One can do shameful things in daylight, too.

I'll have you put in chains.

--

“The point:” said Findekano to himself, out loud, two sharp, focusing stabs meant to slice less productive thoughts away from his plotting; though, as no one but him stood in the empty stone courtyard between tower wall and mountain face, no one replied, and he finished the rest of the thought in his head thus: Anyone who truly preferred Feanaro’s ‘system’ of ‘governance’ over his father’s deserved to live under it.

Most people who thought that perhaps they preferred Feanaro’s theoretical leadership over Nolofinwe’s actual and successful guardianship of Tirion (which had now been running for three decades as grandfather sat in exile and answered letters and pretended that was kingship) had not actually experienced it, they just thought he looked good doing it.

He did. Feanaro looked so good. He was terrible at leading. Findekano had been successfully breaking into Formenos for the past thirty years and he knew for a fact that anyone who preferred what was going on inside Formenos over what was going on in Tirion was insane. Findekano’s father had been tirelessly attending to matters of state, trade, communication, and education, and had picked up each of those responsibilities diligently and competently the second Finwe had dropped them to flounce off with his weirdly preferred eldest. Tirion still functioned as a city with businesses and diplomatic relationships with other cities, all due to Nolofinwe (and his childrens’) hard work.

In Formenos, anyone who wanted to leave the fortress for any reason had to submit a request to do so in writing to Feanaro specifically, which he had to then grant (in writing, with his seal). They did not have relationships with other cities or kingdoms whatsoever and to get things like ‘food’ and ‘raw materials’ they went exclusively through Mahtan, who was dealing with this, for some reason, despite the fact that his daughter wouldn’t. The things they made with that raw material were then not allowed to leave the fortress, meaning that they repaid Mahtan’s services with exactly nothing and had a significant cultural export of nothing. This was because no one was supposed to know what things they were making with their materials. Everyone did, because Feanaro had told them himself, and then apparently forgotten that he had done that. Feanaro had invented tools for killing people, which is what everyone in Formenos spent their time making, and those things were not then allowed to leave the fortress, and the people who made them themselves not allowed to leave without his say, and all of this pointless because everyone knew what they were up to in Feanaro’s Personal Horde (with living quarters) anyway.

When Findekano expressed that he thought life in Formenos was insane and that Feanaro and Nolofinwe were not equally good at governance, people acted like he was really making things difficult by having opinions and tried as hard as they could to suggest that their lack of information and experience gave them just as fine an opinion as the one Findekano had gained through obtaining information and experience. People did like to do that. Findekano had become content with listening to other people less often and instead honing his skills at breaking into fortresses that his uncle did not want him to be inside of to commit sex acts with his son.

Now, Nelyafinwe was a hand at breaking out of Formenos himself. He had also completely convinced himself that these break-outs did not take real skills or efforts; he got to circumvent the rules on account of being ‘Nelyafinwe,’ that is, Feanaror’s precious heir (for the position that Feanaro claimed belonged to his father eternally and this did not warrant having any heirs whatsoever, but while Findekano was pretty good at riddle-games, riddle him that one), so in Nelyafinwe’s head the fact that he regularly did things that garnered severe punishments for others just meant that he was better than those other people at talking his way out of things and they needed to get better at it themselves. Findekano had nearly loved him, but Nelyafinwe was completely convinced of many things.

They had nearly loved each other as often and enthusiastically as they could manage, which used to happen whenever Nelyafinwe flouted his father’s rules and stubbornly attended some event or another in Tirion, going on reckless sprees of getting away with things due to his surreal good looks, carefully cultivated popularity, and lack of solid concern about the welfare of others, but after Findekano started breaking into Formenos rather than the other way around the sheer thrill of getting away with said things while in Feanaro’s halls ruined the potential of doing things any other way. Sure, Nelyafinwe could stand to get out more often, but at this point Feanaro knew Findekano was sneaking in regularly, meaning that he had enough social cache with the inhabitants of Formenos to get away with sneaking in regularly, meaning Feanaro was aware enough of his prisoner-citizens liked Findekano enough to just let him in the fucking door, meaning that sneaking Nelyafinwe away to a riverbank outside was no longer base enough misbehavior, because once you’re nearly discovered misusing the black coal-lined forges of Formenos for the worst possible purpose, lighter hits don’t smack the same.

Now, to follow that line of logic further: to simply have the front gates opened by someone whose loyalties can be swayed is one kind of thrill, but actually breaking in is another. Findekano was a tree-climber as a boy, always reaching for the highest opening bud, the reddest apple of the crown. To scale a wall of stone requires different skills; less of strength, though strength is certainly required, and more of stealth and subtlety. The walls of Formenos stood between mountains, their southern faces open to the vales below. Anyone trying to climb up the side would look like a red sore on the lower lip. But there were the places that shadows fell, thin angles where built wall met the craggy face of the rock, windows often open to dump out used oil or washing-water, gutters and unlatched locks at the edges of things. Findekano had found a way to get into just about any house or hall in Formenos, tracks through its high, narrow streets where a dash from here to there would leave him unseen (or only seen by those who wouldn’t tell). Even the thrill of breaking into a fortress grows dull when one has found one’s way into just about every room in the fortress, boldly feasted with its despot’s sons in their hall, purchased boots from a cobbler set to labor at a common house. (Arakano’s face after Findekano had responded to “Fine boots” with “My thanks; I purchased them in Formenos”; worth every moment of the mad chase back out (which had rather hurt as he had been wearing new boots).)

One of the few rooms which Findekano had not yet wriggled his way into stood above his head, at the back of a complex at the back of the fortress, nearly pressed to the mountain. Findekano was looking up into what he knew was Feanaro’s private chamber.

The wall itself would be simple enough to scale. The hard part was behind him, a dozen boundaries already transgressed. Findekano rolled his head over his shoulders, felt the bands holding the sword on his back flex and settle.

He had been advised that one’s side was the place to hold a sword, but that made it impossible to scale walls quietly, and he had chosen a particularly large and heavy design, so on its back it went. He had spent time practicing how to bend and turn to draw it from between his shoulders until the motion was a dance-step. The heft of it—how the air hissed when he sliced its edge through it—he kept the thing under his bed, usually, because he knew how his father would feel if he saw that Findekano was taking it out of the house with him instead of keeping it hidden.

The same way everyone felt about it, really.

Findekano took off his gloves to climb the final wall, knowing he would need his fingers to pry open Feanaro’s window.  Laurelin was shining thin; the mingling was coming on. It was a warm hour in the mountains, dead to wind, but the stones in the shadows of Feanaro’s house were still chill. His hands prickled with cold pain as he climbed, and his thighs strained with tension.

The window was set with white mica instead of clear glass—for privacy, Findekano assumed. Once he reached it, he clung to the wall, waiting, sweating, listening. Since he couldn’t see inside, nothing more than shadows past the stone, he only had his ears to tell him if Feanaro was in. They did not make him certain, even after several minutes of listening. He heard nothing; Feanaro might be out, or might be early abed, or attending something quietly.

Findekano took his chances. He always did. The window was firmly locked, but some work and patience assured Findekano of two things: he would eventually get inside (by prying the damn thing off of the wall), and there was no way Feanaro was inside (he would have noticed someone prying his window off of the wall by now).

Ten minutes of digging a hole into someone else’s house so that he could directly enter his bedchamber left Findekano some time for reflecting on his course of action. He typically declined that opportunity, but while nursing a split nail while clinging with a shaking arm onto the now half-broken windowframe, it was impossible to ignore the (very) quiet voice inside that mulled over some doubts. One such was that there may be other, less precarious ways to accomplish his goals (end of Feanaro’s tyranny in the North, grandfather Finwe’s well-deserved abdication, the confirmation of his father Nolofinwe as the rightful ruler of the Noldor, as well as a few other, more petty personal goals). The bedroom was undeniably an odd place to pursue political ends, though it had worked for him and others before. The methods he was considering for exposing Feanaro as a horrible leader and indefensible hypocrite were fallible, pointlessly dangerous, and, one might say, unintuitive. If he wanted to prove that no one at all should follow Feanaro—frankly, threatening to run his brother through in the marketplace should have done that for everyone, so really Findekano had no idea why he even had to try to prove to anyone that Feanaro was a dangerously unstable individual—there were ways to argue that, convince people, write letters, join debates, make events and spin the conversations there to influence public opinion.

Findekano did not want to do all that. It wasn’t working, anyway. All the proof in the world that Feanaro was a brutal forge-boss to everyone who lived under his banner hadn’t convinced people that he should not run a city and/or entire kingdom. Pits to it. Findekano would awaken the world to the fact that Feanaro was disgusting as a person.

Findekano knew he was. He has testimony from every one of his sons that wasn’t too personally invested in basking in their own moon-like reflection of Feanaro’s glow to admit it. If the obvious lived experiences that Nolofinwe was good at running a society and Feanaro was just dogshit at it weren’t enough, he could probably convince the cloud-filled heads of his own people that a person who is just bad is also a bad ruler. Since many of his peers had proved uninterested in using their brains, and Findekano thought their eyes still worked, he would just have to make the bastard look bad.

Now, for something that people would recognize as ‘bad’, since the fact that everyone who spent more than a casual amount of time with him was abjectly miserable did not (it seemed) count. Findekano popped the window off of the wall and heaved it and then himself inside.

—

But, as it turned out, Feanaro’s living quarters were depressingly spare. Without the wife there—and in case he hadn’t mentioned this, even Feanaro’s wife refused to live with him now, and as he said everyone in Formenos was a fucking prisoner—Findekano suspected the husband simply didn’t spend a lot of time in the nest. There was a dressing closet, full of cloudy white and beaming gold, there was a desk with pen and ink and paper—next to nothing actually written down, no damning letters, in fact it was so oddly bare of correspondence that Findekano suspected that either this desk was not in use or Feanaro always sent off his letters the minute he composed them. The only scrap of writing present was something esoteric about verbs. There was a sword braced upon the wall, made by Curufinwe, there was a coat on a chair, a bath with soap and oil and naught else. There was a bag of what looked like outdoor supplies—flint, rope, a lantern, waybread, so forth.

There was a nightstand by a bed with a lamp and a book. There was a bed—lovely, each linen in Feanaro’s spotless white, draped on a frame of pale spruce, large enough for two and looking practically unused. Beneath it, there were hands.

Carven stone. Storm-like marble, fog-like limestone. Findekano suspected right away that they were made by Nerdanel and inspection proved it. Curling fingers, open palms, left and right, about twenty in all.

Had he cut them off of her statues when she left? That was certainly petty, and especially odd. Findekano suspected a sheer destructive urge and the knowledge that the wrists of statues were the easiest part to break. Why keep them? So that she couldn’t repair them. Why under the bed? Perhaps he denied he had done it, but could not bring himself to destroy her works to conceal the crime.

She was especially good at hands.

Findekano debated taking one with him, but even the small ones were heavy and impossible to conceal on his person. Unsure what to do for the moment, he put the idea away and returned to his searching.

He came to the disappointing conclusion that Feanaro kept next to nothing of interest in his bedroom. No insane scrawls (the verbs didn’t quite count), no suspicious stains, no silmarils (thank Manwe, honestly; Findekano hadn’t considered what his plan was if he just found the silmarils, but he knew he would come up with the worst possible idea when faced with the opportunity for historic stupidity. He knew himself). To venture further inside was too foolish—he might encounter one of Feanaro’s sons, and there was none among them he truly wished to see in the moment. Besides, he knew the rest of the house well.

He waited; he considered calling it off to reconsider. He wondered where Feanaro did keep the natural refuse of tyranny. A secret room? It was possible. Findekano was thus exploring corners and stones on the wall when he heard footsteps coming toward him down the hall outside.

“Wonderful!” he said to himself. He turned to face the door. The footsteps were quick, he had little time to think of exactly how he wanted to face Feanaro having broken into his house. As he was a respected aficionado of making the wrong choice, he drew his sword from his back and held it in his left hand.

(Yes, always had been. There were those who didn’t like it, who had even claimed it was a poor indication of his nature when he was just a little thing learning how to write. He could certainly use his right hand, but the left had a special intelligence to it. It had only occurred to him after long hours of practicing holding and using a sword with his left that he might have started with the right to learn it that way from the start, but when he tried, he just hated it. His mother, too, was left-handed, golden-eyed, short of stature, delicate-faced; he begged anyone who wanted to insult those traits to consider the comparison before they opened their stupid mouth.)

Feanaro opened the door, entered the room, and halfway closed it behind him before he even realized what was in his room. He was holding a pen, writing on a scrap of reed paper in his palm; the pen snapped up into his palm like a knife when he realized someone was in his room. The door, hastily opened, hastily shut itself behind him.

Feanaro wore white robes over white trousers, all plain. He wore a circlet, platinum and chalcedony, but other than that he was unadorned, as if he had woken in the night and got up just to write something down. His hair was pulled back flat from his forehead and bound into a braid which was then tied and pinned onto the back of his head, so modest it was practically a matron’s hairstyle.

What he did not wear was a sword. The steel that had pricked Prince Nolofinwe’s skin was not borne now.

“What’s this?” Findekano asked. “I was told that your paranoia was so great that you went armed everywhere, even at home! Another disappointment.”

Understandably, Feanaro’s cheeks grew bright with anger. “Crow and son of crows! Why have you come here?”

Findekano choked on a laugh in his throat, and burst out, “I’m calling! Ha. I admit it’s unannounced.”

“Unannounced!” The skin under Feanaro’s eyes wrinkled and the color increased on his cheeks. Findekano’s uncle was very pale, another wan inheritance from his white mother; that flush came easy and often, and had often been the only warning sign before the court at Tirion was turned upside-down. It drew the eye; Feanaro was one whose states had to be watched anyway, if you knew what was good for you. “Crawling in like a thief. You put politeness on incivility to slip it into civil life like a sugared pill, thinking to make anyone who protests your effects look foolish. I am not afraid to call thievery what it is, in whatever coat it comes.”

“If I had stolen anything, I wouldn’t blame you. No, I considered it, but you really don’t have much here.”

“I know you have no need to relieve wealth from others, your father raised you and your brothers in nests of braided gold. Why are you here? For Nelyafinwe?” Fenaro sneered.

Findekano felt heat beneath his own cheeks, though it didn’t show on him. “I know where Nelyafinwe is. If I wanted him, I’d find him.”

“I’m sure you would. You’ve been warned more times than you deserve to keep your prising fingers away from my son. The height of the leniency you have flouted is towering. You straw-brained braggart; do you understand that I do not want to punish or humiliate you for the ill manners and poor morals your house had bred into you? I don’t blame the son for the acts of the father. If you were upright yourself I would have no quarrel with you.”

Feanaro spoke like a river running. Every shining silver word he selected from his hoard of language was plucked rapidly, precisely, without his eyes even going to the work of his hands. Feanaro never struggled to sound eloquent, never used pretty words for the sake of their shine; he spoke the way he spoke because he thought that way. To him, as far as Findekano could tell, the world was ‘upright morals’ and ‘towering leniency’ and ‘putting politeness on incivility’, not ‘being decent’ and ‘giving a little’ and ‘lying’. “I wouldn’t want you to! I don’t do anything I’m not willing to answer for.”

“You have broken into my house.”

“I sometimes must prove my answers, I admit.”

“Why did you come here?”

“A few purposes. One I’ve already failed. Some which I may not accomplish. But there was one thing that I swore to myself I must do, even if I achieved nothing else. I go to it now,” said Findekano, and lifted his sword.

He had to advance a step on Feanaro; Feanaro stiffened, and tilted up his chin when he did so. Findekano raised the point of his sword, leveled it, and after slowly drawing it up like he was painting the curling stalk of formen or ampa, he rested the point to Feanaro’s breast.

When Findekano breathed out, holding the blade steady, he felt like he was breathing out years. It was stunning; it was surreal. He had imagined this moment so often, fantasized about how to achieve it; to have Feanaro at the same swordpoint he had put first to Findekano’s father and then to all of Tirion, all of their house and their people under the knife, living below the knowledge that the Prince could and would draw on his own, and so many of their kin would still love and follow and adore and obey him. To those who loved Nolofinwe it had been horrible, sitting at court and in feasts and walking down the market and not knowing who among them had cheered and praised Feanaro holding the blade to his father’s throat, who would do it themselves if they had the chance. To not know which of their friends were loyal, and which lied.

Feanaro’s chest swelled up nearly to the tip of the blade. His mere breathing drew it close. Findekano had imagined doing this so many times. One of his wildest fantasies was briefly fulfilled; Feanaro was speechless.

As had been noted often, he was nearly identical to blustering, grumbling Kurufinwe, though larger. The resemblance to Nelyafinwe, however, was stark in the moment as his flush grew and his throat worked, in the strain around his eyes, in the rapid calculations that caused one hand to flex and twitch. Nelywafinwe never looked more like his father than when he was figuring out how to wriggle out of something, how to bend words and twist feelings until he got things into the shape he needed them to be in to tuck them away, fit them under the bed, lock them into his collection. It was ugly; it was when Nelyafinwe looked his ugliest. When Findekano made a good point, when he proved Nelyafinwe wrong, when a lie was exposed or a hypocrisy uncovered, this look came on Nelyafinwe’s face immediately, and the great and root-bound sinews of his mind blazed like a winter fields-burning until he came out with whatever invention, complicated, twisted, sleek, ingenious, would get him out of trouble and into comfort again.

(Findekano liked to play on that habit. He liked to point out such flaws and inconsistencies when the two of them were entwined in passion and then watch Nelyafinwe’s mind wake up, watch him consider what he might do, come up with ideas; watch that ugly look twist and untwist his face as it roamed the body opened underneath him, as he generated possibility after possibility, plot after plot, crunching up the pages of his stories and inventions and images of lust together in his mind as plans and desires ran together; he could think of anything like that.)

Of course, anyone old enough to know claimed that Feanaro really looked like his mother, in his fine and tight-lined features, in his pallid cast, in the anxious tightness that could never fully lift from his brow. Findekano couldn’t know. They had painted her smiling and soft in the portraits that remained of her, but Findekano had heard his grandfather admit the smiles were artistic inventions. ‘She never did smile such,’ he had said; ‘It sounds odd, but I liked it about her, that she never saw things all well.’

Findekano heard that something had happened to his voice when he said “That’s better. I couldn’t rest; I was unbalanced, knowing you hadn’t felt yourself what you had done to others. Now the scales are closer to even.”

Findekano watched Feanaro consider the point of the sword, lift an arm but then replace it at his side. “I see now why you are so aggrieved. I cannot count this unjustified, though it is coarse, brutal justice. You don’t know how I’ve regretted what I did. You were not the only one losing rest.”

“Have you been troubled? Good. You were not nearly so troubled as those of us living under the fear of your sword. Do you know what it’s done to people, those who know that you might commit acts unprecedented to maintain your power and to answer objections to it? Do you know what it’s done to those who agree with you?”

