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It is a ramshackle tavern, but Galadriel has seen much worse.
The atmosphere is boisterous this late in the evening, and no one looks twice at her as she sits in the corner nursing her modest dinner and bitter drink. Most have stopped taking much note of her after the third night she had spent here with no trouble and no interest in talk. She does not garner much attention beyond the preliminary enterprising and appraising glimpses of interested men, but she had quickly dissuaded them from approaching that first night with a few appointed barbed words that discouraged too much tomfoolery. Scorned men react as all scorned creatures do, with too much ale and too much glaring.
Indeed, they leave her alone now. They’re curious why she lingers. She hears the accusations, the whispers, but no one dares approach.
“This is a strange place to broker peace for the fate of the world, wouldn’t you say?”
Galadriel does not do anything so profane as flinch, for she sensed his presence for some time now, his gaze resting on her from afar with a heat that could rival the flames of Udûn itself. From across the room, from the shadows, where his dominion has always remained, Galadriel had sensed his arrival from the very second he had entered the village. She had been anticipating it all day, ever since she had spied his crows above her head, knowing full well he had received her missive and was here to strike the deal she’d tendered him with only faint details.
A deal that could very well lay devastation upon her.
“Peace,” she offers him — Halbrand, Sauron, the Dark Lord himself, whatever vile name he proffers himself tonight, “is a stressed tiding for tonight.”
He lifts a carefully deliberating eyebrow. “A temporary truce, then, at the very least?”
“I did not come here with any contingent of soldiers. I came alone.”
He takes the seat across from her, patently amused. “Is that supposed to disarm me? You are the weapon, Galadriel. You have always been your own great army.”
She does not need to question whether he came alone. Even now, even on the eve of a great battle, she knows he has come at her behest without a single thought to any escort. It would be beneath him. For what purpose does a hurricane have need of protection? Its gale force is its own cover.
He holds up a hand, signaling to the barmaid that he desired ale. The woman, raven-haired, young, ducks a bashful head under his gaze and nods eagerly, already reaching for a glass. Galadriel cannot blame the barmaid for her coyishness, for Halbrand has always been a sight bright and pleasing for the eyes for all the shadows beneath the surface. Painfully handsome in the most masculine of ways, dark coloring despite the hints of gold in his hair, a sharp jawline, cheekbones cut like glass that even an elf would find envious. His stature is not common either, full of sharp edges and steel lines, ropes of muscles latent beneath his clothing, flesh fortified by work, by a form of physical endurance that she would not have thought the Dark Lord would brook or enjoy, but she’d see it firsthand, hadn’t she? Back when he was posing as a mere mortal. He liked to work with his hands. He enjoyed excursions full of physical endurance and labor.
A smirk playing at his lips, but not yet breaking out. “You look well, Galadriel.”
“You look much the same as last I saw you. When will you grow tired of this human visage, I wonder? It must be tiring to fit yourself into such a common appearance.”
“It isn’t as bad as all that. It chafes, a bit, this skin. But it has its advantages. Look around us. Here we sit, two of the most powerful beings in all of Middle Earth, and the poor fellow over your shoulder has spent the last five minutes snoring into his bowl of half-eaten potatoes. Anonymity, you will one day find, can be a boon when the world abroad knows your name.”
“Listening to the shrieks of horror and pain everywhere you go must be so very tiring,” she proffers, frost in her throat.
“You have no idea,” he tells her, the smirk finally burgeoning to its full bloom.
The barmaid comes by, dropping off his drink and departing with a comly smile.
“So,” he lifts his glass. “What shall we toast to? Health and wellbeing? Peace on Middle Earth?”
“Your head dripping blood down a mounted spike?” she returns.
He laughs. “Clever tongue, Elf. And strong words indeed with my army poised to take yours out come morrow’s light.”
She does not pause. She does not even think before the pointed edge of a dagger is pressed against the juncture at his inner thigh beneath the table, the tip at the artery which would have a normal man bleeding out in seconds.
“I thought,” he muses, unfazed, “we had a temporary truce?”
Is a truce ever a possibility with Morgoth’s disciple?
She thinks not.
She hopes so.
Around them, the chatter of the tavern goes on, unchecked, unbothered. A drunken man spills his drink to the floor, glass shattering, and a boisterous round of applause follows. Piss poor drunk, another roars with a chuckle.
“Careful, Galadriel,” he warns, when she digs her dagger a fraction deeper into his thigh. There is a broadsword at his side, but he does not shift to draw it. “You would not want these people to suffer for your pointless temper.”
The ease with which he says it is a reminder of his power, a threat, far from idle. Everything he says and does, everything he is, is a black poison to this world, a malice of the highest order. A foul promise of affliction and slaughter and life in retrograde, a breathing sin sitting idly before her with taunting eyes and smirking lips. A face meant to beguile and charm, and Galadriel, for all her wisdom, experience, and forethought, had fallen for it. She will never forgive herself for that.
For the sake of their blissfully ignorant company, she pulls back. For his taunting words speak more truth than gloating. His army is vast, his power too strong. The battle morrow is too heavily weighted in his favor. The only thing that could assure her peoples’ victory would be a miracle — or in its absence, a deal that would barter out her very soul. For the battle would be far from a certain defeat for the good people of Middle Earth, if the Dark Lord himself would be absent from it. And she could sway the tide of the battle with her absence far more than with her presence. A wounding thing for her pride, but Galadriel is not so headstrong as to miss all the moving pieces of the chessboard.
When she sits back, hilted dagger back at her hip, it is almost as if nothing had occurred at all.
“Why am I here, Galadriel?” he asks. “I find the timing most curious.”
Tomorrow, their armies go to war, a battle not seen by elves or men or dwarves or any other manner of creatures known in this age or the last. And yet, tonight, here they sit in a rundown tavern in the middle of nowhere special and on the way to nowhere interesting. She had chosen it carefully. She had selected everything with an eye to the most painfully remote details, chosen with great haste, perhaps, but with no less concentration to their regards.
But she cannot bring herself to say it. The reason they are here, the deal she is willing to strike with him, with the fate of her friends resting in the balance.
