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In gold and silver light, long ago, Maedhros started laughing.

“Imagine,” he managed to say, “forgive me, just – imagine – my father’s face –”

Fingon was laughing too. “I know,” he said, “I know!”

“Congratulations,” Maedhros says, “you have forced us both to contemplate what must be literally the most complicated entanglement possible. Thank goodness we need not worry about that! Celegorm and Aredhel would be nothing to it. And now you have reminded me: I need you to talk to your sister for me. I already spoke to my brother. He has no more sense than a pigeon sometimes, but fair as she is even he admitted the last thing we need is more family arguments, especially more family arguments over exactly how related we all are –”

Maedhros was the one who called for a council. They could not plan this great assault by trading letters back and forth – letters that now had to pass the dreadful road across Anfauglith if they were to arrive in any sort of good time. Still less could they plan by carrier pigeon. He knew that very early on, and yet it took him months to send the letter he wrote almost at once, the one that called for a meeting and suggested a time and a place.

In Dorthonion they would meet, Dorthonion reclaimed and liberated from the horrors of the Shadow. It had once been Beren’s country – Beren who for all his mortal weakness still lifted in his hand a Silmaril taken from Morgoth’s own crown. And it had been where Angrod and Aegnor had kept their watch, the cousins whom Maedhros had always liked and whom he meant to see avenged. Let the cleansed lake of Aeluin be witness to the council where they would seal the Enemy’s doom!

He told himself that. He sent the letter.

Fingon’s answer came quickly: yes, yes, a hundred times yes. Reading between the lines Maedhros could tell Fingon would very gladly have suggested the meeting himself long ago, if he had not thought Maedhros would refuse. He felt foolish. Fingon was without a doubt the best general the Noldor had left to them. It would not have been hard to argue that he was the best general they had ever had. And Maedhros could argue and wheedle and plan, could see the shape of the alliance they needed and knot it together with promises and pleas and threats; he could send this ally here and that ally there in order to clear out Morgoth’s roving ill-supplied Orc-bands. But for the great battle that lay before them something in the back of his mind had always been counting on Fingon, in whom Middle-earth had revealed and nurtured an unexpected talent for war.

Maedhros should have agreed to meet sooner. They would need each other for this. Still, it would come soon enough. Only a few weeks now until they stood face to face again. Only a few weeks! Maedhros told himself he was looking forward to it. He was looking forward to it. It had been more than four hundred winters since the feast Fingolfin gave by the shores of Ivrin; more than four hundred years of the Sun since he last saw his friend.

Sauron had decided to talk to him again. Maedhros knew he was being baited, knew, knew, but he was not made of stone. His spirit could not endure silence forever. Sauron had decided to talk to him: had taken on the shape of a tall fair Elf-lord to do it. Maedhros was naked and chained to the wall. After the talking came the torture. It was, by now, a very familiar pattern. He decided not to think about it, because Sauron would enjoy watching him think about it.

“But you are thinking about it,” Sauron said.

Maedhros glared. Morgoth’s servant could pluck thoughts from the edges of his mind if he was careless; and Maedhros was very weary, and weariness bred carelessness. He steeled himself. These conversations were assaults on his spirit even as the tortures assaulted his flesh. He need only endure.

“If you will insist on thinking so loud you can hardly blame me for noticing. I can see perfectly well that you would prefer not to think about what will happen to your body next, but also it concerns you rather urgently. Well, it has to. Truly I find the whole thing fascinating,” said Sauron. “I wear, as you can see, a body: but it is only a raiment. I am not changed by my raiment any more than you might be changed by putting on some clothes.” He smiled as if he had made a very charming joke.

Maedhros gritted his teeth. He knew that his nakedness was only intended to humiliate him. He refused to be humiliated. He was not changed by his clothes – or his lack of them.

“You, though,” said Sauron, “are subject to your body. Oh, you may not believe it! But I assure you that you are: at least, compared to me, you are. It is impossible to imagine you without it; you would not be entirely yourself without it. As a snail carries its shell so you carry your flesh with you wherever you go. I don’t believe you quite understand how terribly strange that is. To have your spirit prisoned in such a way! Do you not feel it?”

“It is not my body that imprisons me,” Maedhros said with a pointed look at the shackles around his wrists.

Sauron laughed. “You are quite mistaken. Take, for example, the – what is it your people call it? – the blossoming, I believe, is the local term; an interesting metaphor; the Sindar are of course very florally minded. It is most tiresome. Ah, I remember – opening.” He smirked. “Avoiding metaphor altogether, for of course it is an opening. There is the obvious if rather undignified physical action, of course, but what is strange to me is the effect that then has on the spirit – which opens, which yields. Therefore your body compels a subjection not merely to your own flesh but even to the flesh of another – and thus, of course, to the spirit of another. Now that is imprisonment, if you like!”

“That is not what that is,” Maedhros said. “That is a blessing, a part of marriage. It is no mere domination, and it has nothing to do with your foul speculations about power.”

“You Elves choose in a rather dull way not to exercise the power that bond grants you, true,” said Sauron. “But that does not mean the power is not there. The act engenders so great a weakness in the one who yields –“

“Not weakness,” said Maedhros.

Sauron laughed at him. “You think it is,” he said. “You know you should not, but you think it is. Would you not feel weak if you yielded yourself so utterly?”

The trouble with lying to Sauron was that it only made him laugh. Maedhros could at least stick to something he knew was true. “Only because it is not my nature.”

“No?” said Sauron. He touched Maedhros’s throat gently with his too-hot fingers. Maedhros involuntarily flinched away – as far as he could, which was not far. Sauron smiled. He set his hand a moment under Maedhros’s chin, forcing his head up a little in a vilely tender caress. “This is my point. Your spirit is prisoned in your body: and bodies are so fascinatingly easy to do things to. I can inflict pain, of course. You know that already. I admit myself impressed by how little it seems to trouble you. In fact I must congratulate you. Most Dark-elves would have surrendered themselves entirely after only a little of what you have endured for us. Plainly the princes of the Noldor are made of sterner stuff! But shall we see what may be done to your spirit through the agency of pleasure?”

“It is not my nature,” Maedhros said again. “And even if it was, I do not imagine that you intend to have some Balrog-queen marry me.”

Sauron started to laugh in earnest. “No,” he agreed, “no, that would not serve at all! Not your nature, hmm? Your spirit rebels at the thought.” His smile was wolfish. “How interesting.”

It was a drizzling winter’s day, and heavy cloud was spreading from the North. Even the blue and silver banners of Fingon’s band in their encampment drooped a little under it. Fingon had brought few with him. Maedhros, of course, had fewer. This great alliance was his doing, his best work, his hope and salvation, but it was not following him. He knew that. It was following the promise that the Noldor seemed to make to Beleriand long ago when they first came here; it was following the light that Beren Erchamion held in his hand; it was following the hope of Morgoth’s overthrow. Of those who had been loyal to Maedhros personally very few remained. Himring’s defence in the Dagor Bragollach had been dearly brought, and to the high council of the alliance he brought no retinue or honour guard. Maglor was with him – leaving Caranthir in charge back in the east, but there was no helping that – along with Borlach and Uldor to speak for the Easterlings, and a solemn bearded Dwarf who stood as witness for Azaghâl and his kin. The Dwarf had yet to give them any name to call him by. It had been a moderately awkward journey.

Maedhros dismounted. Maglor beside him called out the hail and the passphrase. It was beneath him – there should have been a herald – there should have been all sorts of things that they did not have and could not afford. Lake Aeluin shone with a dull gleam under the dull sky like a dropped piece of silver beginning to tarnish. The blue and silver banners hung limply in the damp breeze.

Then from the little encampment came the appointed answer to their hail. Fingon called it himself: ran forward himself, smiling and smiling. He looked just as he had when Maedhros saw him last. The only change was the crown now set upon his dark hair, plaited silver and gold. It was not the crown his father Fingolfin had worn. Of course not. They would have had to make something new. And though Fingon looked the same, he was not the same. Grief had marked his spirit, made it not darker but more determined, and laid a banking ring of sorrow about all the old brightness. Maedhros could tell. He wished he could not.

Fingon’s honour guard dashed out of the camp after him – two young Elves and four tall Men, all of them looking various shades of rueful before they schooled their faces to gravity behind their kingly charge. The Elves Maedhros had seen before, in passing; they were very young, Noldor born in Beleriand, High-elves in name only and Grey-elves in truth: Elves who had never seen the Trees and never would. The Men, of course, he did not know. 

Fingon visibly remembered himself and slowed his eager advance to a more dignified walk, which allowed his guard to catch up with him. Maedhros and Maglor exchanged a glance. Borlach and Uldor dismounted too. They both looked suddenly unnerved. “Is this all?” Maedhros heard Borlach whisper in his own tongue. The Dwarf said nothing.

Fingon drew near with the familiar smile of welcome on his face, in his eyes. He stretched out his hands to them. “Well met, cousins!” he called.

He meant it. He was very glad to see them. Maedhros could feel the gladness leaping up in him, and only a trace of uncertainty underneath. It had been four hundred years of the Sun since they saw one another.

He went to one knee.

Maglor followed suit. Borlach and Uldor were a startled beat late; the Dwarf, of course, knelt for no Elvenking, but folded his arms and watched. Maedhros did not need to look up to feel the shiver of discomfort that troubled Fingon. Of course he did not. He could not help but know these things.

But this was not a family reunion. This was a council of war. Even with so few of them here, the forms had to be observed. And this, of course, was why Maedhros had to bring Maglor, rather than any of his other brothers, though he would dearly have liked to be keeping an eye on Curufin at least. Maglor was the only one he could trust to kneel to the High King when he should without making an unspeakable fuss about it.

“My king,” Maedhros said, in a voice that would carry across the glade and across the open water. He glanced up under his lashes. Fingon’s expression was solemn; but the Men of his guard looked satisfied, and the young Elves relieved.

“Him?” Uldor whispered in his own tongue: vá? “That’s the King of the Elves?”

“Shh!” said Borlach.

Fingon came forward and stood before Maedhros. Maedhros stared fixedly at his boots.

