Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There came a lady clad in grey
beneath the moon a-shining.
One moment did she stand and stay 
her hair with flowers entwining.
He woke, as had he sprung of stone, 
beneath the moon in shadow,
And clasped her fast, both flesh and bone; 
and they were clad in shadow.

And never more she walked in light, 
or over moonlit mountain,
But dwelt within the hill, where night
is lit but with a fountain -
Save once a year when caverns yawn, 
and hills are clad in shadow,
They dance together then till dawn 
and cast a single shadow.

(From an early version of J. R. R. Tolkien's poem 'Shadow-Bride', 1936)

He says: “they’ll tell stories about us one day. When these people’s distant grandchildren walk the realm, when everyone’s forgotten when we came, when all of our history is so faint we’re stitched into the land like legend, they’ll still tell stories about us.”

Turning to her, cradling her, his forehead pressed to hers: “maybe we’ll be here to hear it, Galadriel. Maybe we’ll be telling the stories ourselves. Some curly-haired child on your knee, Theo’s forty-times-great grandson.”

“Maybe we’ll be far away,” she says in return. “Maybe we’ll be gone. Some distant empty land. Forodwaith - your fortress must still stand under the ice. We could rule the snow and the grey seals.”

(Neither of them mentions Valinor.)

He stares up at the rafters, dreaming awake, and tells her: “They’ll begin like this. Once upon a time there was a soldier, a great warrior of the elves. The youngest child and only daughter of a mighty family. And there was… what am I in this story? The monster, the king?”

“The smith,” she says. 

He smiles at that. “Yes. A blacksmith king, who paid a bride-price for the warrior elf with mithril and magic and the work of his hands. And they lived in happiness from that day forth in a land -“

“Mairon.”

“Ah, now. It’s a poorer story the way you’d tell it. But if you insist: they lived in happiness eventually in a land of apple trees. Better?”

Perhaps, better. But that’s not where it begins. 

It begins with an oath.

Númenor, centuries before 

Although the smith was a master of his craft, trained by Aulë himself, the people of the island kingdom doubted him. Here, even with the guild crest on his shoulder, he had to begin as barely more than the apprentices that scuttered around the workshop. Here he had to prove his work. 

Fortunately for the smith, the forges were all in great demand making materials for the great warrior’s war. Somehow she had managed to convince the island queen to grant her an army. She had her ships, her soldiers, all the swords they could make her; and yet she would not be content without bringing the smith, too.

“That is hardly -"

“Shhhh. It’s a legend, a fairytale. They’re true in a different way.”

The first time she asked him, he said no. The smith had left behind war and anger and everything on Middle-earth. He told her that he wanted to find peace on the island kingdom and never return there; he told her to find another head to crown. And still she was not deterred.

She came a second time, found him in the forge and begged him to go with her, and a second time he told her no. He told her that he was not the hero she sought. He told her that he had done evil; he told her that when the island people learned of it, they would cast him out; he told her that she, too, would cast him out. Still, she was not deterred.

There was something in the warrior that compelled the smith. She seemed like a being sent from the Valar to bring him back to greatness. He had seen her only once before, at the head of a company of warriors hunting across the tundra; and he had watched, curious, noting her beautiful hair, her speed, her determination as she struck down an ambush party of orcs. He thought then that she might prove a worthy adversary. He never expected she would seek him as an ally.

And so he was thinking about her, as he stayed behind to finish sweeping the forge. He was thinking what it would be like to fight her, and what it would be like to fight alongside her. He was thinking what it would be like to kiss her with the sparks of the forge fires dancing in her eyes. He was thinking that in some other reality, he had chosen to fight at her side already; and in another reality still, he had captured her in that frozen tundra and held her hostage, hands and feet bound, glaring up at him on his throne. He was thinking of what it would be like to run his fingers through her hair, to hold her face close to his. He was wondering in which possible realities she would struggle and bite at his lip as he kissed her, and in which of those she would find herself thrilled at the taste of his blood. 

The smith was a little of a monster, after all. A little of a monster, and a little of a king.

A third time, the warrior came, and this time she brought him a gift. The gift of an oath - her own oath - to forgive him anything from his past and stay loyal at his side, no matter what she learned of this evil he had done, so long as he would name himself king and follow her into battle. And she took his hand, and pressed it against the anvil; and swore to Aulë that if this smith would be loyal to her, and do as she asked him, then she would forgive him his past and stand by him even if all others cast him out. She would stand by him.

And so, he agreed. 

And then he told her his name.

She shifts beside him in their bed, all these long years later. “Perhaps you hoped I wouldn’t recognise ‘Mairon’.”

“I knew full well you’d recognise it. I gave you the name I wanted. Do you think I wanted to be Sauron then?”

“Didn’t you?” she says. “Not even a little?”

“Galadriel,” he says. “My warrior wife, my queen. Let me tell my story and you tell yours.”

(Which isn’t the same as ‘no’. But he never lies to her.)

At first, what Galadriel did was - nothing. Too keenly aware that all the actions available to her could turn against her in some way she could not foresee, too overcome by the weight of her own words pressing her down like anchor chains, she sank to the floor by the anvil and could not even weep.

Halbrand who was not Halbrand, who had never been Halbrand, said some things to her she did not hear. Then he ignored her, and at the edges of her vision she saw him continue to work, clearing and tidying, sweeping the floors. Then he squatted down before her. “Coming with me to see the Queen Regent?”

Somehow she was still breathing. Somehow, she still existed. But speech, movement, pleading for him to stop this, all were beyond her. And eventually he was no longer there and she realised he must have gone to the Queen, sealing his fate and hers.

Twilight had turned into night, turned into the grey pale shadows of early morning.  Then from nowhere he was there again, his hand on her face, fingers dug in under her jawbone as he pulled her head up, some sort of bottle pressed to her lips. She tasted rich, heady spices and spat, pushing it away. “What is that?”

“Wine. We’re celebrating.” He was smiling at her, smiling as if the world had not just broken into pieces and left her forever tumbling through the gaps. “Good to hear you talking again, elf, I was getting worried.”

She could indeed talk, it seemed, although turning her head to look at him or doing anything more with her hands than drag them into her lap was beyond her. “What do you intend to do to these people,” she said quietly to the ground.

“Have them follow you. Hunt orcs, save the Southlands.”

“Hunt orcs.” Nothing made sense any more. “Your orcs.”

He rocked back on his heels, and she could feel his eyes on her, looking at her, long and awful and unrelenting. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said. And eventually, when she didn’t respond, “People need room to work here. Besides, don’t you want to hear what evil things I’ve got planned?”

“No.”

“How are you going to stop me, then?” And faster than she could react, one hand on her elbow and the other arm around her shoulders, he hauled her to her feet. “Come on. Walk.”

Outside, it seemed that the sun still rose. People still hurried through the town squares exchanging quiet early morning conversations, shutters were still thumped open, boots were still laced up by yawning workers sat on doorsteps. 

He steered her through parts of the city she hadn’t seen before, through courtyards and narrow alleys between tight-crowded houses, up steps that clung tight to sheer cliff faces of pale stone. Throughout, he said nothing, and seemed content enough with her silence. In time, they reached a quiet terrace tucked away before two empty buildings, an old, half-dead fruit tree of some sort growing from a crumbling pot. 

He sat down, and gestured for her to sit across from him. For lack of anything better she conceded.

“When you told me your company turned against you. What did they do?”

“What does it matter, now?”

“What did they do,” he said, and when she didn’t answer reached out with his foot to nudge hers, the edge of his boot pressing uncomfortably into the sole of her own. 

“Laid down their swords and refused to fight. We returned home.”

“Hmm.” He leans back into the low wall, thoughtful. “And they took you with them, did they?”

“Of course.”

“Bound in chains and beaten, or -”

“Why do you ask me this?”

He was smiling, the same Halbrand smile that had teased her and played with her since the raft, and it seemed almost a greater cruelty than anything else he had done. “You know what my company did, when they turned against me? They split me in two on my own anvil. My own most trusted lieutenant burned what was left of me and then they trod my ashes into mud on their way back south. I think there were songs. I didn’t have much of a form by then to tell but I think there were songs. They fucking cheered when they killed me, Galadriel. That was the last sound I heard, my own army cheering as they watched me die.”

She considered this, picturing him being broken to pieces, torn apart and burned, his spirit drifting away in smoke as those he had trusted laughed and celebrated. “Good,” she said.

His eyebrows came up, his head cocked to one side. “Are you going to ask me why they did all that?”

“It doesn’t matter why. You are evil, those who served you are evil. What difference if that evil turns on itself? Like a snake poisoned by its own bite.”

She still had Finrod’s dagger. It was in her hand before she had to think, her mind operating on some level more primitive than oaths or allegiances or any future beyond this moment. She lunged straight for his throat -

His hand closed on her wrist like iron, seemingly already there before she’d even moved. Deadpan: “Won’t you please spare me, kind elf.”

“There is no need for you to mock me.” Her voice seemed so quiet, now, as if nothing she could say would make any difference any more. “Why did you not kill me when you could? You had enough chances.”

“Which should be evidence enough that I don’t want you dead. Unless you think I’m careless. And I am not careless.” He nods to her dagger. “I got this back for you, remember?”

She hadn’t forgotten. “Why? What purpose of yours did that serve?”

He shrugs. 

“Sauron.” She’d said the name a hundred times, a thousand; sobbed it and howled it, snarled it and whispered it, yelled it across empty frozen wastes. She had never once said it to him.

A slight, untroubled nod of acknowledgement. “One of my names.”

“I know all of your names.”

“You do not, Galadriel of the Noldor.” 

“Skip this part. It’s boring.”

“You don’t want to hear again what you told me. How you convinced me.”

He rolls onto his stomach, the better to shake his head at her chidingly. “Go on then,” he says. “And the smith said to the warrior…”

He told her that they had a common enemy. A plan - Morgoth’s plan - they both, surely, wanted to oppose. 

He told her that he had turned against Morgoth and his legacy legacy, and that his aim was to heal Middle-earth and mend the damage that had been wrought.

He told her that he had never, never once, lied to her. 

And he reminded her that she had, after all, sworn an oath to stand by him. She had sworn, of her own free will, not to turn him away for his past. Not to cast him aside. She had sworn to Aulë. She had sworn an oath, Galadriel, this said with a dangerous and ancient look in his eyes.

And just as her hand tightened again on the handle of her dagger, he added: “But only for my past. Not my present. Not my future. If I’m deceiving you, if I really am planning to carry out some great evil, you’ll be able to turn on me as soon as you learn of it without breaking that oath. And won’t it be easier for you to do that when you’ll be there at my side?”

Perhaps part of her believed him. Perhaps she was only so desperate for a way out of this that she seized on his words anyway, denying what he was. 

At any rate, she had no choice.

“Do you want to know why I really got your dagger back for you?” He leant in too close, some awful caricature of intimacy, and whispered: “Because I saw you wanted it. You woke up on the ship and it was the first thing you looked for. I knew I could get it for you, so I did. That’s it.”

“And the smith deceived her -"

“No. No I didn’t.”

“The smith deceived her.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that, Galadriel.”

The journey went much as she imagined. She felt sick at the thought of what she was doing, bringing this evil back to Middle-Earth, granting it a crown and an army.

(“I’d have the army anyway, Galadriel,” he whispered to her as they stood at the railings watching the seabirds swoop low over the waves. “At least you’re here to watch me.”)

He joked with the soldiers, the young ones she’d taught to fight, and over days they began to follow him about coaxing stories and battle advice from him. On the third occasion that she found him sitting below decks with an admiring circle surrounding him, when she resolved to finally confront him and stop whatever poison he was dripping into their ears, she approached only to find he was describing the beautiful mountains of Middle-Earth to these children of Númenor who had never seen them.

“Commander Galadriel!” A tone of pleasant surprise, as if he hadn’t known she was there, as if he was nothing but pleased to see her. “Can you tell them what the elf kingdoms are like? I barely know more than stories, myself.”

(“If you harm them,” she told him later, “if your intention is to bring them to death and ruin, I will devote the rest of my life to hunting you down in any form you take until the end of Arda itself.” He only laughed.)

When they rode out across the Southland plains, she wondered whether they were galloping towards some betrayal at last. An ambush, an army coming to hail him their dark lord. But instead, it was all as he said: scattered hamlets, empty farmhouses, dead crops, then a band of orcs and a smaller band of terrified, outnumbered villagers, who stared at the approaching Númenor cavalry as though the Valar themselves had sent it.

She couldn’t spare the attention to keep close watch on him in battle. She was commanding, she was battling orcs, and it felt glorious and right. And somehow he was always there anyway, at her side, battling with her, so quick to anticipate her moves it felt that they had been fighting like this for years.

She still wouldn’t believe him, though, not even when they captured the moriondor enemy commander. She wouldn’t believe Adar’s failure to recognise him; wouldn’t believe Halbrand’s anger, “remember me?”, a weapon raised and a snarl. Wouldn’t believe any of it, not even when they had him tied for questioning in an empty barn. Not when he told her he killed Sauron, not when he claimed Sauron had been trying to undo the damage he had caused, not even when she threatened to drag Adar’s orcs into the sunlight so he could watch them die one by one unless he would admit -

“Galadriel.” Halbrand’s voice (no, not Halbrand, not Halbrand), his hand on her shoulder, keeping her back. Then: “Did I tell you how I killed your brother?”

She went for him without a second thought.

“Ah - no.” This time he knocked her dagger to the ground, held her wrist fast to stop her going to retrieve it. “I thought he was their leader,” he said, his face inches from hers. “Obviously he had to be their leader. An elf, one of the Noldor!  But he wouldn’t admit it. And he wouldn’t tell me who they were or what they were doing in my tower, or anything. He wouldn’t even give away Beren to spare himself, your brother - so very loyal. And so I sent one of my wolves out to kill all the prisoners, one by one, in front of him until he gave me what I wanted. I was just - like - you.”

He let go of her, and turned to Adar as she sagged to her knees and the world seemed to fold and crumple around her. “Remember me now, you treacherous little worm?” she heard him say.

“I would like to interject to remind you that the smith does not harm the villain, very much. The smith is kind and forgiving despite what he’s been through.”

“You threatened to ram your fist down his throat.”

“But I didn’t, did I? I couldn’t, not with you there. My guiding star, my lady of light. Let me tell this part. I’m better at stories.”

The bracelets on her arm clink softly as she moves. Once they were coloured cloth, woven tight, one for the birth of each of her children in the Pelargir tradition. But Pelargir’s traditions are for mortals; for them, the colours faded and the cloth wore thin to fraying almost before the children were all the way grown. The original bracelets are long ago gone. Now they are metal forged to look like woven ribbons, made by the blacksmith king who had first tied the cloth around her arm. 

He makes things; he mimics things, and echoes them, and changes in the guise of improving, and improves in the guise of mending. Like the bracelets she wears, like and yet unlike the cloth they represent. Like the stories he tells, and their story when he tells it - so much more beautiful than the way it really began. 

“You tell it to me, then,” she says.

The warrior and the smith knew they were battling a cunning foe, akin to the dragons of old, one that lied and tricked and deceived with its tongue. They knew better than to trust the golden poisoned honey of its speech.

And because their foe was clever, it knew better than to lie to them directly. Instead, it spoke in half-truths, trying to weaken the smith and turn the warrior against him. 

“You’ve returned with your own pet elf, I see. Does it please you to have elves do your bidding again? Is this one a replacement for me?”

The smith kicked him, a foot hard to the monstrous creature’s chest.

“So bright and pure. Yet so cruel and cold. Is this what you do with elves now, Lord Sauron?”

But the foe was mistaken; for the warrior could not have been so cruel, nor so cold, as she permitted him to live. 

The warrior walked away without a word, and the smith thought for a time that he had lost her. He walked through crowds of cheering soldiers, beer splashing from their mugs, searching for her, and she was not there. He asked the villagers she saved, who grouped together in huddles as they mourned and celebrated together, and none had seen her. He began to think she had left him, his warrior; he began to wonder if she was some gift given to him and then pulled away, some prize shown to mock him. Then the island queen told him to search in the trees, and there he found the warrior waiting for him.

“Shhh.” His hand between her shoulder-blades, stroking her back down to quiet before she’d even objected. “I know, I know, you've told me enough times, but let me tell it now. Let me tell this part.”

The smith wanted to tell the warrior what he had felt, fighting alongside her. He wanted to show her how clear he was now of the path ahead and of her place at his side. Or he wanted to bring her the head of her enemy, lay all the orc weapons before her in a great, clattering pile. Or he wanted to build her some vast palace, the sort he had once been able to design, but not out of smoke and black stone any more; something light, marble, limestone. A gift, a home. Enough to remind her of the elves, should she ever miss them.

Or he would bring her a crown; a sword; a ship. Whatever she liked. Truly, in that moment there was nothing in Arda he wouldn’t have brought her or hunted for her, forged for her, built for her. She could have had anything.

But she seemed to fear what he might say, and he in turn feared what she might do, and so they sat there in silence together on a fallen log, until the mountain of fire woke and all was ruined.

“You forgot -”

“I didn’t. It doesn’t matter.”

“The part where you claimed to be their king doesn’t matter?”

“And what’s a king, Galadriel? Rule by descent, rule by conquest, it’s much the same to farmers. They needed a king, they had none other.”

The volcano felt both like a terrible shock and a terrible inevitability. Galadriel woke buried in ash in smoking ruins, and her first thought was to call for him, using the name she first knew him by at sea. Then her second thought, that this must be his work, this must have been what he led them towards the whole time. Then her third, when she couldn’t find him or any other alive, that maybe this was some form of justice, the world burned in fire just as Beleriand had sunk beneath the waves; that his evil had been so great that his punishment was to burn up in the ruins of his would-be kingdom, and that her punishment was to wander the ashes alone. 

But she found Theo, in the end. She found the survivors from Númenor, at their camp, with their blinded queen (her fault, surely her fault), with sorrowing Elendil whose son (her fault, again) was not there. 

And then: “What about our king?”

The creature who claimed to be their king was lying under sweat-drenched sheets, shirt stained with darkening blood, healers fussing around him. If he were truly a mortal man she would have been deeply concerned for his life. 

She sent away all of them, the healers, the Silvan elf Arondir who had stayed with these people after the elves withdrew. Stayed calm and quiet until they were out of hearing. “You monster,” she spat at him then, “you have never been anything but evil, this was your plan the entire time -”

“This wasn’t me.” Simmering fury in his voice. “I didn’t do this, this was that fucking orc, this is what I was trying to stop. Look!” He pulled at his bloody shirt. 

“How convenient for you.”

“Come on, Galadriel, how’s it convenient for me to have them kill me again?”

“Oh, I think it would take more than this to kill something like you.”

There was a very slight smile at the corner of his mouth, that part of him that she was learning to recognise was pleased when she acknowledged what he was, how powerful he was. “Maybe I’ll live, but the injury is real. I can’t exactly hunt him now. You’ll have to go without me.”

“I’ll have to?”

“You swore an oath,” he says. “You swore an oath to stand by me, Galadriel.”

“And because you could not keep from doing evil -”

“Don’t you even think about turning your back on me now. Don’t you dare.” He pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing at the pain in his side. “You swore an oath to Aulë.”

“For your past. I am not bound to stay at your side for anything you have done since. I am released.”

“No. No you are not.” His face became something different, something worse, his eyes yellowed and cat-like, his fury blasting from him like the heat of the volcano. “I have not lied to you and I have done no evil since we set foot on this land. You swore yourself to me and you can’t go. You will not go. I command you stay, Galadriel, Galadriel -"

“Goodbye, Halbrand,” she said, the last time she would ever call him by that name. And she did not turn back, even at his wordless scream.

One final thing, before she left. She gathered several of the people of the Southlands, Arondir, Bronwyn who seemed to be the closest to a leader they had. “The creature in there is not what you believe,” she said. “He is not a mortal man. He is not your rightful king. He is a servant of Morgoth from long ago. I am sworn not to kill him for what he has done, but none of you are bound by what binds me. He is weak now. Do what you must.” And she rode away, back to the elves and the High King, who had been wrong about Sauron but perhaps, all along, right about her.

“It did hurt. I was in agony.”

“Yes, you poor, injured -"

“Now, now.” His weight on top of her, his lips silencing her jibes, suddenly hungry and urgent. “I should have had you in that bed right there, injured or no. I could have convinced you. I know how to convince you.”

“You didn’t, then.” 

“I had some ideas.” He traces a line down her side, shoulder to hip. “Anyway, you didn’t kill me so I knew all wasn’t lost.”

“I couldn’t. It would have been for the past whatever I claimed, I’d have broken my oath.”

“You couldn’t.” A soft kiss at the base of her throat. “You couldn’t. And you came back.” His knee nudged her thighs apart. 

“You said you wanted to tell the story.”

“I'm bored with the story. Now I want my wife.”

“What you want is a distraction from what you did.”

He slumped down beside her. “No, Galadriel. From what you did.”

There will be stories about them: legends, myths, fairy tales.

And fairy tales are cruel.

Chapter Text

'By day and night on the diving sea
We whistled to sun and moon,’ said he.
'Together we whistled to moon and sun
And vowed our stars should be as one.'
- No, never, said I.

‘And now,' he said, 'that the war is past
I come to your hearth and home at last.
I come to your home and hearth to share
Whatever fortune waits me there.'
- No, never, said I.

His eye it flashed like a lightning-dart
And still as a stone then stood my heart.
My heart as a granite stone was still
And he said, 'My friend, but I think you will.'
- No, never, said I.

(from Charles Causley, ‘Angel Hill’)

The smith’s wound began to mend itself in time. He was not much of a healer; it was not a particular skill he’d ever needed to value. It took concentration and focus and more strength than he’d prefer to use, before he was able to dissipate the poison and restore the body he occupied back to health. 

Dissipating the poison that the warrior had left in the ears of his people was, comparatively, an easier task. 

He thought about his warrior, who would now be halfway back to the elf kingdoms. He felt some anger, perhaps, but more than that -

“Perhaps?”  She scoffs.

“And what would you have me say?” 

“The truth. All of it.”

He sighs. “I’m telling you all the truth that matters. Do you want me to detail every leaf that fell along your route, every calf born in my lands while you were gone? I cut the palm of my hand splitting logs for firewood once - do you want me to number each drop of blood that fell? Yes I was angry. It’s not important.”

“It is important to me.”

His hand brushes her hair back from her face, a gesture by now so familiar it comes as easy as breath. “Why, love? What is it you need to hear?”

“That you hated me.”

 He kisses her forehead, light as the morning sun. “You hated me first.”

He thought about his warrior, who would now be halfway back to the elf kingdoms.  His anger raged. How dare she, how dare she. How dare she promise him such glory and show him such light, only to turn on him once he’d served her purpose. How dare she leave him - leave him! How dare she lie. 

If she wanted an enemy in him, then an enemy she could have.

Still, even beyond this, he thought of her riding back alone to tell the elves what she had done. He thought of how little the elves seemed to value her, this most extraordinary warrior they had already tried to cast out. He thought of how little they would welcome her now even before hearing she had brought her enemy back to Middle-earth. And while most of his anger was taken up with her, there was still some small amount left to be angry on her behalf.

“There. Better?”

The sun casts long shadows of tree branches through their tall windows, criss-crossing the golden light. She looks at how they fall on her own hands and does not say what she is thinking. 

She told the elves everything.

It was Elrond who was the most angry in the end, to her surprise. Angry enough to pace about the room, hands clenched into fists in a way she’d never seen from him: why did you do this, why did you do this, you could have been in Valinor now. Why could you not find peace?

Gil-galad was quieter, a chill calm about him, his words limited to short, expressionless questions. When; and where; and how, and with what forces. What could she tell of Númenor and its queen regent. What did she know of the volcano’s explosion; what did she know of the stories reported by the few fleeing elf soldiers who had escaped from some sort of prison camps, forced by a leader the orcs called Father to dig endless strange tunnels. He said nothing of what he thought, or what he felt, until she was finished, and then he said: “You have done wrong by me and by your people, Galadriel. But I think, sometime long ago, we must have done wrong by you.”

And then he told her the news he had been keeping, himself: that fundamentally, it did not matter now what Sauron did or sought to do on Middle-earth.  The elves were fading; there was no way to save them; the only way left was to Valinor. 

Galadriel returned to the Southlands on a bright sunny day, alone. No armies would be granted her now, and soon there would be no-one left to grant them anyway. Whatever evil sought to spread out across Middle-earth now would do so barely opposed. 

She had tried not to imagine what she would see here, tried not to hope that the Southlanders would have been able to destroy him themselves. Tried not to think about what it would mean for her if they had. Still, as she headed towards Pelargir, the sight of greening fields and clearer skies and herds of grazing cattle felt almost hopeful. The volcano had left its mark, in dark, scarred lands she had skirted around as she headed south towards the sea, but this did not seem like a ruined land; this did not seem like a home of evil.

Pelargir itself was occupied still, she could see that much at a distance. As her horse drew closer, she saw figures building new structures around the ancient stone, smoke curling into the sky, people coming and going from the settlement itself. New fences marked the last part of the road, and when she passed a small band of people repairing a thatched roof they seemed healthy and free. No sign of him, of his evil, of the dark tide of corruption reaching back over this land.

And then at the outskirts of Pelargir was Theo, running to greet her. “Galadriel! We knew you’d come back!” Alive, and well, and pleased to see her. Not furious at her betrayal; not despising her for bringing that evil upon them. 

They took her horse away for water and rest, and took her to see Pelargir itself, now returning from its ruins. She had seen it once in its early days, when Númenor was still friendly to the elves. It had been abandoned for centuries, now. It was good to see it full of life again, whatever the circumstances that brought her here. 

Theo talked to her of the work they had already achieved, his words so full of enthusiasm they tripped over themselves. He seemed to walk taller, prouder, now. He still carried the sword she’d given him on his back. They passed a mill, housing, workshops, passed people carrying bundles of cloth or hammers and nails, laughing with each other, chasing racing children. Everywhere the air was loud with the sound of stonework and the sawing of timber. Nobody seemed afraid. She felt the first tiny seeds of relief start to take root again inside her. 

They reached a half-built dwelling, much like all those they had already passed, with a small team of workers up fixing roof timbers into place. Here they stopped; and Theo shouted up at the nearest of them, “Where’s the king?”

The king?

The king, it turned out, was one of the workers on the roof, nails in one hand and tools at his belt. He sprang down with ease and dusted off his grimy hands on his leather apron as he came over to her. She anticipated fury, the same as she had seen in him when he lay injured in that tent - instead it was a grin and welcoming arms pulling her into a hug. “Don’t make things worse for these good people, Galadriel,” he whispered into her ear. And then, louder for the benefit of others around them. “Have you come to stay?”

Again, his trick of knocking her off balance before she had time to brace. She shook her head. “I must return to Lindon. The High King has only given me leave to be away for as long as the journey takes.”

“And elves are so obedient to their kings.” The very slightest bite of sarcasm, gone again when he laughed and clapped her arm. “Of course! Of course, we won’t keep you. Surely you’ll have time to see a little more of Pelargir, though? I know it’s not much compared to what the elves have, but we’re very proud of what we’ve begun here.”

His little audience looked at her, hopeful. She could think of no reason to refuse; and before she could say anything anyway, he had taken her by the arm and walked her away into the city.

“Why do these people call you their king?” she asked, quietly, when there seemed to be no-one close enough to hear.

A bright smile. “Because I’m their king.”

“You have deceived them.”

“Oh, Galadriel.” And a quiet laugh, a slow shake of his head, as though her very presence amused him. “Here we are.” And he steered her into one of the half-built shelters, a room and walls and what seemed like a Númenorean tent canvas stretched over to make a roof. 

It was halfway dark inside with the faint smell of woodsmoke still soaked into the furnishings from the now-unlit fire. There was not a great deal of room, but what there was had been carefully and lovingly arranged. She saw a bed, with furs and clean woollen blankets; plates set out at a heavy wooden table; pans stacked neatly by the fire. A woman in a blue dress was sat by the window with her feet up on a low stool, mending some piece of clothing. Her face broke into a smile when she saw them. “Commander Galadriel, you came back!”

“Didn’t I say?” he cut in, before Galadriel could respond. “She wouldn’t have left us.” He was grinning, pleased. “Your roof’s nearly done - a few more days, at most. But while we’re here, can we…” A nod to what she realised was a cradle in the corner.

The baby was pressed into Galadriel’s arms, a tiny bundle swaddled in patterned cloth. Dark eyes peered at her, bleary and unfocused. “She’s the first one born here,” the child’s mother told her. “We named her after you.” 

All of this felt unreal. Galadriel was dreaming, surely, she was lost in some sort of vision. Some strange palantir, showing her a phantom of what could never be. But the smell of woodsmoke was real; the weight of the child in her arms was real; the hopeful look of its mother was real, waiting for some response from her.

His quiet whisper in her ear, again: “Be nice, Galadriel. Say thank you.” Then to the child’s mother, laughing: “Excuse her. She has been travelling a long time, she’s tired.”

“It is. This is.” Galadriel swallowed, her mouth oddly dry. “This is a great honour. And one which I doubt I deserve. I wish I could have done more, for you and for her.”

She handed the baby back to its mother, who shook her head, smiling, as she accepted it. “No, you saved us.”

Galadriel was almost too angry to even look at him after that, as they walked out of the city across cold grasslands towards the sea. His idea, ‘to show you the view’ - all of this was his idea, all of this seemed to have been carefully planned for her. “You have deceived and manipulated these people who trust you,” she hissed at him once they were out of range of any listening ears.

“Or, I’ve been here building houses and hunting orcs while you and the elves gave us no help at all. Sit.” He tugged her down on the grass beside him, and pointed out towards the sea. “Story used to be you could see Númenor from here. Can you?”

Nothing but water to the horizon. Númenor was leagues beyond her eyesight, let alone that of mortals. “No.”

“No, me neither. Nice story though, isn’t it? I’m trying to learn more about my people, you see.”

She knew, she knew, not to trust him and not to believe him. She knew what he was. And yet, there was something familiar in him now, and it wasn’t something she recognised from her old adversary; it was something she recognised from the man she’d first known on a raft in the Sundering Seas. He had the same kind of gleeful enthusiasm he’d had in Númenor, when even a jail cell seemed to barely make a dent in it.

“What plan is this?” she demanded. “What is your intent?”

He laughed, lying back on the grass in the cold sunlight with his hands folded behind his head. Tricks, she reminded herself. All of this, all of him, only tricks and lies. This ease he revelled in was a reminder that she could not harm him, however she might try. It was a ruse to remind her of Halbrand and keep her off guard. And yet, at the same time she was sure it was genuine too; that he liked it here, was enjoying the sun and the grass and the breeze from the sea as much as the being he pretended himself to be.

“If I had any plan here beyond what you see,” he said, “why would I tell you?” 

“Do they believe you their mortal king still?”

“No, no, you saw to that.” His hand moved towards her, and she thought for a strange minute he was intending to take hers, but he was only running the grass through his fingers. She almost expected it to wilt blackened with poison beneath his touch; instead, he curled his index finger around a lone purple flower and then released it, delicate, unharmed. “They know what I am. One of the Maiar, who served the one you call Morgoth, who now seeks to mend this land to make amends for the harm I caused.”

“And they accepted that?”

“Is it so hard to imagine someone more generous of spirit might truly believe me, Galadriel? Is it so hard to believe I’m good at this?” His head tipped slightly, coaxing. “Well done trying to convince my own people to kill me, though. A valiant effort which I will not forget.”

Almost certainly a threat, but she could no longer bring herself to care. She looked out into the distance towards where Númenor must be. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I came to say that the Elves are leaving Middle-earth. Whatever it is you plan, whichever lands you covet, we will no longer stand in your way.”

He hadn’t known this, it seemed. She saw surprise furrow his face. “Because of me? I’m flattered, truly, but it seems something of a -”

“Not you.”

“Well, why, then?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m interested.”

“It isn’t your concern. I only came because…” Why had she come? To see that he was dead, and her task on Middle-earth was done. Or to see that he was working evil, so that she could stay behind to fight him. Neither of which seemed to be so, and yet… what was she missing? Something must be missing. 

"Because,” he prompted her.

“To tell you that you need not seek to make war on us, now. My people are leaving.”

He seemed to accept it finally. “And are you planning to make it all the way to Valinor yourself this time, or should I find another raft?”

She wished he wouldn’t do this. “My place is yet to be decided. I need to set out for Lindon before sundown.” 

“I wouldn’t advise you leaving me again,” he said.

“There is little you can threaten me with any more.”

“Galadriel.” Halfway between amused and indignant.

She got to her feet. “I need to see Arondir before I go. Is he -” The thought briefly chilled her. “Is he still here?”

He looked up at her, smiling. “Didn't I mention that I murdered him and hung his body in a gibbet above the city gates?”

“You -”

“Leading archery practice behind the stables, that way.” He waved an absent hand back towards the road, making no effort to get to his feet. “You insist on thinking so little of me. Go on, go and talk of elf things.”

“You aren’t coming?”

“Namárië, Galadriel.” And he went back to staring up at the sky, ignoring her, as clear a dismissal as any further words could have made it. 

Arondir (who was alive, well, and was indeed leading archery practice) chose to stay. If that meant fading and living a mortal life, then so be it. She felt that she should be challenging him, probably; that maybe she would have done, once; but as it was, he seemed so much more certain of his place in this world than she was, and she no longer had soldiers like him at her command, and there was little she could think to do but nod. 

Bronwyn was waiting for her at the stables, her calm brown eyes speaking more clearly than anything else in this strangely ordinary city. She handed over a bag of provisions and a water-skin, then helped Galadriel saddle her horse. “You didn’t expect to find him here among us.”

“No,” Galadriel said a little too harshly, fastening the bridle. An elf-bridle with no bit, for decoration as much as anything, unlike the ways of human riders. She focused on its embroidery for a second, reminding herself of who she was. 

“I do thank you for telling us about him,” Bronwyn said. “We needed to know. If it helps you at all, I didn’t allow him to stay to begin with. I told him, if he wanted to be our king he’d need to bring us something to prove his worth.”

She almost feared to ask. “What did he bring you?”

“Adar’s head.” 

“I see.” Galadriel put a calming hand to her horse’s shoulder, the animal starting to skitter at its mistress’s evident tension. “Just because he has enemies among the orcs does not make him good. He served -” Her oath felt like metal in her mouth. 

“Morgoth,” Bronwyn finished her sentence. “As did our ancestors, and the elves have never let us forget it.” Her voice was gentle, but within it was the steel of someone who had fought far too many battles already. “It’s not our war, Galadriel. I’m sorry. I know that wouldn’t seem the same the way elves see it. I know you must have lost so many. He told us a bit of that. But we don’t want endless war. We want peace. And if he’s willing to work with us now to get it, then… that’s more than people like us have had for a long time.”

“I would like to know what you were thinking, when I left,” she says.  

“No, you wouldn’t.” He will say nothing more than that.

