A Farewell to Arms

by MorwenSteelsheen

Summary:

Two years before the War of the Ring, Éowyn is sent to Minas Tirith.

A story told across three books.

Notes:

'Hear now all peoples who bow not to the Shadow in the East, by the gift of the Lord of Mundberg we will come to dwell in the land that he names Calenardhon, and therefore I vow in my own name and on behalf of the Éothéod of the North that between us and the Great People of the West there shall be friendship for ever: their enemies shall be our enemies, their need shall be our need, and whatsoever evil, or threat, or assault may come upon them we will aid them to the utmost end of our strength. This vow shall descend to my heirs, all such as may come after me in our new land, and let them keep it in faith unbroken, lest the Shadow fall upon them and they become accursed.'
— Oath of Eorl

Chapter 1: Prologue: Spring 3016

Prince Théodred, Second Marshal of the Mark, had a lot on his mind. He always had a lot on his mind given the seemingly relentless pace of Dunlending incursions into the Westfold and Orc invasions in the Eastemnet, but after having returned to Edoras to greet Lord Boromir, son of Denethor II, Steward of Gondor, Théodred had even more to worry about.

Boromir was, in every conceivable way, his greatest friend. Though their moments together were few and far between, and fewer and farther still in recent years, theirs was a friendship that Théodred valued above all else. Struck up after a rare diplomatic expedition arranged by Théoden King in Théodred’s youth, the Prince of the Riddermark and the should-be Prince of Gondor had taken to each other immediately. Boromir seemed to Théodred a man apart from the stilted and patronising ways of Gondor’s nobility (though, in fairness, Théodred had met vanishingly few of them outside of the Steward and his sons). He seemed to understand the ways of the Mark as if their culture was his native tongue. 

But he was not so apart from his Gondorrim brethren either. He was, if Théodred were to put a word to it, a very purposeful man. There was almost nothing Boromir did that did not come after much careful consideration of all possible outcomes. There were times when Théodred was certain that Boromir did not breathe unless he thought it would be beneficial to his cause and country, so calculated and determined was his way.

So it worried Théodred tremendously that Boromir had, apparently entirely by accident, let slip that his father had little trust in the ability of the Mark to come to Gondor’s aid should the red arrow be sent. Even drunk, Boromir was not prone to admitting that which he did not plan to admit, and the remarkably casual way in which he admitted to the perceived weakness of the Oath of Eorl set off every alarm in Théodred’s mind. 

It helped little that Boromir’s confession came in light of a whispered discussion concerning Théodred’s youngest cousin, Éowyn. 

Éowyn was—in equal parts—Théodred’s greatest joy and greatest mistake. She and her brother Éomer (also one of Théodred’s greatest joys) had come to live in Meduseld when Théodred was twenty-four. She, then but seven years old, presented a problem for Théodred and his father. Théodred’s mother had died in childbirth, and Théoden had never remarried. With the death of Éowyn’s mother, Théodwyn, Théoden became the last of his house, his elder three sisters having died in various, tragic combinations of childbirth, pestilence, and cancer. Thus, the arrival of Éowyn heralded the arrival of the first woman of the House of Eorl to reside within Meduseld’s hallowed walls in well over a decade. 

The problem had not been spoken aloud in those days, but Théoden and Théodred, each taking a more or less equitable role in the rearing of the new charges, chose to raise Éowyn as they would raise her brother. She was trained in the arts of the warrior, she learned the languages of rulership (not least because Théoden, who had been raised for some time in Gondor, was sympathetic to the Elvish tongue), and, naturally, horsemanship. For ten years she had been allowed to live and learn in much the same way as her elder brother, with nary a woman in her life to object or train her otherwise. 

Éowyn’s personality was, therefore, singular. She fought well, both in the practice ring and around the dinner table, she thought of herself as entirely equal to her brother and her cousin, and did what she could to prove the truth of that assertion. Her kin, thus trained, rarely thought of her as anything other than, simply, Éowyn. This suited them all well, but suited Éowyn the best. She grew to be a bright young person with a lively wit, sharp tongue, and keen sense of justice. All who met her loved her, and it seemed to them that she loved all she met. 

Gríma Wormtongue arrived at the court of Meduseld not with a bang but a whimper, simpering and preening his way into the good graces of the King. Théodred, who was talented at some things, but not talented at all in the ways of courtly politics, hardly knew what was happening until it was too late. He would return from traveling with his éored to find that changes had occurred in Meduseld. At first it was insignificant changes: a decrease in the size of household staff as a cost-saving measure, a change to the guard rotations, an increase in the number of hours his father spent in counsel. But as the months and years passed, the changes became noteworthy: restructuring of the éoherë without consultation, a ramping down of the forces on patrol in the Wold, a slowdown in the number of foreign dignitaries welcomed to the Golden Hall. 

The change that had worried Théodred the most, the one that had coincided with the most recent arrival of Lord Boromir, was his father’s sudden pronouncement that Éowyn had tarried too long in the spheres of men and should behave more in the ways of women to prepare herself for her eventual marriage. Éowyn, now twenty, had braved the uncharacteristic chastisement with a stiff upper lip, but as Théodred watched, horrified, he saw that her eyes rested not on her uncle and King, but on Wormtongue, who stood behind Théoden, yellowed eyes glistening in the candlelight. She knew, had likely always known, what Théodred had only just discovered: that whatever risk Wormtongue posed to the King, the threat to Éowyn was tenfold. 

Thus Théodred—blessed by good fortune and better timing—had sought out the counsel of Lord Boromir, who, despite having no sisters or female wards of his own, had a younger brother who had in his much younger years been prone to finding himself in trouble. Over a tankard of ale, they had shared stories of the troubles of younger siblings and begun to devise plans to ensure Éowyn’s safety. Boromir had suggested, at first, marrying her off to someone trustworthy with land away from Edoras. The thought had initially repulsed Théodred, who was loath to view his cousin as, ultimately, a woman, but, after Boromir’s gentle and well-intentioned coercion, had realised that Éowyn would be seen by the world as a woman even if her brother and cousin refused. Still, he loved her too much and too well to marry her off so abruptly and with such little concern for her own happiness, even if it was her safety at stake, so the plan was scuppered.

Many more ideas were bandied about: training her as a healer and dispatching her to tend to wounded warriors, sending her on a tour of Gondor in the hopes that she might find a husband, removing her to the Hornburg to manage the household of retired-Marshal Erkenbrand. All these seemed too limiting to Théodred, who above all else could not countenance seeing Éowyn’s bright spirit dimmed, and knew that to ask her to take up the life of a woman, managing decline in a house or a land that was not her own, would be an unnecessary cruelty. At the end of the night, when the first light of dawn threatened the horizon, they even considered disguising her as a man and stationing her in either Théodred or Éomer’s éoreds, a thought which warmed Théodred’s heart, even if he blanched at the prospect of her facing genuine danger on a battlefield. 

And then Boromir had made his confession, and even worse anxiety had riddled Théodred’s thoughts. 

He went to bed and slept poorly, the spectre of Wormtongue chasing his beloved cousin through his nightmares, and the threat of the loss of Gondor’s support weighing heavily on his waking mind. In the morning, when he had conceded that sleep would continue to evade him, he had risen and had his revelation. Two problems, he realised, could be solved at once. 

He approached Lord Boromir first and, upon receiving his enthusiastic support, had gone to his King father. Gondor needed assurances of the amity of the Mark, but the situation in the Mark was such that no man could be spared from the struggle to repel the enemy from their borderlands. But Éowyn was no man, though she was stronger and cleverer than almost all the men of Théodred’s ken. She alone could act as an ambassador to Minas Tirith, could repair the relationship that had been sundered. The King, his father, his beloved, valiant father, had agreed—with sadness in his eyes. 

Théodred worked quickly, had to work quickly to ensure that all was settled (or in the process of being settled) before the snake could intervene. He dispatched a messenger to the White City with a message written in his hand, though also bearing the name of Lord Boromir, offering to Lord Denethor an envoy. Éomer was told next, and at first Théodred thought Éomer might strike him, but once the full extent of Théodred’s fears had been explained, the young man begrudgingly agreed that it was the best course of action, and the one least likely to mortally offend his headstrong sister.

Telling Éowyn was more difficult. She bore the news with the same miserable, distanced silence she had borne the King’s admonishment with, which broke Théodred’s heart. He had tried to provoke a response in words from her but she would not budge, keeping her mouth closed and her thoughts distant. It was only later, watching her in the practice ring from the veranda as she threatened to completely dismember a wooden dummy, that he thought he understood the full extent of her rage at her situation. 

He had sworn himself to not doing that which would immiserate his cousin, and yet there he stood, having done exactly that, and entirely of his own volition. Boromir, who, though reasonably affectionate towards Éowyn, saw her not as kin, was able to whisper words to him that kept him resolute in his decision. He spoke truly; Éowyn would be safer if she were to be removed from Edoras, and the chance to develop herself away from her kin would be valuable. Was it not, in effect, the same as Théodred and Éomer being allowed to prove themselves in their éoreds, in an environment where merely being of the King’s family did not guarantee success? 

Boromir left at the end of winter, and little was heard from the realm of Gondor thereafter. The Dunlending situation in the Westfold grew more complex, and Théodred’s attention was drawn there to ensure the safety of his people. Éomer faced increasing orc incursions in the Wold, and returned less and less to Edoras. Wormtongue skulked the halls of Meduseld, eyes ever trained on Éowyn. He found ways to restrict her liberties, and Théodred could not always be present to intervene. Éowyn grew distant, Éomer grew angry, Théoden grew old, and Théodred grew tired. 

In the middle of spring, a messenger arrived from Minas Tirith bearing the seal of the Lord Steward. Denethor would welcome a diplomatic mission from Rohan and the chance to strengthen the bonds between their two kingdoms. He wrote that he could not spare a detachment to escort the ambassador from Edoras, which angered Théodred—did Gondor’s high-minded Lord Steward imagine the Mark so impoverished that it could not furnish its own security forces? But Théodred’s desire to see his cousin safely settled beyond Wormtongue’s grasp stayed his pride, and he did what he had to to ensure that she was sent away. 

The arrival of the messenger, and Théodred’s presentation of Denethor’s missive to his King was the first time he saw Éowyn cry in over half a decade. Even then, she stood to attention, straight-backed, shoulders drawn, head held high, as if the tears that streamed down her cheeks weren’t there at all. 

She was gone by the end of spring.

Chapter 2: Book I: Spring 3016

Notes:

'In that book which is my memory,
On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you,
Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.'
— Vita Nuova, Dante Alighieri

Éowyn was unhappy but dared not let it show. She had ridden for three days, two of them in the pouring rain, to reach the Mering Stream. There, she had been met by the company of Lord Boromir of Gondor, Captain of the Citadel Guard, the eldest son of the Steward of Gondor, and a dear friend of her cousin Théodred. He greeted her with none of the stiff formality she had been primed to expect, instead kissing her hand, smiling broadly, and telling her that he was pleased to see her looking well and joining them at last in Gondor. 

She was not well, and she was certainly not pleased to be joining him in the Stánland, but she smiled and played along, eager to complete the journey to the White City and seal her fate. She could not—would not—forgive her cousin, her brother, and her king uncle for sending her away so heartlessly just days after her twenty-first birthday, and to such a distant and alien land at that. True though it was that she knew Lord Boromir from his occasional visits to the Mark, she could now only see him as her captor, and resolved to not extend to him any more courtesy than what he extended to her. With a terse but polite valediction, she took her leave of him and returned to her escort, in whose quiet company she remained for the next two days of the journey. 

The White City was imposing, certainly, but seemed to her to be a whited sepulchre, piercing the sky in a great, unnatural way, as a knife through the heart of the natural world. Carved, apparently, from the rock of the mountain against which it was built, it was a testament to the Gondorrim obsession with control. What are rocks and mountains to the might of men? the City seemed to ask, jutting and scarring its way downwards, until it stopped abruptly, giving way to the rolling fields and farmsteads at its base. 

In sight of Minas Tirith, Lord Boromir assessed that it was in his interest to strike up a conversation with her again, and attempted to do so by praising that great monstrosity in the sky until her polite demurments finally hindered his infringement of her silence. Cleverly changing tack, he began to speak to her of business, of the parameters of her imminent imprisonment in Gondor. As an emissary of Gondor’s closest ally, and one who came without property in the City, she would be housed in the Palace of the Stewards, until such time that a better living arrangement presented itself. Upon their arrival, she would be shown to her apartments and given free rein until dinner, when she would be officially presented to the Lord Steward. 

Éowyn had been warned, repeatedly and in explicit terms, of the coldness of the Lord Denethor. He was an intimidating man, said Théodred, who carried little warmth or good humour in his heart, and brooked no opposition or impropriety. But more than that, he was unlike any man who lived in the Riddermark; he had an air of magic about him, as if he could see into the hearts of Men and bend them to his will, more alike the Elves of old than the Men of the present. Théodred warned her to stand before him with no lies in her thoughts, lest he wrench the truth from her heart. She had not yet met him, but Éowyn found that she did not fear him, but instead found him tiresome. Any man so self-serious could have nothing to offer her but annoyance. 

Minas Tirith surprised her—it was not that she liked it (it would take nothing short of destroying and completely remaking the City for that to be the case), but its dissimilarities to Edoras were striking. The poverty and misery of the City was immediately evident upon entering the enormous gates, squalor and filth unhidden from view. Edoras, of course, had its own miseries, but the King had done what he could to alleviate them, and hid from initial view what he could not alleviate. Visitors to Edoras were not greeted by its failures. 

The reason for such an apparent oversight became evident as they wound their way up the enormous spirals that formed the City. Each circle grew in wealth and status, sprawling upwards into the sky, until at last a single spire (the White Tower of Ecthelion, Lord Boromir told her) rose above all else. The destitution was confined to the lower circles, almost spilling out its gates, Éowyn realised, because those who dwelt in the upper echelons rarely left the City. The thought sent a shiver down her spine.

In the streets, Lord Boromir was hailed with the same fervour that the people of the Mark reserved for returning war heroes. He was loved by these people, most of whom called out to him in the Common Tongue, but some who spoke in Elvish. He responded with warmth, never seeming to tire of speaking to and acknowledging those who sought his attention. In that, he reminded her dearly of Théodred, and her heart clenched miserably in her chest. 

They stabled their horses on the fifth circle, where Éowyn’s escort would be given lodgings before returning to Edoras. There, Éowyn took a moment of quiet with her horse, Windfola, as Lord Boromir arranged for her baggage train to be sent to the supply entrance of the Citadel. She attempted to remove Windfola’s tack herself, hoping for the meditative solace of such a grounding and familiar activity, but was quickly stopped by an indignant stablehand who insisted that those who kept their mounts in these stables did not manage their own horses. She stared at the stablehand, wondering if he knew how feeble and petty he had already made his people sound, but was interrupted by the return of Lord Boromir. He evidently had no problem with allowing others to care for his horse, and had not stopped to think that she might, and so began to guide her away from the stables entirely.

This, Éowyn thought, was already a bad start to her exile. 

They entered the Citadel—a fortress where the governance of the kingdom was handled—through a tunnel. The tunnel led to a forecourt paved with glistening white cobbles and guarded by men in gleaming silver plate armour. The entire City was an act in blinding newcomers; from the extravagant displays of wealth, the white-washed masonry, to the inescapable presence of guards, Éowyn feared a headache if the sun ever got too bright in the sky. 

The White Tower of Ecthelion surged so high into the sky, and was thereupon crowned by an even taller flagpole bearing an enormous white banner that was so entirely immense that gazing up at it too long dizzied Éowyn. Opposite the Tower laid, in brilliant greens, rich browns, and the shimmering, rushing blues of water, the realm of Gondor. It was a monumental land, not just for the man made buildings and monoliths that interrupted the landscape, but for the precision with which it seemed to be tamed; even those tracts of land that she thought ought to be wilded appeared to her, from her vantage point high above the City and the world, to be perfectly manicured. This land was nothing like the Mark. 

Behind the Tower, nestled against the cliff face of the mountain, though by no means less grandiose than any of the other buildings of the Citadel, was the Palace of the Stewards. Beside it, as if reflected in a mirror that showed a better version of one’s self, was an equally expansive palace. This, Lord Boromir told her gravely, was the Palace of the Kings, uninhabited now for nigh on a millennium. Privately, Éowyn wondered at why the Stewards, who had ruled Gondor for nearly double the length of time that her own kingdom had existed, did not merely become kings themselves, but the tone of Lord Boromir’s voice suggested that it was not a topic upon which she should intrude. 

Inside the Stewards’ Palace, she was set upon by a veritable army of servants. There was firstly Hadoriel, who reported to the Palace seneschal but whose primary duties were now to oversee Éowyn’s apartments. Then there were several housemaids, even more laundresses, and a girl, no older than fifteen, named Sedril, who appeared to serve the function of a page without any of the military obligations. 

After making the necessary introductions, Lord Boromir bowed with great formality, then disappeared back into the labyrinthine halls of the Palace, leaving Éowyn to discover the limits of her coruscant cage. Sedril, whose black curls bounced wildly with each word she spoke, was eager to act as a guide, and Éowyn, who yet hoped to learn more about her captors before facing them again this evening, was all too happy to oblige. 

Sedril was from a noble family, she said, a family that had long ties of friendship with the family of the Steward. Her father was the Lord of Anórien, the fiefdom that stretched from the gates of Minas Tirith to the Mering Stream, bounded in the north and south by the Onodló (the Entwash, Éowyn realised after some time racking her brain for Elvish translations), and the Ered Nimrais (the White Mountains, this translation came easier). Her mother, originally from the southern fiefdom of Mornan, was a favourite friend of the Lord Steward, and had leapt at the chance to offer her daughter in service to an esteemed guest. Sedril spoke in such a way that almost convinced Éowyn that she was seen as an esteemed guest, but all she knew about the Gondorrim suggested that, in fact, Sedril was simply naive enough to believe what she was told without understanding the subtext. 

In truth, as they explored the cavernous apartments that were to become Éowyn’s holding cell, she realised that Sedril was there to act as an informant. The girl could have no way of knowing it, the world seemed to her an entirely happy and just place, but there was no doubt that in her credulity she would readily share information that otherwise should not be shared. Staring at the sitting room that she knew would host no real friends of hers, Éowyn began to accept that every word she spoke here would, effectively, be spoken in public. Privacy, or what little privacy she had had in Edoras, was now a thing of the past. 

She was seen to a bath in an opulent washroom, where the Gondorrim obsession with self-imposed helplessness continued. Not only was Sedril expected to help Éowyn undress, she was expected to help wash her too. Modesty bore a different definition to the Mark than it did in Gondor, that she had been warned of, but even so, being prevented from bathing alone seemed like several steps too far. Sedril, however inadvertently, had routed Éowyn’s attempts to shoo her away by launching into a discussion of the family of the Steward. 

Éowyn relented, allowing Sedril to assist her while listening intently to every word that came out of her mouth. Most of the information was information she knew already: it was a family of three, the Lord Steward, his two sons. The elder, Lord Boromir, was a warrior of renowned valour, the consummate heir, loved by all, and carrying a vitality and youth to him that spoke of promise for Gondor’s future; the younger, Lord Faramir, was different. He, too, was a warrior—or at least was a soldier, captain of the Gondorrim forces in Ithilien—, but had fewer major victories to his name. In his youth, he had earned something of a reputation for quiet brazenness, though Sedril spoke of this mostly in the terms of ancient history, it having happened so early in her youth. At one point, there were rumours of an impending betrothal to a daughter of the Lord of Tolfalas, but since those had fallen away, he had earned a reputation as completely untemptable.

What interested Éowyn most was her depiction of the Lord Denethor. Sedril was aware of him as a towering sort of figure, but remained sympathetic to him nonetheless. He had married late in life, to a beautiful princess from the southern coast. She was well loved wherever she went, and loved even more when she had borne two healthy sons, fulfilling with precision her requirement to produce an heir and a spare. Despite the outward perfection of her life, she had fallen ill, and had wasted away for many years before dying some thirty years ago. The Lord Denethor had become a tragic figure in the intervening years, still admired for the diligence with which he executed the responsibilities of his office, but his joy dimmed considerably for the loss of his beloved wife. 

Éowyn, now washed and dried, began the process of being dressed from the trunk of her belongings that had been delivered to her chambers. Sedril continued to talk, but her own mind wandered. Her uncle had similarly lost his wife, but if anything had become more loving and open thereafter, filling his halls with light and music and joy, taking in Éowyn and Éomer, caring for them as his own, and ever honouring the memory of Elfhild with a promise of life. Even Éowyn, orphaned so young, had not become a recluse, despite having every justification to. Yes, she thought, she understood Lord Denethor less and less each time she thought on him. 

Thoroughly tired of Sedril’s babbling, and dressed in something equating an appropriate ensemble, she sent the girl away, demanding a few moments of silence to recuperate after her long journey. The girl had acquiesced, with the sort of affected deference learned after too many years in a disciplinarian household, an implication Éowyn intended to return to later. 

The girl gone, Éowyn stood at the window in her bed chambers, gazing out at the fields that lay beyond the walls of the City. Farmsteads dotted the land, ordered precisely to form a grid. A partially-ruined wall enclosed the field, and fleetingly Éowyn wondered if it was to keep enemies out, or people in. Closer, much closer, to her window, laid a small terrace garden, mostly comprising white bricks, but with four squared flowerbeds, decently if sparsely maintained. There were four trees at each corner, casting long shade across the flagstones. A small staircase led down to the garden from her sitting room. 

First checking to ensure that no twittering maids would follow her, Éowyn escaped out the door, shutting it gently behind her in the hopes that no one would come looking for her. The sun felt warmer, less threatening than it did inside the City and the Citadel. The breeze, moderated on three sides by the protection of the Palace and the mountainside, rustled the leaves on the trees and the flowers in the bed, not quite so harsh as it was in the forecourt. 

She had little experience of gardening, but what she did have told her that the flowerbeds here were planted to require the smallest energy expenditure to maintain them. The flowers were mostly perennials, ones that she recognised from the fields around Edoras, though more artfully placed here. Everything gave the impression of reluctant duty here, as if it was expected that a garden be there, though no-one had any interest in doing more than keeping up appearances. 

Crouching, she felt the velvety petals of a daffodil beneath her fingers, smelling its soothing perfume. She had had no inclination to cry since she left Edoras, but something about the tranquility of this garden stirred sorrow within her. When she had been moving, and then faced with meeting and memorising so many new faces, it seemed that her momentum was so strong her feet would just carry on until she returned to Meduseld. But here, kneeling against the hard, hot stone, knowing full well that she had stopped moving and that she had stopped in Minas Tirith, her soul was beginning to admit to the reality of her captivity. 

It should have been an honour, she knew. The alliance between Gondor and the Mark was the oldest and most significant of each kingdom’s, but the manner with which she had been sent from Edoras disturbed her. It was as if one day she was Éowyn, niece of Théoden, sister to Éomer, and the next she was Lady Éowyn of Rohan, Defender of the North to their southern detractors. It should have been a moment of intense pride for her, but instead it felt as though she were being pushed away from her family, as if she had committed some crime against them or brought dishonour to them and needed isolating. Éomer and Théodred, when the time came for them to prove their worth, had taken up command of their respective éoreds, an act as integral to the culture of the Mark as the grasslands or the rivers that fed them. Éowyn, allegedly granted the opportunity to prove herself, had been sent hundreds of leagues away, to a foreign and unwelcoming kingdom. What did it say about her that they believed that she would prove her worth so far from her home? 

“I had not realised you had arrived.”

Glancing up from the flower, she saw a man leaning against the far wall of the garden, invisible from her window, but now clear as day. He looked nothing like a soldier, too wiry, but carried the air of a man who would be a formidable opponent nonetheless. He was tall, of a face with Lord Boromir, but less lined by mirth. His hair, long and dark, was pulled back behind his head in a braid similar to hers, but infinitely messier, matched in untidiness only by the jagged lines of his short beard. Dressed in brown and green, he appeared at odds with the stark white about him, as if he had come directly from a life in the forests. The only thing marking him as of this staid city was the book he carried under his arm, thick, bound in dark leather. 

She released the daffodil, then stood, straightening the fall of her skirts. “Why should you know who I am or when I arrived?”

“You,” he said, “are Lady Éowyn of Rohan, a fellow prisoner of the court of Minas Tirith.”

She paused, wondering who this impudent young man was, and how exactly he’d gotten into the garden. She looked back up at the door to her sitting room to check that it was, in fact, still closed.

“There are stairs from the library behind that tree,” he said, gesturing towards the oak furthest from her.

She frowned at him. “You are mistaken, I am no prisoner. I am the ambassador of Théoden King of the Riddermark to Lord Denethor of Gondor.”

“And yet, if you will forgive me for saying so, your sorrow speaks more to the gallows than the realm of diplomacy.”

She blanched, then a feeling of unease settled in over her—it was true that she was sad, but she had been careful to keep that sadness from her demeanour. Hiding her emotions had been an invaluable survival skill at Meduseld, and it frightened her to think that she was now faced with someone who saw right through her defences. Still, if Théodred’s warning about the Elven magic had been at all accurate, she now knew exactly who this man was. 

“Lord Faramir.”

“My lady,” he greeted, tipping his head in only the most perfunctory deference. Then he crossed his legs at the ankle and opened his book, leaving Éowyn bewildered.

Thus far, the Gondorrim had appeared to her to be overly effusive in their conversation, speaking merely to be heard and to appear as though they were performing the proper formalities. This man, however, seemed to have no interest in doing more than alerting her to his presence, and then immediately accepting that she had no interest in chatting. But her defences had been breached, and she would not fall without a fight. 

“It is not sadness you see, but fatigue. I have travelled a long distance this past week, so might be excused for a certain slowness in my manner,” she said indignantly. 

“Indeed,” he said after a moment. “The people of Rohan must be a very trustworthy people, for you are not well practiced at the art of deception.” 

That, she thought, was the most backhanded way she had ever been called honest. 

“Since you cannot lie,” he continued, “you might prepare a better answer for why the King of Rohan has sent his teenage niece here, evidently against her will, in lieu of any of his lords or councillors.” 

“I am one and twenty,” she snapped, the words coming too quickly. “And none could be spared from the border conflicts.”

He smiled at her, a wry ghost of a smile, but a smile all the same. “But you do not deny that you are here against your will?”

She blanched, she had not even thought to refute that, had not realised that that failure would be so revealing. 

“Lady Éowyn, I bear you no ill will, and what reasons Théoden King had for sending you here are, I am sure, worthy ones. No doubt you are capable enough to execute your duty faithfully. But Minas Tirith is no provincial court, if you are to fulfil your duties—whatever they may be—then you must be ever on your guard, and prepare yourself for more incisive barbs than implying that you are unhappy to be here.” He shut his book with a small whoosh of air. “But you are tired, and I can see that you would prefer your solitude, so I will take my leave.”

He left with such speed that she was unable to chastise him for calling Meduseld a ‘provincial court’. Though it was true that the Mark on the whole was smaller than Gondor, their concerns were no less important than his. And to speak so openly against her country! 

For a moment after her eyes lost track of him, she wondered that she had seen him at all, and not some sort of annoying phantasm. The way her heart raced, and the searing heat of the blood in her veins, however, told her that the experience was very much real. 

Real, and infuriating.  

She remained in the garden for several more hours, turning over his challenge in her head. She could not lie—would not, but he was right, she would be asked about her purpose here. Théodred had told her that it was to regain the trust of the Lord Denethor, and that had been a sufficient explanation for her until Lord Faramir had problematised it. She was not often in the habit of imagining herself a young woman, but that fact was inescapable, and others would surely see it more obviously than she. 

Had her uncle and cousin sent her to make a match for herself? Was she expected to marry some little lordling to solidify the Oath of Eorl? She could hardly imagine them expecting that of her without first communicating it to her, but what other reason could there be for sending her? Could Erkenbrand of Deeping-coomb not have served the same function, retired though he was? Such insecurities could only hinder her success. She would need to find her own justification, if an obvious one did not present itself. 

Sedril returned to help her dress for dinner, and, in the customary way of young girls, made a face at the formal gowns Éowyn had brought, declaring them unfashionable. Éowyn, who had yet to find a topic she was less interested in than clothing, nodded her head and listened to Sedril’s advice until the girl had tired herself out. She had no intention of paying for new gowns (though she had been sent with ample coin), but was willing to indulge the girl if only to give her a sense of the prejudices she would be facing in court. 

Dinner that evening was to be a relatively small affair, with only the family of the Steward and the family of the Lord of Anórien present. Sedril guided her to the Steward’s formal apartments, then slipped down a side door where, she said, her parents were waiting for her.

Unlike Edoras, there was a more formal routine for welcoming guests to a meal. Even in a private dinner, a seneschal would announce the guests in ascending rank order, which meant (to her surprise) that Éowyn would enter last. Though she was untitled, her status as the niece of a king seemed to afford her some prestige. 

As she waited to be called, she considered the decor of the Steward’s apartment—or, at least, the foyer. It was ruthlessly efficient in its design, scarcely a chair or table stood that did not have an explicit purpose, and very few ornaments adorned the walls, save for a metal crest here and there or a tapestry hung from the far wall. 

When announced, she entered into yet another soberly-decorated room. She was told these were the Lord Denethor’s private apartments, but it seemed to her as if they were utterly devoid of life. Pristine in their condition, lacking any identifying marks or trinkets, and breathlessly formal. 

Lord Denethor, she learned, was much the same. His sons both favoured him in appearance, though he had infinitely more sternness to his look, appearing to her like a carrion crow awaiting the end of a battle. A king he was, in manner at least, if not title, and again Éowyn found herself confused as to why his house had not taken up the title after so many years administering all the duties of the Crown. It was just one of a hundred other incomprehensible facts of life in her new home. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Lady Berúthiel was by far and away the most nefarious of his father’s friends and allies, so it came as no surprise to him that it was she he had invited this evening to act as a social buffer. She would, relying upon the latitude given to women (particularly mothers) to sniff out details about young people that might otherwise go unnoticed, do her best to rip Lady Éowyn apart. He had sensed a strength of being in Lady Éowyn that indicated to him that she might withstand it long enough to survive this evening with her dignity intact—so long as she kept some of that fiery pride that lingered beneath the surface in check. 

She seemed competent enough (certainly self-possessed enough) to survive for a time here. She would need good allies, decent allies, ones who could overlook the alienness of her culture to draw out those traits in her that would keep her head above water. He, however, could not be that ally, no matter how fascinating he found her and that vengeful sadness that clung to her like a cloak. Whatever her reasons for being here (and he suspected that there was more to it than merely reopening regular diplomatic ties), she would need to engender some sort of sympathy from his father, and in that cause he could only do her harm. If what he saw in the garden today was any indication of her true personality, there was every chance she was too similar to him in character for him to not bring out those traits that would only hinder her. Anyway, he was intending to go back to spending as little time in the City as possible, and she would need a more constant ally. 

And, perhaps, an ally with some understanding of the aesthetic politics of Gondor.

Though he had to admit that he did enjoy watching Lady Berúthiel, dripping in so many jewels and fine silks and perfumes that he thought she might have accidentally worn an entire shop to dinner, square off with Lady Éowyn, who had shown up that night in a curiously simple gown wearing no jewellery whatsoever, save for a thin gold girdle. Briefly, he wondered if Lady Éowyn had been so confident in her ability to verbally outmanoeuvre her opponents tonight that she had decided to eschew the distracting accoutrements of women’s dress, but when she stumbled on defending her King’s failure to trade with the Men of Dale, he was certain that she simply had no idea how to wield women’s weapons. 

That, undeniably, was not a topic on which he could be of any use to her: he had long since forsaken keeping his appearance in line with common fashions, and could, on most days, barely be bothered to brush his hair. No, tutelage in that regard would have to come from elsewhere. And, as he had already had to remind himself once that evening, he would be retreating to Ithilien with haste so would have no time to help her. 

It was a shame, he thought, that none of Berúthiel’s implied criticisms of the Rohirrim bore any resemblance to anything worth criticising. Instead of highlighting their reckless valorisation of martial deeds over strategic victories, she hinted that their fashions were too plain; rather than noting that their lack of a true written culture would mean that their considerable history would pass into the unknown, she complained that their social norms lacked sufficient rank deference. In this, Boromir was Lady Éowyn’s (and, by extension, Rohan’s) most ardent defender. It frustrated Faramir to no end that his brother could not see the obvious faults with the culture and politics of the Rohirrim, but at least here his obsessive apologetics served some greater purpose. 

She had done well, keeping her defence close to her chest and allowing very little new room for Berúthiel to strike, so Boromir’s interventions were largely supplementary, giving the impression that she had more support in the room than she strictly did. That easy command of her conversational space spoke not to promise, but to mastery of a certain type of social skill. It was a skill Boromir was particularly gifted in, and his continued support of her at the dinner table implied the beginning of an alliance that might prove mutually beneficial. 

Beside her, after having kept remarkably quiet for most of the evening, his father prepared to launch his own move. Evidently Berúthiel’s investigation was not revealing what he had hoped it would, and the crease between his brows deepened the longer Lady Éowyn was compelled to answer question after question about the exact nature of her childhood education. He wondered what approach his father would take to her; undoubtedly he could see that she had little interest in engaging in innuendo and implication, but would that stop him? 

The answer, he learned quickly, was yes, yes it would. 

His father took a long, slow sip of wine, carefully placed the cup just so on the table, then fixed his gaze on Lady Éowyn. In what was easily her most impressive feat of the night, she unflinchingly held his gaze, appearing neither impressed nor intimidated. 

“Why, my lady, did Théoden King send you to us?” 

Faramir might have laughed, if laughing wasn’t by far and away the cruelest option. In the garden that afternoon he had imagined himself to be the most callous version of himself, and even he could not approximate the bluntness with which his father approached the question on everybody’s lips. 

He steeled himself to hear a reprisal of her weak excuse about lacking men not engaged in combat—he knew (so his father knew) that the King had a former Marshal of the Mark living out his retirement in the land near the Deeping-coomb. There were men available, but they had not been sent. 

“My lord,” she began, regarding his father with a look of calm detachment. “As you have heard, I was raised in every way an equal to my brother and cousin, the Prince of the Mark. My skills are not just comparable to a man’s, they are a man’s. But my uncle knew that men are disposed to taking pity on women, and thought that the fact of my being a woman might induce a degree of compassion that would not otherwise be available for the men of his court.” 

Faramir, with as much grace as he could muster, lunged at his cup of wine to mask the smile that crept up on his face. Boromir, much more comfortable with his own presence in such situations, laughed loudly. 

“An answer and a half, my lady,” he said, raising his cup in toast to her. “If the Lady of Rohan intends to bat her eyelashes and simper her way into the heart of Gondor, then I for one am eager to see it happen!” 

Not for one moment did Faramir believe that that was her real plan, but the smile she wore when she looked at Boromir was so blindingly beautiful he thought she might end up doing exactly that all the same.

Chapter 3: Book I: Spring 3016

That dinner had been something of a watershed moment. She made no new inroads with Lord Denethor in her first week in Minas Tirith, but Lord Boromir had proved himself to be enough of a friend that she did not resist quite so thoroughly when he insisted on seeking her out. She was under no illusions about why he had a single-minded focus on spending time with her; Théodred had undoubtedly put him up to it, but by the end of the week she found herself begrudgingly grateful to have a companion who was not a chittering teenager or a vicious fool. 

He carved out an impressive amount of time for her, either taking dinner with her in her apartments or meeting her in the afternoon to stroll around the Citadel or the City. He was very similar to Théodred, though more restrained in temperament and somewhat less prone to outrage when faced with an unsolvable problem. This, she realised quickly, was because Gondor existed as an unsolvable problem: a kingdom with no king at the frontlines of an unwinnable battle against unspeakable evil. Impotence was built into the culture here, as inescapable as the sky above their heads or the ground below their feet. 

Even with his companionship, she was dreadfully lonely. The Gondorrim nobility spoke the Elven tongue as a matter of course (and, she thought, of status insecurity), and though she had been tutored in Sindarin, she was far from fluent. When addressing her directly, people were careful to use the Common Tongue, but her ambient soundscape remained foreign and she felt more isolated than ever. 

Worse still was the totality of her captivity: she could not ride Windfola out along the fields beyond the City gates, for the fields were working fields, and the verdant land she saw from her window, Ithilien, was off-limits to all but a select few warriors. Lord Boromir’s brother was the captain of that company, and was expected to return to them at the end of her second week, a thought which stirred an emotion in her that she could make neither heads nor tails of. 

On a base level, she found him interesting enough to think about more than once, which set him apart from nearly everybody else she had met thus far. He was handsome in quite a disarming way, but very distant. If she in Minas Tirith was estranged from her people, he also seemed to be estranged from something, though what she could not yet tell. She, more than a little alarmed at their encounter in the garden, had taken to avoiding him, Théodred’s caution about the magic of the Elves echoing in her thoughts. She did owe him thanks for his warning about her reason for being in Gondor, but she was so unsettled by the speed with which he uncovered her thoughts and feelings that she sought to keep her distance. 

She saw him twice more in the garden, each time from her window, and each time he had a different book. Once, in a brief moment where she had gazed out at him trying to organise her thoughts on him, she was certain in her bones that he was aware of her, even if he didn’t look up. That unnerved her enough to make her resolute in her desire to avoid him. She did not like anyone who she could not easily understand, and she liked even less anyone she could not readily make useful to her aims. 

At the end of her first week, Lord Boromir arrived at her apartments early in the morning, bearing a leather hauberk that matched the one he wore. She, unimpressed with being approached so early in the morning, required a moment of careful coercion before she was willing to listen to his offer, but then was altogether very happy that she did. 

“I made a promise to your cousin I would not allow your training to slip,” he said, walking by her side out of the Palace, “and I will not be forsworn.”

He took her down the winding circles of the City, until they came upon a practice ring, double in size to the one she was accustomed to outside Meduseld, with infinitely more soldiers skulking about. There, she donned Lord Boromir’s gifted hauberk, fetched a training sword, and stepped into the ring. 

He had the advantage of both years and bulk on her, but she had been trained well in how to mitigate those factors. Éomer had taken no mercy on her, and after a certain age even Théodred sparred with her as an equal, and in response, she had been forced to learn how to duck and weave to tire her opponents out before striking out in earnest. Dexterity and stamina were her allies, and they were allies she would use well. 

Lord Boromir had, apparently, not been told by Théodred that she was in the habit of fighting grown men, and so came at their first round as if he were training a child. She beat him handily, but the victory was hollow, for she did not feel she had really earned it. When the dulled tip of her blade cracked against his side however, she saw the light of challenge in his eye, and in the next round he made it clear that he would underestimate her no longer. 

He was skilled, weaker than Théodred, less imposing than Éomer, but craftier than both of them put together. It took no time at all before she was sweating heavily from her exertions. Each time he knocked her back, she saw in his face a flash of worry, as if this would be the time she broke, but each time she pulled herself to her feet, he redoubled his efforts as if she was no more breakable than any of the soldiers who stood and watched. 

In the end, he beat her four times to her two, and, drenched in sweat and lying on her back in the dust, she felt something that might have been happiness. 

“Well earned, Lord Boromir,” she said as he helped her off the ground.

“I think,” he replied, wiping dust off his own hands, “after the challenge you have issued me, ‘Boromir’ will suffice.” 

“And after the trouncing you have issued me, to ensure that you stay humble I shall insist you continue to address me as Lady Éowyn.”   

He grinned at her, and in return she smiled at him, her first true smile in a fortnight. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

For whatever successes she had earning the trust of Boromir, she had none with Lord Denethor. She had been warned (by many) that he was a man singularly dedicated to his duties, but she had failed to account for how intensive his duties were. He worked from the early hours of the morning until late in the evening, interrupted only by those social calls he could not reasonably avoid. Those social calls, it seemed, did not include her.

Until the afternoon of her ninth day in the City, when a page delivered her a hand-written invitation, stamped with the seal of the Steward, requesting her presence in a room in the White Tower of Ecthelion. Sedril, being just fifteen years of age and never before invited into the Tower past the Hall of Kings, was entirely unhelpful for navigating. Instead, Éowyn resolved to ask the Tower Guards when she arrived, and hope that none of them found it to be a foolish question. 

The air outside was warm and still, the first day that might be called summer. Time seemed to move slower here, as if that, like the rocks and the mountains and the rivers, had been brought under the control of the Gondorrim, to be stopped and started at their whim. She lingered in the forecourt for a moment, feeling the warmth of the sun upon her skin, imagining that she was at home in Edoras, preparing to ride out into the great, infinite grasslands. 

“There are better places to enjoy the sun.”

She opened her eyes slowly, and was met by the sight of Lord Faramir, looking as artfully out of place as ever. 

“Later, perhaps,” she said, squinting into the sun, eking out her last few moments with it. “I have an appointment with the Lord Steward.” 

“I would recommend arriving early, he has different expectations of punctuality to most,” he said, and she hoped that that would be all he would say, because the unnerving feeling that he was seeing too much of her had returned. 

“I don’t know how to find the room he invited me to,” she confessed, then was surprised at her confession. Had she not wanted him to leave?

A moment of silence passed between them, interrupted only by the sound of a bird chirping in the distance. 

“I could show you,” he said, then added: “My lady.” 

She considered her options for a moment, then decided that between his warning about punctuality and her unfamiliarity with the area, it would be asinine to turn away assistance for the sake of her pride. 

“Lead the way,” she said, then added: “My lord.” 

He carried another book under his arm, and for the sake of making polite conversation while they walked, she asked him about it. He told her it was a history of the Undeeps, the land Eorl the Young had traversed on his way to aid the Ruling Steward Cirion during his war against the Balchoth. She nodded and told him what she knew of it, the routes through it which provided the best tactical advantages, and which were the most dangerous. 

In return, he told her he was interested not in the military history, but of the geography of it. He had never been west of the Mering Stream nor north of the Dead Marshes, and so had no image in his head of what the land there looked like. She, feeling as though she had somehow been given a dressing down without realising it, rose to the challenge he had set. She described the land as far north as she had been, which was in fact the Wold, intending to prove to him that though he thought her people provincial, there was much they could do that he could not.

Once or twice, he interrupted her to ask how she could be content with knowing that such rich recollections of her country and people would be lost to history for their having not been committed to the written word. Each time, she, with as civil a smile as she could muster, explained to him that they would not be lost to history, that the stories of her people were as rich and numerous as the stories of the Gondorrim, and that they lost little for their method of transmission. He seemed to her to be genuinely distressed, as if the stories were somehow illegitimate or fragile for their lack of commitment to the written word. 

“Our stories might be more enduring than yours,” she said, not bothering to mask her insolence. “Tales of wartime gallantry are not so easily forgotten.”

His brow furrowed. “But war is not all that a people are, what of the weavers, artisans, and farmers? Theirs are not stories of bloodshed and valour, but are they any less important to the history of your people?”

She stopped walking and looking at him directly, face contorted into an expression of disbelief. 

“Do the books in your libraries tell the stories of farmhands and weavers?” 

At the very least, he had the good grace to look sheepish when next he spoke: “No, but perhaps they should.” 

She laughed and continued walking. “No indeed. So your quibble with my people is one that is equally applicable to your own. I wonder, then, if you are not being a touch unjust in your assessment?”  

“Is a judgement inherently unjust simply because it encompasses multiple subjects? I should think that that would make it a more necessary complaint.” He stopped outside a small, nondescript door. “This, my lady, is where I leave you.” 

When a brisk bow of his head, he departed, yet again leaving her feeling slightly detached from reality. 

But she had no time for deciphering why she reacted as she did to the traces of Elvishness that persisted within him; she had to ensure that this, her first private meeting with Lord Denethor, would be a fruitful one. 

The room he had invited her to was a chart room, filled from war to ceiling with shelves full of scrolls, and featuring two tables in the centre of the room, each covered with enormous maps. She had, of course, seen maps before, her uncle had a noteworthy collection in his study in Meduseld, but never had she seen maps so expansive and yet so detailed. The ones she could see covered hundreds of leagues in each direction, with incredible amounts of information about the land they encompassed. 

Lord Denethor revealed himself from behind a bookshelf, carrying a small canvas sack and a rolled up chart. She sketched a curtsey to him, which he faintly acknowledged, then unfurled the chart across the table. It was a long, fairly generic map of the lands of Gondor, the Mark, and the Enedwaith. He continued to say nothing to her, but emptied the canvas bag on the table, scattering tiny map markers across the surface. As she watched, he placed the markers along the map: three in South Ithilien, two in Pelargir on the Anduin, one on the isle of Tolfalas, two in Dol Amroth, four in Osgiliath opposite Minas Morgul, two in Cair Andros, two in the Emyn Muil. He looked at the map for a moment, his face unreadable as his eyes traced over the lines. 

“These are our points of routine contact with the Enemy, each of these locations hosts at least five hundred men at all times,” he said. Then he collected up the remaining markers and placed them in front of her.

She looked at the borders of the Mark and knew that if she admitted to even half of all the locations there were regular skirmishes, the Mark would appear weak. But she looked back at the markers along Gondor and saw that they, too, looked weakened. He was offering up Gondor’s own bleak prognosis in exchange for the Mark’s. He was approaching this from how she thought about it: it would be impossible to understand the strength of their alliance without knowing its weaknesses.

The first marker was placed in the Wold, across the Anduin from the south Undeeps. The next twenty leagues north of that, also in the Wold. Then came the banks of the Limlight, the land opposite the Sarn Gebir, the Gap of Rohan, the Fords of Isen. She set the leftover markers down and looked up at Lord Denethor, who was eyeing the map cautiously. 

“Edoras is not a walled city,” he said.

“Not as Minas Tirith is a walled city, my lord,” she said, though unsure if he was actually asking. 

“The bulk of your farmlands are where?”

“The banks of the Snowbourn,” she answered without hesitation. “And along the banks of the Entwash in the Westemnet.” 

“If control were lost over the Onodló, you would be able to survive yet.” 

“Attacks from the east present a less serious concern for us,” she confirmed. “Both Edoras and the refuge of the Hornburg are well resourced.” 

“But only for so long, and an army from the west met by an army of the east could prove fatal.”

“For such an army to pass into the Mark would require the fall of Gondor,” she said quickly, brow furrowing. 

He looked at her for a very long second, in such a way that her heart thudded in her chest. Then he looked back down at the table, gnarled finger stretching out towards the map. 

“The Anduin is uncrossable except at a select few points,” he said. He pointed at them: the Undeeps, Cair Andros, Osgiliath, Pelargir. “Only Osgiliath can support a landed crossing of a full-scale army.” 

His finger strayed south, pressing against a line beneath the mark that denoted Minas Tirith. “This is Rath Bachor. It is the sole road passing between the Ered Nimrais and the Anduin, connecting Minas Tirith to the southern kingdom.”

He pulled out a chart, it was almost illegible to her for the density of figures and labels squeezed between the margins. It looked, from what little she could make out, to be a balance sheet, listing gross tonnage of imports of food and raw materials. The numbers were astronomical.

“Anórien accounts for but a fraction of the raw goods required to sustain Minas Tirith. If Osgiliath falls, and Rath Bachor blockaded, the City will withstand a siege of one month. When the City falls, the only direction from whence reinforcements could arrive is the west, from Rohan.” 

“It would come,” she said defiantly. 

“If Osgiliath falls, then Minas Tirith will fall, and so too will Rohan. It is in the interest of your King to not see Osgiliath fall,” he said, and then departed. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

His father was a shrewd strategist, and was handling an increasingly complex war with greater finesse than could be wrung out of any of the other men of this kingdom. But he was also a politician, and a politician managing a fraught landscape that demanded certain concessions that this war could not (or should not) bring. He needed dramatic, exciting victories to justify the colossal costs of the war to the flightier lords of the south, and he needed them with greater frequency. But the war in Ithilien was not a war given to creating fodder for the propagandists. It was a slow, miserable trudge through minor skirmish after minor skirmish, a war of attrition that felt, even in the blistering heat of summer, like an eternal winter. 

His father knew this, but what his father knew and what his father desired were often at odds with one another. It was Boromir’s greatest talent, contriving heroic war stories to keep the fools of the court content. Boromir was talented at it because he believed in war—not war for war’s sake, but he believed in this war so deeply that he had allowed himself to become defined by it. He measured his worth in terms of the war: how many orcs he had slain, how many battles he had won, how many dangerous acts of valour he had seen the other side of. It was well enough that he was good at it, and prone to a cheerful temper, because such an attitude towards war and life had, in Faramir’s estimations, degenerated the entire kingdom into a husk of its former self. When he consulted his books of lore, burrowing himself into the tales of the kingdom of old, of the land of Númenor, he saw almost nothing recognisable to him, a son of Gondor. 

It was on this (and many other things) that he and his father disagreed. It was never said aloud that he should raise the stakes to catalyse more glorious battles, that would be too craven—even for a family such as theirs—but it was ever implied. Faramir knew that some of his men even agreed with his father, for all the horrors they had seen in Ithilien, he knew that they felt the pull of envy when they spoke to soldiers of his brother’s troop, who had endlessly triumphant war stories to share. But he could not bring himself to do it. Anyway, it mattered little to him if the Lords of Lamedon desired a restructuring of the kingdom’s expenditures, the Rangers were the most cost-effective force in Gondor’s service and could continue their operations with the revenue of a single profitable farm if need be. 

That, he knew, was not an attitude his father appreciated, but it was also not one he was willing to change, and so it led to many protracted disputes whenever Faramir had the misfortune of being in the City for an extended period of time. He had, thus, expected to spend his last days in the City anywhere but the Citadel. He was older now, a little more sedate, but in his youth there had been plenty of taverns he had once enjoyed that he thought he might return to, for a little taste of anonymity and urban seclusion. 

But then he had seen her standing there, in the light of the sun, and all thoughts of being alone had melted away. 

Lady Éowyn mystified him. Not in how he felt about her—it took a single look at her to see that she was as fair and lovely as the first blossoms of spring—but in what he thought of her. At first he had wanted to call her clever, but that seemed wrong. It was not that she wasn’t intelligent, she seemed disconcertingly aware of herself and everything around her, and even without the advantage of a written culture she was competent enough to match wits with those who challenged her to it, but clever seemed like an entirely inaccurate description. Then he thought that maybe the word for her was strong, but that too felt insufficient. She carried herself like a warrior and spoke not as the daughter of kings, but as the son of kings. She faced what was, undeniably, an intimidating change in situation with admirable composure and grace. Still, strong felt too simple a descriptor for her. 

And there was her sadness too. That unimaginable pull of sadness that seemed to go unnoticed by almost everyone, so skilled was she at masking it. At times he wondered if she had even convinced herself that it was not there, but in a quiet moment, when she thought that she was passing unseen, he would see a glint of worry in her eyes confirming that no, she was very conscious of her sorrow. 

He had no time for love—or rather, he had all the time in the world for love, but his time was not his own, and his master, the war, had no time for love. She, he assumed, would have little time for such declarations anyways; not only had it been barely a week since they had met, but she had been sent to the City for reasons that yet remained opaque to him, and she had the sort of air about her that made him think that no amount of poetry and fine prose would induce her to do anything that was not her duty. Which, he reasoned, was an admirable enough trait and one that, if his duty were not something he found so distasteful, he might hope to see in himself. 

There was, of course, the unavoidable issue of his status as the second son. She was the niece of a King, the singular lady of the House of Eorl, and in all ways of character a desirable woman. She could—should—marry well, a lord with an extensive estate or even a prince, someone who could give her not just security, but comfort of rank. He could give her security, he might even be able to give her comfort, but as the second son, he could not give her anything befitting her rank. He could not give her what she so richly deserved, and that was enough to make him hesitant. So he could not love her, or he could not love her in the way he ought to, and so should not.

Still, he had seen her outshining the sun, and decided that irrespective of whether he loved her, he would be doing a great service to his country if he entertained the esteemed ambassador from Rohan. 

The problem, he learned with haste and uneasiness, was less that she had no time for declarations of love, and more that she had no time for him. She seemed to ascribe to him all of the cultural differences that existed between their two peoples. It was true that there was much he found worthy of criticism in the way of the Rohirrim, but there was similarly much he found worthy of criticism in the way of his own people. He tried to find ways to show her that whatever misgivings he had about her culture did not extend to misgivings about her, but she was utterly impenetrable. 

He saw that she was happiest (or, more accurately, least sad) after she sparred with Boromir each morning. That, to him, seemed like an ideal venue through which to show his personal respect for her, but he worried that to infringe upon that time would be to hinder the growth of what would, he knew, be a very important friendship for her. And, as he had routinely been reminding himself since her arrival, she needed allies in the City who were more available than he. So he decided not to follow that path. 

Instead, he broadened his outlook. He often saw her on the terrace outside her apartments. There, she would walk between the flowers, nap in the sun, or sit beneath the largest oak tree and gaze out at the garden. This, he thought, indicated an interest in gardening, so he went out into the City and ordered a lemon tree sapling in an intricate terracotta pot, to be sent to the garden and placed by the stairway entrance to her apartments. 

The next morning, through the library window, he saw her standing beside the pot, running the leaves of the sapling between her fingers. He took this as an encouraging sign, and after taking a long moment to collect himself, stepped out into the garden.  

She, he remembered, was very proud of her station in life, and worked hard to ensure none could forget it. So, on approach, he pressed his hand to his chest and swept into as respectful a bow as he could muster. She turned slowly from the tree and greeted him in kind, that wary edge in her demeanour creeping back almost immediately as they spoke. She, at first, spoke only in general terms, remarking (with no small amount of boredom) on the weather, what she planned to do that day, and the social invitations she had received. 

After those topics had been exhausted, and with some awkwardness, she turned to look at the tree, a furrow appearing between her brows. It seemed to him that she was deciding whether to say something. He made a breezy comment about the state of the garden, which appeared to settle her argument for her. 

“I find the Gondorrim practice of potting trees rather insolent,” she said firmly, and it struck him that he had neglected to include a message indicating who the gift was from when he sent it. “I awoke this morning to see this new tree placed here, but when I spoke to the gardener to ask when and where it would be transplanted, he told me that it was not to be transplanted at all, that it was intended to remain in the pot.” 

“Why should that be insolent?” he asked, forcing indifference into his tone. 

“Trees are great and ancient things. They grow to be taller than all the halls of men, or—,” she quickly amended, “—the halls of my country. They sustain life from the ground to the sky, but they are only able to do so because they are given the freedom to allow their roots to spread far and deep. To keep a tree in a pot is to inhibit its nature, its duty to the world and itself. It is to imprison a thing which has committed no crime.” 

“I had not thought of it like that,” he admitted, tugging a hand through his hair. 

She hummed. “I do find it fascinating what the Gondorrim choose to spend their time thinking about. It has been very enlightening.” With an effortless curtsey, she beat a hasty retreat, leaving him standing alone, feeling as though he had failed a test he had not realised he was taking.

Chapter 4: Book I: Spring 3016

Given that she was a guest in his home, she found it strange that she did not often see Lord Denethor. She saw plenty of Boromir, and, when she let her guard slip, Lord Faramir. But the Lord Steward was difficult to pin down. He made an effort, however minimal, to pass her by at least once a day, but that was often for nothing more than a short greeting or acknowledgement. 

She wondered at first if Boromir had been tasked with minding her, if his well-known affinity for her people marked him out as the man who had to make the sacrifice of pretending to be her friend. She struggled to maintain such a cynical perception of him, however, because he approached her (like everything else he did) with an attitude of dogged enthusiasm. He represented to her what a man should be: proud, valiant, amiable, and strong. What confused her was his insistence that he loved Gondor and all that it stood for. To her, Gondor seemed nothing like Boromir, except in that it was relentlessly proud. In all other ways, it was his opposite: frail, disagreeable, and bitterly stoic. 

These traits were no better represented than by the people immediately around her. For stoicism, there was Lord Faramir, whose only outward displays of emotion seemed to come when he was baiting her. For frailty, there was Sedril who, though physically young and hale, was so accustomed to the cultural convalescence of the Gondorrim aristocracy, and would not lift a finger to do what she could pay someone else to do for her. For disagreeability, there was Hadoriel, her housekeeper, who, despite being only a servant, revered Gondor’s traditions so vehemently that a single look of apathy from Éowyn was enough to incite a vicious tirade in defence of her people.

What made the situation all the worse was that she was keenly aware that, despite having next to no contact with Lord Denethor, he was ever aware of her whereabouts and what conversations she had and with whom. In Edoras, the Worm had a similar air of perpetual knowing about him, and it had taken Éowyn very little time to learn who his informants were. 

It was knowledge she stumbled upon entirely by accident: one day, after both Éomer and Théodred had ridden out with their men, she had discussed her plans for the day with two people, and two people alone. With one, the son of one of the lords of the Eastfold, recently made a squire, she indicated that she wanted to take a turn in the tiltyard. With the other, one of her uncle’s oldest and most trusted guards, she had changed her mind and instead expressed an interest in taking Windfola out for a trail ride. She had later gone to the stables and was there greeted by the Worm, who announced with smugness that the tiltyard was closed for repairs to the fencing. Having discussed her plans with no other people, and having had both conversations in empty rooms, she quickly realised that her thoughts, when expressed aloud, were no longer her own. 

She had no desire to upset Lord Denethor, nor did she intend to disrupt how he managed his house, but she did want to test his system of control, to see which of the people in her orbit were the most inclined to inform on her and at what speed they would do so. To ensure maximum efficacy, she needed to tell each of the people around her something that would provoke them to speak to Lord Denethor, and Lord Denethor to then speak to her, and she needed to tell them something that would not ultimately hurt her standing in the house. 

She began in the evening by telling Hadoriel, in passing, that she had received a message from her uncle announcing that he was putting a halt to the historic patrol of the western boundary of the Emyn Muil. This, she mused, was because he thought the Gondorrim had abandoned their duty to defending that land, and he had no desire to allocate resources there if Gondor would not share in the burden.

The next morning, after she finished sparring with Boromir and was joined by Sedril, she told the girl that she was considering inviting her cousin to stay with her for some time to help ease her homesickness. Sedril, who had obviously been well trained by her abominable mother in the moral obligations of women, proceeded to spend the better part of an hour attempting to convince her not to. It would, she said, be inappropriate for an unattached woman to have a man stay alone in her apartments, even if they were closer to siblings than cousins. 

Once she escaped that particular discussion, she went out in search of Lord Faramir. He seemed to her the sort who would be mortally wounded at the thought of any rule-breaking or impropriety, but perhaps somewhat more discreet than her other companions. It had taken her most of the night, lying awake and staring at her darkened ceiling, to come up with a suitable tale to feed him. It needed to be one that would shock his fussy Gondorrim manner, but would still feel true enough that he would not see her lie. 

She had practiced the tales she had told both Hadoriel and Sedril in the mirror for hours, working to ensure that no twitch of her lips, no quiver of her eyes gave away her deceit. She had pointedly not practised the story she intended to tell Lord Faramir. If he could identify the truth of her feelings with as much ease as he had shown when first they met, then he would undoubtedly spot over-practised words. 

He was much trickier to find than she had anticipated. After trying the terrace garden, the library in the Palace, the forecourt gardens, and the library in the Tower, she finally found him in the interior courtyard garden outside the Hall of the Kings, seated beneath a tree, scribbling away in a small ledger. She caught a hint of surprise in his eyes when he first saw her, but he soon returned to his typical polite reserve, rising to greet her with a breathlessly formal bow, his hand pressed to his chest. 

She engaged him in idle conversation. He seemed, at first, apprehensive, as if he could not understand why she’d sought him out. Carefully, she steered him towards a topic at least tangentially related to the yarn she wanted to spin. First, she asked after his troop in Ithilien, what their duties were, how numerous they were, and how they were trained. He was, obviously, proud of them, and spoke excitedly, reeling off more individual names than she could ever hope to have capacity to remember. 

Once she was certain that his apprehension had subsided, she began to compare the training he outlined to what she had observed in the Mark. She told him what types of training she had done, what historical tactics and strategies had been drilled into her and her brother’s heads in youth. He listened and asked questions often, which began to unnerve her—she thought, from the sheer number of questions he posed, that he was attempting to point out some fatal flaw she could not see. 

Conscious of not losing her composure before she arrived at the truly difficult part of her scheme, she took a steadying breath, looked away from him, and began. 

“Your father spoke to me of the strategic import of Osgiliath to the defence of Gondor. I then sought out more information about the city, and was startled to learn that it has been ruined for longer than my people have had their kingdom.” She flexed her fingers at her side. “I know that it would be impossible for me to go under normal circumstances, but I have been trained well with a sword, and thought that if I disguised myself as a man I might be able to explore the ruins.” 

“You want to go to Osgiliath?” The tone of his voice gave away nothing about his opinions on the matter. 

“I do,” she said, then watched as a small bluebird took flight from the very highest branches of the tree above their heads. 

He was quiet, and she kept her eyes away from him, terrified that he would see the lie in them. 

“I will take you,” he said, and she snapped her head around to look at him. “I will not have the opportunity before I leave for Ithilien, but if you wait for my return, then I will take you.” 

She had been certain that that story would offend him. She had crafted every element of it to go against what she knew of his character, what she knew of the Gondorrim. She had not once stopped to consider that he might respond anything but negatively to it, and had certainly never imagined that he would not only condone her outright rule breaking, but volunteer to be complicit in it. She had not planned for this outcome, and was now floundering. 

Abruptly, and surprising even herself, she stood. Then, to rescue the artlessness of it, she dropped into a curtsey. 

“I would welcome that, my lord,” she said, and fled. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

In the morning, she went with Boromir to the practice ring, and they went several rounds until she was entirely breathless. She hadn’t improved her proportion of wins against him, but it did feel as if she was making him work harder for her losses, which she took as a victory of sorts. She was still not fully accustomed to the swords of Gondor—theirs were thinner and longer than those of the Mark, and had a circular instead of arched pommel. The difference was not so great as to make her feel noticeably worse, but adjusting to the new centre of balance, even on the practice sword, was taking her some time. 

She took the last win of the morning, and was grateful for it, because their previous round had seen her knocked onto her knees in the most undignified way. She slipped her hauberk off, replacing it with a surcoat that at least gave the impression of tidiness, chatting casually with Boromir as she did. 

“My father tells me you have invited your cousin to the City,” he said as they strolled back in the direction of the Citadel. She bit back a smile, pleased that her scheme had worked, and that it had worked so quickly.

“Hoped to invite, only. There are a great many complications,” she replied, kicking a loose rock.

“Not least that he would despise it,” he said, as if it upset him to say. 

“He is a man of many opinions,” she said. “Some of them are even correct.”

Boromir laughed, and the conversation flowed naturally to different shores. All the while, Éowyn pondered what this new information could do for her. She had never imagined that Sedril wouldn’t have loose lips, but the speed with which the information had travelled implied a level of directness with Lord Denethor that she hadn’t anticipated. The girl had spoken with some sympathy about him, but she could hardly believe that he, as imposing as he was, would have any sort of conversation with such a young and flighty girl. No, she thought, the connection must be her dreadful mother. Anything she said to Sedril must be expected to be filtered through Lady Berúthiel. What, exactly, that meant for her future was as yet unclear, but it was knowledge worth having all the same. 

She left Boromir in the forecourt of the Citadel—he was making for the Tower, and she for a warm bath in the Palace. The day was already a clear and warm one, and the way the winds danced across her newly-unbound hair reminded her too much, too keenly of home. The days had not gotten easier, even if she dedicated less time to mourning. There were still too many eyes on her at all times, as if she were an exotic animal on show. For all that she understood of what went on around her, she felt as if she might as well have been an exotic animal. 

Her Sindarin improved, somewhat—the near-constant exposure to it meant that less than a fortnight had done for her comfort levels what years of tutoring in Edoras had not—, but it still did not come as naturally to her as her own tongue, and she passed many hours feeling out of step with the world. She could help herself, she knew she could, it was not as if she wanted for people to speak with, but she was held back by the crippling (if irrational) fear that to learn more of the Elvish language would somehow sacrifice her own native tongue. 

She could not, she insisted, do her part for strengthening the alliance between their two kingdoms if she forgot everything of her own. Since she could not have the music of the people, nor their stories, nor their food or drink, then she would do what she had to to keep her language, even if it came at the cost of ingratiating herself to the Gondorrim nobles. She had given up so much else, there had to be a limit somewhere. 

She bathed and dressed and kept to herself until the time came for her to take tea with Lady Berúthiel and a select few of her lady friends. They met, apparently weekly, in the townhouse of the Lord of Anórien, a great, ghastly temple to overindulgence. Every surface was gilded, or draped in velvet, or encrusted with jewels. It was not that there were no similar fineries in the Mark, there of course were, but they were not quite so conspicuous in their consumption of them. The display of wealth here seemed vulgar to her, and had the effect of making her feel intensely sceptical towards all of the women with whom she met. 

It was no small mercy that the topics of their conversation this week had little to do with her—she had no desire to face another interrogation. Instead, she learned about the lurid affairs and dalliances of all of the lords and ladies who dwelt in Minas Tirith, and many of those who didn’t. There was, though she was loath to admit it, a rather impressive gulf between the morals that Sedril had insisted were vital to society in Gondor and the ways in which their rulers conducted their business. It did little to improve her opinion of them: if they all broke their moral code, and were all very aware of it, then why did they not simply move forward with honesty? Why cower behind that in which they did not believe? 

Out of sheer boredom, she made an effort to remember the names and connections between the objects of the women’s ire. The problem was that there were just so many of them; for each fiefdom of Gondor there seemed to be at least fifty vassal-lords, and, with the addition of their wives and numerous children, she wondered that the entire City was not populated by minor aristocrats. Then, with some tartness, she realised that they could not all possibly live there, with so many ongoing (and ill-concealed) affairs, they would likely end up murdering each other. 

The women spoke almost as openly of the affairs as did the women of the Mark. Lady Melcien, wife of Lord Golasgil of Anfalas, had recently become involved with Lord Mesgrîn of Imloth Melui, and had much to say on the comparisons between the two men. Expounding in great detail what exactly set the men apart, Melcien kept her eyes ever on Éowyn. It was only when she slowed her speech as she described the physical particularities of her most recent tryst, that Éowyn realised she was being tested, challenged. These women, who had obviously internalised their affairs as a show of their worth and social prowess, were now attempting to show her up at an ingenue, unworldly and unwomanly. 

Éowyn may have arrived in Minas Tirith with her virtue intact, but she was not naive. True, there had been no great loves—she was far too busy for that—but there had been stolen kisses, the occasional young rider who had flirted with her well enough to draw her attention momentarily away from her duties. Her slowness to marry (if being unmarried at just twenty-one years of age could even be credibly called slow) had nothing to do with her inability to induce such an arrangement, and everything to do with her disinterest in it. She would marry, she told them with vehemence, only when she was certain a marriage would not hinder her ability to serve her king. 

“I thought,” said Lady Berúthiel, leaning forward, “that the pendant you wear was a token of affection from a suitor in your country.” 

Éowyn fingered the tiny necklace where it lay against the hollow of her throat. “No, a gift from my brother on his first commission. It shows the head of a spear, a symbol of courage in the Mark.” 

“You certainly have courage,” she said, then returned to interrogating Melcien about her affair.

Leaving the townhouse with a much-tarnished understanding of Gondorrim chastity, she was quickly intercepted by one of Lord Denethor’s pages, who told her, with some fear in his eyes, that the Steward requested her presence. Where she had been gratified by Boromir’s comment earlier that morning, she now found herself grimly concerned at the prospect of an impromptu meeting with the Steward. It was true that she had been actively seeking one out—or, trying to provoke one, more accurately—but that did not mean she found herself particularly excited at the prospect of dealing with the man.

She followed the page all the same, privately steeling herself for the encounter. There was only so much that could go wrong. He had revealed to her just days ago how dire Gondor’s need of strong alliances was, and she, a flesh and blood representative of the kingdom’s oldest alliance, could hardly be offended too mortally without risking that. That, at least, provided her some protection. And, she reminded herself, he was a stern and uncompromising sort of man, but there was nothing in his air that indicated that he was personally dangerous. At the head of an army she might find herself frightened, but on an interpersonal level he was, in actual fact, naught but an elderly man who thought very highly of himself.   

She was led to a chamber at the very back of the Hall of Kings, a small room with a large fireplace, and two tall windows. Lord Denethor stood behind a wide table, dressed in the sable of his office. She greeted him with a curtsey, and he returned the address with a tight bow of his head. Behind her, the page left the room, shutting the door in his wake. 

There was, she saw, a map on the table, similar to the one that he had shown her before, except smaller and with less detail. It was turned so that she could read it clearly, north facing away from her. She looked at the map, and she looked at the Steward, and she waited. 

“I have heard that Théoden King intends to retreat from the Emyn Muil,” he told her, and she nodded her head as he spoke, as if confirming to herself that the moment was going as she anticipated. 

She held her silence for a moment, Théodred’s warning to not lie to him echoing loudly in her thoughts. She took a deep breath and clasped her hands behind her back.

“No, my lord,” she said, and then waited again.

“Do you suggest that my sources are incorrect?”

“Not as such, my lord,” she said simply. 

“Not as such,” he repeated. 

“I was the source of that report, my lord,” she said, voice resolute. “I had no intention of deceiving you, but I desired to learn in what manner and at what speed information travelled through these halls. I required a story that would circulate well and would not damage any reputations in its circulation.” 

Silence fell, except for the occasional pop and crackle of the fire behind its metal grate. It was too late in the spring for fires, she thought belatedly. 

He rested his hands on the table, the ring that bore the insignia of the Steward glinting in the firelight.  “And what did you learn?” 

Again, there was silence. She had no particular inclination to learn the extent of his Elven magic—at least not today—and so instead considered how best to proceed in honesty.

“If I require information transmitted with any haste, I should speak to Lady Berúthiel’s daughter, or better yet, Lady Berúthiel herself. But if I desire that it is conveyed with any accuracy, then it must go through my housekeeper,” she said.

He watched her closely, reminding her again of a hawk. It occurred to her that there was one thread she had not received the other end of yet. 

“You have not heard of any travel plans I claimed to make?” she asked. 

“I did not,” he said slowly. “To whom did you pass that canard?” 

She held his gaze. “Your son.” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The day before his return to Henneth Annûn was filled with the frustrating menial labour he had been procrastinating for the better part of a fortnight. He woke (slowly, very slowly—Boromir had insisted on taking him out for drinks the previous night) with an extensive to-do list already hanging heavily on his thoughts. 

Replenishing the Rangers’ meagre dry food store was at the very top of his list. Winter came earlier and earlier with each subsequent year, and he had no interest in discovering they were running low on anything when the storms and the snow set in. That took up more of his morning than he’d have hoped, slowed considerably by the circuitous path he’d taken to avoid crossing paths with his father. 

The rest of his afternoon saw him in the armoury, replacing the leather armour that had, through years of heavy wear and less-than-ideal maintenance, finally given way. He would no doubt face plenty of ribbing from his men when he returned with a squeaky-clean new hauberk, but he would rather that than discover at exactly the wrong moment that the leather was giving way entirely. 

In the stables, he chose a new mount—his own steed, Andúnol, had suffered an adductor sprain and had to remain in Ithilien. As he considered his options, he wondered, however fleetingly, what opinions Lady Éowyn might have on the horses that stood before him. As the daughter of horse-lords, what thoughts would enter her mind on instinct as she surveyed a stable full of horses for the choosing? He did not yet know her well enough to hear her voice in his head, but he thought that he would like to. 

In the end, he chose a hot-blooded light horse, young, a little restless, but tall and strong enough to ensure that his return journey would not be unnecessarily long, even with the customary stop at Cair Andros. He took no pleasure in war, but he grew anxious the longer he was away from his men, so speed was of the essence. 

There were more things he had to do, but he found himself unfortunately distracted by a thought. Or rather, it had begun as a thought he was happy to have, then spiralled out into something that made it impossible for him to focus on anything else. 

She had an ulterior motive in seeking him out that day, that much he knew for certain. What that motive was, however, eluded him. He was not so starry-eyed as to think that her ulterior motive had something to do with him—though it did not stop him from hoping against hope. Whatever she intended by it, he had learned more about her than he had expected, and what he learned dizzied him. She had been clear from the start about what sort of upbringing she had had, but it had seemed then as if she had been overselling it. He could not imagine, not in his wildest dreams, that any noble house would so educate its only surviving daughter. 

But she had spoken to him with unassailable fluency about the same lessons and truths he had been tutored in or had been forced to learn in his years in the field, and suddenly she became living, breathing evidence that his assumptions were completely wrong. There was still an air of insecurity to her words, and she took two words to say what she had convinced him in one, but there was an underlying self-assurance bubbling just beneath the surface that took him by surprise. 

He had met many confident women before—there was hardly a woman in Minas Tirith who could not be called, in some fashion or another, confident. Lady Éowyn was something entirely different. It was not so much a matter of confidence—confidence could be learned or manufactured—it was something in her presence that set her apart from not just the women he knew, but the men too. 

She had asked for Osgiliath, and the thought nauseated him, but he had said yes, because if he could get her nothing else at least he would give her that. But the way she asked about it set something off in his mind; she had thought about it first in terms of its relationship to her people. It was not for its own sake that she was interested in it, but because of the problem it presented to her way of thinking: Osgiliath was older than her kingdom, she had said, and that had alarmed her, she could not understand it. 

He looked to the ages of Men that came thousands of years before the fall of Osgiliath and saw not discomfiture in them, but hope. He looked to Númenor and saw within its tales of wisdom and glory a sign that Men could be more than mere bodies who existed exclusively in the shadow of evil. They could be a people who loved widely, created things of beauty, expanded life from rote and animalistic action and reaction to something greater, more precious. He found that hope not in the war songs of his people, but in the books of lore that covered the walls of his home, of the libraries of Minas Tirith. 

She had seen something of a challenge in the very fact of Osgiliath’s existence. Osgiliath had fallen to the agents of the Enemy before the dawn of her kingdom—and hers was a kingdom that had always lived in the shadow of the Enemy, and had never known the light of life without evil brewing in the east. History began to her in that age of evil, and there was nothing before in the songs or lore of her people to show her what hope might look like, what a life defined by peace, not war, might be. If he could acclimate her to the utility of reading lore, of life in ages beyond theirs, she might see hope in the way that he saw it. 

She had made her position on books clear and it was not a lesson he would not need to learn twice. But it didn’t mean he would have to accept her position, not when he thought it might provide her with some much needed optimism. No, he would need to readjust how he approached the issue, would need to stop forcing it as a black-and-white issue, as a defence of the written word against the traditions of her people. 

He had wandered to the library in the Tower of Ecthelion without a care for whether he would stumble upon his father. His priorities for the day had changed, and if it meant he had to have a few uncomfortable conversations, then he would suffer it to ensure that he could see out his greater purpose. 

He searched the shelves and stacks for nearly an hour, fingers brushing across many titles, but none fulfilling all of his requirements. He wanted to give her something on the history of Númenor in its glories, to hope that she would come to love it as he much as he did, but reversed the idea when he remembered that she had been overwhelmed by the age of Osgiliath—if five hundred years felt alien to her, thousands of years would no doubt not scratch the realm of real for her. 

After he settled on a book, he went in search of her and found her in the first place he thought to look. In the waning summer daylight, her hair was light like a waterfall of molten gold, and he thought that even the waters of Henneth Annûn could not compare. He shook his head to clear the thought, then approached her, watching her watch him cross the garden in a few long strides. In that moment he would have given anything to know her mind. 

She set her embroidery aside and rose to greet him, the soft folds of her pale linen dress spilling down and away from her as she moved. He had given little thought to women’s clothing in his life, but could only thank those that did, for the gown she wore made her look fair and queenly. Again he shook his head. 

To his delight, they dispensed with the small talk quickly. It seemed that each time they spoke to one another they reached a new accord of how little they both cared for the aridity of social routine, and dropped more and more pretences of puerile sociality. In no time at all, he was explaining that, after giving more thought to her request, he had found a book he thought she might enjoy. 

He held it out for her, and she took it, with exactly as much hesitance as he had expected she would show. But at least she took it, and with luck he thought she might even read it. He expected to be gone for many months, at least until Mettarë, and that, he thought, might be a sufficient amount of time for her to find herself bored enough to read it, and that, he hoped, would be the moment in which the quality of his recommendation would be tested. 

He desired to linger in her presence a little while longer, but the call of his ever-increasing list of duties was too strong to resist. He took his leave, wandering back across the terrace slowly, head spinning. At the oak tree that stood in front of the library, he stopped to look back at her, and saw that she was watching him once more. He memorised the wild fall of her hair, the strong, elegant lines of her face, the determination of her posture, the intensity of her gaze. With a short nod of his head, he turned away, his heart full of her. 

Notes:

It was Rebekah Vardy!

Chapter 5: Book I: Autumn 3016

The months passed in the sort of slow, lethargic way that time tends to move in misery. On reflection, it felt like summer had hardly happened at all; there was heat—far worse than in Edoras, amplified by the unyielding reflective stone—, and there were thunderstorms, and a midsummer celebration, but Éowyn perceived little of it. She was lonely, she was unmoored, and, for the first time in her life, she was confused. She had been given an explicit purpose, a more formal role than any other she had held in her life, yet she understood almost none of what it demanded. 

Reinforcing the alliance between the Mark and Gondor would, she thought, come only in battle. The Oath had been forged in the crucible of war, and, like a sword, would not be strengthened with cleaning or polishing, but by thrusting it back into a blazing kiln. Her uncle was misguided in addressing the problem in the way he had. He, she thought, ought to have sent her with men to command, and with an offer of services to the army of Gondor, in exchange for Gondorrim troops sent to the Mark. She knew, though had never experienced it at firsthand, that the bonds between men who fought alongside one another were greater than any other bonds. Without a battlefield on which to prove her commitment to the alliance, she could do nothing of worth to bring the two kingdoms together. 

The truth of that was borne out in how her life was lived in the months since her arrival: she seldom spoke to Lord Denethor, except on occasions where it could not be avoided. Instead, she grew close to his son and heir, Boromir, who, when he was in the City, would spar with her as a matter of routine. It was not in the polite and frivolous dinnertime conversations that their friendship was constructed—it was in the practice ring, in the electrified space between two hard-swung blades. 

Since she could hardly spar with everyone in Minas Tirith, she was lonely beyond articulation. Her Sindarin improved, the foreign ambiance began to fade into comprehensible background conversation. Nevertheless, almost all of her conversations felt as though they were conducted in two discrete, mutually unintelligible languages. It did not matter that they used the same vocabulary and the same grammatical constructions, there was still a gulf as wide as the White Mountains between her and the people to whom she spoke.

The days grew shorter, and she became less of an exotic curiosity to the people of Minas Tirith than a nuisance to be endured. They thought her cold and arrogant, that much she knew for certain. In passing, she had heard it questioned if she could feel happiness at all. She heard it asked by people who had never been made to leave their homes, who had never known a life of relentless social isolation, who had never been forced, day in, day out, to prove not just their own personal worth, but the worth of their entire people. If she was stony, it was only because they had made her so.  

For one reason or another, there was a feast. Éowyn had listened when Boromir had explained the reason for its happening, but had promptly forgotten it after deciding that she had no interest in its subject. 

Sedril, who grew more vocal with each passing day, balked at the gown Éowyn pulled from her closet. It was, she insisted, entirely the wrong colour for the season: dark green could only be worn in winter and spring, autumn demanded lighter tones, perhaps a bright red at a push. She dove into the wardrobe and returned from her hunt with a pale blue gown, one that Éowyn had only worn once before, having found herself particularly unimpressed with the stiffness of the fabric. On that basis alone, she refused to wear the gown again, sending Sedril into a furious tirade, the likes of which could only be conjured up by a young girl who had been told no too few times in her life. 

Éowyn sent Sedril out before her, hoping for a few minutes to herself before facing the wolves. Her apartments did not yet feel like home—they were too staid and too foreign for her liking—but there were at least some signs that their inhabitant had a discernible personality. Éowyn’s embroidery hoop lay across the arm of the settee, abandoned midway through an outline of a thistle. In the corner of the sitting room, her practice blade stood in its ragged sheath, located near enough to the door to make it easy for her to grab while still bleary-eyed each morning. On the small writing desk beside the window, a partially-abandoned letter to Éomer, filled with the beginnings of too many thoughts she could not yet articulate. And beside that, sitting where she had dropped it when she brought it in all those weeks ago, was the book Lord Faramir had given her. 

It was a history of the plains of the Mark, when they were still known as Calenardhon. She was not sure why he had given it to her—she was certain that she had never shown a preference for books—and so it sat on the table, untouched. She thought she might read it before he next returned to Minas Tirith, if only to have something to say to him that had nothing to do with why she was here, but even that seemed optimistic. Anyway, having something to say to him more than the boring simplicities of civil small talk might force her to have a real conversation with him. He, she had realised through the months, unnerved her because of how very much like his father he was. Where Boromir was gregarious and had an open temperament, Lord Faramir (in the few hours she had spoken to him) seemed to her more like his father, aloof and censorious. Since she was already failing to make inroads with one such personality, she saw no reason to deal with another, particularly one who could do little to help her in her duty to her kingdom. 

She turned away from the sitting room. The feast would be a long evening, she needed to fill her head not with assessments of soldiers who were the better part of thirty leagues away, but with the names of the lords and ladies she would face tonight. Smoothing down the front of her dark green dress, she breathed slowly through her nose. The time for battle was upon her. 

For whatever her problems were, Sedril had at least been correct in warning Éowyn that she would be looked down upon for her breach of sartorial norms. From the moment she stepped foot in Merethrond (the enormous banqueting hall in the Citadel), she had felt eyes on her. Not the curious, probing glances she had become accustomed to since her arrival, but scornful, judgemental eyes. She was the niece of kings, though, and not in the City to set or follow petty fashions, so she held her chin aloft and took her seat at the high table, daring anyone to speak out against her. 

They dared. 

Mercifully, she was seated next to Boromir and several indistinct lords and ladies, none of whom showed any interest in criticising her appearance. That brought her some sanctuary, though did not insulate her from making mistakes that did trigger some laughter at her expense. In the Mark, it was customary for guests to serve their own food, the platters and dishes held only by the attendants for ease of service, and such had been the case in the private dinners she had been to thus far in Minas Tirith. The rules, apparently, changed for public events, and when she went to serve herself she was promptly rebuked by an indignant servant. She felt furious, humiliated colour creep into her cheeks when the people sitting around her laughed. 

The Gondorrim were relentless in their pursuit of self-enforced uselessness. They refused to do any activity that could be redistributed to a servant. How they managed to so diligently defend the border with Mordor when she assumed that they must have employed servants to hold even their swords for them, she could not understand. Everything in this kingdom was done to incapacitate as many people as possible, to prevent any one person from behaving as a whole person, instead of a shell of a person, propped up by a hundred little helpers. It was disgraceful.

Once the meal was finished and the guests rose for the latter part of the festivities, the commentary on her attire went from whispered to vicious. More cutting than their words (which she was unimpressed with but not hurt by), was the fact that they conspicuously swapped from Sindarin to the Common Tongue to pass their scorn. It was not enough that they were criticising her openly for transgressing their norms, they had to know that they saw her as so powerless and undeserving of respect that they could insult her almost to her face. 

Not satisfied with merely disparaging her appearance, they began to conjecture on why it was that she had so openly defied the rules of Gondorrim society. While passing a group of young women on her way across the hall to the social safety of Boromir’s graces, she overheard insinuations that the reason she had worn what she had was because she was simple-minded, and that simpleness was endemic to the people of the Mark. 

She sniffed angrily as she nabbed a cup of wine from a passing server, then sped up her pace, making it over to Boromir before she could think of anything especially cruel to say to the women. 

“Your people think me a fool,” she said by way of greeting, stepping into the corner Boromir had claimed as his own. 

“You learned Sindarin? And can read and write Tengwar? And do arithmetic? And manage a household budget?” To each of his questions, she nodded. “Then you have received almost the same education as I.”

“But they do not think you a fool,” she said, and sipped her wine. 

“No,” he conceded, “but that is because I keep well-stocked shelves in my home and am occasionally seen buying books.” 

She raised her eyebrows. “Literacy is no guarantee of intelligence.” 

“True enough, but there is something to be said for appreciating the art form.” He drank his ale, watching the hall disinterestedly. 

“Of storytelling?” 

“Well, yes, but your people also have storytelling.” He looked back at her. “Books are more of a tangible art, alike with painting or sculpture.”

She sniffed indignantly.

“Come, listen, it is not so simple as inking words, as I think you imagine it to be.” He gave her a knowing look, which she deflected. “Each book requires as much thought and care as the clothes one wears to an event such as this.”

“On that,” she said acerbically, “we agree.”

“No,” he replied, “you are too quick to dismiss what you don’t understand. Look yonder, at Lady Luineth. She wears blue because it is the heraldic colour of her beloved Lord Nennor, who she far outranks, but seeks to show allegiance to all the same. And tonight I wear linen pulled in Lossarnach because I am attempting to induce Lord Forlong to commit more funds to the war effort.” 

Éowyn’s eyes darted across the room. She wondered if all the lords and ladies present put as much thought into their attire as Boromir suggested they did. How could they expect anyone to know exactly what they were hinting at with the colour or fabric of their clothing? It was as sure a sign as any that the Gondorrim nobility spent too much time idle. If they had time and energy to fret about the meaning of their attire, then they had time and energy to undertake other, better tasks.

“These choices have thought behind them, and that is equally true for books,” Boromir continued. “Whether the words are printed on vellum or parchment, if the binding leather is sourced in Lebennin or Anórien, and even if the words are written in Quenya, Sindarin, or Westron—these are all questions that require an immense amount of thought, and are asked each time a book is bound. Each book speaks to the unity and wealth of our people, a representation of all that makes Gondor great and good.” 

She eyed him over her cup. “But you do read?”

“Of course I do,” he said, pausing to drink his ale. “I am, however, more partial to the narrative traditions of your people, I find them infinitely more humane.” 

She smiled at that, not too cynical to accept flattery where it was tendered. Still, she was troubled by the implication that her people were somehow less intelligent based solely on their preference for oral storytelling. She had read few books in her life, but she was certain she could outmatch any of these blathering ingrates for knowledge of history. Just because her people didn’t feel it necessary to enslave their lore to the cage of vellum and leather binding didn’t mean they were unlearned. 

Irritably, she thought of the libraries in Minas Tirith, all hoarding thousands of books, but none visited with any great frequency. All of the words of Man were hidden away in those depths, but who besides Lord Denethor (and, perhaps, she thought, Lord Faramir) knew of their existence? The Gondorrim had their books, yet what did they really know of them? Less than what her people knew, of that she had no doubt. 

“Ah,” said Boromir, interrupting her angry stupor. “Here is a man who knows the value of appearances! Well met, Uncle!” 

The man who Boromir referred to as his uncle did, immediately, seem like the sort of man who knew the value of appearances. He was tall, as tall as Boromir, but heavier-set, more alike the riders of her home than the leaner men of Gondor. His hair was long but well-kept, and flecked with silver that looked, on him, rather becoming. What struck her first though was, appropriately, his clothing. 

He wore a surcoat of sapphire silk that, like his hair, was woven through with intricate silver embroidery, matching the finely-wrought silver coronet that rested above his brow. Beneath his surcoat, his tunic was made of midnight blue velvet. A thick belt of embossed black leather girded his waist, and that too was studded with opulently-forged silver pins, and held together by a wide, gleaming buckle, offset by a few short inches from the centre of his torso. His boots, which rose beneath his knees, were polished to a level of gloss that made Éowyn wonder if leather could be used as a mirror. The words that came to her mind were first expensive and then ostentatious.  

She watched him carefully as he approached Boromir, opinion of him softened somewhat by the unfussy manner in which they embraced and greeted one another. His smile was bright and freely given, without an ounce of apparent insincerity. 

Boromir turned to her, placing his hand on her arm. “This is Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, lord of the most beautiful realms in Gondor, and my uncle.” Éowyn’s eyes flickered across the hall to Lord Denethor, seeking out a family resemblance that she could not find. 

This gesture was not missed by the Prince, who smiled coyly at her. “The Lady Finduilas was my beloved sister,” he explained, then, with a great flourish, stopped into a low bow as he pressed his lips to her hand. 

“You well know who this is,” said Boromir to his uncle. 

“I have heard tale of the wild princess of the North, come to beguile and corrupt our virtuous young men,” he said. He leant in closer to her. “Though I find myself more surprised at the news that Gondor has virtuous young men than at the news that a beautiful princess has come seeking them out.” 

She pursed her lips, fighting back against the urge to chastise him for degrading her purpose in coming to Minas Tirith. 

“I came to congratulate you for the stir you caused,” he continued, undaunted by her silence as he moved to stand beside her, casting his gaze out at the revelers. “The White City is overdue a good bit of insubordination, its inhabitants have grown too pampered of late.”

“I had no intention of causing any upset,” she said, a certain grimness to her tone as she twisted her cup of wine in her fingers. 

“No, no-one ever does,” he said wistfully, then paused, as if taken by a thought. “Well, some do—your brother has always had a flair for indiscipline.” He reached across her to rap Boromir on the arm. Boromir raised an eyebrow, and Éowyn decided that there was a story she would quite like to hear. 

“I cannot imagine Lord Faramir causing any trouble,” she said, then thought that, given the uproar caused by just the colour of her dress, his unkempt appearance might speak to a level of rebelliousness she had not before seen in him. 

“Oh he is quite capable of it,” the Prince mused, “in his own way.” 

And Éowyn, bored of being apparently the only subject of idle gossip, decided to push onwards, if only to have something else to talk about. 

“What way is that?” she asked, looking between Boromir and his uncle. 

The Prince smiled. “My nephew is in possession of a great abundance of beliefs and, in his youth, had a penchant for speaking his mind with perhaps less regard for suitability of setting than was strictly advisable.” 

That seemed perfectly in line with what she already thought of him, and served, in some small way, to mollify her. If she thought him singularly judgemental towards her, at least she could be comforted in the fact that he behaved as such towards everyone. 

Up on the dais, the musicians began to play, and her heart cried out to hear that it was a slow, stilted song, not the brisk, cheerful reels she was used to in the Mark. Nothing here would be easy, nothing here would be familiar. For as long as she was stuck in this place, she would be trapped in a world of unknowns, left permanently perturbed. She longed to return to Edoras, to lose herself in wickedly fast drumbeats and the soaring calls of fiddles.

“And there was the incident with the wizard,” the Prince added, then looked across to Boromir. With more gravity than she had seen on his face since he had pointed out the Palace of the Kings, Boromir shook his head. Rather than closing the topic, it only spurred Éowyn's interest. She turned to the Prince, readying herself to ask for more details, but saw that he was looking pointedly away from her, out at the dancers as they closed out the first dance of the evening.   

“Speaking of politics, I can imagine no better boon to your ambitions than an endorsement from the Prince of Dol Amroth,” he said, depositing his own cup of wine on a nearby table, then doing the same with hers. “Come, my lady, I have gone too long already without dancing with such a beautiful woman, my reputation is at risk.” 

She had no desire to dance, but she went without complaint. He was right on one thing: she was well aware of the power Dol Amroth held within Gondor, and given the state of her entrance this evening, establishing some sort of connection to its fabled prince could only benefit her. And, outside purely practical concerns, she found herself somewhat charmed by his innate charisma, and by the bluntness with which he spoke about the people of Minas Tirith. There were too few people around her who were willing to speak that obvious truth, and that, she thought, should be rewarded. 

The dance she abhorred. It was slow, bordering on morose, and concerned itself too much with intricate steps and self-indulgent parades about the floor. Even more frustratingly, it allowed no time to talk to one’s partner, meaning the whole thing was conducted in baleful silence. If there were dances at funerals, she thought this might be one of them. Fortunately, her participation in the morbid affair had something of the intended effect, and by the time the music stopped she could see that there were not quite so many people monitoring her every move. 

Expecting to retreat to her corner, she was taken aback when she was immediately approached by a young man. He was of a similar height to Boromir, but looked less like the noble men of Gondor than the descendants of the Éothéod; tall, blonde, and golden-hued in all, dressed in a rich emerald surcoat and tunic. There was a sword on his belt, but it looked as though it had never before been unsheathed.

Introducing himself as Glórindîr, son of the Lord of the Pinnath Gellin, he asked for her next dance with the calm confidence of a man who was rarely rejected. The more rancorous part of her temperament reared its head, encouraging her to turn him away so she could return to her silence, but her lingering common sense won out. She accepted his hand, and held her head high as he led her away. 

Lord Glórindîr, she learned, was a lord only in courtesy, not title. He was the third son of a noble family, and in all the ways that Éowyn could see, was the consummate third son. He danced well, laughed loudly, and was an incorrigible flirt. Though she had little time or desire to stroke his ego, she did not regret agreeing to dance with him, and even relented to thinking that the five or so minutes she’d spent with him were an agreeable way of passing the time. 

In comparison to where she went next, it was almost ideal.

She wasn't sure how she got wrapped up into the circle of women until Lady Berúthiel let go of her arm to sidle in next to her, and all became clear. She had let her guard down for the briefest of seconds, and the snake had struck. 

The group was, at first glance, rather innocuous; mostly comprising women of a certain age, who were dressed lavishly and who had deemed themselves too old to dance—an unthinkable premise in the Mark. They smiled and went through the appropriate formalities, but from the first word there was something insidious about the way they looked at her. 

It took barely ten minutes for the purpose of their intervention to come to light. 

Initially, they had asked the customary list of questions about her life, her country, and why she had come to Minas Tirith. She answered those with the efficient affability she had spent so much time practicing. Soon those milder questions were exhausted and they began to turn towards the more biting. The women were deeply concerned with her apparent lack of feminine education and, latterly, any real education at all. It did not matter how many times she insisted that she was learned in Sindarin, and the Tengwar script, and all the arithmetic and considerations necessary for maintaining a royal household, they still refused to believe her intellectually competent. 

Asserting her own intelligence was draining, and soon she began to falter. Though she was in the habit of dodging entirely the issue of having books in her apartments, in her tiredness, she made the mistake of admitting that she had none. One of the ladies, whose name she struggled to remember, looked aghast. 

“My dear, that will not do,” the crone wailed. “I will have some books sent to you, you must not go without.” 

And, instead of triggering defensive anger, the woman's offer snapped something within Éowyn, for she did have a book in her possession. The book that sat on her writing desk, the book Lord Faramir had given her, the gift whose purpose she had not understood—it all suddenly made sense. He was passing judgement on her perceived illiteracy, he was attempting to teach her to read by luring her in with a topic she knew well. 

He thought her a fool. 

And she was no fool. 

The rest of the evening passed in a haze of barely-concealed fury. She did not dance again, and kept mostly to the outer edges of the hall, speaking only when spoken to. When the festivities began to die down, she bounded back to her apartments, the sting of humiliation still piercing her thoughts.

Once inside, and without bothering to undress, she pulled the book from the writing desk and collapsed onto the sofa. She would prove to him that she was no fool, she would show him that she was every bit as clever and learned as he.  

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Ithilien was beautiful in the autumn, he had always believed that. In the pouring rain, the jewel-toned leaves glimmered like Gondor’s own hoarded wealth. The mud that spattered everywhere and bittered on his tongue was a small price to pay for the luxury of seeing such beauty. 

They had been tracking late, and so had seen the sun set through the pouring rain, casting the forest in a brilliant rainbow. He preferred to return to Henneth Annûn before sunset, but this orc troop had been particularly difficult to corner, and seeing that they were moving troublingly close to the Harad Road, he thought it not unreasonable to follow them until the deed was done. And it was done, with a ruthless efficiency that made him proud of his men, even as they scrambled back through the freezing mud far too many hours after dark. 

The orc movements of late were worrying. Not enough to sound the alarms in Minas Tirith, but enough that he would need to stretch their resources to double the size and frequency of patrols this far north of their refuge. This close to winter, that didn’t bode well. 

In the years since he’d taken over captaincy of the Rangers of Ithilien, there had been a certain ebb and flow to life in the region. The spring and summer, when the land was drier, the days longer, and the air warmer, saw an upswing in enemy activity and viciousness. The autumn and winter, with their shorter, colder, and wetter days, saw less and less commotion along the border. Monstrous though they may be, even the orcs avoided fighting in the mire. 

There had been neither a seasonal slowdown this year nor an increase in activity. An increase, he thought, might have been preferable. A temporary upswing might indicate that the Enemy was planning something that might justify a more forceful response from Gondor, which would, in turn, lead to another tentative detente. But the lack of a slowdown this year implied that this level of activity was going to become the new baseline. It was a thought that unsettled him.

He had already exhausted this year’s allotment of time he was willing to spend away from his men, but the number of skirmishes they faced told him that he would need to increase their uptake of recruits, something that could only be done from Minas Tirith. 

The recruitment regimen for the Rangers was legendarily harsh. Priority was given to those of Númenórean descent who could trace their heritage to Ithilien before the clearances, but that was vanishingly few people these days, and their volunteer pool had shrunk year on year. He had, much to his father’s chagrin, altered that particular barrier to entry. 

He still needed men who could face the absolute worst of the world, however, so he had also intensified other conditions for entry. The number of tests the recruits had to face in each subsequent round of the process doubled, and the threshold for failure widened. Instead of the two weeks it used to take, the whole process now took between four and six. Four to six weeks that were as hard on him as it on the recruits—not that he would complain, he had been the one to reorganise it all, but with a bleaker and bleaker prognosis on the ground in Ithilien, he struggled to convince himself that he could justify taking the time away. 

Even with his comparably limited resources., he prided himself on having one of the lowest casualty counts of all of the units in Gondor. It was not just that he had fewer men overall, though that certainly helped, it was that he took each casualty seriously and had worked hard to instil a culture that saw death as an unnecessary failure of the entire unit, not the individual. But internal culture, no matter how good and disciplined, could not stop the inevitable in a time of war. And the inevitable arrived with horrifying regularity this year. 

The men were often buried where they fell, the journey back to Henneth Annûn was typically treacherous enough without the addition of a body. He recorded, to the best of his ability, the location of each burial, and when he wrote to the kin of the fallen, he described the gravesite, with a promise that one day they would be able to visit the grave. Most days, he wasn’t sure he believed that they would ever get to see it, but it seemed the right sort of thing to say, so he always did. After an entire decade of writing those letters, the nausea never went away.   

That, combined with the ever-frustrating dispatches from his father, made him dread the arrival of messengers from the City. It was not that (besides his father’s letters) they brought anything particularly upsetting, it was that he knew he would have to sit in his quarters, pen the wretched announcements, and send them back to the unsuspecting families of the slain. Insomnia was a matter of routine on those nights. 

Trekking back down through the slopes and valleys that led to the refuge, he had no way of knowing for certain that a messenger had arrived, but a dizzying feeling at the back of his head told him one had. He tried to force back the looming apprehension as they slid their way down the final hill before the fissure in the rock face that led to the tunnel, it would do him no good to worry about things that might not be. But as Damrod, his hard-nosed deputy, slunk through the entrance and proceeded to make a harried expression, he knew that he would be going sleepless that night. 

There were no deaths to report this time, and for that he was grateful. The messenger was typically dispassionate as he handed him the stack of letters, which boded well for the situation in Minas Tirith—the messengers themselves weren’t privy to any more information than a common footsoldier, but if things were going poorly in the City generally, it usually reflected in their demeanour. 

He took his time handing out the letters in the bundle. This was an activity he always enjoyed, it gave him an opportunity to learn more about the lives of his men than he otherwise would have the chance to. It interested him to know which ones had sweethearts back home, whose mothers wrote monthly, whose families remembered their birthdays, who never received any letters at all. It engendered a level of intimacy between soldier and officer that most other units never could have, heightened all the more by the uniqueness of their living situation this far away from civilisation. 

Unless his brother was bored, Faramir did not often receive letters that weren’t from his father. Some years, usually around his birthday, he would receive some from his uncle and cousins in Dol Amroth, but those came only once a year, if that. It surprised him tremendously, then, to reach the bottom of the stack and see a letter addressed to him that was not written in his father’s long, elegant script. This one bore his name in short, clipped writing, with ink that spread on the page as if the writer had pressed too hard against it. 

Double-checking that he had no other letters to distribute, and that nobody was watching him too closely, he ducked into his quarters, shutting and barring the door. He tossed the missive from his father onto his writing desk—that was a problem for a Faramir of the future. This hour’s Faramir was far more fascinated with finding out who was writing to him and why. 

He sunk down onto his cot, pulling his nail knife from his belt and slitting open the clumsily-laid seal on the letter. 

And then he laughed. 

He had sincerely never expected to receive a letter from Lady Éowyn. Especially not such a long one, and especially not one sent to him here, with apparently no regard for the fact of his fighting a war. 

No, she had written to him (and written quite a lot) with the single purpose of critiquing a book he had given her. There were no formalities at the start of the letter, she did not stop to wish him well, nor to tell him of her life in Minas Tirith. She merely wrote his name at the top of the page, the date, then launched into a scathing judgement of the book. It was exhaustive; she hated the book, that much was immediately apparent, but she had still read the thing from cover to cover with an impressive eye for detail. 

Her writing got more careless as the page progressed, and he wondered if it was in anger or something else—when had she written the letter? An image appeared in his mind unbidden of her writing it in bed late at night. The thought of her in bed and thinking of anything remotely related to him set his blood aflame and threatened to undo him entirely, so he banished the thought. But ignoring that thought sparked a hundred more in its place, chief among them: why now? He had given her the book the day before he last left the City over two and a half months ago, yet this letter was dated just three days past. What had changed?

Once the thrill of receiving a letter from her subsided, he read it again with slightly more rationality. The answer to his question began to reveal itself. Her words savoured strongly of resentment, and of the same desire to assert her value that she had shown in the garden all those months ago. For whatever reason, it seemed that she had wildly interpreted his recommendation, taking it not as intended—a show of his interest in the things that interested her—but as an attack on her intelligence.     

He floundered. The book, he had hoped, would be a way to start a conversation with her on her own terms. He had even chosen a history that recorded the songs and poems of the Rohirrim, hoping that they might bring her some comfort while she was so far away from her home. Instead, she seemed mortified at the thought, specifically highlighting their inclusion as an indicator of Gondor’s ‘compulsive need for cultural dominance.’ 

That made him laugh again; she was many things, but a diplomat she was not. 

He wondered if she was acclimating at all to life in Minas Tirith. Her letter indicated a certain level of familiarity with its antagonisms, but he had no way of knowing if this was her releasing pent up rage, or just the level of resentment with which she engaged with everything in Gondor. 

Either way, she had opened the door to some sort of correspondence between them, and even if he was still firmly committed to not pursuing her romantically, he couldn’t bring himself to say no to the chance to talk to anyone with such strong opinions. So he sat at his desk, read her letter a third time, and set to work.

Chapter 6: Book I: Winter 3016

The Palace of the Stewards was unnervingly quiet. It was not just that both of the Steward’s sons had been unexpectedly required to man the patrols of the East Osgiliath, it was also that Éowyn was entirely unused to the Gondorrim’s more sombre manner of celebrating Mettarë.

Mettarë in the Mark was a celebration of light and life, a recognition that the old year had ended and the new one was being born. It was considered bad luck to not ring in the new year with exuberance, for how one started the year set the tone for how one expected it to go on. Through circumstances outwith her making (and all the more frustrating for her helplessness in them), Éowyn would be spending Mettarë alone. She tried not to imagine what that portended. 

A letter had arrived—the first letter she had received since leaving Meduseld in the spring—announcing that there was a spate of pestilence in Edoras, that Théoden King had taken ill and that, in what capacity he had to make such decisions, Théodred requested that she remain in Minas Tirith for the holiday period. It was, she thought, an unwinnable challenge. She could neither argue back, nor in good conscience go home of her own volition, particularly since another letter arrived at the same time addressed to Boromir, a letter she was certain detailed the circumstances and included instructions to keep watch on her. 

By the time Boromir had been called out with his troop to the outskirts of Osgiliath, the weather had turned for the worse and she had no hope of slipping out of the City in the dead of night. She was left, with great bitterness in her heart, to navigate the intricacies of the Gondorrim Mettarë celebrations entirely on her own. On her own, save, of course, Lord Denethor, who had taken the news of her uncle’s illness for exactly what it was—a sign of weakness—and seemed less interested than ever in acknowledging her existence. 

The Mettarë celebrations, which featured an array of solemnly-lit candles, mournful music, and heavy food, were completed in record time out of respect to the soldiers on the war front. Several of the young ladies of the court whispered their dismay at the abruptness of the proceedings, but the cleverer ones, who knew that the kin of many of the more eligible young officers stationed in Osgiliath were present, dabbed their eyes and uttered prayers for the safe return of the men. Éowyn, with nothing to prove at such a tragedy-touched event, had stood quietly on the dais, counting the minutes until she could return to her apartments and curse the miserable enclosure of her life. 

When she had been released from the grip of the event, she had left with Lord Denethor, walking with him as far as the Tower of Ecthelion (which he entered), then nigh on sprinted back to the Palace of the Stewards, dismissed all of her attendants, and stared into the crackling embers of the fireplace until restlessness overtook her. 

Thereafter, she had gone for a walk, which now found her lost down one of the hundreds of identical corridors that turned the Stewards’ Palace from a home to a maze. The sole benefit of the emptiness of the Palace (it seemed that Lord Denethor had similarly dismissed his servants) was that she had unprecedented access to the building, free from prying or judgemental eyes. She had seen some of the Palace, most of it incidentally when she was pretending to not be lost, but the vast majority of it remained unknown to her. For someone who had, for almost her entire conscious life, not only known every room in her home but had been intimately involved with its maintenance, having so little understanding of the building that had become her functional home felt wrong. 

So she walked. 

And walked.

And walked some more. 

And soon she found herself in a part of the Palace she was sure she had never seen before. There was nothing here to make it more distinctive than any other part of the Palace, except that she had turned so many times that she couldn’t imagine how she could have accidentally stumbled upon it in the bright light of day. She stopped, looked at a tapestry that seemed to show boats on a choppy sea, then turned the corner yet again. 

At the far end of the corridor was an open door, warm light spilling out of the room it guarded. A sign of life she had not expected, but, so far back in the Palace, one she could not forsake exploring without good reason. She crept closer to the door, avoiding floorboards that looked especially loose, and glanced inside the room. 

It was a nursery. Or something that had once been a nursery and developed, with the growth of a child, into something else. There had been, she thought, no children in this house for at least as long as she had been alive, but the room looked as if it could be put to use that very moment without problem. 

A collection of candles stood to attention on the windowsill at the far end of the room, each taller than the last, and each lit, except for the tallest. Beside the candles, in an overstuffed wingback chair, sat Lord Denethor, looking older and weaker than she had ever seen him before. He seemed aged, as if the short hour since she had last seen him had stolen a decade from his life. She stepped back from the door, startled.

“Enter, Lady Éowyn,” he called, not bothering to look at her. She hesitated. She had stumbled upon an intensely private moment, and it would be the greater part of decency to turn back and pretend she had never been here, had not heard his command. But then he turned to look at her, and there was such darkness in and beneath his eyes that something stirred in her heart and compelled her to stay. 

She entered, and when he gestured for her to sit in the chair opposite him, she did, careful to hold eye contact and not look at anything else in the room. 

“The nursery,” he said after a long moment. “Then the children’s playroom.”

It seemed like an invitation to look around, so she did, and saw that it was a room that fulfilled his description. There were toys placed throughout, and baskets with linens and thickly-knit blankets. There was a bassinet, made of light wood and still filled with soft quilts and pillows. Everything in it had been meticulously maintained, though, by her count, the last time the room had been used for its intended purpose was seven years before her birth. She looked back to Lord Denethor. He was watching her. 

She thought of Théodred’s warning about his Elven magic, wondered if that was what made him look so gaunt. The new shadow in his eyes, she thought, might be a symptom of it, a sign, perhaps, that he was using it on her. Was it through eye contact that he exerted his will? 

He spoke: “Your mother passed when you were how old?” 

The question startled her, though on reflection it was not so unexpected. 

“Seven, my lord,” she said, seeing no reason to lie or obfuscate. “My elder brother was twelve.” 

Lord Denethor nodded, resting his elbows on the arm of his chair and tenting his fingers beneath his chin, as if deep in thought.

“My Finduilas died when my youngest was but five,” he said, in a voice that sounded very different to the commanding one she was used to. Forlorn, tired, almost paternal, she thought. Almost. There was an unnerving edge of inauthenticity to it. She had not once gotten the sense that he was a man of any sentimentality.

There were, she thought, two possibilities. The first was that he was a man deeply affected by the loss of his wife, who had chosen to share his concerns with the young envoy from the court of his kingdom’s closest ally. The second was that he believed that she, as a weak-willed young woman, would be liable to divulge more information about the state of her kingdom if she thought him to be a kindly old man. Of those two possibilities, the latter seemed the most probable. 

Which left her, in turn, with two more possible courses of action. She could either play into the simpering womanhood she thought he expected her to display, or she could immediately disabuse him of that notion. And she would not have a diplomatic relationship with anyone who thought her emotionally frail.

“I often wished that my mother, if she had to die, had died earlier so that I would have no memories of her,” she told him, hoping that he would see in the bluntness of her words the strength of her will. 

“Yes,” Lord Denethor said. “I used to wish that too for Boromir. But he is very like his mother, and takes only hope and optimism from those memories that grieve others.” 

Éowyn frowned, staring out the window. The flames danced in reflection on the windowpane. She had not expected that additional push of vulnerability from him. Perhaps it was time she matched his with her own. 

“That is a gift I have not been granted, it is to your credit that your sons think to hope,” she said, passing judgement on the parenting skills of the man who was king in all but name of the greatest kingdom of Middle Earth as if it was her right to. 

“You do not hope.” It was not a question, but she didn’t like the way it sounded from his mouth. 

“In times such as these, hope is a folly,” she said sternly. “I trust in my duty to my people, and that is enough.”

He was silent for a time, and then spoke: “And what is your duty?” 

“Whatever my King wills,” she said. There were other answers, but that was the only truth. He nodded.

Silence descended again, and she looked at a small blanket that was cast over the side of the bassinet. It was blue, crocheted in small circles that spiralled ever outwards, crowned with white flowers. The design was intricate, it had no doubt taken many hours of meticulous work to craft, a labour of love. She would not have had the patience for it. 

“It was on Mettarë that she passed,” he continued after a time, and she saw that he was also looking at the blanket. He removed his hands from beneath his face, and gestured at the candles. “One for each year since she left. Twenty-eight in total.” 

“In the Mark, the candles represent the lives of the dead. It is said that they live on within us so long as someone, somewhere, remembers them as they light the candle,” she said, thinking of the candles this year that would go unlit in Meduseld. 

“Light it,” he said, pointing to the final candle. “Light it and remember your kin.”

“I could not—,” she began.

“—You will,” said he.  

Éowyn stared at him, a tremble within her soul. She did not understand this game he was playing, could not make out entirely the rules of it. 

With great effort, she stood and lifted the tallest candle. As she held it aloft, she tried to remember the faces of her mother and father, and found that she could not. Instead, she remembered Éomer, and hoped that the memory of them, which she knew lived on in him, would be enough. 

She lit the candle.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn had never been one for letter writing—had never had need of it, but now she found herself writing with disconcerting frequency. It had started, at first, as a spontaneous act. Her pride had been wounded, which would not do, and writing a letter was the most expeditious way to rescue her honour. It had been a long, rambling thing, and she had passed it off to Hadoriel, her housekeeper, before the red clouds of anger had cleared from her vision. She was not embarrassed by what she had written, nor did she regret sending it, but she thought that one letter would be the end of it. 

When a letter came for her less than a week later, she was immediately offended. Her letter had made no bones about its purpose, she was writing to correct his assumptions about her intelligence, and she was writing to prove that the written histories the Gondorrim so revered were not as sacrosanct as they thought. Lord Faramir’s reply read like a florid chastisement. He began by asking her questions about her life—questions she would endure in a face-to-face interaction, but had no interest in wasting her time responding to in writing. His questions sneered at her, as if she was being shown, by example, how one respectfully structured a letter. 

His ripostes to her arguments seemed to be given in good faith, and she gave him credit for that, if nothing else. She told him that the complexities of her culture could not be captured in the words of the Common Tongue, that the reason the language of the Mark did not include a direct translation of the word ‘reticent’ was not because of an inherent ineptitude of her people, but because the concept of being slow to express one’s mind was incompatible with their culture. To that, he suggested that she, a fluent speaker of both languages, commit what divergences she could find to paper, to better help those who might live through a similar cultural exchange.

She took umbrage with the author’s implication that her people’s failure to dominate the rolling grasslands and rushing rivers came from a technological slowness; this, she insisted, was not the case. Her people simply felt that they had no right to fundamentally alter the natural world. He, with no hint of irony, wrote that some control of nature was necessary to ensure a higher standard of living for all. That incensed her—what higher standard of living could he speak of when she had seen the squalor in the lower levels of the very City she now wrote from? Did the taming of tides fill the empty stomachs that were endemic to Minas Tirith? 

At the end of his letter, he tendered some brief observations on the land he now patrolled. Given the incendiary nature of his arguments immediately preceding these observations, she felt as if he were attempting to diffuse her anger with distraction. That she would not let stand, and, in a similar blind anger as had provoked her first letter, she penned him another. In this one, she added in her own commentary on those Gondorrim protocols that she found most objectionable, an attempt, however petty, to remind him that his own culture was not without flaw. 

His next letter arrived quickly, in the same breathlessly formal structure as his first. It seemed he was intent on teaching her a lesson she would not learn. She had expressed some exasperation at the habitual sluggishness in Gondor—after her dealings with his family, she had expected that all she met would hold themselves to the same standard of efficiency, and was incredibly frustrated to learn that that was not the case. She had expected him to defend this for one needlessly-elaborate reason or another, and so was taken aback when she read his extended invective against the pomposity that prolonged all matters of business past their natural points of expiration. 

Still, he found ways to rile her even amongst the occasional compromise, and soon she found herself writing to him twice a week, each letter composed with the same fervour as the first. Somewhere along the way, the content began to morph into something more personal. Observations about the general state of Gondor evolved into complaints about her private state of affairs, grievances she had with the nobles who flitted in and out of her social awareness, and, soon, her struggle to make any progress with his father. 

It was that development that led her directly to her writing desk the morning after Mettarë. As was customary in the Mark, she wished him blessings in the new year—love, joy, and good fortunate, as standard. Then, she wrote about her encounter the previous night. Committing it to writing was not her first choice, but she had to tell someone, and there was nobody left in the City that she trusted with the information. He, distant both in that he was in Ithilien and that they were nothing to one another beyond nuisance correspondents, felt safe enough to entrust with her thoughts. Even so, she painstakingly omitted details that she felt were either too intimate or too upsetting, and wondered if he would find it strange to read about his father in such calculating terms. 

Midway through writing her letter, a message arrived for her, stamped with the seal of the Lord Steward. A small travelling map was enclosed, with a trail circling out from the City, across the Pelennor Fields, and toward the ruined city of Osgiliath. Quicker than she had done anything in months, she dressed and made her way to the stables. 

The freedom she felt navigating Windfola out of the gates of the City was unparalleled by anything else in her life. For over an hour, she rode through the bitter cold winds, breathing freely as Minas Tirith melted away behind her. It was not the grasslands of her home, nothing could replace that, but after seven months cooped up in the urban fortress, it felt like a tremendous relief. The world was mostly silent, save for the sound of Windfola’s hooves against the dry dirt road, but even that did not bother her. 

The ruins of Osgiliath loomed in the distance, visible before she heard the roar of the Anduin. It seemed to her a colossal waste to let the ruins persist as they did, when they could be turned into a much more manageable redoubt from which to control the river. But there was some of the naïve Gondorrim optimism to keeping the ruins aloft—as if they believed that one day the city would be repopulated. 

She turned away from the path before she arrived at the army checkpoint, opting to instead parallel the Anduin on its soft banks. At length, she came to rest along the banks, watering Windfola and taking time to simply breathe the clean, frigid air.

The land opposite her was Ithilien. She knew little of it, had dreamed of it once, and now found it captivating. There were no words she could put to it to express the feeling, except that it felt completely at odds with what she had seen of Gondor. It was wild. It was untouched. It was beautiful. 

Without meaning to, she thought about Lord Faramir, about where he might be in that vast, lush forest. The focus of Gondor’s army was now on the abandoned road that bisected Ithilien, but beyond that, she knew none of the specifics. Were they very near to Osgiliath? If she mounted Windfola now, could she find their encampment before day’s end? 

She turned away from the river and reprimanded herself—Boromir, her sole friend in the City, was also out on that campaign, and it was impolite of her to not think of him first. And she did fear for him, he had something of Théodred’s reckless gallantry in him, and seemed to her the kind of man who might find trouble even if trouble was not looking for him. 

As she returned, begrudgingly, to Minas Tirith, she worried for her family. Théodred’s letter had been characteristically short and to the point, she had not expected it to be otherwise. She thought of all the letters that remained abandoned on her writing desk, the letters to Éomer that contained nothing but her sorrows, the letters that she thought were too burdensome to ever send. She now thought she might send them, if only to hear some word from her brother, to have something to recall his voice to her thoughts. She had forgotten her mother’s face, her mother’s voice, who else would she forget in her exile? 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

There was a change in tone in the Palace in the subsequent days. It was not a dramatic shift, and not as if the miserable place became her home overnight, but the air felt lighter, breathable. 

Without Boromir, she expected there to be an interruption in her sparring. And there was, until the end of the first week after Mettarë, when a young Tower Guard arrived, announcing that he was to escort her to the practice ring. Warily, she let him do just that, and less warily, she faced him in the ring. 

She beat him every time. She should not have beat him every time—she was more than confident in her abilities, but she knew when she was being babied. There was no conversation, she did not smile, and she certainly did not laugh. Still, she appreciated the chance to be outside, to be able to move her body until it was so fatigued her mind was cleared. He came back the next day, and the next, and each time she went. 

The corridors remained empty, and emptier still were her apartments, save only for her and, occasionally, Hadoriel. Instead of filling her rooms with people, she filled them with her sorrows, and thought always of her family so far away, of her loneliness so nearby. 

For many days, there was little news from Osgiliath. Then the levees broke. One messenger arrived before she woke. That she heard through Sedril, who whispered that her father had been called in for a meeting in the early morning. 

The next arrived in the middle of the day, which she learned when she was called—to her immense surprise—to the council room in the Tower of Ecthelion. She went with the page, wondering what ill fate had met the men in Osgiliath that a representative from the Mark could be necessary. 

She entered, and was greeted with half-cocked bows from no less than seven men, and a small nod from Lord Denethor. She moved to the back of the room, where she could see the map that was spread on the table, but where she would be no longer conspicuous. 

The map was of Osgiliath, and Ithilien to its east. There were coloured markers on the map, and from context she understood that the blue markers were the Gondorrim forces, the red the forces of the Enemy, and the yellow… the yellow she had no answer for. East Osgiliath still appeared to be held by the Gondorrim, but the Enemy’s markers drew ever closer. The yellow markers were scattered behind the Enemy lines, few though they were. 

The men conducted their business in the Elvish tongue, and Éowyn, though slow to understand the more technical terms, was not lost to the complexities of the situation. There had been a larger skirmish overnight, the Gondorrim forces had held the central bridge across the Anduin and forced the invaders back from the city, but at a cost. Not a significant cost, but a cost—one the various lords in the room were unhappy to have to shoulder. 

The greatest problem, it was agreed, was not that there had been a skirmish. It was to be expected, said one of the lords (Forlong, her mind supplied after a stuttering moment), Osgiliath was too great a prize for the Enemy to leave unclaimed. No, the problem was the yellow markers. The Haradrim, they called them. The men of the South, fearless, cutthroat warriors who had long been the enemies of Gondor. Somehow, it seemed, they had navigated their way up from Harondor, through South Ithilien, and into Mordor, where they had formed an alliance with the Enemy. A question, unspoken, though evident even to her, required an answer: who had failed to stop them?

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Faramir was tired. He was always tired—it came with the territory—but today he was especially tired. The sound of the volleys released across the river pounded still in his head, hammering, hammering, hammering away. 

The bow had not been his first choice of weapon, but, being the second son, had found no other option by the time he was old enough to begin wielding weapons. Boromir, the elder, and thus the first to lessons, had had a sword foisted upon him and had turned it from a weapon into an extension of his very being. There was, all were sure, no finer swordsman in Gondor. Certainly in the House of Húrin none could beat him, which presented something of a problem for his relentlessly competitive younger brother. He had, in youthful folly, tried to outdo Boromir with a sword. Several long years of merciless defeats had finally beaten that delusion out of him. 

So: the bow. True to his competitive nature, he had committed himself to learning how to use the thing with more precision and potency than anyone else who had ever picked one up. Some days he was good, some days he was better. There were awards and medals to be won, and he did, and then it was said of him that there was no better bowman in Gondor, which had imbued in him some sense of pride in his accomplishments. But then he had gone to war for the first time, had killed an Orc or ten with his bow, and had come home and suddenly been filled with despair at the hours of his life lost learning to use the weapon. 

The problem was that there was no honour in it. Killing something—even an Orc—was serious business, and to hide behind distance to do it felt like an abdication of morality. If one were to commit to violence, he thought, then one should commit to it wholeheartedly. For the first few years of his military career, he stowed his bow and quiver and made do with his sword. 

But then he had taken up his first command position, and men under his care had died, and the honour of the fight seemed secondary to the ability to survive it. He would rather that his men lived with tattered honour than die with it intact. 

The bow returned. 

Then came the Ithilien commission, and range and distance became not just an unfortunate-if-necessary side plot in his life, they became his entire life. The rules of the game in Ithilien were entirely different to the rules elsewhere. It was part of why he had been singled out for the position, one of his father’s accidental mercies. He had no desire to ride for death or glory, no desire to do anything but see the war ended so he could live a life he chose. In his youthful naïveté, he thought that he would live to see the war finished, that if he did his job well enough in Ithilien, he would get to go home. 

There was no glory involved in harrying the Enemy in Ithilien. There was no precedent. The tried-and-tested formations that made pitched battles comprehensible weren't relevant in the grisly skirmishes along the base of the Ephel Dúath. No two days were the same, and each new encounter required careful thought and a willingness to disappear. When he had taken up the commission, he was thrilled for the chance to take up what he thought was a more cerebral position, and though he was markedly less cavalier than his brother, he had no lack of a personality. He had struggled in those early months and years with letting himself recede back into the background—not as a matter of camouflage, but as a matter of giving himself up entirely to the war. 

The Regulars, the standing army of Gondor (or, more accurately, the standing army of Anórien and Minas Tirith, comprising those soldiers from the regions whose lords were less inclined to maintaining a consistent troop) had their lives segmented. They went away on campaigns for some portion of the year, then they went home. They left the war, in body, if not mind. There was no such reprieve for the Rangers of Ithilien. They were a country unto themselves, men who lived and breathed the war, whose first thoughts in the morning and last thoughts at night were of the Enemy. There was no room for personalities, no room for a self that was not a soldier.

For seventeen long years of his life, Faramir, a man who above all else abhorred war, knew nothing other than the war. It did not matter that he loathed being surrounded by so much death and desolation, it did not matter that he thought ranged fighting dishonourable. Who he was, whoever he might have been if the war had not been, had beaten him down, was excised from the world.

And so, Faramir, Captain of Archers, had stood beside the rushing Anduin and organised assault after assault from afar, his men killing men and creatures alike whose faces they would never see. They had fought, from a distance, until the earliest hours of the morning, and then had fallen back under the direct orders of the Captain-General of Gondor. 

The same Captain-General who now, to his immense credit, was attempting to make himself scarce. There were times when he benefited from having his brother in the room, and there were times when he did not. It was abundantly clear that this was a time when he would not. There were commanders’ reports that needed to be heard, said Boromir, at last stumbling upon a plausible excuse to leave.

The door shut behind him, and Faramir leaned against the table, the skin on his knuckles pressing into the polished grain of the wood. He had, by his estimations, a few seconds left before his father would turn around to face him, and he intended to use every second of that to collapse into the worst, laziest posture imaginable. 

He took a deep breath. His father pulled his hand back from the side of the window, but did not look in his direction. It had been Faramir’s lifelong burden to know too much of the thoughts of those around him. With his father—who shared the burden, though looked upon it as a boon — he was given the luxury of being around someone who knew how to keep certain mental defences engaged. He never knew more about what his father was thinking than what his father explicitly wanted him to. It was not enough to hide everything, even with his father’s careful protection, he was ever aware of his emotions with unnerving clarity, able to tease apart every strand of anger, disappointment, grief, and boredom like brightly coloured threads on a loom. Now, his father was exasperated and exhausted — an especially common combination in the past few years.    

“When, Captain, did you become aware of their intentions?” His father spoke first, then turned to look at him. Faramir straightened his back, clasping his hands behind it to square his shoulders. His arm ached, it had been a long night.

“A fortnight past, my lord,” he said, which was enough of the truth to not constitute a lie. His father looked at him, obviously weighing up whether picking out the whole truth was worth the fight.

“A fortnight,” he repeated. “You did not make any attempt to hinder them.” 

“The first three envoys they sent were halted. The fourth outnumbered us nearly three to one.”

“You, of course, have no experience in optimising your numbers against a larger force,” his father said with bitter sarcasm.  

“The costs to my men would have been severe,” he said, which was the entire truth. 

“And the costs to Gondor? Would you care to provide me with your assessment as to whether those costs are severe enough to merit your august consideration?” His father had long ago given up using outright anger on him, so there was no palpable heat in his words. “You are eight years into your captaincy, seventeen into your war. There is no pretext under which your failure to think strategically is excusable.”

Faramir breathed slowly through his nose, willing himself to not take the bait. If he maintained his composure, he reduced the amount of time he need wait to find his bed. 

“I,” he said, “have had to do more with less each year of this war. I judged it right to not risk halving my unit for the sake of fighting an unwinnable battle.” 

“Battles are won by their commanders, Captain. It need not have been unwinnable.” 

His composure evaporated: “That, then, explains the success of our war effort.” 

The disdain poured off his father in waves, a black, miserable flood of contempt and disappointment. 

The dressing down Faramir then received was by no means one of the more impressive ones, but his father had evidently discerned that his son was deeply exhausted and was now punishing him not with the viciousness of his words, but with the duration of his speech. Time seemed to drag on infinitely before him, time commanded entirely by his father’s desire to itemize his failures as a captain. Failures that were, he knew, exaggerated for the purpose of wearing him down.  

When (at last) his father finished turning him inside out, he was dismissed. He snapped the heels of his boots together, then turned with military precision, thinking only of his bed, and the ride to Cair Andros that awaited him tomorrow. 

“Faramir,” said his father. He racked his brain to remember what personal sin he had most recently committed to engender such a tonal shift. He looked back with his whole body—it wasn’t worth the risk of being criticised for sloppy movements. “Be mindful of in whom you place your trust. The Rohir interloper is shrewder than she seems.”   

On that, at least, he and his father agreed.

Notes:

This post is worth reading if you’re a fan of Faramir. I’ve tried to tender some of my thoughts here on the issue of weaponry, though I’ve come down fairly hard on the side of Faramir being a captain of the Rangers. This was a narrative call and not necessarily reflective of what I think is most ‘canon accurate.’ I hope you’ll indulge me.

Chapter 7: Book I: Winter 3017

Lord Faramir had been in the City and had not done her even the bare minimum courtesy of acknowledging her. That, she thought, was a reflection of the content of her last letter, detailing the strange events of Mettarë. She had been too candid in her observations, and had offended his prim Gondorrim sensibilities. It was a foolish error for her to have made anyways, that sort of information would have been unwise to share even with her close companions, let alone with someone she hardly knew. The emotional distance provided by letter writing had lured her into the utterly asinine belief that they were friends. They were not. His failure to speak to her when he was in the City was confirmation enough that they were not friends. It was only through Hadoriel’s idle chatter that she learned he had come and gone, and it stirred something akin to exasperation in her heart, though she later conceded that she had hardly been communicative in her pursuit of her friendship with him, so she could not be surprised that he had no interest in her.

In reality, she had almost no friends in Minas Tirith. There was Boromir, of course, though she suspected he saw her still as the younger relative of his acquaintance and therefore associated with her mostly out of obligation. Beyond that, there were no others. Sedril was her constant companion, but Éowyn had almost nothing to say to a fifteen year old, particularly one that was being rigorously primed to become exactly like her odious mother. But even Sedril and Berúthiel had been largely absent from her life since Mettarë, having spent the bulk of the month in Anórien at their estate home. That, she thought, was why she had become so negligently attached to Lord Faramir: he was one of the few people she spoke (or rather wrote) to with any frequency. 

Lady Berúthiel chose a dreary, rainy morning to send a message inviting her to afternoon tea in the townhouse of the Lord of Anórien. Éowyn, who, despite her long term enforced solitude, was quite a sociable person (or was a person for whom the ambiance of socialisation was preferable to silence), went along with only some hesitance. It was a more substantive affair than she had been prepared for, when she arrived, no fewer than twelve ladies of the realm were present, many of whom she only barely recognised. 

She was immediately set upon by a giddy young thing, with brilliant strawberry blonde hair that set her noticeably apart from all the other women in the room, bar, of course, Éowyn herself. Introducing herself as Lalaith, the younger sister of Lord Glórindîr, she pulled Éowyn to the very centre of the room, dragging her down into a plush sofa and proceeding to dominate not one but two conversations with her life story. 

It went, as far as Éowyn could unravel it, thusly: The Pinnath Gelin, which was ruled by Lalaith’s father, Lord Hirluin, was a provincial place. It had rolling hills, no connection to the sea, and scarcely any inhabitants. Lord Hirluin’s family was split into two generations. The elder sons, of which there were two, were born to Lord Hirluin’s first wife, Helwanís, a daughter of one of the esteemed elder families of Gondor. She had passed in one plague or another, and Lord Hirluin had remarried to a very cosmopolitan young waif, Iruthûien, who had borne him Glórindîr and his younger sister, Lalaith. As the far younger cohort of the family, they were each less enamoured with the quieter, rural life of the Pinnath Gelin, and instead preferred life in Minas Tirith. 

As such, Lalaith was not only intimately acquainted with the hows and whys of Gondorrim society, she was more than happy to share that information with Éowyn, one of the few people in the City who was considerably more parochial than her. For her part, Lalaith showed no interest in encouraging her to change her behaviour—quite the opposite, she encouraged Éowyn to retain what she termed ‘her whimsicality.’

She spoke of the rules of the game in Minas Tirith with a sense of somewhat detached self awareness; she was obviously deeply invested in it, but plainly cognisant of the ironies and contradictions inherent to the system. From the way she spoke of it, it was all a sport, something to be done for entertainment, and to give one the occasional sense of victory, but never to be treated seriously. Lalaith confessed—with little regard for the considerable attention she was garerning—that her elder brother Glórindîr made a sport of his dalliances, and was more than happy to share the (unnervingly large) number of women he’d bedded—everyone from the daughters of minor provincial lords to the dowager Lady of Lebennin.

“He tries to collect everyone new and shiny,” said Lalaith, looking between Éowyn and Lady Melcien, who had pointedly moved to sit beside her at the first mention of Glórindîr’s name. “Not you, you’re far too great a challenge. And I’m sure the Steward’s son has already put in his best effort.”

Éowyn grimaced. “Lord Boromir is my friend, only my friend.” 

Lalaith and Lady Melcien shared a look that Éowyn couldn’t parse. “Are you not, then, here to marry one of them?” Behind them, Berúthiel came to sit beside Lalaith. 

Éowyn blinked. “Certainly not. I have little interest in marriage.” 

Lalaith laughed loudly. “Oh, indeed! Well you hardly need to be interested in it for it to be interested in you! We all thought you were here to arrange a match of some sort, both of the Steward’s sons have gone so dreadfully long without marrying, it really is unfair.”  

“Unfair?”

“Yes of course it’s unfair. Lord Boromir has never shown the slightest interest in women, so none have any expectations, but Lord Faramir once lit the candle of hope and has spent the subsequent seven years working tirelessly to snuff it out under piles and piles of dreary scrolls!” 

“He had quite the reputation some years back, you know,” Melcien said. “Even in his younger days he had a sort of brooding, mysterious air to him.” Éowyn squirmed internally—Lord Faramir had made more than clear his lack of interest in being her friend, but she had still enjoyed their correspondence and was not quite at the level of resentment towards him to justify gossiping about him. 