“Kinsman and liegeman, be welcome,” Fingon said. His hand came into view, held out to help Maedhros back to his feet. For the sake of ceremony Maedhros had to take it. The touch was brief but electrifying. Maedhros felt as if he had been dunked in cold water, wide-awake, shivering. Fingon knew; met his eyes briefly and apologetically; let Maedhros go at once. He offered the same courtesy to Maglor, greeting and hand, and Maglor stood already grinning.

“Now, cousin,” he said, “the forms are dealt with, and you may embrace me!”

Fingon laughed and did it. Maedhros, not envious – not envious, he could hardly fling his arms around Fingon that way, and he did not want to – presented Borlach and Uldor and the Dwarf to him. There was a slight awkwardness over the Dwarf’s continued polite refusal to supply a name, but it could not be helped. Fingon then cheerfully introduced them to his honour guard – which was not what Fingolfin would have done, but Fingon was not naturally ceremonious and seemed to regard them all as his friends. The shortest of the six, a yellow-haired Man named Húrin, was to be included in their councils. Borlach and Uldor looked at him doubtfully. Maedhros let it go. He had worked out by now that Men for all their friendliness were inclined to be suspicious of one another, and that it was better to let them work it out among themselves.

It had all gone perfectly well. There had not been a single diplomatic misstep. Their little party set up camp on the lakeshore under the blue and silver banners, and Maglor nudged Maedhros and whispered, “I told you it would be fine!” The Sun even peeped out a little while from behind the curtains of cloud. There was still drizzle in the air, but it glittered in the light.

Maedhros looked up an instant before Fingon pointed and called to anyone who was listening, “There!”

A rainbow – a splendid one – arching across the western sky. Maedhros smiled despite himself. He could still feel without reaching for it all Fingon’s gladness and strength, his leaping hope and the determination born of grief. He tried not to lean into that strength in his thoughts, for it was not his, and he had no right: but Fingon’s spirit shone like a beacon, and despite himself Maedhros was comforted by it. Fingon believed they would win this war. Still, after all this, after his father’s death, Fingon believed it – believed it all the more strongly, and was determined to see it through. Maedhros had not known how much doubt was still left in his own heart until now, when it was melting like snow in the sunlight.

He felt Fingon’s eyes on him then. He could not help but know. Fingon knew Maedhros’s heart too, of course: which was why, by the time Maedhros had gathered the courage to turn and look at him, he had already kindly turned away. Maedhros was grateful forever and forever for Fingon’s generosity. This would last a few days – a week at most. It would be madness to keep so many key pieces of their alliance in one place defended only by secrecy for more than a week. This meeting would not last long. It would end; and then perhaps they would not see each other for another four hundred years. That was what they had agreed to. That was how it should be.

In Angband there were no gentle wakings. Maedhros never willingly slept at all: it was not safe. He missed it – missed rest, missed dreaming; would have been grateful for a chance to walk in memory – but he had to have his eyes open and his spirit aware as much as possible. Even if he could not stop the tortures he could at least know they were coming. Knowing made it a little easier to bear.

But Sauron – and Maedhros took a certain satisfaction in always calling him by that insulting name, for it infuriated him – knew something of the functioning of bodies, and this was not the first time that a well-judged blow to the back of the head had sent Maedhros into an unwilling unconsciousness that was nothing like true sleep. Maedhros knew he was awake when he felt the headache start. He did not remember the blow. He had a hard time getting his eyes open. He blinked several times, saw redness and dancing black flecks painted on the insides of his eyelids: finally managed to open his eyes, and there was red light flooding the room.

It was a room, not a cell. He was still naked, but he was not chained down. He had been laid on a bed, the worst of his injuries healed. Maedhros was suspicious at once. Surprises never meant anything good, here; apparent kindness always led to some inventive new cruelty. Sometimes the kindness itself was the cruelty. He had nearly broken down in tears the first time Sauron graciously permitted him to wash after months of sweat and blood and dirt and misery; had stopped himself only when he remembered that Sauron was watching with his usual inquisitive smile. He knew Sauron saw the moment, the weakness.

A plain room, a bed – a moderately comfortable bed, even, if not a handsome one – and a red light. The light came from a round stone set in its own niche in the wall above the bed. It was not particularly bright, but it did not have the stomach-turning stink of the pitchy torches that burned in the dungeons of Angband. Maedhros stood on the bed to investigate it. He could not get it out of the wall. It was, perhaps, slightly warm to the touch.

He took a blanket off the bed – it had blankets – and wrapped it around himself. It was a small defiance. It had been a long time since Maedhros had anything resembling clothes. He paced the limits of the rest of the room; found the door, which had no handle on this side; discovered what looked like a small metal cupboard but was in fact a dumbwaiter. There was a jug of water inside. Maedhros ignored it. He trusted no food or drink that was given to him here.

He could not work out what Sauron meant by this. He must mean something by it.

After a while he went and sat on the bed again. Then he lay down. He might as well enjoy the luxury of pillows and blankets while it lasted; whatever Sauron meant by it, whatever cruel twist would come of it. Besides his head still hurt. And it seemed to him the room was not so comfortable as he thought at first. It was too hot; the red light had an odd heaviness; and though he would not touch the jug of water, he could not stop thinking about it. Water – cold water – what a relief that would be!

It was too hot. Eventually Maedhros kicked away the blanket he had wrapped around himself, and then threw the rest of the blankets off the bed too. He pressed his sweaty face into the pillow. It was much too hot. Perhaps Sauron meant to roast him alive.

He tried to track time. He stayed awake. He waited. Something was coming; something would come. But there was a redness that he could see whether his eyes were closed or open, and his mind swam in the shimmer of it. What was this? It did not hurt. Maedhros could not think.

He lost track of the time. He did not notice Sauron entering the red room; did not even notice him sitting down on the edge of the bed. He was gasping for air, head turned to one side, eyes closed, cheek pressed into the coolest patch of pillow he could find.

“Do you remember our conversation?” Sauron said.

Maedhros could barely hear him; could not make words at all.

“This is interesting,” Sauron said. “I had no idea it would work so quickly. Still you are a little difficult to talk to in this state.” He got up and walked away. Maedhros blinked a few times; felt his senses begin to come back to him; turned over and watched the tall figure of Morgoth’s servant pick up the water-jug. He realised, slowly, that the red light in the room had faded. It was still too hot, but at least it did not seem to be getting hotter. Sauron came back to the bed and sat beside him again; and he put a forceful hand on the back of Maedhros’s head and tilted the jug by his mouth. Maedhros had to swallow the first gulp or choke; he turned his face away after that, and water spilled down his chest. It was blissfully cool. “As you like,” said Sauron, sounding amused. He put the jug to one side. “Now, as I was saying. Do you remember our conversation? We agreed that pain seemed to be having very little effect on your stubbornness. I believe I congratulated you on your victory.”

Maedhros was still recovering from the aftermath of choking. He could not think what Sauron was talking about. He was still finding it hard to think at all. “What have you done to me now?” he demanded.

“Exactly what I said I would do,” said Sauron. “It really is working remarkably quickly.” He cupped Maedhros’s cheek. His hand was cool, cool; for a fraction of a second Maedhros leaned into it and then pulled away, horrified at himself. Sauron’s smile looked close to breaking out into laughter. “I am afraid you were mistaken,” he said. “It is not necessarily anything to do with marriage at all. It is simply an opening; and there are all sorts of ways it can be begun.”

“That is not my nature,” Maedhros whispered. His throat was dry; the water spilled down his chest had already evaporated.

“Does it really upset you so much? It was your father’s nature, and his father’s as well. The possibility was within you. I had to do a certain amount of,” Sauron smirked, “fiddling, shall we say. It was not entirely straightforward; but you may consider it my gift to you. Did you not inform me that the Eldar regard this yielding as a blessing? You told me my speculations about – what was it – mere domination – were ill-founded. I am most interested to learn more of the matter.”

Maedhros panted for breath. “You are foul,” he said, “and you are lying.”

“Not at all,” said Sauron. He leaned down and kissed Maedhros’s temple. Maedhros flinched hard from the cool press of his lips; from the heat in his bones which said yes to it. Sauron laughed. “This is, of course, the early stages,” he said. “Let us see how you progress. I am determined to be most considerate in this matter – you Elves consider it a sensitive one, do you not?”

Maedhros summoned up all his strength in order to give him a disbelieving glare.

“No, no, most considerate,” Sauron said, and stood up. “There is no poison nor any kind of deceit in the water, incidentally. It is just water. I look forward to my observations. And furthermore I assure you,” he laid his hand on Maedhros’s brow, “I shall not take what you now so very much wish to offer me until you ask it.”

“I offer you nothing,” Maedhros said. “You are a thief and the slave of a thief.”

“I am the Lord of Gifts,” said Sauron, “and you shall learn to call me by my proper name before the end. I shall give you what you want when you ask me for it. I promise you that.”

“If you had told me,” said Maglor, “that I was here to talk to Fingon for you...”

Maedhros waited.

Maglor lifted his brows.

“Yes?” Maedhros said.

“I never had any intention of finishing that sentence,” said Maglor. “I suppose I might say, I would have prepared myself better, though I cannot think how; or I would have been very surprised, for I am. You know, I find myself rather liking Húrin. Perhaps it is because his people have been settled in Beleriand for so many lifetimes of Men that he seems easier to talk to, somehow, than Bór and his kin. And it makes me feel better to know that someone else is finding this as awkward as I am! He attempts to guess what Fingon is thinking, and says that: and I attempt to guess what you would answer, and say that; and we both give an agonised look, so, to the left,” Maglor demonstrated, “and Húrin has an easier task than I do, for at least Fingon has expressions on his face now and again, whereas I might as well have a stone pillar next to me. If only I had known before we set out! I would have advised you to stay behind, and put a red wig on the nearest thornbush for much the same effect: though the thornbushes look friendlier than you do. Where is my brother the diplomat? What have you done with him?”

Maedhros said nothing.