She rode without rest for the remainder of the day, all through the night, and the next day, stopping only when her horse was too tired to continue. She feared not him nor his people, but rather the quiet that came with rest; the fear that in dreams, she would be forced to turn back, to Pelargir, to Tirharad, to Numenor, to the sea, to what she had done. She considered not sleeping at all, only resting her mind briefly as elves did once she was back on the road; but in the end, decided that she needed to be alert enough on her journey not to risk it, and allowed herself to fall into a deep sleep by the ashes of her campfire. 

She dreamed of none of it, in the end. She dreamed of Lindon. Of ships in the harbour at Mithlond, of elves from all over Middle-earth filing down to the quay. And yet it wasn’t sad, even though it was a parting, because all those lost were there too, healed and alive and joyful again. Unnumbered soldiers she had fought alongside, unnumbered friends whose names she could no longer bear to mention. They saw her and hailed her and it was almost as if all was well once again.

Still, Galadriel could not leave. She walked under the golden trees, alone; she saw the blackness spreading from leaf to leaf, inching its way from trunk to tip in veins of poisonous rot. She grieved and still could not leave it. And as she walked further out, the grass soft under her feet, she realised she was not the only one left behind. Someone else was there too, lost, searching, and as she drew closer she could see the silver armour too big for him. 

She ran to her husband, flung her arms around him armour and all, tears and laughter so mixed she could no longer tell which was which. She knew it was only a dream but truly in that moment it didn’t matter. It had been years since she’d even allowed herself to dream of Celeborn; even after all these centuries, the pain of his loss remained like a raw bleeding graze on her soul, and she’d long since learned to drag herself back into waking rather than face even a hazy memory of him. But now… 

“Galadriel,” his beautiful Sindarin accent she had so dearly missed. His armour was splattered with raindrops and mud, as though he’d lived after all and found his way back from some distant battlefield to find her. He kissed her, again and again, and then he lifted her hand between them. “Where is your wedding ring?”

“Lost. Long ago lost. I am so sorry, I-” Even in this dream it struck her like a blow, the memory of that day. How she had not realised that while her hands could stand the cold, a gold ring could still slip from her finger unnoticed; how she had sobbed on her hands and knees, scrabbling in the snow for any glint of it, any sign, despite it being three days and most of a mountain since she last remembered seeing it; how much of a betrayal it felt, her betrayal, that she had not even realised it gone until then; how her second in command had almost had to carry her back down to their camp, “it’s not him, it’s a ring, it’s only a ring, he would not want you to freeze to death out here for its sake.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Celeborn said, his soft fingers wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Please don’t cry. It doesn’t matter any more. Galadriel, why is everyone leaving?”

She told him about the darkness, the fading; how hard Gil-galad had tried to find a solution; how Celebrimbor and the smiths had come close, and failed, again and again. How it wasn’t like this, really, all these happy crowds at the harbour; how it was sad and grey and muted, as the elves began to cut down trees to build the boats. Despite his kind words, she couldn’t keep from crying still.

“It’s all right, my love.” His arms holding her close, one hand kneading soft patterns into her back, calm, calm. “We’ll make it all right.”

“It shouldn’t be like this.”

“I know, I know.” A gentle kiss at her hairline, so soft. “The Valar have never cared for Middle-earth.” 

He said it so calmly, so reasonably. “I don’t...”

“They’ll let it rot. If we want to mend it we’ll have to do it ourselves. Together.”

It was Celeborn’s voice, Celeborn’s smile, Celeborn’s hand on her chin tilting her face up to his. The realisation came to her like ice in her blood, all the same: this was not Celeborn.

She woke screaming, thrown back into consciousness. Her campfire was cool ashes by now in the grey light of dawn. 

“Good morning,” Sauron said. Crouched down low barely an arm’s length away from her - he’d been here, he’d been watching, he’d been inside her mind, he -

She went for her dagger. It was gone. 

“You can have that back when you stop trying to stab me with it,” he said, smiling.

“If you ever do that again, ever, if you even think of using my husband’s memory in that fashion -” She yanked her arm free of his, further resenting him for the knowledge he was letting her.

“You’ll do what? Hate me? Threaten me? Try to turn my people against me? Turn your back on me, betray me, promise yourself to my side and then leave me? How would I even tell the difference?” A quick kiss to her forehead, his lips finding the exact same spot they had found in Celeborn’s guise. “Told you not to leave me again. I’ll see you soon.” Then he was gone in the half-darkness.

“Now, I would know what you were thinking,” she presses him.

“I made my thoughts clear enough.”

She shakes her head. “You did not. Tell me more than this.”

The smith had been a wolf, once. He could no longer shift forms so easily, not yet, but he could remember wolf. He could remember the scent of distant prey, the sound of footsteps crunching on dead leaves a mile distant. He could remember hunger and bite and the redness of blood like berries spilled over the snow.

He considered tracking the warrior back to the elf kingdom by the sea. She would not need to know he was there; he could keep quiet, keep pace alongside her, hidden in the woods. There were still plenty of dark and dangerous things on the road, after all - what was one more?

He could follow her back to her people and watch them all leave, count every single elf onto ships and away, leaving him with the land everyone seemed so eager to abandon and forget. Second-best Middle-earth, without the glory and light of Valinor, without the mansions of the Valar, without his own brothers and sisters. Who among them cared any more? It would crumble and be forgotten, and he could rule over an emptiness, an echo. No more elves.

He considered all this from a distance, unseen, as he watched the warrior hurriedly pack her things back into saddle-bags. The wolf in him could recognise fear and anger, the metal scent of it. The wolf in him could hear the snap of saddle leather as she fastened it and the soft snick of a sword fastened at her side. She noticed the wool cloak he had left her, and he saw her lift it, puzzled, turning it in her hands as though there might be some enchantment woven into it.

“There was.”

“Only a little. For protection. I wasn’t entirely a monster, not even then.”

The smith considered following the warrior, and reminding her of the oath she had sworn. He wanted to carve it into the very rocks of the earth so that she could never avoid it, have the clouds spell out her promise, the trees by the road grow their branches in the shapes of letters, have flocks of cawing birds scream out her own words to her. Maybe there were few forces here any more strong enough to hold her to her word, but there was him . He could follow her back to Lindon and tell the elves what she’d done if she hadn’t already. Remind them, if she had. He could follow her to Valinor and make her plead with the Valar in his defence.

But the wolf, the almost-wolf, did none of this. Instead he turned north, away from his home and away from her route. 

His plan would require him to be both king and smith. And wolf, perhaps. Wolf for just a little while longer.

It was raining the day he came to Lindon. Galadriel, who had been out walking for most of the morning trying to outpace her despair, could not even trouble herself to pull a hood over her soaked hair. Already something seemed to have faded, deeper than the rot of the trees; the sky was grey, the air was grey. There were rain puddles in the mud trodden over flagstones. No-one laughed any more.

The delegation was small and not particularly remarkable, and almost seemed not to warrant the rider that had been sent ahead to announce it. Four elves she didn’t recognise; and Celebrimbor; and then him. Riding with them all, even joking with them all. 

He stopped his horse at the east gate. Its hooves stamped to a halt just shy of the slight groove in the stone. He looked at her as if she was the only one present, as if she wasn’t surrounded by the city guard and standing with her own sword in her hand. “Good, you’re here,” he says. And then to the crowd: “Where’s your High King, elves?”

Gil-galad, unarmed, unarmoured, stepped forward. “Name yourself.”

“Galadriel’s friend. You knew me as Sauron.” He swung down from his horse with ease, hands raised, laughing at the guard drawing their swords. “I’m here to make peace.” And then he actually bowed , down on one knee in the mud.

“This is trickery,” Galadriel said later, when they were all sat around Gil-galad’s council table. “This is lies and deceit.”

“We'll not reject an offer of peace before hearing it,” Gil-galad said. And to Sauron - to Sauron, invited into their city as a would-be emissary of peace, allowed to sit at the vast table with the elf-lords, only the armed guards all around him giving any indication of his presence being anything other than welcome - “Set out your case.”

He looked at Galadriel before he spoke, and while she braced herself for some smug grin of victory, there was no sign of it - he seemed more to be checking she was there. Which she was, at his own request. “A straightforward enough thing,” he said. “All of you here know which side of the war I fought on. All of you here know that my side lost. And now Morgoth’s gone, and so much the better. I seek to make what amends I can to Middle-earth. I’ll bring no armies to you, no threat to your lands, in return for you leaving me and mine be.” 

Gil-galad considered this. “And what assurance do I have that you aren’t seeking a reprieve to build your forces?”

“I wouldn’t need to, would I? The elves are leaving. If I wanted your lands I’d only need to wait until you’re all gone.”

“You cannot trust him,” Galadriel said. Once again she was the only one who saw the danger, the only one who understood the insidious threat of evil, only now the evil was sat among them naming himself and still it seemed none of them would listen to her. “He has ruined the Southlands and he would see our lands the same.”

“Galadriel,” his voice half laughing, half chiding. She heard as clear as if he’d spoken aloud: Remember you swore an oath. “You saw Pelargir. Tell them how it is. A land of ruins and despair? Do my people suffer?”

“If Pelargir seems to prosper now it is only because -”

“Thank you.” And back to Gil-galad. “My lands are well, as she saw herself. They’re not what you have here but that’s not what I seek. The dark one I served did enough damage to the Southlands. They deserve what recompense I can give them, now. And as I said - if I wanted your lands, all I’d have to do was wait until you left. On which subject - as a token of my goodwill…”

He nodded at Celebrimbor here, Celebrimbor who, she noticed, wore a new golden ring on his hand, set with a sharp blue stone. Celebrimbor, whose fingers went to the ring and hesitated, slightly, at removing it, the pad of his thumb lingering on the gem. Then he tugged it free and handed it to Gil-galad across the table. “There are two more,” he explained. “I was merely trying that one to see if it’s made any difference. And it has. Ost-in-Edhil feels brighter, High King. It’s worked, I’m sure of it.”

Gil-galad held the ring up to the light, rolled it in his palm. “A gift for the elves, from a Maia of Morgoth?”

“A Maia of Aulë, first,” Sauron said. “To allay your suspicions, I had no hand in the making of the rings themselves. My role was merely in showing how to mix the ores given the small amount of mithril you had. I’ve never touched them. So, yes. A gift for the elves, to demonstrate my good faith. They’ll protect your people, as Celebrimbor sought. As you sought, High King. And the elves will not fade, and you can stay, if you like.”

“Why?” Amdir said, sitting back, arms folded. “What does it benefit you if we stay?”

“Three reasons. First, the fact you’re all still here suggests to me that you love Middle-earth as I do, and you have no desire to see it become dark and desolate and broken. If you have the power to protect your lands and no war to threaten them, I think they would be the better for it, and Middle-earth the better for that. Second, if you want evidence of my good will, I can’t think of any better than giving you the ability to stay here and protect your realms - what enemy would do anything that foolish? And third… of course, I’d be asking for something in return to demonstrate your good will.”

“Something,” Gil-galad said, the ring sitting loose in his palm.

“I want Galadriel,” as if it’s the simplest decision ever made. “Saving the elves is my bride-price for Galadriel.”

She went to him at night, sneaking past the guards like she was a foolish girl out to meet her betrothed in the moonlight. He was lying on the bed they had made for him, fully dressed and wide awake, staring at the ceiling as the candle-flames guttered and bobbed in the draft from the open door. “Hello,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”

“Do you need Gil-galad to agree to this?”

He swung his legs off the bed to sit up, but then seemed to change his mind and leaned back against the carved headboard instead, looking entirely relaxed and far too comfortable. His boots, she noted, he had left neatly paired at the side of the bed. For a moment she felt she might collapse in laughter at the sheer strangeness of how ordinary he could still seem. How was this her dark enemy?

“Explain,” he said.

“If the High King will not agree, but I come with you anyway. Does that meet your conditions?”

“Interesting.” He considered it, or pretended to do so. “It shouldn’t, really. But all right. If I keep you, the elves can keep the rings, consider that done. If they try to keep both… we can revisit what I said about armies.”

“I would think you would be tired of leading armies.”

“Very,” he said. “You have no idea.” Then, patting the bedcovers beside him, “Sit with me.”

“No. Why do you ask for me as your bride?”

He smirked. “My people don’t have a tradition of concubines. I did check - I’m joking, Galadriel, don’t look at me like that.”

“You went to such lengths to pretend you came here for noble reasons, then you ask for something like this.”

“You weren’t an afterthought.” He looked indisputably pleased with himself, now. “How go the discussions about my offer? Are you permitted to hear them?”

The discussions, such that they were, had fast degenerated into argument. Gil-galad had made his own view clear: Sauron’s offer should be rejected and the elves depart as planned. For many of the others, the question was not so easily decided. None of them would outright demand she be sent to him - they seized instead on the idea that he might be convinced of another gift in place of her. But this was a polite fiction, and all there must have known it.

With one offer to make peace, he had deftly set the elves against each other and ensured she would know no peace among them herself. If the elves went to Valinor now then every abandoned town, every sad departure, would be her burden to carry. And while none might say out loud that she should go with their enemy for the sake of her people, she who had brought him back to Middle-earth, she knew plenty were thinking it. More would, once his offer became more widely known. He’d made sure enough that they would know; he’d made sure a crowd was there to see him and to hear him name himself as Sauron, after all. 

She had not thought it possible she could find new ways to hate her ancient adversary. She had, it seemed, been wrong.

“I was married before,” she said. “It is not custom among the elves to marry twice.”

A bright, happy smile. “I really don’t care.” 

“I could have gone,” she says. “All the same. They would have put me in a boat for Valinor that night, and by the time you returned I would have been long since departed. That offer was made to me.”

He strokes her shoulder, quiet for a moment. She has never told him that. 

The smith gave the elves three days to make their decision. Three days would be long enough to see the rings begin to do their work: the Great Tree restored, damage undone, fading replaced with brightness.  

On the first morning he reached the first foothills of the mountains and climbed high enough to see the city down below. He sat and watched and waited, too far to see any of the elves but close enough to know it if any ships set sail from the harbours. He was pleased to see there were none.

He was a king, now. Maybe not by lineage, although the closest thing he had to lineage was grander than any king the Southlanders could have found. What glory in being the son of a son of a son of a son of a hastily-legitimised bastard who happened to be luckier in battle than the other claimant, weighted against being among the choirs that sung Arda into being?

A king was an easy enough thing to assemble. A king was a name, and a crown, and a queen. 

The name would be something of a challenge. He had Halbrand, a name chosen in haste with no meaning other than a need to be ordinary. It lacked grandeur, but it was the name his people knew him by. And the king was fond of his people, his people who liked him. Perhaps it would do. 

He had Sauron, the name the elves knew him by - the name the elves had given him. Sauron, the abhorred. Gorthaur, the terrible dread. They served well enough to get the attention of elves, but they were not names he would have chosen for himself. 

He had other names, or ways he could name himself. Aulë’s student. Master of order. Smith, itself - there were ways to make that a name, a name conveying that he could create far more than nails and horseshoes. This would need further consideration.

The crown would present less difficulty. He would not have been permitted to wear such a thing under Melkor’s reign, but then Melkor was often absent and the smith intermittently ignored, or condemned, or in hiding. True, he had been Melkor’s most trusted lieutenant, but Melkor cared little for trust or for order. So he had fashioned a crown of sorts out of a battle helmet, a terrible thing of spikes and fear; and he had been permitted to keep it, or at least not been thrown down and tortured for the impertinence of it. It maybe still existed, somewhere. Perhaps even now, some orc held it in shaking hands. 

No matter. It would not be the sort of crown this king needed. Something different, something brighter. Something to rival the beauty of Valinor, one day. And in the meantime… well, the elf-smiths trusted him now. He could get a crown. He could make one himself easily enough, if it came to that. 

The queen, though. This presented more difficulty. He still lacked a queen at his side, and having an angry elf queen in name only who kept trying to kill him might lose its novelty after a while. 

He had considered leaving it for a few decades, taking a mortal queen from the Southlands to meet his people’s expectations -

“You had not.”

“I had! I did think about it. Are you jealous? I might have done it, you know.”

“But.”

“But… oh, lots of reasons.” And then, when she laughs: “Heirs would have presented a difficulty.”

She traces the metal patterns of the bracelets on her arms. “Heirs still do.”

“You surely never thought our children would grow up quiet and placid. Anyway…”

- but truly, it was the warrior he wanted at his side. At his side, and without a knife permanently at his neck as the price of that. The first part was easy enough, he was almost certain of it. The second would need more time. But time, at least, was something he had plenty of.

A name, a crown, and a queen.

On the day he returned for Galadriel he came dressed as a king, with a simple gold circlet on his head and a long embroidered cloak that snapped in the wind. No entourage at his side this time; only him, alone on a sweat-soaked horse as though he’d ridden through the night. Tar-Mairon, he named himself. 

Again, he stopped just at the gates of the city, his horse’s hooves a finger’s breadth from the border. Again, he looked out to the assembled crowd of elves and seemed to see only her.

She nodded, once. 

He swung down from his horse and bowed his head low to her, and then held out to her a silver ring, the kind the elves exchange for betrothal. Its pair was already on his own hand.

They brought him a new horse, and one for her too, a milk-white mare who stood calmer than Galadriel felt. They packed provisions for the journey, and for her, things to take from her people: clothes, jewels, armour. A cloak for the rain. A sword for the road. Three red apples.

Gil-galad said: you chose this, but if you ever choose Valinor instead I will not bar the way for you. And gave her a knife, ornate and folded into a comb, pressed into her hand.

Elrond only hugged her, his own tears wet on her cheek.

She took the knife and the friendship, the bags and the horse, and left without looking back.

Chapter Text

Beren laughed. “For little price,’ he said, ‘do Elven kings sell their daughters: for gems, and things made by craft.´

(‘Of Beren and Lúthien’, The Silmarillion)

They rode in silence for most of the first day. The woods of Lindon fast gave way to low, rolling hills, scattered herds and distant villages. She had passed through here three times in recent months but always in such haste she had barely seen the lands she travelled through; the country here was familiar to her and she knew the roads so well that she barely needed to think about them. This journey would be slower, it seemed. She felt that she might be permitted to set a different pace, if she asked, but she had no desire to put that to the test. Travelling with him was terrible but arriving at their destination together would only be worse, and she dreaded facing all those people who remembered her with such undeserved kindness. 

At least on the journey she had silence, and there was no need to pretend her travel companion was any sort of friend to her. For his part he seemed content enough not to make attempts at conversation after she ignored his first few. At one point she noticed him whistling a faint tune and snapped “stop that” with a greater familiarity than he deserved, and he laughed, but he did stop.

Evening drew in slowly, the shadows of the rocks along their path lengthening. She saw ice already forming on the puddles left in the hollows of hoofprints and wondered absently if some of those might be hers from the number of times she had crossed this path since returning to Middle-earth. From the Southlands to Lindon, and then returning; and then again back to the elves; and now it seemed for a final time, away. For now, at least. She did not much care to think about the future.

“Wait,” she said when they were near the peak of one of the higher hills. By design, the path crossed this one rather than circling around it; from its height her keen eyes could see the elf watchtower to the south, and then back to the west the pale buildings of the harbours at Mithlond.

She stayed looking back for longer than she expected to, long enough that her horse fussed and pawed at the ground, keen to be moving again. Her companion, at least, waited in patient silence until she turned back around herself.

“We should find water,” he said once she rejoined him. “Somewhere to camp for the night. You must know this road. Where’s good?”

She did know it, although it had been some years since she’d spent time here. She pointed down to woodland in the middle distance, some way from the path, and he nodded.

The horses were glad of the rest, with the heavy saddle-bags removed from both of them. She hadn’t really wanted him to take any, there was nothing she valued so much she’d rely on him to carry it, but he had made such a performance of being helpful back in the city that she’d given in before he arranged for a team of pack ponies to take with them all the way to Pelargir. Now, he took bags and saddles off the horses with a calm, practised efficiency as she made the campfire, their division of work simple and straightforward with no need for discussion just as she had imagined it.

There had not been many times that she had imagined it. Before she knew who he was there was little space for thinking of the future and they seemed to always be fighting, anyway, and then afterwards was - afterwards. But there had been a time or two in Númenor when she had briefly let herself think of what it might be like to journey with him, somewhere, swords at their sides and a world ahead of them; how they might share a meal by a campfire and tell each other stories of their pasts, she of Doriath maybe, he of a childhood spent in the villages of the Southlands. 

It had been ridiculous, really, that her mind had wanted to entertain itself with such frivolities. Ridiculous when she thought he was a mortal man from the Southlands, even more so in retrospect. Even at the time she hadn’t thought it for long or in much detail. Still, there had been a time or two it brought her a strange comfort to imagine; and now that she really was watching him set up camp for the night, she remembered it again with a twisted kind of shame.

He finished unsaddling his own horse, patted its damp neck, then turned to Galadriel with his fingers twisted into its wiry mane. “Will the horses stay close?”

“They will come when I call them.”

He nodded and let the horse amble off to longer grass, then came over to sit beside her, comfortably at ease. “Think that’s the most you’ve said to me since we set out.”

“If you wanted conversation you should have found a travelling companion you did not need to force.”

“If anyone forced you it was the elves, not I.” He held out his hand palm-down over the pile of sticks she had assembled as a fire, and without need of flint or tinder a small flame sputtered to life. Despite herself she leaned in closer to see it. He noticed, pleased. “Saves time.”

“What else can you do?”

“Lots of things.” He held out his hands to the fire again, but this time only to warm them. “Less than I could. I’m more bound to this form than I’d have chosen. Tell me, one as old as you, born in Valinor - you must have known beings like me before?”

She had. There had been many like him in Valinor; the elves named them Maiar , ‘the beautiful’. She had seen what some of them became, twisted into nightmares of flame and shadow by Morgoth. It was unclear to her which he meant and she did not much care to ask. “I was close with Melian, for a time,” she said.

“Melian! Was that here in Middle-earth? In Doriath?” She nodded. “You know more of me than most, then,” he said.

He was nothing like Melian, save maybe in their powers. Even then, Melian’s were channelled to nurture and protect, the glory of her cherished forests a testament to her love. Hard to imagine him doing anything the same. 

He took one of the pieces of lembas from the leaf that wrapped it and held it out to her. She shook her head. “You should eat,” he said. “It’s a long journey to go on an empty stomach.”

There had been stories, once, that beings corrupted by evil could not touch elven lembas. If this was ever true, it was not any more. Perhaps he was too powerful. Perhaps it had only ever been a myth to comfort children in the first place. At any rate, she, herself, wasn’t hungry. “No,” she said.

“Suit yourself, then.”

She let her thoughts wander back to Doriath, staring in silence into the fire as the night pulled in around them. Melian’s beautiful land of forests where the trees bowed over endless golden paths, where she might walk forever. There was still a war, then, but Doriath was isolated, protected, borders guarded with quiet ferocity by Melian’s magic. There was no need to know about it, there was no need to care. She had cared, though - of course she had cared. She had cared more than many. It was only that the forests were so peaceful, the light so calming, the songs and the stories so beautiful. She only wanted to rest a little while. 

She had only put down her sword for the briefest time, seemed; barely a seasom, barely a year, barely five. And then in a breath she was married; and then in another breath, her brave young husband was saying that what she had told him was true, it was important, it was wrong to ignore the evil outside their borders, and he would go to fight if no others would. 

They let him have one battle, he and all the other brave young idealists. One battle and then they were to return. She imagined he would come back after it horrified and shaken, or perhaps filled with a sense of righteousness, or perhaps thrilled with the fight and wanting to take her back to it. She spent a long time rehearsing what she would say to all of these once he returned. She had not once thought that he might not return at all. 

The campfire began to die down. It was dark enough to see the bright stars, and only the silhouette of Sauron watching her. “Get some rest,” he said. “You’ve been riding back and forth across Middle-earth since we came here. Surely you’re tired. Sleep for a while, I’ll keep watch.”

“You are the thing I would most want to keep watch against.”

“Am I now.” He lay back against his pack, fingers criss-crossed behind his head. “You need have no fear of me. I won’t touch you, I’ll stay out of your mind. You have my word.”

“And what is that worth?”

“More than yours.” He rolled onto his side and said no more.

The fire was only small, and there was nothing unusual about the flames within it. To the elf warrior, to any mortals passing, it was no more than a campfire. But to other eyes and other minds, it burned bright; it was the smith’s work, his name stamped on its being like a maker’s mark. And in distant lands to the east, a great and terrible wizard turned his head towards the flame.

At the wizard’s side, his small apprentice tried to follow his gaze. Seeing nothing visible to her eyes but recognising his expression, she sighed and picked up her walking staff. 

The smith did not know this, at the time. He did not realise that powerful and dreadful wizards still roamed Middle-earth. 

“Were sent. Were sent to Middle-earth, to guard against you, specifically.”

A dismissive shrug. “Well, they weren’t looking very hard. I wasn’t even hiding and they were off talking to birds and starting cults.”

He did not realise that powerful and dreadful wizards still roamed Middle-earth. If he had known, he might have taken more care. He would certainly have taken more care to invite the wizard to his wedding, because great and terrible wizards always wish to be invited to ceremonies of death and birth and marriage, and a forgotten invitation can leave them very angry indeed.

But the smith knew none of this, at the time. He did not know that the wizard was starting his long journey back towards the lands of the west, nor that he was hunting the smith. The smith cared only that the campfire he had made would warm his warrior, tired from her endless, relentless travels. He did not know that already the wizard was scheming against him. He did not know that the wizard sought to take his beautiful warrior bride away.

She laughs, and he thinks how beautiful her laughter is, what a gift it felt the first time he ever heard it. She is laughing at him, here, but she was then too; and there’s no harshness in it, not really. “He’s to be the villain of your story?”

“Wasn’t he? He took you from me.”

“He did not.”

“He sort of did. It’s the same, really, isn’t it? You wanted my story, Galadriel. If it’s my story, then I can smooth out the jagged parts. I can arrange it in better order. That’s what it means to tell a story.”

She laughs again, as he knew she would. “That is not what it means.”

“Of course it is. Otherwise, wouldn’t I be challenging you on everything you’re leaving out?” 

“I’m not -“

“Really,” he says. “Aren’t you.”

The smith did not sleep, that night. He knew his warrior wasn’t sleeping, either, and really there was no need for both of them to stay awake, for while he was not bound to the same limits as the mortal whose guise he walked in his body still did need to rest itself. But he had told her he would keep watch, and so keep watch he would. She needed to trust him; she needed to remember that whatever else he had done, or might still do, he would not lie to her. 

He had not realised she had known Melian. Calm Melian, peaceful Melian, whose influence did not seem to have made much impact on Galadriel. He had known Melian too, once, although they had never exactly been close. 

There were different ways to tell Melian’s story on Middle-earth, and that of Elu Thingol her husband.

One was this: The great enchantress of the woods, the wise queen who had loved the trees so dearly she came to Middle-earth just to live among its forests and teach the nightingales to sing. A king of the elves, journeying back to Valinor, found her in the woods; and there they stood overcome with love for each other, their hands bound together with flowers and trailing vines, Valinor forgotten, his searching armies forgotten, day after month after year as the trees grew up around them.

In this tale, they ruled together over a beautiful land of forests, a place of peace where Melian’s protection ensured the raging war beyond its borders could not enter. In this tale, the wise king of the elves guided his people, created other kingdoms for them, made alliances with dwarves, showed kindness to the sons of men. In this tale, they had a daughter who sang like the nightingales in their forests.

This was another way to tell it:

The arrogant, foolish king found his Maia wife in the forests, after the Valar tried to use him to lure the elves to Valinor. Ignoring his armies and his people, he stayed enchanted by the sorceress of the woods for centuries. They ruled a land defined by what it kept out: not only war, which they blissfully ignored while their kin massacred and were massacred, but men, dwarves, other elves. 

Their daughter loved one thing and was denied it. But then, not entirely denied. The king would not give his beloved precious daughter away to a mortal, not for anything, not for anything in creation… except for a Silmaril. For a Silmaril, Beren could have her. And while the king may have pretended he only posed this as a task because he knew it was impossible, there was no pretence in how much he wanted the jewel once it was within his grasp. He wanted it enough that it led to his own death once he had it, murdered defiant and spitting fury as ever to an equally covetous army of dwarves. 

The Queen was wiser than he, but the king refused to listen to her, time and time again, through war, through death, through failure. And when he was killed and their daughter died a mortal death, even the Queen’s supposed love for Middle-earth meant nothing - she left and took her protection with her, and Doriath was overrun, with war, with orcs, with death. Now Melian resided in Valinor after all, and her once-beloved Doriath lay neglected and ruined beneath the seas. 

The warrior must know this, both ways. He wondered which version she preferred.

Galadriel did not sleep that night, nor the next, after a day of uneventful travel that passed much like the first. On the second night he seemed to sleep himself for a while, asking her to keep watch, and she wondered if it was real or deceit. Melian had slept like the elves, but Melian never seemed to resent her form the way he did his.

She did keep watch. She did not try to kill him. She waited and watched the fire, and the distant woods, and the stars passing slowly overhead, until the morning came and he sat up again and stretched out his arms like a cat. If it was intended as a test, she passed. 

She still didn’t eat, refused to share his food, and allowed herself only the smallest portion of water. She was not even sure why, herself. By the third day he had started to pester her into it: come on, you surely won’t starve yourself and leave Middle-earth all to me?

She searched in her saddlebag for a water-skin towards the late afternoon and her hand found one of the red apples she had been given in Lindon. She held it for a moment, feeling its weight. It would be sweet if she bit into it, it would taste so wonderful; but then there would be one less red apple from Lindon. She left it where it was.

That third night, though, she allowed herself a few hours of sleep before morning. It seemed increasingly foolish to make this a point of principle, when she might have - years? eternities? - at his side yet to find a way to manage, and she could not expect to forego sleep forever.  So at the first sign of the grey dim of dawn, she closed her eyes and surrendered to the dreams she was dreading. 

It was full daylight when she woke again. There had been rain, it seemed; the grass around her was wet, and she was covered with a blanket, something she had not done herself.

She stayed still, gathering in her environment and listing it to herself like this was a new battlefield. Her immediate surroundings: wiry hillocks of grass, scattered grey and brown with fallen leaves, and the trunk of a great oak tree a little beyond her reach, its bare branches providing some shelter above her head. Further: a blazing fire, and him sat beside it, the smell of cooking fish and smoke. Further still: more trees; the distant road; grassland to the horizon, and their horses, grazing on the ridgeline of the nearest hill. 

He had let her dreams be, at least. They were pleasant but forgettable dreams of sailing long ago. Already they were unravelling from her consciousness so that all she could remember was images and flurries of feeling. Hands on wood, white sails against the sky, the lightness of laughter.

She felt immeasurably better for having rested. It was not any easier to see the path that lay ahead of her, but it seemed now somewhat easier to decide how she might travel it.

She joined him by the fire, keeping the blanket wrapped around her like a cloak. “Where did that come from?” she asked, nodding towards the blackening fish.

“A stream or something, I suppose? We’re a bit far from the sea. All right ,” at her expression, “Local people passing by on the road a little while back. I traded for lembas, I’m getting bored of it.”

She was hungry, suddenly and intensely, and when the fish was ready she took the plate he offered without objection. He raised an eyebrow a little but didn’t comment. “They said there’s an inn at the ford, about half a day’s journey,” he said. “Maybe you don’t know it. I’m guessing elf soldiers don’t bother with things like beds and comfort when you’re out patrolling?”

“Elves are not always welcome in such places this far from our lands.”

“I’ll handle that. You just avoid starting any fights. We give the horses a day to rest, wait for the weather to improve. Deal?”

The fish tasted good - surprisingly so. She realised he must have found herbs to cook with it, or bargained for those too, or brought them with him. She nodded.

The inn was larger than she had expected although still a small thing in itself. A courtyard with an arched gateway, two thatched wings of building and a fence at the back, against which a collection of outbuildings leaned in various states of repair. A couple of well-fed dogs watched them warily.

“Best you stay quiet,” he muttered to her, then hailed the innkeeper who came out to greet them and asked for rooms for two nights. Separate rooms, if they had them, for himself and his betrothed, for their sole use. He would pay extra, he said, of course; they might be of humble means but her honour was without price. 

(Hissed under her breath when the innkeeper turned away: “What are you doing? Stop it.” And his response back, without even turning to look at her, “Suggest you let me handle this my way or I’ll start thinking you want to a share a bed with me.”)

One of the servants took them through a long, low-roofed room that served as some sort of drinking and dining hall, full to bursting and noisy with the clamour of laughter and argument and pieces of song. Her companion kept up an easy stream of conversation with their host as they passed through, and it was hard to remember that he was not Halbrand, that he had never been Halbrand. 

She could sense the eyes on them, the conversation going quieter as they passed. On her, more than him; he had taken off his royal cloak and his crown the day after they left Lindon, and seemed only as a human traveller now. She heard the word elf from somewhere in the crowd, and then again in another voice. 

He seemed oblivious to it, except when he passed one man in a faded blue tunic who sat eating some sort of pastry at the nearest end of one of the tables they passed. This one didn’t even seem to speak, or at least as far as she could hear, but her companion stopped and clapped a hand on his shoulder a little too hard. “Friend,” he said, and the rest of the table went quiet, the air around them chilled. Then he laughed. “I can’t blame you. Isn’t she beautiful? I’m the luckiest man in Middle-earth.”

(“What was that,” later when they were weaving through narrow timbered corridor between the doors of bedrooms.

“I didn’t like the way he was looking at you.”

“And how do you look at me?”

“Like my Queen.”)

The rooms were fine enough, if small. The innkeeper thanked him for the generous payment as one of the servants kindled a fire in each of the fireplaces. Once they were alone he lingered for a short while with her, and then left her alone. 

“There. There, that’s you leaving things out.”

“Because you paid with a knife? And I asked you… I did ask you, yes. Does it matter to you?”

“I thought you were going to gut me head to toe. Tell the truth, Galadriel. Tell the truth if you want mine.”

Once they were alone he said “There, see? Not too bad, you -” She caught him off-balance with a shove to his chest pushing him back, and he stumbled against the wall. He looked down at her hand still holding him firm. “What’s this about?” 

“He said a knife,” she hissed at him. “He said you paid for this with a knife from the elves.”

“Oh, you think I gave away your brother’s dagger? Is that it?”

“Did you?” She wished she had it now. She settled for -

“No. Say it. Say what you were thinking.”

She wished she had it now. She wanted so desperately much to be holding it at his throat, the tip just pressing into his skin. She wanted to see the first beads of blood appear and grow and turn into a stream, running over the back of her hand, down her arm, dripping onto the floor. She had her sword from Lindon, but as the innkeeper insisted swords were not carried here it was beyond her reach; she had the knife concealed in an ornamental comb from Gil-galad in her boot, but she would only get one chance with that once her enemy knew she carried it. And it was Finrod’s blade she wanted to hurt him with, wanted it so much it was like a hunger within her. For now she settled for more pressure on his chest, enough to warn him against moving, and while he could no doubt have resisted he didn’t.