Galadriel is not insufferably egotistical, but she does have her pride.
“Galadriel,” he presses. “I am only so patient.”
Another beat of silence, where she cannot look upon his face and see the stirrings of his interest.
“Have you come here to beg?” he taunts. “To plead mercy on your army’s behalf? I doubt so.”
“I would never beg anything of you,” she hisses.
“Some can find it pleasurable, depending on the thing they are begging for.”
His meaning is not lost on her, and it only makes her rage spark more. “What I’ve come here for, necromancer, is not something I have ever begged for. It is your desire, your pleading, that has brought us here tonight.”
He looks far from amused now, but still immeasurably interested. “I do not recall pleading for anything.”
“What do you call asking a woman to be your queen when she has a dagger at your throat?”
“A proposal, of which I will gladly tender in any manner or fashion you find agreeable. Do you want me on my knees, Galadriel? Pleading, as you say? You need only ask. I will gladly go on my knees for you.”
Must he be so crude?
“You have not wrested me to your side,” she warns in a hiss. “And no manner of pleadings or proposals will ever sway me there.”
“You protest too much for a woman that urged me to her side tonight.”
“For a deal, a temporary one. Like the truce laid out at the start of this conversation.”
He artfully mentions nothing of the fact that she’s already threatened to spill his blood since that truce was first uttered. “And what would you offer in this deal?”
She pauses, but she can delay no longer. What will come, will come. What will pass, will pass.
She has made her plans, and now they must unfold.
“One night,” she forces out, breath carefully controlled, face belying nothing, no tick of emotion, no schism of betrayal. “And one day. That is all. During that time you will not step foot in battle, you will not do a thing to sway the fate of this war in your favor. What comes in our absence will come.”
For a long beat, he does not respond. The silence rests heavy with them, a living breathing thing.
For it is either a brilliant tactician’s ploy or her greatest folly, with nothing in between, this gambit of momentary corruption. To take the Dark Lord out of play during a great battle is no small feat, and one Galadriel knows only she can accomplish.
He looks at her, greedy and godlike and glad, and she knows he understands her meaning.
“Spell it out, Galadriel,” he challenges, leaning forward, eclipsing the very light in the room with his dark fathomless eyes. “What will you offer me during this night and day to provoke such a relinquishment on my part? I have my foot on your army’s throat. Why would I lift my heel?”
Damn him for making her say it, but she expected no less. After all, it will be far from the most objectionable thing he will make her do before the night is through.
“I will give you what you desire most.”
For a moment, she can see it, the appetite, open and longing, plain for all and sundry to see. A dark and bottomless yearning, want mixed with potent obsession, dark attraction, an unslaked lust.
A blink, and then it is gone again, replaced by a stubborn clench of his jaw.
“But only for one night and one day,” he clarifies, displeased.
Galadriel says nothing, her stiff posture more than telling. That is all the corruption her soul can withstand, and even that, mayhaps, is too much. Too optimistic for her to leave such a thing entirely unscathed.
“It is not enough,” he tells her, tongue clucking disapprovingly. “I want you, Galadriel. All of you, and I am too greedy to be satisfied with only one night and one day. Moments you offer, when I want eternity. Forget about negotiating for some petty battle. You could end this war. You could stop the suffering in a single breath. All you have to do is join me. Be at my side, always. Together we can rule Middle Earth the way you would find acceptable. The light at the dawn of a new Era.”
For a glimmering moment, she can see it.
Him and her, standing side by side, the greatest, most formidable couple in all the ages. Light and dark, good and evil, intertwined, a legacy of power untold and unprecedented. They could change the face of Middle Earth, reforge it in their image. A glorious thing, it would be.
Ruinous, assuredly.
“That is not what I offer,” she tells him. “You want me, it will be on my terms. My conditions. It is this, or it is nothing, Halbrand.”
It is already too much.
“Take it or leave it,” she continues. “But this will not be an offer I extend ever again. I have sacrificed much to come here, the eve of battle. My own men wonder where I’ve disappeared, what I’m doing. You will not see this prospect again.”
He reaches across, a slow and measured movement, enough to telegraph his intent as his hand covers hers. Fingers over fingers, the heat of his palm scorching, the open disparity between them only augmented by the sheer size of his broad fingers against her own slender ones. She does not move back, as much as the urge to repel pushes through her. She can feel it against her skin, his strength, pulsating, throbbing against her own. A simple brush of digits, and the very hair on Galadriel’s arms stand on end, akin to a singular explosion, feeling a great power ignite across her body, immeasurable and hungry, as urgent as a black star.
She does not blink, but a small sharp exhale escapes her lips. Damning, too revealing. She stays seated, still, and watches him as he processes everything and comes to the only conclusion she knew he would.
He cannot deny himself this opportunity to corrupt her.
He cannot deny himself her.
“Your proposal is acceptable,” he declares. “With one caveat.”
She stiffens, bracing herself for the worst. “What is the lone term?”
“You will be honest with me, Galadriel, so long as I’m inside you,” he says, and she heats against the words, snatching back her hand as if burned. He smiles, but it is a tender, delicate thing, instead of the smirk she expects. “Honesty,” he says, “is a small price to pay for saving your brethren’s spilt blood. I will not tolerate lies in any bed I take you in. Do we have a deal?”
“What do you hope to provoke with such a qualification?” she spits out, affronted in a way she cannot describe. “I am not the one full of deceits and lies.”
“Oh, young one,” he tells her, as if she is not thousands of years old. “The lies you tell are the ones you speak to yourself. I only intend to offer you the freedom of truth.”
Her jaw clenches. Manipulation is a game he has been orchestrating with her through charm and offense since day one. This is no different.
“What are you afraid of, Galadriel? I only ask for honesty. Surely that is not an unfair term?”
She will not let him unseat her power. This is her proposal, her play at a shameless exploitation of his weakness. She will not yield the higher ground by answering his provoking little taunt.
“You might not like what you hear, Dark One.”
“Oh.” He tilts his head, just slightly, so slowly. “I think I’ll like it just fine. Do we have a deal?”
Fingers braced white against the edge of her dagger once more, but she does not pull it from her sheath this time.
