hour. And damn, he really had to give to her, because she was holding it together a lot better than he was. Watching her straighten her shoulders to take a deep breath and then to release it again, he knew she had just yawned without even having to open her fucking mouth; instead, she just went back to smiling and nodding as she said her goodbyes to the elderly couple.

'You look tired, wife.', he murmured then when she turned to him again, the smile on her lips just a little more exhausted than usual, the smile just a little more honest now. She was clearly surprised – though not too surprised – that he had seen right through her facade of socially mandated hospitality and Southern charm, but then again, they had been married for almost a year now, and that would have been more than enough time even for an ordinary man to pick up on the various little cues her body made to betray the true inner feelings she sought to hide from the world. Smiling at him with warm tenderness then, he could tell that she appreciated him taking care of her like that, even though she still struggled with accepting that care.

'Well, it's late, husband.', she simply said then as she stepped closer to him – and she didn't really put it into words then, but unspoken between them went the joint decision that they both had had enough of Southern hospitality for one night; they had done their duties and paid their respects, now it was time for rest. Éomer smiled at the thought of going to bed with his wife – and not only because these Southern beds were just so fucking unbelievably soft and comfy – but now there was no wantonness in that smile. It was just something he had realised about himself, and about them, quite early on in their relationship: he simply loved sleeping next to her, to be able to hold her and feel her – somehow it calmed him and gave him some of the best sleep he'd had in years, and remembering the look of deep rest on her face in the mornings, he knew she felt the same way.

Nodding in agreement, they both downed the contents of their glasses in one gulp then, handing them off to a servant passing by with a tray, ready to slink away from the party thrown in their honour, when they were approached by a gentleman – and somehow that immediately thwarted their plans of sneaking away from the party. Now, he was sure that his queen could have easily gotten them out of that awkward position, but for some reason his wife didn't react as she usually would have done – no polite smiles, no formal curtsey, no instinctual small talk, no trick up her non-existing sleeves that would have allowed them to call it a night.

Instead she only froze in response, and that was more than just a little unusual, because his queen was just not a lady who would forgot her manners – but more than that … she seemed uncomfortable, no, alarmed even, and that was curious indeed. Looking at the nobleman that had approached them, Éomer tried to figure out what it was about him that had alarmed so, but there was … nothing – only a young man in fine clothing, with a clean-shaven pleasant visage and dark hair slicked back, and a charming smile on his lips. So what was it exactly that unsettled her so? What was it about this seemingly unremarkable nobleman that had managed to turn his wife from his queen into a frightened little girl again?

'Your Highness.', the gentleman spoke then, addressing the king with a practised tongue, bowing low enough – though not nearly low enough to be sure – for it to appear almost insincere, though Éomer ignored that possible slight and simply nodded in response, before the man turned to Lothíriel.

'Your Grace.', the nobleman crooned as he bowed low once more but not without taking the liberty of taking the queen's hand to try and kiss the back of it – a gesture Éomer himself had once made with regard to his wife, and perhaps, it was that fact exactly that had him now seethe with feelings of jealousy once more. Lothíriel, or so it would appear, seemed to have her own reservations as she regarded the gentleman with watchful eyes and resisted the kiss on the back of her hand just long enough for him and the man to notice, but then she relented and the moment of resistance was gone and she was all smiles and hospitality again as she allowed the nobleman to blow a kiss onto the back of her hand.

'My lord Agarwaen, what an unexpected – ', his wife had just meant to start with one of the usual small-talk openings, when this nobleman rose to his full height again and smiled pompously and proceeded to rudely interrupt his queen with the air of a man who was quite used to dominating a conversation (and apparently any other interaction he had with other people), 'I-is it your Grace or is it my Lady? I really don't know what's what with these Northern titles!'

Alright, Éomer had changed his mind; nope, he was not liking this fucker one bit.

However, while the king of the Riddermark was more or less secretly seething with anger on the inside, his queen took the slight with a little more composure (she was far too well trained and bred to ever let her feelings get the better of herself in public), though he did not doubt that beneath her poise his wife was just as outraged as he was, and perhaps that was also the reason then that his queen just could not help it and simply had to fire back a taunting quip of her own, 'Lothíriel Queen would be the exact title – but I can understand your confusion, my lord, with addressing a woman of greater power.'

'Of course, if you say so.', the nobleman only chuckled derisively then, and if he had noticed the mocking tone and phrasing in her remark, he did not show it – or at least, he did not show it in any way that Éomer would have picked up on it. However, stealing a glance over to his wife and seeing the small, triumphant smile on her lips, he understood instinctively that she had just scored a point in this game of trading hidden barbs, and the gentleman before them understood that too, and, no doubt, was already thinking of how to repay her for this slight.

