Chapter Text
Nirien had inherited her foremother’s golden hair.
Indis of the Vanyar, mother and grandmother to some of the greatest heroes of their history, and yet Nirien had inherited none of their courage. None of her father’s strength or her mother’s grace - not even a flicker of her uncle’s wisdom.
She had never been more aware of these shortcomings than today, standing in a tent on the edge of a wasteland while maids fussed over her, and her mother wept in a corner. She had not seen her father since their arrival last night, after weeks of strained and silent travel. She'd been hearing his voice sometimes ever since the maids arrived, carried by the wind over to her from her uncle’s tent.
The brothers were fighting.
They had been fighting since the negotiations were finalised. It should be a cause for celebration.
Sauron was defeated for now, and the promise of peace lingered on the horizon... but everybody knew it was far from over. Victory would be short-lived.
Galadriel and her begrudging alliance with the Lord Father of the Orcs - Uruks, Nirien corrected herself. She’d been trying to get herself used to that word - had managed to vanquish their foe, had bought them some time, but it was no peace.
No lasting one anyway.
Sauron would return, and he would seek to destroy all of Middle-earth once more.
“She is my child!” Her father’s angry voice was but a whisper in the wind. The stench of sulfur hung heavy in the air, too much for the perfumed oils of her bath to overpower. That, too, she’d have to get used to.
“My only child, brother!”
Nirien squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to breathe, to force oxygen into her lungs, but between her mother’s tears, her father’s anger, and the lavender fighting the sulfur in the air around her, she felt as though she were suffocating.
"Leave me.” She whispered in Sindarin, and the maids bowed before exiting the tent. Her mother followed shortly after, unable to bear the sight of her daughter, all dolled up for a monster to claim her as his bride, any second longer.
Nirien struggled not to cry. She’d wanted to be brave! She had told herself she would be brave!
She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She spent weeks sewing her gown, using the finest white silk and silver thread. It hugged the gentle curves of her body and pooled around her feet on the ground. The sleeves were long and flared, a shimmering sheer fabric that looked almost like water glittering in the sun, running over her pale arms. It had been a welcome distraction... she hoped he would like it. However silly she knew the thought was, it stayed with her.
Her golden hair fell in loose curls down her back.
Nirien looked like a princess.
She wasn’t. Her uncle was king, not her father, and in many ways, Nirien was unsuitable to be a princess.
“You look beautiful, my dear child.”
Nirien lifted her head and bowed when she saw her High-king standing in the entrance to her tent.
“Thank you, Uncle.”
She turned back to the mirror.
She didn't agree.
She never quite could escape looking sickly since-
Nirien shoved the thought away roughly. Those memories would not serve her here.
Dark shadows clung to the skin under her eyes after years of too little sleep, and her skin looked more sallow rather than the noble pallor of other highborn ladies. The blue of Nirien’s eyes shone too bright, unnerving in its intensity. She was not as tall or beautiful as Galadriel.
She felt like a cheap consolation prize.
What if he wouldn't want her?
If he saw her and decided he'd rather have war than wed her?
Gil-Galad stepped into the tent behind her, his hands folded in front of him, though the diplomatic gesture did not quite manage to conceal the tremble of his fingers.
Everybody was nervous today.
“I hope I please him.” Nirien whispered. Even her voice failed her today, refusing to be anything but a fearful cower stuck in the back of her throat, but she had to voice her concern to someone. She was desperate for a last shred of assurance before she had to leave. Nirien didn't even know when she'd next see her uncle, any of her kin...
“As your king, I must once again remind you of the importance of this, and how much rests on the success of this alliance - but as your uncle, I need to be certain that you know, you do not have to do this, my dear child. If it is your wish, we return to Lindon and never speak of this again.”
Nirien ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. They were tender from her pulling on the dry skin with her teeth during the entire journey from Lindon to the border of the Southlands - Mordor, as it was called now.
How much she'd like to take the offer…
“I do not want that. But- Uncle-” Nirien could no longer hold back her tears. She turned and fell into the king's arms, shaken by quiet sobs. “I am neither courageous nor particularly strong or diplomatic. In all honesty, I do not know how I will ever be able to live up to all that this task will ask of me…”
She was overwhelmed and tired. She had not managed to sleep for days now. Weeks. Ever since she first put her name forth to seal the alliance they so desperately needed after the negotiations with the Lord Father of the Uruk had come to a full, strained gridlock.
She felt like a foolish child now.