Maglor frowned a moment, but continued in a light tone, “So Húrin and I, defeated, continue to pretend that we know what we are talking about – and at least he almost does, but you know very well that I do not; you were the one who insisted on holding all the threads in your own hand. I cannot answer the questions he asks me, and you just sit there! Meanwhile Borlach and Uldor are understandably concerned, for they both know enough of war to know we will lose if our generals cannot even speak to each other. Indeed I am concerned. And I think our Dwarven emissary is concerned also, though possibly he is only trying not to laugh. It is so hard to read an expression under all that beard. Maedhros, when did you quarrel with Fingon? I thought you were friends.”

“We are friends,” Maedhros said.

Maglor threw up his hands. “Then I cannot understand you! But I beg of you to make up this squabble in whatever way you can. However you think he has wronged you –”

“Fingon has never wronged me,” Maedhros said, too fierce. He knew at once it was too fierce.

Maglor looked at him searchingly and said nothing for a long moment. He was almost the cleverest of Maedhros’s brothers. Maedhros avoided his eyes.

“However you have wronged him, then,” Maglor said at last. “For something is wrong. I can see that. Maedhros, our cousin loves you well. I do not believe there is anything he would not forgive you for. You do not have to tell me – it is plain you do not want to tell me – but this war will fail if you cannot settle your differences. Talk to him.”

He got up and left. Maedhros was left alone with his thoughts and with the awareness he could not escape. The muting effect of distance had been greater than he realised: that or the long separation had made this reunion sharper. Maglor was right. Maedhros needed to speak to Fingon, somehow. They had to find a way to manage this – for a week, no more. No more than that.

Once he had decided to do it he caught himself thinking of reasons not to do it just yet. The hour was late; Fingon’s honour guard would think it strange; Maedhros had meant to rest, and had already lain aside the hook he had been wearing lately instead of the more appealing but less practical metal hand his nephew had made. He did not want to put it on again.

Go without it, his better self whispered to him. You know you must say something, so go without it and go now. It is not as if you do not know where Fingon is.

He had to decide what to say first –

Maedhros sneered at himself. He had known what to say for four hundred years, and only been too much of a coward for it. He owed Fingon an apology. It was as simple as that.

There was nowhere cool left. Maedhros’s hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat. He breathed through his mouth, taking in great gulps of stale air. He tried to think mostly about breathing: about the drag of his lungs, his parched throat, the way he could feel the slight shifting scratch of the sheets when his chest moved. The weave dragged across his skin. The blankets Sauron had given him were a tangled heap on the floor. He had managed to aim them so they knocked over the water-jug. He almost regretted it now. Water – water! He rolled over, pushed himself up with difficulty on one elbow. There they lay in a sodden heap. Perhaps they were cooler than this –

Maedhros collapsed face down on the bed. Perhaps they were, but more probably they were not. If he got off the bed now he did not think he could make himself get onto it again. Sauron would not find him sprawled on the floor. He would not. He would not. “He will not,” Maedhros whispered, and a whimper broke from his throat afterwards.

He rolled over again, and pushed his sweaty hair away from his face with both hands, and tried to think only of breathing – not the tickling scratch of the sheets against his naked skin, not the way his blood seemed to pound dully in his ears, not the thought of cool water, nor of cool hands to touch him – what it would feel like, now, to be touched –

He breathed. Blinked over and over against the red light. Counted his own breaths, though his mind was dull and his senses swam and he could not keep track of the count: stopped trying, eventually, to make it past seven. He put his hand over his face for a while to block the unspeakable hugeness and emptiness of the red room, looked up into the different red darkness that made until he could bear it no more, and then buried his face in the sweaty pillow again. He could hear the whining sounds he was making with every breath, but he could not make them stop.

Eventually as he lay there Maedhros felt a light pressure on the back of his neck.

Sauron’s fingers were cold as ice.

It did not feel pleasant at all. Yet terrible relief crashed over Maedhros: relief one instant, and longing the next. He shuddered with it, and felt rather than heard the laughter, felt it in the slight motion of the three fingers resting lightly against his skin. The cold touch drifted from the nape of Maedhros’s neck down the length of his naked back. He cried out into the pillow. It was taken away, and he shuddered again, wanting it back, wanting it more than anything –

“You must ask,” said Sauron near his ear.

Maedhros gathered his strength, turned his head to one side, and spat.

“Or not. As you will. Still, I am a generous friend,” Sauron said. “I will not take you until you ask me to, and you shall have no lasting relief until then. But let us see what can be done for you in the teeth of your pride.” The cold touch returned to the back of Maedhros’s neck. He tried to go stiff. He would not – he would not –

“I know you will not,” Sauron said. “Yet you do. Your body is your master in this. What does it harm you to let it have its way? In pain you clearly understood as much. Why should this be different? Yield only a little, and suffer less.”

“I will not,” Maedhros managed to say. Sauron was still touching him: was gripping him, now, by the scruff of the neck. The undignified hold was not unfamiliar, but it had never felt like this. Maedhros had never wanted to turn towards it like this. His mind knew very well that this new game of Sauron’s was only another torture, but all the locked-up muscles in his shoulders and back were loosening while Sauron held him, and his hands were unclenching from the fists they had been curled into for hours. He felt – he wanted –

Sauron turned him over. Maedhros did not resist him. He meant to, but he was distracted, and did not. He panted for breath, instead, while Sauron’s cool fingers drifted down towards his sternum, tracing the line of his breastbone. “You are very beautiful,” said Sauron absently. He met Maedhros’s eyes then and smiled. “It would be a pleasure to own such a beautiful thing.”

“You cannot own people,” Maedhros said. He forced himself to flinch away from the cool hand that was petting his flank.

Sauron snickered. “Now there you are certainly mistaken. My master owns your father, or all that was worth having of him; and I shall own you. And when I own you, I shall do as I please with you: break you and undo you, transform and improve you, share you or sell you or give you away; and you shall enjoy all of it very much, probably, though if you do not it hardly matters.”

“You cannot –”

“I can,” said Sauron. “I will. When you ask.” In a sudden too-swift movement – the movement of a being that was not really bound by the body it wore – he seized both of Maedhros’s hands and pressed them back by his head. Maedhros cried out – not in pain, though he wished it was. Sauron’s mouth came down on his. The rolling red heat poured through Maedhros again and he thrust up against nothing. He felt open, he felt empty, and Sauron’s tongue darted out, tasting Maedhros as a snake might taste the air.

Maedhros made a helpless muffled sound at the feeling. It was the closest anything had come to being what he wanted, what he needed – and it was not what he needed. Sauron’s tongue was deep in Maedhros’s mouth, a penetration he had not asked for and could not escape and desired desperately; his cold grip was around Maedhros’s wrists; the scratchy sheets slid against Maedhros’s skin as he shuddered and twisted and sobbed into Sauron’s mouth –

Maedhros reached a climax without any more stimulation than that. Sauron let him go, smiling, and he collapsed back on the sweaty bedsheets utterly spent. Sauron’s cold hand traced down his sternum again, and drew a line through the mess of seed on Maedhros’s belly. Maedhros panted for breath. His mind was emptied. He could not think. He could hardly see. But he could feel, and what he felt was a deep painless ache, a longing he did not know how to resist. But he had to – he must! Sauron would relieve him if he only asked. He must not ask. He whined desperately. His cock was already growing stiff again.

He did not notice Sauron leave. He did not notice anything much, until his blood began to pound in his ears again, and then he gave a low moan of despair and desire both. The hunger in his flesh had not lessened at all. If anything it was worse. He tried to start counting his breaths again, but he could not remember how.

Sauron returned eventually. This time he wrapped his cool fingers around Maedhros’s hand and guided him to grip his own cock, encouraged him to move and thrust into his own grasp and cooed soothing words into his ear as he was made to abuse himself.

 “You cannot help it,” he whispered. “Believe me, I know even better than you do how little you can help yourself. It is not enough, is it? Are you sure you will not yield to me?”

He kissed behind Maedhros’s ear, and Maedhros whimpered at the feeling of sharp teeth nipping his earlobe. He could only just make sense of Sauron’s words, his body overwhelmed by too many sensations at once, and he could not form the shape of an answer. Yet his heart wailed a horrified refusal, filled with loathing for what Sauron had done to him and what he was promising, and with shuddering revulsion at the thought of being taken as Sauron was offering to take him. Though it would have been a relief to yield himself up – though his body yearned towards that cool merciless touch as it might long for cool water – to surrender himself to a creature so utterly evil, to have Sauron’s spirit bound around him and inside him, and so to be owned – for Sauron would be ruthless, would take him not in love but in mastery, and Maedhros would be owned –

“I thought you said it was no mere domination,” Sauron murmured against his ear. “Do you admit yet that you were mistaken? Of course it is; of course it will be. But I promise you shall not mind it.” He let go of Maedhros’s hand where it was wrapped around his cock, and Maedhros should have let himself go: should have, but could not. He tried to keep his hips still, and only succeeded in reducing his movements to small graceless jerks. Sauron smiled and pressed cool fingers against Maedhros’s lips.

Maedhros tried to bite them.

Sauron snatched his hand away. “Now, now,” he said. He was laughing. He seized Maedhros’s jaw in his other hand and forced his mouth open. Then he paused with an admiring look that took in Maedhros’s nakedness and helplessness, his sweaty hair and gasping open mouth and his hand on his cock, and he said, “Still beautiful even like this – perhaps more beautiful like this! Yes, I shall be very pleased to possess such a prize. I believe I shall be an indulgent master. Consider it: there could be no objection to allowing you to visit your brothers once you were mine. My lord would certainly agree to it, knowing we could be quite sure of your willing return.” He slid two cool fingers between Maedhros’s lips, and this time Maedhros did not try to bite them, did not resist at all. He closed his eyes, trying at least not to weep. Sauron pressed the pads of his fingers against Maedhros’s tongue. “Suck them, and touch yourself,” he instructed in gentle tones. “Bring yourself to climax. You will feel a little better for it.”

Maedhros did it. Once Sauron left he did weep. His tears felt hot on his cheeks. The room was still heavy with that dull red light, and his exhausted body still clawed at him with renewed insistence, telling him he wanted, telling him he needed, telling him to yield.

