Chapter Text
They left Himring burning behind them.
The mare beneath her was black, tall-withered, stolen from some lord's stable. Sauron sat behind her in the saddle, one arm across her waist to keep her upright, the reins held loose in his other hand. Her wrists were bound before her with rope that smelled of tar. The pearl lay hidden in her left sleeve, a small weight against the inside of her elbow.
Behind them walked the others.
She turned her head once—only once—and saw them stumbling through the dark. Five or so. The Elves from Himring's garrison: guards who had stayed to defend the walls, servants caught when the gates fell, a smith still wearing his leather apron. Their hands were bound behind them. Orcs walked alongside with whips, and the crack of leather on flesh carried forward on the wind. They walked in silence. Only boots on ground and ragged breathing broke the quiet
One lifted his head as she looked back. Young, his face smeared with ash and blood. Grey eyes met hers across the distance. Recognition moved through his expression—brief, swiftly hidden. He had stood watch in her tower once. Had brought firewood to her workroom on winter mornings when the cold came bitter through the arrow-slits.
She looked away before the Orcs noticed.
The horse moved at a walk, steady and tireless. Sauron's arm held her upright, unyielding across her ribs. He said nothing. Made no sound. Only guided the beast north across the burned valley while the stars wheeled overhead and the cold deepened.
Anfauglith stretched flat in all directions. No trees. No hills. The ground was hard beneath the mare's hooves. Each step struck like stone on stone, the sound carrying far in the still air.
The wind came from the north, bitter and dry. It carried the smell of smoke—acrid, the scent of forges and slag heaps and things burning that were not meant to burn. Angband lay that direction. Thangorodrim rising black against blacker sky.
Her hair whipped back in the wind. Silver strands tangled in Sauron's armor, caught on the chased edges of his plate. She felt him shift behind her, felt his hand tighten fractionally on the reins. The horse's ears swiveled back, then forward.
Hours passed. Or days. The stars turned in their courses. Her legs went numb from cold and the rigid position. Her bound wrists ached where the rope cut into skin. The pearl pressed against her elbow—small, hard, a constant reminder. She focused on that. On keeping the sleeve in place.
Behind them the sounds continued. Whips snapping. Sometimes a stumble, quickly corrected. The Orcs spoke to one another in their harsh guttural tongue. The prisoners made no sound at all.
The mare's warmth rose up through leather and wool. Steam came off its neck in the cold air. Sauron's breath stirred her hair—regular, measured, not the breath of a living thing, but the careful mimicry of it.
Dawn broke grey in the east. No sun. Only a gradual lightening, the black sky fading to charcoal, then ash, then pearl. In the growing light she could see the prisoners more clearly.
The young guard walked near the back. His red cloak was torn. Blood had dried on his temple where something had struck him. But he walked steady. Kept pace.
Ahead, perhaps a mile distant, smoke rose thin against the pale sky.
The camp.
Sauron's arm tightened. The mare quickened its pace from walk to trot. Behind them the Orcs shouted, and the whips cracked louder. The prisoners began to run.
The camp grew larger. Dark shapes resolved into tents—low structures of black leather and hide, arranged in concentric circles. Orcs moved between them. They looked up as the column approached, and their voices rose in jeering calls.
The mare slowed. Stopped. Sauron dismounted in one smooth motion, then reached up and pulled her down. Her legs buckled when her feet struck ground. His hand caught her arm—not gently—and steadied her.
"Bring them," he said.
The Orcs herded the prisoners forward. They collapsed near the fire, a ragged circle of bound figures. Guards stood around them with spears and whips.
Sauron looked down at her. His golden eyes caught the firelight and held it.
The tent stood apart from the others, larger, its dark fabric stretched taut over poles twice the height of a man. Lamplight glowed faint through the opening. Two Orcs guarded the entrance, black-armored and silent, their yellow eyes tracking her as the captain dragged her forward across frozen ground.
He shoved her through the flap.
Warmth struck first—the wind's absence, the air still and close after two days of cold that had cut through every layer she wore. Then smell: lamp oil beneath something sweet and cloying. Incense, perhaps, or perfumed smoke from the brazier. Pleasant. Wrong in this place, with Orcs outside and Angband waiting north.
