Archive of Our Own

There were a few records in the tower that had survived the Bragollach victory and Orodreth’s hasty retreat. Mairon perused them: he had left that, initially, to lackeys, and they had likely done a sorry job. (Everyone did, who wasn’t himself.) Orodreth’s host had tried, Mairon thought, to take maps with them, and anything of import. But among what chaotic stack of papers remained there were a couple letters in a slanting hand.

Artaresto,

Let not thy wife be offended I address thee as such! The rest of my note, as you see, is in Sindarin. I would not like you to have any secrets between each other! You must tell me you are well and safe. Sirion is fair in spring—have the herons built their nests? Are the flowers blooming in the river-grass?

I am not only writing to remind you I have granted the Men of Brethil the right to fish around the isle in these months, as you may suspect, but to give account of the latest in Nargothrond. You shall discredit what we heard from cousin Fingon's messengers, but I will unburden myself of it anyway! (Trusting in your worthy ear and loving confidence, &c., &c.) Also: to ask you for news of your uncle Aikanáro. I have dreamt of him and I worry…

Findaráto, Morgoth’s lieutenant had said, triumph ringing in his uncannily beautiful voice, and Finrod had known himself condemned. He cursed himself for having let his control slip enough to give his name—he swore to himself that he would not let fear make another precious choice: he cursed and swore and yet none of it could undo what had been done, as if Finrod had needed another bitter lesson to that effect.

He waited he knew not for what: to be sent off to Angband, to be made some grislier trophy, to be ransomed at some false price of agreement too steep for his family and city to pay that he could only hope they, wiser than he, would not consider (though he suspected some of his cousins would offer Sauron treasure instead to keep him.) He waited to be tortured again, for Edrahil and the others to be dragged before him in torment, because surely having found such a breach in his defense the Maia would continue to press him for whatever information he would give, and—fool, you have a duty to more than these eleven, no matter that the others turned from you!—Finrod tried his best to resolve not to give it. He had been terrified when he answered the Maia, but this bitter, creeping, helpless dread was worse. Finrod did not act it—Curufin and Celegorm did not think it of him, to be sure—but he hated genuine helplessness: he had learned to hate it at Alqualondë, where he had learned so many other things, and he hated it now.

He waited for something to change. Yet days passed, and it did not—or it was not told to him. With teasing smugness, Sauron offered to treat with him again. Finrod asked if the words truly bound him and received little enough of an answer. Finrod held his gaze as if that could impact such a being and they exchanged words anyway. Weeks passed. Each night he held the threads of the tower in his (bound, now) hands and listened to his companions’ steady breaths as faintly as though through several veils of cloth. Did Sauron truly mean to do nothing? Could he do that? Was it some kind of twisted vanity to suppose that he couldn’t?

If so, Finrod supposed that there were two ways to look at this: the first was dismal and informed him that his existence was such a trifle now that Sauron could keep him as a plaything for some strange sort of company and disregard all else; and the other was brighter and supposed that Sauron wished to keep him as a plaything for some strange sort of company enough to disregard all else.

Finrod could not stop the Maia if he chose to do any number of the former things. Yet if the last possibility held true and he did have some little sway with him, there were still choices to make—some chance to continue that did not end in ever-present doom.

For a while inaction seemed to be working. Findaráto lost some of that bitter fear. That was what Mairon surmised from his flickering spirit. Though the Elf's fëa had dimmed, he thought it had steadied. Mairon left him bound now when he was not present, a king in gilded chains, but he was considering ceasing even that: it was more a point of principle in answer to the defiance of striking at him than a true caution. Especially as Mairon's eyes were upon him now even when he was not there in form.

(Mairon's throat still bore a faint scar, no matter how his fana changed. He had once returned the injury in kind on the same principle, with the same song-enchanted blade, holding Finrod in his arms as pallor overtook him, but when he healed the Elf again, Finrod's neck was smooth and unmarred, and his eyes still shone with light.)

Such were the thoughts that occupied him as he flew as a shower of sparks into the tower room, changing as he fell into the form of a wolf before at last taking up his preferred raiment in that moment. Mairon stood before the bed wrapped in sable and beheld his prize. The Elf was asleep in his bindings, looking like a jewel in a setting: a pendant upon a delicate chain. He was beautiful, Mairon thought, not for the first time. Well had he been named fair; well had Mairon named him honey-wine. Even with his Treelit eyes closed, he seemed to glow faintly in the gloom of the room, and his hair spread across the sheet in waves like liquid gold. 

Mairon reached out to his spirit, and found a shield as graceful and strong as ever barring the Elf's thoughts from view, like the shell of an egg, or the home of a sea-thing. For once he lingered in the faint impressions at that border and did not press further.

Finrod shifted in his sleep. Dark-gold lashes flickered open, and he gazed on Mairon without needing to look for him first.

What wouldst thou, lord of Tol Sirion?

Mairon was… not displeased, hearing the impertinence of the address. That was something to consider another time.

Thee.

There was something of the forbidden now about his prize—as though anything could be forbidden to one who had left the Valar’s decrees behind, one such as himself! Yet so Mairon felt, though little did he think it. Mirbhoz had felt like his own to capture and coax. An unnamed Noldo, however remarkable, was Mairon’s claim easily, and no one would dispute it. Finrod was… It was both sweeter and bitterer, and Mairon relished both, that Finrod’s lips closed around his fingers, and Finrod’s body trembled with the Eldar’s fragile breath. Mairon had learned him well enough by now, but he still had more to work out: and as Finrod sighed into his ear, Mairon toyed at his breast, and drew from him a gasp and blood on sharp teeth. Finrod’s pulse suffused his senses, heady as wine, and Mairon smiled against his throat, and dwelt in the space that flew open in that guarded fëa when he kindled pleasure from it like flame.

