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shieldofrohanShe had been prepared for the end. She had been ready to die with sword in hand, to watch Edoras burn and bring her down with it, while the Shadow covered the land and all that they clung to was swept away. She had done all that she could, and even doing it, she had known it would not be enough. She had been ready.
She had not been ready to survive it. Every day since, she has wished with all her heart that she did not.
He had tried to woo her, at first. If it had not been so terrible to see, it would almost have been funny: the sheer clumsy stupidity of it, to think that power was enough, that a grief-stricken captive would flee to the architect of her misery. He had brought her flowers, and tried to make himself a confidant. She had spat in his face, and bidden him to kill her too, or else she would kill him.
Even Gríma's foolishness had its limits, but his covetousness did not. He would have her, he told her, and she would be his wife and kneel for him, and she would know her place. At the time, she had laughed openly, certain that nothing he could do would break her will, knowing that she had resigned herself to pain and death, believing that there was nothing left for him to turn against her. Éomer was dead. Théodred was dead. The only leverage he had over her was Théoden, who lingered half-conscious and no longer himself; and he needed the King more than he needed his desires met.
She had been so innocent, back then. Even in what had seemed to her the darkest possible hour, with everything lost and all that she loved ripped from her, she had still been so naïve.
The first time he had tried to bed her, she had clawed her nails across his face, snarling and spitting like a wildcat; and Gríma would not have overcome her alone, being both smaller and weaker than his unwilling bride, but he was not alone. She had been held down by his new guard, muscular men of Dunlending stock, and her maidenhead was lost to her most loathed enemy beneath the eyes and hands of three uncaring strangers, and she had wept as bitterly as ever a woman wept - not for her lost virginity, nor even for its circumstances, but because that was the moment at which she understood fully how utterly helpless she had become.
She tried to rally. She tried to find some strength, some pride to carry her forward. At every turn, it was ripped from her.
She had not given way easily. She had made him fight for every inch: made him drag her by her hair sooner than go where she was told; met his demands with stony, proud silence; watched for any weakness. She had left her mark on him more than once, biting and scratching and kicking and punching, and in time, it seemed, he had changed his aim. If he had once seemed to hope that she would love him, he soon sought only to see her broken, like a horse to the bridle; if he had once intended to make her his wife, now he was content to make her his whore. Anything, it seemed, to make her crawl.
She tried to escape, more than once. She knew the King's hall better than anyone still living, and they could not guard her all the time. Her second attempt, in hindsight, had come close to success - would have been successful, in all likelihood, if she had simply fled. But she could not bear to flee and leave him living, and she had managed to come so close, had had the knife almost to his throat, when the men he hired had heard his screams and dragged her off. That she had been soundly beaten did nothing to dissuade her; that thereafter she was locked away for over a week without light or food only hardened her resolve. But then there had been the prisoners.
Gríma needed the King alive. He needed Éowyn alive. The other Men of Rohan, those who had survived his takeover... he needed them far less. He had brought her out of her captivity, weak with hunger and grief, to see the ends of the men who had tried to help her. Háma, Ceolfrith, Harbeorn, and the rest, all men she had known since her childhood, bloodied and beaten and trying to remain strong; he had made her stand there as they were hanged, and their bodies thrown onto the dungheap, and all she could do for them was to give them the honour of not looking away.
And then he had turned to her, and said in a tone low enough for her, Their wives, their children. And when the guards released her arms, and Gríma told her to kneel, she had knelt.
That was a year ago. She has rebelled since, in smaller ways; twice more she attempted escape, alone in her planning, but that made no difference to the deaths that came from it. The second time she came close to killing him, wrapping her hands around his throat so that he could not call for help, was the last time he was alone with her. He was still alive, and she was still a slave, and all that she had accomplished was that her humiliations were more public.
