A Taste of Royal Blood by Rocky41_7

A Taste of Royal Blood

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It had been such a brilliant stroke of luck for Thuringwethil. Capturing the princess of Doriath, wandering abroad, alone? She could still hear Sauron’s delighted cackling. It seemed Lúthien Eluviel had a restlessness in her that her Maia mother had long outgrown. What a prize they had for Melkor!

            When Thuringwethil had let the princess go, she had not expected to ever see her again.

            Of course she went whining to Sauron about Lúthien’s alleged threats, about how she said she’d tear Thuringwethil’s skin away as a prize, and claimed there had been nothing she could do to subdue Melian’s wild daughter. Then, she had retreated to Nan Elmoth, the better to get away from Sauron’s ongoing tantrum.

            That had been nearly two years ago, and she had yet to return to Tol-in-Gaurhoth.

            Nan Elmoth was become a shadowed, ill place, harboring dark things and sickly magics. Past the Girdle of Melian Thuringwethil could not go, so Nan Elmoth was where she stayed, dreaming of a light of pure white shining on the horizon.

            In the closeness of that malevolent wood, Thuringwethil wrapped her mind in cotton, shielding herself from considerations of why she had done it. There was no need to think here—she could simply be a beast: hunting, feeding, resting. There was no pretense of humanity here.

            The first time Lúthien had entered, Thuringwethil had been certain her mind was going, or that she had come under some wretched enchantment of Nan Elmoth’s unknowing. The light of Lúthien pierced the misty darkness between the trees: a beacon; a target; a horrifying, cleansing force. Thuringwethil could do naught but sit and stare dumbly at the princess’ approach, could put up only feeble resistance to the powerful resonance of her voice, and bent to her will in the end, though Lúthien raised neither hand nor blade against her.

            Thuringwethil was one who craved direction: a voice to instruct her, to tell her what to do. For a time, Vairë had been it. But she had heard the voice of Melkor, and it seemed to her that his was the stronger, so she turned away from Vairë and embraced the discord of Melkor, but since she had quitted the service of Sauron—though she had not framed it so when she left—she had been directionless, lost, bestial.

But then there was Lúthien, her commands given in the haughty confidence of a royal brat, telling her: be good, do not kill, do no harm, consider the feelings of your prey, speak not to Morgoth nor to Gorthaur, be better. Many of Lúthien’s commands seemed difficult, even impossible, and most of them felt silly and pointless. Yet Thuringwethil strove to obey, because Lúthien wished it.

Her reward was Lúthien’s presence.

Now, she had grown to expect it—she could feel a miserable restiveness in her breast when it had been too long since the princess had last visited. Each time, she began to wonder if Lúthien meant never to return; she grew snappish, angry, wounded, anxious. She did not recognize herself.

But when Lúthien came, all that had preceded her visit faded away, and Thuringwethil forgot her distresses and even her anger (usually), and welcomed her guest to the best of her ability (limited as it was). Still, she could not pass behind the Girdle, so she could not see Lúthien in her home, and Lúthien warned her it would continue to be so until Thuringwethil could be trusted not to harm the Iathrim or the flora and fauna which also called that forest home, and which the Iathrim treasured beyond all works of their hands. 

At the mouth of the cave in which Thuringwethil sheltered, Lúthien called out, as she always did, as if Thuringwethil needed a warning of her presence, as if she had not been tracking her for miles since she first detected Lúthien’s presence in the forest. She called, and then she pressed into the darkness, balancing the handle of a basket in the crook of her elbow—she usually brought something with her when she came. Thuringwethil perched on a rock spire, her clawed fingers digging into the stone with anticipation until Lúthien’s dark head appeared in the around a slight bend in the rock. It hurt to look directly at her, but Thuringwethil looked anyway, taking her stinging eyes as proof of Lúthien’s greatness, of her power.

She could smell the blood on her at once, cutting through the musty dankness of the cave.

“I have brought something for you,” said Lúthien, setting the basket on a flat-ish rock over which Thuringwethil had spread a blanket that Lúthien had brought previously. She unclasped her cloak and folded it up beside the basket, as if she were visiting one of her Elven friends behind the Girdle and there was nothing unusual or out of place. Her deep gray eyes snapped up to Thuringwethil’s snub-nosed face. “What have you done since I saw you last?”