This was not his nature. This had been done to him, for no purpose except to undo him. Maedhros’s spirit rebelled not just at the chain Sauron wanted to put on him but at the fact that it was possible at all. He would never have dreamed that his flesh could be forced to betray him this way. His heart was full of rage and despair and humiliation. Meanwhile his body whispered sick perversions to him, told him that Sauron's borrowed form was fair, and suggested that if nothing else he could touch himself again. Maedhros knew it would not help, not against what was happening. Nothing would help except what Sauron had offered him: a yielding of body and soul together, a surrender, an opening. He would not. He would not.

But perhaps, something murmured in the back of his mind, it would be better to give in than to have to continue like this: for there was no hope of rescue anyway, and if this lasted very much longer, it would tear him in two.

It was strange to be sitting alone under the stars and know, as well as he knew his own name, that somewhere close by Fingon was dreaming. Maedhros had not yet worked up the courage for his apology. Well, it had taken him four hundred years already, he thought wryly. He could wait an hour or two more. He tipped his head back and looked at the stars. A line from a song came to his lips, dear familiar words of praise. He did not sing it, but it hung there in his heart, sweet and strong, with many memories woven about it. The wind blew through the pine trees, and set small ripples at play on the dark surface of Aeluin. A fair night; a fair country. They would reclaim Ard-galen too when they won this war.

Maedhros let himself think on that for a while. When they won this war. Beren and Lúthien had cut a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown, and they would win this war. It was a fair night, and a fair country. Fingon’s dreams were pleasant ones. Maedhros did not know what they were, but he knew that. Once again found his own spirit trying to turn that way, wanting to lean into the light and strength that were so close at hand. He did not restrain himself as quickly as he always had before. What could it hurt, he thought. It was only a little, and Fingon was dreaming.

The night was very still. Maedhros watched the stars and thought of nothing very much and was happier than he had been in a long time. Something in his awareness of Fingon’s dream shifted as the moments passed. It was almost like a change of key: it sent a shiver down Maedhros’s spine. A new dream, he thought, and an even better one. He smiled.

That woke Fingon up.

Maedhros, he said, into the empty silence of his tent on the other side of the encampment.

Maedhros was already hastily dragging himself away. He should not have indulged himself. He had no right. But he could hear or feel the question in Fingon’s heart, and he ducked his head, ran his hand backwards through his hair, and admitted to himself that he would never know the right words for his apology. It had to be now. It had to be now. He got to his feet.

The camp was silent. All the Men were asleep. One of the two young Elves from Fingon’s honour guard was on watch, and his gaze silently followed Maedhros as he passed. Maedhros wondered what was said of the sons of Fëanor in western Beleriand nowadays. It did not look as though it was anything pleasant.

Fingon was awake and waiting for him when he ducked into the tent. “Forgive me,” he said before Maedhros could say anything. “I did not mean to startle you. I only – I was dreaming.”

Maedhros heard of you as loudly as if Fingon had said it. Of course of him. How could it be otherwise, with Maedhros’s spirit lingering at the edges of his mind, stealing undeserved pleasure from Fingon’s dreams like the greedy creature he was? He was no better than a thief. He crouched just inside the tent’s entrance. “I am sorry,” he said. “I should not have –“

Fingon kept looking at him.

“I should have just sent Maglor,” said Maedhros abruptly. There was no apology that would suffice for all he should not have done. He was thoroughly sick of himself. “I should not have come.”

“Maedhros,” said Fingon before Maedhros could leave the tent. But then his next words seemed to stick in his throat. Maedhros had to wait for a long time. Fingon was looking at the canvas of the tent wall, though there was nothing interesting to see there. Maedhros could feel his struggle with whatever he wanted to say, and the dim thrill of determination in his spirit the moment before he looked up and said, “Are we friends?”

Maedhros stared at him.

“Or, since it seems we are not,” Fingon said, “will you tell me if there is any way I may win your friendship again? For I am sorry above all things to have lost it.” His look was determined. “I know I have wronged you –“

This was appalling. “You have never wronged me!” Maedhros said. “You have been the truest friend anyone could wish for –“

“Have been –“

“Have been and are,” said Maedhros firmly. Fingon was frowning. “Fingon, I came here to apologise to you. I am the one who has not been the friend you deserve. I ask your forgiveness –“

Fingon's frown deepened. “For what?”

“For –“

He stopped. They stared at each other.

Maedhros looked away first. He hid his face with his hand. “Well, this is going well,” he said.

“Very,” Fingon agreed. Maedhros looked up at the edge of laughter in his voice. “Almost as well as today's council.”

“Maglor upbraided me,” Maedhros said ruefully.

“You should have heard the scolding I got from Húrin!”

“He dared scold you?”

“When Húrin thinks you have done wrong, he tells you so,” Fingon says. “Elvenking or not! He bade me do better tomorrow, and I meant to, and I still shall – only you must tell me how I am to win your regard again, if I can: or if not, how to make this meeting between us less unbearable for you. Maedhros, I can see how unhappy you are. I can feel it! Tell me what I can do and I will do it: anything in my power, I promise you.”

Maedhros did not mean to flinch.

Fingon’s eyes went wide and he looked briefly furious: with himself, Maedhros knew. The silence stretched.

“Do not make me promises like that,” Maedhros said quietly at last.

Fingon swallowed. “I will leave,” he said. “Húrin can speak for me. Bid me be gone and I will go.”

“You will do no such thing. How will it look if the High King of the Noldor comes and goes at the bidding of Maedhros Feanorion?”

“I was your friend before I was your king!” Fingon said. “Long before, Maedhros – long before anything else, I was your friend.” He held out his hand uselessly across the length of the tent. The gap between them might as well have been half Beleriand – as it had been for centuries. “Bid me be gone or tell me what I can do.”

“There is nothing you can do,” Maedhros said. “Do not think of it. I can bear it –“

“I cannot bear it!”

Maedhros stopped talking.

“You are so unhappy,” Fingon said, “and I know it, and I can think of nothing else – and I may not even take your hand to comfort you.”

Maedhros pushed away the shiver of longing and discomfort that stirred in him, the memory of the shocking instant of touch when Fingon drew him to his feet at their greeting. There were other memories underneath it that he did not want to wake. “I did not ask you to comfort me,” he said.

“I know,” said Fingon sadly. He finally dropped his hand. He had been holding it out to Maedhros all this time. “I am sorry,” he said.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I will go.”

“Do not,” Maedhros said. “Do not. We will... we will do better tomorrow.”

Fingon nodded, and then he said, “Yes.” Maedhros could feel him trying to believe it. Before he could duck out of the tent and make his escape – a worse than useless apology this had been! – Fingon said, “Maedhros, what would you?”

“I would that Sauron had never come near me,” Maedhros said without thinking.

“Of course,” Fingon said at once. “Of course.”

The pools of Ivrin were cool and clean and fair. Four white swans glided through the gleam of evening sunlight reflected on the waters, utterly unconcerned by the fuss of Elven celebrations on the shoreline. Their proud curved shapes against the dim evening light reminded Maedhros of the ships of the Teleri: the ruddy gleam of sunset carried in it a hint of flame. Maglor had caught his eye and grimaced earlier. It was unfortunate. But there were few enough present at this celebration of Fingolfin’s who would perceive it, and neither Maedhros nor Maglor was fool enough to mention the ship-burning on a night like tonight. Tonight was for rejoicing and reunion: a chance to pledge lasting friendship between the no-longer sundered branches of the Noldor.

Fingon appeared at Maedhros’s elbow as if in answer to the thought. He looked out across the shining waters. “Beautiful!” he said.

“Very,” Maedhros agreed quietly. “Be proud of yourself, cousin. This night is your doing.”

“My father’s,” said Fingon at once, “and all who crossed the Helcaraxë; and yours too, Maedhros, for without your wisdom and the agreement you managed to make between my father and your brothers we should no doubt all be arguing yet; and –“

“And yours!”

Fingon’s grin broadened. “And mine,” he admitted. “I played my part.”

“A small part, of course,” Maedhros said. “Hardly worthy of comment, let alone praise.”

“Indeed the Eagle did most of the work,” Fingon agreed.

“Yet for some reason I do find myself inclined to praise you,” Maedhros said. “Only a little, you understand.”

“It must be your affection for me leading you to be over-generous,” Fingon said. “Certainly you should not praise me more than a little.” He offered Maedhros a smaller, more crooked smile and said, “It is not as if I could possibly have done anything else.”

They had always understood one another very well. Maedhros smiled back and reached out – left-handed, of course, and he hardly even had to think about it anymore – to give Fingon’s arm a squeeze. “Then I praise you a little,” he said. “Just as much as you deserve.”

“I ask no more,” Fingon said. “Will I see you among the dancers?”

“Later,” Maedhros said. “Perhaps.”

“Later,” Fingon repeated. He touched Maedhros’s shoulder. “I shall hold you to that; and if I do not see you, I shall come and find you! Until then, farewell.”

“Farewell!”

When Fingon was gone Maedhros seated himself upon the greensward to watch the waters. The swans were gone: sleeping, perhaps, among the reeds on the far bank. The pools of Ivrin were so still that they reflected every star. It was almost as if there was a second sky stretching across the valley floor. As the Moon began to climb the sky his reflection crossed the water slowly. There was a new dark mark on his pale surface. He had been drifting too close to the Sun again. Maedhros smiled.

He sat there as long as he thought he could get away with. The party was mostly happening further along the shore: stray wanderers, quiet appreciators of the night, had peeled off here and there, and no one would think less of him for being one of them. But he and Maglor were here not just for themselves but for all their brothers and followers, and the wounds that had divided the Noldor were still recent. He had to join in, and be seen to join in. Not the dancing, perhaps. There were too many dances that relied on the clasp and release of hands, and Maedhros disliked the thought of forcing some Elf-maid to grasp uselessly at empty air – or, worse, to have to grip his stump.

Still he ought to join in: the talk, the storytelling, the singing. Maglor had made a song of Fingon’s heroics, and sung it last night to great applause. Maedhros had no doubt that a repeat performance would be demanded tonight. Fingon’s expressions would probably not be quite so funny this time, but if Maedhros positioned himself at his side, he could nudge him in the ribs at the best moments. He smiled to himself at the thought and got to his feet, turning towards the sound of harps and pipes and drums where they rang out across the water from the shore –

He staggered.