Little by little, he broke her down. She rarely spoke, rarely moved without being ordered to. For a time, she tried to kill herself: refused food and water, until they forced it down her throat anyway; sought any weapon to end things, without success; tried to break her skull against the walls of her room, until they bound her helpless to a bed. In the end, with even that escape blocked to her, she surrendered. She hated herself for surrendering. She hated Théoden, in his sickness and his weakness, for surrendering them. She hated everything, with a ferocity that was the only thing she could still feel, and she had no recourse.
When he told her to kneel, now, she knelt. When he told her to stand, she stood. When he told her to open her legs, or her mouth, or any other part of her, she did. She stood behind his seat, beside the empty throne, and she was a shell: she said not one word, nor shed one tear, nor moved a muscle unless she was told. She had spoken against him perhaps a dozen times since the winter, never for her own sake: to denounce some political cruelty, to refuse him some right that was not his to claim, to say aloud You are not King. Each time, she had been made to pay. Each time, her people had been made to pay. She would never allow herself to close her eyes, as the bodies were brought before her. She would never give their lives lightly, and so she surrendered, over and over again, and hated herself more every moment.
And then, the King died.
She did not weep, finding Théoden cold and stiff in his bed when she came to bring his breakfast. She felt no sorrow, only a dull ache where her feelings had once been. She thought, without the horror she should feel: I would that you had died two years sooner, and spared us all this end. She closed his eyes, and settled his withered hands upon his counterpane, and, despite it all, she kissed his brow.
If he was dead, then Gríma was King. He was King by her hand, by her claim. He was King because he had married the Queen, and so long as she surrendered to him, who was to dispute it? And in time, she knew, his attempts would bear fruit, and she would fall pregnant with his son, and then the line of Eorl would be reduced to a whore's get, and what remained of Rohan would mean less than the dirt.
They had ceased to watch her so closely, now. It had been months since she had made any attempt at escape or rebellion. She had no contact with her own people, those who were loyal to the line of Eorl; she had no weapon and no horse. She had only one thing to aid her: the last scraps of Éowyn, Éomund's daughter, who had once sworn that she would never bend.
She would die, she swore, there in the dead man's room. She would die, before she lived a day as King Wormtongue's queen.
And she hurled herself at the guardsman, and as he stumbled back, taken by surprise, she scrabbled the eating-knife from his belt, and drove it into his eye, and then his throat, and she ran. There were few windows in the living-quarters of the hall, and fewer still large enough to climb through; she ran for the nearest door, a headlong and desperate dash which had no chance of success, no hope of escape...
And out into the summer sunlight, so dazzlingly bright after months almost entirely spend inside. She staggered at the heat of it like a hammer-blow, and tried to catch herself, looking back into the shadows of the hall and out into a city that was no longer hers, and wondered why they were not yet upon her; but there was no virtue in wondering, or in pause. She held the knife white-knuckled, turning toward the stables. It would do nothing to defend her, if armoured men came to reclaim her. It would not save her from capture - but it could save her from once again surviving it.
They did not come.
She did not discover why until she was outside the city. She had taken, of all among them, the King's own horse: Snowmane knew her well, and he had almost smashed down the door of his stall when she called to him. He charged through the street and down the Barrow-Road, and she clung bareback to his mane, almost flat against his back, the bloody knife still in her hand; and as the gates were closed to bar her leaving, the guards at last moving to prevent her, she dug her heels into the stallion's flanks and urged him on, with all the swiftness that only Rohan's horses could claim, and the guards were Men of Rohan, and they hesitated a split second to recognise the King's horse, and then he was upon them, and bursting out onto the open hillside, and he did not stop until the strength left him, and then he settled from a gallop to a trot, his white flanks heaving and dark with sweat.
And it was then, and only then, that she found she was not alone.
That was two weeks ago. Now, she and her strange rescuers are far from Edoras, outside the borders of the Mark, farther than she has ever been. She has spoken to them, by now: enough to know that they were sent to retrieve her, that their rulers seek an alliance, and that they will see her returned to the throne. It should be a hopeful thing, but it fills her with a terrible dread to think of it. Will she be Queen, who has already betrayed her people a thousand times, and surrendered them and herself to the man who would destroy them? Will she take up their cause, only to fail them anew?