“Galadriel.” Head tilted to the point of taunting. “I’d hardly trade a blade of Valinor steel for two nights under some worn bedsheets and a few bowls of soup. It was a pocket knife from Eregion.”

Of course. Its value to mortals had nothing to do with it; he wouldn’t have given up something he could use as a weapon against her in far more subtle ways. She let him go, and he settled at ease into the chair by her fireplace. “I told you,” he said, “you can have that dagger back once you stop trying to stab me with it.”

“If you are waiting for a time when I no longer want you dead, I will never see that dagger until the end of Arda.”

She expected him to swat that aside easily, but instead his lips thinned. “I believe you will come to like me better in time,” he said, something clipped and short in his voice. “You liked me well enough before.”

“As a mortal man.”

“As a mortal man who had done evil. What was it you imagined you were forgiving me for, hmm? Anyway, I’ve been more generous towards you than you’ve warranted. I would hope you could extend me some of the same courtesy.”

“Generous? ”

“Not a concept familiar to you?”  He lounged back in the chair, firelight glowing on the leather of his boots. “Do you think they’d bring food here to your room, if I asked? I’m hungry.”

“Get out. Get out and leave me be.”

“Very well.” He slapped his hands down on the arms of the chair as he rose, making enough of a point of leaving that she thought in truth he might not go. And yet, without seeming to have moved far he was suddenly on his feet before her, so close she stepped backwards without even intending it. Her heel bumped the wall; the room felt smaller, and he larger, looking down on her like some terrible thing of shadow. 

“You liked me well enough before,” he said, and then left.

“That’s better,” he says, “well done,” taking her hand in his. “You hated me so much then. I know it. I deserved it, I’m sure.”

“Tell me why you did.”

“We’ll get to all that.” His thumb strokes circles on her palm, inviting, distracting. 

“No. Tell me.”

There was another villain in the story.

This one was gone beyond the edges of being, cast into the timeless, formless void. Still, the world itself was soaked with the malice that the villain had sung into its creation. That voice lingered now and whispered after the smith as he walked through the woods, eager to be away from the inn, from the chattering inanities of the humans, from her. It said: this is the only way you will ever know her hands on you. 

It had been four days, the smith thought. Four days four days. He had eternities. He could be patient, he could learn patience.

Still that dread familiar voice whispered to him, seeping from the ground and the trees in the evening dark. From the stones, from the sky.

It said: you could have her now. Any time you wanted. You’ll never have her forgiveness and you’ll never have her love, but you can claim your own anger and lust and hate and you can claim your bride. What would you care if she fights you at first, if she sobs as you take your pleasure? She’ll come to serve you well enough, in time. You know how to make a lieutenant of your own. You know exactly how.

Melkor - Morgoth - all his names - he was gone. He was gone, but his work was not, and his voice still spoke in everything he had touched and sown with ruin. Sometimes it spoke so well it sounded as if it wasn’t even his voice; as if it never had been, all along.

He lets go of her hand. She watches it fall.

The next morning Galadriel was relieved to wake alone for the first time since leaving Lindon. She stayed in her room while the sun rose and spent a peaceful hour or two wandering in her own memories, turning through old volumes of poetry learned by heart long ago. It was calm, and peaceful, and it was good to remember these old things once again, and she felt a little less saturated through with despair than she had before.

When she finally came down to the lower floor, the long rooms were empty except for one of the serving girls in a soot-smudged apron and bonnet, shelling chestnuts under a window. 

Galadriel joined her. The chestnuts were warm in her hand as if not long from the fire, and were easy enough to shell, her fingernails digging under the deep brown husk where the heat had already peeled it back. She ignored the sight of the silver ring on her hand.

The girl seemed surprised by the assistance, although she did not object. She wouldn’t meet Galadriel’s eye, but kept looking at her every time she thought she wasn’t being watched, a flurry of hidden glances. 

“Do you want to know if I’m an elf?” Galadriel said, not looking up from the chestnut in her hands.

The girl flushed and bit at her lip. 

“I am.” Brown shell cracked between Galadriel’s fingertips, its sharp edges pressing into the pad of her thumb as she pulled it away. “I have lived in Middle-earth for thousands of years. I can remember when the road that runs through your village led to the great road that ran from the dwarf realms in eastern mountains, to great kingdoms in the west long lost under the sea.” Another piece of shell joining the little heap on the table before them. “But I have never been to this inn before, and I am grateful for your hospitality.”

“I didn’t mean to stare.”

“You didn’t stare.”

The girl nodded, slowly, still not quite daring to meet Galadriel’s eye as she took another chestnut from the bowl. “You don’t have to help.”

“I’d like to.”

The girl smiled into the table and mouthed a silent thanks, followed by an exaggerated nod towards what must have been the kitchen.

They worked in comfortable companionship for some time more, alone in the long room. The rain pattered against the thick latticed glass of the window. One of the dogs from the courtyard came in to lie before the unlit fire, filling the room with the smell of wet fur, its tail thumping hopefully on cold floorboards. 

“Your man,” the girl said. “The man you’re with. He’s not an elf, is he?”

“No. He’s not.”

“He said.” A hastily hidden grin, more quick fingers freeing curves of deep brown shell. “He told Caty in the kitchen he was a lost king and he’d come back one day with a crown to thank us for serving his breakfast still hot.”

No need to say that he had a crown, presumably hidden away in one of the saddlebags. Nor to mention what kind of king he was, nor what kind of creature he was. With luck, these people would never see nor hear of him again. “I would not put too much trust in the things he says.” The girl nodded again, looking chided, which had not been Galadriel’s intent. “Where is he now?” 

“He said he was going out walking. Um, I don’t know where. What direction. I’m sorry.” She must have noticed Galadriel’s relief, because she looked briefly confused for a moment before gathering herself. And it must be confusing; not only to have an elf stay here, an elf betrothed to a mortal man who claimed to be a king, but that she would want to avoid her betrothed at all. In these lands and their humble villages, there must be little interest or need for arranged marriages; people would marry for love and companionship alone.

“I had a husband, a long time ago,” Galadriel said. “We lived in a forest kingdom before the war reached his lands. He taught me how to cook chestnuts.”

For the first time the girl looked up at her fully, brown eyes meeting Galadriel’s own, the start of a tear forming. “You miss him?”

“Very much. Yes.”

“I had a sweetheart,” the girl said. “He drowned. It’s been a year, nearly.” Her hand trembled slightly, and then she put her handful of chestnuts down and dabbed at her eyes with the cuff of her dress.

“I am sorry you have known that loss too,” Galadriel said. 

The girl nodded. They worked on in quiet companionship, with no need for words. 

He came back towards evening with several of the local villagers he seemed to have befriended, arms around each other’s shoulders, all of them including him seeming more than halfway drunk. He was looking for Galadriel as soon as they made it into the room, to the now-lit fire where the dog welcomed them. “There!” and straight away he was at her side, lifting her hand to his lips. “My beautiful, my love.”

“Don’t,” she said quietly, but he only laughed. 

One of the villagers behind him called out, “That’s your elf?” 

“Mine,” he agreed, not taking his eyes from her. “All mine.” He made not the slightest of efforts to conceal the hunger and lust on his face and she pulled her hand fast out of his grip. He laughed at her again, quietly, and switched his speech to Quenya. “My beautiful, my elf, my own, you agreed to this, Galadriel, you came with me, willingly or not I don’t care. You’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine now.”

She could feel the growing crowd watching them both, a little uncertain now, none of them understanding a word he had said to her in this language but enough of them sensing something wrong, something uneasy. His words felt like a shower of sparks on dry leaves, at any moment threatening to burst everything around them into flame.

She smiled, a forced gentleness that came easier to her than it should. “What are you threatening me with?” she said in Quenya.

“Threaten my lady of light? Why would you say that? Oh…” as he reached for her hand again and she pulled it into a fist below the table, where none but he could see it. “No, love.” He wrapped her fist in his hand and leaned in to kiss her. There was no way to avoid it without it being clear she was doing so, and so to his evident surprise she let him, his lips oddly gentle and brief against hers. “You know how I’ll have you?” he whispered, and then leaned in close again, mouth to her ear. “Willing. And I will, in time. We have centuries. My love, my Queen.” And then he let her go.

After that she spent an uneasy night drifting in and out of dreams: of the sea, of Lindon, of the sea again. But he was not in them, and he let her be. 

In the morning, he was waiting for her with both the horses ready and nothing but a polite bow in greeting.

Travelling was easier once they crossed the ford and joined the road on the opposite side of the river, where it was still marked out well with wayposts and smoother going for the horses underfoot. They passed most of the morning in silence, with him occasionally singing snatches of song to himself that she didn’t recognise and didn’t care to let him know she had heard. 

For the first miles she rode a fair distance behind him, too far for any pretence at conversation, but he kept turning back to check she was there or stopping to wait for her. It proved enough of an annoyance that she began to ride beside him after all, albeit still with some distance between them.

He did not mention anything about the way he had been with her in the inn, the day before. She began to wonder if he had drunk so much he had forgotten it, or if he thought it was not even something worth commenting on. But neither of these seemed quite right. As they rode on in their usual silence, she turned it over and over in her head until some things about it started to make sense: that it had seemed as though something in him had slipped, some mask or defence or pretence briefly dropped; and that she had seen this in him before, but only with her, only ever with her. 

Towards midday, with the sun surprisingly warm above, she pulled close enough to him for easy conversation. “When you said you had been generous to me,” she said. “What did you mean?”

He tipped his head back, considering. “Is this a real question?”

“You have taken me from my own people. I would ask to know what sort of generosity you think could counterbalance that.”

“Your people don’t care for you.”

“Those are my friends, my kin -”

“And you are so dear to them that they sold you to me for three magic rings. They sold you. I’d have let my realms fall into the sea before I’d lose you, but not your friends and kin, no. All those centuries you spent protecting them and this is how they show their gratitude? The daughter of Finarfin himself, and this is what they think you’re worth? They should have given you a crown. Lands of your own. They were humiliating you and I did you a favour taking you away from them.”

“I would still prefer that to you keeping me as a prisoner.”

“I will keep you as a queen. You’ll have no need to beg for soldiers from me, Galadriel, I can give you whole armies. Rule at my side and you can have whatever lands you like. When your elves come asking for an alliance I’ll let you negotiate on terms you choose. Or, if you prefer it, I’ll make them kneel in the dust to beg your forgiveness. That’s my generosity to you after all the wrong you’ve done to me.”

He believed it, she realised. Whatever other layers of deceit he might have built up around himself and his actions, whatever other evils he might yet intend to trap her within, he had convinced himself this was true: that he had been generous, that she should be grateful. 

“If you think yourself generous to me, tell me why you are so cruel,” she said. “What purpose does it serve you to mock me and torment me? What do you gain from it?”

His face became oddly blank, unreadable. “I’m an ancient and terrible evil, Galadriel,” he said. “Haven’t you said so yourself? You spent centuries trying to destroy me.”

“All of my people fought a war against you and yet I am the only one you constantly seek out. It is me you try to humiliate in front of my friends and kin, me whose discomfort you crave, my lost husband you impersonate. You offered to make peace with the elves but you would not leave me be. Why?”

He only shook his head, and whatever he intended to achieve with the gesture the result was that the fogs she had not even noticed were there in her mind began to clear a little. She could almost see something, now, the shape of its form beneath his anger and spite. She remembered Halbrand in a prison cell in Númenor, a time that felt so long ago now, advising her about Míriel: stop galloping, and give yourself a moment to think. 

“What is it that you fear?” she said.

He snorted. “Give it up, elf.”

She hid a smile, and kept her quiet victory to herself. 

It was not quite enough to make her forget what he had said to her in the inn, though, or what he had said about the elves. And the next morning after she washed her face by a stream she tied her hair up with the comb Gil-galad had given her the day she left, needing to feel it close. She had seen this first glimpse of a weakness in him now, of something she could surely use. She would not listen to his poison.

Chapter Text

O if I were at home again,
At home where I would be,
No living man should flatter me,
To sail upon the sea!

‘O hold your tongue of weeping,’ he says
‘Let all your follies a-be;
I’ll show you where the lilies grow
On the banks of Italy.’

(‘The Demon Lover’, traditional)

They spoke little in the days after that. The days passed in a pattern that fast settled into a drab, numb routine. It was possible, it turned out, to set up camp for the night, share a meal, rest and water the horses, sleep, wake, prepare for the journey and then ride the whole length of the day while saying barely ten words to each other. 

While he did not challenge her on her silence she noticed that he began to watch her, more and more.

They were riding around the edges of the vast fenlands the elves called the Swanfleet when his patience evidently began to fray. The landscape around them had its own cold beauty: land and water overlapped, vast carpets of sedge studded with fir trees followed by lakes followed by cold, muddy waterways snaking between islands of moss. The swans that gave the place its name seemed the only inhabitant, vast flocks of them white on the dull-coloured water. 

They had passed no others on the road since crossing the ford and she knew this land was mostly empty of settlements until much further south. She knew there were elves, here, but they were wood-elves who cared little for roads unless they were heading for somewhere in a hurry, and if any of the travelling companies saw the two riders passing they thankfully did not make themselves known. 

He caught up with her and pulled close alongside, his arm nearly brushing against hers as they rode. “What is it,” she said when it became clear he planned to stay there.

“All this,” he said, turning around in the saddle, sweeping an arm out over the landscape, the fens, the empty expanses of forest they had ridden through. “What’s this land, what do you call it?”

“Minhiriath.”

“Whose is it?”

“No-one’s.” More swans took flight at the sound of their horses, clattering overhead in a noisy crowd of wings. She nodded towards the birds: “Theirs.” In truth there were elves here, and humans, and rumours of other strange folk, but none that would claim it as a kingdom and none it seemed wise to draw his attention to.

He nodded, thoughtful. “What would you do with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“If this was yours. What would you do?” When she didn’t answer he kept on, insistent as if her silence himself was a challenge. “You never had your own lands, did you?”

“I had other duties.”

“You must have thought of it. Somewhere like this, forests, fresh water, between two rivers that go west out to the sea. What would you do if you could? Build something on the rivers? Realms in the forests like Melian did?”

“Why does it matter?”

“You’re to be my queen. You’re to rule alongside me, if you want it. I would prefer that. I didn’t imagine you as the sort of queen that only produces babies and tapestries.” Again that sharp-edged smile, that sense that he would push and push and push with this until he had cut some sort of reaction from her. 

This sort of nod to her future, half promise and half threat, should by rights have chilled her and likely would have done not so very long ago. But she was tired, now, so much that even her dread felt muted and his menace seemed more like a pestering annoyance than anything else, a taunting, needy child pulling at her sleeves. “These lands are not yours,” she said, a mere matter of fact. 

He laughed, and she couldn’t tell how much he was joking. “Seems no-one else wants them.”

“And you would claim land near the borders of Eregion and start building cities? After you said you were making peace with the elves?”

“No, no. But I’d let you. Or anywhere, I don’t mean here in particular. I want to know how you think. What would you do with this?”

She looked out over the woods, the pools, the fenland, the mountains in the far distance. High overhead a hawk soared, its distant mew the only sound beyond their horses’ soft hoofbeats. “I would leave it to the swans,” she said. 

They reached the Greyflood river that day, at the crossing point at Tharbad. There had been a town here once, abandoned and rebuilt several times over the ages. Its buildings were all ruins now and the ford itself abandoned, the waystones that once marked its course long since scattered. The river was high, bringing mountain rain down from the Glanduin, and the surface was muddy and dotted with foam where it broke over hidden rocks.

He looked annoyed, which she found satisfying. “Wasn’t there a causeway here?”

“Not for centuries.”

“What about further downstream, can we cross there?”

“Not without a boat.”

“You’re no help. What do elves do?”

She was sure some of the wood-elves would have been able to guide them over, if she cared to find them. “Elves don’t cross here when the river’s high.”

But looking at the rainclouds smudging the sky in the distance there was no real alternative without turning back to head north around Eregion, and adding another week at best to their journey. For a time she feared he’d suggest that. He had allies in Eregion now, it seemed, elves who would greet him and look at her with - with - with nothing she cared to consider. But instead he spent a long time in silence looking down over the river, and then told her to follow close behind him.

She had forded this river more times than he must have. She would have chosen the same point he had decided on anyway, but the river in spate was a very different challenge to the river she remembered. Even taking care to cross on a sharp diagonal path, letting the horses’ hind legs break the water for their forefeet to find calmer footing and saving them from the full force of the current hitting side-on, it was hard going. The water rose higher, lapping against the saddlebags; and then higher again, and her brave horse had to swim a few strides for every stretch they managed to walk. He kept turning round to check on her and she snapped at him to keep his eyes on the path. 

They were most of the way to the opposite bank when Galadriel’s mare stumbled and went down. She felt the water come up over her hands as she fell forward against the panicking, thrashing horse, the muscles in its twisting neck like iron beneath her and knew in that moment that fighting to stay upright would only pull them both down. Instead she let the force of the fall take her forwards over the mare’s shoulder and into the rushing river.

The water swallowed her and spun her, so very cold. She had endured worse and she had braced herself for this, it was not her first fall into a fast river, but still the freezing chill of it struck her through. She gave herself a few moments to adjust to it as the current pulled her along, letting it take her without a fight as the shock seemed to press all the air from her lungs. His distant voice shouting her name was fast lost in the crash and swallow of the raging water around her. 

She could, she realised, simply let the river carry her away. She should by all rights have drowned in the sea before he pulled her onto a raft. She could amend that error here, let these waters take her and end her and wash her body out to the ocean, away from Middle-earth forever. It would not be so difficult. It would be easier than fighting. 

But sharp and clear the understanding came to her that she would not do this, that she did not want to do this. While it might give her some bitter victory in denying him his prize this was not the victory she longed for. She wanted to defeat him, more now than she ever had. He may have won their latest battle but she was not yet finished with the war.

Once she had adjusted as best she could to the shock of the cold, she kicked herself around so that her face was above water and she was floating curled and feet-first downstream. The first rock she hit she used to brace her feet against and kick herself sideways, still carried with the current but aiming for the opposite shore. Another stroke of her arms, and another rock, and another, until eventually she hit gravel and crawled soaked and shivering onto the bank.

He was there almost before she’d reached it. She saw his horse’s hooves skid to a halt, cutting deep grooves through gravel and mud, then his boots hit the ground. “What was that?” He pulled her upright. “Why didn’t you hold on to your horse?”

“I would have drowned her with me. Have you never crossed a ford like this before?”

She was no warmer for being out of the water and didn’t object when he wrapped his own cloak around her. “Were you trying to drown yourself?” he demanded. “Is that it?”

“I have no interest in drowning myself. It was not my plan to cross the river at this time of year.”

He glared at her but said nothing to that, instead leading her over to a grass-covered bank of higher ground. “Sit,” he said, and went to the horses. Her own mare had made it to the other side safely, she noticed, and had followed after them along the bank. He brought back dry clothes which he put in a pile beside her. “Get changed,” he said. “I won’t look,” a snap in his voice as though she’d accused him.

Once his back was turned she reached up to touch the comb in her hair. It was still there.

True to his word he didn’t look at her, busying himself with making a fire and gathering water to heat. After she was dressed again in dry clothes, hair wrung out the best she could manage and soaked boots lying by the fire to dry, he pressed a hot mug into her hands, wrapping his own around them until the warmth soaked into her palms. “What is it?” she said.

“Blood of my enemies, I’m such a monster. Nettle and honey. Drink it.”

“Where did you get honey?”

“Some elves like me.” He touched her cheek. “You’re like ice.” He sat down with her and her back against him, arms around her waist. “Hate me later,” he said. “You’re too cold.” 

“And you would not want your war prize damaged.”

He breathed a fast hiss through his teeth. ”Would you stop.” 

It was not that she was any less afraid of him than she had been that let her relax in his arms now, she thought, although perhaps she had never feared him as much as she should. It was maybe the knowledge that she was in no more danger of him this way than she would have been if he was on the other side of the campfire. Or maybe it was knowing that she held some sort of weapon he feared even if she did not yet understand quite what it was, that she had some power over him he had not intended to reveal to her. Maybe it was the relief of clarity, of knowing that she did not want to die and so must have chosen to live. And maybe it was only that she was exhausted, very much exhausted, and his arms were warm. 

At any rate, she did not resist. After a time she leaned back to rest her head against him, and felt him relax, pleased, oblivious to the comb in her hair pressed against his chest. He began to sing to her almost under his breath, some language she didn’t recognise, a low lulling song that repeated itself over and over again. She closed her eyes and let herself doze on and off as the fire burned. 

The fire was acting strangely. The smith had not at first intended to do anything to it bar light it, but once he felt how cold his warrior was, as though the thieving river had tried to turn her to ice, he had made sure it would light fast and burn steady and warmer than usual to stop her shivering in his arms. And it seemed this had been noticed, somewhere, because the fire was not behaving like a normal fire now. Nor was it behaving like he had commanded it; nor was it behaving like anything he had seen in a long, long time.

The smoke was hanging like a curtain over it, thicker and thicker. White marks flickered over it like strange runes. 

The smith looked down at the warrior, grateful she was asleep -

“And how convenient for you that I was.”

The smith looked down at the warrior and felt concern. She was exhausted enough by her near-drowning in the river and did not need to see whatever this was. Carefully, he nudged her mind into a deep sleep. She would dream of nice things and perhaps she would wake up later and be kind to him. 

It was to his considerable credit that he had not done this before, but he wouldn’t expect her to appreciate that.

The flames steadied and merged into a solid sheet.

A face appeared, etched out in smoke. Deep shadowed eyes, thick eyebrows, a tangle of long hair, wrinkles that may have once indicated a long life of smiles but were suggesting no such thing at the moment. “Mairon,” the wizard’s voice said. “There you are.”

The smith was tempted to throw a pail of water over the fire and ignore it, but wizards that know your name cannot be easily ignored. Besides, this sort of dark sorcery suggested the wizard was somewhere close. Relatively close, at least. Hundreds of leagues away on the other side of a mountain, maybe, but not across the seas. Not in Valinor. Here, on Middle-earth.

“Olórin,” the smith said, one hand on the sleeping warrior’s bright, beautiful hair. “And here you are, apparently.”

“Who is that?” Glowering brows cast the wizard’s flame-face into shadow. “She’s an elf. Who is she?”

“This is my elf. You get your own elf.”

“Mairon,” barked like sparks spitting from damp wood. “What are you doing? You were told to return to Valinor.”

The smith threw a branch onto the fire. It could not harm the wizard, unfortunately, but his face broke up into a fountain of sparks and came back looking furious. 

“You were given a chance,” the wizard said. “You were given a choice. They waited for you and you never came. So we have been sent to watch you, to limit the harm you do to this place, and to ensure those you would enslave and destroy can resist you themselves.”

“I am doing no harm. You can run back to Valinor and tell them all that. Look,” an arm swept out behind him to the trees he presumed the wizard could see. “No armies, no orcs, no Angband, no dragons, no wolves, none of it. Leave me be.”

“And why has Aiwendil heard that the elf you have with you was weeping, hmm?”

“No she wasn’t.” Was she? In truth he hadn’t seen it, but that meant little. Perhaps Galadriel would not have let him see her tears. 

The smith felt something push at him, press into him, uncomfortable and comforting, strange and familiar both. He didn’t want her to cry. He didn’t want her to be able to hide her eyes from him when she did. And then - “Aiwendil? He’s here?” 

The smith and the wizard and their kind were not limited to their own language; they could speak the languages of elves and of Men, of dwarves, of Ents, of tongues devised by civilisations that had grown and died fast away before any of the rest of Middle-earth had noticed. Some concepts were best expressed in other languages than their own Valarin. The smith cycled through a few of them now, saying precisely what he thought of their bird-whispering, nature-loving sibling and the level of threat he might pose, ending with “I’ll be sure not to anger any squirrels.”

“Don’t dismiss me, Mairon,” the wizard said. “You were Aulë’s, once. You were ours. You were loved. You could turn back.”

“You don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“And what are you doing? You might not serve Melkor any longer, but you’re serving no purpose here beyond your own.” 

“It’s not your concern.”

“It is precisely my concern. Wake the elf and let me speak to her.”

“Fuck off, Olórin.” The smith was not (not yet, not yet) as powerful as the wizard, trapped in this mortal form, but he could summon enough to push the wizard back out of the fire, back out of his mind, back out of the connection the wizard’s powerful magic had burnt into being. 

The flames slumped back down as if relieved. 

The smith considered his options. They would find him now, surely. They would track him back to the elves and learn of Pelargir and it would be too soon. He wasn’t ready, none of it was ready. But what else could he do? Although he had been good at running and hiding once he could not so easily do this with his warrior. He tried to imagine a life in a remote forest outpost somewhere, none but them and the trees and the deer, and could not picture her there. She should be a Queen. He could keep her safer from the wizard as a Queen.  

The smith looked down at his beautiful warrior, his elf, his light, and said her name again and again, quietly so as not to disturb her dreams. Galadriel. Galadriel. Galadriel. 

She woke the next day wrapped in a cloak and a blanket, a distance away from him. She was rested and well and felt no worse for her time in the river. She checked her saddle-bags and found everything intact, if a little damp, the Lindon apples she had wrapped in a dress not even bruised. 

He woke a little after she did and lay watching her without saying anything. There was a laziness in him sometimes that had come to surprise her. Although he was not afraid of action or hardship he could happily lose himself in the pleasures of food and sleep and song, and he seemed to like watching her like this without bothering himself to rise.

“Get up,” she said. “Wash. We’re missing the morning.”

“I’m not one of your soldiers, Commander Galadriel.” But he got up all the same, grumbling about it to himself as he packed up their things. 

She noticed he took more care than usual to make sure the fire was out and even turned back once to empty more river-water onto the ashes. It seemed a little odd, but she did not think to ask why. 

As they travelled south the forests broke into plains, and the land became more populated, with farms and villages dotting the horizon. Days passed, and then weeks. The weather improved as they moved south and he decided there was little need for campfires any more. It seemed to her that he became more cheerful as they travelled further from her people’s lands and closer to his. 

He began to tell her of things she might like. This was something it seemed he had given some thought to, and she might have welcomed it more if she had not realised by now that he would only put on this guise of kindness when he was confident he had her. When she gave him any reason to doubt that he fell into snarling and threats. 

“You’ll have your own rooms,” he said at one point. “They’re already waiting for you. You won’t need to share my bed until you choose it.”

“How kind of you.”

He laughed, unconcerned at the bite in her voice. “Be nice.”

Another time, when he found her staring into the sunset, he came to sit beside her and said “Those rings will do as I said. Your elf kingdoms are safe.”

She had begun to wonder at the silver band she wore herself. He followed her gaze down to it and ran his fingers over the back of her hand, coming to rest lightly on the ring. “This one isn’t the same. I’ll make you better one day, though.”

“There’s no magic in this?”

“Only a little.”

“You did not tell me -“

“A little. Just protection. You wouldn’t wear that beautiful armour I made you any more, I had to give you something. Don’t get close to any volcanoes with this, though. It’s not as strong.”

“Then you knew your armour would face a volcano.”

She expected that to anger him but he only took her hand gently in his own, lifted it and stroked his thumb over the back. “You still don’t believe me. You will. We have a long time to learn to trust each other.”

Another time, when they turned around the southern edge of the mountain range past the mountain she had known in the Sindarin tongue as Methedras, the Last Peak, its tip lost in the clouds, she stopped for a while to look upon it. She had no particular attachment to these mountains, no more than any other, but she knew Methedras of old as a waymarker and had been watching for it. This was where the path began to turn east. Soon they would cross the Isen, and then follow the White Mountains, and then turn again south towards Pelargir and whatever awaited her there. 

He did not hurry her to keep moving. He never did; they had reached a silent agreement that there would be times she wished to stop and look on things familiar to her, and he would wait in silence for as long as she did, and they would not discuss it. But this time he said her name when she rejoined him, and stayed close to her, and told her “Our people will want a feast to celebrate when you’re home.”

She had had enough, by now. She did not want any more of his feigned kindness. More than that, she had had enough of the confidence behind it, the swagger back in his voice, the smugness that had not even subsided when she challenged him about the volcano. It was as if every step closer to Pelargir was bringing him strength. She needed to know that she could still push against it, that whatever weakness of fear she had sensed in him earlier was still there. She needed to kick against and use his spite like she had the rocks in the river.

“Don’t call it that,” she said.

“Home? It is your home now. I want you to be welcome.”

“Lindon is my home. Eregion -"

A snort. “Doriath, beneath the seas?” He nudged his horse closer to her still. “Valinor? Tell yourself what you like. Are you concerned that you will face the same reception you did in Númenor? Don’t worry. I don’t plan to let anyone in my kingdom look on you with anything less than the respect you deserve.”

Still no real sign that he was shaken, though, and she began to feel the first shadows of fear herself that he might have found a way to hide it so deep it was beyond her ability to reach. “Your subjects bowing to me will not make it my home.”

“You being there will make it your home, in time.”

“And if it should take whole ages of Arda?”

“Then it takes whole ages. I can be very patient. You’ll see.”

“You might keep me there but I will be there only as long as you make me. It will be my prison, never my home.”

There, finally. His jaw set, just visible because she was watching for it, and his smile slowed and stilled. “And you think the elves would take you back, do you?” he said. “You know when I knew I had you? Right after I named you as my prize and they didn’t say no then and there. An offer like that, you either refuse it without having to think or you’ve accepted it already. All they were doing for those three days was finding nice ways to convince themselves it wouldn’t be that bad sending you to the bed of their enemy.”

“So fast your pretence of kindness disappears.”

“I’ve been far kinder to you than your elves would have expected, and perhaps you should think on that a while,” he snapped, and didn’t speak to her again the rest of the day. She made a reasonable effort at looking shocked and wary but in truth it was a relief to have him quiet for a while. 

Never, then. He had turned at the word never.

Chapter Text

Well bred young ladies should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say, “wolf,” but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.

(Charles Perrault, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’)

The last part of the journey passed too quickly. Even riding at a slow pace, even stopping here and there to rest the horses, it became harder and harder to avoid the knowledge that their remaining time could now be measured in days. As they drew closer to Pelargir she felt the end of the journey closing in on her, a fist tightening around her neck, a smothering fog that hid all the clarity of any resolutions she had sworn to herself.

He in contrast seemed brighter, if anything. He talked to her whether she replied or not, in the apparent belief that he could make this a normal, friendly journey through his own action alone. He spoke of Pelargir often, of his plans for great bridges and rebuilt quays; he mused on why the Númenoreans had not yet returned; he described plans for gathering the volcano’s ash to fertilise the fields, some time when the volcano itself had calmed enough. “I can’t wait for you to see it,” he told her once of some new wall hanging his people were weaving for his throne room, and seemed genuinely surprised at the look she gave him in response.

The last time they gave the horses a day to rest was near an oak forest, where they found fair-sized meadows flanking a stream swollen with snowmelt from the mountains. She told him she wished to spend the day walking alone among the trees and he should look after the horses and not trouble her. 

He was quiet a moment at this and she wondered what she might do if he refused, not entirely sure herself. She felt so tightly wrapped in her own thoughts now that her actions seemed some volatile force of nature beyond her ability to predict. But in the end, he said only “Please yourself. Watch out for bears.”

“Are there bears?”

“I don’t know, watch out and tell me. These lands are mine too by right. I should know more about them.”

“By right?” she snapped and did not look back.

It was a quiet day, alone in woodland with no companions but the birds and the trees. There were no signs of habitation where she walked and only rabbit-tracks criss-crossing the forest floor. She could feel her strength coming back to her, the panic that kept clawing at her withdrawing once again. 

She sat against a moss-covered tree root and listened to the faint whisper of the breeze in the branches above. Forests had always felt like safety to her since Doriath, even though Doriath itself hadn’t been in the end. Hidden away in forests, an accusation sneered at them long ago - but within a forest it was the outside that was hidden, blocked from view and muffled from hearing by the trees. 

When she had imagined having her own realm, back when such things seemed reasonable to imagine, it had been one of forests like Melian’s. It would have had golden trees; it would have had songs; it would have been ringed around by a barrier that kept all evil things hidden.

She returned to their camp as it grew dark. Her companion was sitting beside the stream, staring down into it. He did not seem to have noticed her and so she waited for a while but he never moved, only stared expressionless and still into the water for so long that she felt chilled with something she could not even begin to name. 

“I saw no sign of bears,” she said, when she could stand the odd sight of him like this no longer.

“Ah! Well, that’s good.” And he was all smiles and simmering fire again, as if he’d never been otherwise.

“There’s elf lands further west of here,” he said the next morning as they set off. “On the other side of these mountains, down near the sea. Edhellond.”

She nodded.

“Are they your people?”

“Sindar.” Exiles from Beleriand, who had founded the city after fleeing from Morgoth. Perhaps word had not yet reached them of Morgoth’s servant claiming his own lands so close to theirs. 

“There were Sindar when I was in Lindon, were there not? I heard them talking in their language.”

“Only because those were unusual circumstances. They would not usually work so closely with us.” Although the Sindar of Edhellond might, and might be friendly to her in particular. They were closer to the Noldor than many. They had been allied with Finrod once. No good would come from sharing this now, at least not for her, but she held onto the knowledge for herself as a small, hidden thing of hope.

“At any rate,” he said, “I don’t mind elves in my lands, so long as they’re no trouble. And I think they’ll be more interested in what I’m doing in time. What we’re doing, I should say.”

“What do you claim to offer me now?”

He rolled his eyes. “I am making conversation. What do you want me to offer you? Do you want elves? You can have elves in Pelargir if you like. Ladies-in-waiting or something.” 

“I want you to stop talking about Pelargir.”

“If that’s your wish, then very well.” And true to his word, he ceased telling her of Pelargir and kept his conversation instead to matters where he seemingly considered himself on safer ground - the colour of the heather she would see on the hills in late summer, the fish that gathered in vast shoals at the mouths of the Anduin, the great bone-eating vultures that soared in the mountains, the golden thistles that grew along the lanes. 

He had told her some of this before. As Halbrand, on the raft, once the storm had passed and they were floating exhausted and alone and lost on an endless ocean. At the time she had welcomed it, the clear affection and loss in his voice, and she had kept it fondly in her own memory. Then later, once she learned what he was, she could remember it only as betrayal and deceit - he had wanted her to think he could love such things, he had goaded her into keeping the Southlands at the forefront of her mind. He surely had never cared for these lands. 

Listening to him now, she realised that if she wanted to - if she allowed herself to - it would be all too easy to let herself forget who and what he was. 

They turned south, left the mountains behind and crossed calmer fords over the Erui. They must be close, now - she’d been less than a day away the last time she came here, but she’d been travelling lighter and in more haste. She tried not to think about it.

They were riding alongside when she noticed the figures ahead. “They’re blocking the road,” she said.