“I was always surprised that it was Lady Lelyaïnde who caught his eye,” mused Lalaith. “She is so quiet and mannerly, he seemed to me the sort that would have preferred a bit more spirit.” 

“That,” said Melcien, “is where you’re mistaken. No man desires a wife who argues with him, it’s an insult to his pride. Lady Lelyaïnde is exactly what every self-respecting man wants in a wife.” 

“To willingly diminish oneself for the sake of a man’s pride is an indignity no self-respecting woman should endure,” Éowyn said, straightening in her seat.

Berúthiel, who had heretofore been silently watching the conversation like a carrion crow observing the end of a bloody battle, sat forward in her seat. “Spoken, my lady, like a maiden who has not yet learned the efficacy of womanly arts. A woman need not diminish herself by using her silence to conjure the illusion of authority for a man. There is great power to be had in a woman who understands how to employ her muliebrity to maximum effect.”  

Éowyn sniffed angrily at her words. “Such power might hold sway within a marriage, but without? Without it is by the power of the speech and the sword that the day is ruled.” 

“There are more swords than those made of steel,” Berúthiel said stonily, “to learn to grasp one but not the other is a dereliction of one’s duty as a woman.”

“Perhaps there are more kinds of swords than those made of steel in poetics, but there is only one that one can die upon, and it behoves women of good sense not to lure themselves into a false sense of security by imagining that not to be true. No woman should willingly accept any man who would have her surrender the weapons of her defence, whether they be tongue or blade.”

“I am glad to hear that you have no intention of seeking out a husband, my lady, for sentiments such as those would render you unworthy of marriage by any respectable man of Gondor,” said Lady Melcien, looking not vicious but rather deeply worried. 

Before Éowyn could stand and deliver a castigation for the ages, a porter arrived carrying a small slip of paper for her. It bore unexpected news, and with some giddy haste, she took her leave of her puerile companions, promising (however perfunctorily) to call upon them again at her earliest convenience. She hurried out of the townhouse, and was met in the street by a man of her country, who looked exactly as ill at ease with the place as she felt. 

He seemed entirely unprepared to speak with her, but she peppered him with questions nonetheless, excited beyond words to at last be able to speak to someone in her native tongue. She followed him down to the fourth circle, and along the way learned that he was an aid to Lord Leofric of Haligholt, one of the easternmost estates in the Eastfold. Leofric had sent his son Elfgar to seek out a meeting with her.

Inside the inn that Elfgar had taken up a room in, she was gifted with a bottle of mead from the apiaries outside Aldburg, a gesture so simple but so meaningful her heart was almost rent asunder with yearning for her home. The gesture, she soon learned, was part of a less-than-artful attempt to induce her to aid Leofric with an ongoing border issue. The Haligholt estate, which bordered the Fírien Wood, had been beset upon by bandits, who appeared to be overflowing from Gondor, just a stone’s throw across the Mering Stream. Lord Leofric had attempted to work with the Gondorrim lord, but had been rebuffed at every turn, and now looked to her for assistance. 

Elfgar was sheepish before her, and made it abundantly clear that he felt it was a personal failing on behalf of his father that she had to be consulted at all. Éowyn, by contrast, was almost giddy to have been thought of. It meant, for the first time since she had arrived in the City, she had something worth doing. It was not until she was winding her way back up towards the Citadel that she realised she had not even an inkling of how to begin solving the problem. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The Hall of Kings had never intimidated her, not as, she thought, it was intended to intimidate outsiders, but it had never been one of her favourite places in the City either. It was ancient and beautiful—for all her divergent opinions on aesthetics, she could not deny this place its beauty. Everything in the Hall was crafted as an ode to the kingdom, a declaration of intent for what had once been the greatest of all kingdoms of Men. In its glory days, she thought, it must have been a remarkable sight to behold. Now, in an age of unending war and cultural impotence, she thought it savoured strongly of decay. The mithril inlays on the doors and walls made her think not of the largesse required to justify such details in the first place, but rather that it was an extravagant waste of resources to leave the mithril where it lay instead of melting it down for better purposes. 

There were statues throughout the Hall, most of which she’d never taken the time to look at. The men were dead, and the statues said nothing of the deeds they had done in life—what did it matter if she could see what they once looked like? 

At the far end of the Hall stood a throne on a dais, opulent and fit for a king and, as such, permanently empty. Besides the throne, on the cold floor, stood a chair made of simple dark wood. There was nothing in the look of the chair that implied power, it was up to the men who sat in it to do that. 

Boromir stood to the right of the chair, looking up at a statue of yet another generic-looking king. She approached him slowly; she could never catch him off guard, but she thought to give him time to finish whatever private vigil he was holding. 

“Ondoher, thirty-first King of Gondor,” said Boromir when she reached his side. “He was slain in battle at Morannon, along with his eldest son Artamir. His second son, Faramir, was mandated by law to remain in Minas Tirith, but refused to stay as regent when there was glory to be won in battle. He rode in disguise with the North Men—your ancestors, that is—and was cut down near the Dead Marshes.” 

“That,” she said, “is quite a legacy to put on your brother’s shoulders.” 

Boromir laughed grimly. “So it is. So it is. Our Faramir, at least, is less committed to rule-breaking—if only just.”

“Is that when the Stewards became Ruling Stewards?”

“No,” said Boromir. “There were two kings yet before Eärnur rode forth to challenge the Lord of the Nazgûl in Minas Morgul.”

Éowyn gaped. “He challenged the Wraith-king?” The stories from the far North, though not commonly told, had passed through the Mark often enough that she was well acquainted with the terrors that accompanied his reign. 

“He did. Needless to say, he lost,” said Boromir, with some disdain evident in his voice. 

“Such reckless folly,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “To abandon his people in search of glory.” She looked up at the statue once more, wondered if somewhere in this City stood a statue of Eärnur, if that would have been what he desired. “How long ago was that?”

“Nine hundred and sixty-seven years.”

Éowyn blanched to hear it. She had known that Gondor had long been without its kings, and had known that it was a Steward who had given the Mark its lands, but she had no quite grasped the sheer scale of years that separated Gondor from its monarch  

“So long to rule in another man’s stead,” she said, awestruck. “And never as kings?”

“Never,” Boromir said firmly. 

Éowyn furrowed her brow, and decided that his mood seemed temperate enough for her to push the issue. “Why? Your house has ruled for as long as mine, and yet my uncle is a king.” 

“The legitimacy of your uncle’s reign is derived from the tremendous act of valour and benevolence that brought him and your people to aid Cirion in Gondor’s time of need,” he began. “Authority was imbued in him for his actions, and his actions created the Kingdom of Rohan. It is as Elendil established Gondor and Arnor through his leading of the pilgrimage of the Númenórean faithful. The authority of the Stewards derives from his authority, not authority unto itself. To take up the mantle of Kingship would be to become usurpers, to undermine the very thing that makes Gondor what it is.”   

It was not, she thought, a particularly convincing answer. True, there had been no singular act of might that set the stewards apart from the kings, but what could be more noble than watching faithfully over the kingdom for nigh-on a millennium? Had that not proved their worth? 

With a sigh, she returned to her original purpose in seeking him out. “I hoped to receive your counsel on a matter of some diplomatic concern,” she said, looking from the statue to him. 

He met her eyes, and nodded her on. 

“Lord Leofric of Haligholt, an estate which abuts the Mering Stream, sent an envoy to me to express his concern that the Gondorrim were tolerating a certain degree of lawlessness that is provoking trouble for the safety of his own land and people.” 

“Haligholt, opposite the Fírien Wood?” 

“The very same,” she confirmed. “There have been ongoing issues with bandits in the area, and his attempts to make contact with his Gondorrim counterpart have been unsuccessful. He appealed to me to raise the dispute here.”

“Lord Tawarthawn is the lord of the Anwarlum estate. He has never been especially receptive to intervention from Minas Tirith, and would, no doubt, not be keen to hear that the issue has been raised over his head,” Boromir said, folding his arms across his broad chest. 

“I am doing only that which I have been asked to do,” she said defensively. 

“Aye, of course you are,” he answered, his voice much lighter. “I apologise, I did not mean to criticise you, I was merely thinking aloud.” He turned his back to the statute, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. 

“In the Mark, it is common to station part or all of an éored in an area suffering from disorder, both to reduce the level of criminality and to remind the local lords that Meduseld does not take lightly to abdication of duty,” she suggested. 

“That was my immediate inclination too, however Lord Tawarthawn has been quite unobliging in paying his tax, and I should not like to do anything that might upset him further.” 

Éowyn frowned, the estate around the Fírien Wood was relatively small, was the fiscal situation in Minas Tirith so dire that every coin needed counted, no matter how petty?

The great doors to the hall lurched open, and she turned in time to see a messenger, dressed in the heraldry of the Citadel Guard, enter. He stopped, saluted them both (at this, she was pleased, the Gondorrim soldiers seemed to never know what to do in her presence), then announced that the Lord Amathluin of Falasîr sought an urgent meeting with him about the defences of the southern Anduin.

“I will find you when I can, my lady,” Boromir said to her, then departed with a bow. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

It was fortunate, Boromir thought, that the interruption had come when it had. It was not that he was a hotheaded man—such tendencies would have been hammered out of him long ago as unbefitting of the heir of the Steward—, but Tawarthawn had long been a thorn in his and his father’s side. The Fírien Wood was not, by any extent of the imagination, a place of offensive strategic import for Gondor, but the beacon wardens who tended to the beacon of Amon Anwar resided there, and the Great West Road, which facilitated all trade between Rohan and Gondor, crossed through the heart of Anwarlum.

Tawarthawn, from a family of lower nobility, had ever been an ambitious man, and had assessed that there was a certain amount of trouble he could cause for Minas Tirith without being rebuked. He had worked hard, especially in the previous five years, to enrich himself at cost to the kingdom’s coffers, and had been given more than his fair share of leeway to do so; the jittery lords of Lossarnach, Lebennin, and Tolfalas took up far more of his and his father’s concerns, leaving little time to deal with Tawarthawn. 

None but his father, Tawarthawn, and Lord Astron knew about the tax issue, and so long as Tawarthawn wasn’t naive enough to openly announce his crimes, Boromir was content to look the other way. But flouting the law so openly as to incur the ire of another kingdom? That was not behaviour that could be allowed to persist. The problem was that simply failing to subdue bandits was not a punishable crime—not for a lord, anyway—and the only crime Tawarthawn had committed was tax evasion, and that could not be used lest his father be forced to admit that he had been aware of it for some time. No, the law could not be relied upon, nor could a martial solution. 

Blessedly, Lord Amathluin’s concerns about the fortifications of the southern reaches of the Anduin were easily solved. A short letter to his uncle in Dol Amroth would hopefully see a more routine naval patrol of the Anduin watershed, giving Amathluin a cheap solution and Boromir (and Minas Tirith by extension) more credibility with the lords of the southeastern fiefs, who were ever seeking out reason to moan.

He sent Amathluin away and slumped back into his chair, rubbing the sides of his nose. One day without a looming crisis, that was all he hoped for; a single day where he didn’t have to worry about whether the entire kingdom would collapse before the Shadow in the East overtook them all. A fantasy came to his mind: in lieu of sorting the problem himself, he could offer Anwarlum as a token of friendship to Théoden King and let the Rohirrim solve the problem as they saw fit. That, at least, might give him a reason to see Théodred, and he did sorely miss his friend.  

But fantasies were those who lacked reality to hold them to account, and for those with far more leisure time than he had ever had. He took a few seconds to recompose himself, then went off in search of Éowyn. He still had no answers for her, but he knew a way to get an answer that would help her do more than just serve her petitioner. 

He found her, as he so often did, in the private sitting room of her apartments. She had lived in Minas Tirith for the better part of a year, yet still her chambers looked no different to how they had the day she had arrived. Privately, he wondered if she did not keep it that way as a sign of defiance, and perhaps a show of optimism that she might not be forced to linger in Gondor much longer. 

The circumstances of her arrival in the City had—at Théodred’s explicit decree—been kept secret from all, apparently including even Éowyn herself. He often wondered how she might react to the truth, were she ever to discover it. Though he knew her to be an easygoing young woman within the comfort of her own home, her demeanour in Minas Tirith had been nothing but distant and constrained. He had heard many of the women of the court (and more than a few of the men) puzzle over whether she was capable of showing any emotions at all. A ‘grave young woman’ they had called her, and at first, Boromir thought it was just a sign of her homesickness. As the months passed and as their friendship grew, she had become less somber around him, but remained as icy as ever in public. 

She greeted him with as much warmth as she ever had (and in that, he knew, he was lucky, she was, afterall, a very likable woman once her cool exterior had been shucked), asking after his afternoon’s activities with a tone of genuine interest. He answered her, because if nothing else he was proud of his work, then told her of his plan to solve her problem. Her posture stiffened ever so slightly, her chin tilting a hairsbreadth towards the ceiling, as if standing to military salute. He thought, fleetingly, that she looked like a war-weary commander preparing for an ill-fated engagement.

Still, she followed him without complaint, fielding his questions about her day with masterful fluency. He knew something of her life in Rohan, likely more than she would have wanted him to know, but he wondered with a sharp pang of pity what more had happened to her to make her so skilled at masking all of her emotions. How could so young a person be so adept at suppressing her very self? At least his brother had taken some time to get to that point in his life, and not without quite a loud youthful rebellion. As far as he could tell, Éowyn had never had that luxury. 

She fell silent as they entered his father’s council room. Boromir, who had never quite grown out of being overawed by the majesty of the place, knew at once that it was not with appreciation that her lips went still. Nor, he realised after a single sidelong glance at her face, was it fear. A small furrow appeared in her brow, and briefly she looked deep in thought. Then her face cleared, and her expression became unreadable. 

His father entered a few moments later, immediately congratulating him on his handling of the situation in Falasîr. Boromir had long since become accustomed to his father learning of events barely seconds after they occurred, and accepted his congratulations eagerly. He then deferred to Éowyn to explain their conundrum. 

She would never be a politician, of that he was confident. She masked her emotions well and had a canny sense of self-awareness, but she was in the habit of being a bit too honest. It was probably to her credit that she struggled so obviously with dishonesty, but in the world she now inhabited, it could be a dangerous liability. His father also never lied, though he had a remarkable talent for telling only as much of the truth as was convenient to him, and then simply not divulging any further information. Éowyn, by stark contrast, told so much of the truth that she often expressed her opinions on events without fully intending to. 

Each time she admitted a little too much, his father looked at her with an expression of grim amusement. Boromir had none of his father or brother’s clear sight, but he had been his father’s closest companion for almost thirty years and knew well how to read him. He had that look upon his face that indicated he saw potential in her, and maybe even held her in some esteem already, in the way that one might look at a particularly precocious child and see a bright future. There were obvious reasons for that. In most ways, Éowyn was exactly the sort of person his father looked for in an ally: singularly dedicated to her duty, unruffled by snobbery, and eminently pragmatic. Her greatest personal fault (if it could even be said to be that) was that she was of Rohan, not Gondor, a well-nigh unforgivable sin in his father’s book. 

Even so, sending a young woman as Rohan’s ambassador had been an accidental stroke of genius—not, as Éowyn thought, because the fact of her womanhood made men more liable to speak candidly with her, but because her womanhood had seen a level of deference stamped into her. Had Théodred Prince or her elder brother, Lord Éomer, been sent, they might have been every bit as practical and dutiful as she, but their warrior’s pride would have been a formidable obstacle to their success here. 

Éowyn, though she obviously struggled against it, had clearly been told enough times that quiet obedience to rank was an important quality to hone in herself. Unlike military men, whose obedience came uncritically, it was abundantly clear that she carefully considered every command put to her. For that level of contemplation, to win her figurative genuflection was a more valuable thing. That mastery over her impulses endeared her (however marginally) to his father. And, certainly, when she was set in comparison to his brother—who also scrutinised every order he was given, but who always managed to find the most frustratingly unorthodox ways of executing them—, she seemed a fascinating thought exercise in what could have been.

She explained, as she had to him but a few hours ago, that in her country it was routine for the King to temporarily garrison an éored on the estate of any wily lords. Far more than acting as an explicit reminder that the King in Edoras well knew the business of his realm, it served as an unspoken sanction. The éored had to be lodged and fed on the estate’s coin, an expensive reminder of what insufficient submission to the King meant. There was a ghost of a smirk in his father’s eyes as she told him this—a ghost likely detectable only to Boromir, but there nonetheless. 

His father wasted no time in responding. “A cunning approach, but effective owing to the centralisation of the Army of Rohan. The bulk of the Army of Gondor is based, rather, on territorial duties. Only the Guards of the Citadel, the Rangers of Ithilien, and the Company of Minas Tirith are under the direct command of the Lord of the City and the Captain-General. Neither the Guards of the Citadel nor the Rangers of Ithilien could be spared for a journey to our most secure border.” 

“No, the Lord of Anwarlum has squandered too much time among his own council, I deem.” He glanced up at Éowyn. “My lady, when do you next intend to visit your kin?”

Briefly, Éowyn’s face bore an expression of bewilderment. In an instant it was mastered, and she returned to the very picture of bland affability. “Early spring, my lord.” 

“It would be beneficial to our common cause if you henceforth kept that information private. Do not, however, shun honesty with those you encounter in the City about the petition tendered to you.” Éowyn nodded tightly. “My son,” he said, looking to Boromir, “dispatch an invitation to Lord Tawarthawn, I would have his company at my dinner table.”

“Dinner, my lord?” Éowyn asked, and Boromir began to revise his earlier assessment of her, perhaps she was not always silently deferential. 

“The powerful move but are not moved,” said his father. “The Lord of Anwarlum might use the journey here to podner his options.”

Éowyn regarded him for a moment—the scrutinising look returning. Then she nodded once more. She took her subsequent dismissal by his father in much the same manner, curtseying primly then retreating with a stiff back and unhurried steps. Boromir watched her go, then turned back to his father. 

“And what sort of encouragement am I to expect that Lord Tawarthawn will receive upon his arrival here?” 

His father almost smiled as he began to rifle through his papers. “Encouragement enough to see the Rohirrim appeased and to see his arrears paid off, if the Lady of Rohan will oblige us with that assertive diplomacy that so characterises her people.”

Notes:

The stationing of éoreds to spook local lords is lifted directly from AnnaFan’s Flower of Ice and Steel.

More footnotes available here.

Chapter 8: Book I: Winter 3017

Several days later, a letter had arrived for her from the only person she ever received letters from. At first, she’d been hesitant to open it, fearing that she had already given far too much consequence to what was obviously a lopsided friendship and not wanting to embarrass herself further. But, after suffering several long hours of boredom under the grey winter light, she had relented and read it. 

It explained, in especially opaque language, that he had passed through the City from Osgiliath for barely enough time to give a report and sleep. From this, she began to fill in the blanks: the tone of the council she had attended had been severe enough that she had no doubt whatever report he had given had likely not been received well. Even Théodred, beloved and only son of the King, was not exempt from the mortifying reprimands endemic to military discipline, and when he had suffered those, he had had little time for anyone or anything else. With dawning horror, she realised her histrionics had been entirely narcissistic, that she had had no sane reason to assume that she had misjudged their friendship when a far less dramatic explanation was available. 

Lord Faramir explained that he was urgently writing to her after having returned to the refuge of the Rangers because a soldier of the garrison at Cair Andros had told him a tale (that, he said, originated with her people) of a great warrior who, in service to a foreign king, had slayed two monsters, became king of his own people, then fought a dragon. The soldier, he insisted, had not been a particularly gifted storyteller, but in spite of that, he had become fascinated by the story, and appealed to her to tell him the story in full. 

Éowyn had failed to reply to the letter not because she was unfamiliar with the story, but because she was altogether too familiar with the story. It had been one of her favourite bedtime tales in her childhood, and to this day she could recite every single line of it. It was a beautiful, epic legend in the language of the Mark, one that relied upon the even older language of the Éothéod to conjure a sense of antiquity. To successfully translate it to Westron would require her audience to have at least a passing familiarity with her native tongue, which she was certain Lord Faramir didn’t. Once that hurdle was overcome, the issue of medium became completely insurmountable. It was a tale meant to be passed on orally, and, as such, was shaped by the specific speech patterns of the people of the Mark. She knew almost nothing of Westron or Sindarin poetry, but just from hearing the way the Gondorrim spoke, she knew that there was no way she could commit the words to writing without obliterating the metre of the tale, ultimately shattering the effect of it. 

So: she had not yet penned a response. At first, she had considered simply telling him to learn her language before she would deign to pass along the story, but then she thought that even then, she would not be able to commit the story to paper, so there was little use in that. She thought next of writing to tell him exactly what her concerns were, but that seemed like an enormous amount of work, and she wasn’t certain any of what she said would be sensical on paper. She circled back to wanting to tell him to learn her language; it would be a complex enough request that he would likely never do it anyway. 

Her uncharacteristically scholarly afternoon was interrupted, with great pomp and circumstance, by Lady Berúthiel, who welcomed herself into Éowyn’s sitting room as if she owned the entire Palace. She was dressed in stretches of maroon silk inlaid with gold brocade. Her jewelry—also gold—was so thick upon her wrists and décolletage it seemed nothing short of a miracle that she had not collapsed under the weight of it. In her hands, she carried a large canvas bag. Éowyn took one look at the tableau and braced herself for a bad time. 

“It would be prudent,” Berúthiel said, eschewing any civil greetings, “for you to be adequately prepared for dinner this evening.” 

“Quite,” said Éowyn. “I was fortunate enough to receive some advice from Lord Boromir just this morning about the situation, and of course I am well aware of the situation as it stands on the border.” 

Berúthiel sniffed, her nose twitching as if she had finally caught wind of her own acrid perfume. “I was referring to your attire, my daughter tells me that you have very particular beliefs about what is and isn’t appropriate for events such as these, and I am here to ensure you make the right decision.” 

“My lady, I can assure you that I am more than capable of dressing myself,” Éowyn said as diplomatically as she could. Her temper flared when Berúthiel, disregarding her words entirely, moved to the door of Éowyn’s dressing room.

“That is plainly untrue,” Berúthiel called in response, disappearing into the room. 

Éowyn stared at the door. She was more than accustomed to a certain degree of dismissiveness from the elder ladies of Gondor, but this had gone well beyond the threshold of what she had resigned herself to. 

“Lady Berúthiel, I thank you for your concern but I have no need for nannying,” she said, moving closer to the open door. 

Berúthiel returned to the sitting room, hands now free of the bag. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes were fierce. 

“Perhaps in your youth you believe that you have no need for proper guidance, but my age and insight surpasses yours, and you would be wise to take heed of my counsel in such matters.” 

“My counsel is my own,” she said coolly. “And from whom I choose to take it is a matter of concern for myself and my King alone. Again, I thank you for your concern, but it is unnecessary.” 

“It is very necessary,” Berúthiel said. “The company you so selectively keep may be content to see you as a curious little plaything, but not everyone in Gondor will be so indulgent. For too long have you offended the norms of our people, and I will not have your obstinacy provoke a political debacle when there are so many issues of greater concern to be dealt with. Lord Tawarthawn is a man who places great esteem in tradition, and very little in recalcitrant young women.”

A cold wrath settled over Éowyn. “I suggest you remember under whose command it is that I am in this City and show due respect to the representative of your kingdom’s closest ally. It may be in the nature of your people to revere such ludicrous impracticalities as the colour or fabric of a gown, but it is not in the way of mine, and I will not stand for this flagrant impertinence.” 

“If it is your womanhood that causes you such distress, then so be it, but do not presume to make it my distress too. If you intend to do more than make starry-eyed declarations about the strength of your character compared to the feeble women who surround you, then continue on as you are. If you intend to successfully resolve this lawlessness at the border, then you would do well to think beyond the tip of your nose.” Éowyn was struck dumb by Berúthiel’s incivility. “Or would you prefer to explain to your lord petitioner that his land and people will continue to suffer because you refused to endure a single second of discomfort on their behalf?” 

Her vision flashed red. “Do you believe that I endure no discomfort? Do you believe that I have enjoyed being cloistered with a people who see me as an imbecilic barbarian? Think you that I prefer to dwell here within this barren, lifeless necropolis? I was forged by discomfort, it is all that I have known, and I do not need to be lectured at the hands of pampered ladies who know naught of the necessary hardships of diplomacy.”

Berúthiel let the vicious silence lay long enough that Éowyn began to think that she had bested the hag. 

Then she spoke: “Are you quite done?”

Éowyn’s mouth fell open. 

“Good,” she said. “If you must, imagine that you are breaking in a particularly unruly horse, or whatever it is that you do for pleasure, but make yourself acquiescent to the inevitable. I will not have this spoiled for my lord husband and my liege-lord for the sake of preserving your pride.” 

She stepped back into the dressing room, and Éowyn stood stock-still, as if her feet had been nailed to the floorboards. Berúthiel’s tone had been appalling, and by any stretch of the imagination she would be justified in not only throwing her out, but in demanding an apology at threat of a diplomatic disaster. But the content of her speech had been… lamentably persuasive. Éowyn well knew that this was an opportunity to do more than just provide assistance to a lord of her homeland, it was a chance to prove herself as an emissary of merit. It was her duty to her kingdom, to her King, to see this problem dealt with as swiftly as possible. 

With violent defeat in her heart, she entered the dressing room. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The sound of water was ever present in Henneth Annûn. It echoed through from the waterfall to the furthest reaches of the deepest caves, becoming less like noise than the sound of blood thrumming in a vein, and just as necessary for survival. In his first few years attached to the Rangers, it had been a source of unrelenting (if concealed) nighttime terror for him. His dreams of Akallabêth, which had been occasional in his youth, were irrepressible until he had finally learned to turn a deaf ear to the rushing of the water. 

In time, he had grown first to like, then love it. It had taken seeing many sunsets, when the light of Anor refracted through the sheets of water spread colour throughout the central cavern before he had come to accept that there were other ways of seeing that great vein of water. It had taken longer for his subconscious to come to the same conclusion, but it had come around to it eventually. 

Still, nothing could allay his abiding fear of water. His cousins in Dol Amroth, whose entire culture exalted the ocean as the great giver of life and beauty, could not fathom his aversion to it. His brother, who suffered no nightmares of the fall of Númenor, could hardly understand it, though was at least sympathetic. But those were the discourses of a life lived in leisure. In war, it mattered little if he was forced to relive the destruction of his people time and time again, if a situation concerning water presented itself, he had no choice but to take command of it. 

As it happened, he had been spared dealing with the river on this occasion, but only just. A longer range group of scouts had been dispatched several days prior, disincluding him only because a different returning patrol had reported a death, a matter whose handling he would not deputise. He had done the miserable duty of penning the death announcement to the family, of writing to the record keepers in Minas Tirith, and of beginning to sort the pension for the surviving next of kin. His deputy, Damrod, had gone out with the long range scouts in his stead, leaving Faramir to monitor the ongoing shorter range operations. 

Even those painted a bleaker painting than he really wanted to think about. There weren’t daily skirmishes, not this deep in the winter, but they were frequent enough to be concerning. Those numbers, when collated with the reports from the garrisons at Osgiliath and Cair Andros, would inevitably amount to a level of activity that far outpaced what their resources could handle. It helped, undoubtedly, to have the reinforcements from Cair Andros patrolling the eastern shores of Anduin, and if the men at Osgiliath ever pushed far enough back into the city to take up patrols there, then that would be a boon too. But even that could not mask the obvious: things were getting worse, and at an alarming pace. 

He stood some way behind the watery curtain as he considered the circumstances. In better times, he would see this refuge turned into something of higher value. Its beauty was too great to be lost to the ignominies of war, it deserved to be seen and revered by all those who could want to. Such was the condition of war: the privation of beauty and goodness could not be avoided.

The scouts clamoured in through the tunnel entrance, moving quite a bit more loudly than he would have expected of each of them individually, and quite a bit less silently than he would have expected of Damrod. They were fortunate that the Orcs had not strayed within five leagues of Henneth Annûn of late, or he might have stronger words for them. Such as it was, he let them off with one of his sterner looks (a look honed through many, many years observing his father), then took Damrod to the officers’ quarters—a small, interconnected series of alcoves in the very back of the complex. 

The scout report—and the reason for the men’s excitement—only served to dampen his mood further. 

The Orcs that harried Ithilien had never been particularly strategically cunning. They were devastatingly strong at times, and numerous enough to overwhelm even the best prepared troops, but could be easily outfoxed. Life in Ithilien was not, typically, a complex game of chess. He had not come to expect innovation from the servants of the Enemy in these lands. So it troubled him immensely that Damrod’s scouts had stopped a medium-sized contingent of Orcs led by an Uruk attempting to ford the river fifteen leagues north of Cair Andros on a rough hewn skiff. His Rangers had been forced to chase them into the shallow reaches of the water (a thought which brought Faramir no comfort) before finally intercepting them. They had been properly dispensed with, which was, at least, some small victory, but the very fact of their having had plans to cross the river struck fear deep into his heart. And, against his desires to keep Ithilien largely divorced from the wider concerns of the army, it meant that he would need to escalate the issue up the chain of command. 

He sent word to his brother, then prepared to, yet again, take leave of his men. Early into his tenure, there had been nearly-year-long stretches when he had not left Ithilien. It was as much by his own contrivance as by necessity. Boromir was ever obliged to be a master of two realms, of arms and of politics. He enjoyed it too, which meant that whether on the battlefield or in the feasting hall, he always enjoyed himself. Faramir thought that he might have learned to like court life if he might have had any power of his own to make it worthwhile. As it was, he had none, and his presence was more a conciliatory gesture than anything else, a means of showing that the house of the Steward was united in all things. 

The older he had gotten, and the less impressed with Gondor’s court he became, the harder he worked to spend as little time as possible in Minas Tirith. There were creature comforts he missed when he was away, and it was not that he came to love life in the war above other things, but when given the choice between his liberties in Ithilien and the torturous frivolity in the White City, the decision had been easy to make. 

Increasingly, he had lost the ability to stay out of the City for such long durations. It felt to him that the past two years had seen him returning to Minas Tirith with nauseating frequency, and he enjoyed very little of it. If he could convince Boromir to meet him in Cair Andros, then he would be saved from some of the frustration of feeling as if he was abandoning his men for the sake of playing at peace with the hopelessly naïve court worthies.

He took two more patrols before Boromir’s response arrived. The first took him only a short distance away from the refuge, and, despite uncovering some signs of enemy activity, revealed no living Orcs. It was not uncommon to come upon detritus left behind; the Orcs were often forced to move by the light of the moon alone, though generally the wintertime saw a blurring of the lines between nighttime and daytime movement thanks to the often days-long disappearance of the sun.

The second patrol was not so blessedly quiet. 

It had begun, as they so often did, at the first light of dawn, ten Rangers slipping out into the misty morning air, cloaked in green and darkness. They skirted the northern edge of the burn that veiled the refuge, then tracked out into the forest, moving with practiced silence through the undergrowth. They would go for six leagues to the north, cut across three leagues to the east, then switch back on the diagonal, covering the mirror image of the territory that would be patrolled by that afternoon’s guard. 

For two hours, they moved in absolute silence, disturbed by not a single unexpected sound. The birds had flown south for the winter, the animals had burrowed away until the frost dissipated in the spring. Life had largely abandoned this part of the world, made more ominous by the pervasive sense of dread that rolled off the Ephel Dúath in waves. 

There were no signs of Orc movements at all, no errant detritus, no tracks in the mud, no sloppily-slaughtered animals. After so many weeks of substantial activity in the area, it set Faramir’s teeth on edge. He was not hoping for a fight—would be very glad to return without having once had to knock his bow—but the silence was unnerving. 

His first captain, Eradan, had been a grizzled old veteran, nearing the end of his career by the time Faramir arrived in Ithilien. He had little time for words, having spent far too much of his life with the Rangers, which made each word he did deign to speak that much more valuable. He had impressed upon Faramir that silence was a tool and a terror. 

He had taken him out one winter’s evening and made him stand in the forest, blindfolded. There, he was made to describe every sound he heard until Eradan was satisfied they had identified all of the same noises. For Faramir, who had been raised in the City and had previously found the quietness of Ithilien impenetrable, the realisation that it was not silent at all, but utterly abounding with noise, had been astonishing. The longer he stood blinded to the world, the more individual sounds he could discern: the brushing of leaves against branches, the sound of sediment settling into the burn above Henneth Annûn, the whisper of the wind high above the trees, Eradan’s breaths, the beating of his own heart.   

Silence, Eradan said, did not occur naturally in the wild. It was manufactured, it required outside intervention to completely stifle the sound of life. To impose silence, to become indiscernible from the natural sounds of the forest, was to wield a weapon of unimaginable power. To be surrounded by silence was to be surrounded by a malign influence, imminent danger. 

Mercifully (or perhaps not) that day’s silence was broken not an hour later, by one of his men letting out the soft, trilling whistle that signalled an Orc sighting. Two subsequent pips came to signal a small group of them, and three more pips came to announce that they had not yet been alerted to the Rangers’ presence. 

Moving slowly, they came within visual distance of each other, close enough for their sign language to be effective. Three men were sent north to pin the Orcs into a southerly path of retreat. Two were sent to the east, two to the west, and two more remained with Faramir, to act as the rear guard and pick off any Orcs that survived the previous three lines of attack.

These manoeuvres were muscle memory to most Rangers by now, and the given commands more a formality than anything else, but those few seconds of time before a skirmish was initiated were important. It gave Faramir a final opportunity to remember who he had brought with him, which direction he needed to search in if they didn’t return to the muster point after all was said and done. It was grim but unavoidable business. 

After a ten minute wait, a final signal was blown into the cold winter air, followed immediately by the thundering sound of fleeing Orcs. In the distance, he could discern the whistling sound of released arrows, followed by distinctive thuds. He counted them, two, three, four. More whistling, more thuds. Nine, ten. More whistling, but no more thuds. 

He signalled to his own men, no further whistles had come—the skirmish was not yet over. They knocked their arrows, aimed into the thicket, then waited. 

The snapping sounds came first, heralding the arrival of whatever enemy agent had survived this long. The bushes and low lying branches, hastily pushed back, gave way to enormous brute of an Uruk, clad in alarmingly thick and sophisticated armour, and carrying a long mace. 

He saw the Uruk first, but only by the grace of an instant. He saw recognition, then fury, then nothingness as the Uruk held his gaze. He released a breath, released his grip, then looked away. His arrow would hit its mark. They always did. He had no desire to see more death. He had no desire to feel death either, he had learned the hard way what happened when he looked too long at a dying creature. 

The thud was great enough that he felt a tremor in the frozen soil beneath his feet. He thought of practical concerns: the armour would be salvageable, and the mace could be brought to Cair Andros and melted down into several shortswords. 

After five minutes’ silence, three signals came: from the east first, then the north, and lastly from the west. His own signal rounded out the bunch. The deed was done, it was time to strip the bodies and set them alight. They were always burned, at first as a warning to the Enemy, then as a matter of necessity: for all the Orcs that had fallen in these woods, the land would be nigh on unnavigable for the sheer number of corpses. 

They returned quickly to Henneth Annûn, carrying more than their fair share of repurposable armour and weapons. The Ithilien operation was onerous, it was soul-crushing, but at least it was self-sustaining, few other long term campaigns could be credited with that.   

A messenger had arrived while he was on patrol; Boromir would meet him at Cair Andros in a day’s time. He wondered if he had been in Osgiliath or Minas Tirith, his letter had given no indication (that was not a surprise, Boromir was not exactly an effusive writer). Either way, he was glad for not being recalled to the City, Cair Andros was close enough that he could postpone his departure until the morning, and, with luck, return the next day. It would be no more disruptive than if he had taken an overnight patrol. 

The ride to Cair Andros was always easiest with Andúnol, after so many years of making the trip it was as if the horse knew the route on instinct. And, perhaps he did: the steed had been a gift from his uncle, whose cavalry horses were among the finest in Gondor, bred for stamina and hardiness and notably cleverer than their counterparts from Lebennin or Lamedon. If nothing else, taking Andúnol enabled his worst tendency to let his mind wander as he rode.

Mostly, he argued with himself about how much longer he could put off training new recruits. Their numbers had remained strong enough (all things considered), and there was no explicit requirement that he had to bring on new recruits each year. If he could delay until next year, he might be able to plot it to coincide with Mettarë, reducing even further the amount of time he needed to spend away from Ithilien. 

But the treacherous, untameable part of his mind reminded him that six weeks in Minas Tirith might not be entirely unenjoyable, especially if Lady Éowyn were there for any part of it. He had done considerable work to suppress his feelings for her (though largely because, after one especially vivid dream, he had realised he could not, in good conscience, continue to think about her without sacrificing whatever dignity he had). It did not mean, however, that he had stopped writing to her. It was one of the few diversions he had, and so long as she was content to write to him (which he thought she might be), he had no intention of stopping. But he was careful to mind his words, even if he did maintain his usual level of candour in his opinions of the aristocrats whose paths she crossed. He had nothing to offer her but friendship, and he needed to remind himself of that as often as he could, if only for his own sake. 

Boromir met him in the officer’s briefing room at Cair Andros, looking entirely too well-rested for his own good, and confirming wordlessly that he had come from Minas Tirith. Faramir felt guilt—almost—at the knowledge that his mood would immediately upend Boromir’s sense of calm, but there was nothing to be done for it.

They did away with the necessary practicalities first, charts were laid out, and the locations and dates of Orc incursions noted and detailed, bringing each of their logbooks up to date. It was exactly as he had expected, the situation was dismal, getting worse with each passing day. They would need, at the minimum, an increase in the number of men stationed at both crossing points, even though they had almost no men to spare. Some might be easily pressed from their uncle’s forces if he was feeling charitable (or, more accurately, if he was hoping to later ask their father for a favour), but the rest would require an endlessly fatiguing rigmarole of appeasement and flattery to be drawn from the forces of the various other realms. He was grateful beyond words that that responsibility always fell to Boromir. He had no doubt that he could do it, but he could not imagine taking joy it.

The news of the Orcs attempting to cross Anduin went down as well as it could have. Coordinating with the river captains had never been a favoured activity of Faramir’s (he had long found them tediously superstitious), but it would have to be done if there was any hope of maintaining a consistent watch on the river, something his Rangers would never have the capacity to do alone. In a better world, they would have the resources to establish a river guard of their own instead of relying on traders whose vessels were not equipped for war, but it was not a better world, and Gondor, after too many years at the vanguard of the fight against the Enemy, was woefully lacking in assets. 

They broke for an early dinner, neither particularly heartened by the other’s situation. Boromir, at least, had the promise of some entertaining tales, which far outmatched Faramir’s stories of dreary reconnaissance in the forest. They ate and talked, though Faramir’s mind continued to linger on the threat of Orcs taking to the river: his geographical remit concerned only the land east and south of Nindalf—who would monitor the Orcs if they traversed Anduin to the north? Certainly not the Rohirrim, they had never made much of sailing the river.    

“This one you’ll enjoy,” said Boromir, refilling both of their cups of wine after finishing a riveting survey of the preparations for the upcoming spring festivals in the city. 

“More exciting than the last? I don’t believe you,” Faramir said sardonically, leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes. 

“We finally held Tawarthawn’s feet to the fire,” he said with a considerable amount of pride.

“Ah, well done,” said Faramir, desperately wracking his brain to remember who exactly Tawarthawn was. “You are a peerless enforcer.” 

“Actually, I had very little to do with it. Our victory came at the hands of the esteemed ambassador from Rohan,” Boromir continued, and Faramir suppressed the jolt that ran through his body. He opened his eyes, took a sip of his wine, and reminded himself of the value of emotional discipline.

“I had not realised that the situation in Minas Tirith was so desperate that it required outside intervention.”

“It isn’t—not yet. Though I might set her on Mirianon if he continues to complain about the iron tax…” Boromir trailed off, looking as though he were giving serious consideration to it. “But, no, it was on Lady Éowyn’s request that we intervened at all. One of the Rohir lords along the border appealed to her for help: brigands spilling out from Anwarlum were disrupting his trade, stealing his people’s cattle, that sort of business.” Boromir stopped, drank, stretched his legs out in front of him. “I took her to father for it, and he decided to haul Tawarthawn in, thinking that seeing an ambassador from Rohan in the City might scare some sense into him and make him realise that he’s not in the hinterlands anymore.”

“A reasonable judgement,” said Faramir, leaning back and closing his eyes once more. 

“It was, and I suspect that was how it might have gone, had Astron and Berúthiel not caught wind of his plan,” Boromir sighed. “Berúthiel, Morgoth take her, decided that Lady Éowyn’s appearance in society had not complied with our fashions as much as she would have liked, and all but forced her into the most garish attire she could. There must have been a quarrel between them, because even though Lady Éowyn was beaten into submission over the gown, they spent the evening sniping openly at one another. Quite brutally too, lesser women might have fled the country after suffering just one of the jibes they doled out to one another. Anyway, Tawarthawn took one look at Lady Éowyn done up like a porcelain doll and thought she’d be an easy victory.”

He raised an eyebrow at his brother’s words, more than a little surprised to hear that the Lady of Rohan could be made to yield to anything. Perhaps she was more suited for diplomacy than he had initially believed...

Boromir continued: “It was a fearsome thing, she looked at him with such pity in her eyes, then began to slowly and clearly narrate all the ways outlaws are punished in Rohan. By the time she started describing something called a scold’s bridle, his face was so pale it took one word from father before he’d promised to personally scour the estate and pay back his tax arrears.” 

Faramir laughed, finding himself for once sorry to have missed an event hosted by his father. He wondered what she might have looked like in the face of her victory, if she would have taken it in stride, as she seemed to do with so many other things, or if she would have let herself enjoy it for what it was. He wondered if she might have smiled, actually smiled. The thought set his heart aflutter, and, desperate to not admit to anything that he was not prepared to admit to, he jumped on the first thought that entered his head.

“Perhaps those tax arrears can be put into sending better wine to the outposts,” he said, nodding at the bottle that sat between them. “This is appalling.” 

“No matter how long you’re out there, you never get less snobbish, you know that?” 

“Ten thousand years without a drink would not be enough to convince me to enjoy this swill.”

Notes:

Extended footnotes available here.

Chapter 9: Book I: Spring 3017

The injury was born of an embarrassing mistake, the kind of mistake he should have learned not to make decades ago when he was a cavalier recruit and not the captain of Gondor’s foremost military unit. But the mistake had been made, and the resulting injury was such that he couldn’t receive proper treatment in Henneth Annûn and had to be evacuated first to Cair Andros and then, when his leg was in better shape, to Minas Tirith. 

He had hoped to keep the specifics of the encounter quiet, but by the time his father sought him out in the Houses of Healing, every second of it had been recorded to paper. He endured his father’s lecture about alertness and proper scouting with some disdain, until the pain relief draught kicked in and he had listened to it with something akin to delirious irony. 

His confinement in the Palace was not so awful, all things considered. Though he remained anxious to return to his men, the injury afforded him a level of idleness he had not had in years, which allowed him time to catch up on the reading he had longed to do and—most importantly—write more letters to Lady Éowyn. 

She had returned to Rohan some weeks before his injury, and was expected to remain there until the middle of spring, her first trip back since she had arrived in Minas Tirith almost a year prior. Their correspondence, which had been both regular and eminently entertaining for him while in Ithilien, became irregular and infinitely more captivating while she was away and he bed-bound. 

Their letters followed, for the most part, a formula. Each time she would reply, her letters were disorganised and shot through with intense emotion—usually anger. The more letters she wrote, the more it seemed to him that she was using them as an outlet for the frustration she felt at her own life, and soon her letters morphed from extemporaneous rants to detailed surveys of her (negative) opinions on the comings and goings of her life. 

His letters maintained that level of exaggerated formality he had set out in his first. The incongruity between the formality of his language and the relative crassness of its content, he hoped, would make her laugh. He never strayed too far from the realm of the proper, but he was more than happy to offer his unfiltered opinions on the various lords and ladies of the court if and when they offended her. 

She had (jokingly, he thought) challenged him to learn the language of Rohan before she would tell him the heroic tale he had asked her for. He assumed she had not actually imagined he would, and was instead looking for an excuse not to commit the story to paper (he well knew her thoughts on that), but he had been unexpectedly bed bound with little else to do, so he had sent for any relevant books in either of his father’s libraries and set to it. He had not, if he was honest with himself, made any discernible progress. Though the Rohirric language was an antecedent to Westron, there was still much about it that made language acquisition far from straightforward. More than anything, he needed to hear and speak it aloud and his opportunities for that were few and far between.

He had spent very little time under the same roof with her, and so did not find it strange to not have her around. But, even though he had continually recommitted himself to not feeling anything other than a sense of general amity towards her, he could not help but feel bitter that, in this unexpected residency of his in the Palace, she was not there. It was not that any time was their time, given that they were two individual people leading very distinct lives, but he felt that he would rather like to have some time with her. 

His leg healed with impressive speed and he was cleared to walk (if not ride) again by the turn of winter to spring. Instead of languishing in his bed all day, he took to reading in the terrace garden. And if, on occasion, he found himself gazing into her empty apartments, imagining what it would be like to live there with her, then it was more a matter of proximity and cabin fever than actual intent. 

The fact of the matter was that he still lacked time and anything to offer her. He was the second son—of a noble house, of course, but a second son nonetheless. That had not changed, even if his feelings had solidified into something he had to actively ignore instead of passively forget. In the end, if he loved her (which, he insisted, he did not) he would have to let the feeling pass. She, surely, could not ever desire a life with a man who had so little to give her, and he would not do her the indignity of offering it. 

She returned on the day of the vernal equinox, with the sun shining brilliantly in the sky as if to herald her arrival. There was to be a feast to celebrate the end of winter, a feast he was determined to be at, and so, despite the protestations of his heart, had to eschew greeting her. Instead, he slept, and when he wasn’t sleeping, he paced, testing the ability of his injured leg to hold weight for any significant amount of time. 

He caught his first glimpse of her outside Merethrond, and all the blood rushed both into and out of his head at such a great speed he thought he might lose touch with reality. He had not thought it possible for her to grow more beautiful, but she somehow had.

When he first laid his eyes on her almost a year ago, he had thought her like a wildflower in the valley, beautiful, but in the way that all of nature was beautiful. Looking at her now, he thought her frighteningly beautiful. She appeared more distant than before, more subconsciously aware of her status and worth and less desperate to prove it. She seemed to him to know that she was more powerful and more beautiful than all those around her, and the sight of her self-assurance made his knees weak. 

There dwelt, in Laurelindórenan, in the vast forests of the north, an Elven queen. The White Lady of Lórien they called her, and she was said to be mightier and more fair than all the Elves who remained in Middle-Earth. He looked at Éowyn, clad in white, encircled by her untameable golden crown of hair, and thought that there could be no being in all of Arda who surpassed her for beauty or strength. She was the embodiment of all that was right in the realm of Men, all that was worth defending. 

At dinner, she was seated on the opposite end of the table to him, out of deference to her high aristocratic rank and his high military one. Boromir sat to her left, and Lord Astron of Anórien to her right. Opposite her sat a minor lord from Lamedon, who regarded her with what he thought was the appropriate level of terror and yearning. Once or twice, entirely by accident, he caught a line or two of the lord’s thoughts, mostly concerned with admiring the curve of her lips or the nervousness he felt whenever she looked directly at him. He could fault the man for neither of those thoughts but all the same felt an unseemly twinge of defensiveness on her behalf. How could that man sit there in front of someone so worth speaking to and think only of her appearance?

He noticed, while shamelessly paying no attention to his own conversations, that she laughed little. He had not often heard her laugh in the few short hours he had seen her in person, but based on the dry wit of her letters, he had expected her to laugh more. He waited all throughout dinner to hear her laugh, but it never came. Then, resolute in his vow to not harry her, he quickly engaged himself in a conversation with Lord Golasgil of Anfalas, an endlessly boring man good for nothing other than trapping oneself in a conversation so dull nobody would dare interrupt it willingly. A conversational hiding place, of sorts.

He tried not to watch her as Golasgil talked, but every cell in his body was aware of her. When she crossed the hall to speak with someone who hailed her, all his mind could process was the billowing of her skirts as she moved. When she danced with Lord Tígion’s idiot son, he couldn’t help but imagine how her hair would feel beneath his fingers. 

He was, he insisted to himself again, not in love. He had simply carried on an engaging correspondence with someone who he had not been in a room with in a year, and was now confusing his desire to speak to her in person with other, less noble inclinations. She was, he reasoned, one of the few people he had been in regular contact with outside of the Rangers, and it was only natural that he would feel outsized emotions toward her now. With time and care, those unhelpful feelings would subside. 

And he was certain there was nothing wrong with trying to be her friend. 

Her dance with Tígion’s son had finished, and she was making her way to the far side of the hall, hair falling in perfect, dancing ringlets down her back. He waited for Golasgil to finish his sentence, then made his excuses, doing his best to not appear too desperate to leave. 

He cursed his leg that it took him so long to close the distance between them, and found himself caught in not one but two tedious conversations in the interim. By the time he reached her, she had her back flat against the far wall and looked as if she was planning her own escape. 

He bowed to her, movement stilted somewhat for the pain in his leg. Then, he took a chance. He greeted her in Rohirric (or what he hoped approximated it closely enough for her to understand it). 

She said nothing. 

For a fleeting moment of insecure panic, he wondered what she might be thinking. When he tried to answer the question for himself, he was met with a bewildering tangle of emotions, few of them clear to him, and almost all of them muted, as if he was seeing them through a thick pane of glass. Ashamed of his behaviour, he mentally stepped back from her. 

Then, something miraculous happened: she laughed. He had, he thought, never won a greater victory. 

“I had not expected you to take up the challenge!” she said, eyes bright. 

“As I said to you some months ago now, I should very much like to hear the story of your legendary demon slayer,” he said, turning to stand beside her (and to lean against the wall, providing some much-needed relief to his aching leg). “And I found myself faced with quite a bit more leisure time than I am used to while I waited for my leg to heal.”

Her face changed, contorting into confusion. “Your leg?” 

“I met the wrong side of a club in Ithilien.”

“Your letters did not say…” She stopped herself, and a dizzying array of emotions flashed across her face, none of which he could interpret. “We must find you a seat.”

It did not escape his notice that she intended to go with him to find a place to sit, but he had run out of patience for being nannied many days ago. 

“That won’t be necessary, I took today abed in the hopes that I might ask you for a dance now.” 

She arched a delicate eyebrow. “A dance, my lord?”

“Ah,” he said, smiling wryly. “Forgive me, in Gondor, typically when music is played, those present will partake in coordinated, harmonized movements.”

She scowled at him, but there was begrudging amusement in it too. 

“I have no love for your Gondorrim dances,” she said, with a surprising lack of vitriol. 

“I too dislike the dances in the north.” 

She looked up at him. “The north?” 

“The north,” he confirmed. “The music and dances of the south—of Dol Amroth, from whence my mother hailed—are very different to those of Minas Tirith and Anórien. Not so sombre and perhaps a bit more honest.”

“And yet you hoped to subject me to one of these instead?” There was a teasing glint in her eye that made his heart leap. 

“It is better to suffer with friends than suffer alone.”

“Are we?” She looked at him, uncharacteristic uncertainty in her eyes. “Friends, I mean.”

“Lady Éowyn,” he began, but stopped short when she looked at him sternly. 

“I think, my lord, we are beyond such formalities now.”

“Éowyn,” he corrected, then continued when she gave a small nod of approval. “I do not write twice weekly to people I am unfriendly with,” he said, with a smile. He did not say that he didn’t write twice weekly to anyone. 

“I met your uncle,” she said, and it became very clear to him that she was avoiding the topic of dancing. 

“Oh? How did you find him?”

She cast a sidelong glance in his direction, then returned to watching the dancers. “Not so sombre and perhaps a bit more honest than the people in the north of the kingdom,” she answered. “He sent me a crate of wine.” 

He laughed. “You must have made a good impression, that’s how he tries to win friends.”

“A commendable method,” she said with a smile. A smile which soon faded as her eyes traced out into the crowd. He followed her gaze, and saw the source of her mood change approaching: a young man he knew well by reputation. 

Lord Glórindîr bowed to them both, but had eyes only for Lady Éowyn (not that Faramir could fault him for that). “My lady, I hoped to share this next dance with you,” he said with a cocky smile. 

“Oh, my lord, I am very sorry to disappoint you, but I promised this one to Lord Faramir. Perhaps if you seek me out later I will be at greater liberty to accept your offer,” she said. Then, to Faramir’s distinct and unexpected joy, she tucked her hand through his arm, and began to push. 

He needed no further encouragement. With a conciliatory tip of his head to the rebuffed young man, he led her away, praying to all the Valar that his limp did not seem as pronounced as it felt. They moved in silence for some time until, certain that they were far enough away from eager ears, he leaned into her. 

“Not a friend of yours then?” He could hardly help the smugness that crept into his voice. 

“No!” she said quickly. “He very much is, and his sister too, but his reputation is somewhat concerning and I have no interest in gifting such rich fodder to my detractors.” 

“And here I thought I had convinced you on my own merits that I might be an enjoyable dancing partner.”

“Gladly would I have you as my partner in the dances of my own country,” she said, allowing him to guide her into the starting position for their dance. “But now you will have to make do with me finding the experience only tolerable.” 

He realised, a moment too late, that the next dance would be the very pinnacle of solemn northern dances: a slow processional, intended mostly for flaunting aesthetic largesse than actually dancing. His only consolation was that, if nothing else, it was conducive to an extended conversation. With a quiet, tense exhale, he lifted his hand out for her. She took it and he looked away, surprised and more than a little charmed by the way her hand was not at all soft and delicate as he’d expected, but rough and firm. A hand not made by indolence.  

“Oh by all that is sacred,” she groaned when the music began. He had to press his tongue to the back of his teeth to stop himself from laughing. 

“This would not,” he said quietly, “have been the number I would have chosen.”

“Your discerning taste is noted,” she answered, twisting their fingers together. His heart beat in his throat. It was, of course, a far more comfortable way to keep their hands linked, she could be forgiven for that, but it was against the nature of the dance. It was neither a friendly nor intimate event, it was intended to be as stately as the music that undergirded it, and holding hands like that undermined that solemnity entirely. 

An argument raged in his thoughts. He could correct her, and risk temporarily embarrassing her but save her the potential whisperings that might otherwise arise. Or he could say nothing, and continue to feel the intoxicating thrill of being so close to her. 

In the end, the decision was made for him; the music began, and they were forced forward before he could unravel his myriad competing thoughts. Their hands remained tangled. His heart beat like a snare drum. 

“Tell me about how you injured yourself,” she whispered as they moved through the hall. He swallowed. “If it would not offend your pride too greatly.”

“My pride might survive it,” he said, “but I would not have you think me foolish.”

She looked up at him, face half concealed by the fall of her hair, an uneasy lightness in her eyes. “After reading your letters I cannot imagine ever thinking you a fool.” 

He smiled at her half-compliment, knowing full well that it would haunt his dreams for months. Not for a moment did he regret hearing it. 

In whispers, he told her of the miserable affair. His ongoing paranoia after the capture of the Orcs at the riverside, how he’d pushed for longer and longer patrols, even though he knew he didn’t have the men to sustain it, and even though he knew that the winter was the worst time to try to open a new front. He told her how one day he’d pushed his luck a little too far, how he had taken his patrol too close to the river. They weren’t accustomed to tracking that close to the river, and the roaring of the water gave enough cover to the sound of movement. They’d had to fight in the mud, caught between the river behind them and an abnormally large band of Orcs in front of them. He told her how it wasn’t the blow to his leg that did the most damage, but the four league march back to Henneth Annûn. He spared her the gorier details, how he’d felt the unnatural crunch of bone against bone, both rubbing against his skin from within. He wished he could have spared those details from himself. 

“The Orcs have begun moving on the water? But who will defend the north of the river? My people do not sail on it,” her words came breathlessly as the dance ended, their fingers still twined. He purposefully ignored that her first instinct had been to ask after what had been his own greatest concern. No good would come of thinking too hard on that synchronicity. 

“There has been some discussion of coordinating a response between the river traders, my Rangers, and the militia of Anórien, but with luck what my patrols witnessed was only an unfortunate aberration,” he told her as they slipped back into the crowd. He let her hand go in emotional self-preservation, then mourned the loss of contact. 

“My lord,” she said abruptly, “I promised Lord Glórindîr a dance.”

He steeled himself to mourn for an even greater loss of contact. “Of course, I will not detain you further.” 

She shook her head at him, beleaguered. “No—my assessment of his reputation has not changed in the five minutes since I last spoke of it, I merely meant that I need a justification for not accepting his next offer.”

She looked at him expectantly. His mind jumped into action. 

Heart beating in his throat, he led her through Merethrond, out two side doors, and through a small courtyard garden. At the far end of the garden was a small row of hedges that concealed a passageway that led to another, smaller courtyard garden. They passed through it. 

“My brother and I often came here as children,” he told her, watching as she spun slowly around, taking it all in. “The longer celebrations could be interminably boring, and neither he nor I had much of an attention span for it.” 

“My brother and I had somewhere similar at Meduseld,” she said, and sat on a bench in the centre of the garden. “Though we hid training swords in ours and would beat each other black and blue just to occupy ourselves.” 

“I could send for some,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder towards Merethrond. She smiled, but her eyes seemed taken by a sad nostalgia. “And how was your time in Edoras? I’m sorry I did not ask sooner.” 

She looked at him, then quickly away, and it did not take his clear sight to see that she was waging a private war against something. He sat on the bench opposite her, and waited for the outcome of her battle.

“I was glad to see my brother and cousin again,” she said after some time. 

“It seems since we last spoke in person you have grown considerably in your ability to obfuscate through plain speech,” he said. 

She sighed dramatically. “A necessary precondition for life in the White City, I feel. My brother teased me mercilessly for it.” 

“If my brother were here, he would commend yours for doing his duty,” he said. “For my part, I hope you found some way to return the favour.” 

He thought he saw her smile as she gazed up at the starry sky. Around her, the perfectly manicured garden with its artfully planted flower beds and ancient sculptures seemed the very picture of Gondorrim beauty: mathematically balanced, rich in symbolism, an homage to thousands of years of history. She was nothing like the garden. Her hair, unbound despite the common fashions, frizzed in the humidity. One eyebrow was always slightly more arched than the other, even when she was at peace, the other had a scar through it where hair no longer grew. Another scar, dashing across the perimeter of her mouth, made her lips seem lopsided. She was not perfect, but she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. 

She looked at him, holding his gaze fiercely. “Do you hold any lands, my lord?”

The question cut through his heart like a knife. The answer was: not enough, not enough to give you what you deserve, but he could not bring himself to say it. 

“Some, but not a large estate. My mother’s dower lands in Belfalas.”

“Oh,” she said sadly, and he looked away from her, desperately miserable at the way she said it. “I presumed you had none, that complicates my argument.”

“My lady?” 

She stood abruptly and began to pace, looking to him like a battle-hardened commander assessing a campaign. “There are many who assumed that I could not possibly have been sent here as a diplomat, and who assumed that I had rather been sent to secure a favourable marriage. They were wrong about the marriage, but, to my immeasurable fury, correct about my not having been sent primarily as a diplomat.” 

He resisted the urge to make a sarcastic comment about her diplomatic skills, though when she looked at him expectantly he thought that, perhaps, she might not have seen the levity as unwelcome. 

“I was sent from Edoras because I was coveted by my uncle’s councillor. I, of course, have been aware of this for years, but it was not until my cousin at last awoke to reality that it was decided that action had to be taken. I discovered this a few days after I returned to Meduseld, and proceeded to inquire after what other alternative solutions were spoken of before they agreed to my exile.” She stopped, put her hands on her hips, and shook her head. “Rather than simply asking if I could defend myself, they considered training me as a healer, disguising me as a man and deploying me with an éored (which I would have far preferred), and marrying me off to a suitable lord.” 

“In their infinite wisdom, my cousin and brother argued that not only would they have not seen me married off without my explicit desire to be married—a sentiment which does them some credit at least—they would not have me wed to any lord who does not have a sizable estate. I took umbrage with this, not because I have any particular inclination to marry, nor because I believe that marriage represents even a remotely sensible solution to this problem, but because I found it untenable that they might disregard an honourable man as a potential suitor on the basis of his entitlements.” She began to pace again. “I argued to them that I knew many decent men who had no lands at all to their name. I mentioned your name, but of course now that example has little merit.” 

Her words hit him like a hammer blow to the chest. It was as if a fire had been set in his brain, and nothing coherent could pass through it except that she thought him a decent man, had invoked his name in a discussion of marriage, and did not see a lack of substantial holdings as an obstacle to a suit. 

“If you meet either my brother or cousin,” she continued, as if she had not just upended his entire world, “I would greatly appreciate it if you not mention your entitlements to them. I loathe when they win arguments.”

“I give you my word,” he said, voice noticeably weaker. And then, once his thoughts had reorganised themselves into something loosely approximating sanity: “I am sorry to hear of the circumstances of your arrival here.”

She frowned at him. “As if you did not also think that I had been sent on some sort of ill-advised mission to find a husband.”

“I can honestly tell you I did not think that,” he said, and it was true: he had assumed, however incorrectly, that she had been sent as part of some well-crafted plan, and so was very surprised to hear that that was not the case. 

“Well you are alone in that. Twenty-two years of my life passed and not once was I ever asked to show concern for the fripperies of womanly duty. One odious man decides to look upon me with greedy eyes and now no-one can think of anything to say to me that does not concern marriage and virtue. But what need have I for either of those? The liberties given to me as the niece of a king far surpass any that might be given to me as a wife of any man, and I do love them too much to give them up so easily. And virtue!” She dropped down huffily onto a bench. “The men of my ken have always been content to whore their way across the Mark, what use have I for virtue that they do not? I see little merit in upholding such conceits, I would far prefer to ruck up my skirts and have done with it now.”

For the second time that night, it felt as if a fire had been set in Faramir’s brain. All at once everything was too overwhelming and he noticed too much: the heady scent of jasmine that drifted on the air, the warmth in his cheeks that had not been there just seconds ago, the lithe curves of her figure beneath the soft fabric of her dress. In a moment of desperate need, he began to silently recite the names of the Kings of the Northern Kingdom, a chanted prayer to regain his failing dignity. He coughed to hide his distress, but she saw right through it.

“As someone who had once intended to marry, I am surprised that you react so skittishly to the facts of life,” she said, with a withering look.

She had confused his reaction for offended modesty, an assessment which could not be farther from the truth, but to disabuse her of that notion would require him admitting to (and recognising) feelings that he was working very hard to bury. He flailed for an appropriate response.

“There was never a formal intention to marry,” he said as a diversion, then wondered how he had ever come to be in command of one of Gondor’s most elite forces with defensive instincts that poor. 

“A politician’s answer,” she said scornfully. 

He laughed at his own expense. “I can say it no clearer! I thought myself in love, but I was mistaken.” 

“But you were mistaken,” she repeated hollowly. 

“It is easy for the young to get swept up in fantasies, but reality will always set in at one point or another.” He looked up at the stars, and thought back on the now-distant days of his life when things had not seemed quite so complicated. “It would have been unkind to force the life of a soldier’s wife on someone who could have lived a different life,” he said after a moment. 

Éowyn laughed, and he thought it sounded bitter. “How very noble of you.” She leaned forward, and the light of the moon made her hair seem like a cold flame. “You dismiss it so readily, but there is honour in being the wife of a soldier. It can be a good life.”

The words were out of his mouth before he had the chance to stop himself: “Would you have it as your life?” 

She appeared for a moment almost sad. Her eyes darted away from his, down towards her hands where they laid in her lap. Then she looked back up at him, a glint in her eye. 

“I think I would prefer to be the soldier.” 

He laughed. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn awoke to a blindingly bright morning and an acute feeling of embarrassment. An attempt was made to stifle the embarrassment by burying her head under as many of her pillows as she could, but to no success. She clenched her fists beneath the covers, screwed her eyes shut so tightly she risked a headache, and tried to force back all of her memories from last night. 

She had let her guard down, she had had a moment of weakness, and she had humiliated herself. For nigh on a year she had successfully hidden the confused nature of her removal to Minas Tirith, had convinced as many people as she thought necessary that she had been sent because she was competent and trusted. In a single night, she had shattered that illusion, had admitted to the depths of her weakness and vulnerability. More humiliatingly, she had done so to the son of the one man who could absolutely never, ever know her weakness. 

She let out an agonised groan, muffled by the mountain of pillows above her head. One of her housemaids would be along soon to help her dress, and no doubt Sedril would be at her heels, ready to push her to the limits of her civility. There was nothing for it, it would be another endless day of miserable torment, now made worse by the knowledge that there was a chink in her armour, a chink put there by none other than herself. 

It was, she told herself when her maid arrived, not completely her fault. Faramir had that same Elven air about him as his father, and it was that magic had made her truly vulnerable. He had induced her to speak against her will, had made her share those secrets that she had not wanted to speak aloud. And then, in a master stroke of manipulation, he had called her his friend, in a deliberate attempt to make her think that she had willingly made herself vulnerable. 

She was furious. 

Sedril arrived, as chipper and irritating as ever, bringing with her some silly little embroidery. They sat in Éowyn’s sitting room and worked, Éowyn with considerably less interest than Sedril. Her rage coursed through her veins, hotter than the hottest fires, and as expansive as the sky above. She had not felt fury like this in years, never had she felt so utterly deceived. 

They worked for several hours, and Sedril kept them full with a running commentary of her thoughts on her work, her life, Minas Tirith, the weather, every insufferably dull topic she could find. Éowyn said little, drowning in the ocean of her anger. The wildflowers she was embroidering began to look less like flowers and more like amorphous blobs of colour. There was no point in her attempting to maintain the charade of her interest in craft work any longer. It was all a farce. 

Everything was a farce.

She stood abruptly, shocking Sedril into silence (blissful, merciful silence). Out of the corner of her eye, she saw through the window that someone was sitting in the garden. She knew who it was, and white hot fury blinded her once more. 

He had, again, wounded her pride. He had made a fool of her, and she would not let it stand. 

With not even an ounce of affected courtesy, she sent Sedril on her way, claiming a headache. When the girl left, she stood in the sitting room, fists clenched once more, heart beating in her forehead. 

There was only one course of action before her: she stormed out into the garden, taking the steps two at a time. 

“Your Elven magic,” she snarled, “you used it against me.”

He looked quickly up from his book, and she saw confusion on his face. She stopped before him, hands on her hips, chin thrust upwards.

“My—my Elven magic?” 

“Yes,” she said. “You used it against me.”

He carefully closed his book. “There are few Men who have dealings with the Elves, fewer still who have any claim to knowledge of their arts, and I,” he said, slowing his speech, “am not one of them.” 

“Théodred Prince warned me of the Elven sorcery of your father, who can read the hearts of Men and bend their wills,” she said. He could lie to her no longer, she knew the truth of his control. He would have to face her openly, and he would have to beg for her forgiveness.

“Ah,” he said gravely, pushing hair back from his forehead. “Forgive me. No, it is not Elven magic that you speak of, or, at least not Elven magic as such.” 

Her face flushed. “But you admit that there is some controlling magic that you have used upon me?”

He looked alarmed. “No! Certainly not, or, as I said, not in the way that you suspect.” He set the book on the bench beside him. 

“I do not wish to play at riddles. Speak plainer!” Her voice was tight with anger.      

“Then if you will have it so,” he said, and took a deep breath. “In the Elder Days, the Fathers of Men, or Edain, came forth from the east, seeking the Light of the West. They settled in Beleriand, and there entered the service of the Elves, during which time they, at great cost, aided in the War of Wrath. Eärendil, one of their leaders, voyaged to Valinor, and entreated the Valar to grant him the means to defeat Morgoth. For their labours, the Maia Eönwë strengthened the Edain in body and mind—that is the important part. Thereafter, the Edain sailed to Númenor, and there became known to history as the Númenóreans. Their kingdom was great but flawed, and they soon fell prey to the deceptions of the Enemy—our Enemy. He tempted them with immortality, and many fell under his spell. Elendil, and his sons Isildur and Anárion, who were descendants of the Edain Bëor, could not be so easily swayed, and fled to Ennor, and there established the Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor.” 

She folded her arms across her chest. “Your histories are, I’m sure, very well spoken, but of little interest to me. I asked what magic you employed against me, not of the history of Men.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it. Her anger did not dissipate with his evident speechlessness. The silence stretched, and she grew more frustrated.

“Fine,” she said, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Continue.”

He said nothing for a moment longer, then stretched his legs out in front of him. “The men of Númenor who came to populate Gondor did not leave all memory of their homeland behind when they crossed the Western Sea. The Númenórean faithful, to whom my ancestors belonged, retained legacies of their Edain heritage—they preserved their dark hair and grey eyes, for example. The gifts of Eönwë they kept too, certain strengths of the mind that other Men did not have.” 

“The ability to dominate the minds of other Men,” she completed for him, the anger returning in stronger waves. 

“It is not so violent.”

“You have trespassed against my mind, that is more violence than any Orc might affect.”

“I would not,” he said sternly, though looking at her with gentle eyes, “make you think or do anything that was not your will.” 

“Would not, but not could not,” she countered.

“A gravely important distinction, in all things. You could use my injury to your advantage and attack me, but I hope that you would not,” he offered her a wry smile. She did not return it. 

“Then my thoughts are not my own when I am in your midst. Last night, the things I said were not said willingly, but because you took them from me.” 

“No!” he said quickly, sharply. “I swear to you, I crossed no barriers while you spoke to me of your home.” 

Her heart stopped, then thudded forcefully in her chest. “While I spoke to you of my home. But we spoke of many things beyond that.” He briefly averted his gaze, and she realised the worst was true.

“When I attempted, however poorly, to greet you in your language, I thought that I had perhaps offended you, and in my uncertainty I suffered a lapse in judgement.” 

Her blood ran cold in her veins and she turned away from him in shame and humiliation. 

Her voice, when it came, trembled with anger. “What did you perceive?”

After several excruciating seconds of silence, she spun on him, and saw that he was gazing out at the garden, deep in thought. “Turmoil. Heartache. Defiance. Courage. All enveloped in abiding loneliness.” 

She looked away from him, too proud to know that he saw the darkness she sought for so long to hide. “And now you think me weak, an object to be pitied.” 

“Look at me, Éowyn!” he said, and she did. “If you are weak and pitiable, then so too am I, for I saw naught in you that I do not recognise in myself.”

Notes:

Silm fans…. Please don’t roast me for my hackneyed history of the Edain. I am literally…. I just cannot be fucked with the Silm, I’m so sorry. I’ve read it, I enjoyed it, it was a good experience. That’s also how I describe reading Marx’s Capital and I promise you I’m never doing that ever again lol

More footnotes available here.

Chapter 10: Book I: Spring 3017

She stared at Faramir. She wasn’t sure what else to do. If she spoke, she would unleash a torrent of furious words on him that—even in the depths of her anger—she didn’t think he deserved. Probably.

There was, she thought, no better evidence that they had nothing in common than that this was his plan to mollify her. That, almost more than the unbelievable violation of her privacy he’d just confessed to, mortified her. Even if he had spoken honestly to her and he hadn’t attempted to control her thoughts, then she had still assumed a level of understanding between them that simply wasn’t there. She had thought she’d found a kindred spirit in him, only to now learn that he misunderstood her entirely. 

She continued to stare at him. She could turn and leave, retreat to her chambers and never speak to him again unless absolutely forced to. But it would leave her with too many questions unanswered, and she liked her sleep too well to leave that many issues on the table. 

A deep breath pierced the tense air between them—her deep breath, she realised. 

“What,” she began, keeping her voice as steady as she could, “do you know of my thoughts?” 

“Of yours? What I have told you, nothing more. I felt only a passing glimmer of emotions, but heard no complete thoughts.” He held her gaze, though not in challenge. 

“But that is not the norm?” 

He seemed, for the briefest of seconds, as if he wished to answer any other question in the world. But, with a somewhat more aggrieved sigh than Éowyn was quite willing to put up with, he recomposed himself.

“Yes and no,” he swallowed, and looked to her to be almost nervous. “It would, I think, be most helpful to imagine that you are standing in a crowd of people. You are aware that there are conversations happening in your vicinity, but only the loudest are comprehensible. Some conversations are completely unintelligible, but the countenance of the participants tells you as much as you should like to know. In other instances, you can know that a conversation is happening, but for one reason or another the people involved have sought to keep you out of it.” 

“And which one am I?” She unfolded her arms, planting her hands on her hips once more. 

“Something between the second and final options,” he said. 

“Unintelligible,” she repeated, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she struggled against her desire to turn and leave. 

“Yes, though with not quite as much of the moral judgement you perceive it to be,” he answered, with a small upward twitch of his lips. 

She stared at him once more, entirely uncertain of how to deal with the influx of information and the mortifying swirl of emotions within her. 

“And now?” She tightened her grip around her hips. “What am I thinking now?”  

His eyes, which had before been creased with grave concern, softened. “Still I see only emotions.” 

“It would be best if you did away with the pretence of modesty and spoke without obfuscation,” she told him, hearing how angered her voice was. 

“Embarrassment. Suspicion. Weariness,” he said. “You have yet to decide whether you would prefer to hit me or ask me more questions.”

She exhaled slowly. 

“For my part, I hope you choose the latter course of action,” he continued. He shifted on the bench, as obvious an invitation as any for her to sit beside him. 

She looked at him. 

She looked at the bench. 

She thought about how much simpler her life had been a year ago. 

And then she sat down.

She asked her questions, and he answered them dutifully and—she believed—without censoring himself again. The more she listened, the more it became apparent that even he was unable to fully define this part of him, that so much as he claimed to have an understanding of the root cause of it, he had almost no practical answers. He had hypotheses for whose thoughts he heard most clearly, but none had ever stood up well enough to experimentation to satisfy him. 

Even more than that, he seemed remarkably reticent about using whatever it was that he had. She had no qualms in admitting to her hypocrisy: she was horrified at the thought of anybody else seeing into her thoughts, but if she’d been given such a gift she wouldn’t have thought twice about using it to her own advantage. To hear him talk about the pains he went through to ensure he never overstepped his bounds unsettled her; Théodred had made it abundantly clear that Lord Denethor made no bones about using this magic of his for his own purposes. Perhaps she had estimated Faramir wrong, perhaps he was less like his father than his appearance and demeanour indicated. 

She wanted to trust him, felt inclined to even against her better judgements, but still she could not fully fathom the parameters of this power of his. How was it that he could understand emotions but not thoughts? How could he know that she had (however briefly) been angered almost to the point of a violent outburst, but not know what thoughts guided her there? Where was the line between an emotion and an outright thought? Did he struggle simply because she natively spoke a different tongue to him? Would her thoughts be clearer to him if they came in Westron or Sindarin? 

There was, she knew, but one way to find out. 

When she was young—not a child, but not yet old enough to properly call herself an adult—she had been privy to some discussions between her brother and his friends, namely, and most explicitly, discussions about drinking songs. There was one that, to her fourteen year old mind, had made a particularly serious impact. 

She thought of it now, translating it as best she could, to the Common Tongue. The song concerned a young woman, who, facing death in one form or another, desired to not go to it while still a maiden. She spoke her concerns aloud, and was quickly seized upon by a man, who benevolently offered himself up to her to help assuage her fears. He then described to her, in some detail, that bodily fluid he would then give to her, by comparing it to the finest, sweetest ale she had ever had. The woman, sufficiently convinced by his arguments, went away with him to at long last see the end of her maidenhood. 

(The final part of the song, which Éomer’s friends conveniently forgot about, and which Éowyn only discovered much later, was a warning to young women about the dangers of dallying with men before marriage. That, of course, did not serve her purposes here, so she didn’t bother translating it.)

She thought the words hard, thinking over and over again about the young woman, about her desire for the man, and about her apparently voracious appetite for the sweet ale. All the while, she stared Faramir down, searching for any indication that he had caught wind of her thoughts, looking for a telltale sign of embarrassment, as he had shown her last night when she had eluded to those same acts. 

For what felt like a small lifetime, she stared at him, repeating the translated lyrics over and over in her mind, imagining those things that they described. But no recognition came, and he continued to—effortlessly—explain the nature of this clear sight he had been given. 

The longer she thought of the song, the less the lyrics mattered to her, and the more she thought of the happy and carefree times she had had in Meduseld, at home in Edoras, so far from the staid white walls of Minas Tirith. She thought of her freely given happiness there, how laughter had not been a surprise, but the norm. How before the Worm had arrived, she’d never had occasion to count her moments of happiness because there had simply been too many of them. She thought about how desperately she missed her brother and cousin, how sorely she wished her uncle well, how much that cloudiness in his eyes terrified her. Her heart hurt, not the usual dull ache of sorrow, but as an actual, physical throb in her chest, like a searing iron wrenching apart her bones. 

Beside her, Faramir stopped talking and sucked in a sharp breath. He had sounded pained, a noise like he had been hurt by something—not something drastic, but like a knife dragged across soft skin, fingertips unexpectedly grazing an open flame. 

“Are you well?” His voice was soft, his brow furrowed. She looked at him, saw the concern in his eyes, real, unrestrained concern. 

He had felt her sorrow. 

“I—,” she began, prepared to hand wave her moment of homesickness away. But he had felt it. If he had spoken truly and could not discern her thoughts in full, then he had felt her pain and had no understanding of why. “I suffered a lapse in judgement,” she began again, hoping to lighten the sting. “I was reminded of Edoras, and it burned like a wound within me.”

“I apologise, I had not realised anything I said might recall your home,” he said quickly, concern not lessened in his eyes.

“You were correct, it was nothing you said.” She looked away from him, colour creeping into her cheeks against her will. “I aimed to test your… your ability, and so thought of a drinking song favoured by my brother and his friends. It was a lewd song, perhaps unreasonably so, and I wondered if perhaps the reason you were less successful in hearing my thoughts was because they are in a language unfamiliar to you. So I translated—as much as I could—that drinking song into Westron, and thought that if I had supposed correctly, the crudeness of the language might fluster you, which I thought would show on your face. But instead, the song reminded me of the occasions on which I had heard it, of the happiness I had felt in those times, and how different that happiness was to the life I live now.”

He looked, briefly, as if he was considering a variety of complex arguments. “I had not caught the thought, that is true. Though I confess I am now very interested in hearing what Rohirric songs you have heard that you imagine would be offensive to me.” 

She gaped at him. “Surely not, my lord.”

“Surely, my lady, I have been a soldier for half of my life, there is little that might shock me now,” he said, then grinned wickedly. “Unless you are concerned for your own propriety, in which case I would not demand it of you.”

He was taunting her, trying to call her bluff on her insistence that she was less squeamish than the Gondorrim. It would not do. 

“It is sharper in my own language, but I think not unintelligible in Westron,” she disclaimed, and then began to sing. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The midmorning sun cut through the patchwork of buildings, momentarily blinding him. It was at the perfect angle in the sky to somehow be both unavoidable and hidden enough to not warm the cool air. Not normally a concern for him, but normally he walked at twice this speed. 

“I am sorry my brother is not here to spar with you,” he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. 

“As am I,” she said, and he saw a flicker of sadness on her face. “The guards your father sends in his stead are far too fearful of harming a lady.”

“You can hardly blame them, it is an impossible situation to be put in. At least Boromir has the advantage of rank and knowing you personally to protect him.” 

“Oh I know,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “But I do see a great many men of my acquaintance in the practice ring from time to time, and find myself frustrated that none of them will accept my challenge. Never you, though.” 

“I prefer my bow,” he answered, watching as she kicked a rock, a faintly comical sight given the abundance of skirts bunching around her feet, which were themselves encased in finely embroidered slippers. 

“Do you?” She looked shocked, and he was glad for it. 

“No,” he admitted with a smile. 

“I never learned to shoot. There is no honour in it, I think.” 

He stopped walking, and thought an extraordinary number of thoughts in the blink of an eye. Then, with great effort, he continued walking.

“I agree,” he said. “But it is an invaluable tool for preventing unnecessary deaths. Stealth and distance are crucial to the struggle in Ithilien, even if they are, perhaps, less honest than other forms of combat.”

She looked up at him, blue-grey eyes gleaming with apprehension. “I did not mean to imply that you are dishonourable, my lord, nor that your command is anything less than exemplary.” 

“I did not think you did,” he said, and smiled at her compliment.

“I should like to rest,” she said, gesturing to a nearby bench. He had no doubt that she was only asking to sit out of concern for him and his injury, but he indulged her all the same. The longer they sat on that bench, the longer it would be before they faced the return to the Citadel and their inevitable separation.

The days grew longer and warmer, and he was happy to spend as much and as many of them with her as he could. Friendship had grown between them, friendship that he found far more rewarding than his unrequited not-love, and he preferred to abide in that. They spoke often and at length about many things and none at all. They argued as much as they spoke, and he thought that she had come to enjoy their arguments as he always had, seeing not the finality of battle in them, but the joy of two friends of equal wit and obstinacy having enough respect for one another to stay and make their case instead of leaving the other to their chosen darkness.     

She told him, on rare occasions and in whispered tones, of all that she had seen in Edoras. Of her anger at her uncle bowing to the pernicious demands of a councillor, of her fury at not being trusted to handle him herself. She was steadfast in her belief that the strength of Rohan had not yet failed, but privately he saw in her words pride borne not from confidence, but from compensation. She was bound by her duty to her king, but when, on occasion, she slipped up and spoke entirely as his niece, Faramir could sense the building fear within her. It saddened him that, even now, she did not feel comfortable enough with him to speak entirely openly, but he supposed that she quite reasonably assumed he could not understand the depths of her turmoil, and short of admitting his own underlying conflict with his family, there was naught to be done for it. She had been charged with acting as an emissary to the court of Minas Tirith, and she was a woman with no real political power of her own. Her doom was to watch the man she loved as a father fall to an ignoble end. 

In that, he felt immense sympathy. His father was hale and keen of mind, but his kingdom was not. His kingdom was a shadow of its former self, a mockery of all the things that had made Númenor great, and its ongoing decline seemed unrelenting. And Faramir, too, lacked any power to reverse that decline, he had neither land, nor titles, nor true political influence to steer Gondor in the better direction. No, he was condemned to standing athwart history, watching all that he loved hurtle towards desolation, entirely unable to prevent the inevitable. 

They loitered on the bench in the warm spring air until the sun set in the sky. Only then, and with great reluctance on his behalf, did they begin their return journey to the Citadel. On the way, their conversations turned to lighter topics: the farces she had to endure in the company of Lady Berúthiel, the antics of his Rangers, the trouble he and Boromir had caused in their youth, the scares she and her brother had given her cousin and uncle in theirs. When he felt that she was relaxed enough, he tentatively broached the topic of learning to speak her language. Her face showed first unbridled excitement, then was quickly forced back into practiced neutrality. It was an affectation of hers he’d come to see more often than he’d hoped. It seemed that she was almost scared of her happiness. She built a fortress a mile high and deep around it, and was more fearful of the moments in which it slipped out than of the unrelenting misery she described as permeating every layer of her life. 

But his reference to her language had brought her joy, even if she had forced it away, so he returned to it again. He had never laid siege to anything, but knew the mechanics well enough. The key was consistency of the force, not strength. If a battering ram was too heavy, too slow to move, its carriers could be shot down by the defenders, rendering it functionally inert against even a thin wall. But even the thickest of walls could be downed by a pen knife with enough stamina and dedication. If he had to take out his pen knife and chip away at her defensive walls for decades until she was no longer so terrified of her happiness, then he would do it. 

He asked her for help pronouncing some of the more impenetrable words he’d come across and, not without first teasing his foreign accent, she helped him through it. That led to more questions from him, then instruction from her, which spiralled into her observations about the slight linguistic differences between Aldburg, where she was born, and Edoras, where she was raised. 

It was easier to put his love for her aside when they spoke like this. It was not that the love receded—if anything, it was stronger than ever—but where before the only future he had seen for them ended with her as his wife, he now saw her as an unrivaled companion, one for whom the promise of the future was less central to his enjoyment of their time together than the excitement of the present. So long as their conversations continued, so long as he could laugh with her, he was content. 

In the forecourt of the Citadel, despite both of their conspicuous attempts to avoid it, they were drawn into a conversation with Lady Berúthiel and her coterie of twittering bores. He was certain they all had names, and even more certain that Boromir would have eviscerated him for not remembering them, but as it was he didn’t, and so did his best to remain on the periphery of the conversation. Berúthiel, who had never had much time for him anyways, was obviously content to let it happen. Her attention was focused, with almost unnerving fervour, on Éowyn. Berúthiel was, apparently, attempting to chide her for her recent decision to seek out the Rohirric traders in the City. Éowyn had insisted she’d only done it because she sought the solace of those who spoke her native language, but Faramir thought it an eminently politically sensible decision. By specifically pointing out the Rohirric presence in the City she had, however inadvertently, begun to show the people that Rohan was not so distant as they might otherwise think. It was a sign of Berúthiel’s political and intellectual incompetence that she thought that beneath her. 

Her complaints were as long-winded and circuitous as ever, giving Faramir ample time to notice that the moon was full and bright in its low position in the sky, that the air was beginning to tend towards the dryness of summer and that, despite having had his weight on it for some time now, his leg barely hurt at all. The realisation brought with it a complex array of emotions. The sooner he was entirely without pain, the sooner he could return to his mean, alleviating his feeling of guilt for having been away from them for so long, and his stress at not being aware of every single troop movement in Ithilien. But, almost more potently, was the vague feeling of sorrow that his time spent with Éowyn would soon be over. They would write, he had no doubt about that, but he had come to enjoy their time together in a way he had enjoyed few other things in his life. 

He wondered, with an insecurity he was not typically given to, what she thought of him. He was in the habit of knowing exactly where he stood with people, or if he didn’t, not caring about it. Before, when he had felt romantic inclinations towards people, he had approached the situation with a sort of brusque confidence—he knew his merits, even if they were not always fashionable, and he had never really felt the need to doubt them. With Éowyn, he felt unsettled. It was not that he lacked confidence around her, not as such, but not being able to know exactly what was going on in her head made him feel as if he was permanently trying to catch up with her. 

She seemed willing, if nothing else, to indulge him in his desire to spend time with her, but he was not sure what to make of that. He felt as though he now understood her both better and worse than ever, as if the more she told him or herself and her thoughts, the less he knew how to categorise her, what to expect. It thrilled him, of course, there were so few people whose thoughts and actions he wasn’t bored by, but it also unsettled him. From a young age his father had taught him how to read and classify people, and since he had mastered the skill, there were few people who ever contravened the ordering system. She did, but she didn’t seem to be impressed with herself for her difference. If anything, she seemed to be permanently enraged by how ill-fitting she was with the world around her. That frustrated him beyond words—that the thing he saw in her as among her greatest features could be something that she seemed to so intensely dislike. 

What frustrated him even more was that he could never tell where he stood with her. Sometimes he wondered if she even knew what she thought of him. She would ricochet from being open and honest with him to recoiling with breathtaking abruptness. She had told him, in that patchwork manner of hers, about the untoward attention of her uncle’s councillor, but her fear of happiness and of friendship made him think that perhaps there was far more to the story than she was willing to let on. 

Beside him, Berúthiel began another torturously long lecture on the places in the City that were and weren’t appropriate for a well-bred young lady to be spotted in. He hazarded a glance at Éowyn and immediately regretted it: when their eyes met, her already-tenuous grasp on her composure began to falter, and for a single, terrifying second it seemed as if she might burst out laughing. For each of their sakes, he looked away, concentrating with great enthusiasm on the stonework at the opposite end of the forecourt, pushing his bottom lip between his teeth to quell his own imminent laughter. 

After nothing less than a millennium, Berúthiel tired of her own melodramatics and, with a cloyingly formal curtsey, departed, taking her perfumed cadre of gossips with her. When he was certain the sound of their footsteps was distant enough that laughter became less a threat than a welcome release of tension, he looked over at Éowyn. 

Her jaw was working as if she were frustrated, and the lightness in her eyes told him it was to stop her laughter. He thought he would quite like to hear her laugh, so let his out, daring her to join him. And she did, great, glorious peals of laughter that descended with a characteristic harshness into gasps. She clapped one hand over her mouth and the other over her chest, shoulders quaking as she put forth what appeared to him to be a colossal effort to compose herself. He laughed now mostly at the force of her laughter, she had the sort of laugh that was so rare but so brilliant when it came that it was, to him, completely infectious. She had confessed once that she thought her laugh grating and duck-like, he thought it better than any gift he had ever received before. 

Slowly, her breathing returned to its normal rhythm and her body shook less with mirth. The dusting of pink on the tops of her cheeks remained, bright and stark against her pale skin and hair. 

“They don’t like me,” she said eventually, but it did not seem to him that she did so out of self pity. 

“They might if you made an effort,” he mused, having finally recomposed himself. 

“I cannot be the only one to make an effort,” she said. “If they were half as committed to extending me any courtesy at all as they are to insulting me in every conceivable manner, we might be able to reach some sort of neutral ground. As it is, they aren’t committed to it, and I am left wondering if it will ever be possible to be liked here.” 

He frowned at her. “Are you really concerned with being liked?” 

Sidestepping a puddle, she wrinkled her nose as she tried not to laugh at her own expense. His answer, then, was clear. 

“Ah,” he said, watching her intently. “As I thought. Being liked is not a necessary precursor of having power, you know. Lord Astron is among the least liked people in the kingdom but he is tremendously powerful.” 

She whipped her head around as if expecting that their conversation was being monitored. “You, my lord,” she said teasingly, “are a liability. Anyway, I cannot imagine I would in any way benefit from being loathed but submitted too. Nor, I think, would I want that; you are right that I have little concern for the approval of others, but I do not desire to be hated.” 

“There are other ways of being liked and being powerful that do not involve subjecting yourself to the whims of the court,” he said when at least they crested the stairs and began the walk to the Citadel.

“Yes,” she said. “I could ride out and lay waste to the servants of the Enemy. Though for some unaccountable reason, I cannot seem to find my men.” 

He smiled, and worked up as much restraint as he had left in him to stop himself from commenting on it; more than their fair share of letters had been exchanged challenging one another over the morality of the valorisation of war. He would not be swayed from his beliefs, and she would not budge from hers. For now, at least. 

“Men could be found for you, if you so desired, though you are correct in that it becomes more difficult by the day to earn one’s place in history through nonviolent means.” She looked at him as if he were wretched for complaining about it. He ignored her look. “But you overlook the value of appealing to other constituencies than just the Lords of Gondor. The people of Minas Tirith, though lacking in titles and heraldry, are a fearsome bunch, and where does the greatness of the high-hearted shine through more clearly than in the love of the people? A lord or lady who is loved by the people of this kingdom would be more powerful than one who is seen by the people as only a distant enforcer of the law.” 

She laughed, a little more coldly than he was used to of late. “It is not love or emotions that confer power, but steel and blood.” 

“And yet,” he began as they entered the Palace, “my late mother wielded no blades and commanded no troops, but was more powerful than all the lords and ladies of the realm, save my father and his.” 

“Because she was married to your father,” Éowyn said sharply. 

“No, or at least not completely. Her marriage was, of course, indispensable for the access it provided her, but it was through her careful cultivation of a relationship with the people of the City that her real power was forged.” He exhaled slowly. “It is not customary for the wives of the Stewards to be honoured with an official mourning period upon their deaths. Yet after my mother passed, the City was cast in black veils and muted bells, done entirely at the free and independent will of the people.” 

Éowyn looked across the foyer as they passed through it, and he briefly allowed himself the hope that something he had said had finally gotten through to her.

But then, as she so often did, she surprised him. Stopping abruptly in the middle of the corridor, she put her hands on her hips—and he was not too honourable to not notice the soft swell of her hips, the way they curved gently into her waist, how he wondered what it would be like to taste the skin there. He swallowed thickly.

“Are you truly as committed to learning my language as you say you are?”

He frowned—briefly. He was used to this sort of abruptness from her; whereas he used meandering tangents as a way of easing the landing for more controversial topics, she jumped from thought to thought to elide conversations she didn’t want to have. 

“I am,” he said, not indulging her as such, but curious to see where she intended to go with this new line of thought. 

“I have an appointment with one of my cousin’s former sergeants on the morrow. I had initially intended to visit him where he has taken up residence, but now that I am aware of how offensive Lady Berúthiel finds my activities, I thought to invite him to the Citadel instead. He is from the very far reaches of the Eastemnet, and his accent is,” she looked at him with a mischievous intensity that sent fear right to his heart, “quite unique.” 

He nodded his head slowly, weighing up his options. He was not, he was sure, remotely skilled enough yet to manage any sort of vernacular conversation, but he could hardly turn down the opportunity to hear a form of the language he might not otherwise have the chance to. 

“I would not demand it of you if you were afraid, of course,” she said coyly, tilting her head to the side. He knew that she thought doing that made her look more innocent, less culpable for the havoc she so gleefully wrought. He also knew that she was right, and that, in the face of such an obvious challenge, he could never back down. 

With a sigh and a wave of his hand, he agreed, condemning himself to certain doom.

Notes:

Solidifying Éowyn's jock status by having her test the mind reading garbage in the most deranged way possible. The song she's singing in her head is called Watkins Ale and is raunchy as hell.

Chapter 11: Book I: Spring 3017

If Éowyn asked him, he would jokingly tell her he regretted it the minute the Rohir veteran opened his mouth to speak. In truth, he had to focus especially hard to keep track of the conversation (even if the emotions of it ran implicitly and clearly through his thoughts), but he did not regret it one bit. It would do little to improve his command of the Rohirric language, but it had been a far more valuable learning experience in different ways. 

For one, he learned that she was not just loved by her people, she was adored. The man—her Prince cousin’s former sergeant who had settled with extended family in Anórien after a debilitating injury—looked at each of her unguarded, borderline-coarse moments and saw in it something remarkable. Faramir approved wholeheartedly of it. He, of course, found her brashness charming beyond words, but to know that there were others who appreciated her idiosyncrasies filled him with just the smallest bit of fondness towards the Rohirrim, even if he still found himself angered by their obsessive vainglory. And the retired sergeant was more than forthcoming on the vainglory front, stretching Faramir’s already-tenuous ability to sit quietly. 

Secondly, he learned that Éowyn was not just confident, she was positively arrogant. She was more cocksure than some of the boldest men he’d ever commanded, and that confidence translated not to an amplification of her personality, but a magnification of it. Her voice grew no louder, her actions no more exaggerated, but she seemed to dance through the conversation like a master swordsman making a mockery of his opponent—and his, or rather her, opponent seemed to be thrilled by every second of it. She seized upon every chance to play his words back at him, and in so doing made the man feel equally at ease and keyed up. The sergeant seemed to be disarmed entirely by her, mesmerised by this beautiful woman who comported herself as a man. 

Seeing her like that, in what he now realised was her element, Faramir thought that it was one of the greatest injustices he knew of that she would never be the queen of some celebrated kingdom, beloved by the good and great. She had no talent for winning over the dour Gondorrim nobility, but her easy repartee with this common officer spoke to almost limitless potential in other areas. Not that she would listen to him on that issue, he had tried already and she seemed wholly unimpressed with the thought of earning her reputation through anything but the misery of warfare. 

He lost track of the conversation embarrassingly quickly, and resigned himself to being kept company by his own thoughts. Thoughts which, for better or for worse, strayed to his mother. He had been very young when she’d passed, so young he could hardly remember her face or voice now, but he knew how she was remembered within the City. He knew that the people said she seemed to have an entire kingdom’s worth of love within her heart and was singularly dedicated to distributing it as widely as possible; no person was too small or too insignificant to merit her attention. 

There was a room, at the very back of the eastern wing of the Palace, where her belongings—the ones that had not been buried with her or returned to Dol Amroth—laid. Laid in wait for something, though when he had asked as a child no-one was prepared to give him an honest answer. Watching Éowyn, the answer appeared before him as clear as day. 

When the sergeant rose to take his leave, Faramir elected to go too. He let muscle memory guide his footsteps, his thoughts too captivated by long-forgotten memories of his mother to be fully aware of the path he cut through the back corridors of the Palace. He hadn’t visited the room in twenty years; he had desired neither the personal sorrow nor the risk of upsetting his father that it brought. But he had a reason to go to it now, a reason that was more than just unproductive mourning. 

The air was heavy and warm when he pushed open the door. Fleetingly, he wondered who of his family had been the last to enter here. In all likelihood, it was Boromir, he had always borne his grief better than either he or his father, and could stand to think about their mother without losing a fight with his emotions—something neither Faramir nor his father had ever fully mastered. Whoever it was that had last come to it, it had been some time in the past, the dust lay thickly on the surfaces, almost sticky to the touch.

He knew what he had come for, but knew not where it was. While most of his mother’s possessions had been taken to Dol Amroth for safekeeping by her father and siblings, enough of them remained that multiple trunks lined the walls of the room. He stared at each one in turn, as if they might gain sentience and tell him which contained the prize he sought and save him the heartache, but no such fortune graced him. 

With a sigh that was perhaps a bit more emotive than he was fully comfortable with, he knelt before the first trunk and wriggled its latch open. It contained papers—sheet music mostly—things that his aunt and uncle would likely have no attachment to but which, he realised with some gloom, were probably valuable to his father. He shut the trunk, looking into the darkened room and working to send away the heaviness in his heart.

There were many things said in the City and beyond about his father and mother, though she was universally loved and he universally respected, for years after her death many said that it was their marriage that sealed her doom. It was strange, they said, that such a vibrant young woman should willingly marry such a stern man, and that it was her time in the city of stone that ultimately drained her will to live. Faramir, of course, knew better. For whatever faults he saw in his father, he could not deny that his parents’ marriage had been a loving one, that it was neither his father’s temperament nor the White City’s aloofness that sent his mother to an early grave. No, it was none of those things, and the papers he had just seen were a reminder that the grief in the house of the Steward had been so profound because there had once been so much joy. 

The next several trunks were less emotive, filled with tapestries and textiles that he did not recognise and could not even begin to construct an emotional context for. For that, at least, he was grateful. He had no intention of making himself miserable just now, and certainly not in such close proximity to his father, who would sniff out its cause with ease.  

The very last trunk on the far wall held his quarry, buried beneath several fine gowns and veils. He lifted it up, looking it over for damage or any obvious signs of decay from disuse. There were none; this hardly surprised him. It had been gifted to his mother at his birth by the residents of a war widow’s home she patronised. It had taken ten women six months to craft. The starry firmament it depicted was a reference to her status as the wife of the Lord of Emyn Arnen—as the Steward’s heir was known. His grandfather had died shortly thereafter and the title passed immediately to Boromir, but so long as she wore the cloak, she remained Ithil to the people who loved her, fair and proud and eternal.

He could not give Éowyn much, the lands he had were meagre, the titles especially so. Little that could be called his was worthy of her, that he knew all too well. Even if she would not—should not—love him, he could give her this and ensure that it passed on to someone who would do justice to his mother’s memory. Someone who was fair and proud and eternal. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

She had hoped to disappear for the day, and had been successful at doing so for most of the morning. She had dismissed Sedril (claiming fatigue), and retreated to the terrace garden where the sun was bright, the air remarkably still, and the temperature warm enough to not be too much of a bother.

She had lost track of time, lost track of the days, and an entire year had passed. Her birthday had not, typically, been something of huge concern to her: a year was a year, and a day was a day. She appreciated birthdays for the chance to spend time with her kin, but they had never been days of particularly intense reflection for her. 

This year was different—a year spent away from home, in a land that still felt deeply foreign. It was a year made all the worse by the revelations she stumbled onto when last she was in Edoras. In a whispered panic, she’d revealed to her brother that she had scarcely anything to report to their uncle as to her activities in Minas Tirith, Lord Denethor remained as impenetrable and untrusting as ever, and outside of regular appointments with the Lady Berúthiel, she had hardly made connections of worth with the Gondorrim political establishment. 

Éomer, who loved her too much and cared for her too well, proceeded to overshoot the mark in trying to comfort her. Instead of (as she had hoped) reframing what she had spent her time doing in a way that sounded more impressive, he had squeezed her arms and told her that it mattered little what exactly she did in Gondor, so long as she was safe from the clutches of the Worm. 

The revelation had been devastating, and more than ever before, it had made her hate Gondor. It made her hate herself; she had spent so long imagining that she could be something important, something worthwhile, and had instead deluded herself into thinking she could be aught but a woman. 

Against all her wishes, she had returned to Minas Tirith, and had spent every hour of the six day return trip in feral misery. Her mood turned for the worse when she was greeted at the entrance to the Palace by Boromir alone—not for a moment had she expected Lord Denethor to take time out of his day to attend to her, but an untamed and irrational part of her (a voice that cried from somewhere deep within her, somewhere she had never heard before) cried out in rage when Faramir had not been there too.  

Her anger had continued, until he had approached her that evening, offering a wry smile, an easy joke, and words that sounded almost, almost like home. It might have been the heady drink, or the exhaustion that had still coursed in her veins, or the comfortable rapport that had somehow translated from written correspondence to face to face communication—whatever it was, she had chosen to bare her anger to him, and he had taken it in stride. There had been none of the weak pacification she had expected from his letters, or the unintentional dismissals that had become so common with her brother and cousin.

And he kept listening. And even when she did not feel like saying more, or did not feel as if her words had much meaning, he listened. When faced with a horrible knot of emotions she could hardly contain or understand, the feeling that he was seeing her in her entirety, that feeling that had once been so repulsive to her, felt suddenly like a blessing. In a few short days, she realised she hardly need speak at all. They would wander about the Citadel (slowly, for his injury), or sit in a garden or a courtyard, and when she had exhausted her words, she would lapse into silence, and still it felt as if he heard her. 

He was slower to tell her things, but soon he did. His expectations for his life troubled him: he longed to live the true life of a second son, to become learned in the ways of the world, to travel, to dally in politics and to solve the problems he saw in the world. He worried deeply about the world, not just in terms of the war, but of the culture and manner of his people. But since the age of seventeen, the war had been his life, and there had been less and less time for reading and music and exploration. 

Éowyn did not fully understand his desires. She still desired nothing more than to make a name for herself on the battlefield like her kin, but to hear him speak of how desperately he wanted those things for himself, her heart ached for him. If nothing else, she could understand his desire to fix the myriad problems around him, and his ongoing frustration at being unempowered to do so—that was the most familiar feeling in the world to her. 

All of their time together had stirred something in her, something she could not quite name. Friendship, perhaps. He was quite different to the people she had considered her friends ere now, it would be reasonable enough to assume that this was just what being friends with a scholar felt like. It was an explanation that suited her well, though she continued to find it odd that none of her other friends had inflamed such anxiety in her before she greeted them. Again, that she attributed to his more intellectual demeanor, she was simply steeling herself for more complex arguments.

In the time since their argument, where he had confessed to her that the emotions he saw in her heart were the same ones that plagued him, she felt as if she had a new understanding of him—once she had gotten over her instinctive offence. The things she believed to be true about him, she realised, were often accusations levelled at her by others. The coldness, the reserve, the abrupt censorious, they were the very same mannerisms she used to protect herself. So long as she continued to rely on them to guide her interactions with him, she could hardly fault him for doing the same. 

Slowly, like ice melting from the peak of a mountain in a cold spring, she let some of her defences fall away. It did not come effortlessly, nor did it come perfectly. It was easy to forget that he was not an enemy when she was surrounded by people who still thought her an obtrusive misfit. It helped that they mostly spoke in Westron, so she never felt at a disadvantage compared to him. 

Similar though they were, the ways in which they differed complemented each other. She found less comfort in speaking, and often preferred to fall to silence and pacing; he, content to sit still for hours at a time, favoured talking through the things that troubled him. She would talk until she had reached her limit, then he would take over, and though he said it from an entirely different life, the things he expressed resonated with her more often than not. 

She had accomplished little of political worth in the year since she arrived, but at least she now had friends. Even if they were friends she was actively avoiding on her birthday, choosing to brood instead of seeking out their companionship. Her sadness was, she insisted, nobody’s concern but her own, and it was on her own that she would chase it away. 

A good effort had been made of it, too. Her morning in the garden had gone some way to lifting her homesickness, and though she would have given anything to be with Éomer and Théodred and her uncle, the warmth of the sun was an almost-passable substitute for the warmth of the sun in the garden at Meduseld. 

In the distance, a door opened and shut. She did not need to turn from her seat to know who it was—almost nobody used the library, and of the few that did, only one ever came out to the garden, especially when she was in it. Her heart trembled, and she sighed at herself, if she was worried about getting into a drawn-out argument with him, she was more than capable of demanding he make it his birthday gift to her that they talk on lighter topics only.

She reclined back on her elbows (caring little that the grass was sparse enough beneath her that it would leave dirt streaks on her sleeves) and saw that he carried a bottle of wine, cups and a soft velvet bag. She frowned at him. He ignored her face as, with considerable effort, he sat beside her on the ground. 

“How is your leg?” she asked, eyeing it as he stretched out. 

“Better each day,” he said, and handed her a cup. She accepted it with a tilt of her head, watching with some concern as he sat next to her, his motions stiffer than she thought they ought to be for the optimism in his voice.

When he had settled on the ground, he crooked an eyebrow at her, a teasing glint in his eye. “You lied by omission.” 

“I did no such thing,” she snapped, then realised she had no idea what she was being charged with: “About what?”

He corked the bottle. “Your birthday.” 

She rolled her eyes and, with an exaggerated huff, held her cup out to him. He filled it, then his own, and together they passed a silent toast.

“It is but another day of the year, living is no great accomplishment.”

“Is it not?” His eyes flicked, perhaps inadvertently, to his leg. 

“Not as I live,” she said. “There is no triumph in a life lived in indolence.” 

“Would you think less of me then, if I said I would prefer your life to mine?” He leaned back, more hair falling loose from what was already a remarkably structurally-unsound braid. 

“I would! You have been given the freedom to make your name in the glories of war, your life will not be one that is so easily forgotten. Were I granted that chance, I would not so readily cast it aside.”   

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You fear being forgotten?” 

“I fear a cage,” she said. “To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”

“Great deeds can be done outside the auspices of war,” he said thoughtfully, a dark eyebrow raised in challenge. 

“Can they? You yourself have complained that the world only remembers those who distinguish themselves on the battlefield.” 

He laughed. “So I have! But I put this to you: would it not be the greatest deed of all to do that which is remembered though it is not an act of war?” 

She said nothing for a moment, frowning into the silence. 

“You are a reckless idealist,” she finally said. “And as a military commander! Such talk would have you laughed out of any decent éored.” 

He looked at her steadily, brilliant grey eyes tracking across her face as if searching for some hidden tidbit of arcane lore. Suddenly, she felt very much less sure of her convictions than she had just seconds ago. 

“Does that make my proposition incorrect then? Is it wrong merely because it is unpopular?” 

She opened her mouth, then decided she had no interest in getting drawn into the argument he was setting up. Instead, she cast about for a new topic, her eyes setting on the velvet bag beside him. She asked him about it, pulling a small wildflower from the grass and twirling it between her fingers as she did. 

“A gift,” he answered, and her heart fluttered. “For later, when you are not quite so irritated by me.”

She made a noise of indignation, then, realising she was proving his point, frowned. Seeing that that too was playing into his admonishment, she pinched the bridge of her nose and huffed out a laugh. He smiled at her. She was happy for it, he so rarely seemed to smile. 

They then spoke for some time on this and that, carefully skirting topics that led back to their fiercer arguments (few topics did not, in some way, lead there, but they had each become practiced in knowing where to draw the line). The sun rose in the sky, then began to set. Food was brought out, and they ate, and Éowyn thought that, in some ways, it was not so different to being at home. 

The wine was rich, dry on her tongue, more like the wines her uncle preferred than the sweeter ones she was partial to. The homesickness returned, and with it an undercurrent of fear. She looked directly into the bright sun and banished the thought.

More wine was retrieved, this from the crate sent by the Prince Imrahil, and a blanket was found and stretched along the ground. Then she stretched herself along the blanket and listened as he told her the tale of a woman warrior of old who led her people to freedom against great odds. He was, she knew, trying to impart some moral on her, but she was lulled into a daze by the strength of the wine and his steady baritone voice, so she was content to listen and not argue back. 

The story then moved on, captured by his own runaway thoughts, to stories from his childhood, when he and his brother had terrorised the Palace. These stories she much preferred. He spoke as eloquently as ever, but to hear of a time when he had been a little more at ease with the world lightened her heart. This grave young man had once known something of peace, and that thought encouraged her. 

He finished telling her of a time when he and Boromir had lured a horde of stray cats into the kitchens, causing a tremendous uproar that ended with the two young boys being forced to wash every dish in the Palace. Laughing, she rolled over onto her side, facing him but shutting her eyes to the world. She had tasks that needed done, appointments to be attended, meetings to be arranged, visits paid to the various people of the Mark who had, for one reason or another, made their homes in Minas Tirith. There were things that needed done, but today was her birthday, and she had fine company and could afford a little levity. 

“I think,” she said, letting her eyes flutter open, “that I am not quite so irritated with you now.”

He laughed. She liked his laugh. It was warm, measured, like him. It sat deep in his chest, as though it came straight from his heart. 

“You’ll need to stand up,” he said, so she did. He stood up too, with less effort than it took for him to sit down. A good sign, she thought. He reached down for the velvet bag, then began to work apart the fastenings that held it closed. 

He slipped the bag off, and unfolded a cloak. It was deep blue, the colour of the sky in summer when the sun fell behind the horizon and lit the world only in memory. Around the neck and hem, hundreds of fine silver stars littered the sky, the embroidery glimmering as if they contained the light of Eärendil. Every stitch, every thread was perfectly placed. It was unspeakably beautiful.

She smiled, he never failed to surprise her in his conscientiousness; In the Mark, cloaks were traditionally gifted by siblings before milestone events such as weddings, first deployments, or first harvests. First learning her language, now learning even the more subtle customs of her people, he was, truly, an excellent friend to her. 

He gestured for her to turn around, so she did, and pulled her hair to the side. Carefully, he draped the cloak over her shoulders, reaching around to fasten it. His fingers grazed across the hollow of her throat, and fleetingly, she felt her heart threaten to beat through her chest.

“It’s breathtaking,” she said, running her fingers up and down the velvety fabric. She had never owned anything so delicate—had never had reason or desire to. Now, she thought that she wanted to be wrapped in it forever, to feel the soft material against her bare skin. 

“It was my mother’s,” he said, and she had not realised how close he was to her. His breath fluttered the hair at her neck.

Her heart faltered. “I cannot accept this.”

He stepped in front of her, fingers tracing the edge of the cloak before letting it slip through them and fall to her side. She suddenly felt as if there was not half as much air around her as there ought to be.  

“It deserves to be worn,” he said, then smiled. “And my brother and I are too tall for it.” 

She breathed out a laugh, looking down at it, watching the stars dance around the bottom of her skirts. When she looked back at him, he wore an expression of such seriousness that she knew he would not be convinced out of this gift, and that she would do neither of them any good for trying. Reaching out, she took his hand. It was rough and calloused to the touch, but soft as she wrapped her fingers around his. 

“Thank you,” she said, and meant it.

Behind him, the library door opened, and a messenger in the livery of the Rangers stepped through, calling out for his Captain. 

Faramir stepped away from her with impressive speed, her hand falling unceremoniously into the space between them. He looked at her apologetically, and she nodded at him—as if he were in any way accountable to her or her whims. Still, he did not turn from her until she nodded, only then crossing the terrace to receive the messenger.

The messenger was a gaunt looking man, his sharp features pinched and drawn by the affected formality of his expression. She knew those sorts of men well, had practically been raised around them, the sort of men who were prepared to do whatever they could to secure their path up the ranks, who accepted every unpleasant task with grim determination because it brought them a step closer to their aspirations. She wondered what sort of task had been granted to this unfortunate young man, to have to come so far and with such urgency to speak to his injured Captain. 

She looked away from the scene, her brother’s scolding voice ringing in her head. She had faced her fair share of punishments for eavesdropping as a child, and though she could not hear the word passing between Faramir and the messenger, the hard-learned lessons of her youth nonetheless stayed with her. Instead, she returned her focus to the starry mantle, overawed by its beauty. 

For him to have learned the traditions of her people and seen to it that she could partake in even some of them while living so far from her home was one of the more thoughtful gifts she had ever been given, without even considering how beautiful the cloak was. And to be so generous, to take up the role of family for her—he had likely not known of the depths of her homesickness, but the gesture went a long way towards relieving some of her sadness, to feeling as if she was not so out of place in the White City. 

She heard the slightly-louder farewell of the messenger, and turned to look at Faramir, fondness swelling her heart beyond the confines of her chest. But he now looked as stern as the messenger had, a small crease appearing between his brows, and a faraway look in his eyes. She stepped forward—he declared his intention to be as family to her, and she would not let that go unheeded. She took his hands in hers, looking at him with a silent question. 

His shoulders were tense, the muscles in his jaw even tighter. He had the air of a man who had been caught entirely off guard and was now paying dearly for it. Even so, his hands were perfectly still beneath hers, so he could not have been so unsettled. 

He exhaled deeply, then met her gaze, a piercing sadness in his eyes. 

“There was an ambush in Ithilien, seven of my men are dead,” he said, a small twitch in his lips. 

Her heart sank for him, he had written with such affection of the men under his command, and there were so few of them, she could hardly imagine what that news must have been like, especially given that he was so far from his command post with little that he could do. And the sadness in his eyes was so plain to see, it stirred the deepest of sympathies in her. He had just been so kind to her, extending her an unparalleled symbol of friendship, and she now felt obliged to return that in kind.

“I must go,” he said before she could speak. “There are letters I must write…”

She had never heard him trail off quite so, and even that made her heart clench. She wanted to encourage him to stay, that she might comfort him, but she also knew how much she valued her own solitude when faced with sorrow, and would not begrudge him that if it was what he desired. 

She loosened her grip on his hands, not wanting him to feel obligated to remain with her if seclusion was what he needed. He looked up at her, nodded, as if understanding the answer to a question (what question, she was not sure), then left her with a strikingly formal bow. 

Notes:

🤪
I loved the idea of marriage-by-cloak, so of course I wanted to try a wildly different type of misinterpretation. Sibling-zoned, baby, we love to see it.

Chapter 12: Book I: Summer 3017

The spring had passed quietly into summer and Faramir had returned to Ithilien. The summer had been so busy for her that had it not been for the uncharacteristically brutal heat she might not have noticed it at all. As it was, the heat had permeated absolutely everything she did; meetings with merchants from the Mark had to be conducted outside under the shade of great, thick awnings, her morning sparring sessions with Boromir were moved earlier and earlier until finally they moved to late in the evenings just to avoid the blistering sun. 

Her success in helping to deal with the bandits in Anórien had seen her become something of a favourite among the lords of the borderlands, from both sides of the Mering Stream. It was not unusual to have two or three appellants a fortnight asking her to secure various trade deals with their counterpart lords in the other kingdom, or to moderate some dispute or arrange some meeting. It was not, in truth, the sort of responsibilities she had ever expected to take on, but she enjoyed it all the same. For the lords of the Mark who sought her out, she was their only real connection to the halls of power in Minas Tirith, and so could not be discounted. For the Gondorrim lords, she was a respectable bridge between their two cultures, and though they might have otherwise turned up their noses at her manner, they were forced to treat her with deference, something that felt akin to a personal victory.

All the while, her correspondence with Faramir continued, though she noted with some sadness that he seemed less interested in provoking her as the middling days of spring came and went. It surprised her that she should feel sadness in that regard, given that just months ago it had been a source of immense irritation for her. But she found that confiding her exhaustion in her letters only to have it met by his own in his replies made her realise that, against the general haze of unreality engendered by the pernicious heat, the border war against the Enemy grew more dangerous with each passing day. 

Even so, he seemed more committed than ever to learning her language, and more often than not she would find herself laughing at his earnest, if poorly done attempts to write some of his letters in it. She could, of course, write in the language of the Mark, but she saw it done so infrequently and did it herself even less that it seemed to her like trying to catch a fish in a wicker basket—possible, but more comical than practical. At the very least, it made her feel better about her sometimes lackadaisical grasp of Sindarin. 

After so long living in Gondor, she was more than fluent, but there continued to be barriers to her conversations that she had not expected, implications and innuendos that often passed her by, leaving her feeling no less integrated to Gondorrim society than she had upon her arrival all those months ago. Most frustratingly, she found it harder to dismiss the Gondorrim as liars as she once had, for she found that more of them than not were truthful to a fault; what she had previously perceived as lying was merely the hundreds of layers of obfuscation that were naturally a part of their speech. Even Sedril, who was but a teenager (and not an especially precocious one at that) partook in the cultural verbosity as if it were her native tongue—and, Éowyn thought, if her parents were any indication, it may well have been. In the Riddermark, Éowyn had been raised among people who were desperately blunt in their language, and who instead simply avoided any conversations that might be an affront to their pride. It was a difference that she might have once thought inconsequential, but now felt with more startling urgency with each passing day. 

She continued to spar with Boromir as often as she could, and with Tower Guards sent by the command of the Lord Steward when Boromir was away. For all the many hours they spent training together, she found that she was becoming stronger rather than more dexterous. Whereas with her brother and cousin her advantage had come from moving with greater swiftness and flexibility than they could, Boromir fought in largely the same manner to her, though was notably stronger than her. Since she could not hope to become more skilled than him, not when he had nearly twenty years of experience on her, her only option was to become stronger. She noticed the changes in her body with no small amount of joy, finding it easier to move and to recover herself after taking hits in the practice ring. It was, she thought, not exactly the kind of victory she had hoped for in life, but it was enough to sustain her. 

On one the morning, her good spirits not dulled by the hazy superheated air, Éowyn departed the Citadel alone, making for the third circle of the City. It was her first time going so deep into the tangle of the City; typically the people she met with stayed on the fourth circle at the lowest, and even then they usually offered to come to her. This meeting was different: not only was it not officially a meeting, it was with a woman of the Mark who had opened a bakery in Minas Tirith. Éowyn had been told of her business by Lady Lalaith of the Pinnath Gelin, who (to Éowyn’s distinct chagrin) saw the Riddermark as something of an exotic performance and had, in the months since making Éowyn’s acquaintance, come to collect trinkets relating to her kingdom. But in this, at least, Éowyn conceded that Lalaith’s condescending fascination with the Mark had proved useful, Éowyn had come to miss the food of her home with an intensity that was like a physical pain in her chest. 

Before she set out, she told her housekeeper, Hadoriel, that she intended to spend the day in the library in the Tower of Ecthelion, and excused herself from a morning spent with Sedril by telling her she was going to spend her morning catching up on her correspondences. This casual misdirection was a habit she had picked up in the early spring after she had been on the receiving end of too many pointed questions from the ladies of the court about the amount of time she had spent with Faramir during his recovery. Though they had not exactly been discreet in their movements, they were rarely ever seen by others, leading Éowyn to believe that the source of information about her whereabouts came from the few people who were privy to her schedule on a daily basis. Rather than changing the amount of time she spent doing as she pleased, she simply took to muddying the waters; anyone who wanted to know where she truly was would either have to physically seek her out, or do a significant enough reconstruction that it would likely deter the idle gossips. Faramir had been gone some months now, but the privacy engendered by her new strategy was too sweet to so quickly relinquish, so the habit remained.

She had spent plenty of time in the sixth circle of the City, with its whitewashed townhomes scrubbed clean each morning, and the quiet side streets and courtyards that she had explored with Faramir a few months prior. The fifth circle was familiar to her too, for its stables and the practice ring that anchored so much of her daily life in Minas Tirith. She was less accustomed to the fourth circle, though knew it well enough from her occasional trips to its better-kept inns. Even there, in a tier that was decidedly less aristocratic than the rest, the veneer of tranquility and formality was maintained. The buildings and streets were cleaned regularly, the ambient noise was never too loud, and all of its denizens knew to make eye contact with her, even if they weren’t certain of who she was.

The third circle was nothing like the circles she was used to. It too was a circle of white, or might have been white if the mud and wood smoke had allowed it; but they had not, so it was a circle of greys and browns and blacks, like the inside of a winter cattle barn before a spring cleaning. It was a circle that made Éowyn reconsider her assessment of the Gondorrim: not only was it a working circle, with chimneys that puffed out great, thick clouds of smoke, but it was a vibrant, social circle too. The black streams of runoff that spilled down the sides of the road were rarely left undisturbed as horses, children, beggars, and merchants pattered in and out of them, sending streaks of mud and filth across everything below knee-height. The streets themselves seemed to rumble and quake under the sheer amount of movement they enabled, and the high stone walls that in the upper circles of the City enforced solemn silence here amplified the noise to an almost-unbearable roar. Edoras was by no means an unpopulated city, but to Éowyn it seemed that its entire population had been crammed into just one segment of Minas Tirith’s third circle, and that its people, rather than heeding the pastoral tempo of life in the Mark, dashed from one place to another as if time was always, always running out.

In the few minutes since she descended the steps from the fourth circle, she had lost track of her thoughts too many times to count. Food vendors hollered into the streets, their calls echoing off the grimey walls, only to be picked up, twisted, and hurled back into the air by jugglers and acrobats, who here needed no stage save for the muddied cobbles upon which the rest of the world passed. Prostitutes and preachers alike emerged from winding alleyways, both promising joy Éowyn was sure only one could deliver on. The languages were as confused as everything else; she caught the thread of a merchant advertising discounts in heavily-accented Sindarin, only to lose it to a minstrel describing in Westron the tale of great seafarers, whose song was ultimately bested by a fortune teller crying out in a language Éowyn could not even begin to place. 

She wandered, blinded and deafened by the overwhelming wall of noise and colour and activity, for half an hour until, at the very second she first began to lose hope of ever finding her bakery, the small, swinging wooden sign bearing an image of a green stallion and a yellow pie leapt into her line of sight. The door swung easily open when she pushed on it, and for a moment after she stepped in, she was blinded in earnest by the drastic contrast between the blinding white light outwith the shop, and the steady darkness within. 

A woman, at least sixty years of age and who wore every second of those years, greeted her from behind a high counter. She spoke in Sindarin and used no formalities, though from the thick coating of flour upon her pinched features, Éowyn conceded that it was unlikely this woman showed deference to anything that did go into or come out of an oven. In her younger days, the woman might have been imposing, her face and posture were stern and proud enough, but age and foreignness were as much a part of her as her skin, and her entire being was that of a concerned grandmother rather than a stern matriarch. 

“Ferthu baecere hal,” Éowyn said, relishing every syllable of the greeting. 

The woman’s face grew bright and keen, and in a few short, probing questions, she determined that Éowyn was truly of her country and worthy of her time. Passing the counter off to a thin, spiritless young girl with hair as blonde as curly as Éowyn’s own, the woman, who introduced herself as Urse, clutched Éowyn around the shoulders and ushered her into a room in the back. The room, filled to the brim with wooden crates and tall barrels and heavy burlap sacks, had a small table and chairs in one corner, covered in papers which Urse quickly cleared into a leather satchel that was in turn placed precariously on a crate. 

Urse, Éowyn learned, left Aldburg twenty years ago with her brother and his wife, moving first to an estate in Anórien and later to Minas Tirith, where they took over running the bakery from an elderly Gondorrim man with no heirs and no surviving family. They had run the business for ten years, until Urse’s brother and sister-in-law had died in a bout of pestilence that swept through the lower circles of the City in one particularly harsh winter. Urse had taken over the bakery on her own while raising her niece and nephew as her own. It had been twenty years since she had last been in the Mark, but she asked after it as if it were a friend she had seen only a week past. 

As Éowyn spoke of the Mark, happily if a bit unfocused in narrative, Urse retrieved a small cake that Éowyn had loved well in her childhood. Entnasí, a dense, unleavened cake sweetened only by currants and a brushing of cow’s milk, had been her favourite sweet as a little girl, and the dish that she had missed the most from her home. Eating the cake, laughing as the crumbles caught on her tongue and lips as she spoke in her native tongue, Éowyn momentarily felt as if she weren’t quite so detached from everything that felt real and good in the world. 

For more than an hour they spoke about the Mark, the strangeness of life in Gondor, the cultural idiosyncrasies that annoyed them both. Only then, and with great hesitation on Éowyn’s part, did she finally leave, though not without Urse slipping a full Entnasí cake into her basket and soliciting a promise to return when it was finished. 

Her heart was so full as she left the shop that she was only slightly disoriented by the rush of light and noise back on the streets of the third circle, cutting through the throngs of people with greater haste than she had earlier, bolstered by both her new awareness of the directions, but by a burgeoning feeling of belonging—not to Minas Tirith, probably never to Minas Tirith, but to something that was greater than just her own miserable exile in the Citadel. 

Of course, as was so often the case for Éowyn, her nascent happiness was strangled in the cradle. She was not a minute’s walk into the sixth circle when the cruellest stars aligned in the sky to put her on a collision course with the Lady Berúthiel. By the time she became aware of the imminent threat, it was too late to contrive some excuse to dive down one of the alleyways, and so was forced to tilt her chin to the sky and brace for impact. 

As was so often the case, she smelled Berúthiel several seconds before they were within hearing distance of one another: rose and narcissus, two smells that she usually liked, but could not stand in such absurd quantities and potency. She wondered if her eyes might not water and she and Berúthiel greeted one another as civilly as either could muster. 

“My daughter told me you intended to spend the morning in your apartments,” said Berúthiel, far too eagerly revealing how closely she attempted to surveil Éowyn. 

“Indeed I did, but I thought it a shame to waste such beautiful weather.”

“Quite.” Berúthiel reached forward, uninvited, pulling the cloth back on Éowyn’s basket to reveal what lay beneath. Her face contorted exaggeratedly into a look of pity. “Oh, you poor dear, were you unaware that there are attendants who can be dispatched to fetch goods for you?”

“As I said, I hoped to take the air, and visiting a bakery is not so far out of my competencies,” Éowyn said, sharply recovering the cake. 

“No, certainly not outwith your skillset,” said Berúthiel, obviously returning to her usual implications about the coarseness of Éowyn’s education and manner. “Perhaps this is another way in which life differs from life in Rohan, here, those of good birth and high rank do not fraternise with mere merchants, to do so is to needlessly debase one’s own rank and to raise subordinate’s above their innate station in life.” 

“I can assure you no uprisings have ever been fomented in the Mark by minor transactions between the nobility and the merchant class,” she sighed. 

“Not yet, perhaps, but trouble is never far behind when people forget the natural order of things.” 

Éowyn forced a smile, and tried not to rise to the bait. She was the niece of a king, nothing she could do would be a disruption of what she was entitled to do, despite Berúthiel’s erroneous beliefs. She was the daughter of one of the proudest houses of Men, she would not be provoked into petty spats.

Or, she might, but only if she suddenly forgot how to turn and walk away from tiresome conversations.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

So it was that summer passed into autumn—going not gracefully, but with a fight, the season not having been broken until an immense thunderstorm finally shattered the heat’s tyranny over the land. With the moderating of the temperatures came the moderation of her schedule, it seemed that everyone along the border had become more good natured in line with the fairer weather. Despite the easing of the demands on her time, she saw less and less of Boromir. He was coy in his explanations for his absences, describing mostly a need to execute better training regimens for the garrisons in Osgiliath and Cair Andros. His brother (perhaps inadvertently undermining Boromir’s attempts at maintaining confidence in the war effort) painted a far more miserable story in their letters: the Enemy was pressing further and further into the north and west, and was now aided with unnerving frequency by Haradrim scouting parties. The efforts at Osgiliath and Cair Andros were not just a matter of training, they were a matter of stopping the Enemy from invading Anórien. 

It had been nearly half a year since she had last seen Faramir, yet he managed somehow to find new ways of frustrating her from afar. Even if he was not as gleefully attempting to goad her into arguments, his insistence that she consider alternate routes for establishing herself in the City was tiresome. She had had plenty of success with the course she had set for herself, and though it was true that she felt that she had not gained any particular ground with Lord Denethor—outside of a sort of distant and silent respect for one another—she did not feel as though the state of their alliance was quite as fraught as it might have once been. In fact, despite the worry she had felt in the springtime about her uncle’s welfare, she now thought that she had perhaps over-exaggerated his incapacity and that, should the need arise, he would be fit to come to Minas Tirith to entreat with the Lord Steward directly. Such assurances had made it easier for her to sleep at night, and though the reports out of Ithilien (and the relative, though not unexpected, silence from the Mark) concerned her, she found herself more or less comfortable with the state of her life. 

It was entirely by accident that she had crossed paths with the Grey Pilgrim one chilly autumn afternoon. He was something of an enigma to her, a figure of legend who had been known to her uncle, and at one time revered, but whose stature had weakened over the course of the previous decade. Many of her people saw him as an omen of bad tidings, and while living in Edoras she had believed those rumours to be promoted by the Worm and had accordingly reacted negatively against them. Having encountered him now in Minas Tirith, she found she rather liked him less for how little regard he gave her. There was no more than a greeting, a recognition of her relation to Théoden King, a nod towards the uniqueness of her residency in Minas Tirith, and then a curt farewell. It was not that she had anything particularly interesting or urgent to say to him, nor did she expect him to impart any great words of wisdom on her, but the terseness with which he conducted their interaction left her irked. Even the bitterest of Gondorrim nobles had managed to say more than a few short sentences to her. 

Flustered somewhat by the encounter, she continued into the Tower and through the Hall of Kings to Lord Denethor’s council room. She was early for their appointment, but had been so unsettled by her interaction with the Wizard that she hardly paid it any mind. She knocked on the door, entered when called, then distractedly dropped a curtsey. 

“The Grey Pilgrim is here,” she said, furrowing her brow. 

“Mithrandir,” said Lord Denethor, setting a thick ledger on the table. The ledger contained the reason for their appointment this afternoon—one of the Lords of the Eastfold had petitioned her for aid in securing a purchasing agreement between Minas Tirith and his estate, which had a bountiful harvest and was at risk of letting grain go to waste over the winter. After her success with Lord Leofric, she had had many of these petitions. Usually she dealt directly with the relevant Lords of Gondor, typically Lord Astron. Today, she could not avoid dealing with Lord Denethor.  

“I do not much like him,” she said, sitting in the chair closest to her. “The White Wizard has ever been a friend and ally to my people, but the wandering wizard… there is something untrustworthy in his air.” 

“He is a great man who is unburdened by the practicalities of governance,” said Lord Denethor, opening the ledger. 

“Great but not good?” she asked, unfolding the appeal letter she had received. Lord Denethor fixed her with a look that indicated he would not be answering her question. 

They set to assessing the logistics of a purchasing agreement. There was, she thought, no reason for this to end unfavourably for her and her appellant—she had seen the state of the City’s import cycle, had seen what tight margins they ran on at the best of times, going into winter their need could surely only be more dire. Disconcertingly, Lord Denethor approached the negotiation with the same level of confidence that he would secure a favourable deal, which left her wondering if she had not wholly misinterpreted something. 

She knew her people well, and she knew the Eastfold well. Everything else, she quickly realised, she did not understand with quite the fluency she ought to have. More than once, she realised that Lord Denethor had completely outmanoeuvred her next two moves before she even knew what her current move was. But he knew as well as she that additional food would not go amiss in the cold winter, so did not push her harder than her pride was willing to accept. 

That had been the nature of their relationship since her breakthrough that first Mettarë she spent in Minas Tirith; they were honest with each other, in their own way. They were not friendly, not as such, but there was considerable respect there. She had her duty to see to, he had his, and when the two overlapped, their respect for one another was sufficient enough that they preferred to do their business face-to-face, instead of in the usual fashion with a mountain of middle men between them. She respected his practicality, she thought he respected her frankness. They would not ever be good friends (not that Lord Denethor had any) but they related to one another successfully enough to get the job done. 

The sky grew dark outside the window, and Lord Denethor opened a bottle of wine from Lebennin. She had no especial love for the white wines of Gondor, but they had been negotiating for so long that she could hardly turn it away. It was a dry wine, thin on her tongue, and not much to her liking. It tasted expensive, and not strong. A reasonable assessment of this deal. 

She set aside the draft terms, smoothing them out across the table in front of her. “Why has the wizard come to Minas Tirith?” 

