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Elendil can hardly believe he is allowed to lay hands on Míriel this way, to touch her so intimately, so thoroughly. Caught up in the moment earlier, he was dumbstruck, but now that his heart is back to beating at a reasonable pace, now that the immediacy of that revelation, of discovering her longings easily matched his own, has settled . . . he feels the weight of it.
He was humbled by her trust when it was far less, that of a sovereign leaning on a devoted follower.
Now though, he ultimately aware of liberties he has been granted, at the sensation of Míriel's flesh against his own: the way her naked body fits against his own, her backside pressed against his front, the feeling of holding her in his arms, running a hand lazily along her ribcage and the curve of her waist to her hip. She is so perfect, her skin soft and unmarred, not weathered from the wind and the sun like his own.
Which means that when he moves his hand, caressing her thigh, and feels an indentation, a smoothness that is less soft somehow, it immediately draws his attention. Propping himself up on his elbow, he guides her hip backwards, scrutinizing carefully and finding a white line angled across her thigh: a scar.
“Is something wrong?” she asks.
“This scar,” he answers, running his thumb along it, trying to imagine how serious the wound must have been. “A blade cut you, rather deeply and some time ago, but when, Míriel? How? Until our venture to the Southlands, Númenor had been in no conflicts, had no wars, since long before either of us were born.”
“It’s nothing,” she says a little too quickly, which piques his curiosity further.
“A little further this way,” he points out, walking his fingers over to indicate just how close, “and this kind of cut could have caused you to bleed to death.”
Someone had tried to kill Míriel, of that he is certain. Even though this attack must have occurred before they met, he feels a protective surge of rage and guilt, as if somehow he ought to have prevented it.
Míriel sighs, sitting up, and takes his hand in her own.
“He was aiming for here,” she tells him, dragging his fingertips across her throat. “And then here,” she adds, entwining their fingers and placing them at the center of her chest, right between her perfect breasts. “
“Definitely not nothing,” he replies, and she lowers her face, as if she can feel the scrutiny of his gaze even though she cannot see it.
“It was right after I was chosen as Queen Regent,” she says finally, voice low. “The would-be assassin managed to get hold of some poison in his cell before questioning revealed any answers as to his motivations or who hired him. We . . . we decided it would be better to keep it quiet, rather than stir up any existing tensions. A succession debate always threatens our peace and stability. The last thing I wanted was finger pointing or riots. Our people would not have-”
Every last word makes him more enraged. He has no doubt who was behind that attempt on her life: Pharazôn, or at the very least someone who had supported his bid for the throne back then. Doubtless it was Pharazôn who had preyed on Míriel’s generous heart as well, convincing her to overlook justice and her own safety with fear mongering about the public good. But that her own guards, the people entrusted with the safety of their queen, had failed to track down the slightest evidence of who was behind the attack or even whether she might not still be in danger . . . Elendil feels his blood begin to boil.
“This is-”
“Ancient history,” she insists, clearly worried about what he is about to do, putting both of her hands on his shoulders, keeping him from rising immediately to seek out justice, to bring accountability.
“Someone tried to kill you. Someone covered that attempt up. And the rest just watched and said nothing, did nothing. Everyone who knew about this failed at their duty to you, their duty to the kingdom!”
He realizes he is shaking. In his mind he sees himself slashing through Pharazôn’s neck, stabbing through his chest, inflicting every injury on that vile worm of a man that had been intended against his beloved queen.
“Elendil,” she says with a regal tone, a clear command, “Promise me. Swear to me you will speak to no one of this secret, that you will not go out making wild accusations and putting your own and others lives in danger.”
“You ask me to act as if I do not know, to let this transgression go unavenged?”
“I have moved on from it,” she tells him. “I am safe here now with you, and that is where I want to be. Do not deprive me of that joy chasing some phantom of past wrongs.”
She presses her body against his, one arm around his neck and the other his shoulder. He presses his face into her hair, breathing her in, trying to calm down enough to be what she is asking for from him.
“I would never willingly deprive you of any joy,” he promises.
He won’t. So he will not rush off hot headed in a rage. Time has taught him patience. He will comfort Míriel, cherish her, and then later he will figure out how to address all the questions swirling in his mind, how to untangle this once buried conspiracy and protect her future, their future.
“Good,” she tells him. “We have both lost enough.”
“I want to be here with you too, you know that do you not?” he clarifies, kissing her forehead and then her cheeks, her nose, lingering on her mouth before continuing down her neck.
He can’t help imagining the fate she described in his mind, trying to banish it with his lips tracing that same line across her throat before descending further, guiding her to lie on her back against the pillows, covering her chest with kisses, doting on the swells of her breasts, stopping to pause a little longer in the valley between them, lips covering the absence of a scar where her attacker had apparently missed.
“Searching for more scars?” she asks as he continues downward.
“Should I be?” he asks, “If I keep searching, will I find more?”
“Not from that sort of thing,” she promises. He pauses to look into her face and sees her smile before continuing, “I have one on my foot from catching it on a sharp rock underwater when I was a girl.” The smile fades as she adds, “and my eyes . . . you know about them.”
Maybe that is why, to Míriel, the scar she bears seems not worth pursuing. What is it compared to her sight?
Still, as he moves down her body, along her hips and then towards her thighs, he stops and lavishes extra attention along the mark, kissing more slowly and thoroughly, dragging his tongue along that telltale line.