Instead, she nods.
“Then it’s done,” he says, simple words with too much packed behind it. “Your accord has been struck, My Lady. Let us proceed to the terms.”
#
In the end, silence is the thing that follows, the thing that makes her fully appreciate what damnation she has committed herself to. He wordlessly ushers the barmaid to their table, paying for his untouched drink and her half-eaten dinner without any pleasantries exchanged. He merely looks at her afterwards, and she stands, following her out the door with a large open palm pressed along the small of her back, possessive and heated, another outsized dichotomy in comparison to her slim waist; he’s already far too close for a man she has always kept at an arm's length distance, even when she had seen him as a savior of mankind that she felt too much for, done too much to aid. Now it is a ruination, this diminishing proximity, this overly-familiar touch.
Up, on the third floor of the Inn across the street, Galadriel opens the door to the modest room she has spent coin on for the last two nights. It is painfully simple. Only an unadorned table in one corner, two chairs, a washbasin across the room, a mirror, and a simple tidy bed tucked in the far corner, fitted sheets and a cover smelling of freshly cleaned linen. It will do.
“This will not do,” he tells her, from behind.
Before she can open her mouth to question or protest, the world around her shifts like sand falling through a sieve. Next, she is staring at a room that would rival any Elvish city’s beauty, a large grand room intricately adorned with emerald greens and orange candlelit, decorated with curved white oak furniture blessed with rivulets of carved wines everywhere, into the smallest of pockets and with the greatest of details. It is enchanting, and entirely unnecessary.
“Your time at Eregion served you well,” she spits out, distastefully.
Shame lances through her, because he only came to be so close and familiar to the Elvin city because she had brought him to its halls. So much knowledge and trust freely given, duplicitously taken.
“Now, now,” he murmurs, charmed and soft. He pulls free his belt, removing his sword and sheath before laying it across an ornate table with the symbols of her family’s ancestry on it. “I only mean to make you comfortable. A creature such as you should always be surrounded by fitting magnificence.”
“I care little where this night of debauchery will take place.”
“Debauchery?” he repeats, amused, stepping closer behind her, his breath stirring her hair. He smells achingly of sandalwood and clear river waters, a crisp fresh scent that goes against the very nature of him. She is overly-alert, aware of every molecule of air he disrupts between them, every inch compromised and breached. “What has your imagination conjured up regarding this night? How do you know I will not be a gentleman?”
She refuses to dignify that with any response, then finds herself involuntarily bereft of words when his lips unexpectedly press at the line of her throat, a barely there kiss that makes her straighten her spine. His fingers glance up her sides, coming to rest on either side of her hips. He brings her back towards him, towards the cradle of his own body that gives off heat like a furnace, and their bodies do not so much as collide as buttress against one another, sealing into a single line with nary a whisper of space between them.
“Will you be good for me, Galadriel? Let me have you, as you’ve promised?”
“I made a pact, did I not? Let us not belabor the point.”
“So impatient? It’s almost as if you’ve never reveled in the anticipation as much as the act itself. Some things should be savored.”
“I am not a dish you will feast upon,” she warns. “Whatever little fantasy you may have about me submitting to you can end the same way I imagine this night will. Disappointedly unsatisfied.”
“Galadriel,” he whispers in her ear, with another kiss to her throat. “You are too tense.”
“I am not tense,” she sneers out.
He chuckles, unclasping and removing her cloak without ceremony. “A lie, but it is all right. I am not inside you yet, so no accord is broken. You may tell yourself whatever petty lies you need to comfort yourself. I only mean to make you more comfortable.”
Why does her comfort matter at all to him? It does not. She knows this. She knows he only seeks to make her bend to his will, to his perversion. She will not make it so easy.
But then his hands begin to undo the belt across her waist. She is wearing a practical outfit tonight, a silver suede dress with white embellishments that splits at the waist with lilac slacks underneath and tall gray boots. The garment, however, does not sacrifice femininity for all its functionality, and for a moment she hates that she is – pretty, for him. A prize to unwrap, for unwrap he does, beginning with her belt.
But his hand shifts to the pommel of her dagger, and she reacts before thinking. Swiftly whirling around, snatching back the dagger, only to be met with surprisingly quick resistance, as his hand stops her firmly from retrieving the blade and sheathing it into his chest. He holds one hand on the hilt, the other over her straining fingers, forcing her to remain immobile despite her significant strength.
“Did you want to bring a dagger into bed with us?” he muses. “I did not think you the type, though it does not overly surprise me either.”
“Let go,” she warns.
He looks down at the weapon, eyebrow lifting. “Curious, this is not your brother’s dagger. This is just – a trinket. A pretty replacement. What happened to your brother’s dagger, Galadriel?”
She refuses to answer. Even if it is not the same dagger that had been by her side since Finrod’s demise, she does not want Halbrand’s hands on it. It must show on her face, for he lets go himself and takes one large step back, palms lifted placatingly at his sides.
“Very well,” he appeases. “I’ll let you disarm yourself.”
She does, reluctantly, slowly, putting her dagger on the corner table that perhaps does not exist except in her mind’s eye, where he’s erected this farce of a room. Does the dagger fall to the floor in reality, back in that simple inn? Or does it find a home in this land, despite all its illusion? Galadriel does not know how this works, and she is too prideful to ask him.
When she goes to undo her belt, weary of dragging this on any longer, he tsks at her. “Allow me,” he says, brooking no argument as he steps back into her space. He brings her focus to his eyes, which is perhaps a mistake more than focusing on his hands as they land on her body. For his gaze is dark, intimate, knowing; he stares at her with such a singular devotion that she cannot look away. “Tell me, what do Elves know of the pleasures of the flesh?”
She glares at him. “I am over five thousand years old, Halbrand. You will not be teaching me anything new.”
He grins. “I like the challenge of that. But I am curious why you continue to call me by that name. Does it offer you some comfort, to think you’re bedding a man you’d grown attracted to all that time ago in our little adventure? Does it make it more palatable than Sauron, or any other name you could call me?”
She is incredulous. “Would you like me to call you the Dark Lord in bed?”
His grin widens. “Only if you want to.”
