Author's Note: This chapter only rated NC-17 for sex, violence, and disturbing imagery!!!!1 Ye hath been warnéd.

When Huan brought her back, he did a double-take, but a moment later he was awake enough to register the differences – slightly too slender, shorter, and of course wearing blue, though she carried a strange silver cloak under one arm. Half a second later he did a double-take again anyway, but for an entirely different reason, and even if she was – all that she was, there was a piece of him that felt a writhing of disappointment in his belly.

He watched her, didn’t take his eyes away for a moment. No one could have with eyes. He dismissed the thoughts as they came up, but they came anyway – the way her hair flowed in a silky river down her back, sleek and dark, made his fingers twitch. The curve of her slender neck to pale shoulder, the way she tossed her head in slightly impatient annoyance when he tried awkwardly to make conversation – even, in some ways, the slight disdain with which she regarded him, eyes demanding that he explain himself, Tyelko when he had no explanation.

Even after he had left her with Curufin, she followed him back, Huan padding at his heels, her eyes bright and watching him with disdain, executioner, magistrate and witness in one, the conviction already made. He didn’t like that; at least wanted the chance to argue his case, no matter how hopeless it might be. At least if he tried. Though he couldn’t think why it would matter.

Not if it changed nothing.

Curufin returned later, looking coldly angry, to inform Tyelko where she was being ‘kept.’ He considered going to her, but decided against it at last, though he wasn’t certain why. Impulse, perhaps; or the chance to deny the impulse that wanted to go to her.

*

He woke after midnight and slipped out of his room, down the hall. The moon had shrunk to nothing and no starlight pierced this far. It was eerie, almost, walking down the hall on quiet feet. He found her door and knocked, lightly, before opening it.

She was not asleep and the door opened a moment later. He stopped it closing with his shoulder, voice like gravel in his throat. “Wait. No.” She stepped back reluctantly, head tilted back, the candlelight flickering on her throat and gleaming in her hair.

“What do you want,” she asked, mouth a little stubborn line, and it was the easiest question he had ever answered, “You,” and he covered her mouth with his.

She didn’t fight, or not exactly – made a small sound of indignation and protest, her hands wrapping around his upper arms and squeezing painfully at the muscle, nails digging into the skin, but she didn’t say no.

He kissed her again, and this at least was familiar, slipping his tongue between her slightly parted lips and letting a thumb run lightly down the curve of her neck, rest in the hollow at the base. Her skin felt like silk. Her lips were warm and soft and his arms fit around her waist like they were supposed to be there. “Wait,” she said, sounding breathless, but he did not want to wait. Where had waiting ever gotten him? No; he’d always known, here and now was the only time there was.

He laid her down on the bed and kissed her neck, this time, feeling the beat of her heart under his mouth, and licked the skin, curious of the taste. She whimpered, squirmed slightly, and he felt her breathing on his own neck and her body moving under his. He pushed her shoulders down with both hands, slid a hand at last into sweet, thick dark hair and tangled it around his palm. “Wait,” she said again, but this time he replied, “No,” and suckled at her neck, and she moaned in a deep, low and husky way that was viscerally satisfying – and viscerally stirring. Her hands were gripping his shoulders now, wrapped around and kneading the muscle almost too hard, and it was almost reassuring to feel a little pain. He kissed down her neck, moved one hand from her hair down to her breasts, cupping one in his palm still clothed. She moved, again, a soft sound issuing from her mouth, and he slipped the nightdress off her shoulders and down rumpled around her waist, and her mouth opened but he didn’t look to see what she would say before taking her nipple in his mouth and sucking it the same way he had the skin of her neck, and then she didn’t say anything but a long and wordless sound. He felt his shoulders shudder and her hands clench; slid the dress further down, revealing more of her body.

