Author's Note: I decided this piece belonged here. Please heed the triggers.
Trigger Warnings: Slut Shaming, Third Degree Burns, and psychological warfare
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Yet More Lies
There were moments, fleeting moments, when Ar-Ephalazra furtively admitted that she found Tar-Mairon attractive. But mostly she found him terrible. He was cold, cruel, aloof, and intelligent. Oh, how his intellect was .frighteningly keen! Admittedly that had been the reason why she married the Dark Lord of Mordor. She needed a smart cunning husband, but the golden malicious porcelain doll flouncing about Numenor, was more so than she'd imagined, and perhaps if she had, if she had truly been capable of imagining she would have sought a husband elsewhere. But that ship had sailed when she was but a girl, and Tar-Maiorn had seen her tied to the Dark Lord-their little secret among so many lies.
She'd seen him, just once, the one to whom she'd truly pledged herself, and she bit her lip as every muscle in her body braced itself. She shrank in her chair, bowing over in fear, and fretfully she glanced toward the door, knowing she was alone-horribly, unequivocally alone.
That loneliness rose up to swallow her.
Like the wave in her visions, it was dark, blotted the sky from view, and it pulled her down deep into a dark suffocating place where there was no air, and nothing but fire in her lungs.
She was alone. Her father was lost, her mother for her entire life indisposed and forced to watch from the way-side the fall of the kingdom that had been hers. And then there was her husband, her frightening horrifying husband, whose evil knew no bounds, yet on whom she was frighteningly and pathetically dependent. His willingness to help her ended where his designs upon her throne began. Scant years she had left to defeat him, to send him back to Mordor, but he was embedded like a tick within Numenor's infrastructure, and refused to be removed.
It was rare moments like this when she could be alone, but all the time she felt lonely, and her chin crinkled as it overwhelmed her.
The door handle jiggled, and she sat straight, breath catching as the door to the entrance of their chamber opened. She dabbed at her eyes, and flipped open her poetry book, brushing aside the ribbon that marked her page, and she stood up just as he entered.
He was beautiful, in flowing robes of blue and cream, and his eyes were molten coins of pure cold, and her heart twittered in a fervent mix of attraction and anxiety. She approached the study's doorway as he entered. He slipped his cloak from his shoulders, and threw it over the back of a chair, as he passed the bed.
"Greetings."
Right before her he paused, too bright, too beautiful, and too terrible to look upon. He was sacrosanct and sacrilegious, so pure and under it all so corrupt, like a crystal fractured and glowing with a broken light.
For a moment he stood over her as an image at once defiled and perfect, and then he bent. His lips, almost too warm to be pleasant, grazed her cheek, and her insides clenched with a thrill of warmth and crippling loneliness.
It was too much.
Without thinking she grabbed him. She grabbed him, and her fingers curled into the pale blue of his robes, and she stared up at him, heart hammering, not wholly sure of her intentions nor what she wanted from him, only knowing that she did.
One elegant brow lifted expectantly, but her breath was stuck, and her tongue felt swollen, and she could do nothing but stare up at him until his hands encased her own and she uttered an ignoble squeak of protests as he forcibly levered her fingers from his cloths.
"Tar-Mairon." His eyes flicked from her hands, to meet her gaze, but after a brief pause when she said nothing else his eyes dropped once more.
"I take it your afternoon was not so-"
Something snapped inside. Something deep down she knew would prove her undoing. But for one brazen, selfish, horrific, and glorious minute Ar-Ephalazra succumbed. She pressed forward, and shoved her lips against his in a swift, clumsy, desperate kiss.
She felt him stiffen, no doubt reviling her touch, but caught in a maelstrom of madness she didn't care. She clung tighter, trying for to eek out comfort of any kind, but there was nothing. He was daunting, cold, and made or iron, and breathlessly she sagged against him, head falling to thump against his sternum. There Ar-Ephalazra buried her face in his robes; hot and cold, trembling all over, disgusted by her behaviour and so tired of being so afraid.
It was stupid. She was stupid.
And she stood limply wallowing in self-loathing.
Tar-Maiaron was still so stiff and tense, like stone, frighteningly and threateningly unmoving, and she feared what he might say or do.
His fingers squeezed hers, and then gently his arms slipped around her, and his golden hair was like the sun on her face as it cascaded from his shoulders in silken waves. The embrace she found herself wrapped in felt wondrously real, and for a moment she basked, choking on some bitter long buried sob, before closing her eyes and letting him lie.
Right then his illusions, his manipulations, and his deceptions was exactly what she needed in all their grandeur and warm amber radiance.
Broken light effervesced and his fingers found their way into her hair, gently playing with the ebony strands.