'But shame on me! Here I am, messing around with titles and yet I haven't even congratulated you on your auspicious wedding. Forgive my forgetfulness, but it does seem to slip one's mind, now that you're up there far away in the rustic North.', the gentleman crooned then, feigning shock and remorse to such an extent that even Éomer could tell that the nobleman was secretly taunting Lothíriel by mocking both of them, and in particular, by laughing at the Riddermark and its king. But while the Horse-lord was fighting the ever-growing urge to show that pompous Southern arse just how rustic that North could really be, the queen seemed perfectly unfazed by the sneering jabs, and indeed only smiled leniently to signal her forgiveness for the mistake the nobleman claimed to have made by accident, though he knew his wife well enough to know that she was not so forgiving when it came to the very intentional way in which this gentleman had dared slight her.

'Forgive me, my lady. Congratulations on your well-earned union.', the nobleman started anew, and he just would not ease up on the amounts of scorn he was pouring on her and her marriage – because Éomer was under no illusions here; he knew that like this vain, arrogant peacock here, most Southerners did not have a very high opinion of the North and its people, citing a so-called lack of manners and their strict adherence to honour and honesty as their main source of contempt. So, yeah, Éomer understood quite well that this pompous arse was not really congratulating his wife here, but rather mocking her with the husband she had been handed to – because even if that husband was a king, he was still a Northerner, and for this Southerner at least, that seemed to make all the difference between a man and a barbarian.

Lothíriel, however, kept on smiling, although she probably understood the true meaning of the nobleman's words even better than he did. And even though there was indeed that well-known facet in her smile that told him that she understood very well when someone was trying to laugh in her face, there was also a rare honesty to that smile – almost as if she truly felt that her barbarian king was a good catch indeed. And the self-assured nature of her smile was enough to ease his anger and to boost his own confidence, chasing away the nagging self-doubts that had plagued him ever since they had come to the South. Because if his queen thought him worthy enough to be her king, then what the fuck did it really matter what those bloody court cringers thought?

However, it was clear to see that Éomer was not the only one who noticed that the mockery this nobleman tried to make of their marriage surely missed the fucking mark there, and perhaps it was because of that exactly that the lord then redirected his line of mockery, and rather than laugh at her for having been given to a husband far beneath her (in manners at least, even if not in title and status), he now chose to attack the one weakness they still had left, 'It's a shame though that we cannot yet congratulate you on a little foal. But I'm sure all that hard work will eventually pay off.'

'So generous of you to say, my lord.', his queen responded then, the smile on her lips not wavering for a second, even while her jaws tightened and her eyes squinted slightly, and seeing her swallow hard, Éomer understood very well how much this low blow had truly wounded her. Even with the crazy contingency plan they had hatched, the childlessness of their marriage was still an issue that weighed heavily on his wife. Of course, his queen would never admit to such self-doubts in public, but her king knew quite well that his wife placed most of the blame for their childlessness on herself – as these Southern women were wont and taught to do – and this scheming bastard knew only too well how to use that against her. But the pompous peacock before them had not taken into account that his wife was more than just a queen, and before she had worn a crown, she had been a lady of the Southern courts and had worn their intrigue on her sleeves like a badge of honour, 'Such good wishes from you, my lord, will do wonders, I'm sure – and let me extend my good wishes to you as well, my dear lord Agarwaen, as we've all been aware of your own hard work in such regards.'

In the awkward silence that followed, Éomer was glad for the glass of wine he had decided to drink despite his earlier decision to quit drinking for the rest of the night, because now at least he had a means of hiding that dangerously loud chuckle that otherwise would have threatened to make itself shamefully known. The nobleman for his part was surprisingly stunned and blushed scarlet-red with embarrassment, and not just because the lady before him dared to reciprocate taunting jab with taunting jab, but also because he was apparently genuinely stung by the insinuation that he wasn't man enough to produce a child – a very dangerous and very humiliating blow to any man's honour, and a blow that this Southerner surely wouldn't let go unpunished.

'Yes, well, my first wife wasn't very accommodating in that area – so I sent her back to her family. My new wife, I'm sure, will be more than just up to fulfilling her wifely duty.', the nobleman crooned then, lifting his own glass of wine that seemed to have appeared out of thin air in a toast to himself, congratulating himself on his own obnoxious, heartless cleverness, daring to wink at his queen with leering arrogance. It was quite clear to Éomer, and he did not doubt that Lothíriel was even more aware of that insinuation, that for this Southern nobleman a childless marriage was apparently, obviously, a woman's fault, and that not even a queen would be spared the shameful fate of being divorced and sent back to her family if she so failed to produce a child.

