He is mocking her, hoping to rile her to reaction. She knows this, fights it, and yet it works nonetheless; she feels the irritation like a gall in her throat, bitter bile on the back of her tongue.
"The daughter of his sister, dullard." She cannot keep it from her voice, that brittle anger that gives her away. She remembers her mother, recollection dimmed by the years; how she had grown pale and thin from weeping, how the lustre had left her golden hair, how old and frail she had seemed when at last they buried her. She remembers her uncle before he was so afflicted, how he had dandled her on his knee as a child and walked with her among the stables, told her the stories of old battles and kings gone by until they were as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. The prisoner's vulgarity tears open old wounds, rubs salt into the raw edges of her heart; if she bore a sword, it would have leapt too easily to her hand. She thinks, with grim amusement, that she must compliment Dúnhere later on the restraint it must have taken to do no more than gag the man.
She presses her lips together again, and wishes that she were not so fair of skin, that the colour on her cheeks might not be visible when it deepens. That he might not take her flush of anger for one of embarrassment, or worse. But she must not hesitate. She is the blood of Eorl; she is, with Théodred and Éomer both away and fighting their own battles, the closest kin remaining to the King; she is the White Lady of Edoras, and she will not falter. Not in front of him, and not in front of the guards who still wait at the doorway.
"Éomund was my father; Théodwyn my mother; and she was the sister of Théoden, who sits now upon the high throne of Meduseld." Or, as the case may be, lies in a stupor in his bed, in a room which she cannot find a way to guard from the dangers that lurk within his own walls. "And we might while away the hours on my lineage, and trace lines back to Eorl the Young and Fram Dragon-Slayer and the first men of Rhovanion; but I have other duties, and if you have nothing to tell me, and no desire to spare your head, then I may as well return to them. I ask you again, and for the last time: who are you?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sforzinda
no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 10:14 pm (UTC)"The daughter of his sister, dullard." She cannot keep it from her voice, that brittle anger that gives her away. She remembers her mother, recollection dimmed by the years; how she had grown pale and thin from weeping, how the lustre had left her golden hair, how old and frail she had seemed when at last they buried her. She remembers her uncle before he was so afflicted, how he had dandled her on his knee as a child and walked with her among the stables, told her the stories of old battles and kings gone by until they were as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. The prisoner's vulgarity tears open old wounds, rubs salt into the raw edges of her heart; if she bore a sword, it would have leapt too easily to her hand. She thinks, with grim amusement, that she must compliment Dúnhere later on the restraint it must have taken to do no more than gag the man.
She presses her lips together again, and wishes that she were not so fair of skin, that the colour on her cheeks might not be visible when it deepens. That he might not take her flush of anger for one of embarrassment, or worse. But she must not hesitate. She is the blood of Eorl; she is, with Théodred and Éomer both away and fighting their own battles, the closest kin remaining to the King; she is the White Lady of Edoras, and she will not falter. Not in front of him, and not in front of the guards who still wait at the doorway.
"Éomund was my father; Théodwyn my mother; and she was the sister of Théoden, who sits now upon the high throne of Meduseld." Or, as the case may be, lies in a stupor in his bed, in a room which she cannot find a way to guard from the dangers that lurk within his own walls. "And we might while away the hours on my lineage, and trace lines back to Eorl the Young and Fram Dragon-Slayer and the first men of Rhovanion; but I have other duties, and if you have nothing to tell me, and no desire to spare your head, then I may as well return to them. I ask you again, and for the last time: who are you?"