She scoffs, looking away. He is insufferable already, and he hasn’t even kissed her yet.
“Ah, there she is,” he provokes, gleeful. “I know you were there somewhere underneath all that stern exterior. It is all right to breathe, Galadriel. It is all right to want this.”
“I do not want this,” she hisses back. “This is a means to an end.”
He does not smile. “Another lie.”
Before she can form any measure of response, his hand is at the back of her neck, tugging her forward, forcing her to brace hands against his chest. Their bodies collide, and then he is breathing out her name, a soft intensive utterance, and she knows he’s about to kiss her only a split-second before he does, his mouth sealing over hers, a brute conqueror in his vanquishing.
It’s a demanding kiss, shockingly in contrast to the light teasing ways he had been touching her thus far, but now she can feel it unleashed against her, the weight of his expectations heavy in one single bleeding kiss; hands at her throat, drawing her in, almost bending her entire body up and around him for the joining of their lips; her feet partially lift on the tips of her toes. She is overwhelmed by his taste, an insistent force, unstoppable, cloying in his carnal desires, all pretense forgotten.
He draws her in for a second, third, fourth kiss. His arms, coiled with tension and almost disconcertingly strong, wrapping around her, crushing her in close. And she sways with each successive kiss, a sliding retreat that threatens every thought or resistance in her head, her body fighting the urge to melt into the very line of him, as if he is not what he is, who he is. She tries to hold herself stiffly in his arms, under the ever pervasive reminder as if it is blood on her fingertips she cannot wash away.
“Galadriel,” he exhales out, and beneath her breathless name, there is victory crowing in his throat.
Oh, how she hates that, even as her body warms.
She says nothing, mouth clamped shut until he pries it open again for his tongue. She stands still as her belt is finally removed, falling to the ground unceremoniously, while he opens the pleats of her dress. In between sips of kisses, his hands are swift and assured, annoyingly familiar as he runs his palms softly across the crushed grayish-purple suede material.
Galadriel tries to control her breathing, but his lips steal her breath every opportunity he finds, while his hands gain purchase again with the folds of her dress, undoing the buttons that run up along her chest. Fast, knowing fingers, dexterous in their enterprise of peeling away any layers and barriers between them. She finds herself undone alongside her dress, standing there, assaulted under a deluge of kisses, pulling for air, eyes squeezed shut so she will not have to watch him disrobe her and witness the conquest.
When he finally has the long line of buttons unfastened, he lets the flaps of her dress hang open, exposing her white chemise beneath, the one tucked mid-waist into her pants; he has not once wavered from his devotion to her lips, but here, he pauses, stare affixed at the hint of skin exposed at her collar, and she blinks as he tugs off the dress and pushes it off her shoulders, leaving her clad only in pants and her nightly things.
She is not expecting it when he drops down, hands on her hips, knees on the floor. “How could I not fulfill my queen’s spoken desire? You said you wanted me on my knees, after all.”
She had not, in fact. Those had been his words, his taunt. Galadriel nearly points out the distinction but her voice, perhaps for the first time in her entire life, does not carry out her command. Because the sight of him on his knees is an arresting look, the moonlight in this little mindscape of his creation, this false Elvin paradise, slants the light across the curve of his face, akin to perfection, too flawless and everlasting, his profile too exquisite. He pops open her trousers and wrests apart her underclothes, tugging the material down her legs, the thin fabric underneath damningly damp from her building arousal, something too evident to deny — until all she is left clad in is the singular white chemise, nude underneath.
In the same moonlight that has cast him in all his magnificent glory, she finds herself bathed the same. The outline of her body is only all too apparent in the sheer slip, her pointed nipples standing against the material, the curves of her hips a shadowy sharp shape.
A lock of his wayward hair falls across his face, sinfully attractive, and for a beat Galadriel wants to brush it away. She locks her fingers into a tight fist to battle against the instinct, because she will give him nothing; she agreed to let him take her to bed, but she will not folly in this way. She will not reach for him, she will not give him the satisfaction of overwhelming her with base desire. A pillar, she will become. An unwavering structure like that of a towering mountain, unbowed by time or any virulent demands.
He seems to read her mind, mayhaps, because his gaze darkens. “Have you thought about this, Galadriel?” he goads, then almost immediately takes it back with a crude smile. “No, do not tell me. I do not want to hear another one of your false denials. I’ll wrest the truth out of you shortly.”
I’ll be inside of you soon enough, she hears his voice, crystal clear, in her mind.
Her alarmed response at yet another invasion is derailed entirely when he lifts the hem of her chemise higher up her thighs, past her waistline, exposing the most intimate parts of her. He groans at the sight of her, brushing his nose against her inner thigh in a playful nudge, which causes Galadriel to jolt a little, despite herself; he inhales deeply, pressing a devastatingly soft kiss to her inner thigh. She can smell her own arousal in the air, so surely he must be basking in the same with smug awareness.
“Very pretty cunt, young one,” he tells her.
She heats at the brazen words.
She is expecting it, but still, when he licks a long, slow path up her open slit, a low, guttural noise almost escapes her lips. She locks her limbs into place, fighting the urge to sway as he licks her open, glancing up to watch her face when his fingers come up to spread her further open for him, making a mess of her arousal. His attention strays higher, a kiss to that bundle of nerves that rocks her to her very core. She hisses a breath in sharply through gritted teeth when he plants a sucking kiss against the spot, teasing at her clit with his tongue. His fingers warm and wet with her dampness, as he pushes through her folds, a finger breaching her.
Galadriel sways, despite herself, and then one second she is standing and the next she is falling — falling, but not. A blink and a glimpse of blackness before she finds herself in an entirely different position, spread out on the large four-poster bed that had been feet away last she’d seen. He is naked now, not a stitch of clothing she can see in the blooming moonlight. She has no time to question this shift in reality, or him. There is no finesse to the way he sups greedily at her core, but Galadriel hates that she prefers it this way. His kisses are messily passionate, his mouth electrifying as it explores her body in a greedy all-consuming fashion.