Now, of course, the king had made it abundantly clear to his wife and queen, and more than just once, that he would never even consider such a thing, given that he had suspected more than a few times that this fear was truly at the heart of her crazy contingency plan, even if she had never truly admitted to it. But of course he was still a king and he had a duty to his people and his country in more than just one way, and even if their contingency plan could work out and avert an immediate crisis, it could just as well raise a whole new set of problems – not that he found it very likely that they would even have need to put that contingency plan into practice, but he allowed her to hold on to that hopeful safety net because … because it broke his heart to see her heart break. And now it simultaneously fucking pissed him off that this arrogant arsehole dared to hurt his wife like that, but before he had any chance to let his quick temper get the better of him, his queen had already jumped in then to salvage what little victory she could from the low blow she had been dealt with.

'Well, I can only hope your efforts will be more fruitful this time around.', his queen offered then, amicably enough, or so it would seem, because despite her polite words and polite smiles, she was not done with dealing out low blows of her own, intent on making her point abundantly clear that this nobleman wouldn't be able to blame any woman for his lack of quality, and so she added with a seemingly sympathetic tone, 'I can't imagine the shame if the same misfortune would befall your house a second time.'

At that the nobleman only laughed, albeit with quite a pained note it, trying to cover up the fact that the queen before him had landed yet another successful jab at him, putting yet another chink in his armour as the all-controlling, self-assured lord he liked to present himself as, but because he failed so miserably at swallowing that slight with anything that resembled honour, he merely sought to save his pride the only way an aristocrat like him knew how to do – by putting down others who were even less able to defend themselves, 'Well, if not, I can always send her back where I found her and find myself another one. I mean, what else are you supposed to do with a woman who doesn't do as she's told?'

Laughing whole-heartedly at his own abysmal joke, the nobleman proceeded to smile and wink at Éomer then, as though looking for another man of status that would surely agree with him. The king of the Riddermark, however, only stared him down with an icy silence, shaking his head as if to say No, dude, before he returned to his glass of wine, trying to wash down the sleazy, dishonourable demeanour and behaviour of this man.

'Oh, I don't know – kill her, perhaps?'

Éomer nearly choked then at his queen's words – because while he had been trying to drink away the annoyance of their opponent, his wife had been biting her time before she went back in for the kill, and, Béma save him!, she left none alive in her wake. The lord meanwhile had his gaze flit nervously across the room, as if to make sure that no one had heard her dangerously rude quip, and when he turned back to her, there was a sudden menace in his eyes that seemed fairly over the top for a conversation that until now had been about childless marriages – or so it would seem.

'Almost two years and you're still spewing the same old, boring gossip. Perhaps you should use your time up there for more useful business … that would be more befitting a lady.', the lord said then, chuckling lowly but there was no real humour in that laugh, but Éomer was still more confused than alarmed or angry at this point, part of him still wondering and helplessly trying to figure out when he had missed the point exactly where the tone of this conversation had turned from stiffly polite and mockingly spiteful to fucking menacing. Of course, it had been less than friendly before (sometimes even nonsensical at times, successfully weirding him out) but now the vibe was positively threatening.

'My lord, at least I'm still alive to tell the same old, boring gossip – others have not been so lucky.', Lothíriel countered just as harshly then, her words dripping with poison, her eyes burning with hatred and her smile vanished into a thin line of her lips, so sharp she could have easily cut somebody's throat with it, 'And what I use my time on, is no business of yours until I make it so.'

'How charming, really – but perhaps, my lady, you should leave the demonstrations of power to the powerful … or things could get very ugly.'

It all happened very quickly then. The lord had hardly finished his sentence, hardly gotten the words out, when Éomer was already taking a threatening step towards him, and the nobleman actually had the good sense to shrink back for a moment. In that intense situation, the king, surely, would have not stopped at only a gesture of warning or threat, had it not been for his wife who only had to put the back of of her right hand against her husband's chest, and, of course, such a small move would not have been able to hold back a seasoned warrior-king such as him, but it was the meaning of the gesture that made all the difference in the world, and it was enough to have him calm down again – or at least, enough for him to not sent that lord flying across the fucking ball room.

'I-I will not be threatened in this manner, do you hear me, woman?!', the nobleman hissed then – now that he wasn't afraid anymore that he would be beaten into a bloody pulp, now that he had regained much of his former arrogance and viciousness, and though he spoke low enough for no one around them to notice the stalemate between them, his words had lost nothing of their bite, 'You had better put a leash on that damned dog of yours.'

'I'll keep no man on a leash, but I'll keep you safe from my husband … for now.', the queen countered then, and her voice was cold and calm and calculated, a stark contrast to the growling curses her king next to her whispered under his breath at being called a dog. The queen fixed the nobleman with a deadly glare as she took one step towards him, close enough to step into his personal space, and when she spoke again, there was absolutely no mistaking the truth behind her words or the meaning implied in them, 'You should have a care who you're threatening: I am a queen and I need no man to handle my business for me.'