“I never wanted—”

“Am I supposed to believe you regret what you’ve done? How can I? I have been in your forges, I have seen the carts that run in and out. You have your people making swords and armor. You don’t regret what you did. You would be making books and wagon-wheels if you did.”

“I am not making swords for Indis’ son. I am not making weapons to turn on my own people. There are other dangers, worse dangers, which I even endeavor—”

“I know what you endeavor to do,” Findekano snapped. He was Manwe’s devotee; among the faithful they knew full well how Feanaro was spreading hatred of the Valar around him. “You aim to tear at any power that can serve to check yours. Where is the King of the Noldor? In whatever room you’ve had him locked in for the last thirty years. What of the Powers that guard this blessed land? You speak against them at every opportunity. What of the princes of the Vanyar and Teleri? You insult and deride them so that they will favor the Noldor less and question those that genuinely seek for partnership and interchange with more and more suspicion. And what the result of all this? That those in your grasp cling harder and harder to you, every day more afraid of all the things that you insist are a danger to them. And what danger? What harm? Who was the one who drew a blade?”

“Poor child,” said Feanaro, now soft, “Poor blind child of eyeless creatures. You do not know of what you speak.”

“I do, because I know your sons well.”

“If you knew the true nature of that from which I am protecting you and all of you, you would not have such harsh words for me.”

“And I see what you being not just father but Lord has done to each of them. No; no more pleading words. I am not here to hurt you. It would be against the point,” Findekano admitted, and pulled back his blade to his side. “It has not been wounds that have grieved us. No one has been cut. It has been the threat that slowly increases in its power, growing louder, drowning out all words.”

Feanaro put a hand to his chest, an instinct. “Can you feel it now?” Findekano wondered, but corrected himself, “You cannot. You won’t, until the passing of the years has made it a thing that happened not once but a thousand times in your mind. Vengeance, I suppose; I feel dreadful,” he sighed, and reached up with his right hand to push sweat off of his forehead.

“For this reason, again, I regret my hastiness,” Feanaro continued, voice smooth. “I cannot take back my words. Nor would I, they were not wrong, and I never rescind the truth. But what is between Indis’ son and I should have remained that way. Neither you nor anyone should have been privy to it.”

Findekano’s searching eyes returned to a glare. “So that none might have witnessed what you could have done? I’m sure.”

“Because, though you appear to be striving to deserve it, you do not,” Feanaro continued, a thin thread of frustration weaving into his voice. “You were born to that nest of vipers without your say in it. You have every right to be your own man, of your own mind, and not of your father’s. I do not even blame you for being little able to resist him, for I know how he manipulates and obfuscates, how he has spun his story of how things are and must be around you. Do you see your own desperation in your loyalty? Do you imagine that your actions now please your father? Who is this father, then, who would be pleased—”

“Leave off your hissing,” Findekano replied, though, he admitted, without the fire that line asked for. “How you have the nerve to try to pry into the motivations of my actions where I merely copied yours astounds me. What is it you think you know about me? We are kinsmen, you know, though I can’t hardly remember a moment of interest from you except the brief scowls of distaste you would toss at me when I was a mere child. What have you ever known of me? I don’t believe you think I am my own man; to you, I am another viper in the pit, born a thing to hate.”

“To pity, perhaps. I see now how alike to him you are, brooding and plotting, coming to arms and then blaming others for it; how could you be otherwise? There was a rending of the world that came with the cleaving of Indis to my father, and strange things crawl out of it again.”

A feeling twisted in his gut; Feanaro had marked something that, perhaps, he did not know he had. “Strange, queer;” Findekano murmured, “Revolting, but at least remarkable.” Then he looked up at Feanaro more boldly and said, “And here is a way you may be like unto him, for I am a shame to him as well, though he endeavors to hide it and to keep shame from finding me in court; are you going to pretend that I don’t disgust you while I hold a blade and you do not? You’ll call me blind thing, poor scion of my father, and pretend you do not hate me as I am?”

“For what would I hate you?”

“Do not lie,” said Findekano, and advanced a hasty step toward Feanaro. “You voiced your disgust before I threatened you, now you pretend you did not to protect your skin; what of my ‘prising fingers’, what of the son that you thought I came here for?”

Again, Feanaro could compose his face, but he could not control how the blood flowed to his cheeks. “My Nelyafinwe—”

“Your.”

“—Is open-hearted, kind—too kind—he has eyes that see beauty.”

Findekano snorted. “He’s open-hearted, certainly.”

“He considers you a friend!”

“It seems he does.”

“Nelyafinwe strives to mend bonds and make alliances. He is too good; to his detriment, he hunts for middle roads through thicket and briar.”

“If you had anyone in your ear that wasn’t afraid to offend you,” Findekano said, clutching the hilt of his sword on one hip, “They would tell you that everyone says your precious boy is a slut.”

Feanaro replied, “Your eyes see ugliness. I know what you want of him. How you became marred in this way I do not know—I suspect the vile company your father keeps, though I will not force you to incriminate any of them. Nelyafinwe had made mistakes—he has trusted where he shouldn’t have—”

“Is that what you tell yourself!”

“And I mean you,” Feanaro clarified, his white gaze drifting toward the sword Findekano kept in his hand—had he noticed?—”He will not cease trying to find ways to save and repair you and your ilk—”

“Your Nelyafinwe grabbed me when I was barely a man.”

“He always—”

“Though, not so different from how your wife grabbed you, ‘barely grown’, or so I was told by your father, and him laughing.”

“Enough of this. You’ve had what you came here for—I understand, you wanted me to suffer in turn what I did to another; very well. If it stops here I will not hold this event against you.”

“Now, that is a lie if I have ever—”

“Content yourself with having accomplished your aim; go and consider what you have done here and why it is that the deed leaves you hollow. Like the rest of pillaried Tirion you depend on the approval of Valar for your moral understanding. But reflect, consider your feelings and their sources, peer into the shadows behind the pillars, and perhaps you will come out a man you understand and respect better.”

“Is that what you did? No wonder you’re so full of yourself.”

“You try my patience. I have not forgotten that you came unbidden into my house. I am showing grace.”

“You are showing fear,” Findekano replied haughtily. He lifted the sword again, though he did not point it at anything in particular, and turned it with a toss of his hand. “Had I been unarmed and you armed, your actions you have been very different, and whether you will admit it aloud or not we both know you would have had every excuse in the world to teach me a lesson I wouldn’t forget. Having never showed interest in me before—”

But Findekano’s time to speak was limited. He had known that a sentence before, as the light on the blade flashed in Feanaro’s eyes and they widened into white circles. Now he had seen. Still he spoke, until Feanaro interrupted, his voice now low.

“Where did you get that.”

“You thought that I’d stolen it, didn’t you?”

“Hold that still.”

“You thought I picked it up from your forge, or stolen it from Nelyafinwe—”

“Let me see it.” Feanaro’s repeated demands now came with an advance, and despite being armed and his opponent unarmed, the thrill of the rabbit leapt in Findekano’s heart. Feanaro’s quick advance toward him was like the drifting of a maia, graceful, so quick, with a glittering force of will in his eyes.

Findekano gripped the hilt of his sword in both hands and drew it up before his chest, such that Feanaro could see the full length of the blade and the sigil of Nolofinwe’s house not hastily stamped but carefully crafted upon it. “From my own forge, Uncle!—Have you been sitting on your mountainside thinking the rest of us are stupid to figure out whatever craft you muddle through in an afternoon? You thought we saw your blades and said, ‘ah, it would be best if it was only the aggressive maniac who had those, and all the rest of us had none?’”

Feanaro said, “They are making weapons.”

“You can’t be surprised by this. All of your sons have seen me with— really? None of them told you? Balls, I knew it was bad in here, but still.”

“They are forging weapons in Tirion, emblazoned with their foul signs—forged against me—”

“Yes, this is one of the things I was hoping you would feel. You do see how frightening this is, correct? Do you have an idea now of how unpleasant it has been in Tirion? As we found out you had been forging weapons against us—”

Findekano’s jaws snapped together and his heart jumped when Feanaro suddenly lurched up to snatch at the hilt of the sword. A swift yank did not manage to dislodge Findekano’s grip—to be an Orome-trained hunter was the greatest mark of fighting skill in Aman, but to have been taught by Eonwe while in the King’s service was no slight honor either—so instead Feanaro’s thin but powerful fingers were now grasped around his as he pulled. “Give me that.”

Findekano’s grip was firm. “Interesting you should ask—as it isn’t yours—”

“Do not test me.”

Feanaro had to lean down to be level with Findekano; his feet slid and then dug into the ground, his shoulders were jostled by Feanaro’s tugging. Feanaro’s eyes were black, from Finwe, but had so much light in them that one could only see their true color in brief moments after blinking, or if a deep shadow fell on his face. “You can’t have this or anything that is mine.”

“Half-prince, you have nothing,” Feanaro spat, and with his other hand suddenly grasped Findekano’s wrist and dug his nails into his taught tendons. Findekano gasped, his grip softened; in another moment, Feanaro had the sword.

Findekano wobbled, disrupted by the burst of pain. Feanaro whirled around, putting his back to his nephew. He lifted the sword into the air so that the light from the broken window fell onto its blade and made its carvings clear. “No—impossible—so smooth, but the weight—who is the smith?”

Findekano lurched forward, kicking off of his back leg. Feanaro turned to meet him. He kept the sword above his head; with his left hand he hit Findekano so hard across the face that he turned to the side.

Findekano was stunned. He had trained—he and his siblings and the smiths had been practicing the arts of combat, honing what they had learned from their disparate Ainur teachers. Yet Feanaro—there was something in the way he moved that confounded him. Not skill, but ferocity; he wouldn’t be able to predict an enraged wasp’s motions either. Findekano couldn’t even straighten his back to stand before he felt those fingers curl into his hair.

“Who is the smith?”

“Do you expect a prince’s name?” Findekano asked, throwing his shoulders to no avail. Feanaro kept him in his sharp grasp. “Do you want it to be my father, or one of my brothers? Some Vanya you can call a gold louse? He’s a common man admired for his exceptional skill. He made the designs we gave him.”

“Then whose design?”

“They were discussed and drawn out in common; a whole table debated form and function. Do you dislike its quality?”

“I dislike its existence.” Feanaro’s fingers dug past his hair and the tips of his nails found his scalp. One of them tapped against the gold in Findekano’s hair.

“How dare you. Get your—”

“How dare I! Again, snake, I found you slithering in my personal chambers, and now find you bear a token of the conspiracy against me—they called me paranoid and grasping. They said I jumped at shadows. Well. Shadows deepen. Here, your father’s brand on the blade—heavy, and thick, isn’t it? With a dull tip, but two sharp sides. This instrument is like a necklace: made to be put around the throat.”

It was. But Feanaro knew that, so, in Findekano’s mind, no one was innocent here. “No, Uncle, it’s to cut down trees.”

Feanaro did not even acknowledge the petulance. “To have the sigil of Indis’ son on a neck-biter—abhorrent, but a blessing in disguise. All will know that they are in ranks against me. None can deny it now.”

It occurred to Findekano that all this could go very badly. He didn’t tend to worry about bad outcomes until faced with them. “Will they believe our poor forges made such fine work after you have spent years telling them what inferior craftsmen we are? And who will they believe if I say it was a gift from a man who loves me well, made specially for me, and they are left to make their own conclusions about what is more likely?”

There was a brief pause. Feanaro’s hand was still on his skull. He said, “You will not be around to tell tales,” and then let him go with a push backwards.

Findekano had had the time to recover his balance, so he quickly sprang up and faced Feanaro. He was stunned to find a sword at his own chest. This was his nightmare—but now that he lived it instead of dreamed it, he was only angry, not afraid. “You won’t get away with this.”

“The chair,” said Feanaro.

Findekano did not understand him. “What you will bring down on yourself—to be an instrument of vengeance in such a way I disdain, but it will be vengeance that is—”

“The chair,” he repeated, and pushed the blade forth slowly enough that Findekano stumbled back and toward the writing desk.

“You—” Findekano began, and realized Feanaro meant the chair behind him, which he was to sit in.

No, Feanaro was not going to kill him. That was—Findekano hadn’t really thought he would go so far, it was just, with the sword in his face—be that as it may, he didn’t know what Feanaro was doing. Findekano considered his options, and decided, as usual, that he wanted to see where this was going.

He stepped backward, right foot and then left, and sat himself down in the chair. Pale hardwood, like the rest of the furniture; everything in the room as near to Feanaro’s favored pure white as possible. Feanaro kept the sword trained on him, but took a few turning steps to the side to reach into his travel-bag and pull out the length of rope. As he wrenched it out, making swift loops around his hand, he said, “Your father should be proud to have a son like you. I wonder if it really was your own idea to come here. Your conniving could have gotten you far if you weren’t hot-headed enough to foil yourself. Some threats issued in private, where none could prove they had taken place, and to make me seem like some villain as I accused a younger kinsman of ill-doing, everyone knowing how I regard your relationship with my heir—did he think I would fall to such a ploy? No, he surely counted on my goodwill. He knew I would let you go, try to extend grace even as you insulted me. But this is one slight too many.”

“As I knew it; you are armed, and I am not,” growled Findekano as Feanaro now approached with the rope, “so instead of ‘misguided’ I am now ‘conniving’, instead of being beguiled by my father, I’m his accomplice. Do you need your sword in hand to speak your mind?”

“I am aware you are a gutter-headed, pleasure-seeking degenerate,” snapped Feanaro, looping the sword in front of Findekano so it could keep him in check as he walked behind the chair with the rope, “But my attempt to extend grace to you nonetheless was unfeigned. You were misbegotten and then ill-raised, and regrettably, you seem to have chosen to follow your poor influences on their descending road. I believe that any man can become a pure one if he throws off the shackles of the Ainur and their sycophants, unlearns their dictates and learns himself, and I believe you, too, could manage the same, if you have kept enough brains in your skull to do so.”

“‘Misbegotten’ is unfair. Say whatever you want about my grandmother, my mother is undeniably proper.”

“Fine, fine. My regards to the Lady Anaire. Her marriage is pure, as that of sow to swine.” With a whisk of his arm, Feanaro threw the rope around Findekano’s chest from behind, and pulled it tight behind him; then again, to make two loops. He roughly grabbed Findekano’s left wrist—he had noticed—and manipulated the rope around it and then the next, saying, “You have clearly received some of the traits of our shared forebears: bravery, loyalty, and a sense of justice that pricks you into action. Perhaps it is the hot blood of the Vanyar in you that so dilutes those gifts, perhaps ill influence. You could be a man worth welcoming into a new house some day, but you have ruined your chances with mine. You will stay away from Nelyafinwe. This is your final warning.”

Feanaro, having looped both wrists twice, pulled them together and Findekano’s shoulders back with a smart snap.

Findekano was reminded of a dream he had had.

Did have. Had been having. Well, it was like this; Findekano had witnessed Feanaro threatening his father at swordspoint himself. That moment had been hollowing, like the tip of the blade had poked into Findekano’s heart through his eyes, and had been burrowing and burrowing a hole into him since. He had never felt fear before or since like he had as his uncle, the man who had been tearing his family apart before he was even born, threatened his own father’s life.

Findekano had thought at that moment that he would really do it.

Findekano loved his father. Nolofinwe had his faults; he loved his people and everything he could to uphold them, working without sleep, pacing through and through the city to check in on friends and subjects as his worries hounded his steps. Nolofinwe had a certain melancholy—working so hard staved it off. When that sadness grew heavier, visible in the stooped bow of Nolofinwe’s shoulders, Findekano grew afraid for him. His father had said things to him, over several cups of wine—questions that haunted him, his misgivings about his choices, how he sometimes doubted the worth of his life.

When Nolofinwe went to arms and shielded himself he did it against the fear that it was pointless, that he wasn’t himself worth protecting, and with the hope that he could at least protect something worth the while, his family, his home, the peace of Aman. Seeing Feanaro threaten him—press the point to him—Findekano didn’t sleep for several minglings, and when he did, he began to have nightmares. The point at his breast. The point at his brow. Dreams where Feanaro did run his father through, stained the whiteness of Tirion with red; dreams where Feanaro ran him through.

He never did tell Nelyafinwe about those dreams, and he certainly wouldn’t now. He had considered it, when things were a little better, but he knew Nelyafinwe wouldn’t—he was a damn stubborn man sometimes, and even after admitting how harshly his father treated him, Nelyafinwe wouldn’t listen to criticism of the same man. He could say, “He was unfair to me,” but if Findekano then said, “Your father is unfair,” Nelyafinwe would snap and snarl at him.

So Findekano hadn’t wanted more trouble in an already strained relationship, and so he had never told Nelyafinwe about the dreams, of Fenaro wetting his blade with the liquors inside him. How they sometimes came to mind again when Nelyafinwe wetted his ‘blade’ inside him, as Findekano had his eyes closed shut and could only see the darkness of the mind, and feel the hot pleasure of penetration, and then unasked for see again the blade. The beating of his heart in lust recalled in some unlit organ of his body the tremors of fear; he saw the blade.

He had other things to think about. He didn’t sweat over one nightmare every day, as often as it repeated. He started having it less often, he thought about other things. He sought his pleasure with Nelyafinwe, looping his thighs over Nelyafinwe’s lap to welcome him in or pushing Nelyafinwe’s back down over a couch to help himself. Nelyafinwe had made a present of a sword to him, a different one, and that especially daring gift had never left his bedroom. It became harder to see him, more walls to jump over, more windows to break in. He never told him about the dreams, about his lover’s father pushing him against the wall and calling him by his own father’s name (‘I’m not him,’ he cried in his dreams, ‘I’m not him,’) and driving his sword into the soft place between his ribs. Nelyafinwe insisted while they lay wet and soft together in bed that all of the trouble between their families ‘really was equally Nolofinwe’s fault, Findekano, come on; your lot been making those things just as long, it’s only that no one knew you were’, and Findekano saw the sword in his mind and said nothing.

Then one soft mingling he woke up from a dream in which Feanaro had pushed him against the wall again and laid his sword flat on his shoulders and then put his hands on him and took his pleasure inside Findekano just like his son did, parting his thighs, shoving and sticking inside him, refusing to move until Findekano was shaking, and while he took him he moaned his name, his, Findekano.

Findekano had woken up and known that that was when a good man washed himself clean and found a way to forget he had even had such a horrible nightmare. It was time to find a wife. It was time to go back to Manwe’s mountain and become pure again. He had known that, and he put his hands between his legs instead.