She should have died, she thinks. She should have died in the escape. She should have died in the imprisonment. She should have died a year and a half ago, when she saw her people fall. But she is alive, and she cannot pretend that she has no duty to them, and even in the direst moments of her imprisonment, she has never been so afraid.
They brought clothing and supplies, and at last she is permitted some of the things she has been denied: she is given a knife to eat with, and a belt, and riding-gear. She looks, as they ride into the courtyard, almost the woman she was before the war: she is tall and fair and she sits upright in the saddle of a milk-white warhorse, her chin raised and her long golden hair fluttering in the August breeze. But there is an emptiness behind the grey eyes that fix themselves on some imagined point, and her hand clutches tightly to the horn of her saddle, the mark of a shackle half-visible on her wrist, and, inside, she is nothing the same.
She does not dismount when they draw to a halt. She barely seems to have realised that they have stopped at all. It is with the slowness of one moving through a dream that at last she turns her head, looking uncomprehendingly at the small party who have left the palace to meet them.
"They will follow me here, as like as not." Her voice feels rusty, alien on her tongue. It is the voice of the old Éowyn, who had never knelt with her head bowed and called herself whore and slave. It is the voice of a woman who expects to be taken seriously, coming from the mouth of one who has grown to expect mocking laughter. It is the voice of a Queen, and she is not Queen; she is not sure she is even human any more.
She wants to scream. She wants to say: Kill me or leave me to the wolves, but do not ask me to be Éomund's daughter now. She is dead, the Lady Éowyn is dead, and all is lost. Do not look at me as though I carry hope; I have none even for myself. She wants to say: I cannot offer you alliance, I cannot offer you help, I can offer you nothing at all. But there is no other Lady Éowyn, and she is needed, all the same.
"They will follow me," she repeats, and her hand winds tighter in the reins, her nails digging into her palm. They are longer nails than she would choose. It has been a long time since she has been trusted with either work to keep them short for, or with scissors. "Are you ready, if they come?"
She had not been ready to survive it. Every day since, she has wished with all her heart that she did not.
He had tried to woo her, at first. If it had not been so terrible to see, it would almost have been funny: the sheer clumsy stupidity of it, to think that power was enough, that a grief-stricken captive would flee to the architect of her misery. He had brought her flowers, and tried to make himself a confidant. She had spat in his face, and bidden him to kill her too, or else she would kill him.
Even Gríma's foolishness had its limits, but his covetousness did not. He would have her, he told her, and she would be his wife and kneel for him, and she would know her place. At the time, she had laughed openly, certain that nothing he could do would break her will, knowing that she had resigned herself to pain and death, believing that there was nothing left for him to turn against her. Éomer was dead. Théodred was dead. The only leverage he had over her was Théoden, who lingered half-conscious and no longer himself; and he needed the King more than he needed his desires met.
She had been so innocent, back then. Even in what had seemed to her the darkest possible hour, with everything lost and all that she loved ripped from her, she had still been so naïve.
The first time he had tried to bed her, she had clawed her nails across his face, snarling and spitting like a wildcat; and Gríma would not have overcome her alone, being both smaller and weaker than his unwilling bride, but he was not alone. She had been held down by his new guard, muscular men of Dunlending stock, and her maidenhead was lost to her most loathed enemy beneath the eyes and hands of three uncaring strangers, and she had wept as bitterly as ever a woman wept - not for her lost virginity, nor even for its circumstances, but because that was the moment at which she understood fully how utterly helpless she had become.
She tried to rally. She tried to find some strength, some pride to carry her forward. At every turn, it was ripped from her.
She had not given way easily. She had made him fight for every inch: made him drag her by her hair sooner than go where she was told; met his demands with stony, proud silence; watched for any weakness. She had left her mark on him more than once, biting and scratching and kicking and punching, and in time, it seemed, he had changed his aim. If he had once seemed to hope that she would love him, he soon sought only to see her broken, like a horse to the bridle; if he had once intended to make her his wife, now he was content to make her his whore. Anything, it seemed, to make her crawl.