“He sought to avail himself of the City’s extensive records,” answered the Lord Steward, continuing to look through some of the import and export documents concerning the border at the Mering Stream. There were now three people she knew of who used the libraries in Minas Tirith, Gondor was growing more learned by the day. 

“I thought the wizards would not need to consult the words of Men,” she said.

He looked up at her, sharp lines around his eyes creasing further. “There are many things contained within the libraries of this kingdom that are beyond the ken of the Istari, particularly wizards who elect to spend their time traipsing from realm to realm, learning little but saying much.” 

That, she thought, was an unusually demonstrative response from a man who so often kept his cards close to his chest. She glanced down at the draft terms on the table in front of her, ostensibly reading to ensure that she had not forgotten any of the requests, but truthfully working to buy herself time to think. 

She furrowed her brow. “Your contingency clause. It renders the import tariff waiver invalid if an Enemy attack is recorded in Gondor on the date of sale.” 

“Yes,” said Lord Denethor. “Why does that trouble you?”

“My lord,” she said with a smile, “I know very well that attacks are recorded nearly every day in Ithilien.”

The Steward inclined his head in concession. 

Éowyn spent the remainder of their negotiations feeling eminently smug for having identified and defended herself against an attempt to cheat her appellant lord out of a better deal. When at last the draft had been agreed to, she signed it with a faint smile, then, feeling remarkably light, took her leave of Lord Denethor. 

Departing the Tower of Ecthelion, she found her journey unexpectedly preempted. She had at first, in her excitement at having successfully negotiated a good deal, not noticed him. But the doors to the Palace were opened, and the light shone upon his face, her good mood had only been bolstered.

“Lord Faramir!” she called, then smiled when he turned around.

He was yet dressed in the uniform of the Rangers, green cloak cast about brown leather light armour. Frighteningly light armour, she thought—especially to be worn without mail. The full metal plate armour that was preferred in Gondor was not exactly common in the Mark, the Riders much preferred more flexible fare, but even she found the Ranger’s armour worryingly thin. 

“I did not realise you were expected in the City,” she said when she reached him, a slight bounce in her step. 

“I had not expected to be here myself, but I received a letter from a very old friend and rearranged a later trip.” 

Together, they stepped into the foyer, a place they too often found themselves conversing. 

“An old friend?” 

“Mithrandir,” said Faramir with a smile. “A wizard who long ago enchanted a very eager, very easily-distracted young pupil in the library of this Palace.” 

“Greyhame we call him in the Riddermark,” she said, choosing her most neutral response. “Have you seen him yet?”

“I have not, I arrived just this past hour,” he said, thumbing the green mask that hung loose around his neck. 

“Of course,” she said quickly, face warming at her foolish oversight. “I will not detain you any longer.”

“I am yours to detain,” he said. “I have no appointments this evening.” 

She smiled. “I,” she said, “am celebrating. Would you care to join me?” She cocked her head in the direction of the short corridor that led to her apartments.

“I would, but you will have to tell me what it is that we are celebrating first.”

“I have just negotiated a very lucrative purchasing agreement with the Lord of the City.” She waved the scroll in her hand in the air to illustrate her point. “And I caught a ludicrously inequitable clause that he attempted to hide, which, I feel, was a victory in itself.”

Faramir grimaced as they entered her apartments. “Just one?”

“Yes, just the one,” she said. “Well hidden too, were it not for your letters it likely would have escaped me entirely.” 

“May I see the agreement?” She handed it to him, then took his cloak and hung it up near the door. 

While he began to read, she sought out Hadoriel and instructed her to bring out an extra setting for dinner. The old woman seemed prepared to chide her for it, but Éowyn turned and left before she had the chance to—she was far too excited to see her friend again. Returning to her sitting room, she found him, still standing, frowning at the document. She too frowned.

“If you are to be the bearer of bad news, at least sit down first,” she said, inelegantly dropping into her preferred armchair. He followed, sitting on the edge of the sofa while continuing to work his way down the agreement. The crease between his eyebrows deepened.

“Yes, here it is,” he said, extending the parchment to her so she could see it as well as he. “The purchaser’s right to claim for indirect damages remains, which means your supplier would be liable to relinquish the value of any goods that the purchaser deemed damaged. Even damage as negligible as travel-related jostling.” 

Her good mood and sense of accomplishment collapsed around her. 

“I feel like a fool,” she said sourly, staring at the evidence of that fact where the words lay on the page. 

“I would not call you a fool,” he said firmly. “It is his oldest and most effective ploy, he places two disproportionately favourable clauses in the contracts, one that he is more willing to sacrifice than the other. Most catch neither, which imbalances the contract quite badly. The cleverer ones catch only one, and, feeling pleased with themselves for having caught it, fail to notice the other. Vanishingly few catch both.” 

She groaned, letting her head sink into her hands. “Your father can be a real bastard,” she muttered, not realising she’d said it aloud until Faramir laughed.

Pressing her fingers into her temples, she looked up at him, then spoke more out of social necessity than genuine contrition: “I did not mean to insult him, or you, or your family.”

“I am not the least bit offended,” he said. “Believe it or not, I have known my father for thirty-four years now and am somewhat familiar with his proclivity for belligerence.” 

She frowned. She had known the Steward to be aloof, and certainly not lacking in shrewdness, but belligerence? He was to her the very opposite of belligerent; cool and detached, as if not even walking through fire would arouse an emotion stronger than diffuse annoyance in him.

“I had not realised there was conflict within your house,” she said, frowning at him. 

“There isn’t,” he said. “Or not as such. It would be politically indiscreet for the disagreements that do exist to simmer beyond that which is easily concealed. But my father and I having come to an accord of sorts does not preclude my knowing exactly how he behaves.”

She pressed her tongue between her teeth, worrying it against the sharp edges. She recognised implicitly the need for discretion, and could hardly imagine allowing her personal disagreements with any of her kin to become public knowledge, but she was surprised all the same. True though it was that she had been told Faramir had something of a rebellious streak within him (and could certainly see where it yet lingered just below the surface of his carefully-constructed facade), she thought him so similar to his father that the thought of them being in any sort of conflict seemed entirely incongruous to her.

And then, the very flicker of a memory stirred within her, the soft dancing flame of a challenge she had abandoned almost a year ago.

“The incident with the wizard,” she said before she could stop herself. “Your uncle mentioned an incident with a wizard. It was the Grey Pilgrim, then.” 

He smiled faintly at her—not a true smile, but his version of it, more with his eyes than anything else. “Yes, that is certainly part of it, though I am surprised to hear that you know of that.” 

“I know nothing more than that there was a tale to be told,” she confessed, watching his face closely for any indication as to his opinion of it. Then she found herself surprised to be so interested in what he thought of her questions, instead of intent on hearing the answer.

He settled back further in his seat, crossing his legs and running his palms down his thighs—she didn’t think he looked nervous exactly, but it was certainly a more overt display of discomfort than she’d ever seen from him before. 

“The story has been, I think, somewhat exaggerated in the intervening years,” he looked from the fireplace to her, a sly glint in his eye. “Mithrandir came to Minas Tirith in my teenage years around the anniversary of the death of my mother. He sensed, correctly, that I might appreciate a diversion from the routine, and tutored me, for some time, in some of his more… practical arts. The specifics elude me now, but I seem to remember losing an entire afternoon to learning to disappear books with a sleight of hand and inadvertently snubbing my father, my uncle and aunt, my grandfather, and several court worthies in my enthusiasm to master the trick.” 

She stared at him.

She waited for the punchline. 

It didn’t come. 

“Is that all?” 

“That’s all,” he said, waving his hand lazily in the air. 

“Your great controversy, the pinnacle of your rebelliousness, was learning how to read in a more convoluted manner?” 

He shrugged.

“I am very disappointed.” She slumped back further in her chair, defeated. “I had been led to believe it was some terrible act of insubordination.” 

“Oh no,” he said, a faint smile playing at the corners of his lips. “The insubordination came later, and was only possible because I had been taught how to smuggle books out of the library. I believe I once challenged my father, in front of his council, on the legitimacy of the swearing-in ceremony for new recruits to the army, citing the precedent of King Valacar’s public ceremonies, which were used to confer responsibility on the subjects of the King and in turn legitimise loyalty. That, of course, was a very expensive ceremony and not the sort of thing a ruler overseeing a wartime situation wants to hear from his son in front of an assembly of the most powerful lords of the realm.” 

She snorted derisively. “Your rebellion, then, was reading books and arguing about theories of governance. How very audacious.” 

“Later I learned to gamble and to sneak the daughters of my father’s counsellors into my chambers, which I suppose constitutes a rebellion.” 

Éowyn gasped, then, seeing that his smile had grown more apparent, laughed, clasping her hands over her mouth as she did. He seemed encouraged by this. 

“When my father found me trying to help Lord Húrin’s daughter out through the supply tunnel in the Guard’s livery, I think he wished that I had kept exclusively to quoting ancient legal precedent at him.” 

She grinned. “And he would be right to! If you must insist on breaking the rules, you ought to, at the very minimum, ensure that you are not caught. Out of respect for your father, if not a sense of self preservation.”

“That,” he said, “is unnervingly close to what my father said to me that day.” 

She regarded him closely, not quite able to discern what his expression implied. For all that she had hassled him over it, she would have given anything to have his clear sight, to know exactly what he was thinking. 

“Is that the source of your conflict with your father then? Your anger at being caught misbehaving?”

“When I was a teenager, perhaps, but now I think our disagreements stem more from how he chooses to conduct his business. I, for example, find it distasteful to play games with one’s counterparts.” He nodded toward the purchasing agreement that now sat on the table. “I do not agree with behaving like that in a negotiation.” 

“It is not so irrational; for however upset I am about it, you cannot deny that your father has secured an undeniably lucrative deal for the people he is pledged to care for. What need does he have for good taste so long as his duties are fulfilled?” 

“His fundamental duty to ensure the welfare of his people would have been fulfilled regardless, but as a lord of the kingdom he has a higher duty to protect the moral rectitude of his people too.”

“But—and loath though I am to admit it—I am not an especially skilled negotiator, if I had been, and if I had elected to behave dishonourably, would such a commitment to moral rectitude not disadvantage him? Is a strong offence not the greatest defence?” 

“Because there will always be someone prepared to be more immoral, to behave with less regard for what is good and decent. If a ruler debases himself in one instance to account for some wickedness, then the next time he encounters immorality, he does not do so from his initial position of goodness, but from his new position of lesser goodness. If he then continues to adapt for such moral failings, he will continue to degrade himself, but there is no limit to immorality, and thus no limit to how far a ruler can fall once he is willing to take that first step.” 

“The moral decay of an entire people triggered by a single inequitable clause in a seasonal grain purchasing agreement? My, perhaps rulership is more fraught than I realised,” she said, not bothering to hide the laughter in her voice. 

“That is how it began with the Kings of Old,” he said, looking at the fireplace. “The hubris of thinking themselves beyond the grasp of morality, even quotidian morality, ultimately led to their deception by the Enemy.”

Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle her laughter. “Such drastic proclamations from a man who just confessed to sneaking young ladies into his chamber! I thought you prided yourself on being less hypocritical than your compatriots.” 

He looked back to her, at last catching on to her teasing. She smiled wider. 

“You might say that my moral laxity is a sign that I am not destined to be a ruler,” he said, just the faintest hint of self-effacement in his tone. 

“Which, naturally, justifies all sorts of misdeeds.”

“Does it not?” he said, now with a lightness in his eyes. “I am sure that you have had more than your fair share of misdeeds.” 

She shot him a look of mock-offence. “I was very complaisant, even in the most outspoken days of my youth.” 

“I’m surprised to hear that, I thought it inevitable that you would have talked your way into a thousand contentious debates, and probably worked your way into very many more.” 

“I most certainly would not have. The political situation in the Mark is not as fraught as it is here, but none would have benefited by the King’s ward kicking up a fuss simply because she disagreed with a matter of ceremony.” 

His brow furrowed. “Again, you surprise me, you seem to me so forthcoming in your opinions that to hear you advocate muzzling them seems entirely out of step with what I imagined you to believe.” 

“Forthcoming with my opinions in Gondor,” she corrected gently. “You will find, I think, that the convictions I have publicly aligned myself with are representative of the general opinions of the court of Meduseld. In contrast to the Gondorrim, I find myself far more comfortable agreeing with the ways and manner of my people. But when I am at home in Edoras, some of my beliefs are notably divergent, not just from the court, but from the King and Prince and oftentimes even my brother. And in those instances little good could come of my articulating those divergences.” 

“Little good? Surely much good could come of you making your beliefs known, by giving yourself the opportunity to change the opinions of others.” 

She laughed, louder and more abruptly than she intended to, clapping her hand over her mouth to muffle it. “Spoken like a man for whom power is readily available! My kin might be willing to indulge my pride by listening to what I say, but they would never treat my words as equal to their counsellors or to one another’s. I have been educated, and I have seen much—in some ways, more than even my cousin—but I have little in the way of valuable experience, namely, I have never commanded men. For that lack of experience, I have no true say in the conversations that shape how the kingdom is ruled, and it would be naive to pretend otherwise.” 

“That,” he said slowly, a flash of comprehension sweeping across his features, “accounts only for maintaining discipline in public debate. You have not denied misbehaving at all.” 

“Well spotted, my lord. Yes, I may have misbehaved somewhat in my youth, though never publicly and never in a manner that might undermine my uncle.” She smiled wickedly. “Several years ago I was caught in the Royal Stables with one of my cousin’s officers. Thankfully we were only discovered by my brother and my skirts were still mostly on the ground, but Éomer lectured me for days for it.”

Faramir’s eyes widened briefly and abruptly, he looked away from her. Her temper flared.

“Oh, come now, I have confessed to nothing more than what you have, surely you cannot condemn me for what you yourself have also done!’

“No,” he said sharply. “No, certainly not, I was merely struck by sympathetic embarrassment at the thought of being discovered by my brother. If it had happened when I was your age, I’m certain I would still be suffering for it now.”

“Oh,” she breathed. When she laughed again, he laughed too.

Notes:

Please note that it took all my strength not to put a million Robin Hood jokes in this chapter.

More extensive end notes available here.

Chapter 13: Book I: Autumn 3017

Lord Denethor had insisted upon dinner. Lord Denethor always insisted upon dinner, because dinner represented the absolute minimum amount of courtesy he could extend to those he distrusted while still maintaining the veneer of civility. Because he had been surprisingly forthcoming in providing access to the lower levels of the City archives, and despite the terseness with which he spoke, the wizard known in this land as Mithrandir thought it was only right to engage him in his little charade, to let him feel as though he had done well by his peculiar moral code. 

So: dinner. 

The Lord Steward dressed in his most mundane fineries, knowing from many years of experience that the luxuries of court wealth would not impress in this instance. He was very unlike his father in that regard, far more talented in the art of subtlety and far less prone to letting his pride rule the day. Lord Ecthelion had been shrewder in some ways—Gondor in his day had been more open to the support and influence of outsiders, for one—but he had never quite learned to subjugate his sense of self to the greater cause. Lord Denethor, through years of playing second fiddle in his own home, first in the eyes of his father, and later (if briefly) in the eyes of his own people, had learned to make himself entirely at one with the war. He was a cold man, a severe man, exactly the sort of man such a war demanded. But he was also a man who would not survive in a gentler, more peaceful age. He was the ideal man for the imminent war, and he would no doubt see his people through to the bitter end, but if they should, on the very slimmest of chances, see the light of a brighter day, Denethor II, son of Ecthelion II, would need to go quietly into the dark night. 

The elder son, Lord Boromir, was conspicuously absent, sent away to Osgiliath, no doubt to put some of his extensive charm to use in convincing the immiserated soldiers that they would indeed make it through the coming winter. He was like his grandfather in that way, his value lay not in his courage (though there was, naturally, courage abounding), but in his ability to make others believe as deeply as he did. His men would march into the fires of Mount Doom on his command, and would do so with smiles on their faces if they thought it might earn them the praise of their Captain-General. 

The younger son was Mithrandir’s preferred son. In fact, he was the sole son of Gondor for many generations that he had come to actively like, rather than tolerate on occasion. He was a dreamer, in his youth a bit too starry-eyed for the harsh realities of life in permanent war, but over time he had been sculpted by his father’s steady hand into a machine of ruthless efficiency. He had heard few stories of Lord Faramir since his entry to the Army some twenty years ago, but those he had heard indicated he was a man that combined the best and most frightening traits of his mother and father. He was an optimist, a scholar, and a leader, but he was also stern, grave, and predisposed to imagining he lived in a kinder world than he did. He was the sort of man it mattered to have on side, not for any innate power he held, but because he was cleverer and cannier than the rest, and what he did not have he would always get. 

The final guest perplexed him the most. He had briefly seen her in the White Tower, and, in his haste to uncover more of the exact nature of the Shire-held Ring, had not fully registered the significance of her presence in Minas Tirith. But upon later consideration, he realised that there was something deeply troubling about the fact of her being there. Neither Lord Denethor nor Théoden King had fostered warm relations with one another, Lord Denethor focusing his efforts on the struggle against the Dark Lord, and Théoden King, made foolish by his pride, perceiving that as a snub and returning Gondor’s lack of effort with his own. It was, therefore, remarkable to see the niece of the King of the Riddermark dwelling in the seat of power of Gondor at the exact hour that rumours had spread of the King’s dwindling faculties. 

Lady Éowyn had the air of someone who had been plucked out of time and placed where she ought not to have been, a sensation made all the worse by her evident awareness of it. Her pride was equal to that of her uncle’s, though necessarily tempered by the frailty of her house and the limitations thrust upon her by her sex; yet for all that those obvious hindrances existed, there was a fundamental strangeness to her, an indication in her manner or presence that she would be instrumental to some struggle somewhere. What struggle, he did not yet know, but he was certain that her lot in life was not to be merely a flatterer to old men and later, perhaps, a bride to a slightly younger one. No, this girl would come to occupy an outsize role in the unfolding story of this war, whether she planned for it or not. 

More strangely than that was that she commanded more power in the room than either she or the other occupants were aware of. Her countenance was cold, her manner reserved, but her magnetism was strong enough that the Lord Denethor, who otherwise missed nothing, could not see that his youngest son was prepared to risk everything that he had for her attention. 

If she was anything like her kin, which Mithrandir very much suspected she was, it was her ignorance of the power she wielded that made her truly powerful. If she ever were to notice the way that the world seemed to bend and rearrange itself around her (if she ever asked, for example, why she, above any of the Gondorrim nobility, had been invited to dinner that night), it risked making her susceptible to whatever corruptions had befallen her uncle in the north. So long as she remained unaware of the tremendous power that resided within her—and so long as she remained influenced by calmer heads (and in this, Lord Faramir’s regard for her would prove useful), she could pave the way for greater victories, however small. 

She obviously nursed her people’s scepticism towards him, and made no bones about quickly excusing herself from the dining party at the first appropriate moment. Whether she intended it or not, it was a move that earned her an approving nod from Lord Denethor, who used the momentum spurred by her departure to make his own exit not three-quarters of an hour later. This too was beneficial, for it left only he and Lord Faramir in the room. 

He was older now, much older, than when last he saw him, and it was almost impossible to see in him the precocious young lord he had once been. He now wore much of his father’s graveness, but softened it with a dry wit that was all his mother’s. Lord Faramir was, in earnest, a much better conversational partner than most people he had been expected to speak to of late, and Mithrandir found that this grave young man often taught him more about the race of Men in a single sentence than he might have otherwise learned in a hundred years. But in that learnedness sat a kernel of cynicism that was entirely of his own making, a brutal synthesis of all the personalities and conditions that had formed these early days of his life. 

It was that cynicism that saw him lean forward in his chair, full of unabashed self-assurance, and ask what business one of the great Istari had with a mere Captain of Rangers. And it was that cynicism that made the so-called great Istari smile, reminded of what potential he had seen in that youth all those many years ago. 

“Dark days are coming. You know this, I think, you see it in the comings and goings in the woods of Ithilien and hear it in the whispers of your people,” Mithrandir said, pulling his pipe from his staff and laying it across his lap. 

He retrieved the remaining pipe-weed he had procured in Bree-land from a pocket, and began to measure out enough to fill the bowl. He preferred the earthier notes of peat and cedar wood in the varietals grown near Bree to the sweeter, fruitier overtones of the northern leaf. The Arnorians he encountered were fond of teasing that it was this preference that led him to spend so much time among the handlings, an assertion he was quick to refute. His fondness for the hobbits was not harmed by the fine pipe-weed they cultivated and dried, but it certainly was not predicated on it either.

“I do,” said Lord Faramir simply. It was an important statement: he had spent too long amongst people who needed the truth delivered gently, but Lord Faramir was not one such person. 

“When did the Lady of Rohan arrive in Minas Tirith?” He pressed down lightly on the bowl, watching as the leaf shavings knitted together then sprung ever so slightly apart. 

“Two springs past,” answered the young captain with a raised eyebrow. 

“And for what reason was she sent from Edoras?” He lit the pipe, inhaling quickly to coax the small flame to life.  

“To be an envoy on behalf of Théoden King’s court.” Lord Faramir moved with purposeful nonchalance, leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, rubbing his jaw; each a calculated movement meant to imply ease, but all betrayed by the preemptive defensiveness in his tone. It was not up to his usual standard of self-control, that much was evident. 

Mithrandir exhaled the first draw of silken smoke, watched it curl away and disperse into the air above his head. There were not many people who smoked in the Palace of the Stewards, though if victory was at all in the cards, that might one day change. 

“Is that what she has told you, or what you believe to be true?” Another long, slow inhalation, the tiny red embers dancing in their casings. 

“You imply that there might be a difference.” The eyebrow lifted higher on his forehead, though they both knew that he had plainly not answered the question. 

“I do, I do,” he conceded, and blew out a clean, swirling tunnel of smoke. “Has she been a successful envoy? Shaken the alliance of the Oath of Eorl from its stupor?” 

Lord Faramir tapped his fingers along the end of the chair of his arm. “I believe that you would find more insightful answers to your questions if you asked them of Lady Éowyn herself.” 

“And yet,” Mithrandir said with a smile, “it is of you that I ask them.” 

There was a momentary lull in their conversation, during which the only sound in the room was the soft crackle of the pipe-weed and the sound of his own breaths. 

“If you assess the typical variables by which an alliance is measured, then no, it has not been revitalised. But such measures are not nearly as instructive as their assumed importance implies,” Lord Faramir said, keen grey eyes holding his gaze. “A cynic might say that it is valuable that the niece of a Théoden King is in our capital, for we know at least that the capital will not fall without some intervention from the Rohirrim. A romantic might say that she has stimulated a new understanding between our peoples, not something that is quantifiable, but something that would be evident only in the spirit with which we now view one another. In truth, her success lies somewhere in between, and is connected far more to her person than a cursory glance might otherwise suggest.”

Then that was confirmation enough of his hopes for this conversation. Lord Faramir was in love with this girl, this daughter of kings, but he was not blinded by it. Elsewhere, deep in the wood of Eryn Lasgalen, another man, also deeply in love, prepared to go to the ends of the world for the right to her hand. Yes, love was a powerful motivator, and each man would serve his purpose well—with the right encouragement. 

“Ah,” Mithrandir said, reclining in his seat and lifting his pipe from his lips. “Now that, I think, was an insightful answer that could have only come from you.”

It would serve nobody’s purposes for the Chieftain of the Dunedain’s true heritage to be announced, but if this shrewd captain and strange young woman could pave the way for Gondorrim acceptance of the merit and strength of foreigners, then when the time came for his identity to be revealed, his path to the throne would be an easier one. But it would have to be done in unquestionable earnestness, there could be no appearance of the Steward’s youngest son undermining his father’s authority, no question of the purity of the returned King’s claim. Those charged with laying the foundations for his new castle could not know what it was they were building or who it was being built for. 

“There are dark days coming,” he repeated, twisting the pipe to loosen the ash. “There are many in the kingdoms of Men who are not as amenable to alliances as you. There are many more in your own kingdom who would look upon such alliances with suspicion, and who would no doubt desire to see Gondor stand alone rather than with those they believed to be lesser Men. It would be prudent for those who are of a mind with you to not find themselves outmanoeuvred nor without a suitable figurehead. The Lady Éowyn seems to be a fine fit for such a role, and she would do well to have robust support when the time comes for her to step into it.”

The young captain smiled.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The road, wide and well-maintained, paralleled a thick wood for several leagues on one side. On the other, the hill that propped the road in the air slowly gave way over a long, steady decline to farmlands with rolling fields of wheat and other grains. The weather was mild, and the woods cut off most of the winds, making travelling through the land easier than she had expected. 

There were no straight lines here. No sharp edges, nor smooth surfaces. Even in the middle of winter, the colours were vibrant, every shade of golden yellow and rich green and luxuriant purple, all set against a clear and bright sky. The land felt unbound, not in the rugged manner of the Mark, but in a softer, older way, as though the land had been worked and polished for hundreds of years.

This was the land of her grandmother, her mother’s mother. She had barely known Morwen—she had passed when Éowyn was just eight years old, a year after she’d lost her mother—but she wished now, more than ever, that she had. What had she thought of this place? Had she missed it when Thengel was called to the throne in Edoras? What had she thought of this land compared to the Mark? Did she see, as Éowyn now saw, the similarities? Did she draw any comfort from them?

They stopped for the night at an inn tucked between the road and Anduin—far enough from the road to feel secluded, close enough to the river to be loud. Faramir was sent in. He, they decided, was the most inconspicuous of them all, even with his unrelentingly Dúnedain looks. It was an unfortunate side effect of the internal politics of the Kingdom that they had to take such care in passing through the land; they had very little time to travel from Minas Tirith to the southern coast, and could not afford to spend the requisite time in the homes of the lords and ladies who ruled the lands they travelled through. In an effort to not offend any important lords, the sons of the Steward now travelled covertly. It was, Éowyn thought, relentlessly silly. But she had already wasted her ability to argue by insisting that she would travel on horseback, not in the back of a cart, and so had little extra room to complain. 

She and Boromir sorted the horses, Éowyn taking Andúnol from Faramir, and Boromir helping his Aunt Ivriniel from the wagon. Ivriniel, an immensely imposing woman from Dol Amroth, had been sent north to Minas Tirith to act as a chaperone for Éowyn when it became evident that their travel arrangements from the City would be complex. Ivriniel, more so than anyone save Lord Denethor, represented to Éowyn all that she deplored about Gondor. She was sharp-tongued, which would have been no problem had she not chosen to employ it exclusively in service to Gondor’s witlessly inflexible moral code. Fortunately, she seemed to be as unimpressed with Éowyn as Éowyn was with her, and few words had passed between them for the bulk of the journey. 

Windfola, Adúnol, and Aglaroc—Boromir’s dark bay steed—were untacked quickly by the stable boys.  Even in the provinces, it seemed, everything had to be handled by servants. They left the stable to find Faramir waiting for them, with assurances from the innkeeper that everything could be handled with discretion. Three rooms had been prepared upstairs, alongside a private dining room at the back of the inn. 

Boromir kept his hood drawn as they passed through the main room of the inn. Éowyn did not. Her hair was something of a unique sight, but not uncommonly so, and certainly not enough to induce anyone to ask after her. She knew Boromir envied her for her nonchalance—as much as he was willing to accept subtlety for the sake of protecting his family’s political capital, he was not a man for whom secrecy came easily, and even something as small as passing unseen through a rural tavern seemed like a slight against his personality. 

She pitied him, in truth. She had come to love him in the way that he was loved by all his people, but she saw in his life a certain sadness. He longed to be a man who was made glorious entirely by his deeds and his love of country, and not by the family to which he was born. It was not that he was any less valiant for being the future Steward, and in truth he was likely afforded greater latitude to do valiant deeds for that fact, but he would never be able to walk among his men as if he were truly one of them. He would never be able to walk among the people that he loved so dearly as their equal. He would ever be set apart from them. 

Éowyn, for her part, had no desire to be seen as an equal to the people of Gondor. More than a year of her life had been spent amongst their leaders, staring down people who thought, on the basis of her heritage and sex, that she was lesser. They had not once succeeded in making her believe that she was beneath them, but she longed to prove that she was capable of what they were not. Unlike Boromir, she saw acts of valour not as a way to ingratiate herself amongst the Gondorrim, but as a way to prove that she—and by extension, her people—were not so primitive as they believed. She kept her hood down and let her hair, blonde and long, fly free, because it was her only remaining means of showing that she was not of a kind with them.

The innkeeper who showed her to her room complimented her hair, reaching up to run her fingers through the bottom edges of it where it lay against Éowyn’s shoulders. The woman was old, with thick, grey hair and deeply-etched lines across her face, silver eyes not dimmed by age. Éowyn could hardly remember her grandmother, but wondered, if only for a moment, if she had looked similar to this woman. 

She wasted no time in getting to the dining room. The Gondorrim were more austere in their food provisions for long journeys, so they had eaten little for lunch, and her stomach was preparing a revolt. A revolt that was swiftly quelled by the food brought up on trays for them: a rich smelling stew, warm bread, and two bottles of wine. So different to the food she had grown used to in Minas Tirith and yet, for that, so much better. 

Boromir and Faramir talked happily about their memories of Lossarnach, and Éowyn was content to listen quietly. She had little to contribute to the conversation—this was as far away from her home as she had ever been, and before that her outer limit had been Minas Tirith. Her memories of travel were few and far between, but she did not begrudge them theirs. Ivriniel, who was unhappy with the manner of their travel and had been vocal in reminding them all of it since they left the White City, routinely interrupted their conversation to tender her asinine observations. 

Éowyn behaved herself, but only just, and mostly by ensuring that her mouth was never empty long enough to form words inside it. On their first day of travel she had suffered more than enough of Ivriniel’s insinuated critiques of her and had no desire to draw them out needlessly. For all of the woman’s crowing about propriety, she was nonetheless (very) old, and Éowyn had quickly learned that she could outlast Ivriniel’s energy within an hour or so of the cessation of their travel each day and be, for at least a small time, among people worth speaking to without the oppressive eyes of etiquette upon her. 

Despite Éowyn’s impeccable behaviour (and ongoing silence), Ivriniel somehow still found herself provoked into an extended diatribe against what she perceived as the universal impropriety of young ladies. They were, she said, too vain, too illiterate, and too content to sit idly by in their solars. Éowyn found herself begrudgingly agreeing with Ivriniel, though said nothing for fear of having the woman’s ire turned on her. As Ivriniel sternly counselled Boromir against marrying any of the young ladies of the court unless they could prove themselves sufficiently serious, Éowyn let her eyes wander. 

They were soon caught by Faramir, who was looking in her direction. Her heart inexplicably skipped a beat, sending a brief surge of unaccountable anxiety through her until she regained control of herself. Safely seated on the other side of Ivriniel and shielded from her line of sight by the back of her own head, Faramir was evidently as unimpressed with her oration as Éowyn was. As they held each other’s gaze, the depth of their mutual annoyance at the conversation became clearer and clearer until, with desperate haste, Éowyn was forced to lunge for her drink to hold back the tide of laughter. Granting her some small grace, Faramir looked quickly away, though even through his ironclad self-control she could see his lips twitching upwards as he too tried not to laugh. 

When at last Ivriniel bored herself into tiredness and elected to leave, they shared but an hour of conversation—mostly concerning nothing at all, but an enjoyable nothing at all—before Boromir also decided he was tired and desired his bed. Éowyn looked across to Faramir. Since his return from Ithilien, they had had so little time together, and she dearly missed his companionship. She would not ask him to stay, not if he was tired, but she desperately hoped that he would. 

Mercifully, he remained, pouring himself another glass of wine as she peppered him with questions about all that he had done (that hadn’t been covered in their letters) since last they spoke months ago. He answered with aplomb, even explaining the gritty details of the Rangers’ changing strategy going into the winter. It was, she thought, the best conversation she’d had in weeks. 

As they spoke, she looked him over. He looked tired despite the brightness in his eyes, and she wondered if this time away would be enough to replenish his sleep. He had told her in one of his letters that he hardly slept anymore, but she was not entirely convinced that that couldn’t be remedied with a change of scenery. And hopefully a change of scenery would convince him to start growing his beard out again. It had been longer when they had first met, but he had taken to keeping clean shaven, and she missed it. It was not that he wasn’t handsome, he was—and it wasn’t that it mattered whether she thought him handsome or not—, but she preferred the beard. She liked that it made him stand out in Minas Tirith, that it made him look rakish. 

“Will you come?” He looked at her expectantly. She blinked. She hadn’t realised how distracted she’d been. 

“Forgive me, I lost track of myself,” she said, glancing down at the tabletop and rearranging her hands. When she looked up, he wore something approximating an amused expression, though it was evident only in his eyes. 

“I promised to pay a visit to the family of my late captain on the morrow. I wondered if you might like to accompany me?” 

“Accompany you?”

He hummed in acknowledgement. “I thought you might like to meet some people who are different to those you have thus far met in Minas Tirith. And,” briefly, he looked back over his shoulder at the door, “I thought you might like a brief reprieve from the heavy burden of etiquette.”

She laughed, and he knew as well as she that his argument was more than convincing enough for her. 

Later, he told her about Lossarnach in greater detail. It was from whence many of his Rangers hailed, and had become a haven for those who had left Ithilien in the great clearances. Ithilien, he said, was much like Lossarnach, but with infinitely more woods. She closed her eyes as he spoke, trying to imagine what the great woodlands across Anduin might look like in a time beyond the war. Beautiful, she thought, if the images in her head conjured by his words were anything to go on. 

“I should like to go there,” she told him, letting the wine speak for her. 

She heard him take a slow breath, and wondered what she had said to upset him.

“One day,” he said quietly. “One day I will take you.” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The early morning darkness gave way to a kaleidoscope of purples, pinks, and oranges, spilling like shattered glass across the morning sky. It was a brisk morning, one that made her wonder yet again why the future Prince and Princess of Dol Amroth had chosen such a cold time of the year in which to wed. 

Faramir, standing on the front stoop of the inn, looked both very tense and perfectly at ease with the world around him. He appeared, surprisingly, much better kept than usual, his attire not half as wrinkled as it normally was, and even from a distance it looked to her as if he’d actually brushed his hair before tying it back in his customary braid. As she approached, she saw that he had even shaved, a slight nick on the underside of his jaw betraying him. She smiled inwardly, it would make sense that he would put the most effort into his appearance when they were miles from Minas Tirith and anyone who might hold him to that higher standard he set. 

Even looking notably more like a man of his rank ought to, he still looked to her perfectly in tune with the unpretentious, undeveloped landscape around them. He wore the greens and browns that she knew he was so fond of (that she herself was becoming fond of on his behalf), and could have sprung directly from the hills and dales of this realm just as easily as he might have been born in the White City. 

“My grandmother lived for some time in Lossarnach,” she said, leaning against the building support. 

He looked across at her, acknowledging her words, but saying nothing. His letters were so verbose that, when they had gone some time without seeing one another in person, she often found herself learning anew how keenly he wielded his own silence in conversations.  

“It reminds me more of my home than I expected,” she continued, pulling her travelling cloak tighter around her arms. “I thought that perhaps leaving for the Mark might have been strange for her, but now I am not quite so sure.” 

“Sometimes it is the similarities that make it hardest to let go of our homes,” he said sagely. His posture, as impeccable as ever, seemed to relax somewhat as he spoke, and she wondered what he had been thinking about before she’d interrupted his silence. 

“The differences for me,” she watched the stablehands as they prepared the horses. “I feel more at ease here than in the White City.” 

“You will like Ithilien then,” he said. 

She smiled, then stepped forward to take Windfola’s reins.

They left Boromir with Ivriniel, with a promise to return before noon so as to not egregiously interrupt the day’s travel itinerary. Éowyn had, at the start of their trip from Minas Tirith, a particularly frustrating argument with Ivriniel about the impropriety of Éowyn’s chosen riding style. It was, according to Ivriniel, bad enough that she had chosen to ride instead of sit in the wagon, but that she chose to also eschew riding sidesaddle was a veritable crime against all goodness. Éowyn had won the argument through sheer force of will alone, and some hours later Boromir, evidently deeply amused by the fight, explained in hushed tones that the Gondorrim saw riding sidesaddle as a means of protecting a young lady’s virtue. It had made Éowyn laugh until she cried, but once she had recovered herself the thought began to disturb her immensely. 

It had continued to disturb her for the entirety of their trip, though with almost no moments of privacy with either Boromir or Faramir, she had lacked the opportunity to air her grievances. Now, however, she not only had some privacy, but was reminded (as they traversed some rough ground) of the extent to which Boromir’s explanation had unsettled her. It, she thought, spoke to a level of violence in intimacy that Éowyn, though far from being a blushing ingenue herself, had hardly expected. 

“Is making a woman bleed a sign of a man’s virility in Gondor?” she asked, pulling Windfola back into line along a smoother patch of road, kicking up some of the looser trail dust. Beside her Faramir coughed rather exaggeratedly and she, with a great sigh, moved Windfola further aside onto a damper stretch. 

Faramir coughed again, and had apparently coughed enough to redden the tops of his cheeks. “I might require more context before I can answer that accurately,” he said rather stiltedly. 

“Riding sidesaddle,” she began. “Boromir explained that it is done to protect a woman’s virtue, but unless Gondorrim women use very different saddles to the ones I am accustomed to, I cannot imagine how riding with proper posture would impinge upon a woman’s virtue, unless it is by bleeding that her virtue is measured.” 

“Ah,” said Faramir, looking visibly uncomfortable. “Well that would be one measure, yes, but I am surprised to hear that it is different in Rohan.” 

“Of course it is. In the Mark it is common to begin riding as early as two years of age, I cannot imagine that there is a woman in the entire Kingdom who could pass such an asinine test of her virtue, irrespective of whether she has ever been to bed with a man.” She sniffed angrily. “The men of Gondor are more barbaric than even I had imagined if they truly derive pride from something as absurd as that.”

“Not pride, but rather an older tradition that continues to hold sway even if it is not faithfully kept to,” he answered, his voice hoarse. From the dust, she expected.

Éowyn found she had nothing to say to that, for though she found this particular tradition alarming, there were many customs in the Mark that she found similarly untenable, a fact which Faramir would no doubt weasel out of her very quickly in his defence of Gondor. It was easier, then, to silently ruminate on the crassness of Gondorrim attitudes to women. She reasoned that it should not have come as a complete surprise to her that they had found an innovative new way to render their own people inert, but the obvious unfairness of this instance was frustrating. 

They rode in comfortable silence for some time, Éowyn continuing to fume about the strange moral codes of Gondor, until Faramir pointed out, in the near distance, a medium-sized farmhouse, surrounded by small pastures and a vineyard. This, he explained to her, was the home of his late captain’s family. Though they were not titled, they were one of the older and more established families who had fled Ithilien during the clearances nearly sixty years ago, and had become something of community leaders for the refugees in Lossarnach. 

Outside the farmhouse, they were met by a woman who seemed to Éowyn to be as old as the hills themselves. She introduced herself as Erebeth, and surprised Éowyn by hugging Faramir tightly. Her obedience to formality returned when she greeted Éowyn, curtseying as gracefully as her aged limbs would allow. Excitedly, she introduced Éowyn to her grandchildren, one young woman who was of an age with Éowyn, and two substantially younger boys, who saluted Faramir with cheeky grins. 

The inside of the farmhouse was lighter and warmer than she had expected, and was decorated less sparsely than the farmhouses Éowyn was familiar with in the Mark. Erebeth dispatched her granddaughter, Cemmeth, to bring refreshments, then herded her and Faramir into the small sitting room at the back of the house. 

The conversation between Faramir and Erebeth flowed with an almost-familial ease. Éowyn was more than a little impressed at the amount of detail about her life that Faramir was able to recall as he asked about the (apparently many) grandchildren who were not present, the farmhands, and Erebeth’s own work with the Ithilien refugees in the vale. The woman answered with vigour, and seemed to match his attention to detail, rattling off information about the various refugee families that Éowyn would have been unable to retain even with many hard hours of practice. As she listened, she learned that there was an unofficial support network, led by Erebeth, dedicated to providing the Rangers resources that might otherwise be difficult to supply. A yearly collection was taken up from the farming families, sending grain and other long-life goods to Ithilien, and every few months excess metal and wood from the estates was sent by ship to Cair Andros and then on to the Rangers. All this, she quickly realised, happened without the knowledge or official sanction of any of the Lords of Lossarnach. 

Midway through explaining the most recent collection, Cemmeth returned with a tray of bread and hot drinks, which she settled on a small table in the centre of the room. With a level of brash confidence Éowyn had not been expecting, Cemmeth announced that she had had to act as an enforcer with some of the less forthcoming families. She insisted that once the families were reminded of their duty to the fair Captain of the Rangers, they had been very generous, but that it wasn’t until the invocation of his name that that generosity appeared. 

As Éowyn watched the conversation unfold, it occurred to her that not only was Faramir obviously loved by the people for whom the Rangers were a last connection to their homeland, but that Cemmeth was unashamedly using that fact to flirt with him. What truly bewildered her was that far from being unreceptive to her flirtations, Faramir returned them with almost equal brazenness. She had, of course, never truly seen him in a social situation such as this, and had definitely never seen him conversing with women that weren’t of his kin, so realistically she ought not to have any expectations. Yet she was surprised nonetheless. 

She had never particularly thought of him as someone for whom romance might be a consideration; he had, of course, gone to some lengths early in their friendship to explain that he prioritised the war above all else. And she knew about his previous attempt at romance, but she had always thought of that in the abstract, like a story from one of his books of history. Now, watching this baldfaced coquetry, she realised that romance might very much be in the cards for him. 

There was no denying that he was very handsome, her vision was perfectly adequate, and he was certainly sought-after, she had overheard enough of the idle gossip in the City to be more than aware of that, but it had somehow never crossed her mind that he might be inclined towards any sort of romance. But then, why should it have? Their friendship was just that: a friendship, it was not as if she was ever privy to conversations he might have had with anyone he was romantically interested in, so it would not have reasonably been a thing she would have thought about. 

The longer she observed their interaction, the more convinced she was that her conclusion was right. He was, she noted with some humour, quite brazen, and though Éowyn had admittedly missed some minor details, she would have had to have been truly blind to overlook such an overt display of romantic interest if she had ever seen him around someone he was interested in. 

At the end of their hour-long visit, it became abundantly clear that Faramir had perhaps been less than transparent about why he had invited her along. As they stood outside the farmhouse, preparing to return to the inn, he began to hurriedly explain that Erebeth had once helped to coordinate support networks for the soldiers returning from the campaign in Umbar. One of the women who had been instrumental to that effort now lived in Minas Tirith and he coyly asked Erebeth if she could instruct Éowyn on how to find her. Éowyn, frustrated yet again by his obsession with convincing her to look elsewhere for her political security, barely kept a lid on her annoyance as Erebeth gave her explanation. 

When they were back on their horses and safely out of hearing distance of the farmhouse, she fixed him with a cantankerous stare.

“You, my lord,” she groused, “are a nuisance.”

“And yet,” he answered, reaching across the space between their horses to pat her hands where they rested against Windfola’s saddle, “here you are, riding beside me.”

Notes:

Éowyn, beloved dumb jock.

More endnotes available here.

Chapter 14: Book I: Autumn 3017

On the sixth day of travel, they crested a small hill and in an instant Éowyn’s world became infinitely more massive. She didn’t speak, didn’t ask to stop, just vaulted off Windfola and rushed to the very edge of the hillside road. 

She had never seen anything like it before. 

Even the endless, unfettered sky in the Wold could not compare to what lay before her. Never had she felt so at the mercy of the overwhelming power of things she could not control; never did she expect that she could be so at peace with that loss of control. It stretched out before her like a second sky but made rough, more alive by motion and imperfection. Under the blazing autumn sun (warmer here than farther north) it glittered like a shattered mirror hastily reforged.

She had no expectations for the sea—it had occupied no space in her thoughts, it simply did not exist in her world. Now, the sea rushed into her thoughts like a wildfire engulfing the grasslands, it was everywhere and fast and with an intensity she could scarcely begin to understand. 

It was only as she was about to speak to remark on the quietness of it all that she finally heard it. No, it was not quiet, it was perfectly in balance with the soundscape around it. A sound she had thought familiar but now realised was very foreign indeed. It was a dull roar, but it was there, and it spoke to a world she had yet to know—vast and ancient and permanent. 

Her knees trembled. 

She recovered herself and returned to Windfola, but her eyes remained on the sea until they arrived in Dol Amroth and lost the coastline to the tangle of buildings. Even gone from her sight, it occupied an overlarge place in her thoughts. She could not yet grasp the scale of it, its power, the enormity of such a thing that rested so close to her. 

It was built into life in Dol Amroth, the buildings were oriented towards the sea in what ways they could, and everything about them spoke to a milder climate, to an easier, slower pace of life. The city was more colourful too, brilliant blue doors greeted her on every house, and fantastically intricate tiles adorned their facades. It was worlds apart from Minas Tirith, lively and exuberant even in the doldrums of winter. 

The castle, too, was nothing like the Palace of the Stewards. It sat on a rocky outcropping in the water, stately and commanding, a veritable fortress jutting out from the seafloor. Before they arrived at its outer gates, music met her ears, and the warm, fragrant smell of food and incense wafted through the air. It was nothing like Edoras, and yet it was everything like Edoras. 

They were met at the interior gates by Prince Imrahil and his family. The familial resemblance was as strong as with the family of the Steward, but with so many children the effect was more pronounced. She was introduced, with zeal, to each of the Prince’s children. First, there was Elphir, the future Prince of Dol Amroth, who seemed to favour his father in every imaginable way. Then there was Elúriel, his bride-to-be, who had a radiantly happy smile and gleaming russet hair that fell in tight curls down her back. Next there was Erchirion, who favoured his father in appearance, but with none of his father’s self-restraint, and who she immediately realised was an inveterate flirt. Then came Amrothos, a slight, bookish young man who reminded her more of Faramir and Lord Denethor than the Prince. Last was Lothíriel, four years her junior, who was handsome, clever, and had an egregiously happy disposition. 

It fell to Lothíriel to entertain Éowyn for the first few hours after their arrival. She did her job with dynamism, effortlessly showing her to her chambers and around the castle while navigating the hordes of wedding guests. There was, in truth, little Éowyn could say against the girl, except that in her good fortune in having been kept from the war, she seemed a touch naïve about it all, which left Éowyn feeling rougher around the edges than usual. Still, Lothíriel accounted for it well and kept the conversation flowing with aplomb—not an easy feat given Éowyn’s exhaustion. 

In a drawing room overlooking the sea, they were joined by Erchirion, who claimed boredom at the hand of wedding preparations and demanded entertainment. Éowyn, who was no fool, knew at once that he was hoping to entertain himself by flirting with her. She allowed it, if only because his brazenness was a refreshing change of pace from the dull aloofness of the men of Minas Tirith. 

He was a sailor, on leave from his time in the navy of Dol Amroth, and had a great number of stories to share (many of them shared to the vocal chagrin of his sister). Éowyn, who had never before met a sailor, was altogether too happy to hear his tales, even if she felt that they too often ended with some sort of appeal for her approval. She was happy to have her opinion heard, and was happy to give it freely, but was not, she decided very quickly, particularly interested in being used as a means for self-validation. Still, he made her laugh from time to time with his stories, so she continued to put up with it. 

After a time, they were joined by Faramir and Amrothos, each looking frustrated to have come upon a group of people in the room but who each chose to stay after a heartfelt plea from Lothíriel. They took up a game of chess in the corner of the room, though were not so wholly removed from the conversation that she did not occasionally catch Faramir rolling his eyes at Erchirion’s antics. When she failed to stifle a snort at a particularly well-timed eyeroll, his eyes met hers and, without meaning to, she burst into laughter, encouraged by his own bright smile. 

In the way of conversations held in such close vicinity to a wedding, the talk turned from the sea to the upcoming nuptials, first generally, and then with greater concern for the very theory of it. Lothíriel quickly declared that she had little interest in romance, and would only marry if it were sensible to do so. Erchirion announced that he would remain a bachelor for life, then turned on Éowyn: 

“But you are very charming, Lady Éowyn, and must have suitors banging down your door, why have you not yet snapped one of them up?”

Éowyn laughed, and replied, “Men thinking me charming is not quite enough to induce me to marry. Marriage in the wrong hands can be a terrible fate, and the freedoms granted to me as a niece of the King are sufficient to keep me content with my life. It would take an exceptional man indeed to convince me to risk losing what I have.” 

Erchirion grinned and Lothíriel expressed her envy, but it was neither of their reactions that she was most concerned with. Instead, Faramir, who had until that point been watching her speak, had very pointedly turned back to his game of chess, a muscle in his jaw tensing as if he was working very hard not to argue with her. For the first time in a long time, she was left feeling as if she’d made some mistake she hadn’t intended to.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Though they were now many leagues from Minas Tirith, and many more from the Ephel Dúath, the Shadow in the East haunted her thoughts and dreams as intensely as ever. Whereas in her earliest days in the City it had seemed more like a strange weather pattern than anything else, it increasingly felt to her as though it were an almost-human presence, as if the darkness stared into her very soul. 

In some ways, it was a fact of life, no more terrifying than the reports of Orc and Dunlending incursions had been while she had lived in Meduseld; so long as those around her were able to carry on with their lives, so too could she. In other ways, ignoring it was an impossibility, even if she did pretend to not see it. While walking in her terrace garden in Minas Tirith, she would glance out at Ithilien and the overpowering knowledge that something lurked beyond the mountains, something ancient and evil beyond words, would catch her by surprise, leaving her dazed and breathless. Some nights, she would wake from terrifying dreams of fire and cataclysm, sweating yet frozen in her bed. Other nights, she wouldn’t sleep at all, not obsessed with the Shadow, but too disturbed and unsettled to even begin to allow the chance for rest to creep in. 

It was on those nights, when she could hardly countenance the thought of the Shadow, let alone risk inadvertently looking at it, that she would rise from her bed, dress herself to a relatively-appropriate standard, and forsake her chambers entirely. As the days grew shorter and the nights colder, she would bring the mantle Faramir had gifted her along too. It was a tremendous comfort, not just for its warmth and beauty, but for what it symbolised: that someone, anyone, might respect her people enough to learn their traditions. And he had been the person in Gondor who had lodged the most challenging critiques of her people, for him to have gone to such lengths to accommodate the traditions of her people felt like a hard-won victory. 

The anxiety caused by the Shadow, it seemed, would not grant her a reprieve in Dol Amroth, and so she had once again been forced from her bed in the dark, heart pounding and head spinning. In the dead of night, she found it even more disturbing that she hardly knew the rooms and passages of the castle, forced to instead follow the path of the dying fireplaces, moving from room to room until she found the one that had been most recently stoked, the drawing room where several of them had retired after dinner that evening. 

Wrapped in the starry mantle, she stood in the uppermost balcony in the castle’s east wing, looking out at the darkened sea. It still overwhelmed her, she was still uncertain what to make of it. It was so unlike anything she had ever known before that trying to make comparisons to it felt like an exercise in futility. She could do naught but stare at it, hoping against hope that it might make sense of itself for her. 

She had been outside not a quarter of an hour when she was joined, to her great surprise, by Boromir. He leaned across the balcony in silence, looking out with her at the sea for some time. She was unused to quiet with Boromir; typically the only moments of silence they shared came when they were too breathless from exertions to speak, not from shared moments of calm.

“I struggle to sleep from time to time,” she explained, more to break the silence than to excuse her behaviour. 

“For the noise?”

“No,” she said, and returned her gaze to the crashing waves. “No, that I quite like.”

He regarded her for a moment. “My brother also struggles to sleep, sometimes I wonder if he even does at all anymore.”  

“And you?” 

“After my first campaign, I learned to keep a dagger under my pillow, and since then, once I am asleep I always make it through the night undisturbed.” He said it in such a way that she thought he expected her to smile, or even laugh, but she recognised that sort of bravado all too well, had seen it too often in her brother and cousin and the other men for whom the terrors of battle never fully went away. And she heard his careful word choice, knew the implication of his also standing here on the balcony: once he was asleep, but he did not say how difficult an accomplishment that was.

“That,” Boromir said after several long minutes, “is a mantle I have not seen for a very long time.” 

She looked down at it, running her fingers along the hem of the lush fabric. “Your brother kindly gifted it to me.”

Boromir nodded slowly, his brow furrowing. 

“There is a tradition in the Mark for siblings to gift cloaks in recognition of important life events,” she continued to fill the quiet.  

“Is there indeed?” 

She glanced over at him and saw that he somehow looked more tired than he had minutes ago.

“There is,” she confirmed, narrowing her eyes at him. 

“And my brother was participating in that, was he?”

“Yes,” she said, hooking her hands over the balustrade and leaning forward to look beneath the balcony at the courtyard many tens of metres below. 

“He told you that?” 

She frowned at him. “Not as such.” 

“Not as such,” Boromir repeated, then rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Am I to understand that that means not at all?” 

Éowyn, who had not prepared herself for having minor events that occurred in her life many months ago dissected in such great detail, began to feel defensive. “Why should it matter?”

“Because I suspect,” said Boromir, leaning back from the balcony’s edge, “that if I found him now and asked him if he was aware of this tradition, he would not, truthfully, be able to say that he is or was.” 

“He is learning my language, you know,” Éowyn said with an indignant sniff, ignoring the way his eyebrows shot up his forehead. “You underestimate your brother.” 

“Oh I can assure you,” said Boromir with a sly grin, “that is the very last thing I am doing.”

She chewed her lip, wondering what, exactly, he was doing, if not underestimating his brother. Why was he so convinced that Faramir’s gift had not been given as a sign of respect for her culture? She prepared to turn on him and demand an answer, but as she did, he rapped his fist gently against the balustrade, then turned to face her.

“I think,” he said, with an exaggerated yawn, “that I have said enough to lull myself to sleep, and so shall beg your forgiveness for now going in search of my bed.”

He left before she could even tease him for having not said very much at all, and for obviously having lost his stamina for a good-natured argument. Alone with the sea once more, she stared into the darkness, shaking her head at Boromir’s refusal to acknowledge that his brother might be more culturally-sensitive than he imagined.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The wedding was beautiful. All weddings were beautiful, but this one was especially so. The traditions of Dol Amroth were unrecognisable to her, and shared almost nothing with the wedding traditions of the Mark, but she liked them all the same. It was infinitely more nonchalant than the social ceremonies in Minas Tirith, and she found it easier to breathe here. It was, of course, eased by the free flowing of sweet, frothy wine and the loud laughter that echoed through every room in the castle. 

She had staked her claim to a stretch of wall on the eastern end of the hall that hosted the festivities, where she watched with amusement as the dancers and revellers spilled in, all caught up in the heady enchantment of young love. She smiled as Boromir immediately stole the bride for the second dance, then tempered her smile when she caught sight of Faramir, entering the hall through a door on the opposite wall to her.

She hadn’t seen him during the wedding, nor during the subsequent dinner—for as much as she was a diplomatic guest of some esteem, she was emphatically not family, and had been seated a good distance from the family at both previous segments of the event. He, she thought, looked nothing short of dashing. Wearing a midnight blue surcoat and a black tunic beneath, for once he seemed dressed to the usual high standards of the Gondorrim court. She was, evidently, not the only one to notice him, a noticeable number of women in the room physically turned to watch him. She raised a hand to her mouth to hide her grin, their behaviour was coloured by a level of shamelessness even she would not have believed of them. 

Her amusement was cut short by the unfortunate arrival of Lord Golasgil. For months she had avoided him at every turn, and had been remarkably successful in doing so. For all of those months, and for many more before that, she had been made all too aware of the ongoing affair of his wife, Lady Melcien, and Lord Mesgrîn of Imloth Melui. Simply knowing about the affair would have been enough, had she not also been privy to the finer details differentiating Lord Golasgil and Lord Mesgrîn, including but not limited to their competency behind closed doors. She was no blushing maiden, and was certainly not prone to hysterics at the thought of sex, but she didn’t trust herself to keep her composure. 

Lord Golasgil was the sort of simpering dullard she had come to hate beyond measure during her time in Minas Tirith. Far from being able to hold a conversation with her, she wondered that he was able to hold conversations with any women at all. Before she had begun to avoid him, he only ever struck up conversation with her by asking her relentlessly boring questions about clothing and embroidery. She was certain that even women who had an appreciation for such topics would find his conversation lethally insipid. 

She drew a deep breath as he approached, steeling herself for dealing with him until she could find a convenient enough excuse to flee. He opened, as ever, with a compliment of her gown, and a comment on the bride’s attire. It was, Éowyn had to admit, a beautiful gown, but there was nothing to be said on it except that it was well-crafted and suited Elúriel well. Golasgil, undaunted, pressed on, giving an incredibly detailed appraisal of the exact style of embroidery employed on the bodice and how it fared against the delicate fabric of the skirts. 

She sought Faramir out amongst the revellers, and, after spotting him, made a face at him that she hoped spoke to the direness of her situation. He held her gaze for a moment, smiled cruelly, then shook his head, and turned back to his conversation. In that moment, she would have risked a severe diplomatic incident to challenge him to a duel, so furious was she that he had abandoned her in her time of need.

For an untenably long time she was forced to indulge Golasgil’s mortifying attempts at conversation. He monologued at her with a vigour that evaporated any sympathy she might have once had for him, leaving her instead with the vague sense of antipathy towards Lady Melcien for continuing to speak with any affinity at all towards her bore of a husband. When it became apparent that nobody would be coming to rescue her, she took matters into her own hands, telling Golasgil that she had been hailed by Faramir (she had not) and that she could not offend her hosts by being slow to speak to him. 

“You abandoned me,” Éowyn said, eschewing even the pretence of a polite greeting. 

Again, that cruel smile returned. “I thought you might have been enjoying yourself.” 

“What good is your clear sight if it cannot tell you when I desire to be swept away?” she teased, watching as couples took to the centre of the hall in advance of the next dance.

“I ask myself that very question with a frequency you could not imagine,” he answered. She blinked, ready to ask him precisely what he meant, but before she could he was speaking again: “Will you not join the dancing?” 

She arched an eyebrow. “If you are attempting to ask me to dance with you, ask plainly.”

“Will you not join the dancing with me?” He raised his hands in contrition, and she grinned at his amendment. He took her hand, tucking it into the crook of his arm as he guided her out into the centre of the hall. 

Closer to him now than she’d been all day, she saw that he looked less tired than before, the dark circles under his eyes considerably reduced, and his whole being seemed lighter. She tightened her grasp on his hand, comforted to see her friend so much improved.

As they turned inwards for the dance’s starting position, Faramir reached forward, untwisting her necklace where the pendant had become tangled in on the chain. When he moved his fingers back, she covered the pendant with her own hand, feeling that it now lay flat against her skin, skin which seemed to burn beneath it. 

“Green suits you very well,” he said.

“I caused something of an upset with this gown after I arrived in Minas Tirith,” she admitted, grinning at the memory of the outrage. “But I could hardly give it up, it is the heraldic colour of my people.”

“And my Rangers,” he said, reaching up and brushing a loose coil of hair back from her face, his fingertips tracing lightly across her cheek. “Perhaps we ought to make you our standard-bearer to give you good cause to wear it more.” Her skin blazed with the heat of a thousand suns where he touched her.

There was, she thought, a chance she might have had too much wine.

Thankfully, Faramir was a good dancer, able to guide her through the steps (which were, she thought, alarmingly intricate for the first dance of the night) while still keeping up a skeleton of a conversation. She was faintly aware that they were being watched by more people than she was strictly used to—it was not that she wasn’t used to being seen, but this attention felt noticeably different. 

Still, he managed to distract her by whispering his very frank assessments of the other revellers in her ear as they spun across the floor, and soon she could do naught but laugh and allow herself to be swept up in the moment. It was comforting, she thought, to be so far from not just her home, but also from where she lived, and yet to be around someone who made that distance feel entirely inconsequential. Were it not for the peculiarities of the dance, they might have been anywhere at all and yet she could not imagine feeling any more relaxed than she did now, laughing and missing her steps and feeling perfectly herself in his arms. 

That comfort was short-lived: the first dance had barely finished before she was invited to another with Erchirion. Erchirion had what Boromir called ‘sailor’s bravado’, though Éowyn, having never met a sailor before, was unsure how to differentiate that from the rest of his boisterous personality. They danced two turns together, and he kept her laughing the entire time, though more out of her shock at his cavalier attitude to life than any sort of great wit. Within seconds of their final dance finishing, she was snapped up by Boromir, who spun her around until she was dizzy and warned her that if she didn’t extricate herself from the dancing, she’d be passed around to every young man in the room. Singularly failing to heed his advice, she was immediately turned over to the son of a Belfalan vassal lord who stepped repeatedly on her toes, and seemed more interested in using her to impress some other young lady in the crowd. 

Breathless, Éowyn retreated to the comfort of her wall, and searched the crowd for a familiar face who was not dancing. The longer she looked, and the longer she cast aside reasonable options, the more she realised that it was not any familiar face she was looking for, but one in particular. She was in a drastically new environment, she thought, and he was her friend. It was reasonable to seek him out. It was a sign of nothing other than the strength of their friendship. 

She downed a glass of sweet wine, then went in search of him. 

It took her some time, but she found him outside on a balcony overlooking the sea. It was quiet on the balcony, save for the distant sound of music that escaped only when a door was left open too long, and the noise of the waves crashing against the shore below. He stood with impeccable military posture, legs shoulder-width apart, arms clasped behind his back, eyes facing forehead, no tilt whatsoever to his head. She lifted her skirt to avoid a small puddle on the ground, then stood beside him. 

“You are a very difficult man to find,” she said, “I had to search half the castle.” She thought a smile crossed his face, but she couldn’t be sure. He kept his eyes forward, and the silence returned. She put her hands on the balustrade. 

“You do not like the sea,” she said, not sure if she was asking or announcing it. 

“It reminds me of Númenor,” he said.

“Of Númenor?”

“Yes,” said Faramir, “of the land of Westernesse that foundered and of the great dark wave climbing over the green lands and above the hills, and coming on, darkness unescapable. I often dream of it.”

She looked up at him, a coldness coming over her that had nothing to do with the winter air that enveloped them. To dream once about the destruction of his ancestors would be a bitter thing, to dream of it often? To dream of it often while serving as the first line of defence of his people against impending doom? Her heart cried out for him. 

“They were shipbuilders, were they not? Your book—the book I took from you last spring—said the Númenóreans built ships and sailed from the West,” she said, reaching her hand out to bring it to rest over his. 

“They did,” he said, and she saw that he looked down at their hands. She did not move hers. 

“Then it was not darkness unescapable,” she said, and twined their fingers together so she could squeeze his hand. The calluses on his fingers—from quill and sword—were rough against her softer skin. She found herself envious of them, and ashamed at her own hands, softened by idleness. “The wave could not be stopped, but it could be weathered with their ships.” 

He was silent a moment longer, eyes ever on the darkened sea.

“You are fearless and high-hearted, my lady,” he said.

“And you,” she said, though she wished him to keep saying such things to her, “are a flatterer.”

He looked down at her and smiled, though grief still dulled his eyes. She liked his smile; even tempered by sorrow it seemed so much freer an expression than she was used to from him. It was as if the one thing he couldn’t keep tight control on was his joy, as rarely as it came. 

His eyes returned to the water that stretched out for hundreds of leagues before them. Hers followed his, and she wondered what he saw in that vast expanse. He feared it—but was it only destruction he saw there? 

They stood side by side, hands clasped, for many minutes. She closed her eyes to the sound of the sea, matching her breathing to the steady draw and crash of the water against the beach. There were no limitations to the sea, for as much as it could drown entire civilisations and wreak untold horrors upon men, it could similarly be soft and gentle as it was before her then. It was free to be as large or as small as it desired, and it could never be dominated. Those who willingly navigated the seas did so with some fear in their hearts, for they recognised what great and terrible power it had, even if they knew that it could also be tranquil. She envied the sea, both for its beauty and its terror.    

Music trickled out from the hall again, a gallivanting reel, and she smiled. Turning to Faramir, she brushed her fingers along the sleeve of his tunic, feeling the rise and fall of the embroidery. 

“Will you not ask me to dance again?” she teased.

He looked down at her, a whisper of something playful in his eyes as he captured her other hand, then brought them both up to his face. She felt the soft skin of his lips pressing against her knuckles, felt every measure of it, felt the radiating warmth that seemed to rush from her fingers through every inch of her body. Her breath caught in her throat, and when their eyes met, she felt herself tremble. 

When he spoke, his voice was a low rumble in his chest: “If the White Lady wills it.” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The castle at Dol Amroth was unique for its layout. Unlike the tightly cloistered rooms of Minas Tirith, where every room served a distinct purpose and above all else served privacy, the rooms here were oriented toward the communal. The doors (which spanned nearly from floor to ceiling) were almost never closed, the drawing rooms were as much dining rooms as bedrooms, and often served multiple functions at once. It was, Imrahil thought, one of the many things that made Dol Amroth easier to navigate than the White City; there were fewer expectations of formality in these walls.

But the openness of the castle also meant that he was spending more time around his nephews than he was used to. It had been a very long time since he had had an extended period of time with his sister’s sons. It was not that he exactly had a substantial amount of leisure time, not with the wedding so close, but he certainly had more time generally around them, and he was a man very much in the habit of making every minute count. 

Boromir was in good spirits, but Boromir was ever in good spirits. He wore the pressures of his life well, and with far more charisma than his father—who Imrahil had never fully warmed to. Having Boromir around was always a good thing, he had a natural talent for putting others at ease, a talent that seemed to be rarer and rarer these days. He also never had to worry about Boromir, he was a man who was so content with his lot in life that Imrahil had learned quickly that he could manage himself. 

Faramir was very much a different issue. It was not that he was overemotional, in fact, pulling any sort of recognition of his emotions out of his youngest nephew was like extracting blood from a stone, but he was by far and away less content with his path in life than his brother. Faramir had always seemed lighter when he visited them in Dol Amroth in his youth, and that was especially true after he joined the army, but even knowing that, Imrahil thought his nephew was notably more cheerful this trip. He was hesitant to raise the issue, Faramir had a habit of beating back all emotions once he knew others could see them, and Imrahil wouldn’t risk losing that spark of happiness just for the sake of curiosity, but he was curious, so he began to watch him a little closer.

There were the things that were always true—Faramir and Lothíriel talking hurriedly about music, Faramir and Amrothos pointedly ignoring the rest of the room to play chess together, Faramir and Erchirion teasing one another over something incomprehensible to everyone else. Those were the things that he knew always improved Faramir’s mood, and so was not surprised to see them happening in abundance. It was the other things he saw that surprised him. 

He had not realised that his nephew and the Lady Éowyn were friends. It did not surprise him: he had known them to be kindred spirits from his very first conversation with her, but he was surprised at the openness with which they expressed their fondness for one another. Watching them sitting side-by-side on the sofa, so deep in conversation neither of them seemed to be aware of the world passing them by, Imrahil began to wonder if there was, perhaps, more than friendship simmering below the surface of their interactions. 

He continued to watch them for the duration of their visit, cataloguing with greater amusement all the ways in which his nephew’s mood seemed to rally whenever the Lady of Rohan insinuated herself into his awareness, or the way her eyes sought him out first in each room she entered. His nephew, who had jealously guarded his emotions for so many years, was obviously and incorrigibly smitten. It made Imrahil happy—for too long he had waited with bated breath for the day his nephew would cast off his mantle of aloof self-martyrdom and find happiness. 

For many years, Imrahil had feared that the ways in which Faramir was a little too similar to his father—namely in that he seemed to take a little too much joy in arguing with people about anything and everything — would be the ways in which he would prevent himself from finding a lasting love. Any well-trained young woman, Imrahil knew, would blanche at being challenged by a man of Faramir’s rank and would, quite sensibly, back down. Lady Éowyn, he quickly learned, despite her boundless reserve, not only refused to ever back down, but seemed to actively goad Faramir. It was remarkable to see them spin each other up to such heights, apparently neither of them taking the conflict as anything more than normal.

The first time Imrahil saw Lady Éowyn outfox Faramir, he was shocked, and expected to see (as was so often the case with his father) some sort of cold, calculating escalation, probably linked to his rank, that no-one could reasonably crawl out from underneath. Instead, it was Faramir who attempted to crawl out from underneath it, offering up a dry joke and a wry smile in his attempt to diffuse his loss. Lady Éowyn, by sharp but no less fascinating contrast, emphatically refused to concede her defeats. In anyone else, with anyone else, it might have been unseemly, but the way in which she managed to induce Faramir to ultimately grant her concessions (even if it was abundantly obvious that she was wrong), spoke to a level of political shrewdness he had, truthfully, not expected of her. 

It was almost strange to see the clashing of their minds. Faramir was, undoubtedly, the cleverest young man of Imrahil’s acquaintance, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that he was likely one of the cleverest men in the kingdom, but he had a tendency to give too much credence to his more idealistic inclinations. It was ever a source of great frustration for his father, who had sought desperately, and without success, to temper that more starry-eyed part of his son’s personality. What Denethor could not accomplish, however, was done by the Lady Éowyn seemingly with no effort exerted on her part. Whenever Faramir would ramble off on one of his moralistic crusades, she would simply laugh at him (never maliciously) and remind him of the ways in which his thoughts departed from the realm of reality. And Faramir, like a moth drawn to a flame, would come back to her, adjusting to her critiques as if he were always that amenable to outside intervention. 

Faramir, no doubt, would have preferred to be compared to the great and ancient romances, Beren and Luthien, Tuor and Idril, or, in his own family, Mithrellas and Imrazôr; those comparisons, though undeniably poetic, rang hollow to Imrahil. Rather, he looked upon them and saw something far closer to him, reminded of his Almárëa, now lost to him for nearly twenty years. Theirs had not been one for the legends, there was no glorious journey to love, just a meeting of two compatible hearts and minds, two people not incomplete alone, but better for the other. He looked at them and felt his heart swell for how sorely he missed Almárëa, how desperately he wished to be with her again.

He had seen them dance just once at Elphir’s wedding, but just once was enough. In their younger days, just a few short years after Faramir had taken his first commission, one of the more poetically-inclined lords of the court had compared the Steward’s sons to Anor and Ithil. Boromir, gregarious, warm, and casting his glory across all who came within range of his light; Faramir, tranquil, dignified, radiant, but more cold and distant. When he had seen Faramir and Lady Éowyn dancing, her spinning and laughing and he reflecting her beauty across the hall, he wondered if it might not now be the case that she was the Anor to his Ithil. 

It seemed to him that bar the formal arrangement of a betrothal, they were behaving in every imaginable way as two people desperately in love. Despite the occasional autumnal chill, they appeared as two people in the springtime of their lives, dancing around and with each other as naturally as a vernal breeze swept through the seaside valleys. 

They even managed to behave as mischievously as two spellbound young people, somehow always remaining on just the right side of propriety. Imrahil was secretly delighted when, seeing Faramir and Lady Éowyn come running back into the palace soaked to the bone after getting caught in an unexpected rainstorm, his altogether too-proper sister found herself suddenly unable to scold them as Lothíriel and Amrothos bounded in, also dripping with freezing water and howling with laughter. Their convenient arrival meant that not only did Faramir and Lady Éowyn have no need of being chaperoned in the first place, they would have been perfectly well chaperoned if there even were such a need. Imrahil was, he suspected, not the only one in on the joke: when he caught his nephew’s eye, Faramir offered him an uncharacteristically boyish half-shrug, then, apparently remembering himself, quickly looked away, appearing taken aback by his fleeting moment of candour.

But something, some great, unknowable something, tarried in the distance between them. Their touches, what few there were, were stilted and quickly aborted; when one caught the other gazing across the room, there were no blushing smiles, but instead painfully guilty expressions of defeat. True though it was that Faramir had moderated his temperament considerably since his youth, Imrahil was still surprised to see such reticence from him, he had never been shy with his romantic interests before. 

His moments for private conversation were few and far between, and moments where Faramir was not monopolised by Lady Éowyn, or by any of Imrahil’s own children were fewer still. Though he was loath to sacrifice his own sleep, he knew all too well that his nephew hardly slept at all, and more often than not spent his nights in the castle’s library, wiling away the hours while the rest of the world slept. If there would be one time for them to share a private conversation, it would be then. 

Against his better wishes, he sought his nephew out late one evening, finding him exactly where he’d expected to, in the library, stretched out on one of the many sofas, with an unreasonably large stack of books beside him. The similarities between him and his father were numerous, uncanny, and oft-remarked upon, but Imrahil had always thought that it was the ways in which he was similar to his mother that were most startling. He had that air of effortless confidence about him, that same air that had made Finduilas so beloved. It never tended towards arrogance, though it very easily could have, but instead came across as a natural comfort with every situation he was in. Boromir had it too, but Boromir’s confidence was louder, brasher, far closer to his grandfather Ecthelion than to his mother. 

Faramir was also every bit as unnervingly perceptive as Finduilas had been. Though he swore up and down it was a consequence of his time as a Ranger, he had looked to the door seconds before anyone came through it even in his youth, always seeming to be a few seconds ahead of everyone else, just like Finduilas. 

Imrahil was, then, unsurprised to see Faramir already shutting his book and pulling himself into a seated position as he entered the library. They shared a brief moment of polite small talk, if there was one way Faramir was unrelentingly his father’s son, it was his dedication to etiquette. They spoke for some time about this and that, not lingering for too long on any one topic, not for awkwardness, but for the breathless ease of conversation shared by two people with many, many shared beliefs. All the while, Imrahil searched for an opening to ask after his nephew’s happiness. 

Instead, Faramir kicked open the door himself: “I was surprised to hear that you spoke of the incident with Mithrandir to Lady Éowyn,” he said, and Imrahil almost sighed with relief. 

“I wondered when that might come back to haunt me,” he said. “I believed her to be the sort of firebrand personality that might struggle to acclimate to the culture of Minas Tirith. And I, naturally, remembered the story of another firebrand personality, and thought she might find succour in knowing that there were others of a similar temperament. Your brother, however, judged differently, and prevented me from saying more on it, though now I wonder if she has been told the full tale?” 

Faramir dodged the question with his father’s flair for insolent coyness. “I’m surprised that you only spoke to her once during your visit to the City since I can only assume you came to try and curry favour with her.”

“You make me sound dreadfully cynical. Though you are of course correct,” he said with a small smile. “I was too hasty in my arrival, she was very guarded and not particularly interested in being flattered. I decided it was better to wait and see what she made of herself first, since she made it clear that she is not to be bought.” 

“That she is not,” Faramir said, with no small amount of wistfulness. “That she is not.”

Imrahil quirked an eyebrow. “Do I detect a hint of yearning in your tone? Are you perhaps partial to the young ambassador from Rohan?”

Faramir looked at him with the knowing look he had inherited directly from his father. Faramir had only begun to do it until he was a teenager, but even then it had been fantastically withering, the sort of look that marked him out as a shrewd negotiator, even if he had never actually shown an interest in hard politics. 

“Very much so,” he sighed, folding his arms across his chest, a crease appearing between his brows. It was reflective of one of his worst disadvantages in life, he was condemned to always feel too much and too strongly, and always to be kept away from the ability to do anything about it. 

“And she does not return your interest?”

“No,” said Faramir, waving his hand idly in the air to dismiss the question. “I cannot be certain, but she is the niece of a king, and I could not give her the life she ought to have.”

Imrahil laughed loudly. “What nonsense! By all the Valar, I always knew you were prone to theatrics, but this is something else entirely.” 

His nephew said nothing, instead appearing vaguely startled. It had always been Faramir’s greatest flaw that his self-awareness often lacked a workable point of comparison. It was true that he was the least powerful member of his immediate family, but at birth he was the grandson of both the Steward of Gondor and the Prince of Dol Amroth, and his status had hardly waned in the years since then. 

“Your brother’s commitment to bachelordom means that your line will one day carry on the line of the Stewardship, and even if that were not the case, it is not as if you’re some common officer. You are the son of two of the proudest and most powerful houses in Gondor. Whatever fantasies you have invented to torture yourself with having no bearing on reality, and you only do yourself a disservice to pretend otherwise.”

“Unfortunately, the fact of my being a soldier is not detached from reality, and it would be cruel to force such a life on her,” he said, scratching his jaw idly. 

“Oh, indeed? Should I call Elphir up here so that you might call him cruel? Or perhaps it might be enlightening to ask Elúriel if she feels she is being wronged?”

“No,” Faramir said hurriedly, then sighed. “No, I take your point.” 

“There are times when martyrdom is noble, and there are times when it is not. I would hate to think that you are depriving yourself of joy on the wings of a delusion.” He leaned forward in his seat, squeezing his nephew’s arm, wondering when he’d last been given an honest bit of encouragement. “Don’t construct obstacles to your own happiness.”

Notes:

Early update because I am away to London this weekend and I start a new job on Monday. Return to the regular Monday updates next week! :)
More extensive footnotes here!

Chapter 15: Book I: Winter 3018

Notes:

Soft smut ahead, you have been warned.

“Fewer than half of his counsel remains in Edoras,” Éomer said, looking over at the door of her chambers as if the bar on it might spring open at his words. “After you last departed, the snake set to carving out those who showed any sign of resistance. It has been a slow process, only lately has he had his greatest success in dismissing Lord Walstan, and even that took many months of conniving.”

Éowyn tucked her knees up under her chin, hugging her legs to her chest. She had been back in Meduseld not a half a day and already the bleak reality of its imminent collapse weighed her down. Her uncle had greeted her, oh yes, he had carefully maintained appearances, but she could see his obvious distrust for her in his eyes. The Worm’s influence over him was undeniable, even in the bright light of day. 

“Lord Walstan—what will he do now?” 

Éomer sighed, burying his head in his hands. “There is naught he can do, his dismissal was clear: he is to wait at his estate until such time that he is recalled by the King. His men are not at liberty to shift their allegiance, and Wormtongue would no doubt discover any subversion that Théodred and I attempt.” 

“And there is truly nothing that can be done for our uncle?” 

“I had hoped that seeing you might reinvigorate him, but you see as well as I that little has changed.” 

She sighed, running her hands up the soft hair on her legs. “Perhaps I should speak to him privately.”

“There are none who speak to him privately. Even Théo has not been granted a private audience since before the summer. Ever does the snake remain hidden in the grasses, lurking and watching and waiting to strike.”

“I have done more than my fair share of navigating viper’s nests,” she said sharply. “If I have survived this long in Minas Tirith then I see no reason that I cannot manage a single conversation.” 

Éomer looked deeply unconvinced, but bore an expression she recognised well from their youth. The last she had seen it was when she had insisted on attempting a jump across a stream that he had only just deemed too wide; she (obviously, in retrospect) had not succeeded, landing knee-deep in ice-cold water, but it had not dulled her belief that it was very much still her right to try.

They spoke for some time on topics of less weight. Éowyn recounted, with exaggerated voices, her various run-ins with the women of Minas Tirith. She spoke of Prince Imrahil, and his family, and the wedding of Elphir and Elúriel, and the unnerving vastness of the sea in the south. She explained that the Shadow in the East was ever-present, yet Lord Denethor remained unmarred by it, as though the blinding lightness of the White City repelled the Enemy’s ill intent. Ithilien, she mentioned in vague terms, though enough to spur on a conversation about their strange strategies in those forbidden woods. Éomer seemed to be unable to decide if he was impressed or outraged at the covert manner in which the Rangers conducted their attacks on the Enemy’s forces, torn between respect for their innovation and disgust at their disinterest in clashing with the Enemy face-to-face. 

The long days of travel began to catch up with her, and in no time at all her thoughts had slowed to a standstill. It was not until she found herself stopping and restarting a story about her sparring sessions with Boromir that she finally conceded that she was exhausted. It was her very greatest convenience that she had chosen to curl up in the first instance on her bed, and not in the seating by the fireplace, for it allowed her to merely pull the blankets further up over her shoulders and give way entirely to sleep. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

She knew for certain she was dreaming, not just because the whole world had taken on a gauzy appearance, but because she had walked from her bed in Meduseld to the Palace of the Stewards in the White City in no time at all, and not a soul had taken umbrage at her being dressed only in her nightgown. 

The White City was decent enough to her: the sun shone and the temperature neither too hot nor too cold, the streets neither too crowded nor too empty, and the ambient noise no louder than Edoras on its quietest days. As she reached the very end of the Citadel’s prow, she rather felt that she preferred to be by the sea, and so began to cross the Pelennor Fields, weaving between the farmsteads. Deciding she had no desire to pass through Osgiliath, she waded through Anduin, the water refreshingly cool around her, the droplets on her skin drying as she strolled through the rolling verdant hills of Lossarnach, following the roaring currents of the river until she arrived once more at Dol Amroth, that towering fortress in the sea. 

There was music and merriment in the air, and she allowed herself to be swept up in it, dancing a reel in the castle’s opulent main hall, finding herself surrounded not by the Gondorrim aristocracy, but by those she had left behind in the Riddermark. Made giddy by the discovery, she danced until her feet ached and her lungs were empty of air. Then, she twirled away from the centre of the hall, wishing for somewhere to sit that was away from the music and dancing. 

And no sooner had she had the thought than did she find herself outside, surrounded by the crashing waves and a warm summer’s breeze. She glanced over her shoulder at the ocean, shimmering silver under the glow of the moon, beating ceaselessly against the shore. 

When she turned back towards the balcony, she discovered that she was not alone: there was a man with her. Her head told her that she ought to be scared, but her heart told her that she was safe, and that all was well. The air was warm and easy, the sound of the waves soothing, and she gave herself leave to listen to her heart. 

Her nightgown had gone, replaced by a beautiful blue gown, silken and glistening with silver inlays. The man reached out, trailing his fingers across the gown, and she laughed easily, feeling an entire summer’s worth of warmth in her chest. He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and quoted some ancient poem or song at her, she knew not which, nor in what language it was spoken, but knew that he had chosen well for her. She smiled at him; he had always been a romantic. 

She told him it was a beautiful wedding, and he nodded. It was beautiful, he agreed, their wedding had been beautiful. Even her uncle and his father were behaving courteously towards one another, the greatest evidence of all that it was a wedding done well. It was fortunate, she thought, she would not have desired any wedding that could not have been overseen by her uncle. 

Leaning forward, she laid her cheek against the man, watching the revellers through the doors. His hand carded through her hair and she sighed contentedly, pressing soft kisses to his chest. The smell of jasmine was thick in the air, and she looked up, excitedly reminding him that the air had smelled of jasmine the night she had first begun to love him. 

He laughed, catching her effortlessly about the waist and lifting her onto the balustrade. The beach was at least fifty metres below, but she knew she would not fall, knew he would not put her in danger. Instead, she jokingly batted him away as he tried to cover her face in kisses, turning her head to defend herself as she laughed. That, it transpired, was the tactical error her husband had been looking for, and he dove forward, pinning her arms to her sides. 

The air around them grew warmer and heavier, and her breath caught in her throat as he kissed the line of her jaw, dragging his teeth across her earlobe, languidly sucking and nipping his way down her throat. She brought a hand up to his hair, holding him close as he carved a path of liquid heat along the neckline of her gown. Delicately, he pulled down so he could swirl his tongue around her nipple. The other pebbled as his calloused thumb traced circles around it. Her breath caught sharply in her throat. 

Her sighs grew more vocal as he worked so diligently, warmth pooling deep in her belly. She thanked the Valar that she had married so well when he began to gather her skirts, kneeling to press hot, urgent kisses to the sides of her calves, the insides of her knees, the tops of her thighs above her stockings. 

Her head lolled backwards, the warm water of the sea swirling and caressing her face as he flowed like honey between her legs, teasing her apart with tongue and fingers. Their hands clasped over the layers of her skirts, matching golden rings glimmering like a bonfire in the night. 

Her moans danced and mingled with the jubilant music, each building the other up as the smell of jasmine grew stronger, the ocean waves warmer, all swirling and amplifying as the white hot coil of her pleasure wrapped tighter and tighter within her. 

She was swept away by the sea, her body floating in the warm, floral water. She tasted gold on her lips and felt as if sweet wine coursed through her veins. Her happiness could be contained by nothing, it was as limitless as her body felt, free and true in the warm summer air.

Then it all became very visceral: her muscles clamped down on his fingers, her sense of reality tethered itself to the drag of his tongue across her skin, the pulsing desire in every inch of her became the sum total of her knowledge. Instead of growing weaker with each wave, her release grew stronger and stronger, her hips rocking and shaking in his grasp. She gasped through it, then cried his name into the nighttime—

Her eyes flew open. 

Her hands gripped her blanket, tighter as the waves of mortification flooded over her. She certainly was not naive, and could not be embarrassed by such natural thoughts, but for those thoughts to feature a friend? Even for her it was wildly inappropriate, she could hardly account for such a marked lapse in self control. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she forced the images from her mind, focusing on the noises in the room to distract herself. 

She thought instead of neutral thoughts, of Mettarë, of Edoras’ winding streets, of the sound of whipping wind outside her window. She did not think of what she had dreamt. 

With some effort, she pulled herself into a half-seated position, then startled when she saw Éomer asleep in the armchair nearest the fire. The fire in her chambers had dimmed to a gentle crackle, casting a soft orange glow throughout the room. Éomer breathed loudly through his nose, his hair obscuring his face from her sight, while his sword, balanced precariously on his knees, glinted occasionally in the firelight, sending sparks of light across the walls and ceiling. 

Stifling a yawn so as not to wake him, she rubbed at her eyes, letting her thoughts drift to different pastures. It had been, in truth, not especially long since she had been in Edoras, but it felt as if the entire world had shifted beneath her feet. Yes, her chambers looked as they always had, and yes Éomer was still Éomer and Théodred still Théodred, but the dullness in her uncle’s eyes worried her. He was not a young man anymore, even she could not deny that, but to see his vitality snuffed out so thoroughly while he yet lived? That was a cruelty beyond words. 

She looked across at her brother, watched the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, listened to the even whistle of air through his nose. How much pain had he been privy to without anyone to share his burden? And Théodred too, she could imagine no fate more terrible than to watch one’s father degrade themselves and to be powerless to stop it.  

An ember popped in the fireplace, and Éomer jolted, hand flying to the hilt of his sword. She held her breath, alarmed but not scared. Éomer was quick to act, always had been, but he was no fool, and even if he had slept poorly he would not harm her. After several slow moments, his posture did not relax as she expected, and instead he gripped his sword more tightly. He stared, with unnerving intensity, at an indistinct point in the distance. 

Except that it wasn’t an indistinct point in the distance, it was the door to her chambers. And in the small gap between the bottom of the door and the floorboards, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, were the telltale signs of movement. Steps, footsteps, passing back and forth, back and forth, neither stopping nor speeding up, but rhythmic and consistent, like a guard’s patrol. 

Her blood ran like ice through her veins, freezing and sharp and painful, spreading panic to every inch of her. It had been many years since she had been subjected to his terrorisation. It had begun just a year after the Worm had arrived at court, when she was just sixteen and still painfully naive about the ways she could be hurt that required neither a sword nor an arrow. He had been careful back in those days to only maintain his patrol on the days when both Éomer and Théodred were away from Edoras, and in that he had made it clear that her safety was contingent on others. But Éomer and Théodred came back, they always came back, and in that the Worm could never fully win. They would return, and the footsteps outside her door in the dead of night would stop. 

Éomer and Théodred both were in Meduseld, and Éomer, though asleep, was mere metres from her and very much armed. Wormtongue, then, had grown careless in her absence. But then no, she realised with a new flush of horror, it was not carelessness but boldness. It did matter that Éomer and Théodred were there, and even worked to his favour that Éomer was in the room with her. He had made her feel that familiar pang of terror even though she was ostensibly defended, even though there was a master swordsman beside her, ready to protect her. He could protect her because he knew, as she now did, that if she acted in self-defence, she had no guarantee that she would continue to have the King’s protection.

The footsteps continued like a terrifying drumbeat. Heart beating in her throat, she began to pull back the blankets. She knew not what she would do, except that doing nothing was not an option. Her hands trembled humiliatingly, but were stopped from doing anything but Éomer, who had gone from sleep to wake in a fraction of a second, moving to the door with brutalising speed. 

“Éomer,” she hissed, needing him to do nothing that would endanger either of them. He waved her away, hand on the hilt of his sword though he did not draw it. Slowly, he lifted the bar on the door, then pulled his hand away, letting it fall back into its catch with a startling clang. 

The footsteps stopped, and her eyes traced the shadowy outline beneath the door. Then they continued, disappearing into the night. 

For a quarter of an hour, Éomer stood unmoving at the door, clutching his sword and breathing carefully, quietly. Éowyn shook ferociously beneath the blankets; she had become too domesticated in Minas Tirith, it was as if she remembered nothing of her own life. 

Éomer returned to the armchair by the fire, and she peeled one of the quilts from her bed, tossing it to him. He accepted it, but kept his sword on his knees. He said nothing to her—there was nothing to be said. They both knew the desperation of their situation, and they both knew there was nothing to be done for it in that moment, talk would only magnify the hurt. 

She thought of Boromir, who slept with a knife beneath his pillow, and Faramir, who barely slept at all. The horrors they had seen, she knew, far outstripped her minor panic at seeing an unwanted sight behind a locked door, but neither response seemed totally unreasonable to her. Certainly she’d feel better if she had some weapon to her name, something not dulled or purely ceremonial. Rolling onto her side, she wished that she were not quite so far away from the White City, that she might be able to rise from her bed and instead of risking the Worm, she could speak with Faramir, could listen to his beautifully-woven tales of old, or, barring that, argue with him until she tired herself out. 

How strange, she thought, that of all the comforts she had known in life, it was arguments that made her blood boil that she thought of now. Debating the finer points of moral obligation was every bit as boring as she thought it sounded, and yet all she remembered was the laughter that had overtaken her during the course of their conversations, how often she’d lose the struggle to preserve her dignity and give herself over to breathless mirth. She smiled, burying her face into her pillow as she thought about how absurd Faramir could be, how routinely he castigated immorality in one breath and confessed to it in the next. 

He was every bit as much a hypocrite as she accused his Gondorrim compatriots of being. But then again, so was she. How many times had she argued with the women of the court of Minas Tirith for the supremacy of the sword over spoken word? Had she not made a name for herself by insisting that it would only through battle that evil could be conquered? And yet here she lay, quaking in her bed because no sword of steel could vanquish the threat that lingered beyond her door. Yes, she and Faramir alike were hypocrites, but at least they both could acquit themselves of mindless hypocrisy.

Her eyelids grew heavy as she wondered what he would make of her situation. It seemed that neither of their preferred methods could offer a complete solution to her problem; just as coming to blows with Wormtongue was unworkable, so too was speaking her mind to her uncle, if the Worm had managed to induce the King to sunder bonds with his most loyal lords, then surely she could not triumph there. 

Perhaps, she might have to write a letter to Faramir. True that it had only been a few weeks since they had last spoken, but perhaps he would understand why she wrote to him so urgently. It was, she thought as she stifled a yawn into her pillow, something to explore come the morn. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

All of the normal Mettarë celebrations were adhered to, but it was as though they were conducted through a thick pane of glass through which only the faintest of sounds and the blurriest of outlines could be heard and seen. She stood on the dais and heard and saw the blessings to the new year, lit the candles and recalled her mother and father, sang praises to the war dead, and hailed the mothers who brought new strength to the world. All of this was done exactly as it always had been, but not a whit of it felt as it had in years past. 

For nearly two years, she had accused the Gondorrim of superficiality and of hiding their impotence behind airs and graces, decrying their behaviour as shameful in the highest degree. Now it was she who stood beside a broken king, smiling and simpering to mask the extent to which her house had faded in its glory. 

She had labelled Gondor’s sombre Mettarë celebrations a testament to their cultural impotence, a sign that they had nothing worthy of veneration. But she had stood beside Lord Denethor while both of his sons, his last remaining connection to his beloved wife, had been away at the frontlines of a nigh-on unwinnable war. She had stood beside him as he had spoken of hope and strength with words so potent, so convincing, that his people took solace in them. His family took no especial accolades for their contributions to the war effort, yet brooked its greatest horrors with an upright zeal, never showing weakness to the people they had sworn to protect. More than that, they were the first line of defence for the free peoples of Middle Earth against the ultimate evil, and they manned that defence with little help from the other kingdoms that so greatly benefitted from that defence. 

She thought of Faramir, staring down The Black Land with fewer than five hundred men to support his efforts. Even if he had spoken truly and there were tensions between he and his father, she could not imagine that any parent would take such an appointment for their son lightly. She had no children of her own, but if the fear she felt as a friend for Faramir when he was in Ithilien was even a fraction of the fear Lord Denethor must have felt as his father, then it was a harrowing fear indeed. Such a great burden rested upon his shoulders, and yet he bore it with silent dignity, seeming to her like an ancient oak tree anchoring an entire forest in the midst of a terrible storm. 

Looking across the dais at her uncle and King, she saw none of that strength, and her heart cried out in fury and despair. He was surrounded by his kin, his son was hearty and hale and at his side, his loyal nephew at his other side, and his niece, who loved him so desperately she had forsaken everything she had known and loved to accept an exile simply because he’d asked her to. All that love surrounded him, but he could barely keep his shoulders from slumping forward, or his voice from wavering. He wore his nearly seventy years of age not as the glorious Kings of Old did, as proof of the strength of their character and of their enduring victories in battle, but as if it were a burden to be the ruler of a great Kingdom, the head of one of the proudest houses of Men, and beloved by so many. 

At the end of the table, mercifully as far away from her as was possible, Wormtongue sat, smug in his place at the top table. He was a wretched thing, barely even a man at all, and yet he had cowed her uncle. Lord Denethor had to contend with Man’s single greatest enemy, and had not shown even the slightest inclination to surrender or to allow his spirits to be broken. But this thing, this feeble mistake of a man had brought her uncle to his knees. 

The King spoke of the necessity of beginning the year as one meant to see it come to pass, he spoke to the value of beginning it with a heart full of courage and joy, to then ring courage and joy through each day of the new year. Éowyn had courage in her heart, courage in spades, but when she raised her cup to her lips, she tasted only bitterness and anger. 

She was seated between Lord Erkenbrand of the Deeping-coomb, a retired former Marshall of the Mark, and his wife, Lady Gwengwith. It was the best possible outcome, she had known them both her entire life, and they each had, in their own ways, expressed concern about the King’s state of being, though were extraordinarily careful to not verbally commit themselves to anything that the Worm might exploit. It meant, chiefly, that she could speak to them with less fear in her heart. Even if they did not speak on the painfully obvious topic that lingered beneath all of their words, it brought her immense comfort to know that, however briefly, she was among those who understood the gravity of the situation. 

They talked instead of the simpler things, things that would not change the course of history but might make a troubling evening more survivable. Lord Erkenbrand spoke with radiant pride of his sons’ efforts in Théodred’s éored, of the impressive job they had done in helping to repel the Dunlendings from the Fords of Isen in the summertime, and their excitement at having been given patrols of their own through the Westfold in the autumn. It was his intention to commission a bow for his eldest son, who was a formidable archer, and had found a suitable bowyer in Aldburg to do the job.

“They say that his craft is better than that made in the realm of the White Lady,” Erkenbrand explained, gesturing with his cup of wine.  

Éowyn, meanwhile, felt her heart speed to a thunderous gallop. That epithet, she had heard that epithet once before and had not fully understood it, it seemed too great a coincidence to now hear it again.

“Who, my lord, is the White Lady?”

Erkenbrand smiled at her, as an old man to a wide-eyed child. “The Lady of the Wood, of course. Are you not aware of her?”

“I am indeed,” she said defensively, her heart sinking in her chest, “she is a conjurer and sorceress of terrible power.” She hoped that the bitterness she felt was not overly-evident in her voice; she was at once mortified at having been compared to her and for having not understood the reference soon enough to refute it directly.

“That is true, but it is said that she was mightier and more beautiful than all the Elves. Though she was but a lady in title, the legends tell that she was unrivalled in valour and wisdom by even the Kings of old.” Though she was seated, the floor lurched beneath Éowyn’s feet. Her head spun and she found that there was too little air in the room.

Faramir had compared her to the highest and most valorous of all the Elves of legend. He had done so without fanfare, saying it as if it were some natural, inarguable description of her. And he had compared her not to some delicate ingenue, beautiful and guileless, but to a woman who was as the greatest of Kings. 

In the moment, she had assumed that he was referring to her complexion or to her clothing (though, on reflection, she realised that not only had she been wearing green that evening, but that they had also had a conversation specifically about her choice in colour), and had not believed it was something worthy of remark. There were, she thought, many things he said that were simpler in meaning than his word choice led her to believe. This, this was entirely different.  

She stared at the plate of food before her, her cheeks superheated. He must have thought her incredibly bad-mannered, to have been bestowed with such an extraordinary compliment and yet to have ignored it so completely. She felt like a fool to have been so rude to her friend. 

Some time later, when the guests had departed and the Golden Hall had been returned to something approximating order, Éomer found her in the royal apartments, a look of grim amusement on his face. He handed her a letter, recently arrived by messenger from Gondor, narrowing his eyes at her as she took it from him. She felt a vague twist of panic in her from years of that expression being a harbinger of horseplay in her youth, before remembering that Gondorrim messengers bearing letters to Meduseld, and particularly to the lady of the house, were distinctly uncommon. He was not amused by some imminent practical joke, but at the fact of her receiving a letter at all. She blanched at how just a few short years had made things that were once entirely strange seem so banal to her. 

He nodded toward the letter. “Ought I offer you words of counsel?” 

“I am perfectly capable of reading and writing,” she said grumpily, opening the letter and scanning through it. 

It was, of course, from Faramir; there was nothing more or less groundbreaking in it than his usual notes, except that this one included more idle gossip from the White City—evidently he was as bored as she wished she could be.

“I am not questioning your literacy, Béma knows you’ve always been a better writer than I,” Éomer said, sinking into an armchair near the fire. “But receiving letters from men seems to me to be the sort of thing that would require some brotherly guidance.” 

She looked at him sternly, folding the letter back up. “He is a friend, nothing more.”

“A gentleman friend who writes to you when you have been gone just a few short weeks? Sister, you are young, but you are not naive.” 

She looked first at the ceiling to recompose herself, then at Éomer. “Whatever you’re implying would be better served by speaking it outright.” 

Éomer sighed exaggeratedly. “You are entitled to your private affairs, but if you are in love, then know that I would share in your joy and not begrudge you for it, even if he is an effete Gondorrim.”

“He is most certainly not effete,” she said sharply, then allowed her mind to catch up to the rest of his words. “And I am most certainly not in love. I simply sought out companionship in Minas Tirith and found it. Or would you rather I have spent my exile alone?” 

“No, of course not.” 

She stared at him until she was certain that he would drop the topic, then returned her attention to Faramir’s letter. Before she had departed for Edoras, she had challenged him to explain why, exactly, he believed his insistence on seeking power outside the court would be valuable for her. With excitement in his eyes, he had promised her he would send her a full explanation at his earliest opportunity—and it now seemed to her that full did not even begin to adequately explain what he had written to her. 

When Gondor was ruled by Kings, the coronation of a new king had included a request made by the Steward to the gathered crowd for their affirmation of the King. The act bound the people to their King and the King to his people, a tacit recognition that the folly of the old Kings of Númenor that had led to its downfall would not be tolerated in the diasporic lands, watched over by its people, those faithful who had not fallen to the Enemy’s manipulations. The Stewards, who had no such coronations, were nonetheless bound to the descendants of the Faithful and expected to obey the will of the people in matters where they might reasonably be consulted. He was circumspect in his wording, but the message was clear. If she were to ensure that the people of Gondor believed in the moral weight of the Oath of Eorl, then she could ensure its ongoing security. 

In a flourishing change of topic that made her wonder exactly how many days it had taken him to write the letter, he tendered some observations on the social scene in Minas Tirith. He described, in excruciating detail, how his father, desiring to punish him for some infraction or another, had seated him between Lady Melcien and Lord Mesgrîn and opposite Lord Golasgil at one of the Mettarë feasts. Melcien and Mesgrîn, apparently unaware that he knew all too well of their ongoing affair, and taking advantage of Golasgil’s obliviousness, had proceeded to engage in an innuendo-laden conversation for the duration of the evening. He recorded only a few of their more choice words, but it was enough to make Éowyn blush and snort with laughter at their lack of subtlety. 

Beside her, Éomer coughed. 

She slammed the letter into her lap, fixing him with a furious look. “Out with it!”

“Have you considered that you are mistaking feelings of love for feelings of friendship?” Her thoughts flickered back to the dream she had had, that very first night since her return, and her cheeks flushed. Éomer wasted no time jumping on it. “There, you see, you look the very picture of a young woman secretly in love.”

“Oh Éomer, just because you cannot imagine a friendship between a man and a woman that isn’t tainted by other considerations, does not mean no-one can.”

“I am very sure you can carry on just fine with men without falling in love with them, I have never seen you blush so furiously when discussing Lord Boromir, for example.” 

“Yes, because Lord Boromir is just a friend,” she snapped, before thinking through what she was saying. 

Éomer grinned ferociously. “Implying that it is reasonable to presume a difference in your feelings for his brother, given the brightness of your cheeks?”

“You are a fool,” she gritted, leaping to her feet and clutching the letter to her chest. Éomer looked at her smugly, only irritating her further. 

With a slight, angry huff of air, she turned from him and absconded to her chambers; later, when he arrived to sit guard for the evening, as he had done every night since her return, she pretended to be asleep, ignoring his pointed laugh.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The customary quietness after Mettarë now felt insidious, no longer a time for rest and recuperation, but a moment of intense fear for Éowyn. Each noise in the Golden Hall was imbued with greater urgency, the potential for greater danger. The hours she did not spend with Éomer or Théodred were spent in her chambers, the bar dropped on her door and the curtains drawn. Though she would never admit it, she found herself missing Sedril. The girl was interminably superficial and too mulishly a tool of her pernicious mother, but she was second to none in her ability to talk through even the heaviest of silences. 

And no silence was heavier than the one that fell upon Éowyn when she learned that she would have to schedule an appointment to speak with her own uncle. His secretary, the secretary he had retained since long before Éowyn had first come to Edoras, had apparently been dismissed, in favour of a new man (obviously in Wormtongue’s pocket) who had no qualms in turning away the King’s niece. No, she would have to make an appointment and wait her time, like a common lordling. Undeterred, she made her appointment, she held her head high as she returned to her bower to await what she increasingly realised would be a farce of a meeting. 

On the third day of waiting, she was at last called upon by a seneschal, who bore a look of pity that filled her with disgust. Nonetheless, she followed him to the King’s council room, wondering when it was that she became a stranger to her own land.

Inside, her uncle was a shell of his former self. He was dressed in his usual regalia, splendid but practical golds and greens, but his countenance bore the winter scarring of the frozen grasslands outwith Edoras. There was little in his appearance that evoked the fearsome and valiant warrior he had once been. The man who had once been a hero and a father to her had given way to nothingness; he was there, flesh and blood before her, but his spirit was gone.

“You have been gone many months, sister-daughter,” he said, the first words he had spoken directly to her since her arrival. 

“At your behest, my lord, labouring for our people in the Stone Kingdom.” 

“Not my behest,” he said gravely. “The nefarious bidding of your brother and my bleeding-heart son who sought to degrade our stature in the eyes of our allies by burdening them with a simple girl as our envoy.”

“Uncle,” she said, lowering herself to her knees in front of his seat, hoping that the simple act masked the furious disdain in her voice. She took his hands, rough and dry, into hers. “Neither Théodred nor Éomer intended any ill, and it has been to the great benefit of our people that your son made the choice that he did.”

He beheld her with a sharp look, a look that was entirely unfamiliar to her, yet one that was unmistakably his. He had never before looked at her in such a way, but he had looked so upon common criminals, petty thieves, and deserters. She gripped his hands tighter. 

“My lord, the alliance between our two kingdoms has never been stronger or more secure,” she continued, amazed at her willingness to defend something that she herself barely felt was true. 

“It would be stronger,” he began in that unnervingly stern voice he used when chiding his men, “if the Stánlanders dispatched men to assist in the northern defences or to aid in putting down the Dunlendings. Alliances are not built on the simpering words of fragile diplomats.”

She closed her eyes, letting her head fall against his hands. She too believed those things—had believed those things. She was unsure now what, exactly, she believed, except that she knew not returning to Minas Tirith now would be a worse decision than any other possible decision. 

Behind his seat, a door opened, allowing a snake to pass through. She relinquished her hold on her uncle’s hands, pulling herself to her feet and stepping away from him—that moment of intimacy, of vulnerability, belonged to no-one but her family, no matter how changed that family was.  

“Such change has occurred in this wayward daughter of Éomund,” said the Worm, hands coming to rest on the back of her uncle’s chair. “With all the airs and graces of a foreigner does she approach the proud King of the Riddermark. And whose friendship does she esteem the most? The House of Eorl or the broken house of the Stáninglanders?”

She fixed him with a stern glare, tilting her chin to the ceiling. “I need not the friendship of the House of Eorl, for I am its daughter.” 

“Indeed you are, and your King has much missed your company in the long months of your departure to the White City.”

She clenched her teeth, feeling the spine-tingling grind of bone against bone, wondering how it had come to this. The King had been powerful in battle, but his might with weapons of steel had been undermined by a man who bore no weapons at all. Her uncle’s sword and shield could not defend against the power which came from covert manipulations of evil words spoken at the proper moment. It was true then, what she had for so long refused to admit: power did emanate from beyond steel and blood. Wormtongue had known that and had used it against her uncle; but she would not be taken in so easily. But how, how had he done it?

The answer came to her in the soft drip of memories of a hundred arguments she had had in Minas Tirith, one man’s words that she had fought so vehemently against. When Wormtongue had come to the court, he was treated as a curiosity, a young upstart from a humble background, more renowned for the fact of his being a commoner of some note than for any innate skill or insight he showed. He had turned his modest upbringing to his own benefit, traded on how the lords of the court, how Théodred and especially her uncle, had underestimated him on that basis alone, and had outplayed them at their own game. No-one had expected that the shrewdest man in the Kingdom might have been a commoner, and for that, they had all been made fools of. 

She looked only to her uncle. “My love and loyalty lies with Théoden King.”

“For now,” said the Worm. 

There was naught else to be said. Her King had fallen to dotage, had been outmanoeuvred by a wretch of a man, and for his indolence he risked the safety of an entire kingdom. Her kingdom. It would not do, she would not allow her uncle’s misery to befall her people, not while strength yet lingered within her. 

“My lord,” she said, sketching a curtesy before turning and leaving the council room. She passed through the Golden Hall with its dimmed fires, up into her chambers, throwing herself inelegantly into a chair in front of the table she had converted into a writing desk. 

Her fate was now sealed—she had to return to Minas Tirith and do what she could to provide for the defence of her people. Éomer and Théodred would do what they could, but it was plain to her now that they had been outfoxed. No longer could they even attempt to move on the offensive in the court of Meduseld, so effective had the Worm been in his machinations. No, they would have to hold the defences, to prevent loss of life and limb and instead leave to prayers the defence of the spirit of the Mark. Her power, or potential for power, was limited in Edoras. That she knew, had always known. Though the people here might have loved her, she could not distinguish herself on the battlefield, could not bring soldiers of her own to any negotiations, and so she was functionally a non-entity. 

But power was diffused in Gondor. It ran like water in a mountain stream, winnable by any who knew how to collect it, and it mattered little if it was collected in a bottle or a tightly-woven basket, what mattered was that it was collected. She would return to Minas Tirith and she would consolidate her power. She would eviscerate any rumours of the weakness of her people before they even began, and she would ensure that even if their King would not defend them, that she would. And she knew how to do that, or knew how to learn to do it, because one person had been arguing how to for months now; one person had, intentionally or not, been so doggedly on her side that he had solved her biggest problem before she even knew what it was.

Smoothing Faramir’s letter out against the wood, she scanned through it once more. She looked at his thin, neat script, the small flourishes on the drops of the characters that he told her he had only conditioned himself to do because it irritated his father. She smiled at his note, which included, scribbled halfway down the page as if he thought he might otherwise forget the thought, a progress report on his learning of her language. She even smiled at his post script, which yet again implored her to consider nontraditional forms of power. His perseverance had paid off—she was not convinced by all of his arguments, but she was more willing to listen to them now than she had been before her visit to Edoras. That she would keep out of her letter, she desired too greatly to see his face when he learned of her change in opinion, to see if he would be as happy about it as she expected him to be.

For far too long she stared at her own empty page, waiting for words to appear on it, as if forgetting that they would only come if she wrote them. The problem, she realised the longer she stared at the page, was that she had let Éomer’s words get under her skin, even though she knew that he knew nothing at all of her situation, and so spoke from a place of no authority at all. 

Twisting and turning her thoughts this way and that, she hoped to see some sliver of clarity in them that she had not seen before. The truth was that she had thought herself in love—or at the very least attracted to someone—before, and there could have been no mistaking her feelings then. He had been a proud soldier, gregarious and handsome, with a laugh that could fill an entire room and a personality that could fill an entire kingdom. He had been, in short, everything she believed a man ought to be, and for that he was entirely opposite to Faramir. That fact presented an even more egregious problem to her, for she had no trouble saying that Faramir, with his steady reserve, and his sharp wit and his quiet generosity, was also very much everything a man ought yet to be. 

But he had been, first and foremost, a friend to her when she had had so few, and she could not trust that whatever feelings might have stirred within her were not just gratefulness for the kindness he had shown her. When she had first thought herself in love all those many years ago, it had been instantaneous, like a strike of lightning, blinding and deafening and wholly unavoidable. She had felt nothing of the sort with Faramir, and so could not reasonably call it anything but the affection felt between friends—matured over time, yes, but unchanged. So Éomer had been wrong, she was not mistaking feelings of love for friendship, if anything, she was being encouraged to interpret a deep friendship as romantic love, something that could do no good whatsoever. 

Yes, her thoughts were clear. She did not love Faramir, she was simply grateful to him for his kindness. Her attention was needed elsewhere, on protecting her kingdom, on helping her cousin and her brother, and absolutely not on romance.

Chapter 16: Book I: Winter 3018

Éowyn left Edoras early in the morning, before the sun had risen and before anyone but her brother and cousin could see her go. It felt unnatural to leave her home in such a secretive way, as if she were fleeing in the dark of the night for some crime she had committed, but the case for doing so—and for minimising any chance of the obvious discord in her house being witnessed by too many people—was too strong to deny. It made her heart ache in her chest, an actual, tangible throb that felt like it might immobilise her completely. It was as if she was a deserter, forsaking her duty to serve her King and uncle, though she knew (and Éomer and Théodred went through great pains to remind her) that she was doing anything but. But after so many years of seeing to her uncle’s every need, of being the one constant in his life from sun up to sun down, and despite having spent more than a year in Gondor, she could barely move beyond the feeling that she was betraying him somehow.    

The entourage she took with her was smaller than usual, something she hoped would go unnoticed (or at least unremarked upon) in Minas Tirith when she arrived. The fact of the matter was that vanishingly few men could be spared from the open fronts, and the road between the Riddermark and Gondor represented one of the safest places in either of the two Kingdoms. The smallness of the host meant that she had more time than she had planned for to ponder her situation. She had recognised that she would need to think carefully about how she shored up her position in the White City, but given that she had no particular inclination to behave as underhandedly as Wormtongue, she was left without a template upon which to base her future plans. 

Faramir had encouraged her to consider the example of his mother, but Lady Finduilas though foreign to Minas Tirith, was not foreign to Gondor, and brought substantial connections with her when she came to the City, and had, of course, come to the City to marry the heir to the most powerful active title in the Kingdom. Éowyn had no real connections to trade upon (though her status as niece to the King of the Riddermark had won her some laxity in her early months in Gondor, that grace had largely run dry), and any activity she undertook would be viewed immediately with suspicion by virtue of her foreignness. 

She knew (loath though she was to act on it) that she could play to expectations of her womanhood to justify some activity—Lady Finduilas had patronised a war widows’ home in the lower circles of the City, and it would not be altogether too difficult to argue that Éowyn sought to do something similar out of her innate womanly proclivities. But war widows were not an especially powerful group of people, and while attending to them would no doubt soften her reputation in the eyes of those who cared to think about such things, there was an enormous distance between appealing to widows and ensuring that Lord Denethor had no choice but to support the Mark should the call come. 

By the time the White City rose out of the rolling fields of Anórien, she had settled on her immediate plan of action. She would spend her first day in the City with Sedril to begin the new year with at least a sheen of normality. Then, she would descend to the lower levels of the City and begin her work, in whatever form that might take, ever aware of her duty to her people and to her King. 

When Sedril arrived to greet her in her apartments, she brought with her the news that there had been some significant naval disturbance off the Tolfalan coast, and that the Lord Steward had convened a council early that morning that had not yet had a single break. Éowyn, who had more than enough opportunities in her life to practice masking her surprise, simply nodded as if it were an interesting but otherwise irrelevant tidbit of gossip, and took up the embroidery she had set aside before Mettarë. Sedril, remarkably, proved her worth by recounting, in excruciating detail, the conversations she had overheard at the dinner table in her own home. 

The Lord and Lady of Anórien were, apparently, deeply concerned about the ability of Lord Forlong of Lossarnach to successfully manage the stockpile of resources intended to sustain refugees from Minas Tirith and Anórien if an evacuation were ever called. It was clear Sedril believed her knowledge of her parents’ feelings on the matter to be a show of how well-connected she was, but to Éowyn it revealed a level of insecurity in Gondor she had not previously grasped. She knew that Lord Denethor was deeply concerned about the defence of Osgiliath, and she knew from Faramir that the situation in Ithilien was markedly worse than in previous years, but for two of the most powerful people in the Kingdom to be actively and vocally fretting about provisions for an evacuation seemed to her a step beyond mere military concerns.  

She wanted to take pride in that, wanted to feel a perverse sense of superiority that the affairs of Gondor were equally as worrisome as those of the Mark, but all she could conjure within herself was a pervasive sense of dread. She knew, perhaps better than most, that the defence of her Kingdom relied explicitly upon the ongoing defence of Gondor, and that any sign of weakness boded poorly for her people. And, more pressingly than that (though she felt a small rush of guilt for it), she worried for Faramir—if the situation was truly desperate enough to warrant concerns about evacuation measures, then there could be no doubt that he was at a greater risk than ever. 

She was accustomed to this kind of worry—beginning with her father, then Théodred, and later Éomer, all of the men in her life had, more often than not, been directly in the face of danger. But this worry felt different somehow, settled not deep in her stomach but high in her chest, like a high-pitched whine in her blood. It was the sort of feeling she couldn’t live with, so she focussed less on Sedril’s words, let her speak for longer without interruption, and instead tried to push the nervousness back to well beyond her usual emotional defences. 

In the evening, when the evening bells rang seven times, Sedril departed, leaving Éowyn to a silence that, for the first time in a very long time, she found herself desperately not wanting. Her rational mind knew that she was far from Meduseld, that there would be no footsteps behind her door that night. Nevertheless, the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and as she gazed aimlessly into the fireplace, her eyes flickered from time to time to her door, checking that the bar was still in place, making sure that nothing was moving behind it. 

In her bed, she found herself utterly incapable of sleeping. She had become too accustomed to Éomer sitting in with her until she fell asleep and now struggled to contend with the sound of silence. For nearly an hour she stared at her ceiling, wincing at every soft crackle and pop that came from the fireplace, every rattle of the window panes caused by the whipping winds whirling up the levels of the City. 

It was cold outside, she knew that much, but she knew better that remaining in her bed would only worsen her mood. Reluctantly, she dressed, casting her starry mantle about her shoulders and padding out through the darkened corridors of the Palace, out to the forecourt of the Citadel, turning towards her favourite spot, a small alcove partially obscured from sight by a statue. It was there that she had passed many of her most restless nights, gazing out over the luminous White City, the city that felt to her as dead as it was alive.

There was no use dwelling on her sorrows, no amount of her misery would fix the evil that had befallen her family, but she found she could not help but see the coldness in her uncle’s heart every time she closed her eyes. It haunted her that such a proud, valiant man had succumbed so thoroughly to the machinations of a mere snake, a haunting made worse by the knowledge that she now resided in the house of a man who proved that such a doom was not inevitable, that it was possible to stand tall and strong against evil. 

At length, she stood and tried to control her thoughts, willing them to put aside that which she knew she could not change, and to instead begin to work out how she could fix the problems that faced her. The ambient noise of the City chased away the stinging edge of panic she felt when she thought too long on Meduseld and began to see the face of the Worm. but it was not half so effective as the jolt that shocked through her when she heard the great doors of the Tower of Ecthelion open, and a dozen men’s voices spill out into the otherwise-silent forecourt. 

She cautioned herself not to turn around, she had no time for being smugly told to return to her bed, nor did she desire to see any of the men of the court in her state of substandard dress—even if she wore a respectable day gown, it was one she did not often wear, and would no doubt earn her judgemental looks from the more discerning lords. Her best, cleverest choice was to hope that she remained unseen in the darkness and could elide the gossip mills for another day yet.

It was her cleverest choice, which is why it came as no surprise to her when, several minutes later, she heard Faramir calling her name quietly, sounding as if he was standing some distance behind her. There was, it seemed, no room for sensible decision making in her life. She slowed her breathing, running her fingertips across the coarse stone on the wall, feeling each bump and crevice, each invisible imperfection, letting it ground her. Then, swallowing heavily, she turned to face him. 

Her heart stumbled, not able to decide if it wanted to seize or beat too quickly, and instead opted to miss one beat, then hammer away for the next. 

There was nothing for it, the worst thing in the world had come true: 

Éomer was right.

Faramir looked tired, but alert—not surprisingly, for she knew his sterling mind was ever at work, but after a month’s time with men whose energy waned, whose spirits had frozen over, and whose minds were not their own, it shocked her still to see someone who bore the brunt of the world’s ills and yet seemed in no way cowed by it. In fact, far from bending under its weight, he looked as well as he had before she had departed for Edoras, when several weeks of rest had seemed to take several years of strain off of him. His hair, plaited and cast over his shoulder, appeared brushed for once, and his beard was (to her distinct delight) not shaved, but rather tidily maintained. She had always known he was handsome, always known that, but it had never meant anything to her before. Now she found herself tongue-tied like a petulant child, her head spinning as if it had fallen straight off the Citadel wall. 

“I had not expected to see you today,” he said by way of greeting.

“Nor did I,” she said, fumbling as she tried to pull her thoughts into some semblance of order. “And I certainly did not expect you to see me here.”

“You glow,” he said, nodding towards her. She saw that he spoke truly, the distant light of the lanterns in the forecourt reflected vividly off the embroidered stars on her mantle, making them appear as if they really were the stars above. 

“Oh,” she murmured, wondering if that had ever compromised her privacy on previous nights. “I hope your meeting was not too tiring?”

“The war makes allowances for no man’s tiredness, the council is ongoing, to be reconvened shortly. Perhaps the next ten hours of ceaseless bickering will be more enlightening than the first,” he said with a rueful smile. “I am surprised you are awake, I thought you might be tired from your journey.”

“Fatigued, certainly, but my mind had other plans.” 

“Naturally.” He came to stand beside her, leaning casually against the wall in a way that made her breath catch in her throat.

“How was your Mettarë?” She hoped he did not hear the way her voice came out just the wrong side of breathlessness. 

“It went as well as could be expected given the circumstances. The ceremonies went smoothly, everybody was largely well-behaved, and nothing I am responsible for fell apart.”

She grinned at him. “You have a very high standard for success, my lord, I wonder how you ever maintain such consistency.” 

“Discipline—ought I define that for you in terms you might understand?” His teasing was light, no more or less serious than it had ever been, but her cheeks warmed considerably, and she looked away, hoping to hide it. 

“I rather think you ought to define it in my language, since you have proven yourself such an adept at it.”

He laughed, a warm, rumbling laugh that reminded her of what she had missed in the last cold, lost month. “You are very cruel to mock me for my inadequacies.”

“Inadequacies! Hardly! I can think of no other people in this City who I would not box about the ears for trying to learn something of my home.” She glanced up at him and saw that his smile was less cynical, almost verging on smug. She looked away, swallowing hard and cursing herself for her foolishness. 

“And your Mettarë? Was it a passable experience, all things considered?”

Her fault, she realised a second too late, was that she hesitated before attempting to sneak a weak-willed obfuscation past him. He listened to her explain the Mettarë traditions of the Mark, but immediately jumped on her obvious omission: what it had been like this year. 

She hesitated some more, eyes dancing across the outlines of the White City’s skyline, then sighed. 

“It was very poor,” she said, running her hands up the fabric of the cloak, clutching it tighter to her shoulders. “Very poor.” 

“I am sorry to hear that, truly,” he said. “Is it your uncle?”

She winced. The silence stretched painfully.

“It is,” she said eventually. “The Worm has cleaved my uncle from his allies, his friends, even his kin. He looked at me and could not decide if I was a traitor or a simple-minded child, Wormtongue’s words have so poisoned his thoughts. As I watched him and wondered at how he had fallen so far, I was reminded of your words, of the power that lay beyond the battlefield, that could be consolidated by other means. That was how Wormtongue managed it, his inconspicuousness was his greatest asset.” 

“Ah,” said Faramir, not missing a beat. “Now I am sorry it was in that context that you thought of my words, I do not wish to cause you any distress.”

“No, you need not apologise. Had I not understood what had happened, had I not known how to explain to myself how my uncle had been brought to such a piteous state, I would have felt much worse about the entire affair. So: do not apologise, for I will not accept it when I should rather thank you.” 

He nodded his head slowly, in the way that she recognised he did when he was waiting for her to say more. She took her time, looking back out to the City. She had had little intention of speaking so openly of her time in Edoras to anyone, let alone to any man of Gondor, but it was always this way with Faramir. She thought to bear her sorrows with dignified silence, to let none know of the burdens she carried, but his stubbornness to let her walk her path alone snuck up on her time and time again, leaving her emotionally defenceless. Yet for that, she found she bore him no ill will for so thoroughly breaching her constructed walls, feeling—to her shock and perhaps slight horror—that his infiltration had left her not feeling weaker, but stronger, less vulnerable overall, as if he had taken up two of her defensive fronts, freeing her to focus more intently on the remaining ones. 

“My cousin and brother will not be able to defend the Kingdom alone, they will need support from outwith the Riddermark, and there is none better positioned than I to win that support. But to attempt to win the loyalty of the Gondorrim nobility, who were predisposed to disliking me before I even arrived, would be folly and would waste valuable time. I think,” she said, looking back up at him, “that I will follow your counsel and look for security in places I might not otherwise have looked.” 

He smiled at her and it made her heart sing.

“I hope that you might allow me to steal more of your time over the coming days,” she continued, “I would very much like to hear your thoughts on some of the dilemmas I face.”

He grimaced, and her heart stopped in her chest.  

“Gladly would I give you every moment of my time, if my time were my own,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have been urgently recalled to Ithilien; I leave on the morrow.”

“Oh,” she said, caught off balance by his words. “I am sorry to hear that.”

His eyes snapped back to her. “Are you?”

“Yes, of course I am,” she said defensively, before hearing the shameful distressed edge in her voice. “I hope that nothing too drastic has occurred to take you away so suddenly?”

“No, nothing that cannot be solved in good time. I do expect to return before the spring to begin training new recruits. That, at least, has not changed.”

No sooner had he spoken then had the doors behind him swung open once more, a bell ringing out across the forecourt. Her frustration with the world flooded back through her. 

“If there is anything I might do now to give you support, you need only ask it,” he offered, and she smirked at him, knowing full well that he was just as interested in avoiding returning to his meeting as he was in helping her. 

“You are too kind, my lord, but I would not have you be late on my account.”

He nodded, looking back to the door. The silence between them hung like a thick smog, stifling, blinding. 

The spring would not start for another seven weeks, a span of time that suddenly felt frightfully long to her. Even if he came back in only a week, she could not go that long without having some sort of answer to the question asked by her pounding heart. There was, in truth, so little she could do. There were so many emotions that swirled within her, and she knew no words that could do them justice. But she trusted him to do justice to them, trusted that he would know—somehow—how to speak to what she felt. All she could do was hope that one day she might be able to convey through actions what her words could not. Though, she conceded, she had never much been a fan of waiting. 

“You compared me to the Lady of the Wood, did you not?” Her voice sounded raw, and she hoped it could be excused as a byproduct of the cold night air.

“I did,” he said, his own voice unimaginably soft.

The distance that spanned between them that had once felt so small now felt infinitely large. At the very moment she stepped forward to close it, the bell rang out in the distance once more, and her heart came to a juddering halt in her chest. 

Their eyes met, and she wondered for a moment if what she saw could be trusted, if the desperation she felt was truly mirrored in his eyes, or if she was blinded by unfounded hope. 

But she would not let herself stand in the way of what she knew was the greater priority, so she stood tall, holding herself to the level of self-control that had become the painful standard for her life. 

“Go safely, my lord,” she said in a measured voice. “Go safely, and know that I anxiously await your return.”

He looked as if he had more he wished to say too—and she desperately wished that he did—but he stayed silent. With a perfectly choreographed half-bow, hand pressed elegantly to his chest, he departed. 

She watched him go, holding herself perfectly still and stalling her breath in her lungs. After he disappeared back into the Tower, she turned back towards the White City, cloaked by night. Then, the air rushed from her lungs, and she fell against the rampart wall, pounding her fists against it. Her infuriation at herself flooded out in one single, broken groan:

“Béma give me the strength!” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

In the morning, after having slept almost none of the night, she found herself out of practice and off her game in the ring with Boromir. Her only saving grace was that he seemed every bit as exhausted and distracted as she, enough that he did not bother to tease her for her sluggishness when they finished, allowing her to escape quickly and quietly to the Citadel. 

A note arrived for her while she bathed, brought to her by Hadoriel, who took the opportunity to chide her for the impropriety of continuing to not allow anyone to help her bathe. Éowyn listened in resigned silence until Hadoriel had tired herself out, then took and scanned the note, sinking beneath the waterline to hide the creeping blush on her cheeks as she read Faramir’s words. 

It was uncharacteristically brief, apologising profusely for leaving her so abruptly, and reminding her of how to find Erebeth’s contact in the City. For all that she had kicked out against and resisted his reminders before, this one could not have been timed more perfectly. It set her harried thoughts to a clear path: she would go in search of this contact and hope that it would make her next steps clear. 

She dressed, passing on her distracting stories to those mostly likely to be asked about her whereabouts, then hurried out into the City, ducking and diving her way through the crowded alleyways and noisy sidestreets, winding further and further down the circles, following the directions Faramir had left in his perfect handwriting. 

The directions sent her down a small alleyway, distinguishable only by a small statue of a slain dragon that stood in the middle of its intersection. The alley was dark and poorly-maintained, the street more puddles than not, and the buildings leaning in on one another so much that they blocked what little light filtered through the grey clouds above. Éowyn gathered up her skirts and pushed onward, counting the doors until she came to the ninth one on the left, a ramshackle door, its white wash chipped and flaking. 

She knocked and was surprised to find that the door opened for her almost immediately, an old, haggard looking man brusquely greeting and wasting no time in pointing her to a room at the very end of a long, slanted corridor. Each room she passed seemed as if it were full with too many people, the uneasy silence of the outdoors replaced with a strangled roar of too many people navigating their lives in too little space. 

The room at the very end of the corridor was smaller than the rest, and had a larger window, casting murky grey light across the few furnishings in the room—a small cot, a simple bassinet, a trunk, and a table. At the table sat a woman, young and rail-thin, with her red-brown hair pulled back into a series of tight braids. She was bent over a dark green tunic, her slim fingers carefully pushing and pulling thread through a snag along the hem. In her lap sat a small child, with a shock of dark hair and bright grey eyes. 

“Are you Amonel?” Éowyn’s voice sounded more foreign here than it ever had in the high halls of the upper circles of Minas Tirith, and she almost winced at it. 

The woman looked up, her eyes travelling over Éowyn, sizing her up with ruthless efficiency.

“I am her daughter, Elaureth,” she said slowly, with no small amount of distrust in her voice. “Who are you?”

Éowyn started, it had not seemed like a question that would have caused her trouble before the conversation began, but now seemed to her to be an enormous liability. 

“A friend sent me,” she said instead, watching as the little boy reached out, grabbing a loose scrap of thread and discarding it from the garment. “She told me I would find Amonel here.”

“I doubt it was a friend then,” said Elaureth, returning to her mending. 

“Why do you doubt it?”

“My mother died three winters ago,” she said icily, threading a new colour on her needle. 

“My condolences,” Éowyn said. “I was looking to find someone who had been involved with her support work for the soldiers of the Umbar campaign.” 

“Oh,” said Elaureth, looking back up with a new derisiveness in her eyes. “You’ve come from the upper circles then.” 

“How do you know that?” The words flew from her mouth before she could stop them, and immediately she knew she was a fool for it. 

Elaureth stared at her, faintly smirking, before she was distracted by pulling a spare needle from her child’s hands. 

“The gown you wear is worth twice what most here make in a month, you speak as if you have every right to be here, despite your foreign accent, and you don’t look to me as if you have missed very many meals in your life,” she said, tying off a stitch, then turning out the tunic before shaking it out, folding it, stowing it in a basket, and pulling another tunic—this one black—from a canvas bag. “The ladies from the top who scurry down here to kiss babies and give blankets to the indolent carry themselves with exactly the same insensitivity that you do. I can only assume that you are here because you have bored of your solar, because you have had a revelation that has driven you to benevolence, or because you have bored of your husband and have come to take a lover, and thought that sniffing around the war widows might help you find where the men who can keep their mouths shut are.”

“I have no husband,” Éowyn said quickly. Elaureth smirked.

“No? Then you are here out of the goodness of your heart, or you have done something that has made you unmarriageable, but you hope to have your bed warmed nonetheless.” She held her needle between her teeth, adjusting how her child sat in her lap. 

Éowyn, who thought that she perhaps ought to be offended at the woman’s insinuations, instead found herself deeply impressed by her bluntness. To have such a boldness of speech and clearheadedness seemed to promise skills that Éowyn might be able to make use of, even if her original contact was dead. 

“I came seeking counsel,” she said at last, stepping further into the room. “I was sent for your mother, but I see now that you might be able to help me in her stead.” 

“You have come from the upper levels of the City to seek my dead mother’s counsel, and now are willing to settle for mine.” Elaureth arched an eyebrow, beginning to mend a frayed hem on the neck of the tunic. “How will you pay me?”

Éowyn shifted awkwardly. It was not that she was without funds, not necessarily, but the bulk of the allowance she drew from the treasury in Edoras was sent directly to the Citadel to account for her living costs, and she could hardly write and demand more money when she had left Meduseld under such testing circumstances. 

“I must maintain some secrecy,” she said, praying that her honesty might endear her to the woman. “I cannot offer you money, but I can offer you repayment through other means.” 

Elaureth snorted. “I have no use for anything that isn’t coin, unless you know of some way to feed and clothe a child and pay rent to a landlord that doesn’t involve money.”

The little boy brought one tiny fist to his face, wiping his long, dark fringe from his forehead. Éowyn looked from the boy, with his obviously Númenórean appearance, to the woman, with her brown hair and eyes. 

“The boy,” she said tentatively, “is he your son?”

“Yes,” said Elaureth sharply.

Éowyn nodded, then looked about the room once more, from the small cot, to the few trinkets that lay about it, and knew at once that there was no man who lived here. Certainly it made her son’s appearance more understandable, there were few in Minas Tirith who retained such distinctly Númenórean features and were not of the aristocracy, Faramir had told her that some time ago. So the child’s father was, for one reason or another, not present, but not a dead soldier, for she would retain his pension and, as far as Éowyn knew, would therefore not need to work. That narrowed down the possibilities for his parentage considerably. 

She stepped forward again, and took a risk, lowering herself into the chair opposite Elaureth, who looked at her with a mixture of confusion and irritation.

“You are right, I am from the upper circles of the City—but my situation is perilous. The head of my house, my uncle, has been taken in by the plotting of a foul man, a man who has rendered the men of my house inert. I am the only one of my kin who might aid my uncle, but I cannot hope to do so by appealing to the men and women of my family’s ken. I know of the story of Lady Finduilas, of how she was beloved by all in this City, and how the love that existed for her made her powerful. I must protect my uncle, but the unspoken rules that govern the court limit how I might do that. You, I think, understand what that looks like,” she said, looking from Elaureth to the boy and back. “I cannot promise you my own money, but I can win you security in other ways, I have powerful allies, friends who have access to far more resources than I.”