He hadn't told Nelyafinwe about the dreams in which he was being murdered; how would he tell him about that? It had become hard to talk to him without him getting aggravated, which was because Feanaro was watching over everything Nelyafinwe said and did and chastising him for every slight and making him ask permission to leave his home, but Nelyafinwe wouldn’t admit that was the problem; Findekano’s mind drifted when they made love and he didn’t say a word about it. He thought about the dream, and so the dream came again; being taken as roughly as a cat in the streets, pinned to the wall by a sword through his chest (which does not hurt so terribly in a dream), both of his hips in Feanaro’s tight, clever grip. He wondered about it; he had to be pretty good at it. He had so many children. He was an incredibly handsome man. He was his uncle. He fed it; he thought about it when he put his hands on himself, because he loved the thrill, he always had, the thrill of knowing something was wrong had been the whip that drove him to Nelyafinwe when he was young. Beauty or flattery might make him warm but trespass made him hot. When he had crawled onto Nelyafinwe in the bath and put his arms around his shoulders Nelyafinwe had said ‘You’re a boy’ and Findekano had settled his ass on his lap, and Nelyafinwe had panted, ‘you’re my cousin, ’ and that had made him so hot he slipped his tongue into Nelyafinwe’s mouth and rubbed their bodies together until he gave in.

He had sometimes wondered if he hadn’t been able to resist Nelyafinwe because he was the worst possible choice. The most forbidden. But, as he eventually realized, ‘worst possible’ was not accurate. ‘Worst available’ might have been more precise. There were worse possibilities, they were just unavailable to him, behind high walls and locked windows.

But when Findekano saw a wall, he climbed.

The rope tightened around his shoulders so firmly that his chin tilted back. Feanaro threw it around his chest again, riding up over his breasts, settling under his arms, through the ribs of the chair.

Findekano considered going for goal three. One had been a bust; two, ‘point the sword at him and he how he likes it’, had been worth the while though admittedly consequential. Three was probably impossible, but if it wasn’t, it took him through the most roundabout path right back to goal one, ‘prove this incredible hypocrite should not be ruling anyone.’

Feanaro’s fingers ran up the soft inside of Findekano’s arm as he pulled the rope up and around his elbows.

Feanaro’s head hovered over his shoulder. He was holding very still. That hand stayed on the inside of his arm. “Do you understand me?” he asked, voice low.

That threat was a direct follow-up to Feanaro’s demand that he stay away from Nelyafinwe. If he only knew; but Findekano found it hard to think about it now. His brain could hardly work through the sudden warm fog in him. “Oh, there’s no further damage to be done,” he bluntly informed his uncle. “Do you think we’ve just made soft eyes at each other? Do you think he’s heroically fought his base impulses? I had him the day I could.”

“You think I don’t know,” sighed Feanaro, coming closer to Findekano’s ear. He shivered and grew warm in his depths, a heat that grew with his heartbeat. “I had to watch you writhing together like animals on the roof when you snuck him out of this house. Barely outside my window; you thought I couldn't see you? You thought I wouldn’t notice? You bayed like an animal. There’s no one who wouldn’t notice.”

Triumph felt like wine, like hot coals in Findekano’s stomach. He had known he saw a shadow move away from the window while he had Nelyafinwe pinned under him and gasping for him on the roof; he had seen that shadow in the very window he had broken through today. That was how he had marked it as the right one. Nelyafinwe had assured him the next time they met that no one had seen them during the ill-advised rooftop meeting, the one he had begged Findekano to not insist upon, but you coerced me again, you prick enchanter, hoping you’re proud of yourself and that you know how terribly wrong that could have gone. And Findekano had told him that of course it had all worked out alright, how could he doubt him? And he kept that shadow in the window in his heart with the rest of them.

Nelyafinwe had been forced to clasp his hands over Findekano’s mouth to silence his moans of pleasure when he let Nelyafinwe penetrate him; they hadn’t been accidental. He wasn't a beginner. He knew his voice would carry, and he watched to see what heard.

“Well, then, good for you; it turns out you are right about everything,” said Findekano, and he could hear his voice was thin. A throb was starting to build in him, under his heart, that increased as Feanaro’s nails ran over his skin as he bound him. “You can call me a son of bitches and a bitch myself, say I’m no different from the harlots who bore me, why shouldn’t you?”

“If only you were. You would never have caught Nelyafinwe’s eye if you had no qualities; now I’m instead stuck convincing him that the diamond he sees will never get out of the rough.” Feanaro emphasized ‘rough’ with a tug on the ropes that he twined now around Finderkano’s forearms and the chair, binding him fast to the furniture. Findekano’s hips jolted. “Though I will grant you the comparison—I didn’t expect to feel the agony I felt while watching the woman creep up to my grieving father and press her advantage on his troubled heart ever again, but you have conjured the spirit of it.”

“Have you been thinking of me so oft?” asked Findekano, knowing he was being bold, knowing he was perhaps pushing too far too fast, but feeling the restless heat build rapidly under his skin, like a well-built fire finally catching after smoking and smoking. His arms hurt but his thighs tingled.

“It is hard to not think of such horrors,” Feanaro scoffed, straightening his spine to stand behind Findekano, out of view. “Of course to see one’s son this way would be distressing even in the legal bonds of marriage. To see something like— that— this is why such things are not permitted. It infects through the eyes.”

“Infects?” asked Findekano, trying despite himself to see over his shoulder and discovering how tightly he was tied. The ropes strained against his attempts to move any muscle below his neck. That was tight— that was dangerous, if he moved around too much. He was forced to stare straight ahead and feel the tingling grow under his skin.

“Infects, degenerates, reduces, which is why we have our laws against it—to see such things troubles the mind, bruises it like a blow, opens it to—dark possibilities—this is why I assume something happened to you, you captive in the cesspools that your father has made out of the courts. You must rise above it; struggle inside and prevail. To give in may feel good, but when you persist through, the peace and self-respect you gain will be worth your efforts.”

Findekano had not been so indulgent of his own predilections for so long without developing a fine ear for them. He heard a strain in Feanaro’s voice, an unvoiced countermelody; something detectable in conspicuous absence. “Your empathy is unexpected—your understanding.”

“I know more than you think I do about what things go on in your father’s world.”

“And have you suffered yourself? In your wife’s absence, perhaps—”

Findekano’s words were startled out of him as Feanaro grasped the back of the chair and swung it, its legs grinding on the stone floor. After a rapid turn he was facing Feanaro, whose rose-red face was bright with rage. “You foul creature. You see only your own twisted imaginings. I have suffered the absence of my love; when I reconcile to her she will find me faithful in all things. Shut your dirty mouth and, for your sake, cease the imagining of such wicked things. There you must begin your fight, and your path to freedom from that which torments you.”

Findekano had looked down at Feanaro’s mouth when he said ‘mouth.’ It was thin, pink. He looked back up when Feanaro was done speaking.

“What wicked things?” he asked. “I asked if you had suffered—what did you think I meant?”

Feanaro stared back at Findekano, instead of speaking, for a moment. Findekano’s mouth felt raw, blood-filled. He asked, “What did my ‘baying’ sound like? Can you still hear it?”

Feanaro drew back. “Enough of this—I see your game. It’s a crude one. If I refuse to answer your perverse questions, you imagine guilt; if I do, you take any chaste word I say and make it unchaste, and you can make anything at all sound foul once you have it in your mouth. I’ll have none of it. Spin your lies; the truth will win out. This,” he said, and lifted up the sword into both hands, his eyes running down the blade, “This I will have inspected—brought to my smiths. See what secrets went into making it.”

“Nothing; you think we laid some curse on it? You’ll find steel. What, you’ll leave me in here like this?”

“I see you’re—heated,” said Feanaro, and damn Findekano if he didn’t see his pupils drop down for a splinter of a second. “If I let you run roughshod in my city now there’s no telling what damage you’d do. You won’t be harmed. None will even know you are here. I’ll let you cool your head here and release you once you’re more minded to behave.”

Findekano could not let him leave now. He was working on him. He was chipping away at the wall. It would take time, but he could make a crack—and he was getting hard and he could not touch himself so if Feanaro left now he would just have to suffer it. He did not have the willpower for that and he knew it. “You spineless—”

“None of that. I’ll remind you, you were the one who broke in and tread all over my goodwill. I gave you several more chances that you deserved.” He half-turned to head to the door.

“I said your name under him,” said Findekano, deciding he was desperate enough to induce blind rage. “We both did. I heard him say it. ‘Father’. Like that.”

Feanaro had turned just far enough that Findekano could not now see his face. He could see his fingers clenching against each other. “Silence,” he groaned through his teeth. His voice was terrible. He reached forward; he went through the door and was gone.

Findekano had pulled a breath in to try again, to say something, but the sound of Feanaro’s voice had halted him. That was—

—Yes, he had heard something. Now he was not so sure how proud he felt about that.

As footsteps clattered down the hall, hard now, Findekano swallowed and felt that his throat was raw. He felt that his heart was beating in his neck; that the ropes were too tight on his arms. He felt that that harsh heat was still turning around and around in his stomach. His prick throbbed.

Findekano could move his legs, so he lifted one and then slammed it against the ground, screaming in his throat. He didn’t dare scream out loud—he might be heard and found. Which, yes, might technically be a good idea, but who would find him if he screamed in this house? There were many options; some always bad, some extremely bad under this specific circumstance of being tied to a chair in their father’s bedroom.

Findekano therefore kept his voice at a low volume as he cursed himself extensively for being the dumbest bastard to walk this earth and renounced his own company forevermore.

--

Original Note:

(...You’re quite ignorant of why you live, what you do, and who you are.)

Title and all chapter titles come from Ian Johnston’s translation of the Bacchae; I’ve been on a real tear with Greek Drama (nothing gets you out of the depression like repeated Herakles Suffering binges) and wanted to write something similar, a short, tight, intense handful of scenes where something that has been simmering for a long time off-stage comes to a boil in the two hours it has on-stage.

The chapter titles specifically are threats that Pentheus makes to Dionysos in the Bacchae. If you don’t know much about the Bacchae, the rundown is that the demigod Dionysos, disguised as his own priest, comes to the home city of the mortal side of his family (Thebes) to convince them to respect him as a God (or punish them if they won’t). Pentheus, his cousin on the mortal side, is the ruling King of Thebes. He refuses to acknowledge the son of his harlot aunt as a god, as he believes she lied about having sex with Zeus to cover up an indiscretion. Over the course of the play Dionysos aims to entrap his cousin Pentheus, who constantly has his exploitable sexual hangups on display and is horrified by the compulsion he feels toward the effeminate stranger, to get his way or kill Pentheus trying. All of Pentheus' threats about what he’s going to do to punish the queer priest are met with the rejoinders from Dionysos that I include in the notes below the chapters titled with them.

In this fic, Findekano isn’t really playing Dionysos. There are some parallels, but he’s not super into the role. Feanaro, however, is playing Pentheus and he’s doing amazing.

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I'll cut off this delicate hair of yours.

--

Hours passed and the silver light of Telperion strengthened. Findekano considered things. 

Much that he expected would make him feel better had not. He was not sure after some hours of silence in Feanaro’s chamber (except for occasional footsteps downstairs, hurrying up and down the halls) that he still wanted to go through with what he had planned. But he had said things too dire to withdraw his hand with the deed half-done. If he now bowed his head and scurried away instead of enduring, Feanaro would consider him a mere instrument of Nolofinwe’s plot and direct further rage at his father instead—rage he did not deserve, because he had not known any of Findekano’s plans, and would be himself appalled to learn of them.

No. He would finish what he had started, one way or another.

He was approaching a grim state of mind (furthered by the cold dissatisfaction of his body) when finally he heard footsteps coming down the hall again. He wriggled to straighten himself out of the way he had slumped into the ropes, not that they had allowed much relaxing. Even as the footsteps approached, he knew it was not Feanaro; he could not place who it was until they neared the door and he heard them speaking.

“No, I cannot; I am not content with it and I am going to whine about it. I’m not fucking doing it,” snapped Turkafinwe Tyelkormo, throwing open the door to his father’s bedroom.

His father, of course, was not present. A silver beam of light from the broken window revealed who was.

Turkafinwe stood in the doorway, hand halted on the knob. He was the sort of finery that Findekano could not recall having ever seen him wearing and his one-wild hair had been shorn nearly to his skull. Protest, perhaps, or punishment?

He stared at Findekano. Findekano tilted his head and smiled.

Turkafinwe looked up and down the hall behind him, both ways, as if hunting for the explanation. “...We’re… We’re doing this, now?” he asked the air around him, indicating Findekano as ‘this’ with a sharp flip of one hand.

If someone in this house had to run across him like this, Turkafinwe was nowhere near the worst option (Kanafinwe). Findekano could make this work. “Hail to thee, faithful servant of the Valar!”

Turkafinwe slowly turned his head from searching the ceiling for some kind of cleverly hidden answer to face Findekano again. “Hail,” he repeated sourly.

Because Turkafinwe was Orome’s faithful servant, and Findekano knew he remained so despite living under the rule and watchful eye of his Ainur-hating father. One couldn’t tell by looking at him, because all his insignia and tokens had been stripped from him, but Turkafinwe’s devotion to Orome was such that Findekano would have known in a moment if it had been beaten out of him, and it had not been. Since Turkafinwe was Orome’s servant, and Manwe’s servant had addressed him as such, they were going to treat each other as if the Valar were watching.

“Might my cousin come in and loosen my bonds?” asked Findekano, continuing to smile. “I don’t mind them in the abstract, and I endured worse discomforts in training my body to meditate under my Lord Manwe, but I find myself wishing I could shift my limbs somewhat.”

“Y—well—why—are you—I would like to say that I don’t remember any conversation about keeping hostages, and if I had been invited to it, I would have certainly said that I was not keen on the idea.”

“You know, I don’t believe there was any such conversation. I believe this was a decision made without counsel.”

“If he has you in here, and I let you go, he’s going to have me whipped in the square.”

“I don’t want to go!” Findekano informed him.

Turkafinwe stood for a moment, watching, his bright eyes looking Findekano down and back up, and then he leaned himself against the doorframe. “Oh?”

“I just want them loosened—or, you’re good at woodscraft. What if you could redo them into slip knots that I could get out of myself once the time comes?”

“I could,” Turkafinwe hesitated, his eyes now going down the lines of the strained muscles of Findekano’s arms, “but he would still know someone had aided you once you slipped out to do whatever it is you’re scheming to do. I may not know you like some, but I know you well enough to see you’re brewing something strong in that head of yours, which I’ll not—”

“So you’ll just walk off and let the old bastard get away with this?” Findekano interrupted.

Turkafinwe’s hands tightened on his arms like he was trying to hold himself in, but after another mere second of resistance, he knocked back his head and groaned. “No. I would know I had run in fear, which is worse than lashes. Besides, I have to know how this happened.” 

With that, he detached himself from the doorway and walked into the room.

Findekano beamed. “Many thanks, my cousin!”

“Sure, sure.” Turkafinwe grumbled as he walked the length of the room and stepped behind the chair, then kneeled down to get a look at the ropework. “So, why are you—oh, that’s a bad job.”

“It’s solid work, I promise you that.”

“I’m sure it’s solid, but that's a bad job. That’s not safe. A wrong move could have wrenched your shoulder out.”

“Nearly did, a few times.”

“This will take some time—I don’t want to tear your arm off undoing—Balls, look at that knot. That’s awful. Why are you here?”

“In the fortress, or on the chair?”

“I know why you’re in the fortress, down-for-brains, you’re trying to get laid. Why are you on the chair?”

“Would you believe that I broke in through the wrong window while engaged in the hard work of getting laid?”

“No. You know which window is Russo’s. I see you did break the window, but what did you need to get into my father’s bedroom that badly for? Did you want strung up by your ankles bef—By My Lord’s Ample Breasts this is the worst knotwork I’ve ever seen.”

“His what?”

“What do you swear by, Manwe’s chastely gloved fingers and humbly downcast visage?”

“You’re so charming, cousin.”

“This is really—it’s just terrible. I'm very glad I’m undoing it now. You were about to have nerve damage that could last years.”

“I did notice that I couldn’t feel my hands anymore.” Turkafinwe relieved his wrists, which he couldn’t feel either, but he happily noted a lightening of the pressure around his chest.

“Yes. Seriously now, how did you end up stuck in his room?”

“Fit of madness,” Findekano admitted. “Wanted to know if I could. Did. Bad idea.”

“No, you little bird’s nest,” Turkafinwe mocked gently. “Why didn’t you call for Russo after father stomped out? He was in here until an hour ago, you know.”

“Dog bait; carrion-breath,” Findekano called him, just to make up for the Manwendil-specific insults. “Maybe I didn’t want to tell the whole house. Maybe I didn’t know how many of you were in here. Maybe I don’t need Kurufinwe or Manwe forbid Kanafinwe asking me these questions.”

“Lauro has been out for days, haunting the walls and singing for his wife; Kurvo can’t hear anything he doesn’t want to. Do you think I’m stupid? I meant with osanwe . Why didn’t you call for Russo?”

Findekano responded with silence as Turkafinwe pulled the ropes away from his breasts and, at length, freed his arms. He slowly pulled one forward, fighting horrible aches, to test his fingers. They hurt, but they moved.

“I’m not tying you back up again until you answer me.”

Findekano slowly, painfully closed a shaking fist. He breathed in, and held his breath.

Turkafinwe stood, pulling the rope up with him. “How about—”

Findekano slammed the fist onto the back of the chair as he turned around and his entire arm went up in a riot of pain. “He broke up with me!” he snapped, voice breaking hideously as he spoke. “He let me take him out to the mountainside and went down to the riverbank with me and then he told me it was over. He said I wasn’t the same anymore.”

Turkafinwe whistled through his teeth as started draping the length of the rope around one of his own arms in loops to neaten it. “I knew he was sideways about something.”

“He said I was inconsiderate. He said I never thought about him. I’ve been breaking into a fortress to see him for years!”

“Russo has been acting like a wet cat for a week. You can’t do anything around him without him hissing and spitting. I asked him if you wouldn’t put out for him, andI don’t think I’ve ever heard him say half of those words he said in response to that.”

Russo. “I certainly won’t now. Do you know what else Nelyafinwe said to me?”

“‘Findekano, we’re cousins’?”

“He said I was immature. Immature — he’s the one who snatched me up the second I tied up my hair for the first time.”

“Do you think you have to tell me that? Do you know the things I have seen? I was the one who had to tell him that your ass was going to set on fire if he kept staring at it like that at your coming-of-age party. He called me a pervert. I’m not sure I’m the pervert, brother.” (He spoke his final comment in the direction of Nelyafinwe’s bedroom.)

“They’re all—lying fucking hypocrites. They’re too childish to face their own feelings, so they decide that you made them feel that way, that you somehow infected them, and they punish you for it. I won’t say I’m pure. I won’t say I didn’t have my own intentions. But it was never just me.”

“No, that was a dance for two. Listen, do you want me to fix you up again?”

Findekano squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Yes,” he sighed, and turned back around in the chair, folding his arms behind his back.

Turkafinwe settled down behind him again with a sigh. When he picked up one of Findekano’s still-tingling arms, it was gentle, like he was unwinding a bird from a trap. “You don’t want to hear this yet, but this might be for the best. Russo… I wouldn’t tangle with him if I weren’t his brother.”