It had always been clear that the Uruk would demand some… collateral to feel assured that the Elves would not deceive them and attack when they least expected it. The oldest way of forming new bridges, of bringing together houses and families - and in this case, entire people? - was marriage.
It had sounded so logical to her then, when she first suggested it.
Marriage could not be forced between Elves. Whoever Gil-Galad chose had to consent. Galadriel would have done it, seeing as she was the most determined of all the Elves to ensure this treaty came to fruition, but she was already married to Celeborn.
It couldn't be just any woman, either. A common girl did not hold enough value to the king and his people. She would not assure the Lord Father that the Elves would be forced to honour the treaty between them out of determination to protect her safety and life.
Gil-Galad had neither wife nor children, but his brother… his brother had a daughter.
Nirien was the highest-ranking maiden at her uncle’s court.
Nirien had sought out her uncle in secret, without speaking to her parents - they never would have agreed - and gave her permission to offer her hand in marriage to the Lord Father of the Uruk. So that both their people may find peace in this treaty, that they both may work together to fight Sauron once he returns.
And without ever having met her, without ever having set eyes upon her - the Moriondor had accepted.
What if he saw her today and decided she wasn't enough?
That she was dull, and boring to look at, like the utter lack of men approaching Nirien with any sliver of romantic interest had been telling her for many years.
“My dear child.” Gil-Galad pressed his lips to the crown of her head. She felt his fingers trembling where they cradled her hands. He lowered himself to the ground, kneeling before her, dark eyes wet with tears. “Courage is not the absence of fear, and strength does not require an utter lack of weakness. You have already survived more than most of my bravest soldiers could have endured.” He pressed his lips to the back of her left hand, then to the back of her right hand, before pressing his forehead to her knuckles. “Your people and the realms of Middle-earth are forever in your debt. I have been assured that you will be treated kindly and gently, and your safety has been guaranteed to me - or I would not have even entertained this.”
His words did little to ease the unrest squirming in Nirien’s belly.
Quite the opposite.
What did Uruks consider to be gentle or kind? She still did not quite believe a single man held the power to contain the ravaging, bloodthirsty, mindless forces of evil she had grown up hearing stories about.
Nirien wanted nothing more than to turn her back on the burnt wasteland she’d been watching through a gap in her tent all night while the camp around her lay in a fitful slumber. She did not want to stay here, in a place where ash hung in the sky so thick that one could see neither sun nor stars, where no plants grew and no animals dwelt.
She did not want to leave her home for this hopeless, dark place - but she wanted war between her people and Mordor even less. It would be bloody and long, and while it happened, Sauron would gather his strength again.
He wanted them fractured, fighting each other so that he could use their weakness to close his wretched hands around Middle-earth.
What was a single Elven maiden in the grand scheme of Middle-earth?
Even Elrond lacked the usual tranquil poise he always exuded when he entered the tent and bowed to the king. No matter how much work her uncle burdened the half-elf with, forgetting all too often his physique was not the same as his own, he never faltered in it. Nirien had found Elrond fast asleep on a stack of writings many times. Or she would leave small plates and bowls of food at his desk for Elrond to find when he came back from a sitting of the privy council that lasted longer than it should have.
And they always did.
Nirien's cat meowed from where she perched on the Elf's bed to greet Elrond. She was a slender, elegant wisp of shiny black fur. Only the very tips of her toes were brushed with a touch of white. She was Nirien’s closest friend and companion, had been for several years.
“Híril nín” Elrodn bowed to her. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “It is time.”
Her throat closed up. She wasn’t ready. This was all going too fast. After weeks and weeks of talks and secret meetings crawling by, suddenly everything happened within the blink of an eye!
Nirien turned away to hide the fearful expression wanting to slip onto her face. She wouldn’t let it. She didn’t want to let it.
She told herself she would be brave!
The walk through the Elven encampment passed in a blur of colours and distorted noises. Nirien moved, she thought, though where she found the strength to, she didn’t know.
She left the treacherous safety her tent had offered behind.
Without her cat. She wasn't sure the feline would be welcome - or safe. Leaving her behind was perhaps the most difficult part. She knew she would not have anyone where she was going. Nobody to lean on, nobody to support her. But she did not want any harm to come to her, more than she knew she would be craving her company.
Would Orcs- Uruks - try to... eat... her?
The thought of losing her cat was worse than leaving her behind in Elrond's care. He'd find the letter she wrote him later. She knew he'd care for her.
