Chapter Text
The ceremony at City Hall took exactly fifteen minutes. A bored official, two witnesses pulled in off the street, signatures in a big ledger. Quentalie and Servagrim exchanged secret smiles: the real wedding would happen somewhere else.
…The club under the mountain was transformed. Instead of dim bulbs, iron candelabras filled the hall with candlelight. The cages were draped with black and red ribbons. In the center, a makeshift altar stood, roughly hewn from stone.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” The dwarf administrator stood behind the altar in a robe more suited to an executioner than a celebrant. “We are gathered here to witness the union of the Mistress and her devoted slave!”
Down the aisle between the cages, Findebo walked, carrying two items on a velvet cushion. The hobbit looked at once embarrassed and proud.
Quentalie stood in a black leather dress; naked Servagrim knelt at her side.
“Exchange the symbols of your bond!” the administrator proclaimed.
Servagrim took the wedding ring—a perfect copy of the One Ring, only without any magic—and slipped it onto the elf’s finger.
“I vow to serve, obey, and belong only to Your Majesty.”
Quentalie picked up the other item—a leather collar with a silver buckle.
“And I vow to own, command, and never let you go.”
She fastened the collar around the dwarf’s neck. The hall erupted in applause.
“Spit on your slave!” someone called from the crowd.
Servagrim opened his mouth wide, and Quentalie spat into it. The dwarf swallowed and bowed. The ovation grew louder.
The feast was legendary. Tables groaned under dwarven food and ale. Mistresses and their slaves celebrated openly—one fed her dwarf by hand, another made him sit under the table massaging her feet, a third danced a striptease, using her partner as a pole.
Quentalie sat next to Findebo, who was already a bit drunk.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “Without you, I never would have found power, or love, or myself.”
“Glad to help,” Findebo slurred a little. “You know, I… I know a thing or two about all this myself.”
“Oh, I figured,” Quentalie chuckled.
But Findebo went on, suddenly serious:
“I had a Mistress once. In the capital. Before I… died. I served her, the way your dwarf serves you. She was a surgeon. Brilliant, beautiful, dominant…”
He fell silent, staring into his mug.
“What happened?” Quentalie asked quietly.
“She got sick. Incurable. And before she died…” Findebo’s voice shook. “She didn’t want me to belong to anyone else. She tied me up and… castrated me. Carefully. Professionally. She said, ‘Now you’ll always be mine.’”
Quentalie gasped.
“A month later she was gone. And I was left. The last of Frodo’s line—everyone expected heirs from me. There was pressure, threats, even talk of sending me to a ‘clinic’ for inspection. Fanatics. So I decided…”
“To disappear,” Quentalie finished.
“Exactly. I moved here… At first I tried to find a new Mistress. Sat in those cages, got taken for a week… But I never loved anyone like I loved her. So I switched to detective novels. That’s how we met.”
They sat quietly, watching the dwarves celebrate.
“I’m glad we met,” Quentalie said.
“When you first spoke about absolute power… For a moment, I thought of offering myself instead of bringing you to the club,” Findebo said, half-laughing.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I saw it in you… When you were blackmailing me—you were nervous, but… you were enjoying it. I remember your smile when you gave me a week. You loved that I had nowhere to run, that I was in your hands… It was perfect. But I was afraid you’d take it wrong if I offered myself.”
“I’m glad you brought me here. I don’t need power over the world anymore. Absolute power over one dwarf is more than enough,” Quentalie said calmly.
Servagrim, kneeling at her feet, grinned up at her:
“So does that mean, to Your Majesty, I am the whole world?”
Quentalie slapped him, sharp and clear.
“Don’t get cocky.”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he replied instantly, kissing her hand where she’d struck him. “I forgot myself.”
“That’s better.” She ruffled his hair. “My world. My own little world with a magnificent beard.”
Findebo raised his mug.
“To all of us finding what we were looking for—even if it was something completely different!”
“To that!” Quentalie echoed.
Here, in this underground kingdom of fierce desires and honest feelings, time flowed unnoticed. It didn’t matter that the palace was just a modest apartment, the scepter a whip, and the kingdom a single devoted dwarf.
What mattered was that they had found each other.
And the One Ring? Well, sometimes the greatest power is the power over one single being—someone who gives themselves to you freely, with joy and total surrender.