“I see that.” He didn’t slow, but his focus was immediate and sharp. “Three. No, five, two behind the wagon. Is that an archer on the hill?”

“If we’re to fight them one of us will need to take that archer first.” 

He nodded, just slight, not taking his eyes off the band ahead. “This road. I’ve had to deal with this twice already since you left us the first time.”

“These are your great lands?”

“This won’t happen when these are my great lands, elf.” His hand went for the sword at his side, then stopped. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let me see if I can talk our way past them first. Wait for my signal.”

“What signal?”

“You’ll know.”

“This should be you.”

He glowers and grumbles. “You’re doing a perfectly fine job of it. You know what happened.”

“You should tell me what you were thinking.”

He turns onto his back, feigning that he’s ignoring her, staring up at the ceiling rafters instead. A humble place, this. He’d dreamed up vast castles for them both once upon a time, spinning out architecture like the strokes of a pen. He’d built them such wonders.

Her scoff jostles him. “You sulk like a child.”

“This is not sulking. This is negotiation.”

“Oh, is it? And what would you ask of me?”

He can still startle her if he turns fast enough, the quick intake of her breath a quiet prize that he claims with a light touch to her lips. “I’ll do as you ask, if you tell what you were thinking after. All of it, all of it. How’s that?”

“You already know all of it.”

“I like hearing details.”

“Yes, you’ve mentioned this before,” she says, and he remembers all the centuries of that, her words, her whispers, all the things she wanted to tell him, the admissions he had to coax out of her, the words he had close to pleaded for, the feel of his victory in the shiver and blush of her even before she spoke. It’s almost enough by itself.

“Come on,” he says. “Don’t make me beg for this again.”

“You never begged.”

“Think I did, a time or two.”

“It was not convincing.”

“No? You should give me some advice.”

“Stop it.” She swats his hand away from her cheek.

But she agrees, in the end. She always agrees.

There are people who drift into stories such as this only for a brief and unpleasant purpose. Their own, or someone else’s, or both. 

There were six such people on the road ahead in this story. Perhaps there is more to them than this tale can tell. Perhaps they had homes, with brigand wives and adorable little brigand children, gurgling brigand babies wrapped in fine silks robbed from travellers. Perhaps they had terrible lives; perhaps they were the outcasts of brigand masters who were even crueller to them, who beat all their failed plans and visions and thoughts of rebellion into mewling pleas for forgiveness. 

There must be some reason to be found to pity them, for the warrior could manage it, but the smith had a different approach to pity. The beaten outcasts of brigand masters should have learned to be better brigands, shouldn’t they. Or at least, to be cleverer ones.

At any rate: here they were, six of them, five on the road and one archer high on the hill above. Not a bad idea to have an archer, he granted them that, but really quite ridiculous to have only the one and not two covering each other. He saw the warrior’s quiet snort as she noticed the same. 

Between them they could have this over in a moment, one of them taking down the archer while the other made fast work of the ones on the road. It would be very satisfying. Not as she likely imagined it would be for him, though, for no doubt she thought it was the blood and screams and brutality itself he craved. She had looked at him so strangely when he suggested talking his way past them, as though she failed to recognise him, or perhaps recognised him too well.

Perhaps it was a little satisfying. Sometimes. There were times when he needed to feel his fury turning into spattered blood, yes, he wouldn’t deny that. Perhaps more than a little, perhaps enough to distract and divert him from greater work in a way he could not allow. Not now . Not now he had real work to do, a plan, an aim, a goal, something so much greater than sitting in another fortress he’d been allowed to keep as a favour with nothing to do within it but find things to distract him in the bleakness. Thrown entertainments by his master like a pet. No, no more of that, not now he was a smith again. 

No, he had no particular love for conflict other than as a means to an end, not truly. And if there were other ways to achieve that end - more efficient ways - then he’d be happy enough with them. 

And those were his thoughts on the matter, as they approached the brigands ahead.

“That was not the agreement we just made.”

He may have been slightly angry with the warrior, also. As they approached -

“No.”

“All right, all right.”

And he was still angry, so angry, so tired of her spitting her fury and defiance at him. He had tried and it seemed to make no difference at all. He reminded himself he had centuries, and if it took centuries then it would be all the sweeter when she finally gave in; that he could be patient, he would be patient, so much of his plan required patience far beyond her part in it. But she seemed to know exactly what weakness in him to touch and twist. She might yet sense some of what lay beneath it. And he didn’t have so much time, did he? Even less than he’d thought now they’d sent Olórin after him.  

He could feel it all running out, escaping him, as if he was trying to clutch at dry sand and watching it pour between his fingers. She did not know what was at stake and she did not even care, she had lied and she seemed not to even realise she had done so and this only made it worse, ridiculous deceitful little elf that should be grateful he -

That sort of thing, at any rate. 

He was angry and he wanted to hurt someone. And while he should have wanted this pathetic pack of amateur thieves to simply move out of their way without any trouble so their journey was not delayed any longer, he may, admittedly, have put less effort into achieving that than he could have. 

The smith wheeled his horse to a stop with a little more of a show than was needed, keeping the flank where his sword hung turned away from them. They should have spotted the sword long before but they seemed stupid enough to miss such things, so why not give that a chance. He smiled at them, kind, benevolent, just a smith out on his travels with his beloved elf companion. 

“I’m glad to meet some company!” he said to the one that seemed to be their leader, a stocky, sweaty figure in a stained tunic and a decent cape he surely hadn’t got through honest means. Better this way, with no particular greeting. Better to knock them off balance and make sure his pretence was there as an affable, harmless, friendly support when they reached for one. “We’ve been travelling from the elf-lands in the north and we’ve seen barely a soul.”

“Have you.” The leader sauntered close and reached up for the horse’s bridle, to be met instead by its pinned-back ears and bared teeth. 

Good horse, the smith thought, well done. “Sorry, he has a very short temper. Perhaps you can tell me, is this the road that will take us to Edhellond?” A nod back to his warrior a few paces behind him. “We’re trying to reach my wife’s people.”

“Your wife?” 

The others were already looking at her with more interest than he would like, and the remaining two ambled out from their hiding place. He pretended to look startled for a moment, then smoothed it over with a smile. “My wife, yes. Well, she will be. It’s a long story, we’d be here all day, but suffice it to say that not all of her kin were happy at our match. No dowry, not even a gift. We ride alone. And we truly don’t want trouble, friend, but we have nothing to give you as thanks for our safe passage.” He held out his empty hands.

“We’re not fond of elves in these lands,” the man said. 

From the corner of his eye the smith noticed another of the band start towards his warrior. He was scrawny, taller than the first, an ugly-looking knife at his belt. “Could get fond of this one,” he said, and nodded over one of his companions who approached her from the other side. The warrior did not move.

He longed to turn his head enough to see her face. He couldn’t decide whether it would show fear or amusement and anything unrevealed in her was like nectar to him, barely possible to resist. Looking back at her would not be what an oblivious, ambling smith did, however, and for now he was still that and that alone. Instead he smiled blank and genial at their leader, who said, “We won’t keep you long.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow?” He was surely overdoing it by this point, but the brigand didn’t even seem to notice. The smith allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction in knowing just how much the man would be noticing in retrospect once he was spitting his own teeth into the dirt. 

“My friend there likes elves better than the rest of us,” the man said. “Stay a little while to keep us company and then you can be on your way.”

Enough. He turned his horse, met her eye (scornful, he noticed, she was scornful, not even a pretence of fear of them, it was delightful), said “Galadriel, kill them,” and rode straight for the archer.

“There. You have what you want. Don’t I always end up giving you everything, eventually?”

“No.”

“‘Eventually’ isn’t over yet, Galadriel.”

Galadriel did not kill them. She might, if there had been more and she had been in more danger, if the tall one who had first approached her had not turned to run as soon as he realised the situation he was in was not the one he imagined. But four road bandits with no training and little experience at anything more than threats and ambush were never much of a concern. 

It felt a surprising relief, to be fighting again. The sword was a good one and its weight in her hand was just as she preferred. Four was enough of a challenge to keep her thinking, keep her moving, but not even close to enough to have her in any real danger. As they learned, and fast. She broke bones in her defence, drew blood, and left one of them screaming from a sword wound to the shoulder that would stop him lifting anything heavy in his right arm for many years - but despite Sauron’s signal, she did let them live. 

He had no such qualms, it seemed. She saw him kill the archer with one sharp downward stroke and then turn back down towards her. “Need help?” he shouted down from a distance away. She pointed with her sword in the direction the tall one had run, into a patchwork terrain of sandstone hillside and scrub, and shouted back “Get that one”. By the time she had finished her own fight, he was riding back at a calmer pace, holding the fleeing man out at his side with a strength no mortal would have been able to manage. 

The bandit’s face was white. Blood streamed down his leg. He said nothing as Sauron swung off the horse, dropping him onto the dusty road in front of her, but screamed in pain as he was forced down to his knees. 

“This is your Queen,” Sauron said with a pleased smile. “Now you kneel before your Queen and you say sorry. And if you’re very very good at apologising maybe she’ll kill you quickly.”

The man looked at Galadriel, horrified by whatever it was Sauron had shown him or told him or done to him, capable of nothing more than mouthing something she could not even make out. 

“Let him go,” she said.

“Galadriel, come on, I don’t -“

“Let him go.”

Sauron looked at her incredulously and shook his head, but he let the man out of his hold, pushing him face-first into the dust. “All of you!” he shouted to the survivors. “Tell all your friends and your village and anyone else you’ve got agreements with to rob this stretch of road that there will be no more of this. Any more trouble on this road and I’ll come back without my Queen and nail you all to posts along it.” And then he kicked the one he’d been holding in the face, and she heard the crack of breaking bone. 

She could not speak for a time as they rode away. 

The road passed beneath their horses’ fast-paced hooves, more and more miles gone and so few now to go. He was watching her and watching her. “Was good to see you like that again,” he said eventually. “You’re more yourself with a sword in your hand.”

She nodded. 

“You should have killed them, though. I’d have let you.”

“I will not let you turn me into a creature like you.”

He shook his head, half laughing. “So much mercy you’re willing to show to everyone but me.” But he did not even seem annoyed, and she felt sick at the recognition that this was because he was happy.

He had insisted they press forward through the foothills after that, on and on into the growing dusk, far beyond where they had left the thieves on the road. When they finally reached a point where he agreed to stop, on a hilly outcrop with a few lone birch trees, it was almost too dark to see the road beyond them. Once again, no campfire that night; the weather was mild enough and it was too late anyway to eat anything but a few mouthfuls of lembas before resting for the night.

Once she lay down he came to lie beside her, closer than he ever had before. She could just about make out his features sharp in the moonlight. He pointed down to the lights of fires in the distance below them, and said “That’s Pelargir.”

She nodded. It might well have been a prison, for all she cared; an orc-pit, a death sentence. At least it existed and was not some illusion he had woven for her the previous time to hide her eyes from the wasteland he reigned over, a thought she had mulled over more than once.

“The last night of our journey,” he said.

“I gathered.”

An annoyed sigh. “I know this wasn’t your wish,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask that you think on it with fondness. Still, I hope there were good things for you as well. I saw you smile a time or two.”

She closed her eyes and rolled away.

“You looked happy in that fight today,” he went on. 

And she had, and that memory of fighting the thieves with him was clouding everything. Perhaps she was letting it, the better not to think of everything else. Perhaps she needed to. Perhaps she needed to not. All the same, there it was. The memory of him calling for her orders and following them, dropping her would-be assailant at her feet - and before then, the keen anticipation of waiting for his signal, of watching him pretend to be affable and harmless and knowing they would go for their swords together on his word - none of it should matter, and yet all of it did. 

Even before this, even before meeting him, she had started to feel that she had left too much of herself behind in some battlefield long ago. What was left of her now was full of hollow places. Somewhere she had lost her own contact with the anger and pain and grief that once drove her, until all that was left was a monument to it, a cold shell of revenge around a void she could no longer feel. 

She had become resigned to it all without ever really realising, she had not minded, she had not thought to give herself the luxury of minding. She had duty instead. And then, and then… at Tirharad before, on the road today, some lost spark within her had started to glow again.

She knew that she would fight alongside him again, too. That he would engineer it if he had to. That some weakness in her - some absence in her - had allowed this to link them together somehow, and whether this was his design or only something he seized on as justification he would surely not put it down now he had seen it. 

And she knew, though it shamed her, that if he had been Halbrand and only mortal human Halbrand she would have so wanted it to be just this way. The two of them, lying together under the stars after fighting at each other’s side for his lands, not along this road but somewhere else, the edge of some dark forest after a rainstorm. 

She had thought of this, too, and more than once.

She would have said: Come here.

He would have, she is sure. Dragged himself over without properly getting up, complaining about elves giving him orders, but he would have come to lie beside her. Maybe his hand would have reached further, lying lightly on her hip, neither of them commenting on it. 

She would have said: This is not how you should thank me.

She would have let this mortal man pull her against him, his thigh between her legs, so close she could feel the hard swell of his arousal through their clothes. She would have reached for the hunger in his eyes and not pretended she did not see it, that she did not recognise it. She would have let him show the whirl of fire and fury and pain that he barely held back and think, I used to feel that, once, I used to feel that too, and she would have closed her eyes and let it burn through his hands, burn through her skin, burn itself into the emptiness that had been left behind in her and ignite. 

She did not imagine he would be particularly soft and tender, and nor would she. She would not have wanted it that way. What she would have wanted felt like a burst of broken images, as if her senses were warring with each other over her ability to think. 

She would have wanted his hands on her thighs, her hips, the urgency of him searching for more and more of her. She would have wanted the groan in his throat as his head fell back. She would have wanted the violation that was not a violation of his fingers inside her, this mortal, his desperation calling to her and her own desperation calling back, not something of the romances of legend but something that belonged instead in this marred earth, in the mud around them, the wet grass under her hair, the rain-soaked trees standing in silent witness.

She would have wanted the tremble of her own hands loosening his belt, the feel of him hard as she took him in her hand like steel wrapped in silk. She would have wanted his resistance giving way to welcome as she pushed him back, his surprise as she knelt between his legs, his bitten-back words as her tongue first caressed the very tip of him, because she shouldn’t, this was not right, not for an elf, not for one of her standing, to know the salt taste of this mortal’s need for her, to yearn for the gasp in his breath and the hand in her hair. 

And when she broke away and he reached for her she would have wanted the strength of him against her. She would have wanted the impatience of him seeking her out again, the feel of his grip on her arms, the length of him pressed hard against her, the look between them at the last moment they could have turned back, the silent exchange, will you - but I need, I need - and then the force of him deep inside her, hard and urgent and keen and all of her alive and crying out for him.

And she would have wanted, she would even have welcomed, the force of him moving her as he wanted her, the flickered hints deep within his eyes of whatever picture he was enacting from the raft, the prison, the forge. Or from before then, before her - a memory of some mortal sweetheart, a wife, someone lost in the war that had never ended for him just as it had never ended for her. So short, their lives, and yet it had not stopped him being charred through with the same pain she knew.

She would have let him position her as he liked, her back, her hands and knees, however he chose. She would have let him twist her hair around his wrist, grip her shoulders, whisper whatever he liked into her ear, let him call her by whichever name it was he needed to remember, let his grief and lust bring forth hers as his knuckles or his fingers or the heel of his hand brought forth her release. 

And in the end it would have been her name he spoke, her eyes meeting his. He would have brushed the hair from her face with a soft cupped hand, and he would have kissed her as he moved in her, holding himself back for just a second as she demanded he give her more and now and please, and she would have felt that tie between them pulling closer and closer again and know he felt it too. She would have felt whole for the first time in long ages.

His hand is too fast to her shoulder, movements like the quick bite of a snake, but his lips on her neck are soft. “And now let me tell you what I’d have done.”

“That’s not the story.”

“It could be the story. I could tell that story. You’ve let me before.”

“I have not. I have never wanted you to play at being him.”

“Well, close enough. Does it matter, really?” His fingers lace through hers, pulling their hands fast together. He has enough tricks to use and he’ll race through them all if he has to. There surely isn’t an inch of her he doesn’t know exactly how to touch. “It’s better than what happened. It would have been better, come on, Galadriel, it’s not as though either of us comes out well from yours.”

“Still.”

Still, it is what happened. And if there is a story to be told, this is the one it should be.

What she had imagined could never have been. He was not Halbrand. But Halbrand, the Halbrand she had wanted, had always been him.

It was the last night of their journey. It was the last chance she might have. 

She didn’t even have to pretend. All she had to do was to allow the part of her that was already pulling her towards him free reign to do as it wished. Her hand found his already reaching out to her, her body turned towards his, she let him curl his fingers around her wrist and he breathed “oh that’s it, my beautiful” - and she leapt like a cat on its prey.

In the space of a heartbeat she had him on his back, one knee pinning down his nearest hand and the other under his ribs, her weight holding him down, her body blocking his free hand and her comb-knife pressing into the hollow of flesh just below his chin.

“Clever, clever elf,” he said.

It could end. It could all end.

The moonlight shone on the sweat and stubble of his jaw, of the bronze blade pressing a point into his flesh. She turned it slightly and a trickle of blood unravelled down the side of his neck, dark against the metal. He swallowed and she watched him with an appetite that felt more like hunger than anything she might have expected.

“This is not making me want you less,” he said. His hand came up to her back to the curve of her waist and stayed there. “Am I worth breaking your oath over?”

The part of her that had found it so easy to reach for him wanted to lean down more. She kicked it back into some dark corner of her mind. “Removing your poison from Middle-earth might be.”

“In that case, at least give me one kiss as you kill me. Would you refuse a man his dying wish?”

She could feel a slight shake in her hand, could feel a voice within her that did not seem entirely her own whispering to her that her lips were so close to his already, that no-one would ever know, that if she was to be exiled beyond hope for breaking an oath then at least, at least…

“Quiet,” she said.

“Stop waiting, then,” he said. “End it. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing for either of us. We can haunt each other in the void until the end of time itself. Or, you let me live and we can redeem both our bloodlines like you promised me. We can put an end to it that way. We can turn all of the damage in Middle-earth to good. Together.”

“An evil like you cannot turn anything to good.”

“You’ll never know, will you,” he said, and wouldn’t say anything more.

She let him go, in the end. She would have liked to think she spent hours with that knife at his throat, but it maybe wasn’t that long, maybe not even close. And as he’d told her - if you hesitate with something like this, you’ve already given your answer. The rest is just waiting to admit it.

So she let him go, took the knife off his neck, took her knee off his chest. 

He sat up and touched the wound her blade had left, and she saw him looking at the blood on his fingertips. Then so fast she barely had time to react he was pressing those fingers to her lips, his other hand holding the back of her head firm so she couldn’t pull away. “Good hunting, little elf,” he said. “First blood.”  

She tasted the metal tang of it as he let go, and in the same motion he grabbed her wrist and span her around so she was facing away from him, her arm twisted up behind her back. Pain flared in her shoulder and she could feel her breath catch in her throat echoing the hiss of his words behind her: “Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“Liar.” He pulled her back into him as he lay them both down again, holding her so close against him she could feel him breathing, freeing her wrist only when he had his other arm wrapped firm around her too tight for her to move. He wrestled the blade out of her hand with ease and threw it out away from them. “No more knives for you. You can eat with a spoon for the next hundred years for all I care. Vicious little thing you are.”

“No worse than you.”

“I’m your standard, am I?” His breath was hot on her ear. “Should I punish you? Would you plead for mercy?”

“I’ll not plead for anything from you.”

She could have killed him. She could have been sitting beside his still form now with her hands shrouded in his blood. Any time she’d tried to harm him previously he’d been an easy few steps ahead of her, stopping her with barely a breath spared, taking a smug pleasure in letting her know just how much of a threat she wasn’t, but this time was different. This time she’d fooled him. She could have killed him, if she’d only been certain enough in her decision.

He adjusted his grip on her a little so that her head came to rest on his upper arm, and the growl of his voice turned to a purr. “You should get some sleep, my love. Your new home awaits you.”

She spent the rest of the night held in his arms like that, looking at her comb knife in the grass out of her reach and in the distance beyond it the lights of Pelargir.

Chapter Text

                Yet I will give 
a respite brief, a while to live,
A little while, though purchased dear, 
to Lúthien the fair and clear. 
A pretty toy for idle hour. 
In slothful gardens many a flower
like thee the amorous gods are used 
honey-sweet to kiss, and cast then bruised, 
their fragrance loosing, under feet. 
But here we seldom find such sweet.

(Morgoth speaking to Lúthien, in The Lay of Leithian)

The night seemed endless. Galadriel watched the faint lights of Pelargir far away until they seemed disconnected from the city itself and even the land about it, becoming instead gold and yellow stars hung in the unreachably distant darkness. 

She did not sleep, nor dream, but let her mind drift back into the past. It seized once again on Lindon and her last few days there and this time she was too exhausted to fight back the memories. 

Another meeting, out under the trees. Gil-galad had wanted it this way to calm things, Elrond had suggested; meetings in the grand stone-built chambers of the Noldor could too easily make the Sindar feel like they were being reminded of their status as visitors, could bring together too many people too close all to jostle and annoy each other, and it was harder to resort to anger under leaves and sky. 

If that was the plan it had utterly failed. 

Gil-galad held his hands up for calm, glaring down the loudest of those protesting. “My views remain the same,” he said. “We will discuss peace terms with any of our enemies, but we will not trade even one of our own. Nothing that asks - nothing that asks,” this shouted above the growing clamour of protests, “ nothing that asks such a price of us can be trusted.”

“She brought him back,” another voice cut in. “She told us so herself.”

Galadriel turned to face her challenger directly, and met hard grey eyes, anger and fear and pain all mixed together in a face she vaguely recognised as one of Oropher’s kin from east of the mountains. 

“I’m sorry, Galadriel,” the challenger said, her voice no softer. “But you brought him here. You gave him a crown and an army. None of us would wish you harm, but you don’t understand, you Noldor cannot understand. Middle-earth is the only home we have ever known.”

“At least you should admit what you are asking of me,” Galadriel said, her voice level as a blade. 

“If he’s amenable to discussion, perhaps there could be a compromise,” another voice across the table. “When he returns we will discuss conditions with him. Galadriel, you -“

“You cannot think to have him take part in this.” They understood so little. “Do you know what he is, any of you?”

And then a chaotic row of voices all shouting at once. “Those of us who fought him rather than hiding have not forgotten,” and “we wouldn’t be in this position if,” and “Morgoth’s servant,” and “trading our past for this,” and “trading our homes when she” and “what have we become” and “what will be left” and -

“Enough,” Gil-galad roared as Galadriel got to her feet fast enough that the tall goblet on the table before her tumbled under the sweep of her sleeve. It didn’t break. The water pooled like a mirror on the stone then began to soak softly into the mats holding whole dishes of uneaten food. 

She turned and left.

Gil-galad found her a short time later by the river, where she sat staring into the rushes. There were water birds here usually, building their nests hidden under the city’s stone-built banks; they would be hiding now but there must be many just beyond her sight, and if she waited in silence for long enough she might see them come to feed in the shallows.She would not see their young in the spring, though, and she would not see the summer birds return.

“The meeting is over,” he said, sitting beside her on the stone bench. “Nothing was decided. Again.”

“He is tearing us apart without needing to send a single soldier.”

Gil-galad nodded, a slow, subtle incline of his head. “It has not escaped my notice that what he asks for in exchange for peace is one of my best commanders.”

“He would say he is holding me to my oath. No more than that.” 

The oath she had sworn weighed on her as a chain around her neck. Her enemy was a growing cloud of threat and malice, no less than he had ever been, and she could not act against him until he made that threat a reality. Even the volcano she could no longer say with certainty was his work, not since seeing Pelargir, no matter her suspicions. What he was doing now was manoeuvring, surely, dividing and beguiling, doing his best to ensure the elves could not be a threat to whatever he planned - and yet until he acted she was no less bound than she had ever been. 

Gil-galad turned his hand, the sapphire and gold ring he wore catching the last rays of the sun. “All of us have fewer paths forward than I would like.” 

“And now they plan to bring him into those meetings. Have him sit among them to debate their terms. This is -" Intolerable, she had meant to say, but this seemed a weak and inadequate echo of what she felt. “I must choose between being handed over to my enemy by my own people, or losing Middle-earth for all of us. And now I must also sit there and listen as they negotiate with him over terms?”

“On that I can refuse him an audience. But only on my own lands. Apparently even Eregion does as it pleases when it comes to him.” 

“We cannot let him see us at each other’s throats like this. He will use our own weaknesses against us.” She breathed in cold air, the chill of frost on her lips, and closed her eyes for a moment and spoke the only words she had left. “Tell them the discussion is over. Tell them I will go with him of my own choice, against your will, and without any more debates about bartering me away like this. No-one is to give him any conditions; I will set my own. No-one is to accompany me. I will go but I will not be sent.”

“Galadriel, we still have a day left.” He clasped her hand in his. “Think on this until tomorrow -”

“No. Now. Tell them all now. I do not wish any of them to spend one moment longer believing my life is in their hands to trade away.”

He nodded, one final time.

Morning came too soon.

The smith could feel her heartbeat. It was a little thing, a faint thump under his hands deep in the twisting veins that he imagined running through her like ore in rock. He could feel her breathing, somewhat too fast but steady enough, and he knew she wasn’t sleeping. He was still holding her tight; she had made no move to fight him, and he didn’t think she would, now, but best not to give her any temptation. 

He considered letting her go, just a little way, loosening his arms so she could turn if she wanted to. She might let him stroke her hair and kiss her lips and murmur “there, it’s all right, just let this be” as she gave into him, let him make her his queen on this hillside with no crown but the wild grasses around her hair. Or she might turn on him with all that fury and claw and bite at all the flesh she could reach. Or, she might do both, one melting into the other, either way around would be equally wonderful. The thrill of possibility was almost better than anything it could come to. 

Either way, they would need to rise soon. They would be at Pelargir before afternoon. 

And then. And then. 

The smith had his vast castle, maybe not so vast yet and maybe not the castle he wanted but it could be, easy enough. This much was not a challenge for him; he had always been good at designing fortresses, turrets and walls and battlements, wrapped around cliffs or spanning fast-flowing rivers. He could keep her there, in some high tower, in some garden enclosed by hedges of roses, their stems like iron and their thorns like knives and still a beautiful wall of flowers to those who stayed within their bounds. He could keep her there and she would stay, because she would have to, and she would accept it, because she would have to. 

And Melkor, who had once captured then lost Lúthien, would have been proud.

No, that was not the same. He was not doing the same. Lúthien, had she not sung her captors into a trance and walked past the sleeping Melkor with a stolen Silmaril in her hands, would have been kept as only a thing. Beauty to corrupt for the sake of corruption alone, for Melkor could not stand that beauty - that anything - should exist beyond his will. Galadriel would be a Queen. Galadriel would reign in glory, Galadriel would have power beyond anything the elves would ever have given her.

Still, if he put a crown on her head now, he knew without any doubt at all that she would hurl it at his feet. If he dressed her in silks she would tear them to spite him. Every step he took towards her she hated him more, and every kindness he offered her she turned to malice and spat in his face. Even now, finally so close to her, only because she’d almost cut his throat. If he wasn’t holding her she’d be gone. 

And Melkor would have laughed.

Her beautiful golden hair now was like silk against his face, glowing with soft light as the sun rose. She had not killed him. She would come to Pelargir. She would see, surely, she would see. He had such hopes for what she would be at his side. He had time yet. He still had whole centuries if he wanted them.

Centuries to cement how she loathes you, Melkor would have said. Centuries for her to lose every scrap of affection she might still hold for human Halbrand. All your work, all your effort, and she is further from your grasp now than she ever was before. Just as you did with your plans to save the Southlands, only to watch the volcano turn them to ash anyway. It is the same as I, you are doing the same as I, your grand plans will come to the same end as your whining little rebellions and they will all serve my will. I have made this world what it is, I have stamped my being into it, everything you do will come to my will in the end, all of Arda will know no will but mine but mine but mine…

And then the only voice of Melkor’s he could summon was a hellish clamour in his mind, chaos and noise, jagged and broken, turning everything into ruin. So beautiful that voice had once been, turned towards the end to only noise and fury and spite, a sound that still rang in the smith’s ears like the hammering of a forge.

Maybe this was what despair would feel like. Not pinned to the ground by Lúthien’s wolfhound and realising that no matter what form he took there would be no escape, not kneeling broken before Eönwë to beg forgiveness and hearing it be denied to him, not seeing his first plans to mend Middle-earth ruined in that fortress in the ice as his own armies turned as one against him. This, here: a hillside of dark wiry grass, a few stunted trees, and the grey light of an empty dawn. Not today, not quite yet, but soon. Maybe soon.

“You hate me,” he said, and he felt the flinch of her reaction to that. “I’m long used to being hated. But I think you hate me more because I was once a friend to you.”

No response from her to that, no word. She felt a fragile thing in his arms, her breath rising and falling in her like captured prey. Something small and delicate. A sparrow in the soft paws of a cat.

“I would be a friend to you still if only you’d let me,” he said. “Surely it’s a better way than this.”

She snorted, tapping his forearm that held her tight. A fair point, he supposed. But one easy enough mended, and there, he could give her something she wanted - he let her go and she rolled up in one smooth movement to sit, kneading circulation back into a calf muscle. “You did try to kill me,” he said. “I’ll let it lie.”

Nothing. No sign that she had even heard him. 

“Galadriel.” Inside him the name built up and up into a scream and he wanted to rip the ground beneath her into pieces with it. He forced it back; he had not lost , this was not it. “Galadriel. Galadriel. Do you know what I could give you? Do you think I lied when I said you could have your own lands to rule? I would not lie to you. I have never lied to you.”

She did not even seem to care. What he could see of her face was distant, closed to him, blank.

“You could have killed me and you didn’t. That means something. You had a reason for that,” he tried, and before he’d even finished speaking she said “I don’t know why,” clear and sure and almost as if the strangeness of it amused her. 

“Because you know I was telling you the truth about what I am trying to do. You saw what I did for the elves -”

“What you did?” She was up on her feet in a snap of movement, her hand going straight for the dagger she no longer carried. “You did nothing for us that did not serve your own purposes.”

“I told you -”

“What you gave them will turn to rot and evil like everything else you touch.”

So fast she turned on him, and even though he was expecting her to do exactly this it still felt as if she had torn into him before he could block her, picking apart his composure into a mass of bare and broken threads. “I have heard no complaints from the elves,” he said, and his voice snapped and snarled like a dog.

“They will see you for -”

“See what ? They are at peace, their lands are flourishing. They chose to work with me not against me and they see their rewards.”

“No good can come from a creature of Morgoth.”

“Galadriel.” His fingernails were digging tiny crescents of pain into his hand. He would not waste everything, not now, not after all this, he would not let her stamp all this work to pieces beneath her pretty fawn boots. “Enough.”

“You dare to tell me what you have done for the elves, when I have seen countless numbers of us dead because of you? So many of us year after year after year. My friends and my family and my soldiers all dead because of your armies, your creatures, everything you sent out to fight your battles for you while you hid in your stolen fortresses -”

“Oh, so now I’m at fault for not fighting battles -”

“You have dragged me here as your captive, you have taken me from my own people and you dare to call yourself my friend?”

“And what about what you’ve done, backstabbing little elf? You demand I return to Middle-earth then you blame me for coming here, you swear yourself to my side and you’re gone the moment I’m of no more use to you. You used me -“

“You used me, you deceived me -”

“You know full well I did no evil that would have released you from that oath and you turned from me anyway. You heard my own enemy tell you I was trying to heal Middle-earth just like I said and no, even that wasn’t enough for you, even swearing an oath before Aulë wasn’t enough for you, all you want is vengeance and you will not hear anything else.” He was vaguely aware that he was standing right before her now, growling down into her face, and she seemed like she might explode at him in claws and fury at any moment and wouldn’t that be perfect, the whole world could burn up in their anger.  “I offered you peace, I offered you a crown, I offered you power and all that you want -“

“You offered me nothing! You tricked me and you forced me and I am sick beyond bearing it of your self-serving lies,” she was saying, shouting, her voice tearing itself to pieces around the edges. How dare she look such a thing of beauty when she was nothing more than a whirlwind of rage. “Nothing can make up for the evil you have done. Nothing.”

It was all chaos and noise now, his as much as hers.  The hill they were on had gone, the sky, the trees, Pelargir on the horizon. They were standing somewhere dark with rain lashing at them, running down his face and soaking through her hair. His doing, surely, but not his will, and that in itself was troubling - how was this happening without his deciding it? 

But his anger overtook the concern as she lunged at him again and he caught her blow in one hand, holding tighter as his grip slipped over the rain-soaked fist. “You will see,” he was growling, “I will make you see,” and the ground shook under his feet and he didn’t care, let the thunder break around them, let the rain drive against them both and drown them and let it all end like this.

She screamed at him, nothing left in her but rage now, and he would have told her she made a better servant to Morgoth than he ever did if the words were there to form but all that came out was a scream of his own in return, wordless shattering fury. Then they were both falling into water, the Greyflood crashing around their heads, the storm-waves of the Sundering Seas throwing them about like driftwood. He could see the shape of her just visible through it: a faint spirit of a being turning away from him, her hair fanning out around her like the sun itself, falling, falling, her hand in his pulling him down -

And then there was the hillside again and he was kneeling beside her, his palms pressed into the newly-soaked grass.

Such a weak thing he was now. Such a pathetic creature to be so subject to the physicality of it all. The wet ground beneath his knee soaked through to his skin, his heart was hammering and hammering at him. He should be master of all of this and he had so little: a broken city, an elf who hated him. A silver ring cold like ice on his hand.

“Galadriel,” he said. 

He could hear each of her breaths through her slightly parted lips, he could all but feel the flush of colour in her cheeks. The drops of water in her hair shone like jewels. “What happened?” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

She hadn’t known he could. But nor had he, not like this. As a thing of his design if he wished it, yes, but having it all unfold beyond his stated will like that was different. It wasn’t what he had planned - not when he had made the ring, not when he had gone to Lindon to claim her, not now. “I didn’t intend that. At least, I didn’t imagine drowning us both.”

“But I did,” she said even quieter. 

It was like a strike through him, as if her little blade had found its mark after all.

“What happened,” she insisted. “What did you do."  

He knew better than to even try for apologies. She’d never wanted to hear them even from Halbrand and she certainly wouldn’t believe any from him. “The ring I made you. It’s - no, it’s protection like I told you, it is,” one hand out to pacify her. “But it was intended to work alongside mine so long as our wills were aligned. They are made to amplify each other.”

“In this?”

“In anything, I suppose. But my intention was to protect our realm.”

She turned the ring on her finger and he was certain for a moment she would remove it, but instead she left it where it was. She wanted him drowned. She wanted to go back to the sea and this time pull him under with her like one of the water-spirits the Southlanders told their children stories about. So close, he had her so close , and yet she’d never been further away. 

“The horses,” she said, looking past him. Their horses were gone.