The sulfur stench was worse outside, but at least there was no more lavender fighting with it for dominance and giving her a headache in the process.
Nirien did not look towards the wasteland. She wanted to stay here, among the lush trees and bushes, where birds chirped, utterly unaware of what was going on in the camp beneath them.
“Ada-” Nirien all but choked on the word. She had not been able to say it since the negotiations started. It summoned terrible pictures to her mind, of brutish orcs and hideous faces, blackened, cursed blood, and all the other horrid things her mind conjured.
“Father.” She whispered in the common tongue, pleading with him to turn around and look at her. As if she did not feel terrible enough for going behind his back, for making this choice to leave him, to bind herself to a monster on the feeble promise of hope - now she was asking this of him too. Because she craved her father’s attention, his love and well-wishes. She craved to be held by his strong arms once more before she turned her back on Elven life and walked into a camp of Orc- Uruks!
Her father was a proud man, a tall man. A man who held all the virtues the Elves valued so dearly. He taught her what strength looked like, and never once since the fall of Beleriand had Nirien had to feel unsafe, because he was never far, never hesitant to wrap her into his strong arms and keep her safe.
Today, he did not look tall.
His face was stricken by grief as though he had been asked to carry her coffin to her grave.
He wanted to plead with her to stay, to turn her back on what he felt was a futile, empty attempt at something not worthy of pursuit, but he knew his daughter, and he knew she would hear none of it.
He tried regardless.
“You need not throw away your life like this.” His voice was heavy with pain, a tone Nirien had never heard from his lips. She felt his desperation radiating from them. It prickled on her skin like a thousand tiny bites. And there was nothing she could do to ease it. “Do not toss yourself at savage beasts!”
“A bird that grows up being told it can never fly, will never even dare attempt it.” Nirien wished her voice would have sounded strong and assured, that she could be the spitting image of confidence her great-aunt Galadriel had been every day of her life, but she wasn’t. “Even Morgoth got a chance from the Valar to change his ways when he pleaded for forgiveness.”
“And see what it got them.”
“But would it not have been monstrous to deny him the chance? To cast judgment upon a repenting soul without even allowing the opportunity for change? Many would argue the Noldor did not deserve their forgiveness either after the Kinslayings. Father, the Orc- Uruk-"
Her father grimaced at hearing Black Speech from his daughter's tongue.
"-only ever lived under the command of cruel masters. I do not think it is right to call them savage for it.”
“This is madness!” Her father hissed. “Madness committed on the basis of mere hope.”
Nirien glanced at the High-king, standing with Elrond a few steps away. Vilya gleamed auspiciously on his finger. A soft smile flitted across her lips.
“Hope is never mere, even when it is meagre.”
An expression of sad pride and hurt on his face, Gil-Galad bowed his head to his niece.
Nirien took a shuddering breath before turning back to face her father. “You cannot change my mind, but you can decide whether we part ways in strife - or in love.”
“Oh, Lasdithen nín…”
Her father melted from his tormented rigour and pulled her against his chest, wrapping her up in his strong embrace. Nirien allowed herself to be swept up in it, in the sense of safety he had exuded for as long as she could remember. His familiar scent made her feel as though everything would be alright, as it had always done, no matter how dark the world seemed with the forces of evil spreading around them.
She stood there, at the edge of a wasteland cloaked in ill-fated shadows, once again finding peace in the same arms that had held her when she could feel herself breaking, when she thought she would never feel warmth again…that remained at her side, always, while she tried to heal.
“I cannot bear to lose you again.”
Nirien pressed a kiss to his cheek. She couldn’t bring herself to speak of fear she would start crying, and once she did, she knew she would not be able to stop.
She told herself she would be brave.
And Nirien did not want to meet her future husband with tears in her eyes.
She walked past the maids and servants who had attended to her since she was a child, past her uncle and great aunt, away from the light and towards the sulfuric, ashen plain of scorched, dead earth. She embraced her mother one last time before climbing the mounting block to mount her pure white horse.
The handover would happen a few miles beyond the borders of Mordor. The Uruks were establishing their dwelling somewhere beyond the still-smouldering volcano spewing smoke into the sky half a year after its eruption.
Elrond, Galadriel and Gil-Galad would accompany her to ensure she was received well and bear witness to the formal betrothal. Nirien had been told there were some Uruk customs to be observed too, but she did not know what that entailed. She still struggled with the notion that Orcs- Uruks! - Nirien gritted her teeth - had customs and traditions of their own.
They were already waiting for them.