“Rich friends and powerful allies who cannot help you directly?” Elaureth said, pausing her sewing. “How can that be true?”

“The situation is,” Éowyn looked at her hands, smoothing them out across the tabletop, “complex. But I swear to you that I can help you, if you agree to help me.”

“And why should I trust you? You have not even deigned to tell me your name.” 

“Éowyn,” she said. “My name is Éowyn.”

“Éowyn,” Elaureth repeated. “A foreign name. That does not inspire confidence. Why should I trust that you will not take what you want from me and disappear once it is got?” 

Éowyn hesitated. It was a good question that, on the surface, she had no answer to. She could hardly divulge more without risking the reputation of her Kingdom, but there was no other information to credit her or tether her to the City. She reached up to her shoulder, brushing away hair from her chest, her fingers accidentally tangling in the chain of her pendant. And her heart sank. 

Her fingers moved before her thoughts could, unclasping the necklace, coiling it in her hands, and laying it out on the table in front of Elaureth. 

“This pendant is pure gold, gifted to me by a lord of a great realm. I will entrust it to you for as long as we work together. Should I fail to give you what you are due, then selling it will provide you with more than enough money to raise your son,” her voice shook on the last word, but she held Elaureth’s gaze, willing her to accept the offer. 

The woman picked it up, turning the pendant over between her fingers, running her thumb along the chiselled edges. Éowyn saw in her movements that same things that she had done when Éomer had given it to her, when she had marvelled over the fine metalwork and felt vicarious excitement for his new life as a commander. 

After a terrifyingly long silence, Elaureth spoke: “What, exactly, is it that you want me to do for you?” 

Relief washed over her, steadying her galloping heart. She rolled her shoulders backwards, took a deep breath, and then explained. All the while, she watched Elaureth continue to work, watched her son continue to help as much as his tiny hands could. 

When she finished speaking, Elaureth said nothing for some time, continuing to mend her garments and mind her son. Éowyn shifted in her seat, glancing out the window where rain now lashed against it, feeling as if she were hovering several inches outside her body. 

“I can help you,” the woman said eventually, folding the tunic, putting it in the basket, and reaching for the new one. “I can help you, but my terms have changed. I want you to do something very specific for me.”

“Anything,” Éowyn said, and meant it. 

“My son, Eglerion, his father was the youngest son of the Lord of Linhir,” she said, running her hand across the top of his head. “It isn’t what you must think, he swore to marry me when he found out about my condition, and he had done everything that needed done, all that was left was to have our marriage witnessed. But he was killed in Osgiliath a fortnight before it was meant to happen, three months before Eglerion was born. There are letters in his hand proving that Eglerion was recognised, that his father — that Anmedior — recognised him, but now Lord Maerninon refuses to acknowledge it. He claims I’m trying to extort him. I have no desire to take his money or to insert myself into his family, but without his acknowledgement, the Army will not extend the war widow’s pension to me. It isn’t much, but it would allow me to give him a better life than he’s got now.”

“Yes,” said Éowyn without hesitation. “Yes, I will see that done for you.”

“Then I will help you,” she said. She looked down at the canvas bag at her feet, then back at Éowyn. “I can help you sooner if I finish my work earlier. Can you sew?” 

Éowyn smiled, and took the next tunic from the bag. 

For several hours they worked in silence, a silence occasionally punctuated by noise in the corridor or Eglerion’s babbling. She felt no particular need to break the silence herself, she knew a transactional relationship when she saw one, and the panic she felt in the silence up in the Citadel had not followed her here, it seemed that even the darkest parts of her mind could not imagine Wormtongue in a place such as this. 

The rain faded away, but the sun did not shine, and by the time they had finished their work, it seemed as if the dull grey light would be the only light they got that day. Elaureth packed all of the garments further into the basket, then covered it with a thick sheet of canvas, handing it to Éowyn while she carried Eglerion down the corridor to another room. Éowyn heard the exchange of cheerful voices, a raucous giggle that could have only come from a small child, and found herself wondering if the misery that permeated every inch of this building was not as absolute as she thought. 

Elaureth returned, pinning a dark wool cloak around her shoulders, and took the basket back from Éowyn. Together, and in continuing silence, they set off out into the City. Éowyn followed her up to the third circle, the hustle and bustle rising up to tear apart the second circle’s solemn silence. They walked for some time around the outer edge of the circle, until they came upon a small tailor’s shop, which Elaureth quickly slipped into, returning with a small coin purse. 

“You are right to be interested in Lady Finduilas’ example,” Elaureth said, tucking the coin purse into her girdle. “Even now her memory lingers among the people who dwell here. They speak of her fondly, but distantly. She was an ally to them, but perhaps less of a friend than many in the upper circles might think. Her interactions with the inhabitants of these circles was ever ceremonial, and though it made her loved, it was a venerating love, not an active love.” 

She began to retrace their steps, and Éowyn followed, drawing the hood of her mantle up over her face to guard against the light misting of rain. 

“You will face more intense scepticism than I have shown you, and I cannot imagine that you will be able to buy off every person you meet,” she continued, slipping down a dark side street. “Instead, I would suggest that you attempt to appear as humble and unobtrusive as possible. Many will assume that you have come amongst them as the other women of your rank, seeking to use their misery to comfort yourself. You will have to countenance some things that will offend your refined sensibilities.”

“I have countenanced many things that offend my sensibilities,” said Éowyn bitterly.

“Good,” Elaureth said, stopping outside an unmarked door. “Then this will not scare you.” 

Elaureth pushed open the door, the stench of garlic and sage and piss pouring from the door like a flood through a collapsed levee. It was a smell Éowyn was all too familiar with, a smell indivisible from houses that kept the diseased and dying. In Edoras, she had spent more time than most in them, trailing the elder women of the court around as they saw to their traditional duties. 

Now, she followed Elaureth down a dark and cramped corridor, the characteristic din of the sick and the caring echoing off the bowed walls. The floor beneath their feet was stained with a nauseating mire of deep reds, browns, greens, and blacks, the sources of which she had no desire to dwell on. It was not an untidy space, but it was undoubtedly a working one, one so busy that cosmetic considerations had fallen by the wayside. 

They pushed through to a small room where an elderly woman sat sentinel over a sleeping man, his cheeks caved in against his skull and his skin tinged yellow and marred by maroon splotches. Beneath the thin blanket that was his only cover, she could see the sharp edges of his body, whittled to a point by hunger and disease. The woman at his bedside nodded in recognition at Elaureth, her eyes passing suspiciously over Éowyn. 

“Ciriel, I bring Lady Éowyn, who has come to offer her time and labour,” said Elaureth, leaning her hands against the footboard of the man’s bed. The woman, Ciriel, arched an eyebrow at her words. 

“Have you received any training in the arts of healing?” She spoke in sharp, clear Sindarin, her voice high-pitched but firm. 

“I was taught some of what the wise women in my home knew.” 

“You’re a Rohir,” Ciriel said. It was not a question, but Éowyn nodded nonetheless. Ciriel turned to Elaureth. “Go to the storeroom and roll the scrap basket into bandages. Then return to me on the morrow and I will find more work.” 

Elaureth gestured for Éowyn to exit the room, so she did, stepping out in time to see two women negotiating a gurney down the corridor, a boy who could be no older than fifteen lying unconscious upon it. Elaureth touched her elbow, drawing her attention away, and guiding her further into the building. 

They past room after room of the injured and ill, not just men, as Éowyn was accustomed to in such settings, but women and even children, all crammed together with little regard for separation on the basis of sex or age. Women in badly-stained pinafores changed dressings, showing no interest in the blushing modesty that seemed endemic to the Gondorrim aristocracy. 

In the storeroom, Elaureth pulled a woven basket down from atop a large shelving unit, tossing it haphazardly onto the floor, then sitting beside it. She looked expectantly at Éowyn who, with some reluctance, lowered herself to the ground, following Elaureth’s lead in taking scraps from the basket, tearing them into thin, long strips, and rolling them.

After several minutes of silence, Éowyn cast a sidelong glance at Elaureth, who had taken to the work as if it was a completely normal part of her daily routine. For all Éowyn knew, it could be, she realised she had not even the slightest understanding of what defined normal in a life so utterly different to her own.

“Why,” she said quietly, “have you brought me here? Is it not very isolated?” 

“A place such as this would seem isolated to you, but to us it is an unfortunate centre of our world. Many come to lend what support they can, and those who do not will either know those who do, or know someone who is in here. Our people learned long ago that even the strongest cannot survive alone forever. Those in the upper circles, those who do not need to think about when and from where their next meal will arrive, they are able to indulge in the fantasy that they are alone, that they live alone. In the lower circles, if you fall ill, you must rely on those around you to ensure that you do not die, that your children are fed, that you do not fall into arrears on your rent,” Elaureth said, tying off her bandage roll. “It will be difficult work, but if you wish to build support here, this will be your least difficult path.”

Éowyn’s fingers slid along the thin material of the bandage, beginning a new roll. It still seemed strange to her, but she did not know enough to refute Elaureth’s words. Wordlessly, she nodded, and continued to work. 

When the scrap basket was emptied, every last shred of fabric rolled into a usable bandage, they returned to Ciriel, who still kept watch over the unconscious man. She pawed through their work and, when satisfied, dismissed the both with the curt efficiency of a military commander, though nothing in her mien suggested that might be her background. In silence, they left the makeshift infirmary, finding that the streets were dark already and the lanterns lit for the evening. 

Elaureth took her leave of Éowyn, reminding her to return the next day as Ciriel had requested. With a neat toss of her beautiful hickory hair, she departed, melting back into the masses of people that now spanned the street as if she had never stood apart from them at all. 

Moving slowly, finding herself feeling more displaced from her life than normal, Éowyn worked her way back up the circles. She hardly noticed the people and places that passed her by, noticing only the strange numbness in her limbs and in her thoughts, seeing in the darkness the Worm, and seeing in the light only her potential humiliation. 

The only people in the forecourt of the Citadel were the Tower Guards, and even they looked to her as if they felt they had somewhere better to be. The whole world, it seemed, had a true and worthwhile purpose in life. The whole world except, of course, Éowyn. 

Passing into her dressing room, she hurriedly unlaced her gown, laying it over the back of her chair. Turning to retrieve her nightgown, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, seeing, for the first tie in a very long time, how she looked devoid of her pendant. 

It had been many years since she had cried in earnest. There was little use for it, it could not provide a solution to any of her problems and it only revealed her weakness; but it had been a long day, a hard day, a day that had made her feel more foreign and more alienated than ever before, that made her aware of how precarious her situation truly was, how little protection she had. Years of resentment, of sublimated insecurity, and of fury bubbled up inside her, then released all at once. 

She choked out a sob, turning away from the mirror in shame, forsaking her nightgown and retreating as quickly as she could to her bed chamber. There, hot, mortifying tears streamed down her cheeks, burning her skin as if branding her with her shame. 

All her life she had been raised on the false promise that she could lead a life she now knew she could not. Her uncle and cousin had been put in an uncomfortable position, that she accepted, and they had been good and kind to take her and Éomer in and kinder still to treat them not just as wards, but as true family, but they had failed to reckon with what raising a young woman entailed. Instead of finding a woman to act as her guide and mentor, to ensure that she would come of age knowing what the world would expect of her, what she should expect of the world, they had tempted her with freedom. And she had loved that freedom, loved it above all other things, but it was an illusory freedom. It had slipped from her grasp at the first challenge, leaving her drowning in an ocean of danger, learning how to swim for the very first time with no guidance, no support, and hundreds of leagues from her home. 

She sank to her knees, crying furious tears and wiping them away with the backs of her fists. She knew that her duty to her people lay in the path she had chosen that day, but the thought ripped and tore at her insides. Were she a man, were she her brother or her cousin, there would be order and structure to her life, a way to feel as if it were not all so futile, so utterly pointless. She could count battles won, or Orcs slain, or men commanded, and she could feel as if the things she did mattered. But she was not her brother or cousin, and she was condemned to putter endlessly, to travel through her life as if experiencing it from afar, a master of no one’s destiny, least of all her own. She was no man, and so she was left to bear the horrible burden of the world with no way to lighten her load. 

Her hand strayed across the bare skin where her pendant had once lain, and she sucked in a harsh intake of air, choking on an unspent sob. She had never been sentimental before, but she had allowed herself to grow attached to one thing, and losing it hurt worse than any injury she had ever suffered. It had been the right thing to do, she had made the correct decision, but it only underlined to her how dearly the good decisions in her life cost her. 

For once, she longed to be able to do something that was good and honourable and find that at the end of it her life was better than before. She wanted to know the heady rush of battle that everyone else in her family was so familiar with, she wanted to know what it meant to feel that alive, not trapped in the routine of going through the motions of life. Her life was nothing more than moving from one vaguely discomforting situation to the next, never knowing emotional depth that was not predicated on her pain. 

Sniffling, she leaned her forehead against her bed, breathing shakily as she tried to regain control of herself. There was nothing in her life to warrant such hysterics, and allowing herself to cry like a small child was beyond unproductive, but it had been so long since she had allowed herself to acknowledge that she was well and truly drowning in her sorrows. 

There were good things in her life, things that she knew she ought to focus on for the sake of her own sanity. For all the ill tidings that had befallen them, her family was as whole as it had ever been, and though her uncle had withered somewhat in his glory, he yet lived, and for that she knew she ought to be thankful. And she had her own health. though for all that she was doing she could have just as easily had none of it. 

She drew herself up to her full height, shaking out her hands, hoping the activity would clear away the embarrassing memory of her tears. Rest, rest was what she needed, it was obvious that her exhaustion had led to hysteria, and once she had slept, she would be in control of her emotions once more.

Notes:

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Chapter 17: Book I: Winter 3018

Her hood, drenched by the time she wrenched open the door of Urse’s bakery and dragged herself inside it, clung uncomfortably to the icy skin of her cheeks. Her hem was coated in a thick layer of mud and sludge, and her skirt soaked through to her knees, water dripping miserably through to her shift and stockings before rolling onto the floor. She was more than accustomed to poor weather in the wintertime, but not at all accustomed to how much muck accumulated in the streets and swirled about by the rain. In Edoras, the banks of the streets were bare earth, not stone, and absorbed the rain more readily, leaving fewer opportunities for the water to get trapped and rise higher and higher against the cold legs of passers-by. 

Boromir had sent word early that morning that he would not be able to spar with her and that none could be spared to take his place. He was effusively apologetic, but she was gratefully relieved. The punishing rain was not enough to put her off in and of itself, but she had had another dream, and was not certain she could face Boromir without collapsing from embarrassment. She felt no shame about her feelings for his brother, none whatsoever, but there was a very big difference between simply being in love with his brother and dreaming about him pinning her to a wall and taking her there and then. The rain, then, had been a blessing. 

Éowyn swung the mantle off her shoulders, grimacing as more runoff puddled on the stone floor. Behind the low counter, Urse’s niece, Brunhild, looking marginally less gaunt than the last time Éowyn had seen her, and greeted her in unaccented Sindarin. 

“Have you not learned the language of the Mark?” Éowyn asked, eyeing a caraway-seed biscuit. 

“Only a little,” said Brunhild. “It isn’t much use here.” 

Éowyn frowned, a flash of irritation running through her at the girl’s words, before she was forced to concede that there was some merit to it—it was not as if her language was widely spoken here, and the Gondorrim were too proud of their Elvish tongue to take an interest in it as a curiosity piece.

“My aunt is in the back,” Brunhild continued, apparently unfazed as she gestured over her shoulder. “If it was she who you came to speak with.”

“Yes,” said Éowyn absently, laying her cloak over her arm and moving beyond the small counter toward the corridor that led to the supply rooms of the shop. 

The smell of gingerbread wafted through the air, reminding Éowyn of the Mettarë she ought to have had, filled with warm spices and warmer feelings. It drifted out from a small room at the very far end of the corridor, beside a door—propped-open with a small crate—that led out to an alleyway. Inside the room, Urse worked at a large table, folding and kneading an enormous round of sticky brown dough. 

In an instant, she fluttered around Éowyn, taking her cloak and hanging it up beside the oven, clearing a short stool and gesturing for her to sit, and asking excitedly after her trip to the Mark, eyes almost as bright as the open flame. Éowyn answered as honestly as she could without alluding to the nightmare it had truly been. 

“Brunhild does not speak our language,” she said once Urse had returned to kneading the dough. 

“No,” said Urse with some wistfulness. “Her mother and father thought it would separate her too greatly from where she lives. She has learned some, though not quite enough to make her feel as if she is of the Mark.”

“Do you miss it?” Éowyn asked, watching as she began to segment the dough out into smaller spheres. 

“Every hour of every day,” she said. 

“But you have not returned to it?”

“I would hardly be able to! It would be nigh-on impossible to find the money to spare to pay for the journey, and I am not certain that any of my kin still live. But they say that once you leave home, you can never truly return to it, except in your memories, and that is satisfaction enough for me.” 

“I suppose that’s true,” said Éowyn, wishing very much that it weren’t. 

Urse regarded her for a long moment in that piercing way only women who have seen far too much of life are capable of, as if looking both into and beyond Éowyn. Then, she pushed a small play of broken biscuits toward her, nodding expectantly at them. Éowyn, who had never willingly turned away food and had no desire to start now, gratefully took one. 

“It is easier to make a new home for yourself if you let go of the old,” Urse continued after some time. “They are a different sort here, kinder in some ways, harsher in others, but altogether no better or worse than the folk of home.” 

Éowyn sniffed indignantly at this, not certain she would ever agree with the sentiment, but said nothing—not for deference, but for the second biscuit that now occupied her mouth. 

There were some people she respected here, a few she even liked. At that concession, her heart beat harshly once, for Faramir in Ithilien, whose safety she had always cared for, but now felt as if it was integral to her sanity. 

“But you seem changed since last you came to me. You dress, to my eye, more in the manner of the Gondorrim.”

Glancing down at her attire, Éowyn conceded the point. She wore the looser gown and tunic customary of the Gondorrim women, and a more substantive girdle, that much was true. 

“I dressed for ease of movement in the infirmary,” she told Urse. “There is less space for flat surfaces in this City than in Edoras, so more must be kept about the person, their thicker girdles are more conducive to hanging tools.” 

Urse raised her eyebrows briefly in surprise. “Indeed they are, and it is very generous of you to think of attending to those unfortunate souls, very generous.” 

She paused what she was doing, letting flour-coated fingertips drum against the tabletop for the span of a moment. Then, she pulled a canvas sack from a crate at the far end of the room and, moving swiftly, began to sort through the stacks of fresh bread rolls and hardened biscuits, settling some into the bag. When the sack was sufficiently full, she placed it gingerly in Éowyn’s basket, nodding as if in approval of her own work. 

“There, take that with you, with Béma’s blessings for a speedy recovery for all who dwell in that wretched place.” 

Éowyn lingered for a little more time, speaking on this and that, reminiscing on the blue skies and endless grasslands of their shared home, remembering it as it would forever remain in their hearts. Then, basket heavy with Urse’s offerings, she departed, braving the torrential rain once more to seek out first Elaureth’s home and next Ciriel’s infirmary. 

The infirmary was louder this time, more people scampering from room to room, carrying stinking bundles of what Éowyn did not care to find out. Once more, Elaureth led her to the back room of the building, and once more Éowyn followed in mute supplication, her thoughts plagued once more by sullied memories of her uncle, who had not looked entirely different to the haggard, broken men laid out upon the beds in the various rooms they passed.

“Our runaway princess returns,” said Ciriel with grim humour. “I had not expected you to seek us out again.”

“I am not a princess,” Éowyn said dourly, following Elaureth’s lead and taking a linen pinafore from a hook on the far wall. 

“No indeed. Whatever your rank, are you strong enough of heart to be useful to me? A grievous accident occured on the City gate winch, and several young men now face amputations. They will need tending to until Crisdolor returns with an adequate saw.” 

Ciriel stared at her as if expecting her to faint at the mere mention of amputations, but Éowyn had spent her entire life around the aftermath of gruesome battles, and had long ago made her peace with the sight of blood and the sound of men losing their last connection to personal autonomy. Instead of dignifying Ciriel’s underestimation of her with a response, she merely looked down, loosened the ties at her wrists, and pushed her sleeves up beyond her elbows, waiting for her next instructions. 

This, it seemed, was answer enough for Ciriel, who wasted no time in explaining exactly how they were to tend to the men. Moving around the room with the speed and efficiency of one who had followed the procedure too many times before, she filled Éowyn and Elaureth’s arms with myriad salves, bandages, spirits, and rags, before ushering them into a small room in the eastern wing of the building.

The men were in worse shape than she had expected, but were by no means as bad as some of the injured soldiers she had seen before. Wordlessly—whether to not disturb them or to not invite any more comment on her person, she could not be certain—she set to the work Ciriel had assigned her, gently unwrapping the elder man’s leg bandage, washing away the barely-clotted blood, packing on the herbal salve, and wrapping it anew with fresh bandages. 

In the doorway, Ciriel watched her with a hawklike intensity, until, apparently satisfied by something she had done, she departed, shutting the door quietly behind her. The people here treated her in a way she was completely unused to. They, like so many others she had met in her life, initially underestimated her, but their underestimations were almost defensive in nature, as if guarding against her wasting their time instead of keeping her in her place. Once she had proved, in some manner or another, her competency, they were more than happy to take her at her word. It was not as it was with the ladies of the Gondorrim court, who seemed to hope for her failure out of a perverse desire to be entertained. No, Ciriel and Elaureth each seemed to expect her to fail, and to feel obligated to be prepared to step in when that should happen. It was an unemotional assessment of her character, hardly about her at all; it did not matter that she was Éowyn of Rohan, they expected failure of her because those they had met who were like her had failed them, but they did not desire her failure. 

It was little comfort. It provided an opportunity to prove that her life was not as simple and as meaningless as many were convinced it ought to be, but it was an opportunity that came at costs no member of her kin would have willingly accepted. It was foul, it was undignified, and there was little glory in it. As she washed her hands of blood, using a frayed and stained rag to wipe the man’s sweat-drenched face, she thought that neither Théodred nor Éomer would be forced to go to such lengths to prove that they were worthy of renown. It was not that she did not understand the value of this work—she could hardly have grown up in the Riddermark and not come to revere the labours of healers—it was that she should have to undertake it at all, when she knew well that her strengths lay in wielding a blade and that there was a war at her doorstep that could not afford to turn away men.

The glories of women were tethered to the love of men if they were sung of, and muted footnotes to history if they were not. The bards and minstrels sang of no healers of renown, and Éowyn desired to be realised by no man’s love—even if she did desire to have one man’s love.

To her chagrin, it took only a few short minutes after she departed Ciriel’s infirmary that evening for her thoughts to once again be complicated and distracted by her recent revelation that she was very, very much in love with Faramir. She had never given much thought to love and romance before, yet her first thought every morning and last thought every evening belonged to him and him alone. It was, she thought, not unlikely that he returned her feelings—she spent an alarming amount of time each day reliving every moment of their friendship, desperately searching for any sign of potential affection toward her and found, to her distinct embarrassment, that there were many. The earliest signs she felt confident in began nearly a year and a half before, which, far from bringing her comfort, presented a very new problem.  

If he had felt some sort of love for her for that long, then it seemed likely to her that something had prevented him from speaking up about it; even if he thought she did not return his sentiments, it seemed uncharacteristically reticent of him to have said nothing about it—it was not as if he had ever been quiet about his opinions or feelings around her before. There was something else, then, that he believed to be an obstacle. For her part, she neither saw any obstacles worth discussing, nor believed that she would allow her feelings to wither were there any, and so knew it would be incumbent upon her to hurry him along in the right direction. 

It was the exact nature of that right direction that surprised her the most. Not two months ago she had affirmed her desire to never marry, convinced that marriage would only be a curtailment of the freedoms—few though they were—that she yet enjoyed. But as she thought about the overwhelming (occasionally nauseating) weight of her love for Faramir, it occurred to her that her love was not as necessarily irrational as she had once thought all love to be. Though she had once imagined him to be the very height of Gondorrim conservatism, the sort of man who might marry a quiet and deferential young lady who wanted nothing more than a well-decorated solar and a long list of tea afternoons and feasts to attend, she realised that almost nothing in his behaviour toward her or anyone else merited that belief. In fact, though she represented an undoubtedly strong match for him (one that, if he had been successful, would have shown him to be a shrewd politician and diplomat), he had refrained from making any sort of serious romantic overtures toward her and had instead focused on helping her secure power for her country, not his. 

The very nature of that focus showed him to be far less concerned with what she saw as Gondor’s wretchedness: what she interpreted as his underestimating of her ability to wield a sword and command soldiers was not that at all, but rather his desire to see her take control of an untapped resource instead of wasting valuable time and energy on fighting for a rigidly-apportioned one. He had made the recommendations he had not because he saw her as lesser or weaker, but because he believed her to be, in some small way, more capable than many of the others in Minas Tirith. And that was a thought (among other, less respectable ones) that kept her awake at night, heart beating in her head and cheeks flushed. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

A strange routine had developed since her return from Edoras, outpacing even her time in the second circle for consistently unsettling her. It seemed that the insecurity she had sensed upon her return had translated within the Citadel to a belief that Gondor and Gondor alone understood the full weight of the Enemy’s power. Since becoming aware of the Rangers’ campaign and of the importance of Osgiliath, she had not doubted that Gondor’s situation was both unique and dire, but increasingly, it felt as if her acceptance of that fact was in question.

At first, it had simply been pointed remarks and questions from the lords and ladies of the court she interacted with day to day, but a week after her return, she had received a summons from the Lord Steward, who deemed it necessary that she join a council meeting. There, she had been invited in only long enough to hear of the worsening situation in Osgiliath, and a prediction from one Lord Denethor’s military councillors that, should Osgiliath fall, it would be only a matter of weeks until the land as far east as the Gap of Rohan was taken too. 

She had no qualms with the truthfulness of the assertion, no part of her disbelieved that Gondor was essential for the defence of the free peoples, yet time and time again she was summoned to the Council room, made to listen to the bleaker reports, then summarily dismissed. It did little for her mood: not only was she indignant at the implication that her people would not fulfil their oath, she was horrified at the maps and charts that showed attack after attack along the Ephel Dúath. She had received no letters from Faramir since his departure, leaving her only information about Ithilien the information she received in those council sessions. 

Worsening those factors was her gradual realisation that Lord Denethor looked uncharacteristically tired, as if his age had suddenly begun to wear more heavily on him. He, of course, did not look half so haggard as her uncle, but the change was noticeable and deeply worrying. Still, he watched her as closely as ever, and she found herself speaking less and less in his presence, terrified that even a word out of place might reveal the weakness of her Kingdom’s position, compromising everything she had finally begun to work for. 

It was at one such council meeting (four weeks after Faramir had departed for Ithilien, not that she was keeping track), that she was finally cornered and made to answer for the social obligations she had so cavalierly been forsaking. She had been as silent as the dead—the dead she was trying to prevent, she thought bitterly—throughout the meeting, keeping to her corner where the light touched little of her, and making no more noise than was absolutely necessary to ensure that there was still breath in her lungs, but even she could not delude herself into believing that she was an unnoticed presence in the room. There were ladies present at some of the political councils, but never at the military councils. She was an oddity, an upset to the norm, of course she was noticed. 

Lord Astron pounced at his earliest possible convenience, all smiles and silks and sharp cologne as he reminded her that she had been missed at his lady wife’s tea afternoons, that he hoped she did not feel herself unwelcome in his home, for her invitation was ever open. Éowyn, who had no desire to confess that she knew herself more than welcome, but had purposefully ignored the invitations in favour of spending long, exhausting hours secretly labouring in a house of horrors in the lowest circles of the City, feigned her most simpering smile, and told him she was glad to hear it, that she had been uncertain as to her welcome, and would be grateful to attend once more. 

Astron, evidently marginally cleverer than she believed him to be, used the break in the council session to escort her to his townhome, chattering all the way about a garden renovation he had commissioned for his estate in Anórien. It was, she thought and did not say aloud, a far cry from his fears about the ability of Lord Forlong to supply a strategic retreat at the end of days. She wondered, as they entered his obsessively opulent home, how these lords of Gondor could countenance such frivolity when facing the end of the world. What did it matter how and where decorative saplings were planted if there would be none left to take pleasure in viewing them? 

The ladies of Berúthiel’s tea afternoon were surprised but not upset to see her. She knew exactly why they were not upset—they were no doubt eager for a new target for their barbs, though mercifully they allowed her to sit in uninterrupted silence for some time after her arrival. It was a silence that did little good for helping her to join the conversation. She sat at the periphery of it, watching the women fuss with their draped tunics and overwrought hairstyles, sniping and snivelling at the world and all its inhabitants, as if it and they existed solely for their entertainment. 

As she sat and listened and sat and listened, feeling her thoughts waste away into boredom, a terrible thought wormed its way into her mind: this might have been her life, had she not been sent to Minas Tirith. For all the faults she found in Gondor, in truth the conversations amongst the ladies of the Riddermark were not so different, she had merely been exempt from them by virtue of her rank. She had been exempt, though it was clear that had she not been so unceremoniously exiled to Gondor, that merciful exemption would have withered away far sooner than she ever would have wished. 

Wormtongue had, in coveting her so keenly and lingering so close to the site of greatest power in her life, desired to make a proper lady of her broken, unwilling soul. He had wanted her, wanted her as his wife, but could not contend with the notion of a wife who could not be kept docile and deferential in her solar. He wanted her to be the connection from the blood of kings that ran red and hot in her veins, to his sons, a vessel for power, but never a wielder of it, a situation in life these women surrounding her seemed all too willing to accept. 

“It has been said,” began Lady Glíreth, the wife of some minor lord or another of Lossarnach, “that the youngest son of Prince Imrahil has been seen dallying with a woman of Dale.” Several of the women around her clutched at their gaping mouths or chests as if they had just been told he had been caught murdering innocents indiscriminately.  

“Why should that matter?” asked Éowyn stiffly, keenly aware that if anyone was paying even the slightest bit of attention to her she was giving away her hand far too easily. 

Berúthiel looked at her, pursing her lips. “Are you aware of the Kin-strife?”

Éowyn stared blankly at her, not willing to commit herself to saying anything that might enable the other women in this room to label her a fool.

“King Valacar wed a woman of the Northmen of Rhovanion, men whose moral integrity was of deeply questionable stature, and in so doing sowed the seeds of doubt in the line of the kings. When his son, Eldacar, took the throne, there was a great civil war. Thousands died, Osgiliath was left in ruins, and the great blood of Númenor was weakened in the line of Anárion, bringing unspeakable shame and vulnerability to Gondor. To make such a mistake again would be foolish beyond words, a decision that ought to be prohibited ere it is made.” 

“Or perhaps it is necessary to recognise that love cannot be conquered as readily as hate and that those who would oppose such a union ought to be brought in line swiftly and decisively,” she answered, voice searingly cold. 

“I am sure that was what King Valacar believed, yet it was not he but his descendants who paid the price,” said Berúthiel calmly. “No, for men of good standing and lineage it would be foolish to disregard these important lessons of our history. No good can come of such reckless intermarriages.”

Éowyn laughed. “No good? Morwen, wife of Thengel King, hailed from Lossarnach and Belfalas, yet married a man of the North and made a feared and loved Queen.”

Some of the women around them shifted uncomfortably, unused to such open conflict at their cordial afternoons. Others repositioned themselves as if jockeying for a better view at a duel, desperate to see blood drawn first. 

“It was by the injection of her blood to a lesser line, however, that those good things came about. Condescension from those of a greater nobility ought to be welcomed, but the lowering of that greater nobility to accommodate those who are of morally disreputable lines is not to be encouraged.” She watched Éowyn harshly for a moment, challenging her to speak and open herself up to more humiliation. After a long moment, she turned her attention back to Lady Glíreth. “The fair Prince is, of course, a sensible man and I have no doubt he will nip his son’s dalliance in the bud before it becomes a problem in earnest.”

Her entire world suddenly took on a reddish hue, her blood pounding like liquid steel in her veins, spreading her fury through every inch of her body, setting her heart to a thundering pace. So this was what the Gondorrim thought of her in truth, no lesser by her bearing or her being, but by her birth and blood. There had, then, never been any hope for her in the first place, she had been sent to befriend a people who thought her degenerated and inherently immoral, able to be bettered only through the benevolent condescension of better breeding, as if she were of a particularly wily line of thoroughbreds. 

One of the women behind Berúthiel set her cup down. “Has anyone seen the girl?”

“I have,” said Lady Goladiel. “She is recommended well by her sense of decorum, she knows not to speak out of turn, nor to question that which ought not be questioned.”

Éowyn stared at her cup of tea in a last, desperate attempt to not roll her eyes too obviously. Her breath came shallowly, and she tried to avoid the continuing jibes at her. It would get worse if she addressed it, these women circled the air above her like carrion crows after a battle, looking for the weakest, loosest skin to begin their degloving from. Any acknowledgment of their attempts constituted an immediate tactical loss on her part  

Nonetheless, a thought crept unbidden over her, a thought that perhaps she had been wrong in her assessment of Faramir’s hesitancy. She had been confident that whatever obstacles Faramir believed to have stood in his way if he was really in love with her were immaterial, but in the past hour alone she had been presented with two very serious ones, ones that she had not known existed at all. If it was true that it was insensible for any man of Gondor to wed with a woman of the North, then she had no answer for that except to hope that the stubbornness he exhibited in all other areas of his life would hold firm here.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Sparring with Éowyn was equal parts frustrating and challenging. It was not that she was particularly more skilled than anyone else he might go toe-to-toe with, it was that she was remarkably more self-possessed than most people he came across. He preferred to win by coming on strongly, battering down his opponent’s defences, then relying on their loss of confidence thereafter to keep up his successes, even when he lessened his energy expenditure. It was much harder to pull that strategy off with Éowyn because nothing seemed to ever rattle her. Nothing ever seemed to shake her, even after an abnormally long series of losses, she would dust herself off and get right back to it, looking as though it was her very first round of the day. 

If nothing else, their nearly two years of sparring together had been a good exercise in stamina-building for him, there were few men he knew who were so willing to throw themselves repeatedly at a fight with no noticeable degradation in energy. She reminded him very much of what her prince cousin had been like in his youth: full of fire and a desperate need to prove himself, but absolutely none of the self awareness necessary to realise that those around him already thought him remarkable on his own terms.  

He had learned early on not to bother complimenting her, she always managed to misconstrue it as him giving her some sort of polite concession out of deference to her gender. It did not matter that he genuinely did find her very skilled at certain things, it seemed there was some impossibly high bar she had set for herself and only by reaching that standard would she ever accept that she was worthy of praise. He hoped that if enough people spoke highly of her, she might begin to believe it, so complimented her often and at length to others. In return, he was regularly interrogated about whether he harboured any romantic feelings for her. 

At first, he often found himself wishing he could. When she had first come to Gondor, he had wished desperately that he could have found some way to have loved her, and to have married her, and to have given her a better life than what she seemed fated for. But no matter how hard he tried to rationalise it to himself or insist that he could conjure feelings where there were none, he came up short. 

The truth was that he saw too much of his father in her. It was not a comparison that had been made by anyone else—those who thought of her favourably tended to draw comparisons (inaccurately, he thought) between her and his mother—but it was one he felt was startlingly accurate. She was as sharp-tongued as he could be, and she wore that same noble coldness, wore it like a shining suit of plate armour, an impenetrable defence against the cruelty of the world. And there was that sadness too; few would believe it, but his father had wept an ocean of tears in his lifetime, unseen by all, and heard only accidentally by Boromir, who listened to them drip from his voice. For thirty years he had heard his father’s unshed tears, and he heard them again in Éowyn’s voice. 

Unlike his father, there was a hope that her life would not be so marred by tragedy and suffering, and it seemed that she knew it too, even if she did not realise she knew it. He heard it in her voice sometimes, but mostly he saw it in the way she drove forward relentlessly, flashing her practice sword to the grey winter sky as if she were slaying a dragon under the heat of the sun in more glorious days. His father knew perseverance, oh yes, he knew it better than anyone, but his perseverance was resolute, calculated, the same from day to day. Éowyn would make it through to the bitter end of her life, but she would make it through with a desperation borne of believing there could be something better that awaited her. 

She was similar to his brother in that way, too solemn, too somber, but somehow still optimistic. Theirs was not a cheerful optimism, but an obstinate one, as if it was inconceivable that there was not something better out there. Faramir he had worked on, and though he was not much more cheerful, he laughed more now. He had never been humourless in his youth (very far from it) but he had not laughed much. It had taken many long years of work, but Faramir laughed more now, even if his humour still tended toward the ironic, the wry, altogether very much like Éowyn’s. Though Éowyn, it was plain to see, had had no one to ensure she remembered to laugh. Rohan had ever felt more grim to him, less hopeful, yet even he had not thought the situation so dire that none could be spared to teach a young woman to laugh. 

He blocked her thrust, saw the glimmer in her eyes that told him she would swing harder (not smarter) the next time, and wondered if his father had ever been given leave to feel so strongly, so boldly. Was that why the resentment simmered away between his father and his brother? His brother, who had loved poetry more than he had ever loved pitched battles, who had never been afraid to raise his voice or refuse to toe the line. Was that firestorm of emotion he saw so clearly in Éowyn’s eyes, tamped down to barely embers in his father’s, was that what had made the difference between peace and a stalemate in his house?

Their blades clanged together, the vibrations running straight through to his wrists, and her brow furrowed in concentration. She had expected to brute force her way through it, found that it would not be so simple, and was now obviously adjusting, though never appearing any weaker for it. 

Yes, he admired and respected her, but mostly he wanted for her what his father could not have: a chance to distinguish herself free from the oppressive weight of unspeakable tragedy. She deserved the chance to ride out and win her accolades, to be crowned with golden laurels, and to return to a home that was free of pain and ignominy. She, like his father, deserved to have her silent struggles honoured and lauded, not to be spoken of—as so many did—as unfeeling and unloving. 

He never believed in that more than when, after he had delivered a winning blow to her upper arm, she pulled off her gloves, stowed her blade beneath her arm, and began to recount the story of an acquaintance who needed help. This acquaintance, she said, was being deprived of income that was rightfully hers simply because her son had been born out of wedlock. It was a good cause well argued, he thought, until he asked for the names of the relevant parties. With an uncharacteristically sheepish expression, she admitted that it was not just a simple tiff over inheritance within a common soldier’s family, but a fight between a mere seamstress and the lord of one of the most important cities in Lebennin.  

“I understand that presents a significant obstacle, but I thought you might be better positioned than I to convince Lord Maerninon to show some grace.” 

“I am afraid,” he said, pulling loose the straps of his jerkin, “that I am very likely the worst person to ask this of.” 

She stopped unfastening her vambraces, an eyebrow sharply arched at him. 

“The lords of the southern realms have not been our most generous friends of late. They would no doubt be very grateful for the opportunity to paint those of us in Minas Tirith as promoters of depravity.” He looked over at her once more and saw that her expression had become stern. “I will see that it is done successfully, do not doubt that, but I am obliged to warn you that it will take some time.” 

An unintelligible emotion flickered across her face, and then she nodded. “I cannot thank you enough for your effort, there are few people I could trust with such a sensitive request.” 

“I am glad to have your confidence,” he said while she went back to removing her armour. “I have been led to believe it is not a thing easily won.” 

She smiled, seemingly despite herself. “The legend of my belligerency grows.”

“Oh, very much fully grown, I think. Though, as I said, it makes the reward of your friendship all the greater, so I would not discourage you from your current path if you do not wish to be discouraged from it.”

She pulled her surcoat over her head, allowing it to fall loosely about her, then fussed with tidying away her armour for some time. He waited for her, hoping to postpone facing whatever disaster awaited him in his father’s counsel room for just that much longer—the increase in attacks in and around central Ithilien spoke to an imminent collapse in their defensive strategy. Imminent, inevitable, and not something he was excited to explain to his father.

They walked from the practice ring in companionable silence, though she continued to wear her concern like a mask, her hands clasped behind her back beneath her cloak as a commander inspecting his troops. She might have made a good one, in her own time; she resembled the icy indifference of some of his best lieutenants, men who regularly stared down danger and laughed in its face. In a different life, in a different time, she might have been one of them.  

It was as he was opening her mouth to inquire after her concern that she next spoke: “It is very strange, is it not?” 

“Is what not?”

“For a pension to be denied to a woman simply because her child was born out of wedlock,” she said, brow furrowed. 

“I am more surprised that you are surprised at it,” he answered, blinking through the hazy rain. “Is it not the same in Rohan?”

Her eyes sparked. “No, absolutely not! A war pension in the case of a family is not at all dependent on a marriage, there are far too many young men who die without having formally wedded and far too many mouths that would go unfed.” She paused, and her frown deepened. “Is such behaviour very common?” 

Again, Boromir found himself unable to follow her line of worry. “Is which behaviour very common?”

“For a noble man to bed a woman but make no preparations for her continued security in the event that he is killed in war.” She spoke hastily, then seemed to catch herself, visibly backtracking. “Or any man, he need not be noble nor go to war.”

Realisation—and distant panic—crashed over him, colder upon his skin than the freezing rain that lashed at it. 

“Éowyn, you must forgive me for my presumptuousness, but are you asking out of a scholarly interest or from a more… personal concern? Have you—”

“—Scholarly interest!” The words flew from her lips so quickly they sounded to his ears almost a squeak, so very different from her usual timbre. “It is just that it is so at odds with what I am accustomed to I wondered if it were representative of Gondor as a whole, or merely an aberration.”

Boromir, who felt now as if he were speaking to defend something far closer to him than his loyalty to his Kingdom, shook his head. “An aberration. I can think of no man of your acquaintance—or mine—who would be so reckless as that.” Then, fearing that he had inadvertently encouraged behaviour he had not hoped to, he added: “And I would hope that I do not know any men who might do anything that would leave an unwedded lady in such a condition.”

“No indeed,” said Éowyn, in a tone so airy and faraway that, he realised, there was now another conversation he was now obliged to have with a very different person. 

Chapter 18: Book I: Winter 3018

The last few weeks had confirmed several things for Faramir. First, he would need to be ruthless in his training of the new recruits; it was increasingly likely that there would be a drawing down of the numbers at Cair Andros to reinforce the garrisons at Osgiliath, leaving the Rangers even more isolated in the North. When that draw down came, there would no longer be room for mistakes (not that there had ever been). Second, since his uncle’s mortifying but well-intentioned intervention into his personal life, his thoughts had been a disaster. With the ongoing degradation of the situation in Ithilien, he could afford no distractions. At some point in his six weeks in Minas Tirith, he would need to talk to Éowyn, even if it meant confronting the very real possibility that she did not and would never love him. And because of that possibility, it was imperative that he have that conversation as soon as possible to maximise the time he would have to mend his wounded pride. It would also require a high degree of discretion, it would be best for all involved that their conversation was completely private, that none beyond the two of them (and, perhaps, his uncle) knew of its occurrence, ensuring that it would pose no problems for her in her time in the City.

Arriving in Minas Tirith, he had moved slowly from the stables to the Citadel, meticulously constructing a facade of calmness that would, with care and good luck, prevent both his father and brother from asking any questions during his briefing. If either did discern any discomposure on his behalf, he had planned to simply explain it away as irritation over the state of affairs in Ithilien (which was not completely untrue) and hope that would be a sufficient answer. Instead, he found that his brother’s uncharacteristic distractedness and his father’s not-so-uncharacteristic frustration stopped either of them from thinking of him as a person with any real sincerity. As he made his escape from the council room, he briefly considered asking what had so captured their thoughts, but decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth and slipped away before either could remember familial etiquette. 

His next challenge was the greatest of that morning: locating Éowyn. A challenge because, even when he had spent any extended period of time in the City with her and had come to know her routine quite well, she was still remarkably difficult to pin down; and because, unlike those times, he couldn’t simply ask after her whereabouts from any attendant or servant he passed. He could wait to speak to her at the dinner celebrating the sculptors and architects his father patronised, but he had hoped to escape that by claiming fatigue. On a better day, he might have gone directly to her apartments, but he wasn’t willing to risk anyone who might answer her door asking too many questions. The logical conclusion, then, was to find someone who could investigate for him, someone who would or could have a good reason to wonder about her whereabouts, but who would not necessarily be linked to him, or to anything untoward for her. 

The solution to his problems came in the form of one of the Lieutenants of the Citadel Guard. He had known Beregond, in a loose, formal sort of way, for the better part of twenty years, since he had first been assigned to the Guard at the turn of the millennium. He had not, exactly, had many conversations with Beregond, but he had always found him personable enough in the brief moments they had spoken and had, most importantly, found him more willing than most to look the other way when either he or Boromir were doing anything that might have upset their father. It was those two qualities that recommended him generally, but especially in this instance. 

As nonchalantly as he could manage, he explained to the lieutenant that he was hoping to find Lady Éowyn, but would prefer that that fact remain a secret. When Beregond merely smiled and said he would make some enquiries, Faramir was certain he had made exactly the right call, and retreated to his own chambers in the hope of completing some work before the lieutenant returned. 

It was, naturally, an exercise in futility. He spent most of an hour staring at a stack of correspondence that demanded a level of eloquence he simply could not muster. His thoughts, as they so often did of late, were occupied entirely by his concerns about and for Éowyn. He thought it unlikely that she might love him—not out of any sense of personal deficiency on his part, but rather that she seemed too committed to what she saw as the freedom engendered by her lack of attachment—, but he couldn’t help but wonder how she would react to his confession. He had, of course, dreamt up a great many scenarios that saw her returning his love, but those were childish fantasies, the product of a mind made socially idle by too long in Ithilien. 

An hour and a half passed before Beregond returned, and when he did, he did so with a sheepish look on his face. 

“Her lady-in-waiting, Lady Sedril, indicated that Lady Éowyn intended to spend the day in the library in the Palace of the Stewards,” he began. “But upon my arrival she was not there. I then sought out her housekeeper, who informed me that the lady expressed a desire to pass her day in the library in the Tower of Ecthelion. Alas, she was not there either. Lieutenant Belegorn, the officer of the Citadel Guard assigned to her security in the Palace, said that he had last seen her leaving for her regular appointment with the Lady Berúthiel of Anórien, but the guards near the townhouse of the Lord of Anórien reported that she had not attended this morning.” 

Faramir smiled at her staunch refusal to be found, an instinct more than familiar to him. For years before he joined the Rangers, he had learned how to move unseen through the world, avoiding responsibility (and the impossible weight of his father’s expectations), by using the very same tactics of confusion. He dismissed Beregond, thanking him for his hard work and reminding him of the value of discretion. 

Alone once more, and now no closer to his goal, he chose to go to the terrace garden: if he could not clear his thoughts of her, then he could at least remind himself of some of his more favoured memories of her. 

This, it transpired, was the first useful decision he had made in quite a long time. He had been outside (in the bitterly cold late winter’s air) not a quarter of an hour when, as if ordained by the Valar, he heard his name called by the same voice that had been calling it in his dreams for months. 

Éowyn stood at the top of the stairs leading to her apartments, a cloak still cast about her shoulders and a small basket caught between her hands. If he had been asked, he would have guessed that she was only just returned—but from where he could not say. She looked well, cheeks burnished slightly (from the wind, he thought), and hair unbound, as was her custom, golden curls swirling around her shoulders and face. He was so taken by the sight of her that it was a moment before he realised that she was not just calling out to him, she was calling him over to her. 

He covered the space between them as quickly as he could while still retaining even a fraction of his dignity, willing his heart to slow from its gallop inside his chest, which itself now felt too small to contain it. She met him at the foot of the stairs, smiling up at him with a smile so dazzling it threatened to make him dizzy. 

“I had not realised you were to return today, it seems I have lost track of time entirely,” she said, pulling her cloak tighter about her shoulders.  

“You have been busy then? You were quite difficult to track down when I arrived.”

Her head snapped up from where she was setting her basket on the bottom step. “You asked after me?”

“How could I not?” he said, aiming to play off his slight-misstep with exaggerated coolness. “But I found that each person I asked seemed to have a very different answer for me. Not, I think, a natural phenomenon, but rather a ploy contrived by someone very shrewd indeed.” 

“Perhaps,” she said, and smiled at him once more. It was a smile that appeared to him especially insolent, as if he had caught her doing something wrong, something she was defiantly unrepentant for.

“I would be very interested to hear how this strategy came about.”

She smoothed her skirt down, looking very pleased with herself. “When I arrived in Minas Tirith I told three different stories to three different people, intending to discover how and to whom my personal information was passed. Sedril, obviously, passed her information immediately—however inadvertently—to her mother and from there to your father. My housekeeper, meanwhile, transmitted it to your father much, much more slowly. From there, I knew that I would always be under some sort of supervision, and that the only way to ensure I had any hope of going where I pleased when I pleased was to so badly confuse my trail that none would ever reasonably desire to untangle it.”

“And the third?” 

“The third?”

“You said you fed stories to three people, but named only Lady Sedril and your housekeeper.” 

“Oh.” He was not sure if it was the windburn or something else that briefly made her cheeks appear redder. She looked away from him. “It hardly matters, I am certain that they did not spread my information.”

He frowned at her naïveté. “How can you be certain of that? This person might have passed it along to someone who is more discerning about how they reveal what they know.” 

“I considered that possibility, but I am confident in my assumption.” She looked back at him, and he could not begin to understand the look on her face. “Unless you did speak to others of my request to go to Osgiliath?” 

“Ah,” he said, and felt his heart drop. “No, I did not.”

She was but twenty-two and already had faced greater sorrows than those thrice her age. He had been a fool to relate his childhood secrecy to hers, of course her reasons for hoping to pass through the City unlooked for came not from a boyish disregard for rules and discipline, but from a far more heartbreaking need to control knowledge of her whereabouts for her own safety. He should have known that before she told him, and he hadn’t, and for his ignorance he had openly trespassed on her right to a defensive privacy. 

“I hope,” Éowyn continued, “that you do not take that as a sign that I do not now trust you. You must understand that I came to Minas Tirith under sensitive conditions and was not given to easily trusting those I did not know. For years I endured isolation and terrorisation at the hands of my uncle’s councillor. In turn, I trained myself to see the worst in those around me, until I forgot how to trust, and I forgot what it meant to not be alone. I brought that fear with me to Gondor, I believed it to be the only correct way of living my life, that the closest I should ever let anyone to me was the distance of a sword. But you, you were diligent and you were kind, and you saw me as I wished to be seen, and saw, perhaps, more of me than I understood myself.” 

A rush of unimaginable relief washed over him, and he opened his mouth to speak, but she continued undaunted. 

“Were you aware that in the Mark the gifting of cloaks is an act shared between siblings?”

The relief vanished. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I was not aware of that, no.”

“Good, I had hoped you were not,” she said, then arched an eyebrow. She placed her gloved hands on the stone bannister, the sleeve of her gown slipped out from beneath her cloak, a curious red stain upon it that, with some concern, he realised was blood.

After too many years in the field, too many years when unexpected daubs of blood could be the harbinger of grievous injuries and imminent death, reaching out to take her wrist came to him on instinct. Soon he was turning her arm this way and that, brow furrowed, before it came to him that he was very much not in the field.  

When he looked back up at her face, still holding her hand, she bore a look of surprised amusement, her eyebrow now raised even further on her forehead. Her other hand was now perched on her hip, and—even in his fleeting moment of frustration at his thoughtlessness—he soon laughed at himself, giving her her hand back. 

“The first few days in the City always require an adjustment period,” he said, then nodded towards her arm. “Though I can now safely say you are not in danger of bleeding out.”

She laughed, running her fingers over the hem of her sleeve. “No? I am glad to have your expert opinion, for I was very worried.” 

For a second, she looked at him intently, and he felt a faint ripple of uncertainty in the air, before she exhaled huffily. 

“I have spent much of the previous month in a makeshift infirmary in the second circle,” she said, again fingering the edge of her sleeve. “I believe it has gone some way to aiding me in that endeavour on which we have so often spoken.” 

He frowned. “An infirmary?”

“Aye, an infirmary. I sought out Amonel, and instead found her daughter, who has been very gracious to me and has allowed me to make connections with those I would never have thought to speak with,” she said. “She believed that I would be best served in my aims by proving that I was earnest in my engagement with the people of the City, and that to do so I should go where help was needed most and where help from the upper circles was given least. By happy chance, that place was somewhere where I have had experience before, for it is both common and expected that the women of the court care for injured Riders should the need arise. It is still very early, perhaps too early to truly assess it in earnest, but though I have reservations in some regards it feels as if it was a decision well made. For my part, the opportunity to pass my time engaged in something that is not languishing in torpidity has been reward enough.”

His heart swelled in his chest, and a speech of a thousand words built up within him, a rhapsody recounting all the ways in which she was singularly brilliant, a light of unprecedented brightness and warmth in the cold grey of his life. 

He had not intended to speak to her here, had hoped for something more memorable, but he was certain if he did not speak his mind now, his heart would collapse in on itself. Not for the first time that day did he find himself running through words he had spun and woven in his head for more than a year, words that he now knew he needed to speak into existence. 

Behind Éowyn, at the very top of the stairs, the door to her apartments opened. Without thinking, he stepped backwards, not realising until too late that they had not been inappropriately close, but that by moving so quickly he had surely given the appearance that they had been. 

Her lady-in-waiting—or whatever passed for it, since he knew all too well how resistant she had been to the very idea of an enforced companion—stood in the doorway, radiating the sort of youthful obliviousness he had not realised existed anymore. He now wished it did not exist, so that the girl might realise she was intruding and simply leave.

But he knew it was not to be when Éowyn looked first up at the girl, then back at him, an apology scrawled across her face. “Will I see you this evening?” 

The rational part of his mind (what little of it remained) wanted to say that the answer was no. No, because he had far too much work to do; no, because he hated those sorts of pointless events and avoided them as often as he could; and no, because he really was very tired and ought to make time to try to sleep. The emotional part of his mind, which had somehow wrested control over the reins of his thoughts, was resignedly accepting his fate. 

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” 

Her expression turned from apologetic to teasing. “I am glad to hear it. I will endeavour to make time for you to give me a more thorough examination, so that we both might be absolutely certain I have no injuries.”

With that, she curtsied flawlessly then retreated back up the stairs, leaving Faramir momentarily incapable of breathing. 

He was no fool, and he had certainly lived long enough to experience nearly every sort of interaction imaginable, yet for the first time in a very long time he was overcome by terrible uncertainty. His heart and mind waged a war: his heart said that Éowyn knew exactly what she had implied, and his mind said that she had never spoken to him in such a manner before, and it would be silly to believe she had started to do so now. 

The door clicked shut at the top of the stairs, yet still he stared at the spot where she had once stood, mind racing. 

His day, he realised, was now officially over. There would be no hope of recovering his thoughts after this, and there was none. For several painfully long hours, he tried (to no avail) to complete any work at all, finding himself entirely and miserably distracted by thoughts of her, replaying over and over again her comment to him, wondering if it meant what his heart desperately wished it did.

The next few hours were some of the most distracted of his life. As a child, he had been prone to distraction, wiling away the hours in his father’s library, or wandering the cavernous City streets, focused on anything and everything except what he was expected to be focusing on. Even in the depths of those heady, distracted days he had had a better control on his thoughts then he did now. He could hardly move or read a word without thinking of her, her smile, the sound of her laugh, his embarrassment at having done exactly what she had hoped to protect again, the warmth of her beneath her sleeve. And her insinuation oh, by Elbereth’s sweet and blinding light, every word, every breath of her innuendo was now imprinted in his marrow, putting thousands of thoughts into his head that he knew he should not allow. 

His distraction only worsened as he dressed for the evening, then slipped through the Palace, avoiding his brother entirely, and making a short, unconvincing joke at his own expense when he saw his father’s raised eyebrow. No part of him was interested in or willing to contrive a worthwhile excuse for his appearance when he usually worked so hard to avoid these sorts of events, and he had no interest in letting his father know anything more than he was absolutely required to tell him. 

Instead, he silently took his seat at the far end of the high table of Merethrond, stuck between the wives of several of the lords of Anórien and Lossarnach (who no doubt had a greater sense of self-preservation than he and found some way to excuse themselves). He would need to survive just over an hour at the table before, he knew, they would all be freed, and he could hopefully fabricate some reason to speak to Éowyn in private. There, he would say his piece, then, if the outcome was unfavourable, he could quite reasonably leave without arousing any suspicions—it was not as if he was a regular fixture at these events anyways, and would not be especially missed.

Something he had done, though he could not be certain what it was, had encouraged Lady Melcien, wife of Lord Golasgil, to try to engage him in a conversation. For as much time as he could safely manage without letting his frustration show, he indulged her in her mind-numbing conversation about some gossip concerning one of his cousins—he had not been paying close enough attention to hear exactly which cousin, but was inclined to believe it was likely Erchirion, for all the effort he put into ensuring the ladies of Minas Tirith could not go more than a few months without thinking of him. 

Eventually (by the intervention of Nienna’s great and encompassing mercy alone, he thought), she bored of his obvious lack of interest, and turned back to the other nearby dinner guests, several of whom appeared to be involved in a particularly cruel game of passing judgment on those who had the misfortune of being in their line of sight.

“You would think,” began Lady Melcien, “that after so long in our country she might begin to understand how to dress appropriately.” 

Faramir who had, for as much of the evening as he could manage, been avoiding so much as looking at her, was now forced to glance across the hall at Éowyn to see exactly what she had worn that had so offended the ladies of the court. What he found when he looked upon her was that he hadn’t the faintest clue, she looked to him as beautiful and queenly as ever. Her hair was not bound up in the complicated fashions of Minas Tirith, falling instead in tight ringlets over her shoulders and back, but that, he was certain, could not be offensive to anyone, even those looking to find offence. It could, then, be her gown, made of white wool, and largely unadorned save for gold trim at the hem and sleeves and humbler by far than the gowns worn by the other ladies present. It was, Faramir thought, a courtesy on her part: the gown, for its simplicity, only made her beauty more striking, and she glowed as no other could. 

The neckline of her dress was wide, and through her cascading curls the tops of her shoulders were visible, a level of distraction he could not contend with, made worse by her lack of a surcoat, meaning every curve and line of her body was evident. She turned, pushing more of her hair over one shoulder, exposing the taut, carved muscles of her back, revealing a strength he had long known was there but had never seen so clearly. He swallowed thickly, trying to clear the all-too-vivid memory of her words to him earlier that day. 

“Do you not agree, Lord Faramir?”

He blinked, looking back to the woman who had spoken, trying and failing to recall her name. 

“I confess that I have very few opinions on how the ambassador from Rohan chooses to dress,” he said, realising only latterly that it was an outright lie: he did very much have opinions on how she chose to dress, centred entirely around hoping he could see her wear that gown every day for the rest of his life. 

“Surely you must,” said the woman, who he had finally remembered was Lady Thurineth of Erynos in Lebennin. 

“It would be unfair of me,” he insisted, gesturing half-heartedly to his own simple green tunic, one that he had worn an unfashionably high number of times in the past ten years of his life. “I can hardly hold others to a standard that I do not expect of myself.”

“Oh but you are allowed to dress more humbly because you are so handsome,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm before turning back to Lady Melcien. “If she were perhaps a touch less homely it would no doubt be excusable, but of someone so plain-looking it can hardly be allowed.”

This, Faramir knew, was a sign of worse things than the apparent blindness of Lady Thurineth, it was a sign that he had not been as circumspect as he ought to have been. He had experienced these kinds of pointed remarks many years ago, when rumours had spread far and wide about his intention to marry. What he had learned then, through several unfortunate and embarrassing missteps, was that to react with anything beyond mild-mannered disinterest would be to provide ammunition to any who sought it.  

He was saved from having to work out a reasonably demure response by the arrival of the attendants to strike the tables and benches, allowing him to lose track entirely of the conversation. Instead, he watched as Éowyn was led by the young son of the Lord of the Pinnath Gellin away from their table, toward the closed balcony doors. Their progress was immediately halted by the arrival of Lady Berúthiel, who inserted herself into their path and began—it appeared from Faramir’s vantage point—to interrogate one of them, though which one he could not tell for certain. 

Without realising or inviting it, he was swept up into a conversation with Lord Forlong and Lady Goladiel, two people for whom he had very little sympathy at the best of times. They were concerned, it seemed, with some tariff or another that his father was preparing to levy, and were hoping to induce him to convince his father out of it. He listened, if only for the sake of maintaining a pretence of rationality, but he would have supported his father taxing the very air he breathed if he could have but a single moment to speak with Éowyn. 

For no less than ten ages of Men he was subjected to a mortifying inquisition at the hands of Forlong and Goladiel, neither deigning to realise that they had never secured his attention in the first place, and instead electing to subject him to a dreadfully boring recitation of statistics and figures he was already well aware of. Worse still, Forlong underscored his own incompetence by repeatedly referencing an import revenue rate that had not been accurate in at least half a decade—something he would have known had he bothered to read the reports issued by the secretary of the Steward. Twice Faramir corrected him before giving up entirely and lapsing back into nodding absently at moments that felt vaguely appropriate. 

Across the hall, Éowyn had been strong-armed into a conversation with Berúthiel, Lord Astron, and Lord Dregaron, and to his eyes she fared no better than he. He watched, with no lack of affection, as she stared listlessly out into the distance, apparently content to let the entire conversation pass her by. Even distracted she looked breathtaking, and his thoughts began to drift toward a poem he had once uncovered, scribbled in the very back of a book, in short, clipped Tengwar. The words, echoing ceaselessly in his mind in the Quenya in which they had originally been written, now seemed woefully incapable of describing the soaring heights of his love for her.

He forced himself to return to his conversation, grasping the ends of Goladiel’s firm assertion that an increase in the tariff would necessitate a reduction in the amount of resources sent to Minas Tirith to support the Army. What she failed to disclaim, and what Faramir knew all too well, was that Anfalas’ lord did not send support for the Army anyways, so the tariff could hardly trigger a loss in support, given that there was none to begin with. Still, it sounded as if she had practiced her thinly-veiled threat, and Faramir felt somewhat charitable, so he allowed her to continue unhindered, registering only the peaks and troughs in her tone. 

His heart thudded so forcefully he thought it a miracle it had not beat out of his chest entirely. Were it not for the twenty long years of practice in controlling his emotions, he was sure he would have been bouncing out of his skin. Instead, his movements grew tighter, shorter, and better planned. He sipped his wine, he nodded at Goladiel, then he cast his gaze out across the crowd. He looked first at the far corner of the room, then the centre where his father held court, then, only after some time, back towards the balcony door where Éowyn had been trapped. 

When he saw that she was looking at him, that her face bore an expression that profoundly resembled the acute boredom he felt, his resolve crumbled. 

“My lord, my lady, I have regrettably been called away. I will give your concerns due consideration,” he said, immediately turning tail and carving his way through Merethrond. If they were offended at his abruptness, it would be a problem for another day, or, hopefully, another person.

As he walked, several people attempted to catch his eye, but he paid them no mind. Fire coursed through his veins, scorching his soul, and there was but one thing he could do to soothe the burn, one person he could speak to. 

In front of Berúthiel, Astron, and Lord Dregaron, he proffered only the most cursory of bows before turning to Éowyn and announcing that the flower arrangement she had been interested in had finally been displayed in the window box on the far balcony, and that he would be happy to show her them. 

Unfazed, she smiled at him (and his heart faltered), thanking him for thinking of her. Excusing herself far more gracefully from her conversation, she tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, enthusiastically tugging him away. It was only when they had reached the doors of the balcony that he remembered that not only was it midwinter, but that there had never been window boxes on Merethrond’s balconies. Nevertheless, he pulled open the door, breath suspended in his lungs until they stepped outside. 

“Will you not be cold?” Éowyn asked, voice a rough whisper against the chilled night air. 

He blinked, looking at her exposed shoulders and wondering when he had become so frightfully stupid. 

“I’m sorry—I was over eager to get away from my conversation—we can of course return to the warmth,” he said, eyes following her as she walked away from him, towards the far end of the balcony. 

Under the silver moonlight, she seemed to glow as if lit from within, the white of her dress transcending cloth and thread and becoming a celestial body of its own, wrapping her up as if she had fallen from the limitless firmament to bless the humble land below. 

“I asked if you would be cold, I know I will not be,” she said indignantly, and he followed her, leaving behind the light of the hall and stepping forward into the darkness of the evening. 

“I,” he said, leaning against the balustrade, if only to give himself a veneer of poise, “am used to far harsher conditions without anyone half so praiseworthy as you to induce me to endure them.” 

She looked up at him, grey-blue eyes wide, cheeks flushed by the brisk wind, lips slightly parted. Not since Beren laid eyes on Lúthien had any man seen such a perfect sight. 

Then she looked away, reaching up to brush hair away from her forehead. “I received an unexpected lesson in history from Lady Berúthiel while you were away.”

“Did you indeed? Now I find myself offended, for I thought I had won the exclusive right to bore you.”

“You could never bore me,” she said quickly, then looked startled at her own speech. “Or rather, you could, and certainly you have, but do not misunderstand me, I will always welcome what words you have for me, whereas I would sooner welcome a public lashing to ever again being on the receiving end of one of Berúthiel’s lectures.”

He laughed, and fought hard to not allow his hopes to swell at the kindness of her words. “Dull, but not so dull as to be less preferable than punishment is, I think, praise I might be content to accept.” 

“You deserve higher praise than that,” she said sternly. “Though I must postpone a great ceremony of praise-giving until after I have told you of my lesson, for I fear it has greatly troubled me.”

He folded his arms across his chest, grateful for what little warmth they provided. She was, as ever, correct, and he was not well suited to the cold, but he had made his commitment and would not be forsworn (nor would he allow her to claim that particular victory over him, but that was a much lesser consideration). She glanced back at him, and there was a lightness in her eye that indicated that she likely knew she had been correct, but was showing him a tremendous amount of mercy by not drawing attention to it.

“She told me of the Kin-strife,” she began. “That Gondor suffered a great civil war after one of its Kings married a woman of the North, that the Gondorrim were so horrified by the intermixing of the lines of the North and the lines of Númenor that some were willing to go to war, even to kill their own kin, just to see his claim undermined. She told me that it would be unthinkable for any man of Gondor to marry a woman of the North if they did not wish to see discredit brought upon the Kingdom.”

Faramir closed his eyes, willing himself not to roll his eyes—evidently the story had concerned Éowyn enough for her to ask him about it (and on that, his heart rushed through a million thoughtless hopes that his brain could not tamp down on), and he did not wish to delegitimise her concerns, but it was characteristically artless interference from Berúthiel. 

“And in what context did she speak of it?”

She cast a sidelong glance at him. “She and some of the other ladies present for her tea afternoon were speaking, unaccountably, about your cousin Amrothos. Apparently he has been seen dallying with a woman of Dale.”

“Amrothos! Now that is not who I had expected to catch the attention of Berúthiel and her ilk. I heard some whisperings earlier but wrongly assumed they were referring to Erchirion.” He laughed, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Well, no doubt Amrothos has chosen well if the rumours are true, he is a diligent young man, and if it is true that he has set his sights on a woman of Dale, then I would be glad to hear of some late-blooming rebelliousness.” 

“Then it is true,” she said sharply, turning to face him. “It would be untenable for a man of Gondor to wed a woman of the North?”

“Untenable? No, not in centuries has that been a concern with any real weight, though there remains an element of roguishness to it,” he said, then, finding his courage at last, reached out to brush his fingers along her billowing skirts. “Not so different from insisting upon wearing gowns that offend the genteel ladies of the court, I think. If what the gossips say is true, then I would congratulate my cousin on his good sense.” 

With lightning speed, she caught his hand, not for a second breaking eye contact with him.

“And you? Would you have your proud folk say of you: ‘There goes a lord who tamed a woman of the North! Was there no woman of the race of Númenor to choose?’”

His whole body was thrumming with an anxiety he had not known himself capable of. It was as if he had been struck not by lightning, but by an entire thunderstorm, raging within him and blotting out all hope of seeing or thinking of anything but her. 

It had come to this—this wildly inappropriate moment, when neither of them could reasonably make an escape that would not put them in too-close quarters for an entire evening, unable to avoid the inevitable misery of a friendship ruined because his heart and his thoughts had conspired against him. He would have to speak, she would have to (quite rightly) send him away, and what came after that would be enjoyable for neither of them. 

“I would not,” he said, and her face fell. “For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. Once I thought of you as a flower of the valleys, fair and bright, ready to be plucked and placed in some delicate vase, kept from the harshness of the world. But now, I see that I was wrong; no, I would not have them say that I am a lord who tamed a woman of the North, for I have no desire to tame you nor make a prison of your bower. I would wed with the White Lady, if it be her will.” 

Éowyn’s eyes widened, and she seemed to sway against the bannister.

And then she kissed him.

Notes:

End Book I.

Chapter 19: Book II: Spring 3018

Soon, her fingers tangled in his hair, her tongue darting outwards, making exploratory sallies, stroking his. This was not a gentle, courtly kiss, it was desperate, pleading, and he seemed only too happy to concede to her demands.

He tasted to her as sweet as the first spring rain upon the blossoms of wildflowers, free and beautiful and alive. There was laughter, joyful laughter, clumsy laughter that made lips miss their mark, made hands quiver against cheeks, and breath come in gasps. Beneath her fingers, he was warm, and that wiry strength that she had for so long been aware of but not understood held her to him, every point of contact between them searing her skin like the heat of a thousand fires.

There was a part of her that knew that nothing they were doing could possibly be excused. But there was a larger, more convincing part of her that felt every inch of his body against her, needier and more real than any of her dreams.

She pushed forward into him, confidently backing him against the balustrade, hearing a noise in the back of his throat when she at last pinned him to it. She felt the grasping of his fingers as they curled around her, dragging her hips against his, chasing the contact they both knew they should not. The thought and the feeling went straight to her head, warmth pooling low in her belly and in her limbs as she realised her desperation was mirrored by his, that he wanted her at least as much as she wanted him. 

He kissed the spot where her neck curved into her shoulder, and she inhaled sharply, hips canting forward into his, drawn by a blind desire for more, more, ever more. Bringing his hands up to cup her face, his thumbs stroked her cheeks, cheeks which burned despite the cold. His breath was hot against her face as he rested his forehead against hers, and for a moment, Éowyn forgot that she hated the silence.

“Were you truly upset by Berúthiel’s taunts?”

“No.” Then: “Yes.” Then: “I cannot be certain, it feels so silly now to think that I may have been, and perhaps I was not at all… but I believe I thought it inevitable that something might prevent this from becoming a reality, because I am so unused to getting that which I desire.” 

Faramir’s smile, at one moment dazzlingly bright, became something altogether more smug. “And what, exactly, did you desire?” 

The rough pad of his thumb dragged along her bottom lip, and her breath hitched, feeling as the air grew warm and swirled around them. She had lived this before, lived it many times before, in the dreams which she had fought so hard to push to the back of her thoughts, far away from anything that might influence her behaviour. She had lived this, and yet finding herself facing it beyond the safety of her dreams, she found herself completely unsure of what to do next. 

Her thoughts spun wildly, an implacable whirlwind of anxiety and self-doubt, the likes of which she had never before faced down. It occurred to her that while she did not consider herself entirely naive about the way of such things, that she had been but a teenager when last she had encountered a similar situation, and that not only was she not a teenager now, but her last encounter had been with someone barely old enough to qualify for the title of man, let alone someone more than a decade her senior who had demonstrably more experience in such realms than she. She could muddle her way through adolescent rutting in a stable, but she was quite clearly beyond that now—what would he think of her obvious inexperience? Would he interpret her hesitancy as a sign that she was uncomfortable with all that they had done? Might he believe her to be more prudish than she was—or felt?

Nervousness pounding in her head, she hazarded a glance up at Faramir. And then she laughed, her shoulders falling backwards and her head shaking at her own folly. “Oh, you, of course, surely I have made that clear.”

“You have,” he conceded, “but you must indulge me, for I have dreamt of this so often that I can scarcely believe it is real.”

She kissed him once more, stunned to be able to do so. “How long?” She ran her hand across his tunic, smoothing the creases. “How long, for you?”

“Since the very first moment I saw you.”

“What?” Her gasp then turned into a laugh. “Oh, I fear I came to this very late.”

“You are here now, I could ask for no more.”

“Yes, but think of all the time we have lost.”

“Time we have lost? Is the rest of our lives not time enough?”

Her heart fell. “How long might that be? Neither you nor I can say with any certainty.” 

“I can say with great certainty that I intend to see this war through, that we might then cross the River and there make a house, and a garden and a happier life.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Can you really believe that?” 

“I often dream of it—.” He frowned, raising his fingers to trace across the hollow of her throat. “Your pendant?” 

“Gone,” she whispered on instinct, before swiftly recollecting herself. “Gone, but it will be returned in time. Boromir is lending me his aid on that matter.”

“Boromir…?”

She chewed the inside of her cheek. It was not that she had no wish to tell him the full story, but that she had little interest in doing so when her mind was so thoroughly occupied with other things, like the small freckle she had spotted for the very first time on the side of his neck, or the way she could feel the muscles in her stomach flex through the layers of fabric that separated her hand from his skin. 

“Éowyn?”

She looked up, and saw in the glint in his eyes that he knew exactly what had caused her silence.

“A story for another time, I think. Anyway, you promised me a more thorough examination than what you were able to provide in the garden this afternoon. I do very much worry what injuries I might have acquired that I cannot see from my vantage point.”

He stiffened, then cleared his throat. “I don’t believe I made any such promises.”

“Ah,” she said, then smiled wolfishly. “It must have been wishful thinking on my behalf.” 

His eyes widened, and she laughed, leaning in to steal another kiss and letting her pride roar to life at the low, contented sound he made in the back of his throat. 

This, she thought, this was what happiness felt like. For so long it had been a great, intangible unknown in her life, something sung of by minstrels or recited by the poets, but never so real to her as it was now. And how wrong the songs and poems had been to focus on the breathless perfection of it: this was imperfect, it was fingers snagging awkwardly in hair, teeth catch skin they should not, breaths half-caught and then promptly lost, all enveloped by heady, giddy laughter. No, there was nothing perfect about this, yet it was for its imperfection that it mattered most.

With a gasp, she pulled gently back from him, fingers still clutching his hair, holding him to her as she fought to recover her own breath. He pressed forward, trailing light, teasing kisses across her jaw, raising a hand to brush away hair to give clearance to continue down the line of her neck, fingers tracing the skin of her exposed shoulder. She could hear her own breath, ragged and uncontrolled as he escorted her down each perfect step on her descent into madness. Through her rushing lightheadedness, she could think of nothing but him and how blindingly she loved him. 

But when the balcony doors banged open, she found herself blinded by something else entirely as the bright light of the hall flooded into her eyes. He jumped back from her with the sort of speed she could not possibly have conjured the grace for, while she spun around, placing her hands firmly on the bannister, scouring her thoughts for a safety line.

“You said it was King Tarondor who replaced Osgiliath with Minas Anor?” Her voice was crisp and clear, betraying—she hoped—nothing about what she had just been doing.

Slowly, she turned, looking at the open doors and blinking as if she was noticing them for the first time. Raising a hand to her brow, she squinted into the light, then let her panic be replaced by reserved indignation.

“Lord Golasgil,” she said with feigned interest, hoping her cheeks were not as red as they felt warm. 

He nodded distractedly at her, then turned on Faramir—if he noticed anything amiss about either of them, he appeared willing to ignore it. “My lord,” he began with a delicate bow of his head, “I wondered if I might borrow you? There is a matter of some… economic importance that I wished to discuss with you.”

Faramir's face had returned to its carefully constructed mask, and Éowyn realised that it was very probable that had she not been intimately aware of what he had just been doing, there was nothing in his demeanour to give it away. For the first time in her life, she had become the weak link in her own secrecy, and her heart rejoiced at it. 

“I believe your lady wife and daughter have also presented your case to me this evening, but I should be interested to hear if there are any revisions since I last heard it,” said Faramir slowly. Éowyn arched an eyebrow at his frostiness—even she would have been more coy about her disinterest than that. “Lady Éowyn, I beg your pardon for leaving so abruptly.”

She made a good show of raising her hand in dismissal. “Think nothing of it, my lord, the defence of the realm of the present is far more important than the history of the realm of the past.”

Fleetingly, he looked ready to argue with her, but when her lips twitched upwards in a smile, she swore she could almost see him mentally heave a sigh of defeat before following Golasgil out of the balcony. For the first time in her life, being left alone, in the dark watches of the night, her life did not feel quite so much a prison. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The next weeks were spent in as close to happiness as Éowyn had ever known. Her daytimes, workload no less for the glow of joy that emanated from her, were still the purview of Ciriel’s infirmary, where each hour brought new and more frustrating miseries. More often than not, her hours were passed in the overwhelming haze of men’s agonised shouts, the eye-watering stench of garlic and goosegrass and peppermint, the feeling of hot, soiled blood spilling over her hands. She came to better know the tempo of life in the lower circles of the City, and in turn, it felt as if the lower circles of the City came to know her. With greater (though not common) frequency, familiar faces would stand astride the bustling crowds to proffer her a knowing salute, eyes bright with recognition—if not trust. There was evidence that her work had some effect, though even that knowledge brought her no succour, for she still could not shake the feeling that she had been relegated to this task, forced into grim conditions that she would not have had she had the good fortune to have been born a man. 

Her evenings, those were entirely different, and entirely better. She would return from the second circle in the late afternoon to quickly go through the motions of appropriate socialising, spending some time with Sedril, or seeing to the interests of the various Lords of the Riddermark who made entreaties of her, and she would wait for the fall of dark. When at last the sun disappeared in the sky, she would unlock the door leading from her front room to the terrace garden, and she would set her excited hands to whatever small tasks they could manage while her thoughts whirled away from her. 

Some time thereafter (usually too much time later for her liking) Faramir, with impeccable politeness for someone so openly partaking in something they both knew was not exactly mannerly, would slip through the door, fresh from a long day testing and exhausting the new Ranger recruits in the military complex in the fourth circle. Then, behaving as if they had been married for years, instead of just weeks into their open love for one another, they would share every detail of their days, each listening to the other as if every pause and filler word was a work of art of inestimable value. 

Occasionally, he would talk to her about the future, a topic she had never in her life thought to seriously broach. At first, his talk was purely practical; after earning consent from both her uncle and his father, there would be a year long betrothal (she had been aghast at the thought of waiting a full year), then a wedding (or two, her grandmother and grandfather had been married once in Gondor, then had another in the Mark upon their return), and a bridal tour (Dol Amroth, she suggested; Lebennin, he suggested, far from the water). There were the darker aspects of this burgeoning agreement of theirs that lingered at the edges of their conversations: how she would secure her uncle’s consent; how quickly the legitimacy of her ambassadorship would collapse once they announced their betrothal; how they would reconcile competing traditions (she blanched at the Gondorrim notion of having parts of her bridal gown torn from her, he at the apparent indignity of the Rohir bedding ceremony). Solving these problems, they agreed swiftly, would be postponed until after they cleared their first and greatest hurdle: consent. 

In time, he strayed from the practical to the wistful. She noticed that he was careful to never say the words ‘after the war’, and so she never chided him for it, but he seemed to labour under the belief that, at some indeterminate point in the future, they would make their home in Ithilien. His brother was formally the Lord of Emyn Arnen, but it was a title that had existed without an estate for more than a century, and Faramir believed it unlikely he would ever rebuild the manor from which the title derived its name. They, then, might take up in Central Ithilien, claiming the ancestral right to settlement that was afforded to the families of the refugees and Rangers of Ithilien—there was no formal declaration of this settlement, but it represented a rare moment of unity between the Lord Steward and his sons (or, rare on Faramir’s behalf), that the land should go first to those descendants of the Númenórean faithful who had been forced to abdicate it by the Enemy’s return to Mordor. 

When he spoke of what their life might be like there, he spoke with such breathless optimism she hardly knew whether to be amazed or to laugh at him outright. He was, she knew, as prone to pessimism about the course of the war as she was, yet on this he was unerringly stubborn in his insistence that one day Ithilien would be theirs to live in. She laughed when he told her of his desire to have a house with a garden and children running merrily through its corridors, Ithilien and their family a stark contrast to the barren confines he had known both to be for so long. She did not think him a fool, necessarily, for dreaming as he did, but it struck a discordant note in her when she was not laughing, his words left her with the nagging feeling that he was failing to take either the war or their future seriously, and she found herself unable to decide which worried her more. 

Nonetheless, they had exhausted those topics—or, more commonly, when they had hit upon something that reminded one or the other of their excited, blossoming romance—they occupied themselves in other ways. In this, though undoubtedly the more inexperienced of the two, Éowyn found herself the more eager to push through the boundary of their already-shattered respect for modesty. She was unsurprised, though no less frustrated for having expected it, to find that Faramir put up considerable resistance: when she would slide into his lap, he would rest his hands firmly only her hips, allowing her to move no further forward than the middle of his thighs; when she would tug at the ties of his shirt, he would lace their fingers together, stymieing her progress. They never spoke of it, not openly, but the frustration thrummed within her. 

Her nights, after he slipped back out into the garden, leaving her alone in the quiet dark, pushed her thoughts and her dreams to oscillate wildly between the lovestruck and the terrified, often a nauseated amalgam of both. Some nights, she dreamt of Gríma, seeing his footsteps behind her door, hearing the distant swishing of his shoes as they paced circles, moving ever close to where she lay helpless in her bed. Other nights, she dreamt with reckless abandon of release the frustration built up within her in her stolen evenings with Faramir, imagining herself at last breaking his resolve and winning that which she had never experienced but now desired so greatly. She had become no stranger to the nighttime sentiment that while she dallied in bliss, cooped up in the strange safety of the White City, her uncle and King languished in misery, left to suffer ignominy because she had been too selfish to rescue him. 

The Shadow in the East cloaked her in unshakeable fear, so much so that even when she shook herself awake from her nightmares, she was unable to push back the terrors that clung to her. She slept fewer hours, and spent most of her nights wandering the ramparts of the Citadel, memorising the curves and recesses of Minas Tirith from her perch high above the world, her starry mantle her only companion. Most nights, she saw none bar the Citadel Guard, who had all largely appeared to make their peace with her wanderings, leaving her undisturbed as she followed her own patrol of the high prow of the City. 

In the few moments her heart could tolerate it, she would look out at Ithilien, shimmering white and deep green under the moon’s light. Her thoughts then were more disorganised than ever before, made all the worse by her having never seen it except from the far banks of the Anduin. It had, for so long, represented the most overt expression of the war to her, a near-silent battlefield that, from a distance, hid the horrors she knew happened within. But Faramir’s promises had begun to complicate how she thought of it, she was not, perhaps, ready to accept it as her future home, the whirling tangle of emotions evoked by it still tended towards the negative, but she began to wonder more about it, what it might be like if the unthinkable happened and there was a world for all them beyond this. Not for a lack of imagination, she could not fathom what that world might be like, she had dwelt in the shadow of the war all her years, there was, she was certain, no life for her beyond it, no matter how poetical Faramir’s words were. 

That day, she had met the daughter of a man who had fought and died with the Rangers, compelled by love for a land he had not known until he had stepped foot upon it as a soldier. His daughter, who had never known it at all, spoke with effusive love for it, describing the rolling hills and verdant pastures of her grandfather’s memories as if they were her own. The woman had no hope of her family ever returning to it, yet it featured prominently in her conception of herself, as if it existed, somehow, apart from time. It was a thought that worried Éowyn, she could not have a home and raise a family in a land that was not real, and she hardly knew Gondor well enough to say where else they might go, where she might live while Faramir maintained his captaincy—and how she might begin to give up her home in the Riddermark.

It had, of course, not been her home for many years, and though she was nostalgic for Edoras she could not truthfully say that that had ever been her home either. She had lived a nomadic lifestyle, uprooted from Aldburg under the shadow of death, removed to Edoras where she had spent a few happy years, before those two were stolen from her by Wormtongue’s contrivances, and when she had finally struck a new bargain with her life, she had been once more sent away, sent to a foreign Kingdom with nothing but her own thoughts for company. Still, she owed a debt of gratitude and of duty to her King and her uncle, and though she loved Faramir more than any words she knew could express (and she knew a great many more words now than she did just two years ago), she felt relentless guilt at the thought of leaving the Riddermark.  

But the bitter reaches of her mind told her that, no matter how hard she fought it, she had left the Mark long ago, and that it had left her many, many years before that. It was an unsettling thought because it left her emotionally and spiritually homeless—if she was not of the Mark, and she certainly was not of Gondor, then there was nowhere in Arda for her. She had found happiness, that much was true, but for that happiness, she was unchanged. She was a wanderer, lost within a twisted and savage wood, neither a pathway nor a light to guide her steps. She could allay the feeling temporarily, with busy hands and a busier mind, and so she set to it, parcelling her time up and gifting it away until there was naught left for the silence and the dark; as long as she maintained her pace, her mind would be safe. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

“Hearing their mindless babble all afternoon was utterly dreadful—to think that it nearly made me long for the days when I was the target of their ire, just so that I might hearing something interesting!” Éowyn groaned as she collapsed into her settee, leaving Faramir to shut the garden door. “Lord Dúrbethir and Lady Gelwen have begun a liaison, and it is apparently the most pressing news of our day. I wasn’t even aware there was a Lord Dúrbethir!” 

He laughed at her indignation, then sat beside her, kissing her temple in somewhat-delayed greeting; he had been delayed for their usual appointment that evening by an especially frustrating exercise for the Ranger recruits. 

“They were caught liaising, so to speak, behind a market stall by Lord Mesgrîn, which, naturally, triggered an equally interminable conversation about whether his brother, Lord Caladol, would be marrying Lady Mílien. Why it should matter I do not know.” She sighed exaggeratedly, but accepted the cup from him with a genuine smile. 

“It matters to them,” he began, taking her hand in his and tracing the lines on her palm, “for Lord Caladol and Lord Mesgrîn’s line traces back to the earliest settlements of Mornan—the vale from whence Lady Mílien hails. Were Mílien and Caladol to marry and produce a son, he would be the heir to sizable swathes of land across Mornan and Imloth Melui, giving Caladol—and Mesgrîn by extension—control of the trading capacities of three of the rivers south of the Ered Nimrais. That, in turn, would enable them to consolidate their power amongst the vassal lords of two of the more prosperous fiefs, entitling them to access to far greater troves of wealth and influence. For Mesgrîn this is especially important—there is hardly a soul in Minas Tirith who does not know of his ongoing affair with Lady Melcien, and it would be foolish to leave himself open to the wrath of the Lord of Anfalas, who has been judicious with his investments despite the relative poverty of his realm.” 

“I am surprised, my lord, it sounds to me as though you have a very shrewd understanding of the petty politics of the Kingdom, despite your professions that you care little for such intrigues.”

“Oh, I do care very little for them,” he said, kissing her hand. She watched him with a blazing intensity, her lips parting slightly when his touched her skin. “But there is a vast gulf between feeling apathy towards something and not understanding it. It matters little to me who holds influence in which realms—I will never hold a political office in this Kingdom, so their manoeuvrings concern me very little, but it would be impossible, being of the house that I am, to not absorb some of it.”

She hummed in acknowledgement, and he kissed her wrist, watching with a hint of giddiness as her blush deepened. 

“It is—was—very much simpler in Edoras,” she said, looking momentarily mournful. “My uncle’s power was such that the need for any political subversion was allayed before it arose; I cannot imagine such a complex tangle having any connection to Meduseld.”

“It is our greatest fault. There are none who can say for certain what led to the rise of such underhandedness, and no doubt many would be eager to lay the blame at the feet of the Enemy, but for my part I believe it was the self-centred idleness of those who were entrusted to rule. They could not—or would not—busy themselves with the preservation of the realm for the ages, and instead chose the cheap and facile diversions of gossip-laden politics.” 

She laughed and he traced nonsense patterns on the soft skin of her hand. “Now tell me how you really feel, for I worry you have not quite been clear enough.” 

“There have been other things I believed myself to be very explicit about that have passed you by entirely, so you will have to forgive me for my overemphasis,” he teased, then kissed her palm. 

Her eyes widened, and he saw her swallow hard, then look away. 

“Other things?”

He pushed the sleeve of her gown up to kiss the inside of her wrist. “Nearly two years, my love.” 

“Oh,” she whispered, and he could see her breath coming laboriously as he continued his way up her arm. She really was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. 

When their lips met, there was a desperation that had not been there before. Her hands tangled in his hair, but, finding her work quickly frustrated, she rose to her knees on the sofa, pulling loose the thin leather tie. Tugging lightly on his now-freed hair, she tilted his head backwards so she could kiss him more deeply, and gladly he followed her lead.

She wobbled on her knees, and (with only the most noble of intentions, he assured himself) he steadied her with his hands around her waist. Already it was so much more than they ought to have done, so much more than any man of good sense would have allowed himself to do. He swore that he would not move a muscle that he was not certain she was willing to see moved, he would not do anything that she might interpret as him demanding more of her than she was comfortable with. But that oath mattered not one whit: for it was she who planted her hands on his shoulders and pushed him against the back of the sofa, she who lifted herself into his lap, and she who began to nip and suck her way down the column of his throat.

When she’d pushed him back into the sofa, all capacity for rational thought had fled his mind, until she’d lowered herself into his lap, and panic had filled him instantly. He could and would be able to control himself, that was never in question, but he could not always master his body’s physical responses, and to have her straddling him, her tongue hot in his mouth and her hands running relentlessly over his chest risked triggering every one of his unstoppable physical responses at once. 

And yet, when she settled herself fully into his lap and came into direct contact with the most glaring evidence of his loss of self control, she let out a soft gasp. Her eyes fluttered shut, golden eyelashes fanning out across her reddened cheeks, and she dragged herself over him again, matching the tiny rocking motions he could not stifle. 

“You are a soldier,” she said, her voice so dangerously husky it took his delirious mind a moment to process what she had said to him, then a moment longer to understand the implication of her words. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. 

“I am,” he said, hoping he had masked the disappointment in his voice. “And if you are not willing to condemn yourself to the fate of being a soldier’s wife, then I would not begrudge you that choice.”

“I do not want to be a soldier’s wife,” she said gravely. “I want to be your wife.” 

For that, he kissed her recklessly, until he thought his heart might beat out of his chest (if there were any blood left in his upper body). 

After a few moments, she leaned backwards in his arms, her face flushed and her lips rubbed red. It was a sight that threatened to undo him, a sight he should not have seen until their wedding night, if he were a better, more respectable man. 

“You will soon return to your posting,” she gasped out.

“I have several weeks yet,” he corrected, tucking a loose ringlet behind her ear. 

She sighed and frowned at him. 

“You will soon return to your posting,” she repeated, with an edge to her voice that was not there before. “A posting that none would deny comes with substantial risk to life and limb.”

“Yes,” he whispered, leaning forward to kiss her softly, bringing his hand up to caress her cheek.

When she spoke next, her voice was quiet. “In the Mark, there is a saying concerning the foolishness of shutting the stable door after a horse has already bolted. There is also an understanding that, where young women and soldiers and dangerous postings are concerned, there are a great many bolting horses. We are a practical people, as you well know, and have accepted that some horses are simply not meant to be forced back into a stable.”

He went stock still, scared that moving even a muscle would shatter whatever perfect dream he had somehow stumbled into. 

“It appears to me that the stable door is wide open,” she whispered into his ear. 

With those words, he saw his life flash before his eyes. And what a happy, happy life it would be. 

Turning his head to catch her in a kiss, he teased apart her lips with his tongue. He clutched her body to his, and the closeness he felt, the implicit strength, built a fire deep within him, blazing through his limbs, spurring him on. In an instant, the entire world went up in flames. 

“Éowyn,” he choked out, the last vestiges of his dignity going with it. “Éowyn, I—.”

“—think too much,” she muttered grumpily before hooking her finger under his chin and tilting his face up to look at him. “Tell me, what do you see of my mind now?” 

It was a moment of terrifying revelation for him; her emotions, which had for so long been an unnavigable tangle to him, were now clearer to him than the features of her face. Each thread ran bright and true: the blue-black of sorrow, the gleaming yellow of joy, the deep purple of nervousness and yes, there, clearer than the rest, was the blazing red of her desire. 

He looked at her, and saw in her eyes that gentle curiousness that set his heart aflame. He dragged his thumb across her bottom lip, mesmerised by the contrast between the softness of her skin and the hardness of her gaze. Her hands moved to the fastenings of his surcoat, sloppily pushing it off his shoulders before coming up to tear at the ties of his shirt.

“Éowyn,” he began, before she groaned and dramatically let her hands fall from his throat. 

“How clearly must I say it? I care for you, I care very much to marry you, but I do not now nor have I ever cared about my virtue. Will you take me to bed or must I leave now and see to my own needs?” 

Vividly, too vividly, his mind painted a picture of what, exactly, it might look like for her to see to her own needs. His mouth went dry. 

“I was going to suggest that I actually take you to bed,” he said, blinking through the distraction. “Though it warms my heart to know that you still believe me capable of some level of civil behaviour, even as my mind is now consumed by my desperation to feel and taste every inch of you.” 

“Oh,” she breathed. Her eyes glazed over, her hand idly coming up to her lips, index finger running delicately across them. Then, the haze cleared from her eyes, and she pulled herself out of his lap with impressive agility, smoothing out her gown and her hair as if that might make her look less debauched. 

He stood too, and let her take his hand, following her to her bedchamber, praying and hoping against hope that if this was truly a dream, he would not wake from it for a while yet. 

Inside, he turned her around, pushing her hair over her shoulder to expose the lacing of her gown. Carefully, he untied and loosened it, bringing his hands back to the neck of the gown to push it from her shoulders, then down her arms and waist, past her hips, letting it billow to the floor at her feet. Only a sliver of skin was exposed now that was not before, and he leaned forward to kiss it, tongue tracing the freckle that sat at the crook of her neck. 

She turned to face him, brushing loose hair back from his forehead while he reached down for the hem of her shift. He inched it up over her thighs, the muscles there tensing as she steadied herself. The sheer fabric rustled as he dragged it higher, his heart beating faster when the triangle of coarse, golden curls was revealed, followed by the gentle curve of her belly, the hard lines in her abdomen, honed by many long hours of training. His cock twitched painfully against the now-constricting fabric of his breeches when he at last saw her breasts, small and firm and lightly dusted with a constellation of freckles. He let the shift drop unceremoniously to the floor, more concerned with kissing her deeply and running his hands over her body for the very first time. 

She lowered herself onto the bed, pushing herself far enough backwards that she could recline fully on it, and for a moment he swore he lost consciousness. 

“Valinor lacks its full perfection only for lacking you,” he whispered, closing his eyes in a final attempt to recompose himself. 

When he opened his eyes, the world seemed to slow around him, each sensation growing more potent, each sight more fantastical, each sound more desperate until she was the only thing left that made any sense. 

There was the miracle of her stretched out before him, watching with a hungry intent that no high-born Gondorrim lady would dare show. The puckered pink skin of her nipple, teased to a peak in his mouth. The softness of the skin of her back as he held her close, her head thrown backwards against the bed as he mapped her body first with his fingers, then with his tongue. The sound of her pleasure, at first quiet, almost-nervous whimpers, evolving into louder, self-assured moans. 

Then the feeling of wetness dripping from her, across his lips and between his fingers, its brackish taste intoxicating on his tongue. The latent strength of her thighs as they trembled around his head. The nigh-on unbearable warmth as he slipped first one finger, then another into her, and the way she hoarsely cried his name as she shook apart. 

Later, there was the reverential way she pulled his shirt off him, the slight quiver in her fingers as she picked apart the laces of his breeches. Then the surprised and aroused look in her eyes as he laid back against the pillows and helped her settle astride him. The feeling of indescribable need that surged through him as her yielding, wet warmth enveloped him; tight but pliant from her previous climax. 

The way her nails dug into the skin of his chest as she grew more confident. The way she whispered words in her own language he could not yet understand as he worked languid circles around her core. The feeling of her tongue exploring his mouth as his hands explored her body. How she let his name fall, broken, into his ear as he thrust up into her, and how she pleaded with him for more as he buried himself completely with every stroke. 

The trembling breaths that preceded her second fall, her fingers twining with his, messily, needily. The pink flush that spread across her cheeks and chest, how she clutched at the back of his head, holding his lips to her breast. Then the slow, tremulous cresting when she came again, her mouth falling open in a silent scream, her hands tensing where they held him, lighting a blazing fire within him as she fell apart so gloriously. 

She slumped forward against his chest, and he could wait no more: he rolled her onto her back and drove into her, overcome. In turn, she held his face in her hands, and he saw the need there, felt the waves of her desire pulsing through her thoughts. Oh, he was a blessed man that this should be real, that this could truly be his life. 

Heady euphoria coursed through him, blinding and deafening him to everything except the feeling of being buried to the hilt within her, the way she watched him with wide-eyed wonderment. He allowed himself one final slow, deep thrust into her miraculous heat, memorising the sensation. Then he slipped from within her, and with a wanton, animalistic sob of her name, the light took him. 

He shuddered and gasped, painting streaks of pearl across her stomach and his, hips jerking forward until he collapsed onto the bed, incapable of coherent thought. 

For several minutes he could do nothing more sophisticated than breathe heavily, trembling as the enormity of what they had just done settled around him. The image of her coming apart completely under his mouth and fingers was burned into the backs of his eyelids, and the quiet, shattered sound of her moans rang in his ears. 

Slowly, the small part of his brain that was still capable of rational thought returned to action, sending him in search of something to clean up the mess. Settling for the shirt he had just discarded, he drowsily wiped at her stomach, swallowing hard at the sight. It was a sight that would, he was certain, take a starring role in his dreams for the rest of his life.

He fell gracelessly back into the pillows and she slumped against him. And for many minutes after that, he could do naught but lazily run his hands across the warm expanse of her back, marvelling that he was able to do so at all. In turn, she grazed her fingers through the hair on his chest, dotting kisses here and there. 

This, he thought, was a moment he wanted to live in forever. The war, his responsibilities, none of it mattered, there was nothing in his world beyond her.

“I will love you until the seas run dry and the rocks melt with the morning sun,” he murmured, and closed his eyes.

Notes:

• Thieving openly from Rabbie Burns and Dante there, sorry for being lazy lol.
• You might have noticed that the total chapter count has changed significantly. It’s because I lack self control. Thanks to Kim for the brilliant idea re: [redacted for spoilers] that spurred on the massive expansion of the plot lmao
• Also yeah sorry this is absolutely a Saturday night, but, outside of having no self control, I'm also in the process of moving house/country, so updates will likely be as-and-when until the third or so week of August. 🐻 with me.
• btw unironic advice for PIV-sex-havers: Using a variation of cowgirl is much easier for awkward first times!! Lowers the mortifying oh-my-god-this-is-chafing potential of missionary. Go forth and shag well 🙏

Chapter 20: Book II: Spring 3018

Éowyn, who had been lying on her stomach watching Faramir read for some time, and had become both impatient and desirous of his attention, ran her fingers down the bare (and now tensed) skin of his chest. “You Gondorrim are so hypocritical.”

“So you have said,” Faramir said mildly, turning a page.

“I am serious.” 

“I have no doubt that you are,” he said, then sighed and set his book aside. “Tell me then, why it is that we are hypocritical.”

“It is very strange, I should think, that your people would find fault in my people for being descendants of the far north, while you yourselves are the second half of a kingdom that once included the vast majority of the far north.”

His eyes lit up, and she knew at once that she had succeeded at stealing back his attention. “It would be very strange, were the complaint one of mere geography, but it is far more complex than that. In the First Age, after Men awoke in Hildorien, they began their pilgrimage to the West, moving across Arda slowly but surely. Many crossed the Ered Luin in the far north and west, and settled in Númenor, where they aided in the war against Morgoth. But many did not, and they settled and remained in Rhovanion, choosing not to seek out the light of the West, and instead remaining nonaligned in the struggle against the purest of evils—though in time many of their Kingdom became true friends to Gondor, and later, as you well know, settled and became the great Kingdom of Rohan.” At this, he leaned forward and kissed her exposed shoulder, several soft, small kisses that raised goosebumps along her arms. “It is a matter of moral fortitude, those who went West did so at terrible personal expense, and persevered in pursuit of greater righteousness. Those who did not adopted a position of moral neutrality, one whose effects reverberate to the present day.”

Éowyn frowned. “How can you hold to that? My people have fought long and hard against the Enemy, and have made sacrifices as great and terrible as your people!”

“Peace, my love,” he said. “Not for a moment do I doubt the steadfastness of your people’s allegiance to our common cause, but there are those who might, or who might make reference to that history which divides us, and it is better that you should know it from someone who does not hold fast to it.” He carded his fingers through her hair. “And I would caution you further against characterising Gondor as the second half to the Northern Kingdom, for Gondor has more faithfully upheld the traditions of our forefathers through longevity and resilience, while the Northern Kingdom crumbled and faded. Arnor—or what little might exist of it beyond the whisperings of legend—failed to keep the memory and love of Númenor strong in Arda, and through its refusal to adapt to its circumstances, withered. Gondor, meanwhile, bore some of the good sense of the Númenórean faithful and retained, in part, its strength through all these many centuries. If we now fall short of that great heritage from whence we were delivered, then at least we have maintained strength enough to one day return to that glorious light; there may never be such a path for the Northern Kingdom.”

He folded the covers further down, drawing nonsense patterns in the small of her back. “In Gondor, we do not view the Northern Kingdom as the second half to some greater whole of which we are but a constituent part; we are the greater whole, if the Men of Númenor can yet claim descendants in Arda—and it would be wrong to say that they could not—then it is the Men of Gondor who own that claim, not the scattered remnants of Arnor. What continuity exists, exists here in this City.” 

“Do you know,” she began, “I used to feign illness when my tutors wanted to discuss the history of our people. I found it so tedious that I preferred to confine myself to my bed, but here I am now, listening to you tell me about things which are so distant to me I cannot imagine even my dullest tutors having attempted to thrust it upon me, and yet, unaccountably, I find myself interested in what you have to say.” She laughed again. “I beg of you, do not take advantage of that, I could not bear to have strong opinions on even half the things you profess to care about.” 

“We’ll see,” he murmured. “We might make a lore master of you yet.” He leaned over her, kissing first across her shoulder, then down the length of her spine, sending licks of flame through her body, making her heart pound in her head. 

She had never thought much about her body, except for how her arms could be used to block, her shoulders to swing, her thighs to jump, and her toes to dodge. Beyond that, her body meant nothing to her, she neither hated it nor loved it, nor thought much about it. It simply was, and as long as it did not betray her, that was enough. 

But Faramir made her think about her body, think in ways she had never done before. He stretched her out across the bed, tracing the lines of her body, asking her about her myriad scars as if she were some great sculpture whose every mark needed cataloguing and preserving. He ran his finger along the lines of her stomach, telling her jokes to make her laugh so he could uncover new ones. He kissed the scar on her knee that she had earned after jumping off the roof of the royal stables when she was eight. 

He told her that the lines and ripples in her arms were beautiful, that he loved the divots in her back wrought by many hard hours of training. When she reminded him that his body looked the same, he told her his was from necessity, not choice, that hers was proof that she loved nobody’s expectations but her own. She found she had nothing to say to that, so let her voice return to soft sighs as he kissed the highest point of her shoulders, the short hairs of his beard tickling her sensitive skin. 

She had never thought about those sensations before, how a scratching feeling across her skin could make her breath come heavily in her chest, how watching someone else watch her could make her pulse thrum throughout her body. 

There was a long, white scar that traversed her back, from the bottom of her left shoulder blade to the bottom of her right rib cage. He traced circles along it as she explained that she and Éomer had gone swimming in the Snowbourn and that she, fearing nothing, had dived from a tree, only for the branch she was standing on to whip back against her back as she leapt. Refusing to acknowledge that she had done anything wrong, she had continued to swim with an open wound until the blood in the water could no longer be ignored, by which point the flayed skin had pulled even looser. 

“How old were you?” he asked, kissing the very bottom of the scar. 

“Seventeen.” 

She felt the ghost of hot breath against her lower back as he laughed, then resumed following the curve of her spine, the swell of her hips, the creases at the tops of her thighs. 

Goosebumps flickered to life across her back as he moved his way back up, leaving the tiniest bite at the crook of her neck, making her laugh, then kissing away the almost-nonexistent sting. Raising his head, he looked at her with the same impish look she recognised from far too many of their arguments. He fancied himself as having found a winning strategy, something sharp and clever to drag him through to victory, some cut path through the bracken that he believed she had not seen. Normally, the look would have infuriated her, sent her mind scrambling for a preemptive defence. Now, with the comforting weight of him upon her, the look made her shudder with want. What would he find to do? How would he bring her her pleasure? Quickly and deftly, with her voice broken and hoarse? Or slowly and resolutely, whispering poetic words into her ears as she melted around him? 

It transpired, however, that there was a third option, an option she could never have expected.

He rolled her over so quickly she could do nothing but laugh, even as her hair became her own blindfold and gag. She felt every inch of flaming skin against the linens, then tasted, without any dignity, her own hair when it caught in her mouth as she laughed. 

Dutifully, he pulled her hair away from her face, grinning as she gracelessly clawed at it. When she could see once more, he counted the freckles along her chest and stomach, pressing featherlight kisses to each one, so gently and chastely she thought she might have imagined the feverish heat in the air just seconds ago. 

Propping himself up on his elbow, his fingers danced along her side, raising goosebumps as they went. He bowed his head, dark hair falling about and across her, almost as silken as his tongue against her breast, teasing, sucking, coaxing it to life with a scholar’s reverence. The dusky skin, shining for wetness, caught the cold of his breath as he blew gently across it, making her gasp into the quiet room. 

As he leaned across her to attend to the next one, her breaths grew ragged and heavy, a warm desire growing in her that filled her thoughts with only the promise of what was to come. It coiled within her, and she could feel her pulse thudding between her legs, hips rocking upwards, seeking contact that was not there. 

Hot tongue and soft lips working in glorious tandem, he carved his way down her body, ghosting over her hips, and stopping to nuzzle a kiss into the stretch of skin at the very tops of her thighs. He pressed another kiss to her hip, then looked up at her. His hair, mussed and falling in waves around his face, was the most beautiful she’d ever seen it. 

He closed his mouth over her, drenching her in liquid heat. His tongue was sinuous and searing, swirling around the soft skin at her core, and she cried out, hips driving forward of their own volition towards his mouth. In response, he dropped one hand against her stomach, and she felt every measure of his hand against her, felt the implicit strength that spoke to many years as a soldier, the gentleness of a poet, and the dedication of a man out to win a prize. All of that, concentrated solely on her. 

She had felt uncharacteristically self-conscious at the beginning; in the first instance, that very first night together, she had hand waved it away as a courtesy, a kindness he had bestowed upon her out of recognition of her relative inexperience and in pursuit of easing the path forward for them both. With each subsequent stolen night, where he would settle himself between her legs and slowly, methodically take her apart before even gesturing at going any further, she began to wonder if perhaps it was not just an act of (enjoyable) charity. One day, when they could not spare the evening for one another but clawed back a few minutes in the garden, he had backed her up against the farthest wall, disappeared under her skirts, and not reappeared until her knees had nearly given out beneath her. Soon, she began to notice how he watched her as she gasped and sighed and allowed herself to be swept away by the moment, how his face flushed when she cried out his name. It occurred to her, after some time, that perhaps he actually enjoyed it, and she, who had learned to never name her joys lest they be stolen from her, had accepted that hunch as good enough. 

And, she thought as he slid two long, clever fingers inside her, if this was what constituted good enough, then she truly had no complaints. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

“You seem in bright spirits this morning,” Boromir said, tossing her a practice sword.

Éowyn shook her head. “I am just heartened by the arrival of the sun, the cheer of spring’s coming is a thing we might all benefit from, I expect.” 

“Indeed,” said Boromir. “Let us hope that your good mood translates to a stronger performance this morning, for you, if I remember correctly, trail me for wins.” 

Her mouth fell open. “By whose count? Have you devised some fantastical new system of arithmetic in Gondor that is utterly divorced from reality?” 

The challenge thus set, Éowyn promptly fell entirely short of it. For all that her spirits were high, her ability to find an opening in Boromir’s defences, evidently, was not. Her frustration grew exponentially the longer they carried on and the more swiftly he dispatched with even her best-thought out attacks. She feinted left and dove right, he anticipated it and landed a humiliating blow to her undefended arm; she stayed low where she knew his reaction times were weakest, he learned—apparently instantly—how to retaliate swiftly; she, red-faced and indignant, chose to play dirtily and attempted to charge him, he simply lifted her up before dumping her unceremoniously into the dust, leaving her feeling like a foolish child.   

“Well, I am very sorry to see you lose so bitterly—.”

“—You are a terrible winner, truly, it is a wonder I continue to subject myself to this at all,” Éowyn groused, pointedly ignoring Boromir’s smug grin. 

“If you would be so kind as to let me continue,” continued Boromir, not an ounce of venom in his voice, “you would discover that I am about to offer you a consolation prize that will, I think, soothe the sting of your horrible, humiliating loss.”

She continued to scowl at him, but said no more. 

“For all my hours of toil and labour, including very much effort put into complex financial litigation and intense negotiations the likes of which have never before been seen in this Kingdom, I am now very happy to tell you that I have completed your request in full, and that your acquaintance in the second will receive the full sum of her entitled pension, beginning within the fortnight.” 

He was right, her bitterness melted away in an instant. “Truly?”

“Yes, truly. Though it comes with some conditions that I do hope you and your acquaintance will hold to.”

“Of course, anything,” she said, almost breathless.

“Lord Maerninon is, perhaps justifiably, concerned about the appearance of such a payment, and has requested that the pension be delivered in as inconspicuous a form as possible. It will therefore come from the office of the Steward, with references to neither Lord Maerninon or the realm of Linhir. It does, then, follow that some discretion is necessary about to whom and under what circumstances the truth of these payments are divulged: it would be preferable if they were not spoken of at all, but if absolutely necessary than a referral to my father’s office should be the upper limit of explanation.”

“That is a far better settlement than I expected, and will no doubt be very easy for all involved to follow,” said Éowyn excitedly. “I cannot thank you enough for this, it will make the life of a young child immeasurably better.”

Boromir nodded, his hand pressed to his chest. Éowyn could only smile—it was, she knew, far more important for Elaureth and her son, but she could not help but feel recklessly joyful anticipation at having her pendant returned to her. With each passing day she felt less and less connected to her kin, and to have at least one tangible reminder to her brother would bring her comfort beyond belief. 

Some hours later, she found Elaureth not in Ciriel’s infirmary as she had expected, but in her bedsit, hunched over her son. At first, Éowyn’s heart faltered, fearing that Eglerion had fallen ill—or worse—, but upon approaching his bed and seeing naught but peace on his sleeping face, her panic cleared. 

“More work has opened up in the storehouses on the first,” Elaureth said, as if reading Éowyn’s mind. “All the idle hands have been pressed into work there, and I could find none to watch him.” 

Éowyn nodded, but said nothing—there was nothing she could say, and she doubted Elaureth would appreciate meaningless words of comfort. Instead, she offered what aid she could: “I have secured your pension.”

Fleetingly, Elaureth’s eyes lit up, but as soon as the happiness danced across them, it was banished. She sat on a small stool and began to fuss with her curled braids. Errant strands of hair caught on the rough and worn skin of her hands, hands that had seen and done so much more than Éowyn’s, not for want of freedom but for lack of it. Freedom that, Éowyn hoped, might come more easily with this new source of income.

She explained, in words no more sugared than Boromir’s, about the conditions; Elaureth’s response was much the same as Éowyn’s: surprise at the apparent laxity. She sat in silence for some time, alternating between watching her son and picking at loose skin around her nail beds, her face revealing nothing more than the air of tiredness she always carried with her. Then she stood, walked to the only window in the room, and pulled back the plyboard that formed the windowsill, lifting from it Éowyn’s pendant. 

“I appreciate,” she said, dropping the pendant into Éowyn’s open hand, “that you have never pretended that this was anything more than a transaction. I cannot bear the condescension of the Lords and Ladies who pretend that they care in earnest for us, when it is clear to any with sense that we exist to furnish them with wealth and assuage their latent guilt.” 

Once more, Éowyn said nothing, for she felt she had nothing to say that would not be dishonest.

“You remind me of him, you know,” Elaureth continued. “Anmedior. He was more honest than most, that’s why I loved him. I never had to wonder what he thought or if he was telling me the truth, he didn’t seem to care if people thought him callous, he just said what he believed and damned those who disagreed.” She looked across at Eglerion, opened her mouth as if to speak, then shut it and shook her head. “I am not alone in appreciating your candour, there are whispers among those of us on the second and third about you, they say you are alike the Steward.”

Éowyn frowned. “The Steward? They say I am like the Steward?”

Elaureth hummed in acknowledgement. “He makes no overtures of charity or loving good will, he does not pretend that there must be amity where there is none. He ensures the roads are maintained, the storehouses are well supplied, and that pestilence, when it arrives, does not last long. He is efficient and he is effective, and so he is loved; you have the makings of that same love in your demeanour.”

“Ah,” said Éowyn, and tried not to wonder if Elaureth’s words heralded bad tidings for her ability—should it become necessary—to force the Lord Steward’s hand should the Mark call for aid. But for now, at least, there was no more that could be said or done to test her fears, she could only continue on the course she had set for herself and hope that it would bring her success if and when the moment of trial presented itself. So, with a heart lightened by the return of her pendant but her mind burdened by Elaureth’s words, she made for Ciriel’s infirmary. There busying her hands with the tending of wounds and the soothing of the ill, she fought back thoughts that told her that this was a life of uncertainty she would not have to face were she given the right to find her glory and her strength on the field of battle. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn jolted awake in an empty bed that was not her own. Blinking wildly into the darkness, her heart thudding and blood rushing loudly in her ears, she found herself unable to distinguish between the lines of dream and reality, seeing at once both the Worm pacing outside her door and the luminous silhouette of the White City beyond the window. For a long moment, she fisted the blankets, holding them to her mouth as she fought to control her breathing, eyes adjusting slowly to the low light. 

The sound of footsteps faded with the haze of her sleep, the cold walls of Meduseld drew back into the tapestried ones she knew belonged to Minas Tirith. Her legs, which had previously felt as if they were pinned by some great weight to the bed, moved freely, though bringing with their movement a newly-familiar ache. 

The closed door glowed for the light behind it, and Éowyn was glad of it, glad to know that instead of donning her cloak and walking for a time in the quiet darkness, she could go directly to the one person she wanted to speak to in such moments. 

So she did, rising from the bed, retrieving the crumpled shift (which had not moved from where it had been rather hurriedly discarded), and slipping through the door, down the small corridor, and into the sitting room. There, she stood in the corridor, obscured by the darkness, watching Faramir as he wrote in a ledger. He looked different to her, not less tired, certainly not less tired, but less agitated somehow. She had seen him working a few times before, seen how his body became a line of tension, how his leg bounced from the pent-up energy, the hand that didn’t hold his pen clenched in a tight fist on the tabletop. Now, there were none of those signs, he sat with his legs crossed at the ankle, one arm on the table, propping up his head, looking remarkably calm.

Despite the looseness of his posture, he was quick to turn to her when she stepped through the doorway, letting the pen roll from his hand as he stood. 

“Did I wake you?” He closed the gap between them, taking her hands and kissing them. She laughed, struck by how quickly such a simple gesture had gone from taking her breath away to feeling as natural as breathing. 

“Not at all,” she said, then nodded towards his desk. “Urgent business?” 

“No more or less than any other.” 

“Tell me.”

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. She dropped onto the sofa while he returned to the desk, gathering up quite a few more papers than she had expected. The fire was low and warm in the fireplace, and she resented that she was so awake, for it seemed to her an eminently reasonable place to fall asleep. 

“What I tell you now cannot leave this room,” he said, sitting beside her and kissing her temple. 

“And here I was hoping to steal your secrets and undermine your command.” 

He smiled sleepily. “Not for one moment do I doubt your ability to do just that.” He rolled out the first parchment, a map of Ithilien, stretching from the Poros in the south to the Emyn Muil in the north. Hundreds of small red marks littered the terrain, some circled. There were two obvious clusters: one to the north and east of Osgiliath, and another in the far north and west of Ithilien, nearing the Emyn Muil.

“This is an accounting of every Orc encounter in the past month.” 

She blanched. The marks were nigh on uncountable, in some places there were so many the parchment was dyed entirely red. 

“They are rapidly increasing in frequency, in discipline, and in quality of arms. With only this month’s information, one could reasonably assume an imminent attack on Osgiliath.” She nodded lamely, not sure what else could be said of it. He unfurled a second map, this one of only the south of Ithilien. It was as if blood had been splashed across the page. She sucked in a harsh breath. “This is two months’ worth of attacks, as reported by the garrisons at Osgiliath.”

She laid her cheek on his shoulder, feeling his steady warmth beneath him. “This is a very elaborate way to tell me you have no intention of upholding your promise to take me to see the city,” she murmured, and felt him laugh. “How will you defend it?”

“You have hit upon the question of the moment,” he said. “There are a great many divergent opinions on the matter within my father’s council, there are those who wish to simply ignore the problem and hope it resolves itself—though by whose hand that resolution is brought about, they never seem to have an answer. There are some who wish to burn what little political headway Minas Tirith yet retains by levying troops from those realms who have sent smaller (though proportional) numbers, in the hopes that a small increase would be enough to defend the eastern quarters of the city long enough to exhaust the Enemy’s efforts there.”  

“And you?”

“I would prefer a tactical retreat, to accept the loss of Osgiliath in favour of ensuring better-manned defences along the Rammas and in Cair Andros.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “You would prefer to sacrifice any hope of an offensive campaign against the Enemy.”

“I would.”

“You would prefer to cut the Rangers off from any large-scale support from the Army of Gondor.” 

“That is not entirely true, reinforcements could cross at Cair Andros.”

“Faramir.”

He sighed. “Yes, I would.” 

She looked away from him, willing her to temper into something less vicious. “Why?”

“The number of deaths required to defend the eastern shores of the city against the numbers we have seen of late would be incalculable, it would be reckless bloodshed, savage bloodshed.” 

She scoffed. “You cannot hold yourself to such sentimentality, death is inescapable in war.”

“Death is inescapable, yes, but it need not be meted out senselessly. Even for want of respect for the value of a life, there is a finite number of soldiers who might be pressed into service, and that number grows smaller with each subsequent death. I would not wish to widen the Enemy’s advantage unnecessarily.”

“But you would be at a greater risk.”

“No greater than before, I assure you.” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then kissed the spot beneath it. The outer edges of her vision blurred with a miserable combination of fear and nausea.  

“Come back to bed,” he whispered, running his hand down her bare arm. 

“I do not wish to lose you so soon,” she said, surprising herself with her honesty.

“I have a fortnight yet,” he said, kissing her brow. “A fortnight in which to love you and ensure you find some sleep.”

“And after that?” She glanced at the maps on the table, wishing that she could avoid what she so clearly saw in them. 

“After that, I will love you still.” Again and again he kissed her face, wrapping her hair around his finger then letting the curls bounce away. “But someone else must take charge of your sleep.” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Faramir had not anticipated finding himself with a free afternoon, but when the opportunity arose, the sun shining brightly in the great clear sky, he was neither so foolish nor so committed to his own misery as to turn it down. And he was rewarded handsomely for his shirking behaviour: Éowyn had no plans to go down to the second, and so readily fit him into her usually equally busy schedule. 

The sun backlit her, her hair glowing as if a crown of fire about her, like a servant of Arien come forth to bless the land. Far less virtuous (though no less divine) was the way the light filtered through the thin linen of her dress, outlining her lithe, athletic form. There was, he was certain, at least one thing in the world that could compare to her beauty, but for the life of him he could not conceive of what it might be.

“You talk in your sleep, you know,” she said, reaching up into the lowest branches of the tree to run her hands through the small leaves.

“Do I? What do I say?”

“I cannot be certain, at first I thought them to be just sounds, but there was one that you repeated often.” She scrunched up her face. “Eleni orë men? Does that mean aught to you?”

He laughed. “I eleni orë men mal lá sertalvët; the stars incline us but do not bind us, it is the motto of the House of Húrin. Perhaps I am more my father’s man than I thought if that is where my thoughts go at night.”

“I rather think we all are, in the end.” She leaned back against the tree trunk, a faraway look on her face.

“Our fathers, or my father in particular?” He was rewarded with the tiniest of laughs, apparently given despite herself. 

“My father died when I was very young, but it was often said that I took after him for being quieter and more headstrong; my brother is more like my mother, bolder and more good-humoured.” Her hand strayed idly to the hollow of her throat where, he noticed for the first time, her pendant now sat once more. 

“Your humour is very good,” he said, reaching out for her hands. She took them, but made a face at him.

“You mock me,” she said, letting him draw her nearer. He kissed her hands, then brought her down, settling her in his lap. Pushing her hair back from her shoulders, he kissed first the sun-browned skin on either side of her pendant, then her cheek, then her brow. 

“I would never be so foolish as to mock you, for I have heard tale of your skill with a sword and would not goad into a fight she whom I was not certain I could best.” 

“Oh, very well said.” She brushed her fingers through his hair, then heaved a beleaguered sigh as she pulled a fallen leaf from his braid. “I will never understand how your mind is so orderly but your appearance so untidy.”

“Strong words given your preference for eschewing the court’s rules of dress.”

“That is entirely different, and it is very important to me that you know that it is different.” She took his face between her hands, looking at him with teasing seriousness. “I choose to dress after the manner of my own people, which might be anathema to the fashions of the Gondorrim court. I would not, however, ever be caught carrying about half of an entire garden in my hair.” 

Whether or not she had meant it, a challenge had been set; a challenge he had no intention of shying away from. 

“Is that so?” He looked at her for only long enough to ensure that she was looking at him and not his hands. Then, with more speed and perhaps less grace than he had hoped, he rolled her onto the grass beneath them. 

Her squeak of surprise quickly melted into peaks of laughter as she tried (and failed, and tried again) to bat his hands away. She put up a good fight, a better one than he had expected, but he held the advantage of relative geography, and soon had her pinned, her hands pressed to the ground above her head with just one of his, the other spreading grass, twigs, leaves, whatever garden debris was within his reach through her hair. 

Her whole body shook with laughter, and she seemed unable to decide if she sought to duck his attack or raise herself into it, chasing after him. The air around her thrummed with something bright and melodic—at a point not so long ago, something unfamiliar to him, but now he recognised it as her happiness, vibrant and unrestrained. It had startled him when he had first noticed it all those weeks ago, it was as intense as the summer sun revealed once more behind the dark, uncompromising winter clouds. 

For a moment of hesitation on his part, she managed to hook her fingers into his hair, dragging him down to her (and he found that he enjoyed being outfoxed in this instance). Their lips met and parted around breathless laughter, the scent of crushed grass mingling with the afternoon’s heady warmth. 

But by the grace of ill fortune, which he felt he saw rather too much of of late, someone coughed. 

He moved first, hauling backwards onto his knees, while Éowyn, slower by only a fraction of a second, pulled herself up to a seated position, hands flying to her hair to tug at the cornucopia of floral detritus caught in it. Keeping his eyes on her and her alone for fear of facing a harsh reality he did not wish to face, he drew himself up, then offered her his hand to pull her up, too. She moved quicker than he, turning to face the interruption with a mask of faultless implacability. Then she stepped forward, reaching her hands out towards Lady Sedril, who looked exactly as uncomfortable as the situation demanded.

Faramir’s mind whirled. He had never expected to feel regret for having not paid more attention to the girl, and yet he did. He remembered when she had been born—days after his return from his first trip to Pelargir as an exhausted nineteen year old, made all the more exhausted for having to play a dull game of niceties with the Lord and Lady of Anórien. From there, he had not given much space in his thoughts to her, and now, with building horror, realised he was not certain how to approach this problem. He knew what her parents were like, knew what damage might be wrought if they discovered his and Éowyn’s intentions before they had decided how to proceed with the unavoidable problem of her uncle; but he also knew (all too well) that children were very often entirely different to their parents, and what would work with the mother might go terribly awry with the daughter.

“Sedril,” Éowyn began, drawing nearer to the girl. “Sedril, what you saw—.”

“—I know what I saw, my lady,” she said. Éowyn showed no concern at the sharpness of her tone, instead taking her hands and drawing her close. Mortifyingly, she made no attempt to downplay what the girl had seen, instead opting to divulge far, far more information than Faramir would have willingly told even a friend. In remarkably blunt form, Éowyn explained that they did wish to be married, and that though there were complications that momentarily stood in their way, they did not wish to postpone their joy and risk (for Faramir’s posting) never having it at all. 

When she was done, the girl nodded, and Faramir, perhaps pushing the bounds of politeness a little further than strictly necessary, took stock of the outline of her thoughts. Rather than seeing the incident as an opportunity to leverage her knowledge for her own benefit, as her mother and father might have, the girl seemed rather more contented to have been made privy to the details at all—miraculously and unaccountably, Éowyn’s gambit appeared to have worked.

Éowyn sent her away to wait for her in her sitting room, and stood quietly as she retreated across the garden, and back up the stairs. Her emotions roared with nervousness, nervousness that did not abate when Faramir quietly (very quietly) divulged what he had seen of the girl’s thoughts. 

“It is not that I think she would maliciously betray what she knows,” Éowyn said, stepping closer to him and lowering her voice considerably. “It is that I fear she will inadvertently reveal it for her own naivete.”

“Then what? What do you propose we do?” 

She took his face in her hands and gave him a sad smile. “Perhaps we have come to the last hours of our freedom, perhaps it is time to speak to your father.”

Notes:

As ever, Silm fans don't roast me for my hackneyed summaries lol. Also if you understand quenya, don't roast me for how badly I constructed that translation lmao.

Chapter 21: Book II: Summer 3018

Notes:

Sorry this was obnoxiously late, that move suuuucked.

The charts laid out on the table were a sign of nothing good—that had been true for nearly all his life, and especially true for the last three years, but somehow these charts spoke to new depths of horror. A deluge of Corsairs along the southern coasts, Haradrim sightings further and further north in Ithilien, reports of Orcs attacking shipping vessels along the Anduin in Anórien… if there was a part of Gondor that was not currently vulnerable, he could not see it. 

Worst of all was the land around Osgiliath. They could no longer deny what the maps had shown for many months now: an attack of unprecedented scope was imminent. Within the season, they might lose Osgiliath. 

The mood in the room was fittingly somber. His father stood watch at the far end of the table, fingers pressing into the tabletop as he appeared to gaze out at the charts, though he was, as Boromir knew all too well, listening to the conversations in the room. Those conversations were no more optimistic than the maps before them—supplies were running low across the Kingdom, the southern lords were yet again sabre rattling, and the early blooms of spring brought not half as much cheer as they needed to. 

One person, however, defied the general sentiment, strolling into the council room characteristically late and dishevelled, but half-smiling and far more receptive to the customary greetings proffered by the other men in the room. Boromir caught his father’s eye and shook his head; there were some questions not worth the trouble of asking, particularly when it was obvious that the answer could only bring more frustration. It was, Boromir thought, an interesting quirk of their lives that it was usually Faramir who prompted such questions. 

Even Lord Astron’s repeated insinuations that the apparent imminent attack on Osgiliath was only possible because the Rangers had failed could not dampen Faramir’s mood. Rather than jumping to his usual long-winded defences of his men, he simply waved him off, reminding him that the past was unchangeable and it was the future they needed to be concerned with. Again, Boromir and his father shared a look, Faramir had long ago learned to prioritise silence in the face of those he had no respect for (Astron chief among them), to see him respond so temperately was surprising, and only heightened Boromir’s interest in finding out what, exactly, had his brother so cheery. But discovering what that was would be a question for another time, preventing the loss of Osgiliath and the inevitable fall of the Kingdom took obvious precedence. 

For hours they debated and argued and lamented the condition of their defences. The room, more slowly than usual, broke along its usual lines: he and Astron favouring an aggressive approach, Faramir and Angbor a more conservative one. Their father typically broke with the more aggressive arguments, knowing better than most that anything less than a robust rebuke of the Enemy’s manoeuvres would be interpreted both at home and abroad as an admission of weakness. It was clear today, however, that the normal rules of engagement in the council would not be followed; though Astron argued very convincingly for levying troops from the outlying realms to man the eastern half of the city, Faramir’s proposed tactical retreat immediately seemed to hold more sway with his father. 

It was a proposal that mortified Boromir: sacrificing the remaining eastern quarters of the city would be a disaster of unimaginable scale and scope. Not just strategically, for losing one crossing at the Anduin was already a loss they could not afford, but for the propaganda value too. It was, and they all knew it was, an admission that they could never, ever win this war. From the moment they let the crossing at Osgiliath fall, there could be no hope of ever running an offensive campaign against the Enemy, they would be forced to man the defences until death or the end of the world. 

Boromir seized on another, more terrifying truth of the strategy, turning to Faramir (who was now leaning against the wall, staring out the window, looking very much like a teenager unfairly kept inside for lessons) and beginning his plea: “It would be impossible to send a large scale reinforcement to your Rangers in a time of need. You would fight alone in Ithilien, with no hope of support.”

Faramir glanced at their father, who gave an almost-imperceptible nod. Then he looked at Boromir. “We will endure.” 

It was not the answer Boromir wanted to hear. It was not the answer Boromir wanted his brother to give, and it was not the answer Boromir wanted his father to accept. He was exhausted by his father and brother’s preference for melodramatic self-martyrdom, and he was even more exhausted by their apparent inability to see what an enormous risk this retreat would be. More than that, he was frustrated by having been politically outmanoeuvred by his brother when he had made the mistake of attempting to show concern for him; for all that Faramir complained of their father’s penchant for callousness, it was Faramir, not their father, who had taken advantage of Boromir’s openness to force a win. A single nod from their father, given before Boromir could think to stop it, and the vote was over before it even began.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Overnight, Orodruin had begun to spew thick, corrosive ash into the air, blanketing the lands of Gondor as far as anyone standing on the prow of the Citadel could see. Those who could afford to stay indoors did, and those who could not scampered about, their heads covered in layers upon layers of scarves and veils, doing what they could to slow the dust’s invasion into their lungs. Though Éowyn had insisted she was more than hardy enough to survive sparring in the inclement weather, Boromir had elected to visit her for breakfast instead. They ate and made comfortable conversation, and Éowyn, who was still rather miffed at missing out on her morning exercise, missed entirely the smirk that slowly grew on Boromir’s face throughout their meal. 

“I am very sorry to have deprived you of your fun,” said Boromir. Then, schooling his face into as stern an expression as he could manage while looking so thoroughly amused, he added: “Sister.”

Éowyn flinched, the colour draining from her face. “Who told you?” She whispered it as if there were anyone else in her private sitting room who might hear her, and for a moment, Boromir appeared almost contrite. 

“Believe it or not, the choice is yours, but there are those who seek my counsel from time to time, and, when the stars have aligned exactly with the changing of the winds, sometimes those even includes my brother.” 

“Oh, of course,” she said, her shoulders dropping as she leaned back into her seat. “Soon I doubt there will be a soul in this City who will not have heard.”

“You sound appropriately scared,” said Boromir. 

“I am not in the least bit scared.” She paused looking up at him. “Ought I be scared?”

Boromir smiled wryly. “That is very much your own decision. Although, the last time a woman was implicated with my brother she faced a considerable amount of unkindness at the hands of the court, and she was and always had been a very gentle presence.”

Éowyn laughed. “And by that you mean that I am very ungentle and so should expect far more harshness?” 

Boromir inclined his head. “You were aware, were you not, of my brother’s previous, swiftly aborted attempt at marriage?”

“I was. In fact, perhaps ironically, it was one of the things that endeared him to me in the first place. I have been led to believe I am quite different to her.” She raised an eyebrow expectantly. 

“In most ways. You share dutifulness, though even that manifests in markedly different ways. For all her many virtues, and please believe me when I say there are many, I cannot imagine Lady Delieth viewing criticism as an inherent part of duty. For that, I think, you might offer a better defence against the inevitable nastiness, no doubt aided by your comparatively greater rank, and by the more explicit nature of the agreement—should that consent be given.” Now it was Boromir’s turn to pause, and for a moment it seemed to Éowyn as though he might be preparing to shy away from some other thought he had had. But, with a slight grimace, he soon spoke once more. “Have you a plan for securing your uncle’s consent?”