No, it was certainly sweet.

“Is it true you took Bëor to bed?”

“Yes. Also, he took me. Would you like to hear something more interesting?” Finrod said on impulse. “I met strange, new beings in the forests and mountains of the East. Imagine it—beings that were totally new, crafted by Eru’s timeless hand, with a tongue and music of their own. I was so pleased, and so curious. I wanted to learn everything about them. I gained something infinitely precious—I looked into their inmost hearts. Do you know what I saw therein—in Men’s hearts? (That is, in the westernmost branch of the Bëorian house…) Maybe you do, or maybe you have seen so much of it that now you only notice that which is otherwise. I saw the same shadow that rests upon my own heart. I knew they were already injured, already haunted by the injury, already corrupted into injuring others. These new beings were but a few generations upon the Earth, and yet they intimately knew horrors that among my people are reserved for the dungeons of… well, what was once a very beautiful tower and further north, a very interesting mountain range. I looked at them, and I looked into a mirror—the mirror was distorted, of course, full of changes, but that doesn’t stop reflection.”

The sorcerer smiled thinly. “I think this story makes your forces appear to disadvantage. You do not even suppose that you could have reached them sooner than ours.”

“It is not over. I loved them. Some of them loved me. They do not serve you. Bëor’s kinsman saved my life at the Bragollach.”

Something flickered over the Maia’s face: Finrod knew not how to read it. Perhaps it should have troubled him more, because then Sauron snarled, “Where your kin turned to ash in the fire. Charred bones you could not have picked from the rest of the field.”

Finrod stilled. With the same pleasant expression, he said, “Does this story show your forces to their best advantage?"

"They were alone at the last." There was something vicious in the Maia's spirit now. Finrod felt it like the surge of roiling sea against a wall. "You, precious Findaráto Ingoldo, Nóm, and Felagund, needed your human allies to save you, and now you make up another bauble in my court, wearing the castoffs of my human servants. Weak. That is what you are. Maybe it is in the blood: I have heard your cousins at the front name your father coward."

It was plainly meant to weaken Finrod's resistance, to drive a wedge between himself and those he loved. Finrod knew this, and had the good grace and luck to recognize the barb for what it was before it struck. Still, it did strike, and there was truth in it, he knew, which struck deeper. At least for having truth Finrod had already turned it over in his mind.

"You shall not name him so before me," he said mildly.

"Bowing to the Valar and seeking their forgiveness?" Sauron's eyes flashed with sudden fire. "I'll name him what I like before my thrall."

He was weary of the suggestion that returning was not the—or a right thing to do, or that any others among the whole host of Exiles would have had the courage to do it.

"It is a distasteful idea, isn’t it? Is it pure distaste that keeps you from doing the same?" Finrod asked, voice carefully, beguilingly calm. "Is it pure pride? Not a hint of—oh, what am I thinking?—fear?"

Speak those words again, the Maia spoke in his mind. Pain stabbed Finrod's temples, and the room seemed to tilt. He heard a distant clatter—then something struck him, and he realized it was the floor, and that it would bruise unless Morgoth’s lieutenant sang him new again—the Maia did not seem to like seeing him bruised when he had not intended it—and each time he did so Finrod felt a little less himself, as though he were being worn thin. Absurdly, he saw Andreth’s withered hands, floured and rolling out dough.

He cast out an arm to pick himself up. "Of course not," he said evenly. "I don't presume to know about these things." Finrod pushed mussed hair from his face, and noticed that Sauron was standing over him now, not across from him at the table. He glanced up to that cruel, beautiful face before rising. “...If they seem to me of greater power—”

“Finrod,” Sauron said. His voice was leaden.

“Yes?” Finrod said sweetly.

The sorcerer paused, a leaden pause, but what emerged after the warning was this: “How in a thousand Ages of the world wert thou named wise?” It was something of a snarl, but Finrod was so surprised to hear the Maia say this phrase that his eyes merely widened a little, without the appropriate fear.

“Astound as it may,” he said lightly, “a few have taken my counsel.” Few was surely the correct word to employ there.

If another spoke thus to me they would be dead already, Sauron said. Finrod was not even quite certain the Maia had meant to speak it, or if the thought had merely overflowed its bounds—but Finrod had heard it, in any case. He heard Sauron in his mind often now, though—yet, thankfully—not as often as himself.

“I am in your power,” Finrod answered. “You may kill me any time you like.”

Of the writings that remained in the tower in that swooping, angular hand, who would have thought so much would be botany? Mairon grew frustrated on the fiftieth page of what appeared to be a draft for a manuscript on purely the plants of Ossiriand. Though there was use, to be sure, in those things, Melkor had more talent for molding such organic matter to their own purposes, rendering blooms deadly and roots toxic to consume—if “talent” could be the word when he hardly thought about it most of the time, Mairon sniffed. Mairon found them tricky and tiresome until they were already distilled to their chemical parts. Finrod had scrawled more personal notes in the margins, and included uses among the Bëorians and others where applicable, which convinced Mairon to read on: that would prove efficacious in poisoning them. A folk song, too, about seregon flower, would be useful to lure a Man into the wood—he would find a way to have the Elf sing it for him. Yet it was tiresome reading, and on the fifty-first page he tossed it aside and departed the cellars of the tower to oversee the clatter and glow of the forges. (Above, Finrod’s presence was a small and distant pinprick of light in his broader scrutiny.) His thralls’ and Orcs’ work was characteristically unsatisfactory, and Mairon exacted his demands to greater satisfaction.