The horses were easy enough to track though it took the better part of the morning to reach them again. The hoofprints were lumps of grass torn out of the turf, a long drag of a line where one had banked too fast and slipped and skidded before finding its feet. They must have been terrified. 

At least it left little need to discuss anything, and he trudged in silence beside her along a wide arcing route that took them far from the road below, skirting the edge of a pine wood, down along the curve of a stream, barely venturing even to look at her. Eventually the lighter prints along the banks of the stream showed the horses had slowed to a walk. Not long after he saw them grazing together, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. 

Galadriel called her horse to her side and left him to fetch his own. He’d have said something at other times, but no matter. 

It took him a little while to reach his frightened, sweat-damp horse, one careful step at a time once he got close, keeping his voice calm and steady and soothing, waiting and waiting before even reaching for the bridle he was carrying slung over his shoulder. Even then the horse flinched away from his hand on its side and backed away, its harsh snorts of breath suggesting it wasn’t even sure of what he was. He sang to it instead, low and quiet, until it finally settled.

So easy, this should have been so easy. The horse calmed and calmed and nudged its tired head against him. He scratched it between the ears and felt it relax more, its eyes drooping half-closed. He remembered when he’d tamed wolves this way, wolves and worse; he’d had armies of orcs drop to their knees before him, howling dark spirits fold their wings low, even a dragon once, its head to the ground, scales scraping against the ash-covered slag heaps outside Angband as it awaited his orders. One elf should have been a trifling thing. Yet he’d underestimated her, just as he’d underestimated Lúthien all those years before, and now maybe she too was going to bring everything he’d built down in ruins around him. 

When he got back to Galadriel she was leaning into her own horse, face pressed against its broad shoulder, speaking quietly as it curved around to rub its head against her side. She loved that horse. He determined to tell her she could keep it for herself in Pelargir, even though they were short on horses as they were short on everything else. 

“Galadriel,” he said, and she ignored him.

Again, he tried to remember that purpose he had felt in the first sunrise after Morgoth fell, that light, that certainty. Again, nothing.

Patience, he reminded himself, half wanting to turn it all to crashing ruin, half wanting to fall at her feet and beg forgiveness as he had with Eönwë. Patience , find it. But oh, patience was hard to gather. He felt as if he was fraying and coming apart and this form of his was so weak , speaking out all its secrets in heartbeats and tensed muscle, in the feeling at his jaw as his teeth pressed together, in the way it would capture and change the voice in his mouth before he spoke it out loud, a tremble or a snarl. 

“A truce,” she said, still not looking at him. “I propose a truce.”

It was as if the world had pulsed and pushed him back, the force of it smoothing him whole again. He longed to touch her again, even lightly, even just the soft edges of her golden hair. Beautiful as Lúthien, beautiful as the stolen Silmaril that Lúthien had carried so easily away smooth and soft in one fair hand, and he understood better than ever why his master had wanted to forge the Silmarils into a crown.

He settled for bowing his head, in thanks or deference or whatever she wished it to be. “How do you mean?”

“You are familiar with the concept, surely?” she said, still not quite looking at him but with the slightest of smiles on her lips.

She wasn’t afraid of him, he realised, relief and annoyance squabbling within him to be the one he could best lay claim to. Or she was and no longer cared that she was, which might be better or worse. “For how long?”

“Until whenever you intend our wedding to be.”

“Harvest. It's to be harvest time.” Weddings were usually done then in these lands, it seemed, part of the celebrations when the last of the crops were gathered in. He would be their king, he would follow their customs, they would not doubt he was theirs as much as they were his. “What makes you offer this to me now?”

She still would not look at him, staring out past him towards the sea. “Because I have stood at the start of every other path forward and chosen not to take it,” she said. “And I cannot stay here.”

He curled his fingers into his own horse’s wiry mane, anchoring himself, stopping himself from reaching out to her and finding his hand charred through the way a Silmaril would burn the grasp of an evil thing. “Set out your terms, then.” 

It is customary, for the beautiful princess who finds a magical and powerful creature in the wild lands beyond her home, to request of it three wishes. And the warrior was such a princess. She was the daughter of the High King of the Noldor in Valinor. She was beautiful. She had found a creature that could grant her any wish she made. 

Her first wish was for movement, to be allowed to come and go from Pelargir as she chose. As and when and where. She told him that those who were denied such things were captives, whatever else he might call it, and that if this was what he sought for her then he should name her so and cease pretending she was anything else.

She was not a captive, of course, and he told her that. She was his Queen in waiting, his light, his beautiful warrior, she would reign at his side, she would have power greater than anything she had ever been granted, and this was such a small thing. Of course she could have this.

So long as she would come back, of course. So long as she would not use it as a way to negotiate any alliances behind his back. So long as she would not attempt to cross any fast-flowing rivers until the snowmelt was washed from the hills and the path was less dangerous. A truce must be held from both ends, after all. 

And she agreed, and so he granted her first wish.

Her second wish was a binding on him: that he not negotiate any new alliances, any new partnerships, any more friendships with the elves, without her there. Those he had made, he would not act on without her knowledge. She would not stop him (could not stop him, she said, something less true than she thought though he did not correct her), but if he insisted on this talk of reigning alongside him then he should show her what that meant.

This was harder to grant. Diplomacy was careful, delicate work, perhaps not best done by warriors. Besides, plenty of people in these lands had little trust in elves. She was not his Queen yet and - 

My terms or none at all, she said.

- and yes, all right, she could have this wish too. He would work something out.

Her third wish was for her brother’s dagger. Now, before she would agree to come with him willingly to Pelargir.

This gave him some reservations. He had made an agreement with her (he hadn’t, she said). She might claim a truce now, but what assurance could he have that she wouldn’t sneak into his bedchambers at night looking to stab him in the dark? (He would enjoy that too much, she said.) Why did he even imagine he had it here to give her? (You do. You do. You have had it with you all along.)

As they arrived back at their camp, he caught her as she sprang down from her horse and pressed the dagger back into her hands. 

“I should have asked you,” letting her hold his hand loosely between hers. “How did you know I was carrying that dagger? I’m sure you never saw it.”

“I didn’t see it in the throne room in Armenolos when you took it from Elendil either. I knew what you could do by then. I was sure you would not have trusted it to anyone else, and I guessed you would find some satisfaction in having it close to me and hidden from me all along when you knew I wanted it so.”

He doesn’t deny this. He does say “You didn’t exactly prove me wrong, asking for a weapon before everything else I’d have given you.”

She doesn’t deny this, either.

He is suddenly so tired, weariness like a deep ache in his bones. More and more now, this happens. Tired like the last days of the war, tired like the first time he woke again after Adar killed him in Forodwaith, tired like the time Galadriel had left him lying on the stone floor of a prison, nothing he could do but watch the swirl of her dress as she walked away from him at Olórin’s side. How cold the ground had felt against his face, how final. 

“Besides,” he says, looking at his hand in hers, turning it so the faint ring of a scar on his wrist is visible to them both, “you learned how to carry a weapon hidden in my sight, too. Didn’t you? Right under my eyes.” 

“Not a weapon.” But light as sunshine she strokes the scar and he knows she knows better.

Galadriel resaddled her horse for the final time, packed away her belongings for the final time, checked the bags for food more out of habit than hunger. Little of it left now. Lembas, again; a flask of wine he had traded for at a village they passed through and then seemingly forgotten about; and her Lindon apples. 

She touched the wrinkled, dulled skin of one, its shine long gone, its peel pitted under her fingers. She had kept them unbruised and they had lasted as well as she could have hoped for in such conditions, but they were long past new.

“You have apples?” he said, watching her, always watching her. “When did you get those? Share. I haven’t eaten red apples for the longest time.”

“No.” 

“Galadriel.” His voice was half amused, half offended, the laughing threat she had grown so exhaustingly familiar with. “You like apples? I’ll give you orchards. Fields full of orchards so vast you can’t see beyond them. I’ll give you apples that grow any time of the year, apples you can pick right from the branch in the middle of winter. Just for you. No-one else could touch them. Give me time and you’ll have all the apples you could ever want.”

She wrapped them back in the soft cloth of a dress, not looking at him. “These are from Lindon.” 

He nodded as though he understood, as though he was even capable of understanding, and let her be.

She closed her eyes and let her mind fill with the memory of Lindon’s orchards. So many apples, there had always been too many to eat and to store; so many apples there had been red carpets of them left to lie under the trees, for the birds and the beasts of the forest to come and take their fill. It was one of the memories she had returned to again and again when trudging through wastes and woods and deserts as the commander on her enemy’s trail. She had faced worse than Pelargir. 

When she looked around again he was wearing his long embroidered cloak and his crown. He looked every inch a king, the king she had made, and she felt as though even without arriving at Pelargir her journey was at its end.

“I have something for you,” he said, almost a hesitancy in his voice. “A gift.”

She felt her heart seize and skip, kept her expression set firm as steel.

He lifted a large bundle from one of the bags, unwrapping the blue cloth around it as he brought it over to her. Underneath it was folds of white with what she could already see was a shimmer in the cloth. He placed it in her arms and stepped back.

It was a cloak. A fine cloak, maybe too fine to have been made along with the rougher woven clothes from these lands. The edges were stitched with tiny, careful embroidery that spiralled into leaves and flowers across the hood, only a tone or two darker than the base cloth, not intended to be visible to anyone except those close by. 

On the back, by contrast, was a symbol intended to be visible for miles. Bright yellows and golds, beautifully sewn, a circle inset in a diamond with the rays of a sun bursting through it: the sigil of the house of Finarfin. 

“Will you wear it?” he said, and when she didn’t answer he put it around her shoulders himself, pinning the fabric at her throat with a bone brooch in the shape of a lamb. The cloak fell past her knees, its hems weighted well enough that it hung straight and true. 

He lifted her hair out carefully from under the collar and she fought the urge to pull away from him. “Beautiful,” he said, almost to himself, and began twisting and twining lengths of hair, taking more between his fingers as he worked his way back from her temples, pulling it back and gathering it up at the base of her head. She did not speak, did not move, stayed frozen under his hands as he worked; and then she felt cold metal touch her scalp and reached up to feel her comb-knife from Gil-galad, nestled safe in her hair once again. 

She rode into Pelargir at his side, her head held high. 

There was a crowd waiting to greet them at the city gates, cheering and chanting and throwing white flowers beneath their horses’ hooves. With her they seemed in awe, staring at her in wonder and murmuring her name as they bowed, but him they greeted like a long-lost friend. He was fast surrounded by a mob of happy, shouting Southlanders competing for his attention and he seemed as pleased to see them as they were him, leaning down from his horse to grab a hand, clap a shoulder, ruffle the hair of a child. 

Bronwyn was the only one she recognised, and the only one who seemed pleased more than awed to see her, welcoming her with a kind greeting and hopes that she would like Pelargir even if it lacked the grandeur of the elf cities. Galadriel was still unsure whether any of them had expected her to come, but Bronwyn seemed to know more than most. From the way she spoke to Sauron relating a quick summary of things that had happened in his absence, it appeared she was the one that had been left in command of this place when he was away.

Sauron gathered his horse’s reins as the crowd began to clear ahead of them, but Bronwyn indicated he should lean down from his saddle and whispered something to him, fast and quiet. The humans around them would not have been able to hear any of it; Galadriel, though, heard the word “Númenor,” and saw the annoyed turn in his face before he nodded.

Pelargir had once had broad sweeping streets easily wide enough to ride two abreast. Long years of ruin had taken their toll and now there were piles of rubble, shelters built with wood and thatch against walls still standing, and paving stones cracked and broken away where trees had grown up through them. The people here had worked to do what they could, and even now the city looked brighter than it had the first time she had come, but Galadriel saw the ruins now as much as the new life in it as they rode on with Bronwyn walking between them. 

The people who accompanied them through the city, with more joining as they rode, continued to speak to him with joy at his return. She watched them point out a seemingly endless list of newly-finished work as they rode: this roof is done, this wall fixed, this one had to come down but they had plans to reuse the stone. He asked enough questions to make it clear that he knew each detail of the work they were discussing and seemed pleased enough by the progress they reported. And it was impressive work, truly, for this place had been ruins for a long time. 

She remembered, though, what he had done to her brother’s fortress in Tol Sirion, the beautiful island turned into a dark thing of wolves and evil. The Southlanders knew he was one of the Maiar, he had said. They knew he had served Morgoth. They perhaps did not know of all he had done in Morgoth’s service. Or, worse; maybe they did, and loved him anyway. 

What they thought of her was even less clear to her. Certainly they seemed pleased enough to see her, their distance more wonder than dislike from what she could tell. Had he told them that he intended to bring her back with him? Did they know the circumstances under which she had agreed, or did they think her pleased to be here as his bride? Either filled her with a deep, sick emptiness, but it would be better if they thought her happy. She could barely stand to think of them looking at her with pity, or worse, knowing what he had done to bring her here and still thinking it a price worth paying to have their powerful Maia king protecting them. 

They followed a long, arcing path to a less ruined part of the city, up to a cluster of taller buildings near what must be its heart, and here they stopped. Someone led away their horses, others carried their bags, and her betrothed king took her hand and led her up a flight of white steps to their home.

"I still couldn't tell if you believed me about what I was trying to do." He pulls her close in the circle of his arms, and after all those memories it's such a relief to have her nestle soft and calm against him. "I think you did. I think you did a little."

"Then you should add that the smith deceived his warrior, shouldn't you."

"It wasn't like that. It wasn't a lie."

"Then say it how you like. But you should say it, if you want this to be the truth."

The smith had been honest with her, whether she believed him or not. He did intend to mend Middle-earth. But when smiths mend a broken thing, it is done with fire and hammer and solder hot enough to burn.

Chapter Text

For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

(G. K. Chesterton, ‘The Ballad of the White Horse’)

She had her own rooms as he had promised. Not large but well kept and furnished, with a fair-sized fireplace, a writing desk, and a comfortable seat under the light of the window that looked out onto the great river. 

He insisted on showing her all of this himself, of course, taking her hand to smooth it over the soft lambswool blanket of the bed, showing her the design of the ships carved on the side of a trunk. There was a pride in the way he spoke but a need also, an insistence on pushing and pulling at her until she acknowledged what he wanted her to. Another strange thing in this already so strange experience although by now not an unfamiliar one. She was beginning to recognise him better than she cared to. 

“I’ll leave you alone a while,” he said when he’d finished, but he hovered at the doorway as though waiting to be dismissed. “Will you join me for dinner after you’ve had some time to rest? I need to discuss something with you. No -” a hand up to dismiss the objection before it even passed her lips. “You’re the one who wanted to play diplomat, and diplomats talk.” A pleased little smile, a captured victory, something else for him to show her. 

Once he was gone she sat in the chair by the window and looked at the silver ring on her hand. It gleamed in the faint warmth of the afternoon sun. Perhaps she should have taken it off as soon as she had learned what it could do, but again she had hesitated and her hesitation had been answer in itself. The ring had gone suddenly cold on her hand on the hill that morning as the world started to blur around them, had ached like frostbite as she felt the rain sting her face. It had pulsed with something she could not name as she remembered the river and the sea and his smug and spiteful voice and thought, I wish, I wish - and then she had made it so, pulled him down with her and felt the water swallow them both, the ring able to do what she had pulled herself back from before. It had felt so wonderful.

She had hated this ring when he first put it on her hand. Hated it and hated what it meant and hated him for giving it to her most of all. She had not known it could do such things with that hate. Protection, he had said, and perhaps he had not thought too hard about what she would most wish protection from. 

She would not think any more of it for now. 

She unpacked the bags that had been carried to her rooms for her, all the people so willing to help as though she had done them some great favour by coming here. Her travelling clothes were all worn and spattered with mud now, the occasional halfhearted wash in a stream when they stopped for a day not enough to lift the grime of the journey from them. She removed her worn boots, still coated in dried clay from the poor ground where they had stopped to camp several days before, and changed from her green riding tunic and breeches into a finer dress, blue as a summer sky, untouched since they had left Lindon. 

Inside one of the sleeves something scratched and rustled against her skin. She pulled out a small parchment, neatly rolled and tied with white linen. Inside, neat lettering in Elvish script:

Galadriel,

I write this the night before you are to leave, and while I still hope against hope that you will not I will assume by your reading this that you have.

I hope you are well. I hope your journey has not been too difficult. This seems pathetically inadequate to say but nevertheless I hope it is as true as it can possibly be. I hope that Pelargir, when you reach it or if you already have, has things you will find good and beautiful. I was there myself many years ago when it was still new. I remember beautiful carvings in white stone along the banks of the Sirith. I hope those are still there; you would like them.

You have always been the bravest, most determined person I have ever known.

I have been thinking about the first time I met you, when Elros and I were children hiding on that beach as our city burned. The world seemed utterly hopeless to me at the time. My parents gone, my people murdered, my home in ashes and ruins, and although you tried to keep us safe it was the sons of Fëanor who took us away. Yet while I could see little but despair at the time there have been innumerable better things since, things I could not foresee at all from that terrible day. So I will not allow myself to believe that your present situation is without hope of a better future and nor should you. 

If you are able to write to me, now or at some time in the future or ever, I would be so glad to hear from you. I would also not blame you if you had nothing to say to any of us ever again. I am sorry I could not do more. I will miss you so terribly much.

Namárië,

Elrond.

She left the letter on her desk, lay on the soft blankets of her bed with her three red Lindon apples gathered in her arms, and sobbed until she had no more tears left. 

He lets her tell this with no interruptions, no words at all, his gaze fixed on the roof above them, his hand absently stroking her hair. 

“Did you read that letter?” she asks him.

“No.”

“And if you had?”

He pinches his lips thin between his teeth. Thinks. “I would have been angry with him for upsetting you.”

“This. This is why -”

“I know, I know. What else should I tell you? I swore I won’t lie to you.”

Galadriel assumed that he would return for her himself, but instead he sent one of his servants to fetch her. It seemed odd to her still that his servants were not orcs or monsters or terrified slaves but ordinary mortals like this one, a kindly-looking woman with long dark hair who gave her name as Hilde. It was better, she supposed. She should suppose.

The buildings her rooms were in were an interconnected labyrinth of halls and stairs and corridors, built over different generations of Númenor’s might. Pelargir had been one of their grandest ports in Middle-earth once. Now, half the city was uninhabitable ruins and rubble and even the half that stood seemed not too far from crumbling itself: there a hastily patched roof, here a faded, flaking mural. 

She stopped to look more closely at one of those murals as Hilde led her through a maze of hallways. It showed copper-coloured ships on faint blue waves with the guiding hand of Uinen, Maia of Ulmo and Lady of the Seas, calming the waters ahead of them. The surface of the pitted, flaking paint was rough under her hand as she traced the green branch at the lead ship’s prow. “Was this city empty before your people arrived?”

Hilde nodded, a quick bob like a bird. “Nobody dared live here. The people in the nearest villages believed it was full of ghosts. Steward Bronwyn said it was better than where we were coming from, and none of us disagreed.”

“And the king? Was he with you then?”

“When the king came back from fighting the orcs he said we had no need to fear ghosts. Said any ghosts should be more afraid of him.”

And meant it as reassuring, no doubt. Perhaps he had been right that it was what they wished to hear, though, these lost people in search of a home. 

Their king was sat alone at a modest table waiting for her to join him. There was bread and some sort of thick stew and dark red wine in crystal goblets, and she realised she was hungrier than she had thought herself to be. She took the seat he gestured towards and said “Tell me why you called me here.”

“And hello to you too.” He lifted the glass to his lips, its facets cutting candlelight into the wine.

“Many things, but first the situation of our lands and this city. So. We’re short on most everything, really. People here took what they could carry when they fled and most times that wasn’t much. We have what’s been brought from the Southland towns and whatever was here when we arrived. Clothes, blankets, things like that, not much. Cloth and dyes and needles and thread and spindles and carding brushes and all of that to make more, even less. There’s trees for timber but few tools to prepare it. Can’t make pottery without clay and a kiln. Pelargir’s built of stone and nobody here knows stonework and there’s no way to quarry any new if they did. And there’s a forge we could make tools in, there’s a fairly good anvil still here, but I’ve got no metals, no charcoal, no tools for smithing. We’ve used river reeds to thatch the roofs and that’s not so bad for now but I don’t know how it’ll manage in the heat come summer. Looks brittle to me. Then there’s food, of course.  The land’s good from what I can tell but we’ve struggled to plant crops without many seeds or tools.”

“You seem to be eating well yourself.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Watch your attitude, elf, you’re not a queen yet. Besides, you don’t know what’s in this stew.”

She kept her eyes level on his and refused the temptation to look down at her bowl. “Rabbit,” she said, sipping another spoonful. 

He laughed. "Food’s not been as difficult in recent months, but that’s luck of the seasons and the traders. There’s settlements further up the river and south who relied on sending a lot of what they grew east into the lands the volcano’s ruined. That’s where the wine’s from, too. But we can’t store anything ourselves for next winter and I won’t have my people living on rabbit and fish and coarse flour. Even cheese is difficult. We’ve got some people working on making it now but it’s more complicated than you’d imagine. Did you know that? I had no idea. I’d never given any thought to making cheese.”

“And why should you, such a powerful being as you.”

“Mocking me, here in my own home?” Oh, but he liked that, there was no denying the satisfaction in his smirk. “Anyway. There’s a feast planned for us in two days and I’d like it if you’d let them celebrate us returning, even if it’s not the fine elf banquets you’re used to or the poor fare you think I should be content with. Our people will work very hard to create this for us. Please try to seem grateful.”

“I would hardly criticise your subjects.”

“Good. Main thing is, in most things we don’t have half of what we need here and we have even less of what we’d need to make it new. And we still get more people arriving from the burned lands looking for sanctuary even now. So, one thing we’ve been considering - and where I’d like you to help, if you’re willing - is running raiding parties back into those lands. See what we can pick up in the way of tools and so on. Fight orcs when we come across them. Will you?”

She turned the idea over in her head. “When?”

“A month or two maybe. Once there’s more light in the day. I would hope not to come across any orcs at all, but if we do few of my people are trained to fight.”

“You threatened the elves with an army.”

“Threatened? Galadriel…” He shook his head slowly, its candle-light shadow bobbing on the wall. “That was a peace deal,” he explained with exaggerated, maddening patience. “If the elves hadn’t agreed to my offer I’d have been a fool to let them keep those rings and I’d have needed an army to keep my own lands safe. Unless you think my people should exist at the elves’ sufferance alone?”

“I would like to know what army you had in mind.”

“I’m sure you would.” He folded his arms and leaned back. 

She let the silence spool out between them, and waited, and waited.

“All right,” he said. “Because you’re to be my queen and because you did offer me that truce. We have no army here, you can see that. If we need one the choice is the lands to the south - they’re part of the Southlands, they should come under my crown. Or Númenor. Or orcs as a last resort. None ideal, but all a possibility should it come to that.”

“Orcs -”

“Orcs as a last resort. I don’t want anything to do with orcs if I don’t have to. Besides, there’s no need for any army now. One small party, that’s all, and I can make that up from those here. If you’ll join us.”

He went back to his meal, looking satisfied, and she thought once again how ridiculous and strange and unfair it was that he should seem so ordinary. Surely, if the world was right, his disguise should have been gone like smoke the minute he spoke his name. He should have been back in dark armour and a spiked helm, the floors of that forge workshop should have broken beneath his steel boots, his voice should have been a scream like the crushing blow of a mace. He should not be sitting before her eating rabbit stew like a mortal man. 

“You ask me to arm your people,” she said.

“Our people. They don’t need arms right now, they need fish-hooks and needles and seeds. You want to starve them to spite me?”

On Númenor, she remembered, there had been large ornamental plates finely painted with elaborate scenes from stories. Ships battling great sea monsters, dancing bears deep in the forest. Her life now felt like one of those plates broken into shards, leaving her to assemble a picture she did not know out of nonsensical pieces that made no sense. No doubt, if she tried hard enough, she would see how this harmless request fitted into the greater picture of the darkness he was trying to create. No doubt, once she had, he would wheedle and threaten and argue her into doing it anyway.

“I will go,” she said. 

He smiled, pleased, and toasted her with his half-empty glass. “I knew you wouldn’t leave us to struggle when the elves have so much. Now, my betrothed, let’s see if you’ve grown any better at diplomacy.” And he slid an unfolded paper across the table to her, another letter written in a careful hand with dark ink. 

It carried a very different message to Elrond’s kind words. 

The letter was from Númenor. It conveyed the kind and generous sentiments of its king, Ar-Pharazon, and his wife, Ar-Zimraphel, to Lord Halbrand and his people. It expressed their hopes that Numenor’s assistance had been helpful in aiding the people of the Southlands to find their home in Numenor’s ancient port city of Pelargir. It wished them all well, and it ended with a warmly expressed hope for further discussion on all matters they surely held in common. It was signed, in friendship , Ar-Pharazon of Númenor. 

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Miriel was the King’s heir. If he has died, she should be Queen. If she has died, why would Pharazon not mention it?”

“Wondered that myself.”

She looked at the letter again. It was in Elvish script, as she would have expected, but the curves were sharper and more angled than they should be. What had first seemed like an unfamiliar hand now seemed more like a deliberate choice. “What do you think of this?”

“What do I think. First: Lord Halbrand, fuck that. Second, seems that Númenor wants to play empires again. Third, I can probably get their help if I need it but it’ll come at a price I’m not going to entertain paying unless our situation takes a turn for the worse. Fourth, he’s cleverer than he pretended to be but not as clever as he thinks he is. Fifth, Zimraphel means -”

“Jewel-daughter,” she said, realising the second he said the words. “Miriel.”

“Indeed. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe not. Curious. And sixth, the fact they’ve been silent for so long and send this to us now suggests that whatever’s happened over there is now settled enough that they’re looking over here. And they’re looking to us first. So.”

“They do not know what you are.”

“They do not. And I don’t think I’ll be telling them for now. I’m not minded to tell them anything else, either. They can come to me if they want to talk.”

“And if they come with an army?” She thought of those brave young soldiers again and images of battle flooded unbidden into her mind. Burning homes again, black orc blood spattered on Numenor scale armour again, and this time with him fighting on the side of the orcs. Commanding the orcs.

But he smiled broadly. “If they come with an army then I think that’s our army, Galadriel. But I suggest we leave them for now. Oh - look!” 

A black cat had jumped down from the curtained windowsill and skulked its way under the table. Pelargir was full of cats, feral and easily terrified and ready to bolt at any attempted proximity, but this one put up no resistance as Sauron scooped it up with one arm. It climbed to his shoulder and nestled into the curve of his neck as he mopped up the last of his stew with a crust of bread. “My cat,” he said with evident pride, tipping his head to look at Galadriel over the dark fur.

“You have a cat.”

“What, elves don’t approve of cats now?” The cat kneaded its paws happily into his shoulder. “Miss me, Miaulë?” he muttered to it. 

“I thought those here were wild. Not pets.”

He scratched the cat’s head and she heard the heavy rumble of its purr. “I’m good at taming wild things.”

She ignored the look that came with that and went back to the letter from Pharazon, the last remnants of her stew growing cold beside her. Adunaic names and an effort to change Elvish script were, though it saddened her to see it, consistent enough with what Númenor had become over its past few centuries. No friend to the Elves or to Middle-earth now. Under Miriel’s guidance there had been a sense of change, a softening or a strengthening, a hope - but no longer, it seemed. Still, it seemed also that Númenor planned to return all the same. They had agreed to support the elves in fighting Sauron once; what would they do when they learned the true name of the mortal puppet king they had put on a throne? Perhaps join with the elves against him. Perhaps join with him against the elves.

“I was wondering,” his voice nudged her from her thoughts. Annoyance flared inside her - could she not even think without having to entertain his endless needling demands? - but she did not let it show. “If you’re giving me six months of a truce and you plan to work at my side for that time, we should know each other a little better. Will you come to meet with me in the evenings like this? The rest of the day would be your own still. You can help us or not as you please. Just a little of your time, if there’s nothing else we need to do. And then you can ask me whatever questions you like about me and my plans.”

“And would you answer?”

“I might. For you.” He nudged the cat back down to the table where it trotted away, flicking its tail in annoyance. “At least consider it,” he said, a raw vulnerability on his face that she did not at all trust. “Is it so much to ask?” 

She should view him for what he was: her enemy, a dark commander, a servant of Morgoth, a lieutenant of an opposing army. This would, then, be an opportunity to gather her own intelligence on what he had and what he intended. But even if she viewed it that way, she had none to report it to. Gil-galad, if he planned anything at all, had not told her a word of it and Númenor could not be trusted. The elves who should have stood against Sauron had perhaps not quite traded her away themselves, but clearly preferred such a trade over war. There was Elrond but Elrond had little influence of his own. Whatever actions she chose to take, whatever actions she could take, would be hers and hers alone. 

“I will think on it,” she said.

He bowed his head magnanimously, as if he was the one granting her a favour.

“You were so happy then. So pleased with yourself.” She’s said this with anger before, and with sorrow, but it’s so long ago now. All that’s left is a faint and nostalgic affection. 

“When it was only Pelargir? I had a ruined city and no army and a queen in waiting who mostly hated me.” He kisses the tip of her ear. “I was, though. I was happy enough.”

She did not come the next evening. The smith waited for her anyway until late into the night, but he was not angry, all the same. She had granted a truce and he did not believe she would break her word again. She only needed a little time. He had his city back, his people, various plans that did not matter so much for the immediate future, and his beautiful warrior so close. So close, now. He was happy. 

In the night he walked through the empty outreaches of his city alone, quiet under the moon.

By the following morning he had grown tired of denying himself the sight of her and went to her rooms early as the sun began to rise. She was still in her bed, awake, ignoring him, only the flick of her blue eyes in his direction letting him know she was aware of his presence. He said her name and she only glared past him in silence. 

“You didn’t come,” he said. “In the evening. I missed you.”

“Was it an order, then?”

“No, no. No such thing.”

She rolled away but didn’t order him to leave, and letting his tightly-wound determination unravel just a little he lay down on the bed beside her. Not touching, no, but closer than he’d planned to. Closer than he should have allowed himself. 

The sense of her like this was all but overwhelming. He fought back the tiny howls of a hundred cravings - to kiss the nape of her neck, to lay one palm on her back to learn whether her heart beat slow and still full of sleep or whether it hammered like a frightened thing’s at his closeness, to nudge the edges of her mind and tease out some long-ago memory of the first time she had ever longed for another’s touch - and instead made himself lie still, so still, soft as the lambswool of her bedclothes. The scent of her hair was like the night-blooming flowers that grew in piles of white petals along the city walls.

Mine, he thought. Mine, all mine . And he pictured himself as a dragon, curled around his hoard of gold. 

“Why are you here,” she growled at him, pushing him back from his rich delicious dreams.

He lay a hand light on her shoulder and pulled it back fast as she flinched. “I won’t harm you, Galadriel.”

“Why are you in my bed?”

He shouldn’t be. He hadn’t intended to give her such opportunity to distrust him, and even this small thing would no doubt cost him days and weeks of the meagre amount of progress he had made with her. He had not come here intending it and it was his own weakness alone that had pushed him on, and even so, he could not find it in himself to regret it. 

“It’s not that way,” he said. “I told you, I’ll not have you until you come to me willing.” And whether she believed him or not he couldn’t tell, but it was true all the same. The smith was greedy, the kind of deep insatiable greed that left even dragons wanting more. It would not be enough to have only part of her; he needed all of her, her mind as keen to please him as her body, her will in perfect harmony with his. 

“You said I could ask you questions, did you not? Tell me why you are here if you have not come for that.”

That, she spat, as though it would be such a miserable thing. Oh, he had so much yet to show her. She would be so soft for him, he imagined. She would taste like spiced wine on his tongue. But not yet, not yet, and what he wanted now was harder to explain to her: an easing, a coaxing, the sense of her relaxed against him, the weight of all her light and power held in the circle of his arms. 

“I was remembering our journey. The night after the ford at Tharbad. You let me hold you. I kept you warm, you were safe. I liked that.”

She was quiet for a while. “You sang to me,” she said.

Deep within him the beat of his blood thumped and pulsed and thrummed with hope. He kept himself still, so still, so perfectly and obediently and unchallengeably still. She said nothing more. And then there was a clang from the kitchens below as someone hauled a pot onto the fire, and he got to his feet.

The feast was a small enough thing, the smith thought. A small enough thing in a half-ruined hall, its roof patched with rushes, sparrows nesting high in its rafters. The food was plentiful but it was fit at best for a tribal chief, not a great king; those who served it were in worn clothes, stitched again and again with sinew and rough fibre. Even his own crown was a meagre thing compared to what it should be. 

Yet his people were happy, his people who loved him. They were pleased their king had come home to them carrying honey and spices and salt from the elves and with a queen at his side. He had taken good care to teach them to love Galadriel already, long before she came back to them. He had taken their memories of their golden-haired warrior who led a cavalry to them and forged from those images a queen to hold in their minds until the real one returned to take her throne. 

It had been easy enough. Galadriel was somewhat easier to love, or at least to love in a way that could be explained, when she was a blur of images in the mind’s eye with her sword turning fast in the sun. But he loved her still even snarling at him with fury. Even trying to drown him in the strange nothing-land where their minds met. Even the shape of her shoulder or the shadows in her dress as she turned away from him enthralled him, made a thrall out of him. She seemed not to know how much he was giving her and what it meant for him, for him, to stoop so low as to give it. 

Wait until you see what sort of a Queen I will make you, Galadriel, he thought as she sat beside him at their feast, politely nibbling at some crackling roasted pork. Everything was too sweet; the cooks had overdone it with the honey now they had some once again, although he didn’t mind. They had been denied and kept poor and paltry for too long. They’d have more than this in time, they’d have all the riches they could want, and she, oh, she… Wait until you see, Galadriel. I will give you so much.

He had dreamed of this, a feast like this. Dreams were new to him in this form. Sleep was not, and while he didn’t need to rest as often a mortal would he had quickly grown seethingly resentful of the rest that he did need, at war with the limits of his body as his muscles weighed heavy and his mind slid from focus. Such a humiliation it had seemed to him at first, having his proud Mairon appearance trapped in this mortal body as though in a parody of his once-greatness. But if it was a punishment, it was at least not an execution; and over time he had grown used to it. And then he had started to dream.

In his dreams of this feast all the others moved like faceless masses of colour, paint on an ever-changing canvas. Only his beautiful warrior was in sharp and perfect detail. He took her arm and led her past vast tapestries of their victories to come, out through corridors where formless crowds reached out faint blurred fingers to touch the silk of her sleeves. He led her out to the ruined streets of Pelargir where he lifted his hand and with all the power he shouldn’t have as a masterless Maia, smoothed rubble and ruin back into perfect form. 

Further they went, further and further, through fields golden with rich bounteous crops, to the salt marshes at the mouths of the Anduin. Here she stilled; and he made the sand-grained mud beneath her feet a pathway of mother-of-pearl, divided the marsh into gardens and harbours, filled the waters with swan-ships like those her Teleri mother’s people had made.

