peaches we devour, dusty skin and all by NiennaWept

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Her hand hovers over the polished brass handle, heart fluttering somewhere high in her throat. Her blood rushes as much from nerves as from something altogether less wholesome.

She breathes deep, trying to calm down. The morning air filters into her lungs, cooling and miasmatic at the same time. She can do this, just this once. The family's private bath belongs to her too. It has been made clear to her time and again that it is by no means unusual for the highborn of the Noldor to bathe together. Írissë will think nothing of it.

Perhaps, that is why it seems so wrong.

Elenwë drops her hand, ready to turn back. Poorly concealed madness to tempt herself this way. She should be content with what small things she has. The mingled scents of riding leather and woodsmoke. The stolen glimpses when no one else is about to see. That one burning touch that indelibly marks her left shoulder.

The marble tiles feel suddenly cold underfoot. A clammy, too-tight feeling roils over her skin. She turns and pads toward her chambers. Not today.

***

It starts years before; another half-lit day like this one, dusk instead of dawn, with mist curling up the neat rows of columns in the courtyard. On the first night of her betrothal celebrations, Elenwë flees the high table to breathe the free air. Nolofinwë’s hall has grown a hundred hungry eyes each with a hundred more questions and insinuations about how she had landed this place amid the Noldor. She can stand it only for so long.

The air itself is thicker in this place, being so much lower to the earth than her mountain home on the knees of Taniquetil. She cannot decide whether it is that added weight, or the expectations that make it hard to breathe. Her hands clench and unclench at her sides as she tries to slow the too-fast thrum of her pulse. She must not crack under so slight a pressure.

This is what she wanted, after all. She will rise to a much higher station with this match, connected to the King of the Noldor through marriage to his grandson. She will never have to scour another pot or beat dirt from fine-woven rugs again. All it took was being in the right place at the right time.

She could do worse than Turukáno. Her betrothed is a warm, generous man and steady one; he is clever and ambitious and altogether more preoccupied with turrets and buttresses than with her, which suits her fine, all things considered. He does not care to delve beneath the surface of her ready acceptance of his offer.

There is no spark between them. Instead, there is rapport. Conversation flows between them like the tide flowing in and out; he appreciates her ideas and her judgment for aesthetic matters. Elenwë does not love him the way a wife should, but neither will he be a bad partner. She will be secure for the rest of her days. She takes slow breaths and tells herself she can live with that.

That is how Írissë finds her, standing in the pool of light under a chandelier worth more than everything Elenwë has ever owned put together. Her sister-to-be does not hesitate. She presses her advantage.

“Elenwë,” she says, crowding into her space, herding her without touch toward the wall. Something about the intensity of her expression warns of a yet-unnamed danger. Her heart beats, struggles, fights like a mouse cornered by a fox. “I have been looking for you.”

She prowls closer, forcing Elenwë to look up, for Írissë is tall like her father. Like her brother. From this angle, it is impossible to miss the coiled strength in her. The exquisite lines that well-muscled shoulders and arms sketch, even through the flowing silver of her banquet gown. Írissë is a wall between her and excuses or escape, but like all things in this place of Noldorin splendor, she is so magnificent that Elenwë has to suppress a shiver.

“Turukáno sent me,” Írissë adds, smiling, bared teeth glinting sharp. “But I’ve been meaning to speak with you. This gives me a chance.” She steps closer still, all but caging Elenwë against the stone. The scent of woodsmoke clings to Írissë’s neatly braided hair. For all her manicured finery, wildness and the hunt cling to the Noldo still. It does not detract from the effect. If anything, it makes her more magnetic.

Elenwë swallows; the small sound seems loud to her. Every nerve in her is focused on the woman before her, buzzing with danger and perhaps an undercurrent of something else she does not want to put a name to.

A spark, her traitorous mind calls it without her permission.

“I am taking some air. It’s so crowded in the hall.” Her voice sounds meek, breathless. The serving girl from Carastan’s estate again.

Írissë’s hand grips on her shoulder, bow-strong fingers pinning her to the wall. “You are not a noble.”

“No,” Elenwë agrees.

“You have no assets, no connections, nothing to offer my family.”

“No, I haven’t any of those things.” She rips her eyes away, looks at the marble mosaic floor. “I only have myself.”

Írissë’s left hand darts out, catching her chin, tilting it up by degrees until the hunter is all she can see. Her heart flutters, but not from fear. A vague thought about Írissë’s beauty drifts past. The sharpness of her eyes contrasts well with her full lips—lips which are pursed in frustration. “I will not contest his choice, but understand this: my brother is tender-hearted; I am not. Hurt him and I will repay you. Is that clear?” The hand on her shoulder tenses, clawing at her flesh under the fine fabric. It will leave no mark, but the message feels seared into her.

Elenwë forces herself to nod. Rather than following the motion, Írissë’s grip on her chin slackens, calloused thumb skating along her jaw, catching on her lip. The sensation is rough and soft at once. Without meaning to, she leans into the touch. Something lights in the hunter’s eyes, casting a knowing shadow.

Írissë smiles, a true one this time, knife-bright in these dim corridors. The tension in the air between them evaporates like mist before the vibrant glow of Laurelin. “Welcome to the family, then.”

***

“Elenwë? Wait!”

She stiffens. The command in the voice brings her to shuddering stop. Her traitorous little heart leaps and she waits.

“I thought I heard you out here.” The door makes a soft noise, opening wider. Fragrant steam wafts out, smelling of peaches and honey. The scent that clings to Írissë's skin when the woods have been properly washed away. “Where are you going? You can share with me.”