"I'm sorry." She should not have touched him so. He may have been her husband, but there was no love between them, only doom and sorrow.
"Whatever for?" He asked lightly.
Ar-Ephalazra's brow knit in worry. But when she made to pull away his hands in her hair became restrictive, and alarum pulsed cold along her spine.
His hands shifted, one slipping from the back of her head to curl under her chin, and his eyes bore into hers when at last they met. Gold; molten gold gleaming with cunning and cruel intellect held her riveted to the spot.
The world fell away, and there was only him, only that magnificent frightening molten gold.
"What means it to me, if Numenor's future queen wishes to renounce all propriety and prostitute herself before an enemy?"
She hissed angrily.
"That's-"
He shoved her back, impassively watching as she stumbled and regained her footing.
The gossamer light around him crackled, and the air fizzed with warning.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Her lower spine crunched as she backed into the desk, and her heart sputtered as he approached, ghastly and bright with fearsome light.
Tar-Mairon paused, a finger pressed thoughtfully against his chin.
"Yes?"
His voice was greased in feigned pleasance.
Wide-eyed Ar-Ephalazra watched him, scowling.
"I do not sell myself like a dockside harlot."
"Do you not?" His lips curled in a smirk, and he was moving again. There was something altogether threatening and predatory in the casual air around him. An unhurried menace, and she wished there was a place to run, but he was fast, with the door behind him, and nowhere left to go but the balcony she was trapped, and she didn't want him to see how afraid she truly was.
Boldly she met his gaze, biting down her tongue as the urge to look away become overwhelming.
"Need I remind you whose idea it was we should wed? Is that not prostitution Sweetling?"
Her insides churned.
"But then you didn't marry Tar-Mairon, did you?" His smile was sick with triumphant. "You married the Lord of Mordor."
"The Lord of Mordor, yes. I married him. I married him, and by extension I married the golden, gossamer, porcelain doll he parades about Numenor, and allows all and sundry to play with! I married him. It was my idea. But he was not forced to agree. He could have said 'no,' yet he didn't, but I'm a prostitute?" She uttered a humourless laugh. "My dear, your venom has lost its potency."
His eyes flickered, and he stood still, unmoving, and she smiled. She smiled at his anger. "I'm not a prostitute Sweetheart," she whispered, straightening to her full height. "I'm something far, far worse." His eyes narrowed and her smile softened into something she hoped resembled seductiveness. "I'm a politician."
"You think you're funny."
Her brows rose. "You think I am."
Tar-Mairon's smile twisted into something that might have been genuine, and scant inches were suddenly left between them. All was gold again, but as his fingers grazed her chin, and slipped over her lips, to trail down her throat, his gaze hardened, and the soft light about him sharpened. He yanked her forward as she flinched, and his breath ghosted over her mouth.
"Politicians are the most unscrupulous of whores, but you are right about one thing: I do find your pathetic attempts to give me sass amusing in their failure."
"You still need to think of better insults."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Tread lightly Little Lamb. Tread lightly, or thou may yet find thyself reduced to a lamb chop."
The threat was real enough, but before she could say more, his mouth met hers in a scalding kiss. In pain she whimpered against his lips, and he smiled, trailing a sweltering constellation from the corner of her mouth down her throat. He took his time lavishing cruel and twisted care upon her, in roses of blistering red, relishing every mewl of discomfort, and every jerk of pain, as she twitched in futile attempts to flee him made him smile.
Wetness touched his nose, and he kissed away her tears, smirking as her hands rose to his chest to push him back. He leaned in, forcing her to bend backward. He pressed one last kiss upon her lips and he made it salacious, and venomously sweet. His fingers curled in her hair, and the other slid to the small of her back, and he held her in scornful mockery of a lover's embrace, as pained little sobs and punched their way down his throat. He groaned, purring in delights, relishing every bleat of agony.
Slowly he pulled away, eyes glittering in fell mirth and bitter condescension, as he appraised his work. One of her hands flew to her mouth and the other to his chest as she unsuccessfully tried to put distance between them, but he had her helplessly caught.
His fingers smoothed through her hair, and with ginger care he lifted her face to look at him, and his eyes were almost compassionate. His touch seemed mournful, and his gaze remorseful, as he looked down her.
"Let me go-" Her words were shill and slurred as she spoke around stinging blisters, and the smile that lit his face was beautiful and soft.
"Don't ever touch me again." His dulcet tone was sharply at odds with the razor edge of threat in his voice. "Or far worse I will see you suffer for it."
Ar-Ephalazra nodded miserably. With tender care Tar-Mairon held her as she sobbed.