Every time, she looked at all of this and turned her face away.

Every time he would wake seething and bitter, her ingratitude sharp as a blade in his side.

Now, he leaned across to her and spoke quiet enough that no other ears would hear: “Thank you. For being here.”

She sighed, just a little, with the tiniest most perfect furrow of disapproval around her eyes. “You need not thank me. I wish they would not go to such trouble. I do not feel that either of us warrant it.”

It was maybe the foolishly optimistic streak in him, but he imagined that she truly had softened a little since that last day of their journey. Perhaps he should let her put a knife to his throat more often if it had such a pleasing effect on her. “This is what they wanted. And they like you.”

“They should not like me. I thought to help them and they lost their lands, they lost so many of their people, they live in ruins -”

“Ruins which we’re rebuilding. You brought them a cavalry, Galadriel. People don’t always seek victory alone. Sometimes they just need hope.” He nodded towards the next table down by the great fireplace. “Theo, there, he’d follow you about all day if I didn’t need him for building.”

“He is young,” she said as though it was explanation of its own. 

As the celebration drew to its close, people drifting away from the last remnants of dances and song, he offered to walk her back to her rooms. She said no and so he bowed and wished her a peaceful night’s rest. He noticed that her eyes stayed on him just a little too long, uncertain, as he turned away from her. This was what she needed, maybe: a little freedom, a little movement, enough to feel that her choices were her own. He could grant her that and wait.

Galadriel’s first weeks in Pelargir passed like centuries. 

He would come to her bedchamber at sunrise. It fast became a habit, a part of the morning as predictable as the sun itself. When she rolled away wordlessly to the edge of the bed, as she always did, he would lie behind her atop the sheets and snug against her back, his arm around her waist or his hand loosely resting on her hip, so close she could feel his breath on her neck. 

He barely spoke - she even less - and his touch felt both wholly chaste and wholly not. He would stay there with her until the clank and noise of the household waking became louder, and then he would leave her again, neither a prisoner nor a guest nor a hostage in his home. His betrothed.

“Is this truly all you want from me?” she asked him once, as he was leaving. 

“No. No, not by a long way. But while it’s all you’ll allow then I can be content.” His fingers fumbled slightly at the pin at his shoulder as he fastened the folds of his cloak. “Although, if you would ever - I wouldn’t touch you, but if you would ever allow me to watch you touch yourself it would be the most wonderful thing. I would like that very, very much.”

She turned fast away again, hiding fury and blushes both. “Don’t speak that way.”

“What’s the harm in it?” She felt the weight of him settle as he sat beside her on the bed. “Oh, Galadriel,” he said. “How long has it been?”

“Get out.”

“Of course, my lady.” She heard him laughing softly to himself as he left.

In the evenings she would sometimes go to him. Not every time, not enough for him to grow accustomed to it. He would speak with her of what he knew about their neighbouring lands, a patchwork of petty kings and tribal chiefs, and discuss where they might seek to build alliances first. He was intelligent and practical in his considerations to a degree she almost admired, and masterful at calculating what his potential allies might or might not accept. He did not speak of Numenor or the elves. 

They reached an unspoken agreement that they could ask one question each of the other, and while it did not have to be answered but it was more often answered than not.

“What happened to your husband?” he asked her once. “Your elf-husband.”

She put down her glass with a soft thud on the table. “The war.”

“Ah. My part of it, or -“

“Does it matter.”

He tore at the flesh of the roasted chicken leg in his hand. “Suppose not.” 

In the woodgrain of the table between them she could see that first battlefield again, the horror of it scattered around her like dead leaves in an autumn forest. The great piles of helmets she had helped to build towered above them as they searched through the battlefield, naming and tending the dead. Each soldier was another one lost, another that was not him, again and again and again until their hearts shut out the pain of it and it was only a weary trudge back and forth, day and night. She had been so sure he would come home. She had so much to tell him. 

She dreamed about it sometimes in the years since, until she learned to block out such things. In the dreams she was not numb. In the dreams she felt everything. 

“Why do you want me,” she asked in her turn. “Why is it so important to you to have me at your side?”

“That’s getting into matters past what I’m willing to discuss with an elf who’s tried to stab me. Several times.”

“Coward.”

“Oh! Listen to you, now, bold little fighter.” But he was grinning, finding the challenge to his liking as she knew he would. “All right. You hunted me for centuries. The sea gave you to me. Brought you to me like that, even Ulmo wouldn’t turn against it, even the storms spared us. I thought they’d come for me and I was so weak and Ossë and Uinen were going to turn the whole sea over to reach me if they had to. Then you, and I saved you, and the storm calmed. You’re a gift . And that’s all you’ll get until I can trust you a little better.”

Her daytimes, as he said, were her own.

For long hours she wandered the city’s ruins, travelling far out beyond the inhabited areas where the people clustered together under his protection.  Occasionally she would take one or two of the Southlanders with her but mostly she worked alone. She searched for anything they could make some use of, turning over ancient rotted wood and pulling ivy away from hidden alcoves in marble walls. 

In the earlier days, when the Southlanders searched the more intact buildings, she knew he and Bronwyn had organised a careful system for it. The whole town was mapped and charted and the ruins divided into sections assigned to each pair of searchers. This far out, though, there was little to find in the ruins and rubble and little point in such a thorough searching effort, although no-one objected to her going of her own will. 

Sometimes she found something useful. A weighted spindle buried under drifts of leaves in what was once a fireplace, some wooden serving dishes. Arrows, once, their fletching lost but points still sharp. (She struggled over these, feeling in a sense that handing them over would be arming her enemy, but in the end gave them to Arondir whose devotion she did not question.) There were many coins bearing the faces of long-dead Numenorean kings which could be hammered into arrowheads, or used as trade for the value of the metal alone, or given to Pelargir’s children to play with in some endless game they liked to play in the courtyards, marking out circles in the wealth of ancient Numenor. 

Mostly, though, she found little of use beyond broken mosaics and crumbling shapes of rust where something had slowly eroded away in long years of exposure. The searching was an end in itself. While the days were long and the work seemed endless she felt a small - almost immeasurable, yet there all the same - part lighter every time she returned to the city’s heart as evening came. 

She found the banks of the Sirith where rings hammered into marble marked the mooring points for ships long since gone, but there seemed no sign of the carvings Elrond had spoken of. Not, that was, until she lifted a thick mat of a twining purple-flowered plant that cascaded over the marble embankment and saw the first; and then the second, and the third, a long frieze marking its way down towards the sea. 

The carvings showed the last days of the War of Wrath, the defeat of Morgoth and the destruction of his armies. One scene pictured a dying dragon crushing the awful peaks of Thangorodrim beneath its bulk as it fell. Another, freed slaves spilling forth from the dungeons of Angband. Another, Morgoth himself, wrapped in a great binding chain by the Valar. All accompanied by joint armies of Elves and Men fighting together against evil. Victory, found after long years of despair.

She remembered Elrond’s words and smiled.

Sometimes she left the ruins for a day and took her horse out far into the surrounding lands, up to the foothills of the mountains in the north-east. She watched the road. There were traders occasionally, some she pointed down towards Pelargir if they were not aware of its new population, but mostly there were no elves; the elves of Edhellond and whatever settlements might surround it knew routes through the White Mountains to the north and for the most part stayed away from the roads heading east. Still, she kept watch, until on one fog-cloaked afternoon she saw a small band of Silvan elves riding west. 

“Galadriel,” the first of them said when she reached them. An uncomfortable recognition, not a surprised one. They knew she was here. “Are you… are you safe?”  

She wondered if they expected her to ask them for sanctuary and what they would say if she did. How long it would take Sauron to come for her. “I need you to send a letter to Elrond Peredhel in Lindon,” she said instead. “Please. Many of the travelling companies will go north at this time of year.”

They agreed without hesitation, and took the letter she had carefully sealed and kept hidden with her since writing it.

It had been hard to decide what to write to Elrond. She could hardly tell him that she was happy and it would have been a lie to say that her life here was easy or enjoyable. Still, it was not a life of pain and torment and she did not want him to believe it so. How to say that her enemy never laid a hand on her except when he came to lie beside her quietly in the mornings, when he sometimes sang quietly to her under his breath; how to say that she did not welcome this, but nor did she dread it. 

She settled instead for describing Pelargir, its people and its lands. She told him of the vast flocks of starlings that turned in shifting clouds overhead at sunset and of the shimmer of sun on the great river she could see from her rooms. She told him of what the days here were like, of the food, the children’s songs, the buildings mended, the roads rebuilt, the ruins where she had only cats and lizards for company. She told him of the people here, how hard they had worked and how much hope they managed to find even with their world ruined around them. She did not mention Sauron; but she did tell Elrond that she had found the carvings he had spoken of, and that she liked them very much just as he had said. 

It was the twenty-third day after her arrival in Pelargir that she gave the letter to the elves and rode back to the city that was her home. When she reached her rooms, she took her Lindon apples from the careful place she had kept them dark and safe at the foot of an oak chest. She took one to Bronwyn and one to Arondir, asking them to save the seeds for her to plant. The third she took back to the banks of the Sirith, and she ate it alone by the carved friezes. It tasted so beautifully sweet. 

Chapter Text

The dress that he wore was a velvet so green,
All trimmed with gold lace and as bright as the sea.
And he said, “Love, I'll make you my own fairy queen
If you are but willing to go with me.

“Lisses* and forts shall be at your command,
The mountains and valleys, the land and the sea,
And the billows that roar along the seashore,
If you are but willing to go with me. […]

“Many a mile I have roamed in my time,
By sea and by land a-looking for thee,
And I never could find rest or peace to my mind
Until fortune proved kind and sent you to me.”

(‘The Fairy King's Courtship’, traditional)

The full moon could barely cast any light through the smoke-fogged clouds. They had come as far back towards the mountains as they could before making camp for the night but the reach of the volcano was long. Here the ground was black, whatever grass had grown here now somewhere beneath the ash and chipped cinders. Everything dead was buried, everything alive long fled. 

There were six of them who had come past the mountains into the charred wasteland that had once been rich and green. Galadriel herself, and Sauron, and four of the Southlanders who knew where the villages had stood. At the shore of the Anduin two others waited with Arondir, keeping watch over the boat that would take them and all they carried back to Pelargir. They had found a fair amount, more than Galadriel had expected: farm tools and saws, two sheets of tanned leather, a few smaller hand tools gathered for wood- or metalwork. With them also were things of other kinds of value, a child’s doll, a carefully sewn sampler, gathered without word or discussion. Whether these specific pieces held some memory to those who gathered them or whether they were kept only because no-one’s loved things should be abandoned to orcs and ruin, she did not ask. 

Together it was as much as they could carry, and better than some of them had hoped, and yet Galadriel still found herself angry and unsettled as she sat awake keeping watch over the sleeping humans. Orcs had already gone through the villages and taken much of what was there to take, breaking and tearing what they left behind. That was part of the anger that would not settle within her, certainly. Seeing this ruined land for herself again was another; knowing that the evil she had brought back to Middle-earth - had brought back willingly, keeping his disguise, letting them think him a king, all due to her own ridiculous desperate oath - might have caused this ruin was another still. 

Then watching him search the empty buildings, gather scythes and hoes and soup-ladles for Pelargir, she could not help but think it did not make sense for him to have caused this. That maybe he had not intended it, after all. And this was almost worse.

Fighting back against the orc-ambush on their way into the last village had felt almost cathartic. These lands were watched, it seemed, better than they had expected. Still, the orcs had been easy enough to defeat. Her own sword seemed to cut a little finer now, her own movements steadier, her own strength just a little greater than she had expected. The influence of the ring she wore, she was sure; in the same way that Pelargir’s crops grew stronger now, its buildings were easier to protect against the wind and the rain, and no eagles had taken this year’s lambs. In things where their wills were aligned, as he said, the rings worked.

Sauron had mentioned nothing of the effect of his rings, uncharacteristically for him. Not a single boast, not for the fight against the orcs that day or the stability of Pelargir. But the people of the city had noticed all the same even if they did not know the cause. Pelargir was safe, they said, now that the king and Lady Galadriel had returned. Pelargir would flourish, now that the king and Lady Galadriel had returned. 

Their king lay beside her now, his head so close it may as well have been in her lap. The night was too dark to see him well but she knew he had ash in his hair and mud and orc-blood spattered over his tunic. That he was not sleeping. That he was watching her. 

“Rest,” she said, less unkindly than she could have done. It had felt good to fight at his side again and there seemed little use in denying it to herself, much though she wished it were otherwise.

“Don’t need it.”

“All the same.”

“I’m keeping you company.” Which she hadn’t asked for nor wished for, of course, although she wondered if even he could be worse than sitting in silence looking out over this ruined land all night. “And fighting doesn’t put me in the mood to rest, besides,” he added.

“I don’t want to know what mood fighting puts you in.”

She could almost hear his smirk. “Is it the same for elves, then?”

“Be quiet and let me keep watch.”

“Angry? What is it? We got as much as we should have hoped for. We can try further east next time if you want.”

“No, it’s…” How to explain it, how to explain any of it. And he was the only one she could explain it to and the last she wished to seek consolation in. “It’s being here. What this land has become.”

“Mmm. It’s unsettling.” A fitting description, even if he did not sound particularly unsettled himself. 

There was no sound in all the dark night around them but the breaths of their sleeping comrades. No distant birds calling, no soft pad of a fox or scurry of a mouse, not even the wind through rich leaves or long grasses. Everything dead. 

“I would like this night to be over,” she said.

“That’s one thing I can’t help with. I could distract you if you like.”

“You are not distracting me, you are annoying me and I would prefer you be quiet.”

“I mean,” the irritated, exact tone that meant he was growing annoyed himself, “I could try to take your mind off all this.”

“Whatever you mean by that I am sure I would not prefer it.”

“Well, you might .” She could just about see him turn his head towards her, and wondered how well he could see in this dark. Better than her, possibly. 

She shook her head. “Nothing you do makes sense.” 

“How is this not -”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Whatever you are insinuating.”

“Insinuating? ” His hand on her arm suddenly, like a cuff over her wrist, and she flinched without intending it. “Thought it was fairly clear I’m insinuating fucking you until you sob with pleasure. Is that clear enough, or should I tell you exactly how?”

She wrenched her wrist free of him. He did not resist. “You are appalling.”

“Appalling. Really. This is so tiresome, Galadriel. Why do you persist in speaking to me as if you’re some blushing maid? Either elf husbands are lax in their duties or -”

“Don’t.” 

“Or, my working theory, maybe you prefer it this way. Maybe you’d like me to treat you as innocent and virginal and untouched. Fine, if that’s your wish. I can be all sorts of accommodating. I only wish you’d -”

“Stop this. Now.”

“- you’d let yourself enjoy at least some of what I could give you. I don’t just mean pleasure, I mean power. Might. The lands you could rule as my Queen if you want that. Everything I offer you, you make it seem such a poor, petty thing. Are you the only one of the Noldor who came here without such dreams? I can give you that. I would like to give you that. You can -“

“Stop talking,” she said, and finally, mercifully, he did. “I have no interest in sharing any supposed pleasure with you. And as for kingdoms, you would do well to remember that your realm is half in ruins and your people have little food for winter.”

“You’re in a vicious sort of mood.” He played with the dark chips of cinder littering the ground, heard more than seen, a scratching like some sort of animal sharpening its claws. "My rule in Pelargir is new. It won’t always be this way.”

“But it is this way.” And what they had gathered here was not enough to change that. Even with a good harvest, winter would be hard. “I will go to Edhellond after we return,” she said. “The elves might give us aid.”

For all her earlier negotiation she had not yet gone far from Pelargir. Edhellond would be several days’ journey at a good pace. She had not intended it as a test when she first thought it, but it was a test all the same and one that pulled her breath tight in her chest as she waited for his reply.

He considered it. “You truly think elves would help?” 

“I don’t know.”

“Will you go alone?”

“Arondir, too. If he agrees.”

“Ah. My best archer. I’ll have to hope no-one thinks to attack with both of you gone or we’ll be relying on the cats to defend us.”

“You don’t want it.”

“I gave my word you could come and go as you chose, so…” The scrunch of stone beneath his shoulder-blades as he shrugged. “Safe journey.” 

She wished for some sound in the night. The distant sound of an owl, even a snake, an insect, a spider crawling through the ash. Anything would be better than this thick, suffocating silence.

“I think they might send aid,” she said. “If they knew what these people had suffered.”

“These people have been suffering for years. Elves didn’t care much then. All your glorious cities while my people lived in dirt being watched like criminals.”

“Your people. You are not their rightful king.”

“Oh, I am.” He laid a hand out palm-up next to her as if thinking she might take it. “I’ll miss you when you’re gone. And that’s not insinuating anything, other than that I’ve come to enjoy your company.”

“You are trying to soften me so that I will be less angry at you for what you said before.”

The soft chuckle of his laughter, barely there at all. 

The smith had long known what it was to lose things. He had lost armies, lost battles and kingdoms, castles and trust and hope. Had looked out over bleak wastelands with his plans turned to ash in his outstretched hands; had heard the endless silence in the howling wind, he whose voice had always been part of a greater song now left to sing not even against it but alone, alone, alone.

He had lost a master, gained another, lost that one too. Rebelled against them both and lost something in the doing, win or lose, the ache of Aulë’s sorrow, the fury of Melkor’s fist smashing him against smoking rock. Lost beauty, first beauty as Aulë conceived it and then beauty as Melkor conceived it and then the very picture of beauty itself, and eventually all but the shape it left behind in his mind, a seal printed in wax, the imprint of a shell pulled from damp sand.

He had lost his name and been given others, some he held and some he didn’t, some cursed at him by elves and so he took them for his own and cursed back, Sauron, Gorthaur. Then lost those too, lost his form, lost blood and breath and viscera spilling onto the ground under Adar’s shadow.

He had lost the light and lost his yearning for it, lost friendships and lost the part of him that would have cared, lost the loyalty of others and then their fear and finally found himself with nothing left but their suspicion and scorn. Lost everything, all of it, whittled away to a human form on a broken raft on the ocean waiting to starve or drown or die raging and mad of thirst in the pitiless sun, thrown down to the seabed by Uinen’s waves, bones splintered and smashed by the great teeth of one of Ossë’s sea-drakes.

And then he had gained Galadriel, and the world had tipped itself right.

Now he watched her prepare to ride away with Arondir and it felt like another loss. Another dragging, gnawing absence, another thing to haunt the dreams he shouldn’t know, a lack of her where a presence should be to leave him unfinished and ever incomplete. 

Along with it, though, there was a thrill of knowing he hadn’t lost her at all. She could be thirty leagues away with the elves and she would still be his. Still held by her oath, still holding to the truce she had granted him. He would not know for sure until she returned and his heart would be on a blade’s edge until then, but even that in its own way might be enjoyable in the end. 

The stable hands brought her horse and another for Arondir. He took the reins for her himself, standing at the horse’s head as she fixed her sword in place on the neck harness. “Don’t make a ridiculous show of this,” she muttered to him too quiet for the crowd that had fast gathered round them to hear.

He did not remind her that she had asked him to bring the white cloak he had given her, and nor did she object as he put it around her shoulders, pinning it this time with a bronze relief of a lapwing. If she wished to go to the elves she could go with the crest of Finarfin on her back and a sign of the Southlands near her heart. 

“You have left out why I said that. You make me seem unreasonable.”

“Oh, no. Not unreasonable. I was pushing my luck, I knew it then.” He traces the seam at her shoulder, the fine lace banded across her sleeve. Remembers the fine robes brought from Numenor and the way he’d dressed her once in the early summer dawn, looking out over the sea by a distant fortress as she laughed in his arms.

The brooch he had first wanted her to wear was larger and more unmistakeably of the Southlands: a sharp relief of an eagle, carrying away a child in its claws. The elves might be fond enough of Manwë’s eagles but these people knew eagles only as things of terror.

She had refused to wear it. 

“Safe journey, Galadriel,” he said for the ears of those listening, and “anar caluva tielyanna, melmenya”* for hers. And he watched them ride away until they were distant, then mere flecks of shadow on the horizon, then gone altogether. 

The road to Edhellond was long overgrown, with little of it left but a scattering of way-marker stones and a dip in the green carpet of grassland. Still, the way was not hard to follow. The weather was good and the horses happy to be moving. They passed fast-running streams and herds of grazing deer and waves of long grasses almost purple in seed like an ocean before them, and Galadriel felt a weight lifting slowly from her soul, piece by piece falling away with every mile they travelled from Pelargir.

Arondir was a quiet but welcome travelling companion. She had come to know him only a little in her time in the Southlands and a little seemed as much as it was easy to learn of him. It was not that he was reluctant to talk; it was more that he gave the impression of having little of great import to say, at least about himself, while at the same time having made decisions of such loyalty and courage and wisdom that they put most of her own recent choices to shame.

They camped for the first night under a copse of thick trees. She noticed him touch the trunk of the nearest and whisper a greeting and remembered her life with the Sindar in the forests of Doriath, like a dream that had happened to someone else.

“We lack trees in Pelargir,” she said.

“For now.” He smoothed out his cloak on the sandy ground, enough of a blanket in this mild weather. 

“Do you think my apple seeds will grow?” She had not planted them, yet. She had kept them dry and dark, safely stored away, and not dared to do any more for fear that they would fail to grow at all. 

“They need cold first. They need to feel it’s winter. Apples fall too late in the year to trust the ground alone. If they grew as soon as they could put down their first root the green shoots would die in the first frosts. So, the seeds must be cold for long enough to trust the spring, and then they’ll grow once the soil warms.” He lay back with his head on folded hands. “We could try to force it but it would be better if you let them have the winter. There aren’t many seeds to spare. I think we will all need green to hope for in spring.” 

“I would very much like them to grow.”

“They’ll grow.”

She felt herself soothed by this, calmed by his grounded certainty in all he believed. If Arondir ever doubted himself it was surely only in the strength of his convictions and his courage to see them through. 

“Did you find it hard to stay here?” she asked, once it grew dark enough to see the stars.

“Sometimes. In the first years I was here. They hated us and we didn’t trust them. By the time Adar and the orcs returned, no. Although I did disobey orders, I suppose, for staying after the danger was past.”

She let herself smile. “I am no longer commander of the northern armies.”

“I think I will always be a soldier. I no longer remember myself clearly without a war.” He was silent for a long time, enough that she thought he had fallen asleep until she saw the starlight bright in his eyes as he stared at the boughs above them. “They are good people here. Maybe not all of them. But together, they are.”

Edhellond was quiet and peaceful. She almost felt at first as if she had wronged it and all of its people by coming here, dragging the damage she had caused behind her just as she had to Númenor and the Southlands. Then the guards at the gates greeted her by name with no surprise to see her - they knew, of course they knew - and she lifted her head a little higher in instinctive defiance.

The great hall was white stone and vast windows, with climbing vines twisting from floor to ceiling and trailing down in cascades over wooden rafters. Galadriel and Arondir, led in by the guards, were left before the grand dais from which Lord Maethion and Lady Raindis looked down from their high thrones.

Galadriel bowed. “Galadriel of the Noldor, daughter of the Golden House of Finarfin.”

Beside her: “Arondir, of Greenwood.”

“Both now of Pelargir?” Raindis, dark-haired and wrapped in a grey cloak sewn with clouds of tiny gold leaves, spoke with a rich Silvan accent. “We welcome you, all the same.”

“We were not aware there were other elves in Pelargir,” Maethion added, directed to Arondir alone.

“I served in the armies of High King Gil-galad of the Noldor. I was stationed at one of the watchposts in the Southlands,” Arondir said. “I stayed behind after the volcano to help the Southlanders make a new home.” 

“We come to seek aid,” Galadriel said, and while no-one replied she felt a ripple of tension in the hall all the same, a chorus made up of slightly indrawn breaths and shifted weight on feet. “The people of Pelargir have lost their lands. They carried little with them as they fled. They have worked bravely to build themselves a home in the ruins of Pelargir, but without your help they will struggle and falter.”

Raindis’s hands were light on the arms of her throne, its white wood carved into the shape of breaking waves. “Were you sent by their king to ask this of us?”

“He does not send me.”

“You understand why we are reluctant to give him aid towards building his forces, even so.”

“I do not ask for arms. I ask for help for them to grow their own food and make their own clothing. They are farmers. They have no wish to fight. I will not see them starve in the next bad winter.”

The Lord and Lady looked at each other in silence, some previous conversation echoing unspoken between them. 

Galadriel took a few steps closer to their throne, noticing the guards either side move their hands to their spears. So they would treat her as an emissary of the enemy, would they? “My brother Finrod aided the Falathrim in Beleriand. Without his friendship you would never have built Edhellond here nor any of your great harbours there. Should I beg for your aid now, for the sake of food and sewing needles?”

“Peace, Galadriel.” Maethion signalled the guards to stand at ease. “You know it is not your legacy we question.”

“I know fine well whose legacy you question. I hunted him for centuries. I have lost more to him than I can say. And if you are content to accept his peace at the price of my freedom, then you can surely accept me as Pelargir’s queen.”

There was a long, weighted silence, the kind that seemed to drag itself across the long tiled floor. Galadriel stood proud and unflinching and waited.

Raindis rose to her feet. “We welcome you here in friendship, Galadriel. And you should know that your High King Gil-galad has already requested that we look favourably on any request from you for aid should you seek it. We did not expect this to be the form that took, that is all. Stay here with us for a few days, if you can, and we will see what we can spare for your people.”

They stayed three days in Edhellond. She walked by the harbours with their grand ships, through the fair pagodas and tall spires of the city, in the gardens where samphire and sea campion spilled over the paths. Edhellond was built into the sea-cliffs, climbing high from the shore to vast reaches above, and the crash of the waves below was a constant whisper ever in the background. 

It was too long since she had been here. Arondir, who never had, seemed to find it marvellous in a distanced, careful way. She found him the second afternoon sitting on a wall by the cliffs looking out over the sea and asked if he could ever be happy in this place. 

“Happy…” he said. “Not in a place without Bronwyn, and not a single tree.” And a very slight ghost of a smile flickered at the corner of his lips.

Galadriel herself felt somewhere closer to happiness even for these brief days. She had missed this dearly, the comfort and belonging of living among elves. Even the Sindarin spoken here reminded her of Doriath long past and the contentment she had found there. Those years had seemed so stupidly naive to her once after she realised that Celeborn was gone and would not return. Now, at least, she found she could look back on them with fondness when she could bring herself to look back on them at all. 

There was a letter from Elrond here waiting for her on their arrival. She had not expected this: there was barely enough time for her own message to have reached Lindon, let alone for a reply to reach this far south. But Raindis told her, quietly and away from others, that Gil-galad had requested they send a fast ship to Lindon immediately on hearing anything from her. “And he wished us to tell you,” Raindis added, “that you are not forgotten, and you are not alone.”

She waited to read Elrond’s message until night fell, sitting alone in peace under the moon and stars with only their light and that of a few pure white candles beside her.

Galadriel,

I cannot tell you how glad I was to hear from you. I have been sick with worry since you left. So have many here in recent days, including - and I wouldn’t blame you if you doubt this - a number of those who were in favour of your leaving in the first place. I can only suppose the passage of time gives its own perspective.

You asked about our lands. I’m pleased to say that all is well here. The rings, I must acknowledge, have done as promised and if there is any evil purpose in them I have not been able to find it. 

I wasn’t sure whether it would be helpful or hurtful to you to describe how ordinary life in Lindon has been, so I will say it all here and you should move ahead to the next paragraph if it would make you homesick. I am writing to you from the orchard in Mithlond where blossoms are falling. We have great feasts to welcome the dwarves we are now closer to. There are endless ongoing discussions about building a better road to Eregion which I won’t bore you with. Nórimë has started sailing competitions out in the bay below, would you believe. The great tree is well. It’s bright again. It’s like before. Please do let me know if you wish to hear more of this sort of thing, and I can write you volumes if you do.

I say all this not because I agree you should have gone. I don’t and I never did and my mind on that has not changed. Only that, as you did go, you should know it seems not to have been in vain. Your sacrifice has not been forgotten - Gil-galad insists your name is spoken at all these interminable meetings and that none are permitted to forget you and what you have done, although I suspect some would prefer to from their own sense of shame if nothing else.

I don’t know when I will see you again but I am certain that I will , and that this is not an end to anything but only a rather awful interlude. I was so glad to hear of good things you describe there. Certainly the land sounds beautiful, and I would love to see those great flocks of birds you mention myself. Perhaps one day you will show me.

I will end this letter here so that I can catch the ship before it leaves for Edhellond. I will write more to you later, if you’d like, and I suppose even if you wouldn’t as I can’t bear to wait until I hear from you again. I will write until you tell me to stop. I miss you and I wish very dearly that more of our elf-lords had had enough courage to reject the offer that took you from us. 

Finally: I don’t know who else may read this letter, but if it should find its way into the hands of your king, we would tell him that we have not forgotten who he is or what he did. Our peace lasts only as long as his does. If we hear that any harm has come to you he should know there are plenty here who will consider the deal broken immediately, with all the consequences that would follow.

Yours in friendship,

E.

The smith’s warrior returned to him late in the evening when the shadows stretched long over the grass plains. She and Arondir led between them three pack-ponies, heavy laden.

“Seed,” she said, climbing down from her horse as he came out to greet them. “To plant for winter wheat. Cloth. Tools. Thread. Rope.”

“Didn’t think they’d give us anything. Well done, elf.” 

Others came to unpack the bags under Arondir’s guidance, with shouts of joy as things were passed back through the crowd. But his warrior looked weary. She did not even pull away as he kissed her brow. “Galadriel, are you well? You look exhausted.”

“I am exhausted. Though not as you mean it. The last time I was in Edhellond was many centuries ago before Beleriand was lost. Returning here now, to you… it feels like days of swimming upstream.” She let the stable hands lead away her horse, the milk-white mare he had let her keep since Lindon, and seemed for a moment as if she had nothing to balance herself. “I did not do this for you,” she said.

“I know. I know that.”

He led her back through the halls, got the servants to bring her food and water. She paid little attention to any of it. Instead, she sat curled in one of the cushioned window seats of the great hall with her head resting against the latticed glass. Pelargir’s poorness and ruin must seem particularly acute to her after Edhellond, he supposed; she was accustomed to all the glories of the elves and their great shining cities. She would not believe him that she could have cities like that of her own one day, to rule as she chose, and so he did not mention it.

“Did you see many others on your journey?” he asked her, keeping it conversational enough that she would think it only a passing question. “One of the shepherds heard word from a trader that someone travelling from the east was seeking the way to us in Pelargir. A man riding alone.”

She shook her head, thankfully too tired to notice anything curious about his question. “All that land is empty. I think Numenor built other towns along the coast once but they are gone.” She seemed so tired . He wondered if even allowing her this much freedom had been a mistake.

He nodded to her and got up to leave, knowing her well enough by now not to push it too far when she wished to be alone. To his surprise she grabbed his wrist and stopped him. “What would you have done if I had not returned?” she asked, her blue eyes hard as sapphires. “How long would you have waited before coming after me?”

“Were you planning on that?”

A dark snort of laughter. “I would not be so foolish as to disobey you after what you did to me the last time I left Pelargir.” 

“Then it doesn’t matter, does it.”

“It matters to me. It matters to me that you tell me what you intend.”

He looked down at her hand still fixed on his arm. How she could anchor him, how she could keep him fixed to this place. “I don’t know precisely what I would have done. Do you want to know that I would have gone after you? Yes, I would. I can’t say when or how.”

“I am not free to leave.”

“You’re free to leave so long as you return. You agreed -“

“I am not free to leave.”

There was, perhaps even then, a small part of him that wanted to grant her this. Of all the gifts he could give her, the one she most desired. Perhaps there were other futures in which he let her go further. Even back to the elves, maybe, until he had a vast kingdom to offer her. But these were dreams, and dreams alone. 

“No,” he said. “You are not free to leave.”

She let go of his arm. “I prefer you honest.”

It rankled him that she would imply he was otherwise, with her. He had not lied. He had not misled her. At least not by his own standards, however she might look back on it from some future time in which her perception would be unfortunately clouded by other events. “We had an agreement. Do you intend to change that now? I can be -“

“I know fine well what you can be.”

He waited, silent. Always better to give her a little room rather than rise to her when she was like this, he was learning. Let her find her own feet and she would generally become more reasonable. 

She turned away from him, looking out over the city below: “I do not wish you to offer me vast realms which you do not have. I wish you to let me govern this one with you. Now and as we rebuild it and into the future. That is what I want from the little now permitted me. Give me that. You are so powerful, give me that.”

“Of course. Yes.” He sat beside her, but she seemed uninterested in saying anything more. “I’d like it that way myself.” Nothing, still. “Is that all you want?”

“I can’t trust you.”

“Why can’t you? You can.”

“You grant me things I want so that I will be agreeable and do as you want. You will take them away again as soon as you find a way to do so.”

“You ruling at my side is what I want.” 

She shook her head. “You have deceived me too many times.”

“I have not. I am growing tired of this, Galadriel. I’ll show you.” He took her hand and twined his fingers through hers, holding tight as she tried to pull away. 

“Stay out of my mind,” she snarled at him like an injured animal with nothing else to do but fight.

He felt the cold of the rings like a spreading, aching wave over their joined hands, and let the edges of his mind smudge and soften where they touched against hers. 

It wasn’t necessary to do it this way. He could pull her in if he needed to, let her see exactly what he wanted, maybe without even a need to touch her now he felt more and more powerful with the passing of time. But the craft of the rings he’d created meant he could be more subtle, layering future over the present, letting her feel enough of what he felt that she would believe without him needing to force it. 

The rings were small things, practice pieces almost, not as powerful as the ones he’d aided the elves in and yet more powerful than he’d realised all the same. He had not anticipated this but he was fast coming to appreciate what they could do. Such power, barely tapped, the jewelsmiths in Eregion like children trailing their hands in the surface of some vast, deep ocean…

Not here, not now. He pushed all of that neatly away and tugged slightly on Galadriel’s hand, pulling her closer in body and in mind as well until he could see through her eyes as well as his own. The world split into two, superimposed, a pair of near-identical realities moving together: 

Pelargir below them rebuilding itself from ruins, full of colour and noise again, its white towers bright in the sunlight;

both of them standing together on a balcony as vast crowds below cheered them both;

great fleets of ships for this once-proud port city;

and through it all his pleasure in this, his satisfaction that it should be this way, his certainty.

She jerked her hand away and stared at him, shaken, her lips parted, her breathing fast. 

“Consider it,” he said, close to shaken himself. He had chosen what he wanted her to see, of course, been careful about which of his thoughts he allowed near the surface of his consciousness for her to share, but they were his thoughts all the same and he had not intended to grant her this so soon. Nor would he have if he hadn’t been so weary himself of her constant, biting ingratitude. “Hate me if you like, meantime.”