Three lamps hung from the crossbeams, their flames steady behind glass, casting soft gold across walls lined with heavy fabric the color of old blood. Carpets covered the ground—thick wool in patterns of black and gold, soft beneath her boots after days of frozen earth. A brazier stood in one corner, coals glowing red-orange. Heat gathered beneath her bound wrists where rope cut into raw skin.
At a low table near the brazier, he wrote something on parchment. The quill scratched faint against the surface.
Copper hair caught the lamplight, shining bronze and red-gold where it fell past his shoulders. No armor now—only a long robe of black velvet, the fabric draping smooth from shoulders to floor, worked with silver thread at collar and cuffs in patterns too intricate to follow. His hands moved with steady precision, long fingers elegant around the quill, entirely unhurried. The mark in her collarbone burned dull and constant.
The tent pressed too warm. The air too thick. Sweat began at her temples, at the small of her back.
He set down the quill. Stoppered the ink bottle. Only then did he look up, and his grey eyes found hers with the same attention she had seen at Himring—fixed, unblinking.
He rose. The black velvet fell in unbroken folds from shoulder to carpet, its hem pooling briefly on the wool before he moved.
"Come. Sit." He gestured toward a carved chair near the brazier—dark wood, cushioned in deep blue silk. "You must be weary. Two days on the road without proper rest."
She remained standing.
He tilted his head. Studied her a moment. "I said sit."
A force pressed against her—not physical, not hands or rope. A weight settled on her shoulders, her chest, her legs. She tried to resist and could not. Her knees bent. The chair met her as she sank into it.
"There," he said. Tone still warm. Still kind. "Much better."
He moved to a side table where a pitcher stood beside two cups of silver. Wine poured. He lifted the cup and crossed the space between them—three steps, four—and held it out.
She refused it.
He stood close now. Close enough that she could smell him beneath the incense—something clean. Winter air. Stone washed by rain. Not the orcish stench that had surrounded her for days. Just that clean cold smell that should not exist in a tent this warm, in a camp full of creatures reeking of rot and leather.
"Trust nothing from the enemy." He smiled—his mouth curved but his eyes remained flat, grey and still. "But I am not your enemy, Serindë. I am merely the instrument of your education."
He set the cup on the small table beside the chair—it settled with a soft sound, wine trembling in the silver—and stepped back. Not far. Only enough to give the appearance of courtesy. She could still smell that cold clean scent. Could still see the lamplight catching in his hair, the silver thread worked through his tunic's collar, the way his hands hung loose and empty at his sides.
"You shiver."
She had not realized. But yes—her hands trembled, the rope cutting into wrists gone raw and dark with dried blood. From the mark, perhaps. From exhaustion.
"The tent is overwarm for you. You have been in the cold too long. Here." He reached toward her.
She flinched back against the chair.
He paused, his hand suspended between them, palm up. "Peace. I only mean to unbind you. Those ropes are cruel. Unnecessary. You are not going anywhere."
She stared at him, silent.
"No?" He lowered his hand. "Then they remain. But you will permit me—" He stepped close again, too close, and his fingers touched her wrist where the rope had worn deepest. His skin was cool despite the tent's heat. Dry. He turned her wrist gently, examining the raw flesh, the blood crusted brown against the hemp. "Your hands are your craft, Serindë. And yet here they are, damaged by rope and your carelessness."
He released her wrist. His fingers trailed along her forearm as he withdrew—just a touch, light, but she felt it burn. The pearl pressed hidden beneath her sleeve. If he reached higher, if his fingers found the fabric's edge—
"Your hair."
She looked up. He had moved again—when? She had not seen him shift but now he stood beside the chair, not before her, and his hand rose toward her face. The tent flap was behind her, Orcs beyond it, nowhere to go.
His fingers touched a strand of her silver hair where it fell past her shoulder. He lifted it, let the lamplight catch in it, examined the color with the same attention he had given her wrist. "Like Míriel's." He let the strand fall. "Such beauty. It would be a pity to mar it."