Findekano breathed in, and out. The surge of anger he felt in his chest, the guard dog-like need to defend Nelyafinwe’s name, felt like bile. “What do you mean?”

“He’s controlling. He’s pushy. He’s a perfectionist who can’t abide making mistakes. He's a sore loser, too, so he’ll lash out at you if you point them out.” Turkafinwe started weaving the rope around Findekano’s arms again, but softly, leaving space between bonds and skin. “He’s very much like our father, but he doesn’t want to be like our father, so what that means is that he has exactly the same childish overreactions to his emotions, but instead of howling and banging on like our father does he hisses and snarls and whines. He pretends he’s not angry and then picks at everything you do for hours. Then he claims he’s so much more mature and regulated than his own father when really, what he is is quieter.

“I don’t know anyone who holds a grudge like Russo does. It’s astonishing. Finno, I’ve never hidden this; I think you’re dumb as a rock. I admire your nerve and your shooting arm but would like to keep both far away from me. You won’t let well enough alone; you think you’re a hero but you direct your amateur heroics at every miniscule, irrelevant issue, your business or not. You’re an aggravating little busybody and I genuinely think that it’s Russo’s fault. Let me be frank, he did pick you up when you were too young.”

Findekano did not resist his shoulders being jostled as Turkafinwe slid them into place. “It was me.”

“Sure.”

“It was me. I accosted him in the bath. If I had been the older one, you would have called it an attack.”

“Alright, alright, you’re a matched pair of lovebirds. Were. My point; try life without him. Think about something other than his minute-long moods. Get out of the family business for a while. Go to the temple.”

“You go to the temple.”

“All of Nature is my Lord’s temple. How about this: bed someone else. It’s good for you.”

“Oh. That, I’ll do.”

“Findekano,” said Turkafinwe, deftly slipping the rope around itself to make a false knot, something that would vanish the moment it was stressed, “What are you doing in this room?”

Findekano hesitated. As he did, by terrible chance, he heard footsteps coming down the hall again.

He froze, because it was Feanaro this time. Those steps, quick and light. Turkafinwe tensed behind him as well.

But then, he pulled in a breath and let it out in a sharp bark: “What do you think you’re doing?”

The footsteps outside skittered to a messy halt like a cat chased away after being caught munching on the callas. “What—What are you doing?” came the sharp, nasal, slightly different voice of Kurufinwe Atarinke.

“Something that’s none of your business. Fuck off,” Turkafinwe responded, quickly settling to work again on finishing Findekano’s ropes.

Findekano’s lungs compressed under the weight of relief. He didn’t want Kurufinwe seeing this, but it was fathoms better than Feanaro walking in on Turkafinwe adjusting his work.

“Why do I get the feeling that it’s none of your business either?” Kurufinwe hissed from behind the door.

“Because you’re a very smart boy.”

“What are you doing? Get out of there.”

“I’m not telling you what I’m doing, and I’ll be out of here when I’m well and done.”

Findekano found himself impressed; he had spent less time with Turkafinwe than just about any of his other cousins, largely because Turkafinwe was such a fan of being lost in trackless wilderness. Nelyafinwe had talked about Turkafinwe being irascible, irritable, more likely to fight his father than the others; he had picked up some authority with repeated instances of taking a stand, it seemed. He didn’t remember Turkafinwe being such a fine handler of his younger brothers because he didn’t remember Turkafinwe caring. It seems he did now.

“Hurry up whatever it is,” Kurufinwe complained. “I don’t know why you have to make a point out of aggravating him all the time—”

“The principle. Don’t get any closer to that handle.”

Findekano could hear Kurufinwe huff. “Why? What are you doing? What is it that I can’t see?”

“I’m fucking with him, Kurvo. I’m being an asshole. It’s honestly beneath me.”

Findekano had to bite his lip to keep a snicker in. Turkafinwe whacked his arm with the back of his hand, and Findekano felt that his knuckles were split.

But then, there was a noise again, the handle being grasped. “If you’re going to do it, at least let me—”

“Kurufinwe Atarinke, you back away from that door.”

“At least let me help you!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is going to find out someone did this,” Turkafinwe explained as he looped the rope around and around itself, and then dropped the end which would undo the whole design once pulled into Findekano’s left hand, “And when he does, he will want to know who did it—and trust me, he’ll want to know—and I need you able to deny that you saw anything or knew anything about it.”

“I can—”

“No, you can’t, you’ll spill like a geyser.”

“B—”

“That’s fine. That’s what I want you to do.” Turkafinwe silently stood behind Findekano, bracing one hand on the head of the chair to balance him. “I don’t want you to get in trouble, baby bird.”

Kurufinwe didn’t respond.

“The best way to do that is to make sure you have nothing to get in trouble for. Do you understand?”

“Why do you have to do things like this?” Kurufinwe asked.

“I have a flaw in my character,” Turkafinwe responded. “Fly away, baby bird. I’ll be downstairs in five minutes. If I’m any longer than that, you can come back up and drag me out.”

“You’d better.”

“Five minutes. I promise.”

Kurufinwe took a couple steps. “I don’t want you getting in trouble, either,” he shouted, angry.

“Fly,” Turkafinwe snapped, and Kurufinwe stormed down the hall.

Findekano heard Turkafinwe huff. He could move a little better with the ropes as they were now, but he didn’t want to let himself move too much. He could undo the slip knots accidentally if he was careless. “Idiot,” Turkafinwe said fondly.

“You have him handled like a hawk on a leash.”

“Crow.”

“What?”

“Crafty little crow. He’s my little brother; are you saying you don’t have Turukano and Arakano at heel?”

“I absolutely do not.”

“Work on that,” said Turkafinwe derisively.

“You didn’t mention Irisse.”

“I know no one has Irisse at heel. Stars, for a ride with Irisse. Listen, cousin; this is a bad idea.”

“...You don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I think I won’t learn what you’re doing, and for the same reason: I can’t confess what I know if I don’t know anything. You know, I’m going to take the counterpoint to something I said a minute ago.”

“And which of your wise words have you regretted, oh servant of Orome?”

Turkafinwe took a step away from the chair and turned so they could look at each other. “I said I didn’t know anyone who could hold a grudge like Russo. I know one. Russo bends eventually, if you shame him enough and then let him sit in it for a time. But the master of that craft does not bend. He does not forget. He does not forgive.”

Findekano glared up at Turkafinwe. He stared back down.

“Are you sure about this?” Turkafinwe asked.

“I’m sure about what I don’t want,” Findekano told him, “What we’ve had for the last thirty years. Even if it’s a change for the worse, at this point, I’ll take it.”

Turkafinwe bent forward as he sighed. “Don’t say that. You could get it.”

“I don’t go back on my word.”

“Consider trying that from time to time. It might improve things for you.”

Turkafinwe turned to go; Findekano felt an itching at his back. Turkafinwe followed Orome’s rules, yes, meaning Findekano could usually bargain straighter with him than most of his kin, but one of those rules was reciprocation. “What do you want for keeping this quiet?”

Turkafinwe shrugged as he loped away. “Well, if I end up not keeping it quiet, don’t worry about it.”

“Prick.”

“Ha. That is, I’ll try, but sometimes you have to use the tools you have. If I do manage to keep it for you, I’ll take like for like.”

“Like what?”

“You know…”

“You’d like me to look the other way the next time you’re up to no good in someone’s bedroom?”

Turkafinwe smiled pleasantly as he opened up the door. “Works for me!”

“Or the next time you’re bound up in a cell."

Turkafinwe barked with laughter. “I promise you will never see this from me. Ropes, locked doors, tower rooms. Freak.”

“Thank you for your abundant and generous wisdom.”

“Any time! And one more, as proof of my generosity,” he added, slipping out, holding the door just a crack open so Findekano could see half of his face. “I’d bet you anything you asked for that he didn’t want to break up with you, he thought he had to. And you’re still better off without him.”

With that, he smartly shut the door behind him and went happily on his way.

--

(...my hair is sacred, I grow it for the God.)

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Return to Navigation

And give me that thyrsos in your hand.

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Original Note:

I’m being particular with names as usual. Findekano calls his relations by their father-names, mostly because he’s mad at them, with some stand-out exceptions. But, as seen below, quite a few of them prefer their mother-names and refer to themselves and each other with nicknames or preferred names. I try to use Quenya versions of the names used in the Silm on the assumption those are preferred names--hence Karnistir is called 'Karano' here instead of 'Moryo' for 'Morifinwe' as 'Caranthir' appears to the the name he goes by. Ect.

Using Quenya names instead of Sindarin names is always a choice and I have gone exponentially up the Choice meter with the ones I have made here (and in other such fics). Basically, the narrative uses the names that the POV character would use, so names switch with POV. There is even sometimes slight differences between narration and dialogue, as you saw in Ch 1 when Findekano stubbornly called his ex ‘Nelyafinwe’ out loud but thought ‘Russo’ in narration.

The adherence to ‘k’ whereever and whenever ‘calma’ is used in the spelling of a name. Also a choice. I think it’s related to my stubbornness of never using anything but ‘kh’ to transliterate ‘khi’ (it’s Akhilleus with variation permitted naturally in the declinable ending as it is declinable but you will not otherwise budge me from this soap box)

Oh god this is so much sorry to everyone who comes here for rancid ships and not transliteration takes

--

When Tyelkormo came down the stairs, the first flight that went down from the floor that belonged exclusively to their father, then past the second floor which held their packed chambers, stuffed like teeth between the stone jaws of their fortress-home, into the open-windowed ground floor where a slow breeze did not do much to alleviate the heat, he found Kurvo sitting impatiently at the table, arms crossed, and Karano at the other side, writing. Other than those two he saw no one, which matched with his account of everyone’s movements as he knew them. Kurvo stood when Tyelkormo walked into the room; Karano flickered his eyes to him and returned to his work.

“There you are,” said Kurvo, so nervous he couldn’t quite stand still.

Tyelkormo stopped across the table from him, where he halted, crossing his own arms. “Did I take too long?”

“No,” Kurvo admitted.

“Then.”

“Were you speaking to the two up there?” Karano asked, still writing as he questioned.

“No, they’re both out, fetching something for dinner,” Tyelkormo told him. To stave off further questions, he added, “I was speaking to Kurvo. He caught me up to no good. After that, I spoke to my Lord; I had a fit of conscience that I had to pray through once our brother left me.”

“You did not, but very well,” Karano replied. Tyelkormo could see his brain walking down two (or three) separate roads as he wrote and spoke; he was the smartest of any of them, and smart enough to not typically show it. “I didn’t catch them going out. They must have slipped out the back.”

“They did, I heard the latch click.”

“We must be the only ones in the house, then. I heard father stomping out. Where’s Lauro, if not locked in his room?”

“Sighing for his wife on the walls, as always. She won’t dare to come visit him.”

“Should I presume I know where Russo is, then?”

“I have no idea where he is.”

“Then I will presume I know what he does.”

“You may presume,” said Tyelkormo.

Karano did not miss his cagey phrasing, but he did not remark on it either. “That’s everyone accounted for, then, except grandfather, and I know he’s outside the walls right now, visiting Olwe in Alqualonde, as they have the same conversation about lost Elwe again. Or perhaps he stopped by Vinyamar to have the same conversation with Ingwe.”

“Father nearly forbade him,” said Kurvo, tapping his gold-tipped nails on the beads of his sleeve.

“He can’t forbid his own father to travel,” said Karano.

“I wonder what grandfather does if he tries?” asked Tyelkormo. “Because I think that he thought to do so as well before deciding he couldn’t, and our father will typically only think that he can’t really do something two times or three before he decides that he can.”

“He wouldn’t forbid his own father his freedom.”

“Oh?” Tyelkormo questioned. “So a son cannot work against his father?”

Kurvo pulled out his chair again to sink back into it. “Tyelko, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“You don’t have to make it your quarrel just because it’s mine. Just cast your eyes down.”

“I don’t want to.”

“And nor do I. If my father does something I find objectionable, I will say so. Why shouldn’t I? Why is he exempt from the judgment I would speak to anyone else? Is he a Vala, infallible? Perhaps he would like his subjects to think he is, for he asks them to not see what their eyes take in, not understand what their ears hear, and pretend that everything clearly inexplicable has an explanation that their Crown Prince hoards in his mind, which would be ill-spent on their lowly understanding. If he asked the same intellectual subservience of us that would mean he wanted us to be his servants, not his sons. I presume he wants heirs, princes, able leaders; he should want me to act like one.”

“It is because you issue your judgements like a temple-dwelling priest that our father will not hear them,” said Karano. “If you want to convince him of anything, the first step would be to stop preaching, and you haven’t taken it.”

“I will not deny my Lord either.”

“There are shades of gray present in this matter; as Orome’s hunting-hounds, whose lice and fleas you once dutifully shared in their great service, you do not see them.”

“It’s colors that dogs can’t see,” said Tyelkormo, grinning. Karano was also one of the funniest people he knew. “That I am proficient in; I see red oft.”

“Don’t you. What has you both so anxious?” Karano asked abruptly, tapping the back of his steel pen on the table. Kurvo jumped; Tyelkormo uncrossed his arms. “Kurvo displays his anxieties like a new gown worn to an evening engagement; I know you think you’re subtle, Tyelko, but I know you too well.”

“To be frank, Karano, what doesn’t have you anxious?” asked Tyelko, still formulating his words as he spoke but knowing the one thing he could not do was wait and let Kurvo reply. Kurvo didn’t really know anything, by design, but even knowing he didn’t know something could make him a target. “Father grows more irate by the day, Tirion pours out letters. Every city on the map grumbles against us but no one speaks directly so stories spread like fungus on a fallen log. Russo won’t come home except to sleep and not always for that, the debt to Mahtan is climbing to the sky and he will cut off the supply eventually, we still don't have clean water south of the royal forge and Father still won’t let us tell anyone that and we still don’t have a way to clean up the river that people are still using, people are going to figure out why they’re getting sick and feeling drunk all the time eventually, and despite us moving a half-continent away and making thirty-foot walls we have locked, barred, and guarded, we still have to deal with Findekano Nolofinweo.”

Karano’s irises fluttered up into his head. Kurvo muttered something quietly. (Tyelkormo was relatively sure the thing was ‘faggot.’) Tyelkormo continued, “I can’t bet on there being anywhere I won’t find him, locks be damned.”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Karano groused. “When I saw him in the public bath I almost cried. How? And why?”

“He enjoys the transgression of boundaries. Unlike most with the same hobby, he had cultivated the skills to support it and killed the shame that might otherwise impede it. Now, our cousin is a man with faults—”

“As much faults as man.”

“A flawed character, but I didn’t think you both were that against him.”

“Once, I wasn’t,” Karano admitted. “It was never comfortable to have him around, because I knew why he was around. But back then they were circumspect. Now he’s shameless. He breaks in, runs rampant, causes problems everywhere he goes. We’re stuck trying to keep Russo’s secrets for him, but Findekano is so reckless about it that father still notices or learns after the fact. He gets everyone else in trouble but escapes unscathed himself. It’s inconsiderate.”

“Inconsiderate! You think so?”

“Of course it is! He knows he’s not supposed to be here. If he and Russo have to play man and wife, whichever they individually think they are, they could do it quietly and secretively. It’s obscene.”

“I could make my judgment on who’s who, but you wouldn’t like it.”

“I wouldn’t and prefer you wouldn’t. No, I used to like him fine; he’s enjoyable company in small doses, he has a piercing sharp wit, he’s friendly and quick to help. At least, he was. Sometimes I can’t help feel that we’re all reduced, now.”

Tyelkormo sighed. “Not you, Karano. Or you, baby bird.”

“I find my nerves reduced,” said Kurvo bitterly, leaning further forward on the table.

“You never had those.”

“I never had the nerve, and I’m proud of that,” he sniffed, “I think the rest of you could have less nerve, frankly. But I used to be able to hear a bang on the roof without jumping.”

Tyelkormo bit down his smile. “Just Findekano again.”

Kurvo put his head in his hands. “Powers, I bet it is. I’ll just assume that from now on, and worry not. Just Findekano again, improbably where he shouldn’t be.”

“Your opinion of him is quite low as well.”

“Does he want it any other way?” Kurvo asked from inside his arms. “He tries to pick fights when he sees us in the street.”

“He argues.”

“He wears a sword!”

“So do we.”

“I don’t strut through Tirion like that, or at all. I don’t want things to be this way either but I don’t go around making it worse for everyone. I wish I could respect Russo’s choice, but there are times I wonder if Russo respects his own choice.”

“I believe his mind changes,” said Tyelkormo. He knew Russo; some of the younger ones were born when Russo was already a man grown, but he could at least remember his grumbling adolescence. Russo was a calculator like their father, but like their mother, he considered all sides; because of that his mind turned, and turned. He had surely come to the decision to end the affair at incredible length, through years of agony, and had surely rued and regretted it every hour since. (He must be beating his own body again—it explained a few things Tyelkormo had seen.) But he would not have done it if he didn’t think it had to be done.

It should have been done centuries ago. Nothing for it. Karano was looking at him again, searching, but Tyelkormo received a minor divine intervention (he had put in his time to earn them) as a certain set of hobbling footsteps started coming up the road. “Someone approaches.”

“It must be Iwre,” said Kurvo, lifting his head from his arms.

Kurvo was right; the old man, who had opened his eyes along with Finwe in Cuivienen and had been his servant since practically the same day, had an odd gait that remained with him from violence done to him by a fell creature of the shadowed distant continent. Some old men had those wounds, and they would not speak of the things that caused them. Anything the generations of men born in Aman learned were stolen from beyond keyholes and doorways.

Men such as Iwre would sometimes say they had no need of swords, not even now. This isn’t trouble, they would insist. You’ll know trouble if you see it.

Iwre himself was only a little patronizing, an old gentleman who minded himself and spread around the news of others as bid. Tyelkormo was a little surprised he had not gone abroad with Finwe. He went to open the front door himself as the old servant approached to let him in.

“Welcome, uncle,” he said politely. “Do you come for us?”

“I do, though only for a moment,” he sighed, only tapping Tyelkormo’s arm instead of accepting it as he swung into the room. He was thin; age was gracing him with silver frost on his face, but he remained strong. He put a sheaf of papers onto the kitchen table as Kurvo and Karano both respectfully stood up. “I have a few things your father asked I bring here. Would one of you young men with good legs mind—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Tyelkormo said, quickly, before Kurvo could eagerly offer to take them upstairs.

“Oh, I’ll look through them for him,” sighed Karano, neatly solving the problem. “He was storming when he left, he won’t be able to focus on these when he returns.”

“Will you sign his name on them too?” Tyelkormo teased, making Karano’s cheeks darken.

“If he was in a storm leaving the home, he was in a howling gale by the time he reached the forge,” Iwre continued. “I came here in part to warn you boys to wait for another day if you have today’s complaints for him. He won’t hear you.”

“He seemed rather upset,” said Kurvo cautiously. “He was snarling to himself in his room. I couldn’t make anything of what he was saying—not that I was trying to listen in.”