She tried to escape, more than once. She knew the King's hall better than anyone still living, and they could not guard her all the time. Her second attempt, in hindsight, had come close to success - would have been successful, in all likelihood, if she had simply fled. But she could not bear to flee and leave him living, and she had managed to come so close, had had the knife almost to his throat, when the men he hired had heard his screams and dragged her off. That she had been soundly beaten did nothing to dissuade her; that thereafter she was locked away for over a week without light or food only hardened her resolve. But then there had been the prisoners.
Gríma needed the King alive. He needed Éowyn alive. The other Men of Rohan, those who had survived his takeover... he needed them far less. He had brought her out of her captivity, weak with hunger and grief, to see the ends of the men who had tried to help her. Háma, Ceolfrith, Harbeorn, and the rest, all men she had known since her childhood, bloodied and beaten and trying to remain strong; he had made her stand there as they were hanged, and their bodies thrown onto the dungheap, and all she could do for them was to give them the honour of not looking away.
And then he had turned to her, and said in a tone low enough for her, Their wives, their children. And when the guards released her arms, and Gríma told her to kneel, she had knelt.
That was a year ago. She has rebelled since, in smaller ways; twice more she attempted escape, alone in her planning, but that made no difference to the deaths that came from it. The second time she came close to killing him, wrapping her hands around his throat so that he could not call for help, was the last time he was alone with her. He was still alive, and she was still a slave, and all that she had accomplished was that her humiliations were more public.
Little by little, he broke her down. She rarely spoke, rarely moved without being ordered to. For a time, she tried to kill herself: refused food and water, until they forced it down her throat anyway; sought any weapon to end things, without success; tried to break her skull against the walls of her room, until they bound her helpless to a bed. In the end, with even that escape blocked to her, she surrendered. She hated herself for surrendering. She hated Théoden, in his sickness and his weakness, for surrendering them. She hated everything, with a ferocity that was the only thing she could still feel, and she had no recourse.
When he told her to kneel, now, she knelt. When he told her to stand, she stood. When he told her to open her legs, or her mouth, or any other part of her, she did. She stood behind his seat, beside the empty throne, and she was a shell: she said not one word, nor shed one tear, nor moved a muscle unless she was told. She had spoken against him perhaps a dozen times since the winter, never for her own sake: to denounce some political cruelty, to refuse him some right that was not his to claim, to say aloud You are not King. Each time, she had been made to pay. Each time, her people had been made to pay. She would never allow herself to close her eyes, as the bodies were brought before her. She would never give their lives lightly, and so she surrendered, over and over again, and hated herself more every moment.
And then, the King died.
She did not weep, finding Théoden cold and stiff in his bed when she came to bring his breakfast. She felt no sorrow, only a dull ache where her feelings had once been. She thought, without the horror she should feel: I would that you had died two years sooner, and spared us all this end. She closed his eyes, and settled his withered hands upon his counterpane, and, despite it all, she kissed his brow.
If he was dead, then Gríma was King. He was King by her hand, by her claim. He was King because he had married the Queen, and so long as she surrendered to him, who was to dispute it? And in time, she knew, his attempts would bear fruit, and she would fall pregnant with his son, and then the line of Eorl would be reduced to a whore's get, and what remained of Rohan would mean less than the dirt.
They had ceased to watch her so closely, now. It had been months since she had made any attempt at escape or rebellion. She had no contact with her own people, those who were loyal to the line of Eorl; she had no weapon and no horse. She had only one thing to aid her: the last scraps of Éowyn, Éomund's daughter, who had once sworn that she would never bend.
She would die, she swore, there in the dead man's room. She would die, before she lived a day as King Wormtongue's queen.
And she hurled herself at the guardsman, and as he stumbled back, taken by surprise, she scrabbled the eating-knife from his belt, and drove it into his eye, and then his throat, and she ran. There were few windows in the living-quarters of the hall, and fewer still large enough to climb through; she ran for the nearest door, a headlong and desperate dash which had no chance of success, no hope of escape...