“Ah,” said Éowyn, her jaw clenching involuntarily. “That is a matter of some… sensitivity. In truth, I thought to write instead to my cousin and seek his counsel.”

“Yes! Good! Then I shall write to him on my brother’s behalf, though Théodred is an eminently sensible man and will no doubt come to the correct conclusion with little necessary urging.”

Éowyn blanched. “I thank you for your kindness but I assure you that will not be necessary.”

“My lady, I do not wish to embarrass or shame you, but I know something of the strife faced by your kin in Meduseld.” Panic coursed through Éowyn, cool and sharp in her veins, but Boromir continued, quicker now. “It is a secret kept well with me, and indeed, lest you have told my brother aught of it, there are no others in Minas Tirith or Gondor who know of it, and not by my words will those circumstances change. Allow me to offer what services I might in support of your quarry, if only that I might see the very happy future of my house.” 

She fell silent, taken aback by the brute honesty of his words. For a moment, she looked at her hands, eyes tracing the cracks in her skin wrought by the cleansing astringents she used day in, day out. 

“What would you propose saying in this letter to my cousin?” 

“Naught that I would not say to any man of Gondor in a similar position,” he said. 

“And what would that be?”

Boromir smiled. “That my brother is both a good man and a fortunate man, and it would be a shame for anyone to hamper his streak of good fortune by standing in the way of this match.”

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The spring came and went, and the Shadow in the East grew more bold. It was a spring that was colder than its predecessors, and darker, for Orodruin continued to spew toxic ash into the air, blotting out the sun and pelting freezing rains upon the east and north of Gondor. Faramir returned to Ithilien, and Éowyn to the monotony of her life, working in the days and praying in the nights for hope that all that she did might amount to something of worth. 

Before he returned to his posting, Faramir had stood (rather frustratedly) beside Éowyn and made the case to his father for giving consent to their betrothal. As Éowyn had expected (and much to Faramir’s chagrin) Lord Denethor had made his consent contingent on the consent of Théoden King. It had seemed to her the most natural condition in the world—she would have thought less of him had he not taken the opportunity as one to sniff out the political conditions in Edoras and what influence Éowyn yet retained—but Faramir harboured political frustrations regarding his father’s conditions, namely that given Éowyn’s tentative position as third in line to the Rohirric throne, he would have thrown all his weight behind ensuring the match was made, were he in his father’s position. When pressed on it, he conceded that he had taken it as a sign that even this small sliver of his happiness could not go uncorrupted by the pressures of the war. Even so, the gauntlet had been thrown and, after a brief missive dispatched to Théodred, there was naught either of them could do but wait and hope. 

It seemed to Éowyn that all her life had been reduced to a game of waiting and hoping and praying and waiting some more. For all that she feared for Faramir in Ithilien, she found her thoughts tainted by envy: he abhorred war and its trappings, and spoke against its valorisation at all opportunities, but he was able to do so because he had been given the right to make his name under the auspices of the war. Éowyn did not for one moment doubt the sincerity of his beliefs, though she could not help but feel as though they might be different were he condemned to the same dismal uselessness that she faced. 

And it was a uselessness that pervaded all that she did: though she had a tangible impact on the lives of those she helped in Ciriel’s infirmary, it still felt meaningless compared to the weight of the entire Kingdom whose safety she could not yet be certain of. Her dreams, which she was certain ought to have been concerned with thoughts of a wedding and the life she and Faramir might one day make together, were instead haunted by fantasies of vengeance. More often than not, she imagined herself riding back to Meduseld at the head of an éored, breaking down the doors of the Golden Hall, running through the Worm and bringing her uncle back from his desolation. Some mornings, she would awake overcome with rage at her brother and her cousin for having not done just that—though her rational mind knew exactly why they could not, her heart, which beat red and hot, simply could not accept it. The longer she let the bitter anger flow through her, and the longer she went without a true solution to her problem, the more her thoughts turned to despair. 

Though she knew she had been truly happy in those few weeks when Faramir had been by her side, she knew (knew though it hurt to know) that that happiness had only been a temporary salve for the misery that lurked beneath. To love him brought an ease to her heart that had not been there for some time, but it could not change the very facts of her existence, could not free her from her gilded cage, nor give her the recognition and the power that came so easily to all, it seemed, but her. 

The summer grew hotter but no brighter, the fields of the Pelennor grew but did not grow green—crops wilted and bowed under the oppressive, murky heat, and fears swept through the city and the surrounding countryside about what the harvest would (or would not) bring. Many took ill under the dense smog, and none in the City knew how to clear the black dust from the lungs of the afflicted. Éowyn’s days were filled with misery, both other’s and her own alike and in equal measure, and her nights spent more awake than asleep. 

The news of her betrothal to Faramir spread quickly, quicker than she thought it should have for how slow all else moved. To her immense relief, the news took the court by surprise—not just the feigned, nasty surprise that anyone the son of the Steward might stoop to involving himself with a woman not of Gondor, but the very real surprise that it should have happened at all, and, apparently, so suddenly. The affected shock did not offend Éowyn, who had prepared herself for far worse; the knowledge that Sedril had either not spoken of what she had seen to anyone, or that if she had, whoever she had told of it was tending to their silence, was far, far more interesting to her. 

With Boromir’s help, a letter was sent to Edoras, pleading her case. She watched the messenger depart, overcome by a sense that no good could come of it, then watched a few short hours later as Boromir himself departed, leaving her certain bad tidings abounded. She returned to her work, there was nothing else to be done. 

In the fifth week since Faramir’s return to Ithilien, just a fortnight after Boromir had gone to Osgiliath, the sky cleared. Orodruin fell silent, and the lightning that had cracked and shattered across the horizon for weeks on end simply stopped. What few clouds remained were fluffy and white against shimmering blue, and the sun spread warmth through a gentle breeze. Éowyn did what she had not done in a great many years and slept late. 

Hadoriel had only just finished dressing her when a knock came at the door, heralding the arrival of a young man, dressed in the livery of the Rangers. It was enough to make Éowyn’s heart stop in her chest. 

“A letter from the Captain, my lady,” he said, handing it to her with a bow. “I was given orders to deliver it should the retreat from the east of Osgiliath…” He swallowed and averted his eyes. “Should there be any complications.”

“Why should it matter whether the retreat faces complications? Have you not come from Cair Andros?”

The boy said nothing, and the blood drained from Éowyn’s face. Hadoriel dismissed him, then made herself scarce, but Éowyn found she could hardly move. She stared at the letter, twisting it around beneath her fingers, feeling the rough parchment, the smooth lines of the ink, the nicks where it had been brushed harshly against something, either by Faramir or in travel, she could not be certain. 

This had been what she had committed to, this had been what she had been proud to commit to. She would have loved him less had she thought him a coward, or did not trust him to lead from the front—yet now she wished more greatly than ever that he had been a coward, had remained with her, far from danger and far from the grim inevitability of death. 

He expected to die. He expected to die, and his last words to her were ruthlessly practical: he’d included a letter to be forwarded to his uncle, petitioning for his mother’s dower lands to be passed to her, and pleaded with her to accept it so that he could go to his death knowing she would be secure in life. And then he wrote, in beautifully excruciating detail, of the moment he knew he was in love with her. 

Terrified nausea overcame her, and her whole body trembled as she fought back tears, her breath coming slowly and heavily, more labouriously than ever before in her life. She would not allow herself to cry, would not face the misery until she could be certain that misery was what she faced. Too often in her youth had she seen and heard the agonised sobs of women who thought their husbands dead, only to later discover them alive; she knew too well that subjecting herself to such premature sorrow could do her no good. 

At length, she stood in the terrace garden, staring hopelessly at Osgiliath, as if the longer and harder she looked at it the more likely it was she might see something, even from so great a distance. In her youth, she had stood by and watched as the news of a battle preceded its outcome, had watched as women feared for their husbands and sons. Yet in her youth, she had convinced herself that she would never be on the wrong end of such an event, it had seemed to her then utterly unthinkable that she might one day be the one kept away from the battle, and so she now could not remember how the women wiled away their anxious hours. She thought they might have worked, but at what she could not be certain. Her fingers trembled too much to attempt her embroidery, and there was none she wished to speak to. She could not go to the practicing ring, not just because none could be spared to spar with her, but because she could not stomach the sound of clashing blades when she knew what was happening not ten leagues from where she stood. 

The sun, almost three-quarters of the way through its arc in the sky, stung at the back of her head. She turned and blinked into it, letting the light momentarily erase her sight. Her hands opened and closed around the hilt of a blade that was not there, and, ashamed at her idleness, she resolved to put distance between her and her stillness. 

The corridors of the Palace were sickeningly quiet, too close to Meduseld, too close to a reminder of what might lie in store for her. She forsook it, standing out in the blinding forecourt of the Citadel and wishing time had not begun to move so slowly. Her chest hurt her lungs, she breathed as if she had been bruised internally, feeling as if each breath she took was somehow a stolen one. 

At the end of the prow, harshly outlined against the white stone and the white heat, stood a figure. She knew who it was, knew that she had little she wished to say to him—not for anger, but for fear that in her heightened emotional state she might reveal something which would destroy all that she worked for. She knew this, she feared it, yet she nonetheless walked toward him, hearing only the scuffing of her slippers against the paving stones and the horrible, agonising silence.  

Lord Denethor acknowledged her, briefly, when she reached the rampart wall, and she said nothing. There was too much that needed said, too little she was willing to say. 

Men came, some lords, some military men, some with news, some with none. The Lord Steward listened to them as he stood at the far end of the prow; Éowyn listened too, unwilling to take her eyes off the ruins of Osgiliath for even a second. Over the hours, a fuller picture emerged of the day’s catastrophe: they had intended to facilitate the retreat by laying out distractions in the North of Ithilien, goading as way as many of the Enemy’s forces as possible, but the Rangers, privy to a better view of the situation than any others in Gondor, saw that their distractions had not drawn half as many of the Enemy’s men away from Osgiliath as necessary. An expeditionary force had been sent from the Rangers' refuge to reinforce the men at Osgiliath and to cut off the Enemy’s supply chains from the north and east, but something had gone terribly wrong, something they could not account for. The retreat, which they intended to execute in the dark of night, had been forced in the early hours of the morning, and, for the obvious lack of men retreating across the Pelennor, something far more sinister raged in the city. 

The dispatches dwindled, and silence reigned once more. Éowyn’s fingers pressed into the rough stone of the ramparts until it felt as if none would break through skin. She hated herself for the happiness she had once felt, hated that she had given the world one more way in which to bury her with her misery. She had not looked for purpose in her happiness, had felt it simply because it was there to be felt; now she looked for purpose in her sorrow and saw that there was none. The sun lit the lands, but shadow was built into it, shadow that destroyed, shadow that devoured, shadow that wrought pain for no reason except that it could. 

She turned from Osgiliath and looked at Lord Denethor, and saw that he felt this tortuous pointlessness of the shadow too. He had lived long and hard, longer and harder than all who she had ever known, and yet he saw the shadow too, saw it for what it was. And he did not seek happiness to distract from it, to numb the pain, he simply did as his duty demanded of him and expected no more.

“The red arrow might still be sent,” she said, looking away from him once more. “And my people would answer.”

“I doubt it not,” came the Lord Steward’s response, looking long and far across the land. “But time has made itself an ally to the Enemy, and ere the red arrow crosses Glanhír, this battle will be at a close, in whatever way it might.”

“Do you trust your sons so little?”

Lord Denethor looked at her, the chill of the grave in his eyes. “It is that I trust in them that I know this battle will not be injudicious with time. I trust that it will be brought to a close efficiently, for death or for glory.” 

A tear, hot and stinging, slipped down Éowyn’s cheek. It fell to the white stone, staining it with her shame. 

“The last stone-bridge of Osgiliath was broken in the two thousand and forty-seventh year of the Third Age,” said the Lord Denethor, after a time. “During the campaign of Boromir, the eleventh Ruling Steward. He was a fierce captain, as steadfast and mighty in battle as any of the greatest kings, said to be feared even by the Lord of the Nazgûl himself.” 

“Only a fool would underestimate Lord Boromir,” Éowyn said quietly. “Even in my Kingdom, where horsemanship is revered above all other skills, he is renowned for his command.”

Lord Denethor nodded but said nothing. Éowyn returned to watching Osgiliath. The sun began to set, the world was awash in brilliant fuschias and purples. A slow, miserable line of men began to cross the Pelennor Fields, filling the road that bisected the farmsteads. Then the trickle stopped. Lord Denethor retreated back within the Citadel. 

Her hands trembled no longer, and she had no tears to cry. Her heart ached in her chest, and her thoughts were too frayed to be coherent. She had not often thought of what her future might look like, she had not ever learned to look beyond the fog of war, but for her lack of imagination on it, she did not feel any less as if it were now slipping away from her. Faramir had spoken often and recklessly of what future they might have had together—a long, happy, and modest life, wiling away the years until the inevitable moment when he would be called to take up the Stewardship. She loved him, loved him more than words might ever express, but she had found little to desire in that future he spoke of. She could not imagine herself passing her days away in simplicity, could not fathom even more years of waiting for some nebulous something; but as the glimmering possibility of that future was blotted out by the darkening sky, she found herself wishing for it more than ever.

The night came, cloaking her in darkness and in chill. Men passed to and from the White Tower, their voices lower, all keeping as wide a berth as possible from her. She did not want them to come nearer, she did not want their pity, and she did not want them to see her in her weakness. For once, against everything she had ever wanted, she wished to be invisible. 

Sedril came, bearing her mantle, the stars reflecting against the darkened ground. She spoke quietly as she wrapped it around Éowyn’s shoulders, first apologising profusely (as if it had somehow been her fault that they lived in the doldrums of an endless war), then telling her all that she had overheard from her father—it was nothing Éowyn had not already heard, and only frustrated her further. Her willingness to be kind already cut short, she spun on Sedril. 

But the words, whatever they might have been, died in her throat. Far in the distance, at the very highest point of the White Tower of Ecthelion, a single, radiant light pierced the darkness of the night. It was as white as the stones of Minas Tirith under the high noon sun, as white and just as blinding. 

“My lady,” said Sedril, shattering the silence once more. Éowyn blinked, fingers curling further so round the hem of her mantle. She cast a final glance over her shoulder at Osgiliath, dizziness washing over her, then stepped away from the wall. 

In time, though with very little awareness of how it happened, she returned to her apartments. Sedril remained with her, and spoke quickly and idly about whatever topics seemed to come first to her. Éowyn could not muster the energy to send her away, so made a halfhearted effort to interject from time to time, wincing in each instance at the shallow vibrations in her voice. 

Soon, even Sedril left, counselling her to go to her bed, as if she were someone of greater wisdom than Éowyn and not a mere youth. Éowyn, naturally, took no heed of her advice and chose instead to stand in the middle of her sitting room, swaying under the weight of her exhausted sadness. She made it as far as the sofa before she collapsed, missing the sofa entirely and landing with a painful thud on her knees. There were no tears, she found she had none to cry, but her breath came in short, desperate sobs, pushed out against the fabric of the sofa cushions. 

She had spent too much of her life unseen and unknown. The men in her life (and they were always men) looked at her with pity, or with confusion, thinking her some inconvenient anomaly, some problem to be ignored until it solved itself or disappeared. But Faramir had looked at her and truly seen her—perhaps more of her than she would have wished—and saw her not as an aberration, but as someone deserving of care and time and recognition, and he had given each of those things to her, and given them so freely and so well that the thought of going back to her life before she had known them burned her as sharply as a hot iron brandished against her bare skin. 

In her life, she had been unkind to her mother, to her mother’s memory. After the sting of sadness had faded into a dull ache, she had grown to bear resentment towards her mother’s weakness, her abdication of duty. She had never understood how anyone could be overcome by such sorrow that all else might be blocked out, that even the most rote of responsibilities would become too great an obstacle to surmount. But now, faced with only the possibility of loss, not even the certainty of it, Éowyn felt a dreadful, breathtaking wave of sympathy for her mother. 

And then the tears came, tears of sorrow, but tears of shame too—for her callous assessment of her mother, yes, but for her own lack of self-control too. There was no confirmation that anything approaching the desolation conjured in her fears had occurred at Osgiliath, and yet she already assumed the very worst of it. She had chided Lord Denethor mere hours ago for his lack of faith in his sons but she fell prey to the very same folly, to letting her emotions run wild and make a fool of her, though she well knew she ought not to. 

She cried until her throat felt as if it were slicked by blood, and her skin burned with each new tear that fell. Outside the windows, the sun began to rise in the eastern sky, taunting her and making a mockery of her sadness. When it at last crested the Ephel Dúath, painting gold across the Pelennor Fields hundreds of metres below her, she stood, and, limbs heavier than lead, made an attempt at putting herself together. 

Hadoriel arrived in due course, and no sooner had she finished helping Éowyn dress than did a scene identical to yesterday morning’s catastrophe start to unfold: a messenger (this one in the livery of the Tower Guard) appeared breathless at her door. He bore no letter, but rather a summons to the Tower. Fleetingly, Éowyn considered rejecting it, but her body moved before her mind could hinder it, and she followed the messenger on his retreat through the Palace. 

Through the Hall of Kings, through to the council room at the back of the hall she followed the messenger, caring little for decorum or etiquette; there were many lords of the court gathered, but she acknowledged none, though she held her head high, praying that her manufactured confidence would mask the raw skin of her eyes and cheeks. 

Lord Denethor’s secretary pushed open the door to the council room, a task that ultimately required more effort than it ought to have for the sheer number of bodies packed into it. She held her breath, bracing for whatever ill news inevitably awaited her (and she knew it had to be ill news to have invoked her presence at the Ambassador of the Mark). The men in the room shuffled and turned, giving her as much of what little space remained; this became a boon and a bane to her, for when Lord Astron—stood farthest away from her and closest to the centre of the room—turned, he revealed two men whose lives she had already believed lost to the sands of time.

Notes:

subtlety is for the weak bye xo

Chapter 22: Book II: Summer 3018

Notes:

Sorry this is so late, I lack self-discipline. I think the coming updates will probably be on an ad-hoc basis until I figure out my work patterns better. (Unless anyone wants to pay me an exorbitant amount of money to NOT work? No? No? Bueller? Bueller?)

Between the east and west banks of the Anduin, the water moved languidly, almost serenely. It lapped against the remnants of the levees, better maintained on the western side than the east, but neither side especially convincing. Under Anor’s harsh light, the pulverising current beneath the waves glowed green, adamantine reflections cast upon the nearby surfaces. 

He looked once more at the bridge, saw where the master carpenter, dressed in the uniform of the Osgiliath garrison, carried out his final examination, surrounded on all sides by the regular patrol. To the untrained eye, the tableau would have appeared no different to the patrol that passed across the bridge each day; to Faramir, it was a harbinger of death. 

He had not slept—could not have, but would not have either—and so had elected to settle his affairs, to ensure that all was right should the worst come to pass. There had been a conversation between he and Boromir, a stilted, miserable one, in which Boromir insisted that no matter what the true order of things, if they both fell, the records must show Boromir having gone first. Though stirring a level of existential horror in Faramir that he had not felt in some time, he could not deny the logic of it: if Boromir predeceased him by even a few seconds, Boromir’s entitlements would be passed along, and the bulk of his and Boromir’s estates (those that were not legally entailed back to their father or elsewhere) would be passed to whomever Faramir named as his heir. It was not a process he had thought to formally complete before he last left Minas Tirith, so his night had been spent hurriedly scribbling out letters to his uncle in Dol Amroth, and the Hall of Records in the City. If the record keepers would not accept his letter as legitimate, then his uncle could be prepared to advocate on behalf of his wishes. 

And at least his wishes were simple: everything he had was Éowyn’s. 

There were elements he was not certain he was fully empowered to give away—particularly those that would come from Boromir in the worst case scenario—but there were many he knew beyond a doubt were his to do as he pleased. His mother’s dower lands in Dol Amroth, modest though they may have been, would be enough of an income to sustain an independent life for her, if she so chose it. There were modest investments in various houses and establishments in the City made on his behalf by his father’s factor. Those, if liquified, would enable her to stay far away from the Mark for as long as she wished. There was little else he could give her. 

In his letter to her, he noted the locations of gifts he had intended to give her but now knew he no longer would be able to. A diadem from the stash of his mother’s possessions kept in Dol Amroth, pilfered when he was just twelve. His books, not truly his to give away, but hers if she wanted them. A sword, mostly ceremonial in nature, but one that would suit her well. And his journals, more than a decade’s worth—not a gift, but a last request. In each journal was listed the names and burial locations of every single Ranger that had died under his command; to her, he trusted the safekeeping of their memory, in the hope that one day, one better day, she might, at long last, give their families the right to see their lost ones a final time. 

The master carpenter returned across the bridge, met on the western bank by Boromir’s lieutenant. Faramir looked out at the water once more, thinking (not for the first time that morning) how much he might have preferred to have been an officer in his uncle’s cavalry, turning rotations along the sleepy central steppes. 

Just over a quarter of the Osgiliath garrison remained on the eastern half of the city, split equally between the north and southeastern quarters—an ideal positioning for making a small company of men feel many hundred times larger in size than they truly were, but less ideal for coordinating an absolute retreat. At the very worst of times, Faramir refrained from splitting his men, but these were so far beyond the worst of times the choice had practically been made for him before he arrived in the city with a detachment of just a hundred men, outfitted for scrapping in the mire in Ithilien, not a pitched urban battle. He knew in his heart that every command he was about to give his men was an absolute abdication of his duty to them, but he knew even better that no other help would or could come for the trapped men in Osgiliath, and that his Rangers had been trained better than any to handle such grim circumstances. 

They crossed the bridge, Faramir stepping out from the column to signal across the river to Boromir. They had until the sun reached its zenith in the sky to arrive at the two eastern outposts. There they would wait until nightfall to begin the retreat in earnest, the Rangers acting as the rearguard for regulars who had not been properly resupplied in weeks. It was not a perfect plan, but it was a plan, which spoke to a more substantial level of organisation than they’d had surrounding Osgiliath in months, and, at the very least, insulated them from charges of acting thoughtlessly. Recklessly, perhaps, but not thoughtlessly. 

The contingent heading for the northern outpost was dispatched first, and only when they had scuttled away into the ancient tangle of ruins beyond his line of sight did Faramir begin to move his contingent towards the south. If their recent reconnaissance missions were half as accurate as they needed to be, then the greater side of the Enemy’s forces would be coming from the south, linking up with Haradrim invaders from the south before marching on the city; it was only right that he go with the side that would meet them first. 

Once, during his first deployment, he had found himself on the wrong end of a skirmish at the crossing of the Poros, in the very far south of Ithilien, hundreds of leagues from safety and from home. He hadn’t expected it—none of them had, and they certainly hadn’t been prepared for it. He remembered the way the sand whipped in his eyes and through his hair, drying his skin and making his fingers slip as he tried and failed to restring his bow, then the panic as he struck out with the wrong hand when one of the Haradi attackers got too close, hitting the man limply with his bow and not with the hand that held his knife. He remembered the horrible, shuddering pain in his arm where the bowstring snapped against it, making his forearm feel as if it had been set alight. Against the odds, and his right, for if all had been truly just in the world he would have died then, he managed to scramble back across friendly lines, damaged but not destroyed, and vowing to never, ever fall prey to the error of sloppiness again. 

When the sky was cleaved in twain first by a world-shattering shriek, and second by all-encompassing darkness the likes of which he had never experienced before, he knew to slow his breathe, to restrain his movements down to every last muscle, to do nothing without thinking about why exactly he was doing it first. His conscious mind knew not what soared above them, but his instincts knew that they needed to get to the southern outpost in half the time they had planned for. 

His men did not break formation—would not have, they were trained too well and too accustomed to unknown horrors to be so easily startled. They pushed on at a sprint now, the archers among them watching the skies, the swordsmen watching the roads. The shrieking continued, triggering a nauseating ringing in his ears and making his voice hoarse in his throat. 

The situation degenerated quickly, too quickly. They were not halfway to the outpost when they were met by an enormous line of Orcs and Haradrim, split along the ruined buildings and pathways that led to the southeastern quarter of the city. He looked into the mind of the Uruk commander, and saw the outpost in flames, burning since the early hours of the morning. They had moved too slowly, believed too much in their own safety, and now at least a hundred men were dead or worse. 

He blinked, willing away the bile that rose in his throat in time to hear a flaming arrow whistle past his face, leaving a swirling trail of smoke in its wake. He gave the command for the retreat, knocking and loosing arrows almost blindly into the enemy line, counting his men as they circled past him, back towards the Anduin. 

Their retreat was hindered by the screeching, diving creatures in the sky, creatures he recognised from the very worst depths of Gondor’s history—the Nazgûl, the Wraiths of old, servants of the Witch King and bane of the lighted West. Three circled above, one calling out orders in the Black Speech of Mordor in a voice that curdled his blood. 

The cobbles beneath his feet provided less traction than the soft earth he was accustomed to, building little confidence as he held up the rear of his men’s unexpected retreat. To his great horror, the enemy proceeded no further towards the Anduin, simply giving volley to their archers and holding their own line—what quality of tidings that spoke to he could not be certain, though he knew they could not be good ones.

The rushing waters greeted them at the bridge, barely discernible over metal squealing against metal, and the immutable sound of death. In his mind’s eyes, he saw and felt Eru Ilúvatar’s fury, the crashing of the waves upon Númenor, the tearing of life from limb from land as the deceived were ripped from their homes and beds. Númenor fell in his thoughts as Osgiliath fell in his sight, and soon, too, he knew Gondor would fall too. The sons of Númenor had failed their final test, and would bring no worthwhile defence against that oldest of enemies; from the ruins of the east would the end of the West come. 

The bridge, weakened in its capacity by their now-scuppered plans for retreat, could carry little more than ten men at a time. The fleeing troops bottlenecked, pouring in from the north and the south of the city at once, as if they had both been made aware of their failures at exactly the same instant. The Enemy’s lines pushed forwards with a more punishing speed now, and their archers downed unspeakable numbers of men. He watched, overcome with desolation, as one of his Rangers, who he had known for more than a decade at least, fell first to his knees, then over into the unforgiving river after taking an arrow to the back of his skull. He saw and felt the light leave the man’s body, felt the dull, throbbing ache of death and the icy cold of the river before he pulled himself back to the harsher truth of reality. 

Many metres behind him, a heart-rending shriek broke out, muffling the excruciating din of battle. The Wraiths drew nearer, while through the unruly stampede of men, living and formerly-living, Boromir pushed forward. He skidded to a halt beside Faramir, looked out across the field of battle, and swore under his breath. 

In Minas Tirith, though less so of late, it was often said that Finduilas of Dol Amroth died because she had seen the shadow of the future, and what she had seen had weakened her in both body and mind. She withered slowly at first, then all at once, as if she had been consumed entirely by her guilt at having brought new life into a world without hope. As a child, it had been unfathomable to Faramir that any one thing could have caused such a sense of overwhelming dread and despair, that anything could be so horrible as to snuff out even the memory of hope. To look upon the wraiths, he knew at once that he had vastly underestimated the horrors of the world. 

“It must fall,” shouted Boromir over the din. “It must fall now!” 

Faramir slid his dagger from the chest of the Uruk, hand jerking as bone crunched against metal. Then he looked out at the waves of encroaching enemy forces, and knew that Boromir was right. 

Time moved perilously slowly. Even as his movements came quicker for the blood slicking the wood beneath his feet, each step and parry seemed to take infinitely longer than before, made worse by the mortifyingly slow rate at which the bridge was cleared. Soon, Boromir’s horn wailed out, clear and bright into the darkening sky. 

A maelstrom of arrows rained down on and around them, their arrowheads blazing. Across the bridge, vases that had not already been shattered by the fighting exploded, pungent oil spilling across the bridge and soaking the planks. 

The flames spread quickly, as quickly as they had hoped for, lapping at the bridge, ripping and tearing the fibres of the wood, sending wet ash dripping into the rushing water below. A Haradi footsoldier, caught too close to an exploding vase, shrieked in agony before diving into the river, leaving behind a trail of thick smoke and the nauseating stench of burning flesh in his wake. 

The stampede worsened. Tens of the remaining Gondorrim took their chances by diving into the Anduin, and those who didn’t were run through by Orc and Haradrim blades. 

The flames rose higher and higher into the sky, enveloping them, threatening a crueler death than even the worst battlefield deaths. Despite the threat of a fiery doom, the air was bitter cold, stinging at exposed skin. The world grew darker, quieter, movements slower. 

A voice cried out from the east, sharp and terrible: “Retreat, Men of Gondor. Stand not between the Lord of the Black Land and his quarry, give passage to His faithful servants and take not an ignoble end.” 

A pot shattered at the far end of the bridge. Boromir threw another, sending oil and flame splashing across the ground at the feet of the Black Riders. His cry became a signal, a signal to take to the river, and soon, against the protestations of his agonised mind, Faramir dove from the bridge.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn held herself taut, though she felt as if the entire room had begun to spin around her. The hours of exhaustion crashed down upon her, and she yearned deeply to be anywhere except for in the middle of a room full of men who could see no sign of weakness from her. She folded her arms across her chest, hands squeezing her biceps as she often did in these council meetings anyways, and tried not to appear as dazed as she felt as she looked at Faramir. 

He was alive, and that was her first—and only—comfort. The side of his face was badly grazed, as if he had been dragged along something, and what little else of his skin that she could see was bruised or lacerated in various ways; but that was not half as terrifying to her as the slight slump in his posture. For all the years she had known him, for all the times she had seen him tired, or frustrated, or even half-asleep in her bed or his, she had never seen him carry himself with such defeat before. True though it was that the weariness in his mien was barely perceptible—and she suspected it had entirely passed by most of the lords in the room—it did not escape her notice, and it worried her to despair. When their eyes met, there was a heaviness in his that she had never seen before, the same graveness as ever, but now overlaid by something worse, something haunted. 

“My lords,” she said, tearing her gaze away from him only long enough to nod at Boromir, to see that he looked every bit as ground down as Faramir, and then to redirect her attention entirely to Lord Denethor, who himself managed to look as pinched and drawn as if he had seen whatever had occurred at Osgiliath with his own eyes.  “I am very glad to see that you return to us,” she continued, then stopped herself: she could say no more without revealing far too much about her fragile emotional state. 

“There is a matter of some concern regarding the defence of the northeastern reaches of your Kingdom,” said Lord Denethor, hardly looking up from the papers his secretary held before him. “As I understand it, there is a Rohir patrol of the banks of the Anduin opposing the northern Emyn Muil.”

“A patrol maintained by my brother,” Éowyn said, fingernails digging into the linen of her gown. “I am as familiar with its particularities as anyone might be without having ever ridden it themselves.” 

“It is a patrol that will now go without Gondorrim support along the river. That patrol has not gone unmanned since—.”

“—Sixteen years ago, almost to the day. It was my father’s patrol before it was my brother’s, and it was an excursion into the Emyn Muil that led to his death.” Several of the lords around the table flinched at her bluntness; she ignored them. 

Lord Denethor’s expression was solemn, and he silently held his gaze for a moment, before nodding tightly. “It will need to be manned with greater care henceforth, the loss of Osgiliath has required a repositioning of our forces within Anórien. We can make no guarantees in the far north.” 

“Nor would Théoden King expect them,” she said, certain she was now lying outright. “The ordering of Gondor’s defences are her own business, and the House of Eorl remains grateful for what support we are given, but the defence of our own borders is a matter of ancient pride, and one that will be maintained irrespective of what dwells opposite the Great River, whether friend or foe.” 

He nodded in acknowledgement, then gestured for Lord Angbor to step forward. Angbor took his time explaining the state of the defences along the coasts and in the northern, unpopulated reaches of the Kingdom—Angbor at least was accustomed to her presence in such meetings, and so did not censor himself for her sake, but many of the lords who had only just returned to Minas Tirith after long absences cast querying glances in her direction, many seemingly unsure if it was their place to question where she ought to be among them at all. In time, when the hopelessness of the situation had been analysed and reanalysed with a great enough frequency that even the more hopelessly verbose men in the room found themselves speechless, they agreed to put the council on hold in favour of more productive activities.

Lord Denethor left first, followed closely by Boromir, then Lords Astron and Angbor, who each seemed similarly desperate to speak to them both. The remaining lords filed carefully out of the room, many throwing wary glances in the direction of she and Faramir. None were quite so brazen in their expression of disapproval than a tall, ruddy-haired Lord Éowyn did not recognise, who, far from simply looking on judgmentally, stood at the door to the council room, sniffing loudly. 

“I cannot imagine why any young lady would wish to linger, unchaperoned, in such an environment,” he said, looking down his nose at Éowyn. 

Éowyn, too tired to think of a suitably dismissive response, was saved instead by a voice from outside the room: “I can imagine several reasons, my lord, but she is, insofar as I can see, not unchaperoned, thanks to your fine stewardship. Now, however, I will gladly take up that charge for you.” Boromir now stood behind the man, an eyebrow raised in challenge. “Lest you have any qualms regarding my moral credibility, of course.” 

“You are the very best of us, my lord. Your brother, however…” He sniffed once more. “Good evening, my lady, my lords.”

Éowyn stared in silent shock as the man turned and left, leaving three exhausted, indignant people in his wake. 

“Who was that man, and what have I done to so terribly offend him?” she asked after a moment. 

“It is nothing you have done,” answered Boromir, leaning against the doorframe, “and everything dear Faramir has done.” 

“Faramir?” She glanced around at him in time to see him rubbing at his eyes with one hand. 

“Indeed. You have just had the distinct pleasure of meeting Lord Glamhron of Ras Morthil, husband of Lady Delieth. I have always found him to be a very agreeable man, though I have never had any dalliances with his wife.” 

“She was not his wife then, let us not unduly muddy those waters,” said Faramir, his voice ragged with tiredness.

“Why should any of that matter to him now, if he has married her and Faramir is well on his way to marrying me?” 

“Pride is a fickle thing,” said Boromir, then loudly yawned. “As is my waning energy, so I would thank you both to keep your reunion to a fast gallop so that I might find my bed without having to worry if an already bad day will be made worse by needless social scandal.” He stepped away from the door, then rapped his knuckles against it. “That said, I believe I left some important documents behind the statue of Ostoher. If you will excuse me while I collect those, when I return I will gladly escort you, Lady Éowyn, to the Palace.” His bowed with mock formality to match his tone, then departed. 

The silence that fell then was suffocating, overfull with unspoken and caustic emotions, emotions that neither of the remaining occupants in the room could fully articulate or bring to heel. In lieu of speech, Éowyn spun on her heels and closed the gap between her and Faramir, leaning her forehead into his chest and wrapping her arms around him, feeling the solid warmth of him, the steadiness of his breathing. In turn, he kissed the crown of her head.

“You are injured,” she said, a wretched half sob muffled by the fabric of his tunic.

“In parts, yes.” He tangled the fingers of one hand through her hair. “But nothing that is more grievous than vexatious; I expect to return to Ithilien before the end of the week.”

“The end of the week! So soon?” Éowyn stood back, catching his wrist in her hand and turning it from side to side, her fingers tracing lightly over the red bruising exposed beneath his clothing. 

“It cannot be delayed, not now. For whatever else today’s events were, our work in Ithilien has become infinitely more pressing, and I would not deputise it.” 

“But you are injured,” she repeated limply, once more overcome by the feeling that very little in her life truly existed within her control. 

Faramir fell silent, watching her as she looked over what little of him she could. The bruises she had noticed earlier looked much worse to her up close, and more than not were marked by large lacerations caused by grazing—she could hardly imagine what would have caused them, and a very small part of her wished to never find out.

After some time, Faramir spoke again, expression lifted by a wry smile that did not fully reach his eyes: “Will I do?” 

She looked for a moment longer at a long gash between his thumb and forefinger, eyes tracing over the light swelling around the wound, then nodded dimly. “Will I see you again today?” 

“If you would wish it. There are some things I must see to first, I suspect what we have just endured will be the very easiest part of my duties ere I return to Ithilien, but after I have seen to at least some of the more unpleasant tasks, I am sure I can make yours what time is yet mine to give.” 

“I will pretend,” said Boromir from the doorway, startling Éowyn, “that I have heard nothing.” 

“Indeed you have heard nothing, for nothing at all has been said,” answered Éowyn in a shadow of her former playfulness. “We have been the very picture of courtly etiquette, merely gazing chastely across an enormous distance, thinking only of poetry.” 

“Not for a second do I doubt it, your respect for both poetry and etiquette are renowned.”

Éowyn frowned, detangling her fingers from Faramir’s so she could plant her hands on her hips. “I’ll have you know I do very much respect poetry, I would wager no small sum of coin that I could recite far more of it than you.”

“And I am not a fool and so shall not be parted easily from my money, but will instead hurry you along. If there is to be a scandal, and at this point I would not count against it, I would much rather it happen when I am in no way culpable for it,” said Boromir, proffering her his arm with teasing seriousness. 

She took it in kind, and together they passed through the Hall of Kings, where a few scattered lords remained, whispering furiously to one another but not pausing to look up from their conversations. She wondered how many—if any at all—had passed the previous night in stark horror, how many realised, as she was now beginning to, how truly evil the world had become in one fell swoop.

“I fear I may hear very little of the tale from Faramir,” Éowyn said as they stepped out through the doors of the Tower. “And though I would not wish to impinge upon his privacy, for my own sake I cannot help but wonder what it was that you endured today.”

Boromir sighed and nodded, scratching his jaw. “Yes, I would find it very strange indeed if you did not have any questions. I will answer what I can, but we spent very little of the moments leading up to the destruction of the bridge together, so my recollections are only my own.” He slowed his pace as they crossed the forecourt of the Citadel, steps matching the cadence of his words as he explained all that had led to the miserable skirmish. Each word he said drilled a more potent horror into Éowyn’s heart—she knew that the planned retreat from Osgiliath was a devastating loss for Gondor, but until Boromir began to describe the Black Riders, she had not even begun to fully grasp how truly desperate their plight had become.

“We had expected to destroy the bridge with none upon it,” said Boromir, gazing out sightlessly across the Citadel. “But it was not to be, I was compelled to give the signal while fifty men at least remained upon it.” 

“How many survived?”

“Four. Myself, Faramir, and two of my lieutenants, though Faramir was the most fortunate of us all, there was a short time when I believed him truly lost.”

Éowyn’s breath choked in her throat and came out as a harsh wheeze, a painful chill spreading from the crown of her head through her spine and extremities. “Tell me,” she said, voice hoarse.

“We dove from opposite sides of the bridge, I to the north, he to the south. I believed then that it was the northern side of the bridge whose structure had degraded most rapidly, but it was not so. I swam to the shores, but when I emerged from the water, I saw that a pylon had collapsed on the southern edge, trapping some fifteen, twenty men beneath it as it sank, Faramir, was, at least momentarily, among them.” Boromir exhaled slowly, running a hand through his hair. “So far as I know, he freed himself from beneath it, but it had already sunk so far beneath the waterline that by the time he neared the surface, he had begun to lose consciousness. I waded in as far as I could and pulled him back the remainder of the distance to the shore but—well, I am sure you know of his dreams of the wave.” 

Éowyn, who had been plunged into a realm of fear she had not before known existed, could do naught but nod. “And overall? How many casualties?” she asked, though she had no desire to know the answer. 

“Several hundred dead. Of Faramir’s Rangers, nearly one-third of their numbers were cut down, and an unknowable number taken prisoner.”

Éowyn blanched, feeling as if a belt had just been tightened around her lungs. “I am truly sorry, I wish that it had been possible for my Kingdom to lend support, to lessen the burden.” 

“I, however, do not. This was a moment of error for Gondor, one that need not have occurred, and, indeed, one whose ill effects I would not share with others. No, I would rather call upon our alliance only when it is necessary and when the costs will be justified as equals, not when it would amount to Rohan suffering the punishment for Gondor’s lapses in judgement.” 

“There are none in my country who would see it so, you must know that,” said Éowyn, unsure of the truth of her words but indignant at the implication that her people could be imagined to be so uncaring. 

“Éowyn,” said Boromir with breathtaking sternness. “You and I alike know that it would be folly to call upon the support of your Kingdom when it is not absolutely necessary; folly for the damage it would work upon our alliance, and folly too for the damage it would do within your Kingdom. The Rohirrim are loved for their valiance and their courage, let us not unduly tarnish that love for the sake of pride. There will be a time to call upon the strength of the Rohirrim, and that time may come sooner than any of us would wish, but that time has not yet come, and it would do us no good to hurry it along.”

In that, she could find no greater foothold for her argument, and so let the issue pass. Boromir escorted her to her apartments, where she found herself at once too exhausted to do anything including sleep, and so allowed her mind to wander to the smaller concerns of her life. She had escaped, by virtue of secrecy alone, questions about why she had not yet received consent for her betrothal to Faramir. To Lord Denethor, she had explained that it was not a matter that could be resolved by letter, and so would have to wait until she returned once more to Edoras. To the gossips of the court, who poked holes in her story more readily and more openly than the Steward, questions had been raised about why she had not returned to the Riddermark with haste; those questions had been stilled somewhat by the increase in Orodruin’s activity, and would no doubt be buried further by the disaster at Osgiliath, but she knew that time was not her ally, and that she would need to find a solution for her problem before long. 

Later, when darkness settled once more upon Minas Tirith, made darker by the choking ash that fell anew upon the whited sepulchre, Faramir slipped through the garden door to Éowyn’s apartments. There, she pulled him into her bed chamber, sat him upon her bed, and slowly began to undress him. There was neither heat nor wantonness in her actions, only a clinical seriousness. Each newly-exposed inch of skin was not a tantalising challenge to her, but a heart-wrenching site of inquiry. He had been seen to by healers in Osgiliath and Minas Tirith alike, but her thoughts could not rest until she had seen and catalogued each injury upon his body; she now knew too much of the medical arts to be able to stow away her concerns neatly with no new knowledge gained. With the story that Boromir had given her, his cuts and bruises looked more cohesive to her eyes, the outline of the pylon where it had fallen against him was now clear, and the bruises upon the back of his neck where Boromir had pulled him from the river were now more discernibly finger marks. 

She expected Faramir to protest, he so often preferred to appear—even to her—as though he were unbreakable, but he said nothing as she worked, alternating between watching her keenly and closing his eyes, breathing into her investigative touches. She wondered (but did not ask) what he thought of in those moments between his crushing by the pier and when he was pulled from the river. Had he felt vindicated for his fear of the water? Had he been willing to accept it as his time to die, or had he been prepared—as he was with everything else—to fight it? Instead of asking those questions, she simply finished her examination, stripped off her own daywear, then curled into bed beside him, fingers tracing circles in the dark along what little unharmed skin remained. 

She listened to the sound of his heartbeat, felt the rhythm of his breathing, the warmth of him beneath her cheek, and resolved to never, ever again allow herself to be put in a position where death might come between them while she sat idly, purposelessly by.

Notes:

Extended endnotes available here.

Chapter 23: Book II: Summer 3018

Notes:

Generally have a principled opposition to using fictional foreign languages in fic, but, in deference to the professor's brilliant work, I have kept some of the Sindarin familial titles in. They should be self-explanatory contextually, but if you are reading on a computer, you should be able to hover over the words with your cursor and an English translation will be provided.

Faramir had not, he reflected, spent very much time in his life discussing his whereabouts and his actions with other people. He received his orders, and he followed them (mostly without question), or he gave his orders, and expected them followed (mostly without question). He might seek counsel on one element or another of his designs, from a deputy or from his brother, or even, on occasion, from his father, but usually, once his mind was set to something, he simply did it.

He was, then, walking into a conversation he had no precedent for. He respected and loved Éowyn, to the very depths of his soul and beyond even that, but he would have to tell her that he was going, and that nothing could change that. He had delayed the conversation long enough—first for lack of opportunity, next, because by the time he had at least completed his work, she was almost asleep in her sitting room. Then, when she had awoken, he had hoped to broach the topic, but Éowyn, as ever, had other plans, and as her hands roved over him with ever greater boldness, he decided that the conversation could wait a little while yet. 

But now, in the early light of dawn, diffused though it was by dark clouds and rain, no shadows remained in which to hide his secrets: the conversation had to happen, he could avoid it no longer. She had been dozing for some time on his chest, but began to stir, stretching this way and that and making tiny murmuring noises of contentment as she welcomed herself back to wakefulness. 

She rubbed her eyes, then blinked up at him, her sleepy expression morphing into something altogether more concerned. She propped herself up on her elbows, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Are you well?”

“I am,” he said, then exhaled slowly. “There is something I must do, somewhere I must go.” 

“I believe that is true of us all,” Éowyn said, and laughed despite himself and the look of affectionate frustration on her face. 

“It is an errand to the far north, beyond the Kingdoms of Men, to seek out a tool that might change the course of the war.”

“A tool…” Her eyes narrowed. “You mean a weapon?”

“I cannot know for certain until it is found,” he said. “And that may be many months yet—a year or more, perhaps.”

“A year or more,” she repeated. Soon her eyes lit up, and she pulled herself to her knees on the mattress “If you must go, then let me ride in your following, I am weary of waiting in hopeless misery for men to return safely from great deeds, deeds that I could accomplish no less than they.” 

His heart sank, wretched sorrow spreading outwards from his chest. “But who will tend to your duty to your people? Who will ensure their call is answered if it comes?”

She took his hands in hers. “What does duty matter in the face of such terror? Will there be a Gondor to answer the call? Would you have me skulk in this City, prepared only to make demands of its ashes, while you ride for brighter hopes?”

“You speak with more optimism of my errand and less of yours than I would,” he said. “Gondor is strong, she will withstand greater perils than a single retreat, but the road north is dark and full of many unknown perils. I would not have you take that road on the tail of a wish when there is work to be done here, work that is far more just.”

“But work that could be done by any person with time enough,” she said sharply. 

“No, this work you know could be done only by you, for your strength and your experience of life. It is my errand that might be done by any.”

“Any except me, you mean.” 

“Éowyn, listen to me! It is not a matter of could, but should. I would not use a mallet to mend what can only be mended by a needle.”

“And you think me a mallet? Indelicate and wielded by the unskilled? Do you think so little of me as to imagine me as savage and unrefined as my detractors in the court say I am?”

“No, Éowyn, I am not so arrogant as to believe that I might contribute as you do to the strength of our two Kingdoms. You are the needle, threading together two tapestries that might otherwise be rent asunder if not mended by a skilled and wizened hand.” 

“Skilled hands that are kept only by the hearth, that pass into history unremembered by all,” she said sourly, looking away from him. “You would have me live as a wretch, a master of no one’s destiny, least of all my own.”

“Do you believe that I am a master of my destiny? Do you believe that I wish to lead a life marred by such wanton violence, a servant to a war that devours all joy, with no hope of action except at the hilt of a sword? Éowyn, I wish dearly that I had the opportunities that exist now before you, that my contribution to this world might be a contribution of peace, not war.”

“You say that only because you do not understand how enfeebling my life is. You, you believe my anger and my sorrow to be folly, the machinations of the mind of a silly girl who simply cannot understand that a gilded cage is better than one wrought of steel and that a bower can be a comfortable prison.” She held her clenched fist against her forehead, closing her eyes and breathing heavily. “I foolishly believed that you heard my words and understood them, but I see now that I was wrong.”  

With some effort, the effect of which was to rather undermine the furious abruptness of her actions, Éowyn lifted herself from the bed, pressing the linens to her chest as she sought out her discarded garments. “Éowyn,” said Faramir, pinching the bridge of his nose, wondering how this had managed to go so badly. 

“No,” said Éowyn, shrugging her shift on. “I will be late for my appointment with Elaureth. Given that you think me good for little more than tending to men of greater valour than I, I should expect that you would not wish to hinder me.”

“You know very well that I do not believe that,” he said sharply. “And you know very well that you vastly underestimate the importance and goodness of the work you do.”

“Goodness!” said Éowyn. “You might make your name as a warrior of renown, as one who stood athwart the path of unspeakable evil and made to hinder it, but my name must not be made at all, I must satisfy myself with chasing virtue.” He watched her fingers shake as she attempted to tie her gown behind her back. “Though I would note that your commitment to goodness and virtue is no obstacle to you seeking me out to warm your bed.” 

“I have never claimed to uphold that sort of virtue as a moral imperative,” Faramir said, hoping the sheepishness he felt did not translate to his tone. Her fingers slipped yet again against the back of her gown and he waved her closer. “Come, you will not be able to leave in a hurry if you cannot fasten that.”

Her hands stopped moving and she glared at him, clearly weighing up her options. In the end, good sense won out, and with an exaggerated sigh she came to him, turning around and lifting her hair up. “You know that I hold you in higher esteem than any other,” he said, tightening the first row of lacings. “And not for your potential to tend to hearth and home, but for your courage and your shrewdness, your tenacity, and, yes, in my more indulgent moments, even for your beauty.” At this, he kissed the back of her neck, just beneath her hairline. “Not for a moment do I doubt that the very best of your qualities would make you an excellent warrior, and one that I would be proud to command or even to serve under; but as my wish is to be not a soldier, yet a soldier I must be, your duty lies elsewhere, and you do yourself the greatest of disservices to so denigrate that duty.” 

“You still elide the crux of my complaint,” she said, stepping away from him when he tied off the final row. “Death in battle may come to us all sooner than you might admit, and though you choose to seek out a means of delaying that doom, should you fail in that endeavour, then you will nonetheless be rewarded with a valiant and bold death. Yet you would deprive me of that, condemning me to die ignobly, because you forget, my love, that those who do not have swords may still die upon them.” 

“I do not forget that, but I would not have you turn so wholly to darkness and despair when it is not yet inevitable. We have been given word of something that might bring us hope in earnest, and if hope is to come, I would not have you cast away needlessly.” 

She looked at him, and black hopelessness billowed off her like a cloak. Tears streamed down her cheeks, tears she either did not notice or did not care to draw attention to, and it occurred to him—not for the first time—how horrifyingly young she was to have felt so much pain, to have been turned inside out with no hope of reprieve. When he had been her age, he had still known hope, had still clung to it, recklessly, perilously, had not yet been ground down to the husk of a person he had so lately become. And yet there she stood before him, living out his very worst nightmare, and his only contribution to it had been to isolate her further. 

He opened his mouth to speak, but as she so often did, she beat him there, eyes now filled with furious rage. “Your idealism has made you dangerously blind to reality, my lord.” 

She turned and left him with nothing but his own miserable silence.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Two days passed, and Éowyn did not see Faramir. She had expected it, it was no secret that the events at Osgiliath had thrown the Citadel into disarray, but it brought her immeasurable sadness all the same. She still held firm to her convictions, and would not have sacrificed them even if it meant seeing Faramir sooner, but her heart felt bruised and emaciated for having parted from him on such harsh terms, particularly so soon after learning for the first time how desperate her mood could become when she thought him lost to her. 

On the third day, she returned to her work at Ciriel’s infirmary, and for several hours was kept busy enough by a spate of young men injured during the restoration works on the Rammas Echor. When her hands were kept busy, she did not notice the way blood dried and crusted beneath her fingernails, nor the way her heart felt heavy and cold. The work kept her thoughts elsewhere, and it kept her body tired, and for that she could only be grateful. 

In the late afternoon, when the weight of her workload began to lessen and Ciriel’s chores for her at last started to become fewer and further between, Elaureth arrived. She bore dark, swollen circles beneath her eyes and whose hands had a slight tremble that had not been there when last Éowyn had seen her. 

“What news?” Elaureth’s voice, despite her appearance, had all of its usual firmness. 

“News?” 

“Of Osgiliath.” She blinked, as if surprised by her own brusqueness. “I thought you might be privy to news we are not.” She stepped further into the storm room Éowyn was in, wordlessly splitting the task up between them. 

“What information would you have?” 

Elaureth suddenly looked very cowed, her eyes and hands alike dropping to the mortar and pestle she had purloined from Éowyn. “We heard tale of the destruction of the last bridge.”

“Yes,” Éowyn nodded, her breath coming shortly and shallowly. “It was destroyed as part of the retreat. As I understand it, two outposts remained in the eastern half of the city, and it was those outposts that were evacuated.” 

“I know of the outposts, Anmedior was stationed there when—when he was killed.”

“Oh,” said Éowyn, a slight tremble to her fingers where they curved around a jar of strawberry tree leaves, freshly delivered from the arboretum on the first circle. For several long moments, they worked in silence, Éowyn measuring out the various ingredients, and Elaureth adding them to the mixtures. Then the levees broke. 

“My last words to him were spoken in anger. My condition had only just become obvious enough that I could no longer hide it, and I began to face difficulties I had not anticipated—difficulties he would not have to face himself. I was upset, and uncomfortable in my own skin, and I spoke harshly to him.” She began to tip the salve into small containers, the metal of her spoon clanging loudly against the find. “Then he returned to Osgiliath and was dead within the fortnight. I only learned of his death because my cousin helped to bring the cart with his body back.” She screwed lids onto the containers, stacking them on top of one another with quite a bit more force than was necessary. “And the last words I ever spoke to him were cruel ones, and that is a legacy I will have to live with, and my son too.” She lifted the containers up, putting them into her basket, then nodded at the container of rags beside Éowyn. “If you would finish those please, then assist me with the children,” she said, her voice returned to its standard indifference. 

When Éowyn nodded, she departed quickly, leaving Éowyn to her thoughts, which had all at once turned in a direction she was hoping to avoid allowing them to turn.

Éowyn stared out the window, ripping new bandages and watching ash-laden raindrops streak down the glass while her thoughts ran away from her entirely. She had suffered no change in opinion on the fundamentals of her quarrel with Faramir, but the longer she thought upon the manner in which she expressed them, the more she was overcome by guilt. She had been right that he was blind to the truth of the world—of the imminent disaster awaiting them all, and of the wretched doom he was condemning her in his refusal to allow her to join him—but it did not change her love for him, only made it sit painfully in her chest, and it did not mean she wished to be cruel to him. And she had—in her own, austere way—been cruel to him, not just from the fiery anger within her soul, but in the way in which she had echoed the arguments he so often had with his father. 

He had been coy in what he had told her of his longstanding disagreements with his father; his coyness she understood all too well, even she had been reserved in what she had told him of her life in Edoras and of the struggle she faced with her uncle and the Worm. To defend his family through self-censorship was an instinct she knew well, but for her keen awareness of that instinct she also knew how to read beyond it, and had gleaned in both his obfuscations and his silences something of the truth of his relationship with his father. He, in the few moments of open honesty he had about the matter, ascribed it to an essential discord between them, something immutable and inherent, both not easily fixed and not worth attempting to fix. She, meanwhile, saw in it the frustrations of two men who were so similar in nature yet so different in life circumstances that the aspirations and restrictions of the one could only ever come to the detriment of the other. Though she was inclined to agree with Lord Denethor on some things (issues of military engagement by far the most significant of those issues) she had never been inclined to engage with Faramir in the way his father did, and so now found herself mortified beyond words at the manner in which she had inadvertently done so. 

She would have to speak to him. Perhaps not apologise, not as such (both her pride and her staunch refusal to give any ground on the matter of her fundamental correctness prevented that) but speaking to him had become a sudden and potent necessity. The problem now lay in how, exactly, she might do that. Even when the fact of their relationship was not an open secret, they had relied on routine and unspoken agreements to facilitate their meetings—usually through doors left unlocked late at night under the expectation one or the other would arrive through them at the same hour as always—and such practices were not, she knew, practicable when they both seemed hellbent on avoiding the other, and when any productive discussions at all would be impossible under the nose of a chaperone. 

In the evening, under the unsettling cold of a summer’s day turned prematurely to winter, she retreated to her apartments, dodging as many attendants and courtiers as she could, and admitting only to having taken an interest in observing the architecture of the City on the occasions when she could not avoid the question of her daily whereabouts. She stood for a time in the garden, eyes ever straying to the library door on the wings of unfounded hope. When her fingers had begun to turn red for the cold, she returned to her chambers, her forlornness renewed tenfold.

For two more days she could not see or speak to Faramir, and her heart grew heavier and heavier in her chest, its weight lessened in no way by the return of her night terrors. She saw and felt the Worm once more, his footsteps wearing thin the stone beyond her chamber door, and she awoke to empty, bitter darkness, her bed drenched with sweat and her breathing collapsed by panic. The guilt and terror of having abandoned her King, her family, was made infinitely worse by the far, far more tangible guilt that she had caused pain towards the one person in the world who she trusted and loved unconditionally, and that had she not been so harsh with her words, that had they found a peaceable solution, she might not be waking to face her fears utterly, entirely alone. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The Lord and Lady of Lebennin had—inexplicably—elected to host a celebratory feast in one of the lesser-used halls on the sixth circle. The invitation arrived at Éowyn’s apartments on a morning so chilly she hardly could acknowledge it as a summer’s day, and with lightning crackling across the storm cloud-pocked sky and yet another night passed in miserable terror, she could see or find no reason to celebrate anything. But her lack of interest in celebration was, it seemed, her own personal burden to bear, for Sedril arrived at her door shortly thereafter, her excitement almost feverish; it would be the first time she was allowed out in high society, and nothing would dull that experience for her.

“Adar says it is a disgrace,” Sedril explained, marching towards Éowyn’s dressing room in a manner eerily alike her mother. “He believes that Lord Tígion seeks only to embarrass Lord Denethor and to imply that he is weak when he is not. That is why he is allowing me to attend though I have not yet been formally presented to the court, for he says it will offend Lady Galanhîl but that as I am both no longer a child and connected to you and my parents alike, there will be naught she can do for it. Anyways, I care little for why it is that I am allowed to go, only that I am at all, I have waited far too long to be allowed to join in on all the fun. And I have heard that Lord Glórindîr, son of Lord Hirluin will be there. He is very handsome, so you not agree? Or I suppose you might not, since your attentions are otherwise engaged, but I think he is rather handsome and would not mind in the slightest if I were allowed to speak or even dance with him.”

Éowyn, who had followed Sedril into her dressing room, stopped abruptly, folding her arms over her chest. “Sedril, I am not blind, of course I can see that he is handsome, but I would advise caution. He is a fair friend and an excellent companion at events such as these, but his interests tend toward the less noble, and I would not wish for your reputation to be tarnished so quickly.”

“No, who would ever engage in any activities that might tarnish their reputation?” Her voice was muffled by the layers of gowns that now surrounded her head. Reaching into the very back to snatch one, she leaned back, holding it up to the light to examine the warp and weft of the fabric. “I am certain I could tame him,” she hummed, then frowned at the gown, letting it fall back in among the others. “Naneth says this evening will be an opportunity to test your mettle. She says the southern lords are looking for an ally and hoping to make one of Lord Faramir or, failing that, you. She believes you will be incapable of doing anything to impress them—the southern lords are socially closer with one another than the lords of any other region, and yet perceive Lord Faramir’s refusal to marry Lady Delieth as a personal slight, and so are predisposed to disliking you even before you offend some of their more conservative sensibilities—but I rather think you will do just fine. Adar says Lords Tígion and Laichíron are so desperate for a victory over Lord Denethor they would accept a squealing child as an ally if that child could give them even a scrap of hope.” 

“Your confidence in me is appreciated,” said Éowyn, leaning against the doorframe and watching Sedril rifle through all her gowns—after so many years of time spent together, she had learned that it was sometimes easier to let Sedril do as she pleased, and to modify her work after the girl had left. 

Sedril shook her head, dark ringlets bouncing around her cheeks. “It is not a lack of confidence, I simply believeNana is too keen to see faults in you where there are none and wish for your failure when there is little hope of it—what will lord Faramir be wearing, do you know?”

Éowyn frowned, her heart beating twice over for the pang of sadness that shot through it. “Whatever is least damaged that he has not worn recently, I would imagine,” she said after a moment, hoping it sounded as indifferent as she intended it to be. Sedril huffed dramatically. 

“Lord Boromir always appears so thoughtfully dressed, and Lord Denethor certainly always makes an effort, I truly cannot comprehend what went wrong with Lord Faramir.”

“Perhaps he values other things,” mused Éowyn, her fierce loyalty no dulled for their quarrel.  

“Fool,” said Sedril, shaking her head as though it were imbued with the wisdom of one far older than just eighteen. Then she nodded towards the latest gowns in her hands. “The blue, I think. Seasonally-appropriate, but you will not outshine Lady Galanhîl, which will no doubt heighten her esteem for you—she loves anyone who allows her to remain the centre of attention, or so Nana says.” 

After a time, Sedril departed and Hadoriel arrived, and Éowyn, who was far too distracted by her own woes to think of much else, accepted the uncomfortable blue gown as her doom for that night, and allowed Hadoriel to braid and twist her hair up into something that was neither fully Gondorrim nor Rohirrim in style. 

Later, when the muddy darkness of the daytime had been replaced by the only darkness of the night, Éowyn arrived at the appointed feasting hall, and was heralded, and was then faced with the profound discomfort of seeing that Faramir, too, was there; that he had looked across the hall at her only briefly with a look of unabashed love, before replacing it entirely with a look of cool indifference; and that she now faced an entire evening spent not knowing whether or not she ought to approach him. 

At the meal, at least, she was saved by questions by the rigidity of social etiquette, and was seated between Boromir and Lady Berúthiel. Thereafter, when the tables were cleared and the evening’s focal point shifted towards general merrymaking, it felt as if she had been thrown into her own tortuous dance, circling the hall and making conversation as and where she could, ever aware, as if by some cruel magic, that she and Faramir seemed to move in equal and opposite distances, always maintaining an unspoken gulf between them. Her heart, for whatever else it was doing, became a burden so heavy she was unsure she could bear it at all. 

Then, at the midpoint of the evening, when she had spoken with or delicately avoided as many of the southern lords as she could, an attendant approached her with a summons from Faramir. She pressed her lips together in quiet anger that he would send someone to call upon her rather than finding her himself, but soon found her complaints silenced when she saw that he appeared to be almost physically trapped in a conversation with a man she had never seen before. 

The man was dressed finely, and perhaps she would have had more thoughts to spare for his appearance were she not so singularly consumed by seeing only Faramir, her heart pounding wildly in her chest as she sought out his gaze to see what emotion, precisely, his eyes were filled with when he looked upon her. But when he did, he looked at her only fleetingly, before reaching out to place his hand on the arm of the man opposite him, stilling his speech. 

“My lady,” Faramir said, with a bow that was not half so stilted or uncomfortable as Éowyn felt. She knew immediately that they were under intense scrutiny, even if most in the hall were experienced at hiding their voyeuristic habits. 

“My lords,” she said, sketching a curtesy. 

“Lord Sirgon, may I present Lady Éowyn of Rohan, niece to Théoden King and his ambassador to Minas Tirith.” Faramir glanced across at her, his posture and appearance in as close to military precision as anyone could reasonably muster while every inch of his exposed skin was still largely painted in shades of black, blue, brilliant green and nauseating red. “Lady Éowyn, Lord Sirgon of Pelargir.” 

The aforementioned lord reached out and took Éowyn’s hand, kissing it politely but staunchly refusing to make eye contact. 

“I have heard much of Pelargir and its beauty,” she said, looking up at Faramir as if to silently ask what, exactly, she was being faced with. “I hope I may one day be given leave to see it.”

“And I hope it would agree with you, northerners often struggle to adapt to our way of life in the south,” he said, looking over her shoulder. 

“Just under a year ago I travelled to Dol Amroth and found I enjoyed it very much. It is true there was much that differed from my home, but it was familiar to me in many ways, not least in the generosity shown to me by its inhabitants.”  

“That is fine news indeed,” said Sirgon, his eyes lifted with a new brightness, though still focused elsewhere. “Dol Amroth is, in some ways, more provincial than Pelargir, but its generosity is no greater for it! In fact, I suspect there is more to be given freely in my land than in Belfalas thanks to the largesse of our port.”

Faramir laughed, a short, polite laugh. “I hope you would not say that in the presence of the Prince, my lord, wars have been started for less.” 

Sirgon looked at Faramir—and it did not escape her notice that he was willing to make eye contact with him—and proffered up a sheepish grin. “No, I would not, but perhaps there are some things that might be said to the good lady in confidence.” His eyes flickered vaguely in her direction. 

“If you will repay my silence with the promise of a visit, then my silence will be gladly given,” she said with a smile. “And it may then be that I come to see the truth of your argument.” Behind Sirgon’s head, Faramir nodded approvingly at her words, though he too had stopped looking at her and was now watching the other occupants of the hall with some intent.

“Yes, yes, of course, you shall see the city when—”Sirgon cut himself off, glancing awkwardly between her and Faramir—“when, well, when you are better disposed to undertaking such endeavours. We will all benefit from the presence of your beauty among us.” He straightened himself up to his full height (which was not much taller than Éowyn), and brushed nonexistent dust from the sleeve of his tunic. “Beauty that I would not now wish to monopolise, not when there are younger, brighter men who might gain more from it.” Abruptly, he bowed, first to her, then to Faramir, and departed. 

Éowyn stared at Faramir, feeling for the first time in a very long time as though she was not certain of what to say to him. After a year at least of such easy conversation, where she felt she could say whatever words came to mind, to now be returned once more to the realm of clumsy self-censorship brought her more sadness than it had ever done before. She settled, then, for saying the one thing that was on her mind that would not, in all likelihood, be controversial. 

“Did you notice that he would not make eye contact with me?” She frowned, chewing on the inside of her cheek, before wondering if she should have spoken at all—would Faramir wish to stay in conversation with her at all? Did she wish to stay in conversation with him?

“Lord Sirgon’s pride rules his manner in many ways, but for as long as I have known him (and I have known him for rather a long time) he has never been able to wield that pride while he is around women he believes to be beautiful,” said Faramir, turning to take a cup of wine from a passing attendant before handing it to her. When he moved closer to her, making clear to all that this was a private conversation, it seemed to Éowyn that, if nothing else, he still wished to talk to her. And nothing made that clearer than the appraising look he gave her, gaze tracking slowly downwards before coming back up with an intensity that sent a shiver down her spine. “You are beautiful,” he said, his voice low in his chest. 

“This gown is horrid,” she answered, with a laugh given at her own expense. “The fabric is much too stiff. It feels as though I have been tied up in a burlap sack, but Sedril insisted it would endear me to Lady Galanhîl.”

Faramir arched an eyebrow at her. “I had not realised you had begun to take her counsel in earnest.”

“I am being tested today in more ways than one, evidently.”

“Is that not always the case?”

“It is,” she said and sighed. “But Sedril and her noble and oh-so-kind parents believe the southern lords are attempting to either find an inroad to the Steward or to wield our—“ She dropped her voice, making deliberate eye contact with some of the ladies who had been watching her pointedly since Faramir had found her—“betrothal as a cudgel against him. I thought then that if they are truly such a problem, the least I could do would be to not be more of a problem myself."

“I have never had a problem with you,” said Faramir, sipping his wine and gazing out at the hall. “Or them, for that matter.”

“But you are not your father.”

“No, and I think we can both be very happy indeed for that.”

Éowyn smiled, but fell silent, the tense weight of unspoken words staying her tongue. Then, accepting that her time was limited and her patience had worn out many days ago, she heaved an enormous sigh. “You are owed an apology for the way I spoke to you, it was thoughtless of me.”

“You owe me no apology,” he said, his voice no more than a low hum. “It was I who was thoughtless, for I heard only what I wished to hear and not what you were truly saying. You have spent your life being ignored and wilfully misinterpreted in an attempt to frame you in terms that are not your own, and I would not wish to do the same, not when you have placed your trust in me. I was wrong to diminish your concerns, and for that, it is I who must apologise.” 

She opened her mouth to speak, then promptly shut it. Then she opened it once more: “If you wish me to say that I am wrong to believe what I do, then you will be disappointed.” 

“I do not wish that,” he said, taking a long, slow sip of his wine. 

“But your thoughts on the matter are unchanged?” 

“My thoughts on the matter no longer have any bearing on its outcome.” 

She sighed, fighting against the renewed tide of bitterness that swelled within her. “When do you depart then? Is it to be soon?”

“I suppose it is soon that I will return to Ithilien, but it is Boromir who has been selected to undertake this particular errand.” 

Her stomach dropped, and when she looked at him again she saw the tiredness and sorrow in his eyes, worse now than usual. Her heart clenched in her chest. “Boromir? But how? The way you spoke of it seemed as if it were a settled matter, I thought…”

“As did I,” he said, running a hand through his hair (and testing her strength to not reach up and fix what he had made messier). “It was unthinkable to me that anyone but myself might be selected, not just because the manner of the errand is far better suited to my particular skill set, but because it is an enormous abdication of responsibility to send the Captain-General of the Army and the heir to the Stewardship away from the front lines of the war at a moment such as this. My father has many faults, but not until now have I counted recklessness among them.” 

“But why? Why did he choose Boromir?”

“For the same reason he always will, his trust in him is stronger than it has ever been in me.” Faramir’s bitterness was both palpable and so familiar to Éowyn it was as if she were looking into a mirror. She reached out, damning the gossips, and gently touched his arm. 

“Then we have both been unjustly overlooked.” 

He looked up at her, poignant sadness in his eyes. “But, at least, not by each other,” he said with a wry smile. 

Éowyn returned the smile, though only in a half-measure. “My question remains, if altered: when does he depart?” 

“He will away to Edoras for the start of the month.”

“Ah,” she said, cold panic creeping through her veins. “I suppose, then, that is my chance to return to Meduseld and seek my uncle’s consent.” 

Faramir frowned. “Is that wise?” 

“I cannot imagine that there is any learned wisdom that might apply to a situation such as this. But wise or not, my life has been devoid of joyous things for far too long; I would prefer to win myself this one, and whether through hell or high water, I will see it done.” 

“My appreciation for the strength of your sentiment notwithstanding, I intended to ask about how you would feel about doing such a thing. Could you truly feel safe?”

“No,” she said. “No, I could not, but it is my home, I cannot stay away forever.” 

Faramir looked as if he were preparing to say something, but after a moment of brief hesitation, he nodded, draining his cup. “So be it,” he said. 

There was more to be said, that she knew for certain, but having only just resolved one quarrel, she could not bring herself to start another one, and so let the matter settle quietly. Instead, she searched the crowd for Sedril. 

She did not have much affection for the girl, but she had kept her silence when it mattered most, and wished to return the favour if only by preventing her from becoming entangled with any one of the many men who might tarnish her pristine reputation. And indeed her mindfulness had proved auspicious, for she spotted Sedril in a circle of vanishingly few women and many men—most far too old to have anything worth saying to such a girl of just eighteen, but who all nonetheless seemed unreasonably intrigued by the fine gold material of her gown. 

“Oh,” groaned Éowyn. “Shameless carrion crows, all.” She wrapped her fingers around Faramir’s forearm, heart rejoicing at the return of their casual touches. “Will you do me a favour that will, I swear to it, bring me much comfort?”

Again, he raised an eyebrow at her. “That would depend on the manner of the favour.”

“I cannot bear how those men are swarming about her; she is too young to realise she has little to gain from their attention.”

Faramir looked across the hall for a silent moment, then sighed. “Yes, very well.”

She watched him cross the hall, putting on the very best of his charm as he bowed to Sedril, offering her his hand with every artful flourish and formal affectation Éowyn was grateful he’d never shown to her. Sedril, by contrast, seemed to come alive under the attention—it didn’t matter who it was that was giving her it, not really, it was that someone of any rank was not only giving her attention, but attention as though she were an equal. And that, Éowyn realised, was the secret to Sedril’s silence on what she had witnessed before her and Faramir: Éowyn had not spoken to her as her parents might have, trying to turn her head with obfuscations and outright lies, but had been open and honest with her and that had made all the difference. 

Her mood noticeably buoyed, Éowyn contented herself with watching the dancers, smiling as she realised belatedly that she had condemned Faramir to one of the dullest dances in the standard repertoire (though simultaneously coming to the conclusion that the dance was far better to look at than to partake in). However briefly, her heart was lifted.

And then Lady Berúthiel arrived. 

She came, uncharacteristically devoid of her usual crowd of chittering fools, but not less bedecked with opulent, nigh on garish jewels and finely wrought silks. Éowyn’s mouth twitched—the air itself seemed to change around her, as if it had grown heavier for all the many fragrances Berúthiel wore. 

“Thank you,” Berúthiel murmured when she had drawn close enough to do so quietly. Éowyn, startled, raised her eyebrows at her over her cup of wine. 

“I am not sure what I have done to earn your thanks,” she said. 

Berúthiel nodded subtly towards the centre of the hall. “If it had continued any longer, I would have been impelled to send her father along to handle it. Your solution both concludes that terrible spectacle and improves her chances of making a strong match.” 

Éowyn frowned, watching as, out now in the very centre of the hall, Sedril laughed brightly, allowing herself to be spun around the floor and looking as if she were the only completely happy person in Minas Tirith. Despite the show Faramir often put on of being so far at odds with polite Gondorrim society, he played his part among them well, with the sort of skill only available to one who was born right into the heart of it all. For as much as the mores of life in Gondor chafed at her, and reminded her too strongly of the mortifying shackles the Worm had sought to place upon her, to see Faramir manage them so well brought something that felt rather like comfort to Éowyn’s heart. 

The dance finished, and—with great haste—Sedril approached her mother and Éowyn, the slightest pink flush on her cheeks contrasting vividly to the gold of her gown. It was a flush, Éowyn soon gathered, not of exertion, but of anger. 

“If you had sent one of lesser rank I might have been angrier, and as it is I doubt there will be many who will see that for what it was, but—“ She paused, rubbing her hand across her forehead as she glared at her mother—“I am surprised at your tactlessness Naneth, I was under the impression we had agreed that my attendance at these events is proof enough that I am capable of making my own decisions that—that I would not need your interference on every interaction I had?”

Surprised both by Sedril’s sharpness of speech towards her mother, and by her own preparedness to defend Berúthiel, Éowyn spoke. “It was I who sent Lord Faramir,” she said. “I do not doubt that you are capable of making whatever decisions you wish to make, and indeed it is not my prerogative to know what those decisions are. However, there are some lessons best learned from afar, and those relating to the interests of older men and very young girls are very much one of those.”

“Lessons!” Sedril laughed, in the manner of sarcastic bitterness accomplishable only by teenaged girls. “You are barely older than I and your betrothed is your senior by a decade or more! What lessons would you have to impart upon me?”

Éowyn steeled herself. “Yes, just six years separate you and I, but I have lived those six years much, much harder than I hope you will be obliged to; there are lessons that I was forced to learn at far too young an age, things that I have seen and experienced that no young girl—no woman, ought to see and experience.”

“Oh, of course. And it is this difficulty of life that enables you to flout rules you would impose upon others?”

“Sedril!” Berúthiel hissed. 

“I am not offended,” Éowyn said coolly. “No, had I had the good fortune to have had a mother and a father, I no doubt would have had the same quarrels with them.” Sedril, at Éowyn’s sharp reminder of her misfortunes, blanched. “Alas it was not my lot in life to be blessed with those who would look after my interests when my own discipline faltered.” At the opposite side of the hall, she spotted Boromir—at last free from his enormous list of necessary conversations—and decided that she would rather suffer a thousand dull dances than even a second more of the ongoing conversation. “As it is, I am neither your mother nor father, but a friend who hoped to offer you some freedom to escape those ill moments that have at times afflicted me; but where my assistance is not desired, I shall not impose it, and will instead go where I am wanted.”

With a rather dramatic swish of her skirts, she sidestepped Sedril and made directly for Boromir. With Boromir, she danced two (dreadfully boring) dances, and tried all the while to swallow back the horrifying feeling that they were all suddenly living on borrowed time.

Notes:

Thanks to Kim for the big help with... almost all of this chapter lol

Chapter 24: Book II: Summer 3018

Prince Théodred, Second Marshal of the Mark, had a lot on his mind. He always had a lot on his mind, but since he had learned yesterday of the imminent arrival of his cousin and the heir to the Steward of Gondor, his mind had been awhirl with even more worries and concerns that he had neither wanted nor welcomed. It was not that he was unhappy to see his cousin, he missed Éowyn dearly, but it was the manner and timing of her arrival that troubled him. She had been the first of them all to see the change in his father, and was, of all the sons and daughters of the House of Eorl, most closely involved in managing the relationship of the Riddermark to Gondor. Why, then, had she deemed it in any way acceptable to bring one of Gondor’s greatest men into close proximity with the Mark’s weakness? Privately, Théodred wondered if the folly of her actions related to the letter that had arrived some months ago. 

It had come, as these things tended to do, at the worst of all possible moments. Wormtongue, having successfully driven him into an impenetrable state of confusion, finally managed to convince the King that Éomer’s skills were put to better use in Aldburg. Neither Théodred nor Éomer could proffer a counter argument that the King deemed sufficient, and so Éomer was sent forth. The messenger arrived just moments after Éomer and Théodred had quit the council room in anger. Éomer had departed to sort his affairs, Théodred had found a place of seclusion to read his cousin’s missive, and was immediately grateful that he had intercepted it: Éowyn had written to request permission to marry the second son of the Lord Steward of Gondor. Her letter was remarkably brief, she wrote only that she sought approval for the betrothal, that she believed it was a good match, and that she desired a swift response. Her letter gave no indication of her thoughts on the matter; there was urgency in her words, but that hardly implied anything more than her own natural impatience. 

He had never known Éowyn to be the sort of person who might marry for political prestige, but then he had never thought her to be the sort of person who might marry at all. If she had come to the decision to marry, then he thought that she might have done it of her own accord. But during her last trip to Edoras she had expressed anger at feeling as if she had little of practical value to contribute to her Kingdom—had she chosen to marry out of some misplaced sense of duty? 

Either way, the matter had to be dealt with discretely. Wormtongue had taken to implying that Éowyn’s tenure in Gondor was an indication not of the lengths to which she was willing to go to follow a command given by her King, but rather of her desperation to distance herself from him. The Worm had been careful to stay his tongue in Théodred’s presence, but his whisperings about Éowyn had found their way to his ears nonetheless. This news from the White City presented an unimaginably significant problem for Théodred: if he approached his father in the hope of granting Éowyn’s wish, then the Worm would surely use it as evidence of her disloyalty. If he passed the letter along to Éomer, as her elder brother, and let him be the one to give his permission, then the Worm would continue to widen the gulf between Éomer and the King. His best hope was that Éowyn had written before making any announcements or promises in Gondor. If she was marrying for political purposes, he could ask her to reconsider; if she was marrying for love, then he would ask her to postpone until he had a better handle on the situation in Edoras. Thereafter, a substantial Dunlending incursion into the Westfold had stolen his attention away, and his thoughts had barely been his own yesterday when another messenger reached Edoras, heralding the coming arrival of Éowyn and Lord Boromir. 

He waited on the veranda for them, watching with something approaching concern as their small entourage passed first through the wooden outer walls of the City, then up the main thoroughfare. It seemed as if Éowyn and Boromir were working in tandem, each as responsible for their attendants as the other. The sight only made him grateful that his father and the Worm were sequestered in the council room, for to see her comfort in commanding the Gondorrim troops would have been more than enough evidence of her disloyalty. 

When she greeted him by throwing her arms around his neck, he realised that the situation was very much the worst case scenario. 

Ever the paragon of duty and propriety, Boromir hailed him with astute formality, though not quite masking a lightness in his eyes that confirmed Théodred’s fears. Mercifully, he was tactful enough to not say anything so openly. Mercifully, for Wormtongue wasted no time in stepping out onto the veranda, yellowing eyes focused on Éowyn with a searing intensity. Boromir, evidently having watched Théodred’s gaze waver from his cousin, stepped forward, becoming a physical obstacle in the Worm’s line of sight. It was a simple gesture, easily disguised as something natural, but to Théodred it confirmed that his decision all those years ago had been a sound one. He might have still felt guilt at the emotional duress he put Éowyn under, but he would never doubt that his decision had been the right one. 

With as much subtlety as he could muster, he guided them away from the exposure of the veranda, through the Golden Hall and into the back gardens. Meduseld’s attendants would manage the baggage train, and though Éowyn and Boromir were no doubt weary from their travels, he needed to ensure they were aware of the precariousness of the situation before they were allowed to pass unattended through the halls. 

Éowyn waited only long enough for the garden door to shut behind them before she turned on him, eyes blazing. “I was surprised to hear that my brother is in Aldburg,” she said primly. “I was under the impression that his residence was here, in Edoras.” 

“He will return within the week—I sent him away on business ere I knew of your arrival.” He tried to deflect by asking why they had each come. That, it seemed, was the wrong tack. Éowyn and Boromir shared a glance with one another, then Éowyn jumped back to attention, explaining how they had travelled to Edoras, and exactly what route they had taken through Anórien and the Eastfold. He had noticed this sort of graceful evasion more and more from her since she had gone to Gondor, but was surprised now to see her artlessness in it. She wasn’t even attempting to hide that she was dodging the question, and seemed to expect that he would go along with it.

So he did, and let her talk until it seemed she was convinced that the question was successfully avoided. When that moment came, he let her go, keenly aware that the sun was already beginning to set in the sky. He watched her as she left, wondering how she would react to him stationing one of his men outside her chamber door—he was too busy to risk losing sleep, and Éomer wasn’t there to take up the post himself.  

Boromir made no move to go, he was smart and generous enough to know when those around him might be in need of support. Théodred wondered, briefly, how circumspect Éowyn had been in her apparent plans for marriage. He hoped very, but he knew that was unlikely to be the case. 

“How,” he said, looking at Boromir, “is your brother?” 

Boromir laughed, a true laugh that lit up his face, deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth. It was the sort of laughter Théodred hadn’t heard in a very long time, and welcomed wholeheartedly. 

“You, my friend,” said Boromir, thumping him on the arm, “will want to have a drink before I answer that question.” 

So Théodred sent for some ale, and together they shared a tankard, watching the sun set over the White Mountains, casting a dizzying array of lilacs and lavenders across the sky—sunsets made more brilliant by the thicker, denser clouds that punctuated the horizon. He kept his watch of the door that led to the Royal Chambers, unsure if he feared seeing Wormtongue or his father more, while Boromir furnished him with the sort of easygoing, idle chatter that had first endeared him to Théodred all those years ago. Now, he found he enjoyed it less for the interruption to the monotony of formality that it brought than for his knowledge of how difficult it must have been for Boromir to push back the obvious tragedy lingering at the edges of all of their lives. 

After some time, and when they had refilled their tankards for a second round, Boromir stood, stretching his arms out and shaking his head slightly, as if remembering the playful insolence of a small child. 

“To my brother’s credit, I believe he has harboured feelings for your cousin for two years, but did not act upon them until she did.” 

Théodred grinned at his friend. “And he asked you to say that?”

“No,” said Boromir, returning the smile. “She did.” 

“Oh, of course.” Théodred laughed, but his fear grew more poignant. 

“It is a good match, I think,” Boromir continued. “Though I am not such a fool as to imagine that what I think matters, they have both set their minds to it and Nienna have mercy on any soul who attempts to stand in the way of that particular battering ram.” 

“It may be a good match, but is it a wise match? I cannot account for why anyone, least of all Éowyn, might send such a foolhardy letter to us at a time such as this. Could they not have waited for a better moment?” 

“Ah, well,” said Boromir, scratching his beard absentmindedly. “I believe their hand may have been forced.”

“How so?”

“Some uncharacteristic indiscretion gone awry, I believe.” Boromir threw him a meaningful look. Théodred sighed, reaching for his drink before he could say anything too unkind. “I thought your outlook might be more liberal,” Boromir continued, eyeing the movement of Théodred’s tankard.

“There are certain allowances made in the Mark, accommodations for changes in morality necessitated by times of war, intended to ease the burden of mistakes made in the heat of tragedy and to pave an easier path for those who might seek to marry after youthful wartime dalliances. They do not exist for high-minded young ladies to circumvent rules that exist for their own good,” he said, setting his drink back on the bench. “When did this all begin?”

“By my best guess, the winter.” 

Théodred did some brief arithmetic, then let his aching shoulders drop. “At least one or both of them knows to behave somewhat sensibly, though I know for certain it could not possibly be Éowyn.” 

“And I thought it impossible that it might be my brother,” said Boromir, sitting once more. “But when I went to do what I could to prevent my house bringing dishonour upon yours, I found that I had preempted. So it appears, however unlikely it may seem, that two wrongs do make a right.” 

“What did you expect to do? There are few things I can think of that might induce Éowyn to behave sensibly when she has set her mind to something.” 

Boromir smiled kindly. “Savalaiquë, my dear prince, a valuable little herb used across the generations in the cases of stubborn young people who let their emotions get the better of them. Many a scandal has been prevented with it.” He sighed. “I ought to have been a better guardian for her, found her someone who might have explained these matters to her better than I ever could have. There are women around her, of course, but none who I think she has taken much of a liking to, and certainly none who I would trust to speak with her as directly as she would need. Though if I know Éowyn, and at this point I suppose I do—or I know her as well as she will let anyone know her—then she will prefer to learn not by being lectured, but by experiencing. And for all my teasing, my brother is a good man, a conscientious one—despite what it now seems, he is often too conscientious for his own good—and in that she will have no better companion to discuss and learn about such matters with.”

Théodred grunted in acknowledgement, staring out over the colour-drenched mountains. Éowyn seemed so terribly young to him, when he looked at her he still saw the little girl who ran through the corridors of Meduseld, brandishing a stolen practice blade at any who tried to get in her way. He could hardly imagine her as fully grown, let alone on her way to being someone’s wife—no matter how good or kind the man allegedly was. 

“Will you allow it then?” Boromir gently interrupted his reverie, his own face more serious than it had been several moments ago.

“It is not up to me to allow or disallow.” Boromir nodded, and it was clear in his mien that he was not fully satisfied, but electing nonetheless to let the issue drop. So Théodred pressed on: “And you, dear friend? You come to us with such urgency as I have never seen from you ere now—and that is no simple feat for a warrior such as yourself.”

Boromir placed his hand upon Théodred’s upper arm, squeezing it. “I? I am away to the far north, in search of aid much needed.” He sighed, and the faintest trace of sadness marred his features. “But when I return, you and I, we will find some garden or another, and we will sit and drink our ale and be merry, and think fondly upon the joy of those we love, and all will be well.”

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn rose early. The sky in the Mark was less polluted by Orodruin’s effluence, and the sun filtered through the windows earlier than she had grown accustomed to. Against her wishes, Théodred had stationed men outside her chambers overnight, and she had slept little for the sight of their feet patrolling back and forth through the gap beneath her door. She could have stayed abed longer, but that very fact—the truth that she had no responsibilities here, nothing to be done except to keep to her embroidery and to greet the lords of the court as they passed her by—was enough to encourage her to leave it. Though she knew that so long as Boromir remained in Meduseld, she could move unchallenged, she did not seek out time in the practice ring, nor did she choose to reacquaint herself with the corridors that had for so long been her home. Instead, she pounded on Boromir’s door until he (groggily) joined her, and then went to the stables, where together they tacked up their horses and put a great distance between themselves and the winding streets of Edoras. 

They rode until they reached the small burn some five leagues from Edoras’ wooden wall, and there dismounted, where Boromir grew stern and grave. While Éowyn watered Windfola, he looked to the north, a heavy indentation setting beneath his brows that far surpassed any signs of worry she had seen from him before. 

“Faramir will be expected to take up many of my duties in my absence,” he said after a time.

“I can think of no better man for the job.”

“No, nor can I, though that does not mean I worry less.”

“Your worry is no doubt misplaced,” said Éowyn defensively, dropping to the ground and tucking her knees beneath her chin. 

Boromir glanced down at her, looking vaguely amused. “Perhaps you are right, though not for the reasons you think you are.” He too sat, looking at once entirely at odds with and at home among the grasslands that surrounded them. “My brother and my father are far too similar to one another, it has always been each of their greatest faults. My father has always been too consumed (however justly) by the struggle against the Enemy to see that in Faramir, and Faramir has always been too consumed by his desire to stand apart from my father to see it himself. I have not been, in many ways, as successful an intermediary as I ought to have been—as successful an intermediary as they deserved, but I have been one, and I will credit myself with having curbed many of their shared failings. But now I depart, and for how long I do not know, and I go at a moment at which the war has never felt more dire nor more real, and they alike will feel that in their shared, mutually self-destructive way.” He ran his hands through the shorter grass, brushing them against the grain. “I would not ask this of you—would not wish to add to your burden, which I know and see is very great already, but our interests are kindred, I think, though you in many ways are better placed than even I to see them out.”

“You wish for me to play the intermediary?” 

“No, over time I have learned that no intermediary could bridge that gap, and I would not ask such folly of you. My brother does not take joy in these duties of war, but will take them upon himself until he is entirely subsumed by them, and while I trust that you would know how to bring him out of such a fog, there are none left who might do the same for my father, none who would care enough to do so—none who have courage enough to approach a man of his stature as though he is a mere man. But you, you are a daughter of kings, and bear within you the courage of kings and the devotion of queens, and to you this task might fall and be accomplished.” 

“Alas, not me,” she said. “I am a shieldmaiden and my hand is ungentle.”

At this, Boromir smiled wryly. “I said nothing of gentleness, sister. Your hand is your own and will be wielded in the manner of your choosing, but I ask only that as you do, you think to this that I have entrusted you with.”

Éowyn’s heart grew heavy as she thought upon this new responsibility, and she feared for the weakness that she knew stirred within her, that grew greater for each day she laid in idleness, her life spinning away from her as the world spun out. Her life, she knew, became an ever greater list of promises to dead men walking, promises that kept her away from the realms of valour and courage, away from great deeds, and enslaved to the sorrow of those left behind. 

“It will only be for a short while,” said Boromir, looking once more to the north. “When I return I swear to you that I will take up this task once more, and I will furnish you with a kingly wedding gift for your efforts.”

Éowyn smiled—with men on the brink of desolation, there was often naught to do but smile. 

Later, when the quietness of the grasslands had taken on altogether too mournful a tone for either of their likings, they retreated to Edoras. Boromir was swept away by Théodred—who, for all his grandeur and nobility could not hide his excitement at having his friend beside him once more—and Éowyn was pulled away by the ladies of the court (or what few of the remained in Meduseld) to visit injured men in Edoras’ infirmary. 

Many of the women were ones she had known since the week she had first arrived in Edoras, young and already tired, still reeling from the loss of both parents in rapid succession. For whatever the men of the court were, the women were not blind to reality, and spoke to Éowyn with pity on their lips, and woven into their words. Were she not hesitant to so quickly face her uncle—or worse, the Worm—she might have made her excuses and fled the scene, but instead, she was forced to keep to her silence, feeling the tension within her build and expand, threatening to explode her chest. 

In time, and encouraged by her overt reticence, the women moved on to topics other than Éowyn; topics, mainly, of fear. The midsummer harvest threatened to be poorer in the Folde than last summer’s, and a pestilence had unsettled much of the population just north of the Snowbourn, to say nothing of the worrying black smoke that had become omnipresent in the mountains abutting Dunland—the Hillmen, it seemed, were clearing the forests. Their concerns were not concerns unheard before by Éowyn, not only were many of them ones she had heard before she had gone to Gondor, they were fears that mirrored those voiced in Minas Tirith. Where they differed was their prognosis: in the White City, it was assumed that Lord Denethor would see diligently to the necessary solutions, in the gardens of Meduseld (though it went unspoken), there was no commensurate certainty

As they at last came upon the infirmary, it was Lady Gwengwith who broke fear’s monopoly on the conversation, her eyes bright with characteristic mischief as she looked across her loom at Éowyn. “I have heard it said that the women of Gondor wear bands of cloth about their breasts, as if to bind them! Is that really so?” Several of the other women giggled. 

“It is,” said Éowyn. “Though all else of their garments are loose and wasteful of fabric; they wear entire gowns of silk, with folds upon folds of fabric, as if to wear all their wealth upon their bodies.” 

“How strange,” said Lady Gwengwith, casting a surreptitious (almost insecure) glance around at the simple woolen gowns their companions wore. “Even the men?”

Éowyn hummed in confirmation, then could not stop her smile as she thought of Prince Imrahil—of what the Eorlingas might make of him and his silk tunics wrought with silver thread. “Even the men, and many make quite a show of it.”

“We have seen Lord Boromir, of course,” said Lady Elfthryth, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And his garb always seemed rather audacious, but for my part I believed it to be so because he is as a prince of their country.”

“No, indeed not! Lord Boromir dresses rather simply compared to his compatriots—or, when compared to most of them.” 

“Oh?” Lady Gwengwith’s eyebrow sat perilously high upon her forehead. 

“There are some who eschew the pompousness, though there is a performance in that, too, I suppose,” said Éowyn, and regretted it immediately for her heart grew heavy and cold with worry and fear alike as she thought of Faramir, and of Lord Denethor, and of her promise to Boromir.

Fortune granted her some reprieve, for they were met at the doors to the infirmary by its warden, who ushered them all in with hastily-given bows, guiding them towards a large room in the centre of the complex.

It was obvious—though Éowyn thought, likely more so to her than any of the other ladies present—that the entire room had been staged just so. There was a startling lack of blood (though not so little that it looked scrubbed clean), and what few men weren’t active and alert were sleeping soundly, unbothered by delirium or terrors in their sleep. It had been some time since she had seen the direct aftermath of battle, but she had seen the aftermath of winching accidents, tannery injuries, and cart accidents all too often, and knew from memory that those were not half so gruesome as battle injuries, yet many more times more gruesome than what lay before her now. The ladies of the court, if they even noticed the staging, nonetheless played their parts well, fanning out across the room and each taking to an unattended bedside. 

Only Éowyn and Lady Gwengwith were left without a bedside to visit, and were instead ushered forth by the chief healer. The chief healer was a stout woman named Mildrith who looked as though she had reared many children and disciplined even more, but who revered above all other things a deference to hierarchy. She and Éowyn had met many times in Éowyn’s youth—more often than not after instances in which neither her uncle nor her cousin nor even her brother could stop her from doing things which her skin and bones could not withstand. There had been many incidents when she had been the only person in the entire kingdom brave enough to scold Éowyn. Then, when she had grown older, there had been many more incidents when she had been the only person in the kingdom brave enough to dry her tears.

Mildrith ushered Éowyn and Lady Gwengwith down a short corridor and into a small courtyard. She had evidently decided that as the two women of the highest rank, their time would be better spent taking a much more extensive circle around the premises, visiting as many injured men as they could. Most of the rooms, small as they were, had few awake occupants, leaving Éowyn and Gwengwith to chat idly.

Though Gwengwith was only some twenty years her senior, the gulf in life experience (and the fact of Gwengwith having, at one point, been a close friend of her mother’s) made speaking to her an oftentimes disconcerting activity. It was not as though she was not a good conversationalist, no, Gwengwith had always been the very ideal of a good wife of a Rohir lord, but she, like nearly every other soul in the Kingdom, simply could not conceive of how to interact with Éowyn. It was made all the worse for her previous closeness with her mother, it seemed Gwengwith could not decide if she ought to mother Éowyn, or treat her as a contemporary. For her indecision over the very many years when the choice had existed, she had settled on neither. Éowyn’s removal to Minas Tirith had, however, for one reason or another reset the uncertainties of their relationship, rebalancing it not so they saw each other as equals, but empowered Gwengwith rather more to look upon Éowyn as something approaching a daughter. 

“We have missed your visits,” she said, hesitation in her voice. 

“As have I,” answered Éowyn mechanically, watching healers hurry to and fro, their concerns too great to pause and make a show of etiquette. 

“I have no doubt that you have greatly missed your kin—your uncle and cousin, and brother, of course—but I thought I would extend an invitation, entirely at your convenience and desire. Elfric returns to his éored shortly, and my husband will return to the Westfold shortly thereafter, and I would not say no to a companion, if it would be something you would enjoy.” 

Éowyn looked at her long and hard, wondering, and then knowing, that her invitation came not from her desire to spend more time with Éowyn, but from her knowledge of the ragged state of the House of Eorl, of its many deficiencies now laid bare in mortifying clarity, and of the parasite that had attached itself to the King—to her. But while she knew what Gwengwith offered, she knew even better what she had been taught from her earliest days of consciousness, of the unparalleled importance of preserving the reputation of the King, of giving neither the Lords of the Westfold nor the Eastfold reason to see weakness in him, to challenge his sanctified authority. For all that Meduseld promised danger to her, it also promised relief—if she could mind her manners long enough to secure her uncle’s consent, she could be free of the Worm’s grasp forever, could better secure the safety of her people where her cousin and brother could not. Meduseld promised danger, but to abscond to the household of the Lord of the Deeping-Coomb would be to admit what ought never be admitted. 

“I appreciate your generous offer,” said Éowyn, looking away from Gwengwith, “but my current situation allows me to spend so little time with my uncle, and he is as a father to me, and for that I miss him terribly and treasure our time together greatly.”

Gwengwith narrowed her eyes at her, but Éowyn held her gaze, challenging her to say more. In the end, she did not, simply nodding and accepting her deferral. She kept her silence, and Éowyn kept the newfound insecurity Gwengwith had inadvertently gifted her: if the frailty of her uncle was known well enough to spur intervention from outsiders, then the situation had not been contained half so well as it ought to have been; and if the knowledge of that frailty manifested itself as a desire to remove Éowyn from the situation, then it was clear to her that her brother and cousin had nigh on entirely abdicated their duty of care to her by living her in among it for so many years before acting. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The week came and went, and Éomer did indeed return from Aldburg, albeit just hours before Boromir was set to leave, arriving in the late hours of the afternoon on the eve of Boromir’s departure. Éowyn kept her newly-kindled frustration to herself, greeting her brother as if nothing had changed—and from his behaviour towards her, he was content to carry on accordingly. In the evening, he stood sentinel in her chambers, and though they said nothing of it, there was a new tension in the set of his jaw that had not been there when last she had seen him.

In the morning, when the sun painted streaks of lavender across the summer sky, Éowyn rose and went with Éomer and Théodred to the veranda, lending what help she could to Boromir in the final moments of preparation before his journey. After a time, Théodred and Éomer’s anxious hands usurped her, and she retreated to the porch to watch as they worked, each carrying with them the giddy energy of horses before a cavalry charge.

She could not find the words to articulate what she felt for Boromir—knew he would not appreciate her fear, except if it was to show how serious she believed his task to be; nor would he likely be stirred by the fit of lachrymosity that had overtaken her, urging her to profess her gratitude for the kindness he had shown to her. She could not find the words, so she said none of them, and instead watched in weary silence as he spoke quietly with Théodred and Éomer, their heads brought together as closely as their respective eyebrows. 

In this, her frustration began to bubble closer to the surface—whatever it was that they spoke of, she knew she could at least hold her own in the conversation, and that she was not involved in it simply because they had all forgotten about her. For whatever complaints she had about the society of Minas Tirith (and of those she had very many), at least she would not have been forgotten quite so readily—sneered at, yes, but never forgotten. 

When their conference had at last finished, Boromir stepped back up towards her spot on the veranda once more, a bright look in his eye, like a hound that had freshly caught the scent of its quarry. 

He raised a teasing brow at her as he took her hands. “You will save some of the wedding preparations for me? Someone with good taste must be allowed to pass judgement on them, since Vaire herself has predestined that you will neither show any respect for it yourselves.” 

She could not help but match his good humour with her own, his enthusiasm was so very infectious. “I am sure there will be no shortage of good counsel passed along while you are away.” 

“No, no, I should think not.” He smiled, looking down at her hands where they rested in his. Giving them a firm squeeze, he looked up at her once more. “And you will remember my request?”

“Of course, it is written in my heart,” she said, and could not mean it more if she tried. 

“Upon my return, I will bring you a kingly gift for your efforts, I swear to it.”

She nodded, and tried not to add an if to his statement. “I await it eagerly.” 

“There is more to be said,” said Boromir, with a sigh. “But neither you nor I are people for whom words come easily, are we?”

“I daresay you are correct on that,” said Éowyn with a quiet laugh. 

“Good. Then I will take my leave of you.” He moved to kiss her hand, but she stepped forward, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly.

“Return to us,” she said, her voice unexpectedly hoarse with emotion. Then, recollecting herself she let out a watery laugh. “Return to us before I am required to choose a gown, I know your keen eye will save us all from scandal there.”

He did not return the jest, but smiled as he released her, stepping away from her and away from her life. 

She watched for nearly an hour as he rode out across the plains, a lump in her throat and an unshakeable feeling of dread in her bones; knowing, but not caring, that she was watched by many as she did so, and knowing but caring very much that she was watched by one man in particular, whose eyes felt as the cold chill of death against her skin. 

Théodred wasted no time—Théodred never wasted any time. Boromir’s horse had barely disappeared beyond the horizon when he called her away from the veranda. Slowly, unwillingly, she went, her limbs moving slowly for latent grief, and slower still when she saw the stern anger in her cousin’s eyes. She had been on the receiving end of his anger a number of times before, enough to know to avoid it when she could, but not enough to remember it from afar.  

He led her into the study that was only sometimes his, and sat behind a desk that she remembered well from her childhood as harbouring one of the best hiding spaces in all of Meduseld—a memory that seemed as trivial and distant to her as even the faintest memories of her mother and father. 

“I have presented your offer to my father,” said Théodred. 

“My offer? Perhaps I was unclear in my letter, it was not—“

“—You were perfectly clear, Éowyn,” said Théodred, placing his hands carefully upon the tabletop, a faint tremor in his voice. “And you should be rather grateful that I did not show that letter directly to my father, or you would not have been given the luxury of this conversation at all.”

Éowyn said nothing, but clenched her fists tightly behind her back, feeling her nails dig into the thin skin of her palm. 

“There are many things that have changed since you have left us for Gondor, and I regret that you have not been kept better informed of them. The situation is thus: my father has been led to believe that any attempt to keep you away from Meduseld is evidence of treachery, or of insufficient regard for the strength of our house. If you continue to push forward with this request—and I would very much wish that you do not—then a choice will be put before you, a choice that I will be able to do naught to change. If you continue on, then my father will wish to test your loyalty, and he will do so by positioning this desired betrothal of yours against your right to return to the Mark.” 

The room shifted beneath her feet, fuzziness and nausea rising within her like an unstoppable tide, squeezing her breath from her lungs. She leaned against the chair in front of her, then, when her strength abandoned her entirely, she sank down into it. 

“If you accept an abridgement of your right of return in favour of this marriage, then it will reflect poorly not just on yourself, but on your brother too. Your brother who, I might add, has been of seminal importance to the defence of our borders and whose efforts could not be so easily replaced.” He glanced down, and when his eyes met hers once more they had softened notably. “Éowyn, I do not ask much of you, but I cannot overstate the importance of this.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to tell her that this was some sort of test, that nothing he said was true, that he did not truly think so little of her and her right to a life. She stared at him until the shock melted away into bitter rage, and his silence felt like white hot needles against her skin. 

“You do not ask much of me? You asked me to give up my entire life, you sent me from my home to live among a people I did not know—”

Théodred put up his hand to silence her. “I do not ask much of you now, your sacrifice against the strength of our kingdom. Éowyn, you are young, you will have another chance for love.”

“No,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “No. Not like this, not like him.” 

“Wars demand sacrifices, Éowyn, but it is only the stoutest warriors who answer that call.”

“But you have not let me be a warrior! You have denied me that right at every opportunity, and I feel it to this day. I have never wielded a blade that is not purposefully dulled, have never seen a battle by my own eyes. These things I have not done, yet you would call me a warrior? A warrior in whose estimation? Certainly not in my own.” 

“Mine,” said Théodred quickly, too quickly. “Are not women warriors when they bear their children?” 

Éowyn laughed bitterly. “If you believe that to be true—and I do not believe that you do—then why would you deny me that opportunity too? You wish me to be neither warrior nor wife, would it not be more convenient for you if I simply did not exist at all? If for all these years I had simply been some inconvenient figment of your imagination that could now be blinked away.” 

Théodred opened his mouth, then promptly shut it, looking at his hands where they lay against the desk. She nodded tightly, blinking away the sting of tears. 

“What will you give me in return?”

“Give you?” He looked up, his eyes widening briefly before his brow knitted together. 

“Yes, give me. It sounds to me as if you are asking me to give up very much in exchange for nothing at all, yet if I choose to return to Gondor, I lose very little, and you lose very much.”

“Very little? Éowyn, how can you speak so? You would lose the love of your family, of your King, and the stability of your kingdom would be irreparably compromised.” 

“A King that sent me away, and a family that cares not for my happiness.” She straightened her spine, narrowing her eyes at him. “What will you give me?”

Immeasurable agony stretched in the silence between them, worsened only by the knowledge that there would be no circumstances under which they would rise from the table with a better respect for the other than they had when they sat down. No matter the outcome, there would be loss, and there would be heartbreak, and after having suffered so much of each, neither wished to race the other to that inevitability. 

“What would you have?” Théodred’s voice seemed to oscillate between resignation and anger as he spoke, a tight coil of emotion forced into so few words. 

“You know what I would have.” 

“Ask anything else of me, cousin, but not that.” 

“There is nothing else. He can give me freedom to live as I please, and you to die as I please. I will trade one for the other, but only one for the other, nothing less.” 

“I cannot give you it. I will not so dishonour the memory of my aunt, who was once to me as a mother.”

“Then her memory will be all you shall have of her,” Éowyn said, standing abruptly. “I will return to Gondor, and there sow the seeds of happier days, if not a happier death.” She turned for the door, holding her hands in front of her to hide how they trembled. 

“Will you not think longer on my request? Will you abandon us so recklessly?” 

She neither spoke nor acknowledged him as she slipped out the door.

Chapter 25: Book II: Autumn 3018

The shadows claimed Meduseld more quickly that evening than they had the day before. Éowyn avoided as many people as she could—and in this the years she had spent scurrying through the service corridors of the Golden Hall as a teenager, doing everything she could to remain unseen by Gríma, proved useful. She moved from storeroom to storeroom as the hours passed, occupying herself only with planning how she would explain her premature return to Minas Tirith upon her arrival.

When the night fully enveloped the Hall, she knew she could hide in the darkness no longer without worrying Éomer. To the rest of the world, she could excuse her conspicuous absence that day as the understandable sorrows of one who had just sent a good friend away on a dangerous errand (which, of course, she had), but Éomer knew her well enough to know that she had never preferred to take her sorrows in solitude. So, moving quietly to avoid attracting more attention than she wished to, she departed her hiding place and traversed the back corridors once more, aiming for her chambers. 

As she entered the large vestibule that separated the upper kitchens from the main corridors, she knew she had erred. He, whether by chance or by contrivance, had found her, and now stood in front of the exit she had intended to use.

It had been a very long time since she had been this close to him alone—the last time she could remember with startling clarity, for it had been interrupted by Boromir (then as much a stranger to her as anyone) and had precipitated her exile to Gondor. Fleetingly, she thought back on that day and wondered at how long ago it felt, how much younger and more carefree she had seemed then, though in those days she had already begun to feel tired beyond her years. 

“My Lady Éowyn,” Gríma said, his voice as prim and collected as ever. “I had hoped to find you this evening, there are some concerning matters I wish to clarify with you.”

She said nothing, and hoped that her silence would expedite the encounter. Her spine was an iron rod plunged into a swordsmith’s fire. Every inch of her skin prickled, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing up straight. 

He paced before her, cold and commanding, more arrogant than his position merited. But he held the power here, and worse still, he now knew he held the power. 

“You are now three and twenty years of age,” he said, stopping to lean back on his heels as if to better appraise her. “Though your mother and grandmother wed later in life, you have come upon the time when it would be best for all if you turned your thoughts towards matrimony.”

“My thoughts are my own,” she said sharply, then regretted it. 

“Indeed they are,” he said, stepping forward. “And for that we must be grateful, for you see clearly the weakness of this Kingdom. But you see the contours of its glory too, you see what it might become if tended to with care and courage.” 

She scoffed. “Care and courage? You have neither.” 

“And you have both.” He stepped forward once more. The dark hairs on his cheeks, curled unnaturally inward, were evident to her now. His breath was acrid, like the dregs of a wine bottle left too long in the heat of the sun. The muscles in her jaw clenched involuntarily. “I could array you in beauty and valour. Together, we might restore the Riddermark to its former glory, to give to it what it is owed. There need not be confusion in these halls, this disorder and turmoil need not continue. Together, we could bring an end to it. I could make you a queen.” 

She could not stop the images that flashed before her mind’s eye: images of her, dressed in all the grandeur of a queen, seated upon a glorious throne, loved and known. It was what she had for so long wished for, acknowledgement of her abilities, yet to imagine it meant to imagine herself alone, to imagine herself as bent and broken as her uncle. No, she had known the brilliant light of recognition, and it did not come from a crowned head. 

“I do not desire to be a queen,” she said, and felt a rush of emotion in her chest at the words, felt the firmness of her convictions fill her with warmth. 

“Yet queenly you are, in stature if not title, and titles can nevertheless be amended with the right power. And your power, bound to mine, would be enough to do a great many things. Your King, revived from his dotage, your Kingdom, renewed and made great.”

“For a marriage without love, not for less than the King of Gondor himself would I settle.” 

He smiled lecherously. “You would be a fine prize for any king, and no good king would so recklessly cast away something of such value.”

“I know my worth,” she said hotly, stepping back from him so quickly that a small gasp of air escaped her when her back hit the wall. 

“Then you know what tariffs can be paid with it.” 

She trembled against her will. His intentions were clear: the safety of her kin and her people rested in her hands. If she left, then she would forever be damned by the knowledge that she might have been able to stop the collapse of her Kingdom. 

He stepped away from her, back towards the door from whence he had entered. “In your own time,” he said, then disappeared as quickly as he came. 

When the door banged shut behind him, she slumped against the wall and sank to the floor, once again cursing the miserable prison that had become her life.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

For all her representations of her commitment to leaving, Éowyn did not leave the Riddermark that month, nor did she make any movements in the first fortnight of the succeeding month. She knew that Théodred wondered at her actions, at their disjointedness from her words, but he did not speak of the issue any further and she did not give him cause to. Although Éomer took up his nightly sentinel in her chambers, she did not confide aught in him of her conversation with Théodred. He, too, did not press the issue, though it seemed to her in the manner of his speaking and the way in which he looked at her that he very much wished to. 

The air grew crisp and thin, and the sunrises and sunsets more vivid and spectacular, tainted as they were by Orodruin’s ash. Storms blew across the grasslands, though the grasses and ground remained so dry that even the softest scrapes of lightning kindled raging wildfires. More often than not, Éowyn wondered after the days in Gondor, whether the streets of the White City flooded under the torrential rains, or if Faramir might see the same fuchsias and violets as she when he looked up at the dawn sky.  Though her sense of wonder was strong, still she could not bring herself to speak the words and to carry herself once more back to Minas Tirith. Her heart, her mind, and her body alike began to slow.

Keeping up appearances became (or indeed, had long ago become ) the sole purpose of her existence. The King oscillated wildly between bouts of paranoia and moments of hopeless lucidity, where he could do naught but loudly despair at the drawn-out collapse of his kingdom—a phenomenon he blamed primarily on his grandfather. Having himself become a liability of the highest order, and generally not fit for public consumption, it fell to Théodred and Éowyn to do what they could to stave off rumours of the King’s impotence. Though Éowyn felt more isolated than ever at Meduseld, and though she could not conjure even the barest flicker of joy within her, she became a central figure of Meduseld’s social calendar, giving up nearly every afternoon and evening to entertaining the various nobles of the court, touring the surrounding farmsteads that sustained Edoras, and generally playing the part of lady of the house, a role that she had for so long shirked. 

In her frustrations, she knew there was one person above all others whose counsel she desired. More than just his good counsel, she yearned to feel his comforting presence once more, to smell the calming, musky scent that was entirely his own, to feel the implicit strength of his arms around her and—perhaps most of all—to hear his soothing baritone as he spoke words of comfort to her. And that was, to her, the very foundations of her sorrow: she could not bring herself to forsake her people, but she also knew she could never be happy so long as she lingered in Edoras. 

She could not write to him, could not risk her letter being intercepted, and she could speak to neither Éomer nor Théodred nor anyone else of her conflict, and so she turned in on herself, speaking little, sleeping less, and ever looking eastward.

It was (though she did not remember enough of what her life had been like before to notice it) a reversion to norm. Few in Edoras noticed the great sadness that overcame her, for in her patient silence and her ongoing deference, she behaved exactly as she had ere she removed to Minas Tirith; for nearly all who looked upon her, it was a boon to their own aims—it mattered little to them if she was in terrible pain, so long as she did what they wished her to do. And for the great sadness in her heart, she could bring herself to do little more than what was asked of her, she had resigned herself to once more living a life that existed to serve all but herself.

The days grew longer, and soon it had been two months since her arrival. Each night, Éomer kept watch in her chambers, and each day she returned to hiding her existence from the world. Gríma’s wandering eye grew bolder, lurking less in the shadows and more in the light, knowing—as well as she knew—that none would come to her aid. 

It seemed obvious to her the calculation he had made; having tried the nighttimes for long enough with no success, he had moved to the daytimes to play his cruel games. And he had understood what she alone knew: in the daytime she became invisible. Éomer and Théodred alike feared the nights, for the nights, they knew, signalled the hours when wandering eyes might turn to wandering hands, which in turn might take distanced coveting to outright theft. In the daytime, they apparently reasoned (though never said outright) that the bright light of the sun would prevent any untoward behaviour, any actions that might bring harm upon her and her reputation. 

But Éowyn knew better, had always known better, and saw far more than her brother and cousin were willing to, for she had returned to her old life as though her new one had never happened at all. It felt to her as if her very skin were a liability, and she wore it uneasily, feeling all too often the Worm’s leering eyes upon her. It mattered little whether it was the sun or the moon that shone in the sky, only that she walked beneath it, undefended and unnoticed by those who might have the power to defend her. She was weak, made weaker by the apathy that surrounded her, and worst of all, she felt her weakness every second of every day, more poignant for her loneliness now that she knew what it was to not feel so alone. 

At dinner in the first chilly week of the autumn, Éowyn sat beside Elfric, son of Lord Erkenbrand. At one point in her teenage years, Elfric had represented everything she thought she might one day marry: he was bold but not brash, and made a show of following each rule he encountered to the letter, occupying in the volume of his voice almost as much space as he occupied in physical form (and he was no small man). Once, she had been able to engage him in a conversation with ease, simply by mentioning the name of a location in the Westfold and allowing his enormous—and well-earned—sense of pride to spur him to speech, giving bombastic tales of his rides against the Dunlendings and his valorous single-handed struggle against Orcs. Now, when she found herself markedly less enthralled by the stories of slaying (not least because she heard far too many of them and saw too closely the aftermath of them in Minas Tirith), she realised she could find nearly nothing at all to say to him. Though he was the heir to his father’s title, he had little to say on matters of politics, nor trade, nor agriculture, nor did he display even a passing interest in culture. She thought, with searing longing, of Faramir’s fascination with everything, of the eagerness he showed for the world that she had never quite seen in anyone else before. 

In the days and weeks before she and Boromir had departed Minas Tirith, there had been a suffocating blanket cast across the Citadel—gripped in equal parts by nervous anticipation (Boromir’s), frustrated but muzzled anger (Faramir’s), and practiced indifference (Lord Denethor’s). The tension had pervaded everything, even her and Faramir’s precious few moments together, so much so that Éowyn had wondered if they would ever again return to their previous ramshackle normality. 

But then, a mere fortnight before her departure, she had asked a question. A rather simple question she thought, or if not simple, then a question she did not absolutely need an answer to, but within seconds of the words leaving her lips, Faramir was staring into the distance between them, his brow gently furrowed and his eyes moving side to side, as if reading a book that was not there. Anórien and Ithilien she could understand, Lebennin she puzzled out, but Lossarnach, she had said, she could not understand—what did its name mean? 

Faramir had been quick to answer that the prefix loss was actually a corruption of the word loth meaning flower (and this he told her with the barely-contained excitement of one who has long held a specialised tool in their hand, hoping for the very unique opportunity at which to wield it), but when she pressed on its suffix, his brow had furrowed once more. And then, in a flurry of activity she had not quite expected, their stolen hours in the evening had turned from something private and sedate to something altogether more studious—though, to her great surprise, no less intimate. He had pulled her by the hand towards the library, she laughing, he looking utterly enraptured by his thoughts; there, she had curled up in one of the many plush armchairs in the room while he had consulted tome after tome, thinking aloud to her as he obsessively tried to solve this challenge she had not realised she’d set. 

As the hours had worn on, she had lost interest entirely in the question she had asked, but had discovered again what she had already known: not only was Faramir a man apart from the rest for his reverence of learning, but that his reverence came not from a place of manufactured discipline, but out of a genuine enjoyment. Though she could not begin to understand how he found the energy for it, to see him move and speak so excitedly (which was, in truth, only barely scraping the surface what other people might call outwards excitement) had brought her a level of contentedness she had not felt in quite a long time. And the longer she had watched him, the more she had realised that his excitement stemmed not just from the challenge of shining a light on the unknown, but from the fact that he had someone to share in it with—he had obviously not expected her to roll up her sleeves and begin wading through the stacks of books, but he had seemed utterly delighted that she had so patiently entertained all of his thoughts, asking questions (no matter how rudimentary) from time to time, and, when his thoughts had come too quickly for him to keep track of on his own, taking rigorous notes. 

In the end, in the very early hours of the morning when she had begun to fall asleep across one of the tables, they had at last given up, no closer to an answer than when they had started. Yet despite that apparent failure, Éowyn felt very much as though it was somehow a victory, and that feeling she had bottled up deep within her, keeping it as close to her heart as she possibly could. That was how it was with him, the simple moments stretched into greatness with him, not because of some newfound appreciation for mundanity, but because his presence was so towering and overfilled with boundless nobility and interest, that to watch him undertake even basic tasks felt as if she was watching something remarkable. And his talent, his greatest, most precious talent, was his unparalleled skill in making others feel as if they shared in that greatness too. For all that her right to glory and importance had been stifled, when she was around him she was able to forget about it, able to—no matter how briefly—know what it felt like to matter. 

It was Lord Elfric’s laughter that brought her back to the present, and she blinked into the light of the hall for several seconds, taken aback by how contemplative she had allowed herself to become.

“Well, if what I have heard of their ways is true, then I am glad that I have no connection to them; their moral venality is most beyond question,” said Lady Elfthryth, with a slight shake of her head.

“No connection? You forget that our Lady Éowyn lives among them now,” said Lord Elfhelm from the end of the table, stern reproach in his eyes. 

“Oh, you are of course correct,” Elfthryth said, colour rising in her cheeks. She glanced down the table at Éowyn. “Though you appear as if you have not yet been corrupted by their alarming customs.”

“Which customs are these?” Éowyn asked, though she really had no especial interest in learning the answer. 

Elfthryth leaned forwards, as if the change of few inches might somehow make the metres that spanned between them less imposing. “Their preference for removing bodily hair,” she stage-whispered. 

“Ah,” said Éowyn, looking down at her plate. For a few strange seconds, she almost relished the excruciatingly normal nature of the moment: her whole life for more than two years had been centred around negotiating the sometimes-unbridgeable cultural differences between Gondor and the Mark—this was a routine she knew all too well. Yet the moment passed quickly (though perhaps not too quickly) and the dull thudding of her resentment returned once more. 

“Is it true then?”

Éowyn sighed. “Yes, I suppose it is, though it has not featured in too many of my conversations, it rather seems to be a topic confined to ladies and their maids.”

“Oh,” said Elfthryth, brimming with disappointment. She looked expectantly at Éowyn for a moment longer, and when Éowyn failed to deliver any more sordid information, she turned back to the table at large, relegating Éowyn once more to the dark crevasses of irrelevance.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

It had not been Éowyn’s choice to face her uncle like this, she had hoped to avoid the issue for as long as she could, but all at once the world had begun to move very quickly. Gríma had departed for two weeks on one of his occasional trips—to see his kin in the Westfold—and when he had returned, he bore whisperings of news from Gondor. She had sensed his fury only briefly before he had sequestered himself with her uncle, and by the time she was summoned to the council room, she knew that terrible things awaited her. 

So she stood, her back as straight and sharp as the ancient blades that hung on the walls that surrounded her, pressing the backs of her hands so forcefully into the metal of her girdle she was certain it would leave marks. There was no other way to control the bitter anger that bubbled and boiled within her, if for a moment her discipline wavered, all would come to ruin. 

Her uncle opened his mouth to speak, but it was the Worm’s words that came forth, in the King’s “So: they intend to make this hostage-taking of my kin permanent?”

“My lord?”

“Craven indeed the behaviour of these Staninglanders…” The King’s eyes grew more hardened with each word, a brutality evident within them that she had never before seen. 

“My lord, is it not with cravenness that Lord Faramir has asked for my hand.” 

“Is it not? Strange then that he would not come himself to ask the right to your dowry from me, is it not?”

For a moment, she faltered. “It is not,” she said, recovering herself. “He is the commander of Gondor’s foremost defensive force, and I would not have had him abandon that post; you, I believed, would have known the merit in that, and seen that it shows him to be both an honourable and dutiful man, and a man who shows me enough respect to take my counsel.”

“Ill counsel,” said the Worm, placing his hand upon the throne, fingers curling slowly about the wood. There was dirt lodged beneath his fingernails. “Ill counsel indeed, though it matters not, for in your counsel you provided cover for the fouler machinations of the Steward and his sons.” 

“There are no foul machinations at play,” she said tartly. 

“Strange, is it not, that the Kingdom of Gondor did not send a reciprocal envoy in answer to your ambassadorship? To one of good sense it would seem that there are two explanations. The first is that the Men of the White City hold little regard for the ancient and noble house of Eorl, and did not desire to parley with it as equals. The second is that the Steward knew that the gift of the Lady of Rohan was a mighty gift indeed, and that so long as she remained within Minas Tirith, there could be no doubts that the Rohirrim would ride to Gondor’s aid—there could, of course, be no better hostage.”

“Yes, yes, and they hoped that the heart and mind of a young girl might be turned by promises of marriage and of titles, and it seems,” said her uncle, looking only at the ground, “that they were correct in their estimations of the situation.” 

Éowyn stared at Gríma, wishing that she could immolate him with a look, that the anger she felt coursing through her veins would be enough to strike him down without demanding she ever lift a blade. She wished to erase him from history, to salt the earth where he had grown and to endure that he could never again look upon her. But she sought also to protect herself, to protect her people, and knew that her temper would not lead her to those ends. 

“If they desired to buy my loyalty with titles alone, then I would not have settled for such a low price. Yet it is not to be a marriage without love, and I have chosen freely and willingly, and ask only that you respect my wishes.”

“And it is your wish to leave your people then, to live as a wife to this Man of Gondor?” Her uncle’s voice came like broken glass, and in it, Éowyn saw the implicit trap he had set. She fell silent for a tortuously long moment.

If she answered in the affirmative, then Théodred’s predicted bargain would come to light, then she might sacrifice her right to ever return to this, the land of her people, of her kin. If she lied, then she would lose Faramir, would lose the only person who had ever truly known her. She had learned to live without her kin, had learned to make a life anew in Gondor, had proven to herself that it was possible; but she had not learned to live in the depths of her despair, had not made the bitter watches of her night her home, and if she tried to, she knew there would be only one fate for her. 

She looked around at the Golden Hall, this home that was not a home, this place that had once symbolised the valour and might of her people, the glory forged in centuries of hard wars and harder life, the brutal love of warriors. It was what she had once wished to become, what she had once been promised was hers by right. She looked at her brother, saw his silent pleas from across the hall. She looked at it all, and she said her goodbyes. Then she looked at her uncle. 

“I would,” she said.

“Then you have played your part admirably. Soon Gondor will have unfettered access to the knowledge of these halls, will be given the right to impinge upon the rulership of Théoden King and, when a son is born from this marriage of yours, he will be in line to this hallowed and sacred throne.” Gríma’s words came half-whispered, caught by the King’s ear. 

“No,” he said gruffly. “No, no I will not allow the strength of the Mark to fail. No, if you are to take up this suit, if you are to turn so wholly from the Mark, then your decision will be final. If you marry this little lord of yours, then your welcome in these halls—in this land, will be at an end.”

“My lord—” Éomer began, stepping forward once more. The King ignored him outright, his attention focused instead on a sheet of paper Gríma had produced for him, his shaking hand moving a pen quickly across it. 

“—Ah, yes, it would be in Lord Éomer’s interest to rebel against your good word, would it not, my lord? For if it is his sister that has the support of the House of Húrin, then support for his cause would be close behind, would it not?” 

“There is no plot against you, my lord,” said Éowyn, her voice coming pitchily for her indignation. “My brother is content with his status and I seek only to live the life of love that was given to my mother and father, and to you—at one time.”

“Speak not to me of things you know nothing of.” Her uncle’s head snapped up, and he and Éowyn glared fiercely at one another, the latter trembling slightly under the weight of her anger. He waved the paper in front of her. “You have been given a choice, and you alone might make it. If you take this letter of consent, you know what you invite into your life.”

She tilted her chin to him, and any hope of reconciliation melted away: “So be it,” she said, snatching the paper from his hands.

“So be it!” cried the King in shock, but Éowyn had already turned on her heel and departed. 

She did not cry as she stormed from the hall, nor did she feel anger; what anger had once been in her body had simply evaporated, and she stepped into the dull light of day as coldly and fiercely as a winter storm come unexpectedly. She could not hate her uncle, could feel naught for him; he was a King, a man for whom the responsibility of rulership was a requirement, not a luxury, and he had failed. And in so failing, he had failed her too, and would have continued to fail her—to what miserable end she did not know—had she not been shown what life could be like when she was truly, earnestly respected and cared for. 

It would not have been her choice, but the choice had been forced before her. In Gondor, she would not be given the right to die as she pleased, would not be given leave to make her name as she chose, but there she might be happy, might know love and communion. In the Mark, in this, this place that had once been her home, she would know only shadow and alienation, and though she might be allowed to die as she chose, she no longer wished to die when she knew what it was like to live. 

She had not known where she had fled to until the sound of the veranda door opening and shutting behind her awakened her from her furious haze. The garden, the last living vestige of her grandmother, it was right that her feet should have taken her there. 

“You must look upon him with forgiveness in your heart, Éowyn,” Éomer said, at last catching up to her. “He has ailed considerably without your steady hand to care for him.”

Éowyn glared at him, watching as he visibly recoiled. “You believe me at fault for this?”

“No, no, but I believe that some things are unavoidable, this chief among them.”

“Unavoidable,” she repeated hollowly, looking once more at the flowerbeds.

“Is he worth it, this man? Can he truly be worth this hardship?” 

“Yes,” she said, then heard in earnest her brother’s words. “But it is not for him that I will endure this, it is for myself.” 

Éomer’s brows knitted together. “For yourself?”

She wondered how often she had tried to explain herself to him, how many times her words had fallen on ears that would not hear. She loved him—would always love him, but she was not certain that he loved her, or, not certain that he did not love the idea of her and his sense of duty to his imagined version of what his sister might be. 

“Will you furnish me with men for my return journey?” Practicalities were safe, practicalities could not be misunderstood. “We will none of us benefit if it is known in Gondor that I am an exile of a ragged house.” 

“Yes,” said Éomer, not meeting her gaze. “Yes, we will do what we must to ensure that it is not discovered.”

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Faramir stifled a yawn. And stretched. And then stifled another yawn. He could not remember the last time he had slept at all, let alone the last time he had slept well. He was used to facing down a never ending workload, for whatever reprieves he might have been granted as the second son, there had never once been a moment when he had not been conditioned to undertake enormous amounts of work. Still, conditioned or not, he was growing weary, the war was growing (even more) hopeless, his father became testier by the day, and, perhaps most frustratingly of all, he missed Éowyn with a desperation of unspeakable intensity. He knew he could not write to her—knew that it would invite risk even he could not justify—but it had not stopped him from penning far too many pages to her nonetheless, all unsent, all crumpled and discarded on his desk. Discarded alongside the hundreds of other hurriedly-scribbled notes he had collected over the past two months, abandoned thoughts and reminders and missives, evidence that this job was not half so simple as his brother had publicly made it out to be.

Not that Faramir had ever expected it to be easy, he was not quite so naive, but in his years of time with the Rangers when the daily concerns of the White City had felt so far from anything that merited his attention, he had forgotten exactly how punishing the cadence of Minas Tirith was. Between meetings with his father’s council, the commanders of regiments scattered throughout the Kingdom, ensuring that the administrative functions of the Army continued unhindered, and taking up the entirely denigrating task of begging the various lords of the realm for more and better supplies, he had had scarcely an hour of peace since midsummer. 

He failed to stifle his next yawn. 

“Are we boring you, Captain?” His father, for all that his tone conveyed frustration, did not bother to look up from the documents before him. 

“I will shoulder the blame, uncle, I should have known to prepare my report in more poetic prose if I wished to have any chance of keeping his attention,” said Elphir, earning a rare (and growing rarer) smile from his father. 

“Forgive me,” said Faramir, ignoring the jab. 

“All is forgiven, dear cousin, I remember how difficult it was to be away from Elúriel at first, I slept very poorly in those first few nights.”

Faramir grimaced—not at the unsavoury implication of his cousin’s words, nor at the fact that they were delivered in front of his father and liege lord, but that they were not so very far off the mark. At first, his newly-bestowed duties had been so numerous that he had had very little space in his thoughts for anything else, but as he began to master the rhythm of his new responsibilities, the rest of the world had slowly but surely slipped in. And it had slipped in in just enough time for his uncle to dispatch Elphir and his wife to Minas Tirith, ostensibly to act as his agent in the City, but given that the Prince had not made a habit of maintaining an agent in the City for many years, it was evident that it was an attempted act of kindness. Attempted, in that it was both premature and a response to something altogether very uncertain, but an act of kindness in that Elphir’s ongoing presence in the City meant that, if Éowyn were to secure her uncle’s consent, Faramir could quickly and easily take up residence in the home of his uncle and cousins, allowing Éowyn to remain—unmaligned—in the Palace. 

The fact of keeping her reputation as sanctified as possible was not something he had previously spent much time worrying about (though on reflection that seemed to him like a perfidious lapse in judgement), but since his informal elevation to a role of far greater importance and responsibility, and his reacquaintance with the messy inner workings of the court, he realised that he owed her that much, at the very least. It would not be too difficult a task, for all the sniping she faced from some of the more outspoken, malicious members of the aristocracy, her reputation was generally good, helped in no small part by the fact that those who liked her tended (correctly, he thought) to see her as almost preternaturally excellent; strong and noble and courageous beyond all need, yet brash and erratic enough to seem altogether more human than most. His job then, far from any sort of rescuing of her reputation, was to ensure that he didn’t taint it by association, and that, in some small, bitterly ironic way, was a far better position to be in than might have otherwise been the case. 

“As I was saying,” said Elphir with a sly grin,”my father is open to suggestions on the matter of their positioning. I am of the opinion that an equal split between the Bay of Tolfalas and the Ethir Anduin would best serve our purposes, stemming Corsair attacks at both of their most prominent targets.” 

“No,” said his father, flicking calmly through a ledger. “Any damage incurred at the Bay of Tolfalas would be easily repaired, but to lose Pelargir would be to lose Anduin, and that is a price no man can pay.” 

Elphir looked across the table at Faramir, evidently having correctly assessed that Faramir would agree with him, not his father, and hoping to spur him to vocalise his support. Had it been just a few short months ago, when the defence of the entire Kingdom and the integrity of his house did not rest so heavily upon his shoulders, he might have done just that—for his father’s assessment, though true in broad terms, failed to account for what a naval distraction caused in the Bay of Tolfalas could do to the ability of the cavalry of Dol Amroth to defend the rest of the Kingdom. But it was not a few short months ago, and the demands upon him had changed substantially, and he knew all too well that he could no longer be seen to be disagreeing with his father in public, even if that public was only Elphir. What was more, if Éowyn did succeed in Edoras, he intended to ask a sizeable favour of his father, one that would likely burn through a not insubstantial amount of his political capital, and to begin to even make that request, he would need to have built up some good will with him. 

So Faramir did something he was not in the habit of doing: he said nothing. Then, he did something else he was not in the habit of doing: he deferred to his father, without complaint.