'Very well then. I'll take my leave.', the lord snorted contemptuously, fixing his appearance to have it appear as though he were in charge of this situation, but he was a man beaten and he knew it, though he was not yet broken and the danger of that knowledge was simmering between the three of them. With a last smug, menacing smile, the lord bowed down low, low enough for it to showcase all the contempt and mockery he had for them, and then he was gone, leaving behind a last jab and a sense of foreboding, 'Your Highness. Lothíriel … Queen.'

Afterwards there was a moment of silence and that moment stretched out. At first, neither of them dared to move. All around them the guests and lord and ladies went on laughing and drinking, gentlemen and noble folks that grinned and gossiped, servants that moved quietly across the ball room – all around them life moved on without missing a beat, without even so much as noticing the two figures that stood frozen in the middle of the great hall.

Éomer was the first to move; he seemed to be waking from his stupor as if waking from a bad dream, with the sensation from before still vaguely clinging to him. With the quick eye of the warrior he assessed the room, to make sure that no one had witnessed their strange encounter or saw just how shaken it had left them. When the king was positive that no one had noticed the volatile conversation they had just had, he turned to his queen, but to his dismay he found that, unlike him, she had not yet woken from her shock.

Standing still as a tree frozen in ice, Lothíriel seemed almost cold to the touch, though there was fire in her still. And at first, the king thought that she was simply angered because she had been partially outmanoeuvred in this weird game of court intrigue, infuriated even by having been so blatantly disrespected, challenged even, by a fellow nobleman, but then he became aware of her obvious distress, the way her eyes seemed to dart from person to person, as though looking for someone, but at the same time afraid to find what she was looking for. It reminded him so much of that first time when he had taken her down to the stables, the way she had panicked, the way she had trembled, the way she had gone rigid with fear.

Éomer frowned with confusion as he turned to his queen to find her petrified still and even as he whispered her name she seemed not to hear him, she seemed as though her mind were a million miles away, and it was only when he touched her cheek – careful, so as not to frighten her – that she woke from her frozen state. With a heavy sigh she returned to him then, blinking rapidly, trying to remember where she was or who she was, looking about as if trying to get her bearings, and the overwhelming sense of helpless exhaustion that seemed to pour straight out of her was simply … heartbreaking.

And perhaps it even was his own response to her that made him so slow to react then, because before he'd even realised it, she tried to push past him, trying to escape the situation, trying to run away again – but he wouldn't let her, and it was only thanks to his instinctual reflexes that he even managed to stop her. His hand shot out, grabbing her wrist, holding her back, and he had to give to her, based on her looks one just wouldn't expect her to be as strong or agile as she could be; but the way her hand trembled in his hand, made him almost release her again, not wanting to force her to do anything she wasn't ready to do yet. But he needed answers, and even if she squirmed in his grasp like fish on a hook, trying to flee, trying to avoid the fallout from this strange encounter, trying to hide from him and his piercing look, not wanting to hear the questions she knew he would be asking – even so, he couldn't just let her go.

'Lothíriel, w-what's going on? Who – who was that?', he whispered under his breath then, when she had given up her resistance at last and instead relaxed her whole bodyweight against him, with her head tucked under his chin and her face pressed against his chest – because what better place was there to hide from the world? And though he had to wait a long, long time for her to answer, he waited patiently for it, because he knew that in time, when she was ready for it, that she would open up to him, and indeed, soon enough, he heard her speak, her voice, though quiet in tone, still vibrating through him like a wave of sadness.

'Someone I unfortunately got to know at the end of the war.', she started then slowly, hesitantly even, the last twitches of resistance going through her body, her shoulders tensing as she buried her face even deeper into his chest, trying to savour the comfort she had always come to find there, before her resistance crumbled at last, and with a sigh her shoulders went slack and a snivelling sound escaped her, and only then could she bring herself to continue, 'Or rather, my friends got to know him, and sadly … sadly they didn't live to tell the tale.'

For a moment then the words hung between them like cloud of foggy confusion, and he was sure she could feel the questions running through his head still, and he was sure she could also feel the exact moment when his mind connected the bits and pieces of information he had been given (and not just because the glass of wine from before crashed loudly to the floor or because the growling anger emanating from him were enough to draw more than a few pair of eyes around them), because her hands grabbed the front of his shirt, forming into tiny little fists – fists that would probably not be able to offer much in opposition to his anger. But she held on to him all the same; and when she looked up at him, there were tears forming in those sea-blue eyes, eyes that widened in fear and shock, and he could imagine so very well what she was seeing.

He had told her before what the blood and guts and terror of the battlefield could do to a man, what they turned him into; he had told her all of that, all those shameful moments when he had been all bloodlust and all wrath, those moments during the war when killing had been the only thing on his mind, he had told it all in the dead of the night, under the cover of darkness, in the warm embrace of her arms, when he had been sure of her acceptance – but knowing was not seeing, and now … now she saw it all, and surely now she understood, now she understand what kind of man he was. And yet … and yet she held on to him still.