“Of course, you taste good,” he groans, almost sounding – angry at the realization. Like he didn’t want to find so much pleasure in pleasuring her. “You couldn’t just smell like some common whore, could you? Your cunt had to taste sweeter than nectar.”
The words do too much for the crassness in them, and her body betrays her with a fresh flush of wetness, which he approves of, humming in satisfaction even as his shoulders build in tension. He drags one of her legs up over his shoulder— goes back to mouthing at her, aggressive and demanding, releasing the filthiest slurping sounds while he does it. She’s never found vulgarity to be attractive, but she’s never met a man that likes the sound of his own groans more than him. She shouldn’t find it appealing, but all the self-denial and energy in the world cannot stop her body from flooding with feeling, tugging her higher and higher with a poker-hot schism of desire.
She barely resists the urge to slide her open palm over the breadth of his muscled back, fingers finding purchase in his unruly hair. Unruly, bedraggled hair that she’s always admired in spite of herself, so different to the Elvin men she’s always known, groomed to perfection without a single strand out of place.
But even so, she’s fighting a losing battle, something Galadriel has very rarely acknowledged in her long life. A shiver runs through her, a groan caught and held in her throat, maddening stubbornness fighting the urge to let her pleasure fly free. She can feel it building in her veins with each pass of his tongue, each murmur against her folds at how divine she tastes, each flick and kiss and maddening suction. It builds and builds, threatening to tumble down her spine. Her toes curl, tingling, body stretching taut as she lays across the mattress. He gives her time to build and build, swallows her swollen dripping cunt as she swallows her moans, keeps her on the edge of her release for an obscenely long time with fervent kisses, fingers spreading open her entrance, diving in and pulling out more of her arousal.
She is incandescent with this tortuous pleasure, a hand roaming her flank, an occasional tweak of her nipple.
“Come for me,” he murmurs, sounding drunk on her. “Come just like this, Galadriel. Let yourself go.”
It’s like a deluge washed out to sea, a flood so intense and hard fought that she loses the battle entirely, succumbing to the inescapable, moaning out as the pleasure crests and comes, and keeps coming as he keeps his mouth and fingers working inside her. There’s little difference between his cruelty and her pleasure, because afterwards her limbs are weak, body collapsing back against the mattress, defeated by pleasure.
In the end, after she’s caught her breath, she looks down and sees how thoroughly he’s ruined her; as if the glistening evidence on his lips and chin is not enough, her hands evidently found their way to his hair – he looks rumpled with victory, bedraggled hair now mussed from her raging fingers. She knows she moaned for him like some wanton common whore. There was no line she did not cross in the throes of passion.
He climbs onto the bed, over her. Broad shoulders outlined in shadows, hair falling into his face, dark pupils blown wide, as he manhandles her legs into a position he desires, tucking them around his hips, notching himself at her entrance, his intent clear.
And she wants it, too plainly to deny.
“Beg,” he rasps darkly against her throat, mouthing kisses. “Beg me to take you, Galadriel.”
Her eyes fly open.
She’s moving and he’s on his back before she quite fully reaches the decision to move. Suddenly she’s staring at him from up above, hips straddling his, and there’s a dagger in her hand again – except it’s not the nameless Elvin dagger with a curved blade and silver hilt she had previously threatened him with. It is her brother’s dagger, the one she’d sacrificed for her ring – and she’s holding it against his open throat.
“Well,” he says, sounding mildly surprised. “Where did that come from?”
Galadriel has the realization at the same time he does – she brought it here, into his mindscape, a breach in the borders of his powers.
“Is this what you had in mind when you propositioned me?” he asks her. “I’m almost proud. But there’s so much time left in our accord. A full night and day. Surely you can attempt to kill me when we’ve wrung out a little more pleasure from each other?”
But she knows it, even with his taunts. This won’t kill him.
“Pain operates on the same principles as pleasure in this place.”
“You’ve already come on my tongue, Galadriel. Why do you persist in fighting what we both know we’re here for? Mutual pleasure is certainly more gratifying than mutual annihilation.”
As much as it pains her to admit it, this rebellious act is of little value. She cannot hurt him, not truely. She cannot even wound his pride the way he’s wounded hers. Because he has wrung pleasure out of her so thoroughly that now she feels shamefaced about it, for that was never the way this night unfolded in her head. She is five thousand years old, and even the most skilled of lovers has never made Galadriel forget who or what she is. She fears that may not hold true now, and it is damning in the worst of ways.
Then it occurs to her, seeing the open want on his face, in his eyes.
She is not the only one that could be driven to damnation by desire.
Her gaze slides down his body, over his muscled abdomen, broad and tensing under her gaze, as her blade rests at the juncture of his throat; she knows it won’t hold him still for long, but her hips flex, a grinding motion, and she watches victorious as a stutter goes through his body at her slightest of movements. He groans as she grinds down by instinct.
“I will not beg,” she warns him.
He stares up at her, eyes as dusky as a black star. “Would you like me to be the one to beg?” His fingers flex, digging into her ribcage and then releasing, but he doesn’t move further. “Is that it?”
“I think you want this more than anything,” she tells him, and it’s the truth. He’s played his hand too freely, acknowledged his desire to have her beside him too wantonly for her not to press the advantage now. This, this is how she reclaims her power in this bargain. This is how she reminds him of who he is dealing with. “Tell me, Dark One, your lust for greed and power knows no limit. But what would you do for me?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Ask it and you shall receive,” he snarls, a flash of his malevolence. “You want the whole wide world, I’ll bring it to you on bended knee. You want the sunrise? I’ll find a way to capture it for you in a pendant for your slender throat. You want the moon? I’ll fly beyond the ends of Middle Earth to leash it for you.”
She shakes her head. “That is your desire, Halbrand, not mine.”
“Why do you persist in using that name?” he hisses, and she must be getting to him, because it is the most emotion she’s seen in his voice yet. His mounting frustration appears at the edges of his tone as he taunts, “It is not my real name.”
Perhaps, but their time together as Galadriel and Halbrand had felt real enough, once upon a time. Speaking his true name, or speaking the name that has haunted her life for thousands of years, especially straddling him in bed, is too far for Galadriel to go.
“Cede control,” she tells him.