The mane of Nirien's horse stuck to her clammy palms when she disentangled her rigid grip from it. Elrond helped her dismount by holding her waist to lift her off.
Nirien's dress was not made for riding, and she was not used to riding side saddle. She was glad for the help. With her luck, she would have ended up face down in the ashen dirt - which Elrond seemed to have foreseen. She held onto his arm, her face concealed by his tall frame, and tried to get her breathing under control.
She had never met the man she was about to be betrothed to. The father of the Uruks…
“I thought I had made myself clear - I will not take a child to be my-” The raspy, deep voice trailed off when Nirien stepped around Elrond. She caught a glimpse of the last flickers of a grimace tumbling into something else. Something she could not discern. His eyes widened as though in recognition and slid down her body, lips parting ever so slightly. Was he surprised? Shocked? She couldn't tell. The whole thing didn't last longer than half a second.
The Lord Father of the Uruks did not look like Nirien had imagined him. He was tall, taller even than her uncle, closer to Círdan whom Nirien knew woke in Cúvinenen, much like Galadriel assumed Adar did - though Nirien didn’t know how true that was. The first Elves had been taller than Elves now were, though…
His hair was dark like the feathers of a raven, not quite as long as Elven men wore it. It fell in crooked, uneven waves. His pale blue eyes seemed to hold all the pain centuries under Morgoth’s thumb had forced him to endure. The left side of his face was warped by a dendritic web of scars that left the skin beyond his temple bare, his hairline pushed back as though someone had searched for a way to fit more scars onto his face.
He was dark and imposing and terrifying, but there was an eerie sense of fallen nobility about him, a not-quite lost grace and elegance, an allure Nirien found herself pulled towards as though on a tether…
She curtsied, lowering herself in a slow, elegant descent until she was almost kneeling on the ground. Her dress pooled around her. The ends of her hair grazed the ground.
“I’m not a child.” She said. Her voice, though neither loud nor particularly strong, carried, filling the deathly silence between the Uruks and the Elves.
She cast her gaze up.
Adar looked away.
The motion of his head was sharp and curt. It felt like an icy rejection. She didn't allow her feelings to show on her face, clinging to the benevolent, gentle expression she wore.
Nirien stepped forward, scrapping together every little scrap of tattered courage she could find within herself until she stood directly across from him, on the invisible line separating her people from his.
He still would not look at her.
“I do not appeal to you, my lord?”
Scarred tissue was drawn tight over his jaw as it tensed. His hands, one of which was resting around the hilt of his massive sword, clad in a grotesque iron gauntlet, curled into fists.
Was he angry? With her? Why would he not even look at her? Nirien knew the shadows of her past clung to her even now, dulling the beauty of the Eldar passed down to her, but she wasn’t ugly.
Nirien glanced towards her uncle, searching for help that she knew she would not be able to rely on once she stepped over the invisible line to her feet.
One of the Uruks said something in that terrible, hissing language of theirs. A woman, Nirien guessed. Her sight made Nirien uneasy. She looked very Elven with her tall, slender build, her short dark hair and clear blue eyes, but her skin was grey and her spiked ears deformed. It was as though looking through a blurry piece of glass, being told there was an Elf on the other side, but knowing deep inside her heart that it couldn't possibly be true, without a shred of proof to make such a claim.
Was she Adar’s… companion? Was Nirien about to take her place away
She considered a lot of things coming here, but she never considered that Adar may have... a love already. Elves only married once, but he was no Elf, was he? Not anymore. Did this treaty force him to abandon the one his heart belonged?
The thought sent an icy shiver down her back.
Whatever the woman was to him, Adar listened intently. His grip around his sword tensed even more, then eased.
“Can we proceed?” Gil-Galad asked, though the sharp tone he used left little room for discussion. The threat of taking Nirien and leaving this alliance to shatter before it was ever forged hung in them, looming above Adar like an empty noose.
Perhaps Adar felt it tightening around his neck because a moment later, he nodded.
Elrond carried a wooden box containing two narrow rings of silver on a bed of purple velvet. Adar grabbed the smaller one, and as though her hand had been attached to strings guiding her motions, Nirien lifted it into his grasp. His gauntlet was cold beneath her fingertips and made her wince. Adar’s eyes flicked up to her, meeting her gaze for only a second - a second that took her breath away - before, like burnt, falling back to her hand. He slipped the ring onto the index finger of her right hand. He dropped her hand right after, pulling away from her as quickly as he could.