This was customary as well—an accounting of her behavior. In the beginning, Thuringwethil had relished telling Lúthien things she thought would disgust or upset her, even lying about what she had done, but the princess proved to be of sterner stuff than Thuringwethil imagined, and Lúthien’s stone-faced displeasure not nearly as rewarding. Furthermore, Thuringwethil only got rewards when she behaved herself according to Lúthien’s standards. Whatever was in the basket was surely one of those, although it was not that which had Thuringwethil’s attention presently.

So Thuringwethil told. It was all quite dull, except perhaps the part about Sauron trying to force his mind into hers to see where she was and twist her arm into coming back. She’d crawled away as best she could, but the force of her mind was not a match for Melkor’s prized lieutenant. She only hoped he would eventually cast her off as refuse, rather than decide to make an example of her. Lúthien frowned during this story; a furrow appeared between her arched black brows; eagerly, Thuringwethil detailed the experience, enchanted with the notion that her distress could be a concern for Lúthien.

“What will you do about him?” she asked. Thuringwethil shrugged bony, oddly-jointed shoulders.

“Avoid him,” she said. She’d done that even when they were still working together, if only to escape from his constant complaints.

“What if he comes for you?” Thuringwethil shrugged again.

“Run,” she said. “He will not chase forever; he has other things to be doing. Lord Melkor will be displeased if he both loses a servant and wastes time chasing after her. Already he is displeased about you.” Of course Melkor had learned they’d had the princess of Doriath captive and then lost her—and of course Melkor had been in a towering temper about it (“Incompetent, he called me!” Mairon had seethed). “If I am lucky, he will look for something else with which to win Lord Melkor’s approval. If I am less lucky, he will bring Lord Melkor my head on a spike in recompence.” Her tone was matter-of-fact.

Lúthien nodded slowly. Somewhere deeper in the cave, water dripped.

“You may need help,” she supposed. Thuringwethil’s eyes darted around Lúthien’s face. The princess exhaled a careful sigh; the air around her seemed to shimmer: a pearl dropped into a pigpen. Thuringwethil did not ask for her aid; why should she give it? Thuringwethil had done nothing to deserve it; she could not understand why Lúthien paid her any mind at all.

“You’re bleeding today,” Thuringwethil said instead of addressing the larger issue. Lúthien had made it quite clear to her the Children did not like having this remarked upon, but Thuringwethil did not see how this bleeding differed from that of an open wound. Was the Child itself not an open wound? Locked into a single, repetitive fana, and so very prone to injury, so keen to part flesh for the teeth and nails of another and bleed, and bleed—even sturdier Dwarves and Elves broke easily under Thuringwethil’s hands.

Thuringwethil’s comment bought her a cross look from Lúthien, which made the vampire part her lips to show fang in a parody of a smile.

“It is the week of your blood cycle,” Thuringwethil went on, since Lúthien was already annoyed. “Will you let me do the ritual with you?” Lúthien sighed. She had tried in the past to explain this to Thuringwethil, but her misconceptions about menstruation and its function among the Children persisted. Lúthien got the sense Thuringwethil thought she was lying, or trying to conceal something from her.

“It is not a ritual,” said the princess again. “And if you are good, then…”

“I will be good!” Thuringwethil announced quickly. “See how good I will be!” She unfurled off the stalagmite and at her full height towered angular and rangy above Melian’s daughter, the cruel cut of her muscles sharp against her grayish skin, her joints outlined thinly in flesh. She was pleased with herself for sweeping the bones of her kills off to the side of the cave, where Lúthien did not have to step over them as she had done in the past.

This was not the first time Thuringwethil had taken the princess to bed. In the past, such things had never concerned her; she did not understand the Children’s fixation on physical pleasures. Now that she too, was more staid in fana (she could shift still, but it took great effort, and it pained her in ways it never had in Aman), perhaps it made more sense—but she thought the better part of it had to do with the tender and perishable beauty of Lúthien.