Yet in the next days he found himself returning again to the sheaf of pages:

The plant is called stone’s blood in all the region’s languages, and it grows upon the foothills of the Blue Mountains and elsewhere soil is rocky. Though it bears the grim name of blood, it makes a sweet-smelling tea brewed, and I have seen the red blooms given as tokens of affection among Men of the Houses of Bëor and Haleth. This and the long flowering season together, I think, account for the following song…

"Edrahil is the dark-haired Elf who traveled with you. Captain of Nargothrond."

Fear jolted down Finrod's spine. He reached with his fëa for the threads of the tower. They were still breathing. "Why would you suppose so?"

"Your reaction tells me I am correct."

This gloating of his was getting old, Finrod thought.

"Well—does it change anything if you are?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not."

"I think you should release him," Finrod said. "You must be spending a great deal of effort on heating those rooms and on feeding my companions therein."

He acted confident that Sauron was keeping his promises—in part because the tower allowed him some knowledge of it, and besides because he wished Sauron to presume him confident in them.

"Don't worry for me," the Maia said silkily.

Finrod leaned forward. "Let me see them." He wound all the sweet compulsion he could manage into his voice, so it was half a Song itself.

"What wilt thou give me in exchange?"

Finrod waved a careless hand, falling back once more. "Must we always speak of such things between us? I would ask it as a favor."

Sauron's eyes gleamed, red that day as coals or seregon bloom.

"I would be grateful," Finrod murmured, "and you might know, though I am trusting by nature, in order to make future promises…"

"Tomorrow," Sauron said.

"Gladly."

Though he knew now some diverse range of the Maia’s forms and desires, Sauron fucked him hard that night and did not heal the bruises.

This is the point when other beings of thy kind recoil, sworn or not. Finrod felt a shudder of horror at what he described, and horror at his own hröa for being so trapped and needing on Sauron's cock despite it. That shudder pleasured the Maia in turn: he could feel it in his spirit. Their fëar draw back. Finrod shuddered again: he was talking so casually about a violation that seemed so different, appalling, and intimately horrible compared to what was happening now, and to him. He hated too, he found, to consider, however distantly he could manage now, that Sauron had taken part in it. Thine strains towards me, Sauron said with triumph.

Finrod heard a sound like a whimper: it was his own voice.

"Once thou toldst me thou pleased’st me," he said helplessly, head falling forwards. "Thou dost. Thou dost."

It was even, Finrod reflected, somewhat true.

And he was glad it had passed his lips, because he felt Sauron's satisfaction like a wave against his fëa and its thin defenses, as hot as a second embrace.

I will show thee how much, Sauron said. He turned Finrod onto his back as easily as one might move a feather, and his pace barely paused. The changed angle made a startled, needy sound spill from Finrod's throat. I should see how much pleasure I can wring from thee before thou flinchest from me. I should send thee before thy companions afterwards. The image that pressed in about him made Finrod shake his head, but his head spun all the more, and his body ached to be released.

The Maia laughed aloud at that, the sound bearing some twisted beauty, like the ringing of something gilded.

"Give me what I crave," he said, the words like a heavy caress, and Finrod's body could not have resisted the power in that immortal voice and in the eerie closer-than-hröa touch of his thrusts if he had wished. His climax overtook him with terrible sweetness, and as always he tried weakly to cling to the pieces of his defenses as he recovered, body still trembling with the last of it.

But it was not all the Maia craved, and he kept moving within him, kissing Finrod's neck with lips that burned him. Finrod felt a glow of his own sense of victory at that, hidden so deeply he hardly registered it himself. Sauron had not had enough of him: he was looking for something else, and Finrod had shown him, even, that there was more to look for.

"Show me thy eyes," Sauron murmured, voice unearthly and coaxing, and Finrod obligingly fluttered them open. The Maia scrutinized them with a burning gaze, like a jeweler looking for a taint of impurity, and Finrod was too unfocused to offer him a perfectly assembled countenance. He should have tried, if the Maia's movements did not have him gasping and moaning again in short order, with something greater than mortal in their touch and the demand that pulled upon his hröa and fëa. He was so sensitive after the second climax torn from him that when Sauron kept going it was painful despite the heady touch of him, and Finrod must have made some sound or sign of it.

I will have what I wish of thee, the Maia said, words suddenly harsh. I'll crack thee open and taste what's at thy heart.

No, Finrod thought, or maybe he said it. No, you won't… But pleasure welled in him: Sauron had slowed his pace, and those flickering fingers—for the Maia's form grew less stable, the more distracted he was—stroked at him.

"Delicate now," Sauron said, "like a lock."

Finrod whimpered. Sauron's fingers slipped through his spend and pushed between his lips, and he obligingly tasted himself and swallowed. Had Sauron come? Finrod could not remember, though he felt the pulse of the Maia's pleasure as closely in the room as though it were his own. It was different for him—

"I've made those too," Sauron said, still coaxing at him with slowness. Tears welled in Finrod's eyes—the Maia had become so skilled at kindling his want. It felt as though his body belonged more to him than it did to himself.