“He is in a rare mood,” said Iwre.

“Less rare than I’d like,” Tyelkormo snorted.

“You expect polite behavior, even from princes; it’s one of your strengths, Prince Turkafinwe. And being one among them you can demand it when you do not receive it. You might think this is meddling advice from an old man, but I caution you; you should turn that discerning eye inside more often, or the day will come that you demand more from others than you give to them.”

Tyelkormo smiled. “My Lord watches me,” he replied. “Even now.”

“May it remain so. Faith is a beautiful thing, more beautiful still when reciprocated. I am your grandfather’s man, and always have been. There are times when to me your father is still a child who does not understand where the path he walks leads him. I think it will lead him aright in the end, though to a man like me, the words he will say about the Valar take my breath. It will be alright in the end. Though for today, give him some space. His weakness is his heart. When it swells too big, he can’t hear anything outside of its beating. He won’t hear you again until Laurelin shines, or perhaps until a full cycle has passed.”

“That is how it is,” said Kurvo, quietly. “His heart troubles him.”

Tyelkormo snorted, once. “I think he is more troubled by another of his organs.”

Kurvo startled and shot Tyelkormo through with a glare. Tyelkormo raised his eyebrows. Iwre, older than propriety, sighed aloud. “And you know that I remember your father as a very young man. Maybe that’s so, but he’s not so petty a man that he would lash out at innocents around him because of that. While he and your mother are at odds, be patient. It is his heart that hurts. When they reconcile, the road will become smooth again.”

“May that day come soon,” muttered Kurvo. He and his wife conversed only in letters now. Lauro’s sobbing wife had had to be pulled away from him when they parted, but thorny Tanaike had told Kurvo that he was picking her or his father a year before his father made him choose. She didn’t tolerate—well, many things, some of which made Tyelkormo wonder how she and his brother had matched at all (he sometimes feared that they both found each other good enough, to be frank). Kurvo’s son had both of their stubbornness combined and a singular wildness that had to be the questionably-intentioned gift of a maia, because where else it came from Tyelko could not say.

Tyelkormo missed his nephew sorely. He was better off with his mother, prickly as she was. “It can’t come soon enough.”

“It can,” said Iwre, “there are some things more dangerous to rush than to wait for, even if your heart is sick with waiting. From what tidings I have heard of Nerdanel, she needs time still. Don't worry about these things—you young men should be free of worries, running in city streets like tree-houses.”

For as long as his father managed a city like his own play house, Tyelkormo would have worries. “If you insist, I’ll go act heedlessly and foolishly right away.”

“No,” said Kurvo and Karano at the same time.

Iwre chuckled. “There’s nothing I can say to you, Prince Turkafinwe, nothing you can’t seize and reshape as it suits you. You’re as clever as your father, though he named you for your strength.”

“I assure you that that’s considerable as well.”

“Oh, leave off; I’ll go before you fill my head with your nonsense.”

“No, stay,” Kurvo said, “At least let us get you tea, or water.”

“No, no, this was only a brief errand. I’m headed home now to eat. You princes enjoy the day; mind your manners, as well, and you’ll have everything you need.”

Kurvo walked him out, they bade him will. Then Kurvo shut the front door again, and locked it, and whipped his head around to Tyelkormo with a glare.

“What?”

“Must you?”

“Must I what?”

“‘Must you’ seconded,” said Karano, returning to his seat and pulling up the first of father’s papers to examine it.

“‘Must I what’ presented to the council a second time.”

“‘It’s another organ that troubles him,’ are you serious?” asked Kurvo, indignant.

“Am I wrong?”

“I don’t know if you’re wrong and I didn’t want to wonder. Why do you have to say things like that?”

“Why do so many have to do things and refuse to admit to them?”

“Maybe because we are speaking about private matters. You are the one who says things no one else wants to hear.”

“I have said it before and will again, I will say what needs to be said whether it’s considered polite or not,” Tyelkormo began hotly, still impatiently pacing as his brothers sat at the table. “What is necessary supersedes what is proper. We have been here muttering about how our Lord and Father’s foul mood has spread foulness to our home, our streets, our city, its society, its courts, its waters, our whole kingdom as his feud with his half-brother refuses to leave a single subject of the Noldoran uninvolved. It would leave his business private if it was private. All of us have to walk softly and mince our words to not disturb him so that he does not transform domestic matters into public feuds; we already have nothing private, not truly, because everything we do and say in this house has the power to sicken all of Formenos if our father takes it the wrong way.

“If something bothers him so that he goes out into the streets shouting accusations and demanding swords then I will not be too precious to complain about it or too proper to address it. Do you think I’m wrong? ‘It’s only his heart that is sore’. Did he have his sons with his heart? Do you think he pinched his nose and closed his eyes through the making of all seven of us? If you weren’t too squeamish to talk like men among men you would hear that Iwre was gentle in suggesting he was fiery in his youth. He was a problem in his youth and he’s becoming one again.

“What are you wincing about? Do you think it can’t be true? He wants you to think that he’s some pure being, all untouched spirit and no base body, and you’re halfway convinced. Do you not hear him insisting he is his father’s truest son at every available opportunity? He is. Finwe could only stand so many years of mourning before his eyes strayed. Feanaro started growing restless a mere month after our mother left and his irritability and hot temper only increase. What piety do you think inspires him to control what clothing the women of Formenos are allowed or not allowed to wear in public? What part of a prince’s duties is that? Why the special ire he reserves for the printing of ‘unfit’ literature; if it’s about banning disloyal and divisive speech, like he claims, why is obscenity in the ban?

“Envy. Do you think it was coincidence, or some strange, unexplainable mood that made him forbid us all our wives and our lovers when his left him? If it was a moment of anger, he would have relented eventually. If he had pure intentions then he wouldn’t want to watch his sons remain lonely and unhappy. Envy. He doesn’t want us to have what he can’t. Your good wives fear to test him, and not for no reason, but Findekano cannot be daunted. Why do you think father is especially cruel to Russo? He is envious of what he has.”

“What, of Findekano?”

“Surely not. Envious that Russo has a lover who wants him, and badly enough to make terrible decisions in the name of passion. Terrible,” he complained, his eyes flickering upwards for a single moment of frustration. (He would not mention Findekano and Russo’s recent division to his brothers; he also preferred that haughty ‘Nelyafinwe’ suffer a little longer, as it kept him out of his hair—such as he had left after his father had it cut off. ‘Since you can’t take care of it’, he had snarled—Tyelko had let it flow free in the style of Oromendili. Well. It did still, though short as sprouts.) “I’ll state things plainly; our father can’t stand to see anyone happy with the things he cannot have. Especially a lover. He runs a city of subjects who bow their heads to him and might in theory just take a new mistress quietly, and I would bet he’s felt the temptation to do so, but he’s spent his entire life railing about how evil old Indis is for seducing a married man. If word got out of an indiscretion, he would be destroyed and he would deserve it. Instead he locks himself down and demands everyone around him does as well; no wives, no lovers, no books for adults, no pictures or sculptures of the body, no one’s neck or legs showing, no glass windows, just in case someone accidentally sees through to a woman changing. We have to live in Varda’s cloister in this fucking place, I’m going to set something on fire.”

“I wonder if it is in actuality my honored older brother who is frustrated," said Karano, cold as spring water, unruffled, objectively hilarious.

“You don’t have to wonder. I am. But I don’t go around trying to control what everyone else does because of what I’m feeling. I don’t try to tell women they can’t show their legs. I’d rather they would.”

“Enough of this,” Karano sighed. “Perhaps you’re right, and so what? He is struggling, we do our best to not exacerbate it. The way you speak I wonder if you still have love in your heart for him yourself. I know he has been difficult of late; I also want better for him but won’t curse his name as I wait for it. I help him, as you can plainly see from my working while you busy yourself complaining. If you are right, there’s nothing anyone can do about the matter. It’s between them.”

Tyelkormo held his breath for a moment. “I love him also,” he said, his voice now low. “And think he can be better than this.”

“You don’t—you don’t think there is someone else?” Kurvo asked, quiet.

Tyelkormo did not stop to think, to ponder. Even suspicion was not worth the time in the moment, for him or anyone else. “I doubt it. He’d never permit himself. I think any unwilled impulse would only make him angry, and compel him to be more cruel to that person than to anyone else. He may not even recognize such a thing if he felt it. Just like you, baby bird.”

“That was the sort of joke I expected to stop when I had my first child, but here we all are.”

“Someone comes again,” said Karano, and after a moment of quiet Tyelkormo heard he was right.

“Two,” he said, and then nearly at one he and Kurvo corrected “the two.” And indeed, after a quick jog down the street, Minyo opened the door and Atyo sprang in. They each carried a mound of lamb and herbs over beds of grains in bowls, still warm.

Tyelkormo’s mouth started watering immediately. “Well, if this isn’t the happiest ‘well met’ I’ve had all day!”

Atyo stuck out his tongue at him. Minyo said, “You’re about to have a much worse one. Father’s on his way; he’s howling.”

Tyelkormo sighed. “What, still?”

“Worse. He didn’t like what he learned when he got the sword to the forge.”

“The sword?”

“The sword!” said Atyo, picking up from Minyo. “What, you didn’t see as he was running out?”

“I didn’t see him at all as he was running out. He gave me some orders this morning that I disdained, I have been avoiding him.”

“He found a sword from Nolofinwe’s forges—he picked it up from a spy.”

“A spy!” said Tyelkormo, exhausting himself for the rest of the day by rueing several things at once.

“Sneaking around,” said Minyo, with a grin. “I saw the sword myself. It had Nolofinwe’s sign on it, as clear as day. Father thinks it was made by the man himself and sent in here with his spy.”

It may have been. Tyelkormo was nowhere near the only person who knew they were making weapons back in Tirion as well, arm for arm with Formenos, but that fact was publicly denied and the details had been craftily obscured. Some, like himself, had seen proof ages ago and kept it to themselves. That the well-laid plan had been bunked by Prince Findekano was as sad as it was typical. He had a lot of explaining to do to his own father—provided he got back there to do so.

Tyelkormo briefly considered getting back upstairs and telling the idiot he had to go, will he or nil he. He also considered just picking up the chair, occupant included, and throwing the whole matter wholesale out of the open window. Then he considered another thing.

“He’s coming back this way?” he asked the two.

“Yes,” they both said. “Barely five minutes behind us,” Atyo added.

Tyelkormo clapped his hands together. “Well! Those bowls look delicious to me and it's turning into a beautiful waning outside. Kurvo, get some forks—napkins—Karano, just pick it all up. We’re leaving within thirty seconds for a lovely meal outside.”

“He’s not going to be happy to see us all gone,” said Karano, though despite that he was picking up his things. Kurvo rushed into the kitchen to get the forks.

“He’s not going to be happy at all and no matter what we do. He chastise us tomorrow for going out for dinner and for not bringing him anything, but that chastising will be grades easier to endure than what’s coming home now. Let his evening be ruined; I can rescue all five of ours and I consider that a good return. Boys, out the back.”

As he began to push the two out through the kitchen and down the servant’s quarters (most of whom were out themselves and the rest of whom knew how to stay out of sight), he cast a glance up to the ceiling, and added, under his breath, “And the protection of the Valar on any restless soul that tries to take roost in this house before we return.”

Thirty seconds, as promised, with only Tyelkormo himself technically pressing the time as he reached behind his head to softly shut the back door leading out of the servant’s quarters without locking it. They all tripped into the thin stone yard pressed between the house and the wall of the mountainside. They were so skilled and practiced at slipping out the back gate (and so pressed by their elder brother) that not one of them looked up to see the dark hole of a broken window in the tower; a bright pair of eyes, however, marked their escape.

--

Original Note:

(...This wand I carry is the god’s, not mine. You’ll have to seize it from me for yourself.)

The concept of this chapter is that it was a ‘chorus’ chapter, in fact it was initially titled “Chorus”. Tyelko is just the chorus leader in this one. But then I found myself wanting to fit all four of the threats Pentheus issues in the particular exchange I pulled this from somehow, and seeing as I had four chapters, I just made it happen and didn’t worry about connecting each chapter to a perfect title.

Obviously, the whole chorus should be aware of the hero’s actions and passing judgement on them, not just Tyelko; he’s being a really bad chorus leader, to be honest. I don’t think he likes the role.

--

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I'll lock your body up inside, in prison.

--

Findekano watched a group of five grown men flee their father, whom they feared, and he thought to himself, I can’t do this. It isn’t right.

Then, after having been tied to a chair in a single room since the mingling and nearly until Telperion’s waning, for the first time in the entire ordeal, cold fear trickled cold down Findekano’s back. Now the thought of what he intended to do was bitter in his mouth and repulsed him. But how to get out of it? He had gone too far.

It was no longer a matter of getting free. Turkafinwe’s trick knots would be easy to slip out of and his exit was still clear. He could be out of the room in his next breath. But he had gone too far. Feanaro had seen and stolen his sword, proof of the industry of war in Tirion and that Nolofinwe was its conductor; he had to minimize the damage that came to his own people from that breach of silence. He had also damaged Nelyafinwe’s reputation in the eyes of his father. He didn’t much care what happened to his self-absorbed ex-lover now, but he considered himself a person better than such pettiness. Having threatened violence on Feanaro in his room could have consequences far beyond this stone tower and having insinuated infatuation with him could destroy his own reputation (and power) completely if he didn’t get Feanaro equally implicated, or somehow convince him it was said in anger, not in truth.

…He was kidding himself. No one said what he had said even in careless anger. A man did not tell another man that he called his name in coitus as a bluff.

His plan of riling Feanaro up again and loosing himself at the right moment to spring on him was stupid, which he had just now realized, but what was he supposed to do now? He had to wait for him to return but he no longer knew what to do with him.

Findekano’s time to think was swiftly taken away from him. Mere minutes after the sons fled the house, the father returned.

As Feanaro thundered into his house he bellowed the names of three or four of his sons; Kurufinwe, Morifinwe, Ambarussa ; when no one responded he shouted for Nelyafinwe, in wrath, and his name was followed by a few choice words. Each of them shot up through the floors like an arrow aimed high, screeching through the stone.

The door slammed behind him, there was banging and crashing, but there was no one to respond to his shouts. After some silence, he called, just as loud, for his servants. Findekano sat, listening, as steps hurried from the back of the house to the front.

Findekano heard his sword being thrown onto the table—he recognized the clatter. He could only hear one side of the conversation that followed, because Feanaro roared and his servants did not respond loud enough for their voices to carry to him. “WHERE THE BLAZES ARE THEY ALL,” “NOT HEEDED IN MY OWN HOUSE,” “SPIES, RATS, CURSES SENT AGAINST US, ALL UNRAVELS—” he made accusations hard to track, not caring if his audience understood. Then he shouted for the servants to leave, all of them, for the house to be left empty, without a soul, and Findekano heard them all rush to obey.

The house of a prince is not meant to stand empty. Even when the master is out, a host of family, nurses, cooks, squires, craftsmen remain at busy work. To empty a palace is like having a body bloodless. Findekano’s ran cold when he realized there was no one left now but him and Feanaro—and Feanaro was climbing the steps.

His attempts to plan went up like candleflames snuffed with his bloody heartbeats. He couldn’t think. He clenched his fist and his teeth against the urge to call out to Manwe, to recite his deeds and titles like he had been taught to do in times of trouble. He would not have Manwe behold him now, not draw his eye. But what to do? Did he count on himself, he wondered, as Feanaro crested one staircase and approached another, footsteps growing ever louder, when he had already made such a mess of the day? Of the last few days, the season, of every one of the twenty minglings since Nelyafinwe had cast him off and he had spent his hours sobbing and cursing him and dreaming foul dreams as he was awake; vengeance, score-settling, retribution. He had spoken about himself in a different way before this, in terms of his values, positions, beliefs, ideals he held. In the pain of severance from the body he loved, the spirit he had inhabited, lost in the sea alone, he had watched the waves take those ideas away. The land had been taken out from under him. What was ahead of him now, in endless, restless life? Two handfuls of days had emptied him of the thing he had thought were his person, his self, and instead he had lust and anger and a need he sought to fill. He had proved himself wrong in twenty minglings about what he had thought he believed about other people, what he thought he would or wouldn’t do to his fellow man, what he thought he was too good for.

He felt as though he had been someone else, some man, before Nelyafinwe had torn his hide off from his back, and who this cast-off thing waiting for Feanaro was he did not know yet. And when Feanaro’s hand wrestled around the door handle and Findekano heard its sharp metal crackle, Findekano lost yet another battle for the rapidly disintegrating bigger person inside of himself and screamed through his mind for Russo.

If Russandol had been in the house, he would have heard him. But the though-speech of osanwe , though sharp as a knife, was as short as a breath. It didn’t carry far. The call went unanswered.

Findekano regretted his bound hands even more than he had yet when a single panicked tear slipped out of his eye and onto his cheek just as Feanaro threw open the door. He could have handled the rest of it if Formenos’ tyrant had not seen him crying.

His eyes snapped right to it, too. There was no hiding it, certainly not with the glare that Findekano put on like paint to poorly pretend that it wasn’t fear that had produced it.

Feanaro stood like a beam of silver light in the doorway, suddenly let loose from behind a dark cloud. The white he wore was so pure it was made luminous in Telperion’s shine. He still held Findekano’s sword, almost black in the shadow of his bright cast. And in that light Miriel’s complexion made Feanaro look like a dead thing.

He had come in shouting, thundered up the stairs, and now he was completely silent. And still, like standing sea-ice in the north, white, bright, cold. He stared at Findekano. Findekano, too, fought for silence; he knew his tight throat would betray his fear, which had come on him like a summer storm. Why now, when he would have had time to master it earlier, if it had come during his hours of numb vigil in this room?

Feanaro stared at Findekano.

“What am I doing?” Feanaro asked, in a thin voice, quiet as a breeze through a window just slivered open.

Findekano pulled in a breath, but not to say something. He had been ready for any kind of insult. He was not ready for this. That slip of whisper chilled had him to the bone.

“What am I doing?” Feanaro asked himself again. He came into the room, but only a step, before he halted again, like someone had put a hand to his chest. “How did it get like this? What am I shouting about? I don’t—I don’t want to think that way. About—people. My people.”

He staggered forward. He dropped Findekano’s sword onto the nightstand by a lamp and a book and put his right hand to his forehead.

“My nephew,” he pleaded. “My family. This—this can’t be what I want. This can’t be what I am.”

Findekano did not know if Feanaro was speaking to him. It was a habit of princes to not speak to those around them; Findekano was aware of it but slipped into it himself, sometimes delusional in the endless search for moments alone when he lived a life surrounded by servants in his ‘private’ chambers. (This was one of several reasons he took to the road so often.)