“I do hate you,” she said. But when he put his arm around her shoulders he felt her settle, just slightly, against him.

“Was that when you told me you wished I'd died as Halbrand and you'd never known me otherwise?”

“Did I ever say it that way? I don’t think I did.”

“You did. Hard to forget feeling jealous of your own disguise.”

She laughs, and it’s comfortable, this one at least a conflict long settled. “Harder to imagine that my friend had never existed.”

“But easier, wasn’t it? You wanted there to be a Halbrand that stopped existing. You didn’t want me real. You didn’t want to accept Halbrand was me, all through. Even though you saw it. You spent our whole time in Numenor convinced your smith had to be a king and then all that time here wanting your king to be a smith again.”

“Maybe I wanted my smith.” 

He grins under her kiss. “Didn’t you just. But you got me, didn’t you? I spent centuries on centuries making beautiful things for you. Crowns and cities and children and everything else. I’d still have let you pretend I was only Halbrand if you’d liked, you know that.”

“Let me!”

“But you wanted more.”

She lets the thought rock and settle in her mind. It should not be true, really; she should never have been content with a mortal smith, no, but nor should any part of her have wanted what he was beneath that. It had been hard to face the realisation that she should have seen the truth of him and did not, and harder still to think that perhaps part of her had seen him, that all of her hunting him had slowly changed her until it had become a wanting him, a craving him, something she could not have faced but could not quite succeed in denying. 

“I wanted more. Yes. Even then.” She kisses him again, and he murmurs that she’s trying to distract him and lets her anyway. 

Spring became summer, and the days lengthened and the sun warmed the land. The fields of crops grew tall and the hay meadows gave a good harvest. New lambs were weaned and grew fat on the hill grasses and someone managed to buy a small herd of half-grown cows from a trader passing further up the Anduin and bring them back. More buildings were repaired and brought into use. More boats came to the city, bought from villages a week’s travel away, little rowboats that would never manage in the open ocean but served to cross the Anduin in the calm currents of summer. 

Galadriel spent less time alone in the ruins. She still went to wander there at times, walking or searching, but the rest of her days were busy with all the work the city needed. She spent long hours with Sauron planning which buildings to bring back into use and how and when, with Bronwyn on her efforts to set up apprenticeships so the younger ones could specialise in all the trades that were needed and lacking, and with Arondir teaching archery and defence. The presence of orcs so close to the mountains had troubled her greatly and she sometimes woke from nightmares of dark forces scrambling over the city’s broken walls, leaving blood and fire behind them, screams and death ahead. But the mornings came bright, day after day, and no orcs marched on Pelargir.

Her days became measured not by the names of months but by the changes within them, the markings of time fading under the endless summer sun.

There was the day when a swarm of honeybees settled on an ancient, faded timber near the city, and there was a great rush to coax them into one of the half-made beehives before they left again. 

There was the day when someone mentioned the time the King fought the robbers on the road and Galadriel realised that they were talking about a different occasion to the one where she had been with him. She remembered, too, what he had threatened that time. She waited to ask him until their evening meeting, a custom that happened now more often than not and for the most part remained free of argument. 

“That was when you were gone to Edhellond,” he said. “Another trader was attacked on the road, and there wasn’t anyone else but me who could stop it.”

“What did you do?”

“Saw that they wouldn’t trouble anyone else.”

“What did you do.”

“Galadriel…” An eye-roll, a pleased, smug smile. “You know I won’t have anyone threatening my lands. I let them go once before. They won’t be waylaying anyone else on that road again.” 

The berries she was eating turned sour in her mouth.

There was the day when the baby named after Galadriel learned to crawl, and her mother Mattie brought her out to one of the squares to practice in the sunshine, the older children sweeping sticks and leaves off the flagstones to save the tender pudge of infant hands and knees. Sauron squatted down and held out a rattle to tempt the baby forward, grinning encouragement through the first uncoordinated attempts and then joining in with the applause as the baby finally mastered enough to crawl forward laughing with joy.

There was the day when two of the Southlanders asked if they could make her wedding gown. She looked up from the fishing net she was mending to see Sauron with them, looking for all the world as though he’d ambled over by chance. Be nice, Galadriel, he mouthed out of their sight. 

“Elves do not have a custom of such things,” she said, forcing as close to a smile as she could manage. “So whatever you do according to your own customs I would consider it an honour.”

(“Why did you do that?” she demanded of him later, and he laughed and begged her forgiveness for thinking she’d be interested in the arrangements for her own wedding, really Galadriel, you make things so difficult.)

And then there was the day that the rider seeking Pelargir found them at last. 

She was sitting by the fireplace reading when he arrived. There was no need for a fire in these long, hot days, when the sun was not below the horizon until after half the city had already retired to bed and she was glad of Pelargir’s cool stone walls in the heat, but she preferred that room all the same with its rugs and tapestries and its great narrow windows that left long stitches of light darting the floor.

Sauron was with her, at the other side of the room, working in silence on his sketches of plans for the ruins on the opposite bank of the Sirith. Often he seemed content enough with her company even when she ignored him and she had come to mind this far less than she used to. 

It was not unusual for new people to arrive at the city. There were traders, and elves from Edhellond with a letter for her from Elrond in Lindon on occasion, and still the occasional straggler from the burned lands although fewer than there had been. But this one was unusual enough that the guard ran up the stairs to them two at a time and they both turned in unison to hear what had happened. 

“A rider who’s been looking for us,” the guard explained. “The one you kept asking about, my king.”

Sauron smiled, thanked the guard politely and waved him away, and then snarled “fuck” and threw the quill he was holding across his desk. His cat scrambled fast to its feet and bolted out. Galadriel was already rising from her chair but he took her arm to hurry her, pulling her fast towards the stairs. “Galadriel. Stay with me and don’t say a word.” 

“What is this?”

“Don’t.” He stopped her partway down the stairs, holding her back against the cool stone of the wall, his face in strange, shadowed relief from the angled light. “You don’t know. This is not a time for - just, please. Please stay quiet and trust me for once at least.” He stroked her face, his movements jagged and shaken and still soft as he held her cheek cradled in the curve of his palm, and she thought: is this fear? Are you afraid?

But when they reached the city gates, her hand gripped tight in his, it was only one rider on a tired horse. She did not recognise the cloak with  odd patterns she would later learn came from the distant lands to the east, but there was a familiarity to the armour, and when the rider turned away from the sun enough that his face was visible - 

“Oh!” Sauron said, dropping her hand and laughing in relief. “What are you doing here?”

Galadriel said, “Isildur?”

Chapter Text

Then let your schemes alone, in the state, in the state,
Then let your schemes alone in the state,
Then let your schemes alone,
Adore the rising sun
And leave a man alone, to his fate.

(Robert Burns, ‘Ye Jacobites By Name’)

Isildur was exhausted, worn down by everything the long months had brought him. His armour was battered and his horse’s bridle a knotted thing of rope, his left jaw and neck covered in half-healed scratches, and the Númenor helmet that Galadriel had last seen him in was missing. All the same, he seemed to spark with a new-grown certainty and confidence she did not remember from the boy she spoke to on the ship. 

He rubbed his horse’s neck after he dismounted and hesitated a moment before handing the reins to the stable hand. “Take care of him, please,” he said. “He saved me.” The horse leaned its head down and Isildur ran one long ear through his hand. “Rest, Berek,” he said. Then, to Galadriel and Sauron and Bronwyn: “Are there any others here from Númenor? Am I the only one left?”

He was. There had been, it seemed, some discussions about leaving behind a garrison in Pelargir, but there had been few to spare and those who came were volunteers who were not expecting to stay behind in Middle-earth. There were promises to send more, and then more never came and there were no ships, no word, and nothing until the letter from Pharazon.

“My father,” Isildur said. “Did you see - did any of you…”

This, at least, Galadriel could answer herself. “Your father is alive, as far as I know. He survived the volcano and he departed with the others. He believed you lost. I do not think he would have left Middle-earth without you if he thought there was still any hope of you being alive.”

Isildur said “Oh ” like he was winded, and started to laugh, quiet at first and then harder and harder until his knees gave way and he sagged to the tiled ground, smiling as if it was the first joy he’d ever known. 

They brought him in and gave him a room with a bed and a change of clothes, clean water to bathe, and food which he ate ravenously. “I’d heard there was a new king near the mountains,” he said, still chewing. “So I guessed you might have survived, but by then I was so far east that no-one knew where you all were.”

“A new king, and soon to be a queen as well,” Sauron said. “Really, this is wonderful timing. You can stay for the wedding and then we’ll send word to your father in Númenor.” And he smiled, clapping an arm over Isildur’s shoulders then refilling his glass, looking immensely pleased with himself.

Later in the evening, when the day’s light had gone but its heat still lingered, Galadriel found Sauron in the room they all called the old library. It held no books or scrolls and what shelves it might have had were long since gone, but the stained glass left in the highest window still showed robed figures studying and writing at long, wooden desks.

He was sitting in one of the deep window seats, comfortably relaxed on furs and embroidered cushions and lit by the warm glow of tallow candles. For all his self-pitying complaints over his still unfinished throne room he seemed uninterested in spending much time in it anyway and preferred the rooms on the higher floors: her favourite, with its great fireplace and long narrow windows, or this one where he said he came to think. 

Sometimes when she found him here he would greet her with some new idea, a plan for rebuilding the bridges over the Sirith or strengthening their fragile new links with the southern tribes across the greater Anduin. At other times, few but more than she would like, she found him staring silent and blank into the empty room seeming not even to notice she was there. Once he had not even responded to her voice, and when she touched his arm he flinched from her for a second before he was abruptly himself again. 

This time, there was none of that. He lay back easy and contented as one of his cats, feet crossed in front of him, grinning at her. “I don’t see why you’re so troubled about this. This is perfect. I’ve spent months not able to move with Númenor because there’s no way to tell how strong their little elf-friendly faction is. Now, we can send word to Pharazon that we’ll discuss some form of alliance - leave it vague for now, I can talk him round once we get him here - and tell them we have Elendil’s son here too. Elendil will be so thankful he’ll agree to whatever conditions we might want to add, and I can build up strength using Númenor without any worries about what they’ll do once they learn what I am. Pelargir will be well, everyone will be happy. Perfect.”

“You would hold Isildur as a hostage.”

“I would tell them to come and get him, that’s hardly what you do with hostages. Really, Galadriel, I do wonder what kind of commander you were sometimes. I don’t trust that Faithful side not to go running to the elves if they think Pharazon is making allegiances with Sauron and I don’t trust the elves not to start getting ideas if they do. But if I’m the one to give Elendil his son back we should all be much safer.”

“We.”

“Oh, I see.” He pushed himself upright with one hand on the stone wall.  “You think you’d be better off with the elves, yes? And if you can’t move against me perhaps they might, and if they don’t seem inclined to come and get you then Númenor could shame them into it. I’d forget that if I were you. They’ve done nothing for you yet. I think a great number of your elves quite prefer it that you’re here. Anyway, I’m more concerned about Númenor for now. I can manage without them as friends, I’d not choose them as enemies. Everyone was happy enough to ignore us when we were living in ruins but as soon as Pelargir flourishes we’ll be under threat. You know as well as I do what happens to cities that other people’s armies fight over.”

She would have preferred to disagree, but Pelargir and its people and its hopes all seemed so fragile. “You are very pleased with yourself,” she said instead. 

“Why would I not be pleased? You know I care for Pelargir.” 

“Do not act on this without me.”

“No?” His voice was smooth, careful, charming her. “I will concede I’d prefer to wait until after our wedding so I can name my queen in my message to Pharazon. It isn’t so long away now. Sixteen days, is it?”

“Fifteen.”

“Ah, so you haven’t forgotten.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “I’ll be a good husband to you, Galadriel,” he said, and she could almost imagine that he believed it. 

It was some days after that when the warrior came to find the smith in his workshop. It was one of the few times she troubled to seek him out in those days. She would not avoid him, or at least not make a point of it; she would sit with him to discuss the things that mattered for their city. But she rarely came to search for him, and he was pleased she had now. 

She watched him work in silence at first and he let her without pushing for more. He remembered the forge in Númenor and how she had come to him again and again, arguing and begging and commanding him to follow her to Middle-earth. How she had sworn that oath to stand by him. How there had been a moment after he had spoken his name, short but infinitely long, where she had stared at him as if she were unable to make sense of it. 

His work was enjoyable to him then. Such small things, such a meagre, modest world he was building, and yet his people loved him for it and who even among the Valar could find fault. Would they come for him? They had sent Olorin and Aiwendil and there would surely be others here before so much longer. He imagined the great fleets of the Valar approaching once again, feeling the earth shake and break apart under the thunder of their feet. Sometimes in the heat haze of the forge he thought he could already see the shimmer of banners.

And here they would find him a smith, making nails to mend things. Such small things: a finished roof, a new bowstring, a buckle stitched to leather, all these were enough for him for the moment. This and his warrior drawing closer to him in small, small steps. Still too far distant, she was, but closer, closer. He could wait in this peace of small things and it would be enough. 

The warrior watched him work but he said nothing, made her wait until she took another step towards him and another, closer still, enough that he would hear her over the hammer: “What are you making?”

“Nails.” Simple enough. Turn and taper the point, hammer out the head, repeat and repeat. He cast the last few into the quenching pail and the steam rose up between them, and when it thinned she was closer again, her eyes on his. “Make the small things right,” he said, “and they hold the world together.”

“You learned that from Aulë.”

He had, in fact, although so long ago. The Mairon who had worked under Aulë - who had truly worked under Aulë, had listened to his words with awe and wonder, not carrying any of them away as contraband prizes for another master - was an age away now. “How would you know?”

“I studied under Aulë myself, for a short time. On Valinor.” She was unreadable, but there was a studied freedom in her movement that he was coming to learn meant she had something planned. It might be that he would like it, although it was more likely that he would not. “It was after you had betrayed him and gone.”

He didn’t bother to give that an answer. “Why’d you come here?” he asked her instead. “Much though I do like your company, elf, I don’t believe you’d be here for that alone.”

Another step closer and then she stopped, still a good few paces away. Guarded, he’d say; but she always was guarded around him. Even in the mornings when he came to lie beside her she would not look at him, would not speak to him. Now was different. Now there was a confidence in her outweighing her bitterness. “I do not think you caused the volcano to erupt,” she said.

Now, there was something. “Interesting!” he said, hammering the next nailhead flat and putting down the tools. “As I’ve told you. And what convinced you to give up on that?”

Cool, unswerving eyes. She did not even flinch. “I still believe it was your work . The scrolls I read spoke of a plan to be enacted after Morgoth’s defeat, by his successor. I cannot believe you had no hand in that design.”

It was the smith’s design, in large part. Melkor was not of a mind for any careful planning towards the end. It had seemed once upon a time that he had plans, had grandeur and complexity and ambition, but it had all come down in a ruin of rubble and spite. 

“And you knew precisely which part of the Southlands to take us to,” she said.

“Aren’t you clever. Is there a purpose to all this?”

“I do not think you wanted that plan to be put into action the way that it was. On that much I will believe you.”

“How kind.” No, this warranted more. She had come to him to tell him this and so it was a gift, something to value. “Truly, thank you, Galadriel.” 

But she had already turned away to look at the tools hung on the wall, running her hand along the line of smoothed wooden handles. He could picture her in Aulë’s workshops all too well and the thought of it carved out a stinging hollowness inside him. “Will you make more sickles for the harvest?” she asked.

“Nearly done.”

The smallest of nods. “The Western corn that elves use to make lembas is harvested by hand,” she said. “We do not cut the stalks. It takes some care to grow from seed.” 

She sounded distant, almost, drifting away from him, and he forced himself to stay silent and still and let her go where she would with this. She wandered back and forth in the small space of the workshop and he remembered her impatient pacing in that prison cell on Númenor. 

“They would not give me corn to plant for lembas,” she said. “In Edhellond. I did not even ask and they told me anyway they would not. Not for here.”

Impossible to tell what she wanted from him by saying this. Sympathy was not something she ever sought, to his knowledge, and he couldn’t yet tell if this was because she didn’t care for it or because she had given up on hoping for it. She was still too closed off from him and he had to rely on the smallest of things, the tone of her voice, the turn of her foot as she moved. 

“Sorry,” he said.

She stilled, and nodded again. More definite this time. “Pelargir is not an elven realm.”

“Not even with an elf queen?” Too much - her lip tensed slightly, her eyes hardened. He backed away to safer ground. “It’s not for me to say.” 

“I have always lived among my own people. This has been - new to me, in ways I did not foresee.” And he could hear it in her voice, the words spat like grit. “You are not the only difficult thing I must face here.”

“It’s hard. I know.” Harder than she could understand, for him, for Maiar were never meant to be alone. In the first days after it he hadn’t been; there were others with him and they had been given such freedom, all the freedom they could desire, and he and Ossë had raced through the storming seas together and it had been so glorious. Then it was only him and a howling void, kept apart from what remained, shown greatness and pain with every alternating whim of Melkor’s ever-changing fury. Tempered like forge-hot steel.

A defiant tilt of her head. She couldn’t know all he meant but she had recognised some feeling in it all the same. “I wonder if Melian found it so. I never thought to ask her.”

Perhaps. Or perhaps not; Melian had always liked trees better than her own kind. But he didn’t care to think of Melian now his warrior was close enough that he could reach up and touch her face, run a thumb over her cheekbone, and for the first time she allowed it. “It’ll get easier if you let it,” he said. “In time. You can have whatever kind of realm you want as my queen, my love.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“A creature like you is not capable of love.”

“Then since I am I must not be the creature you think me to be.”

She half-closed her eyes, letting his hand stay light on her face, and he felt something like a storm in her. Strength and turmoil without direction, without aim, but heavy with possibility. 

“I remember Aulë’s forge,” she said. “And Aulë himself and Yavanna in the days of the trees. I remember learning from them. There are so few left who do.”

She was so perfectly soft under his fingers.

“If I must stay in this place I will not settle for the barest of existences. I will not live half a life here,” she said. Then she turned, and was gone.

Galadriel was back out among the ruins when the strangers arrived. Beyond the old city walls to the north there had once been smaller buildings, likely housing and workshops built some time after the rest of the city. There was little of much practical use to be found here now but she had gathered a number of bright glass beads and was lost in her own thoughts for most of the afternoon as she sifted through centuries of leaf litter for more. 

She thought at first it was a human man and a child on a single horse, looking bedraggled and road-weary as they approached. They were not from the city and so she assumed traders, at first, or perhaps more from the burned lands, finding Pelargir via some circuitous route that had led them into the mountains. Then as they neared she saw the grey elven cloaks on both of them. They were not elves, though; and in fact the smaller one did not seem to be a child but fully grown despite her stature, bright and watchful eyes beneath curly hair with a garland of oxeye daisies. 

“You must be Galadriel,” the man said, climbing down from the horse. “We’ve been searching for you. Well, in a sense we have, although all that is a rather long story and I fear our time may be limited. In every sense it is of course good to meet you, finally. May we sit a while? Would you join us?”

“What are you?” She kept a careful distance back from both of them, although she could perceive no sense they were a threat. Their horse - in an elven bridle, she noticed now - tugged a stem of comfrey free from the stones and ate it, contented.

“Terribly rude of me,” the man said. “Of course. Apologies.”

His companion laughed. “I’m a Harfoot. He’s a wizard.”

“Istar,” the man added, rummaging in the pockets of his robe. “An order of us. Maiar, you would know us more broadly.”

There were not other Maiar in Middle-earth like this, to her knowledge. Or there should not be. Perhaps Sauron was not the only one who had stayed behind. She let her hand rest light on Finrod’s dagger at her belt.

“For you,” the man said, handing her a nearly folded paper. His other hand held bread and cheese, which he also offered. “For you as well, if you’d like?”

“No. Thank you.” The paper was inked with Gil-galad’s heraldry on one side, a carefully drawn pattern of silver stars on a blue field. On the other, a few words of writing: Trust them. - E

“You know my name,” she said, inviting them to sit with her on the grass-grown ruins of walls. “I should know yours.”

“Of course, yes. Of course. Quite a few names! One seems to collect names in this place, I am finding. The Sindar to the east of here named me Mithrandir. That’ll do for a start. And this is Nori Brandyfoot. Harfoots are a little more consistent with names.”

“Harfoots…” She looked down at Nori Brandyfoot, who had settled cross-legged on the grass with a quiet confidence. “I do not know your people. There were stories, I believe, in the East, but I have not met any of your kind before. Are there others of you here?”

“We keep hidden,” Nori said. “We’re good at keeping hidden. Even from elves. No offence. But we don’t usually travel with wizards. He found us, and then I went east with him so he wouldn’t have to go alone, and when we came back to where my people should be this time of year they’d gone off trail. I don’t know where they went. So I’m sticking with him until we catch up with them, if they’re still there somewhere. I think they’re there.” She seemed sad but resolved to it, open and kind. 

“I do not remember Harfoots in Valinor. Were you always in Middle-earth?”

Nori shrugged, and the wizard said “Fascinating, isn’t it? I am certainly finding Middle-earth even more full of wonder than I had expected. I wasn’t sent here to learn about it although truly, I think someone should have been. But I imagine you want to know why I was sent here, and by who, and what it has to do with you.” He cast a long, searching look over the ruins behind her. “Where is he?”

No need to ask who he was. “Hunting.”

“Mmm. Hunting what, dare I ask?”

“Deer. He will be here soon anyway, I am sure. There is little that happens here without him knowing of it.” She threw a pebble at a nearby stone and one of the skulking stray cats jumped and ran. “Have you come to join him? Or to fight him?”

“Not join him. Not join him, have no fear of that. As for fighting him… not in the sense that you mean it. I was not sent here as a warrior and I don’t come with an army. Further, I fear I have little time to explain all this. I sense he is closer than he was, now, which means he will likely sense me here as well, and I doubt I will be welcome. So, as quickly as I can make it: I am sent here to watch him. He was meant to return to Valinor and he did not. The Valar will not send an army for him, but they have sent me and a small number of my kind to keep watch over what he does and what he plans.”

“And how will you stop him?”

The wizard sighed. “If he requires stopping, which I hope he does not although I fear he will, it is for the people of Middle-earth to oppose him. My task is to support you in that. I can ensure, as best I can, that he will find it hard to gain willing allies in carrying out any evil he plans.”

“I wish they had sent an army.”

A smile, not unkind. He was both old and young somehow. “I am sure I would feel the same in your place. I appreciate I make a very unsatisfactory vanguard. I would hope to make a better friend than a soldier, if you have use for one. But, I suspect, we are soon to be interrupted. Are you safe? Has he harmed you?”

What would it matter if he had? “I am not harmed. I don’t know what safe would mean, here.”

There was a drum of hoofbeats that he must have already heard, growing closer. When she turned she could see the rider approaching them from the north. 

“Nor do I, I’m afraid,” the man calling himself Mithrandir said. “Let’s hope we all are for the present at any rate. Ah, Mairon! There you are. Finally.”

Sauron pulled his horse to a sharp halt, its hooves carving the grass. It flattened its ears and gave a quick, snakelike weave of its head in a threat the other horse seemed to ignore. “Get out of my lands.”

“Is this how your new kingdom welcomes its guests? We have hardly brought an army. One old man and a Harfoot.”

“A what?” He peered at Nori, summarising, calculating, evidently concluding she was of no particular threat or relevance and turning his attention back to her companion. “You’re neither guests nor welcome, Olorin. What are you doing here?”

“I hear you are to be married. It seems a strange oversight that you would not invite your own brother to your wedding celebrations.”

“You can absolutely - ” he began, but Galadriel cut in with “You must join us” before he had a chance to say any more.

A cold, thin smile down to her, no humour in it at all. “Galadriel.”

“I rule this city with you, and I say they are guests. Are you not forever chiding me to show an interest in my own wedding?”

The smile set in tense muscles and the jut of his jaw. She watched him look from her to Mithrandir, who raised an eyebrow and said nothing, and back to her. “Fine,” he said. “Why not. Bring everyone, why don’t you.” And then he leaned down to Galadriel and lifted her in one smooth fast movement onto his horse before him. 

He held her close but loosely before him on his horse as they rode back through the city, one arm light around her waist, knowing that balance alone would keep her pressed against him. She did not fight. There seemed little use in that and far more appeal in enjoying her small victory. There might be no army coming to her aid but still she felt as though she were a commander again, realising that the battlefield might yet in some sense be turning in her favour. And she had enjoyed - how she had enjoyed - seeing him struck off balance.

He must have realised much of this, because as they rode he leant his head down into her, lips parting her hair to whisper against her neck words so quiet she could not tell whether they were spoken out loud or only in her mind:

I would remind you that you do not know what you are playing with here, Galadriel.

I would remind you that he brings no armies and the elves have not come for you.

I would remind you that I will not lose what I have built and I will not abandon what I have planned.

I would remind you that your oath still holds. Be loyal to me, elf. You don’t want to learn how I deal with treachery.

“You are afraid,” she whispered back, not looking around, confident he would hear all the same.

A quiet, amused snort. “As I said, you do not know what you are playing with. Don’t goad me. I am not in a mood for it. And I would remind you that we have a truce, so I would be very disappointed to find another blade at my neck. I may not be so forgiving of you the next time.”

“Would you punish me as you threatened?”

“I might reward you, if you would work with me for the sake of our realm. I think both of us would prefer that.”

She let her head loll back against him, rocked by the horse’s motion. She would not have been able to do this when he first brought her here and yet it felt more like progress than the gradual surrender it might have done. “I think your rewards are not so different from your punishments, the way you conceive of them.”

“Mmmm.” His thumb stroked the curve of her waist, then skimmed over her hip and trailed down the length of her thigh. “There could be a certain degree of overlap. Still. I trust you will be loyal to Pelargir even if not to me. Do you think whoever sent him cares at all for our realm? The Valar see these people as servants of Morgoth and they will have no pity nor mercy for them. I will not let any of you turn this city into a battleground. Work with me on this, dear sweet kind Galadriel, and don’t let him bring harm to Pelargir.”

“And yet this istar has shown me more kindness than you do.”

“I said,” his lips brushing her ear, “don’t - goad - me.”

The smith waited in his throne room, watching Galadriel pace back and forth again. She was growing more and more restless as the wedding approached and he very much doubted that the wizard’s presence would help with that. Perhaps it was a mistake to have her here at all, perhaps he should have spoken to the wizard alone, but he did not want to risk her out of his sight even for a moment. 

He had erred, clearly. Wizards expect to have invitations to things such as weddings; wizards will bring great gifts if they are humoured and hosted and welcomed, and will come anyway with terrible things if they are not. 

His throne room was not yet finished - which, whatever his beautiful and gracious warrior might say he only objected to on rare occasion and only then because he disliked plans in place being changed, however good the reasons behind it - a new roof needed unexpectedly, a fence that came down in a storm, mended, a new group of lost, desperate people arriving from the burned lands. It had not been a throne room originally, he was reasonably sure, and it lacked the grandeur of the great palace in Armenelos. But it was fine enough for now. There were tapestries hung, and a dais with long windows behind it, and a wooden throne which would do well enough for the meantime, where he sat with one leg crossed, ankle resting on his knee, watching Galadriel pace back, and forth, and back again in silence.

He’d asked Theo to find rooms for the two guests. The Harfoot girl, whatever she was, didn’t seem any threat, but Olorin was clever and cunning and would no doubt already be asking questions about Pelargir and its king. So: Theo, who was honest and loyal and could be trusted well enough in that, and was also young enough to be away from any of the discussions that wandering wizards shouldn’t hear.

He’d had throne rooms before. Some he’d built himself, some he’d taken, some his master had given him to keep as a gift. He had preferred them grander than this, as a rule. But that had been before, that had been when he had a master to answer to, that had been - other things. Nowhere had truly been his until Pelargir.

Theo brought the wizard in, up to the foot of his throne, and the warrior finally stopped pacing and came to stand beside them. Not quite at his side but close enough. “Olorin,” he said, keeping to Quenya for her sake, and nodding for Theo to leave.

He did not expect a bow from the wizard. He was still more annoyed than he expected by the sigh and the slightly rolled eyes. “You have a crown, I see. Where did you get that?”

“Found it on a dead man.” To his left, a little beyond his reach, he sensed Galadriel tense. Too much - he couldn’t risk angering her. “I’m a king here, so I needed a crown. It’s expected.”

The wizard’s gaze travelled level and still over the throne room, the tapestry made with care by Pelargir’s people, the candlesticks patched and mended. The smith pressed his fingernails slightly into the wood of his simple throne and waited. “ Why, precisely, are you a king here? Eönwë commanded you return to Valinor.”

“At the end of the war, when I threw myself upon his mercy and condemned all I had done and begged forgiveness, yes?” He nodded towards Galadriel. “Since you’re here anyway you can reassure my future queen I told her the truth about that.”

Another sigh. “It is my understanding that you did indeed claim remorse, yes. And then Eönwë told you to return to the Valar to face your judgement and you disappeared.”

“Eönwë told the elves to go back too. Perhaps Eönwë just isn’t very convincing.”

“Speaking of elves, I hear you have a peace treaty with them now. Is this part of your great plan, too?”

“Why shouldn’t it be? Peace is better than war.” And oh this was going well, truly, better than he had hoped. In his confidence he turned to Galadriel and said “There, see?” - and realised just too slowly that this was a mistake.

Those cold, pitiless blue eyes, the ones that had hunted him for so long. “No, I do not see,” she said. “I still do not see why the elves of Eregion worked with you so readily and why it took so little time for Celebrimbor to trust you.”

Well, this was a path he’d rather the conversation not venture down. “Because he knew I could help them and because they were desperate. What do you suspect of me? Ask Celebrimbor yourself if you like. No dark enchantments, no threats. He can assure you he’d never seen me or spoken with me before, if you won’t believe it of me.”

She did not seem wholly convinced. He felt as if he was pinned between two opposing armies, both advancing on the fragile ground he’d built for himself. This would not do; he could not afford to be careless. “I’ll not let harm come to this place, Olórin. These people need me here. Will you tell them that my punishment matters more than their lives? Whoever sent you was happy enough to drown all of Beleriand last time the Valar fought. I will not let you nor anyone else threaten Pelargir so that those who will never believe I am sorry can have their vengeance. Who sent you, Oromë? Tulkas? What sort of judgement do you think a servant of Melkor would face at their hands? They’ll only care for punishing me for what I did then.”

“Nienna sent me,” the wizard said softly. 

Nienna of weeping, Nienna of pity, Nienna of mercy and grief. For a moment his human form felt as if it would wrench itself to pieces and fall away. “Nienna pled for mercy for Melkor and look what happened,” he said. “Even if she’d speak for me there are none who’d listen. No, Olórin. I will continue my work here and you, of course, can stay as my guest for as long as you will and admire it. Help with harvest! Enjoy the wedding feast. Then go back and tell them to give up on me the way they gave up on Middle-earth.”

His warrior lingered after the wizard left them, not pulling away when he took her hand in his. Good. He would not be able to watch them both while keeping them apart but he could do his best to stop the wizard whispering enchantments in her ear, conjuring up dark spectres of fear and doubt. She was his most prized, his shining jewel, his hope. The wizard would want her above all.

“Is that what you fear?” she asked him. “Being cast into the void like your master?”

“Galadriel.” He kissed her hand and she froze slightly as she always did, not quite pulling away, caught on the edge of decision. Oh, how he loved her like this. “It won’t come to that.”

The smith was confident, still. He was pleased that the wizard had not come with an army following at his heels. He was glad that his warrior had heard it from another that he truly had begged forgiveness of Eonwe, and he was sure that he could watch them well enough that no allegiances would be drawn and no plans made behind his back. 

He was, in this, far too trusting. 

But it all seemed to be going so well for those last days of summer. 

“Why are you telling this part? This is not your story.”

“Well, no. Indeed.” He’s laughing, a hand stilling the one she raises in protest. “I was entirely left out of all of this, wasn’t I? Tricked and betrayed, and not for the first time nor the last. So I think you at least owe me the story, deceiver.”

They prepared for the harvest with even the little lordling Isildur working hard and keen with no complaint. They had long crowded evenings in the great hall full of song and laughter, with Isildur telling the Southlanders of  everything he’d seen in his travels in the strange lands to the north-east and all the tales he’d heard from his grandfather in Andúnië about the glory of Pelargir long ago. Even the wizard told stories, legends of the Valar, and made sparks dance out of the fireplace in whirling circles on the flagstones to the delight of all the children. All was well and his beautiful warrior elf seemed almost happy. 

The smith watched all this and was glad. He had worked hard for it all, through war and damage and bloodshed; he had peace and, in Pelargir, a beginning. Finally, finally , his fears had turned to his advantage in the end. He would heal Pelargir and then more, and more; all of Middle-earth would shine like Valinor, a perfect realm in perfect order. He could almost see it.

What he did not see, because he was foolish enough to trust the vicious treacherous elf he loved -

She snorts. “And I should have trusted you, should I?”

“Yes.”

“After -”

“Yes, in that my greater intentions were good even if they required some necessary misdirections on the path to get there. So it seemed to me at the time. And we’ll never know how it would have worked if you’d allowed me to see it through.”

“You cannot believe it would have been better.”

Almost certainly not. But perhaps, perhaps. He will always have this perhaps , a dream of unlived futures. All these years gone by now and he cannot let go of it; he would have to unmake himself to be someone who could. He will never not be this.

No matter. He has the reality of her here, warm beside him. 

“You were vicious,” he reminds her. “Treacherous. Merciless. A great warrior of the elves.”

What he did not see was the web of new alliances forming beneath his watch, drawn up by his own betrothed. 

He watched the wizard carefully enough but he did not think to watch the Harfoot girl. He missed precisely how good she was at hiding, at watching, at staying unseen; what a good conduit she made, like a hand-shuttle passed back and forth from one side of a woven piece to the other, drawing all its threads together. 

He missed that Isildur had learned far more from his grandfather and brother about Middle-earth’s history than a few happy tales of Pelargir, and was not so easily convinced as the Southlanders that any Maia of Morgoth could be trusted. He missed that the wizard had learned far more from the elves than he had said, even if his conversations with Celebrimbor had, thankfully, not revealed anything amiss. He missed that his beautiful brave warrior did not deal with every situation by charging headlong into it, but did indeed how to manoeuvre her forces well enough that none saw them moving when she needed to. 

He missed all the discussions that took place among them about his own plans for alliances with Númenor. He missed the decisions taken without him, in his very city, by his betrothed and the three he had welcomed under his roof as guests. He missed their decision that this would make him too powerful and could not be allowed to happen, the final arrangements of their plans to betray and undermine him led by his own elf. 

He missed the hasty plan for the last night of harvest, for the wizard and the Harfoot girl and Isildur to leave under cover of night and ride fast for Edhellond where a ship would take them to Andúnië. He missed the letter to Elendil in Galadriel’s beautiful writing, begging that he do all he could to prevent harm coming to Pelargir and its people and that he warn them of anything coming he could not prevent. 