"I am no lock to be undone," he managed. Dost thou doubt that thou hast undone me?

Sauron grinned: a mad grin. "Thou couldst be broken, though: but I would rather unpick you."

What did that mean? It was important…

"Of course a stem can be plucked," Finrod said, breath ragged, "and a vine can wither: this is not surprising, but after…"

"Eyes," Sauron snapped. Finrod looked at him again: what he saw there Finrod knew not.

Beautiful, the Maia muttered, but he sounded dissatisfied. Was he looking at the Light in Finrod's eyes? Why would he bother? He knew better how it looked… Finrod's thoughts trailed off abruptly as Sauron kissed him, a burning kiss, and pushed him back onto the floor of the chamber, and moved within him again so Finrod gasped against his mouth.

Beautiful. The thought surrounded him: the Maia's mouth still sealed his, seeking and coaxing, for once, more than demanding. Finrod did not begrudge him the moan he drew from his lips then. Sauron drew back, the mouth of the form he wore reddened as his hair, his eyes still piercing, seeking themselves. Look at me, Mirbhoz. That word came with more relish than the rest. Do not look away.

Finrod looked up at him as he was bidden, and he still looked at him as Sauron took hold of his hips with those burning hands and thrust in earnest, making Finrod's body dizzy with want. Perhaps his fëa did reach for him like Sauron had said: he knew not to trust the things Sauron said, but in this, Finrod thought, he might be right—

He sobbed when the touches brought him to climax again, as wrung-out as he felt, and felt the Maia find his pleasure too, filling him. The edge of pain to the sweetness overtook it, his head was utterly clouded with want, and Finrod sobbed even after he wished he would stop.

"Shh," the Maia said in a whisper, lifting him from the floor. "I'll reassemble thee."

You cannot, Finrod remembered thinking, but he felt a terrible relief too, that the sorcerer wanted to.

Still, he knew, Sauron was not through with him, and nor (he dared believe) had he had all he wanted. It was a satisfying thought—it was a horrifying thought. He had neither broken nor unspooled.

Dawn found him awaiting Morgoth's lieutenant's keeping of his word. But it was not until near midnight, as though testing the outermost boundaries of what he had agreed, that Sauron led him down the winding pathways of the tower to the chamber where his companions were kept. Finrod had washed by then and worn the less revealing of the clothes at his disposal, but none hid the marks of the Maia's lips at his throat and chest, if the burns upon his hips were less clear.

"You still feel the need to appear a king before them," the Maia had sneered, seeing how he had assembled himself.

"A king? They have seen me in far less dignified states," Finrod said airily, though his heartbeat trembled. No, he did not wish his Elves to fear for him, nor to act rashly and jeopardize their safety, even if there were nothing else to consider. "It is your pride I take into account. If you have been as gracious a host as you promised, how much more favor must they suppose you have given me?"

Casually, Sauron's fingers wound into Finrod's hair. "Do you doubt your favor?"

"O, not at all, lord of Tol Sirion—and I should not like them to doubt your power to keep me thus favored."

Sauron laughed that strange laugh and released him. "Do as you wish."

Finrod gave him a bright, pleased look. Inwardly, he breathed a small sigh of relief. The lips of Sauron's fana quirked upwards. His form was pale today, yet shone like a mirror or a flame, and his hair was copper-red again against his fur mantle instead of dark or ashen. His face was lean and beautiful, sharp somehow, with those molten eyes.

Finrod hoped he was true to his word. 

He had been, at least somewhat. The eleven were packed into one room, but it was well-lit and warm despite the chill spring outside. They had the furs Finrod had once bartered with the Maia for. Finrod's heart beat very quickly: he did not think they bore signs of ill use or torment, but it was difficult to say.

"I bring you your lord," Sauron said mockingly. Finrod summoned a smile beneath his searching eyes. "It has been a while since you asked after him," the Maia went on. "I was beginning to think you had perhaps forgotten him."

Edrahil was standing rigidly, astonishment plain on his face. Finrod hoped he was not hurt. He already knew Sauron lied—and here it was a blatant lie, with those who had followed him into death's maw. Finrod shook his head imperceptibly, and his captain seemed to relax a fraction.

The Maia glanced towards Finrod, sharp eyes scorching his fëa as though he had caught that small exchange. Probably he had—Finrod found he cared little.

Sauron's hand found its way again into Finrod's hair, stroking in a parody of a caress. Finrod turned to him in a parody of a sweet look. He was too deeply embedded in this, he knew, to hold back before the others, no matter that his skin prickled with discomfort. The Maia's mouth curled upwards like a piece of burning paper.

"I'll leave you to grow reacquainted," he said poisonously. For all his sense of the tower's beating veins, Finrod trusted that not at all. He found himself a little surprised, though, that Sauron had offered.

Finrod shook his head again as Edrahil drew breath to speak. Behind Edrahil, there were the troubled gazes of the others. They seemed alone, but he knew now enough to say they were not truly so.

Are you unhurt? Finrod said with osanwë. He wished badly to embrace each of them, and he hated Sauron then, for making things thus now between himself and the ones he loved. He moved towards them and was absurdly thankful that they did not flinch away. He set his hand on Edrahil's shoulder, and Edrahil set his hand atop, and Finrod felt his form weaken with relief.