Notes:

These two posts really informed this chapter (the second one made me rewrite the whole back half of it, lol classic), so do recommend you read to explain why I've made some of the characterisations calls I did lol. Post one; post two. (Also again lmao thank u kim for the excellent discussions on why all the people around éowyn sucked all the time 🙏 truly inspirational)

Chapter 26: Book II: Autumn 3018

Notes:

You know that old joke about stumbling into class twenty minutes late with a cup of Starbucks? This chapter is me stumbling in an entire week late with some PWP and a slightly extended chapter count in apology.

In Minas Tirith, she was welcomed by neither Faramir nor Lord Denethor (though the former sent his apologies through one of the Citadel’s pages—he had been called to Cair Andros and would return the following day), but by Sedril and Berúthiel and, for however strange it felt to her to recognise it, it brought her some relief. Berúthiel could be cruel and cantankerous, but it was a cruelty that had a familiar cadence; a familiar, mostly innocuous cadence. Unkind though she may have been, she was no Gríma, and she lacked the power to exile Éowyn from her home and that, in this rapid race to the bottom, was an improvement in Éowyn’s conditions. 

Still, Berúthiel lingered only as long as she deemed necessary for civility’s sake, then departed with haste, leaving Éowyn to Sedril’s grasp. Sedril, for her part, returned to her old habit of obliterating any potential lulls in a conversation but simply jabbering through it. There were kernels of worthwhile information in it: the mood in Minas Tirith had only grown more tense since Boromir’s departure, and though it was generally agreed that Faramir was dispatching with his new duties with admirable skill, the loss of Boromir was felt keenly nonetheless. Thanks to that uneasy sense of loss, there had grown an uncharacteristic reticence towards the usual social routines of the Gondorrim court; there was little in the way of gossip and even less in the way of social events from whence to mine gossip. For Sedril, whose entry into the wider world of aristocratic socialising had been only very recent, it had been a devastating blow. Sedril continued to outline her grievances as they returned to Éowyn’s apartments, speaking as if it truly were the worst thing in the world that fewer tea afternoons and feasts were held. 

Though her complaints were still typically callow, Sedril herself was changed. Her dark ringlets, worn loose for as long as Éowyn had known her, were now pinned and wrapped carefully around her head, jewels and golden threads woven throughout. Her gown was as richly crafted as ever, but she wore it differently, her shoulders thrown backwards, her head held high, and her arms not hugged around herself as Éowyn was used to, but clasped tightly behind her back, as a captain inspecting his troops. Sedril, it seemed, was hoping to hurry along the end of her childhood.  

In her apartments (the one thing that had not changed at all since Éowyn had departed), they sat by the small fire, and Éowyn continued to allow Sedril to speak, alternating between starting directly into the fire, and gazing aimlessly at the hearth in front of it. It was as if she had been running for so far and so long that she had simply run into an entirely different world without having ever left the road. She recognised the people and places and objects that surrounded her, knew them all intimately, yet they might as well have been figures in the tapestries that hung from the walls for as unreal as they felt to her. 

Her place in the world had once again been unsettled, but now she was unmoored entirely, a wanderer trapped now not between two kingdoms, but between life and death itself. Though she felt the very bitterest of angers towards her kin and the impossible situation they had so callously put her in, she knew she could not speak of it to anyone lest word of the Mark’s weakness destroy the willingness of Gondor to ride to its aid, should it ever be necessary. It was an especial cruelty that she should be so beholden to the arduous duties of the Kingship but privy to none of the privileges of its power. She was expected—not least by herself—to ensure the safety of her uncle’s people, yet her own safety was ensured by no-one at all. 

She had sacrificed her right to live (and, eventually, to die) among her kin for the right to live, in whatever form that might take, with Faramir. But the horror she felt in Meduseld had minimised in her mind the impotence she felt in Minas Tirith; now, she would sit and listen to the social grumbles of a teenager, later, she would no doubt have to see to the finer points of wedding preparations, all while a war of unimaginable scale raged not twenty leagues from where she sat, promising a brutalising end to the world. Her world would be one of bows and ribbons, even though her death, she knew (everyone knew, even if they would not admit it) would be anything but. That particular thought she tried to hold at bay while Sedril spoke—for now, at least, there was little to be done. She would return to her illusory usefulness when she could, and would take what joys came, even if they could not give her the death and glory she sought. 

What Sedril lacked in awareness of the world around her she more than made up for in her willingness to barrel through topics others might have elected to ignore. Despite their earlier quarrel on the suitability of it, Sedril affirmed repeatedly that she had set her sights on Lord Glórindîr, that even though he had returned to his father’s estate in the Pinnath Gellin, she was certain he would still be receptive to her letters and other efforts. To this, Éowyn struggled not to roll her eyes—she found Glórindîr to be a perfectly pleasant companion, and one whose good company she had relied on in many circumstances, but she was all too aware of his debauched proclivities, no woman, not Sedril or anyone else, would suffice to temper his inclinations, of that much she was certain. Sedril, naturally, would not be convinced of it, and continued to talk excitedly about all that she intended to tell him in her first letter, prattling on even as the sky outside grew dark, and even as Hadoriel delivered and later cleared their dinner.

But as she began to outline exactly which other lordlings she would conspicuously mention in her letters in an attempt to make Glórindîr jealous, there came a swift, surprising knock on the door. Éowyn stood, and Sedril with her, beckoning in her unexpected—and yet wholly and desperately welcome—guest. 

To her eyes, he looked different. More tired, certainly and excusably, but stretched too, as if ropes had been tied around each of his limbs and pulled him too thin. He was obviously working very hard to mask any physical faltering—for the first time since she had first laid eyes on him in the garden all those years ago, not a single hair on his head was out of place, and his tunic was pulled tight, the blue and silver threads shining brightly even under the dull interior light. Still, she could see the way that flicker of life in his eyes that had once glowed like a beacon had been snuffed out. She could see that much, and wondered if he saw the same thing in her—if there had ever been a spark of life visible within her at all. 

“My lady,” he greeted with a studiously formal bow, his hand pressed to his chest and a lock of raven dark hair sweeping in front of his eyes. His eyes danced momentarily across the room, and he greeted Sedril with an equal amount of formality before turning back to Éowyn. 

Before he could begin speaking again, however, Sedril, with a look of practiced indifference, stepped forward. “It is rather late, and I ought to return to my home lest my lady mother dispatch a search party. If you will excuse me, my lord, my lady.”

She turned and slipped out the door Faramir had just entered, leaving Éowyn with the first bit of good humour she’d felt all day—not just for Sedril’s lack of subtlety, but for her willingness to do it at all, evidence of one of the few good decisions Éowyn had ever made. 

Faramir, meanwhile, had a dark eyebrow raised in amusement. When the door shut, however, he wasted no time in closing the distance between them in two long strides. “I came as quickly as I could,” he said, taking her hands and kissing them. “I trust that your journey was fruitful, and that your return was not too strenuous?”

She almost wanted to laugh at his performed ignorance, these abstruse rituals they had concocted to avoid admitting the true depths of their sorrows were, if nothing else, farcical. Still, tracing the lines of his face with her eyes, she could not help but feel as if they had both, yet again, been robbed of happiness, that this moment should be one so mercilessly imbued with sorrow. She had intended to tell him of the bargain she had struck, of the difficulties they would face in the future, but as her vision lingered on the dark smudges beneath his eyes, she thought of her promise to Boromir, and knew she could not add to his already-enormous burden. So she did as she had ever done, she raised her head to the heavens, buried her self deep within her, and put on a brave face. 

“It was fruitful only if it is still your wish to make me your wife,” she said.

For a single, impossibly sweet moment, his face was lit by the very brightest of smiles, and he swept her up into his arms, kissing her with utterly reckless abandon. He kissed her as if it was his duty to teach her anew what love felt like, as if kissing her might make him the King of Gondor. And for that moment, she allowed herself to feel that joy, to let it thrum in her veins, spreading warmth across her skin like the first touch of the springtime sun after a long, bitter winter. 

When they at last broke apart, she swayed under the weight of her own dizzy breathlessness, her forehead coming to rest against his shoulder as her heart beat wildly in her chest. Oh, how she had missed him, how even her most desperate memories of what it felt like to be near him had not remotely grasped the reality of it. 

Carefully, with a gentleness she had almost forgotten was possible in the world, he brushed a lock of hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “And you are otherwise well?”

The answer was no, the answer could only be no. Yet she knew she could not demand he waste his energy on her comparatively smaller problems when he already bore the weight of the world upon his shoulders. But she knew only too well how clearly he could read her emotions, and knew that she could not lie to him (indeed, nor could she lie to anyone else: Lord Denethor would no doubt suss out the lie quickly, which would in turn raise far too many questions that she wished to never answer). 

“I am as well as can be expected, given the circumstances,” she said. 

He frowned at her. Not unexpectedly—she knew him too well to expect that he would be so easily pacified by her obfuscation. “And those circumstances, are they much changed since last you experienced them?”

“Changed? Yes, change was inevitable. You know enough of it to guess at the nature of that change without my speaking aloud what is perhaps best left unsaid.” She reached up, brushing her hand along his cheek then down to the White Tree brooch pinned on his chest. “And you? Are you…” She found she could not fit a word to what she wished to ask.

“Better now than I have been in many years,” he said, and she begrudgingly accepted his demurral as a fair repayment for her own. “Though I can now scarcely conjure a thought that is not of the future, now that I know what joys lay in it.”

“In a year’s time,” she cautioned.

“Yes, and it will no doubt pass more slowly than any other I have lived; but a year is but a year, and at its close we will be one another’s in earnest. There is no amount of time I would not gladly wait for that.” 

“Then what next? We have lost a day already, I returned this morning and said nothing of it to anyone.” 

He caught her hand, raising it to his lips and pressing a slow, careful kiss to her palm. “I would make the case for considering today a lost cause in that regard.” 

“Would you? Why?” She raised an eyebrow in confusion, though her cheeks flushed nonetheless as he continued to drop kisses up her wrist and forearm. 

“Because—” He reached the crook of her elbow and pulled her close, wrapping a hand around her waist—“the moment an announcement is made, there will be far greater scrutiny upon us, and I will remove to my uncle’s townhouse, making moments like these—” He brushed a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her shoulder so he could trail hot kisses down her neck—“less easily had.” 

“Oh,” she breathed. And then, when his tongue darted out to cross her skin: “Oh.”

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn yawned, sending the fragments of her daze scampering away; in the dark, quiet room, her mind had quite outpaced her self-discipline. “Do you think about where he might be now?”

“My brother?” Faramir’s voice was rough—her mouth and skin had muffled most of his earlier cries, but that had not stopped them from coming. 

“Yes,” she said, tracing nonsense patterns in the dark hair that was smattered across his chest. 

He sighed, running his hand up and down her bare shoulder. “Every day, although my thoughts are often not as benevolent as they ought to be.”

“No?”

“No,” he repeated, with some emotion. “I am resentful still that he should have been the one to go, that at this critical juncture it should be I who must learn his role—of courtly politics, of being a herald to our father—while he must learn mine.”

She hummed in acknowledgement, pressing a butterfly-soft kiss to a scar that wrapped around the top of his rib cage. “I agree that you would have been better suited for this task, but I cannot help but feel my greedy relief that you remain here with me.” 

“Yet it was you who wished to go,” he said. 

“As one might wish when all hope seems snuffed out.”

“So you have found hope then?”

“No,” she answered hastily. “Or, not hope of victory in this war, but I have seen that there are worse fates in this world than idleness, and so long as I may be of use to someone and that I might know some happiness, I would not wish to condemn myself to that fate.” 

“There are many worse fates than idleness, but am I correct in thinking that you refer to the fate of your uncle? You have said very little of him and your home.” 

“I have said very little at all that has been intelligible,” she teased, momentarily ignoring the concerned look on his face. “Yes, I do speak of my uncle, though I have little desire to bring what slothful miseries taint those halls to these, when these contain more than enough of their own.”

“I would not wish you to not speak of what ails you for that reason.”

At this, not wishing to continue the conversation any further, she lifted herself up, deftly swinging her leg over his body. “I do not ail, my lord.” She settled astride him, smiling in earnest as his hands slid up her hips. “I am hale and hearty, keen of mind and sharp of tongue.”

“That I know,” he murmured, pulling himself into a seated position to kiss her, his smile matching hers. She let out an involuntary breath when she felt his cock stir beneath her, hot and promising where it lay against the inside of her thigh. 

“But you doubt it?”

“No, never,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her back and holding her still. He dipped his head, dragging the flat of his tongue across her nipple before closing his lips around it, sucking lightly at first, then with greater intensity as her breaths grew shallower. She tangled her fingers in his hair, holding him to her as she felt wet heat radiate throughout her body, lifting her up on a current of blistering desire. 

She slid her hand between them, brushing the backs of her fingers against the smooth planes of his abdomen, before delicately running her thumb through the beaded moisture that had accumulated on the head of his cock, laughing softly at his gasp. He was the better disciplined of them—more enabled by the world to freely share his opinions than she, but still forced by it to stay his tongue and mask his true emotions. It was, then, both her greatest challenge and greatest pleasure to shatter his cool facade, to prove that for all his claims to the tangled, arcane legacies of the Edain and the Eldar, he was not so very different to any other man, at least as far as this desire was concerned. With a flick of her tongue, or a twist of her hand, or (if she was especially careful) a low moan of his name given into his ear, she could watch his self-control evaporate, watch as he became a juddering, needy mess, not so wholly different to her. 

So when she could wrap her hand around his flushed cock, her still-unskilled movements slicked by his prerelease and her saliva, and watch his brow furrow as he fought against his inevitable discomposure, it made her feel as if—for once—the things in her control might bring joy to this world. And that her actions were invariably followed by his single-minded concentration upon bringing her her own pleasure was simply a convenient side effect. 

She pumped her hand, using the other (still in his hair) to pull his head back, covering his mouth with hers to catch and stifle the soft keening noises he could not stop. She watched as the ridged muscles in his belly began to tense and flex, then glanced up and caught his eye, a look of boyish delight in it. 

“I have never seen you look so studious.”

“I am happy to study when it is a topic worth studying,” she said, pressing small kisses along his jawline, smiling against the scratch of his beard. 

He took advantage of her momentary distraction to brush his hand along the inside of her thigh, fingertips tracing the soft skin, until he let out a groan when they dipped into the wetness that had spread there. He turned his head, catching her bottom lip between his, tugging and nipping it as his fingers began to work their familiar pattern. 

But Éowyn was neither patient nor concerned solely with her own pleasure—not for any inherent benevolence: she had had more than her fair share of it earlier and was willing to spread the good fortune around where she could—and so bucked against his hand, pushing it away entirely as she rose to her knees. Her rise was only momentary, and with as much slowness as her trembling legs could muster, she sank down around him, gasping hoarsely at the welcome stretch. 

With greater urgency than she would have expected of him, his hands flew to her hips, holding her in place. She heard him take ragged, broken breaths, and watched the slight tension in his face that she recognised as his attempt to keep his wits about himself. Haltingly, she reached forward, brushing her thumb across the soft skin of his bottom lip. He laughed breathlessly, wrapping his arms around her and peppering small kisses across her cheeks and jaw. 

“I made the mistake of forgetting what you do to me,” he said, his voice barely more than a rasp. “Oh, my dreams betrayed the reality of you.”

She laughed, kissing him once more as she began to move, spurred on by the feeling of her own pleasure and the sounds of his. He whispered endearments in the space between their lips, though she heard fewer and fewer of them for how loudly the blood was rushing in her ears. She moved slowly against him; he had long made his preference for languor known, and while it was not always her preference, she would not deny him it. Together they worked towards release, fingers tangling together and breaths coming in haphazard unison. She could feel every inch of him as he withdrew almost entirely, and his name fell deliriously from her tongue when he pushed back into her. Her eyes remained ever on his, captivated by the thin ring of grey that banded his blown-out pupils, and the desperate concentration in them.

Placing one hand squarely in the centre of his chest, she pushed, encouraging him to lay back against the bed. As he did, her skin flushed and need ricocheted through her as his changing angle brought new, tantalising sensations within her. 

She rode him hard, sweat beading in the hollow of her throat and the small of her back, the muscles of her thighs tensing as she twined their fingers together. There were few things she could say she truly liked anymore, but the sound of his desire, deep and untrammelled in his chest, was one of them.

Long minutes passed, and soon he screwed his eyes shut, his once-florid words of affection turning into barely coherent recitations of her name as he struggled to keep his climax at bay. He would fight hard to hold it off, but she would fight harder to bring it crashing down around him. 

She slipped one hand free of his, dragging it across her aflame skin, gently rolling and circling her core in the way she liked best. “Look at me,” she said, her voice dark. 

He did, groaning defeatedly as his hips gave an accompanying jerk. She worked her fingers quickly, appearing as if she had given herself over entirely to the sensation, until she at last felt his movements grow erratic, uncontrolled, so unlike the version of himself he presented to the world. 

She opened her eyes in time to watch him fall, to hear the desperation in his voice as he sobbed her name, to feel the rushing release of tension as he was overcome. And then she too fell, riding wave upon wave of delirious bliss until all energy had left her and she could do naught but curl into his side and sleep, at ease for the first time in far too many months. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

He left before the first light of morning pierced the dark horizon, with a promise to return later, and return he did, in the guise of a hastily-scrawled invitation. The Prince of Dol Amroth had, apparently, asked his eldest son and his newly-made wife to take up residency in his townhouse in the City, and Elphir and Elúriel in turn had extended an invitation to Éowyn for luncheon that day. 

There was, she was certain, something to be made of the politics of it all, not least because the invitation had been delivered by a page of the Citadel Guard and not the Company of Dol Amroth, but she could hardly conjure an interest in what exactly those politics might be. No doubt she was sought after as an ally by the Prince, but what interests Faramir might have had (outwith merely ingratiating her to his remaining kin) yet eluded her. 

Nevertheless, she allowed Hadoriel to dress her, and found herself too tired to complain when the woman braided her hair up into an elaborate style that would take far too long to unfasten that evening. She had spent too much of her time of late fighting hopeless, needless fights, and had discovered that she simply had no energy left with which to continue fighting. If she was to be forced to wear her hair in a fashion that was uncomfortable to her, at least it would save her the effort of fighting a battle when she knew she could not win the war. 

The townhouse of the Prince of Dol Amroth spoke to a world without wars; or, perhaps a world in which wars might be reasonably ignored so long as the art was fine enough, the architecture monumental enough, and the food enticing enough. It reminded her sharply in some ways of Belfalas, yet in others it felt so perfectly of a kind with the lay of Minas Tirith that it seemed almost strange that the Lord of the City did not reside in this house. But he did not, and instead it was inhabited by Elphir and Elúriel, and their recently-arrived son Alphros, and so it was that Éowyn joined them all for luncheon. 

They ate well (Éowyn expected nothing less) and Elphir’s easy charm and Elúriel’s soft spoken kindness briefly washed away the omnipresent fear that pounded through the City like an anxious heartbeat. Éowyn had spoken to Elphir vanishingly few times when she had visited Dol Amroth, but her assessment of him remained unchanged. He was, in most ways, like a strange and slightly disarming combination of the Prince and Faramir—gregarious and charming like his father, but touched by that same permanent look of yearning in his eyes that Faramir always bore. He spoke in the lilting Sindarin of Dol Amroth, an accent which to Éowyn resembled the steady beating of the waves against the shore; the words he spoke alternated, like Faramir, from the scholarly to the plainly humorous, though where Faramir often switched more abruptly, Elphir moved from thought to thought with the slowness of a man who never wanted for time. Elúriel, by contrast, spoke quickly and sharply, her voice like the sound of hail against a steel pan. Yet she spoke rarely, and what little she did speak was only said with the very utmost graciousness, as if she needed the cutting harshness of her voice to deliver kindness in the cruel world they all inhabited.

Together, she and Elphir painted the very picture of courtly love, from the subtle-yet-undeniable matching weaves of their garments to the fluid way they moved around one another, as if to catch and amplify the other’s words and personality. Elúriel, with her ruddy hair and sun-bronzed skin, wore a billowing gown in the fashionable silhouette of Minas Tirith, made of silk that was undeniably of Belfalas, while Elphir dressed in the more austere silhouettes of Dol Amroth, but the softer cloth Éowyn recognised as of Lossarnach. She looked at their calm synchronicity and breezy smiles and wondered what others saw when they looked upon her and Faramir—did they appear as well-matched as Elphir and Elúriel? Or did they look as incongruous as everything else in their lives?

After they ate, they removed to a small, wide-windowed room overlooking the central courtyard, and there made use of what little sunlight was afforded them by the gaps in the overhanging clouds. For a time, Faramir and Elphir traded sardonic barbs about the lay of the land in Minas Tirith, leaving what felt like no lord’s motivations and choices uncriticised. But as they started in on Lord Tígion’s latest efforts, a piercing cry echoed through the house (no small feat given its size), cutting Elphir off mid-sentence. 

“Ah,” he said, visibly adjusting his course. “That boy has better timing than any single person I’ve met before.” He watched as Elúriel stood, smoothing down the front of her skirts and slipping out the small door, before setting his sights firmly on Faramir. “You know your end of the bargain?” 

Faramir lazily waved Elphir’s words away. “Yes, yes, I don’t forget things quite so easily.” 

Éowyn glanced between Faramir and Elphir, not bothering to hide her outward look of confusion. It was a look that was quickly picked up by Elphir, who grinned cheekily. “There are few men in this world who might make the son of the Steward of Gondor work for his keep, and as I am now one, I thought to make the most of my opportunity.” When Éowyn’s face did not change, he continued. “Even nobility of birth cannot protect one from aspersions cast upon their morality by unique living circumstances—Faramir, of course, cannot continue to live under the same roof as you after your betrothal is formally announced, so we have quite happily offered him boarding here. But such a generous gift could not come without a price, as I’m sure you’d understand.” 

“I’m not sure I do,” said Éowyn, momentarily gripped by a chill that swept her back to the darkened corridors of the Golden Hall, where no goodness or safety could come without a blood price. “What are you asking him to pay?”

“Childcare,” said Elphir breezily, evidently taking no notice of the sternness in Éowyn’s voice. “He is best in these things second only to his father, but seeing as his father is so often busy these days, it is Faramir who takes the medal in that regard.”

He played it off with ease, but she saw Faramir shift uncomfortably in his seat, crossing his legs and raising his eyebrows as if to dismiss the comment outright. 

“When ‘Rothos and Lothí were very young—and when Adar was in the habit of giving them quite a bit more rein than they really ought to have had—Faramir was one of the few people who could instil any sense of restraint within them, however fleeting it may have been.” 

Elúriel returned to the room, a tiny, wailing bundle in her arms, and Faramir stood immediately, accepting the baby when she offered him. “Very little of it was about restraint and rather much more was about listening to what they were saying.” 

“Yes, yes,” said Elphir with a melodramatic sigh, “but we all know only too well that your form of listening is quite different to the rest of ours.” 

Faramir merely canted his head in acknowledgement, faint traces of a wry smile about his lips, before he adjusted his hold over baby Alphros so that he could hold his hand out to Éowyn. “Come, my lady, the garden here is not to be missed.” 

“I’ll allow it, but only because there can be no better chaperone than a wailing baby, believe you me,” said Elphir, his laughter barely contained. 

Éowyn felt her cheeks redden, even as she followed Faramir out into the courtyard, watching (and wincing) as Alphros’s tiny cries broke new heights the further away they went from his parents. She sat on a small stone bench in the centre, taking in the breadth of the garden as Faramir wandered through it, whispering quietly to Alphros as he went. 

In a startlingly short amount of time, the baby’s cries tapered off into little gasps, and eventually a few tiny yawns. Moving with the sort of quiet steadiness Éowyn knew had been honed by his years as a Ranger, Faramir returned to her, cradling a now-sleeping child. 

Éowyn smiled when he sat on the bench beside her, running her finger along the hem of the blanket that cocooned Alphros’ head. “And you said he was born just after I left for Edoras?” 

“Before.”

Éowyn looked at the child once more, then frowned. “Before? Surely not, I have been gone for barely more than two months, and they were married not eight months—” She interrupted herself, casting a glance across the courtyard towards the door they had exited through—“Oh.”

“Oh,” repeated Faramir teasingly, carefully adjusting Alphros. “Elphir was no doubt sent here for his own purposes, but knowing my Aunt Ivriniel as I do, and if what I have heard from Erchirion is—”

“—is what, dear cousin?” Elphir, who Éowyn had not heard come through the door, stood a few feet away from them, a dark eyebrow raised in good-natured challenge. “I would hope that someone of your rank and stature is not partaking in petty gossip.”

“There is nothing at all concerning you that might be considered petty,” said Faramir, winking at Éowyn. 

“Quite right,” said Elphir, mischief in his eyes. “Since I am overfull with blessed benevolence, I will choose to believe that you are simply expressing your relief that it is I who is here to act as a protector of your virtue and not Aunt Ivriniel.” He stepped forward, helping Éowyn up from the bench. 

“Yes, that,” said Éowyn quickly, “and that I thought it rather strange that it does not appear as though you have a wet nurse in your employ.” 

“Wet nurses are not especially common in Belfalas, though of course my sister needed one. Still, my younger brothers and myself were largely raised by our parents’ hands, or at least that was certainly the case as I remember it.” 

“And as I remember it,” said Faramir, looking only at Alphros. “I remember all too well my and Boromir’s jealousy at the apparent liberties you were granted, when we were kept under the constant and watchful eye of various nurses and minders.”

“But your father was around often enough, was he not? He features fairly prominently in my memories of my youth,” said Elphir, stepping back into the sunroom. 

“He certainly was,” said Faramir, an inscrutable look in his eye. “I think he would have preferred it had we not been turned over quite so completely to the care of nurses.” 

“Well, yes, I would think it very strange if he didn’t, even the very best nurse cannot compare to a mother.”

Éowyn sniffed. “In the Mark it is quite common for a young child’s well-being to be the sole purview of nurses. I suppose,” she said thoughtfully, staring off into the distance for a brief instance, “that my uncle was misfortunate for having been made guardian for my brother and I when we were both far too old to be looked after entirely by nurses.” 

“You speak as if you prefer it that way,” said Elúriel, an eyebrow raised. 

“I don’t know if I prefer it, but I do know that a tremendous amount of work is necessary to ensure the safe reading of a child, and I would not turn assistance away if it were offered.”

“Perhaps you won’t need it,” said Elphir. “Assuming Faramir can see to his own children as well as he sees to other people’s.” 

Faramir flashed her a dazzling smile, while she felt quite unexpectedly as if all the air had been sucked from the room. Elphir was right, of course, if they were to be married at the end of a year then it was entirely reasonable to assume that she would be with child not long thereafter. Yet motherhood was not something she had spent much time thinking about—it was not that she was opposed to having children, but her life had been so tainted by the unending griefs of war from such an early age, the thought had never occurred to her as more than a passing fancy. It had for so long seemed inevitable to her that death would come for her before joy, and the focussing of her sorrows induced by her extended stay in Meduseld had only served to cloud the truth of the matter which was that, for the first time in her life, happiness truly was within her grasp, even if the cost was unspeakably steep.

She was overcome by a wave of nervous energy, neither fear nor joyous excitement, but the sort of shaky hyper-awareness she had felt the first time she had guided Windfola through a course bareback. The longer she thought on it, the more she imagined that the tiny, cooing baby in Faramir’s arms were not the future Prince of Dol Amroth but the heir to the House of Húrin, the more she felt a bright warmth stirring within her.

The hour wore on, and time ran out, and soon Faramir was obliged to return to his duties, leaving Éowyn to the strange listlessness of her life. She wandered the Citadel at first, explaining to those bold enough to ask after her that she was merely refamiliarising herself with the place, though in truth it was because she found herself caught in a strange precariousness by the world around her. She stood, for a time, at the farthest edge of the Citadel’s prow. To the west she did not look, could not bear to gaze down the pathway carved by the White Mountains and to know that never again would she ride home in the morning upon the horses of the Riddermark. Instead she looked to the south, where in the distance beyond her vision the river met the sea, and dangers the likes of which she had never seen, let alone could imagine, threatened the distant shores. To the east, where Orodruin spewed hot ash into the air, threatening days of artificial darkness and reminding those who dwelt within the fortress that was Minas Tirith that the Enemy forged an evil that did not sleep, did not wait, and would, one day, show no mercy.

Notes:

The chat about wet nurses is actually based on the divide between Anglo-Saxon England (Rohan), Ptolemaic Egypt (Dol Amroth), and the Byzantine Empire (Gondor proper). I’ll drop some links to interesting studies on the topic when I have a few spare moments.

Chapters will probably come every two weeks now, I did this really fun thing where I decided I hated everything I had drafted so now I’m rewriting it all. 🤪

Chapter 27: Book II: Autumn 3018

Éowyn glanced at the silver ring upon her finger, and wondered if she should have asked for it to be engraved, for that would give her an opportunity to see Faramir’s face at least on occasion. She had been in Minas Tirith for more than a week, and had seen him for no more than a few hours, so busy was he with all the duties expected of Gondor’s (acting) Captain-General. Her burden had been lessened somewhat by her return—at least in Minas Tirith Gríma did not skulk in the darkness—but that happiness she had convinced herself was so readily available here seemed now in short supply. Even now, sitting at the high table of Merethrond, preparing to celebrate the announcement of her own betrothal, she was both separated from Faramir and feeling far more of her sadness than of her joy, though that was caused in no small part by the devastatingly exhausting day she’d had. 

She had been ferried about from Hadoriel to Lady Berúthiel to Lord Húrin of the Keys (who seemed less convinced than anyone she had yet spoken to of her brother’s legitimacy to represent her uncle in marriage negotiations), before being sent back to Hadoriel to dress for the afternoon’s official announcement ceremony, a somber, bureaucratic affair that demanded an equally somber, bureaucratic gown—of which she had many.

The rest of the evening had been a blur of bright lights, loud noises, belated pangs of nervousness and then, for one brilliant second, anxious joy when she had caught Faramir’s eye over the dais as the announcement of their betrothal was made, when her resolve and his alike had nearly cracked—their momentary lapse in discipline evident only in the lightness she saw in his eyes, and the slight upward twitch of his lips. But it had lasted for barely a second before she was swept away once more, back to her apartments to be stuffed into a more ceremonial costume for that evening’s celebration. 

A gown had been sent for the occasion by Lady Galanhîl of Lebennin, a rich thing of glistening white fabric, shot through with panels of silk, ringed by a gem-encrusted neckline and girdle, and bisected by a sash of brilliant green, it too covered in finely-embroidered jewels. A white veil (a symbol of her virginity, a clothing tradition at least familiar to her in the Mark) that fell in waves of fabric to the backs of her knees, had been lent by Lady Vanyalos of Lossarnach, and was worn by Éowyn with quiet but no less present amusement. The centerpiece of the ensemble, gifted to her from Lady Finduilas’ affects, was a diadem of gleaming gold rope, braided and twisted with such fine craftsmanship it appeared almost as if it were truly rope and not cold, hard metal. The branches of the White Tree circled and enfolded the sun and moon and a white swan, then dripped down her hair into infinitesimally small gold leaves. It was, in every imaginable way, an enormous departure from the sort of clothing she preferred—even when she did favour brighter, flashier colours, which she occasionally did, she would never have thought to wear anything so overt. 

Yet she knew why it was she had to wear it, knew that to gesture to Lady Finduilas’s memory was emotionally-evocative to those members of the court who remembered her, knew that to take Lady Galanhîl’s gown was a statement of intent to the southern lords who might see Faramir’s turn from a daughter of their lands to a daughter of the North as a slight, and that Lady Vanyalos’ veil, shot through with the abounding flowers of Lossarnach, was a reminder to all that Éowyn’s grandmother had been of Gondor, that the Gondorrim and the Eorlingas were not so distant as it might seem. 

Without complaint, she allowed Hadoriel to dress her, to thread her hair through the eye of a needle and to weave small braids into and around the diadem, until the woman who looked back at her in the mirror was at once her and someone entirely different; dressed in the warmest and richest of tones and fabrics, yet cold and stern and unfeeling, unscarred by the world and held aloft from its terrors in her golden cage. And when she was satisfied that the creature that looked back at her was not one vulnerable to the petty, snivelling attacks so preferred by the court worthies, she allowed herself to be escorted away from her apartments. 

And so she found herself seated at Merethrond’s high table, caught between Lady Berúthiel on one side and Lord Tígion on the other. On Lady Berúthiel’s other side, seated to the right of Lord Denethor, was Faramir, who, caught between his father and Lord Astron, was the only person whose seating arrangements she thought might be less appealing than her own. It was not that she did not wish to speak to Lord Denethor—she did not share his son’s antipathy—but since she had given her word to Boromir to take a concerted interest in his well being, she found herself less capable than ever of speaking to him, knowing that he would be even less receptive than she to even the implication of pity. 

Lord Tígion’s boasting, then, was at least something she knew how to manage. What she didn’t was Berúthiel’s newfound reticence. Not only had she not availed herself of her favourite evening activity (baiting Éowyn into conversations she did not wish to have), she had gone so far as to even compliment her on her diadem (though pointedly not going so far to acknowledge whose diadem it was). It unnerved Éowyn, and far from finding solace in Berúthiel’s newfound kindness, it worried her immensely. 

And she was never worried more than when, in the very periphery of her awareness, did she hear the bright, lilting Sindarin of Lebennin, pronouncing something that sounded rather like an attack on her fitness as a match for Faramir—a comment she would have otherwise ignored, not just because it was so wildly out of step with reality as to not merit acknowledgement, but because she knew that addressing even one of those comments (of which there would be, no doubt, plenty) would be to show vulnerability she had no interest in showing. Yet her decision to ignore the comment was immediately undermined, as Berúthiel stopped mid-sentence, to turn and look at the woman who had spoken.

“The Lady Éowyn is niece to Théoden King of Rohan,” she said sharply and in the Common Tongue. The abruptness of her speech brought silence upon the high table and several of the tables nearby. “To question the suitability of the match would be to question the wisdom of Lord Denethor himself.” Lady Thurineth, wife of one of the minor lords of Lebennin, coloured deeply at Berúthiel’s words, silently accepting her chastisement. Éowyn made the mistake of glancing briefly at Berúthiel, who proffered her a smile that appeared as uncomfortable for her to wear as it was for Éowyn to receive. 

The discomfort stretched only for a few seconds, mercifully interrupted by Lord Denethor rising, signalling the end of the meal. As the servants in the hall whirled to action, and as the lords and ladies in attendance (with far greater languor) forsook their seats, Éowyn tried to seek Faramir out in the crowd, wishing for even a moment’s privacy with him, but was abruptly and firmly intercepted by Berúthiel, who cast a hand about her arm as if to root her to the spot. 

“You must ignore Thurineth,” she said, a cloying tone to her voice. 

“I had intended to,” answered Éowyn coolly. 

“She is rather young for her age, and to be married off to a position of such wealth and prominence when she was so obviously unprepared…a rather cruel decision, I feel,” continued Berúthiel, either ignorant of Éowyn’s words or blatantly ignoring them. “But she must learn—and so must you, though in a far gentler way—that we do not take kindly to slandering of our own. And you are becoming one of our own, a fact which brings joy to all our hearts.” 

Éowyn nodded, too eager to speed along her escape to quibble with Berúthiel’s ambiguous use of plural pronouns, but found that her escape was nonetheless postponed by the unfortunate arrival of Lady Goladiel, Lady Melcien, and Lady Gilreth.

For the better part of an hour that passed as if its form had been covered in sticky tar, Éowyn endured alternating bouts of anxiety-inducing inquiries about her wedding plans, and long-winded and (to her mind) deeply impractical words of advice as to the proper structuring of a wedding in the White City. When her hope of ever having a conversation that did not feel like an attack on her person had waned so much as to be practically nonexistent, hope arrived, unlooked for but no less welcome for it—Elúrel had begun to cut her way through the throngs of people, Éowyn’s starry mantle thrown across her arms, and her own darker one cast about her shoulders. 

She approached the huddle of gibbering women that had ensconced Éowyn with practiced ease, smiling sweetly at each and nodding a greeting in turn, before holding Éowyn’s mantle out to her. “I had hoped, my dear cousin-to-be, that you might join me for a turn out of doors, I find that I have not yet regained absolute control over my temperature since Alphros arrived, and I would not wish to wander in the darkness alone.” 

Éowyn, deliriously grateful for the excuse to leave, quickly went with her, expending an inordinately large amount of energy to not appear as eager to leave as she truly was. They kept their pace slow as they navigated Merethrond arm-in-arm, and it was not until they had passed through its immense doors that Elúriel spoke once more.

“I remember only too well how difficult it was to find time alone with my husband before we were wed, and he does not bear a burden half so great as Faramir’s. If there is one kindness I might do for you this evening, then I thought it might be this.” She inclined her head gently towards the centre of the forecourt, where Faramir and Elphir stood beneath a lantern talking quietly. “We will act as your chaperones, but so long as you stay within view, we will not impose ourselves upon your time.” 

“Thank you,” Éowyn whispered, before darting off—with none of her earlier composure—in Faramir’s direction. 

Elphir echoed his wife in delivering a carefully-worded warning, before allowing them to wander off into the dark night. There was a touch of chill in the air that had not been there the previous night, and though they walked without speech, the whipping winds ensured they did not walk in silence. 

“There is something I wished to ask you,” he said after a time, when they had run out of prow to meander along. She frowned up at him, fearful of exactly what question he might ask—and how artful she would need to be in her answer. “You may stow away your suspicion,” he said, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “It is merely a question of history.” 

All at once, the tense fear that had seized her body rushed from her, and she laughed, nodding. “Of course it is, yes, ask me what you will then, and I will endeavour to answer it as best I can—if you will allow that I am not half so scholarly as you.” 

“Only because you do not wish to be,” he said with an appraising tilt of his head. “And, in fact, it is after what you do wish to be that I am inquiring: you have spoken often of the shieldmaidens of your country,  and to my very great embarrassment, I have never stopped to ask you to tell me more of them.” 

“I believe you mean that you hoped to find a book that explained them so you would not need to ask me, and could instead impress me with your seemingly-limitless knowledge, but have now found that there are no books that acknowledge them, and you have instead been caught out.” Now it was she who appraisingly tilted her head at him. “Do my arrows hit their mark?” 

He laughed, and the warmth of it temporarily chased the chill from within her. “They do indeed, and I have been wounded grievously for your accuracy.” 

“Excellent,” she said, and smiled. “Well, since I must do what your books cannot, then I will begin with this preface: it has been many generations since shieldmaidens have existed in earnest, and what few there were have often not been remembered by name. Nevertheless, some have, and it is through their stories of valour that shieldmaidens as a whole are remembered.” She turned to face the City once more, pushing away the memories of her childhood that the topic unearthed. “The most renowned of them all—the one whose stories I was told most often as a young girl—was named Elfremede. She was raised in a time of perilous war, moulded in the forge of great tragedy and endless injustice, but kept down by her obligation to her family. When her elder brother was slain in an ambush, she took up his sword and sought vengeance against all those who wronged her. For many years she crossed the plains of Rhovanion, sacking villages, scouring farms, and amassing power, all in her desperate search for the men who killed her brother. In time, finding that the men had been scattered on the winds, she turned from the path, and towards her path of righteousness. She fought to secure the villages of the Mark, and served justice on behalf of those who could not serve it themselves. It was then that Fréa King took notice of her strength, and ennobled her, granting her the right to fight as she would, and to train those she wished. There were others alike to her, her companion, Brunhilde, and those they raised behind them, and all accomplished feats of immense courage.” She glanced down at her hands, red now from the cold night air. “The women who became known as shieldmaidens were women for whom the world as it was no longer held safety. They went because they knew what awaited them in life if they did not go was terrible, unspeakable suffering; when the men of their kin went to war, they often did not return, and when the men did not return, the invaders invariably came, sacking villages, murdering and violating those who were left behind. The women knew that to remain, unarmed and unprepared, was to guarantee a timorous and painful death, one marred by a loss of virtue, a loss of self, and a loss of honour. Death is inevitable, but the manner of one’s death need not be. To become a shieldmaiden was to accept death in a different form, to earn death on one’s own terms.” 

Faramir was silent for a moment. Carefully, he took her hand and kissed it. “And you wished that for yourself?”

“Wish.” She sighed. “If the war is to be lost, and I suspect there are few who disagree that it will, then I would prefer to die in a manner befitting my life, or what my life ought to have been. I would wish to die with a sword in my hand, as a matter of courage and choice, rather than in my bed—or on the ground, after having suffered any manner of unspeakable acts of violence.” Faramir winced, and she frowned. “It may sound coarse to you, but it is very real to me; when I hear that hope on the eastern front is lost, and when I am told that my blade shall not be mine to wield in my own defence, it is that inevitability that I hear.”

“It does indeed sound coarse to my ears, but no more than anything else I hear in the course of my normal duties, my disquiet stems rather from the anger I feel on your behalf, that you should be so trapped.”

“Yet it is you who would have me die a dishonourable death. For your love of peace you would prefer to see me die without valour.”

“I would not wish to see you die at all, my love.”

“But that—”

“—I know it would be impossible to prevent,” he said, raising a hand to stay her anger. “Peace, Éowyn, trust that I know that, and trust that I know better than most what terrors can be wrought by the hubris of denying the inevitability of death. But you misunderstand me, I think. It is not that I wish that you should be left undefended, it is that I feel you wrongly conflate glory with self defence.”

“Glory is self defence, self defence against the mortification of having been able to do but having chosen or been forced not to. There is but one thing worth doing in this world, and it is the glorious struggle of war.” 

“No,” he said, firmly yet without unkindness. “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but there are more glories in this world than are dreamt of in your songs of slaying. For my part, I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves.”

“And I would wish that for you. But for my part, I would know that my life and death are my own—truly my own.” She looked up at him once more. “And I would know that, when the time comes, you would not hinder me in this.” 

Silence stretched between them for several long moments, silence so potent Éowyn imagined that she could see rough, hard bricks stacking between them, and her heart grew colder and more pained. 

After enough time had elapsed to bring panic to her, she prompted him: “Faramir?”

He sighed, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “I would not,” he said. “No, I would not hinder you.” Then, a lightness in his eyes. “Nor, I suspect, could I, even if I wished to.”

She beamed at him, casting a surreptitious glance backwards to ensure that their chaperones were sufficiently distracted, before stepping forward and kissing him with as much relief and gratitude as she felt. 

When she leaned away from him, fearful of incurring the ire of Elphir and Elúriel (or, more accurately, burning away their good will), he tangled their fingers together. “Come, we have so little time together, and it seems as if it lessens with each passing day. Let us talk of happier matters.” 

“Lady Berúthiel’s defence of me, then,” she answered with a grin, “I thought I had seen the depths of cravenness in this City, but she seems singularly concerned with proving me wrong at all opportunities.” 

Faramir leaned across the rampart wall, then laughed quietly. “In truth, I feel great sympathy for Lady Thurineth, one can only wonder at what bargain was struck to see her take the fall so publicly.”

“Bargain? What makes you think her words were not spoken in earnest?”

“The sentiment may have been earnest, but she knows very well who you are and where your connections lie. One of the only conversations I have ever shared with her featured her criticising your King uncle.”

A strange sense of emptiness overtook Éowyn as her mind told her she ought to feel some instinctive offense on behalf of her uncle, while her heart failed to conjure up anything of the sort. “Even so, I am surprised that anyone would go to such lengths in an attempt to win my favour, when they have not before. It is not as if my uncle has only just ascended to his throne.” 

“It is not your uncle that is the biggest factor in their calculations, unfortunately. It is the fact of your marrying me.” He paused, and anger and grief flashed across his face in rapid succession before he wrest control of himself once more. “Many of their ilk are operating under the belief that my brother will not return.” 

Éowyn glanced first down, then out across the darkened city beneath them. She had no words for him—though she did not wish to speak it aloud, her thoughts also had begun to stray in that direction. 

“Perhaps I ought to take advantage of the situation then,” she said in a desperate attempt to redirect the course of the conversation. “There is little that I wish for, but perhaps this unexpected windfall of interest could be used for purposes other than petty desires.”

For a flickering second, she saw his recognition that she was purposefully avoiding the topic, but then his oh so welcome smile appeared, setting her heart aflutter. “And what purposes might those be?” 

Once, she might have risen easily to the teasing note in his voice, had an answer to his friendly taunts before he had even finished speaking, but she had grown weary, and her mind had grown slower, slower still when it was asked to think of joyful moments. But it had not ceased operations entirely, and soon she answered his smile with one of her own, brushing her hands down her gown. “This evening has made a convert of me, I could scarcely accept being wed in anything less than a silk gown—indigo silk, perhaps.”

“Indigo silk,” he repeated, folding his arms over his chest. “Yes, I suppose you would have to bribe and extort every major Lord of this Kingdom to fulfil that particular wish; I regret that I can afford a silk gown or an indigo gown, but not both in one.” 

“Oh, now that is a shame. I had hoped that by marrying you I would be marrying into incalculable wealth, but I see now that I have been deceived.” She affected a heartfelt sigh. “And so my dreams go, little more than dust in the wind.” 

“Though now that I think about it,” he said, brushing away the curls that framed her face, trailing the backs of his fingers across her cheeks, “I would rather like to see you draped in silk.” 

“Then you know what must be done,” she said, whispering as he stooped to kiss her, light and chaste at first, but growing less restrained as she tangled her fingers in his hair, messing the plait that had at one moment been neat and tidy. She could not help the soft, needy noises that arose in the back of her throat, nor how she stepped forward into him, bringing as much of their bodies into contact as she could. For the very briefest of moments, the stress and strain of the day began to melt away, taking with it the heavy feeling of guilt in her chest, filtering away into the air around them until—

“Faramir!” 

Elphir’s voice shattered the stillness of the night, but it was Faramir’s laughter, warm against her face, that brought her crashing back to reality. He kissed her once, twice more around his laughter, then stepped back. The air between them felt colder than before, and though she could stand perfectly well on her own, those few seconds when she did not have to seemed to her all the sweeter now that they were over. 

“Honestly,” said Elphir, now much closer to them than Éowyn had realised, “not an ounce of subtlety exists between either of you, I have seen wildfires caused by lightning strikes that have commanded less attention.” Behind him, Elúriel smiled, evidently aware of the unspoken irony of the situation. “Now I do not wish to make a hypocrite of myself, so I would ask that you do not make one of me.” He looked hard at Faramir, but for all his seriousness he could not put a stopper on the mirth that danced in his eyes. 

“Fatherhood has made a fearsome enforcer of you,” said Faramir, leaning back against the ramparts. “But I will concede the point nonetheless, lest you are replaced by an ever more fearsome alternative.”

“A wise choice, I commend you.”

Elúriel reached out to Éowyn. “Come, let us rejoin the evening, I am sure your presence is much missed already.” 

Had Éowyn known it then, she might have made more of her last peaceful moment with Faramir before the world’s ending—but she did not, so she gathered her skirts in one hand, took Elúriel’s arm with the other, and departed. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

For all that she had become the central figure of Minas Tirith’s social world, she felt lonelier and more isolated than ever before. She saw less of Faramir with each passing week, an immense upsurge in enemy activity both in Ithilien and along the southern coast kept him chained to his duties for longer and longer stretches of time, and what little time he could spare for her was spent with a rotating cavalcade of chaperones—some scrupulous, some less so, but none willing to let them be within arm’s reach of one another for more than a few seconds. Even if she had not elected to keep the full truth of her sorrows in Meduseld from him, she would have had no opportunity to speak of it to him anyway. Their conversations ranged from the expected (they would wed at midsummer, a concession Faramir had apparently worked very hard to win) to the mind-numbingly mundane (the increase in lightning strikes had started to noticeably scar the Pelennor Fields). Her heart was at once full and broken—the promise of joy in the future now felt like an empty promise to her for how distant and unreachable the future felt. 

The weather worsened, the air grew thinner, and autumn began to bleed into winter. She slept less, though her dreams were haunted less by the Shadow in the East than by the reality of her life. Often, she would jolt awake after hearing herself promise to care for those Boromir left behind, only to have her dreams cloak her in the exhaustion and isolation she knew both Faramir and Lord Denethor felt. Yet for all the turmoil caused by her promise, and all the sleepless nights she had spent ruminating on it, she grew no closer to answering the vital question of how. The war wearied them all, but the rules of peace separated them. She thought to focus her efforts on Faramir, to encourage him to care for his father, but it took little time for her to realise that those were the plans of a sleep-deprived mind. Their perceived gulf was too great to be bridged by even the best of intentions, and she knew well enough that neither of them had any hope of having the best intentions. 

Even Sedril spent less time with her; after a series of successful social outings, and after discovering that her parents were almost entirely distracted by their contributions to the war effort, she had taken every chance presented to her to strike out on her own, turning herself rather rapidly into a social butterfly amongst the circles of the younger nobility. She remained as convinced as ever that her letter writing to Glórindîr would be the thing to tame his more reckless habits, but all the while she cultivated a cabal of admirers who treated her as her parents would not: as someone worthy of time. It was not that Éowyn had ever been especially attached to her and Sedril’s conversations, but to find herself without them while also rapidly losing time with Faramir, and having sacrificed painfully and entirely her very last connection to her home felt like a bridge too far. But there was naught to be done for it, she would not demand Sedril sacrifice what little freedom she had, she could not burden Faramir with her problems lest she break her promise to Boromir, and there was no hope left of her ever seeing the Mark again. 

More selfishly than any other thoughts she had had, she found herself missing Boromir for his companionship. Their conversations had not broken any new intellectual ground, nor had they brought her the sort of emotional succour she found with Faramir, but there was something to be revered in having a friend who was nothing more than a friend. She still trained, on occasion when men could be spared to train with her, but it was altogether less enjoyable when it was stripped back to mere sparring and technique refinement. Without Boromir’s hard-nosed yet caring running commentary on anything and everything, much of the amusement slipped out from the activity. What little she understood of Boromir’s errand told her that it would not be without a new army that he would return—if he returned at all, yet each morning and evening she looked westward, hoping into the depths of her lonely delusion that she might see him returning across the plains of Anórien, bringing with him the good word of hope and victory.

The list of things she wished to do was long, the lost of things she needed to do was even longer, but as she looked out her window to the ashy grey clouds, illuminated in sickly yellow as the sun fought and failed to break through, the hopelessness that had made its home in her heart whittled away at her willpower. She did not doubt that her choice was the right one, and were she forced to make it a thousand more times, she was certain she would not waver, but there were moments when the happiness she thought she ought to have felt did not materialise, when the walls of her life closed further in around her. 

There was a sadness that sat high in her chest, simultaneously an identifiable point deep within her heart, and pouring out from within her, cloaking her limbs in sorrow she could not shake. She did not wish to cry—she so rarely did—and yet it was as though her body was her own greatest enemy, pushing her to the brink of tears with each step she could, in turn making her angrier and more frustrated at this bout of fragility. She did not wish to see anyone, had no desire to take comfort in others lest their natural pity for her be an outward confirmation of her weakness; to cry was to show emotion, and to show emotion was to admit that she could not bear the weight of the world upon her shoulders, and she would not have anyone think that of her, not when she knew it was a weight she could carry. 

In some moments, anger came, unbridled and terrible, burning white hot in her limbs and beating angrily against the inside of her skull. She felt fury and bitter towards everyone—her uncle and cousin for raising her to believe that she might one day have more from this world than she truly could; her brother for doing almost nothing to defend her, first against the Worm, then against their uncle; Faramir for not being the personified solution to all of her problems, for showing her love but love tainted by the unholy misery of war without end; and herself, herself for showing weakness at every turn, for accepting the shackles that closed about her limbs as if it was right and good that they should be there, as if fate itself dictates that she be condemned to death and ignominy. 

She spent more of her time in Ciriel’s infirmary. It was easy to do—the eyes of the White City were upon Éowyn, Lady of Rohan, they were not set upon Éowyn, Stateless Exile. So she moved readily from the upper circles to the lower, unnoticed and unquestioned as she went. There, she heard from the men whose injuries had been grave enough to require treatment, but not so grave as to warrant imposing upon the Army’s waning resources. The men told her stories of hollow glory: skirmishes in the western quarters of Osgiliath, ambushes in the north of Anórien opposite Nindalf, aborted rallies around Cair Andros that only led to more Orc attacks. They each brought stories of their contributing worth, how they had served their Kingdom and made something of themselves, done what they could to bestow valour and victory upon Gondor, even if it had come at great personal cost. 

Éowyn washed and treated their wounds, applied salves made by Ciriel, and bound them with bandages brought by Elaureth. Her hands dripped with blood and bile, and her nose stung with the stench of medicinal herbs and fetid, rotting flesh. All the while, a black bitterness grew within her, jealous rage towards the men who had been given a right to do something of worth to halt the Enemy’s encroachments. She washed her hands until they were red and raw, and watched in mournful agony as the sword calluses that had once covered her fingertips and palms grew soft and pliable once more. 

She was called to join more of the ceremonial events that occurred within the City—though it was unclear whether her invitation was contingent upon her betrothal to Faramir, or if she would have been invited to them irregardless, but the events simply had not happened as frequently before Boromir departed. She was happy for the new imposition upon her time, or if not happy, then at least satisfied by it, for it gave her ample time to observe both Faramir and Lord Denethor, to keep a close eye on their respective moods and to ensure that neither seemed particularly closer to the brink than the day before. 

Lord Denethor, as was his wont, proved problematic in this regard. It looked to Éowyn as though he aged a year for each day that passed, and he had never looked to her especially young. Still, for however much his exhaustion manifested physically, it did not manifest mentally, and he showed himself to be as sharp as ever. In a roundabout way, it was a relief to Éowyn. Though his keenness of mind struck fear into her heart each time the topic of her country was raised, she reasoned that she would not be able to call upon him to answer for a defence of the Mark if he was not in a fit enough mental state to do so. Spending even more time than usual mincing her words was, ultimately, a small price to pay for the future promise of safety. 

Though the mood in the City remained one of unalloyed pessimism, both he and Faramir were singularly committed to combating it where it appeared, and for the force of their combined personalities, there at least grew an understanding within the court that open statements of pessimism would not be tolerated in public. Many yet struggled to uphold this diktat (and many more, namely the Southern lords who remained desperate to score a blow against Lord Denethor), but there was enough acquiescence to it that major events passed without being allowed to fall prey to the unshakeable malaise that had otherwise befallen the City. 

Within the confines of those events, Éowyn—who had never much been one for quiet introspection anyways—began to notice the peculiarities of courtly life that she had not had opportunity to before. For one, Faramir’s bearing at ceremonial events was very far indeed from the quiet rebelliousness he had worked so hard to portray before. None of his frustrations towards the proclivities of the court made themselves known as he stood quiet sentinel at his father’s side, and though she well knew his distaste for the trappings of war, she would have been hard pressed to see it in his face as he pinned medals to young soldiers, led ceremonial drills, and accepted salute after salute from the myriad detachments that formed Gondor’s standing army. With ever greater frequency, she caught herself thinking that instead of a young and slightly-idiosyncratic man of the present age, he was far more alike the kings of old, proud and dignified, always with an air of nigh-tragic ancientry to him, as one not just displaced from his ancestral homeland, but displaced from time itself. 

And for that, and though she would never tempt fate and speak it aloud, she began to wonder if he was not alike the kings of old in more than just deportment, and if the tragedy that clung to the line of Anárion did not also cling to him.

Notes:

Yes, that is a paraphrase of Xena: Warrior Princess. And also yes, that is me shamelessly lifting the bright sword speech. Too good not to, soz

Chapter 28: Book II: Winter 3018

Winter came with a frigidity Éowyn had never before experienced, and it came without word from Boromir. These things were of equal bitterness to her, though only one was ever spoken of. And it was spoken of at length—there were no conversations she had, whether in the lowest cellars of the first circle of the City or the highest state rooms of the Citadel that did not focus in one way or another on the cruelty of the winter. The near-constant eruptions of Orodruin in the East blotted the sun out from the sky for days on end, and soon it was as if nothing at all changed between day and night. 

It grew more difficult for her to work in Ciriel’s infirmary, not least because a pestilence had gripped the lower levels of the City, forcing Lord Denethor to mandate a cessation of all but the most necessary of journeys between the circles. With her unexpectedly ample spare time, she was confined more often to her own sitting room with only Sedril for company. Sedril, surprising her yet again, seemed now to be interested in Éowyn as a source of good counsel—their disagreement about the suitability of Sedril’s choices in men having evidently been consigned to the waste heap of history. 

With rather little sense for the enormous incongruity she was making Éowyn aware of, Sedril spoke often and at length of the ongoing schemes and scandals of the young lords and ladies of the court. On occasion, it occurred to Éowyn that by all measures she ought to have qualified as one of the young ladies of the court, and she was certainly younger than some of the eldest ladies in that category. Yet she knew all too well that the distance with which she approached everything, but especially the Gondorrim court, made her ineligible for such a designation. Though fewer than six years separated her and Sedril, their lives were worlds apart. Éowyn spent her days in terror at the Shadow in the East, horrified that she might not be strong or shrewd enough to ensure the defence of her people. Sedril spent her days in terror of her mother’s criticism of her gowns, and horrified that she might not appear as popular as she felt she truly was. In truth—and it was a silent truth, for Éowyn would admit it to no-one—she felt quiet pangs of jealousy towards the girl. Their lives were equally meaningless, stumbling ever forward towards the same ignoble end, yet Sedril was unburdened by the harsh truth of that reality. She could express her fear for the men stationed in Ithilien and Osgiliath, or her shock at the news of worsening incursions by the Corsairs along the coast, but she lacked even an inkling of what the tragedy of those situations really were. She knew none who risked their lives for the war effort, and so her fears were abstracted. 

But Éowyn’s fears were so real she felt as though they were reaching out to clasp her in a stranglehold. Despite the chill, she recommenced her habit of wandering the Citadel on nights when her night terrors forced her awake, and covered, she was certain, many hundreds of leagues. Her thoughts on those evenings covered nearly every inch of her expansive list of anxieties. Some nights, she fretted over what horrors the Worm had wrought in Edoras, others, how she could continue to lie-by-omission to Faramir and Lord Denethor alike about her new exilic status. On the easier nights, she simply worried about how to manage the unending barrage of advice on how to ensure that her future wedding conformed to Gondorrim standards—on less fortunate nights, this bled into her panic at her brother’s deputation as her uncle’s agent in her dowry negotiations, negotiations which were yet to be scheduled and hung over her like a thundercloud. On her worst nights, she panicked blindly over the conspicuous lack of news from Boromir. Faramir assured her (often enough that she wondered if his assurances were not for his sake more than hers) that they had never expected to hear news of him, that he would be crossing territory that had been largely uncharted in centuries of Gondorrim history. It brought her little comfort. 

Mettarë came. Not for the first time, she wished it had not mandated reflection upon the year. She thought, with no small small amount of disdain, of the Mettarë she had endured a year past, when her uncle’s ailment could be ignored no longer and the Worm’s foul machinations crushed hope to dust and set it loose upon the wind. She had, at least for the moment, outmanoeuvred him—she had eluded his grasp and (mostly) ensured the defence of her people would be possible even if her uncle could not himself organise it. Yet his shadow loomed large above her life nonetheless, his theft of her kin and his introduction of unspeakable fear into her life had cowed her in ways she had not wished to be cowed, and here among the Dúnedain, whose clear sight made her more vulnerable than ever, that loss and that fear had become her greatest enemies; she had become her greatest enemy. 

But there was some lightness to her reflections, for it had been a year ago too that she had begun to realise the depth of her feelings for Faramir, and for whatever else that might have done for her, it had also brought her to the greatest joy she had ever known. She saw less of him now, so much less of him that he was to her almost alike a memory, infrequent and intangible, yet bringing warmth and succour all the same. 

It had been many weeks since she had warmed his bed or he hers; she thought, at one point, to feel shame about that particular aspect of their relationship. She had been precipitate, headstrong in her pursuit of pure feeling over more-appropriate methods of manifesting their love, but she could not will herself to feel shame, only mourning. There was an element of physical desire she could not ignore, of course there was, but there was more to it too. She missed the feeling that (no matter how briefly) she ranked at the very top of someone’s priorities, that seeing her, knowing her, and caring for what she wanted could at all take precedence over the usual, more pressing concerns of the world. She missed the connection that came with it, the construction of a desperately private world, existing only for and between the two of them, open and accessible to no others. And she missed the smaller, less important moments too: how, once she had cracked his discipline, he could be charmingly vocal, not just a flurry of compliments for her and what she could do, but the flood of inarticulate noises he made, proof that even he could be rendered speechless; the way he would wrap himself around her just a little tighter afterwards, his skin always blazing hot against hers, lulling her to sleep; how, in those precious few moments between wake and sleep, he would murmur things to her that she rarely ever heard from him otherwise—memories of earlier, youthful joy or fears he had about the coming days that he could not express to anyone else. 

She yearned for him now in a way she had never yearned for a person before, yearned for things, yes, but never for a person. Never before had she felt at once so understood and comforted by a person as to actively wish for more of them. And for her unanswered yearning, it felt as if the space between them grew infinitely larger. Polite touches—a hand on his arm at a ceremony, the grazing of fingers at a meal, a thrown and caught glance across the Citadel’s forecourt, these were all things that had once tantalisingly bridged the gap between them, but now were to her little more of a reminder of just how far apart the world had forced them. More than physical touch, she longed for the emotional intimacy of being known, of the ease she had once felt at knowing that he could look at her and understand the depth of her emotions. Now, her fear that she would contribute to additional burdens upon him, burdens he did not need, meant that each time he looked at her for even a fraction of a second too long, he would see straight through her and into the darkened, immiserated halls of Meduseld. 

So: Mettarë. Against her better hopes, it arrived, and with it the flurry of events mandated by the season. If in her first Mettarë spent in Minas Tirith she had thought the events were staid and austere, she would have then been entirely unprepared for how bitterly cold they were to become. As in Meduseld a year ago, she found herself trapped between obligation and emotion. Once more, she stood on a dais and heard ruminations on the glory of life, the triumph of courage, and the necessity of struggle against the Enemy; once more she allowed bitterness to flow like hot blood through her veins, heating her skin with the knowledge that she had been denied her right to live gloriously, to show courage, and to struggle against the Enemy. But she also showed none of her bitterness upon her face nor allowed it to trickle out in her words—she was the ambassador from the Mark, yes, but she was more intimately connected with the House of Húrin than ever before, and their need to maintain optimism among the court was now her need too. 

She bided her own counsel, gazed out from on high at the courtiers below, and ignored the sting of sadness at the distance that now existed between she and Faramir. She preferred him when he let his beard grow out, always liking the rakishness of it, and always making certain to let him know of her preference, so much so that whenever he shaved, he had made it a habit of offering her a semi-ironic apology. But lately he was clean-shaven more often than not, yet there was not even the slightest hint of a recognition between them—not, she reasoned, that there would have been an appropriate venue in which to address it, they had not had a moment alone in months, but it seemed to her evidence of its own kind of the gulf that had erupted between them. 

The formalities were finished swiftly, an unspoken agreement that more reflections on optimism that could not be found in earnest would do no good for anyone—better, then, to let those present flock amongst themselves and make merry (or whatever passed for merriment) in what way seemed best to them. For Éowyn, whose feet moved before her thoughts could wrest control of them, that way was by making a beeline to Faramir, reaching out for him as if he were the sole raft in an infinite turbulent ocean. 

But her desires were at odds with the whims of the world, and before she could catch his eye, he was being pulled away by his father’s secretary, out towards the steps that led to the foyer of Merethrond. As she watched him go, she was overcome by the sensation that she was being pulled backwards into the throng of people, becoming an indistinct blur of her own. 

Conversations happened around her, occasionally about her, but she could find no energy to put into them. But the longer she watched the whirl of colours about her, heard the cacophony of noises that were at once familiar and alien, she wondered if her lack of energy was not new at all, if she herself was simply exhaustion personified. The world, it seemed, was exhausted, made weary and weak by a war that would not end. Perhaps in another life she might have been different, but in this one it occurred to her that she had never been anything at all, the very fact of being had been denied to her. And so she was passed from conversation to conversation, saying little and feeling less, looking at the pale skin of her hands and wondering if it was only to her that it appeared as if they had begun to melt into the white stone of the City.

She was, she thought, rather like the City. Many looked upon them both and hoped to see the gleaming white of purity and nobility, yet she looked upon herself and upon Minas Tirith and saw only the grey listlessness of life without a future. Minas Tirith might occasionally be draped in the heraldry of ceremony, washed and embellished in such a way as to affect the illusion of life, but it was a dead City, and though she might have once desired to play pretend with hope and a future, but she too was fated for nothing more than a slow march to her inevitable, inglorious death.

When she had played turn and turn about for a sufficiently long period of time, Éowyn excused herself to the far reaches out the room, taking stock of the attendees and wishing desperately for Boromir’s swift return, so that she would no longer need to suffer these events alone. 

Drawn by boredom and curiosity she was not entirely proud of, she wandered towards the stairs that overlooked Merethrond’s foyer. There, she saw a scene she immediately knew was not for her eyes—yet a scene she could not look away from. 

Faramir and Lord Denethor stood beside a small statue in a hollow in the wall, Faramir talking and gesticulating with muted movements, and Lord Denethor looked intently at the statue. After a few moments, Faramir appeared almost as if he was smiling, but with a slight shake of his head, the expression was gone. 

“You truly have become one of us.”

Éowyn started, wheeling around with a series of potential excuses for her behaviour. But Elphir merely raised his hands in contrition. 

“Spying on the Lord Steward and his sons—son, rather—is Minas Tirith’s very favourite pastime.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then decided that honesty was the better part of valour. “I just find it all so off-putting,” she said with a maudlin sigh. “Why should we even make gestures at celebration when there is naught worth celebrating? Why deny the truth of the war?” 

“There are many who would agree with you, I think, but I, unfortunately, am not one of them.”

“No?”

“No,” he said, moving to stand beside her and resting his forearms against the bannister. “I rather appreciate the opportunity to keep myself abreast of what the simperers and connivers of the court are most interested in this week.” He nodded in the direction of Faramir and his father. “That is the only memorial in the City for my late aunt, you know.”

“Is she not buried at Rath Dinen?”

“No, indeed she is not,” said Elphir slowly. “My grandfather would not enter Minas Tirith except when it could not be avoided at risk of death or war, and refused to allow his youngest daughter to be laid to rest so far from him. She is interred in the mausoleum of the Princes, in Dol Amroth.”

Éowyn let out a small gasp. “Lord Denethor allowed it?”

“He did,” said Elphir. “My father believes it is because he never truly loved her.”

“And you? Do you think that as well?”

Elphir looked at his clasped hands for a moment, then shook his head. “In my youth, I was more inclined towards that interpretation, though with rather less malice than my father—I have never harboured quite the same level of vitriol towards my uncle as my father does.  But now that I have a son of my own, I feel that perhaps I understand something of why my uncle responded the way he did.”

“Which is why?”

“Protection. His two young sons already bore the weight of the world upon them, it is no doubt strenuous enough to be the sons of the Steward at the best of times, but these past decades have been very far from the best of times. They had already lost their mother, and were condemned to a lifetime where their joys and their sorrows would always belong to more than just them—they would belong to Gondor as a whole. What good could come of fighting battles that would inevitably lead to the loss of kin they so desperately needed? What good could come of making the death of their beloved mother even more painful than it already was? In this settlement, they will always be able to visit her tomb, for they will always be welcome at Dol Amroth.”

“But Lord Denethor would never again see his wife.” 

“No, he would not, but that was the bargain I suspected he made for the good of his sons, difficult though it may be to comprehend. There are some sacrifices made in the name of love that are unthinkable to all except those who make them.”

Éowyn nodded slowly, feeling that familiar clench of pain deep within her soul. 

“Ah, now that is likely not a good sign for any of us.” 

She turned back to where Elphir’s attention had drifted, and saw a messenger, livery spattered with mud, standing to attention in front of Faramir and his father. The messenger spoke hastily, then scampered away at his first opportunity—Faramir absently rubbed his temple, while his father stood motionless. 

“Come, my lady,” whispered Elphir, drawing her away from the bannister. “I suspect we will learn soon what ill omen this is, but I would not have us do so while facing a scolding for our lapse in etiquette.”

She followed him without argument, though noticed with a sense of wry amusement that rather than re-inserting them both into the revellers, he pulled them towards the top of the stairs. And his strategy proved effective—it was Faramir who summited the stairs first and, upon seeing them, came quickly to join them. 

“What news, cousin?” Elphir offered not an ounce of subtlety or contriteness. 

“Nothing good,” said Faramir darkly. “Corsairs are laying siege to Pelargir—it seems the fleet was split between Ethir Anduin and the Bay of Tolfalas, against my father’s wishes, and the contingent in Ethir Anduin was quickly overrun. Lord Sirgon is yet unaccounted for.”

Éowyn stepped back in shock, and the colour drained from Elphir’s face. “The fleet was split? But neither I nor my father would have given such a command, not now.” 

“That is all the information I have been given, but you know as well as I that there are many reasons why such a disconnect might have happened, and none are encouraging.” 

“Pelargir? But that is not fifty leagues from here!” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she regretted them all the more when she saw the sorrowful look Faramir gave her. 

“The Enemy, it seems, is moving more swiftly than we anticipated.”

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The news of the siege of Pelargir horrified the denizens of Minas Tirith, but rather more importantly to Éowyn, it distracted enough attention from her that she felt it safe once more to slip down to Minas Tirith’s lowest circles. Her listlessness had grown more powerful with the news of the siege, yet again she could not tamp down upon the sense that she was, to both the world and herself, utterly useless. Helping in Ciriel’s infirmary, hollow though it felt to her, was one small way in which she might convince herself that all that had happened in her life was not for naught. 

And, in an act of cosmic justice which would only be seen by Éowyn as justice at all many, many months later, an opportunity to be useful beyond her wildest imaginings appeared to her not an hour after she arrived at the infirmary. The cosmic justice arrived in the form of a woman, a woman who bounded through the door with the air of death about her—of late, most in the City seemed to be halfway into their own graves, but her aura spoke to a terrifying urgency of death not often seen (at least as far as Éowyn thought) beyond the field of battle.

She explained, stopping and starting often, so shaken and broken was her voice, that her son, a boy of just twelve, had been delivered from Cair Andros after having suffered a grave injury in a skirmish. She had administered what healing measures she could, but they had proved insufficient, and infection and fever had taken control of him. She had grown paler when Éowyn had asked why, if the boy had been injured in battle, he was not being attended to in the Houses of Healing in the sixth circle of the City—after some coaxing, she admitted that the boy was still legally too young to join the troops; while further afield the regulations could be ignored when necessity decreed it, within the white walls of Minas Tirith, rules could not be so flagrantly forsaken. 

Too tired and emotionally-spent to make much of the situation one way or the other, Éowyn volunteered to see to the boy, at the very least it would save her the monotony of preparing salves, a task she especially did not relish. With Ciriel’s approval, she slipped out of the back study, seeking out the boy where he had been deposited by his mother. 

She found him leaning unsteadily against the wall, skin trending more towards yellow-green than its natural brown. The sleeve of his tunic had already been soaked through with blood and infected mucus, imparting a nauseating stench upon the air. For a moment, Éowyn could do little more than marvel at how young he was—too young to have suffered so terribly. 

Quietly, she led him to a side room and sat him upon the table. In the corridor, Ciriel and his mother spoke in a whispered staccato, words she could not make out as she moved from shelf to shelf gathering the necessary supplies. 

The first time Éowyn had stitched a wound, Ciriel had carefully warned her that keeping the stitchee distracted was the difference between neat, safe stitches and unruly, dangerous ones. She began to clean off the noxious liquid crusting the wound, and glanced up at the boy. “How is it that you keep yourself hidden, then? How is it that they have not noticed your age?”

“I keep my helm on,” said the boy, his voice tight with pain. 

“And your voice?”

“Lots of folk keep quiet after they’ve seen a battle or two, talking brings it all back, or so it’s said, but I’m not fearful of all that.” He looked quickly away from her as she worked, every sharp, jolted movement he made dripping with his need to appear strong and capable beyond his years. 

“I would be fearful. I have never been in battle, but I have seen the aftermath of many, and heard the stories of a great many more, and I think it takes unparalleled courage to fight one.” 

“It does,” said the boy with a weak smile. 

“And now you will have irrefutable proof of your valour,” she said, tying off the last stitch. “For that I am also envious—my best scars come from swimming and horse riding. One day I should like to have a battle scar of my own.”

The boy’s shy smile grew wider, and he turned his arm to and fro to admire the stitches. Then, he looked up at her with eager gratitude. “I hope you do too!” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

In the low doldrums of winter, when the earth should have been preparing to grow warm once more, the City remained frozen. There was no optimism left, and the energy of all those who might have cared to stoke it had been redirected towards more pressing projects: the Enemy’s offensive manoeuvres had grown relentless across all but the westernmost of Gondor’s borders—that, at least, was still kept by the Mark. 

Éowyn’s loneliness became acute. What time she spent in Ciriel’s infirmary only served to sunder her further from those around her, for the secrecy it demanded and the cold terror it inflicted upon her heart made her sorry company. She slept poorly, and rose each morning with less energy than the one before, making it through the day only through sheer force of will. But for how much energy expenditure simply staying awake and alert demanded, she could hardly dedicate any more to playing the polite, unburdened ambassador; in time, she withdrew from all but the most necessary of appointments. Instead, she took to wandering the Citadel, as she did in the night, a silent sentinel patrolling the ivory ramparts. 

On one such morning, the sun’s light once more dulled by the heavy, ashy cloud cover, she stood at the near end of the Citadel’s prow, gazing out upon Ithilien, thinking only of the darkness that lay beyond. She had not set out with such maudlin intentions, but she had watched as a supply train had set out for Osgiliath, and her thoughts had returned to that day in the summer. The whole world had collapsed then, she thought, and now they were forced to drift in the aftermath of that collapse, neither dead nor alive, but simply existing. 

Far above the building and the mountain, above the wind and the clouds, cleaving the midmorning silence in twain, a horn cried out, clear and grave, practised yet slipshod. Then, with a suddenness that took Éowyn’s breath away, it fell silent, and did not come again.

Notes:

Happy Halloween xx

Chapter 29: Book II: Winter 3019

In the days since she had heard the strange horn, she had seen Faramir only once. Yet even in passing and at a great distance, she could see that he had grown wearier and developed a line of tension in his shoulders that was primed to snap at any moment. Understandably so: a call had gone out across Gondor to ready for the defence of Minas Tirith—a call that had taken Éowyn’s breath away, for though she had always known that the situation was dire, never had she considered that Minas Tirith itself might soon be at risk. Yet at risk it was, and all the lords who typically preferred to loiter within the City instead of within the realms with whose care they were charged were dispatched at once to rally what troops they had, and to prepare for the bitterest of ends. 

Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, more attention than ever was foisted upon Éowyn and her looming wedding (now growing more and more impalpable to her with each passing day). In the midst of the flurry of preparations for a battle of unimaginable scale and terror, the inquiries stung her like a hot brand, and her self control dwindled, and her mood worsened. She avoided questions about the wedding where she could, and where she could not, she avoided conversation altogether, sequestering herself in far flung corners of the Citadels, rooms and chambers she knew none would look for her in. 

The library in the Tower of Ecthelion had become an especial favourite, not just because it was visited so infrequently, but because even when it was, no attempts were ever made to trespass on her silence. For hours at a time she was left alone, her thoughts her only companion. And in that time, her thoughts often soared high above the White Tower, across the Great Plains of Anórien and the Eastfold, to the Golden Hall of Meduseld. She wondered after her brother and cousin, and, in the few brief moments where her anger subsided far enough to allow it, even after her uncle. 

She held a book about the history of Lossarnach (recommended to her by Faramir many months ago) and thought about her uncle and her mother, and the strange, different world they inhabited to have been raised in the Elvish tongue yet to have been so indisputably of the Eorlingas. It was a possibility and an open question for her future that she had not often thought of; she felt an instinctive sense of duty to the Riddermark, yet when her mind wandered to it, she was filled only by the bitter sting of betrayal and fury. With a new era of the war looming so close, she could not help but think of her uncle’s words to her in the summer, of his accusation that she was little more than a hostage to ensure the pliability of the Rohirrim—in his desperation to prove himself independent to and more valiant than the Gondorrim, would that alleged hostage-taking be rendered worthless? Might he no longer be prepared to honour his oath? And had she allowed herself to ignore that possibility for months on end out of a selfish and childish desire to spare herself more pain?

Her thoughts—for better or for worse, she was too overwrought by the general atmosphere of the world to come to a sensible conclusion on the matter—were swiftly interrupted. 

“My father’s secretary tells me that your brother is yet to reply to his request to schedule dowry negotiations,” said Faramir, standing in the threshold of the library.

She did not look up from her book, though the words had long ago stopped looking sensical to her. The conversation of dowry negotiations had been raised to her earlier in the day by Lord Denethor’s secretary directly, and she had then politely reminded him that with Minas Tirith on the verge of something as terrible as a battle, it was hardly an appropriate conversation. Faramir, she had hoped, would not need to be told the same thing. “My dowry includes several estates in Aldburg, and all the lands and goods remaining from my mother’s dowry. What more is to be said of it?” 

“Very much more, given that it will include ceding strategically important lands to a subject of a different crown,” he said, affixing her with the sort of interrogative look she had never wished to feel him turn upon her. 

She sighed, a little more loudly than she had intended. “Strategically important to whom? And when? If your father’s call to the Lords of Gondor is in earnest, I think we are beyond the strategic necessity of well-timed crop rotations.” She closed her book, slipping it onto the table in front of her. “Yet I suspect even you, great romantic though you may be, are not here to hassle me about wedding plans.” 

“I could be,” he said, leaning now against the bookshelf nearest her. “It does bring me much-needed comfort to think of such things, especially now.”

“But?”

“But in this instance, you have hit the mark, and I come with bitterer tidings. I leave tonight to Osgiliath and will cross into Ithilien on the morrow. I am not certain for how long I will be away, only that it cannot be postponed any longer. The situation has declined considerably, and I could not in good faith leave the management of the border campaign to my deputies.”

“Must you leave so soon?”

“Yes.” Tentatively, his eyes scanned the library, ensuring they were alone. “It appears another attack is imminent, whether at Osgiliath or Cair Andros we are yet unsure, but I would not have the garrisons in either location face an attack without at least one final inspection, it would be an abdication of my duty to my men.” She held her silence—there was nothing worth saying. “Éowyn,” said Faramir after a moment’s pause, his tone softer now. “Are you quite sure you’re well?” 

“Yes of course I am.” She faltered. “Or as well as one might be in such terrible times.”

“But is that well? I would not have you be unhappy.”

“Faramir,” she said firmly. “Do you see me as some sort of ornament to be kept in a case and brought out at entertainment’s need?”

“I do not.” 

“And would you demand happiness of yourself at a time such as this?”

He beheld her silently for a moment, then shook his head. “I would not.”

“Then do not ask it of me. I will not blind myself to the truth of the future we face simply to delude myself into a shallow happiness; I would rather face what doom awaits with sight untainted.”

She saw in his eyes a desire to quibble with her, an instinct to push back upon her words, but, as if the air had become laden with his emotions, she felt his acquiescence. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, then nodded. “Very well, then I will not. But I will ask instead that you spare a thought for yourself on occasion, for my sake if not your own.” 

Rather unintentionally, Éowyn wondered after Urse and Brunhild and their bakery in the lower rings of the City, and if they were ever forced to endure such conversations, or if they had simply accepted that happiness was against the grain of their reality. Her answer to Faramir, then, came as an uncomfortable smile—she had grown weary of making promises she was not certain she could keep, but not weary enough to break ones she had already made. Calculated silence, then, was her greatest asset. “I only wish,” she said, rising to her feet to face him at eye-level, “that I had a favour to bestow upon you, that you might spare a thought for me on occasion.” 

“You already have,” he said, raising his hand in the air so that the silver band about his finger glinted in the light. “I could ask for no more, even if there were more to give.” 

“Said as prettily as ever, my lord, and it is perhaps your pretty words that I will yearn for the most. Will you write to me at least, that I might not be deprived entirely of them?” 

She thought, optimistically, that he may have smiled as he reached out for her hands, bringing them up to his lips with a sharp crackling of their air between them. “If it is in my power.”

“Then I am satisfied,” she said and kissed him. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Sedril cornered Éowyn not long after she forsook the library and, with her characteristic (and to Éowyn’s mind, galling) optimism, elected to speak only of the good news she had just received: Lord Glórindîr was returning to Minas Tirith. Of course, she carefully and adeptly elided that he was returning to Minas Tirith in order to defend it from what terrible fate imminently awaited it, instead focussing only on the fact of his having written to her to alert her to his arrival. 

Éowyn could not bring herself to remind Sedril of the misery of their lives, it was a cruelty, she thought, beyond her own capabilities; instead, she sat quietly and listened to Sedril’s excited plans—her desire to emphasise the nobility and wealth of her house as an opportunity for him to rise above his station, and her hopes of using the recent exodus of young women from the City to her advantage. They were, if Éowyn gave her the credit she was due, shrewd, well-crafted plans, but strange that they were at all necessary, and stranger still that that were dreamt up by so young a girl. Perhaps, she conceded, in a kinder, gentler time she might have had her own opportunity to indulge such childish fantasies. 

Rather, Éowyn could only indulge her own quiet, increasingly frantic anxieties. When Sedril departed in the early evening and Hadoriel had come and gone with food, silence erupted about her, filling every crevice, gap, and hole in and around her, until there was more silence than matter to her. She thought often and warily of the horn blast she had heard, and what ill omens it portended, what it had meant to Faramir and Lord Denethor that they had so quickly assumed that the end of times was upon them. 

It had been weeks since she had trained in earnest, and she felt frail in her body, fearful now more than ever of what weaknesses hid beneath the bountiful layers of her gowns. But even this deep and abiding fear could not still her restless limbs long enough to induce her to test her skills in the practice ring, and so she returned to that old habit of hers, wandering the Citadel, though now she looked both east and west, her heart and her worry split in twain. 

The dark poured across the sky from the west, as if it were that great and terrible wave Faramir had so often described to her, come at last to seal the fate of the sons of Númenor who once escaped its wrath. The darkness drowned even the stars in the sky, colluding with Orodruin in the east to stifle even the most distant promises of hope, and bathing the White City in an unnatural gloom.

The lanterns across the Citadel were lit, but then only sparingly, and their dim lights could not contend with the dark. The banner of the Stewards, raised high above the Tower of Ecthelion, no longer shone its brilliant argent, but became dull and listless, even as the heavy, constant sound of its fabric flapping in the wind beat down upon the empty forecourt. Éowyn watched the banner, and wondered how much longer it would reign over Minas Tirith, or if it too would fall victim to the war, torn down for bandages and liveries and shrouds, for nothing in war could remain sacrosanct. 

Indeed, even that oppressive silence was left sacred no longer, for nigh on the tenth hour of the night (the second of her nocturnal wanderings), the silence was defeated by the fast clattering of hooves and the sound of men’s raised voices, first beyond the tunnel, then within it. The Tower Guards, ever unflinching, reacted little as the cacophony grew nearer, and Éowyn herself drawing closer and closer to its source. 

And when its source made itself known to her, it was as if a gale of unspeakable fear had swept over her, though she did not know why or to what end. Yet in the pale orange light of the lanterns, she saw Faramir’s face, and saw in it a heartbreak she had never wished to see him bear, and knew, deep within her bones, that she looked upon the face of death.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

“In the Mark, we bury our dead with those objects they used the most and loved the best in life,” Éowyn said. There was nothing else to say. Grief hung in the air, thicker and more suffocating than the blackest ash of Orodruin and silence swept through the Citadel like a plague. Her heart was heavy, heavier than it had been in a great many years. “My father’s sword passed to Éomer, but his shield was buried with him.” She straightened the sleeves of her gown. She had already straightened them twice in as many minutes. 

Further down the corridor, the Tower Guards changed shift as if there had been no horrible undoing of the world. She watched as the fourth night shift relieved the third, and wondered how quickly the news would spread through the City. 

“And your mother?” Faramir’s voice was hoarse, and had been for many hours. He had been alternating between talking at length about nauseatingly serious subjects and saying nothing at all, staring out the window as if looking into a different world entirely. The air around him thrummed with nervous misery—in a single, desperately long night, he had lost his brother and become the heir to all of his family’s titles. If it had not already, the weight of the world now rested firmly upon his shoulders, and there was none but he who could bear it. 

“I cannot remember what we buried her with,” said Éowyn, hollow awe in her voice. 

Faramir leaned forward on the bench, holding his head in his hands and rubbing his eyes. “What of her belongings did you inherit, then?”

“Her gowns, many I wear still. And my grandmother’s sword, of course. I love it dearly, I wish I had brought it here with me.” She reached out, brushing her fingers through his hair, doing her best to not disrupt the braid she had only just finished tying off. 

The doors of the Hall of Kings heaved open, groaning against their hinges and the hard stone floor. Lord Hurín, Warden of the Keys, stood in the centre of the doorway, flanked by two Citadel Guards, their faces thrown into harsh relief by the sparsely-lit sconces. Had she not known what this ceremony was for, she might have thought it a call to the gallows. In some ways, she reasoned, it was. 

Faramir stood and wordlessly she followed, lifting his sword belt from the bench and settling it around his waist. Her fingers trembled, and he caught her hands in his, bringing them up to press gentle, fluttering kisses against her knuckles. It was a complete inversion of duty that it was he who was showing her kindness, when it was he, not she, who had suffered so unspeakable a loss, but she found she could not bring herself to stop him. 

He took a breath, long but shallow. Then he stepped back from her, and into the Hall of Kings. The Hall was mostly dark—no more than the bare minimum candles were lit in their holders—but even as he became harder to make out, she heard the sound of his footsteps echoing off the walls, brisk, even clicks against the stone. 

Lord Húrin motioned for her to follow him, so she did, her skirts bunched tightly in her sweating hands. Two others had been roused to witness the investiture, two others who had already been welcomed into the Hall. Lord Astron, dressed as if he had been expecting such an invitation all along, and Elphir, who bore in his expression what Éowyn deemed the appropriate degree of forlorn, exhausted confusion. She stood beside him, unwilling and unable to do more than nod mechanically at him. 

In the dark wooden chair of his office, Lord Denethor looked as though he had lived a century of life in a single night. The creases and wrinkles about his eyes that were once not quite so unsurprising for a man of his advanced age now betrayed every second of that advancement, becoming scars of a life hard lived. In his hands, he held the cloven horn Horn of Gondor, Boromir’s horn, the horn which Éowyn now realised was the one she had heard all those days ago. Her heart clenched in agony, realising that he and Faramir alike would have known its tone, had likely known since its call echoed across the sky what doom had reached Boromir. She trembled at the thought. 

Faramir stood alone in the centre of the Hall, his face and his posture utterly unreadable. She had long forgotten what she had seen in him the very first moment she laid eyes on him: he was at once entirely at home with and at odds with Minas Tirith. He looked as noble and as proud as the ancient stones that held the City aloft, yet to see him surrounded by the trappings of war felt as wrong as the sight of a tree trammelled by a pot. 

Lord Húrin spoke first, and said many words that Éowyn chose not to hear. She looked only at the floor, her head spinning and her throat aching from unshed tears. She knew the bitter sting of loss well, but she had only known it of the dead and dying. Her father’s death had been shocking, but hardly surprising—even at her young age, she knew he was a man not destined for long life, he was too brash, too hotheaded for it. Her mother’s death had been preceded by months of agonising illness, and in more ways than one, her mother had been dead long before she had been buried. But Boromir? Boromir was life itself, full of vitality and yet clearheaded and sensible enough to not tempt death so easily as others might. The thought that he might be dead was as unbelievable to her as anything she had ever heard. Not only should he not be dead, he could not be either, for there was too much still of his life left to complete, too many unfinished discussions, unfulfilled promises, and unattended appointments. No, he could not be dead, and she expected him to return across the plains of Anórien in no time at all, bearing gifts and the promise of victory. Yet she looked at Faramir and saw the ravaging grief in his eyes, could practically feel the misery that thrummed within, and knew that no delusion could shield her from the terrible reality that was. 

Lord Denethor spoke next, with the unnerving calmness befitting his station, and once more Éowyn did not listen. It was as if the grief felt by all within the Hall had been made manifest in the very air she breathed, suffocating and painful. 

Faramir knelt before his father, his arm pressed against his knee as he recited the oath she had heard far too often, an oath that now felt entirely meaningless to her. It was the very cruelest fact of them all that he should be so suited for a role that was so anathema to his very being, while she, who would have thrived and rejoiced in his position, could do naught but stand in shadow. 

And then the whole horrible affair was done, and Lord Denethor was sweeping from the Hall, Lords Astron and Húrin hot on his heels. Elphir approached Faramir, squeezed his arm and said something quietly to him, then departed, his steps echoing loudly across the emptying Hall.

When Faramir fell to his knees once more, she closed the distance between them as quickly as she could, sliding on the polished floor as she knelt to pull him to her, cradling his head in her hands. 

“I should have been the one to go,” said Faramir, squeezing his eyes shut. 

“And you would have wished me to feel the agony you now feel? You would have wished me to suffer a life without you?”

He looked at her with breathtaking sternness. “I said nothing of dying; I said that I ought to have been sent in his place.”

She winced, but found she could not quarrel with the presupposition undergirding his point—could not, and did not wish to, and so did not. “Tell me what I can do for you,” she said instead. “Tell me what help I can give you.” 

“There is no help that can be given,” he said sharply, so sharply she recoiled slightly in surprise. But his face soon crumpled, and he shook his head, hair falling across his face. “My brother,” he said, his voice overwrought with emotion. “My brother is gone, and it need not have been this way.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, feeling the harsh tension in his posture lessen as he leaned into her, now raising his hands to clutch at the small of her back and the back of her head. 

He was warm against her, yet all she could feel was the icy draught that snaked in from the outside, chilling her skin where it was not pressed against him. Her head was so turned by the news that she knew two things and two things only: the first was that she could not cry no matter how much she felt it would be the right, expected thing to do; the second that misery was the only thing she had shared with Faramir in months. The whole world began and ended with sorrow, yet she still stood athwart it, an alien to even that. 

She did not begrudge Faramir his tears, but she could not help the faint twinge of resentment as she brushed them away with lips and fingers—resentment that he could still feel sorrow that keenly, that he had not yet become numb and estranged from that which made him human. She had not lost kin, or had not lost kin as such, but her sorrows were not so very small, and it was an indictment of her very being that she had all but turned to stone in the face of them, the blood that once ran hot in her veins turning to ice and alienating her from her own life. 

Time itself slowed around them, trapping and immobilising them in their grief. She felt her heart clench and shatter at this pain that he now felt, pain that she could not alleviate. She felt his pain in her soul, like a dagger wrought of flame, searing skin and muscle as it reminded her that this world was beyond her control, that joy and love were but fleeting things, that even the strongest could not withstand the almighty crusade of death and despair. She held him, and the last vestiges of hope (though she had not known to call them hope) fled her body, leaving her cold and broken and grieved. 

And so they were found by the uncomfortable-looking page when he arrived to announce that Faramir’s horse had been readied. Once more, she tidied his attire, braided his hair, and fussed over him as if there was anything left in the actions to make them meaningful—in truth, she was just desperate not to relinquish him so soon; she could not put words to it, but deep in her heart she knew that terrible things awaited him outwith the walls of Minas Tirith, and that terrible things awaited her within. 

But even he, for all that he could weave joy where none existed and shine light in the darkness, even he could not halt the inevitable. Her fingers grew cold the minute they fell away from his, and a shiver ran up her spine, unforgiving in the night beyond the entrance to the White Tower. 

The light would not come for many hours yet, and she took her place beside Lord Denethor beneath the oppressive darkness, lit only by scant torches to watch as Faramir departed yet again. 

“Why,” said Éowyn, her voice colder and sharper than the bitter air encircling them, “would you exile him now? Why sacrifice what strengths you have—why admit that there is weakness in the House of Húrin?” 

Lord Denethor did not look away from Faramir’s retreating form for a moment longer, the sound of the bitter winds whipping between the buildings below her only response. Then, he spoke. “There is no task more noble or more consequential than the defence of Ithilien. It is no mere exile to be sent East, it is a sign of my emphatic and unconditional trust in my son that he is sent thither.” He looked at her, and the weakness in his eyes—a weakness the likes of which she had not imagined she might ever see in him—took her breath away. “The fate of Ithilien is the fate of Gondor itself. Who, my lady, would you entrust with this task in his stead?”

She swallowed thickly. “Anyone,” she whispered. “Anyone else.” 

“Were this a lesser Kingdom, with a steward who cared not for its people, then perhaps your wish might have been granted.” He reached out, gently laying his hand upon her forearm. “Come, daughter, the night holds little for us now.”

Chapter 30: Book II: Spring 3019

Lord Denethor intended for her to trail along quietly, yet the sadness in her heart grew in strength and grew in bitterness until it was virtually indistinguishable from anger. She followed, but it was not quietly. 

“Lord, if your trust in him is so great, then why was it insufficient to send him forth for the task in Imladris? Why send instead someone whose talents were ill-equipped for such a task yet best-equipped to do that which needed done here in Gondor?” 

Lord Denethor nodded tersely at the Citadel Guards as they passed them, signalling with a gesture for them to depart as they entered his council room. 

“I would not,” he said when the last had departed, shutting the door behind them, “typically answer such a baseless and unqualified questioning of my authority.” He paused behind the table, defensively clutching Boromir’s horn to his chest. Éowyn did not falter in her persistence, her blood ran too hotly in her veins. “However, I will make an exception in this instance, for you are soon to be my kin, and I would not have distrust in these walls.” 

He gestured for her to sit, and, after a long, unsteady moment, she did. Outside, the barest traces of light tugged at the sky where it hugged the mountains. It had been a long night, perhaps the longest of her life, and her fatigue had reached such a fever pitch that she was no longer tired, merely formless and emotionless, drifting listlessly between wake and sleep. 

“My youngest son is an ideologue.” He said it so firmly that it was as if he believed it to be a certainty that she agreed with him. She did, and said nothing. “In the year 3007, the Enemy’s forces—small though they then were, coalesced in the North of Ithilien, near the Morannon. It was believed that He intended to negotiate an alliance with the Easterlings, yet had not been as circumspect in His movements as was necessary; word soon reached Minas Tirith, and a troop was dispatched. At the head of that troop was Lord Boromir—” He paused, his hand briefly tightening about the horn—“and Lord Faramir, who was then several years into his tenure with the Rangers.”

“There were three divisions of men, two under the command of Boromir. Their mandate was precise: to hinder the Easterlings, and to prevent any messengers returning to Rhûn. Clear and efficient plans were drawn up in Minas Tirith, plans that provided for the lowest number of casualties while still faithfully executing the task at hand. It was impossible to prevent all deaths—such is the nature of war—and it was decided that those plans represented the most prudent approach to the inevitable deaths.” Lord Denethor sighed. “Yet Lord Faramir deemed that he was wiser than the elders of this City, and believed that the necessary deaths in his division could be avoided by his own machinations. In his arrogant belief that he alone felt the tragedies of war, he elected to defy his orders and to carve another path for his troops. And indeed, fewer of his men perished than had been planned, but it was at the cost of nearly double the casualties in the remaining divisions.” Éowyn looked down at her hands, warmth blossoming in her cheeks. “That is why, though his skillset was undoubtedly better suited to the task, he could not be sent to Imladris. His beliefs have made him untrustworthy, for he will not subjugate them to the chain of command when he feels that one too greatly contravenes the other. An admirable trait in a poet or a scholar, but a dangerous one in a man of war.” 

“My son believes himself to be the cleverest man in every room he is in. Very often, he is right, and that is his greatest fault, for he has become headstrong and arrogant, and resistant to hearing sentiments that are not his own.” Fleetingly, Éowyn thought of their numerous arguments throughout the years, and how diligently and thoughtfully he had heard what she said, even if he had continued to vociferously disagree. She kept that memory firmly to herself. “Boromir, by significant contrast, respected the chain of command with due reverence, and understood that no campaign could be successful if its commanders did not work and think in synchronicity. For that reason, there could be no doubt as to whether he would faithfully execute the full task bestowed upon him, even if it demanded that he break with whatever personal beliefs he may have held.” He watched her with unnerving intensity until she glanced down at her hands where they lay in her lap. “Does that sufficiently assuage your concern?” 

“It does, my lord.” 

He nodded grimly. “Good. Then on to more pressing matters: I can no longer delay what has long been inevitable, the Red Arrow must be sent, and soon I must evacuate the City.”

She swallowed, looking out the window yet again, burying her fear deep within her. “That is wise, lord.”

“I am glad for your approval,” he said with a bite of sarcasm that she realised only latterly was well earned. “But you know that I cannot allow those who do not have skills useful in battle or in support of battle to remain.” He looked at her sternly, with a look that many months ago she would have feared as a sign he was wielding the true sight of the Edain upon her; now, she felt no fear, what was left in her to hide shrivelled in sight of the evil that was now imminent before them. “Do you still believe that I know not of the activities of those that dwell in my own house?”

She held her shock in check as she met his gaze. “No, lord.”

“Then you wish to ask my leave to remain in the City though I would send away all other women and children.” 

“I would, my lord.” 

“I do not wish to grant it, but the record of your conduct tells me that I would invite greater woe were I to deny it, and that is the spirit in which I grant it.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Do not thank me for this, for it is not gladly done, and even now I foresee that it will bring much anguish.” He steepled his fingers beneath his chin, regarding her levelly. “Go, be gone with you, away to your bed for what rest you might claw back from this evil night. Nothing is to be gained by fettering yourself to consciousness any longer.”

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The Grey Pilgrim came once more, garbed in white and bringing with him two children in his care. Éowyn, who had spent more time than not in the Tower desperately chasing what information might whisper beneath its doorways and through its corridors, set herself to the task of providing him as formal a welcome as she could—Lord Denethor had grown weary and impatient, and for her love of Boromir and her promise to him, she wished to do that which might ease the Steward’s burden. 

Yet as she worked to prepare something of a suitable reception for the Wizard, it became obvious that the children in his care were not children at all, but men full grown, yet shorter and smaller in all ways than men. And as she worked, directing servants this way and that, she listened with great interest as the Wizard (who had quickly surmised her confusion) explained to her that the men were Halflings of the Far North, who were called Hobbits by themselves and few others. She could then not help but stare at them, for she had heard tale of the Holbytlan when she was a child, and they had often featured in the bedtime stories told to her and her brother by their mother. 

In that moment, her heart ached with pain unspeakable as she longed to see and speak with her brother once more, and her mother, and her father, and cousin and uncle and all her kin who had been taken so cruelly from her by the shadow. But time for her sorrow was rare, and as swiftly as it came upon her, Lord Denethor arrived to hear the message of the Wizard, carrying still Boromir’s horn, which he had not let stray from his sight since that dark and terrible night. 

Soon the Wizard spoke of many things, things which brought new horrors to Éowyn’s heart, yet things which Lord Denethor seemed all too familiar with already. Éowyn stood dutifully behind his dark wood chair, and when their conversation turned to the matter of Boromir’s death, she tightened her grip around it, wishing to not show the weakness and frailty that stirred within her at the thought of his passing. 

“So,” said Denethor, looking keenly at the Halflings. “You were there? Tell me more! Why did no help come? And how did you escape, and yet he did not, so mighty a man as he was, and only orcs to withstand him?” 

“The mightiest man may be slain by one arrow,” said the taller of the two; “and Boromir was pierced by many.” Éowyn’s half-choked sob sliced harshly through the tense air of the Hall, a monument to her lapse in self control. The Halflings looked then at her, each alike in their pity, and she recoiled, shame burning in her cheeks. “When last I saw him he sank beside a tree and plucked a black-feathered shaft from his side. Then I swooned and was made captive. I saw him no more, and know no more. But I honour his memory, for he was very valiant. He died to save us, my kinsman Meriadoc and myself, waylaid in the woods by the soldiery of the Dark Lord; and though he fell and failed, my gratitude is none the less.” 

“My Boromir!” cried Lord Denethor. “Now we have need of you. Faramir should have gone in his stead.”

“He would have gone,” said the Grey Pilgrim. “Be not unjust in your grief!”

“Not unjust, lord,” interjected Éowyn, caring not that she spoke out of turn. “For it is Lord Boromir who would have revelled in the organising of our defences, and Lord Faramir in the realm and lore of Imladris, but death need not have come inevitably.” 

Gandalf beheld her for a long moment, then nodded tersely, but it was the taller Halfling who again spoke. “Little service, no doubt, will so great a lord of Men think to find in a Hobbit, a Halfling from the northern Shire; yet such as it is, I will offer it, in payment of my debt.” Twitching aside his grey cloak, the Halfling drew forth a small sword and laid it at Lord Denethor’s feet.

Lord Denethor, for the first time in Éowyn’s short memory of the dark days that stretched out in their past, smiled, and accepted the sword, and soon the Halfling swore his fealty to Gondor, and was brought forward to tell what tales he had. His companion, the smaller, often wove his own commentaries into the stories, seeming to Éowyn as travelling bards or performers, and though she had little joy in her heart, there were moments at which a happier iteration of herself might have laughed at their antics. Chairs were brought forth for them, and hers was set to the right of Lord Denethor’s, and there she sat, holding herself with a steady and tense posture, her thoughts ever straying to what lay beyond the walls of the White City and the banks of rushing Anduin. 

After a time, the Wizard raised his eyes to her, cutting short his verbal sparring with Lord Denethor. “There is news, unhappy news, from Rohan, if you would wish to hear it,” he said to her.

A chill flooded her veins, bitter and wrathful. “I would,” she answered, but soon wished she had not. 

“Then it is with sadness that I tell you that Théoden King and his heir, Théodred, have been lost to the workings of the Enemy. It is now your brother, Éomer, who sits upon the throne of Rohan.” 

Éowyn swayed, and for a moment almost lost control of herself once more, tears welling in her eyes and hoarseness growing in her throat. Lord Denethor, who beheld the Wizard still with a razor sharp gaze, lifted his arm and reached out to her, placing his hand upon hers. It was a poignant reminder of what she had promised to whom, and why her weakness could not be laid bare for all to see; she collected herself with a pacifying breath. 

“How? How did this come to pass?” Her voice sounded entirely unlike her own. 

“Saruman has sworn his allegiance to the Enemy, and entrapped Théodred Prince’s men at the Fords of Isen, not a fortnight past. The grief of his loss proved too sore a trial for your King uncle, and the manipulations of a fell counsellor shrouded his heart in darkness. When I arrived with my companions in Edoras a week after the passing of Théodred, Gríma Wormtongue had commandeered in secret the throne of Rohan, Théoden having passed some days prior.” 

The world shifted beneath Éowyn, waves of shame and guilt and monstrous horror passing over and through her, rocking her to her core until she was certain there was nothing left of her that was not despair. 

“My lady,” began the smaller Halfling, at first appearing unsure of himself. “Boromir—Lord Boromir—spoke to us of a fair and lovely lady who dwells in Minas Tirith, daughter of the Rohirrim yet sister to him. And in Isengard, your King brother bade me offer what protection I could to you.” He paused, glancing sideways at his companion. “It is on the recommendation of two of the most valiant men of my acquaintance that I offer you my service.” 

Her silence stung at her lips, and though she wished to keep it forever more, Lord Denethor’s example instructed her. “Gladly do I accept your offer, for such good will should not be denied.” 

Lord Denethor moved swiftly, gesturing to footmen who waited now at the far end of the Hall. “Lead the Lord Mithrandir to the housing prepared for him,” he said, “and his companions may lodge with him for the present, if they will. But be it known that I have now sworn one to my service, and he shall be known as Peregrin son of Paladin and taught the lesser pass-words. Send word to the Captains that they shall wait on me here, as soon as may be after the third hour has rung.” He lowered his gaze to the Wizard. “And you, my Lord Mithrandir, shall come too, as and when you will. None shall hinder your coming to me at any time, save only in my brief hours of sleep. Let your wrath at an old man’s folly run off and then return to my comfort!”

“Folly?” said Gandalf. “Nay, my lord, when you are a dotard you will die. You can use even your grief as a cloak. Do you think that I do not understand your purpose in questioning for an hour those who know the least, while I sit by?”

“If you understand it, then be content,”returned Lord Denethor. “Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need; but you deal out such gifts according to your own designs. Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men’s purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, my lord, is mine and no other man’s, unless the King should come again.”

“Unless the King should come again?” said Gandalf. “Well, my Lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few now look to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?” And with that he turned and strode from the Hall, the two Halflings close at his feet. 

Éowyn rose, but her resolve faltered, caught unbearably between grief and anger. “Lord, it was the frailty of my uncle that led to his downfall, I swear it; and it will be the vigour of my brother that will answer the call of the Red Arrow and defend Gondor as he might. But there will be naught to defend if a strong defence is not here offered, more than what can be given by Faramir in Ithilien. Will you not meet your men on their terms? Will you not lead your soldiers as a great Captain?” 

“Nay,” said Lord Denethor after a moment’s passing. “The twilight of my life is upon me, I am aged and unfit for duty in such things, and would better serve my people where I am able, and where I have strength yet.” 

“But lord,” she said, coming to her knees before him. “Your fingers would remember their old strength better, if they grasped a sword-hilt, and the strength of your people would be bolstered for the presence of so kingly a man.”

Lord Denethor was silent for some time, regarding her with a keen gaze, a gaze that had, many years ago, been to her more alike the gaze of a hawk than a man, yet was now a reflection of her own; distant, embittered, desperate. 

“Go now, my lady. I have shown you leniency, and I doubt not that you are shaken from this news bestowed upon you, and it is for those reasons you forget yourself. Take your rest, and my pity with you, and leave me to what I must do.”

Éowyn thought to argue, thought to beg and plead with him to reverse his course and keep himself from her uncle’s doom, but she thought also that he spoke truly: she was tired, and her heart was sore in her chest, filled with unexpected grief the likes of which she had not felt since the untimely death of her mother in the springtime of her own youth. 

She left, and sought her own chambers, and only briefly questioned why it was that she had not yet cried, why her cheeks remained dry and her soul remained hollow though she knew she ought to be mourning more openly. From morning to afternoon, she sat unmoving in the sitting room of her apartments, attended to by Hadoriel only occasionally. 

In the early evening, when the blue of the sky was cut through with slashes of orange and purple, Sedril came to her. She was dressed for travel, and her face was as tightly drawn as her hair, and there was fear, true fear in her eyes. She spoke in short, haphazard sentences as she explained that she would be departing with her mother in the evacuation train leaving within the hour—her father was to remain in the City with his men, a fact Sedril seemed to dislike very much. 

“And you, my lady, when will you depart?” 

“I will not,” answered Éowyn, brushing fallen hairs from Sedril’s shoulder. “I have begged leave to remain in the City to support the healers here, and the Steward has granted it.” 

Sedril pressed her lips into a tight line, and it seemed to Éowyn that the fear in her eyes grew worse. “It would ease my cares if you would journey with us to the banks of the Sirion, to what safety we might find there.”

“You will,” said Éowyn quietly, “find no more safety there than I might find here, and here at least I will see what perils await from a greater vantage.” 

This did little to allay the fear in Sedril’s eyes, but it did shock her into silence, and for the span of many loud heartbeats they regarded each other. Éowyn had never regarded the girl as an equal, yet she was fast becoming one—or, Éowyn thought, would have fast become one if the imminent desolation of all had not robbed her of that possibility. Equal or not, she had been a faithful companion in the years since Éowyn’s arrival, and, for all the frustrations she brought with her, had eased her heart in other ways. There would be no great coming together of friends, neither tearful goodbyes nor desperate pleas to find and keep to safety, but even Éowyn could not deny the twinge of sadness she felt at Sedril’s departure. Fearing what blunders her words might work while she remained so emotionally fraught, Éowyn settled for merely pulling Sedril into a hasty embrace before kissing the crown of her head and dismissing her. Their deaths would both come soon, and as Sedril departed, Éowyn said a silent prayer that in whatever manner hers would come, it would come easily and with dignity. Death with dignity and ease—a death that had been denied to so many of Éowyn’s kin, and would, no doubt, be denied to her too—it was the kindest thing Éowyn could wish upon anyone. 

When Sedril had been gone many hours, and when Hadoriel had brought and cleared her supper, Éowyn stood at the far end of the prow of the Citadel, watching in silent awe as the Lords of Gondor answered the call of their liege. They came joyfully, and indeed there was a strange joy in the air of the City as they arrived; the men of Lossarnach, and Morthrond, and Anfalas, and soon the cavalry of the land she knew best beyond Minas Tirith: Dol Amroth. Prince Imrahil’s Swan Knights, riding as proudly and capably as any of the great Eorlingas, sang as they came, and goosebumps pricked upon Éowyn’s skin, for it seemed to her that they came as the pallbearers of desolation.

For nigh an hour she watched and waited and bided her silence as the Lords met with the Captains, and soon with the Steward. Her eyes, from time to time, looked east to Ithilien, and her heart called out to the men who yet lingered there, and to her love—the last of her heart. 

She knew that if sleep would at all come, it would fitfully and erratically and bear no resemblance to true rest, and so she elected to maintain her watch post in the forecourt all throughout the dark, dark night. Lit only by the stars, she wiled away the hours as the City below thrummed with unreleased tension and the sound of thousands of soldiers moving to and fro, tightening the heavy winch of their fear. 

When the early light of morning came, and with it the latent terror no lessened, she still stood upon the high walls of the City, wrapped in her starry mantle and her raiment of white. There it was that the Prince Imrahil found her, for he had been told that the Lady of Rohan had not departed with the wains gone south, and he wondered at it, and did not wish to see her dwell in solitude on so dark a day. 

Yet they were not long there, looking out upon the Pelennor Fields and the river and the condemned lands beyond, when a harrowing shriek cracked the air around them, and it seemed to both the Prince and the Lady that fear had become the world, that though the sun shone bright and true, its light illuminated only evil things. 

In the far distance, near to Osgiliath and the trampled road, five carrion crows larger than eagles and fouler than death swooped and careened through the air, not artlessly, but with harrowing purpose, seeking out something that was not yet visible. At once Éowyn recognised the figures, recognised them exactly from Faramir’s words in the summertime, when he had described the nine Black Riders who had besieged Osgiliath and stolen away into the night. 

Yet it was neither that realisation nor that terrible cry that brought Éowyn the most pain; no, it was the second noise to reel, the fainter, more beautiful call of a trumpet’s melody, then followed by the Prince’s quiet intake of breath. “Faramir,” he said, and the misery in his voice was unmistakable. “It is Faramir’s call.” 

Éowyn’s knuckles whitened as she gripped at the rampart walls, willing steadiness to her trembling limbs. On the hot summer evening when she had first learned of the Black Riders, she had experienced a kind of dread—hopeless and paralysing—that she had sworn to never feel again. On that day she had watched and waited for news from Osgiliath, and had told herself she would never again allow herself to stand idly by as the world collapsed; nevertheless, she stood in anguished fear and could do naught as the very same scenario played out before her eyes once more. 

“It looks as though they are searching for something, see how the horses and men alike scatter and flee—Oh!” Her face contorted with pain as she realised that of the few men to keep their seats against the Riders, there was but one who wheeled around to corral the fleeing men, one alone who rode back into the grasp of the Riders. “Oh, Faramir,” she whispered, her words turning to a whine as she watched him yet again turn and ride beneath the path of a Rider. “Faramir! But who will help him? Who will go? Has Gondor not forsaken enough of its sons when their horns cry out in moments of need? Will he be forgotten now?” 

Her challenge had not fully slipped from her tongue before an answer to it came, a flash of white and silver light, brighter and bolder than any star plucked from the great firmament streaked across the emaciated farmlands, on a collision course with the Riders and the retreat. It was the sole thing in the world that might have repelled that encompassing darkness, the sole thing that could protect the few men who yet lived. Her breath caught in her throat and blood pooled beneath her nails and fingertips as she watched the white light move, and though it spoke to a figment of optimism remaining in the world, she felt deep in the marrow of her bones that she was playing witness to the death of the one whom she loved.

 

Notes:

A solid 50% of this is straight up lifted direct from the books lol sorry

Chapter 31: Book II: Spring 3019

The rescue had left him wearied and spent, but there was much work left to be done—indeed there was more work now than there had been ere he had departed the gates of Minas Tirith. The wizard in these lands known as Mithrandir had resigned himself long ago to the endless tumult of work, though he now attacked his toil with a new vigour, for the moment of truth was nigh upon them. 

Though there were but a few men still horsed, their hooves thundered through the emptying streets of the White City, their unsteady cadence pounding away at his thoughts as he strove to organise them in advance of the necessary pressing of Gondor’s Steward. Yet even the loudness of the cavalcade and the gravity of his worries could not stop his sight from straying upwards, to the high ramparts of the sixth circle of the City (their destination, if they were to ride for efficiency’s sake). There, the Lady of Rohan stood sentinel, and her golden hair unbound and billowing in the silent wind, it was plain why she had been styled the White Lady, as he had heard her called by the lay folk of Minas Tirith: she did not want for similarities to the Elven queens of old. She gleamed despite the evil darkness with a brilliance  surpassed only by the White Tower behind her, and she looked then as imposing and harsh as the ancient Citadel. 

Her posture was as it always had been, straighter than a blade of steel, and defensive, closed off. So tense was she that he saw that her entire body moved as she watched the movement of the troop up through the City, like an archer tracking his quarry. Yet when the riders broke through to the sixth circle and began to dismount, she wobbled, leaning forward slightly, then quickly backwards, as if she were struggling against her instincts. But her restraint soon gave way, and she ran across the narrow street with a grace and speed that was entirely her own. 

There was little of that familiar graveness in her mien as she flung her arms around the young—and uncharacteristically exhausted-looking—son of the Steward, nor was there any of her earlier reticence as she kissed him, caring not that they were in sight of many, nor that many did indeed see them, and that cheers and laughter rose up from the once-nervous throng around them. 

Death clung to the young lovers as a dark cloak of the thickest wool, yet for a moment its burden was lifted by the soft caresses that passed between them, and by their gentle contentment that was shared by the City. Only Mithrandir, close as he was where he dismounted Shadowfax, heard what words passed between them. 

“You kept your seat with honour,” the lady whispered, a hand lovingly pressed to his cheek. “There are riders of my country who could not have accomplished half of what you did, my love. My delight in your deeds is immeasurable.” 

“But it is my delight in being near you again that is the greater, I swear it,” he answered, turning his face to kiss her palm. And then he became aware of his surroundings, and of the presence of his saviour not a half an hour ago, for he caught Mithrandir’s eye. 

Still clutching Lady Éowyn’s hand, though now pressing it to his chest as if in a silent promise not to move far from her reach, he regarded him with more of that seriousness he had grown accustomed to. “Mithrandir,” he said. “You have my sincerest thanks.”

“Think nothing of it,” Mithrandir answered with a wave of his hand. “You are meant for more important things.” 

Lady Éowyn frowned at this, yet continued to cling to him as survivors of a shipwreck at sea. It was, he thought, a very sharp change in mien from how she had presented herself before, and from the frigid, distant woman that had been described to his young charges in Edoras, and who he had seen all those months ago. And Faramir, for all his unspoken assertions of noble aloofness, responded in kind, as if his whole being had become warmer, melding itself around her. Alas, thought Mithrandir, for the terrors that awaited these two young people, no matter what success Frodo might find in his quest.

In the Hall of Kings, when they came to it, (and when the Hobbits were collected, and Faramir had recovered from his shock—there, Mithrandir knew, a greater story lay), Lord Denethor showed more gentleness toward his son and heir than Mithrandir had come to expect; though no doubt it was enhanced in many ways by the ministrations of the White Lady, whose practiced indifference had returned, but could not hide the frantic way she doted upon him. 

Food was called for, and the silence that befell the Hall was punctuated only by the Lady’s nervous examination of her beloved, and of his own cross-examination of the Hobbits. Like his father, he revealed little of his true purposes in his interrogation, but rather unlike his father, he delighted in the knowledge brought by the Hobbits, and he listened with open interest to all that they had to say. But it was not long until Merry fell silent, and Pippin stumbled recklessly upon the news of the part-destruction of the House of Eorl, and the ascension of Éomer to the throne of Rohan. 

“Gimli told us that the man called Wormtongue hid the King’s death from his people for many days,” said Pippin, wearing what would have been an appropriate look of horror, had he not performed it at entirely the wrong occasion.

Faramir brooked the shock well, only momentarily allowing surprise to cross his features. The Lady Éowyn, nevertheless, lowered her eyes just a fraction of a second before Faramir’s sought hers, and though his expression was filled with sadness (and, Mithrandir thought, perhaps a trace of anger), he said nothing. After a time, Lady Éowyn met Faramir’s gaze, and Mithrandir watched with reserved interest as a silent, tense conversation passed between them—concern, pleading, avoidance, fear, all in less than a minute, before Lady Éowyn looked sharply away once more, her eyes now glassy. 

Faramir, in turn, brought his focus back to Merry and Pippin. “And where is this Wormtongue now?” 

“Imprisoned in Orthanc,” answered Mithrandir, hoping to stem any more hurts ere they began. “And Éomer King now musters the Rohirrim at Dunharrow. But that is but little information compared to what tale you have to tell, I fear.”

Adjusting accordingly, Faramir set aside his cup of wine, and looked pointedly yet fleetingly at his father. At his side, Lady Éowyn had become especially interested in the embroidery along the sleeve of her gown, and appeared to pay little heed to the change in tone around her. 

Faramir spoke first of his errand in Ithilien, the simple and soon to be irrelevant minutiae of military stratagems. But he soon came to the greater matter at hand, of his sighting of Frodo and Sam, and of their employing of Gollum as their guide, and of their intention to take the pass of Cirith Ungol. An emotion approaching despair crept over Mithrandir, for though the lore of Cirith Ungol had been lost to much of Middle-Earth, it had not been lost to him, and he could guess well what fell and terrible things dwelt therein. 

“Cirith Ungol? Morgul Vale?” he said, leaping to his feet. “The time, Faramir, the time? When did you part with them? When would they reach that accursed valley?l

“I parted with them in the morning two days ago,” said Faramir. “It is fifteen leagues thence to the vale of the Morgulduin, if they went straight south; and then they would be still five leagues westward of the accursed Tower. At swiftest they could not come there before today, and maybe they have not come there yet. Indeed I see what you fear. But the darkness is not due to their venture. It began yestereve, and all Ithilien was under shadow last night. It is clear to me that the Enemy has long planned an assault on us, and its hour had already been determined before ever the travellers left my keeping.”

“The morning of two days ago, nigh on three days of journey! How far is the place where you parted?”

“Some twenty-five leagues as a bird flies," answered Faramir, standing and turning to look out a window on the far wall. “But I could not come more swiftly. Yestereve I lay at Cair Andros, the long isle in the River northward which we hold in defence; and horses are kept on the hither bank. As the dark drew on I knew that haste was needed, so I rode thence with three others that could also be horsed. The rest of my company I sent south to strengthen the garrison at the fords of Osgiliath. I hope that I have not done ill?” He looked at his father.

“Ill?” cried Denethor, and his eyes flashed suddenly. “Why do you ask? The men were under your command. Or do you ask for my judgement on all your deeds? Your bearing is lowly in my presence, yet it is long now since you turned from your own way at my counsel. See, you have spoken skilfully, as ever; but I, have I not seen your eye fixed on Mithrandir, seeking whether you said well or too much? He has long had your heart in his keeping.”

Faramir turned from the window. “You speak hastily, my lord, for you know well in whose keeping my heart lays.”

“Then ask for your judgement of the Lady, for she gives her opinion readily, and has heard all that I have heard of your actions,” said Lord Denethor, indolently waving a hand in the air. 

Lady Éowyn looked up from her examination of her gown, her cheeks flushing heavily as she looked between the Steward and his heir. “I must beg your forgiveness, lords, for my heart has grown fatigued of late, and remorse weighs heavily upon it; the last words I spoke to my uncle and liege-lord were spoken in anger, and also concerned a decision of immeasurable difficulty, and are now words I would sacrifice all to take back.” A tear slipped down her proud cheek, and it seemed to Mithrandir that she had no knowing of its coming. “We stand now at the precipice of darkness unescapable, and such words and ifs are vain. It has gone into the Shadow, and only time will show what doom awaits it and us, I would not wish to facilitate disharmony between father and son, not when I know only too well the enduring pain it can cause.” 

“Indeed no, and I would not ask this of you,” Faramir said quietly, coming to stand beside her so that he could lay his hand on the back of her chair. “Come, I withdraw my request, what’s done is done, and our eyes must look elsewhere.” 

Lord Denethor watched them silently, a forefinger pressed to his temple. His mien grew less fiery, and he regarded his son once more. “What think you of the garrison at Osgiliath?”

“It is not strong,” said Faramir,  returning to his pacing. “I have sent the company of Ithilien to strengthen it, as I have said.”

“Not enough, I deem. It is there that the first blow will fall. They will have need of some stout captain there.” 

“There and elsewhere in many places,” said Faramir, now to the side of his father’s chair. 

“Not least in Minas Tirith,” added Éowyn, looking long and hard at the Steward. His son looked down at her with dark brows knitted together, but soon swayed, leaning upon Denethor’s chair with a great weight. 

“You are weary, I see,” said Denethor to his son. “You have ridden fast and far, and under shadows of evil in the air, I am told.”

“Let us not speak of that!” said Faramir.

“Then we will not,” said Denethor. “Go now and rest as you may. Tomorrow’s need will be sterner.” 

All soon rose, and Faramir, who had recovered some of his earlier gallantry, held out his hand to Lady Éowyn, who took it with more reticence than before. They departed together, arm in arm, and proud and fair, almost alike the kings and queens of old, were it not for the air of death that encircled them. 

Mithrandir left too, ushering the Hobbits from the place with haste, thoroughly uninterested in what might come next of Denethor’s bittering mood. 

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Mithrandir had not supposed that the Lord Denethor had grown soft in his old age, but had wondered at the presence of Lady Éowyn at such a gathering, until her purpose had been made clear. For she had stood in the room in her rightful position as ambassador for the Rohirrim, yet she had agreed heartily with the Steward in his belief that Osgiliath was the most crucial defensive site left in the east. And she had argued vigorously that when the Rohirrim came, even if an invasion of Cair Andros had occurred, their strength would be such that they might hinder the offence of the Enemy from that point, but none would come from the south to defend Osgiliath, that task could be left to none but Gondor. She had held herself with an air of satisfaction when none could counter her argument, but when the Steward had challenged his son to lead the defence of Osgiliath, her proud countenance had crumbled, and she appeared once more as a young woman who had suffered too many griefs in too little time.

It was she who had followed Faramir thence, feverish worry laid thickly upon her posture. Mithrandir had gone too, intending to speak to Faramir once more, to encourage him to ward off the dismay he no doubt felt, and to not act rashly in pursuit of his quest. Yet there had been little time for those words, for the White Lady had collared the Steward’s son, and had doted upon him with a strong but tender hand. In the fashion of the ladies of the courts of many kingdoms, she had retrieved a pendant from about her neck, and with slender, elegant fingers affixed it around his, whispering sweet words as she did. The previous day’s zeal all but gone, she had offered little more than a swift and chaste brush of her lips to his cheek.

In the final moments before his leave-taking, Faramir had looked north towards the White Tower, and Mithrandir had followed the line of his gaze, seeing there that his father had come forth from its doors, a grim pallor upon him. Father and son regarded one another for a moment, a conversation passing between only them in the look. Then the Lord Denethor pressed his hand to his breast, inclining his head in the faintest whisper of a bow. Faramir had looked for a moment longer, then nodded, turned briskly, and departed. 

Though Mithrandir had been resolved to further press Denethor to take up the defence of his City, it was Lady Éowyn who arrived first to the matter, returning with glorious purpose to the Tower, and there encouraging the Steward with words softly spoken. And many hours thus passed, with the Steward and the Lady of Rohan in close but tense counsel, one promoting dangerous patience, the other promoting the reckless valour that had earned her people their name. 

News came in the evening of the arrival of the Haradrim, and the return of the Black Captain to marshal the forces of the Enemy; the Steward and the Lady removed their debate from the confines of the Tower to the prow of the Citadel, and there stood in silence for some time. They were then two pilgrims, alike in dignity yet divergent in purpose and destination, stumbling through the dark and savage forest of war. When tears fell upon the Lady’s face anew, they returned once more to the council room of the Steward, where their words were known only to the thick walls that enclosed them. 

Word came that Faramir was outnumbered tenfold, that the retreat had been pulled back to the Rammas Echor, and that hope dwindled. Mithrandir went forth where no others could. There, he saw that the whisperings in the City were not without merit: there was little hope, and though the son and heir of the Steward played his part with distinction, even he could not hold back the full might of the Enemy single-handedly. 

The situation deteriorated. That was all that could be said for it: it grew worse, not steadily, but consistently in its unsteadiness. The Lord Denethor pushed his patience until even that had worn out, at last shattered by the visible evidence that the retreat was collapsing: without further aid from the City, the Steward would soon also lose his second son. 

The Prince of Dol Amroth took lead of the rescue effort—his eldest son having been sent to reinforce the rearguard at Cair Andros, only he was left to lead the mighty cavalry of Dol Amroth. The horses charged, Shadowfax faster than even the best of them, and the clamour of battle rang out louder than all the forges of Aulë. Soon it was done, the retreat was facilitated, and the cavalry of Gondor poured back into the high walls of the City, bearing more terrible tidings than before. 

Mithrandir rode beside Dol Amroth’s Prince as they climbed the circles of the City, and heard the weeping in the streets, the sorrowful cries, the mourners who shared their pain too readily. Yet, Mithrandir knew, there were two in the City whose pain would be greater by far, and one whose sorrow would find no relief in the potential for battle-won valour afforded to the other. 

She wore white, yet her face grew paler than her gown, weary eyes watching, seeking confirmation as the Prince Imrahil carried his burden closer. And when he drew close enough for the face of the young man to grow visible, the Lady Éowyn fell to her knees before him, but did not weep, staring blindly, as if she had seen into the very genesis of darkness itself. 

“He is not yet lost,” the Prince insisted, laying Faramir upon a board of wood brought forth by a servant. Lady Éowyn held his bloodless face in her hands, stroking his cheeks. “Have hope, have faith, he is not yet lost.”

The Lord Denethor stood wordlessly beside her, a look of unmistakable horror wrought upon his features. “My line has ended,” he muttered, his eyes turning hard and dark.

“No,” said the Prince firmly. “It has not. Come, is not the Lady Éowyn much gifted in the arts of healing? So it was said by the onlookers in the streets as we made our way up to the Citadel. And has she not begged your leave to remain in this City to care for those injured in the battles that are yet to come? Leave the care of your son in her capable hands and do what is required to organise the defence of the City.” 

Lady Éowyn raised her hardened face, her hands still clutching at Faramir’s lifeless body, and beheld Lord Denethor, renewed discipline in her expression. “Lord, I would do that, if it be your will and if you would entrust me with such a task.” 

The silence held for some time as Lord Denethor thought, and around the scene the Citadel fell silent with it—the longer the Steward dawdled on his thoughts, the less prepared Minas Tirith would be for what awaited it beyond Anduin. It was then that Mithrandir resolved to intercede, yet then also that Denethor came to his decision. 

“I see no other choice before me.” He looked to a nearby attendant, and his eyes remained full of sorrow. “Call for assistance for Lady Éowyn from the Houses of Healing, and organise room and provisions within the Tower as are needed and asked for by her.” The servant turned and swiftly departed, followed soon after by Lord Denethor and Prince Imrahil. For no small amount of time did Mithrandir watch Lady Éowyn as she wept and long did he wonder if some far greater cataclysm had not here been avoided by her hand.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

In all her life Éowyn had never been so terrified by the sight of blood. There was not very much of it before her, yet it felt as though it were everywhere, caught beneath her nails, trickling down her wrists and forearms, smeared across her cheeks, bitter on her tongue. For hours she had tended to wound and to fever, and though she had at first wept as she worked, she now had no more tears to shed, and her shocked grief distilled into desolation. 

Assistance was sent from the Houses of Healing when it could be spared, and for many hours Éowyn worked alongside others, sometimes in speech, sometimes in silence. A grim cold had settled over the City, as fear spreading its black wings over a people already susceptible to panic. In the occasional whisperings she heard from the changeover of assistants, Lord Denethor had prepared for an ongoing siege of the City, and there seemed to be little belief among anyone that the Rohirrim would indeed answer the call of the Red Arrow. Éowyn’s mind was fretfully elsewhere, intent upon the sorrowful task that had fallen into her lap, and upon holding the fragile pieces of herself together for as long as she could. 

She washed her hands often and well, yet the blood would not rinse away. Each time it dripped away, she found it anew: on her pinafore, matted in her hair. The longer she tried, the angrier she grew, frustration building in her with vicious power. It was as if her hands were no longer her own, but hangman’s hands, drenched in innocent blood spilling from those she had destroyed. It was Faramir’s blood, and Boromir’s, and Théodred’s, and Théoden’s, intermingling and staining her hands with the guilt no water could wash away.

In her rare moments of silence, she sat beside Faramir’s bed, caught in the liminal space between agitation and listlessness. His face, so proud and fair in her memories, was now pinched and drawn, covered in a sheen of sweat from the fever he could not best. She wished, more than anything she had ever wished in her life, that she could speak with him. She wanted to hear his voice, his wry humour, his unflappable calmness. Instead, she was met with only his unsteady breathing and the tense silence that reverberated through the White Tower. 

They never had enough time; always what they lacked was time. He was the person she was closest to in the world, yet there remained so much she had not been able to know about him. In the dim candlelight, she saw scars up his face, his arms, that she had never before seen but now sorely wished to ask after. And there were other conversations they would now never have—she had told him to learn her native tongue before she would tell him the legend he had been so interested in, and he had learned it, but she would now never be able to tell him the tale. 

In his face, no less pale and pained after her many hours of work, she saw the other griefs she had neglected to think of. Her uncle and her cousin, each as much a father to her as her own had been, gone in one fell swoop, and gone before she had been given the chance to say goodbye. They would eternally remain open wounds upon her heart, and she now thought that it would be a sign of fortune’s favour of her if Minas Tirith soon and swiftly fell, her along with it. 

She had, by every imaginable measure, failed. She had abandoned her home and her kin in pursuit of happiness that would never come and in a blindingly naive attempt to protect her Kingdom (from Lord Denethor’s disinterest in the welfare of her people, she had thought). Yet for all her worry, her planning, and her toil to force Lord Denethor to come to the aid of the Eorlingas, he had in no way proved to be the greatest—or even a significant—obstacle to that cause. In the end, it had been the one thing she should have expected, the one person who had made her life hell for so long her memories hardly fathomed a time when he had not lurked within them. 

It was proof that she had been a selfish fool. In her haste and her reckless desire to chase joy, she had abdicated her greatest responsibility, and for that abdication, her uncle and King was now dead, his beloved heir with him. She had imagined herself to be dutiful and self-sacrificial, but in truth she was anything but, as avaricious as any, cruel and self-serving to her core.  

So many hours had disappeared that she had lost count of them, only becoming aware again of the passage of time when one of the Holbytla—Meriadoc, she remembered—slipped into the room, his face as gaunt as the situation demanded. He wore about his waist a short sword, intricate in its crafting and ancient and unlike any other she had seen before. Small and youthful though he appeared, he did not wear it as one who had never before wielded a blade—and this thought awoke something in Éowyn, awoke a thought she had long ago forsaken. 

She looked down at Faramir once more, brushing her fingertips across his face, his skin sweltering and damp beneath, a sign of what she had denied for many hours: he was not long for the world. In that moment, and though she had once scorned his words as idle fantasy, she would have given anything for the future he had once described to her, the fair dwelling away from Minas Tirith, the work of stewarding the land, the promise of children and a lifetime of simplicity. But she had always been correct in her assessment; for them, that life could never be more than idle fantasy, as ill-fated as their love had been, the folly of youth and no more. She turned back to the Holbytla. 

“Where is your companion?” 

“With the Lord Steward,” he answered, swallowing hard. “The Enemy has brought an enormous battering ram to the gates of the City, and they have gone to command the defence against it.” 

“Yet here you are, with me.”

“I made you a promise, my lady, and I wish to keep it.” 

“But you wish also to fight alongside your companion, do you not?”