No, his heart cried. No, no. This torment ended; this torment was done. It could not be: not here, not now, in this clean good place, at this time of festival – of hope –

But his flesh was already betraying him, his mutilated body rebelling once more against the spirit that should have ruled it. Maedhros had mostly learned how to bear his scars, how to resign himself to what he had been made by his tormentors – even to smile, sometimes, at the part of it that had been Fingon's doing. But the ache now rising in him was not a scar. It was a living wound, unhealed, unhealable, not the twisting pain that still haunted his wrist nor the frustrating itch he could not scratch in a hand that was not there – no, this was Sauron's lingering joke, the perversion he had effected for his own amusement and never bothered to undo.

Heat flooded through him: desire choked him. The part of Maedhros’s mind that was still rational thought dismally of how his wasted body had slept. For a long time after his rescue food had still been tasteless to him, good wine wasted on his dull palate: fair sights had seemed unreal to his eyes, sweet music almost unbearable to his ears. He had been glad when he began at last to see and hear and taste and smell: glad to have his senses restored to him, and glad too to feel delight in the world again, to be able to praise his brother’s harping sincerely or take pleasure in the sight of four swans skimming across the clear water. But Sauron's curse, it seemed, had slept also: slept until Maedhros’s body grew strong enough to bear it again.

Now the longing rose in him. His throat was dry and his nerves burned. Sweat was already soaking through his clothes as he stumbled away from the lakeshore and into the shade of the trees. It was too hot, too hot: he turned his face away from the sight of the cool water which would not relieve him. At least he was alone. No one would see him like this. Any Elf who happened on him in this state would know in an instant, and Maedhros could not bear the thought of it, the horror, the pity: too much of both of those had he borne already. He groaned aloud as another shudder wracked him. He –

wanted –

Maedhros’s knees gave way and he collapsed against the nearest tree. Then he slid to the ground, his back against the bark, his festival clothes no doubt ruined. He could not make himself care. His hand was already between his legs, pressing awkwardly through his clothes against his own stiff cock. He tried to stifle a hopeless moan at the feel of it, but an obscene sound still escaped him. His mind conjured for him Sauron's laughter the last time this had happened, and the praise he had murmured against Maedhros’s ear – the heat of his breath there making Maedhros jerk when it tickled his neck, his whole body not knowing whether to turn towards or away –

It was Sauron who had taught him to touch himself like this.

Maedhros jerked his hand away from his cock – from gripping, somehow, not just touching – and immediately whimpered. His pulse was thundering in his ears. His body was screaming at him. Yield, it said: yield, yield, yield to this. But there was no one there to give him what his flesh was insisting on. His hand was already creeping back between his legs. Maedhros forced himself to bring it to his lips instead and bit down hard on the meat of his thumb. Even that felt – strange, wrong. He knew the sensation to be pain but his body only understood it as one more thing to feel. More, more, more, he thought wildly – more – no –

So he had said, at last, in that red room under that relentless light, burning as it seemed to him from the inside out: more, more, as he lay shaking and bare in Sauron's embrace, with Sauron's breath on the back of his neck and Sauron's hand stroking his naked flank with a cool gentle touch that did not soothe him in the least. More, oh – please –

Please what, Sauron had said, and Maedhros had felt the wicked smile against his skin as Sauron’s hand slipped down lower. Cool fingers probed at Maedhros’s entrance, making him gasp. This? Sauron had said. Here? And as the first long finger had breached him Maedhros had squeezed his eyes shut and breathed –

“More,” he whispered aloud into the night, and the soft breezes of Ivrin snatched the word away from him. He clenched his hand into a fist and bit down on his knuckles again, determined not to touch himself. Hot tears began to spill down his cheeks. It was not by any strength of his will, in the end, that he had escaped Sauron’s corruption. How often had he been congratulated since his rescue on how bravely he had endured the torments of the Enemy’s fortress! But if a Balrog messenger had not come from Morgoth’s throne room at just the moment when Maedhros finally, helplessly, whispered yes – if the Dark Lord had not by a sudden whim unwittingly delivered him, and sent him from Sauron’s cruel embrace to the shackle on the clifftops –

Let it be delayed, fair one, Sauron had whispered. We both know now that you will yield yourself up. Think on it a while: for you may not escape it now.

Maedhros could not have said himself whether the sounds he was making were sobs or only desperate pants for breath. They were too loud, either way: and his body ached, and his skin burned, and his stiff cock strained against his garments. There was a damp patch at the crotch of his leggings where the evidence of his desire was staining them. His mind was full of the memory of Sauron: fair in his borrowed Elf-shape, cool-fingered and smiling and full of praise and promises. To have his spirit bound to such evil would have destroyed Maedhros, without a doubt. The corrupted slave-thing that remained would have been only a shadowed ruin of his true self. And yet he craved that destruction – craved it still, even now, even here – and wept in the knowledge that he would crave it to the end of his days. His hand was once more pressed over his cock as he remembered spreading his legs for Sauron’s touch. What could deliver him from this? Must he starve himself, torment himself, keep his body prisoner to suffering –

“Maedhros!”

Maedhros clapped his hand over his mouth to silence himself. He immediately had to swallow a desperate groan at the loss of sensation on his cock. If he had had the strength to get to his feet and stumble further into the woods to hide he would have done it: but he knew he could not stand, nor even crawl, not like this. He could see, though his vision swam, the slim figure standing perplexed on the shoreline. Fingon was silhouetted against the moonlight, and it caught the gold in his hair. He had said he would come back. In misery and bitterness of spirit Maedhros silently cursed his cousin’s faithfulness. He bowed his head, hoping to hide his face, hoping not to be seen.

It was a vain hope. A child could have followed Maedhros’s tracks from the lakeshore to the trees, and Fingon was no mean hunter. Even with his face buried in the darkness of his folded arms Maedhros could still hear his footsteps drawing nearer, soft over the fallen leaves. Control yourself, at least, he tried to tell himself, but there was no controlling this. His traitor body wailed for touch and howled against it: even the cool kiss of the evening breeze and the weave of his clothes against his skin were rapidly becoming tortures to his hungering flesh. He could not restrain his shudders.

“Maedhros?” Fingon called again, very close by. Maedhros’s tears had been flowing all this time: they had been for despair, and still were, but humiliation joined it now. He did not lift his head.  It would come soon enough.

“Maedhros!” Fingon said again, this time with sudden anxiety; and Maedhros knew he had been seen.

When Fingon crouched at his side Maedhros felt the heat of him there. His body demanded that he reach out and seize him, as a drowning man might clutch at driftwood. No. Not Fingon. Maedhros would not. He kept his head bowed and gritted his teeth, steeling himself. Fingon called his name softly and Maedhros did not answer him. He was not sure he could compel his tongue to shape words. Almost all speech had been lost to him by the time Sauron finished with him in Angband: he had had nothing left but please and more and yes. If one of those fell from his lips now –

“Maedhros, please!” Fingon said. Maedhros swallowed hard against the please that rose in him in echo and answer. It took all his concentration to do that. He had nothing left to resist the shock of Fingon’s hand gentle on his shoulder.

It was an ordinary touch, of a kind that anyone might lay on his friend. Maedhros flinched hard, and heard an awful sort of sob come from his own throat.  “What has happened?” Fingon said. “What is wrong?” He did not take his hand away. Even through his clothes Maedhros felt it as a brand. He should have wrenched himself away from the contact, but he could not do it.

Fingon began to speak his name again. Maedhros summoned all his strength. “Do not touch me,” he said. Immediately Fingon drew back, and his hand fell from Maedhros’s shoulder. Maedhros felt bereft at once. He licked his lips and tasted the salt of his own tears on them. “Go,” he said, almost steadily. “I beg you. Leave me –”

“If you think I will leave you alone in this state – Maedhros, look at me. Tell me what is happening.”

Maedhros made himself look up. He could not say anything. His blood was hot in him: he must be flushed, he thought suddenly and with a miserable twisting feeling in his breast, flushed and tearstained and ruined. Still beautiful even like this, the Enemy’s lieutenant had said, for what was evil loved to look upon shame. Fingon would not. Fingon was staring at him with wide eyes. Maedhros met his gaze as long as he could, then shuddered and looked away as a fresh wave of hot desire overwhelmed him. He heard the gasp that broke from his own throat as if a stranger had made the sound.

“You are –” Fingon said abruptly, and then, “Who –” and then he stopped. His silence seemed to Maedhros in his misery to last a very long time, though it could not have been more than an instant or two. Then Fingon said with some urgency, “How? I did not think you – that is, I did not know you were –”

It was extraordinarily awful trying to laugh. By the look on Fingon’s face it sounded even worse than it felt. “I am not,” Maedhros said, and then corrected himself, “I was not. This is not my nature. Only another of the Enemy’s games. It amused Morgoth’s lieutenant to make me,” he swallowed, “to have me – like this.”

Fingon went ashen. “He did not,” he said, half of a horrified question, and then with abrupt conviction, “He did not.”

“You would know by now if he had,” Maedhros said. He drew his knees close to his chest, trying and failing to ignore the way that made the fabric of his clothes drag again across his skin, and wrapped his arms around them. With his left hand he gripped his right forearm and held, tight enough that he could feel his own fingernails sharp through the weave of his sleeve. It was distracting enough that he could focus on it, and on keeping his hand there: yet his mind was full of where else he could touch himself, and how it would feel. “You would know,” he said again. “I would not be here. He would have called me back to him, and I would have gone.” He closed his eyes and shuddered. The kiss of the breeze through the trees on the side of his face was stirring numberless memories of cold possessive touches. “I would have gone.”

“You did not allow it,” Fingon said.