Edrahil glanced at Cóviel and took Finrod's cue. Yes, your highness, but you—

There’s nothing. You mustn't fear for me, Finrod said. Say you won't fear for me.

"How can I not fear for you!" Edrahil burst out, forgetting the proprieties he so often leaned on. His hand tightened on Finrod’s, and he returned to osanwë, though his glare lessened not at all. We could hear you screaming. Would you deny that?!

It had been so many months since his torture in the cells below the tower that Finrod sometimes almost forgot it had happened: and no, he could not deny it. The relief that he felt then made him weak at the knees. Finrod could not even have explained it—it should have been miserable, and no relief—save to say that it made him feel light to think someone knew, beside himself, that there was pain and that it was wrong that someone should be made to feel it.

And yet these Elves were his subjects, and Finrod their king—no, that was not right: Finrod was a king no longer, and would do well to recall it every so often, but he remained the reason these eleven of his people were held here, and unhappy. It was his foolish quest, was it not, that they had embarked upon? What did they have to do with Barahir’s son, but for Finrod Edennil?

The silence had gone on too long. Edrahil’s jaw had set, as though he had an inkling of what was running through Finrod’s guarded mind and intended to ward it off in advance. Finrod loved him for that, too.

He pulled the Elf into an embrace, arms winding tightly around him, and as his captain hugged him back one of them stumbled, and they sank to the floor instead. Finrod pretended it was not for himself, but for Edrahil’s comfort, that he had drawn him near. His heart beat strongly against Edrahil’s chest, and his embrace was terribly familiar, and Finrod thought he might weep, but as that moment passed, he knew he had the strength to do what needed to be done, and he was grateful. The eyes of the other Elves were on him, he knew without looking, and another’s hands touched his shoulder, and Edrahil whispered, “Do you deny it, your highness? I can’t reach you.”

Cautiously, like unpicking a few threads in a fine weaving, Finrod opened his mind again to osanwë. He closed his eyes, resting his brow against Edrahil’s shoulder.

Things have changed since, he said, and felt Edrahil’s doubt. I think there is an opening here.

Tell me what to do.

Finrod held him closer. He could not deny either of them that. How long had this adherent of his father’s stayed at his side? Edrahil’s arms had been around Finrod when he stumbled on the Ice, too, or from feast halls in Nargothrond. The grim care in his captain’s thought was like a steady beam. It shone upon Finrod’s soul and warmed it through.

Don’t provoke him, Finrod thought. Someone else’s hands were upon him now, and he relished that warmth too. Say nothing to him. I will get you out alive—all of you. I promise.

Your highness, is there naught—

If I need you, I will find a way to speak with you again. Finrod inflected the message with gentleness. I will if I must.

He could tell Edrahil wanted to protest, and Finrod raised his head, meeting his eyes. There was much Finrod wanted to say. He wished to tell his friend everything that had happened in the past months, and he wished, despite himself, to weep, but even if he had truly been at liberty to do so, how could he? All it would do was make Edrahil more likely to take some action that would put himself at risk. No: Finrod would not have that. And these eleven, for all the good it had done them, still saw him as the lord to whom they had pledged loyalty.

Edrahil’s jaw tightened again, but at last he nodded. 

Some tension loosened in Finrod’s chest. He let out a breath. He loved the Elf before him.

“Thank you,” Finrod murmured, and moved to stand.

Perhaps he could have anticipated the wince as he moved, and done more to conceal it. As it was Finrod rose as smoothly as he could, and cast his gaze steadily around the room, taking in ten more troubled faces as the other Elves shifted to rise as well.

“No, no,” Finrod said, “no need.” What ceremony had he stood on even in Nargothrond? He crouched before Maerchon. “You are truly unharmed?”

Of course Mairon had listened to his captive’s low words—those to which he could listen. Disappointingly—yes, this was what he felt on the matter, disappointment—no secrets were revealed of the workings of Nargothrond nor schemes which would require his immediate attention.

Yet Mairon was unsettled. Disquiet stirred his soul like a whirlwind, and he hungered for he knew not what. If he had been there Mairon would have thrown himself upon him, would have torn at his marred power with ribbons of soul until he found something he craved, even if it was not what he sought. With Finrod Finarfinion’s bright eyes upon him he did not know what to do.

Finrod inclined his golden head, and Mairon thought about wrenching it from his shoulders.

“Thank you,” Finrod said. Mairon brushed against his fëa like a caliper might measure a gem. His own form frowned. That light that was Finrod burned more brightly. It should have pleased Mairon: it did not quite. But a puzzle was something still to unravel, and better than another fracture.

An elegant pale-gold hand glided down the shoulder of Mairon’s fana, over rich sable. Finrod switched forms of address. “Dost begrudge me this?”

He had no fear, Mairon thought, faintly astonished even after so many days. That was not quite true: he was brave. That was it. Mairon had always thought of that word with mockery. No one was brave at the last, and it served them little.

Finrod had thanked the Elf-captain of Nargothrond in a different voice.

“What have I to begrudge?” Mairon said, baring his teeth, which were suddenly much sharper than they had been a moment before. “I have all the wealth of the world, and thy companions too.”

“It’s your move,” Finrod said. They had moved from the table in the bedchamber to the fireside, the chessboard between them. Mairon found himself lighting the hearth in the tower room more often these days, his touch or thought enough to wake flame in the empty space there. It was a trifling thing that eased his trifling plaything. Looking at him in the orange light, Mairon did not regret it.