And out into the summer sunlight, so dazzlingly bright after months almost entirely spend inside. She staggered at the heat of it like a hammer-blow, and tried to catch herself, looking back into the shadows of the hall and out into a city that was no longer hers, and wondered why they were not yet upon her; but there was no virtue in wondering, or in pause. She held the knife white-knuckled, turning toward the stables. It would do nothing to defend her, if armoured men came to reclaim her. It would not save her from capture - but it could save her from once again surviving it.
They did not come.
She did not discover why until she was outside the city. She had taken, of all among them, the King's own horse: Snowmane knew her well, and he had almost smashed down the door of his stall when she called to him. He charged through the street and down the Barrow-Road, and she clung bareback to his mane, almost flat against his back, the bloody knife still in her hand; and as the gates were closed to bar her leaving, the guards at last moving to prevent her, she dug her heels into the stallion's flanks and urged him on, with all the swiftness that only Rohan's horses could claim, and the guards were Men of Rohan, and they hesitated a split second to recognise the King's horse, and then he was upon them, and bursting out onto the open hillside, and he did not stop until the strength left him, and then he settled from a gallop to a trot, his white flanks heaving and dark with sweat.
And it was then, and only then, that she found she was not alone.
That was two weeks ago. Now, she and her strange rescuers are far from Edoras, outside the borders of the Mark, farther than she has ever been. She has spoken to them, by now: enough to know that they were sent to retrieve her, that their rulers seek an alliance, and that they will see her returned to the throne. It should be a hopeful thing, but it fills her with a terrible dread to think of it. Will she be Queen, who has already betrayed her people a thousand times, and surrendered them and herself to the man who would destroy them? Will she take up their cause, only to fail them anew?
She should have died, she thinks. She should have died in the escape. She should have died in the imprisonment. She should have died a year and a half ago, when she saw her people fall. But she is alive, and she cannot pretend that she has no duty to them, and even in the direst moments of her imprisonment, she has never been so afraid.
They brought clothing and supplies, and at last she is permitted some of the things she has been denied: she is given a knife to eat with, and a belt, and riding-gear. She looks, as they ride into the courtyard, almost the woman she was before the war: she is tall and fair and she sits upright in the saddle of a milk-white warhorse, her chin raised and her long golden hair fluttering in the August breeze. But there is an emptiness behind the grey eyes that fix themselves on some imagined point, and her hand clutches tightly to the horn of her saddle, the mark of a shackle half-visible on her wrist, and, inside, she is nothing the same.
She does not dismount when they draw to a halt. She barely seems to have realised that they have stopped at all. It is with the slowness of one moving through a dream that at last she turns her head, looking uncomprehendingly at the small party who have left the palace to meet them.
"They will follow me here, as like as not." Her voice feels rusty, alien on her tongue. It is the voice of the old Éowyn, who had never knelt with her head bowed and called herself whore and slave. It is the voice of a woman who expects to be taken seriously, coming from the mouth of one who has grown to expect mocking laughter. It is the voice of a Queen, and she is not Queen; she is not sure she is even human any more.
She wants to scream. She wants to say: Kill me or leave me to the wolves, but do not ask me to be Éomund's daughter now. She is dead, the Lady Éowyn is dead, and all is lost. Do not look at me as though I carry hope; I have none even for myself. She wants to say: I cannot offer you alliance, I cannot offer you help, I can offer you nothing at all. But there is no other Lady Éowyn, and she is needed, all the same.
"They will follow me," she repeats, and her hand winds tighter in the reins, her nails digging into her palm. They are longer nails than she would choose. It has been a long time since she has been trusted with either work to keep them short for, or with scissors. "Are you ready, if they come?"