"I shall not make for Morgoth."
"No?" He moved again—she caught the motion from the corner of her eye, felt him circling behind the chair. "You say this now. When you have not yet heard what making for my lord entails. What rewards attend such service. What consequences attend refusal."
"He slew my grandfather."
"Ah. Finwë." The name came soft, almost reverent. "At Formenos, was it not? He could have yielded the jewels and lived. Pride, you see—it runs through your bloodline, a flaw in otherwise perfect steel." He paused. "And your brother..." Fabric rustled as he moved. "Tell me—did he ever speak to you of his time in Angband?"
Silence.
"I take that as a no." He appeared at her right side, standing close, looking down at her. "How thoughtful. Perhaps he wanted to spare you. Or perhaps the memory was too... vivid."
She stared past him at the tent's fabric wall.
"He was magnificent in his defiance. At first." The words came soft, almost fond. "But there are ways to unmake even the proudest spirit. Ways that mark a soul more deeply than any blade." A pause. "When I was finished with him, he could not bear to be touched. Could not look at himself without flinching. Even now, I wonder—does he still wake screaming?"
"Stop."
"No." He reached toward her face—she jerked back but the chair held her and his fingers caught her chin, tilted it up gently so she had to meet his eyes. "I think you need to understand what awaits you if you refuse my lord's generosity, little one."
He released her chin and stepped back. She could breathe again but the trembling had grown worse—her hands shook violently now, the rope cutting deeper as her wrists twisted against their binding.
"You tremble. Good. Fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Sweat gathered. Her hands shook. The mark burned cold through her ribs.
He moved to the brazier, looked down at the coals' red glow.
"My lord values beauty. Prizes craft. If you submit willingly—if you place your skills in his service and create works worthy of his glory—you shall be treated well. Given fine materials. A comfortable workshop. Food, warmth, all that you require." He looked up. Met her eyes across the tent's interior.
"But if you refuse..." He let the word hang. "Then he shall take what he desires from you another way. He shall give you to me first. I have always appreciated fine things, Serindë. Beautiful things."
"And when I have tired of you, when your beauty has served its purpose and your pride is properly... adjusted... then you will go to them. To the Orcs. They are not gentle with their playthings. They are not patient."
Wetness touched her cheek. Silent tears, hot against skin gone cold, running down to her jaw and dripping onto the silk below.
He saw them. His grey eyes sharpened, fixed on her face with new attention. And he smiled.
"There. That is better. That is honest." He crossed the space between them again, and this time when his hand rose to her face she sat frozen. His fingers touched her cheek, caught one tear on his thumb, brought it close to examine in the lamplight.
"Do you think your brother would forgive himself? If he knew what became of his little sister in the same halls where he begged for death? If he learned that I had enjoyed you first, before passing you to creatures who would use you until there was nothing left worth using?" He returned to his seat at the table, sat with that same fluid grace. "We have time. You may think on what I have said. Consider your options."
Silence. She stared at the carpet beneath her feet. At the cup of wine he had set beside the chair, untouched. At her bound wrists where blood had dried dark against rope.
"You served a greater master once," she said. "Before you learned to grovel."
The tent went very still.
He rose. Without that fluid grace. Sharper. And crossed the space between them in two strides and his hand shot out, caught her jaw, wrenched her face up with force to meet his eyes.
"What did you say?"
She met that gaze. Held it. "You heard me."
His fingers tightened against her jaw. Enough that she felt the strength in them. Enough that she understood he could break bone if he chose.
"Careful, little one." The words came soft. Too soft.
"Do you wag your tail when he calls?"
For a moment she thought he would strike her. His hand trembled. Then he released her. Stepped back. When he spoke again his voice had gone flat.
"Captain."
The Orc entered.
"Throw her in with the other prisoners. If she will not accept my protection, she does not need a dwelling of her own."
"Yes, my lord."
The Orc's hand closed on her arm. Yanked her up from the chair. The compulsion released. She could move again.
Sauron returned to his table. Picked up his pen. Did not look at her as the Orc dragged her toward the tent flap.
The captain hauled her out into wind that turned the tears to ice against her cheeks.