The Elf had suggested they play, finding the board and pieces untouched in the room where they had been kept in another time. Mairon sometimes allowed the knowledge that Finrod—since his Mirbhoz was Finrod—had inhabited the place before, and indeed had first built it, to drift just that bit away, like a threaded bead. He needed to keep a nearer tether upon it.

Now, though, he smiled with the glittering eyes of his fana and moved a dark rook a few squares.

“Tell me of the Nauglamír,” he said.

Finrod’s white teeth caught at his lower lip. Mairon sensed his hesitation before the pause actually registered. Impatience flared in him as quickly as the flames. He tamped it down as the Elf moved a piece of his own upon the board before glancing up. “How may I satiate your curiosity, Lord Sauron?”

That name again. Mairon detested it. Maybe that was why he heard it rarely, lately. Finrod studied him with those radiant Noldorin eyes, uncanny despite the languidness of his pose, and Mairon thought that perhaps it was so.

“Your kind esteem it such a great treasure,” Mairon said, letting some scorn slide into his voice. With a knight, he completed the trap the rook had begun. “Should I take no interest in the design?”

“I’m no craftsman,” Finrod demurred. After taking his turn, he shifted upon the fur on which he reclined, so that he lay upon his back and golden hair spilled in rays around his head. Mairon's gaze was drawn like heated wire to the pale jut of his throat. The tension in the chamber had swelled already, Mairon thought, despite this making vulnerable and languid, and indeed at its crest Finrod went on in a rush, "Yet for a price I might remember the details."

He was nervous, Mairon thought: his fëa was as a spark to the blaze of Mairon's spirit. But before the careful, well-woven—I am no craftsman, indeed!—barrier which shielded the Elf's thought, Mairon believed he sensed a sort of thrill also. Finrod sighed as if he were not nervous and as if Mairon were not impatient. "If you release my companions," he said, "I will be inclined to tell you all about it."

Mairon laughed. "Sweet, this price outweighs the good in question."

"There are several Elves in your master's holdings," Finrod shrugged, "but there is only one Nauglamír."

Mairon grew irritated. His next move upon the chessboard, which he took to suggest he was not irritated, was less careful. "Perhaps I should put my questions to them about it." Finrod tensed, as Mairon had known he would. "Perhaps I should ask them everything about it at the month's end." That was beyond the latest extent of their terms.

"You might ask," Finrod conceded. He had not even sat up, but Mairon felt the careful rustle of each breath in his lungs, and the careful pace of his heartbeat. He stretched out upon the furs. "But you shall not find what you are looking for, I think. I was with the Dwarf-smiths each hour they made the necklace, and I brought the jewels myself from Valinor which they employed. And of course I wore it. There is much I might tell you that others cannot. Those smiths have perished, too, by now: my songs could only ease the Dwarves' long aging, not prevent it."

All wanes in Arda, Mairon thought bitterly, perhaps too strongly.

Finrod blinked. "It is only the nature of Mahal's people." But he sounded more uncertain. Mairon's spirit swept about him once more and meant to judge if the glow of his fëa had dimmed since that sentence. He could not tell.

At last Finrod propped himself up on his elbow, looking towards Mairon's fana with those Treelit eyes. "That is the beauty of things like the Nauglamír, is it not?" Those eyes enraptured him. "They fade not, and their perfect beauty does not change or wither. They stand testament to the craftsman's faultless skill, even when he is no more for Arda or his aged hands shake."

Mairon could not have described the emotion that passed like a thin knife through the core of his spirit then in words or thought. He flew up from where he'd been sitting. "Speak no more on this," he heard himself hiss. The hearth blazed, suddenly scorching. Finrod's eyes went wide, and Mairon sensed pain from the fëa that shared the room with his spirit.

"As you wish, I obey," the Elf said simply, beautiful voice just a little roughened. He had sworn his obedience to Mairon, albeit with a hundred caveats. Even if he had not, Mairon thought grimly that could yet force him into anything he wanted.

That's right, he spoke into the Elf's mind. He felt Finrod's shiver as though it were his own. You are mine, Findaráto. And you should have a care I do not tire of your impertinences. Since you have not thought to have a care whether or not you acquired my interest.

Breath struggled in those delicate lungs, that golden chest. You say I should regret your interest?

The game before them was forgotten.

Thou mayest yet.

The next night they sat again before the chessboard at the table. In a flurry of motion, Mairon’s flickering hands set the pieces in their places from the night before. They played in relative silence. Finrod neatly evaded his gambits upon the board, yet he played defensively enough that Mairon pressed the advantage. He smiled his knowing little smiles and made his gestures of deference and disrespect and Mairon studied him over the rim of a goblet filled with blood. What a strange being he was, this son of Arafinwë, Mairon’s Mirbhoz!

“It’s your move,” Finrod said, brushing a golden lock of hair back so its waves fell behind one leaf-shaped ear in another poised gesture. It was easy, Mairon found, to imagine him presiding over a court, though he wore a flimsy robe of scarlet and no jewels, and his hair unbound.

Mairon moved his queen thoughtlessly.

“Ah! You are insistent upon making things difficult,” Finrod remarked. He evaded again: yet within a few moves Mairon would have him.

“One,” Mairon said.

Finrod glanced up from the board with those ingenuous eyes and arched a dark-gold brow.