He stiffens.
“You ask me what I want?” she says. “I want control. Cede it, or you will not have me the way you want.”
“I want you in all ways,” he warns, voice low.
“Then cede control,” she whispers.
A moment, when he’s staring at her, wrought emotions blending together, anger, lust, desperation, pride, all too close to the surface for her to parse out a single one.
She divests herself of the single layer of clothing separating them, flinging the flimsy chemise off her body and to the floor. It was not as if the material hid much to his gaze, but when she turns back to him, it is as if she has granted him his wildest dreams by presenting him with her naked body, and he doesn’t even try to hide it from her. His gaze is an inferno of undiluted lust, raking down her body.
Finally, the fingers flexing against her waist release entirely. He drops back against the mattress, flat and supine. She trails a sharp edge of her blade down from his throat to his sternum, leaving behind raised goosebumps across his flesh.
“Good,” she murmurs, a single praise, and the dagger vanishes from her grip with a mere blink.
“Go on, then,” he taunts, eyes flying up to meet hers. “Fuck me, my Queen.”
Her gaze does not waver as she lines up their bodies, and sinks back down onto his shaft, taking him into her cunt inch by inch. Blood rushes in her ears, heart pounding, as she realizes he is broader than she’s used to; Elvin men are slender and long, much like their bodies, but Halbrand has a girth that is almost overwhelming for her to take in one thrust. It’s a slow thing, her body learning how to reshape around him, breathing carefully, giving life as the embers of desire kindle anew in her. His hands cup and cradle her hips to help guide her down, and his voice, oddly gentle and coaxing, yet persistently greedy, murmuring words of encouragement as she takes him in further until she is seated to the hilt of him.
The rest of the world fades into meaninglessness, darkening into a voidless myst, and it is just him and her joined as one. All things beginning and ending, as one. Obsession, control, desire, resentment, hatred — something else too, a feeling Galadriel will never name.
“My brave, beautiful elf,” he murmurs to her.
She moves on instinct alone. The rotations of her hips, pulling up and falling back down, a pursuit heavier than simple gravity and force. She feels slightly off-kilter, at first, the planetary alignment off-axis as she seeks out the perfect angle and rhythm, until she finds it, triumphant, the base of his cock grinding against her clit. She groans and so does he, as she speeds up her pursuit of pleasure.
He watches her now, that look of almost-reverence on his face, pure rapture. Galadriel squeezes her eyes shut, wound up for days now, ever since she first made this foolish plan in the dark of night six days ago, when things were beginning to look too bleak for her army’s prospects with no sign of hope. A petty idea that sunk into her chest and wouldn’t let go, no matter how many times Galadriel called herself a fool for entertaining it.
In the deep, dark recesses of her mind, she could admit to herself if no one else that the shameful thrill of this proposal had heated her blood, even from the start. A dark confession she would admit to no one, the urge to give herself to the Dark Lord, the same vile creature that had made a mission and a manifesto out of her entire life, one half bred of vengeance and anger.
If there was ever a path to corruption for Galadriel, it began and ended with him.
A hand winds through her hair, and she finds herself following him down to capture lips in a breathless kiss, depraved, captive, as his tongue moves into her mouth. She moans, and he laughs, caresses her cheek with a deceptively delicate touch. “There she is. I’ll make you my Queen yet,” he groans.
“Never,” she tells him.
“Ah,” he tsks, thrusting up harshly. “I’m inside you, sweetheart. You cannot tell a lie now.”
She’s saved from answering by the way her body heats, each rotation of her hips down a sinful bliss. She should have anticipated that he would take umbrage with her aborted response, because it doesn’t take long for him to pull her chest against him, draw one of her nipples into the heat of his mouth as she moves over him, sucking and lavishing her breasts with frenetic attention.
“There you go,” he whispers, driving himself up on one of her downward tilts of her hip. She gasps. “We’ll start small with your confessions. Are you going to come for me like this, my Queen?”
She shakes her head, denying him an answer with a groan.
“So fucking tight around my cock,” he grunts. “I think you’re going to come, and you’re going to keep coming. You’re going to like it.” She groans, and he smiles. “Go on now, admit it. Admit you like the feeling of my cock driving into you.”
“Vile creature,” she seethes, neck flushing red. “I hate you.”
He stares at her, assessing with a single thrust up, a bolt of anger across his face. “Truth, enough. But that wasn’t an answer to my question.”
It doesn’t matter, in the end, if she refuses to tell him a thing. Her body says more than enough. She shivers against his touch, feeling her bliss bloom again, a heat surging between her thighs as she works him in and out of her.
Every touch makes her burn, every stroke makes her resolve crumble, every noise pulled from his throat makes her rhythm speed up. Her body arches over him, raking her nails down his broad muscles, and it’s the salacious sight of him groaning under the red lines she leaves behind that does her in. She comes hard, her legs shaking, body clenching him deep inside her, too much, a pitch sidelong, further into that abyss.
Before she’s through it fully, he’s moving fast, maneuvering her onto her back, folding her legs against her chest as he thrusts back into her wet heat, even as she convulses with the last edges of pleasurable aftershocks. It's an invasion, brute and crass, as he folds her body like an accordian and retakes control.
“One more,” he says. “You can do that for me, can’t you? Come for me one more time like this.”
She groans, body a pile of mess, nerves still recovering. She has no answer to give him, no response regardless of her pride or dignity. “Fuck,” grunted into her skin, as he grits his teeth and slams into her, a brutal momentum built all at once, sweat forming in his hairline, dripping down his face as he sheathes himself inside of her with sharp thrusts, a frenetic pace.
When he pulls her pleasure out of her a third time, she feels something else alongside it. The rapture of her orgasm seems to take a new shape as she feels the blunt edges of his power meld with hers, a joining of something she cannot describe in any of the words in all the languages of Quendian, Nandorin, Sindarin, or those of the common tongue. Suddenly, there’s a flare of light behind her closed eyelids, orange and rust, a dance of energy that she cannot recognize. The colors swirl and bleed around them, and she’s never been in the midst of a birth of a star, but it feels like it, the force of her pleasure melding with his, as Sauron pistons into her and finds his own release.