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Date: 2025-07-23 10:32 pm (UTC)And that there is a part of her that it appeals to. That there is a part of her that looks down on a beautiful woman kneeling, submitting, uncertain - a part of her that looks at that sight, and feels a rush of desire - that makes her stomach lurch, and she shakes her head helplessly, her throat seeming to close. She wants, so desperately, to lean in and kiss Galinda again, to hold her and touch her and... and it has been a long time since she wanted that, but not long enough since she herself was wanted. She shivers and pulls Galinda's hand away from her ankle, trying to drag the other woman to her feet - anything but to see her kneeling, and to want her.
"Please." Her voice is thin and miserable, little more than a whisper, absent all command. "Please, do not... I..." And she cannot find the words for all that she feels, all the desire and the horror and the fear and the want that have all surfaced together, tangling into a knot that threatens to choke her. She cannot explain any of it without explaining all of it, and even if she could, she finds herself terrified of what it would to, of Galinda's look turning to horror or - worse - pity, of that strangely worshipful regard being lost. Galinda knows too much already. She cannot bear to fill in the spaces, to have Galinda know exactly how she has been used or why it fills her with such grief and guilt to be knelt to. All she can think to say, in that same unqueenly whisper, is, "I want you. I cannot... I want you." And she almost, almost manages to keep the tears from overflowing down her cheeks.
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Date: 2025-07-23 11:01 pm (UTC)"You need not," she whispers, and hesitates before adding, "and you must not be sorry." At this rate they will both be in tears; Galinda blinks hard, presses her lips together, all the little tricks her women have taught her over the years to make sure she smiles when she ought to. At least she need not smile right now; it is enough, she thinks, to hold back from crying. Éowyn needs her: Éowyn has a battle to fight today, and did not need another battle before she has even dressed.
Her hand smooths down Éowyn's back, feeling the strong muscles beneath soft linen, remembering the bruises and lashes she'd seen that first day. Mostly healed now, and Galinda would like to think her poultices had made all the difference, but she is not quite that good at fooling herself. Certainly they helped, she has decided, or else why spend all the effort to make them? She turns her head to kiss Éowyn's temple, a little awkward at the angle, and then rests her cheek against the other woman's. The closeness is soothing, even if it makes her want to kiss Éowyn again, or possibly beg Éowyn to kiss her - but she does neither, only holds her close and warm.
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Date: 2025-07-23 11:36 pm (UTC)It is no more than five minutes since this all began, but it feels like a lifetime. She closes her eyes, breathing in the smell of Galinda's hair, fresh and clean and floral. There is, she tells herself, no terrible tension in Galinda's body; it is not taut and trembling with the effort of not recoiling. There is no horror in her eyes, no reproach in her touch.
"You..." You wanted to kiss me, she almost says, but then remembers how often he said such things, orders phrased as statements, or perhaps mockery phrased as orders, and she bites it back. After a moment more, with another deep breath, she manages something a little better. "I do not want to hurt you, Glinda. I do not want... you have been the dearest friend I have ever known, even in so short a time." She draws away just far enough to meet Galinda's eyes, her own still glittering with tears. "And I know there is no time, and I must dress and ready myself, and be a Queen. But... but if it is your will, then kiss me, so I may know it. And if it is not, then I am sorry, for I would sooner die than demand of you what is not freely given."
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Date: 2025-07-24 12:50 am (UTC)What she can do is lean in, eyes fluttering closed, to kiss Éowyn once again. It is no less awkward than the first time, no less clumsy; she has had no practice, would not have dared it with any of the young noblemen and had not quite realized she would like to with any of the women. Things that seem as though they ought to be simple, such as the matter of what to do with her hands, turn out to be not quite so. If she doesn't think about it, her hands come to rest on Éowyn's thighs - but then as soon as she does think about it, it seems much too forward.
This time, very daring, she lets her tongue trace the line of Éowyn's lower lip, an offer and not a demand. It had felt - good, but strange - and stirred the melting heat inside her, the ache that seems to pulse through her body when Éowyn touches her. It makes her want to lean in more, to press herself closer to the other woman, and Galinda is concentrating hard enough on kissing to forget that she ought not to appear completely wanton; her fingers tighten on Éowyn's thighs as she pushes forward, her entire body yearning towards Éowyn.