“I would have allowed it. Fingon, by the time he was through with me I would have done anything – I would have begged him – I would still –”

There it was, the horror of it: Sauron had engendered this weakness in him, and now it was a part of him. Even here, even now, it was a part of him. Maedhros struggled helpless in its hot grasp and knew that he would have yielded: knew that if by some evil chance he fell into the hands of the dark powers again, he would yield. There was a touch on the side of his face. Maedhros could no longer stiffen himself against it: he turned towards the feeling of skin on skin, blind and craving, and what Fingon had no doubt meant as careful reassurance became a caress. Maedhros groaned. Fingon jerked his hand away. After a moment when he could understand nothing but the reeling loss that was no longer being touched, he perceived that Fingon was speaking, low and fierce.

“- yet he did not have you, and he will not have you. I swear it –”

“He will,” Maedhros said then. In his despair he believed it. This had been done to him for Sauron’s pleasure and by Sauron’s art. The memories tormented him, as the memories of tortures he had endured had not: and what he remembered, Sauron remembered also. The Enemy’s lieutenant was subtle and patient. He would wait. He had fully meant to take Maedhros for his own possession, and Maedhros had no doubt he still intended it. All it would take would be for this heat, this hunger, to strike at just the wrong time, and he would be undone. In the meantime he would be left this way, tormented betimes by perverse desire, tormented at all times by the knowledge that he was still and would always be quite powerless before it.

Some of this spilled from Maedhros’s lips, in an artless rush of words that did not seem to be under his control, punctuated by panting breaths which certainly were not. He who had been so measured, so reasoned, ever since his rescue from Thangorodrim: who had learned to make words the instruments of his will, imposing a peace on his brothers that he knew displeased them, winning laughter from loyal followers who had had little enough to smile at since they came to Middle-earth, wrangling in dogged courtesy with his father’s hated brother behind closed doors until they managed, however shakily, to understand one another – he could not control his own voice. He ached all over with how much he longed to be touched: with some horror he heard himself telling Fingon that too. Even if this passed – when this passed: he had to believe it would pass, at least for a time – how should he ever look his friend in the eye again? He began to weep once more, and even if the faculty of speech had remained under his own control he could not have put the cause into words. He was still speaking of Sauron’s domination. He could not seem to stop. Miserably he recognised that part of the reason for that lay in the shameful pleasure of remembering, of imagining, even as the better part of himself cried out against it.

“Not while I live, Maedhros!” Fingon said, cutting him off in full flow. “Not while I live, I tell you. I did not save you from the Shadow for this.”

“You saved me as well as anyone could, Fingon,” Maedhros said. “You cannot rescue me from a curse in my own flesh.”

“If –” said Fingon, and stopped there.

Maedhros closed his eyes and waited. It was not unusual for Fingon to start speaking before he had decided what to say. At home – no. In the West their conversations had often been punctuated by halts and starts, Maedhros raising his eyebrows at a stumble or else laughing at Fingon’s interruptions, his impatience. He did not laugh now. He felt almost as if he was sinking into himself. His body was relentless in its demands for his attention. With his conscious thought almost entirely occupied by the pounding of his own heart, the uncomfortable sensation as if he could feel his own pulse thudding under his skin in every part, the heat and heaviness between his legs, it took him a long time to realise that such halting was unusual for Fingon now. In Middle-earth Maedhros’s cousin spoke not as a youth but as a prince.

And when Fingon finally spoke it was plain at once that the pause had not been for confusion but for thought. “Hear me!” he said, and then waited with decisive patience until Maedhros managed to struggle to the surface again. “Look at me,” he said then, and Maedhros made himself do it. He was expecting pity, unhappily braced for it: Fingon met his eyes instead with a look of urgency. “It is no curse,” he said. “No – I understand why you might disagree with that! But unless my mother was cursed, and your father, and our grandfather; unless my sister is cursed, and at least one of your brothers, and many more of our folk and followers besides, then it is no curse. Though that creature –” and the word for ‘creature’ he used was one of the coinages of the Grinding Ice, an ill-wishing folded into a single word, a name of bitterness that Maedhros had until now heard only when the speakers thought him out of earshot “ – though he sought to turn a blessing of this world to his own service, yet he failed. Maedhros, he failed: you are not his, and without him it is no curse.”

Maedhros saw what he was driving at. “A blessing: a part of marriage,” he said, and Fingon looked taken aback at his cruel tone. “So I told Sauron myself, and he laughed. Tell me, which Elf-maid should I inflict myself upon? I crippled, tormented, bound by oath against all love – or do you not know what became of my brothers’ marriages? All of that and this besides –”

“Maedhros –”

“I will not marry. I cannot. Even if I could –” he swallowed hard, “there is no one I love well enough to ask. And if there was one I loved, then for love’s sake I would not ask.”

Fingon nodded, once. “Very well,” he said. “Then let it be me.”

Maedhros stared at him, trying to think past the haze of humiliating desire and misery.

“I know it is not your will to be bound: I will not bind you. I will swear it by any power you please. Let it be me, that it may be no other: and when you go east again you will be free of this torment, and it will not come again, and Sauron will never have you.”

Fingon proposed this madness as if it was both obvious and reasonable. Maedhros dug his own nails into his thigh and blurted the first objection that occurred to him as if he might make it a shield. “How should I be free when –”

“I would not come with you,” Fingon said. The corner of his mouth moved in something a little like a smile. “Our peoples are divided anyway. There is no reason we should come next or nigh one another if you do not wish it.”

“The distance –”

“Is more than enough. Plenty to bear witness to that.” Maedhros knew as well as Fingon did how many bonds of love had thinned almost to snapping between Aman and Middle-earth. Maglor said now, when he said anything of it at all, that he only knew his wife lived.

Then Fingon’s fingers touched Maedhros’s wrist. Maedhros flinched hard from that warm certain grip. Fingon tugged, drawing Maedhros’s hand away from his thigh, robbing him of the anchoring pain of his fingernails. “Please,” he said. If he said more Maedhros did not hear it. He was staring at Fingon’s face, dear and familiar, frowning now with concern: his eyes bright in the dimness under the trees, the dull sheen of the gold in his hair, his soft mouth. Maedhros stared at his mouth. His pulse was thundering in his ears again and every moment that passed with Fingon’s warm hand around his wrist robbed him ever further of his will to resist. To be free of this, he thought: and under it another thought darker and infinitely more selfish: to yield to this, to surrender, to be touched.

Maedhros never knew, afterwards, if he had actually made the decision or if his body had simply reached the limits of what it could bear. He saw Fingon’s eyes widen at whatever expression was on his face, and then he was moving, pulling himself up onto his knees, shaking Fingon’s hand off. There was a moment when he half-believed he was going to somehow stand up and walk away – where, he did not know; to throw himself in the lake, maybe – but Fingon caught his elbows, looking alarmed, and Maedhros swayed forward and kissed his mouth.

Fingon’s lips parted under his. Shock, maybe. No, no, not this, not Fingon, Maedhros thought, and kissed him again. There was no relief in the kiss, no teasing coolness. Maedhros did what Sauron had taught him to do and pressed closer, kissed him more deeply, letting his tongue flick out and draw back. You make yourself very tempting, he heard a cold amused voice out of memory say. Are you sure you won’t just ask? Maedhros made a low desperate sound.

All at once Fingon wrapped a strong arm around his shoulders. He pushed Maedhros down, his other hand behind Maedhros’s head as he lowered him onto the lumpy ground in the shadow of the trees. And it was Fingon, it was: no one else here: only the two of them. Maedhros got a glimpse of his eyes gone unreadably dark before his hot mouth descended again and there was nothing to think of but their kiss. Fingon did not kiss like Sauron at all: there was no lazy languor, no mocking gentleness. His kisses were hot and hungry, and in the instants when they broke apart his snatched breaths were ragged. “Please,” Maedhros said, reaching for him.

“Yes,” Fingon said. Maedhros heard the word and felt it too. He was desperate and needy and open, and Fingon was there, body and spirit together: with him, on him, pressed against him from shoulders to thighs, gripping him tight and kissing him over and over. Yes, Fingon said without words to Maedhros’s wordless pleas. Maedhros felt the instant when what was happening to him began to sweep over Fingon too. Fingon did not flinch from it, or from him. He gasped against Maedhros’s mouth and shuddered a moment in his arms. Then he broke away from their kiss at last, panting, already pulling his tunic over his head. Maedhros did not have to tell him where the fastenings on his clothes were: Fingon knew, and his quick fingers were there already. He brushed his fingers in quick caresses against Maedhros’s throat and breast and hip as he undid the fastenings, as if he could not bear not to. The touches were a relief and a spur together. Maedhros closed his eyes and let them come, let himself feel them, and the shiver each one sent through him. “Do it,” he said, when he was mostly naked. He did not recognise the rough sound of his own voice. “Have me – take me. Do it now.”

Fingon’s breath caught, but he said, “I’m taking your boots off.” Maedhros reached out to him without opening his eyes, reached not just with his hand but with his whole burning self. He could feel how the shock of it went through Fingon’s bright spirit, but that spirit was not overwhelmed, not as Maedhros was. “I will, I will,” was all he said. “Be easy.” I will, be easy, Maedhros heard almost at the same moment, almost as an echo. The sweetness of the reassurance caught him and held him, blind and comforted, gasping, waiting, as Fingon pulled off his boots and set them carefully aside. He tossed away the rest of his own clothes and came naked back to Maedhros’s arms. “Here I am,” he whispered.

Maedhros was too overwhelmed by the feeling of skin on skin to answer. He thrust up helplessly against Fingon’s thigh, forgetting to feel ashamed, forgetting to feel anything but what his body commanded of him. “Please, please,” he mumbled, unless he only thought it: either way Fingon seemed to understand. He let Maedhros rock against him, kissing his whimpers away as he surrendered to his body’s hunger. Maedhros felt Fingon’s own erection pressed between them as they moved, stiff and leaking at the head, but Fingon did not seem to be in any hurry to seek his own relief. All his attention was for Maedhros’s need.

But this was not what Maedhros needed. It would give him no more lasting relief than the touch of his own hand. Did he have to say it again – did he have to ask; did he have to beg? He felt a little awareness, and with it a little misery, come creeping back.

