Lord Of The Rings Fan Fiction ❯ Days of the King ❯ Koutoulas ( Chapter 19 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
chapter 19 - Koutoulas

Arwen slept, a normal sleep this time. She dreamed, not with the vividness
of the Lothlorien illusion, but the dreams of real memory.

The previous night was not gone from her mind. Her weary body craved rest,
but her consciousness would not allow it. It recalled the experience in
abhorrent detail.

When she had invoked the spirit of Koutoulas with her handclap, the body
of Aragorn had dropped to the floor. She ran to him, terrified that her
amateur sorceries had gone awry.

His face was away from her, and she struggled to turn him. Suddenly, his
hand shot up and gripped her throat. She was shocked into immobility for
a moment. As he raised his head, she first glimpsed the face of what would
be her tormentor for the night. Arwen did not expect the eyes; black from
lid to lid and utterly unrecognizable. The personality within twisted the
features of her beloved into a mask of savagery. With a barely recognizable
voice, it asked,"Who has summoned me!?"

She pulled his hand from her throat and scrambled a few paces away.
Composing herself, she announced,"I am Arwen Evenstar, daughter of Elrond
of Imladris. I have summoned you to ask for your assistance with the
conception of an heir to the throne of Gondor. You wear the body of my
husband, the King of Gondor..."

Her voice faltered. He had risen from the floor and stood in a peculiar
stooped stance (so unlike the proud posture of her husband, she thought).
"So I am a King this time?" He chuckled, and flexed his arms, and ran his
hands across the unfamiliar vessel. He suddenly fixed her with a
malevolent stare.

"And where is Salicene?"

At the mention of her name, he grew immediately erect. Arwen was silent.

"Ah. So you call me for YOU, and not for her. Selfish...and dangerous. You
corporeal beings can be so fragile." In one bound he was upon her, gripping
her arms behind her back in a loveless embrace. "Do you know how the gods
mate?" His black eyes regarded her hungrily. "With a violence and abandon
you of flesh and blood find unpleasant. Most of you, anyway."

He switched his grip to her throat again, and pinned her roughly to the
wall behind her. Koutoulas seized her leg, jerked it upward and violently
thrust himself into her.

"I have called you to give myself to you!" She gasped with pain and
shock. "You do not have to hurt me! Please...!" his grip on her throat
tightened. She desperately tried to pry his hand from her throat; but her
efforts were in vain. Her vision swam as he tightened his hold on her neck.
Her breath came in ragged gasps.

He grinned, a mirthless grimace. "Begging pleases me. Continue. If this
man's seed is what you want, you will have all this body contains. I,
however, will have your body and your fear. All that you contain. A fair
bargain, daughter of Elrond."

Arwen woke with a start, exhausted and disoriented. She covered her face
with her hands and began to sob. These memories, and Legolas' intrusion into
her very dreams were fraying her reason. She was unable to sleep, aching,
nauseous, and now wary of the comfort that her husband's presence should
bring.

After her fit, she had again drifted off into an uneasy sleep. She awoke to
find Aragorn, sleeping, curled as comfortably as he could on the floor of
their sitting room. He lay across the doorway, fully clothed, with his sword
at hand as if to guard her. But there was no protecting her from herself.

She wanted him to comfort her, but, try as she might, the recollection of that
night had tarnished her perfect love. His hands had hurt her; his voice had
taunted her; his body had ripped into hers. She could now conceive of
cruelty in Aragorn. This thought was previously unknown to her. She knew
he had killed, perhaps thousands by his own hand in his fight for life, justice,
and kingdom; he was a warrior. But he was never perverse or capricious in
dealing pain and death, and he would never harm an innocent.

His touch had always been gentle, as if she were as fragile as glass. He
worshipped her with his hands, his mouth, his body. No woman born could
have asked for a more considerate lover. But the seed of the poisonous
tree had been planted; it was beginning to bear a horrid fruit.

Arwen was afraid of Aragorn.

He was blameless in this circumstance. The ritual was her idea, her planning,
her execution. She would undo all if she could. For if she had conceived from
that unholy mating, her rape at the hands of Koutoulas, how could the child
be of the light? Might not that darkness taint their child's very being?

She wrung her hands and agonized over her actions of that night again, as she
had done innumerable times since. Had she drawn any of the runes incorrectly?
Had she mispronounced any of the incantations? Had she used all the right
herbs in the wine potion? The right proportions? How did she err? Try as she
might, she could see no fault in her procedure, but the fault must be hers.

And as Koutoulas abused her, what should she have done differently? The spell
could not be undone. She could not call for aid. If any would have heard her and
come, they would have seen their king bespelled to seeming madness by his
elf-witch-wife. Arwen had not realized before coming to Gondor that all Men were
not as comfortable and accustomed to the different races of Middle Earth as her
dear Aragorn. They were provincial, prejudiced, and suspicious of all that was not
like them. She could not have exposed them both to such scrutiny in this most
intimate of acts.

So Arwen had endured, as silently as she could, as her pain and humiliation were
compounded by the fact that the beast used the body of her love to violate her
again and again.

Her husband had become her entire world, here, in Gondor. Without him, she
felt keenly the unmitigated resentment and uncaring curiousity of those she
encountered. Perhaps that isolation was what prompted her to confide so
many intimacies of her life to Legolas. So again, it was her fault that Legolas
now pursued her, thinking her so unhappy in this life that she might be
persuaded to leave it.

Another mistake.