“The nightmares,” said Feanaro. “I don’t know if I am awake sometimes. And they pester me when I am. Everyone screaming for something. I’m told someone saw the enemy in the shadows every day. I’m told about a thousand different eyes over the wall and spies disappearing around corners. Everyone tells me everyone else is lying to me. But they all want the same thing: exemption. They want to think they’ll be excused for their sins if they have powerful enough friends. No. No one. No one is exempt. No one is pure. Even my sons; they think I won’t chastise them for their crimes and their failures because of their blood. They need it more. Everyone must know the rules apply to them. Nelyafinwe can whine and cry all he wants and call me whatever he wants. They get the higher standards and greater privileges they ask for. They get greater responsibilities. Punishments.

“Your father gives you soft kisses and tells you you do nothing wrong. I know. I can tell.”

He was talking to him. Findekano’s back crawled. “He holds me to the same standard he holds every man in his court.”

“Nothing. Next to nothing. Law in the dirt. Standards on the ground. He can hold no one to account because he knows how much he has to answer for himself. I want a kingdom of men. Upright citizens. Self-sufficient, moral, just. You have to rise up above your base impulses to become a man worth being. And I will raise them up myself if I must.”

“...He’s not without his flaws,” said Findekano, knowing he shouldn’t say this, feeling it release from his chest even as he knew he must hold it in. “I wish he would say what he knows more often instead of letting people lie around him and get away with it. He chooses mercy. He endures the hard thing himself. He lowers his eyes and looks away from insults. He turns the other cheek. I’m afraid I’ll watch him lose his head.”

“He’s soft,” Feanaro whispered.

“He wants to be soft,” Findekano corrected, to the floor.

“And he’s cruel.”

“He told me he thinks about dying.”

“Soft, but cruel. He depends on gentility. He knows he’s likable; he is, but you must resist it. The cost of submission is too steep. He does favors, cultivates his circle of the indebted. He will never say a harsh word. He will only—look at you—stare at you—whisper that you could be better. He seduces them away from you, promises them gold and silk sheets, then tells you that it was you who drove them away. And then when you are lulled to sleep he strikes.”

“...I really don’t think he knows he does it,” Findekano admitted, feeling like he was shoving someone down a cliff. “He wants… he wants to be gentle. He doesn’t think about, maybe doesn’t understand how it feels when he’s gentle and kind and soft until he isn’t. But I can tell you he regrets it.”

Feanaro laughed, a short, sharp stab.

“Every time. Terribly. It just makes it worse.”

After a few more staggering steps, Feanaro came to Findekano’s side. Findekano was afraid to look at him. Then he felt his hand—on his face—under the tear stuck to his cheek. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said. “You are a wretched thing, child; you don’t have to be.”

His voice, when soft, sounded so much like Nelyafinwe’s. Findekano did not think he had heard Feanaro soft before. His finger curled up under the tear on his cheek. Findekano’s heart stammered.

“I know you came here with ill intent,” Feanaro continued, feather-light, “Even so. I would take you on. We could fix you. I know it would be work. I know it would take time. Healing ever does. But it would be worth it—it would be proof. With you alone, we could break the spell he has on the kingdom—once they see you in white.”

Findekano turned his head to look at him. Feanaro was beautiful.

He saw the light of his eyes. The white, gold and silver perfectly mixed, the same light in those stones he hoarded under guard and chest and lock and key. The sons locked behind walls, forbidden to leave. The chains. The ropes. The walls.

Findekano could get confused, turned around, seduced; he admitted it. He liked things that shone. He did not hesitate when he wanted something. He felt, now that he had lost Nelyafinwe, that he likely could be convinced to betray anyone he had loved, lose anything else. Perhaps even the principles, values, virtues he once thought he held. But beneath everything, in the lowest basement of himself, the thought of not being able to go outside, to the mountains as he willed, the hills, the forest, free in the vales…

No. More important than any man was the open world. He said, “No. Never.” Not even if it was the only thing left that I wanted.

Feanaro’s face, so close, barely changed in its expression. Yet, Findekano felt his heart drop in his chest. He squeezed his fist on the rope. 

Feanaro shut his eyes, kept them shut. He held still for a few seconds. When he opened them again—what had been in them a moment ago was gone, and thank Manwe. “You must go,” he said, his voice thin. “Go, go now. I’ll undo your bonds; there’s no more to say. I do not want to hurt you, I—may want it again, if—Go. Do not be seen.”

Feanaro stood, and his hand reached down, and Findekano realized several things very quickly. Ropes, knots, configurations, complications; the conclusion of all those things was quick and inescapable. He had completely fucked this up and there was no way out of it now. The door out was not open, as Feanaro was about to realize.

Feanaro’s hand went to the ropes, felt, and realized. It only took a few brushes of his clever fingers to realize that these were not the knots he had tied. They had been untied and redone. And Findekano could not be the one who had done it.

Feanaro grasped Findekano’s wrist, sprawling, with his nails. Findekano hissed. With his other arm Feanaro grasped the end of the rope that had been clutched in Findekano’s fist and with a sharp yank all the slipknots around him unravelled from themselves, one after the next. Findekano lurched to stand, but he did not dislodge Feanaro’s grip, so he stumbled, half off of the chair.

“Who did this?” Feanaro demanded. Findekano tugged his wrist, Feanaro’s nails dug in. “It had to be someone here.”

“Let go of me.” Twisting, Findekano surged with this foot at Feanaro’s thigh. Feanaro didn’t expect it; with a surge of pride Findekano found himself free. But his balance was so bad that he could only get free backwards, so he let himself fall to the floor. If he allowed the fall, he could control it; he landed with a leg under him.

Feanaro was too myopic to be startled. Findekano couldn’t get to standing before he was on him, grasping at his shoulders. “Who did this? Who found you here? Who let you in?”

“I let myself in! I broke through the window!” Findekano let Feanaro grasp at his face so that he had a hand free to grab the back of the chair.

“Nelyafinwe,” Feanaro snarled.

Findekano shoved the chair around and forward, slamming it against Feanaro’s leg. He knew he had no time to waste; as Feanaro jolted backward, he heaved himself up. He now had his feet under him and a chair between himself and the mad prince, and that wasn’t nothing. “Nelyafinwe had nothing to do with it,” he panted.

Feanaro was forced to reassess now that Findekano was (roughly) armed. He snapped, “You tell lies freely, but that one is beyond belief.”

Findekano saw Feanaro’s eyes flicker to where the sword sat on the nightstand. He wouldn’t—he couldn’t take chances, considering what Feanaro had been willing to do to Nelyafinwe before now. There was only one way to get him to believe Findekano’s claim, which was the truth. “He cast me aside,” he spat. “He threw me out as you long desired. Be proud of your son, who did choose you in the end. Now there isn’t even one of them who hasn’t.”

Feanaro’s eyes flickered, running through, perhaps, the same week of events Turkafinwe had pondered before coming to the conclusion that this claim made an awful lot of sense. (How had Nelyafinwe been acting that they believed Findekano’s explanation so readily?) “Nelyafinwe is much like his mother,” Feanaro decided, and what was that movement of his shoulder; a turn to the bedside, a preparation for a lunge to the sword? “He was well-made in her eyes. Then another of your ilk knows a fraction of what I have endured.”

After ending his sentence in a snarl, Feanaro grasped at the chair, intending to tear it out of Findekano’s grasp. At the last moment, Findekano let go; he stamped down on the rope on the floor, too, which remained tangled in the back of the chair. Feanaro saw it rising from the ground like a snake, saw it tighten; too late. The rope pushed on his legs, he wobbled, and Findekano lunged forward to shove him down.

Something that had been frustrating for Findekano about learning to fight with his brothers and cousins (on Indis’ side, that was) was that they all complained that he ‘fought dirty’ and would then refuse to spar with him. The real problem, as Findekano saw it, was that he was the only one who fought serious. He felt a surge of delight in his stomach as he let himself fall down over Feanaro, felt his back crack onto the ground and let his hands dig into his arms when he had him pinned. He could tell it hurt.

Something that only fighting people who whined about fair fights had not prepared him for was someone who had never lost before and lived in terror of losing once. Findekano barely had Feanaro on the floor for a second before his uncle surged up, breaking one arm out of its hold to grab his neck. His neck— Findekano felt immediately deprived of having had any unfair opponents before, because he hadn’t even thought of doing that.

Feanaro squeezed. “Who let you in.”

“Making demands from the bottom. You’re just like—”

Feanaro squeezed harder. “Waste your air and you’ll have less of it. Who.”

“No one let me in.”

“Perhaps so. But you did not untie and retie those ropes yourself. Who is your accomplice? Who has betrayed me?”

“A servant,” he lied, “A mere thrall of your fortress. They heard me shouting and I convinced them. To punish someone low—”

“That’s a lie. They are all forbidden to enter my chambers and none would dare. Only my sons have the nerve. Which one?”

Findekano would not give Turkafinwe up. It was partially about honor; partially, he knew Turkafinwe would get revenge. Not that any of Feanaro’s sons let a grudge go, but Turkafinwe was just about on the bottom of the list of pure princes he wanted to cross. He grit his teeth.

“Any of them have the skill,” Feanaro complained, “I assured they could all do such things. The impertinence, however—not equally shared. My Lauro has not been home…”

It could be trouble, too, if Findekano let him reason through it. Feanaro was mad, but intelligent. He might well figure it out. “And what if it wasn’t only one?”

Feanaro hesitated. His eyes grew wider immediately, drinking in the possibility; greedily, Findekano thought.

“What if they were none loyal to you? You suspect as much, I heard you shouting at the servants.” Feanaro’s grip on his throat was tight. His skin was tingling around it. His littlest finger slipped down and over the male crest in Findekano’s throat as his mind worked. “Why did they all flee the house before you?”

“No. There is a traitor; there is a rat. They do not all—on the whole they are pure. One has stumbled. I will find him—I’ll root him out—”

“And what? Whip your sons? Strike them? Drag them out in the street to beat and humiliate them? I know. Fortunately for you, no one else believes you are so cruel, or else I would have had you drug out to face Mahanaxar’s wrath.”

“You gutter-minded—”

“I kissed the marks on his skin. I know what you did.”

Feanaro’s eyes filled with light. His face was red. “You—YOU—You did that. He came home with those marks. You lying viper, how DARE you.”

That accusation, Findekano could not take. His mind left him. He dove into Feanaro’s hand, letting it choke him, so that he could smash a fist into Feanaro’s face.

Feanaro’s head knocked back. Findekano swung again. The hand that had been at his throat cut down, lancing, and punched at his collarbone instead. Findekano’s next strike was off; he learned, and went for the throat himself.

The next ten heartbeats of his life were the most brutal he had lived so far. Each throb came quick on the heels of the other but he felt each moment like his veins were the size of the whole room, and it took his blood hours to course through. He clutched at Feanaro’s white neck; a thigh kicked up, between his legs, then at his stomach. He was rolling, he grabbed Feanaro’s tightly-bound hair. Feanaro tried to crawl on top of him and Findekano yanked his head back. He heard him scream; he grabbed at his chest, his neck, and couldn’t grasp anything. Feanaro shoved at him. He kicked. He saw Feanaro’s arm reach over his head but couldn’t do anything.

The Feanaro had the sword again, held in both hands like a staff, his right tight around the hilt and his left curling precariously around the blade. It lowered, slow, but somehow, too fast for him to do anything, and then Findekano’s neck was being pressed between the floor and the blade.

He heaved, and was punished for it. His throat choked. He scrabbled for something on the ground but there was nothing. Feanaro, gasping for air above him, snarled and then spat on him. His hair, which had been pinned on his head, was half-unbound now, twisted, falling onto his shoulder. Findekano had scored his neck like a cat.

No one had fought him like that in his life. He wasn’t sure that was fighting, or else it was possible they had misunderstood the idea of fighting so far and had just been playing as of yet.

Eerily, after heaving, his open, panting mouth wet with spittle, Feanaro gasped, “I have never in my life fought a beast like you. What manner of creature are you? Are you the son of an elf at all, or did your mother mate with an animal or spirit in the woods and slip you once born into your father’s lap? What are you?”

Findekano replied him, choking his words past the weight of the sword, “I am what you think my father is.”

Feanaro’s eyes widened, shining out of his rose-red face. He stiffened on top of Findekano; he had him straddled, close, using the dead weight of his body to keep him down (and Feanaro had considerable weight). “What does it mean?” 

“You think my father is a power-craving creature who schemes and plots all day to take you off of your throne,” Findekano panted, “When all he wants is to be a family, or at least to keep his safe from you if that’s what you force him into. I am the one who falls asleep at night imagining you in the dirt.”

Clutching the back of Nelyafinwe’s head, imagining that someday, somehow, Feanaro would be as badly hurt as everyone he had ever hurt. What manner of vengeance that was he was not sure he could imagine, though he tried. And then he would dream about being taken in his arms.

Having Feanaro stand at the point of his sword was not enough —that was why it had left him feeling hollow. He wanted to see him so much more wretched.

Findekano could see Feanaro’s breaths speed up through his open mouth. “You—that—to hear it spoken out loud—is—”

“A relief, I assume.”

“I knew it—and you licentious worm, there was nothing below you, was there? Not to even speak of the one you have corrupted, you cultivated seeming friendships with all of my sons, spending your time spinning your tales to each one of them, becoming the useful friend who would take their letters and gifts back and forth, through my walls, so none of them feels right betraying you; the years you have spent slowly poisoning Nelyafinwe, bending him further and further out of his shape for a normal life, until he is this husk of himself, weeping without his torture. Every stablehand and squire in Formenos knows you, some cast their eyes to the ground as they seek to defend you, and so I knew you have some general love, some affection you’ve cultivated through gift-giving and congeniality—this—

“And you took Nelyafinwe to the roof knowing I could see you,” Feanaro interrupted himself, his voice dropping into his throat. “To the roof beside my high window, between the mountain and the wall; pretending that no one could see you there, telling Nelyafinwe you would be alone, surely with a lie that you had seen me leave the house. Right there, outside my window; I saw how you eased him onto his back, coercing, how you pushed him down when he tried to rise, pressed in your thighs around him. You hushed his complaints with your kisses, you pulled at his clothes with your hands; you shoved aside his hesitation like a stallion that doesn’t care about the braying of the mare. And when you—had him—you looked at me. I knew it, I knew it. You knew I was there.”

Findekano’s stomach was throbbing. He hurt. Feanaro had torn wounds in his neck, his chest, he had bruised his legs, his ribs. Now those wounds were throbbing with pain with his heartbeats because that blood had risen from his depths to his skin. The sword trembled on his neck as Feanaro’s shaking hands slid it closer and further. “I saw your shadow in the window,” he replied, his voice hoarse from being choked.

“It was no accident. Nor—not even—” Feanaro struggled to speak, still gasping, though he could have caught his breath long ago. “You wanted me to see.”

“I wanted you to know I had him.”

“No,” Feanaro snarled. For a second, he pressed the sword too low and Findekano gagged. His head rolled back. With a jump in his arms, Feanaro loosened the pressure; his eyes were wide and wild.

Findekano’s breaths came back loud and rasping. When the shock of the pain faded, when he could breathe again, the coals of his core started burning with each breath. His body was shaking.

“No. No. It was not about him. You would not have tricked him like that if it was about him. That was about me. You wanted me to see,” Feanaro continued, the sword in his hands now barely resting on Findekano’s throat. (Watching Findekano choke had disturbed him.) The weight of his body, however, had sunk further down; his thigh was draped over Findekano’s legs, their chests nearly upon each other. He was a heavy man, like his father, strong, thick; where Feanaro’s body pressed into him Findekano began to sweat with warmth. “You wanted to infect me. You knew that the horror of your disgusting display would burn into my eyes. Something so—monstrous—disgusting—like watching a doe be devoured by once-darling hounds. Your cousin. You wanted me to see my son defiled. You wanted me to have to see it, again, and again, like it happened before me every night—to have these nightmares —to see it in my dreams, over and over—”

It had worked. Findekano’s blood made his skin wet. He was hot between his thighs. Feanaro was pressed to him like a fever presses flesh to silk; he could feel how his pulse pounded too in the skin on his stomach, he could see it in Feanaro’s trembling wrist. Powers, spirits, and things unholy; the minglings that Findekano had spent burning in bed, Feanaro had been writhing in his own. He had—he had infected him. He had—

(Why should that make him feel hot? Even the ones that loved him winced with shame when faced with his perversions. This should be the worst thing to learn, that he had caused another man to lose his way. But he was burning.)

“It’s not me,” Feanaro begged, “It was you. You did this to me. It’s not me.”

Feanaro did not resist or lash out as Findekano lifted his left hand, slowly, though his eyes tracked it. It returned to the hair he had wrenched out of its place, the coiled braid now slowly unravelling. He grasped a curl, oiled and greased into a stiff, tamed wave; but now, sweat and heat caused a strand of untamed frizz to escape its bounds.

Findekano curled it around one shaking finger, loosely, because he did not have his grip. “Make love to me.”

Feanaro’s breath stuttered. His eyes dropped, then rose. Speechless again.

Findekano boldly rose up, pressing his neck against the sword, raising his shoulders from the ground. For a moment, Feanaro did not think to push back; his arms lifted to permit it. “Make love to me,” said Findekano again, reaching for more of his shadow-dark hair.

“No.” Feanaro’s frightened face (Findekano realized now that he had seen him frightened before, but hadn’t known then what that cold, tight expression was) reminded him of his own father, when the resemblance was usually thin. It reminded him of Russo. It looked like the family he loved; it made him want to soothe, to comfort, though that desire burned with all the rest of the coals inside him and when set aflame looked like any other.

Findekano did turn a curl of Feanaro’s hair around his fingers; wet with oil, thick as a rope. It left a shimmer and softness on his fingers as he pulled. “I’ll lay beneath you,” he said. “I won’t even lift my hands to you.”

“You seek my destruction.” One of Feanaro’s hands had left the sword. The right still clutched its hilt like the bridle of a horse running out of control; the other, now, was bracing Feanaro on the cold stone floor beneath them.

“Openly,” Findekano agreed. He tried to rise again, but Feanaro remembered the sword, and pushed him back. “So you may do as you will with me, and not regret it. Why worry about what you do to an enemy?”

“This is a ploy—a trap.”

“I’ll be equally trapped, and I already have a poor reputation for my perversions while you are a paragon. Who will be believed?”

“You don’t want me. You want to hurt the lover that rejected you.”

“I want you,” Findekano said, now winding all of his fingers into a tress of hair slowly unravelling. Gently, he pulled it from the snarl on Feanaro’s head.

“You—” Feanaro began to deny again; Findekano used the strength of his back to lift his hips beneath him, and the movement meant that the hardness that had been slowly growing under Feanaro’s body lifted from where it had been caught and pressed into him. Findekano felt Feanaro’s breath go out of him. Findekano opened his mouth and let out his breath in a hot sigh.