When she comes back to reality, failing back from the black void of her bliss, he is sweat-soaked and groaning underneath her thighs, and he drops away heavily to the side of the bed.
A beat.
“Again,” he groans, already reaching for her.
#
Again, on her back, him lifting the underside of her thighs in his seizable palms, deadly silent as he fucks into her wet heat with an intensity and focus that blots out all else. Again, on her hands and knees, all fours, him wrapping fingers into a tight fist around her unraveling plaited braid, using it as a lever to pull her back onto his cock with every one of his thrusts forward. Again, coiled tension breaking free from her throat as he drags out her pleasure several times in too quick succession, feasting on the mess between her thighs, consumed by a fire he lits anew again and again.
Through dawn and afterwards, it is a relentless barrage of fucking, kissing, consuming lust. All attempts to play the stoic is depleted over the course of a single day, her voice breaking free with moans and desperate sounds she has not heard herself utter in all her five thousand years of sexual experience. “Tell me,” he demands, “you want this as much as me.”
And because she cannot tell a lie, she will not speak a word.
The next time he has her, his retribution is swift, goading her to the edge again and again, but he never lets her fall over. It’s as if he’s learned her body in ways she has never been privy to, a taunt in her ear, whispers of the greatest sin, “You will never feel whole without me, Galadriel, not after this.”
She is not the only one undone. He is consumed by his need for conquest in all things, and this single-minded obsession has turned its eye towards her, both a madness and his own undoing, clearly a curse, because he cannot deny himself whatever she desires, chasing the cause of her slightest moan, pursuing her pleasure with a dogged compulsion that belies his weakness.
He wants her, she knows, and he wants her to want him.
In all ways, she can feel it in his touch, can sense it in his mind, can hear the whispers of his fixation on the very breath he expels.
If she is weakened by this accord, then she knows he is decimated by it.
#
“How many years have you roamed this Earth?” she asks him, bold enough once after he finished, screaming her name.
“As old as creation itself, young one,” he tells her, softly. “I was there when it all began, a primordial beginning that was not what the legends tell.”
“So tell me,” she prods.
“One day, perhaps. When you commit yourself to me. Until then, my secrets are my own.” But he soothes the words by cradling her face against his palm, his thumb over her bottom lip, gently stroking. “I have known millenniums of darkness, Galadriel. I have known what it is to be alone. With you by my side, we could usher in a new age. Of light, of balance.”
“That will never happen,” she tells him.
He smiles. “Your stubbornness is what attracted me to you in the first place. Years, I spent watching over you. Watching your tenacity, your ambition, your will to fight. Finally I had to see it for myself, and from the very first moment on that raft, I saw it all in full glory.”
“And from that very first moment, every word fallen from your mouth has been deceitful and venomous.”
“Not every word,” he admonishes. “Must you always rage against me?”
“Against you?” she points out, pulling free of his hold. He does not let her go far, rolling to keep her pinned beneath his body. “You are the blight I have raged against since you killed my brother.”
“A folly, I see now. Let me repent.”
“You do not know the meaning of the word.”
“Then teach me,” he says. “What is it, do you think, I want from you? A companion for the ages. An equal. I would grant you persuasion over me that I would not dare let another claim. I do not need a kingdom of ash, but I will have my kingdom one way or another. The world would much prefer my rule guided by your hand.”
His words are temptation itself, seductive and powerful, addictive like the indispensability of air, and she finds herself faltering, then gasping for another breath. “You would make me a tyrant, treacherous as the sea.”
“I would make you my Queen,” he says, pulling her under him. She knows what he’s doing before he’s doing it, lifting her hips, pressing against her entrance. He slips inside her with nary a resistance, no force needed as her body is still slick from their earlier rounds. “It is inevitable, you and I.”
Their connection bursts into raging fire, a burning path that coils low in her belly, the floodgates of corruption, invading her with his body as much as with his will to dominate, bottoming out and then retreating, leaving her achingly empty with every withdrawal.
“Is this,” he says, punctuating each word with a sharp thrust, “not what you want? What you desire most? Tell me, Galadriel. Admit it. My queen, my equal. Your heart greatly desires this, I know it. So tell me.”
The moan is pulled from her lips as he bottoms out yet again, a treacherous admittance in a single word, “yes.”
He looks glorious is his unbridled lust and victory. “Then accept your fate,” he whispers, so urgently, so virulent. “Be mine forever, and together we can remake this world into whatever you desire. I will be a faithful and dedicated lover, Galadriel. I have no need of others. Just confess and accede your place by my side.”
She almost lets herself fall in that moment. She almost lets the vow pass her lips, a promise that she could never pull back, words that can never be unspooled. Finds herself biting his shoulder to keep herself from the doomed oath, drawing his blood, which only makes him drive into her, harsher, harder.
His anger comes to the forefront, strong and abrasive. “How many do you think are dying in the fields of battle while I’m inside you? As we lay here, two armies wage war and here we are, Commanders of each, fucking each other senseless. You know the measures of war, the decisions we must make. This ruthless accord only proves it. You would make a formidable Queen at my side.”
“I did what must be done,” she tells him, gasping at each thrust.
“Be mine," he implores, in a harsh whisper.
And she wants to answer, yes.
#
It is evening again, a sunset that looks remarkably like a red dawn, the light low across the horizon. Galadriel wakes, naked as the day she was born, pressed limb to limb with him. It takes her a long moment to orient herself to the surroundings, as bleary eyed and spent as she is after such a — rigorous period of unrest. To her surprise, there is no Elvin decor bracketing her in. She is back at the modest Inn in the middle of nowhere, the plain and rough bed covers over her.
Halbrand is asleep next to her – truly unconscious, if the state of her surroundings is anything to guess by.