This particular delight was something Lúthien could only give her at certain times, and she did not always allow it. But Thuringwethil had been well-behaved lately, desirous to prove herself worthy of Lúthien’s affections, so that day, the princess allowed the vampire to lay her back on the mattress—stuffed with feathers of many birds which Thuringwethil had ended herself for this purpose, for she understood the Children enjoyed such comforts—and admire her supine form: the spray of her ink-black hair against the coarse cloth of the mattress; the allure of her sharp eyes, hooded by the soft pads of her eyelids; the faint points of her teeth, still baby-round to Thuringwethil, but more cutting than among pure-blooded Elves.

Lúthien was not a pure-blooded Elf—she was a strange amalgamation of creation, unique, unknown, dangerous. Thuringwethil licked her lips. Some of Melian’s power flowed in this child, driven by the whims of Elfinesse, for Lúthien was neither entirely Melian nor entirely Thingol—and a great deal of her seemed to be neither of them, but something of her own.

When she allowed such touching, Lúthien permitted Thuringwethil to be shockingly rough, and at times Thuringwethil enjoyed driving Lúthien until she could tell the princess wanted to cry mercy, digging her teeth into those plump pink lips and holding herself back, until her words of reprimand cracked like a whip to put an end to Thuringwethil’s games. However…she began to feel the pleasure in it for her was somewhat lessened where Lúthien’s was overcome with her pain. Still, to see the marks of her hands and teeth blossom across the princess’ fair skin long after they were done gave Thuringwethil a possessive thrill.

Her long-fingered hands trembled as she parted Lúthien’s fleshy legs, tracing a path up to her hips. Methodically, passing her tongue over her teeth, she undid the ties and fasteners of Lúthien’s robes and peeled her out of them until she was splayed in a nest of clothing on the mattress, gooseflesh breaking out across her body. Her nipples puckered, and Thuringwethil brushed her fingers through the shock of black curls between her legs. The wiry hair was wet and matted with blood and Thuringwethil’s mouth parted as she breathed in, to better grab the scent of it.

“Does it taste different? Than drinking of the rest of the body?” Lúthien asked, her curiosity genuine. Elves were always too curious for their own good, but Thuringwethil was happy to indulge her.

“Better,” she said in a throaty, phlegmy purr. She leaned down to mouth at Lúthien’s neck, quivering to feel the princess’ warmth laid so bare against her. Her own ragged tunic she left in a heap by the mattress, so that the wetness of Lúthien’s sex pressed against her bare stomach, leaving bloody streaks behind. “It is…” She struggled to think of the proper word for it. “Rich,” she said at last. “Filling.”

“Ah.” Lúthien’s eyes were half-closed, her head tilted back, but Thuringwethil did not take this to mean she was not paying attention. She’d learned better. “You prefer it for this?”

“For that,” Thuringwethil allowed, rubbing a hand over Lúthien’s right breast. “And this.” Her hands were not shaped quite in the way of Elves, and her touch clumsier on Lúthien’s deceptively delicate form than she would have liked, but it was what she had. She needled at Lúthien’s throat and breasts with her teeth; Lúthien was still teaching her the value of a gentle touch in the midst of her brutality, but Thuringwethil had learned that she could bring Lúthien to pure ecstasy with enough attention to her fana, and she could not let go of the idea of doing it again. However, she was rather accustomed to beating the results she wanted out of the world, which was not always possible with Lúthien.

Lúthien flinched and made a noise; Thuringwethil looked up.

“Only cramps,” Lúthien replied with half a sigh. “Worse today than usual…” She opened her eyes fully to look at Thuringwethil. “Most often it is possible to ignore them. This may help.”

“Oh?” Thuringwethil was not usually presented with the chance to help Lúthien with anything; usually the princess’ directives had to do with Thuringwethil refraining from doing things. “You would allow me to help?”

“Nothing to do with what I allow,” Lúthien replied. “Only with what you can do.”

“The completion of the ritual,” Thuringwethil surmised, her ears twitching. Lúthien heaved a loud breath.

“The completion,” she confirmed. “It may help.” So Thuringwethil did her duty to relieve the pain of Lúthien’s fana; was Lúthien not more likely to keep visiting her if she could make herself useful?

Her teeth left bruises on Lúthien’s heavy breasts, and at her throat, and her collar: pastel purple speckled with red. Her nails raked bright rows down Lúthien’s arms and ribs and thighs. Thuringwethil had seen Lúthien in pain—and the way she gasped and writhed and whimpered now was not that. Heat pulsed through her body, half-trapped in Elfinesse, and Thuringwethil dug into her for the Maia part—the part of them which was alike. There was so much to her—round and soft in so many places, places where Thuringwethil was sinew and bone; she was like a ripe fruit of Yavanna’s children, swollen and sweet with juice and tender flesh, ready to stain Thuringwethi’s mouth and hands at the slightest touch.