Feanaro did not petulantly claim again that Findekano didn’t really want him. The desire was apparent. He stuttered through a few syllables—Findekano had been told by his grandfather, once, that Feanaro had a stutter as a child, the dark well from which his fascination with language first sprang—“I won’t,” said Feanaro, squeezing his eyes shut; “I’m not—I’m loy— L— Nerdanel —”

That made Findekano hesitate. His aunt Nerdanel was a kind woman.

A kind woman whose burden in life would be sorely eased if she could cut herself from her despot husband forever.

…Still. “If you don’t want me,” he told Feanaro, “Let me go.” He wrapped the lock of hair he had disentangled from the rest around his finger, and he tugged, a little, making Feanaro’s head turn. Then he let it slide away.

Feanaro breathed out heavily; his breath had a bit of a strange scent that Findekano could not place. It wasn’t wine, it wasn’t meat; it was some indulgence, but a thin one. He struggled backwards, lifting himself onto his thighs. When the cold air came into the place where their bodies had been pressed together, Findekano’s skin whined and tightened.

Feanaro sat up, but he did not move the sword at Findekano’s throat.

Findekano stared up at him.

Feanaro swallowed. His eyes narrowed and widened, minute movements, rapid as the face clutched by nightmare. He said, “I can’t let you go.”

“No?” Findekano’s body prickled with the cold air; it protested. Warm lust churned in slow places, a slow turn to a low point. One of his thighs tensed and jolted by itself as he tried to stay still.

“You still—you’ve proven you’ll stop at nothing to destroy me—I don’t know what you’ve seen, heard, in your spying. Which one of my sons betrayed me to you. Who your allies are—”

“But you can’t imprison me.”

Feanaro’s face pulsed. “I can.”

“You can’t. You couldn’t keep someone unwilling; your face when you saw me in the chair.” &Though—each of Feanaro’s sons protested their treatment, and wished they had more freedom from their father. Where did the line lie between what Feanaro would or wouldn’t do? Or, like a river, did it wander, the banks of behavior twisting, cutting across low places?) “You could make me willing.”

A light flashed and was smothered in Feanaro’s eyes. His teeth clenched. “What you are willing to do will not bring me any benefit. You are too willing for ill. Too unwilling…”

“I’m very loose-tongued after,” said Findekano, which was true. “I’ll say anything.”

“That’s a common affliction.”

“Are you?”

Feanaro tried to tighten his grip on the sword, but fumbled, and had to recover the blade before it fell.

“Is that why you’re so anxious? What are you afraid you’ll say—”

“I have a grip on my tongue,” Feanaro snapped, though his anger, solid before, was frayed now, a flaw running through it like a pulled seam. “I cannot be—forced, coerced—seduced—”

Findekano tried to sit up again and found himself repressed. Feanaro was barely touching him now—worry that he might lose Feanaro’s interest again sparked under his breastbone. What had worked? What was the soft spot he had found? He had to dig into it. “You can’t keep me, you can’t let me go. You never want me to see your son again, you can’t stop seeing me. Yes,” he said, when Feanaro flinched (causing a resounding shudder of triumph in Findekano’s chest) “Your grip on your tongue was not tight a minute ago. You said that I come to you, again and again—”

“Dreams,” he sneered.

“Mere dreams. But what do I do in them?”

“You know what you do, you foul spirit,” said Feanaro, his eyes skipping down Findekano’s body as he cursed him. (They always did, Findekano realized—Feanaro’s cruel words accompanied by low looks, indulgence betrayed, or revealed, the action of his eyes dropping accompanying the hedonistic pleasure of putting Findekano beneath him with his words.) “It was you who put those things in my head—through some dark powers, perhaps, since I now believe your practice far outstrips the political maneuvering of your father.”

“Maybe!” Findekano smiled. That disdain made his shoulders shiver. “Maybe I linked our dreams together—opened a hole in my mind. I have the same ones, after all. I see you clutching me. I would fall asleep next to your son and wake up with you—don’t look at me like that, it was a lie,” he admitted. “I only ever do dream about you when alone at home, in my father’s house.”

Feanaro’s grip nigh spasmed on the hilt when Findekano said ‘In my father’s house.’

“Writhing,” Findekano admitted, searching for the soft spots, “under the roof where he raised me. Back in my childhood bed. Silly. And then I have to do my own laundry, you know why.”

“I do not,” Feanaro said stubbornly.

Was he supposed to entertain that? Findekano was thrown for a second. “Yes you do.”

“Perhaps I do not.”

A throb of anger joined the stirring in Findekano’s guts. He had not yet learned how to not follow the stabs of anger; he had no idea how others stood so stoic through them. Unthinking, he gripped the hilt of his sword, twining his own fingers over Feanaro’s, and surged up. Feanaro braced, twitched, but didn’t push him back. Close, now, to Feanaro, holding the sword between them, Findekano snapped, “The mere image of you in the night, the delusion of your body on mine, makes me sit up sweating. I wake hot with lust and I put my hands on myself.”

Feanaro’s mouth opened, as if he were to speak, but then it stayed open. Findekano pushed his advantage, tilting up his hips, bringing their bodies closer together again; they were wet with strain, both of them. “I dream that you pin me by the sword and then you take me against the wall when you have me cornered. I wail for help and then melt against you, because I am a liar, and a thrall to pleasure, and I’ve said I’ll improve myself a hundred times and meant it never. And when I wake up I spend about you; I knew I had the last chance to become someone more pure, more good, and the thought of your eyes watching me made me spend in my palm. I thought about your arms and your voice and your snarl of hate while under your son. I was at least loyal before then, though nothing else, but you ruined me with my own hand. There’s no crime that can be done to me here. It’s done. Give me pleasure, at least.”

“You—” said Feanaro, and perhaps reached the end of his insults, looking into Findekano’s face and trying to comprehend. What was the word for this thing? If he found it, and spat it out, Findekano would melt under him.

“Will you try to claim you haven’t done the same?” Findekano demanded, leaning in harder, pressing his chest to the sword, pressing his thigh to the space between Feanaro’s—hard. Warm, even through his trousers; hard, and when he pressed it it twitched on him. Feanaro’s face was red but mask-still, and he did not move away. (Findekano had seen men disgusted by him. This was not that. Feanaro wouldn’t even try to get his hand away from Findekano’s where they twined.) “That you dreamed of me at night, sweated, and then, alone in this cold white room, you didn’t even put your hands to yourself?”

Feanaro’s teeth went together. Findekano could see sweat on his face. “I don’t do. That.”

“Wha—t—touch yourself?” Findekano asked, head going light.

“Never.”

Findekano stared at the fact like he had seen an unknown kind of life in Orome’s woods, newly made, struggling to its feet. He knew it was the truth immediately. The cold, white room around him had never seen pleasure, though it had seen begging and sobbing. “You never—”

“A body,” spat Feanaro, “is pleasure for one’s spouse.”

Findekano was filled with pity inexpressible. His stomach was stoked with fire. Pity; terrible. That was the last thing all of this needed to become love. He had sat up, struggling to his knees under his sword, so that he was nearly level with Feanaro, and they looked eye to eye. Precious lovely animal; he was afraid, in pain, trapped. 

Findekano forgot all else.

Findekano let go of the sword. He put both hands to Feanaro’s shoulders, and suggested he go backwards. Of course, Feanaro did not. “Let me help you,” he said.

Perhaps it was the sound of Findekano’s voice that made Feanaro’s breath hitch. “I d—”

“No, you don’t. But sometimes, wanting is worse. Please.”

“There’s n—”

“Yes, there is. Let me show you.”

“You monster.”

There was the word he had been searching for. Findekano melted, just as he knew he would. He leaned in and kissed his lips.

Feanaro gasped and turned away. Findekano kissed the corner of the mouth. He clutched his right hand on his shoulder, lifted the left to his ear. He tried to turn Feanaro’s head toward him, but he resisted being moved.

He did not resist the kiss that lifted Findekano’s lips to the place just below his ear. Feanaro repeated the same motion, turning his face away; pushing the spot Findekano had just kissed to his lips.

The sword trembled between them, so Findekano reached down and pushed it to the ground. It went. He kissed again, a little higher, just under the lobe of Feanaro’s ear. His heartbeat pulsed on Findekano’s lip. He could hear Feanaro’s breath, dragging out of him like a forge laboring to light, billowing smoke. Findekano came closer, looming over him; the direction finally, at great effort, flipped.

Feanaro’s fist curled on the ground, a desperate attempt to gather himself. Findekano could see it; he had not fully closed his eyes. He reached forward, uncurled his fingers, and placed them on Feanaro’s cock.

He didn’t even move them. Feanaro made a low, animal noise in his throat; it was pulsing. Findekano opened his mouth on Feanaro’s ear, could not restrain his teeth. Findekano pushed down with the heel of his hand and the eager sex pushed back; he never touched it. Findekano felt like he had seen into a dark pit, a place without the kindness of the Valar.

Findekano pulled his breath in; he almost told Feanaro to lie back, but realized his mistake before he could make it. He had him, but having was not keeping here. If Russo was set aflame he couldn’t resist—Feanaro was not the same. He had to be coddled, kept warm. A shock might snuff the fire out. Still, it was the right idea—instead of laying him back, Findekano shifted his thighs for better balance, used the hand that had been in Feanaro’s hair to slowly move down his neck, curl around his lower back. His teeth opened on his neck, but did not bite; the hand on Feanaro’s prick moved only slowly, pressing, finding his shape.

He rubbed up its length—Feanaro groaned out his breath, and Findekano nearly lost his thoughts to smoke and heat. He wore some layers under his white robes, all white themselves, so the touch was surely dull, teasing; but with as sore and swollen as he was, teasing would be torturous. Findekano could feel its heat through the fabric, he could feel it twitch and throb as he rubbed his hand over it again. His own face was burning and his bracing arm was shaking; he kissed the skin of Feanaro’s neck again, then put into motion the plot he had hatched a minute ago.

When he lifted his hand off of Feanaro he tensed; fear flooded back in quickly. Findekano leaned in, straining to brace him. Feanaro was heavy, tall—he wanted to move him to the bed but didn’t think he could convince him yet. He leaned down and slid his hand down Feanaro’s arm, to his wrist, to the hand that was clutching on the floor. “Let me,” he muttered, leaving off his sentence when Feanaro shuddered at his voice.

He managed without asking; he pulled up the hand, Feanaro’s weight went back, and a few breaths later he had Feanaro laid back on the ground, except that Feanaro braced his other hand behind him, his knee, as if terrified that it was laying his back on the ground that would take his power away from him. Findekano took the hand that he had taken in his own—it strained, trying to flee his fingers, not leaving them—and slowly pulled it to place it onto Feanaro’s stomach.

He halted, of course, when he could feel Findekano’s aim. He hissed and turned his face away, took it out from beneath Findekano’s lips. He focused his attention, watched when, after gentle suggestion, Feanaro let him pull his own hand between his legs.

Feanaro’s tights twitched and his knee popped up at Findekano’s side when his own hand cupped around his prick. He tensed; Findekano could see him fighting with himself.

Forcing him wasn’t his desire. Findekano wanted to see him in pleasure. He didn’t want to inch him through something he wasn’t sure he wanted, he wanted Feanaro at the mercy of a passion he could not resist, the animal in him tearing out of his chest.

Findekano said, “I want you to lay me down on the bed and do everything you did to me in your dreams.”

Feanaro’s eyes opened, and his hand pushed onto his sex.

“Everything,” Findekano said, watching the movement of Feanaro’s hand like the hawk the mouse. “And anything you want.”

Feanaro clutched himself; he put his other fist on the ground, and in a quick motion surged up to meet Findekano above him. He was in his face in a moment; he clutched Findekano’s arm with one firm hand and held him in place; Findekano gasped; he couldn’t help it.

“Cruel,” Feanaro snarled, and leaned in further. “Heatless, wicked—”

Findekano’s breath grew thin, watching his uncle draw close to his face. He smelled the strange decay on his breath again, and with his body awake, he placed it. Fasting. Feanaro hadn’t eaten in a long time, or not much. Findekano had fasted in Manwe’s courts, in Ilmarin. Being hungry enough was like being intoxicated. The mind was only king in name, the nerves reigned.

Would he kiss him? Findekano tilted his chin toward him, showed his cheek. Feanaro snarled and lifted him off of the ground.

It was done cleanly, with stunning strength. He stood himself up and picked Findekano up as he did it. Feanaro gripped his upper arms and lifted him like a child. Findekano’s feet left the ground. Completely stunned, he hung there.

“MONSTER,” Feanaro repeated, and with a wrench he turned. He took a few heavy steps, and Findekano dropped far enough that his boots roughly drug on the ground. He wriggled, and with a turn and a shout, Feanaro threw him.

Findekano landed on the edge of the bed. It was soft, but he still landed badly enough that his leg smacked against the bedframe. He scrambled onto it, grabbing his leg, and Feanaro turned from him, clutching his own forehead.

“This beast can’t—you blind creature, like an insect from the dirt. You cannot even feel the evil you bring with you, though it bends your back, makes you contort like—how you— writhe —”

Findekano felt his leg. It was fine. He couldn’t tell if Feanaro was addressing him or not. He walked back and forth in tight paces in front of the bed, a step away. Findekano’s heart was banging on the door of his throat, trying to climb up into his mouth.

Feanaro ranted, “I can’t have fallen so—I can’t be feeling this. I’m stronger than this—I have overcome it before, and I will again—how you know about what happened then baffled the mind, but you have dark servants in your court, dark voices in your ear—Melkor speaks into the ears of Nolofinwe’s counselors just as Manwe does. In league. No surprise. That you’re ‘Manwe’s servant,’ I know what these words truly mean. When I just have my wife back at my side—with her, I don’t—what purpose was there in making flesh-bound man, twined to the impulses of a foul body, wrapped in his nerves like ropes, forced to suffer passions we have no purpose for, feelings greater than we ever have need to feel—why should I be crushed under the weight of passions like this, why even made an instrument that can sense them? —for the bliss of marriage, but without her, without her—”

Findekano watched him walk, rapid. He couldn’t quite follow his rambling; Feanaro dropped words, sometimes muttered things in what sounded like another language entirely. But his ravings about Valar and virtue shifted; “Tortured,” he said, “Tortured, no matter how I love, no matter what length I go to to make a place where such vices are forbidden, by how the rank and base will copulate in alleyways, peddle their pornography, wrest each other in windows, force me to see—”

Findekano looked down the white line of Feanaro’s body, and saw that a bump which interrupted it still rose between his legs. He ranted, he paced, but it would not leave him.

Findekano took the hand that was on his leg and slid it down. He began to unlace his boot.

Feanaro was a rare kind of liar. Findekano had become interested in kinds of lying, once he realized how many there were. Most people, of course, assumed that lying had to be done with words, but that was just the obvious kind. The lying of actions, of intentions, or ideas, could be so thorough, intricate. Findekano heard what Feanaro was saying, yes, but he saw what he had done. Findekano hadn’t thrown himself on Feanaro’s bed. Nor had he left himself there, unhurt, slowly settling back into the white sheets.

Findekano took the boot off and began to unlace the other one.

Feanaro spoke in circles; diseases, infections, his eyes being wounded and the shape of rank sin carved into them. Findekano dropped both of his boots on the ground. He reached up, put his hands on his hips, then moved to untie his belt as he watched his uncle pace in ever tighter circles. Feanaro went on; he told him about how even his sons tortured him, let their sweet sighs float up through the floor as he tried to sleep, while they pleasured themselves, made love to their hands. He heard them moaning names; Findekano took off his belt and untied his riding-breeches. Feanaro said that he wanted to dream of his wife, not the monsters that came to him in dreams, women, men, the old, the young; Findekano pulled his shirt out of his trousers. Feanaro said that foul Melkor had taken the shape of his departed mother to mock her, of the wise men who had tutored him, of innocent girls, of his brother, his cruel, scheming, dark-eyed brother, whose form was so shamefully beautiful; Findekano pulled his shirt over his head. Feanaro said that he wanted to sleep, to eat, that he wanted to not feel so afraid, and Findekano pulled his trousers down his legs.

Findekano did not think that, somehow, Feanaro reached a sudden stop and looked over to the bed when Findekano tossed the leathers over the bed and laid back, stretching out, naked except for his gold, by accident.

“Then eat,” said Findekano. “Then sleep.” He put his arm behind his head, pulling his hair in his hand; he didn’t want to make himself more vulnerable, but he had to. Being nonthreatening would entice Feanaro more. “Then face your fears,” he said, pulling one knee up and stretching the other leg toward Feanaro, uncurling and curling his toes.

Feanaro’s mouth opened. The light in his eyes was exquisite, like two fierce stars, cutting through the gaps in the mountains to tap their mysterious eastern messages like fingernails on the table of the continent (waiting).

“You’re not a coward,” Findekano sighed. “I could issue you harsh words too, if I wanted to. But one thing I know you are not is a coward or a small man. I hate to see you cowering from your fears in this tower room like a boy afraid of his own body. Come on.”

Challenge did it. (What kind of idiot was he? Of course a direct challenge did it). Feanaro was on Findekano like a swollen thunderhead burst open. A quick step forward took him there, a seizing hand grasped his thigh and wrenched it aside. Findekano could not arrest a startled gasp, but that breath was all the time he had before his body was shoved down to the bed by the weight of the man above him. His mouth was taken.

Findekano opened his lips, sank back, but Feanaro did not enter him. He opened his mouth, too, snapped Findekano’s shut, pressed in with the blunts of his teeth. The hand on his thigh gripped harshly, not lovingly, caring to seize, not feel; likewise Feanaro’s other hand went to the opposite arm and clenched. Feanaro bruised him with his mouth, not coming in, pressing down, seizing his lip, then the next, a show of force.

Findekano arced into it and Feanaro shoved him back down with a snarl. The hand on his thigh was removed and both arms were gripped instead, so that Feanaro might throttle him back onto the bed with every thrust up—so he did again when Findekano tried, curling his nails. Then his hips, too—Feanaro shoved him down, splitting Findekano’s hips.

Findekano did not at all have to put on the exclamations of shock and delight that jumped out of his throat as Feanaro roughly forced him into the shape he wanted. The shoves and jostles were exquisite—each one shocked his nerves and made his cock twitch. Feanaro covered his mouth when he screamed, sharp and quick, and then he put his tongue into him with a low, growling huff Findekano nearly drank. His eyes closed—he tilted his head, felt the skin of his face grow so hot it sparked like a candle as his uncle licked into the inside of his mouth.

Findekano moaned onto him. He moved his hips or pushed up his chest and Feanaro shoved him right back down, his hands gripping his arms, then his side, then a shoulder or groping over his bare chest—roving as they performed their perfunctory violence, using the motions of subduing as an excuse to test the muscle of Findekano’s biceps, then the valley between the swells of his breasts, then the curves of his ribs. His prick slipped onto Findekano and off, as though Feanaro were still trying to keep that away even as he groped over his body, leaned Findekano’s head back to put his tongue behind his teeth and try the soft sides of his mouth.