“I will release one of your companions for all the detail your mind possesses of the Nauglamír. Swear it.”

“Three,” Finrod said instantly.

Mairon’s fingers moved upon the chessboard, removing one of Finrod’s knights and placing the white king in checkmate.

“Don’t seek to test me on this, Mirbhoz.”

And now of course he was assessing, considering: it was in this Elf’s spirit to press beyond what Mairon wished to grant. Oh, he wanted to, and there was no question as to whether or not he could—he had before. Brave, Mairon thought again. What ran through that shielded mind now, Mairon was certain, was merely whether it would be more or less effective to provoke the Maia before him.

“Mm,” Finrod made a noncommittal noise of agreement. “Thou knowest me to be gracious.” (Mairon snorted.) “One,” he said, and after only a fraction’s hesitation, “and it must be Edrahil.”

“No,” Mairon snapped. There was flame in the word. Finrod’s hands halted sweeping away the chess pieces.

“Is that different from what you originally offered?” Finrod paused, as though pretending to consider. “I do not think it is.”

“Still it will not be.”

“It must be,” Finrod said. His hands were below the edge of the table now, folded immobile in his lap. The whole pose could have been a statue: Finrod Felagund Seated Overlooking the Narog, or the like. He shrugged and the image was broken. "That is my condition: I have named it."

Mairon seethed. “And you think I care for this trifle that much?” I could break you open and take what I liked from the babbling wreckage of you. But Mairon did not want rubble: he had enough of that. That was all the same.

Try, Finrod’s shielded mind seemed to echo back to him.

“You are a craftsman,” was what actually passed those perfect lips. Finrod shrugged again, and packed away the board.

Mairon looked sharply at him. In a moment his palm, flickering, pressed against the pulse beating at the Elf’s throat. He felt Finrod swallow; felt rather than surmised the lightheadedness that overtook him. They stood now, Finrod’s back to the wall. Breath failed Finrod, and he staggered. There was a dazed look in his Treelit eyes.

“I’ll grant thy condition,” Mairon murmured. He had not released him.

Finrod gave him the most dazzling smile Mairon had ever seen from him. “Shall we discuss the terms?” His voice was very ragged.

He was too clever by half, Mairon thought. It was astonishing how many in millennia had been taken in by “releasing” others through death. Still, his grip loosened without his thinking about it. He was dazzled by the smile.

Mairon nudged his knee between the Elf’s thighs. “Later.”

“So you care for one of them more than the others,” the Maia murmured. Finrod had nearly fallen asleep, but the words drew him back, and he looked again at Sauron. No room was truly dark that the Maia’s presence touched, for all that Morgoth was named the Black Enemy. Rather, the air about his form possessed the sort of warm not-quite-black of forges’ smoke in a night sky, and his eyes were flamelike, their centers blue-white now. “Do those who serve under your banners know you to be so discriminating?”

“Yes,” Finrod said. He was suddenly very tired.

“What,” Sauron went on, sounding terribly amused, “no more to say? Thou admittest thy fault?”

"You think I have not thought of this?” Finrod said quietly. "I know my weaknesses. I know there are some I love better and best, though I might love them all. I am one of the Exiles: thou mightst expect I have already spent many sleepless nights on the matter. Yet if it has to be one, let it be the one I favor. It's not I who set that constraint, but thou, lord of Tol Sirion."

"Which you accepted.”

Finrod nodded, then said "Yes." Well—the Maia could undoubtedly see him in the dark in any case. The yes had been unnecessary. There was a tightness in his throat. Strange, to speak thus with Morgoth's lieutenant, his Maia captor. Had he been too quick to accept? Should he have risked more harm to those he cared for and bargained harder?

"Thou art fond of that word love," the Maia said. "I think you use it too readily."

Finrod fought the sudden impulse to laugh. It could be disastrous to laugh then, he thought, and yet it was absurd to be told by Gorthaur the Cruel that he loved too easily. "And you protest to this?" he asked instead.

"Why not?" Sauron said, an edge returning to his voice. Though his Elf-like form lay on the bed beside him, something coiled around Finrod's wrist and up his arm, like a snake hissing a warning.

"I should not be surprised," Finrod reflected, without meaning to speak. He had been threatened too often to take great heed, yet still he fought to show the Maia purely calm. Privately, he finished the thought. The Enemy and his servants guarded things jealously or not at all. Some lives, some articles had value: others had none—less than none. No, Finrod should not be astonished to hear Sauron speak thus of love. He knew better than that. He should be more attentive: there was likely a grain of truth in the words, for all they were uttered by the lieutenant of the Master of Lies.

For a moment, achingly, he thought of Amarië, laughing in Laurelin's light on the high slopes of Taniquetil. How easy things had been between them! How easily they had understood each other in this, and so much else! The wordless yearning that overtook him then distracted him, and it was not easy to overcome it: yet he did, as he had so many times before.

“All the same, I know what I mean when I say it,” Finrod said. Sauron’s unblinking gaze remained upon him. “And it is true, as broadly or narrowly as thou wouldst like to conceive it.”

There was a time for diplomacy—it wasn’t this time. But many had thought the same facing lesser foes, and Finrod had scorned them for it then. To speak truly, Finrod was not a very good king. But he was a very good emissary. Why not? Why, by the Valar, not?