No, he thought, forcing his gaze away from her understanding eyes; no, he thought, ignoring the acceptance in her gaze in favour of the rage he felt; no, he thought, dismissing the plea in her eyes, and he was already trying to push past her to storm after the nobleman to do … to do what had to be done. But she was right there with him, pushing against him with all the feeble might that she had; and surely she had to understand that she had no chance of holding him back by force – perhaps that was why she began to whisper to him in the language of his home, words of comfort, words of peace, words of calm and soothing, and that got through to him at last … or at least, enough for him to listen to her, if not to reason.

'Don't do that. Don't go there. Stay with me.', she whispered to him quietly, pleadingly, and the strong eyes he had loved so much had turned to beggars, humbling themselves before him to return to her and … and he wanted nothing more than to give in – but the fire was still raging within him, and not even the tears in her eyes would be able to quench it.

'You want me to let that piece of shit get away with that?!', he hissed back under his breath, confusion warring with anger, and he was sure she could hear that in his voice. Perhaps it was that confusion in his voice that propelled her into action then, leading her to believe that it would make him more open to her attempts at soothing his anger – well, it didn't, but he allowed her to grab his hand and to pull him along nonetheless. His queen led him through the crowds of people, and the urgency of her step had him scramble to actually keep up with her. He was faintly aware of the amused looks some people threw at them as they brushed past them and he was sure they were waving them off as merely another scandalous newly-wed couple sneaking off for more scandalous business.

If fucking only, he thought bitterly.

His queen led him straight out of the banquet hall and down an empty hallway before she pushed open a random door and pulled him into the room – only then did she let go of his hand. Immediately, he felt the loss of her touch keenly (like he always did), but for a change he even welcomed the chill that gripped him in the absence of her touch, helping him to clear his mind at least temporarily from the mindfuck that was his anger. Looking for anything to distract himself, Éomer assessed the room they were currently in with the quick eye of the warrior. The room was fairly big and, judging by the shelves of books and scrolls and the dust on it, it must have been used as a study until recently, but for now the room had been abandoned as no candles were lit and no fire burned in the hearth, and the only source of light was the glow of the moon shining through the big, coloured glass windows, painting the floor in colours of silver and pink and blue.

A sound to his right pulled him out of his assessment and had him alarmed for a moment, his muscles already working on pure instinct, but when he turned towards the noise he only found his wife and queen. Lothíriel had her back towards him; she leaned against a table, both her arms behind her back, used to support her weight, and the way that she did it, had her shoulders pulled up high and tense. It was that position and the cut of her shoulder-free dress that had her back almost entirely bare and open to him now, and when she put her head in her neck and sighed to relieve some of the tension of the situation, he felt the familiar itch in his fingers that wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch her bare skin and help her, and them, find some relief for that tension.

But then he remembered the reason they were here in this secluded wing and this forgotten room in the middle of the night and that their secrets – as of yet – were only illuminated by the light of the moon shining down upon them. He moved towards her then, slowly, carefully, so as not to spook her with any loud, abrupt movements – he was sure, she was just as much on edge as he was at the moment – and even though she did not move in any way, she did take notice of him, as she kept her watchful eyes steadily fixed on him, and in that moment she reminded him so much of those wild herds of horses that would not move for fear of the chase he might give them, though they were always ready to bolt at the slightest perceived threat. Yet, there was something else in her gaze, too, something almost like shame, and he wondered then why exactly she had pulled him away from that fight, why she had dragged him all the way down here – somehow, her not wanting to cause a scene just wasn't good enough as a reason for him.

'Tell me then.', he had stopped a few feet away from her, to give her enough space to retreat if she so desired it, but his voice was firm, demanding even, and surely, she had to sense the need in him to get the answers she always sought to hide from him?

'Tell you what?'

'Don't fuck with me, Lothíriel. I'm not in the mood for that and we're both too exhausted for your games right now.', he growled, taking a step closer towards her, emphasising just how fucking done he was with all of those mind games and subtle threats and court intrigues and hidden insults; he was just too damn tired to be lied to now, too tired to be kept in the dark any longer; he simply needed answers and he needed them now, 'I know you better than you think, and you and I both know that you wouldn't just let something like that go. You're planning something and I want to know what it is.'

In the long pause that followed his wife and queen regarded him with quiet but intense eyes, and as she tilted her head to the side, proceeding to look him up and down, slowly, as though she were seeing him for very first time, he could practically see the thoughts running through her head. She looked at him with the eyes of a person that currently weighed the advantages and disadvantages of opening herself up to another person, and the tired look in her eyes told him that she had not miscalculated very often, but when she had, she had suffered greatly for it in the past. He knew she was not a person to easily trust somebody else, and that there were few enough people who had ever enjoyed her unconditional trust, but when she looked up and met his gaze, he saw in her eyes the determination to trust him – but still, even as she nodded slowly, she looked away again.