“Hush,” said Fingon, though he had not spoken. And there was the sweet reassurance again. I will, be easy, be easy. Maedhros clung to him. He heard Fingon spit into his own hand and lifted his hips without needing to be told. Fingon slid one finger inside him, careful but sure. He did not tease as Sauron had. His touch was warm, as Sauron’s had not been. Maedhros held onto him and panted for breath as Fingon slowly moved his finger in and out. Then it was gone, but before Maedhros could cry out for the loss Fingon was touching him there again, pushing into him this time with two fingers. Undignified, this, some part of Maedhros still said: humiliating, this, and the way he was crying out and twisting at being touched this way, so much so that Fingon brought their mouths together again, this time plainly to silence him. But the rest of him could think of nothing but how much he needed this, how good it felt, and then Fingon touched something inside him and his back arched and he thought nothing at all. His nerves all sang together as if he was a harpstring just plucked. “Now,” he said when he could speak again, “Now, now, please, now –”

It hurt, a little, when Fingon entered him: even though his body craved it, yielded before it, still it was not prepared for this rough use. Fingon paused over Maedhros, panting and wide-eyed. “Are you,” he said.

“Please,” said Maedhros.

And then Fingon was in him, at last, at last. The sensation of finally being taken would have been enough to sweep all thought away by itself. But Maedhros was reaching out, eager, open: and then Fingon was everywhere.

Ah, but he was bright, he was strong. It was not a fraction of the cold mastering strength of Morgoth’s creature, but there was nothing dark in it and nothing dirty. Fingon’s spirit was light as air, bright as morning, pure as any flame. Maedhros moved with him as Fingon fucked him and barely knew what was his body’s delight and what was his soul’s. The surrender was all. He knew nothing but that Fingon wanted him and had him, that he wanted Fingon and was held by him, his body in Fingon’s arms and his soul wherever it pleased Fingon to take it.

Fingon whispered his name, and then said it again, low, this time in the tongue of their youth. Maedhros cried aloud as he came. Fingon kissed his mouth, hard. He reached his own climax in a few thrusts as Maedhros lay shuddering with the aftershocks under him: and the echo of it rolled through the bond which now bound them together inextricably, making Maedhros whimper and spasm again.

They lay there together for a little while. The fever in Maedhros’s blood receded slowly. It left only terrible awareness in its wake.

When he pulled away from Fingon’s embrace, Fingon said nothing and did not try to stop him. Maedhros closed his eyes and concentrated a moment. He could do very little to bar Fingon from his mind now if Fingon did not choose to be barred. But Fingon was true to his word: of course. Maedhros’s sense of him slipped away a little. Fingon still said nothing, but he sat up and started passing Maedhros his clothes.

“Thank you,” Maedhros said, when they were both dressed.

He urgently wanted to be elsewhere: to wash, and change his clothes. But the enormity of what they had done was settling on him now that he could finally think straight, and with it an appalling knowledge of his own selfishness. He was not the only one who had just lost something. Fingon could never marry now; would have no wife, no son or daughter, in this Middle-earth; no lover either. As for Maedhros himself –

“We leave in the morning,” he said. He had meant to linger a while, but he could not, now. Maglor would complain but there was no help for it.

“Then I’ll bid you farewell now,” Fingon said quietly. He put out his hand for an instant and then seemed to think better of it.

Maedhros was grateful for that. He did not think he could bear to be touched just now. “Farewell,” he said. He bowed a little, and then turned and walked away quickly into the shadows under the trees. He knew he had to stay as far from the party as possible.

The Fëanorian party departed for the east in the morning. Fingon did not join the group of well-wishers who saw them off.

We will do better now, Maedhros told himself before the council of war began again on the morrow. He made himself meet Fingon’s eyes across the table as he took the seat that had been Maglor’s yesterday, waving his brother to one side. Fingon gave him a grave nod. They would win this war, Maedhros told himself, as he had the night before. The thought was a talisman of sorts. He reached out and with the hook that was his right hand he swept to one side all the silver tokens they had laid on their maps the day before. “From the beginning,” he said.

Fingon gave him all: fortresses and their garrisons, numbers and names, levies raised and promises called upon, setting out all he had on the table between them piece by piece. Maedhros listened carefully, taking it all in: the full strength of the Westmarch of Beleriand, less Nargothrond. Some of it he had already known, but not all. It was much less than it had once been. Yet they might win the war with this. And if Maedhros had ever by any word of his been able to muster his brothers behind Fingolfin’s banner, then –

Well. Too late for that now.

Fingon paused a near-imperceptible instant at the end of his recitation. If Maedhros had not been able to feel the weight of the silence in Fingon’s heart he might have missed it. But he knew what it must signify. “Turgon?” he said.

“Perhaps,” said Fingon, and nothing more.

Maedhros resisted the urge to press him on it. A friend would not. He looked down at the maps and tokens, took a deep breath, reached left-handed for a token of his own, and began to speak.

He could feel Maglor’s shocked look, and the stares of the Easterlings. Not to the dearest of his own brothers had Maedhros offered this. But before Fingon’s eyes he laid out the full strength of the Eastmarch from Ossiriand to Himring, not omitting their gains in the last few years, or the secrets of the mountain fastnesses, or the hoarded wealth of the southern domains. All, he must give all, for this war to have any chance at success. How it frightened him to do it! But Fingon was a friend: whom could you trust, if not a friend?

He pushed away the thread of thought that whispered the truth: they were not friends, and had not been for four hundred years, for what lay between them now was not friendship and could not be. It must be friends, somehow, or else nothing: and nothing they could not afford, not for this alliance and this war. After the war they could part again. Maedhros would not need to think anymore on the thing that bound them. He would go away somewhere, perhaps, into the east of Middle-earth, and the thread would draw fine. Perhaps it might even snap: then Fingon could be free again, for wife or lover, son or daughter, and Maedhros would be his own master in his own heart, untroubled, unbound. Even with the walls that lay between them, even with both of them plainly working to keep himself from disturbing the other, it was near overwhelming to sit so close to Fingon for so long. But they must be friends, Maedhros told himself: though half his heart wished to get up and walk away, somewhere, anywhere: and the other half would gladly have knelt again at Fingon’s feet, neither expecting nor wishing to be raised up.

He set the last of his tokens on the table with a clink: the Easterling cavalry. There was silence in the clearing, a silence of many qualities: Maglor’s astonished, the Dwarf’s thoughtful, the three Men, as it seemed to Maedhros, suspicious. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Borlach eyeing the table. He felt a sudden flash of irritation as he perceived that the Man was memorising relative strengths and weaknesses, for all the world as if he expected East and West Beleriand to go to war against each other.

But Fingon said nothing, and kept saying nothing. Maedhros watched him until he could bear it no longer. Then he looked down at his hand and hook. After a moment he closed his eyes, but it made no difference: he could feel the knife-edge tension in Fingon’s spirit all the same, as plain as if Fingon had been shouting about it. Was it not enough, then – after all he had done to forge this last alliance – was it not enough, would it not be enough: if their best general could not see a way, did it follow that there was no way –

Fingon spoke at last.

“A great many people will die,” he said. “They will die no matter what we do. And if we lose this battle, there will be too few warriors left to defend the homes they left. If we lose, we lose all. So my father always said, when I urged him to press the siege: and he was ever the wisest among us.”

“Yet he is gone,” Maedhros said.

“I wish to avenge my father,” said Fingon, “and my grandfather also: and to have this land free of the Shadow in the North, as I have since the first. But I seem out of memory to hear my father’s voice: lose, and lose all, he says! And he was my king.”

There was a pause.

“Fingon,” said Maedhros. “You know, don’t you? You see what we must do.”

Fingon shook his head, still staring at the table, at the maps, at the silver tokens that glinted where the weak sunlight caught them.  “I see it,” he said. “But my heart misgives me.”

Half a dozen things came into Maedhros’s mind then that he might try: the persuasive speeches of a comfortable ally, the cajoling of an old friend, even – he hated himself for it – the possibility of holding Fingon to whatever shame or guilt he seemed to feel over what had passed between them long ago. Anything, if it would work: because he needed Fingon for this war. But even as he thought of the possibilities they seemed to fade before him. By bullying or sweet half-truths he might get what he wanted, but he would not get what he needed. For victory in this war he needed not just Fingon his friend, but Fingon as he should be: Fingon the High King, bright and splendid and sure.

Once he knew that he knew the right words.

“My king,” he said, “what is your will?”

He paid no attention to Uldor’s low murmur or Maglor’s sharp look or Húrin’s frown. He looked at Fingon and only at Fingon: and Fingon, who had been an Elvenking in Middle-earth these five hundred years, and borne the weight of three great battles and countless lesser engagements, and who wore the new-forged crown of the High King in all bright dignity and strength – Fingon ducked his head and smiled a little, as if he was still the youth making risky proposals to a cousin older and wiser and much inclined to laugh at him. Fingon did not believe it.

Maedhros for a bare instant of purest cowardice tried to persuade himself that there was no helping that.

But it was not so.

All, you must give all, he thought. He closed his eyes, and turned his heart towards the bond forged between them under the trees on Ivrin’s shore four hundred years before. Maedhros had set his will as a wall across it all that time. It was not his nature, he had said, and had meant it. He had loathed the thought of yielding to Sauron, but in truth it was not in him to yield to anyone, be he ever so dear and true. Yet Fingon was his king. Maedhros’s brothers had been quick to point out that by the same logic that had crowned Fingolfin, the crown should have passed back to Maedhros – next eldest of Finwë’s line – on Fingolfin’s death: but Maedhros had never thought of it. He had knelt to Fingon before his own vassals – ah, and he had felt the bond between them spark at it. How quickly Fingon had raised him up and let him go! Never once had he sought to cross Maedhros’s will in this.

They were not friends, and could not be. But they did not have to be nothing.

It took no effort at all to let the barrier Maedhros had set between them fall. Indeed it was a great relief. Maedhros had hardly known how hard he was working to maintain it until it was gone. Nothing changed in his awareness of Fingon’s spirit, which was just as bright and just as safely distant as it had been since they arrived here. Yet Maedhros breathed out. “My king,” he said again, and in the place where no half-truths were possible he reached out with those same words: my king.