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Date: 2025-07-24 02:03 am (UTC)She lets out a low, soft moue against Galinda's mouth at that first wet brush of tongue, and takes the invitation without question, parting her lips and giving Galinda a moment to explore before her own tongue comes into play, twining against Galinda's and guiding as much as she dares. Her hands drift up from the small of Galinda's back, up to her shoulders, one hand burying itself in Galinda's thick, soft hair, the other tracing the curve of her jaw. She tries to remember if she has ever kissed someone like this, without the urge to bite; she cannot remember a time. There is no fight in her now, no desire to flee, only a softness and a heat which, for the first time in years, sparks actual desire in her - unforced, unconflicted, merely two bodies yearning toward one another. She does not allow herself to think before moving to draw Galinda into her lap, wanting her closer, wanting to lose herself.
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Date: 2025-07-24 08:24 am (UTC)There is something like fire kindling inside her, something that rises higher with each catch of Éowyn's breath, with each time Éowyn's fingers tighten in her hair, and Galinda only breaks the kiss in order to take quick, shaking breaths, her forehead pressed against Éowyn's, one hand curled into the soft fabric of the other woman's nightgown.
"How am I to say goodbye to you now?" she manages, eventually; the castle is beginning to stir, the voices of men and the stamp of boots outside piercing through the haze of desire she is half lost in. Duty is calling, the duty both of them are beholden to, bedrock in both their lives. Éowyn's to go; hers to stay, and wait. Galinda clenches her jaw, forces herself to sit upright - cannot quite manage to let go of Éowyn, despite her best efforts.
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Date: 2025-07-24 01:41 pm (UTC)If only it were enough! If only time could stop, and leave them here, in the first time in years that she has almost been able to feel where happiness might be; if only they could step aside from duty and need, and stay here one more minute, one more hour, one more day. But time only stops for terrible things, not for beautiful ones; and duty is a chain that never fully loosens. She takes a deep breath, inhaling the warmth and the scent of Galinda so close to her, and then, reluctantly, opens her eyes and forces herself back into a more queenly mould, forces herself to sharpen her features and set her face toward duty.
"I think we have said goodbye," she says, quietly, and reaches for her tunic again, before she can relent to desire and reach for Galinda instead. It feels strange, now, to undress; she glances back at Galinda a moment, and then turns her back to strip off her nightgown. Only when she is dressed does she turn back, and there is still a brightness in her eyes, but her face is set. "I am sorry," she says again, less desperate and more soft than before, "to leave you this way. But will you go and find my mail-shirt?"
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Date: 2025-07-25 01:29 am (UTC)Perhaps it will be different, later. The next time Éowyn needs assistance with the fiddly laces of her clothing will be after she has fought and won, and perhaps there will be time in between for the two of them to become accustomed again. The thought of helping Éowyn undress has a new tinge of desire to it - and nerves, too, for Galinda cannot help but think of what might come after that, and how it might feel to have Éowyn's hands on her body, and how very little she knows of - whatever they might want to do together.
She waits until the rustling noises of Éowyn pulling her tunic on begin to subside, and turns back as the other woman does; she tries, but does not quite manage, not to bite her lip at the sight of the young queen at her most regal. Oh, but she is beautiful! And how hard it will be to wait, not knowing if she has triumphed or fallen.
Surely she cannot fall.
Galinda's chin comes up as Éowyn speaks, her face mirroring the other woman's: the perfect courtier, the perfect princess. They have both been taught from childhood how to wear a smile even if the world were falling apart around them, how to show no fear regardless of what faces them. This is, for Galinda, the hardest test yet: but she will triumph.
"At once, your Grace," she says, bland and courteous and perfect. And then a smile - quick and sweet, a real smile, one she would not dare if it were not just the two of them. "Éowyn," Galinda says, more softly, more intimately - and turns to walk away, not pausing at the door but closing it gently and firmly behind her.