'I told you that my father wouldn't punish him and his men back then because it would have shattered the good look of the brave, heroic Dol Amrothian knight. Well, let's just say I've worked to find a way around that ever since.', she started then slowly, folding her arms in front of her chest, her hands absent-mindedly rubbing her upper arms, and it was just such a subconscious move, but he could tell that she was trying to shield herself from more than just the cold, and that the quick smile on her lips was more of a front than any real sign of happiness.

'I … I've asked my cousin Faramir – the newly-appointed Prince of Ithilien – to grant Lord Agarwaen and his men titles and estates in his princedom.', she began to explain then, and the hard smile on her lips stood in stark contrast to the shock and confusion that claimed his features, but he had to give to her, she understood instantly the reasons for his apprehension, and she jumped in without judging him for his ignorance in these matters and the way things were done here in the South, 'Titles and estates that would have them – legally – fall under Ithilien's jurisdiction and that of its Prince. A jurisdiction which so happens to take ruthless actions against criminals, even if those criminals are noblemen or heroes of war. An update to a pre-existing law that the Prince and his shieldmaiden wife will be very enthusiastic in putting into practice … once the new lords will present themselves before their new court.'

'Éowyn knew about this? Faramir knew?'

'Of course, they knew – how else do you think I could have accomplished my goal?!', she snapped back then, as though in that moment it simply became too much for her to slow down to his level, and something in him twitched back from the viciousness of that momentary lapse. He had never before seen that snobbish Southern personality in her, that mindset that took one good look at him and found him lacking in every aspect, that type of person that thought quickly and thought cruelly, not minding the victims and damages left in one's wake – or perhaps, she had just not let him see that part of herself, or perhaps, he simply had not wanted to believe her capable of such a heartless way of thinking.

Whatever the reasons for it, he could not hide the shock that gripped him at her revelation, and at the same time he had to admit to the sting of bitterness he felt that, while she had confided in Éowyn and Faramir, she had not trusted him enough to let him in on her plan, and he could not pretend that he did not feel hurt by that realisation. Taking a step back, he swallowed hard, trying to process the new things he had learned about her and what they meant for them. He would not have thought her capable of such cruelty, but here she stood, chin held up high, eyes squinted in barely veiled hatred as she thought of the revenge she would take, and he came to understand at last that he was only one simple man from a long list of people who had all underestimated her, and the slap of reality he had just received was harder to bear than he would have liked it to be.

'You've planned this, from the beginning.', he suspected then, and with his tongue feeling heavy and tired, the words only came out slowly and awkwardly, but they came out all the same, though his mind still raced to try and keep up with the truths he just now seemed to stumble over, 'My sister's marriage – our marriage – '

'I've been planning this ever since my father denied me justice!', she cried out then, raising her voice for the very first time as she threw her hands up in the air, and one could practically feel the tension fall off of her as she bared her dark secret, before she stepped up to him, her finger pointing at him like a blade as her voice turned to a hiss and she regarded him with furiously squinted eyes, 'A plan two years in the making, a plan that depends on the cooperation of many partners – and you very nearly fucked it all up tonight.'

Éomer flinched back from the harshness of her words, shocked at the amount of anger directed at him. Before he could have easily handled her fury, before, when it had not been directed at him but at the men that had wronged her and her friends – but now, the way she was looking at him now? Now her anger was with him, and he wondered then, briefly – before he forced his thoughts to stop going down that road – how far she would truly go to see her plans fulfilled and, would she even spare a thought at all to the affection they had for each other, if she so much as suspected him to stand between her and her revenge?

'Go on, say it then – whatever it is you want to say.', he heard her say then, and though her voice sounded a lot more tired now – as if all her pent-up anger had left her with her revelation, leaving her weak and exhausted – it was still enough to pull him out of his increasingly maddening stream of thoughts. Looking up he saw her standing there, head held high, jaws clenched in, eyes hardening, and he began to understand what she actually meant with her words, and when he did, he realised that the hard emotion in her eyes was not so much anger as it was fear. Before him stood a woman who had opened up to him the deepest, darkest parts of herself, and now she looked at him with frightened eyes, desperately clinging to defiance out of a need for self-preservation, and … and just daring him love her despite all the ugliness she had shown him tonight, and yet fully expecting him to reject her, mentally preparing herself for the dismissal she was sure would come.

But she would have no need to fear that, Éomer thought tenderly as he took a step towards her, speaking as he went, 'What do you want me to say? To tell you to stop? That revenge is wrong?', he made a pause there, shaking his head, taking his time to really make feel the sincerity of his words, and judging from the way she audibly caught her breath, she really did believe him then, and at least a part of her tension from before seemed to fall off of her again, 'You should know me well enough by now to know that I won't do that. I'm not going to stop you.'