He had been thinking of Feanaro as Feanaro, the horrid despot, the power-wielder, the dread father of his lover; Feanaro as his kinsman crashed into Findekano then, his hot tongue in his mouth. His scent was familiar despite him having never smelled it before, his shape felt—a little like being embraced by his father. Findekano’s hand, for a moment resisting, seized up, grabbed Feanaro’s unwinding hair (with its comforting texture) and then his robe, pulling away. Oh, he couldn’t do this—his father’s brother, his grandfather’s son. Their blood ran hot with the same heat, an essence of which Findekano had a half share. His tongue pressed onto Feanaro’s and his stomach roiled with mixed passion and revulsion as his hand tried to pull his uncle away. He desperately tried to chastise himself; your uncle. Your father’s brother. Your kin. (He thought of Russo gasping, ‘But you’re my cousin.’) One of Feanaro’s hands rose behind his back, first to swat at Findekano’s clutching hand, then—to help it undo the clasp at the shoulder of the robe. Findekano’s fingers fumbled and trembled under the hot grasp, even the dampness of which felt familiar. As the robe began to slowly release itself from Feanaro’s body, something inflamed him further; he used his body to push Findekano’s thighs open again and rutted himself between.

Your uncle, he thought, the thought itself moaning. He tilted his head back, too overwhelmed, breaking himself from the kiss, and groaned aloud. Reminding himself of their relation had an effect like rubbing his hand over his own sex. He thought my uncle again and it jumped against Feanaro’s thigh.

Feanaro moved between his legs; Findekano’s shaking hands hurried to remove his robes and Feanaro’s mouth sought Findekano’s tilted neck. Findekano had to bite on his gasps as his uncle’s teeth found the soft skin under his chin. His hands remained violent, clutching, grasping whatever part of Findekano they desired in the moment and rubbing it, sometimes harsh, sometimes exploring quickly, boldly, and then fleeing away.

Findekano could feel the tingling foreboding of orgasm prickling in his stomach, horrendously premature, but he didn’t care—if he shot up at Feanaro’s stomach before he even put his hand to him, then he would still do as he had promised and lie under him and be used however the despot wished, and that itself despite being in theory unfulfilling had the pleasure of the rare and strange in it. So what if he didn’t last—Feanaro would force him, which it occurred to him was exactly what he wanted. He resisted as a matter of dignity—Feanaro’s body, his city, his rule, his supremacy, his dominion—but when dignity fled he swooned for it.

He was forced to cool slightly when Feanaro removed himself to take off the rest of his clothes, a business that took mere seconds, but which Findekano drank with his eyes like he was watching a hurtling boulder grow closer, closer, frozen like a doe. Without his body on him his hard sex throbbed. The skin of his chest and stomach tingled. He whined, petulant, and Feanaro’s face was taken over with a sharp, hateful look; a chastising, disappointed expression. But he did not say anything, whatever scornful insult he had just thought—good, because Findekano would have probably come upon hearing it—and instead returned himself to the man beneath him, grasped his hips now instead of his arms or his chest and pulled their bodies together.

Findekano writhed with lust when all of Feanaro covered him. His hands went to his hair, then wrapped around his back. His muscles were hard as stone under the soft heat of his thick body—another hard part stuck to his damp thighs and slid. He shouted when Feanaro pressed their sexes together and pushed down, a shout as quick and sharp as a hawk’s cry. Then Feanaro covered his mouth with a hand and rutted him.

Findekano whimpered into it. He bore his teeth into its softness and clutched Feanaro’s shoulder. Their sexes slid on each other. Findekano felt a resistance in the back of his head to ending it there but could not resist the sweetness, a feeling like melting in his stomach that made him arch up and push all of himself into the space where their sexes met. Feanaro was hard, thick, straight as an arrow, and Findekano’s prick yielded to the side when it pressed down. He rutted up with his hips and leaked noises into Feanaro’s hand. He heard Feanaro’s breath roughening, growing louder, as he thrust down on him. The prick grew thick and stabbed at his stomach in the wet, hot air growing between them. Feanaro removed his face—too much, perhaps, too overtaken by his organ to keep focus with anything else in his body—then suddenly as he groaned aloud his hand fell down from Findekano’s mouth to his throat and pushed.

Findekano’s thighs tried to open further, but his hips protested. His throat protested, too, as Feanaro’s body removed, unsticking from his with an obscene sound. But he opened his eyes to watch, and saw Feanaro put a hand between his legs—it was huge, red, coming out from his pale flesh and the black hair that came from their royal progenitor like steel pulled flaming from the forge, and Findekano felt the floodwaters of orgasm rise in him again as he watched Feanaro wrap his own hands around his prick and jerk.

It was quick, messy, enthralling. He gripped himself harshly and moved violently, like he hated the motion, like he was trying to rip something out of his gut. Findekano’s thighs bucked, his stomach strained, he hated not being touched; he bent up and panted as he watched dark color flush the head of Feanaro’s cock. He couldn’t even form words of complaint but merely whined as he saw that Feanaro was going to finish on him and refuse to let their joining complete. He tried to buck out of Feanaro’s hold but forgot about the hand on his neck and choked himself—then Feanaro grunted like an animal and thrust and the seed spilled out of him. Findekano whined with lust and bucked his hips as it poured onto his stomach, to his own cock, dripped into his dark hair.

Then the relief that should have made Feanaro’s body soft did not. Like the glass that spiderwebs instead of crumbling, he resisted; his stomach and shoulders grew as hard and stone again, a sneer bit back at his face. He removed his hand from himself and what should have been the slow second half of his orgasm and he instead dropped his heavy, hot body onto Findekano, used a shaking thigh to lift and part him, and then shoved himself inside.

He only came in a little way, since Findekano’s body had been unprepared, but still inside, hot, slick, still twitching as it pumped out seed, and Findekano screamed. Feanaro did not cover his mouth. He let the scream bounce off the walls of the empty white room as he panted, open-mouthed, and forced his way past orgasm like a door barred against him. Findekano could not reposition himself, he could not get ahold of his own body, he could only react as Feanaro while screwing his breath in and out shoved himself further in.

“No you—don’t—” Feanaro growled. He pulled out a little; more of his orgasm leaked into Findekano, wetting him inside. “Want—to—” He shoved in, now further, the come he had rubbed onto his prick with his own hand easing the way. He lost his words as he slid further into Findekano, panting with incredible effort, shivering with strain.

Findekano gained enough of his own breath to adjust his back on the bed as Feanaro visibly fought the calm and contentment that satisfied lust was trying to pour into him. Findekano watched him open his eyes and saw the mingling unholy of disdain and lust, a spurring hatred and a groping desire that stared openly at Findekano’s open thighs, the patch of hair and thickened globes between them, the cock that stood swollen, the white seed dripping down on everything. Findekano watched naked lust beat down its opponent and the eyes become animal.

He shoved himself in. Findekano’s mind emptied. Noises flowed out of his throat as they would. His eyes closed and fists clenched. He heard Feanaro grunt through his gasping breaths, cursing himself and his cock, saying “Want another one—don’t stop—fucking prick—I want to come—I want to keep—I don’t want to stop— stupid fucking prick— ” as he shoved into him again and again, throwing the first orgasm aside, forcing his engorged cock to stay aflame by throwing it against the walls of Findekano’s body. He seized the fleeing pleasure by its throat and pressed it down. It stopped pulsing seed inside of Findekano but jumped and throbbed, torn between stopping and going, and being pushed further in with each thrust. “Going to—again—” he grunted “hate—hate t—want to—”

Then it found Findekano’s root and struck it. Findekano could take no more; he shoved and bucked his shaking hips on Feanaro’s cock and felt it drive up into him and then the waters of pleasure in him broke their bonds and flowed over. A slap on the inside of his skull made him insensible to everything except for the melting heat between his legs. He put a hand to himself without knowing when to squeeze the pleasure out of his cock as it throbbed inside his body. He could hear Feanaro’s snarling words crashing over him, calling him a slut and a monster, and then he was just awake enough to realize Feanaro was not calling him a slut and a monster but verbally beating himself, calling himself a dirty lustful slut and cursing his throbbing cock, and begging to come again and come again and to stay over his pretty nephew’s thighs forever before he bucked forward with a silent, rattling gasp, and stuck himself in place.

He stood still, then jolted; he thrust, and again, folding slowly forward. This orgasm looked like he was being shot in the back with each pump—nothing new flowed inside Findekano, since the years of touchless anguish had been spilled into him the first time, but the throbbing of the organ inside him was still fierce and hot. Findekano was still coming out of his own, dazed, blurry-eyed, and watched with dark satisfaction as pleasure slowly buckled Feanaro’s body over his own, like a man in fervent prayer to the Valar. He gasped breathy encouragement, tested the straining joints of his thighs, as Feanaro’s spasms slowly stilled.

Then he was catching his breath underneath him, and watching as, after moments of death, Feanaro’s back began to heave. Findekano’s mind was in blissful content; he watched and thought nothing. All his body, from toe to crown, tingled with satisfaction. The room, the house, was as silent as a lake in the wilderness, and Telperion’s light was waning thin but Laurelin’s had not yet awakened, though it would in a minute. A mighty man had been bent low; towers, falls, and contrivances alike had all crumbled at the shout of nature, a cry as wordless and meaningless as the crane calling over marshy fields.

All dissolved. Artifice failed again. As it always had with him, passion triumphed, grinning.

Feanaro began to stir upon him, with a curling of his back, with a clutching of his hands. They tried to regain the violent grip they had had but did not have the control. Findekano watched as, slowly, his head rose from where it had been bowed, and the silver light of the broken window, first with taps, then with a palm, opened onto his face.

He had a look on his face.

Findekano merely looked back for a second. Then, an instinct that he had never felt before, a voice entirely new in the chorus of his head, shook itself to life and informed him that, while he had come through everything that had happened so far today alright (he would feel it later, but he had nonetheless come through alright), he would not come out of what Feanaro’s face said would happen next.

Not the same, at least.

Findekano had made and ruined himself a dozen times through listening to his instincts. Without waiting for a second warning or a single word, he braced and then jumped up. It was easy—Feanaro had not recovered from his apocalyptic second orgasm yet, so, since he was surprised, Findekano was able to shove him aside. He sprang up and snatched at his first thought, which was the handle of his sword, discarded on the floor. Then he jumped up again and saw with a glance behind him that Feanaro was doing the same and even the curve as his back as he rose to his feet made that new instinct rustle restlessly again. Out—now. 

But to go out naked? His clothes were scattered. Findekano seized his next thought again, which was to grasp his fist around the outermost layer of Feanaro’s white robe, which he pulled from the floor and then threw over his head. Then, before it had even settled fully onto his body, he began to run—not to the window behind him but to the door before. He would have to leap out the window at this speed, risking his limbs, but he could simply run down the halls.

Feanaro shouted after him. Screamed, a wordless, furious scream that broke when his overworked body failed under him. Still, as Findekano rushed out of the doorway, racing over the cold stone hall that went down the mysterious, unexplored rooms of Feanaro’s private floor, he heard the man stumble to his feet behind him, then heavy, bare footfalls. Findekano wrenched himself around the corner that led to the spiral staircase and then began to run down, past the floor where Feanaro’s sons all slept (with the room at the end which led to an overhang which led to the roof), and past that again, his left hand fumbling at the stays and ties of the over-robe to roughly knot it onto him, his right gripped onto his black sword. As he finished hurtling himself down the stone stairs and reached to bottom level he heard Feanaro’s feet behind him, now gaining control and speed, and a final shout, drifting down to him—“Stay, please—”

A desperate tone, desperate to veil, stretched thin over a malice that made Findekano scream in his stomach. He ran down a hall, into the dining room, where some of the brothers’ plates and cups and pens still lay scattered, and not daring even a moment of delay jumped over the table, ran over it, shaking the porcelain, and barreled down the hall and past the servants’ quarters to the door in the back, which Turkafinwe had surely left unlocked for him—and he had.

Thanking Turkafinwe in his heart, swearing to make it up to him somehow, Findekano burst into the dim silver night of the near-mingling outside and over Feanaro’s greenless stone courtyard. He stubbed his feet and tore them, and jumped onto and then scrambled over the wall without stopping. He was not sure how he had done that when in the future he tried to recall those moments, because he had kept the sword in one hand and had only the use of the other, but he did it nonetheless.

Then he was loose in the streets of Formenos, clad only in a white robe that streamed over bare legs, carrying a naked sword in one hand, his hair unbound behind him. He heard some of his gold things fall out and land on the stone streets but he did not stop; they were not stamped with any names and would not give his identity away. He darted down the streets at top speed with only the goal to find the front gate of the city and flee from it. Now, his greatest danger was being recognized in this state, but still, in his throat, in his gut, he was convinced Feanaro was running up behind him, and that that was the greater danger by far.

People shouted as he passed, or pointed him out; he would learn later, much later, and to his relief, that he had gone at such speed and looked so unlike himself that no one recognized him. In fact with his hair loose behind him and the white robe like a gown he learned that most took him for a woman, a white maiden in a loose night-gown running in terror from who knows what, a man or a nightmare, clutching a sword, and that some who saw her took her for an omen, that some terrible strife would come to the streets of Formenos, or else that soon the stones and fire of the mountain would rain down the streets and they would all be running like her. But whatever they thought she was or meant, the woman in white, bearing a sword, who tore through Formenos in the thin hour was the thing muttered about on the street for days.

Findekano, for his part, ran to the gate and was astonished but grateful to watch it being opened before him. He looked up, for a moment, and saw there was a single watcher; a tall man with dark hair, but then Findekano was running through and he saw him no longer. He ran a little while down the mountainside, found where he had left his horse; with shaking legs he mounted him. He was forced to sit on him bare and reckon with the wetness between his legs.

He shakily apologized to his friend about his state and promised he would bathe them both, in the rivers under the mountains; first, they needed to flee.

Flee they did. And as they did, down mountainsides to fields, Findekano’s thoughts were so turbulent that they could barely be thought. He felt them turn around inside him, heard half-things. The wind on his face scoured.

It was only when they had stopped at a place to bathe and he had removed the robe and stepped naked into the clear water, with now the mingling of Laurelin’s light waxing bright white over the land and turning the waters into a mirror, that he found himself looking into the distant line of the trees and thinking that he had failed his mission, and that completely, because while he had proven that Feanaro was a man not worthy to rule anyone or anything, he could and would tell no one anything that had happened.

He could not cast down someone he now knew so well.

He was not sure why, but as he cleansed himself, his thoughts turned to his own father, melancholy and solemn. Findekano was filled with a love for him that made tears prickle in his eyes. His nobility of spirit, contrasted with flaming Feanaro—Nolofinwe had his struggles, yes, his awful moods, but he strove through them seeking not his own comfort from the pain but his determination to once again bring healing and peace to those around him. He had to do it, because it was the only thing that brought him peace from his own grim thoughts, but he did do it.

Those things too turned in him, his melancholy but passionate father, Feanaro’s sharp, stumbling madness, the path of coals he tread on his walks from washroom to closet. Not fully understanding his own thoughts, feeling the water that poured over him better than he understood the long pathways it took to pour over his head, Findekano was shocked to find himself crying. The horse came to him and Findekano patted his side.

He was afraid. Simple—understandable. Of course he was afraid. He had really thought Feanaro would hurt him. Oddly, he hadn’t expected to be afraid of that. He had been told by anyone who heard about it that the things he and Nelyafinwe did were harmful to each other, so he hadn’t thought he was afraid of being harmed. But Findekano realized now, like feeling a strike several heartbeats after it hit, that Nelyafinwe had never hurt him once. Not until he left him. They had sometimes insulted each other, or aggravated each other; that was nothing. To have a lover who would actually hurt you was different, and if that was what his father and uncles and brothers thought he and Nelyafinwe had been to each other, well, no wonder they were so afraid of it.

Though he couldn’t go back to him now, even if he wanted to. There are doors that can’t be shut once opened. Cliffs that can’t be climbed up once fallen down.

Findekano resolved then to spend the most of his time in the future attending his father, and his family, and mind the people who remained in their party instead of obsessing over those who had removed themselves to the high mountains. He would respect the rift between them now, let it deepen and widen behind his back; he would pour his thoughts and efforts and love into his own, and the people of Tirion, and his siblings and mother and father, and focus on knowing their thoughts and their hearts and not on flying to the other side, where he was not wanted.

He would become his father’s son.

Eventually.

—

Many Years Later 

—

Russandol asked, “Now what ships and rowers will you spare to return, and whom shall they bear hither first? Findekano the valiant?”

His cheeks flushed as he asked; the bitter cold of the wind of the eastern shore lashed at them. He felt so stupid.

The sky and the growling ocean and all the world around him was black except for the torches they carried, lighting up the faces of his brothers in leaping bursts; the twins’ terror and shuddering, how Karano had gone white, the tears frozen on Lauro’s cold face which had been flowing since they left Alqualonde, the light that had pierced and had not left Kurvo’s visage, resting on his suddenly fierce-set face; Tyelko’s grim, stone-like eyes, which had gone dull since the battle had irreparably broken his bond with his erstwhile master Orome.

Russandol felt so stupid as he begged for the man he had cast aside. The salt of the sea was drying his lips. He had put Findekano away for a reason, and that had not changed: Findekano deserved better. He knew it. They both knew it. He had plucked him like a flower from a vine and crushed him. He learned after forcing Findekano away from him (how he had begged Russandol to reconsider on that day at the riverbank, his eyes welling over with tears) that he had surely broken his heart, because all who knew him noticed a sudden change in him, and from that time on he clung to his own father’s side and spoke with his voice in all matters. Findekano was hardly seen in Formenos after that and became Nolofinwe’s prince in Tirion instead. It had been the right thing to do—knowing he had broken Findekano’s heart had been a knife that never left Russandol’s chest. He had bruised himself with his own hands over and again, he had rolled in bed awake, he had shoved his head down until he could go around Formenos like he had forgotten.

But in the battle, there he was, with a sword and in armor and gold in his hair; eyes as wide and bright as an owl’s, and his dear face splattered in blood. He had dropped the corpse of a man aside—he had dropped a body without glancing at it—and he had come up on his toes to kiss Russandol’s face.

Stupid. He felt like he still trembled with it, the kiss at Alqualonde. They had gotten blood into each other’s mouths. He had started crying as they embraced. His knees were faltering; he could not now put Findekano back. He felt stupid with every word of his request, because everyone now knew he had ended things with Findekano, and here he was begging his father permission to have him back. But Russandol’s body refused his mind and his pride like a ship that could not sail against the wind and the waves. That kiss had—that kiss—Findekano was his again, if he could just get him in his hands. He had tasted Findekano’s longing on his mouth, in the blood.

It wasn’t right. Nothing was. He had broken Findekano once. He needed him. He begged his father to send the ships back for Findekano.

Feanaro gazed out over the wide black waves, which were not now lit by any light from beyond the far shore, and Russandol watched his father’s face as an ugly expression twisted over it.

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(...the God will personally set me free, whenever I so choose.)

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