No one else present saw what Maedhros saw, or felt what Maedhros felt. It was an instant of pure shocked longing, all-embracing, flooding the world to its edges: and at first he thought it was his. When he could open his eyes again Fingon was staring at him. Maedhros did not look away. He asked Fingon once again for his commands, but he hardly heard his own voice. I shall do as you will, he thought. My friend, my lord, my king: do you see? I am yours.

“You hate it; you hate me for it,” Fingon murmured, low enough that Maedhros doubted any other could hear him. He did not try to find words to answer: there were no words to answer. He laid himself bare and bade Fingon look for himself. Gently that bright spirit came upon him, and many things it illuminated that Maedhros had long sought to bury in the dark secret places of his soul. The torments of Angband were down there, and all that he had endured so long. Yet they had not undone him, not as Sauron’s games had: for not even the most inventive tortures had ever succeeded in touching his spirit. Maedhros feared no pain, no cruelty, no overthrow through mere suffering: but he feared his own surrender. Only in surrender could the darkness drag him down. As long as he was the master of his own heart – and his mind skipped to a memory very ancient now, an offer made bravely and brushed aside with laughter in gold and silver light long ago. Fingon could not have known how Maedhros quailed at the thought of all the things he wanted and could not control. But nonetheless by the lakeshore he had yielded himself: not of his own will, and not without regret: yet if he must yield, there was no other he trusted.

I will not fail you, Fingon said then, sudden and astounded and joyful. His spirit did not draw away again. His strength and his courage were suddenly all at Maedhros’s disposal as if they were his by right. And in the waking world, where all that had just passed had taken only a matter of seconds, Maedhros’s king began to speak.

His voice was quick and calm, fierce and sure. Maedhros did not hear the words. He knew there was a plan for battle being made, a plan that could work, that would work: not because he heard it, but because of the song of it in Fingon’s heart that was all about him. So this was what it was to give yourself up, to be seen entire, to lose all control over how or when! Maedhros could not have replaced the barrier between them if he had wanted to. It felt very strange, and utterly terrifying, not to want to.

There were discussions and refinements on Fingon’s plan: he did not heed them. The Men argued a while over points of honour very important to them and very dull to the Elves: he did not listen. After a time a name for what he was feeling came to him. Safe. With Fingon’s spirit embracing him he felt perfectly safe, in a way that had nothing to do with where they were or what dangers might threaten.

Maedhros nearly laughed. No wonder it felt strange.

He surfaced at last and looked up into Fingon’s bright eyes. He could not help smiling. Fingon’s eyes widened a little. It has been so long since you smiled at me, Maedhros heard, and felt the trace of embarrassment with it, and the tremendous gratitude. That Fingon should be grateful to him seemed absurd. Yet he did not exactly mind it: it seemed to balance something out between them.

But their council was not done. With the knowledge of their bond in the corner of his mind, no longer a hovering threat but a simple and comforting fact, Maedhros turned his attention back to the war. They would win this war. They could. And besides, they had to.

“What was that?” said Maglor afterwards. They stood together on the shores of Lake Aeluin at eventide. The Moon was beginning to climb the sky. “You have taken our mortal allies by surprise:  they thought the allegiance of the Eastmarch to the High King was only the form of things – indeed, I thought so too! I believe we shall have some work to do reassuring them that they shall not carry on acquiring additional Elven lords without warning forever. But what was that, Maedhros?”

“Fingon thought it was only the form of things too,” Maedhros said, instead of answering. The bright strength of Fingon’s spirit was still in his mind. How had he managed without it all this time? The thought of politicking with Men troubled him not at all. Nothing could. “We cannot win that way.”

Maglor considered that a while. “No, I do not suppose we can. Yet I never thought that you would bend your stiff neck.”

“Did I not give up the crown?”

“Only the crown you did not have.”

Maedhros looked at his brother.

“Or so I always thought,” Maglor said, and shrugged. “Let Fingolfin’s house keep the name of High King, and the followers who would not follow us: yet you have been our lord all this time. If I had thought otherwise, I might have joined my protests to our brothers’! Yet you have not answered my question. What passed between you and our valiant kinsman there? Did you make up your quarrel at last? Did you have to wait until during the council of war to do it? It was really very startling for everyone else.”

“We never quarrelled,” Maedhros said. “And not everything is your business, Maglor.”

Maglor narrowed his eyes. “Do not think I will not find out,” he threatened.

“I know you are a most persistent gossip,” Maedhros said.

“Fingon will tell me.”

“No,” said Maedhros, “I don’t think he will.” He paused, smiling. “Will you?”

Maglor startled and turned. He had not noticed Fingon coming up behind him.

“No, I will not,” Fingon said. Then he waited, looking at Maglor in clear expectation.

“Oh – very well!” said Maglor at last. “If you are my brother’s king in truth I suppose you had better be mine as well. I shall consider myself dismissed.”

“Please do,” said Fingon mildly.

Maedhros tried not to laugh. Maglor rolled his eyes and went away. Fingon came and stood at Maedhros’s side. The wind blew across them both, and they looked out across the lake together: and Maedhros let himself remember the swans on Lake Ivrin, fair as they had been in the failing light. He let himself remember too how it had felt when first Fingon had taken him, the stretch of his body and the yielding of his spirit together. It was a test of sorts. The memories of Sauron’s mockery surfaced, as they always had, when Maedhros made himself consider what he had become and what he had surrendered. But for the first time there was no sting in them. Sauron had understood nothing about this. He had thought it a weakness.

“My king,” he said.

“Not just your king, I hope,” said Fingon.

Maedhros smiled. “No, not just.”

“Are we friends?” said Fingon. “I would have us be friends.”

The words were sincerely meant. That was plain. Yet to Maedhros, aware as he was of the spirit that moved them, they seemed to shiver with that same fierce longing that had so shocked him when he first cast down his own walls. He swallowed.

He went to one knee.

Fingon protested, startled: Maedhros took his hand. A sting of awareness ran through his flesh as it had before: as his spirit, so his body said yes, this one, yes. Fingon tried to pull his hand away. Maedhros held on. He reached for words and found that at last he had them.

“You are my king,” he said. “You are more than my friend. You are the only one I have trusted entirely and the only one I will trust. In your hands I put all I have wrought out of the ruin of our hopes and all the hopes I still have; for you have never failed me.”

“What –“

“My lord,” Maedhros said, “what would you?”

He looked up as he said it, and he smiled. Fingon stared down at him, and Maedhros felt as if it was his own heart turning over how Fingon was moved by the sight of him there.

“I would not press you to any course against your will,” Fingon said.

“I know that,” said Maedhros. “But what would you?” He hesitated. He pressed a kiss to Fingon’s knuckles while he gathered his courage. He said, “Or must I ask?”

Fingon said immediately, “No!”

Maedhros could see how he was revolted by the thought. No, this was not Sauron. Sauron had understood nothing at all. “Then will you tell me?” he said.

Fingon said, “Will you stand up?”

“It might be inconvenient,” said Maedhros. “I am so much taller than you.”

“Stand up,” Fingon said. There was an edge of laughter in his voice: a wild speculative uncertainty in his heart. Maedhros heard one and felt the other. He stood at once. He did not let go of Fingon’s hand.

“Well?” he said.

“I would have you choose me,” said Fingon.

“I do,” Maedhros said. “I have.”

Fingon kissed him. Maedhros had never been kissed before without the red heat already rushing through him. It was very different. He found he liked it. He kissed Fingon back, clinging tight to his hand, felt the giddy happiness rising in his kinsman’s heart and passing through both of them, and found he liked that too.

The Moon was high in the sky by the time they spoke in words again. “We could,” Maedhros said.

Fingon touched the side of his face wonderingly. “Not yet,” he said. “Afterwards. After we win. Come to me then, if – if you still desire it.”

Maedhros looked at him then with some suspicion, and Fingon smiled. Maedhros saw that Fingon knew perfectly well what had prompted him to surrender himself so suddenly after such a long resistance. Of course he did. He had all Maedhros’s heart within his open hand. He knew everything. He knew. Once again Maedhros felt the startlement of not being afraid.

“Also I am not quite as stupid as you think I am,” Fingon put in helpfully. His smile went crooked at the look on Maedhros’s face.  “Afterwards, if you want me. I would not have you against your will.” Then he kissed Maedhros again and added in a low voice, “Though I am a starveling creature without you: for I am not our grandfather, and I never learned the trick of loving twice.”

“Fingon,” Maedhros said.

“It cannot surprise you that I love you,” said Fingon.

“No,” said Maedhros. Indeed Fingon had told him so already, if never in words: when he first took Maedhros, and when he let him go. “Afterwards,” he said, and meant it as a promise.

“I shall not hold you to that,” Fingon said.

“It seems you do not mean to hold me to anything: yet I shall come.”

Fingon’s smile was brilliant. “Good.”

Under the red light of his spell Sauron sat cross-legged on the bed and held Maedhros’s head in his lap. From time to time he stroked Maedhros’s hair: and Maedhros flinched from the caresses or turned towards them, as the waves of hot desire rose and fell. Beyond that he did not struggle. He was marshalling his strength, he told himself. It would not make any difference whether he lay in Sauron’s lap or on the floor.

“You are charming,” Sauron remarked. “Are all the Noldor such persistent liars?” He made no effort to elicit an answer. Indeed he seemed to care very little for what Maedhros thought about anything he said. He went on stroking Maedhros’s hair. “When you are mine,” he said, “you shall tell the truth all the time: to me, but also to yourself. I believe that would amuse me.”

“I will not be yours,” Maedhros managed to say.

“I know you will not, but you shall. Or else I suppose you may remain a liar. One of those, certainly.”

“I am not the liar between us, Sauron.” Maedhros mustered as much defiance as he had left and added, “I promise you, you shall pay for what you have done to me.”

Even to his own ears the threat rang hollow. Sauron started laughing. He did not stop for a long time. The sound of it seemed to Maedhros’s senses to be joined with the feeling of his fingers still gentle on Maedhros’s scalp, and the dull red glow of the light. 

“Well, here is a truth I know,” Sauron said when his laughter ended. “You may have it as a gift. You will never in life keep a promise you have made.” His tone was almost affectionate. “Not a single one.”