'So, you don't think I'm a bad person for doing that?', she asked then, her voice sounding almost hoarse, choked-up, almost breaking there at the end, and the desperate hope in her words, the naive longing to be absolved of her perceived sins (even if she pretended not to see them as sinful or wrong), had something constrict almost painfully in his chest and his eyes softened as he spoke to comfort her and to ease at least some of that bad conscience of hers.

'Good or bad is not the question. It's just like you said, love, war is war – it's not up to me to tell you which weapon to use.', he started, taking yet another step closer to her, and in her big blue eyes he could see the surprise so very well, because she probably would not have expected a Northerner to approve of her plan or the feelings of vengeance she secretly harboured. In a way, he could even understand her surprise; for Northerners, honour always demanded justice, but more often than not, for Northerners, honour was likened to pride – and if pride was wounded and honour besmirched, the end definitely justified the means, so long as that end was justice. But if honour and pride were seen as one and the same, it just wouldn't do to leave it to other people to achieve justice on your behalf – honour and pride demanded that too, as they were at the same time tied to one's reputation and yet also deeply personal. That would also explain why Éomer had been so eager before to practically lunge at the lord and demand his very own brand of justice – because, as he saw it, the injustice committed against a person under his protection was an attack on his own pride and honour, and the king of the Riddermark was indeed very passionate about demanding satisfaction for crimes and injustices committed against his own person or those under his protection. That, perhaps, would also explain why Éomer – while being perfectly fine with his queen's wish for vengeance – could not deny that he was critical towards it nonetheless, with regard to one detail at least. And perhaps another man, a man subtler man, would have been more … well, subtle in his criticism, but Éomer was Éomer, and he was a Northerner through and through, and subtlety had never been one of his strengths.

'But I do have to confess to a certain amount of disappointment here, and perhaps that's just the Northern barbarian in me talking when he should be quiet, but – forgive me, my lady, for speaking candidly – you Southerners always act so high and mighty when it comes to your honour and morals, but when you want your dirty work done, you leave it to other people to do it: you just never want to get your hands dirty.', he proclaimed, turning away as he prepared to make the offer he should never have needed to make in the first place (because the way he saw it, if he'd had his way, honour would have been long justified by now, with blood and guts and all the brutal finality that came with it), 'But I'm not from the South, and if honour and justice demand dirty work, I'll do it – '

He never came further than that, because while he had his back towards her, as he readied himself to make the big gesture of surrendering himself fully to her need for justice, he never saw her coming. She turned around so quickly, he barely caught the movement out of the corner of his eyes, and even if he did, he would not have had the time to react to it, because just like that she lunged at him, grabbed him by the arm and yanked him around. Now, normally, very few people would have been able to do that to a seasoned warrior like him; most people didn't have the strength or the stealth (or the guts) to do that – but she did. However, that feat had far less to do with any inexplicable surge of hidden strength and more to do with the unexpectedness of it all that overwhelmed and stunted him. Yet, it wasn't that exactly either that surprised him into defencelessness, it was what she did after she had managed to yank him around – she kissed him. Or rather, she pressed her lithe little body against his so tightly that it knocked the air right out of him, and what was left of air for him was stolen as she crashed her supple lips against his mouth opened in protest.

Indeed the sense of overwhelming surprise was so great that at first he could neither breathe nor protest, or do anything really other than be frozen in shock. He could feel her lips alright, he felt them most acutely as they moved almost frantically against his, successfully shutting him up, more or less trying to elicit a response from him, and though a detached part of his mind sensed what she was doing, he fell for it anyway. It must have been only a fraction of a second before he had caved in to her demands, but enough time had passed for her to growl in frustration and to bite his lower lip with no little amount of impatience. The pain shooting through him was like a jolt of lightening bringing him back to life, and with a growl of his own he responded in kind; with one hand in her neck, messing up her hair, ruining the symbolic ponytail, the other hand securely locked in the small of her back, he came after her, pulling her towards him, leaving no space between them as he kissed her back just as wildly and hungrily and thoughtlessly as she had.

This is wrong, a voice somewhere in the back of his mind whispered, and he could understand why. She had never been like this before. Of course, she had seduced him before; in the time since their first ride together she had grown bolder each time, confidently claiming her part of the pleasure, but never like this – she seemed to care little or nothing for him in that moment, or for herself for that matter. The voice in the back of his mind had been small, tentative at best, but it was enough to wake him from this hunger-induced automatism of displacement.

'Lothíriel, what are you doing?', he breathed out then when he had managed to pull her away from him far enough and long enough to actually talk, and he had to give it to her, he had to used quite a bit of strength to keep her from lunging at him again (or to keep himself from pulling her towards him again), and he was sure that, in the morning, dark marks on her arms would serve as a vivid reminder of this night. Frowning then, his queen looked at him as though confused why he would refuse her, as though confused by his very confusion, but then her eyes widened in a second of clarification and in her gaze he could see the exact moment she recognised the dangerous nature of her own actions – but then, the moment was gone, and with it she abandoned all thoughts of care or affection.