He paused for a moment, then straightened his posture, proudly throwing his shoulders backward and jutting his chin forward. “I do. My friends will fight for the goodness in this world, and I have no desire to remain in safety while they risk all.”

“Good, Master Meriadoc. I am glad my brother sent you to me, you have the courage of heart I need.” She turned more fully away from Faramir. Even in death, she did not wish him to bear witness to her plans. “Go to the barracks in the cellar of the Tower, bring me what armour might be spared, and find a sword and shield that will serve my purposes. When you return, you and I will make ourselves worthy of your companions.” 

He needed no further encouragement, and though her heart beat rapidly with a new fear, she was grateful for his deference nonetheless. Her world grew smaller once again, little more than four thick walls and the horrors that awaited outwith them. It was all her life had ever been, it was almost comforting in its familiarity. 

Meriadoc returned, insisting she call him Merry, and brought with him enough to outfit herself substantially. The shield he brought was different to the circular ones she knew best, but would be sufficient given what doom she imagined for herself. In silence, she clad herself in what he had brought, accepting Merry’s help where he offered it and where it could not be argued against. She stood in gleaming silver mail, and a rounded helm in the manner of Gondor, rather than the masked ones that were familiar to her in the Mark. Not two months ago, she would have rejoiced at the sight of herself so clad, revelled in the power and glory ingrained in such raiment; now, she felt only nauseating fear, covered by guilt and miserable anger at her failings.

Worse still was the end she could not bear to hasten, for though she knew neither she nor Faramir had long left in this life, and though there was naught she could say to his nigh-lifeless form that would satisfy her, she could not bring herself to move more than a hair’s breadth from bed upon which he had been placed. And though she had firmly resolved to meet her fate upon the field of battle, she was not yet willing to leave Faramir, and so sent Merry away once more, this time in search of a suitable horse that might bear them hence. 

But she was not long alone. Mere moments after Merry departed, when she had only briefly returned to tending to Faramir, the door to the room flung open with startling force. Lord Denethor strode forward, and he too was dressed for war, but he carried a dagger in his hand, as if to wield it imminently. At his feet trailed Pippin, the second of the Holbytla, wearing the livery of the Tower Guard, with blazing fear in his eyes.

“My son,” muttered Lord Denethor, looking at Éowyn as if he did not see her at all. Éowyn saw the panic in his eyes, saw the dagger that he held aloft, and felt horror dawn on her. “The end has come,” he said, stepping forward. “The end has come for all.” 

Éowyn put herself between Lord Denethor and Faramir’s bed. “What news of the siege, my lord?” 

“The siege will soon be broken, Minas Tirith will shortly fall, and the Enemy will do what He wishes with those who remain. When the gates are breached, all hope will flee.” 

“I will go find Gandalf,” said Pippin from behind Lord Denethor. The Wizard was the last person Éowyn wished to bring to this situation, but she could not think of a reason to keep Pippin around either; she let him go unhindered. 

“My lord, why come you here? Gondor needs its Steward, and whatever future it may have will depend upon what aid you can give it. I will see to your son, as I have done, and you must see to the City.”  

“I sent my son forth, unthanked, unblessed, out into needless peril, and here he lies with poison in his veins. Nay, nay, whatever may now betide in war, my line too is ending, even the House of the Stewards has failed.” 

“My lord,” she said. She expected her voice to shake, but it did not, leaving her lips with as much steel as the blade that girt her waist. “He went neither unthanked nor unblessed, for it was with my favour that he departed this City; and the peril, though peril it may have been, was not needless. The Eorlingas will come, you yourself have said that they will not forsake Gondor while I yet dwell within the walls of her greatest City. And when they come, would you wish to be held in lower esteem than they? The Rohirrim are a valiant people, lord, and they are ever your steadfast allies, but would you have the strength of Númenor fail when theirs will not?” 

Every muscle in her body shook as she kept herself rooted to the spot, her eyes locked on Lord Denethor. It was he who broke first, reaching around her to take Faramir’s hand in one of his. In response, her own hand tightened around the hilt of the borrowed blade—whose trembled more she could not tell. 

“Lord, I will not deny that there is no hope for us, there will be no soft light of dawn to welcome us to happier days, nor will I claim that the arrival of the Rohirrim will save Minas Tirith; but I say this to you: our deaths need not be ignoble ones, the shadow may yet take us, but we need not let it pass over us as broken and willing spirits. Is it not the greater part of duty to avenge those we love, rather than mourn their passing?”

Her eyes settled upon her starry mantle, cast across a chair in the far corner of the room when she had first come to it. “Would you wish your fate for me, my lord? Is it your desire that I be deprived of the right to mourn he who I loved best in life?” Lord Denethor looked directly at Éowyn, and she saw that there were unshed tears in his eyes, tears that matched her own.

For a moment, she let her eyes linger upon Faramir’s face, tracing the line of the features she had known and loved so well. She bade him farewell, and, arrayed in silver and indifferent to death, she looked at Lord Denethor. 

“Come, lord, come with me to our deaths, and let us make them worthy of our lives.” 

And into the enormous gap between them, the gulf of lives lived and wasted, she reached out her hand.

Notes:

End Book 2.

Chapter 32: Interlude

Minas Tirith had survived. Against the odds, against all hope, the White City stood; battered and broken, wailing in its agony, but strong enough still  to see another dawn. There had been many deaths to secure that one life, many terrible, terrible deaths. 

The Prince of Dol Amroth took stock: his eldest son had ridden north to Cair Andros, and had returned to man the defences of the City when called; he was safe. Elphir’s wife and son had been part of the evacuation caravan to Sirion; they would be the safest of all of them. Irmahil’s next youngest son was stationed aboard a galley patrolling the Ethir Anduin; not a desirable job, nor an especially safe one, but Erchirion had a knack for surviving anything. Amrothos, against the Prince’s better wishes, rode in the Cavalry that had set forth from the sea not a week past; he was bleeding grotesquely from the side of his head, but he, too, was safe. Lothíriel and Ivriniel manned the fort at Dol Amroth, and there could be no people better suited for the cause than they; their safety was not assured in the strictest terms, but Imrahil felt no worry. For this, he had been unreasonably fortunate, for this, his heart had ached all the more at the sights he had endured, and the sound that had surrounded him. 

The new King of the Riddermark had hurled his anger into the field of battle, thrummed with a desire for vengeance hotter than the forges of Eregion and Tirion combined, and less forgiving than oaths taken above either. Yet all his anger had not revived his sister, who had continued to lay broken and mangled upon a sheaf of wood, more blood and gore than woman. She had fallen defending the Steward of the City, the Steward who had ridden into battle unlooked for but not unwelcome, and who had been waylaid by the Black Captain, and had she not given her life to defend him, there was every chance the City would have gone leaderless into the dark night. But she had thrown herself in the path of the Nazgûl, and she had slain the wretched thing, and Denethor was weakened but not lost to the world. It was, in all ways, a valiant death befitting a courageous woman, though he had wished with an edge of pain he had not expected to be there that it had not been this courageous woman to take that death. 

Yet a strange thing had happened—not the strangest in a very strange series of days, but strange nonetheless, for that lady in white, dead though she may have seemed, had taken a shallow breath. A breath so shallow he had almost believed it to be the byproduct of his desperate imagination, but not shallow enough that he had not pressed his fingers to her shattered wrist and discovered that—yes! Yes! Death had not defeated her yet. 

And so she was borne forth with the men who carried Lord Denethor back to the City, to the Houses of Healing, and not to the squalid rooms and holding spaces assigned for the dead, bringing joy unimaginable to the Prince, who had so desperately needed that joy. But his joy was nothing in the face of Éomer King’s, who insisted on following the would-be pallbearers back through the ravaged gates, winding up the circles of Minas Tirith. Imrahil rode at the young King’s side: he was a proud, brave young man, but he was very young, and very unprepared, and even at the height of battle, he could do with some learned encouragement and protection. The world had not been kind to the House of Eorl, and had been unaccountably kind to the House of Adrahil: one could now support the other. 

Few had remained in the City—the evacuations had been called in ample time to empty its houses and thoroughfares, but many had chosen to stay, whether to aid where they could, or out of allegiance to the place they called home. They streamed from their dwellings to see the sight of their beloved Steward upon his gurney, and to watch in blinkered fear as the Lady of Rohan was carried behind. 

Yet they were not silent; to his very great horror, he realised their voices were raised in song, inconsistent, discordant, yet all singing alike. The new King of the Riddermark, who had already seen and suffered too much, slowed his steed. 

“What are they singing?” His voice shook, his brow furrowed. 

“Nienna’s Blessing,” Imrahil answered. 

“What does it mean?”

“It is but one verse repeated. The words in the Common Tongue are, to the best of my ability:

O, Nienna, Lady of Mercy,

Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.

To thee do we cry,

Poor banished children of Númenor;

To thee do we send up our sighs,

Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate,

Thine eyes of mercy toward us.

They are likening her to Nienna in her sorrow; that she has borne the brunt of their sorrows in order to leave those who live free for a brighter dawn. Perhaps,” he continued, his voice growing unexpectedly hoarse as he looked ahead once more at Éowyn. She was too young, too young. “Perhaps she has.”  

The young king nodded solemnly, then fell silent. The voices of the people alone carried them up the whited sepulchre. 

Notes:

The song is the Salve Regina, also featured in Dante’s Purgatorio in the Valley of the Kings. Make of that what you will!

Chapter 33: Book III: Spring 3019

The days had been long. Longer than they had ever been before, though their hours of light had been fewer and fewer. It was almost better than Faramir could say for himself—he was awake, of that much he was certain, but the quality of that wakefulness was questionable at best. Since he had been called back by the King (the King!), his slumber had been spasmodic, and always he was plagued by visions of the Lord of the Nazgûl, as if simply by soaring over him, the Black Captain had wormed his way into his very marrow, taunting him in sleep and in wake. More egregious still was that his emotional control wavered in ways it hadn’t since he was very young, he found himself overcome at odd hours by bouts of anger and desolation he couldn’t repress; for the most part, he kept to himself, feigning sleep with the healers and their assistants came to examine him. 

On the second day after he awoke, Faramir was given leave to move from his bed. He went first in search of his father: he had not been told much by the healers who attended to him, but they had told him that his father had been injured in the siege, that he had been brought to the Houses, and that he was lucid. For Faramir’s part, he could think of no justification for his father having joined the battle at all. A siege was a siege, and with the arrival of the Rohirrim, it was a siege that had been brought to its knees with haste. The City and Kingdom would need their leader, and the Steward could not lead from a gurney, no matter what his pride told him. Still, the battle had been won, and Gondor—if she survived what was to come—would soon be blessed by a returned King, and his father would be burdened no longer by the strain of rulership; some things bore the mark of optimism. Faramir, dazed but not yet confused, searched the Houses for his father. 

The Houses were overfilled with injured, wearied soldiers, Gondorrim and Rohirrim alike, young and old, conscious and not. It was a terrible scene: he had seen the aftermath of a great many battles in his life (too many), but this was the worst in every imaginable way. The sheer number of broken men in the Houses overawed him, beating at his mental walls like a storm battering a sinking ship. Each room he passed chipped further and further away at his emotional control. Not for the first time since he had awoken, he wondered where Éowyn was, if she had been put to work in the Houses as she had requested—explaining why he had yet to see her—or if his father had succeeded in sending her to a place of greater safety. Faramir hoped desperately that it was the latter, Éowyn would no doubt scold him for it, but after all she had suffered, he would have done anything to see her spared from the horrifying viscera left in the Enemy’s wake. 

A healer’s assistant, slight and pallid with overwork, blanched and remained silent when he asked for his father’s whereabouts. It was, Faramir thought, a sign that his father was healing, if he had returned to terrifying others into silence already. Yet the girl walked quickly as she guided him toward the room where his father was, not quite the speed of a person gripped by terror. 

And soon, far, far too soon, Faramir learned why. 

Nearly all of the most important men of Arda were gathered in the room. His uncle perched coolly on the windowsill; his father on an austere wooden stool next to the bed, and beside him a tall, towheaded man Faramir knew at once was the new King of the Mark. But none of those men of inestimable merit and stature mattered one whit to him, for as the door swung open to reveal the room, his heart had seized, giving itself over to a level of horror he had never in his entire life experienced, not in Ithilien when he had been ensnared by Uruks, not in Osgiliath when the Nine had driven them from their ancient capital, not at the Causeway Forts when the Black Captain swooped and threatened to bring an end to his life.

A long, deep gash bisected her face, from hairline to opposite ear, and around it her pale skin was speckled with a kaleidoscope of violets, greens, blacks, and yellows, further interrupted by innumerable cuts and grazes. Both her arms lay above the wool blanket, but one was confined to a sling not unlike his own, the other was a nauseating purple-grey. Though he could see the steady, shallow rise and fall of her breathing, it was as if all the life had been leached from her, bloodless in the truest sense of the word. For the first time in all the years he had known her, she looked fragile. 

His thoughts spiralled. He fought to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground and his lips tightly shut; any movement at all risked further degradation of an already worrying situation. At his side, his hands shook. He brought them back under control, but sacrificed the last vestiges of his restraint to do so. 

“How did it come to this?” He looked at his father with as much control as he could muster (admittedly very little). “You gave her leave to help as a healer, what did you—”

“—Faramir.” His uncle’s voice, calm, collected, seemed to echo off every surface in the room. “We all ought to be grateful that she abandoned that post. Perhaps you most of all.” 

Anger erupted within him. “Myself most of all? A bold and uncharacteristically callous assertion from you, uncle.” 

“Bold but not unwarranted. The Lady Éowyn, for the valour she showed in defence of the Steward of this City—” At this, his uncle looked pointedly at his father— “has won herself the sobriquet Lady Wraithsbane, for it was she who slayed the Lord of the Nazgûl and made victory upon this field possible.” 

A bitter chill swept over him, a black cloak enveloping him, siphoning the air from his lungs. In the distance, a deafening shriek and the sound of howling wind split in twain by wings beating with the force of a hundred men. He closed his eyes, pressed back the apparition. 

“Éowyn, oh Éowyn,” he said, almost to himself. 

“You would blame her for this?” A new voice entered his mind, and with it the thrumming crimson of anger barely repressed. “She was left in the care of your house and there fell to darkness, and you would blame her?” 

Faramir beheld the King of the Riddermark, who was so similar in appearance to Éowyn that he almost could not bear to look at him. “My lord king,” he said, with rather less civility than he ought to have shown. It mattered little: the King had returned, and if they yet survived this war, then the years of the Stewards would come to an end, and the House of Húrin’s importance would wane as much as it could. He no longer needed to play games of politeness. “I fault her for nothing, but that does not mean I do not wish she had not been injured.” 

“If only there had been some sort of evacuation that could have carried her to safety,” he said, his voice almost a snarl.

“I would have seen her sent with the evacuees, had I not been in Ithilien and were I content to compel her to do that which she does not desire to do. But I was in Ithilien, and she is a lady brave and shrewd, and I would not go against her want.” 

“And it was not your command to give,” said his father, exhaustion more evident in his eyes and his voice than Faramir had ever before seen. It was as if he was seeing his father’s ghost. “It was the folly of a grieved old man, who did not wish to be sundered so swiftly from the future of his house.” 

Faramir, short of discipline, struggled immensely not to roll his eyes—the war may have made his father sterner and colder, but it had not withered his ability to position himself as a victim for his own gain. Yet the hard eyes of Éomer softened, and his posture grew gentler, and the air of wrath around him ebbed. Faramir could not bring himself to feel grateful to his father for the intervention, for what anger Éomer could not conjure at him for his farcical decision, Faramir felt tenfold. 

“My lords, there will be no future for any of our houses if this war is not brought to a satisfactory conclusion, however that may be.” Imrahil slipped off his perch and into that diplomatic stance Faramir recognised all too well from the many long, hard years he had spent watching his father, uncle, and aunt bickering. “There are no doubt many considerations left to be attended to, and, if Éomer King will permit it, we might leave the sentry watch of Lady Éowyn to Faramir.” He looked at Éomer, who in turn looked at Faramir with palpable frustration. 

A single moment stretched to infinity and back, before Éomer sighed, and waved his hand in the air. “So be it, so be it, but I will send my Marshal to see to her once night falls.” 

His uncle shot him a look that cautioned him against quibbling with it, and Faramir relented, nodding stiffly. He hardly noticed as King and Prince departed, for his attention had turned to his father with a furious intensity. For all that his father had played at weakness just seconds ago, he returned Faramir’s look with a brute strength of his own, the bitter regret he had once shown now a figment of history. But his uncle had no doubt sensed the brewing storm, and had left the door conspicuously open. In the end, all that passed between father and son was a look of profound resentment, before the Steward departed, and Faramir was left to face the reality of his nightmare alone.

It was the impotence that gnawed at him; he could feel the contours of her thoughts, her dreams, could feel the searing pain and the relentless despair that gripped, but there was nothing he could do to take away the pain. She was battered from head to toe, more injuries and contusions than he had ever had, even at his worst. It was as though the war that had been waged against her inner spirit had finally manifested itself physically, and it left him nearly speechless—what words he did have dripped with resentment. 

Healers came in from time to time, and slowly, uneasily, he tried to piece together the story, and soon found that he wished he had not begun that task. They were most eager to talk about her slaying of the Witch King, alongside the mystical Halfling who had ridden by her side, but this was the part he could stomach the least. But there were few who could tell him how she had gotten from the White Tower to the Pelennor Fields, and those who might know were unwilling to answer his questions. The Halfling would know, they always said, the Halfling was who he ought to speak with. 

He put it off for as long as he could, yet unwilling to face down whatever horrors laid within the story the Halfling might have to tell. But when he had finally steeled his resolve to send for him, his plans were interrupted by his uncle, who brought grave, bitter tidings. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Whatever else he thought of his father, he had always, always respected him. Or else, he had always tried to and hoped to, even if finding that respect could often be a difficulty. Never before in his life had he looked upon his father and felt so pure and so uninhibited a disdain for him, never before had he looked at his father and seen something lesser than what he was.

“You risk only the lives of those obliged to protect you if you go.” 

The bandage that covered the tops of his father’s fingers fluttered, caught on a draught pushed in through the dark window. “If I stay, the pride and glory of Gondor is at risk, that is a far greater crime.”

“But it is not at risk—the King has returned! There can be no greater glory than that!”

“An arrogant upstart, last of a ragged house, no, his worthiness has not been proven, and I will not endanger my people to allow some untested fool to play at games that are beyond his worth.”

Faramir shook his head, turning sharply away from his father to look out the window. It was a mistake: the Pelennor, scarred and burning below, brought only pain to him. The screeching of the fell beasts reverberated through his thoughts, the smell of the dirt as he fell from his mount clogged his nose. He turned back. “But this is madness,” he said through the dull pain. “For here are men and women in need, whom you should not take idly into the shadows, but should lead to peace, where such good folk are needed. And if you believe Lord Aragorn to indeed be incapable of bearing the weight of the crown, then ought you not remain here to guide his hand? For it is not the choice of the Steward who is or who will become King, and should the Lords of Gondor accept his claim, then will you not be best placed of all to give him the aid you believe he requires? Was it not for that purpose that the Stewardship was first constituted?”

“It is not madness,” his father answered; “for I go on a path appointed, appointed by duty and greater wisdom than yours.”

“Your duty is with your people,” said Faramir. 

“Too often do you speak of duty with little understanding of what that duty is.”

“Did you not accept the charge to govern the people until the King’s return? Was this not the duty bestowed upon our house by the Lords of Gondor in their time of need? If our house had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, less wise and less fortunate, and had Mardil Voronwë not had the foresight and courage not to ride hence with Eärnur, to fall to reckless folly in Minas Morgul, would Gondor’s pride and glory not be a mere artefact of history? Why then, when faced with near the same choice, would you choose the path that has before threatened Gondor’s ruin?” 

“Speak not to me of history, for you would bend it unfittingly to your needs. You forget that Gondor’s ruin was threatened because Eärnur left behind no heir to rule in his stead, but I make no such mistakes. And though I know that you are too concerned with the folly of your goodliness and your charity, still would I choose you over that crude wanderer, and so too would the Lords of this land who are yet loyal to me, and know that without the strength of the House of Húrin their own houses would languish and decay.” 

“You speak of treason,” said Faramir, sharply. “I will not do it.”

“Not of treason, but of a necessary defence of the realm. Were you to extricate yourself from your childish fancies, to see the world with the eyes of a ruler, of a man who understands the burden of responsibility to more than his own foolish dogmas.” 

Chewing a hole in adamant would have been an easier task than convincing his father not to do something so imbecilic. Chewing a hole in adamant with teeth made of cotton wool would still have been an easier task. He looked at his father and saw a man who was old, who was battered and bruised from a desperately insensible attempt at battle after decades far from the frontlines, whose pride had nearly destroyed all that was good and worth loving in the world. He thought of the people who he had almost destroyed, the people who he might still destroy.

“If you will grant no other kindnesses in your life, then grant at least this one: do not go until she has awoken. Wait at least for that.” 

“Do you ask for her sake, or yours?” His father’s voice came out so harshly, so harshly it seemed to unsettle even him. His gaze never faltered, he showed no signs of weakness nor of softened resolve, but when he spoke, the malice had receded. “I will wait,” he said. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The hours of the night were long, and filled with the wails of dying men, and of men who deeply wished to live no longer. Faramir was not certain he could call himself fortunate to count as neither. Éowyn’s condition was neither improved nor worsened, and she seemed to linger permanently between life and death, as if a war raged between the two for the right to claim her and only she could finish it. Her skin grew sallow, the darkness under her eyes deepened almost entirely to black, and the abrasions and contusions that covered every inch of her refused to fade from red to crimson or purple. She looked as though her spirit was dead, but her injuries were alive. 

He brushed hair away from her face, wincing at the overwhelming heat of her skin, and the damp stickiness of the sweat that covered her, mingling with the new blood and coating her skin afresh in an undeniable reminder of the horrors she had undergone. He stayed by her side, mortified that there was naught else to be done. He was useless in all ways, unmanned with a force unlike anything he had ever experienced. The world was ending around him, and he was a prisoner of his own making. 

So distantly it might well have been from another life, he remembered the early morning after a night that should not have been. There had been a gathering of some sort—he now could not remember it, or any details of it, except that she had shined like no other, charming half the room and making the other half desperately jealous. She had moved with a grace and a prowess that marked her out as a daughter of kings, with a self-assuredness that meant that few there could forget who she was, even if they wished to not remember. And when all was nearly said and done, she had sought him out, and whispered in his ear that she had left the key to her balcony door in the lemon tree he had gifted her all those years ago. 

Like night chasing the day, he had followed her, slipping through that door after all the world had gone to sleep, finding her waiting for him. And later, much later, when the purple shards of dawn scattered across the night sky, she had lain with her head against his chest, an arm and a leg cast over him, as if tethering him to her at every point. He had counted her breaths then (sleep would not be his acquaintance that evening), feeling the steady expansion and deflation of her chest, hearing the soft whispering of air through her nose. He thought now that he had been a fool in those days, that even as he had held her and traced the warmth of her skin with his fingers, and counted the freckles upon her skin, and smelled the sweet leather scent of her hair, he had not appreciated it all enough.

One of the healers, a bustling, harried sort of woman who hailed from Lossarnach, now came to tend to Éowyn and did so with the easy but practised indifference that had once comforted Faramir, and now unsettled him. Her bedside manner was generally good, but there was a dispassion to how she went about changing the wound dressings and reapplying the various salves and serums that felt entirely wrong. It was likely a logical response: Faramir could not imagine what sort of emotional drain the healers would face if they saw all those under their care as distinct, fully realised people instead of a breathing (or not) jumble of conditions that needed treating. Still, Ioreth’s choice in conversation sent him reeling, irrespective of allowances for professional disinterest.

“My mother’s mother lived seven and eighty years, but by the end had grown so frail that even eating grew to be too great a tax upon her. In the latter days of her life, my mother’s father was sent away to retrieve all of their children from the town nearest their home, a single day’s journey in each direction. When he left, she took a drastic turn for the worse, and began to breathe her last breaths. Goodbyes were said to all of those present, and for many hours they cowered and waited for death to take her. But it did not come, not until two days had passed and her husband had returned with their remaining children. Only then, after she had at last bid them all farewell, did she go to her slumber.” She folded the blankets down around Éowyn, revealing more bruises and broken skin. “By my reckoning, it is a choice, and there is some comfort in that, I think.”

Faramir, whose capacity for polite and measured responses had worn thin some time ago, merely nodded at her, hoping she might make of his silence some sort of response that would satisfy her. Yet the permeating silence was not absolute, for the creaking open and close of the door to the room punctuated it with breathtaking efficiency.

“There are many in this city who esteem your valor as among the greatest in Gondor,” said Éomer King in terse greeting, now standing at the foot of Éowyn’s bed. 

“They esteem little else,” answered Faramir. The years of reckoning with that fact washed the offence from his voice. He was no more embittered by it than he was by the turning of the seasons. 

“They say you, wizard’s pupil, are bold with your words and thoughts and modest in your martial acts; and though they say my sister has chosen wisely for a husband, they say also there are few who expected the match. She was destined for your brother, they believe—though I laugh at the thought. If she was pursued at all, she was pursued in near silence, they say.” His fingers tightened about the wood footboard, calluses and scarred knuckles whitening. “What do you make of that?” 

“You give too much weight to what these gossips think.” Faramir set Éowyn’s hand down upon the bed, covering it with a blanket against the ambient chill. He looked at Éomer with practiced neutrality. “I loved her from the very first moment I saw her, I will not deny what I know to be true. In what ways I sought her out then, I sought her out as a friend, and she confided in me in friendship what horrors stalked her in the Golden Hall. I committed myself then to not forcing her to endure in Gondor what had driven her from Rohan. If my pursuit of her was quiet, it was a quietness borne of respect for the facts of her life, not disregard for the courtesies owed to her.”

“Yet you see why that brings me little confidence? The similarities are strikingly numerous: you and he are thralls of wizards, you each are denied power by one means or another, and both silently pursued my sister, even when it was ill-advised to do so. True enough that she spoke in your favour when she never did for Wormtongue, but she is young, the years have been difficult for her. When faced with banishment from halls stalked by a snake, and halls stalked by something altogether less outwardly terrifying, though perhaps no less dangerous, it is little wonder why she took her exile so readily.” 

“As I understood it, her exile was forced upon her when she had little awareness of its purpose, and even less awareness of who I am, I can hardly imagine shouldering any responsibility for that.”

“You speak of her initial dispatch from Edoras, but I speak of quite another thing entirely. Do you not know of it?”

Faramir said nothing. The skin around his wound flared with heat, but he did not move to touch it, not wishing to risk appearing weak in a situation where he had suddenly been caught deeply off guard. It seemed he found himself in such situations with unnerving frequency of late. 

“Interesting,” said the young king after a moment. “I believed that her sudden departure had been spurred by you, it seems I was wrong, or that you are a better liar than I have been told.” 

“I do not make a habit of lying.”

“And my sister does not make a habit of going to war, but here we are.” 

Faramir noted, with genuine interest, that Éomer had thus far avoided saying his sister’s name, as if saying it might make the reality of it all inescapable. 

“You deny it then?”

“I hardly know what I am denying,” said Faramir. 

“In the summer, under the fell influence of his wretched counsellor, my late uncle made his consent for her betrothal contingent upon her never returning to the Mark. He believed that the offer of marriage was an attempt by your father to renege on the Oath of Eorl, to take back the lands of the Mark for Gondor. Wormtongue twisted his thoughts, convincing him that Éowyn could be a daughter of the House of Eorl, or a wife of the House of Húrin, but not both. At first, I believed she had elected to stay, but in the earliest days of autumn, she left with great haste, accepting willingly that she would never again see her kin. Did you or did you not influence her decision?”

“Ah,” said Faramir, raising his good hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut against an impending headache. “I did not, for I did not know such an impossible choice had been laid before her.” He opened his eyes and regarded Éomer levelly. “And if I had been, I would have counselled her to seek a solution that would not have seen her estranged from her family, that much I swear, for whatever my word is worth to you.” 

Éomer was silent for a moment—clearly it was not the answer he was expecting. Faramir returned to watching the steady rise and fall of Éowyn’s chest beneath the linens, counting the breaths and praying that they would not run out. His thoughts, about as chaotic as they ever were, were not happy ones. They fluctuated between sorrow and anger in equal parts. Sorrow that she had faced such cruelty, and more sorrow that she had not confided in him. Yet there was anger too, some of it not towards her, not directly, but towards the entire situation of their lives. He could play the dutiful diplomat and tell her brother he would have helped her find an alternative, but he knew as well as any that no such alternative existed. And, with some shame, he felt an anger whose target he could not (would not) name: anger that they had each gone to their deaths with something so enormous gone unspoken and unknown between them. 

“I do not trust you,” said Éomer, again shattering the silence. “If I return from the Black Gate, I expect still I will not trust you. But I will not err as my uncle and cousin did. If Éowyn still wishes to have you, then I will not stand in the way of the match.” 

Éowyn stirred. 

She had shown signs of life in the many hours Faramir had kept his watch, soft murmurs or whimpers that broke his heart, or fitfully rearranging herself on the bed as much as her injuries would allow. But this was the most activity she had shown so far, for though her voice was soft and weak, and though her eyes remained shut and her face pale, she called her brother’s name, clear into the tense silence of the room. 

With some effort, Faramir stood, then gestured to his now-vacated seat. “I will take my leave, my lord, and return ere the host departs.”

Chapter 34: Book III: Spring 3019

Éowyn awoke once to see Faramir’s face. Certain she was being greeted by the start of some new terror and that she would soon be forced to watch him die again as she had every hour for a hundred hours, she closed her eyes once more and slipped back into unconsciousness.

When she awoke the second time and saw that he was still there, her heart began to give way, a terrible battle breaking out deep within her soul between reason and emotion. It took much out of her, and she had had no choice but to rest a while longer.

The third time, she awoke midway through a healer making a valiant attempt to change out the bandages on Faramir’s shoulder. She saw the grotesque, puckered wound, the resentment in his eyes, heard the tightly contained frustration in his voice, and knew she could delude herself no longer. Against all that seemed right or probable in the world, he had lived. He had lived, he had lived, he had lived.

He had lived and he was within arm’s reach of her.

She wept silently, tears stinging her raw skin. Even the healer did not notice that she was conscious once more. It was not until he left the room and Faramir turned back to her that she was noticed, little though it mattered.

He said nothing to her, the shock but a passing visitor up his features. Instead, he knelt beside her bedside. His hand, he realised, clutched at hers, though she could not feel where he touched her greyed and sallowed skin. He bent his head to her, as if in penitence, and still she wept.

She wept that she yet lived; that she had hoped to die while he yet lived. She wept for the agony in her bones and the despair in her heart. She wept for Théodred, for Boromir, for her uncle. She wept for the duty she had eschewed, and for the girl she had once been. She wept for the future she had once hoped to have. She wept until she had no more tears to weep. And then she beheld him, as if for the first time.

Thereafter, she could not bear the space between them. Carefully, they worked together to rearrange her aching and enfeebled limbs. The bed was too small, but they carved out space for him, until she could rest her cheek up his chest without jostling either his injured arm or hers. She felt the steadiness of his breaths, wrinkled her nose when her tears soaked through his tunic. He combed through her hair, unravelling knots that had been wrought by her long sleep. From time to time, he held her a little tighter, as if remembering again the fragility of it all, of their lives.

In time, the candles were lit, and though the attendant wore an expression that said he rather thought he should scold them, his lips were still and quiet, and he departed without a word. The world is ending, she thought, a little indulgence will harm no-one.

Trembling against the strangeness of it, burying her face into his warmth, she closed her eyes again. There was no rationality to her thoughts, no coherent through-line around which to organise them. They jumped from place to place, person to person, until they all jumbled together into an impenetrable, hysterical whine.

She slept once more.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

She awoke to an uneven thudding in her chest, an aching in her muscles, and fear like ice in her veins. A dull light streamed past her eyelids, worsening her headache for each second she spent acknowledging it. Her whole body thrummed and pulsed with nigh-unendurable pain. Her whole body, except one, horrible, glaring gap. Her arm—the one that was not pounding with pain unspeakable—no longer existed. She felt where it pressed heavily against her side, felt the ache in her shoulder and her bicep above it, but she could not feel it. No command from her mind could force it to move, to come to life.

Failure: failure in all things. In life, always, and death now too. She had been denied the right to live as she chose, and she had denied the right to die as she chose. Hot tears slipped down her face, harder and hotter when she felt how they tore at her skin, sending shocks of pain rippling across her cheeks.

She had been wracked by terrors, but the shape of them she could not remember, only the encompassing fear, the latent anger. The sun had not yet risen outside. She was alone. She convinced herself that she had imagined Faramir being there at all, but the familiar scent of him that she could not avoid lingered on her pillow, in her hair, told her that she had not. He was alive and he had left her.

She closed her eyes to the world. The sound of blades crashing against blades still echoed in her ears so loudly she worried it might deafen her. Her blood still pumped like frozen glass in her veins, awake and lethal with the memory of the Black Captain, the sight of his fellbeast. And there too was the outline of Lord Denethor’s corpse, at once his own and her uncle’s and her cousin’s. The thought made her tremble, but no more so than the realisation that that was why Faramir had left her: she had forced his father out into the jaws of danger, and there left him to die, incapable of protecting anyone, least of all herself. She stifled a hoarse gasp and found that even her lungs ached. The world had grown too heavy a weight for her.

“Éowyn?”

Her name sounded unnatural, harsh against the sharpness of her pain, and she blinked. There he stood, half cloaked in darkness, leaning against the far window. Had he always been there?

“I thought you had gone,” she said, and noted only seconds too late how pitiable it sounded from her lips.

“Gone?” said he. “Do you think me so ready to break my word without provocation?”

“No,” she answered. “But then, it would not be without cause. Your—your father—“ Her voice faltered. She almost could not bring herself to say the words. “Do you fault me for the part I played in luring your father out into harm’s way.”

He was silent for a long while. His silence spoke too loudly.

“I would sooner fault him for his uncharacteristic temerity, yet I know my father, and I think that I know you, and it is clear to me that a meeting of such minds could have only ended thus.” He smiled humourlessly. “And perhaps we are the better for it: your deeds, I have heard, could be replicated by no living man.”

A black cloak billowed in her mind’s eye, whipping her skin, drawing blood from her cheek.

“Please,” she rasped. “Say no more, I cannot hear of it.”

“Then I will not.” His brow furrowed. “In answer to your question, my anger with my father has no bearing on what feel for you.”

“You must not be angry with him,” she said, very slowly drawing herself from her bed. “My recklessness is my fault and my fault alone.”

“Indeed, though there are those who would believe that your recklessness comes as a result of my inability to trammel you.” He raised an eyebrow at her. In another time, she might have thought it the ghost of his wry humour, but it looked rather more to her as if she was being examined.

“And when did you start caring about the regard of others?” As soon as she said the words, the answer came to her, and filled her with bitterest regret. His father was dead: he was Gondor’s Steward now. He could no longer afford not to care for the regard of others. She swallowed thickly.

“I care for the regard of your family, Éowyn, and it brings me no joy to be accused of abdicating my duty to you by your brother and King.”

“So said my brother?”

“Aye. And at first,” said Faramir, his tone grave, “I was inclined to agree with him, that I had done ill by you, that it was your blood on my hands.”

Her temper flared. “You? You? By whose law am I bound to you? Or you to me? Your power is not so—”

“—Peace, Éowyn,” said Faramir, a touch of frustration in his tone. “I said only that I was inclined to agree with him at first. But I swiftly reminded myself that you had not become a different lady to the one I loved, and that there were no circumstances under which I could exert any authority over you to which you did not willingly submit.”

Her cheeks flushed. She ignored it. “But my brother disagreed.”

“Your brother has an impression of you that is far more deferential and subservient than the valiant lady I know. He believed that had I simply pressed the nature of your duty to your King and your people, you might have been convinced to evacuate in a timely manner. I argued that although I had reminded you that the risks courted by remaining in the City were numerous, in the end your will answers to naught but itself; neither I nor any other Man could have a hope of forcing you to do what you did not wish to. He insisted that there were, in fact, a litany of examples of you doing things in the name of duty that you would not have wished for yourself.” Again, his eyebrow quirked, though he looked away from her, out the darkened window, a muscle in his jaw working. “It was then that he told me of the bargain you had struck with your late uncle.” When he looked up at her once more, a look of purest devastation crossed his features. “Éowyn, I would not have wished that for you. I would have waited for you, I would have done what was necessary to secure your freedom.”

“What was necessary? There was nothing to be done. For ten years my kin were outmanoeuvred and outfoxed by a man of the lowest dignity, who attached himself like a leech to our house, stealing away all that was good and noble and leaving only fetid waste in his wake. He knew he could not have me freely, so he sought to take me by coercion. He believed that the choice he laid before me would be too difficult, that my pride would hinder me as it had hindered my uncle. But I am not my uncle, I have been taught time and time again that dignity is not a luxury which I am afforded, and so I chose as I did.” She exhaled loudly, the dull ache in her lungs reverberating around her chest. “There. That is my tale, such as it is. Will you look upon me as callous and self-serving, a deserter made victim to her own life? Do you pity me?”

“Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn,” he said quietly, giving her a curious look. “But I do not offer you my pity, it is not my pity that you need. I would offer you my care, and my unyielding love, and a promise, as before, that I do not wish to make you something you are not, or do not wish to be. I am grieved, deeply grieved…” He rubbed his eyes, sighing angrily. “I thought you dead, Éowyn! And to learn it was because you had thrown yourself carelessly at death, driven there by sorrow you had not once spoken to me of—in those hours I felt a pain the likes of which I have never before felt and dearly wish to never feel again. I am angry with you for not telling me the depths of your pain, for not allowing me to bear it with you, to lighten your load.” He turned to face her once more, breathtaking sadness in his eyes. “No, Éowyn, I do not offer you my pity. Once I offered you my love and my understanding, yet I fear now that we have had some glaring misunderstanding about what was meant by that offer.”

Tears streamed freely down her cheeks now, stinging her skin and compounding her shame. For a moment, she did not wish to face him, and so turned from him, sinking back to the edge of her bed once more. But her turn from him, and the sorrow she felt as she looked away broke her resolve and she looked once more upon him. And when she did, she saw exhaustion and frustration in his eyes, but love too, the same love she had seen in them all those many months ago, on the balcony at Merethrond when she had agreed to marry him.

“Éowyn,” he began again, his voice quieter and hoarser for emotion. “Why did you not speak to me of your sorrow? Why did you not entrust me with that?”

Her voice was weak when she found it. “It was not for lack of trust. I gave my word to ensure that you would not suffer any injuries if I could prevent it, and the sorrows I faced were not worries worth worrying the Captain-General of Gondor’s Army.”

“And yet they were, if it was to this end that they led.” He knelt before her, reaching out slowly to cup her face and brush away her tears with his thumb. “Éowyn, your love for your family and for your king has been a great and terrible burden upon you. But I do not desire that our love should be an equal such burden, or indeed any burden at all. It is not your duty to shield me from difficulty, just as it is not my duty to secret you away in some gilded cage. We must face life’s turmoil together, with clear eyes, not shaded hearts.”

“The world ended,” she whispered through her tears. “The world ended and still I did everything wrong—I could not protect you, I could not protect my kin, my life is meaningless,” she said. “It was so fraught and perilous, and I judged it all wrong. I thought the challenge to the alliance would come from within Minas Tirith—from your father—but in the end the most lethal poison was distilled in my own home. I bided my silence for fear of destroying the reputation of my King and uncle, yet for my silence he is dead, and your father is lost.” Her tears fell more harshly now, coating her mouth with nauseating salt. “My misjudgement has destroyed two houses, and nearly my own life.”

“Lost?” He blinked, then leaned back from her. “Grievously foolhardy he may be, but even I, his harshest critic, would not yet call him lost.”

“You are too accustomed to your poetic riddles,” she said with an indelicate sniffle. “I mean only that your father has perished.”

“Unless you are privy to some evil knowledge that I am not, you are quite mistaken. He lives, and so too does his wrathful pride, which in fact may yet compel him to his death.”

The world seemed to tilt on its axis, unsettling the very ground beneath her feet. “Your father lives?”

“For now,” he said dourly.

“When I—upon the Pelennor—I saw him, I saw that he was dead!”

“Wounded only,” said Faramir, and the bitterness had not yet waned from his tone. He pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled slowly and carefully. “Éowyn, he lives, lived still when you put yourself between him and the Black Captain, and now, now he would repay your sacrifice with his ill-considered pursuit of vainglory.”

“Faramir,” said Éowyn, her voice weak and trembling in the manner of one adjusting to life-altering information. “You have in your keeping more knowledge than I, I know only what you have told me, or what I might guess at. Show benevolence and mercy to one who is badly shaken and does not wish to play at riddles, speak plainly!”

He stood—not without some effort, she noticed—and made for the window. There, he leaned against the wall, looking out at the dark sky beyond, his eyes scanning as if there were text set before his face. At length, he spoke. “My father was indeed wounded upon the field of battle, and he was brought to these Houses and healed, and healed well. But though his body required rest, his mind could not fathom such a prospect, and it turned inwards upon itself, towards paranoia and venom. One evening he spent away from these Houses, tending to what matters he could, and one night was all that was required to fan the sparks of his paranoia into a deadly flame.” He turned to look at her, his jaw set firm. “He fears what the return of the King will do to him, he who has sacrificed his life and his goodness to the cause of war against the Enemy. He fears that the crowning of the King will see the ignoble end to the House of Húrin, that his sacrifices and the sacrifices of his kin—my kin—will be somehow forgotten, or lessened in stature. He intends to ride with the Host of the West, to Morannon.”

“And why should he not? Is he not Gondor’s ruler? Ought he not lead her army to whatever fate may await it?”

“He is Gondor’s Steward, charged with keeping to the Kingdom until such time as the King should return to claim his crown, and return he has.”

“The King has returned?” It was said so limply it hardly qualified as a question. Éowyn had grown tired of revelations.

“It was by his hand that you were drawn back from the Shadow, do you not remember?”

Her cheeks coloured and she found she could no longer hold his gaze. Her proud head drooped, and she made a spectacle of staring intently at the hand that had only recently begun to answer commands again. “I believed it to be you who called to me,” she said, quietly enough that she hoped the unmoving air would muffle her words.

“I?” There was trace mirth in his voice that made her heart heavy.

“Yes.” She could not bear to look at him. “I saw a man, tall with dark hair, shorter than yours and better kept, but such were the illusions of death, I thought. You—he—called faintly to me, and spoke of the destruction of the Enemy, and of freedom from pain and sorrow. At first I hesitated, for I believed that you had perished. Then I reasoned that I had been presented with two paths: death with you, or life without. I made my choice.”

She held her silence, willing her fingers to open and close as far as they might. Her embarrassed silence was swiftly interrupted by first a hand closing about hers, then another beneath her chin, tilting her face upwards.

He kissed her with such trepidation as she had ever known from him, and, in truth, she was struck by her own panic. Yet she felt the softness with which he held her, smelled his familiar, soothing scent, and soon sighed into him. His former boldness, the boldness that had made her love him so terribly, returned, and he pulled her from the bed to rest in his lap, his hand now tangled in the hair at the back of her head, desperately clutching her to him.

She held fast to him, as if he were the earth and she the dewy grass upon it, neither one protected from the harshness of the elements without the other. The sweetness of the bygone says was lost to them now, and it was, to her, a darkly funny that that those days should be thought of as sweet. Then, she had clung to her moments with him as moments of light in an ever-darkening world, but now all the light had gone, and she could seek out only the ghostly edifices of safety in the gloom.

“You were dead,” she whispered against his lips, her voice as harsh as her breathing.

“And you,” he answered, kissing every exposed inch of her face. “And you.”

“I cannot bear to lose you. Swear to me that you will not make me live without you again.” Her limp hand tightened in his hair, as if of its own volition, as if it knew as some innate level that she could now never let him go.

“I swear it,” he said, and her tears fell anew, mingling now with his.

At one point in their lives, the moment might have been woven through with dark and heady lust, and at one point in the future (if such a thing existed), she thought, that might return. But the trembling that racked her body—and his too, she quickly realised—was the trembling of weak and weary survivors of war, it was the desperation of those who had wandered too long in a dark and twisted wood and had, and now knew to turn their eyes skywards in search of the sun, even if it did not come.

That was what they were: pilgrims, lost, turned about, watched by many yet seen by none, she pulling ever north, he ever to the West, both so long lost that the destination itself had withered in their minds, becoming nothing more than a faint memory beyond the insurmountable horizon. And so they had stumbled and fallen and missed paths and roads until, against reason itself, they had found one another, and north and west had aligned, and the path had been renewed by the steady trodding of their feet, together. The direction—home, whatever that might be—filled her mind once more, not so much a thing remembered as a thing created in the space between their beating hearts.

The door opened. A creak first, and then a wail. A page entered, bruised, the fineries of his livery tattered and torn. He averted his eyes, though not for embarrassment, Éowyn saw, but nervousness. He was young, too young.

“My lord,” said he. His voice shook as terribly as his hand when he spoke. “I bring word from Lord Húrin of the Keys, who bid me tell you that the Lord Denethor has deemed that he has fulfilled his agreement and has thus departed for the Morannon.” 

Notes:

sorry no happiness on my watch xx

Chapter 35: Book III: Spring 3019

Her limbs were sore and leaden, and though the loose gown the healers had provided for her helped, there were some ailments no contrivances of man could ease. The Warden had not yet given his assent to her wandering so freely about the Houses, but in her life she had learned it was often better to do first and beg forgiveness later; she moved through the interlocking rooms and corridors in search of her destination. Faramir, better practiced and more accustomed to moving unseen, walked beside her, never straying more than a few inches from her side. 

She tried not to see the misery that surrounded them. The blood no longer scared her, the agonised cries now seemed as natural to her as the wind itself, but it was the faces she recognised—few though they were—that slowed her feet and set her head spinning. Out of their heraldry and arms, the only thing that differentiated the Eorlingas from the Gondorrim was the hue and brilliance of their hair, yet even that seemed to blur and pale in her eyes, until it was as though they had all become a single, undulating mass of pain and imminent death. 

“Here,” said Faramir, his voice low and even as he pointed towards an archway. Beyond it, a garden sprouted up from the cold stone. It was a working garden, that much she could tell already, for it was lined with herbs and tea shrubs that she recognised well from Ciriel’s infirmary, though that now felt to her like a different lifetime, lived many leagues from here. 

They stepped into the garden together, and the chill nipped already at Éowyn’s cheeks. She bit her tongue: she had sorely missed the fresh air and did not wish to return indoors so soon. At the far end of the garden (which was not so far, this appeared to be an auxiliary, practical garden, and hardly extended past its functional flowerbeds), there was a tree, old, dead. Beneath it, Faramir helped her to the ground, then drew himself down to sit beside her. There was a tremor in his hand that she had not noticed before. 

Silence reigned for long minutes. Éowyn’s head had been so thoroughly turned by the rapid onslaught of information she had suffered that day that her thoughts could scarcely organise themselves into coherence. Somewhere, high above the Houses, hidden in some secret tree, a bird whistled a hunting song. The fabric of Faramir’s tunic had grown cold against her cheek, but she did not shiver. The dead, she knew, did not freeze. 

“Was your father so terribly injured? How could he chase after the Host? Have they not been gone very long?” 

“Less than a day,” answered Faramir. “And his company will number few and ride lightly to recover lost time.”

“And his injuries? Will they not hinder him needlessly in whatever task they have set forth to do at Morannon?”

“He will live,” said Faramir, and though his jaw was set sharply and his tone was forceful and commanding, there was greater fear in his words than she had ever before heard from him. “He will live if only to make a mockery of my counsel, though I now wonder if that would not be the crueller fate. If he has not fully taken leave of his senses, he will yield to Lord Aragorn and Gondor will stir from its lamentable slumber, but it seems ever likelier that his good sense has abandoned him entirely, that the task of reinstating the King should not be so easy as it ought to be.” 

She blanched. At times, in the depths of her misery in Meduseld, her thoughts had strayed to evil places, and she had wished for her uncle’s swift death, if only to release him of the burden of Wormtongue. Now that he was truly gone, the existence of those thoughts filled her with piercing shame. It was a shame she did not wish upon Faramir. Naively, she hoped to guide him to gentler topics. “Where shall we go? You spoke of Ithilien, I remember.” 

Faramir’s face fell, for a mere fraction of a second before he recovered himself. “I did; then it was more fancy than reality. Now, however, I suppose Ithilien—or a part of it—has become rather more my responsibility than the subject of my idle wishes.” 

“More so than as captain of its Rangers?”

“More so than even then,” he said, and rubbed his jaw. “For the Lord of Emyn Arnen should, I think, treat his estate with some care and consideration, even if that estate is little more than scattered rubble and desiccated Orc corpses.”

“I had forgotten that title is now yours,” said Éowyn quietly. The sound of Boromir’s voice echoed distantly in her thoughts, and her heart grew heavy and still to listen to it. She did not wish to bid him farewell again, not yet. 

“I might now offer you a more substantial living, at the very least. Emyn Arnen’s income is, so far as I’m aware, a pittance, but it is a shade better than a captain’s wages.” 

“Once I thought you a fool for not thinking of the practicalities of our future,” she admitted. “How you could elect not to think of a house and an income left me more than a little surprised. I could not see why you chose to speak only of swimming in mineral springs and riding through glades.” She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Then I could think only of the future, only of what glories and terrors awaited, yet now I know that it was I who was the fool. I allowed such happiness to pass me by, and it is only now, at the end of all things, that I have found what I long ago lost.”  

“I do not know what you might find now that you could have then lost. You loved and were loved, there is little else to ask for.”

“I would ask for a chance to undo the ills that I have done. I wish that I had not spurred your father into combat when it was not his place.” Her breath hitched in her throat, a memory rising like bile within her. Faramir’s unbreakable fever, Lord Denethor’s gleaming dagger, the look of utter despair in his eye. A necessary diversion was in order. “I am worried,” she said. “I am worried that the choices I made in those final hours speak more about me than any others I have ever made. I am worried that I am perhaps more reckless and thoughtless and selfish than even I had thought possible.”

“Why should that be true? You faced an impossible situation.” 

She swallowed hard. “Are we not at our truest selves when all else has been stripped back, when there is naught but ourselves and the cruelty of the world?”

“We are not,” he said sharply, and she glanced up. There was a harshness in his eyes she was not accustomed to in such close quarters. Then he blinked and it disappeared, gentleness returning to his mien. “A dog caught in a trap would chew its own leg off to escape, but we would not say that dogs are predisposed to dismembering themselves.”  

“No,” she said before she had even thought on it. Then she paused and thought on it, and let the thought echo around in her mind, and in the aching cavern that had once housed her heart. He extended such grace to her. Would he extend it to his father? Was it even her place to weigh such concerns? Ought she not tell him? 

“Éowyn,” said he. “You are strong and valiant and above all else, you are good. If we are to be judged by our actions in the uttermost darknesses of war, even then would you be judged as good. There are few who have sacrificed their beings so entirely, so comprehensively, in pursuit of the wellbeing of others. I beg you: do not punish yourself, the world has already exacted a grossly disproportionate punishment upon you.”  

She traced the line of his jaw with her fingertips. “How can you love so much and so well, when there is so much evil in this world? So much evil surrounding you?” 

“I have spent every hour since the one we met wondering the same of you.” He raised his head to kiss her brow, and when in return she leaned into him, clutching at his arm to hold her close, she thought she heard a faint whisper of a laugh. Yet even that was stilted by other demands, for he soon stiffened and brought his lips to the side of her face. “It seems we have outlived our right to secrecy,” he whispered, warm breath ghosting the shell of her ear. 

And as he spoke the words, a new voice entered the scene: “My lord.” 

She expected to see one of the Houses’ attendants waiting at the edge of the garden, but was greeted instead by Lord Húrin’s grim face. Faramir nodded him on, did not let go of her hand. There was, she supposed, little left to hide now. Their betrothal had been public knowledge for months, and whether or not the world survived long enough for their to be a wedding, there could hardly be any harm in such a gentle admission of intimacy. 

“My lord,” he repeated, now drawn closer. There was a dark wooden box in his hands. “Your father’s secretary has asked me to deliver these papers.”

“The Lord Húrin reduced to the drudgery of a mere errand boy?” Faramir raised his eyebrow. “A steep price to pay. What could you have wagered at a time such as this to have delivered so swift an answer, I wonder?”

Lord Húrin stayed quiet, though there was new colour in his face. 

“Ah,” said Faramir, his face growing stern and earnest. “Thank you for your faith in me, even if it was, at this moment at least, misplaced.” 

Éowyn looked at her hand where it twisted in her gown. In the distance that had spanned so painfully between them, she had forgotten Faramir’s preternatural ability to read the hearts of others. 

“Sanity itself has been misplaced,” said Lord Húrin, then clamped his lips shut, his face growing redder. With a curt bow, he departed. 

Faramir watched him leave, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “He is my father’s cousin, did you know?” 

“I did not.” 

“Through my father’s mother, some of the very last to leave Ithilien.”

Éowyn nodded, said nothing. She recognised his mood. If there was more he wished to say, he would say it, her encouragement would have little effect either way on the outcome. 

Above, the stars were shrouded in impenetrable clouds. Only on occasion did the moon’s light penetrate the cover, and even then it was feeble. 

“Have you any interest then?” 

“Any interest in what?” 

“The papers.” 

“Ought I?”

“You ought not do anything that you would not wish to do, Éowyn,” he said, with the air if not the tone of a rebuke. “I ask only because I intend to read them, but would not have you think that I am neglecting you.”

“Neglecting me? I am not some insolent child demanding attention at all hours of the day!” 

“Indeed you are not, but you are someone who I love deeply, and who I feel has been rather unjustly ignored for far too long, whether by her own machinations or the machinations of others. Now: do you care to read these, or do you not? Either answer is more than acceptable to me.” 

Chastened and feeling suddenly very exposed, Éowyn looked down at her hand, her cheeks flushing. She chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she looked at Faramir. He nodded, flipped open the clasps of the box, and handed her the first ledger. It was an accounting of all the remaining grain stores in Minas Tirith and a list of every house, home, and makeshift infirmary in the City that would require a grain delivery. She had seen many such ledgers before, had even managed some in the few brief months of her adulthood before she had been sent to Gondor. She swallowed, blinking away tears. 

Faramir’s hand came to rest on her leg, accompanied by a gentle, soothing squeeze. She shut her eyes once more and let several tears fall unhindered. She felt the sting and burn as they tracked down her face, through the gulfs and gorges and eddies left by blade and dirt and rock. When the last dropped from her chin into her lap below, she opened her eyes, forced them to focus on the writing before her, and set her mind to work. 

If pressed, she would later insist that she had made a valiant attempt at it. In fact, she managed nearly half of the dense letter before her eyes began to droop. By the time she had cornered three-quarters of it, her lean on Faramir had become less about comfort and more about structural support. She did not make it to the final page of the letter before sleep welcomed her once more. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The morning, such as it was, came slowly. Waves of grey light lapped against the City walls before finally rising above it, rushing into all of its nooks and crannies, then rising higher, higher, until it enveloped all in its suffocating onslaught. Éowyn had slept in the garden. 

While she slept, someone had covered her in two blankets, each thin, coarse. Like the gown she wore, they bore no adornments, nothing to imply any life except for the existence of the person under it. Faramir had been the only thing remotely resembling a mattress beneath her, and was still half-sitting against the tree. There was no blanket to cover him. She was not certain that he had slept at all—he held a ledger in the hand that was not bound in a sling, and the hair that was not still pulled back in a plait stuck up at odd angles. A sign, she knew, that he had been running his hand through it relentlessly. 

Shortly after waking, she was swept away by an anxious healer’s assistant. And though she was obliged to stray from Faramir for some time, she returned as soon as she was able to, and discovered that in her absence he had found himself a new companion: the Halfling, Merry. Despite her misgivings—or, more accurately, her guilt, for he was only in need of Healing because she had led him to danger—he proved to be an indomitable spirit, and lived up to his name with enough enough good cheer to compensate for what she and Faramir lacked. Faramir, at least, could sublimate his melancholy with a gesture at the letters and ledgers and other ephemera that had so lately become his responsibility. Éowyn’s gloom was entirely of her own concern. 

In time, however, even Merry’s good humour began to falter, and in order to preserve the rather strange delusion of comfort they had collectively crafted, they turned to sharing stories of their own. Merry shared tales of his travels, of the strange and distant land he called home, and its stranger yet unostentatious inhabitants. Faramir spoke with unaffected elegance and his usual barely-concealed yearning of the bygone days of Númenor, and to Éowyn it seemed that even as he recounted the days of terror and confusion that led to the drowning of the isle, he drew comfort from it, as if the promise of some good, no matter how overwhelmed by darkness, was still enough to sustain a soul. 

When it came time for Éowyn to share her own story, she lunged at one she had often held in reserve. It was a story descended from the ancestors of her people when they still wandered the glimmering plains of the far north. It had long been one of her favourite stories as a child, chronicling the valour and glory of a great warrior who conquered many lands and accomplished many feats of martial prowess with his companion and brother in arms. When that companion was slain on the field of battle, his sorrow and fury was so great that it was said that he might have razed an entire city singlehandedly had his quarry not presented itself to him. It had long been Éowyn’s favourite: the musicality of the words, the red-blooded emotion and pursuit of glory, the intricate and soaring depictions of bloodlust and righteous anger had been, to her, the very height of storytelling. 

Yet as she attempted to evoke the narrative skills of her foremothers and to conjure the image of the blood-soaked earth, the golden beauty of the battlefield, her chest clenched and seized. For a taut, terrible second, the world condensed into the tension in her jaw, the piercing pain in her heart, and the shrieking of the fellbeast. Her hands grew warm, and once more she felt blood pouring across them, thundering like a river and twice as deadly. 

Her tongue stilled. Her breath came in small shudders, and her eyes burned. A shock of pain ricocheted up her sallowed arm. Her heart pounded in her chest. A single bead of sweat dripped down the back of her neck, raising a line of chill in its wake. 

The silence was the worst of it all. It was too much. It was impenetrable, immovable, so dense and insurmountable it was as if the silence had been there since the dawn of time itself. Minas Tirith had never before been so quiet. It nauseated her.

“My brother,” she said, the words spilling from her lips like bile. “My brother tells the story better than I. I ought not do the tale an injustice by telling it when you will have the opportunity to hear it told by him.” She looked only at the grass beneath her legs, cheeks burning as she spoke. She had no desire to risk seeing pity in the eyes of her companions. She did not wish to feel her heart broken again. 

She chose a different tale. A memory of the easier days of her youth when sneaking through the tall grasses beyond the limits of Edoras had been the greatest adventure of all. 

While she spoke, her thoughts forsook the weightless, heady days of her childhood, seeking out decidedly more disconcerting terrain. Her fear, her inability to speak mere words mortified her. It was a level of weakness she had never expected, not even in her worst estimations of herself. Had she not once longed to be among those stories of war and courage? How could she countenance it that a single battle had so disturbed her? How could she allow herself to tremble so easily, when she had, at long last, accomplished all that she had hoped for? She had secured her place in those songs of glory, she had done all that she had set out to do in her life, and yet it did naught but fill her with deep, abiding dread. 

Faramir looked at her but once as she spoke, just long enough to make clear that he saw plainly the conflict that brewed within her. She was not of a mind for deciding if that acknowledgement brought her succour, so she buried it within the deepest crevices of her mind, away with all the other unsettling thoughts and emotions she did not wish to confront. 

In the long hours of evening after Merry had begged his leave, she and Faramir once more retreated to the herb garden, and once more sat beneath the dead tree. She had not the attention for reading, so stared hazily into the neatly organised rows of plants while Faramir continued to sift through his papers. There was an uneasy calm that settled around them; the calm between them was easy, it was all else that was anarchic, uncontrolled. Still, she kept her own council and he read (and sometimes wrote) in quiet comfort, and it seemed to her that that might be the end of their activities for that day. 

Yet after a time, it was evident that he was looking more at her than at the documents; though she had not yet decided if his awareness of her strife brought her comfort, she was certain his quiet observation did not. 

“If there is something you would ask me, then ask it,” she said, and in her haste the words came out sharper, harsher than she intended. 

He did not flinch. “I wonder at why you made the choice that you did, you who are so singularly committed to your duty, who has suffered intolerable sorrows in service of your King.”

“It is as I said: I believed the greatest threat to the safety of my people to be the potential for your father to fail to honour that sacred oath between our people. I felt that I alone might ensure his compliance,” she said. His expression remained unchanged, yet she sensed it in a disbelief that that was the entirety of her reasoning. She sighed. “And I was selfish,” she continued. “I was terribly selfish, more concerned with my own short-term pleasure than the care and duty I owed to my King uncle. I could not bear to think of a life lived without you, so I abandoned my family, and I abandoned my people. Worse still, I pretended that they had somehow demanded too much of me for asking me to remain loyal to my King; I rationalised that I had been burdened with too much, forgetting that it was my Uncle who took my brother and myself in as if we were his own children. I forgot that he had showed us kindness unmatched, and in his hour of need I showed only greed, greed at cost to his life.” 

“Éowyn,” said Faramir, a fierce seriousness in his eyes. “Nothing you have done might be construed as greed, even by those who are enemies to you. I would have you understand that, and and I would have you treat yourself with a gentler hand.” 

“The world is not gentle, my lord,” said she, and adjusted the cloth of her sling. It had become tangled in her unbound hair. 

“Indeed it is not, and so we must do what we can to not increase its ungentle nature.” He set aside his papers and helped to fix her sling and her hair. “I would not speak ill of the dead, nor of those who you hold dear, but I would also not have you think that the circumstances that have befallen you are of your own making. You say that you have failed in your duty to king and country, but to my ears it sounds as if both have failed you. Not for a moment do I doubt that you have the courage and fortitude to care for and defend yourself, and I would not wish to diminish that in any way, but it merits asking whether you should have to. By those who had a duty to do so, you were not given the proper tools to defend yourself; and I have seen enough of war to know that it is a fool’s errand to mount a defence of others when one cannot defend oneself.” 

Anger flashed through her on the wings of darkness; sudden, irascible. But her muscles clenched instinctively, her teeth gritted. She was angry, but his burden was greater than hers, and a momentary lapse in precision did not warrant a quarrel. She sighed, full of feeling. “Perhaps you are not wrong.” 

His brow furrowed, and he looked at her with that penetrating look that she knew meant he saw through all of her defences. “My love,” said he, “I have never known or wished you to restrain yourself around me, and it pains me to see you do so now.”

“I am showing no restraint, my lord,” she protested, though her tone remained quiet. “I gave your perspective its due consideration, and intend to continue to do so until I have come to my new conclusion.” 

Faramir swore. The sound of it shot like lightning down her spine, not just because she so rarely heard him reduced to monosyllabic language, but because the tone in which he said it was so much harsher than the tone in which nearly all other business in the Houses had been conducted. “I cannot compel you to say what you will not, but I know your mind, and I hope that I know your heart, and this overextension of charity and benevolence is beneficial for neither.” He rubbed his eyes, then ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head in frustration. “From the very first moment we met, not once have you shied away from holding your head high and asserting your right.  I can see that to do otherwise brings you grief, but I cannot see why you nonetheless continue to do it. Do you fear some kind of disproportionate retribution for your words?” He looked at her long and steadily, and her heart was strangely unburdened when she lifted her eyes to meet his. “Your family forced an unthinkable choice upon you in response to you rightly advancing your own desires and needs. Please, Éowyn, I would not have you believe I would ever do the same to you.” 

She had not realised she had begun to weep once more until she opened her mouth to speak  and found it filled with tears. “That,” she began, blinking rapidly as she raised her hand to wipe her cheeks, “is why I made the choice I did, why I could never have made another.” 

For minutes that stretched like agonising hours, she wept, first into her hand, then into the soft material of his shirt when he closed his arms around her and pulled her tight. 

“For so long there was no-one. Try though my brother might, he was too wedded to his duties to see that I suffered. At times, it felt as if the Worm was the only one in all my acquaintance who knew me at all,” she whispered into the dark night. “When I came to Gondor, it seemed to me the ultimate confirmation that my family could not—would not—know me as I wished them to, would never even see me, save when they desired to see an obstacle in their paths. But then I met you, and you saw me and you knew me in a way that no other had, and you cared to know me. For a time that was enough, for a time it did not matter that my miseries had not been assuaged, for I had great joy and love elsewhere.” She steadied her breathing, then pulled away from him, cupping his face. “Why did I choose as I did? Because I was doing what for so long I had not done: I was choosing for myself. My own family, Faramir, who had already demanded so much of me and given neither thanks nor respite to my sadness! My own family would have deprived me of even that.” Her breath came harshly, sharply, and he raised his fingers to her hair, combing through it gently, carefully. “Men talk of their betrayals and their duty to redress those betrayals, but what of the betrayals wrought against me? Who will weep for me? Who will keep my dignity in their care?”

“I will,” he said. “I will, if you will let me.” With a slowness that spoke more to his exhaustion than a desire to treat her delicately, he wove his fingers through her hair, then brought their heads together. 

“I am weary,” she whispered. “No longer do I wish to fight for those who would not fight for me.” 

“Then do not,” said he. “I love you, I will not ask you to fight alone; no longer must you be alone.”

In answer, having exhausted herself of the capacity to speak, she kissed him; and for a fleeting second the air did not feel quite so cold. 

 

Notes:

Badly paraphrasing Achilles + Patroclus and doing 4700 words of straight dialogue? Buddy I fear nothing anymore

Chapter 36: Book 3: Spring 3019

Notes:

Porn ahead 🍋

The Warden of the Houses of Healing was a man named Maedthul. For nigh on twenty years, Faramir had known him, and at times known him well. Of all his various traits that best recommended him as a healer, his steadfast honesty was chief among them, followed closely by his firm commitment to maintaining his composed bedside manner even in times of great duress. 

When Faramir was eighteen years old, just months into his first commission, he was slashed by a Haradi blade deep in South Ithilien. The wound was by all measures a minor one, largely healed by the time anyone else noticed it, but his then-commander was especially wary of upsetting the Steward, and insisted that Faramir be sent back to the White City at once. In fact (and as Faramir had then argued) it was entirely the wrong decision: not only was his father’s upset at his son’s injury so great it sent him into an uncharacteristic bout of panic, the ride north split the still-healing skin along Faramir’s rib cage, making the whole thing appear far worse than it truly was. 

While his father had alternated between berating him for failing to repel the strike and berating the various healers and their assistants for suturing the wound with insufficient speed, Maedthul had spoken calmly and evenly, at times even being so bold as to cut across Faramir when he began to say something that would only further enrage his father. In the end, the indomitable Steward had been soothed, Faramir’s wound had been stitched, and the entire drama closed in an utterly benign fashion. But it had then taught Faramir that the Warden’s uncanny ability to stay calm in the face of precariousness was a skill that far outmatched even the best warriors of Faramir’s acquaintance. 

It therefore worried Faramir immensely to sense the obvious signs of stress in the air about Maedthul as he recounted all the necessary supplies that they no longer had access to. The list was, in fairness, apparently endless. The immediate aftermath of the siege and battle had been so bloody and terrible that the Houses themselves had been nearly bled dry of their resources just in pursuit of hindering any further death; the attempt to keep those who now dwelt within them alive at least long enough to meet their fate when and if the Host reached Morannon was working incalculable damage upon their stores. 

But even those concerns, great as they were, were almost insignificant in the face of the troubles plaguing Minas Tirith at large. Her food stores had been largely depleted, her lumber stores were negligible, leaving many houses in shivering darkness come the night, oil and paraffin stores were at record lows, to say nothing of the utter lack of labourers available to return the City walls to something resembling defences lest the worst come to pass. Each passing hour brought some new imminent disaster: shortages, threats of pestilence, disorder, rumours of marauding agents of the Enemy, and all this blanketed by the all-consuming knowledge that within a matter of days the world itself might end.

There were many who seemed to believe it would be instantaneous—or, if they did not truly believe it, they at least spoke of it as if that might be true. Faramir, unfortunately, was afforded no such luxuries. If the gambit at the Black Gate were to fail, it would fall to him to recall the sole remaining garrison at Cair Andros, to batten down the City’s hatches with what feeble troops remained long enough to see the City’s populace evacuated to Lebennin via Lossarnach. Once that was done, it would be his duty to man the very last defence of Minas Tirith until his troops were spent or until he himself was cut down, whichever came last. 

He knew, in a very abstract way, all that that would require. He knew exactly which commands he would issue when, and from which areas and by which people he should expect resistance. He knew he would be asked to do unthinkable things, to demand healers wield swords, to separate mothers from their babes so that the children, at least, might win a slightly greater chance at survival. There were other, more horrifying things he knew he ought to do, but ultimately could not bring himself to. He ought to have prepared himself to send Éowyn away, to do what was selfless and right and to ensure she could live for as long as she could. But he had grown more selfish, more covetous of her time in the days since they had each awoken after the battle, and when he had sent for his sword to be retrieved and kept in a locked box in the Houses, he had also sent for a second sword too, and had forced himself not to think too long upon the matter. 

Instead, he thought long and hard upon the questions of supply lines and workforces, routine patrol assignments and home reconstructions. Lord Húrin reminded him with some regularity that even at the height of his father’s overextension of himself, even he had not concerned himself with such minutiae. Lord Húrin would simply have to continue to remind him, for Faramir had no intention of lightening his workload. The steady, nearly-dull thrum of rote work was itself a soothing balm, and it meant that, through the long hours of reading and writing and speaking quietly with Lord Húrin and the various other administrators who had remained in the City, he could keep Éowyn by his side and brook no judgemental stares.

In the hours (for that was how he had come to mark the passage of time now, mere hours) since she had at last spoken to him of the heartache wrought upon her by her kin, she had become marginally more forthcoming in the details. There was much she yet withheld, though it seemed to him that she did so more for a lack of adequate verbiage than a particular desire to conceal her upset or true feelings from him; in a time of such frightening darkness, he was content to see it as a victory. Still, the details she did divulge turned the blood in his veins to fire. 

He restrained himself: as much as possible, he swore to always do that, for too much of her life had been lost to her desperate attempts to manage the emotions of the people in her life. It did not stop the pulsing waves of anger that swept over him unbidden when he heard of how easily her King uncle had allowed himself to fall to the manipulations of his councillor, or of how few in her family or Edoras’ court were willing to intervene on her behalf when that councillor’s eye began to wander. Her own feelings on it oscillated wildly between pity for others (never herself) and righteous outrage, though the latter was quite often accompanied by bouts of intense guilt that broke his heart to witness. The life she had been condemned to was full of more sorrows than anyone one person ought to have ever faced, and she had faced them all down at so young an age. That her own family had contributed to beating her down so thoroughly that she felt guilt at acknowledging the depravity of her circumstances was, to his mind, the ultimate in filial treachery. Even when plunging the depths of his relationship with his father, in the years when their fights had been near-constant and vitriolic beyond rhyme or reason, his absolute silence had never been an expectation. The conflation of duty with needless martyrdom by Rohan’s late king was egregious behind reckoning. 

And to hear her speak of the necessary conflict between duty to one’s king and duty to one’s own self stirred new troubles within him. He had spoken truly to Éowyn, even in his father’s weakened state he had few doubts that he would return safely—if a safe return was at all possible for the Host writ large—but what might come thereafter was frightful. 

In his youth, when he and his brother (Boromir! How could his own guilt-riddled heart bear the thought of him at a moment such as this?) had begged questions of their lore-master father, he had ever been insistent that it was the duty of the Stewards, of the House of Húrin, to do no more than protect and defend the throne until the King should return. But in those days, the King had been an abstract, in many ways less real and less tangible to them all than Númenor itself. Now, the King was not just a reality, he was a threatening reality. 

His father had never spoken of the tales of Thorongil directly. Of course, he did not need to, the legend had spread far and wide within the Kingdom, and remained popular even throughout Faramir’s childhood. His grandsire Adrahil had been especially fond of relating the tales, and Faramir had not gone long without knowing most of what the mysterious warrior had accomplished in and for Gondor. Once Faramir was older, it was his uncle who had filled in the gaps on the contentious relationship between his father and Thorongil. The lost love of a father, Faramir knew, was not a hurt that would be healed by time; it thus surprised him little to see his father react as he did now that Thorongil had returned, and named as Elendil’s heir no less. 

But lack of surprise did not necessitate the existence of tolerance. Faramir could understand clearly why his father behaved as he did, as he would likely continue to, without condoning it or even wishing to justify it. The irrefutable and irrevocable truth of it was that the King had returned. If the age of Men as a whole did not come to an end first, then the age of the Stewards would shortly conclude, and it would be better for all involved if that conclusion came swiftly, quietly, and with the reverence due such a long and sacrosanct watch. Anything else would render the House of Húrin ragged in the extreme.  

Yet his father appeared to care little for what would or would not condemn his line to abject humiliation and darkness—or if he did, his read on the situation was so deeply incorrect it would damn them all. The burden of preventing such an outcome, then, fell to Faramir. It was not a burden Faramir took gladly to. Often he had dreamt of proving that his father’s shortsighted and cynical politics were unfit for moral goodness, but it was not under these circumstances that he wished to do so. For he knew, though he was not yet prepared to speak the words aloud, that to ensure proper deference to the King and the rightful execution of the House of Húrin’s duty to Gondor would demand that he systematically undermine his father. Seldom had there been moments in his life when his respect (and occasional love) of his father had been so existentially at odds with his moral foundations. 

It demanded, loath though Faramir was to consider it in earnest, that he make preparations of a kind. Truthfully, Faramir was not inclined to believe that there was much chance of success for the gambit at the Morannon, but if there was, then it would not do to face the coming of the future woefully unprepared. That preparation came at a cost: all his life, Faramir had abjured the petty politics that had so governed his father’s world. Boromir had ever been more apt to it, less willing to see that it was those cynical machinations that kept Gondor weak, made her impotent and anaemic. But his father had been robbed of Boromir, and Faramir had been left in his stead, perhaps it was time for him to start behaving as his father had always wished for him to. 

He sat for a meeting with Lord Húrin. Éowyn stayed at his side, her good hand held within his beneath the table. They ate stale bread and drank putrid ale while he and Lord Húrin fretted over the blocked roadways in the Second Circle that were impeding supply runs and reconstruction work. It was a necessary, almost welcome distraction from the larger, less solvable issues. There was something almost meditative in the work: they were problems that existed in closed systems, quite literally bound by the City’s walls. Their solutions too would come from within the City’s walls, and their most potent aftereffects felt there too. If the problems grew too great, too egregious, he could still, potentially, simply roll up his sleeves and solve it himself. Not, he thought, that the Warden (or indeed Lord Húrin himself) would ever allow such a thing. But the possibility existed, and with it some comfort. 

Lord Húrin rose to go forth and enact their temporary solution. Éowyn watched him keenly as he left, but there was a quiet thrum of interest that surrounded her. Compared to the previous two days, when she had spoken to him almost as easily as she ever had, today had brought on an exceptional quiet; he saw no reason to force her to talk if she did not wish to. He turned back to his documents.

“You lead with such care,” she said, almost startling him. Her thought he heard a sigh in her voice. “I know that it should not surprise me, yet it does.” She tugged at the end of the single braid she wore; it had been fastened first by one of the healer’s assistants, but rapidly pulled loose as soon as she had seen him, and she had demanded he redo it for her. It was not, he thought, half as nice as the ones he had seen her do for herself, but it was certainly better than the one he’d done for himself. He made a mental note to try it more carefully later. 

“Care? I can imagine few who lead who do not care after some fashion or another.” 

“At that level of abstraction everything might be true. You’re eliding my meaning,” she said. “There is no hope for us, we face down insurmountable darkness, yet you speak of ensuring that the right stone is quarried, that the memorials to the war dead upon the walls are not disturbed. To show such concern at a moment such as this...” She looked away, and then he was certain there was a sigh in his voice. “If only we had all been fated for something different.” 

He looked at her, and for far longer than he would have wished, he felt the grief he had been forcing back. He so desperately wished to live the life he had once promised her: a home and a garden, slow, sunny mornings, and warm, easy nights. He wanted to have her as his wife, and he wanted to give her the comfort few others had thought to give her. Instead, they would be fated for something entirely worse. 

He swallowed. “Have faith,” he said, though his own grew increasingly weak. “There is hope for us all yet.” 

She granted him the small mercy of not pointing out how terrible a liar he truly was. 

Later, she came with him to see those of his men who were also kept in the Houses. There were too many, too many. In their eyes he saw the doomed defence of Osgiliath, the failed retreat to the Causeway Forts. His blood ran black and cold, and the effort of keeping his composure wore him thin. 

There were some moments of respite. Many of his men were less grievously wounded than he’d anticipated, some who he had been certain would not survive had proved stronger than death itself. Éowyn was perfectly at ease among them all, and in turn they looked to her (or rather, averted their eyes from her) as though she was great Anor above.

More than a few thought to mention what she had done at the Pelennor, and each time she smiled as she acknowledged them, though her smile did not reach her eyes, and her eyes grew more distant and reserved. It broke his heart to see. For so long she had spoken of her desire to be named among the glorious warriors of old, to claim a battle song or two for her own. Now, he was certain, there could scarcely be a recollection of the siege that did not include her contribution to it; her name, far from simply not being forgotten, would stay loud and bright in the memories of Men, until Men themselves dwindled or were snuffed out from the world. But he saw that that had not brought her the joy, the resolution she had been desperate for. In a terrible way, there had been a small part of him that had hoped she would come to see what he meant when he told her that war was cruel, unfeeling, and anathema to life. He had never wanted it to come at such an unimaginable cost, and now would have given all he had to take that pain from her.  

He did, instead, what little he could. For the first time since he had known her, the very gentlest of encouragements had worked, and easily she had done the rest. She kept herself close to him, often clutching his arm to her as if to hold herself in place. He sympathised with the instinct more than he was willing to commit to words.  

In the evening, it rained. The rain was thick, full of ash, and it splattered like black blood against the walls of the White City. By his estimations, the Host would still be in Ithilien, perhaps drawing closer to Henneth Annûn, itself now completely empty for the first time in nigh on a century. 

Tired though they both were (she noticeably more than he, though outwardly she appeared unbent), they did not seek out the comfort of their withered tree. As young lovers markedly more ill at ease with one another than they had ever been, they lingered in the long corridor beside the courtyard, watching the rain fall and finding that no words would come. 

Eventually, with a sigh at his own exhaustion and infirmity, he ushered her along to the room that had been given to him, but had rarely been used since she had awoken. If nothing else, it would grant them the privacy that he knew well they both desired. 

Inside, he released her to do as she would. For his part, he sat on the edge of the small bed, holding his head in his hands and making a vain attempt at pressing away his burgeoning headache. An endless list of names cycled through his thoughts, those who would follow his father unquestioningly into darkness, those who might still be convinced, those who had no doubt already been convinced. From that list, he began to siphon them off into separate containers: those who had gone with the host, those in Minas Tirith, those who could not be accounted for. It was a terrible business, one he had no wish to engage in. There were many evils in the world, but the evil of undermining his own father felt, in that moment, to be the very greatest of them all. 

“I am not vain,” said Éowyn after a lengthy silence. Faramir blinked, and the tangled web of his thoughts faded back into the night. 

“Perhaps a little proud,” he countered with a smile, but when he saw the grim look upon her face, he let it drop. 

She stood before the tall window in the corner. The dark without and the light within had turned the window into a mirror. Even dressed in the simple gown she had been given during her recovery, it seemed to him that she gleamed like the sun. 

“I do not wish to forever be a reminder to you and others of the war. I know that I should not fear for my beauty, not in a time like this, yet I cannot help it.” 

“Fear for your beauty? I would not fear for your beauty except in that it is so great as to be overwhelming to those of us who linger too long in your presence.” 

“Flatterer,” she said sharply, though he fancied he saw a smile. Still, she ran her fingers along the stitches on her face, and his heart ached. 

“There is beauty in your face, immense beauty, but there is proof also of your courage, your fortitude, and the strength of your love.” He reached out for her, and she came, her fingers soft and warm against his. “In your face, I see reminders of the war, yes, but I also see memories of a long springtime when love was all that was. I see hope for the future too, and I see a face that I love more dearly than any other I have known in life.” 

“Love I can believe, but desire? Surely there is little left to desire when I am thus scarred.” 

His laugh, which came quickly, was a startled one. “You imagine that I do not desire you? My lady, there has not been a single moment in many years when I have not desired you desperately, unspeakably.” 

“Even now?” Her voice wobbled as she brought his hands to the front of her surcoat where a series of short ties held it together. His forefinger stirred lightly against the lowest of them. The thin linen rippled around it. 

“Even now.”

Her hand combed through the hair at the back of his head. Her nails scraped against his scalp as she pulled him close. The air between them was honeyed and warm. She was honeyed and warm, and tasted of memories of happiness when he captured her top lip. She sighed into him, and he parted his knees to allow her to draw even closer. Where they touched, he felt heat blossom beneath his skin, as if the sun that had for so long been hidden from them existed only within her, and he could now be graced with its rays through her touch. 

“And always,” he said, and pulled at the laces that held her surcoat closed. Slowly, he pushed it off her shoulders, carefully manoeuvring her sling as he did. It hit the ground with a soft whoosh of air. He ran his hands up her sides, feeling the slight tremble of her body as he did so. He cupped her chin. “Long have I thought of your lips, the soft curve here,” he brushed his thumb along her bottom lip, “the feeling of them against mine.” He brought her face down to his, and kissed her firmly. “The taste of them,” he whispered, his breath ghosting across her skin until he kissed her again. “And they do not taste of war.” 

Next, he ringed his fingers around the neckline of her gown, loosening it enough to expose her shoulders. He kissed the old scars he knew well, and the new ones that tugged at his heart. All the while, he worked apart the fastenings of her gown, fingers tingling with heat as the end of her braid brushed against them from time to time. 

As he pulled her gown down her body, he traced the freckles and bruises that were exposed inch by inch. “Night after night I dreamt of you,” he said, then closed his mouth around her breast. The linen of her shift was rough against his tongue, and he shuddered as he felt her harden in his mouth. He shuddered again when he heard the quiet, needy way she whispered his name, her fingers tightening in his hair. “Still do I dream of you, and it is those dreams that stave off thoughts of war.” 

He raised the hem of her shift, running his hands along the superheated skin at the back of her thighs. Then, with a little more dexterity than he had expected of himself, he lifted her up, wrapping her legs around his waist. Carefully, he settled her in his lap, then brushed hair away from her forehead, leaning forward to kiss her again. 

His thoughts, entirely unasked for, reminded him of the bitter darkness of the night and the rough canvas of his cot against his back. The memory of her on his lips and under his hands, but little more than a devastating memory. The sharp hiss of his own breath as he took himself in hand, his cock straining, painfully hard and leaking helplessly against his fingers as he thought of her, her, ever her. Swift, artless, too-fast strokes that only fed the desperation for relief that would not come, just release that, in the end, only reminded him how very far away she truly was. 

“Éowyn,” he rasped, “It was the thought of you, you amongst this land that I love, that gave me hope even in the darkest of days in Ithilien.” 

Methodically, he began to raise her shift, exposing first her strong, pale legs, marred as they were by a kaleidoscope of bruises. He kissed her temple and dragged the shift up further. He kissed her brow and lifted it beyond her belly. The tip of her nose, and the shift went above her breasts. The corner of her mouth, and it went beyond her shoulders. 

When he relieved her of it entirely, he wrapped his hands around her waist, leaning her back in his lap. Her myriad injuries made his eyes sting, but beyond them, she was as beautiful as she had ever been, more beautiful than his memories could capture. He could feel himself stir beneath her, feel the building heat deep within him. “Do I desire you, Éowyn?” He kissed her as if to steal the breath from her lungs. She tightened her grip on his hair, holding him to her—the thought that he might ever leave was laughable. “Yes,” he said, his voice ragged. “Of course I do.” 

He held her in his arms, then deposited her onto the slim bed, stretching her out long against the blankets. He traced the lines of her body with his fingertips, watched as the goosebumps rose on her skin. At the soft skin at her hip, he could not help himself, he left a series of open-mouthed kisses just to taste the slight tang of her. 

More for his sake than hers, he bent his head to her, inhaled deeply the musky scent that was brought forward by her body heat. His mouth watered, and as he settled himself between her legs, he reached up for her hand, tangling their fingers together. His shoulder ached with an otherworldly pain as he hitched her leg up over it, but he could not bring himself to stop. Fleetingly, he glanced up and saw that she was watching him, her eyes wide and dark, her cheeks flushed, her lips slightly agape. He traced the line of her breasts, the gentle swell of her stomach with his eyes. 

Then he shook his head. “The day I do not desperately want you is the day I die—and perhaps not even then.” 

He did not wait for her response, just brought his lips forward and dragged his tongue through her wet heat. His heartbeat roared in his ears and he groaned at the familiar taste, that, at least, he had remembered well in his dreams. 

His own need was blinding, and the more he felt and tasted how ready she was, the less restraint he felt. He dropped his head to her thigh, catching his breath as he brought his fingers trailing up the inside of her leg. 

Slowly, he pushed his forefinger into her, gritting his teeth at the welcoming press of her body around his knuckle. He suckled at the wet flesh above his finger. Her thighs clamped around his head, and before he was deafened, he heard her try and fail to muffle a cry of his name. 

On and on he worked, relishing the sharp, unconstrained movements of her hips against his face, the warm quiver of her around his fingers, the feeling of her strong thighs wrapped around his head. Her fingers tightened against his, nails biting into the back of his hand. 

He could not hear her, but from the way she bore down upon him, he suspected he could make a passable guess at what she sounded like. His shoulder twinged, but he continued undaunted. The juddering of her hips only encouraged him, and though the pulsing of his own desire was nigh unbearable, he did not wish to take his own pleasure until he could prove to her what she did to him. 

Her release took him by surprise, not just for its suddenness, but for how differently it came to before. Her entire body drew taut as a bowstring, then snapped with commensurate intensity. He placed his hand against her belly, holding her against the bed, suckling at her as she rode through the waves. 

When they had subsided, he folded her into his arms and kissed the crown of her head. For a moment, he revelled in the warmth of her against him, the soft murmurs she made as her breathing steadied. His own took longer to calm.

“Éowyn,” he said, kissing the back of her shoulder. “This war, whether it is to bring our ultimate doom or not, has left its mark upon us all, and some will no doubt linger longer than others. But no mark upon your face, or grief in your heart, could change that my love for you is based in life alone. It is a vital thing, a growing thing, it cannot be bent or dulled by the Shadow, and even if it could, I would not allow it to.” 

He held her tighter to him. There were a great many unknowns, a terrible number of them. In the coming days, he would be forced to make decisions he could scarcely live with, and he would be forced to reckon with realities that felt anathema to his very being. Yet Éowyn was a certainty. The world could—would—spin off its axis around them, but he would always be certain of her. 

Chapter 37: Book III: Spring 3019

For two days, they repeated their half-hearted routine. They were two days that brought neither hope and joy nor desolation and grief. They were days that hung, as they themselves did, in the precarious balance between life and death. The air itself almost did not move, as if it too waited to discover its fate. 

The nighttimes belonged to she and Faramir, to the herb garden, and to the withered tree (if the weather held). The daytimes belonged to Merry, to Gondor, and to a rotating cast of harried healers and their enervated assistants. Some were quiet in their exhaustion, others were loud, quick and eager to speech. 

One of the rather hasty healers was of Imloth Melui, did not much approve of the fashions of Minas Tirith, yet approved far less of the fashions of the Mark, and thought Éowyn far too eager to leave the safety of her bed. All this Éowyn learned before she learned her name. That would not come until the fifth morning after Éowyn awoke, on the third bath she had been subjected to. 

It was not baths in general that Éowyn objected to, nor was it baths scented with sweet smelling salts or dried flower petals. It was these particular baths, with their water so heavily laden with medicinal herbs and salts and salves that her eyes watered merely to step within it. Far from bringing relaxation or soothing to her aching limbs and addled mind, the experience made her rather feel like some sort of boiled fowl, brining in the very worst of Minas Tirith’s often-ostentatious gastronomic regime. 

The woman often filled the interminably long hour dedicated to these bathing routines with stories that led to idle (but nonetheless cutting) observations on the state of Gondor’s culture. It was, Éowyn reflected wryly, not terribly different to how Faramir spoke, except that there was a certain precision and beauty to his words, and markedly more empathy woven within them. 

Éowyn learned her name partway through a winding, twisting warning about some girdle fashion that had lately become popular amongst the young woman of Lossarnach. Her name was Ioreth, and why it was relevant to a commentary on fashion, Éowyn could not quite decipher, but all the same she was happy for the knowledge, if only to put a name to the face of her jovial captor. 

“And it really does make it terribly difficult to maintain other matters of personal hygiene, for the skirt hems often catch on the metal terminals, which do hang rather low compared to the more sensible options,” said Ioreth, slathering Éowyn’s broken arm with an eye-watering herbal paste. “Though that does bring a thought to my mind, and you must forgive me and not think altogether too less of the care of these Houses for letting it slip my mind! I have been busy running hither and thither and am not well accustomed to caring for a lady of high birth such as yourself, you see; it is a very new task, though not an unwelcome one, save in that I wished that you had not been harmed to begin with…”

Éowyn’s thoughts began to drift elsewhere as Ioreth continued to explain—in a miraculously long breath—all the ways in which she was apologetic but also simply could not be blamed. The water grew colder around her, and she catalogued the remaining contusions and bruises along her body, still too numerous to count individually, though showing some progress in some places. On the whole, her skin still was more black and purple and green than white, though at least most of the worst grazes had at last stopped bleeding and had begun to scab and scar. She had turned her mind away from thinking much on her appearance; she had decided she was simply unsure of what she thought. 

“All this to say,” continued Ioreth, at last pausing to gasp in a breath, “Lord Herion was insistent that his gift be brought to you, that you were expecting it, and that you would perceive it as a great slight upon your name and repute were it not delivered to you forthwith. However, the Warden has deemed that it is unsuitable for entry into these Houses and has thus sent it away to the Palace of the Stewards.” She looked at Éowyn expectantly. Éowyn stared at the bath water, desperately trying to remember who Lord Herion was and if she had ever met him.

“What sort of gift was it? I had no expectations whatsoever of a gift.”

“I do not rightly know, my lady, for I was instructed by the Warden only to tell you that it had been removed to the Palace, not what it was, as we rather expected you knew as Lord Herion had made it very much seem that it would be so.”

“Ah,” said Éowyn, and did not say more.

This, it transpired, was entirely the wrong response, for it set Ioreth wandering down a winding invective against the presumptuousness of those who had lately dealt with the Warden and his healers, and the impropriety of giving gifts when they were neither expected nor needed. The topic was not dropped until Éowyn’s skin had been scrubbed thoroughly, her arm examined, rebandaged, and drawn up in a sling, and her (not hairless!) body clothed in one of the drab, white gowns brought to her—why she should have to wear those, when her own gowns were mere metres away at the Citadel, she remained unsure. 

She was then deposited, with neither ceremony nor fanfare, into the central gardens of the Houses. The day brought with it a sharp chill, but it fettered neither her nor the smattering of other wounded soldiers who sat throughout the garden. She recognised none, bar one, and her heart sank to see him. 

“Lady Éowyn!” His voice was clear and proud in the sharp morning air as he beckoned her over with a wave and a lopsided grin. 

“Lord Glórindîr,” she answered more tentatively, and came to stand in front of where he leaned against a small topiary tree. In all the years she had been acquainted with him, she had hardly ever seen him look less than perfectly put together. Even now, with myriad injuries marring his otherwise exemplary beauty, he still looked flawless. It was only after a moment that Éowyn realised he was dressed no differently to anyone else in the Houses. 

“You have my sincerest thanks,” he said, drawing himself up to full height. His head was bandaged and his leg splinted. He showed no signs of effort in fixing his posture. 

“What have I done to earn it?” 

“I was in the detachment at the North Gate of the Rammas behind the Steward’s company when the Black Captain made his charge. I watched you slay him, and know that it is to you that I owe my life.” 

“You owe me nothing,” she said, and looked away. Her throat tightened, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

“You will make a fine hero of legend with declarations like that,” he said. “Though I am glad to see you here as something a little more tangible than a legend, it feels as if far too many of us have crossed that threshold, never to return.”

Éowyn looked at him, and felt that even his attempts at grinning bravado could not hide the sadness in his words. “You have lost loved ones then?”

“All,” he said. “Lalaith is well, of course, or so far as I know she is. But the rest—suffice it to say they made their valiant last stands, and the Enemy proved stronger.” He brushed a stray lock of hair away from his head bandage. “I suppose I am Lord of the Pinnath Gelin now, or shall be, if the world does not end.”

“I am sorry for your losses,” said Éowyn, a little awkwardly.

Glórindîr waved her off. “It has happened before, and it will no doubt happen again. And it has been eight days since the sorry affair, plenty of time to mourn and move on. Anyways, there are sadder states of affairs in this City alone—I have heard a man claiming to be Elendil’s heir has come.”

“Why should that be a sad state of affairs?” 

“For your husband-to-be,” he said. Then, when Éowyn said nothing and showed no sign of understanding, he continued: “Well, without the Stewardship, there is little to recommend the House of Húrin. Old friendships, of course, might go far, but they hold no fiefs of their own.” 

“There is a swath of land in Ithilien,” said Éowyn, primly. “And land is hardly a necessary factor, those old friendships have sustained a Kingdom for nearly a thousand years, a little change in title could hardly be so dramatic.”

Glórindîr grinned at her. “A little change in title indeed! Now you are truly speaking like the wife of an imminently impoverished man.” 

“Impoverished! I should be careful saying things like that if I were you, there are many in these Houses who do not have a fraction of what you would call impoverished.”

“My,” said Glórindîr with a bright smile that was uncomfortably at odds with the grimness of their surroundings. “Not only have you become a legend, you’ve become a woman of the people! A fascinating change for you, I think.” He seemed prepared to say more, but was given scarcely more time to speak, for a great upswell of activity broke out in the far corner of the garden, closest to the Houses’ entrance.

At first, Éowyn could make neither heads nor trails of the commotion, its conduct, though jarring, was quiet. It was only after she drew closer that she began to piece together its cause. There had been some skirmish—where and with whose involvement she could not yet say—and the men who could not be treated at Cair Andros had been brought to Minas Tirith. There were many of them, most in dire circumstances, and supplies and labour were already stretched thin. 

Before she could consider her fatigue, or her sorrow, or indeed aught else, Éowyn pushed herself to the front of the throng of onlookers and had, using the very oddity of her being a woman amongst a great many men, entreated with the nearest healers to allow her to lend aid where she could. Yet their very undeniable lack was not enough to spur them to accept her aid, and their reluctance showed with humiliating clarity as they looked at each other and soon made moves to mollify and pacify her. 

It was soon decided that she could make no contribution without the Warden’s approval, and so despite the men who lay bloodied and delirious on the central rooms of the Houses, and despite her now-extensive experience dealing with such matters, she was brought instead to him. Feeling minimised beyond her station already, she plead her case with a slight tremor in her voice that might have been anger as much as humiliation.  

With a silent gesture while she spoke, the Warden dispatched one of his assistants to she knew not where. Then he asked her questions about her own health: had she slept (yes, poorly), had feeling returned to her arm (sometimes), and was she gripped by waking terrors (only when the world grew too quiet). All these and more seemed to paint some picture for her, but what that picture was was opaque to her, and she wondered at why it should be so hard to offer aid when aid was greatly needed. 

“My lady,” said the Warden after some time. “I do not doubt your competency to give us assistance, only whether it would be wise to give you leave to do so.” He looked at her carefully, and his gaze was not penetrating like Faramir’s or his father’s, yet nor was it unseeing either. “There are many valiant warriors who live entire lives of war and bloodshed without experiencing but a figment of what you survived upon the Pelennor Fields, and I have had many of those warriors in my keeping, and know that the ways in which they suffer are through more than just bodily injury.” 

Éowyn, knowingly or unknowingly, pushed her hand further behind the folds of her gown—he did not need to see the way that it still shook as if clenched hopelessly around the hilt of a sword. Yet for her fatigue, her actions were too slow, and she watched with despair in her heart as his eyes followed the movement of her hand. 

“There is a tremor common to those who have seen terrible battles—not all soldiers show it, and for those who do it may linger only a few days or months, but it is as telltale a sign as any of first-hand experience of war.” He sat behind a large wooden desk, his knuckles rapping the tabletop. “Many are practiced at hiding it, so well that it only appears at moments of great tension. Lord, naturally, is especially skilled, though I have noticed, of late, that it has returned,” he said, and Éowyn held his gaze, defiance hot in her veins. “Well,” he continued, now laying his palms flat against the desk. A scrap of paper curled against the wood as he did. “I would sooner question Lord Faramir’s capacity to lead than your fitness to lend us assistance in our time of need. I would ask, with what liberties you might grant me, that you come to speak with me once a day at least, that we might ensure that your condition does not worsen at cause of your labours.” 

“And if I do this, you will grant me leave to help as I might?”

“If you do this, I would be glad to accept your assistance.” 

“Then I will come to you on the morrow,” she said. “Where shall I go now?” 

In some ways, the work of the healers here was easier than those in Ciriel’s infirmary, there was simply so much of it, and its cause were so certain that it required little thought or investigation compared to the often frighteningly complex maladies faced in the lower circles of Minas Tirith. In other ways, it was far worse: instead of the occasional death, nearly half of all the wounded she tended to would not, she knew, survive the night. The injuries would be permanently crippling, and men who had made both their livelihoods and their names in the service of war would never again be able to hoist a blade aloft. 

Mortifyingly, many of those who were fully lucid knew her by name and repute, and insisted upon interrogating her about the battle at the Pelennor Fields. They pointed at her arm, still bound in its sling, and asked how terribly it hurt. They pointed at the gash across her face (which she had not and did not wish to see) and asked her if she feared it scarring terribly. With her hand drenched once more in blood and viscera, and the near-constant reminders of what she had there seen, it felt as if she had simply sidestepped life entirely, as if the world continued along one road, and she along another: parallel to it, ever in sight of it, but displaced somehow. 

Some of the healers who worked alongside her—ahead of her—took to ushering her on when it was clear the questions became too much, too intrusive. Yet despite this act of grace, something deep within her resisted it, as though the sharp clench in her stomach, the cold sweeping through her limbs, and the prickling awareness that she was not safe were sensations to be chased after. In a strange way, they were. Since the moment she had opened her eyes to the world several days past, the only emotions she had been permitted were grief and numbness, each in equal and opposite doses. That suffocating fear that crept up over her shoulders, like a cloak cast around her neck, reminded her that, to her very great surprise, she was indeed still alive. What purpose could there be in fearing death, she thought, if she did not feel some attachment to life? 

In the evening, when those who had rested during the day arrived to relieve those who had toiled during it, Éowyn followed the other healer’s assistants to a small room off the main corridor. There, as they all began to pull of their blooded pinafores and scrub clean their skin of the evidence of that day’s toil, the women (and they were all, to the last, women) began to entreat with her, pleading that word should be sent to those who had taken refuge in Lossarnach and Lebennin asking for additional hands to help in the City. 

Éowyn at first wondered at why they should ask her, for as little more than the ambassador from the Mark (and even that position largely usurped by the enormity of the war) she had no more control over it than they; yet her wonder was swiftly answered when one of the older women began to lament the postponing of her wedding. It dawned on her then that the women did not see her as the ambassador of the Mark, and did not think to see her as foreign or a guest in this land, but rather as the most direct link any of them had to the highest halls of power in Gondor.

Again, she was returned to her feeling of unreality, a thick fog wrapping itself around her. The women chattered away about how terrible it was that her wedding should now be impossible—and that itself was a thought Éowyn had not yet had—as though she were not there at all. With grim humour, she reminded herself that it was for that reason exactly that Faramir had negotiated to move their wedding forward to midsummer: it would have been a strong distraction. But now it would not come to pass at all, not at midsummer, not ever, and there was some strange comfort in that, too. She had found the discussions of gowns and guest lists profoundly distasteful when they had been foisted upon her, and now, at least, they would no longer be necessary. 

Once she had sufficiently scrubbed her hand and face clean, she returned to the central courtyard, and there found Merry, quietly perched atop a low wall, a book resting on his knees. He bid her keep him company, and she would not deny him after the act of unimaginable kindness he had done for her. Together, they sat and talked quietly, and after a time they broke bread for their evening meal. All the while, Éowyn could not help but notice Faramir’s absence, and fret about what might have caused it. 

Eventually, Merry grew tired, and begged his leave. Éowyn’s body still thrummed with the memory of nearby danger, and she could not yet bring herself to face her bed—not least because it had been days since she had truly been in it: she and Faramir had slept beneath the tree (or, with some careful manoeuvring, in his bed) every night since the first. The thought of being alone, truly alone, was one that held little appeal for her. Instead: she walked. Whatever Faramir’s task, he would now have to accommodate her within it. 

She found him not buried beneath his work as she had expected, but upon the high walls at the eastern end of the Houses, where there was an unobstructed view to the East, and where few passed except with purpose. Yet as she ascended the steps to the ramparts, she saw that he was not alone; Lord Astron, who she had not seen since before the siege had begun, stood in front of Faramir. They were speaking in hushed tones, Astron gesticulating animatedly. Éowyn, who had no desire to see or be seen by anyone, pressed herself against the wall of the stairway, hoping for respite from formal meetings.  

As she waited, she took stock. As ever, Faramir’s posture was impeccable, and his hands (one newly freed from its sling) were clasped tightly behind his back. His braid, longer now than she had ever before seen it, was untidy, though the familiar untidiness that she knew meant he had done it himself. Even in the plain, drab raiment of the Houses, she thought that he carried the air of some great and noble warrior king, caught between the ancient and the new, fitting neither perfectly, but not ill-suited to them either. 

It was a stark contrast to Lord Astron, who also seemed neither new nor ancient, yet as a matter of displacement rather than fluidity. He was dressed in his usual vibrant fare, and that too was entirely displaced from the grim circumstances they found themselves in; it said much about his character (or lack thereof), she thought, that he would think to wear such fineries even as the world teetered on the brink of destruction. 

Her hope for peace was quickly squelched: Astron turned and immediately laid eyes on her. Faramir too turned, though in his eyes she saw that he had already noticed her arrival and had elected to not draw attention to it. Again, she was reminded of the depths of her love for him. 

“My lady!” Astron’s voice was loud enough to make her wince. It echoed off the walls. “Congratulations are in order, I think! Your display of courage and martial prowess is nigh unheard of in all our many tales of valour. You must feel immense pride.” 

Éowyn bit back her first response. It left her with her second response, which was stunned silence. It did not deter Astron.

“And still you are as lovely as ever, indeed, I wonder that they have allowed you to reside within these Houses at all, would it not have been more appropriate for healers to seek you out in some other accommodation?”

“I am assisting the healers as I can,” she said. It was not an answer. It was not even a gesture at an answer, yet any reaction at all seemed to stop Astron in his tracks. She thought she saw him physically recoil at the realisation that she might be capable of speaking. 

“Well,” he said, clicking the heels of his boots together. He threw a halfway glance over his shoulder at Faramir. “I hope you will consider my counsel, my lord, and I hope that we shall speak soon.” His attention returned to Éowyn, though hazily, as if he was looking through and beyond her. “My lady, I wish you well in your return to health.” 

He departed. Éowyn felt a little breathless, as if she had taken the stairs at a run and not, in fact, been stood on the same one for quite some time. When she met Faramir’s gaze, he offered her a wry smile, though it did not reach his eyes. He held his hand out for her, and she moved as quickly as she could muster to take it. 

Dropping a kiss on her knuckles, he lead her to a nearby bench. For some time, they kept their discussion light, inconsequential in the scope of things, and paling in significance compared to the dark, treacherous clouds that collected above the Ephel Dúath. But at length, when she realised it was she who had been carrying the conversation for many minutes, she lapsed into silence. He returned to his sentinel position along the wall, his face illuminated in the pale glow of the moon.  

“The women who assist the healers begged me to ask you to send word to Lebennin and Lossarnach,” she said, a firmness to her voice that had not been there in some time. “We have need of more hands to labour, lest men in need of healing go without.”

“The call has already been made, we can only hope that it will be answered,” said Faramir, and though it sounded to her ears as though he had quite a bit more to say on the matter, he did not. 

The City was covered in a thick, black blanket. Unlike previous nights, the moon was visible. Éowyn thought she ought to feel gratitude at seeing it after its long absence, but gazing upon it sent a shiver down her spine. She imagined that the sky was a frozen tundra, the dark clouds snowdrifts raised up by years of punishing winds. She imagined herself caught between the snowbanks, pushed to and fro as shards of ice blasted her skin, leaving a cold within her that not even the sun could melt. In the caverns of her mind, she heard a sharp, fell shriek. 

She looked at Faramir and stood abruptly. 

“You are uncommonly quiet,” said she, coming to stand beside him. She saw now that it was not to the East that he looked, but down, out at the silent city below.

“I apologise,” he answered, taking her hand in his and brushing his lips against her knuckles was he head done earlier, though more distractedly this time. “I only wish to be careful with what I choose to say, hastiness will not be my friend in times such as these.”

She cupped his cheek, ran her thumb along the soft skin there, not quite healed, but better than the day before. “Hastiness may not be your friend, but I wish you to know that I always will be.” He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, brought her hand down to his chest. She felt his heartbeat, strong and steady, strong and steady, strong and steady. “And I would remind you that it was you who only lately censured me for being insufficiently forthcoming with my thoughts, I would hate to be compelled to label you a hypocrite.” 

“Would you indeed? Perhaps you are changed then,” he said, the barest traces of a smile evident before he sighed. Again his eyes sought out the buildings below. It was as if the entire city took a deep breath as he did. “There lay before me two roads, both alike in construction and quality; but it cannot be ignored that there are two, and I am someone for whom there has only ever been a single line, a single path. The roads, it is clear to me, travel in opposing directions, and I must now decide which one shall be mine.” 

“Regardless of which road you choose, know that you will not walk alone, for I will follow, if I can.” 

Against her expectations, he laughed, breathily, full of surprise. “Ah Éowyn, to know your love is to know the true glories of the world.” Then, his face grew very serious. “As you are to be by my side in all things: what would you have me do?”

“First you will have to tell me of what choice you now speak, for I see but one road before us now, and that road leads only to darkness.” 

He drew her first to him, kissing her brow, then back towards a nearby alcove that housed a stone bench. Around them, the faint sound of water trickling though the garden drain echoed endlessly. The breeze rustled the sparse leaves on the trees and the climbing ivy that surrounded the nook. The scent of lavender settled around her, and briefly she wondered where the host was then, how many days now separated them from their doom. 

“My allegiance is ever with Gondor,” said Faramir. “But how to faithfully execute the duty she is owed is a far more perilous question than I had previously accounted: for if my father is as committed to his pernicious vanity as he was ere he departed, then I fear his response to Lord Aragorn’s claim will require immediate and uncompromising mitigation. Yet for all that he is prone to superciliousness, he is undeniably among the wisest and most learned men of this kingdom, and I esteem him more highly than such a mitigation would allow. The choice, then, is between my father and Gondor, kin and king.” 

A muscle beneath Éowyn’s eye twitched. She had so desperately wished to spare Faramir from any pain alike to the pain she had suffered, but here it was, and arguably with worse consequences. “Are you so certain he will reject Lord Aragorn’s claim, if it comes to that?” 

“Yes,” he said. “He has committed himself to this crusade, and is not so easily swayed once a decision has been made.” 

She raised her eyes to look at him, not as she had done in the days since she had awoken in the Houses, with the haziness that allowed her to pretend this was all some terrible dream, that there was hope she might soon wake from it and discover that the world was not quite so evil after all. No, she looked at him clearly, and noted the darker smudges beneath his eyes, the half-healed scrapes and abrasions along the high points of his face, the uneven edge to the line of his beard, and the horrible, suffocating heartbreak in his eyes. 

“You have already made your decision,” she said. He said nothing in answer. She did not need him to. She could not ever truly know what thoughts swirled in his mind, not as he seemed to know hers, but in this, she did not need to. There was but one choice he could have made, any other would have made him another man entirely. “I suppose one of us ought to choose in favour of our king,” she said, and failed to smile. “As I was presented with that choice and chose against, it is only right that you should now choose in favour.” 

He looked at her with such grave tenderness that she wondered how she had ever lived when not in love with him. “It is a terrible choice to make,” he said, almost a whisper. 

“That I know,” she said, looking away from him. She was too tired to weep. “Is that why Lord Astron sought you out?” 

“Aye, though he did not have the courage to admit his motivations.” 

Éowyn turned this information over in her mind. She shivered. “How unnatural to dream of treachery in an hour such as this. Is not the darkness that looms on the horizon so great, so encompassing that there can be no other future? I cannot decide if it is optimism or folly.” 

“Nor I,” answered Faramir. “All that is left is to hope that come the morn, the world is healed of all its ills, treachery not the least.” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Neither Éowyn nor Faramir slept. Though some hours went spent together, as the north wind grew sharper, and the dark night more suffocating, they each found their distractions where they could. Faramir, having enlisted Merry, a young squire named Bergil, and two wiling healer’s assistants, had acquired a small stack of ledgers and missives without alerting the Warden—who had earlier proclaimed that the Steward’s son had been working so hard he threatened to ruin his own recovery. Éowyn, who had little patience for the wrongheaded optimism of accounting for grain and lumber stores, returned to help the healers once more. 

It was well that she had chosen thusly, for when she came upon the healers, she found that they had been struggling greatly with many of the Eorlingas, who were distrustful of the Gondorrim generally, but who were (understandably, she thought) wholly resistant to most offerings the healers made. With both language and culture chafing terribly against one another, Éowyn was quickly tasked with playing the diplomat and ensuring that the healers were able to do some of their duty. 

Room by room she went, translating and arguing and, when necessary, pulling rank to ensure that the men received some care. It saddened her heart to see how many riders had been gravely injured, for though she knew that any bodily injury was no less terrible in Gondor, she knew also that to lose one’s ability to ride a horse was, for the Eorlingas, a spiritual execution. As she worked, she found herself wishing desperately that she had Faramir at her side, for though she had no doubts as to her ability to argue with even the most stubborn of soldiers, she knew that he would know better how to soothe their aching hearts and terrified minds. 

Most of the men were housed in long halls, often more than forty to a room. The sound of agony, the smell of rot, and the sight of death was inescapable. The men housed within them showed no notice of the horror that ensnared them. Éowyn, meanwhile, felt a bitter, piercing misery for each hour she spent at work, and each time she was asked to recount—or attempt to recount—the incident upon the Pelennor Fields, she was struck by how singularly uncourageous she felt. 

There was but one rider who was given a room apart from the rest, and she kept quiet her sigh of relief as she readied to tend to him. Though that relief was short-lived, for her heart was saddened anew to see that he was a man she well knew, whose courage and valour were much dimmed by the cold stone walls that now kept him.

“Lord Elfhelm, I am sorry to see that you have been injured,” she said, and dismissed the two healer’s assistants who had come with her. Lord Elfhelm was a good man, but a proud one, and she knew only too well that his care would be made easier if there were no audience for it.

“Not as sorry as I,” he said, offering up a grim smile when the assistants departed. “But your brother bid me not speak to you of bitter tidings.”

“My brother is many leagues from here, and I shall not tell him if you will not.” 

“No, I am sure you will not.” He watched her keenly as she moved to examine his myriad injuries. They were terrible, yes, but he had at least escaped the very worst: there had been no amputations, would likely be none, and on the whole she doubted he would be confined to a bed much longer. 

After a time, he cleared his throat. Then, looking pointedly away from her, he began to speak. “There is…scepticism in the Mark about the circumstances under which you departed.” 

She raised an eyebrow at him. When still he did not look at her, she busied herself with uncorking the various salves she would need. 

“You must forgive me for speaking so frankly, but there are some who believe that neither your late uncle, nor your late cousin, nor even your brother protected you as duty dictates they must. There are some who saw the ease with which Wormtongue was dispatched and have taken it as evidence that he might have been driven from Meduseld at any time, were there a willing and courageous hand.”

 “I am surprised that there is time to spread such rumours between what I have heard was a devastating siege at the Hornburg.” She stopped herself just short of saying that she did not disagree with that interpretation.

“There is always time for gossip, my lady, surely you know that better than most.”

“Indeed,” she said stiffly. “For what purpose do you tell me of such rumours? Are you asking me to give my opinion on them? To excoriate my own kin for you amusement?” 

He raised his eyebrows at her. Some of the scabbing along his face cracked, and a small drip of blood slipped down his temple. “Your modesty, though no doubt befitting a lady of such noble birth, serves little purpose here. You know why I speak as I do.”

Éowyn was silent. If, for her silence, Elfhelm thought her a fool, then it was better than her speaking and removing all doubt of that fact. 

“My lady, there are those who saw—see—you as in every way an equal lord unto them as any other in your House, and they do not take well to such perceived slights upon their beloved lords.” He lifted his arm so Éowyn could begin to unwrap the old bandages. ”If in Gondor it is said that the hands of a King are the hands of a healer, then it goes unsaid but no less believed in the Mark. And there are many who saw what decline befell our dearly departed Théoden King once you were sent thence, and they believe that much of the woeful tidings that wrought misery upon our lands came because you were gone from them.”

“Surely you do not believe such nonsense—surely none can, in earnest!”

“Not in the way of magic, but that you were forced from our most hallowed and glorious halls while the Snake remained…that in itself may not have caused the crops to fail or the Hillmen to attack, but their causes, I believe, are not so dissimilar.”

“My lord, you forget yourself. Théoden King was as a father to me, and was your liege-lord, and my cousin and brother did only that which best served to protect me, to imply otherwise—"

“—My lady, you may chastise me as you see fit, and indeed as is your right, but if I, who has known the valour and strength of your kin, can now think such thoughts, imagine for a moment what must occur to those who have yet to see the integral might of the House of Eorl.” 

She stiffened. “Why should it matter what they think? And to me not the least? If all is not lost at the Black Gate, my brother will make an indomitable King. Fallacious whispers need not concern him.” 

“Were these different times, perhaps I might agree. But Wormtongue held the throne of the Mark in his lecherous grasp for three days while your brother languished, unjustly, in a cell in its depths. Confidence in the House of Eorl has been shaken, and indeed in the Riddermark in sum. Those in the West who felt too little aid was granted in their campaign against the Dunlendings wonder aloud why they must pledge fealty to an absent and weak crown.”

“And you suggest that at the end of days, when I am as bound to these Houses as my arm is to my side, that I might have some solution? What do you ask of me, my lord?” 

“Only that you might show mercy upon your Kingdom and do what you might to ensure the lasting strength of Éomer King and the House of Eorl.” 

“The House of Eorl needs nor desires mercy.”

For a moment, Elfhelm was silent. Then, he spoke. “Strange,” he said, an uncharacteristic sobriety in his tone. “Those are exactly the very last works Théoden King spoke to me.” 

Éowyn said nothing. Outside, the north wind howled. The final day had begun.

Notes:

You ever just think about the fucking wild potential implications of Háma's line in Two Towers? What a champ.

Chapter 38: Book III: Spring 3019

Notes:

Porn and some mild body horror ahead. I promise you they are totally separate moments.

Rain lashed against the windows of the Houses, so brutally more than a few of the conscious occupants wondered aloud if it would shatter the glass. There was no light beyond them, though Éowyn was not certain it was yet late enough for the sun to be considered tardy. Either way, its absence was keenly felt, and all the more so for the unrelenting pace of the work to be done. 

One of Faramir’s Rangers, who Éowyn had spent additional time with if only to hear tales of his captaincy, remarked with a dour look that it had been seven days since the Host had set out for Morannon. Seven days, he insisted, was long enough to reach their doom. Many of the injured men in the hall who had heard him nodded in grim recognition. There was no energy left for hysteria, the end of days would come for them unchallenged. 

Éowyn, undaunted, returned to her tasks. 

Hours later, the sun did indeed rise in the sky, though its light was stifled by thick, heavy cloud cover. The rain, at least, had ceased. In the middle hours of the morning, more women poured through the corridors of the Houses than had been seen in more than a week. At first, Éowyn’s exhaustion prevented her from recognising the strangeness of it. It was only when she came face to face with an unwanted ghost of her past that she awoke to the change. 

Lady Berúthiel looked thinner. Not just pinched and drawn as they all were, but enervated, almost desiccated. For all the proudness in her eyes and the sharpness to her posture, there could be no masking the exhaustion that now seemed innate to her. Yet despite it, she embraced Éowyn, kissing her brow and speaking vibrantly, enthusiastically to her joy at seeing her alive and active. 

The war had no doubt changed her; she certainly felt less at ease than she had in her youth, and her accounting of what was important in life had changed substantially, but there was no change in her that was remotely analogous to the change Berúthiel had undergone. Not even in the earliest days of their acquaintance, when Éowyn had truly been a foreign envoy, a daughter of kings and a newcomer to the White City in need of guidance, not even then had Berúthiel showed so much outward ebullience. 

It stunned Éowyn into silence. 

“Oh, but you must see Sedril,” said Berúthiel, and for a faint moment, there was enough of a glimpse into the fracturing of her act to utterly unsettle Éowyn. “She has gone to give assistance to the men yonder, and will no doubt be very pleased to see you.” 

For a moment, Éowyn remained unmoving. Habit fought rationality: never before had she willingly taken command or counsel from Berúthiel; but she had no quarrel with Sedril, and might even be quietly pleased herself to see the girl. 

She went on soft feet. Casting a surreptitious glance at the sky above, she wondered if the sun had leeched the energy from her bones to begin its hike to the pinnacle of the sky. A fair trade, she thought, she had little need for life now, and perhaps Anor might use it to light the Enemy’s path, that they might look death in the eyes when it came time to fall to it. 

Sedril, when Éowyn located her, was at the far end of one of the boarding halls, half turned away from the door. She knelt before a bench, and indeed before a man who sat on that bench. There were no others in the room. The man looked worse than most she had seen over the preceding days, gaunt, stricken, devoid of any will to live at all. With dawning horror, she realised she knew the man: Lord Glórindîr. 

He had made a good show of being recovered from his grief. Even Éowyn did not believe she herself could have built so strong a fortification against it all. Yet here was irrefutable proof that all his carefree cheeriness had been little more than an act. Alone, he no longer hid his tears, nor the heavy tiredness in his eyes. But then—he was not alone, he was with Sedril, and it was to her that he wept. 

Éowyn stepped away from the threshold. This was not her moment. 

In the courtyard, despite the comparative crowd of people that now occupied the Houses, she realised why she had been willing to spend so little time alone: her thoughts were poisoned. She felt—though she knew she did not—the pain of the morningstar as it shattered her arm, the splintered bone grating at her muscles and skin. She wondered why the pain should have seemed so great to her, when the Healers were insistent that her arm was healing quickly, that she would regain full use of it within a few short months, that there would hardly be a need to treat it differently to any other broken bone. She had felt the sharp ice that had flooded her arm when it had broken, had felt the shrivelled call of death in it as she had fallen. But the healers were wiser than her, if they insisted there was no more to it than a broken bone, then why did her thoughts insist it was otherwise? Could she trust at all her memories of that moment? She had, of course, been certain that she had seen Lord Denethor dead upon the field, yet he had ridden to battle mere days later—if she had made such a critical oversight in that regard, what confidence could she have in herself that she had not imagined the vast majority of it? 

She wondered if the things she saw before her now could be trusted either. She saw pain and suffering, saw it so viscerally it was as if she felt it, and that, she thought, could not be something she would contrive. The Black Captain, perhaps he had not been so great a foe, perhaps in her guilt at her inability to defend Lord Denethor, Faramir, her uncle, and even her cousin, she had concocted some angel of darkness to slay, as if that act might wash away all her myriad failures. Perhaps he had been no more than a man, and she no more than a weak woman, and their fight little more than the desperate final act of two condemned to a terrible fate for their sins. Perhaps her punishment for her delusions was to never know the truth of it all. 

Faramir came to her; a part of her, quiet though it was, reminded her that he would always come to her, that not once had he broken his promise on that. She said naught of her turmoil, but saw that strange, fey look in his eye, and knew that he had felt the outlines of her worry. He proffered her his arm, and in almost-comfortable silence, they wandered the high walls of the Houses, at times looking upon the City, at times looking East, for what doom they could not then name. 

The wind grew crueller, and Faramir sent for her starry mantle. To see it among a place of so much dread, so much pain, brought a strange hope to her heart. Such strange hope, that as he fastened it about her shoulders, she let out a breathy laugh. 

“Once, I thought you had given me this as a sign that you accepted me as a sister,” she said. 

Gently, he took her face in his hands, and pressed the softest of kisses to her brow. She shivered beneath the cloak, and tried to force away the tears that came at the thought of all they would never have. 

Side by side, they looked east across the land. She thought of the first time she had truly beheld Gondor. Then, it had seemed just short of an abomination to her, manicured and crafted to the extreme, nary a blade of grass growing anywhere that had not been accounted for by someone in some great ledger. She had failed then to see why it was so, why it had to be so. For three thousand years, Gondor had not just stewarded the legacy of the Men of Númenor, it had kept it alive. If Númenor’s downfall had been its hubristic lust for immortality, then it was only so because its fallen kings had failed to realise what glories lived on in the blood of its people. When she had first looked upon Gondor, she had not understood what strength lay within its people, she had not understood why the love and unyielding desire to protect all that was good in the world manifested as a need to curate, to order. But, looking upon the scarred and burning fields of the Pelennor, out to the distant forests of Ithilien and the mountains of shadow beyond, her thoughts changed, or else at last she understood them. 

Without realising it, she had clasped Faramir’s hand in hers, and in the warmth of his skin against hers, she knew that every decision, every sadness, every joy that had led to this moment had been the correct one. There could be no other person she would wish to stand upon the precipice of death with, no other person with whom she could imagine sharing that fear while in no way feeling weak for it.

“What do you look for, Éowyn?” She wondered to hear his voice, so steady despite the darkness that enveloped that.

“For Gondor,” she answered. “I would not have this world end now, or lose so soon what I have found.”

“Lose what you have found?”

“I have found Gondor itself, and my heart has come, as with all things, too late to this knowledge.”

In the farthest reaches of the horizon, a new mountain of darkness rose above the Ephel Dúath, then collapsed in upon itself, a wave as terrible and suffocating as the one that had taken Númenor. A tremor ran through the earth, shaking the ground beneath their feet. She held his hand tighter, her heart faltering in her chest. 

“I know not what in these days you have found that you could lose,” he said, and still she marvelled at the quietude in his words. 

She hazarded a glance once more at the mountains, and saw that the skies had no more answers for her than before. “Then you think that there is hope yet?” 

“The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny, Éowyn.” And he stooped and kissed her brow. 

It was as if Gondor itself let out a breath held overlong. Light streamed forth from the sky, she saw the world for the very first time: the waters of great Anduin shone like silver, and in the distance flowery Lossarnach glistened as the sun caught in a gemstone, and even Ithilien, which for so long had been so distant and full of terrors, danced green and golden against the sky. She looked out upon the world and felt it thrum in her veins, and she wept, and was glad that she could weep for beauty and for joy. 

And then the Eagle arrived. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn wobbled on her feet, caught herself against a nearby wall, and laughed gaily. Faramir stopped, held his hand out to her. His smile was as bright as she had ever seen it, and it made her head spin. She took his hand, twined their fingers together, then kissed him. He tasted of sweet wine and mirth upon her tongue. 

Eight hours ago, the world had been poised to end. Eight hours ago, it had not. A great, glorious eagle had sung the victory, its voice clear and bright against the grey haze of the sky. All at once, sun and joy had broken out, singing spilling out into the streets, and great Anduin glittering in the far distance. He had been stunned into silence. It had fallen to her, then, to speak. And she had turned to him, and with a heart overflowing, said:

“We stand in Minas Anor, Tower of the Sun. And behold the Shadow has departed!” She had brushed her fingers to the line of his jaw, and to see how beautiful he had looked then had stopped her heart in her chest. “I will wed with you, man of Gondor, if it be your will.” 

He had taken her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and in the time since he had not strayed more than a hairsbreadth from her. Through the endless parade of those in the Houses who wished to thank and congratulate Gondor’s Captain-General, he had stayed by her side. When he had called himself to the Citadel, all too aware of what work now needed done, he had linked their arms together, and along she had gone. And in the warm whispers of the evening, when all the City was alight with festivities (the formal ones, he had said, would come on the morrow; and she trusted him because he alone had the authority to make such decisions), he had swept her away from the Citadel with the promise of a celebration to match the occasion. She had not wished him to leave her side, and now, with growing amazement, she realised never again would he need to. She squeezed her eyes shut and laughed. 

“We will be married then,” she said once she had taken his hand. 

He laughed merrily, then caught her around the waist, lifting her into the air. Her arm ached as he did, but to feel his lips against hers, to hear his laughter swirling in the air, that was her soothing balm. There was a whistle, and she laughed once more, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. He set up down, eyes blazing, lighting a fire deep within her. 

Something—someone—appeared in the corner of her eye. She tensed, clamping down on Faramir’s arm until even her own hand ached. 

But it was no threat: it was a man, dressed simply and plainly, without even a boot knife visible upon his person. Beneath the collar of his tunic, she saw the edges of bandages, not dissimilar to hers, save in that they were thicker and of a murkier colour. 

“Captain,” he said, saluting Faramir with a shaking hand—for injury or drink, she did not know. “I wondered if I might ask for a dance from the hero of the Pelennor Fields?” 

A flash of pain crossed Faramir’s face, but it was swiftly mastered. He nodded in her direction. “It is the lady’s choice.” 

“Of course,” she said, and hoped that the latent fear in her voice was not as obvious as it seemed her. “If you will indulge a cripple—my arm, you see, is not yet healed.” 

“Nor my vision,” he said, and Éowyn saw that the grey of his eyes was cloudy and pale. She did not know what wartime injury might have caused such a malady. 

“What a pair we shall make,” she answered, and allowed him to guide her towards the fast-moving dancers. 

For a time, the man was quiet, concentrating intently on guiding her through the dance without jostling her arm. It was well enough, the sound of the reel and of the blood rushing in her head was enough to awaken the whispers of a headache. Still, from time to time when he found the courage to look at her directly, she conjured a smile for him, even if her heart did not wish it. 

“I owe you my life,” he said, after whirling her around a particularly fast series of turns. 

“You do not,” she said, through rote habit, her stomach churning. 

“No, before the battle, you healed my son, my son is alive because of you.” He looked away from her, redness in his cheeks. “We were fed well enough during the war, our houses kept warm as often as they could have been, our complaints could not be directed at the leaders of our land, but it has been long since love has been shown to us. Men can live on bread and water and a little sunlight, but without love there is little of worth in life.”

Éowyn found she could not speak. She was gripped by a memory of her uncle in the months before she was sent away; how the snake would monopolise his time for hours on end, and how he would look withered and greyed for his effort, but how some light would be restored to his eyes when she sought him out and sang the songs of old to him. Her thudding heart sent an unwanted thought to her: could she have prevented his death?

“When it was thought you had fallen in battle, my lady, it was said that in your mercy you had died so that others would not need to.”“And now that I live?” Bitterness strangled her words like ivy to corpses in an overgrown barrow.

“My lady, you lived and the Enemy has been vanquished. It can only be said that there is greater kindness in this world than was previously thought.” 

The song ended, and the man—whose name she had not learned—melted away into the throngs of people. There was a chill that nipped at the exposed skin of her arms and neck. She fought to bring her breath back under her control. 

There was another young soldier courageous enough to ask for a dance with her, and though he had no stories to tell, the experience again cut her to her core. In his eyes, strange as it was, she saw Boromir, and Théodred in his youth, and Théoden as he had been recounted in stories. She felt their absence sting at her like a hot brand, and blinked away tears.

Yet more dances came, and each with the reminder of all those moments of joy she would never share with those who had once meant so much to her. In her fear, muffled for the gallivanting reels emanating from the viols and lyres, she thought of her brother at Morannon, and wondered if he yet lived, or if he would be another gaping hole in her heart. The joy that had once filled her heart waned, like the shade of night creeping above the mountains in the East. She withdrew from the dancing and revelry, withdrew even into herself.

In time, Faramir found her, and, as they were not among the sort of company that might inquire after why a young man and his betrothed disappeared rather suddenly, guided her from the mustering hall that had been repurposed for that night’s celebrations.

For a time, they wandered a labyrinthine pattern through the streets of Minas Tirith, working their way back up to the Citadel. On the paths they took, there were few passersby to acknowledge them, and even of those who did, they were fast in their speech, more interested in returning to their own private festivities. For the first time, it occurred to Éowyn how very differently to his brother Faramir was treated by the people of the City. Whereas Boromir engendered the sort of raucous love in the people that was deeply familiar to Éowyn and her knowledge of warriors’ welcomes, the people seemed to look upon Faramir as though he were a king of old. She smiled to see it, for it was, in truth, the exact type of love and reverence he was owed.

Yet her cheer at this observation did not assuage the upsurge of guilt within her, as she thought of all those who should have been there to see the victory. She held fast to Faramir, and wondered if the guilt would forever be with her, if she might one day excise the feeling that the wrong people had been lost, that perhaps it was she who ought to have laid down her life in pursuit of this greater victory.

To her surprise, they came to the terrace garden beneath her apartments—the apartments that had lain empty since that terrible night when Osgiliath had at last fallen. It was as if the entire world had passed the gardens by, nary a flower petal nor ivy leaf was out of place, and small fruits had begun to bud on her lemon tree. She relinquished her grip on him, and carried on towards the wall that overlooked the City. 

At length, she looked in silence, though she saw little save for the shades of those she loved. They ran amok in her thoughts, the pain she felt for seeing them so sharp it was as if she had lost them all again. But the bright, brilliant cry of laughter and music that rose up from the City below draped her guilt in a new emotion: fear. Fear that victory would be wasted on her, that there was no place for her in a world without war. 

“Are we fit for this world of peace, do you think? We who can hardly conjure joy at its birth?” 

“I do not think we were made for a world of war,” he said, lowering himself to the grass in the middle of the garden.

“You evade my question,” she said, and wandered towards the low wall that overlooked the rest of the Houses. “I miss him desperately,” she said, and realised only after she said it that she could not be certain who exactly she missed. Her uncle, she thought first, for that would be right and dutiful. Her cousin, for he was ever as a father to her, and it would be selfish of her to not acknowledge that. Yet her thoughts went to Boromir, who had long shown her kindness he was not obligated to show, and who had been as dear to her as her own brother. “I cannot will myself to celebrate when I see his spectre in the smiles of all those young men, and hear his laughter in the songs of war now played loudly across this City that he loved so well.” 

“I know,” came Faramir’s response, quiet and measured. And that was enough to break her sullen reverie. 

“Oh, but here I speak of nothing but my own sadnesses, as if your losses have not been greater than mine.” She dropped to her knees beside him, taking his hand and kissing it. 

“There is no need for weighing and measuring our sorrows, one loss is equal to another in the pain it inflicts, and I would not have you return to your silences again because you imagine it brings some benefit to me.” He pulled her close, dropping a kiss upon the crown of her head. “I too am reticent to celebrate this victory when I know the cost of its winning, I cannot deny that. But I can take my joy in some things, and those things, I find, are enough.” 

She settled her legs across his lap, nuzzling her head against his shoulder. “What things are those?” 

“You, for one,” he answered, smoothing his hand down her hair. “My heart belongs to one who is more courageous and more valiant than the heroes of legend, yet loves more completely than even a poet of old might imagine. I will begin this new age, in whatever form it might take, with a wife who is not just my greatest love, but my truest friend. There is no grief strong enough to wrest that from me.” 

“Ah,” she said, placing her hand squarely against his chest, feeling the strong, steady heartbeat beneath. “Your words are as artful as ever.” 

“They are artless, I swear it.” He covered her hand with his own, gently pulling until they came to rest completely on the grass, her cheek pressed to his chest as they gazed up at the stars above.

“Do you remember the first words you said to me?”

She furrowed her brow. “I demanded to know who you were and why you were speaking to me.”