He knew her body well in this place, the places to kiss to make her moan or cry out, the places he could touch to make her warm and wet and receptive. He ran a hand up the back of her thigh, brought her leg over his hip, and slid his hand between her legs. She made a panting noise and spoke again, “Tyelko,” but she was pulling the shirt over his shoulders too, off his head, pulling his body down and wrapping her tongue around one of his own nipples and with a moan his hand slipped and he brushed one finger against her entrance, felt the contours of her flesh and then the little secret dip like the beginning of deep water, and blood surged in his groin.

She was warm and slick and he wanted to touch her more, but he needed his hands to struggle free of his breeches. Her naked body lay before him, glistening between her legs, breasts moving with every breath she took, her mouth still fixed like a suckling babe drawing inarticulate, involuntary moans from him with every jolt of electric current from nipple to loins. He managed to get free of his breeches without pulling away and didn’t wait, he never wanted to wait again, but brought his head against her and thrust forward into the secret hollow his fingers had found, the embrace of her body.

She cried out, loudly and with pain, and her womanhood did clench around him like an embrace, once, twice, as her nails dug into his back and she bit down on his nipple to his own surprise and cry. He gripped her leg propped over his hip; pressed his fingers in a little too hard as he drew out and thrust back into her and she cried out again but with less pain, her head falling back to the pillows and mouth open in a slight ‘o’ and again.

The way she felt was everything he had ever thought, the way she arched so her belly pressed against his smooth and flat and muscular, her eyes glazed and half wild, the candlelight gleaming tinting her skin golden, and on him, the way she felt around him clasping and receiving every thrust with warm, wet, welcoming sweetness that he suddenly knew was all he had ever wanted-

And then her hand came up, suddenly, and struck his neck, fingers scrabbling for purchase and digging in at the soft part of his throat with terrible strength, and he looked at her and there was blood between her legs where he had been nestled so joyfully, bright and red and wrong, and her eyes were blue, not grey, and he met her disdainful eyes with horror in the moment before her hand clenched around his throat, choking, and she threw back her head and screamed.

He woke then, finally, and jerked half upright, panting, searing with heat and want and need, and hated her, hated both of them. It was still dark, and he thought about going to see Thingol’s daughter. Let her see his erection; let her be afraid, let her swallow her pride and perhaps she would kneel and take this hateful desire and swallow that as well-

There was nothing to break, and breaking his knuckles would do no good. He went out and paced instead, outside in the dark, half hoping that there would be some kind of assault so he could vent everything in the fight and blood and if he was unlucky, the pain. Hand clenched around his throat-

He fell asleep again eventually, against the side of the building, mostly upright. It was the thought – or memory, it seemed – of being strangled that finally drove out the desire, leaving it only cold and heavy, unfulfilled like dead weight below his stomach.

*

Huan found her and led her back to where his master waited, whined low in his throat. He himself was crouched over a brook, reading tracks in mud, when the horse stopped across the water from him, hooves squishing in the mud. He looked up, surprised, and then was on his feet, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

She leapt lightly down and landed on the surface of the mud. The water between them suddenly seemed too wide to cross, and to his horror when he raised his eyes to meet hers there were only empty sockets, pecked clean by carrion birds, blood streaking her face from the holes like tears.

He reached for her and kissed her mouth. Her dress tore at the slightest touch of his hands, but it was only cause for more horror – grey and mottled skin marred with purple bruises, and he drew her pliant, too soft body to him and asked, “Who did this to you?”

“You,” she said, in a horrible, raspy voice created by screaming, and then she dug one clawed hand into his gut and yanked, and the blood looked very red and bright on her skin, and where it touched the bruises they were washed away like it was water.

It seemed an apropos price to pay, and it didn’t really hurt.

*

He woke without a memory of the night, sitting in the courtyard and damp with dew. The sun was just rising and it stabbed under his eyelids. A mouse scurried by; he didn’t think before catching it with his dagger, pinning it to the flagstones, and watching its useless writhings as it died.

Today he would speak to Thingol’s daughter.