“Mm…when did you know?” Lúthien panted, her hands fisted up in the clothes discarded beneath her.

“I smelled you coming,” Thuringwethil murmured, squeezing one of Lúthien’s breasts until she gave a quiet cry, shivering against Thuringwethil’s form. “Fresh blood I might smell a mile away, perhaps more.” Her hand traveled down and dipped between Lúthien’s lower lips, coming away with blood and mucus spread across her fingers. She wrapped her lips around her fingers and sucked Lúthien’s effluvia off, savoring the sharp iron tang, thick with her body’s nutrients. This was meant to nourish the offspring, she knew. It was delicious, and it was hers; she would suck dry what was meant to feed Lúthien’s young; she would swallow a part of the princess and make it a part of herself.

Lúthien squirmed at the brush of Thuringwethil’s fingers and she noticed the princess’ eyes fixed on her as she drew her fingers from her mouth, now shining with only her own saliva.

Lúthien’s efforts aside, Thuringwethil was not one to draw things out or delay gratification: she dropped down onto her belly, threw Lúthien’s legs one over each shoulder, and put her mouth to Lúthien’s flushed cunt. She buried her bat nose in the bloody hair, licking it clean as a wolf to her newborn pup, and mouthed at Lúthien’s slick, yielding opening. Her body was warm, always so warm, and welcoming, inviting Thuringwethil deeper with coquettish strings of blood and tantalizing shreds of organ lining. The blood was hot against Thuringwethil’s cool flesh, smearing across her mouth, her nose, her chin, her cheeks; it was far less a meal than she had had countless times before, yet she felt gorged.

The princess moaned and Thuringwethil thrust her tongue eagerly in, seeking more of her evening meal. Her tongue rasped against the softness of Lúthien’s flesh and Lúthien arched her back off the mattress, her muscles straining to get closer to Thuringwethil’s hungry mouth. She wriggled nearer to Lúthien, pushing her up towards the head of the mattress, and when she thought she had lapped up everything, more oozed out just to tease her.

Lúthien twisted about, her breath coming in pants, and Thuringwethil was stretching her tongue for whatever last drops she could lick away off Lúthien’s insides when abruptly Lúthien’s body went rigid, and then Thuringwethil felt her muscles convulsing. Lúthien quivered against Thuringwethil’s mouth, spasming, and the Elf moaned again, suddenly sounding out of breath. This moment, where she lost control of herself, was something Thuringwethil thought she might crave even more than food. She lifted her bloody face from between Lúthien’s legs to observe the princess’ twitching body and fluttering eyelids, the shapes her mouth made as pleasure beyond her control swept over her.

“No more?” she asked. Sometimes, Lúthien allowed her to keep going, even if she had managed to get one finish from her—which she did not always do.

“Not now,” Lúthien panted, her breasts shivering with her breathing. “I need…” She was reaching for one of the pieces of clothing Thuringwethil had taken from her; it had a blood-stained pad of fabric in it, but Thuringwethil did not hand it to her.

“It does not bother me if you bleed here,” she said. Lúthien sighed, too languid to argue. Thuringwethil did not mention she enjoyed the smell in her crummy little cave; she was already scheming to steal the used pad.

“You look a mess,” Lúthien said. Thuringwethil passed her tongue around her lips, catching a last taste of Lúthien’s fertility and arousal.

“Can I touch?” she rasped, sliding up the bed to sit nearer to the princess. “Can I touch?”

“Not my sex,” said Lúthien, closing her eyes. Thuringwethil nodded and eased down alongside her, running her fingers over other, permitted areas of Lúthien’s bare body. She dipped her fingers into the divot of Lúthien’s sternum and felt the spaces between her ribs; she pressed her thumb into the underside of Lúthien’s breast and watched the point of her nail poke into the flesh; she stroked the arc of Lúthien’s hip bone and scraped a nail over the rippling lines around her hip (it came from the rapid growth in adolescence, Lúthien had explained).