The ring felt heavy. Far too heavy for simple silver.
Nirien’s hand was trembling when she picked up the remaining ring. Adar’s face twitched when she touched his hand. She could feel the tension that held his body in a tight grasp. His palm was calloused, rough against her soft skin that had seen nary a day of hard labour. Her heart twitched painfully in her chest at the thought.
What was she doing here? What could she possibly have to offer?
But this was important. This alliance was more important than her personal comfort!
Nirien pushed the ring onto his finger and allowed him to yank his hand away from her.
She watched him draw a crude, curved knife. Her heart beat faster inside her chest. Fear coursed through her stomach, winding into a tight knot until she felt sick.
Nirien could not quite manage to hide her flinching when he lifted the knife, but he brought it towards his own face and cut a strand of his raven hair.
“Your hand.” He said, his voice low, gravelly. It ignited a strange heat deep inside her. Nirien lifted her hand again and watched with thinly veiled curiosity as he tied the strand of hair around her wrist. He placed the knife, hilt first, in her hand.
“I-” She stammered, unable to find her voice.
“You have to cut it yourself.”
Her eyes flicked towards her uncle. Chewing on her bottom lip, Nirien pulled a strand of hair forth from the back of her head where the cut would be less noticeable. She wasn’t a superficial woman, but she was allowed some vanity, no?
Nirien winced slightly at the sound of the blade slicing through her golden hair. Tying hair wasn’t as easy as Adar had made it seem. She struggled to get it to hold around his wrist. Frustration and embarrassment forced tears into her eyes.
Adar gripped her chin, his movement quick as a snake striking at its prey, and tilted her head up, forcing her to look at him, which - Nirien found that offensive. He was the one acting as if it were terribly difficult to look at her! The sharp tips of his gauntlet dug into her skin, skimming her tender bottom lip.
“I will not allow this to go any further if you are being forced to do this.” He hissed.
“I’m not, my lord.” Her voice sounded frail and, frankly, terrified.
“You are not being coerced?”
“No, my lord.”
"Bribed? Threatened? In any way put under pressure?”
“No!”
“You are here of your own free will?”
Nirien tore free of his grip. She was glaring at him now, tears burning in her eyes. Marriage could not be forced between Elves! Why did he insist on tormenting her like this?
“I am!” With a sharp yank, Nirien tightened the knot securing her hair around his wrist and slammed the grip of his knife into his hand. “If you desire to- if I am not to your taste - go ahead and walk away, condemn your people to a needless war, but do not place that burden on me. It is not mine to carry, my lord.”
Adar merely emitted a deep grunting huff, like a wolf or some other beastly animal. The sound of it made her swallow. How much beast existed inside the man? How much Elf could possibly still be left inside him?
He did not treat her as one would.
There was no courtesy, not a single shred of hospitality in his voice. It was an arranged union, yes - but this was surely no way to receive one's betrothed?
Adar's fingers curled around his knife. His eyes flicked towards the Elves.
“Have you said your farewells?”
“Yes.” At last, her voice failed her properly, fading to a pathetic little mewl.
Adar nodded once before pressing the tip of his knife into the pad of his finger, slicing into the skin to summon a dribble of deep, black blood.
Nirien watched him smear the cursed stuff on the inside of her wrists and the pulse points of her neck. He traced her collar bones, standing out against her chest and smeared his blood over them. His touch made her shudder, and the tang of iron curling around her body from his blood on her skin made her feel queasy. He ran his finger over the strand of hair around her wrist before finally releasing her of this- this strange marking ritual.
Nirien felt disgusting, and it took considerable effort to keep it from showing on her face.
“Do I-”
“No.” Adar’s answer came sharp and curt. He shoved his knife back into his belt and grabbed her wrist to pull her away, towards a massive black horse.
Nirien would not take her horse with her. No Elven-bred horse should be made to live in such darkness... among such dark creatures. The mare could not make her opinion known, could not make a choice, unlike Nirien. It would not be fair to the animal.
Adar lifted Nirien up onto the stallion’s back, his grip on her waist hard and bruising, before mounting behind her. Nirien had to bite the inside of her cheek to not cry. His arms encompassed her, reaching around her for the reins. Her heart beat frantically in her chest. She turned her head to catch one last glimpse of her uncle, but Adar’s broad chest, clad in battered, old armour, concealed any sight of them.
His hot breath brushed over the crown of her head, and slowly, the cold of a sunless wasteland sank past the fine silk of her gown…