“I remembered that I have another engagement.” She risks a glance backward. A mistake. Írissë leans against the door frame, hastily-tied robe gaping slightly. Elenwë forces her eyes not to travel that forbidden path down. Even so, the fire burning low in her abdomen flares and scorches her.

“Another engagement? Telperion will not bloom for another hour yet.” Írissë’s voice does not contain her amusement. She knows the smell of snared rabbit.

She curses herself. Of all the excuses, her mouth has settled on an impossible one. She remains silent for a long moment—thinking. She cannot use Turukáno. He is away on Taniquetil, studying with Carastan, the great architect, and visiting some of his Vanyarin cousins. She could not use him even if it were not so. Írissë watches her and sees more clearly than the rest.

“I—that is, my hair must be fully dry for the engagement that I have later. It would be unseemly of me to go out with it damp.” Feeble, but more believable.

Írissë strides into the hall. The water droplets splash the marble in a thousand dots of irridescence. A hand lands on her shoulder, that place that touch burned many years ago. “We will tie it up.” Elenwë can hear the hunter’s smile, tempting and over bright. “Stay.”

***

Elenwë, as closely as she watched Írissë after that banquet and that simmering touch, does not even remember when it began.

Her own part, she knows. Rising early, watching her hunter run the conditioning course that winds through the woods behind the great estate. Catching small flashes of a figure all in white, dodging between upright trees and under fallen ones. Watching as Írissë dives, rolls, draws back her long bow with unfettered strength and releases.

What she does not know is when Írissë started to watch her in return. She says nothing when sitting in the garden, reading languidly in the yellow-gold tinged light of Laurelin, she feels eyes on her from the upper gallery. She only catches a flash of silver and white, disappearing around a corner, like a stalking wolf’s tail. Nor does she speak up when the musk of the forest understory drifts in wisps behind her in the halls. Her breath catches, when Írissë extends a hand to her at the festival of the First Fruits. Noldorin ladies dance with each other all the time, she tells herself. Her heart does not listen.

Her face heats, not because of the vigor of the steps. Her tight-fit bodice feels too warm for the evening air. Írissë’s calloused fingers are too hard and hot when they press their palms and forearms together, twining about the trunk of an imagined tree. A dancer’s kiss, the Noldor call it. When she takes Írissë’s arm to be lead in a promenade, the iron muscle is exactly as it was on the night this started. She burns for the rest of the steps, and then, mercifully, it is over.

Turukáno smiles and claps with the on-lookers; a carefree look smooths his face, happy to see his wife finally getting along with his favorite sibling—aware that some unknown tension has long been between them.

She did nothing untoward. There was no lingering touch. Nothing unseemly happened, but a cold feeling replaces the fire in her belly, seeing him there. The sudden shift makes her shiver, despite the warm evening. Cold, Elenwë wonders at the game they are playing.

Írissë leans down, lips brushing her ear, “Thank you, sister, for the dance.”

In the years that follow, Írissë treats her less like a sister with each passing day.

***

All of it, time flowing backwards in her mind, wraps around this moment. This guilty ghost that has haunted her all the years of her marriage.

How she craved this. When he is with her, she thinks of his sister. When he is gone, her hands slip under the bedclothes and she imagines her own fingers are rough from bow-strings and strong from hard use.

She knew what she was doing, when she came to bathe this morning, answering a subtle twist in Írissë’s expression, looking up at her balcony before the morning bloom. At least, she thinks that Írissë intended her to see and answer. Everyone else is gone, even the servants are pared back to the core. Elenwë knew, and now she flinches back from the truth of it, even though it had seemed so clear a half hour before.

“I cannot.” Elenwë’s voice, the thing that Turukáno first noticed about her, shatters on the words. “I have too much to lose. I will not endanger my place.”

There is no small risk in saying something so naked after their years of dancing too close and whirling away again. Her breathing shudders and with it, her shoulders shake. Silken robes tease along her neck, as Írissë sweeps her long unbound hair to the side. Lips press at the skin below her ear; hot breath dances over her skin. Meant to be a balm, perhaps. Flame spreads out from the point of contact. If anyone were to see, the scandal it would cause—

“He does not have to know.”

Elenwë’s heart stutters. “Do not toy with me. I will do the right thing. I should never have left my rooms.”

“He is often gone. He will not know. You will lose nothing, and gain…” her voice trails off, promising nothing and everything. Dangling what she’s wanted for so long in easy reach. The thing she’s rubbed her vocal cords raw telling herself she can’t have.

“You are the one who said I could not hurt—”

But Írissë’s argument cuts through, “I no longer care what I said. I did not want you then. I did not even know you. Elenwë, stay.”

The whisper pierces her like a dagger, poised to carve away the parts that hunters leave behind. She hollows out, breathless, considering. She’s never entertained it longer than she has today. A draft from the courtyard stirs her hair, brings with it the scent of bread baking in the kitchens, reminds her how exposed they are here, both in robes that conceal little. Írissë’s fingers dig impatiently into her shoulder but she stays silent.

A fragment of time in which she frets and debates and loses to the part of herself that wants.

Elenwë turns with sudden haste and pushes the one who has tracked her through the years to the cold stone wall. She slides one leg between the hunter’s, pinning her effectively with her hips canted forward. They stare at each other, both shocked by her reckless act. She could not have done it without surprise; she’s smaller and more delicate. Has always been the more demure, despite her past.

Írissë’s lips split into a feral grin. “Oh, little mouse, I thought you would never decide to play.”