If there was no other advantage, each passing moment drew him inexorably closer to Sauron’s spirit. Finrod wished often for respite from its tides at the borders of his mind, but he had begun to know them too. In certain moments he saw bonds within the blazing fire of that spirit: so deeply ingrained they were scarcely there, like another layer of raiment.

He thought of Melian in Doriath. How often he had felt the Maia’s unearthly gaze upon him before the twilit throne of Menegroth? How often had a flock of black-eyed nightingales followed him traversing the Girdle? Kin, Finrod called his great-uncle’s bride, queen of the Hidden Realm, once Maia of Lórien, servant—if such a being could ever be so named—of Vána and Estë.

I have seen Orcs on the march use the paste of this root upon their open wounds, Finrod had written in the margin beside a sketch. Curious—it was the first medicinal use I had encountered of it, but the Laiquendi confirmed my supposition that it was the same plant, and they do the same with it, albeit with more art, and claim to have done so since Cuiviénen. I cannot help but think it good there is a means for relieving some of their pain, and one which the Enemy has not created. 

A miracle, that one so clever could be so naïve.

Mairon had written Edrahil’s death in his soul when he watched his prize rest his head upon the Elf-captain’s shoulder, gold hair and dark mingling. Soon, he had promised himself, not far off. He was tempted, still, now.

He contented himself with showing the eleven Finrod’s body mangled by snarling wolves. To be sure, the body had been someone else’s before the wolves had taken it, but it demanded little enough of Mairon’s craft to render the illusion truer. It would not do for his spies—those not overseen by Mairon, which was few enough—to hear of Finrod alive in captivity. The reaction of Nargothrond’s people, too, was an annoyance to avoid. The Elves wept in various shades of shock and horror, which was nearly satisfying enough. Mairon had not laid a finger upon them, as he had promised Finrod: though the captain fought so fiercely that Mairon supposed for a few gleeful moments that Draugluin might be provoked to attack him without the order.

Mairon ignored the sweet swearing of vengeance as he dismissed the wolves with a dark hand and gestured with another for Edrahil to be dragged from the cell. His attention was on the disquiet in the now-familiar soul far above.

The Maia laughed, fingertips the shade of ash stroking over the sketches Finrod had made. Finrod smiled and waited.

“I am unsurprised that thou saidst then that thou wast used to wearing other’s gifts,” Sauron said. Finrod colored despite himself. He had forgotten that: at least he did not look in the direction of the golden bonds the Maia had crafted, which he lately less often wore. Sauron tapped his fingers upon a drawing of Nauglamír about the neck, smiling as though he knew exactly what Finrod recalled. “It isn’t that dissimilar.”

“Thou speakest thus because thou hast not seen it,” Finrod said airily. The flush remained. How could he still flush here? “And could only speak thus for being so.”

Sauron’s smile widened, showing a flash of teeth.

“Thou findest not my gifts most beautiful, thrall?”

“Regretfully, no.” Finrod cast his glance again to the drawings he had penned. The Necklace of the Dwarves looked back at him, recognizable even in his poor rendering, which had favored precision over beauty. In life, not diagram, it rested lightly on the wearer, and shimmered like a thousand crests of waves, graceful as a bird’s iridescent wings, the design falling down the chest. It had been made for him by those very dear to him and Finrod would have prized it over all three of the cursed Silmarils. It was foolish to feel a stirring in his breast over the memory of such a thing, but Finrod had taken enough jewels across the Ice not to worry too much over foolishness. What he missed, really, was Nargothrond (would he ever see it again?): Nargothrond before things had changed… and he missed Edrahil, and it had tormented him to feel the awareness of his friend slip further and further away across the isle until he could sense him no longer, and trust only in Morgoth’s sorcerer’s oath—the oath of one who deceived the Valar—well, maybe Finrod was a fool, as his cousins had said. So be it: he would rather be a fool than crafty in Curufin’s style. Finrod shook his head to clear it.

“And you won’t be able to replicate it,” he lamented, playing to the Maia’s pride, “for set therein are stones I brought from Valinor, crafted in Tirion.”

Sauron’s eyes narrowed. There was a flash of force upon Finrod’s fea; Sauron’s spirit, ever-present, filled the room suddenly like rising flame. “Think you that I cannot forge gems?”

Maybe he had touched a nerve.

“Perhaps you should show me your skill,” Finrod said lightly, smiling.

There was something unsettled about the Maia’s spirit then, like a dark eddy in a rushing current. Yet he answered: “I will.”

It had taken a year—winter to winter, and spring until the hyacinths bloomed—for the Dwarf-smiths to craft the Nauglamír. Sauron spent far less time upon the task, despite the many things he attended, and still it seemed to Finrod like a great deal of time passed before it was brought up again.

It was difficult sometimes to keep track of the hours and days. Finrod did his best, but he knew the exactness of the count had long since been lost.

Then one evening as summer began to be felt in the isle, and Finrod had persuaded the Maia to open the high windows of the chamber, Sauron settled him before a mirror.

Hands like flame passed in front of his throat. Glimmering strands of pearlescent jewels wound together, whisper-light, and Finrod saw himself in the dark glass. The gems were not the same, not quite, and it was not as beautiful, yet they glittered like doves’ wings and clear springwater. Lately, some bold, dim starlight penetrated the gloom and smoke that always surrounded the tower, and it shone on the Maia’s creation, and on Finrod’s face.

"Behold," Sauron mocked, "the lord of Tol Sirion.”