Fic: IC: Between the Shadow and the Soul
Title: Between the Shadow and the Soul
Fandom: Inheritance Cycle
Length: ~2400 words
Rating and content notes: T (for violence/blood and sensuality)
Summary: The High Queen of Alagaësia is addicted to a tainted man. Murtagh x Nasuada. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” (Pablo Neruda)I
A hundred men have sought to win the hand of Nasuada, High Queen of Alagaësia, in the years since she seized the throne of the tyrant king.
The thought of her kingdom and her power whets their lust—though there are other things, too, that draw them. Some men relish her beauty, her wealth. Others covet the challenge of her bed—folk say she is as frigid as the high winter, as untouchable as death, and these men would have their way with her. Let them but embrace her, and she will melt like candle wax. Let them have but one night, and she will not remain frigid for long.
The suitors declare their devotion—they throw galas in her honor, feasts and masquerades that commence in the torchlit, summer dusk to celebrate her birthday, her political victories, the anniversary of her coronation. They pay poets to extol her beauty and virtue. They lavish her with gifts of perfume and fur, gold trinkets, rich cloth, wine, and silver. Men have gone bankrupt for love of the queen.
The queen acknowledges their gifts and blandishments with the proper gestures: a letter of appreciation, penned in her own hand, sealed with the royal crest, faintly scented. An honored place at her table, a word, a gracious smile. But in over seven years, Queen Nasuada has never once bent, never once broken. A hundred men have sought the prize of her hand, and she has never come close to bestowing it upon anyone.