“I could hurt you,” Thuringwethil reminded her, as she did every so often.

“I know,” Lúthien murmured. They said nothing else for a time, and then she added, with startling self-assurance: “I could hurt you too.” Thuringwethil grinned around uneven teeth.

“I know,” she said, almost gleefully. “Why don’t you?” she asked after a pause. Being hurt by Lúthien, she thought, would be an infinitely more enjoyable experience than being hurt by Mairon or Melkor.

“I have no wish to,” said Lúthien quietly, eyes still shut.

“Why not?”

“It is not my pleasure to hurt others, even wicked ones.”

“Think you I am still wicked?”

“What do you think?” Lúthien then opened her eyes, searing Thuringwethil with her clear gray gaze, and the vampire’s bravado dimmed. If she was honest, Thuringwethil did not expect Lúthien to trust her—she would not have trusted herself. She looked away until Lúthien relaxed again.

After a long, quiet pause, the princess turned her head to look at Thuringwethil long in silence. When Lúthien looked at her this way, Thuringwethil wished powerfully that she had a mind like Sauron’s, which could penetrate through all but the most robust mental defenses, that she might know what Lúthien was thinking.

Of course, even if she could break the princess’ defenses, she doubted Lúthien would ever forgive her such a violation. The Children did not respond well to such things. Her curiosity would likely have to go unsated regardless.

As she was pondering this, Lúthien reached out with one fair hand and touched Thuringwethil’s gaunt cheek. Her fingertips burned against Thuringwethil’s flesh, but she held as still as stone, unblinking, as Lúthien brushed over her cheek and her broad ear.

“Do you wish me to hurt you?” It was the kind of blunt question which Lúthien was rarely afraid to ask.

“Yes,” Thuringwethil answered.

“Why?”

“I think it would feel different.”

“Different?”

“Than being hurt by others. Than hurting others.”

“Do you wish to hurt me?” Lúthien asked. 

Now Thuringwethil hesitated. She reflected. She looked at the cave wall beyond where they lay.

“I do not know,” she said at last. She had done it before, but she was no longer certain what she felt about that. Lúthien accepted this with a weighty, solemn gaze. “Have you never wished to hurt another?”

It was Lúthien’s turn to pause and answer carefully.

“I have,” she admitted. “Fleetingly. It is not a feeling I enjoy. But you find power in it, yes?” This was a point they had discussed before. Thuringwethil flashed her teeth, but did not smile.

“Why? Why did you wish to hurt them?”

“Childish pique, mostly,” said Lúthien. “Sometimes one wishes to hurt another so they might share in one’s own unhappiness. But ‘tis a cruel thing to do, to wield one’s own hurt that way, as a weapon.”

“Did you do it?”

“A few times,” Lúthien admitted with some seemingly reluctance.

“But you did not enjoy it?”

“No. I felt…lesser. Weaker. As though I had allowed myself to briefly become someone baser and more thoughtless.”

This was a sentiment Thuringwethil had never considered before. It was not how things were spoken of among the followers of Melkor; the ability to hurt another was a power; who was most right most often came down to who was strongest. There was a reason why the most cunning rose to the top—Melkor, Sauron, herself—but that was a kind of might as well, wasn’t it? And they could all back it up with physical and magical power. Was there not exhilaration in exercising one’s own anger and displeasure on another? But Thuringwethil knew already Lúthien disagreed with this.

“What did you do afterwards?” Thuringwethil found herself asking.

“I apologized,” said Lúthien, an answer that both shocked and did not surprise Thuringwethil.

“What benefit did this win you?”

Lúthien looked long at Thuringwethil, her deep gray eyes boring into Thuringwethil’s, until the vampire’s eyes watered and there seemed a halo of piercing light around Lúthien’s curving, naked form which blurred the world around her.

“Forgiveness,” she said.

Thuringwethil said nothing, and Lúthien propped herself up on an elbow and leaned forward, pressing a stinging kiss against Thuringwethil’s forehead that seared down her body like a benediction.

“I will rest a while,” said the princess. Thuringwethil felt as though Lúthien had stolen speech from her; no words would come to her tongue. So instead of pressing further, she just sat up and looked down at the princess, and watched her rest. She would stay there until Lúthien felt like getting up.

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Chapter End Notes

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