'Getting my hands dirty.', she simply answered then, as though it were the most normal and most logical thing in the whole wide world, and the brutal simplicity with which she said it stunned him into speechlessness. He frowned as he slowly but surely arrived at the conclusion that she was using him right now – using him to process whatever was going on in her mind, using him to release all that anger and frustration she always kept hidden so tightly and so barely beneath the surface, using him to make herself forget, to make herself feel better, even at the cost of him, even at the cost of herself.

A part of him flinched visibly at that realisation, recoiled even, just as he had recoiled at the revelation of her ice-cold plan, or the heartless determination with which she focused on her revenge while disregarding everything and everyone on her way to justice. It was as though he almost didn't know the woman in his arms at all. However, another part of him felt something oddly familiar about it, something that was dark and twisted and painfully natural, and he welcomed it. The king knew each and every soul dealt with their issues in their own way: Déor looked for women and wine and a good laugh, Éowyn apparently fell in love, and for him – he had always had his anger. For Lothíriel … well, it seemed the way she dealt with shit was through fucking.

Well, he could do that.

After that, he gave up all resistance, and with it all lofty claims of righteousness or fancy morals or any conduct of honour or pride – they were not the sweet honourable characters from the songs of bards, they were a man and a woman made of flesh, and she was his wife, and if she fell into the darkness, he would not hesitate for one moment to jump in right after her. So, that's what it felt like to love, and to be loved in return? No pain was painful enough if that pain was inflicted by the one you loved? How fucked up love could be.

Éomer surrendered then, loosening his grip on her arms and allowed her to kiss him again, allowed her to use her weight to push him backwards until he felt the edge of a table bore itself his arse. The almost violent nature of that act was enough to fire up his own needs and he responded in kind, as his hand went into her hair and yanked her head back – and he couldn't quite say if the moan falling from her lips was made of pleasure or of pain, or if for her it had become one and the same, but it mattered not as he latched his mouth onto her neck.

He would give her what she wanted … whatever she wanted …

In the dark and in the heat of passion there was a shove and a tug then, and as her arms went around his neck, his hands spanned her arse with enough leverage to sweep her off her feet, and before they knew what was where he had spun them around, knocked off the books and scrolls (with inkwell and quills and all crashing down to the ground), and planted her on the surface of the now empty table. And then they were all lips and tongues and teeth again that kissed and licked and bit and hurt and pleased; it was all hands that ripped at fabric, buttons that were unbuttoned, laces that were undone, clothes that were shoved up and down and out of place.

She wanted to forget, he understood; she wanted to vent her frustration, he understood; she wanted to feel better, he understood; and for some reason, she even wanted to be punished, and he even got that, even if he couldn't quite understand why. She wanted to be handled roughly, hoping it would take her mind off things she didn't want to think of, and a part of him, surely, wanted to simply give in to that primal urge, to help her forget in whatever way he could. And yet, as he saw her there, lying on the black table before him, disarrayed clothing and dishevelled hair – a far cry from the lady from before that had held her head high and had her heart in the right place – he knew he could never handle the woman he loved with anything other than care, and so he came to her not with the savage lust and wild abandon she had hoped for, but with tender intensity, and with a shudder she gave in to him then at last.

And although Éomer felt something pricking in the back of his neck, feeling as though there was something there, he didn't turn around; too focused on the woman in his arms and the weight of emotions drowning them to care much for anything else around them. However, even if he had cared to turn around, he would have been hard pressed to find anyone. But there in the darkness, peeking through the crack of the door, a man stood and smiled, and there was a smugness to that smile that could only belong to a man who believed to have it all figured out. And as he slithered away to leave the couple to their own demise, the light from the party at the end of the hallway was reflected in the ring in his ear and the gold shine of his tooth (befitting more a pirate than a prince really) – but only for a moment.

FUN FACT #1: Sorry for the angst, told ya it was coming, though?! Unfortunately, there will be a lot of angst coming your way in the next few chapters, but fear not, this story will definitely have a happy ending!

FUN FACT #2: I'm pretty lame when it comes giving my characters names, mostly I just choose names that fit their personalities and then choose a different language to sneakily cover it up. For example, Aida and Madlen are both Old English names for "helper" or Adaneth (Elphir's wife) is Sindarin Elvish for "wife or queen" and Agarwaen, the lord that hopefully will get his comeuppance, is Sindarin Elvish for "blood-stained". So, as you can see, I'm very unenthusiastic and uncreative in choosing names - I just manage to hide it very well! ;)

FUN FACT #3: I must confess I'm surprised every time how emotionally exhausting it is to write a chapter like this - mind you, in order to convey an emotion I need to feel that emotion, and in a chapter like this, when hurt and comfort are so close to each other, that's a real fucked up feeling ... good boost for writing, though! *laugh-cries manically*