“While I live, I will put myself between you and all harm,” he vows. She is right: they have both of them lost enough. He cannot lose her as he did his wife, as he did Isildur.
But, instead of seeming comforted, she stiffens. He looks up from the spot he was kissing to glance at her face and something is definitely amiss.
“How have I erred?” he questions. “Was that too possessive of me? Presumptive? I know you are capable. Clearly you fought off-”
It is only that . . .” Míriel draws her legs up towards her body and away from him, wrapping her arms around both as she sits up. “It is only . . . I wasn’t alone that night.”
Comprehension of what she is saying dawns on him as her face flushes. Elendil has never worried himself with gossip about the court, so he does not know whether this might be common knowledge, but he also wonders at her apparent embarrassment.
“Someone . . . helped you,” he hazards, trying to avoid the appearance of presumption. He sits up and reaches one hand out to cover hers where they are locked around her knee.
“I thought it would be less uncomfortable not to mention it,” she explains, still looking very uncomfortable.
“For you or for me?” he asks. He does not want to discomfort her.
“Both, I suppose.”
“You do not have to remain silent for my sake,” he tells her, reaching to brush a stray strand of hair from her face. “You have let me into your arms, into your bed. Let me into your confidence.”
“I can’t imagine you want to hear . . . about my being with another man.”
He wonders truly, if has given her cause to think him so petty, so jealous and small. Or has someone else convinced her that such secrets are necessary, that she must hide parts of herself to please and assuage those who hold her most dear.
“Do you truly think me such a child, mírë? I wish to know you as completely as one person can know another, if you’ll let me.”
She nods slowly, lacing her fingers with his. She opens her mouth and the words come spilling out, like water spilling over the edge of a cliffside.
“It’s been so long and I have never been able to speak of it. Because he died, he died protecting me, saving me, and there was nothing I could do. And then. And then I couldn’t even honor or acknowledge his sacrifice, my loss. Because no one could know the attack happened at all, I couldn’t even tell his family he was a hero, I couldn’t tell them that I . . .”
She stops abruptly, as though caught by a heavy anchor.
“What is it about him, about your past, that you feel the need to hide, to protect me from?” he asks softly, encouraging her to let go, to unburden herself.
Míriel swallows, takes a deep breath, and then says, “I loved him. If he had lived, I might have wed him I think.”
He uses his free arm to pull her close against him, wrapping it around her shoulders and holding her as best he can with her legs folded between them.
“How difficult, how lonely this must have been for you. The grief alone of that kind of loss, I know all too well, but to not be able to speak of it, to have to hide your despair, to have no one you can share your pain with, no grace from those around you in light of their knowledge of your suffering. I marvel that you did not break under the strain of it.”
When they first spoke, Elendil thought her cold, rigid, unnecessarily joyless. He has long since changed his opinion, but now he sees how she acted then in a different light. Míriel is strong, disciplined, but how much resolve must it have taken to carry on as though nothing happened? He has watched hold her head high under great difficulty firsthand, but it occurs to Elendil now that she has been doing so for quite some time, far longer than he had realized.
“It doesn’t bother you hearing me admit that, that I loved him, that I would have taken him as my husband? It doesn’t make you feel as if . . .”
She doesn’t finish the question, but he believes he understands her meaning all the same. How can he make her understand that her worries are unfounded? Does she truly not yet know his heart?
“Why should it? I did marry. I loved my wife. There were times when I didn’t know if I was going to survive her death. It gutted me. But that does nothing to diminish or trivialize the love I feel for you, Míriel. Have I given you reason to believe otherwise?”
He hopes he has not but, if he has, Elendil is determined to prove otherwise.
“Not remotely,” she assures him, knees falling from her chest, opening herself back up physically.
“Then trust that the same is true in the opposite direction,” he urges, taking both of her hands in his, kissing her knuckles. “You do not have to hide your feelings, your truths, from me.”
“It’s not just that I lost him,” she says at last. “It is not even that I could not speak of it. It is that he died from a blade intended for me. He died because of me, because of what we were to each other. That’s why I tried not to let anyone get close afterwards, not because I didn’t trust but because I couldn’t stand the thought of another person I loved dying for me, dying because they were with me.”
So it is not simply loss, but guilt that Míriel has been carrying. Elendil knows that canker well enough. If only he had been there on that fateful day, would his wife still be alive? If only he had not pressed Isildur to find a calling so intently, would he still be here? If he had told Eärien that he was proud of her- No. These questions are an endless abyss. He has pulled himself back from that pit too many times not to know that truth.
“You didn’t kill him, Míriel,” he reminds her, pulling across his lap to cradle her in his arms, one arm wrapped under her legs and the other around her back, “and if he was anything like me, the man you loved before me, I am certain he would have chosen to lay down his life for yours, even if he had to make the choice a thousand times over.”
“But I didn’t want him to,” she tells him, resting her head against his chest, fingertips tracing patterns along his skin. “I don’t want you to. I wanted him to live. I want you to live.”
She tilts her face up and he bends his down to kiss her, relishing the feeling of her warm and whole in his arms, the knowledge that she trusts him. She is willing to take this chance on him, despite her misgivings about opening up her heart again.
“I want to live as well, trust me. You have given me so much to live for.”
So much to fight for, he doesn’t say aloud. Míriel has made her position on the situation perfectly clear, but that doesn’t mean he can afford to turn a blind eye, not with her life at stake, not with his love at risk.