There’s a half-eaten tray of food on the table, a pitcher of water resting beside it. Apparently, at some point in the day, he had awoken and ordered dinner. The thought makes her flush, the idea that she had been so expanded by the day’s activities that she had slept through a good portion of the late day. Halbrand is still asleep, so she takes the opportunity for what it is and slips free from his hold, naked, rummaging through his belongings, only finding a half-empty sack full of spare clothing and—
His broadsword leaning against the table’s edge, the same one she’d seen the prior day. Her hands fall carefully to it, lifting it up and carefully examining the weapon the Dark Lord chooses to carry at his side. It cannot be a mere mortal’s weapon. It must be special, she thinks. But when she unsheathes the sword, the metal glints in her eye, light and heavy all at once, etched on each side with curious inscriptions she cannot read, the hilt comprising a simple cross guard and pommel each with a beaked pierced and gilt terminal. It is a beautiful sword, but she does not sense any power from it. It feels, oddly, like a mere sword – pretty, but unremarkable.
“Are you going to hold me at bladepoint again?” a voice comes, behind her, groggy. She turns her head, watching as Halbrand shifts in bed, unabashedly naked, to sit back against the headboard. He stretches, arm settling over a bent knee, staring at her. “Did you really think I’d bring a sword capable of killing me within three leagues of you? I’ve got an ego, Galadriel, but I am not stupid.”
She supposes not. It’s the same reason why Galadriel did not wear Nenya here, her White Ring of Power. She would not be so foolish as to show her advantage to him. He still does not know of the creation of the three Elvin rings, and she will never let that knowledge fall into his hands so easily.
A pause, as he sends her a wolfish grin, eyes raking over her backside. “Though the sight of you naked and armed is indeed a good way to wake up.”
She scoffs, looking away. She sheathes the sword, and moves away, at first, to sort herself out, pulling a fresh pair of clothing from her single pack and arranging her unbound hair back into a simple golden plait that she tosses over one shoulder. He watches her the entire time, saying nothing, his hunger for her as apparent as his rank curiosity.
“Why are you getting dressed?” he asks, voice low.
“I’m hungry,” she answers.
“There’s dinner right there on the table.”
“I want a bath,” she tells him, next.
“We can have a tub filled up with—”
“Halbrand,” she cuts in. “Get dressed.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “I thought I still had a few hours left. That was the deal, was it not? One night and one day.”
But the sun is almost setting.
She does not bother with a response, other than tossing him his bag full of spare clothing.
#
He follows her out of the Inn, out of the village itself, to the quarry that rests beyond the edge of the road. A bit further, and there Galadriel leads him to a fork in the road. One south, one leading north.
“You know I cannot let you go,” he says, voice cool and calculating. “One taste was never going to be enough.”
“You say that as if I will give you the choice,” she admonishes. “You tried your best, Dark One. You did not corrupt me.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. I have made my mark on you, Galadriel. Whether you know it or not. What transpired between us this last day and night will forever change the course of Middle Earth.”
“Perhaps you think too much of your prowess in bed?” she taunts.
He smiles, more of a smirk. “I assure you I do not, but that is not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“What would be the fun if I just told you?”
She has her ring resting nearby, her Nenya. Its power is simple but vast, the preservation and concealment from evil itself. She knows if he fights her on this, she can retrieve it in moments, disappear from his gaze and slip away. But she does not want to show her hand yet about the Elvin rings.
She does not want to flee like a thief in the night, either.
To her surprise, then, he merely gives her a parting kiss, almost chaste. “Goodbye, Galadriel. I will be seeing you very shortly.”
“In battle?” she replies.
“In your dreams,” he tells her, and turns away.
He does not look back.
She does not expect him to.
#
In her absence, the battle is won by the good people of Middle Earth, just as she knew it would be. It is not without great losses, but it is a decisive blow to Sauron’s army. She wonders if this greatly angers him, but she cannot say for sure. He counts his loses and wins so differently than her.
Elrond greets her at the edges of Eregion, his suspicions clear even as relief floods his features. “Where have you been?”
“Tempting fate,” she tells him, truthfully. “And coming out the victor.”
He stares at her for a long time afterwards, through council meetings, through training, through silent walks in the forest. “Something is different about you,” he tells her, nearly a week later.
She’s brushed off his concern and questions enough at this point to barely blink an eye. “I am no different than ever, my old friend.”
But he shakes his head. “No, Galadriel. Something is different about you. I feel it.”
It is Elrond’s suspicion that rings in her ears days later, when she finds out. Rage, she feels uncontrollable rage, as treacherous as a smoldering storm. It cannot be. It is impossible. She made arrangements. She took precautions. But the Elvin medicine does not lie, and she cannot ignore the stirrings in her own mind’s eye. That night, before she falls asleep, she slips off her ring of power and fully expects it. His visit in her dreams, words too taunting not to be a promise.
“You bastard,” she flings at him, upon first sight. “You vile, foul creature of the damned!”
He smiles. “So you’ve found out. I wondered when you would.”
“I took tonics to prevent this.”
He laughs. “Clever tonics are no match for old magic, Galadriel. I know many things more than you.”
“This was never part of our accord.”
“One night and one day in my bed,” he answers back, heatedly. “You should not be surprised that it resulted in a daughter.”
She reels back.
A daughter.
How can he already know the gender of the child not three weeks in her womb?
“You had no right to take that choice from me,” she seethes.
“Have I?” He tips his head, curious and knowing all at once. “Taken your choice? You could get rid of it, Galadriel. You could use your clever Elvin tonics to do the deed, easily. My hand is not forcing you either way.” She storms against him, sword at the ready, but he is like smoke in this dream, disappearing and reappearing behind her. “She will look like you, you know? I have seen it in my mind’s eye. A great beauty and a great power, both. She will be the best of both of us.”
Galadriel advances with her sword; Sauron deflects with his magic.
It is both of it useless, in this dream.
Afterwards, sapped of energy, she looks at him with vengeance promised in her veins. “You will never touch her.”
He merely shakes his head. “I told you,” he replies, lifting her chin by a single finger, forcing her to meet his knowing gaze. “I would not let you go unmarked. Did you think I made empty threats? You are mine, Galadriel. Your child is mine. I will have you, in the future if not now. We are inevitable. I can be patient.”
“Never,” she tells him, and vows to herself once more. “Never.”
He looks, for a moment, caught under the weight of her vow.
Then he says: “Never—” softly, so gently, “—is an awfully long promise for an immortal.”
#
fin.