“No,” he said, laughter in his voice. “You demanded to know why I should have known who you were.” He raked his fingers through her hair. “As if it might have been unknown to anyone that your kingdom had sent an ambassador to Gondor, as if it was unthinkable that you should be recognised.”

“I was as much a stranger to myself then as I was to these lands,” she said, and sighed into his touch. “Though I laugh to think that I thought I knew sorrow then! How joyous and leisurely those days seem to me now.”

“I would have done anything,” he murmured, brushing his knuckles against her cheek. “Anything to ease your pain.”

She held her breath, feeling her heart thud in her chest. “Yet at what cost would it have come?” He frowned, and made as if to speak once more, but she raised her hand, pressing a finger to his lips. “It is done. There is no beauty in war, and what might have been done in my defence could not have been done by you. Come,” she said, “kiss me, and let me think of more beautiful thoughts.” She withdrew her finger only long enough that she could lean up and capture his lips between hers. Obligingly, he cradled her head in one of his hands, the other continuing his exploration. 

Moving slowly, he gently laid her out upon the grass, spreading her hair around her, fanning it away from her face. She looked up at him, watching the reverential look in his eyes as he traced the line of her arm, the cloth of her sling, the outline of her waist beneath her dress. 

In an instant, the air sparked like a grasslands fire after a summer storm. His lips fell upon hers, urgent and pleading, and she had not even the faintest wish of denying him. Her quiet noise of surprise quickly melted into something different as he dragged his teeth across her bottom lip, over and down her earlobe, the soft skin beneath the corner of her jaw. 

She could only murmur his name as he blazed a trail of fire down her throat, then across the neckline of her gown. His tongue burned her where it glanced across her skin, and where just moments ago she had been more concerned with her own griefs, now she could think only of how forcefully she wanted him, how desperate she was for his mouth to trail ever lower, to pull wanton song from her lips. 

His tongue dipped below her neckline, just low enough to tease at the skin above her nipple, but not to make the contact she was now so desperate for. She keened, pushing her chest forward against him, but was met only by his hands rising up the sides of her bodice, thumbs brushing and circling her nipples through the thin linen. She could feel them stiffening painfully against the constrictive fabric, and again pushed herself into his hands, badly negotiating the awkwardness of her sling and caring little for how obscene her behaviour was—his, she reminded herself, was decidedly worse. 

A drinking song echoed up from the street hundreds of feet below, and a breeze sent the smell of lavender wafting above them. She pulled his hair loose from its plait as quickly as she could with but a single hand at her disposal, and tried not to interfere as he delicately worked to loosen the fastenings of her bodice.  

At last he pulled loose the remaining fabric, leaving her bare beneath the great firmament. The air around them carried a small chill with it, but her skin was aflame, as if the stars that illuminated her truly were thousands of fires aimed directly at her. He looked her over for an endlessly long moment, then shivered, his eyes dark and needy. He dipped his head, drawing her nipple into his mouth and sucking, flicking the tip of his tongue across it until her quiet gasp broke the solitude of their moment. 

She felt wetness grow between her legs, then felt the cold air caress it as he trailed her skirts further up her legs. Weaving her fingers into her hair, she tugged him back up to her, licking into his mouth, feeling a jolt of lightning at the base of her spine as their tongues touched and danced. 

In slow, languid movements, they worked in tandem to pull loose the laces of his breeches. When at last they were opened and she could take him in hand, it was she who made the loudest noise. Yet even that was nothing against the noise of revelry in the City below. While he brought one hand beneath her hips, pressing her to him, she could feel the thrumming need that even his ironclad restraint could not hide. 

Trembling from the effort of holding himself back, he slipped into her. The air was still chilled, but she felt none of it for the heat rising in her body. Hugging him to her, she looked into the starry expanse above as he brought their hips fully together. She thought to let herself be blinded by the stars, the inky blackness that separated one from the other, to focus on the brilliance of the sky, but instead her thoughts were only of him. There was the stretch of herself around him, the warm rush of desire, and the sudden awareness of everything about him. She felt the roughness of his tunic beneath her fingertips, the ticklish scratch of his beard against her cheek, and heard the quiet, measured sound of his breaths, almost impossible to hear beneath the slick sound of him moving slowly within her. 

He braced himself on one forearm beside her head, and the fingers of his other hand slipped between them. Her need, once as loose and free flowing as the river beyond, grew tight and commanding. The feeling of him deep within her sent waves of pleasure through her. In haste, she brushed her lips against his temple, the high points of his cheek, anywhere she could reach. 

“Faramir,” she whispered, and rested their foreheads together so she could look into the familiar, unreadable expanse of his eyes. His answering whisper of her name caught on the breeze, swirling aimlessly around them.

He lowered his hand to her thigh, bringing her leg up to wrap around his waist. The change made her cry out and lit stars in her vision. Her heart raced in her chest, her blood pounding hot in her veins. She felt him thrust long and slow within her, but felt also the uncanny restraint, the tensing of his muscles as he held himself in check. 

But she had no need for restraint, and had every desire to crumble it within him. She brought her hips up to meet his, baring down upon him until she began to feel his whole body tremble.

The sound of the festivities covered her soft whimpers and his ragged breathing, the lewd slap of skin against skin. Her fingers dug into the fabric on his back, and the stars in the night sky beyond blurred into an incomprehensible tangle of light and dark. 

They had lived, she thought, they had survived.

Without warning, her whole body tensed. Pulsing heat slammed through her, her breath caught in her throat. She had sense enough only to cry out wordlessly, and then all else was lost to oblivion. 

Faintly, she was aware of him lifting her hips further away from the ground, coinciding with a loss of finesse in his movements. She heard something that might have been her name, then felt the erratic, juddering movements of his body as he spent himself within her. 

For a while, there was only the thundering sound of her heart and the cool darkness of the night. It was only as Faramir stirred, rolling onto his back on the grass, and then reaching out to bring her onto his chest, that she realised that the darkness did not feel half so suffocating as it did before. 

Soon, she was awash with myriad emotions she could not name. Grief and loss and sadness, but joy and excitement and, startlingly, hope. Hope that she would awake tomorrow, hope for the future. 

“You have debts left unpaid,” he said.

She rested her cheek on his chest, gazing sleepily up at him. “Do I?” It was only when he quirked his eyebrow at her that she realised he had spoken to her in the language of the Mark, and she had answered, on instinct, in the Elvish tongue. 

“You do,” he continued, running his fingers through her hair. “You gave me your word that if I learned the language of your land, you would tell me the tale that I have so longed to hear.”

She could not help her soft, snorting laughter as she buried her face in his chest. She had forgotten entirely the deal she had struck with him; it felt to her like a memory that was not quite hers for how distant it was. She laughed until a tear slipped down her cheek, then she shook her head, wrinkling her nose at the scratch of his tunic against her face. 

“Oh very well,” she murmured. “I suppose you have indeed held up your end of the bargain.” 

But when she lifted her head to look at him again, she saw that he had fallen soundly, heavily asleep. She smiled. There would be another time for the story; there was, after all, always tomorrow. 

Notes:

I was really slow on editing this chapter because I’ve been wasting all my time plotting out the sequel, in case you’re wondering exactly how batshit I am lol

Chapter 39: Book III: Spring 3019

Notes:

Sorry this is so late--I have literally no self-discipline lmao

Éowyn was hovering. Since she returned from her rounds in the Houses of Healing earlier that morning, she had been with him constantly, but only now had the air of her actions changed enough to warrant the term hovering. She trailed her fingertips along the documents that covered the desk. “And what will become of your father after the coronation of Lord Aragorn? Will he not be deprived of rank and status?”

Faramir blinked. It was neither an unexpected nor an unwelcome question, it was merely one he had not wished to think about yet. “That would be very unlikely,” he said, and wondered if it could reassure himself. He opened a drawer beneath the desk, pulled out a thick book and held it out to her. “You might find this enlightening.”

She took the book from him, scepticism still in her eyes, as if the book itself might physically attack her. “What is it?”

“An accounting of my father’s estates and entitlements, a copy of what was sent to your brother while negotiating your dowry.” He paused. “It is somewhat dated in that my brother’s entitlements are not included, but it should be sufficient clarification.”

She nodded. Faramir stood, and taking the latest dispatch from Lossarnach with him, he leaned against the large window that overlooked the City, giving Éowyn what privacy she might be afforded in such a crowded study.

“Land in Belfalas, Lossarnach, Anórien, Ithilien; numerous houses and businesses and buildings in Minas Tirith; cargo ships operating out of Pelargir and Dol Amroth; vineries spanning the length and breadth of Anduin’s course in Gondor; the liquid assets are practically nonexistent, but the land...” She shut the book and set it on the table. “Faramir,” she said, “why did you ever imply that you had nothing to give me?”

“My intended share of the estate was hardly befitting someone of your rank,” he answered mildly, continuing to rifle through papers. He had not been able to shake the feeling that it was (as his father had then said) his negligence in not bringing the dream to his father that had ultimately led to his brother’s death. To now take on the trappings of his brother’s rightful title was a bitter thing.

“It constitutes more land than my brother inherited in the Eastfold, and that is enough to make him among the more significant lords in the kingdom.” He felt the horror spike through her as she realised that she had misspoken: her brother was not a significant lord, he was the significant lord. “Well,” she said, her voice a touch rough. “I suppose your father will be suited very well indeed. And we will go to Ithilien?”

“In time. I expect the land in Ithilien will go to the Rangers and their kin as and when it is cleared, and Emyn Arnen is, by rights, mine, until our son claims it.”

She grinned at him. “Perhaps we should hasten that along.”

“To have our son put us out of a house?”

“You forget, my lord, we now live in a time of peace! What son would so undermine his father?”

As soon as the words left her lips, she paled, stiffened, and quietly gasped. Her words reached their unintended mark clearly, a direct hit on his heart.

“Faramir, I—”

“—Need not worry,” he said, waving her away casually. “I will not, I hope, give our children any reason to question their father’s judgement.”

“I’m sure you will not,” she said, but the words fell lifelessly between them.

Though Faramir was quite certain his father lacked any capacity for serious introspection at all, he could not help but wonder if, at some point in his life, his father had not hoped the same thing. Truly, in Boromir he had a son who knew the prudence of obeying a father’s word, but Faramir had never made himself amenable to that particular practice. Yet surely Denethor had not considered himself unwise in his judgements—disagree with them though he might, even Faramir was obliged to admit that there was, from a certain point of view, wisdom to be found in them. And certainly there had been wisdom enough to earn him the right to not be so unceremoniously undermined by his last living son?

There had always been significant political differences between he and Boromir, but for an agonising moment, Faramir longed to speak for his brother, if not for his allyship, then at least for an argument that might further clarify his own thoughts. There was little use in wondering what Boromir might have done were their positions changed; their positions were not, and if they were and it was Faramir who had been lost, there was some small possibility that Boromir might have yet been able to find words that Faramir could not to return their father to sanity.

Yet still it seemed to Faramir that there was even less sanity in what he knew he must do. Disagreements in debate were one thing, the treachery of a son against a father was quite another. And there was the undeniable truth that his father was intellectual and political scion of the Stewards of Gondor, important not solely because of their rulership writ late, but because of the shrewdness and wisdom of that rulership. On few things were Faramir and his father in accord, but that the Watchful Peace was a product of the careful deliberation and sensible governance of the Stewards was one matter on which they had always agreed. His father was, then, heir to that legacy, while Lord Aragorn was, noble though he may be, heir to a broken and ragged house.

But had his father not displayed the very hubris that had led the line of Anárion astray? Was it not he who had ridden to the Morannon against good sense, as Eärnur riding to Minas Morgul and dooming Gondor’s kingship? And was it not the Lord Aragorn who had, unlooked for and unthanked, served the kingdom in silent dignity, as the House of Húrin had for so many centuries? And still, though the Húrinionath had shown reason beyond measure in their Stewardship, it was not they who had led the Faithful from Númenor, and no realm—whether helmed by King or Steward—could sustain itself under the rule of a usurper.

“My love,” said Éowyn, her voice cutting cleanly and welcomely across his worry, “your anguish is written plainly across your face. I do not wish it for you, I would not wish you to face the same tumult I once faced, but I fear it will be inevitable unless and until you reconcile yourself to the truth of the situation.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. He had expected vague words of comfort or encouragement, perhaps an appeal to his father’s innate nobility. But then, he thought, Éowyn had never been one for such plaintive gestures, it was not in her nature.

“You kept safe in your heart your conviction that one day Gondor might rise above its dishonoured dotage, and in demonstration of that faith, you attempted to embody what that honourable Gondor might become. You refrained from indulging the cynical politics you saw as base and unbecoming of the kingdom you so love, did you not?”

“I did,” he said, setting the dispatch he was holding back down on the desktop.

“And now peace has been won, and the King will return, and this City might someday soon become Minas Anor of old. Is that not evidence that your steadfast faith has been rewarded?” She leaned forward in her seat, resting her forearm on the edge of the desk. “Faramir, none can doubt the strength of your conviction. All who look upon you see one who is as lordly as a king of old, one who is gracious, gentle. And that manner will be repaid generously in power and peace when the time for such things comes. But until such a time, you may choose to hold yourself above the fray and hope that faith alone will prevail, and you may choose to enter the fray and ensure that things more substantial than faith are at work, but you may not choose both.”

“It is not so simple as that, I have a duty to my father, to my kin, and a breach of that duty might prove to be a greater misdeed than mere passivity.”

“Oh very good! Mere passivity! Come now, we both know you could hardly describe anything you might do as mere passivity. And anyway, was it not you who once counselled me that duty flows in two directions? You owe a duty to your kin, that is of course true, but they—he—has a duty to you too, and to place what is right at odds with what is dutiful to your kin is as clear a dereliction of that duty as can be imagined.” She paused, flexed her fingers. “And I think you agree with me, though you feel obligated to make a show of uncertainty.”

He laughed, full of shock. “It is a dangerous thing, to have someone know you so well.”

“You understand, then, why it took so long for me to know that I loved you.” She smiled. “I defer to your good wisdom. He will not be my king until we are wed, and I have no heart for political ambition anymore. Your choice is your own, and my loyalty is yours too, if you desire it.”

Before he could respond, a firm knock came at the door.

At once, shutters closed across Éowyn’s face, her posture grew taller, tauter. He had not realised, though now it seemed so plain, how at ease she had been in their seclusion. He knelt before her, wove his fingers through the hair at the back of her head, and kissed her brow.

“You know that I do,” he murmured.

She, with the ease and grace of one who had executed the manoeuvre many times before, stood and walked behind the desk, resting her hand on the back of the seat behind it. Faramir took the seat before calling for the door to be opened. Briefly, indulgently, he wondered at how they must look: she arrayed in the glory of her terrible victories, he in the trappings of an office (however temporarily held) that linked him inexorably to the legacy of Númenor.

A messenger entered, dressed in the rich green and gold of Rohan. The clothing hung loosely about his frame, even the belt that hung low on his hips could not keep the fabric from overwhelming him. He glanced at Faramir only long enough to bow cursorily, then looked only at Éowyn.

“My lady,” he said, in the clipped, too-perfect accent that characterised the Rohir handling of the Common Tongue. “Marshal Elfhelm has requested a moment of your time.”

“It could not be avoided forever,” said Éowyn with an air of exhausted resentment, yet there was neither anger nor sorrow behind it. It was a tone she might use to address a minor inconvenience, a tone, he realised, he had not ever heard her use before. It was light, simple, almost unburdened, even in its frustration. His heart—quite at odds with what he knew was right—sang.

“If I do not see you before the evening comes,” said Éowyn, speaking only to Faramir, “do not forget that as the ambassador from the Mark, I am the highest ranking lady in this City, and it would be a terrible slight upon the dignity of your kingdom’s closest ally if you were not to escort me to the festivities.”

“As the White Lady wishes,” he answered with a smile. As she left, he let himself feel a small flash of relief that for once his word might bind him to something gentle and kind.

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Later, when the food stores had been thoroughly considered and the lack of labour to rebuild the City’s infrastructure sufficiently bemoaned, Faramir decamped to Merethrond. Unlike the previous night’s festivities, this would be one of austere ceremony, abstruse rituals and rites closely observed until all present were unable to forget exactly how much litigation joy required.

He was not inherently opposed to ceremony—more often than not it was he who spoke in favour of observation, and of restoring old ceremonies fallen out of favour—but there was a hollowness to that evening’s fare that discomforted him. Death was ever present, but so too was his awareness that renewed life had not solved all the problems begun before the war’s apogee. Through dinner and speeches (some of which were even his own) he bided his time, praying for the courage and discipline to mask his discomfort with grace.

Éowyn, now a sister to a King, sat at his right during the meal. But with a twinkle in her eye and whispered reminder that it was his duty to make nice with more than just those who already had his love, she turned away from him and delved into a conversation with Lord Golasgil. It was, he thought, especially cruel given how beautiful she looked that night.

She wore a gown entirely unlike the ones she usually wore. Though alike her typical fare the undergown covered her arms to her wrists, the material of her tunic (and this itself was new for her in how closely it aligned with the fashions of Gondor) was white brocade that shimmered like water beneath the lamplight. A looser sapphire gown of billowing silk sat overtop that, and capping that was more jewellery than he had ever before seen her wear. There was a thin girdle of of pure gold, a jewelled collar that seemed closer to pauldrons than a necklace, enormous earrings of gold that dropped like water, and lastly, a wide circlet, woven like the branches of a tree.

His heart had stopped when he had first seen her. For a long moment there had been no other worries, no coronations, no grain shortages, no imminent collapses, there was only her, and the brilliant, blinding summer she had beckoned into the room with her.

Her recovery, such as it was, had not gone unnoticed by others. The third son of the Lord of Midrimmon had even remarked upon it, as if seeking out an explanation for some problem.

“She has a strong spirit,” said Faramir, less an answer than a boast. “The spirit helps the body, and at moments uplifts it. It is the only bird which sustains its own cage.”

The third son seemed mollified by this answer, or at least so confused by it he no longer sought to pursue it. Either outcome suited Faramir well.

Despite these small victories, the bitter winds of reality shrieked through windows left open by wishful idleness, and soon people and politics and dances he knew Éowyn despised stood in the space between them. He was left to admire her from afar, as if that was the closest the world would let him get, as if she was the sun itself and he could not get too close for fear of catching fire.

He watched as she—her arm still bound in a sling and her face still brilliant shades of black, green, and purple—charmed the entire room as if they had never before known the hero of the Pelennor Fields. They had, of course, and though he had no doubt much of their enthusiasm was real—and profoundly bolstered by the excitement of their victory—he could not help but feel a sharp twinge of anxiety brought upon by his father’s departure. Cynical though he may have been about his father’s political inclinations, not once had he ever expected that he would show resistance to the rightful return of the King. Yet now he had done so, and that knowledge nearly unsettled all else Faramir was willing to know or believe about Minas Tirith. His father had attested time after time to the nobility and humility of the Stewards, but in one single, reckless act threatened to destroy it all. What other lies lurked beneath the surface of the White City?

He tried as well as he could to put it from his mind. He did not, however, turn his thoughts to more joyous matters; the losses at the Pelennor Fields had been unspeakable, and though he was quite certain many of the missing faces were those of lords who had gone to the last stand at the Morannon, he almost quailed at the realisation that many of the young men in the room had, while nursing injuries of their own, abruptly inherited their fathers’ titles. It was a social and political upheaval the likes of which Minas Tirith had not seen for many centuries. Worse still than the barely-concealed survivor’s guilt that cloaked the room was the knowledge that Faramir now understood the lay of the land here no better than if he had been truly foreign to it. This city that had, for better or for worse, been his since birth, was now as a stranger to him.

He thought of Éowyn, estranged from not one but two homes, forced to live and make do in a city that was not just foreign to her, but often actively hostile to her. He looked at her now, saw how even those who had once been sceptical of her could not truly hide the admiration in their eyes, how it was the people of this city who had regarded her as their patron martyr when they thought her dead. He blenched, then, to think that he had ever thought her sadness anything less than his uttermost priority.

And yet once again he could not make her that, because infinitely less deserving things demanded his attention.

A tugging feeling in the back of his mind told him this was inevitable. His father, reckless as he was, was not entirely a fool. He no doubt knew that his words and his actions would be taken as a mustering point for those who feared their power and stature was put at risk by the King’s return. That it was Astron who had stepped first from the shadows to play this dangerous game surprised him even less.

He accepted Astron’s invitation to take the air at the westernmost balcony, and on the short journey across the expanse of Merethrond’s main hall, he tried not to make lists of which lords present would come to commit acts of treachery against Gondor herself. How many would turn against the King? Enough to cause a new Kinstrife?

“There has been a great deal of change lately,” said Astron, once cloaked fully in the springtime darkness. “Too much, perhaps.” He set his cup down on the balustrade. It was empty, dry enough to have never been full.

Faramir let his words lie. In the distance, a nightingale sang sweetly. The birds had returned to the City seemingly overnight. They nested in the collapsed houses, chirped lullabies above the remains of the dead, dripped their feathers over the caravans that steadily returned from Lossarnach.

“We are all, of course, devastated by the death of your brother, there could hardly be a greater loss for Gondor or her people.”

“In that we are agreed,” said Faramir tightly, watching wispy black clouds race across the sky. His own cup was neither dry nor empty.

“The loss of your father at the helm of this kingdom would be another tragedy. Do you not agree?”

In a different time, a time when Boromir was alive to bear the brunt of responsibility, when Faramir’s duties were to his men, himself, and his heart alone, he might have laughed at Astron’s shamelessness. But this was not a different time, and his responsibilities were now too numerous and too great to indulge the man he had once been. Instead, he was forced to accept Astron’s artless words for what they were: a threat and a promise.

Éowyn was, of course, right. Faramir could no longer afford to deny the inevitable, to delay making a decision on a choice that had been so plain before his eyes since the moment his father had first spoken of departing Minas Tirith. He did not have to like the politics of cynicism to know that he could no longer afford to ignore them.

“Will you do your duty to your farther? Will you stand in your brother’s stead and see the Stewardship defended?”

The drums of war could beat no louder upon this new battlefield. The miserable facts could be no clearer. It was for his negligence that Boromir was sent to Imladris, and to his death; now it would be Faramir’s own terrible conviction that would force him to again cleave father from son. There were no other possibilities: he could no more stand against the King than could he stop his own heart from beating.

“I am my father’s son,” said Faramir.

Astron reached out, fingers extending like the tendrils of a slow moving frost across a shrouded forest. He touched Faramir’s shoulder, each fingertip drumming down with marginally greater force than the last. To anyone who might observe it, it could easily be concealed as a friendly gesture. But Faramir felt the jolts of pain that ripped and tore through his wound where Astron’s hand pressed into it.

“Let us hope that that is true,” he said. “It would not do to forget who it was that carried the flame of Númenor when the line of Isildur fell to ignominy.” He departed, swift and silently, a snake moving in the night.

Again, Faramir wanted to laugh. There was an absurdity to this evilness that even he had not anticipated. In all his conscious years he had been as close to a pariah as become the son of the Steward precisely for his memory of Númenor’s legacy. It was he who had carried it in his heart, bright and sharp and glorious when all else had fallen to darkness; it was he who had called time and time again for a return to the nobility of the land that once was. And all the while, it was men like Astron—often Astron himself!—who had derided him as an idealist, a naïve. Now that Astron stood to lose even a negligible amount of prestige for the reunification of the northern and southern kingdoms, now he took an interest in the legacy of all that was lost beneath the Sundering Seas? Faramir almost shook for how great an effort it required to not laugh cold and bitterly in his face.

The remains of the evening, such as they were, were not tainted by Astron’s underhanded manoeuvring. In fact, Faramir almost felt a sense of liberation in it all: Astron, in his indelicacy, had confirmed what Faramir had suspected, and ultimately freed jimmy from the tyranny of the unknown. There would be a resistance to Lord Aragorn’s claim, and there would be a need for Faramir to do what he must.

He danced twice more. Once, with the young Lady Sedril, and once with Lady Helwanís, wife of Lord Amathluin. There were otherwise few ladies in attendance, and he felt some liberty to not dance at all without fear of causing offence. Éowyn, meanwhile, moved from partner to partner with ease, and though he did worry for her fatigue, she showed no signs of slowing or of discomfort.

The night continued until it came to an end, which was ultimately the most interesting thing to be said about the remains of the evening. He took his leave when Éowyn did, under the pretences of accompanying her back to the Houses of Healing—which she had not yet been granted a full discharge from. It was the very flimsiest of excuses, but the hour in which they departed was so late, there were few left sober enough to notice it.

What was marginally less excusable was how readily Faramir followed when Éowyn made for the Stewards’ Palace, not the Houses. Quickly, contending with some mild inebriation as he did, Faramir made some mental calculations and decided that the potential for being scolded by the Warden was more than a reasonable trade-off for the far more appealing potentials that awaited if he kept his mouth shut and followed.

“Your father’s allies appear to underestimate you,” she said, slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow.

“I have long known that, but I am surprised to hear that they would divulge that to you, of all people.”

“Well, they didn’t, not as such,” she said. ‘But the daughter of the Lord of Aerthir made the mistake of making a weakly critical comment about my attire, and Berúthiel responded with such force one might be forgiven for thinking she has not been my greatest adversary for years now.”

“You believe that be a sign of her underestimation of me?”

“Of course it is,” she said blithely. “It is no doubt a sign that they think your allegiance might yet be bought, and that you and I alike might be bought by trifling flattery.”

Now passing through the doors to the Stewards’ Palace, Faramir stopped long enough only to dismiss the servants for the evening. The quieter the place, the less risk involved—there would be discussions to come that he did not wish to share with anyone but her. But as he issued his household commands, he could not help but be potently aware of Éowyn, how blinding her beauty was, how even after hours of draining activity, there was still a heady energy that thrummed from deep within her.

The last servant dismissed for the night, they turned down the easterly corridor, the burden of outside observation now slightly lessened. “Perhaps they intend to strike not only with flattery—Astron implored me to hold myself to my duty to my father.”

Éowyn laughed, though it rang nearly hollowly. “Then I am glad we spoke as we did this morn!”

Faramir stopped, wrapped his fingers around Éowyn’s wrist, and gently tugged her to him. “What was it we spoke of this morning? I seem to have forgotten.” His voice was light, teasing, yet when he raised his hand to brush his thumb along her bottom lip, there was a languid heaviness to the air around them.

She responded in kind, lifting up on her feet to kiss him. He intended to tease her only, but she pushed him back against the wall—a little indelicately—and he found he could conjure no will to hinder her. She tasted faintly of the wine they had had that evening, though while in his cup it had tasted like the dregs of a bad vintage, on her tongue it was sweeter than even the finest ice wines of Lebennin.

“Something political,” she gasped, pulling away to catch her breath. “Inconsequential.” She leaned up again, dragged her teeth across his bottom lip, then ran her tongue across the soft hurt. There was almost no blood left in his head.“I seem to remember something about hastening the arrival of a son,” she continued.

“You ought to be careful with talk like that,” he said, tracing the curve of her spine with his fingers, seeking out the fastenings on even one of her various gowns. “The reputation of a lady of your rank must be preserved.”

She laughed breathily, then reached behind to guide his hand to its destination. Warmth coiled deep and low within him as he began to tug at the silk laces. “You might have thought of that a year ago; but it is no matter, on the wings of your wisdom I have secured my reputation by securing it with the people of this good City.”

It was as if a bolt of violent lightning had struck him.

“The people of the City—" He cut himself off, his mind spinning out wildly.

Again he took her by the hand, though now he took off down the corridor. Discordant thoughts suddenly, magnificently began to fall into place in his mind. There were things he still needed to confirm, but her words had unlocked a terribly important realisation for him.

“Faramir,” called Éowyn, a heavy dose of surprise in her tone. “Where are you going?”

“I have had a thought,” he said, counting the doors until the one he was looking for.

“I am quite sure you have had many,” she said. “But I hardly see why that should require you to leave?”

“Not leave, or not for long, but I should like somewhere to think where I am not so distracted.”

Her laughter came lightly through the corridor, easier and more fulsome than he thought he had ever heard it. “Shall I leave you to it then? Will I not be a distraction?”

“Not if you do not wish to.” He held the door to the library open for her and only barely registered her frown. He caught her by the wrist, kissing the inside of it. “You are always a distraction to me, but you are also always my best companion, and I will brook a little distraction for your good counsel.” Her frown melted away, replaced by a barely concealed smile.

“Very well then,” she said, and moved to sit at a small table beside the far window.

Faramir began to pace, lapsing into silence as he worked to untangle thought from thought. He had missed the obvious—had forsaken his own counsel in favour of further complicating an already complex situation. He needed to slow his thoughts, to take careful stock of the circumstances and to ensure that each move he made, each argument he progressed, could be cleanly and concisely justified. Astron’s words had accelerated to overall problem, yes, but they need not compel him to make unforced errors. It was still he who maintained the upper hand, and he, therefore, who could afford to move slowly, conscientiously.

“My love,” said Éowyn, and it was only as she spoke that he realised he had been quiet for quite some time, long enough for the fire in the fireplace to begin to grow dim. “Will you not enlighten me at least generally to your thoughts?”

“Yes, yes of course,” he said, and stooped to add another log to the fire. “Elendil, Anárion, and Isildur led the Faithful from Númenor to Middle-Earth, a deed that should not lightly be discounted. But they did not traverse the Sundering Seas alone, and it was only for the goodness and righteousness of the common people, the lay folk of Númenor that they had any realm at all to rule over upon their disembarkation. There could be no king without subjects, and yet it was for the folly and decadence of the kings that Númenor fell to darkness at all.”

He stopped moving and turned to look out the window at where only the faintest flickering hinted at life in the City below. He turned on his heel and began to pace again. “And was not that truth recognised in Gondor of old? Did not the Kings of Gondor seek the legitimacy and consent of their people ere they raised the crown and sceptre?”

“Did they?” Éowyn tugged at the beaded veil that fell from her circlet and spilled over her shoulders in heavy golden and jewel-toned waves. The circlet did not move.

“They did,” he said. He stopped, scraped his nails through his beard—it was now far, far too untidy. Then, on the wings of an idea, he spun once more and descended upon a shelf at the far side of the room, searching near-blindly for a book he had not touched in more than a decade.

In the far edges of his vision, Éowyn conceded her fight with the circlet and simply pulled it from her head, letting it fall unceremoniously to the table beside her.

“Ah, good,” said Faramir, when he at last retrieved the text he had been searching for. With long strides, he returned to the table, brushing aside Éowyn’s circlet and depositing the book between them. He opened the book, a little more energetically than he would have wished to. The pages dripped aside, coming to rest upon the exact one he had been searching for—the pages, it seemed, had learned from habit: they had spent many days in Faramir’s youth open in this position as he argued bitterly with his father.

“Yes, see,” he said, pointing at the lines he had almost memorised. “My father believes that it was a matter of mere ceremony, that it was likely that the coronations were filled not with the common man, but with soldiers that had served under the ascending king and were personally loyal to him.”

“Your father argues precisely what this book argues?”

“My father authored this book,” said Faramir quickly. “But as I have long said to him, he is far too cynical: ceremony can only protect so much, there were many years of hardship and insecurity during the reign of the Kings, to ensure that there was genuine consent and affirmation of a king’s rule would be a powerful symbol, one that could not be so easily discounted.”

“How did your father find time to author a book?”

“It was done before the death of his father.” Faramir turned around, moving to stand near the growing warmth of the fire, resting his hands against the mantelpiece and stretching his back. “My father will be bound by the traditions of this land. A claim has been made, and its legitimacy can be verified—to a point.” His thoughts raced faster than his tongue could run. There were so many contingencies to account for, so much possible weaknesses. Yet if he could ensure that the margin of error was large enough, there might be no problem…

“But there is the problem of Fíriel, is there not?”

His head snapped up and he looked at Éowyn. She flipped through the pages of the book as if she had merely remarked on the weather, not raised a question of unspeakable importance. “The Fíriel problem,” he said, a little too excitedly. “What do you make of it?”

“Well, Arvedui pressed his claim through both his relation to Isildur and his wife’s to Anárion, did he not? Yet he was rejected on both counts and was sent from Gondor to the North. Is Lord Aragorn’s claim not ultimately the claim of Fíriel’s as much as Arvedui’s? Is there not cause enough to reject it much the same?”

Faramir fell silent, his thoughts finally, mercifully cohering into something penetrable. It felt as if all there had been thick grey clouds blanketing his mind that had instantly been obliterated by the singing sun. He envisioned each contingency as a brick in a wall, effortlessly sliding together for the perfection of its crafting.

“Or perhaps not,” said Éowyn, her voice growing quieter, less assured. “It was only a thought, and I know the tale only from what you have told me, perhaps I have misinterpreted your words—”

“—No! No, you most certainly have not! No, you understood perfectly, and what’s more, you have cut a path of inestimable perfection for us through an otherwise dark and twisted wood.” He dropped to his knees before her, took her face in his hands, and kissed the golden, tousled crown of her head. “Éowyn,” he said, “thank you.”

Chapter 40: Book III: Spring 3019

Notes:

Thanks as always to Kim for encouraging my anti-Eorl crusade lmao

The night had become a desperate attempt to clutch at an indulgence Éowyn knew they would not be granted much longer. Laureled as they were in the uncommon joy of victory, even she could not escape the occasional barbs and judgements of the few ladies present with respect to her flagrancies with Faramir. Some of their behaviour might be excused as a natural reaction to the heady relief of victory, but time to use that excuse was running out. The time would soon come for them to behave with more decorum than they had before—a bitter pill, though at least there would soon be a date on their marriage, not an interminable, eternal prolonging of their separation. 

The fire crackled low behind the grate, occasionally sending sparks tumbling onto the flagstones below. There was no other sound beyond the soft sounds of Faramir’s breathing, steady, even in sleep. Éowyn kept her silent watch. 

Faramir had fallen asleep hours prior, there, leaning against her legs while she sat in the plush chaise, listening to him detail and refine  plans to save Gondor, to save his father, to pay penance for all his perceived wrongs. And though at times she scarcely understood his words, always did he pause to ask her thoughts, to listen to what she had to say, to seek her assent and her counsel. This was his custom in all things; to hear and to trust her, to treat her as he thought someone of her status ought to be treated. It was why she loved him, why she was unable to imagine life without him. 

It made her angry. 

Faramir made her privy to the innermost workings of his thoughts with so much ease it was as though it was the most natural thing in the world. And perhaps to him it was, yet all Éowyn could do was think about those for whom it did not come easily: her uncle, her cousin, her brother. Even in the last moments of the world, when truth was all she had asked of them, they had still chosen silence and obfuscation, even when it had come at cost of having her in their lives. All her life she had longed only for the respect that was due her station, to experience life—sorrows and joys—without eyes forcibly blindfolded by those she loved most. 

And now others had seen what consequences their choices had wrought, and it was Éomer who risked losing what he loved. Forcing down the feelings of bitterness and resentment that filled her at the thought of the choice her kin had made, Éowyn felt a sort of dazed anger she could not quite articulate. To learn that her uncle had been puppeted, in life as well as death, by the Snake had been upsetting but not surprising. To learn that Wormtongue had later been despatched with little more than a word from the King sent her swirling into a spiral of fury. Had it always required so little to rid themselves of him? In the very worst days of his prowling, had all they needed to do was speak firmly and call for his exile? If that had been all that was required then, why had it none been done? Why had the madness and the suffering been allowed to continue for so many years? Why had she been made to suffer all those years, as if suffering were itself some great and noble act? 

Though Éowyn had suffered many hurts in her life, vindictiveness did not come easily to her. She did not wish it to. Nor did she wish, however, to find herself once again in a position where her life and well-being were dependent on the benevolence of those who had showed they did not consider such things their priority. She had learned in the most painful way imaginable that vanishingly few people in the world would pay any mind to her security if she did not do it first; it was not a lesson she intended to learn twice. 

She fidgeted in the chaise, carelessly waking Faramir as she did. Here though his long years as a Ranger came to his aid, for he stirred only long enough to lift her from the seat, bring himself down in it, and then settle her halfway at his side and halfway strewn across his lap. Within minutes he was asleep again, as if he had not moved at all. 

With her head pressed against his chest, the steady beating of his heart was all she could hear. Even now, even after months of knowing that at the end of it all she could still trust him, it still left her a little breathless to think that that could be true. She knew that at any moment she could wake him, tell him of her worries, and he would listen to her. 

For Éowyn, sleep would not come for many hours. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

She awoke in the early hours of the morning, when the dawn light only barely illuminated the dust mites that danced in the library. It had not been her intention to wake up then, and indeed she had been quite comfortable still curled into Faramir’s side (even as he had risen an hour or so earlier, reading to pass the time), but the arrival of a servant had made the choice for her. 

She had barely opened her eyes when the servant passed a letter to Faramir—over her head, she noted with some sense of waning dignity—and quickly departing the room. For a time, Faramir read silently, stroking her hair as he did. Then, rather suddenly and with no lack of showmanship, he sighed and let the letter drop to the floor beside the chaise. She sat up, turning a half-revolution in his arms to face him. 

“My father lives,” he said, then looked surprised to hear the bitterness in his own voice, though Éowyn found that in her heart she could only sympathise with it. “He will return to Minas Tirith five days hence, Lord Aragorn and your brother will remain in Ithilien, upon the field of Cormallen.”

It was the first formal confirmation she had that her brother lived. Of course, she had more than rationalised that having heard no news of him was good news, for it meant that he had not fallen and passed into legend, but she could not help the strange, conflicted relief that washed over her. She turned her thoughts to more pressing matters. “Five days? Slower than you estimated, then, surely that brings you some comfort?” 

“In some measures, yes,” he said, punching the bridge of his nose in a gesture that told her that those measures did not hold the balance. “But there is now a clear end to all things—or most things—and it will require careful, swift work. Work that, as we have discussed, will fall almost entirely on you, if you are still willing to take up this burden.”

“Of course I am,” she answered quickly. 

“Five days is not long” he said, as if to discourage her. 

“Five days ago we stood on the brink of despair, now look where we stand,” she reached up, running her thumb across the high points of his cheek, carefully to no press too hard on the lingering bruises. “Five days will be time enough.” 

“If you are certain.” 

“I am not,” she said, with more honesty than she had felt the comfort to have in months, of not years. “But I trust you, and I trust in this path you have carved, and I am willing to follow as long as I can.” 

“Not follow, lead.”

They could spare but a few more moments before the sounds of the City coming to life beyond the window made it clear that the day had begun. What few servants were in the corridors kept their eyes conspicuously lowered, though Éowyn had long since given up on feeling any shame for her actions and Faramir, she was quite sure, never had any to begin with. 

They parted when Éowyn came upon Sedril, who wore an expression of barely-concealed interest that mimicked her mother’s usual look with unnerving precision. There was a tightness to her posture that had never been there before. Not formality, but tension, a sign of genuine worry. Éowyn wondered if she had ever felt worry before. 

“My father says I am not to marry Glórindîr,” said Sedril, taking Éowyn’s good arm in hers. “His title, he says, is hardly worth half of what mine even, if though I do not yet have one.” 

“Is he not lately become Lord of the Pinnath Gelin? Surely there is some pedigree in that?” Éowyn could hardly believe herself: she agreed wholeheartedly that Sedril should not, could not marry Glórindîr—far from being vastly too young, he was much too wild a stallion for the simple enclosure of marriage, there could be no taming him. 

“He may become Lord of the Pinnath Gelin. There are rumours from Mornan that his elder brother may have survived.” She sniffed. “My father has sent an agent to inquire. As if there are not more important matters to attend to.” 

Éowyn did not say that she was glad Astron was wasting time and energy on chasing ghosts; instead, she guided Sedril back to her apartments and let the girl chatter on angrily about the injustice of her situation without interruption. 

She had not been back to her apartments since the siege began. Little about them had changed, except that someone had cleaned them, though she thought Hadoriel had been sent to Lossarnach with the evacuees. It was as if nothing at all had changed, books she had promised to read but not begun were stacked high on the sideboard and the mantelpiece, her embroidery, abandoned, lay on the arm of the sofa. Even the chair at her writing desk was half-turned from the desk, as if she had simply stepped away from it for a few moments. 

Sedril decided, without prompting, that it fell to her to decide what Éowyn should wear that day. It was the closest she had come to passing judgement on the crumpled state of Éowyn’s evening gown—or the fact that she still wore it at all, so many hours after the evening had ended—and Éowyn was compelled by a strange benevolence to indulge her as reward for her discretion. 

Sedril had been buried in Éowyn’s dressing room barely a minute when Éowyn approached her writing desk, spurred by the sight of a small, partially wrapped parcel upon it. Ioreth had told her some days ago that a gift had arrived for her from some lord or another, and that it had been sent directly to her apartments, but who sent it or why escaped her. 

No note came with the parcel, and as she unwrapped it she was taken by the strange thought that these were not its original wrappings, and that whoever had rewrapped it had done so in a hurry. And soon, the reason for that hurry and why she had not been allowed to retrieve it while in the Houses became blatantly, nauseatingly apparent. 

There, nestled in soft, beige linen, lay the dagger that had haunted her dreams nearly every night since the night she had fallen upon the Pelennor. It was not one she had wielded against the Black Captain—it had never left its tight holster at her side, yet it terrified her more than any weapon she had ever before held. 

She remembered, as if tasting blood in her mouth for the very first time, the sight of Lord Denethor, desolation unalloyed in his eyes, resolved to do the unthinkable. She remembered the fear in her heart, fear borne of a dim hope that Faramir might not yet be lost; it was a hope so dim she had not then admitted it to herself, but it burned bright enough to compel her to reach out her hand, to stay the dagger, to put an end to the madness. 

And when she had fallen and later awoken, she had been so certain that death would find them that she saw little sense in confessing to Faramir what truths she kept locked away in her heart—what good could come of increasing his sorrows when sorrow was already abundant? 

Yet it had come back to her, wrapped in a neat little package, plain as the vernal sun in the sky beyond the mountains. It was at once familiar and entirely alien to her, for all that it had tormented her, it had been a formless, shapeless thing, a dagger only in implication, but rather more a vessel for her guilt. The thing that lay before her was neither formless nor shapeless, and its bright, gleaming edge appeared sharp to the touch. Upon its blade face, in the short, looping characters of the Tengwar, was an epithet that chilled her to the bone: wraithslayer. 

Tears stung at her eyes. For all that she had done, for all that she wished to leave behind, she had still been inextricably linked to the greatest evil of all through this wretched gift. 

“My lady?” Sedril, who did not know why the dagger affected her so, could not know, stepped partially through the doorway from the sitting room. “Will you want the green gown?”

“I suppose I will,” said Éowyn, with unnerving control over her voice. “I defer to your good judgement.”

Sedril made a noise of surprise. 

“Within reason,” amended Éowyn hastily. She folded the linen around the dagger once more and stowed it in the folds of her sleeve.

“There is no reason left in this world,” said Sedril with uncharacteristic sarcasm. It was an important salvo to Éowyn, who had at once become so ensnared by the four walls that surrounded her that she had forgotten her new, larger purpose in life. 

“Sedril,” she called. “Not the green gown, the beige one.” Clutching the dagger beneath her allege her hands trembled. But there was, she knew, only one way to ease the fear that flowed through her. “And Sedril, if you are asked about my whereabouts today, do say that you haven’t seen me.”

≿————-　❈　————-≾

In Gondor’s halls of power, Faramir wove immense webs of legal and moral arguments that required more than one mind to untangle. He traced the history of the lines of Anárion and Isildur from fair Andúnië in Westernesse beneath the Sea to Minas Morgul in the shadow of the Mountains. He unfurled the origins of the Kinstrife and the legacies of Castamir the Usurper, and he proved that the rejection of Fíriel’s claim was a blight upon Gondor’s history. And when Astron and his men began to unravel his arguments and at last earn how to counter them, Faramir switched tack. He made spiritual arguments, appealed to the fury of the Valar, the will of Eru Ilúvatar and his Music that governed Arda, and he predicted the downfall of all if the King’s claim was to be rejected. He spoke with such poetry and passion as had never before been seen in the halls of the White City, and likely never would again. 

Not a single word of it mattered. 

It did not matter if the plague wrought by the Kinstrife had been a punishment engineered by Manwë, or if the rejection of Arvedui’s claim was illegal by Gondor’s own laws. It did not matter if Astron recognised the primacy of the Music of the Ainur or constructed himself a heretical fall from grace. What mattered was that for the sheer scale of the arguments Faramir presented them, not one of the Lords of Gondor thought to ask after the whereabouts of Lady Éowyn of Rohan, wraithslayer and patron of the people. 

And therein laid the true significance of their plan, the plan that had come to Faramir’s mind incomplete yet as a divine revelation. For Gondor’s history was pertinent in some respects, but it was not in the legality of claims or in the precise moral judgements rendered upon traitors. It was in one simple fact: Arvedui, though a Prince of the Northern Dúnedain, was a stranger to the lands of Gondor. He had neither popular support nor popular recognition. Arvedui’s mistake was the mistake of the present Lords of Gondor, he focused too strongly on the technicalities of the law instead of appealing to the people. Eärnil, though his claim was weak, was accepted readily by the people because he was a war hero who had won many celebrated victories upon the field of battle. Had Arvedui appealed to the people, instead of to the law, his claim might have been recognised. 

But he had not, and Gondor had seen its war hero crowned, and her slow descent into the reckless vainglory that Faramir so despised had continued unabated. Arvedui’s descendant, rightful heir to the lines of both Isildur and Anárion, would make no similar mistake, even if he did not yet know he was to be defended from that error. 

Éowyn was beloved in Minas Tirith. It was not just that it was believed that she had sacrificed herself for them, it was the months of time she had spent in the bowels of the City, going where no lord or lady had ever before dared go. She was loved by those who she had helped to heal, and she was loved by those who loved the healed. From dawn till dusk she visited with the families cramped in partially-demolished houses, recounting the tale that struck so terrible a fear into her heart that often she could narrate its climax with only her own silence. And when she was done, she drew upon the patience that had kept her chained to her duty year after year to answer each question that was levelled at her: did she know she would face the Black Captain?; was it true the Halfling had gone with her?; had she felt fear?

To each person she spoke with, she told the tale of her healing, of the King from the Far North who had come to defend Gondor, not for personal ambition but for love of its people. She spoke of his words calling her back from the darkness (and she did not say that she had then thought he was Faramir), and she referenced the tales from Lossarnach that the hands of a King were the hands of a healer. And, though hope had long abandoned her, the people responded. 

The women wept, the children gasped in shock and awe, and the men greeted her with the warrior’s salute. She was at once all things to all people: a martyr, a legend, and a comrade-in-arms. They heard her appeals about the Lord Aragorn, and what was more: they listened. Many recognised him as their King already, not for Éowyn’s pleas, but because they had seen the Battle of the Pelennor Fields firsthand, knew how desperate the plight of Minas Tirith was until at last Aragorn had arrived not just with the mythic Oathbreakers at his command, but with the armies of the South too. 

There was a woman in the second circle, eyes sunken in and too slow to move from years looking only at her loom. Upon her loom she wove fabrics that became cushions for the chairs of the aristocracy—Éowyn had seen many of them, even sat in a few. Her fingers were gnarled and her joints were swollen, and the calluses upon the insides of her hands were so great it was as if her knuckles had simply grown in backwards. 

She lived in a small rented room in a much larger squat, and was the squats’ youngest inhabitant by more than fifty years. She had spent most of her life in that squat and seen young tenants move in and young tenants move out. She was unimpressed with them all, but she ensured they showed her the deference she felt she was owed. When the caravans of refugees departed the City before the battle, she had refused to go. She was born in the City, she intended to die in it, and between those two moments she would not let her shuttle rest from her loom. She completed two cushions between the start and end of the siege. 

Éowyn came to her door after a long day of kissing babies, hugging women, and tending to the injured. She had not, in the hours since she had descended from the Citadel, faced much resistance. She had grown content with her fruitfulness, proud even. To her, it seemed that this small little section of the second would be enough to hoist the crown above Lord Aragorn’s brow and secure it there for all eternity. She had no worries. 

The weaver, however, had many worries. She worried that the streets that connected her house to her suppliers’ warehouses would not be fixed. She worried that the covered market where she hocked her imperfect wares would remain collapsed until there were no coins left in her pocket. She worried that the wool trade from Lebennin and the silk trade from Pelargir would not return to its former roar. She worried that the nobles who inhabited the fifth and sixth circles would never again buy plush chairs and chaises and sofas for their townhouses. “I have no need for a king,” she said, “unless he intends to order a hundred chairs.” 

Éowyn had no answer for it. She trafficked in politics and morals, and when she could not traffic in that, she fell back upon her tragedy and her glory. The woman had no use for politics, no use for morals, no use for tragedy, and no use for glory. She made no show of emotion when Éowyn left, merely closed the door and dropped the bar across it loudly enough for Éowyn to hear on the other side. 

There was little time for leisure in those bright, unhappy days. Faramir spent his time orchestrating the greatest political feint ever imagined, and Éowyn spent hers quite literally rallying the troops in the City. When they were not at work, they were watched by anybody and everybody, and what lenience they had previously taken advantage of for more pleasurable indiscretions was now gone entirely. Éowyn, then, committed herself to continuing to dwell in the Houses of the Healing until Lord Denethor returned and there might be less implicit dishonour to her returning to her apartments in the Palace. But there was a secondary purpose to her lengthened residency there: with Faramir working from hours before dawn to hours after dusk, his whereabouts could nearly always be accounted for; with Éowyn’s labours as a healer now widely recognised, her trips down to the lower circles of the City—if they were at all noticed—could not be traced to some sort of conspiracy between her and Faramir. For, how could there be, when they had not seen one another for days? And indeed, they did not see each other, not even for a passing trifle of a conversation. Yet they were not without communication. 

The Halfling Meriadoc Brandybuck, lately Esquire of the Mark, beyond proving instrumental in saving Éowyn’s life and thwarting the Lord of the Nazgûl, had an exceptionally useful talent for disappearing in a crowd. Little more than a young boy to the eyes of Men, and easily ignored as yet another page running to and fro on the daily errands that kept the Citadel functioning, Merry delivered message after message from Captain to White Lady, helping to coordinate the political gambit of the millennium—at least so far as the Kingdoms of Men were concerned. To better conceal the nature of their communications, their messages were scrawled in the little-used written language of the Mark. Éowyn, who had once challenged Faramir to learn to speak her native tongue, nearly wept when she learned that despite all the many hundreds of other things that demanded his attention, Faramir had nevertheless learned to write in the Rohir language. So: written in the language of the Mark, carried by the hands of the Hobbit, the plot to instal the new King of Gondor was lovingly conducted. 

While it seemed to Éowyn that there was little that might hinder their work, all was not well with her. Lord Denethor’s dagger, which she had kept on her person since the morning she uncovered it, burned a hole in her soul. Through the merriment in the streets and the songs of love and joy that echoed on the walls of the shattered buildings of Minas Tirith, Éowyn kept the dagger at her side. Her arm would heal, her wounds would fade. Perhaps in time, even her terrors would slink back into the darkness of her mind. But the cold, sharp metal of the dagger was eternal.

Faramir had spoken truly; five days was altogether too short. It seemed to Éowyn that she had spoken to all who dwelt in Minas Tirith at least once, yet she had still not done enough. But time was against her, and the simple raiment she wore in the lower circles of the City was replaced with rich, vibrant silks and brilliant jewels: she had been called to the Hall of Kings to welcome Lord Denethor back to his City. 

Seeing Lord Denethor, she was struck by the deep and abiding fear that he now looked how her uncle had in his last days of life. Hard nosed, yes, always that, but thinner, less resolute, eyes gazing almost sightlessly—at what she knew not. She could see in him only the things she wished to bury deep within her; Faramir’s almost-death, and for it, her and Lord Denethor’s equal and all-consuming desire to destroy or be destroyed. In one way alone had they differed: she had desired to destroy the Enemy, he, his own son. 

There was safety in the ceremony. Stranger safety still that though she stood near to Faramir, she did not stand beside him, and it was in fact Elfhelm at her right. Faramir, as he so often had to, stood alone. Often, she had considered how strangely similar he and his father truly were, as two faces of a coin, inextricably bound yet ever pointing in opposite directions. It was never clearer than when Lord Denethor had entered the Hall of Kings, facing down his last living son with scarcely a flicker of emotion upon his face. Faramir, controlled though he was, could not stifle the strange and terrible mixture of relief and upset that plagued him when his father breached the immense doorway.

Lord Húrin guided the procedure with a quiet and uneasy hand. He was much less skilled at hiding his fury than his kinsmen. Éowyn paid little attention to the unfolding events, it was all far too similar to that terrible night that had seen Boromir wrenched from the world. She did not need to see the rod passed from son to father to know that it had happened; her body would witness what her mind could not. 

When it was done, the courtiers filed out in a facsimile of respect. Elfhelm, evidently assured that he had made his case to her enough times, went too. Éowyn, who had resolved never to let Faramir feel the loneliness she had once felt—the loneliness she knew he had felt too—tarried. She could not be certain what she expected for his reunion with his father, but whatever passed between them was so terse it had finished before she had even finished bidding farewell to Elfhelm. 

Faramir’s face gave nothing of his mood away. He did not come to her directly, and instead stopped to speak with several of the lords who had come as part of his father’s escort. Éowyn’s attention was swiftly captured by Merry, who had come to stand beside her. 

“I hope that this changing of the guard does not take too long,” said he, as quietly as he could muster. “Strider—Aragorn—Lord Aragorn is a good man and will make a good king. Or at least I think he will.”

“You are not alone in thinking that, despite what it may seem.”

“No, that’s clear, even now. Still, I hope it won’t be delayed too very long, the wait must now be even more terrible for the Lady Arwen.”

“The Lady Arwen?”

“Oh! Yes! She is the daughter of Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, and she and Strider have been betrothed for many years now. He cannot marry her until he becomes King of Gondor, you see. And I thought, now that it’s almost all said and done, that it would be very nice for them to marry in the summer.”

“You are very wise, Master Meriadoc.” In the half-second Éowyn had looked away from Faramir, he had appeared before them, now standing next to a rather uncomfortable-looking Elfhelm. “They do indeed hope to wed in the summer—midsummer, to be precise.”

Faramir looked at her, offering up the letter that was in his hands. But the regret in his eyes was immeasurable, and she did not need to see the written words to know that they were true.

Something inside Éowyn, something which had long sublimated itself to more benevolent projects, something which had long made her tamp down on her own needs in favour of the needs of others, in favour of what was good and right, snapped. Deep within her there was a shattering of a mechanism that had turned her upset to sorrow, that had fashioned sorrow when she deserved anger. It broke and the millions of pieces of this thing that had once held her back were picked up on the spring breeze that flit through the open door of the Hall, casting across the City, never to be reforged. 

Éowyn took a shallow breath, let the rage wash over her with cleansing beauty, then took a deep breath and focused it into something more dangerous than the sharpest and brightest arrowheads. 

“Elfhelm,” she said, and did not care that Faramir and Merry would be present for what she was about to say, “you believe that my brother’s position is insecure, that there are those who see Théoden King’s choices regarding my ambassadorship as a dereliction of duty, and who believe my brother did not sufficiently defend his kin and King during the doldrums of the war. You believe that my personal support is such that were I to return to the Mark and be seen as supporting my brother and his reign, that insecurity would wane and perhaps vanish altogether.”

“I do, my lady,” said he. 

“Very well,” she said.

Elfhelm, bewildered, looked between Éowyn and Faramir. “Will you do it?”

“Yes,” she said. “If my brother is willing to pay my price.” 

Later, when the billowing smoke of her rage cleared, Éowyn returned to the second circle and found the old weaver woman. She placed an order for a hundred damask chairs, to be delivered to the Citadel by Midsummer. She left a promissory note stamped with the seal of the Lord of Emyn Arnen. Gondor, she reasoned, was worth the price of some chairs.

Notes:

Sorry for being so slow on this one. Next one will likely also be slow, I am, unfortunately, inundated with work.

Chapter 41: Book III. Spring 3019

Notes:

sorry this is late i literally got covid lol

“No news from the North then?”

“None, save that there are rumblings in Mirkwood.”

“Ever have there been rumblings in Mirkwood, it is no more news than the rising of the sun.”

“And yet even that was uncertain not a fortnight ago,” said Faramir, lifting his head from his notes to regard the remains of the council. At the head of the table, his father looked pointedly away. 

“That may be so, but I do not intend to look for ill omens where none exist,” said Lord Astron, seated at Denethor’s right. 

“In that we are agreed,” said Denethor, and stood to adjourn the meeting. 

Faramir waited for the council to file from the room; the lords and captains and various sycophants who would reap great benefits irrespective of if the King were crowned, yet had nonetheless opted to side with treason. They none of them could understand the extent of the humiliation that Denethor was heaping upon his own house, upon the legacy of the Stewards. Yet Faramir understood. And he understood that it would not do to avoid the inevitable: he would need to talk to his father, and he would need to do so with haste. They had and would continue to suffer an irreparable rift unless and until his father conceded on all the major points, but his father deserved at least the opportunity to bridge that gulf without the eyes of the world upon him. 

When all but the sons of Húrin had vacated the room, Faramir stood, preparing to speak. He mustered a concessionary spirit within himself that was entirely at odds with his being, he prepared himself to forgive though his father asked no mercy and made no gestures at reconciliation. 

“Not for the first time am I made to feel the heaviness of having sent the wrong son to Imladris,” said Denethor, and at once Faramir flushed with anger. “He would have known not to stand athwart his liege-lord.”

“Indeed he would not, and was it not that inclination that brought him to his untimely death? Would you, even now, reward the folly of loyalty without thought?” 

“You think too fondly of yourself, Lord Faramir, for it was not without thought that Boromir sought Isildur’s Bane and it is not without thought that I seek to secure this realm against Isildur’s Heir.” 

“If it is not without thought, then it is an altogether greater crime that you are committing, for there may be lenience granted to one who has taken leave of his sense, but to one who enacts treachery while in certain command there can be none. Father, I would not have you—” 

“—Faramir?” Elphir’s voice broke cleanly across Faramir’s. “Forgive me, uncle, it is long since I have seen my cousin, and I cannot wait longer.”

Slowly, begrudgingly, Faramir looked away from his father. Elphir stood in the door to the council room, travelling cloak cast about his arm as if he had just returned from some journey. And in fact, Faramir realised only belatedly, he likely had: last he had heard, Elphir had been left in command of the outpost at Cair Andros. 

It was decided then. There could be no reconciliation, not so long as his father insisted on prostrating himself upon the altar of indignity. Faramir could make an effort, but he could not make the effort of two men, his ability to do that had been exhausted by many long months of silent, unearned deference. 

He pressed his knuckles into the hard, flat surface of the table, feeling the slight tang of pain where unhealed cuts and bruises stretched against the wood. He had not wished for an all-out war with his father. Their disagreements were too numerous to count; their animosity towards one another had rarely merited more than quiet containment. This was too great a trouble to hand wave away with vague hopes of a better or quieter future, and what was more, the last peacekeeper of their house was dead and gone.

“Come, cousin,” said Elphir again, nodding behind him. “Let us have our merry reunion and speak on all that we have seen since we last spoke. I have heard many tales of your valour upon the Rammas and of your good lady’s heroics upon the Pelennor.” 

Faramir, altogether too familiar with a lost cause when he saw one, went. He did not spare a parting glance for his father, certain that he could not do so without starting a fight he did not have time to end. Instead, he followed Elphir out of the Tower, listening distractedly as he recounted his time at Cair Andros, and his brief foray to Cormallen where the festivities had already far surpassed raucousness.

“I hear,” said Elphir as they crossed the Fountain Court, “that you are engineering some sort of plot to ensure that Lord Aragorn is able to take his rightful throne.” 

Faramir sighed. “I would not say it so plainly as that.” 

“No, but there are few things you would say plainly if not forced to. Anyway, I know it is true, or at least, I have heard of some theatrics of yours and my father has dispatched me to learn more.”

“And have you learned more?”

“Well, I think that I have, but what I have learned is so impenetrable I am convinced it cannot be real. Tell me, cousin, do you truly wish to have a thousand-year-old ruling overturned?” 

“It’s perfectly sensible,” said Faramir. Together they stepped into the tunnel that led to the Sixth. “There was no legitimacy to the rejection of Arvedui’s claim, even accepting that power speaks louder than the law, Arvedui’s military might was the greater. Pelendur’s agitation against the claim was sundered from reason and fact and put Gondor at unspeakable risk, it was only Arvedui’s benevolence that prevented a terrible war. We are asking the lords of the Council to annul that decision, recognise the legitimacy of Arvedui’s claim, and rectify the errors of history.”

Elphir’s mouth fell open. “This is a shambles,” he muttered, covering his eyes with a hand and turning away with a groan. “Fuck,” he said, louder and with gusto. 

“You have all of our grandfather’s sense of decorum,” said Faramir, though he could not deny that the brusqueness of Elphir’s reaction had some humour to it. 

“And you all of his delusion,” answered Elphir, with some malice. “You cannot be serious, please, cousin, say that you are not. I will not put my family’s name on the line over such a hackneyed, ill-conceived, enervated—”

“—You will find, my lord, that the argument we intend to make will far outpace your assessment of it.”

“In which direction, Faramir? You know that you have my confidence—our confidence, but I have just heard the ramblings of a mad man and you wish me to lend uncritical support to it? The love I have for you is that of a brother’s, but there are some requests even one brother will deny the other!”

“I am quite aware,” said Faramir stiffly. “I do not ask you for uncritical support, only support. You may critique as loudly and continually as you please, so long as it is evident that we have your support.” 

“You are asking me to take a terrible risk.” 

“I do not deny it.” 

“It could bring unspeakable ruin upon my family.” 

“There are none, Elphir, who understand that better than I.” 

Elphir fell silent. Faramir could see the workings of his mind upon his face, but did not dare press further. 

At length, Elphir tugged at the cropped ends of his hair, then sighed. “Very well,” he said. “You will have our support.”

They stood together in the middle of the Sixth Circle, the sun shining hotly upon them. To Faramir, it seemed that he had not seen the sun in many months, though it had been in truth only a matter of days. 

“Where is your bride-to-be? I spoke no lies, I do wish to hear more of her acts of courage, I am utterly amazed.”

“I will tell you what I can. But she is no longer in Minas Tirith, for just this morning she departed to Cormallen,” said Faramir, “to meet her brother.” 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn was mortified at the indignity of riding in a wain, but the ongoing jolting pain in her arm prevented her from riding properly. Still, she had insisted the wain stop some distance from the entrance to the camp so that she might arrive on her own two feet—marginally more self-sufficient than the alternative.

Elfhelm did not accompany her, but instead sent some bright-eyed young Rider to act as her escort. It seemed strange to her that she, wraithslayer as she was now known in Minas Tirith, might need an escort for a journey of only a few leagues, but then, perhaps the real token of peace was that all had gone back to how it had been before, just with sunnier skies. 

The gate guards spoke to the escort, and their eyes widened when they beheld Éowyn and saw that she was not a would-be camp follower or some young lady of Gondor come to find her fortune among the lords of both realms. They did not find their courage to speak directly to her, instead pointing out to the escort what route to follow. Éowyn could not find it within her to care; a new fear had gripped her. 

It had been many months since she had seen her brother. And in those months, the whole world had changed: not just the fall of the Enemy, but the fall of what remained of their family. Théodred and Théoden struck down, one with valour, one in ignominy. Now Éomer alone helmed the House of Eorl, and Éowyn’s place in her own family was more confused than ever before. In those few hours she had seen him before he had ridden to Morannon, she thought they had spoken to one another as a warrior might address a fellow warrior. There was little said of Kings and snakes and the orphans they once were. 

It could now no longer be avoided. She would see her brother now in peace, and would be made to reckon with the facts of that peace. He a King, she the sister of a King, desperate to throw off the yoke of the Mark and truly make Gondor her home. Yet she could not, not while insecurity still reigned in Edoras and not while she prepared to feed an ultimatum to kin and king to at least steal back what happiness she could from her life. 

The campground at Cormallen was more alike a festival than a military ground, and Éowyn’s thoughts were hardly granted room to move as the cavalcade of light and sound and smell descended upon her. The scent of roasted meats and spilled ale and soured wine danced on the warm breeze, and the colours of Gondor and the Mark and realms she did not recognise waved proudly on banners held aloft by drunken revellers and soldiers barely holding to their guard duty, all scored to the singing viols and harps and bright, ringing trumpets. It was overwhelming and joyous and so terribly at odds with all that Éowyn felt, she could do no more than blink into the light and follow the escort. 

Outside a large tent, green as the rolling fields of Lossarnach, the escort halted, standing to attention even as his gaze strayed towards the free-flowing ale and general merriment. In his place, a page-cum-seneschal who Éowyn only vaguely recognised turned and entered the tent, to appear moments later, throwing open the flap and ushering her in. 

Inside, darkness and smoke mingled as old friends, carried on wisps of muffled chattered and the stilling strings of a rebec. Éowyn’s eyes adjusted slowly, reckoning first the distant flames of portable sconces, then the rich fabrics of the tent that she had once known to be her cousin’s. Then a hush fell, and her sight returned to her in time to see that the tent was full with at least twenty men, and all of them now looked upon her with awe.

“The Lady Éowyn, daughter of Éomund—” 

“—Yes, yes, we know who she is.” Éomer surged upwards into her vision, waving away the page behind her. 

Éowyn’s heart faltered. Before in the Houses of Healing she had not seen what injuries he had accrued—or perhaps they were new from Morannon, she could not be certain—but they were myriad and very visible. His lip was split, he still sported a blackened eye, and a faint yellow splotch around his hairline said he had taken a beating to the head which had only lately healed. At once, there was no anger left in Éowyn, no fear, no worry, all the years of pain and suffering simply fell away, and she was seven years old once more, prepared to cry out for their mother and father to ensure that her brother’s injuries were tended to with care. 

But seventeen years had passed since that was last possible, there would be no Théodwyn to come running, no Éomund to dry wept tears with coarse humour. There was only Éowyn, and Éomer, and the twenty-odd onlookers who now hoped to see a reunion worthy of legends between their new king and his wraithslayer sister. 

And in the space between them, Elfhelm’s words of warning, the insecurity of Éomer’s new crown, the precariousness of the Mark. Éowyn, then, did what she had been trained to do her entire life, what had forced her through each day since she had learned to think and speak for herself: she kneeled before the crown. 

“My lord king,” she said, bowing her head to the carpeted ground.

If a hush had fallen before, absolute silence now governed the tent; there was only the sound of the blood in her ears, the movement of the bones in her spine as she moved her neck. 

“Rise Éowyn,” said Éomer, and Éowyn thought she heard a faint tremble in his voice. “I name you Lady of the Shield-arm.” 

She stood. She had no need for his titles, yet when he folded her into his arms, pressing her tightly to his chest, relief such that she could not explain flooded through her, and for a time she feared that she might weep like a child. 

Éomer pulled back, taking her wrist in his hand and flinging it to the sky, like a tourney champion. “Behold the wraithslayer,” he called, and as the men in the tent cheered, he hugged her again, kissing her head and murmuring words of comfort she had not heard since they were children.

There would be no chance for Éowyn to speak her mind, and indeed it grew more difficult for her to do as the hours passed. The men of Éomer’s company wanted first to hear every second of her story during the siege of Minas Tirith and, overwhelmed beyond her desire to be insubordinate, she obliged them. When that was exhausted, each man took his turn recounting his own story of heroism and valour, at the Hornburg, upon the Pelennor Fields, and at Morannon. And in their words, Éowyn saw the faintest glimpse of the life she used to lead, when duty was all that she was and when she did not raise her voice in rebellion, and so she swiftly buried what memory she had of her purpose in seeking out her brother upon the field of Cormallen. 

When the dark within the tent matched the dark without, Éowyn was led away from the King’s tent to the nearby tent that had been cleared for her. She was gone from the relative safety of her brother’s companions not a quarter of an hour when a very new kind of fear gripped her, for walking apparently straight out of the dark of night was a figure who Éowyn had hardly believed to be real at all. 

She came, generously, to Éowyn’s shoulder, with a clear, tan complexion, black hair that swooped into and out of braids like water from a fountain in the high courts of Minas Tirith, and her eyes were the keen, bright grey that marked her out as one of Númenórean descent. At her side, Lady Melcien spoke hurriedly, pulling her along with purpose. It did not take Melcien’s introduction, however, for Éowyn to know exactly who this woman was. 

“Lady Éowyn, may I present the Lady Delieth of Ras Morthil. Lady Delieth, you well know who Lady Éowyn is.” 

“I do,” said Delieth, then turned to Melcien, tapping her kindly on the arm. “I will find you when we are done with our conversation, thank you for your help.”

With a pert expression upon her face, Melcien turned and left, blending instantly back into the loud, black night. Delieth returned her attention to Éowyn, looking her over carefully. Éowyn straightened her posture, adjusting her bandaged arm. 

“Oh, but you are young,” said Delieth with a sigh, bringing a hand up to cradle her own cheek. Éowyn’s temper flared. 

“The fact of my age was of little consequence upon the field of battle, and should be of little consequence here.” 

“You misunderstand me, my lady,” she said quickly. “Word of your accomplishments in Minas Tirith have long reached us in Lossarnach, and for as successful as you were and, of course, for your more recent accomplishment at the Pelennor Fields, I imagined you to be significantly older than you are. I mistakenly thought it would not be possible for someone so young to have lived so much. When I was your age I was—” She cut herself off abruptly with nervous laughter. “Well, you know where I was.” 

Éowyn nodded tightly, hoping for the conversation to end as quickly as possible. Delieth glanced around nervously. 

“He is a good man,” Delieth continued, a faint air of wistfulness to her tone. “But I do not envy you, if you will forgive me for saying so. I do not expect that I will ever look at some of the lords and ladies of the court as I once did, knowing how hastily they turned upon me at just the whisper of a liaison…I cannot imagine how cruelly they must have acted to you.” 

“I have suffered worse unkindnesses.” She hazarded a look upon Delieth’s face, and saw in it compassion, or at the very least understanding. “Though not many.”

Delieth smiled. “You have faced down both admirably, but between Lady Berúthiel and the Lord of the Nazgûl I know who I would rather, and I would only pray that his sword came down quicker than her tongue.” 

“Morningstar. He wielded a morningstar.” Éowyn said, her voice trembling as the words tumbled out before she could stop herself. 

“Ah,” Delieth answered with a nod, a pallor in her complexion that was not there before. She swallowed thickly, turning her thin, red shawl about in her hands. “I did not come for idle banter, I suspect you know that.”

Éowyn, who had not thought hard enough about their conversation to wonder if she had an ulterior motive, simply nodded as if she had known all along.

“My lord husband is a good man, but even good men do not desire to do that which might wound their pride—but women are not given the same concessions as their lords, no matter the injury to their pride.” She smiled wryly. “I have come to deliver word that the Lord of Ras Morthil will gladly support Lord Aragorn’s claim to the throne. There will be no objections from our house.”

“Why should you bring this news to me?”

“There is little doubt among those of us who know the Lord Faramir what side of this bitter struggle he will choose,” she said. “And while the lay of the land is yet uncertain, a conversation between two ladies may be excused as simply that, other permutations of this scenario promise too great a risk. I hope I have not caused any offence?”

“No, indeed you have not, I thank you for your discretion and for your support, it will not be swiftly forgotten.”

“That is well,” said Delieth. “Then I will take my leave of you, for I know that my son is here among the rabble somewhere, and a boy of his age can only be up to no good.” She smiled and departed, and Éowyn stood woozy in the sun for a moment longer. 

Her heart ached strangely at the thought of Delieth’s son, and of such simple shows of hope as the birth of a child. She thought then of the other ways hope had worked its way into her life, chiefly of the marriage she had agreed to though she had never fully believed they would live long enough to see it. It was then that her resolve was strengthened. She would not and could not put off her happiness any longer. She would summon her courage, and she would speak to Éomer. Until then, all else was distraction. 

There were many distractions in the intervening hours. She was compelled to greet the various lords of the Mark who had ridden from Dunharrow, to salute the men who had made heroes of themselves at the Pelennor Fields and at Morannon, and to tell time and time again the story of her encounter with the Lord of the Nazgûl. 

Then, when even the interior fire pit had been usurped by the fatigue of the night, the men of Éomer’s company began to take their leave one by one, until, after another hour’s time, the two children of Éomund were left alone for the first time since ere the war began. 

“I would believe that my sister has come out of the goodness of her heart and her love of her family, but some strange thing prevents me from knowing that to be true.” Éomer stood at the far end of the tent from Éowyn, leaning against a structural pole, one hand combing idly through his beard, in all ways the very picture of their late uncle. The moment for prevarication had passed. Éowyn could no do naught but speak the truth of her heart. 

“Éomer, I am sorry in ways I cannot fully articulate that the burden of the war and of our Kingdom has fallen upon you. There is none who wishes more than I that I could have shared in your toil, but I am also keenly aware that your burden was worsened by your own actions.”

Éomer’s cheeks reddened. “You know nothing of the burden I have carried, you who were cloistered safely away in Minas Tirith when war ravaged our lands and our kin! You would lecture me on sacrifice and mistakes when you have known neither?”

“I have known both, brother, though our experiences are different, mine is not the lesser. You forget that it was I who saw the shadow creep over our uncle first, I who was left defenceless at the mercy of Wormtongue, and I who was exiled from the safety and comfort of my home instead of given the means to defend myself.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “But I do not hold malice in my heart for you, or I would not. You and I see that the Gondorrim stand on the precipice of a terrible fate, and you and I alike know that this terrible fate may yet await us in Edoras. I am ashamed, Éomer, and saddened at what my life has been, but I would not wish to see sister sundered from brother in the manner that son is sundered from father here. I would help you, if I knew that my help would not go unthanked and unrewarded!”

“What nobility is there in help that is only given for the sake of reward?” His hands shook at his sides. 

“None, of course none! But for too long have I played at nobility and all it has brought me is strife. I will not do it again. You may accept my help, and that would gladden my heart, or you may reject it, and I would be grieved, but I would yet have a home and a family anew in Gondor.” 

For many moments, Éomer was silent, and Éowyn’s heart thudded in her chest. Never had she spoken so cruelly to her brother, never had she sought to leverage power against the love of her family. It tore at her. 

“What would the condition of your support be?”

“The Lord Aragorn wishes to wed his betrothed at Midsummer in Minas Tirith. The preparations previously made for my own wedding would therefore need redirecting to that effort, and, given the precariousness of the political situation, to be wed in Minas Tirith so close to the wedding of the prospective King would be to grievously insult Lord Denethor. I ask, therefore, that you give leave for me to wed Faramir in the Mark, no later than the start of autumn, or whichever season it is that sees us brought back to that country.”

Éomer laughed, a loud gregarious laugh. And Éowyn saw then that there were tears in his eyes. “Éowyn! This Captain of yours—he is too sure of himself by half but,” Éomer sighed, rubbing his hand over his eyes, “yes, I will give you this.” 

A tear fell down her brother’s cheek as he crossed the distance between them, then Éowyn wept too. Holding her brother in her arms, for but a flash of a second she felt the love of family that she had been deprived of for so many years. 

Notes:

astron & big d are both wrong btw this is the exact point in time when the battle of dol goldur is happening lol

Chapter 42: Book III: Spring 3019

Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth had never had an especially warm relationship with his brother by marriage. It had never been especially frost either—simply put, neither of them could have afforded that—but he had never come to revere the man in the way both of his elder sisters had. Denethor was, so the whispers in the City went, the right man for a bad hour. It was an epithet Imrahil could understand, even if he could not like it.

This accord had demanded that Imrahil respect Denethor, and for many decades that had been an easy thing to do. But now, Imrahil was at a loss. He was not accustomed to Gondor’s Steward erring so greatly, nor so unnecessarily. Yet from the moment Denethor had departed the Cormallen, taking with him only a small contingent of his closest supporters, he had erred in a way that likely would not be reparable. 

The Lord Aragorn, who Imrahil had known once many years ago when he had called himself Thorongil and then also been Gondor’s hero, had more political savvy than he showed. He stayed amongst the men, though with each passing day less as a fellow warrior and more as a commander and King. Soon there would be no man in the armies of Gondor and Rohan who did not see and recognise him as the rightful King. Yet Denethor had retreated to the White City, thinking that his fight would be won with the machinations of courtly politics. Denethor had become so wrapped up in his own delusions that he failed to recognise that the new king had the armies of not one but two realms camped out just beyond the gates to Minas Tirith; whether the pompous lords ensconced within the White City approved of him was almost an irrelevance. 

Not that Imrahil wanted to go to war. Not again, not yet. 

Already, there was growing tension, even among the lords who had stayed behind in Ithilien. It amused Imrahil, in a near-bitter way, to see the lords of the south—not the ones he had been able to keep under his influence, but the flightier lords of Lebennin and Lossarnach—suddenly fall into line behind Aragorn. They who had long defied any centralisation of power in Minas Tirith now primped and preened when the King passed, desperate for his approval. 

Imrahil was not in the habit of being a vindictive man. If the lords of the realms that neighboured his own now wished to show even the barest traces of common sense, he would not stand in their way. For his part, he stayed where his needs would be best served: as close to the King and as far from the petty drunkards as possible. On this day, that intention kept him closest to the Lady Éowyn and her brother.

The new King of the Riddermark had come into his role well, despite the grisly circumstances under which he had come to that role. Still, he was a valiant warrior, well-liked by all his men and was, even if not yet skilled at it, an increasingly adept diplomat. 

Where he failed—rather spectacularly—was his failure to hide his dislike of his sister’s betrothed. Imrahil had interceded on his nephew’s behalf where he could, and of course, there had been no shortage of people willing to sing his praises, but the sticking point remained unchanged; Faramir had done what Éomer (by his own admission) could never have done: he had given Éowyn a life worth living. The sting of that truth was not one that could be soothed by pretty words or well-placed compliments, time alone could heal that wound.  

Now, they all stood upon a small hill at the far edge of the Cormallen, near where Lord Aragorn’s tent had been raised (and to where Éowyn had been summoned earlier that afternoon). Imrahil, having been among the first to hear that Éomer had given his consent to allow his sister to at last have her long-awaited wedding in Rohan, had spent some time dispensing what wedding advice the war had earlier prevented him from doling out. And though Éowyn had responded with brightness in her eyes, it was not long before Éomer had seen to it that the topic was considered thoroughly exhausted; Imrahil relented, it was not his desire to stir any more conflicts than were strictly necessary. 

“What,” said Éomer gazing out at Minas Tirith in the far distance, “is the purpose of that enormous outcropping in the middle of the City?”

“It is a ship’s prow,” answered his sister, sounding almost bored. “Minas Tirith—Minas Anor as it was known at its conception—was a city built for the Ship Kings of old, a monument to the mariners who had cut through the churn of the infernal seas to bring light to the lands of Middle-Earth; it is proof that not even the hardest of stones can create an obstacle for the might of the righteous Men.” 

“Ha!” cried Imrahil in delight. “Now if I do not hear my nephew in your words I will be very surprised.”

Éowyn lowered her eyes, a faint blush creeping in on her cheeks, though she made no effort to hide her smile. “You do, my lord, for I once made the same mistake as my brother, though I was in less forgiving company than he.” 

“And what mistake is it that I have made?”

“Not knowing the cumulative history of Gondor, my lord, there can be no graver error than that.”

“It is not quite so rigid as all that, but the Lady Éowyn has chosen the company she keeps with particular care, and it so happens that she has chosen one of the loremasters of the realm. I am surprised that you have retained aught of what has no doubt been a great many orations!” 

“And I am also surprised,” said Éomer. “At one time I would have thought it a cruelty to see you subjected to any such lectures.”

“He is a fine storyteller, it is easy to learn when it is all told so well. And anyway, it brings me joy to see his joy,” she said sharply. 

“And for that we are all grateful,” said Imrahil, watching a young man—a northern Dunedain, by his looks—scale the small incline from Lord Aragorn’s tent. 

So the moment had come: the fate of Gondor now hung in the balance; the success or failure of Denethor’s manoeuvring would now come down to what truths were and weren’t revealed in the coming hours. Imrahil had faith in his nephew; Faramir was one of the few men in the realm he might unequivocally deem principled, but to ask a man to side against his own father was a demand even the most principled of men might find themselves unable to answer. And he was not the only one to acknowledge that, for he had heard whispers already that there were few who had any confidence that Faramir would lend his allegiance to Lord Aragorn. 

To Imrahil, it was an excellent reminder that not all were privy to the long, frustrating history that webbed between Denethor and his last remaining son. Dreadfully alike in almost all ways—save that Faramir had inherited his idealism from somewhere (certainly not either of his parents)—they each kept their mutual disregard for the others’ counsel a matter of secrecy. Though most who had passed through the courts of Minas Tirith could well see that Faramir and his father differed drastically in some ways, vanishingly few would know that those differences had ever been articulated as a matter of political discord. No, Imrahil was certain that Faramir would never support his father’s machinations morally, but morals were not the only consideration in this affair. 

He had heard, through the various means at his disposal, that Faramir was causing something of a stir in the abstruse procedural arguments he was making in pursuit of hearing Lord Aragorn’s claim. But hearing a claim was a very different thing to accepting it—and whether Faramir accepted it was a matter likely known only to himself, and to the grave young woman now standing before Imrahil.  

She showed no change in emotion when the Northerner approached and announced that the King was now ready to speak with her. If she was nervous, she did not show even a hint of it as she followed the Northerner down the hill, her head held high to the sun. 

Imrahil had been often into the tent, but never had he been inside it when it had been so smoky. Perhaps, he thought, Lord Aragorn and Mithrandir were more prone to filling and refilling their pipes when they were left alone. Ahead of him, Éowyn wrinkled her nose, but said nothing, looking slowly around the place as she was announced. 

“I must extend my thanks to you for your efforts during the siege of the City,” said Lord Aragorn, not quite emerging from his strange perch half-cast in shadow. Éowyn turned to regard him with the eye of a commander surveying his troop. The would-be King gestured for her to take a seat. Her face, against all odds, grew sterner and graver, and she acknowledged his compliment with little more than a nod. 

“And I you for your healing of myself and my betrothed.” Behind her, Éomer’s mouth twitched, but he held his tongue and sat beside her, watching Lord Aragorn carefully. “And for your success at Morannon.” 

“It was not done without the valiant efforts of many allies and friends, your kin chief among them; nor could it have been done without the House of Húrin, without whose steadfast efforts there would be little worth preserving in this realm or others.”

“And verily do I account myself among those lives indebted to their toil, Lords Denethor and Faramir, and Lord Boromir.” She narrowed her eyes at Aragorn—a gesture that made her look very much like the Steward himself. “And increasingly we find ourselves in greater and greater debt to the good Prince of Dol Amroth, not least for the supply of grain that has replaced our own badly-ravaged stores.” 

Imrahil half-bowed to her, rising with a wink. “In debt to me is where I prefer Minas Tirith, my lady.” Her returning smile seemed mostly genuine. 

“I shall remember that,” interjected Aragorn with a wry grin of his own. “But it is a very different transaction to which I now look, my lady, one for which I expect Lord Faramir has given you clear instructions.” 

A muscle twitched high in her cheek, the only visible sign that Aragorn had erred. “In fact no, my lord,” she said, her voice as cold as ice and thrice as sharp. “Lord Faramir esteems my council as an equal, and it was in discussion with him that our course of action was devised.”

“Éowyn,” said the King of the Mark testily, the tops of his cheeks colouring.

“Do not trouble yourself my friend, the mistake was my own, and your lady sister was right to make it known.” Aragorn leaned back in his chair, an air of calm settling about him. “I apologise for my assumption, my lady, and I beg that you continue, I would hear what you have come to say.” 

Éowyn slowly rolled her shoulders back, her injured arm twitching in its sling. “You know that the Lord Steward will not relinquish his power lightly, and that there are many in the City who are yet loyal to him,” she began, and it did not escape Imrahil’s notice that she did not assign a number to those whose loyalty to the Steward had not wavered. It brought Imrahil no comfort. 

“I do,” said Aragorn.

She watched him for a moment longer, then nodded, as if to herself. “I came to Minas Tirith three years ago as an envoy on behalf of my late uncle’s court. Over time, I learned that there is a certain rhythm to life in the White City, that there exist certain impenetrable expectations for conduct and order; A great many of those expectations revolve around the office of the Steward. It has been a very long time indeed since a King sat in Minas Tirith, and I’m sure you can appreciate the complexity of the systems of power that have become dependent upon that office. And, naturally, there are now the politics of kinship at play. You would ask a son to undermine his father, to impinge upon the reputation of the rule that has, for many centuries and by many accounts, been a fruitful one for Gondor. It is not a decision I would wish to make, nor one I would ask others to.” She paused, touching the fabric of her sling, letting the silence linger. She had grown much, much better at the art of political theatre since he had first met her all those years ago. “Yet it is the considered opinion of Lord Faramir that the King must sit in Minas Tirith again, that the reign of the Stewards has now necessarily come to its end.”

Her words blanketed the room. Several sets of shoulders visibly relaxed. 

Aragorn moved quickly: “But there are conditions upon which Lord Faramir’s concession will come?”

She laughed. It was a soft, breathy thing that was entirely at odds with the renewed tension in the room. “No, certainly not! He would, no doubt, prefer to yield his father’s title for him and take up a quiet residence in his mother’s dower lands in Belfalas. Or, that is what he would bid me say were he here.” At this, she looked at Imrahil, who gave her a smile and a gentle nod. “But his preferences are at odds with the demands of those for whom the House of Húrin has been a most generous patron and benefactor these nine centuries past. Forgive me, lord, but you are alien to the Court of Minas Tirith, a court built upon the dependencies of house upon house. It may seem from the outside to be as sturdy as the very prow of the Citadel, but in truth, moving or removing even a single piece of the structure could collapse the whole. You wish to take the crown that is so rightfully yours, Lord Faramir wishes to ensure a peaceful transition of power and to see that his father works no malice upon Gondor’s politic. There are perhaps insurmountable complexities therein. But your claim is not solely to the throne of Gondor, you are also chieftain of the Northern Dunedain. Gondor’s politic, therefore, might remain unchanged while the politic of the Reunited Kingdoms is here established.” 

“What would you have me do?” 

“What you will,” she said tepidly, and adjusted her sling, smoothing the dull fabric against the material of her gown. “In the years preceding the war, it was my very great fear that should the Mark be attacked, Gondor would not answer a call for aid, that Lord Denethor would not deem it wise to intervene in such affairs. In conversation with Lord Faramir, it became clear that I would need to secure the support of Gondor’s people through alternative means: if I could not manipulate the court to ensure Gondor sent aid, then at least I could appeal to her people in a time of crisis. For many months I worked in an infirmary in the lower circles of the City, tending and ministering to the poor, hoping that through my works they would see the necessity of our alliance. In the end, as you have well seen, it was not Gondor’s loyalty that was in question, but the Riddermark’s.” She swallowed thickly, avoided her brother’s gaze. “But my work was not for naught, and indeed, it is through that work that we now hope to see you successfully crowned, irrespective of the opinions of the Lord Steward on the matter.” She paused, adjusting the cloth of her sling. “It is a sore price to pay, to pit son against father. My brother can attest to that.” 

“Indeed it is. I lost my own father mere years after my birth and so have been spared the misfortune of such struggles.”

“As have we,” said Éowyn, perhaps a little defensively. “And yet the Lord Faramir, and his brother before him, were not so deprived. I would not wish them to know that sting without due recompense. He is now Lord of Emyn Arnen, but it is a title tethered in all ways to the Stewardship, he, therefore, serves two liege-lords: father and King. And we have already seen what conflict might there be created.” 

“We have,” said Aragorn, and fell silent for some time, deep in thought. 

Éowyn did not quail under the silence, nor did she outwardly register that unease may have been felt by any others in the room. She held her head high, watching this would-be king as if challenging him to measure up to her expectations. 

“I have heard that Lord Faramir has been the captain of the Rangers of Ithilien for nigh on twenty years, and that he knows the lay of that land better than any other in this Kingdom.”

“There are few in this land who are spoken of in such terms,” said Éowyn, with no small amount of pride in her voice. 

“A princedom, then,” said Aragorn. 

The air evacuated the tent. 

Imrahil looked straight ahead, compelling himself to show no reaction. Éowyn, meanwhile, hardly faltered. She blinked once, then twice, and that was the only sign of her shock. “A princedom of the land he knows best,” continued Aragorn, “given to him to tend and care for, to make new as he would hope to make Gondor new.” 

“My lord,” said Éowyn, “that is generous beyond words.” There was no insecurity to her voice, and Imrahil could not help but wonder if this had been her intention form the start. It seemed ambitious beyond Faramir’s character, and certainly it did not seem very like Éowyn’s character, though he did not know her half so well. Yet if ambition were laid aside, there was some strategy to it: a princedom would entitle Faramir to a rank at least equal to his father’s, and in many ways effectively surpassing it. If they could ensure that the Lord Aragorn was crowned, then they could neutralise whatever Denethor’s political will might be, so long as the two princes were aligned. 

There was more discussion between the would-be King and the would-be Lady of Ithilien, but Imrahil paid it little mind. His concerns had rapidly changed. He would need to return to Minas Tirith with haste; Elphir was a good emissary, and there were few he could trust with the role like he trusted his eldest son, but some things necessitated handling in person. He needed to speak to Faramir, needed also to speak to Denethor. But as he sat and planned his next steps, Imrahil realised that, whether she had planned for it or not, Éowyn had just made herself a kingmaker in not one but two kingdoms. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

The streets of Minas Tirith glittered beneath the sun, nigh blinding to look upon. Faramir sat in the embrasure of one of the few remaining battlements in the eastern part of the City that had not been destroyed entirely. He did not often come to the third circle, but he had not wished to bring the leaders of the stonemasons’ guild to the Citadel. 

They were the single most powerful guild in the City, perhaps even the Kingdom; even before he met with them, he knew he was entirely the wrong person to do it, for he had nothing to offer them in return for the enormous risk he was asking them to take. True enough that Emyn Arnen had lately become his and would require extensive rebuilding, but a single minor estate in a dangerous territory lacked the appeal of the promise of rebuilding the entire city of Minas Tirith for a pretty price, which was precisely what his father could offer that he could not. It would have been better had his uncle been there: not only was he better practiced at brokering complex deals, but Belfalas and Dor-en-Ernil would require a reconstruction project of a scale nearly unheard of in the history of the Kingdom, that would have been sufficient inducement for any political risk. 

His ask was, in a way, an exceedingly simple one: if his father did not acquiesce to the King’s request to have his claim heard formally, then all reconstruction work in the City and in Harlond should halt immediately. That ought to have been enough to force his father’s hand, and no doubt swiftly enough to prevent any long-term damage to the rebuilding efforts. There were seven other guilds intimately involved in that effort and he intended to meet with them all, but the stonemasons were the most crucial. 

He would not know the outcome of the meeting until much later, perhaps days. The guild council had recessed after he had said his piece; and the location and time of the vote was secret to nonmembers. Faramir, feeling uncharacteristically listless, had wandered the streets until he had come to rest high upon the walls, gazing out over Ithilien. 

He had grown tired, more tired now than even in the worst days of the war. In those days, at least, terror alone had been enough to force him through the day. Now, he needed to struggle against the ominous reality that good enough might not suit his needs. He longed to see the King returned to the courts of Minas Tirith, wished to see Gondor returned to her former glory, perhaps even to surpass it. He had not ever expected that such a thing might come at the cost of his own family. 

The guild council did not think his challenge to his father’s rule a serious one. One of the council members had gone so far as to say that he believed that Faramir would crack at the eleventh hour, too loyal, too deferential to ever rupture his father’s trust in such a humiliating manner. 

In truth, Faramir was glad to hear that was their estimation of him, and wished dearly that there might be some means by which he could live up to it. He had no desire to humiliate his father, no need to destroy what piteously remained of the thing that had once been his family. He and his father now, though neither would admit it, shared the same pain, the same survivor’s guilt as the last living members of a ragged house that had been cursed and taunted and stalked by death since Faramir’s earliest days. He did not wish to add the sundering of the love between father and son to that mix.

But the King was a nonnegotiable. Faramir could be many things: a hellion, a renegade, even a reckless idealist, but he would not be a traitor to his country. No, he would see the King crowned, and would not brook any resistance to it. It would make his life difficult, he could only do so much while operating under his father’s increasingly ominous shadow, but difficulty had rarely been an obstacle he could not ultimately surmount. 

The horror of the situation was that the only way through it, to the success he so desperately wanted, was through the absolute desecration of his family. The choice, at least so far as others saw it, was between king and father. But the truth was far worse than that: now, Faramir had no king, and he had no father. 

Chapter 43: Book 3: Summer 3019

Notes:

Sorry this update is so late. I've been crazy busy at work and fighting a potential depression relapse. Giddyup!

The tension building in Faramir’s head was inescapable. For days he had hardly slept at all,  alternating between staring listlessly at stacks of notes that no longer meant anything to him and lying in the dark, imagining that Éowyn was there beside him. The daytimes were no better: interminable meeting after interminable meeting, making progress at the same rate that the mountains moved, stymied in all directions by his father, by the legacy of their house, by the ghost of his brother, in whose shoes he had no desire to walk. 

He had almost laughed the day a draughtsman had presented plans for the rebuilding of the house at Emyn Arnen to him. It was so incongruous, this promise of a place of joy and serenity when all else was chaos. But then the draughtsman had pointed out what would be their private chambers, the library, the nursery, and Éowyn’s bower, and then it had made perfect sense to him: there would likely be nary a day in their lives without chaos, irrespective of the outcome of this political nightmare, and a place of greater solitude could only be necessary. 

Summer had arrived in earnest, heat blanketing the City and the daylight hours stretching ever longer. Éowyn had gone to Cormallen more than a fortnight ago, and he had received no word from her in the intervening days. He tried not to note how few days remained until what should have been the day of their wedding; the sting of its delay was no lessened for him though he did not often speak on it and none thought to ask him. There were more pressing matters at hand, Gondor was caught between two very different futures. 

At one time, he had thought the solution to Gondor’s greatest problem was a simple one: prove to his father that he had no choice but to accept Lord Aragorn’s claim. Yet this proved to be a far more difficult task than he had initially expected; his father, for all his strengths as a ruler and a man of war, had locked himself away from reality, refusing to see the glorious truth that lay before him. He had not spoken to Faramir in weeks.

Faramir, for his part, struck out at every possible angle, preparing an offence of inestimable strength. The guilds, the wily lords that flitted from Minas Tirith to the Cormallen and back, the men of arms who could be trusted to do their duty, all these he corralled into something broadly representing a threat to his father’s proposed yet still-unspoken treachery. All the while, he was nauseated at the thought that the rest of his life would follow this terrible pattern: he and his father ever at odds, both working to undermine the other without thought or care for the bonds of kinship they had once held between them. 

It helped little that the court’s general approach to the uncertainty in the air was to go back to behaving as if Minas Tirith had not just suffered a siege of devastating scale. Elphir, ever his father’s son, indulged their worst inclinations in one breath while robbing them blind in the next. Of all the realms of Gondor ravaged by war, it seemed that Dol Amroth would be the sole victor.  

Faramir, to his great unhappiness, could not avoid his own return into that particular war front: though he had no desire to use the levers of courtly politics to bring about the crowning of the King, even he was not so optimistic as to think that he would never need  the support of these lords again. The glittering dinners Elphir hosted in his father’s townhouse, then, could not be avoided. 

His entire life had been a series of staid events and cold, unfeeling battles, thirty-six years with little reprieve from the monotony of it all. Yet standing amongst the people he had spent all of his life forced to perform for, he felt strangely unmoored. He had purpose for being amongst them, and more right than any, but there was a strange solitude to it. Elphir, of course, was there, but Elphir’s first priority would ever be (rightly or wrongly) Dol Amroth. There were others who were committed to seeing the return of the King, but few who had staked so much on it, few who risked ruin as Faramir did. 

With a nostalgia he was not quite accustomed to, he missed his brother. They had not often shared their politics, Boromir having long favoured his father’s approaches to most issues, but they had shared brotherhood, and that, at least, had ever been an anchor in uncertain seas. And when Boromir had not been there, there had been Éowyn, who, even if he knew she did not always agree with him, had not once wavered in her willingness to be beside him. He looked out at the myriad lords and ladies who had spread out across the public chambers of his uncle’s townhome and steeled himself. In time, and with fortune in his armoury, he would face fewer and fewer of these hours. 

He spoke for a time with Lord Húrin, who had been run so ragged by the precariousness of rebuilding the City when its fate was uncertain that he could speak of little more than grain stores and road repairs. Still, it was something of a balm that Faramir’s exasperated thoughts: so long as there remained fertile soil somewhere in Gondor, that problem might always be solvable. 

The new lord of the Pinnath Gelin, Glórindîr, cornered him for some time, imploring him to intervene on his behalf with Lord Astron—Glórindîr, it seemed, wished desperately to wed the young Lady Sedril. Faramir had not had much respect for Glórindîr’s father, Hirluin, who had been altogether too impressed with his own appearance, but he had not once misjudged a situation as badly as his son now was, retrospectively earning him some credit. 

Midway through the conversation, it occurred to Faramir that he was well overdue a letter to Éowyn and that she might appreciate the humour in that particular interminable conversation. He committed nothing to Glórindîr and took his leave of the new lord at his earliest opportunity—there was more value in wandering the outer limits of the room, observing what fragments he could of the conversations therein. 

For a time, he stayed away from the central courtyard. There, Lady Berúthiel and her rotating coterie of women had laid claim to their territory for the evening. But as the general atmosphere of the interior chambers revealed little more than that there was a general unease about Gondor’s fate, and that few were willing to commit themselves to either side of the silent war, he knew he could learn no more save by entering the heart of darkness itself. 

He moved brazenly as he approached Berúthiel; she would, as soon as she was aware of him, change her behaviour anyways, it would be rather more revealing to see with what speed she changed her conversation. And indeed, in response to his arrival, she simply arched a thin eyebrow, pointedly paying him no mind. 

“Yes, well, the Northerners are rather vulgar in that regard; they confuse the ability to wield a sword with the right to,” she said. “But they cannot help it: they are a simpler, more stubborn folk, unchanged over the centuries.” 

“If it is to our Rohir allies that you refer, my lady, I would remind you that they are now among us,” said Faramir, leaning against a pillar in the centre of the courtyard and tilting his head in the direction of Marshal Elfhelm, standing just beyond a pane of stained glass.

Berúthiel looked at him for a lingering moment. Then she laughed. The chittering ladies about her laughed too, though Faramir could well see that vanishingly few of them knew why. “The Rohirrim? Why ever should I take issue with them? Were they not our saviours upon the Pelennor Fields?” Her lip curled upwards into a snarl. “No. I speak of the northern boors from whom this usurper claims rulership. We have seen little of their lot, for though they wish to lord over us in kind, they have not deigned to come among us, but what has been shown is not promising.” 

“And was it not those northerners who liberated the chief part of the armies of Gondor, who ultimately decided the outcome of that siege? We owe our gratitude in spades to our Rohir allies, there are few more aware of that than I, but one gratitude need not come at the cost of another.”

“No, but the shape of that gratitude must be carefully crafted. Kingdoms cannot be passed out as rewards for all warriors who win victories or there would be no land left.”

“Yet you note that it was the Rohirrim who helped to turn the tide, and had not Cirion granted Calenardhon to Eorl in thanks for his aid at the Poros, who then would have come to our aid?”

“Calenardhon was a sparsely inhabited wasteland in those days. To gift that was to gift the marriage rights of the second son. To give away Minas Tirith? That would be to make a common whore of Gondor’s proudest, noblest son.”

“Gondor’s proudest, noblest son? Now, my fear Lady Berúthiel, you flatter me so!” Elphir stepped out into the courtyard, flashing Faramir a look of warning. It was a warning he took—this was not his house, he would not stir fights against Elphir’s wishes—but the anger deep within him was not quenched. Over the evening, he allowed it to cool like a blade thrust into a silversmith’s pool. 

He did not sleep, his thoughts would not settle enough to allow it. He had been generous with his father, generous beyond need or reason; his father had not called him, and so he had not come. But this indulgence of petty grievances was an embarrassment those of sense could not suffer in Minas Tirith: Faramir would politely ignore his father no more. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

In the morning, sending his father’s Secretary into half a frenzy, Faramir entered his father’s study unannounced. The room was set for war, though the war had all but ended. The realisation sent a cold shock of fear through Faramir. This City could sustain no more war, no matter what his father’s delusions told him. 

“You would do well to keep to a clear schedule, your incivility is tolerated only because of your name,” said his father dryly, covering a map with several thinly-wrapped books. 

“You are my liege lord,” Faramir said, pressing his knuckles into the hard wood of the table, feeling the half-healed contusions on his fingers stretch painfully. “And you are last of my kin, head of my house, my father. If this is an unfavourable situation for you, then I assure you, my lord, it is the greater burden to me.”

His father beheld him with a look of affected boredom. “If you have come to bemoan the indignity of being a son of the most noble and revered house of Gondor, lauded despite your recalcitrance and laxity, then I will give you no sympathy. I know you well, and your willingness to deploy your misery to ensnare pity and weakness holds little sway over me.” 

“You would have war then? War because you cannot subordinate your pride to your duty?”

“There would be no war, this northern usurper may have won the momentary love of the people, but he is untested. I have preserved this realm for nigh on four decades, the loyalty of the people is unwavering.”

“And the loyalty of Lord Sirgon, who was wrested free of Corsair imprisonment only after Lord Aragorn liberated the south? Is his loyalty to you unwavering? And his people’s loyalty? Now that they have seen in earnest that Minas Tirith abandoned them in their hour of need, why should their loyalty be unwavering?” 

“You know little of the ways of the world. For too long you have been sheltered, kept blissfully away from the harsh realities of the world. It has weakened you. You know nothing of the encumbrances of rulership, you are free to indulge your delusions because you are accountable to none.” 

Faramir inhaled slowly, feeling his blood heat in his veins. A deluge of words—bitter, angry words—threatened his defences; but his father moved quicker. 

“You are blinded by a child’s fantasies, and in this I fault myself, for I have long been too free with you. You do not see what dangers pride will work upon this land. You do not see that a man who hungers only for his glory so using the deaths of others to win it is a man who will lead a kingdom only to its own destruction. You do not understand the dangers of such a man because you yourself are one. You revel in the death that surrounds you, believing it better to be proved true in death than false in life; yet in the lands beyond the high towers of your ken dwell those who know that a false life is better than a true death; and they are numerous, and it is in their name that a ruler must lead.” 

“This is your word then? That you will stand athwart the legacy of Númenor, against all that is good and right to instead defend a long, slow withering into death?” 

“It is your word also,” said he, in bitter triumph. “For you hold no power that does not derive from my name, and until I no longer walk upon these venerated plains you shall hold no other power. You have been granted lenience, you have been  granted grace beyond measure, but you are my son and no others, and you will do nothing that is against my will.” 

The door clanged open behind them, an esquire of the Tower Guard, breathless and red in the face barging through. 

“My lord,” he said, gasping to recollect himself. “My lord, a rider bearing the banner of Lord Aragorn has been spotted at Cair Andros. It is expected he will arrive before nightfall.” 

“There,” said Denethor coolly. “You have wasted your time demanding peace of me, when it is not I who will be the first to return to war.” He dismissed the esquire. “Captain, if you would even take that responsibility again, if it would not encumber you too harshly with the world to which you owe your life, I would suggest that you that you ready a company to greet this rider when he arrives at our gates.” 

Against his expectations, the gauntlet had been cast down, and it was not his father who would be first to draw his sword in self-defence. This, however it had been intended, was not a test of Faramir himself. If he took up the obligations of his military rank once more, if he did as his father instructed, there could be no return; he would ever be his father’s man. If he refused to, whatever hope of reaching through to his father there may once had been would evaporate. 

He turned on his heel and left.

To his own surprise, he did go towards the Citadel barracks, descending deep into the bowels of the Tower, trudging through the musty basements and cellars, beyond the chambers and training halls and armouries he knew only too well. 

The news had spread quickly, quicker even than Faramir’s legs could take him. As he passed, whispers followed him, thick with nervousness, war-hardened hands trembling against blades, men who did not yet wish to become soldiers again desperately hoping that the inevitable had not arrived. 

He dispatched a chain of messengers. He would not assemble a company of men to harry the rider, of that much he was certain, but that did not preclude him being kept abreast of the developments. He would not learn of the rider’s arrival after his father. 

For some time, ignoring the pounding sense of fear that had quickly enveloped the barracks, he did the calculations he had long been avoiding. It was impossible to reconstruct the losses at the Pelennor Fields and at Morannon, it would take many months to know exactly how many men had been lost. But he could make a fair estimation, and he knew near exactly how many men each of the lords now camped upon the Cormallen had brought—the cost of feeding and sheltering them had not been a trivial one. 

No matter how he reframed it, the facts were clear: the army encamped in Ithilien vastly outnumbered anything Minas Tirith might field. And while he had never before thought his father a fool, he could not be certain that this madness had not severely damaged his ability to reckon with reality. Would he demand that the few men Minas Tirith had left smash themselves like waves upon the hard cliff face of Lord Aragorn’s potential army?

And what of Éowyn?

She had gone to Cormallen too, and ere that had vowed to put aside the implements of warfare—but what if they now faced a terrible extension of the war? Would she remain with her brother, with the men of Rohan and of Gondor? Would she wish to take up arms with them? 

The sun beat hotly against the ancient stone of Minas Tirith. Even buried within the deepest recesses of the Citadel, the heat was suffocating, growing worse with each passing hour of the day. Sweat dripped down Faramir’s neck, catching chill as it dried.

At midday, the first messenger brought word that the rider had reached the Rammas. An hour, then, perhaps two, separated them from their fate. 

Faramir returned to his work. With time enough, and with the cover of darkness to aid him, he might be able to ferry some fifty men to the field of Cormallen without raising the alarms. He would be compelled to go last, if any noticed the departures, he alone might be able to craft a tale sufficient to soothe the interest. He did not wish it to happen that way.

The second messenger arrived, thick black hair plastered to his brow and neck, face reddened—from exertion or the sun, he could not tell. The rider would soon be at the gates of the City. 

Faramir followed the messenger, pressing absentmindedly at the bandages beneath his tunic. He would need to replace them for a second time in one day, the temperature was unbearable. 

He arrived at the prow of the Citadel in time to watch the rider fly through the tunnel leading from the first circle to the second. The rider’s presence had already had what was it’s likely intended effect: the City ground to a halt. 

Up circle, then tunnel, then circle again, Faramir watched the rider, and wondered that he did not feel more fear in his heart. If this was the harbinger of war, then he wished to greet it with the appropriate level of distrust. 

The rider dismounted at the high stables on the sixth circle, and Faramir’s heart stopped. 

She glowed. 

The air itself seemed to bend and contort itself to suit her, fluttering the golden lashings of hair that grazed her shoulders and lower back and setting the hem of her tunic dancing against the breeze. There could be no ladies of Gondor, no Elven queens who could contend with her beauty; even Elbereth herself would have then paled in comparison. 

But her arm—still wrapped in bandages, still pulled taut in a sling. She had ridden from Cormallen one handed, without assistance or companionship. 

He was so taken with the sight of her, so worried for her well-being, he almost failed to notice the banner she rode beneath. Almost.

He had seen hastily stitched replicas of it crop up in the City since the Host had departed for Morannon, but this was the first time he had laid eyes on the original. Black cloth billowed above Éowyn’s head, and upon that black cloth was the White Tree, gleaming silver beneath the brilliant sunlight. Seven stars and a crown wreathed the tree, and it was a sight that made Faramir’s heart leap into his throat: in all his life he had not ever held even the faintest of hopes that he might see the device of the Kings fly freely and openly in Gondor. It set his heart further aglow to see that beneath the banner of the Kings stood she who he best loved, she who had become all that was good and worthy of love and care in Minas Tirith, she, who like the City itself had gone through fire and despair to emerge renewed, more valiant at the end. 

She looked up, pale face proud against the sunlight, and caught his eye. For a moment it was as though he were seeing her for the very first time, the love and excitability and eagerness bubbling up within him anew. Then she smiled. Bright and glorious, all that he had missed for so long. He could do naught but return it. 

≿————-　❈　————-≾

Éowyn took a steadying breath. Minas Tirith stood before her, rising blindingly into the pale blue sky, more of the world of dreams than not. She closed her mind to the memories of it from the height of the siege, when she had seen it battered and broken, when she herself had been battered and broken. 

“Send word to Lord Denethor that I require a meeting with him,” she said, turning to the page who had been sent to greet her. 

“Only Lord Denethor?”

She raised an eyebrow at the page’s impertinence. “Only Lord Denethor. You may tell Lord Faramir that I will speak to him later, if there is time left in the day.” 

Watching the page leave, she quieted her thoughts. The days she had spent with her brother had been happy ones, but not happy enough to repay the years of sorrow she had lost. Still, they had made her resolve greater: if this was to be their new world, then she would not see such burdens fall on the shoulders of others. 

She climbed the circles slowly, not because she had any desire to postpone the inevitable, but because she did not wish to be made to tarry king once she reached the Citadel. The longer she gave the page to deliver his message, the greater control she had over the situation. Once, in days that now seemed very distant to her, she had followed this path with Faramir, when the world had felt tedious and finite to her, but he strange and infinite. 

Entering the fountain court of the Citadel, her careful planning bore fruit: immediately she was whisked away to the farthest corner of the White Tower. This she had anticipated. Her arrival under Lord Aragorn’s banner had been a calculated one, and that calculus included the knowledge that Denethor would thereafter meet with her only in private, and risk being seen with her only when it was unavoidable. 

She was brought to an overgrown courtyard in the west of the Tower, a courtyard she had never seen before. There, at the far end, stood Denethor, older and more tired than she had ever before seen him. 

“My lord,” she said, with a swift execution of the necessary formalities. With a tight nod, Denethor dismissed the remaining guards, watching and waiting until the thick door shut behind the very last. 

“I will not bore you with the social details of my journey if you do not wish it,” she said. 

He gestured for her to continue speaking. She walked past him, angling for the low wall where she knew she would be treated to a view of the City. 

“Lord Aragorn will create Faramir Prince of Ithilien, to rule over the lands from Dagorlad to Poros,” she said, turning to look at him. “In this, Aragorn has the support of my brother, who does not intend to repeat the mistakes of our uncle. He has also the support of our people, the people of this very City, who you have sacrificed so much to protect. He will become king, though you may wish to deny it until the moment the crown rests upon his brow. He will become king, but his kingship need not bring indignity upon your house nor sunder you from your son. Already Lord Aragorn speaks of wars to reclaim the southern hinterlands and the barren lands to the east. Faramir may now wish for a king unconditionally, but he will not always look so warmly upon what the King wills. Would you have the prince of the most expansive realm of Gondor, your son, beyond your influence? Would you not be better suited to preserve what love there remains, to ensure that you might yet retain allies when allies become necessary—powerful allies, not lords who will soon become irrelevant?” 

For some time, Denethor did not speak. The warm wind gusted about them, a momentary reprieve from the early evening heat. Éowyn turned to Denethor, the sunset blinding her periphery. She began to speak again, her voice quieter but no less resolute, “I could not obscure from your sight what you needed no sight to know.” 

Beneath them, the City looked different to her eyes. Broken as it was, it was changed as if born anew. She saw streets she had once known reduced to rubble, with only errant wildflowers scattered along the debris to show that rebuilding had begun. It filled her heart with a strange yearning, a desperation to see it made whole once more. 

“You knew that I was sent from Edoras not wholly to act as an envoy, and though you may have entertained the gossip that said I had come in search of a husband, I know that you saw more of the truth than that. Perhaps you may not have known the details: that my King was made weak by his proud and by the terrible machinations of the Enemy, that my own home became perilous, and that rather than scour it, my King sent me away. But his fear grew to a fever pitch, and he believed me a traitor to the Mark. In so many words, he set forth a challenge. If I returned to Gondor, never again would I see my kin, the land I loved so well. Yet if I remained in the Mark, my hope of marrying Faramir was forfeit.” 

She flexed her hand, the silver band upon her finger glinting in the waning sunlight. 

“I could not bear to lose him, he who showed me love when I had long thought it a scarce. The thought filled me with a greater dread than even the machinations of the Enemy, and if I did not return to Gondor, I feared that I would go mad with grief.” She reached into her sling, pulling out the dagger, refusing to look directly at it. “It is an inclination we share, I think.”

“I have no interest in petty threats.”

“Nor I,” she said. “I come with only admiration and fear in my heart.” She set the dagger on the wall between them. The angry glow of terror that had surrounded it since it had come into her possession faded away into the blur of mundanity. “Twice my uncle chose life without me, and twice I found that I could not choose life without Faramir. Once, you made the same choice as I.” She stood, shoulders strong against the weight of the world. “Lord,” she said, holding Lord Denethor’s gaze with ferocity. “Will you make that choice again?” 

Chapter 44: Book III: Summer 3019

There had been only a flash of melancholic pride in Faramir’s eyes when Éowyn announced the gift Lord Aragorn intended to bestow upon him. 

“Strange that I might be made a prince of this land when it was Boromir who was so oft named one by its people,” he had said, almost to himself, and then said little else on the matter in the days that came thereafter. 

The morning was clear, the sky painted with glimmering flecks of mithril, brighter even than the days after the fall of the Enemy. Summer had come, and it had spread verdure far and wide in Gondor, so that even the blood-soaked fields of the Pelennor (where carcasses and corpses alike continued to burn) teemed with new life, reflected by the immensity of Minas Tirith. 

Éowyn woke gently, led into the light with languor. She had not slept well that night, but the morning was no burden to her. The terrors that seized her body and befuddled her mind were now distant, pushed back with the sun’s cleansing rays. She blinked into the shafts of light that arced through the window, watching dust mites flutter and swim in the warm air. 

Faramir stood by that window, hair loose, feet bare, and a rather thick volume balanced precariously in one hand. If he had slept at all—and she doubted he had—he had been quick to forsake the warmth of the bed. Éowyn stretched, and yawned, and smiled to see him look over at her; she knew the nervousness in his eyes, knew too that she among no other was privy to it, that it was a privilege to be cherished. 

She rose to retrieve her shift and slip it over her head, before sitting Faramir down in front of her. Slowly, breathing deeply to calm her own trembling hands, she brushed his hair, stroke after stroke until it lay soft and smooth, with nary a mislaid lock in sight. The pieces that fell around his face she braided backwards, threading silver strands to sit in stark contrast with the raven. She sealed her handiwork with a kiss to his crownless head. Her hands steadied, her heart did not. 

In her dressing room, a new quandary befell her. The Mark no longer felt like her home. Too much had changed, too often had she been left behind in the story of its ceaseless struggle. Today, she could not avoid the land from whence she once hailed; today, she could only be the Lady of Rohan. She dressed in white, and fastened a thin girdle about her waist: there, golden horses jumped and galloped infinitely. 

It was Faramir’s turn to brush her hair, and he did, and as she sat and tilted her head to and fro, she did not remark upon his uncharacteristic silence. The windows were thrown open, and no noise wafted up through them. There was neither merriment nor anguish, neither industry nor revelry. She wondered if the rest of the City was struck as dumb they were; what speech could be possible under such a tremendous weight? 

When he had made his valiant attempting at braiding her hair—with more than a few stern interventions by her about placements—he cast the thin cloth of her sling around her neck, and tied it fastidiously, with all the attention of one who had been responsible for the health of too many others for too long. Then he reached for the ceremonial sword that lay haphazardly across her writing desk. 

He held it up to her, delicately, as if its blunted blade might still cut the soft flesh of his hand. “Will you wear it?” 

Éowyn looked at the blade. It was not hers—no, there were none that were hers, and what might have been had been smote by the Lord of the Nazgûl. There was the dagger, of course, but that lay with Denethor, and it nauseated her still. But then, that dagger had done less than most blades; it had not even fulfilled its sole purpose, its lethality halted by her quiet faith. And if that dagger not yet soaked in blood nauseated her so, then how could she approve of any other blade that had killed, that had sundered life from life and brought ruin to so many? 

“Not today,” she said, and watched the movement of the blade as he set it aside. In the bitterest marches of her mind, a wraith wailed in fury. “Will you?” Her voice came so hoarsely it broke. She tried again, “Will you wear your own?”

“For today,” he said. “But hereafter no longer, if I am fortunate.” 

Fortune, they both knew, had little say in the matter. 

Outside the Palace, she kissed his cheek and sent him on his way. He had his work, and she had hers. At midday, with diligence and patience, they would find one another once more and relay their progress. Until then, they trod their respective paths alone. 

The Fountain Court was drained of all but the Citadel Guard, and even they stirred like cattle restless to be taken out to pasture in the earliest glimpses of spring. Worry lay heavy in the air, a thick smog to smother all noise. Even the boughs of the White Tree, dead for so many centuries, stooped lower; a centuries’ long war and a siege to bring about the end of all things could not splinter the branches. But this day might. 

The White Tower of Ecthelion was no less dizzying to her now than when she had first beheld it. Now, glistening beneath the sun of a new world, she marvelled that it had stood so proud, so steadfast, through all the waves of horror that had crashed and broken at its feet.

She thought too of the first person she knew who loved it; not Faramir, whose quiet, limitless capacity for love she had come to know only later, but Boromir, whose love had been anything but quiet. His love for this city and the people that dwelt within and without could not be contained by the discipline of reserved silence, and if what the holbytla said was true (and she had no reason to believe it was not), it was that abiding love for it that had brought him to his doom. Once, she had thought it impossible to love anything almost older than the stone it was made of. Now, she understood why the Tower Guard kept watch over a long dead tree, why steward after steward sat, without complaint, in an unadorned wooden chair rather than the opulent throne that stood above it. 

She traced the familiar paths of the labyrinthine corridors, counted the windows whose views she knew all too well, avoided the cracks in the ancient marble—not because they were dangerous, but because she still retained some of her youthful superstitions, and today was not the day to court ill favour with fortune. 

In the anterior chamber to the Steward’s study, she fixed his secretary with a firm look.  

“Lord Faramir has gone to Rath Dínen,” said she. “We need not duplicate our efforts. The task will be done.”

Then, satisfied she had spoken resolutely enough to brook no objections, she entered the study. 

A fire crackled low in the hearth, scarcely more than wheezing embers. The Steward himself stood by the mantelpiece, a strange, unequal reflection of his son. It was likely he had not slept long either. 

“My brother has granted us leave to be wedded in Edoras, as soon as we are able,” she said, shutting the door behind her. Then added, pointedly, “If you now tender no objections.”

Denethor turned his head to face her her. Even now, at the end of all his life’s work, he did not look half so bowed and broken as Théoden in the years before his death. There was yet defiance in Denethor, defiance that had seen at least one of his sons survive the unsurvivable. Defiance that said that he would make his objections clear, with or without her permission. 

“I do not,” said he, after a time. 

“My father is gone,” she said. “And the man who once was as a father to me is gone also. Yet it is long since I have submitted to filial piety, for it is equally long and longer still since I have had the obligations of kinship rendered unto me in kind. But to Boromir, in whom I trusted so readily and placed my love unconditioned, there I found a brother. And in Faramir—the second half of my unbound soul. To you, lord, who has kept safe the lands that I now love and shepherded the people who shall soon be my own, I would pledge the promise of both son and daughter; of protection, of loyalty, of service and of love, until the world ends or death takes me.” She adjusted her sling. “If you tender no objections.” 

For a long, quiet moment, he regarded her. She knew—for she knew his country, his rulership, and his son that had survived—what thoughts he had. He was ascertaining if this was a trick, a ploy at the direction of Aragorn or the White Wizard, or if it was some threat or taunt. He, like she, had not known a life where there was not always some double meaning. He had not learned to trust as she had.

“I do not,” he said. 

She nodded, and found that she had not thought far enough past this moment to know how to proceed.

“Come, then,” said he. “Let us walk, we have an appointment we cannot miss.” 

It surprised her still that she did walk, and that his secretary did not follow, and that there was no coterie of malignant lords chasing at his heels in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable. 

They departed the Citadel, and at the entrance to the tunnel, Denethor stopped, and looked to the Tower behind. Éowyn averted her eyes, it was not her moment to share. 

The Sixth Circle was devoid of life; those with sense had descended into the beating heart of the City, those without had shuttered themselves to the world, as if mere wood might halt the cleansing wave of a new day. 

The Fifth Circle was equally quiet, and yet differently so. Black banners, alike to the one she had ridden under, hung from the windows of houses and shopfronts; and flower petals, escaped prematurely from their stems, bridged the gaps between the cobbles. A guard or two patrolled the streets, the last men left to administrate the making of history. 

Further down they spiralled, and as they went, the City woke from its solemn reverie. Éowyn’s worry did not abate, rather, she grew only more aware that she was escorting a man to his execution. She, as much as anyone, had built the gallows, sharpened the executioner’s blade. 

His was not, she thought, a choice she would have willingly made. No, she had spent too long living at the whim of wise men who had failed her to submit to that fate gladly, without assurances for her own safety. She did not desire forgiveness—not Denethor’s, at least—but she did not wish to repeat the affair. Once the thing was done, once she could retire to Ithilien, she would do so gladly. She had tired of living by rules that were not her own; in that, she sympathised with the Steward. 

At the base of the tunnel to the Fourth, they were approached by a white-haired man, injured, leg splinted and head thickly bandaged. He kissed her hand and thanked her, and spoke of his joy at seeing her among them once more. 

That done, he turned his gaze upon Denethor, and his face broke. “My son was also lost,” he rasped. “At the Causeway Forts, he died for Gondor, like your son.” A tear slipped out beneath the bandages. “I give unto you my greatest thanks, lord.” 

Denethor raised his hands, placing them on the man’s shoulders. As if on instinct, the man bowed his head, heavy lids falling shut over glassy eyes. All at once, Éowyn was taken by the feeling that she bore witness to some ancient ritual, a conferral of succour ordained by thousands of years of practice. Each man closed his eyes, and Éowyn’s breath paused in her lungs; to breathe would be to interrupt a moment that was not hers. 

A soft breeze rose, heralded by thin leaves that circled the ground beneath their feet. Denethor opened his eyes, squeezed the man’s shoulders, and nodded. “Go with peace,” he said. “Go with pride. Your son’s death was not in vain.” 

This, Éowyn thought, was an unusual interaction, a unique moment, a meaningful experience, but not one that would soon be repeated; Lord Denethor was an intimidating man, and there could be few in the City who did not know the part he had played in delaying the King’s return, there would be few others who would seek him out. Yet thereafter, each step of their downwards journey was delayed by those who did seek him out. 

There were weeping mothers, broken and maimed fathers, shocked brothers who had only lately become the eldest sons, sisters who had not been granted the chance to say goodbye. There were carpenters and bakers, artisans and soldiers. All of them came, and none with malice. They thanked the Steward, sought his blessing in their new lives, or said nothing at all, as if their own unspeakable pain might be alleviated by his witnessing of it. 

Éowyn kept her silence; it was not her silence of old. Many thanked her too, they saw her, and knew her, and were not apt to forget her, but she was not the point of focus, she was not their primary concern, and it brought a strange comfort of its own. Faramir, she knew, felt agonising shame at his father’s choices. But Faramir had lived and contended with the fact of the stewardship and what it meant to Gondor for all his life; he would not see that beyond the sickly claustrophobia of the Citadel, that Denethor was yet known as the ruler who kept Minas Tirith strong against a world-ending siege, and who had, at the end of it all, willingly and peacefully relinquished his power to the destined King. That he had done so slowly and with great hesitation matter not. 

In time, they came to the ruined gates of the City, and beyond those gates it seemed as if the sum total of the population of Gondor had amassed, each man, woman, and child eager to secure their place in the history of Man. 

It was there that Éowyn departed Denethor; Húrin of the Keys arrived, and the Citadel Guards that accompanied him held a darkened box, the contents of which Éowyn knew but had never before seen. Elfhelm had come also, and quietly they stepped through the gates, and made for the centre of the crowds, walking all the while beneath hundreds of banners that signified every house and family and guild and company in the land.  

After a time—time which to Éowyn felt as though it had been mere seconds, or a lingering decade, but nothing in between—Denethor stood before the assembled masses, and there the Lord Aragorn met him. To Éowyn, it seemed more than ever that they were kindred, too alike to have stood in opposition in Minas Tirith’s battles. 

When the time was right, Denethor spoke in a clear voice that rang off the enormous walls behind: “Men of Gondor hear now the Steward of this Realm! Behold! one has come to claim the kingship again at last. Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor, Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur’s son, Elendil’s son of Númenor. Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?” 

Éowyn clenched her fists behind the folds of her skirts, whispering a silent prayer that her efforts had not been for naught. 

And so her eyes were closed when the host and all the people assembled spoke with one voice, one powerful voice that cried yea into the golden light. 

“Men of Gondor, it was the custom of old that the king should receive the crown from his father ere he died; or if that might not be, that he should go alone and take it from the hands of his father in the tomb where he was laid. But since things must now be done otherwise, the crown of Eärnur the last king has been brought hither from Rath Dínen.” 

The guards stepped forward, and opened the casket, and Denethor pulled from it that ancient crown that Faramir had that morn sought, holding it aloft for all to see. And it was a more beautiful crown than Éowyn had seen before, more ancient than the House of Eorl, more majestic than the rolling hills and sweeping rivers of Gondor herself. 

And Lord Aragorn spoke in a language Éowyn did not know, then put the crown not upon his head, but into the hands of the Ringbearer, who bore it hence to the Grey Pilgrim Mithrandir; and only then was the king crowned. 

The City was overcome with light and joy untempered, and there was a swell of people who moved as one, seeking for the heart of Minas Tirith as it became Minas Anor anew. And Éowyn did not fight the tide, but allowed herself to pass as one with it, to be borne upwards until at last she was at the Citadel, and there watched in quiet contemplation as the argent banner of the Stewards was lowered, and in its place raised the new banner of the Kings. 

Into the Hall of Kings she was swept, and here she was to be a spectator only, for though Gondor was her home, she was not yet a subject to its King. In delirious silence, she stood beside her brother, and in time beside the Ringbearer and what remained of the Fellowship (and keenly did she feel the loss of its ninth Walker) as the Hall filled with all those lords and ladies and captains of Gondor who would now swear their fealty to the new dawn. 

The King came, and sat in the throne that had lain unoccupied for nearly a millennium, and Éowyn thought it strange but not unwelcome to see a king who was not bowed by impotent pride, and her heart sang. 

It was Denethor who first approached the new king upon his throne, and her heart trembled at the sight. 

“The last Steward of Gondor begs leave to surrender his office,” said Denethor, the clarity of his voice silencing all else in the Hall. He held out a white rod; but Aragorn turned the rod away, saying: “That office is not ended, and it shall be thine and thy heirs’ as long as my line shall last. Do now thy office!”

Éowyn’s heart, which had not beat for many long moments, thundered to life. Through the crowd, she sought Faramir’s face, and saw that he too was looking at her. In that glance, a thousand silent words passed. Denethor would be Steward, but so too would Faramir, in his time, and one day Faramir’s son would rise to that office—one day their son would rise to that office.

Denethor took back the rod, and next presented a sword and knelt, and swore his fealty to the King. Éowyn closed her eyes, willing away the tears that welled in her eyes. 

But next came Faramir, and he too swore his allegiance to Elessar. But before the King bid him rise, he stood from his throne, and addressing both Faramir and the crowd at once, said: “Son of Denethor, I here name you Faramir, Prince of Ithilien. You and your sons shall have those lands to be your princedom, and I would have you live in Emyn Arnen, in sight of Minas Anor and Minas Ithil; for that city that was once Minas Morgul shall be utterly destroyed, and by your hand scoured of that evil that once dwelt within.” 

Soon Éomer greeted Elessar, and they spoke as brothers—and perhaps, Éowyn thought, they now were. In turn, they swore anew the Oath of Cirion and the Oath of Eorl, and though what had once been the words of the Steward now became the words of the King, Éowyn knew it was not in this oath that that promise was sealed, but in her, and in Faramir, and in the love they had and the life they would share. 

And when the time had come that all the Lords of Gondor had sworn their fealty and loyalty to the King, she took her leave of the Hall, and came out into the bright light of the Fountain Court, and there found Faramir. 

She could no longer hinder her tears, and as they embraced, Éowyn wept, and her heart was full, and at last she was happy.

Chapter 45: Epilogue

Summer turned to autumn, and the wounds of war closed and began to scar. Elessar wed Undómiel at Midsummer, and happiness was reborn in Minas Anor. The raiders were chased from the Bay of Befalas, and from Ithilien into Minas Morgul, and from the plains of Rohan and the mountains of Eriador. The Dunlendings were brought to heel, and a new king sat upon the throne in Edoras, and he was hale and full of vigour and beloved by his people. 

In autumn also was Théoden laid to rest as proper—not in the rushed manner of a war burial, but in the manner befitting a king. Éowyn tendered no thoughts on the matter, save in choked whispers to her beloved, for he alone could know truly what conflict raged in her heart. 

Then was the time for joy, and to crown this joy was the wedding of Éowyn, the Hero of the Pelennor Fields, to Faramir, Prince of Ithilien. To anoint their marriage came not only Éomer King of Rohan, but Elessar of Gondor and Arnor, and upon their marriage was staked the dreams and wishes and needs of both kingdoms alike. But Denethor was not there, for a warden ever must remain in Minas Anor, tending her eternal watch against the dark that had only lately been banished. In his stead stood Imrahil of Dol Amroth, who stood also for Finduilas, his sister, and when he kissed the brow of his newly-created sister-daughter, the love of a thousand generations passed through his lips. 

Much merry was thereafter made, and gifts were bestowed by all the races of Middle-earth. From Legolas of the Woodland Realm came the first seedlings to rewild the haunted lands of Ithilien; from Gimli, now Lord of the Glittering Caves, came a shield of mithril emblazoned with the moon of Ithilien, that those who had given so much would at last be protected by the hands of others. From Peregrin of the Tower Guard, the very last of his pipe-weed, to be treasured among the finest of gifts of the Arnorian earth. Meriadoc, Esquire of Rohan laid himself at the White Lady’s feet, and there swore an oath of eternal loyalty and love, and this above all other gifts did Éowyn esteem, and she wept, and did not wish to see him so soon departed. 

Yet to Faramir, the greatest of these gifts was the love of Éowyn, and this she proclaimed to him in the sight of many, and in comparison to her by his reckoning and the reckoning of many others was the light of Anor much dimmed. And she laughed, and so too did he, and it seemed as if the world itself grew light with mirth, for all was beginning to be made whole. 

In the months that followed, hard labours were undertaken; but they were done so gladly, and with hope for all that was still to come. Rohan awoke from its slumber and found that it had strength yet, and the plains were cleansed and ploughed afresh, and the shutters cast off the Golden Hall, and the light that filled it was mighty and just. 

In Minas Anor as in Lebennin and Lossarnach and Anfalas by the wild sea, old hurts were healed and flowers grew from the ashes of fallen cities, and the crownless again were made kings. Even in Ithilien, which had weathered the brunt of the Enemy’s malice and sacrificed much that Middle-earth might live, there came a wail as the first sign of newborn life, and from the rubble of her ancient vales came sanctuary for all those with nowhere left to return. 

The spring came once more, and in the shadow of the War’s first memorial, a child arrived in Emyn Arnen—a son. And he was named Elboron, in reverence of his forefathers and their forefathers before them, who had long endured with only the stars above for succour. He was named too for his likeness to the uncle he would never know, whose appearance he would come to one day mirror, as the summer mirrors itself year upon ever-changing year. He was beloved, then and forever, by his mother who carried him, his father who wept when first he beheld him, and his grandsire who would, in time, atone for his sins through works borne of love for this infant of a new age. 

Thus came Faramir to the peace of his perpetual hope; and Éowyn to the love long denied to her; and all, at its end, was well. 

Notes:

It feels strange that I’m finally able to post this—it’s been a while! I started writing this during the second lockdown while procrastinating my MPhil and, perversely, I think this may be the thing I’m proudest of. One day I may put it through some serious edits, or (heaven forbid) try a sequel, but for now it’s nice to put this to bed.

Thank you all for your kindness and encouragement over these last almost four (!) years. It means more to me than you’ll ever know.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Beyond the Tomb