He did think, after all this was later revealed, that it had been very careless of the wizard to leave her in Pelargir knowing he would find out what she had done and she would have no ally left here to protect her.

“No, there was another plan. In that one he would stay and Nori and Isildur would go to Edhellond. I chose this one. I told him as I told you - I would stay in Pelargir, I would keep my oath, but I would not live half a life. I would have preferred to die than to live in such fear of you that I lost myself.”

The last day of the harvest was exhausting. They worked late into the night until the moon was high in the sky. Even Galadriel began to tire towards the end, and if she allowed herself to think at all of her wedding the next day, it was only to wonder whether any of Pelargir’s people would fall asleep during the feast.

She could not allow herself the luxury of thinking about the future. She had other work to do. 

She lingered in the doorway to his bedchamber, taking a moment to look over the room she had never seen before. It was richly dressed but not ostentatious and gave the sense of somewhere he spent little time. The bed itself had a fine quilted coverlet, with gold, green and scarlet threads showing images of intertwined dragons over rich growing plains.

He was half-dressed, bare from the waist up, cleaning his hands in a basin. She would not have long before he noticed her there and so she made the most of the moments she did have, observing every curve and line of his back. 

“Galadriel.” He seemed surprised when he saw her but it was gone in a moment, and by the time he came across the room to greet her, his movement almost feline in its smoothness, he was entirely himself. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

She looked him over again, taking a fair amount of time and not hiding that she was doing so. The scar from the lance wound he’d somehow gained after the battle in Tirharad was a white, uneven slash nearly down to his hip. She would still have liked to hear precisely how he had come by it but now was not the time. Instead she followed the line of it with her fingers light over its broken surface, and he watched her in silence. 

She would have wanted this with Halbrand. She could let herself remember all that now, no need to deny it to herself. The less doubt he sensed in her the better. 

“I told you I will not live half a life here,” she said. 

Not live half a life here to have him charm and trick his way into turning Númenor against the elves, and whatever else he might plan for it. Not live half a life to wait in fear tonight for him to sense that something was wrong, nor be informed by a guard coming to tell him of the riders slipping away quiet and hidden. There would be no guards tonight; she had made it clear they were not to be interrupted, and she would make sure he would not entertain any who came to seek him anyway. 

“I wouldn’t want you anything less than yourself.” He touched her shoulder, light and almost hesitant, and then when she didn’t flinch ran his hand down the length of her arm until it met hers on his hip. “You wouldn’t be bringing any knives to my bedchamber, would you, dear elf? I’m sure you won’t mind if I check, hmm?”

His hands skimmed over her back, her sides, down the length of each arm, light but firm. He made no effort to hide how much he enjoyed this, but it was clear too that this was more than pretence; if she’d truly been concealing any blade he would have found it. He knelt to search her thighs, her calves, down to her light-shod feet, his eyes hungry and impatient as he watched her face the whole time. 

“There.” He stood and kissed her, brief but fast and greedy and strong. “I should have trusted you. Of course. How ungrateful of me. How would you like me to make it up to you? I can be generous,” steering her back with him to his bed, step by careful step. “I can be kind.” But he let her turn him and push him down to the bed first, pliant under her hands, something close to pleading on his face as he gazed up at her kneeling over him. His lips were slightly parted, his breath rough, and he stayed entirely still as though he feared to move.

“You will stay out of my mind,” she said. “You will not mention my husband.”

“Of course.” She saw the quick bob in his throat as he swallowed. “Whatever you want of me.”

There was something satisfying about the look of his hand against the woven finery of his bedcovers. “How generous of you,” she said, brushing the back of her fingers over the underside of his, feeling his hand twitch and not quite dare grab.

“I can be. For you. I’ll try - I -” His breath hissed through his teeth as her fingers traced the creases of his wrist. “I have spent so many nights alone in this bed imagining ways I could make you scream with pleasure. I look forward to trying them all.”

“Don’t set your expectations on any screaming.”

“I do like a challenge.” He wrapped her in his arms and rolled her down alongside him. “Would you prefer fast? Or slow?”

An hour would be enough, she had thought, if she could get it. An hour would have the three of them over the Sirith and long away. “Slow.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have thought… but as you wish it.” And his hands began to undo her dress, freeing the ribbon at her bodice row by careful row. “I’ve dreamed of this,” he said. “So many times, love.” All the way undone and he lifted her arms free of the sleeves, gently but insistently pulling the dress over her head and away. 

The sight of her in nothing but her pale shift had an effect on him he didn’t bother to hide and he stayed on his hands and knees over her, not quite touching, looking down at her with barely held back greed. “I wish I could show you how you look like this. I can, if you’d let me. No - I know, I know,” stilling her objection before it was all the way past her lips. “I’ll do what you want. I gave you my word. ” And she wasn’t imagining the snap of brief fury in his eyes at that, for her, for her and her alone. 

She reached out and stroked the side of his head, softly, down past his ear and all the way to his neck, and he leant into her hand like nothing so much as a tame cat. This close, he felt disconcertingly normal. Not an elf; his hair was thicker, the point at the back of his neck where it turned into sparse wiry strays most definitely human. Yet his form itself was entirely real to the point where it was almost unremarkable. Under her touch he felt just as she had imagined he would, back before she knew what he was. 

She ran her fingernails gently across his scalp and he all but purred, leaning down to leave tiny light kisses on her eyelids. His hand stroked her bare knee, then her thigh, then - she turned her face away as much as she could, feeling oddly vulnerable even with her eyes closed under what she knew was an unrelenting, greedy stare. But his hand barely lingered, only long enough to yank down her underclothes and cup the curve of her sex under his palm. 

“Let me do this,” he said, “let me, I need to know what your cunt tastes like and I can’t wait one more minute.” Faster than she could react he’d moved her further up the bed, her shift pushed up past her hips, his head between her thighs. “Oh, all mine, all mine, ” he close to growled, and then his tongue and his lips were on her and she cried out without even realising, half in shock and half in pleasure. 

And it was pleasurable, she could hardly deny it. He wasn’t particularly slow, not now, but there was something restrained and almost careful about him all the same. She felt as if she were in danger, of him or of herself; she felt as if the sounds she could hear herself making were some kind of negotiation, something she was losing but yet gaining from all the same, because he responded to her reactions almost before they’d passed her lips.

Her fingers grasped at the bedcovers, pointlessly, nothing really to grip but weaving her fingers into his hair felt somehow too much. He raised his head to look at her and then took one of her hands in his, keeping himself propped on his elbow. It shouldn’t have made a difference but it did, somehow, and she gripped hard onto him as she let the rest of her relax against the things he was doing with his mouth. His tongue licked and circled and teased her, he was waking something in her, drawing it out of her, and she could maybe fight him but she could not so simply fight this. 

And then he stopped, and grinned at her. “You taste wonderful,” he said. “I knew you would.” He came up to lie beside her, pulled off her shift over her head and rolled her to face him, one hand on her spine below her shoulders pressing her body into him as he kissed her, his lips soft on hers. Then his other hand between her legs and suddenly his fingers inside her, pushing hard and deep so that she gasped, almost almost too much and yet…

“There you are,” he almost sang to her as she moaned against him, almost wanting to break free of him but not quite, not quite. “There, do you like that? I do.” And he turned his wrist slightly so that the edge of his hand pressed into her as he moved, sparking fires of pleasure, and how her body wanted him to do this, wanted the feel of him moving in her like this, seemed to have sworn its own allegiance to him without her knowing. Not to Halbrand, but to him.

“You’re so nearly ready for me,” he whispered into her ear after a while, after she’d given up on trying to hide her face in his shoulder, after she’d given up caring what sounds he was managing to draw out of her. “Don’t need to ask if you like this now, I can tell for myself.” And she let herself fall into pleasure like the tide drawing in closer and closer. Distantly she could feel him laugh, soft and pleased, at the effect he was having on her - “You want more than my fingers, hmm? Soon, soon” - and she was closer and closer and -

He pulled away from her sharp and fast. 

“A choice for you,” he said, smirking at the confusion turning to anger on her face. “I’ll take you properly soon, my love, I promise, but not yet. I want to have you come for me once like this before I fuck you. What would you prefer, my tongue or my hand?”

“Why must you be so -“

He laughed. “I’ll be whatever you like so long as you tell me you’d like it.” Drifts of kisses down her neck and across her breasts, his hands in her hair, on her shoulders, cradling the back of her neck as he lowered her back down. “Which is it? Hand or tongue? Ask me. I want to hear you ask me. I want to hear you say it, Galadriel, tell me -“

She turned her face away. “Hand.” 

“Oh, not even a please? ” But he was there anyway and she saw little point in trying to hide the reaction to him that did not seem entirely hers - her spine curving up for him like he was shaping her, her skin shivering under his lips. 

“Show me,” he said, “guide me,” and he let her take his hand and move it, leading him into the touch she preferred. “There, there,” his voice soothing as he took up the rhythm himself and she whimpered against his chest. “Come for me like this, just like this,” and brought her closer and closer until she felt everything shatter and burst apart in bliss.

He stroked her face afterwards and his thumb brushed her lips. “Beautiful, my beautiful,” he murmured. “All mine, my light, my gold.” He kissed her soft and sweet and she opened bleary eyes in time to watch his expression shift. “She’s back,” he said, his voice sharper. “Stay with me, now. I promise you a long night of pleasures like that. And you don’t need to think of anything else as I fuck you, hmm? I don’t want you remembering that this is why the elves gave you to me and this is exactly what they knew would happen to you, nothing like that, no. That might be distracting.”

“Why would you say that?” She went to rise, but he’d already grabbed her nearest wrist and was kissing her neck. 

“Shhh, sorry, sorry. Don’t think on it.” He fumbled at his clothes, throwing his belt aside. “Oh, I have waited for so long,” he hissed, taking himself in hand until he was positioned just right and she couldn’t help the small, sobbing cries that escaped her at the sensation of his hardness pressed against her, into her.

She tensed herself for him to be fast and hard but instead he took his time, making no effort to hide how much he savoured each movement deeper inside her. She found herself past speech, almost past even anger, so lost in how much her body welcomed him. But she held on to the twisting, slippery knowledge of who he was all the same: remembering his cruel words about the elves, reminding herself even as she wrapped his legs around his waist and pulled him deeper that he was not Halbrand, he was not, he was her enemy still.

It was the rings, maybe. It was surely the rings that were amplifying and echoing what she felt with every sensation building on what came before. It was the rings that seemed to resonate his own pleasure through her, and to draw out hers so that she could almost forget the world around them, the plan, Pelargir, her oath, everything but the way this felt. But maybe it wouldn’t have been so different even without them, and maybe she didn’t care.

He stroked her hair from her face and turned her to look at him with a tenderness that was soon gone, replaced by the greater force of him driving faster and faster into her, one hand pressing hers down into the bed. “There,” his voice ragged with guttering breath past a smile that grew and grew as each thrust drew a new gasping cry from her, “there, you like my cock even better than my hand, don’t you? Look at me, Galadriel. Look at me. Didn’t I say I’d have you willing. Mine, mine you are mine you are mine -”

“Wait,” she managed to get out, feeling his speed turn to urgency and his muscled back under her other hand tensed hard like carved marble. In part because she could not risk him being finished before the others had a chance to get away, yes, but in greater part because she did not want this over; she wanted more, she wanted it to last, she wanted him. “Be slow.”

“Mmm. No. Don’t worry, we have all night yet,” as he slammed harder and harder into her, staring down into her eyes. “Besides - you’re safe - Isildur will be miles away by now.”

His words meant nothing to her at first in her rumpled, sweat-soaked pleasure. Then she realised what he had said and cursed at him and fought against his grip and he laughed in smug glee just before he came, growling into her neck as he spent himself inside her.

Once he sagged down relaxed she pushed the weight of him off her with ease. He complied, rolling languid and laughing onto his back. “Oh, that was wonderful,” he said. “You shouldn’t have made us both wait so long.”

“You deceived me!”

“No, no, you deceived me, elf. Clever little trick you played.”

“You knew.”

“I did. And you, traitor…” Fast as a snake he lunged at her, his teeth biting into the flesh of her hip, hard enough that she yelped but no more; he pulled back and smirked. “I think I am quite angry with you.”

“Where are they?”

“Halfway to Edhellond, I imagine. By the time I worked out what you were doing it was too late to stop it with any ease. I’d have had to miss this and, well. I’m weak.” He stroked her arm, loose circles down from the elbow. “I’m terribly weak, Galadriel. You should pity me.”

“Swear to me they are gone and safe from you.”

“I swear it. I’ll regret it in time, I’m sure. For now… hmm. Did we ever discuss how I deal with treachery? Do remind me.”

She could not read him now. He was an ever-shifting whirl of anger and lust and whatever lay beneath, changing endlessly back and forth as if he was unwilling to decide himself what he was. She could not read him, but she had learned well enough how to manoeuvre him. “By pleasuring me, it seems.”

“Oh - Galadriel, truly -” He knelt over her again and pressed his bared lips to her chest, somehow a predator and a supplicant both. “I thought I wanted you wholly on my side in everything. I don’t, I was wrong. I want you like this, I want part of you always hating what I am, I want to fuck you knowing that part of you still thinks me your enemy. When I get you to scream out for me I want to never know which name will be on your lips and when you do finally forgive me I want to know it’s despite yourself. You are so precious to me, I don’t want you changed, I don’t want you broken. I want my queen like this.” 

He took her hand and drew it down and she could feel him somehow hard again already. “I want you again,” he said. “I need you again, now. I don’t care about Númenor, I don’t care about anything. I’m sorry I was cruel. Let me make amends.” 

The full moon was high in the night sky outside with its light almost as bright as dawn. The angles of his face were dark and sharp in shadow, and as she kissed him she could no longer see a place where Halbrand stopped and he began. 

Chapter Text

For saving I be joined 
To her that is the fairest under heaven, 
I seem as nothing in the mighty world,
And cannot will my will, nor work my work 
Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm 
Victor and lord. But were I joined with her,
Then might we live together as one life, 
And reigning with one will in everything 
Have power on this dark land to lighten it, 
And power on this dead world to make it live.

Tennyson, 'Idylls of the King'

“It was...” She considers the different ways she could complete that thought. Long ago, she could say; but what’s the passage of centuries on centuries to ones like them. Foolish, she could say, because there were so many other endings it could have led to.

(Not an ending, though. This is not an ending.)

“Difficult,” he suggests. “It was difficult for you. I do know that now.”

“You knew that then! You merely did not care.”

“I did, I think.” He is distant, looking at her but not with her. “Not in all the ways you mean but I did care. I didn’t want you unhappy even though you had chosen to work against me. Isn’t that what caring is? It should be.”

“And your reasons -“

“And the result. I did not want you unhappy. I let you betray me.”

She huffs, but lets him gather her up in his arms and whisper “sorry, sorry, sorry” into her hair. 

She did not much care about her wedding, in the end. They dressed her in a silver-green gown with a garland of flag-lilies and forget-me-nots for the crown she did not yet have, and she felt like one of the statues that stood above the market square, watching Pelargir turn and turn over centuries through silent marble eyes. 

Bronwyn found her later on one of the balconies near the hall. Inside the celebrations were still going far into the night. The harvest had gone well; the weather had stayed fine; Pelargir would not want for food this winter. Everyone here had shelter and space, now, everyone had a task and a place and a position. Everything here would be well. Bronwyn, who had brought her people here when it was ruins and sent away Sauron to prove his worth to them, stood with folded arms and asked her: “Did you choose this?”

“In a sense.” It was not a question she asked herself any more, nor one she expected to hear others ask of her. “Yes.” 

There was a softness in her that Galadriel had seen only a few times before: when speaking of how much she missed the world of villages and grasslands, while watching Theo ride out with the king on his first hunt, in quiet moments sitting beside Arondir. “I hear elves can choose not to bear children if they wish it,” she said. “The only advice I could ever give you, is don’t have children until you can answer that question without hesitating.” 

The stone balustrade was cool under Galadriel’s hands. “No,” she said. “I would…” She had spoken of children with Celeborn long ago, lying in golden leaves together in the great woods when it seemed as though Doriath might last forever. She had not thought of that since losing him and did not particularly want to now. But Bronwyn had spoken, once or twice, about her own fears in the past and the present, about Theo’s guilt over giving away the sword-hilt to Adar to protect her. “I suppose you would not have chosen Pelargir either if things had been different.”

“Nor him. People used to talk of our king coming back since I was a child. I never really wanted it. We were happy enough being farmers, when the elves left us be.” She shrugged. “And then they left for good and the orcs came back. I wouldn’t have chosen all this in the world I wanted, but I’ve chosen it in the world I have.”

Below them the city streets stretched back out from the river in torch-lit channels, with laughter and singing carried up in the night air. “So have I,” Galadriel said.

She stayed there long after Bronwyn left, until Sauron found her as she knew he would. She had expected him to come sooner. He said nothing at first and stood beside her in silence looking down at what they could see of the city: the streets, the tile roofs patched with thatch, the river dark beyond them. One rowboat, empty, bobbed lightly in the flow of the rising tide. 

“You could return to Valinor,” she said. “Mithrandir said, if you truly -”

“In that?” He nodded towards the little boat, fit to cross the Anduin in calm weather but little more. “No. And I recall you abandoning a ship set for Valinor yourself.” 

She had regretted that deeply, for a time. Now she was less sure. If she had stayed on her ship and he was taken to Númenor alone, would he really still be there today, working in a forge? He had seemed to believe so the last time they spoke of it; he still claimed that was all he had wanted. She knew him better.

“I was pleased you decided to behave amicably today,” he said.

“Do not speak to me like that.”

“Oh? Would you prefer me to say I was not pleased?”

“I would prefer you understand that I do not care whether my behaviour pleases you or not.”

The soft purr of a smile. “Very well, then. I have a gift for you. I think you will like it.” She tensed and knew he felt it, as he took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips. “Please?”

“What is it?”

“Come with me.”

He led her back through the noisy hall, past exhausted children sleeping on piles of furs under tables, expertly weaving around happy well-wishers with laughter and thanks and claps on shoulders, keeping hold of her hand the whole time. The corridors grew quieter as they went further and further back through the complex until it was only them left, their shadows dancing in the guttering torch-light. 

The throne-room was empty apart from a few cats sleeping on the windowsills. This was clearly their destination but there was nothing she could see that was new here. He led her up to his throne and in one fast movement pulled her down to sit on his lap, one arm still firm around her waist. “I will have a throne made for you,” he said. “You can share mine for now.”

“Is that your gift?”

“No.” He nuzzled kisses into her neck and she let herself lean back into him, tipping her head to the side so he could reach the space below her ear that he had liked so much. She had spent the whole night in his bed, under him and astride him and cradled in his arms, his oddly soft voice whispering to her, easy, easy, it’s all right and come for me again and my beautiful my love my queen my light mine mine, only falling asleep for an exhausted hour or two as the sun was rising. Whatever this was, it was hers now and she would claim it.

“Is this your gift?”, as his hand ran down her dress, bunching and twisting its cloth until her leg was bare to the thigh. 

“No…” The whisper of a touch, light enough only to tempt her. “Will you trust me to show you?”

“Trust you.” 

“No lectures on trust from you, traitor.” But he sounded pleased enough as his keen hand pushed its way between her legs. She let him stroke pleasure out of her with newly familiar moves, feeling her tension against him soften around the edges like thawing ice against his heat, and it was only then that he nudged her head down to look at the floor.

Dark torchlit flagstones paled and blurred and then reformed themselves into a tapestry of colour. Below them was a vast, detailed map, snow-peaked mountains over rippling grasslands, the rivers like threads of blue silk winding through to join the dark flow of the Anduin. Green faded to gold at the woods; a faint path of road wound its way across the land, and she could almost see the yellow of Southland thistles growing wild along its route below the faint skeins of white cloud drifting in the wind. 

“Yours,” he said, his touch not stopping for a moment. “This is yours, everything west of Pelargir to the Ringlo between the mountains and the Anduin. It’s all part of the Southlands. Do as you please with it. Fill it with elves if you want that. I will let you rule it however you like so long as you keep it part of our realm. I’ve seen other ruined settlements along the coast just like Pelargir for you to rebuild if you want to. All of this is yours, Galadriel.”

She felt as if she could not look away from its richness, the perfect detail of it, the softness of grasses, the white flecks of waves breaking on its shore. “Edhellond,” she said, vaguely aware of it there at the edge of her vision.

“You can do as you like with Edhellond. Leave them be, make an alliance, drive them out and take it for yourself.” He barely lifted his lips from her skin this time and his words echoed through her like the buzzing of bees. She thought of summer and orchards, of long days under the sun in the dappled shade of trees, a stream at her feet and the distant mountains shimmering in heat haze.

“Stop,” she said, pushing his hand away. 

He groaned half disappointed and half laughing as she got to her feet. “Galadriel. I was being kind.” Below the throne, the image dipped and wavered and faded back to stone. 

“Do you expect thanks for this?”

“Thanks? From you? No, no. Anyway, it’s yours. You can ignore it if you don’t like it, it’s still yours.”

“Your gifts are never given out of kindness.”

“Now, that’s not true.” He leant back to grin up at her, pleased with himself. “I always intended to make you a queen with lands of your own. I told you that. If I have other reasons beyond that, can you blame me? We had a truce until our wedding. That’s gone now and you seemed willing enough to turn on me even before then. Perhaps you will be good to me if I am generous to you. Perhaps you will accept that I have told you the truth about wanting peace and forgiveness if I answer your treachery with kindness. I am not the monster you were fighting. Won’t you believe me?” He caught her hand again, moving faster than she could react, but did nothing with it except stroke small circles on her palm. “I wish you would believe me. I have only ever told you the truth.”

There was something entrancing about his voice, his touch, the soft firelight in his eyes. It would be possible, maybe, to believe him. Perhaps part of her even wanted to, by now -

“That's not fair, Galadriel. We agreed to be honest.”

Perhaps part of her wanted to believe him. Perhaps a greater part of her wanted him to be lying.

They sent a message to Pharazon in Númenor, words carefully agreed together after debate that dragged on day and night for days (“you have many strengths, Galadriel, I’m only saying that perhaps diplomacy is not one of them”), stating who he was and offering friendship with no request for aid or promises of fealty. They did not hear from any of the Faithful, and it was only a brief allusion in a letter from Elrond that let Galadriel know that Isildur had arrived safely at all. 

Sauron began to talk of a closer relationship with the elves, “since you have so thoughtfully undermined me with Númenor.” He made a persuasive enough case: surely from a purely pragmatic ground she understood the importance of having powerful allies in case Numenor did come for Pelargir? Surely she would welcome seeing her Noldor friends and kin again? Had she not wanted that, had she not grieved at leaving them behind? 

She could hardly disagree but something in his plans sat uneasily with her all the same. She told him it would wait until spring, and quietly sent word to Elrond to meet her in Edhellond as soon as he could manage.

The rest of the Southlands to the west and south of the burned lands remained a patchwork of territories under tribal chieftains, most of them unsure at best and hostile at worst to the idea of a new king come to unite them under a single crown. She expected Sauron to send threats and demands but he instead smiled through their bristling, sent them gifts, invited them to Pelargir and threw grand feasts for ‘our friends’. 

Pelargir continued to prosper, safe and thriving and well. 

Neither of them suggested another truce. It suited her better - and presumably him as well - to let everything feel tightly held and fragile, subject to shatter into pieces should one of them step outside a never-spoken line. Surely one of them would sooner or later. He would not be able to play the generous penitent for too long, she was sure of it, and she would find a way she could still fight him. This was not a destination; this was merely a temporary reprieve, another raft in the middle of a storm-dark ocean.

He would tangle her hair like the gale winds had, endlessly turning and winding and twisting it around his hands. “Tell me you like this,” he’d say, stubble scratching the underside of her jaw, knee between her thighs. “Tell me you want me. Tell me I have you, Galadriel, tell me again.”

“I have you,” she’d say instead, sometimes. He loved this, the surprise of it seeming to catch him anew every time. She could feel the shiver in his laugh as he pulled her closer, closer even when she was already beside him, closer even when all that separated them was the weave of clothing which the heat of him already burnt through, closer even when they were already pressed skin to bare skin, closer closer closer as if he wanted their very beings to overlap somehow. 

“Tell me you love me,” he’d say, and she never would. 

At times he seemed tireless, eternally unsatisfied, a fire trying in futility to quench itself. At others he could make her feel that time itself was irrelevant as he brought all of her world down to the shivers he’d sing into her skin. She had not imagined her pleasure would matter much to him but it seemed to matter indeed, intensely and desperately so.

“Call me my name,” he said once, when they lay together in the sand dunes days from Pelargir, when she had finally given in to his endless laughing begging pleas to come and see her lands. Her own lands, to rule as she wished, and now she faced the gift she had tried to turn away from she knew he had won with this. The dark clouds drew in over the unquiet seas and it was only the two of them and the distant whirling flock of seabirds, and it was beautiful, so beautiful. 

“Call me my name,” the prickle of marram grass at the back of her neck, his hands like folded wings wrapped over her ribs. But when she let her voice echo the hiss of the wind in Sauron he buried his face in her neck so that she could not see him. “No, no,” and he fucked hard down into her until she screamed out wordlessly with the joy of it, something like a completeness in the way he felt between her thighs.

He did not mention his name again until some time later, long enough that she had almost forgotten he raised it at all. They were in Pelargir again, she learning how to craft leather and he, ever the perfectionist, unable to resist guiding her in it.

“Ah, no, you’ll ruin the line. Let me show you.” Standing close behind her he held her hand with the knife in it, guiding the sharp blade in one smooth, gliding movement through the leather. It sliced a long and even line. “Steady, see? Like this. One cut. We don’t have the material to waste.”

Having him so close was not entirely comfortable, though it was less unpleasant than she would once have thought it. Little space he afforded her - fenced in by his arms against the work bench, fenced in by the terms of the agreement she’d granted, his peace in return for her, his rings in return for her - but sufficient to move all the same. She focused on his concentration, the pride he took in his work. 

“There.” The long strip cut free, he guided her hand smooth over the new edge of the leather. “That’s a start to it. When the bridle’s done we can say it’s the work of elf hands and trade it for double what it’s worth.”

“And Sauron’s hands.”

“Hmm.” He kept his hand on her arm, leaning in close enough that his voice was a whisper in her ear. “On that. I would like you to consider calling me by a different name.”

“What name would you prefer? Tar-Mairon?”

“If you like.”

“My king?”

His arms tightened around her a moment, something like a threat, something more like a reward. “If that pleases you. You could call me Halbrand still, if you wanted. I would not mind. I’ve been called many things. You have a great number to choose from beyond that one.”

“That one is the only name I have known you by for a thousand years.”

“It’s not even a name, Galadriel,” the irritated sigh lifting his voice with it. “It’s an insult made for me by angry little elves. And in the spirit of goodwill and peace… ” She expected him to do something more, mock her or snap at her, let the anger and possession that never seemed far below his calmed surface take him over and snap their brittle peace under crashing, breaking waves. But he only reached for one of the wooden tools and ran a thumb over its rough carved teeth before pressing it methodically along the edges of the leather strip, leaving a long even line of dimpled marks for stitches. “Consider it.”

“What did Morgoth call you?”

A soft chuckle against her neck. “Mairon. And names your tongue can’t pronounce, elf. And some I’d not have you repeat, and others you wouldn’t care to give me. Not yet at least.”

“But you would like me to.”

“Do you care what I’d like?” The exhale of quiet laughter again, that mixture of surprise and pride she was learning that she enjoyed being able to goad out of him.

She turned the back of her hand over his until the silver rings he’d made touched together with the smallest clink and let her mind blur at the barbed edge of his, a few quick moments before he would feel it and pull -

The room flooded with sunlight as someone swung open the door. “My Lord, we are ready for - oh - sorry, I’ll..” An apologetic bow and stumble back, and she saw how the scene must look in his eyes, the king and his queen close as an embrace with their hands clasped together.

“No, no. Come, show me.” He let her go and was gone in a moment, leaving her only with the leather under her hands and the memory of the name she’d stolen from the surface of his mind before he’d snapped away: 

My precious, my precious.

The smith was, at this point, happy. It was a complicated and bitter happiness but so were all of those he remembered for as long as he had been the thing he was. His warrior doubted his words of peace, he knew; she remembered him still as his master’s servant leading vast armies into battle. None of his words would undo that nor all his efforts to overwrite her view of him, his lips and his hands whispering balms. Time would bring that, and time was bringing that to him now.

She doubted him, but even now he could feel the start of something breaking in her as her doubt warred with what she saw of him. He was his people’s generous king; he was the builder of his city forming order and beauty from rubble; he was the skilled diplomat, bringing his scattered people back together with trade and food and safety, not a blade in sight; he was her lover, weaving pleasure and promises with his body. She doubted him and hated him and refused to trust him, and still steadily, steadily, time would wear down her resolve, the sea against sandstone, carving a new landscape wave by gentle wave. 

This was why, when she said she would go to Edhellond to meet with Gil-galad’s herald, Eärendil’s boy, he did not say: no. 

He did not say: won’t you bring him to Pelargir? What is it you don’t want him to see, love; is it me at your side? Is our city not grand enough for the mighty and proud Noldor? 

He did not say: why would I want anything from Gil-galad when I could have Eregion today if I chose?

He did not say: don’t think I can’t guess who else you might be meeting there. 

He said: of course, my love. Lifted her chin light with one curved finger and murmured that maybe she might join him in his bedchamber later, for he would miss her when she was gone.

“What I recall you also saying is that Elrond’s family had been a plague to you for even longer than I had.”

“In passing! It’s hardly relevant to the story.”

In all his long existence he had seen many kinds of beauty, but his warrior lying on his bedcovers with the firelight glowing on her bare skin might, he thought, be the greatest. She was turned away from him the way she sometimes needed after, curled into herself and gazing into the fire. He had learned to wait.

“When we were on the raft I thought you might die,” she said. She did not sound particularly sad about this. If anything there was a curious nostalgia in her soft voice, as if she too dreamed of the waves lapping at wood. “I thought you mortal, so I feared you would be unable to survive as long as I could without water. Or you might drown. Or the sea-drake might return and take you.”

“Feared,” he said.

Her fingers played absently with the patterns on the bedcover. “Yes. To be all alone in the sea, and then to find company only to lose it again. I feared being unable to save you as you had saved me.”

On the raft she had slept beside him with her hand just touching his and her bare foot resting against his shin. He had realised she was afraid, but not of him; she feared rather that he would go and she would wake alone on the seas. He had stayed still, so still, and watched her sleep, and thought that her golden hair looked as beautiful as it did in song.

“Takes more than one of Ossë’s drakes to kill me,” he said. This at least seemed to bring her brief amusement if not much else. 

She allowed him to be kind to her a little more now. He was kind, he enjoyed being kind. He enjoyed particularly that this was a form of kindness she’d accept: his kisses, his hands, his teeth grazing the curve of her shuddering neck. He liked feeling her come apart in tiny mewling sobs for him, he liked seeing her bliss-soaked and wrung out in his arms.

“Where were you after you killed my brother?” she said. “After Lúthien destroyed your fortress and banished you.”

He would not let her goad him into anger. He would be kind and she would be calm. “North.”

“Back to your master.”

“No, no.” He remembered the mist-filled northern forests in the years he had stayed hidden. Sharp scent of pine-sap, snow beneath his paws. “After losing that fortress and then her taking one of his Silmarils? No. I was lying low.” 

“You were afraid of him.”

He kissed her shoulder, then the soft bumps of spine at the base of her neck. There was a red mark on her pale flesh - the graze of his own teeth, small but all too present. He did not like it too much. He preferred her perfect and unmarred, his most precious jewel of Arda. 

She, for her part, did not seem to care so much for such things. She would tear and bite at him sometimes, such a whirl of fury he couldn’t tell what was rage and what was lust and what was both, and he’d lie back and pull her atop him and let her do as she liked until she tired and allowed him to soothe and calm her. 

Other times she was like this, supple and receptive under his hands now as he turned her onto her stomach. He loved her this way too, warm under the cup of his palm, sweet tasting and soft. He pushed one finger inside her and then another, easing a moan from her as she moved to let him. “There, that’s good, you’re so good for me,” he whispered to the nape of her neck and felt her tense in annoyance around him. 

He had never troubled to look at elves so closely before. This close he could fully appreciate what a fine creation she was, all cream and gold and pink and the outline of muscles like a sculpture. There was a fuzz of almost invisible white hairs in the hollows below her ears and he loved it so fiercely he would have sacrificed armies to touch it again.

“You were afraid -” she said again, her voice narrowing to a pinched oh as he pulled his fingers out of her. This wouldn’t do. He was hard already but he gave himself another couple of strokes anyway, his hand smoother with her wetness, then guided her thigh up with a soft grip running down to her knee as he slid into her. Oh, she was so perfect. Maybe nothing else mattered at all. He pulled her hips up into his and muttered how much he liked her this way, how good she felt, all warm and wet and ready for him again, and he rocked into her and felt - easier? Yes, it was easier, all was easier now. 

“You were afraid,” she said again, bitten between breaths, and this time he ran splayed fingers through her hair and turned her head to the side. A gentle bite to the tip of her ear was usually enough to quiet her. 

“Shhh,” he said. “What do I need to do with you?”

But she was past speech by now and her breaths came in time with the beat of his own movement. He grabbed at her hand hastily and held her curling fingers tight against his, the ring chilling him as - there - the surge of her need, faster and faster and more. Oh he could give her everything, he could give her so much. He let it take him and pull him away as she gasped and tensed and shuddered beneath him, and the tiny red mark on her shoulder seemed to brighten and spread, bright scarlet now, further and further covering her and him and Pelargir and -

- the snow stinging his face as he spat blood into it, the sound of his screams echoing down the valley, the grip on his neck not Huan’s jaws this time but his master’s hand holding him to the ground, let’s see you change now, let’s see you play your little tricks now, coward, failure -

Then nothing for a blissful relief of a time. 

Then the blue of Galadriel’s eyes and she was turning up to look at him, pulling her hand away.

“Sorry,” he said, not meaning to and not meaning it, not really. What he did mean was: no. No, she should not see this, she should not ask him more of this. No he should not allow this or all he would be making of her was another Lúthien come to tear down all his futures and fortresses. No.

Well, he’d known what he was risking using the rings that way. Even that he wasn’t sorry for. He had never thought himself greedy but from her he wanted so much, a grasping, insatiable hunger that couldn’t hold itself back. To not only have her but to know the feel of her wanting him, too - it was too much and he would always want more of it, always more.

Perhaps it was good that she would be gone for a time. He had other matters to concentrate on.

“I will miss you,” he said, curling around her again but this time only to rest his face on the pillow of her golden hair. “Give my regards to the elves of Edhellond and that little herald friend of yours, and do remind them you are not theirs to keep.” It wasn’t as clean a threat as he’d intended but his mind was blurred and muffled, still unclear from that vision of a thing he had never before needed to find a name for.

And she knew , his clever little warrior. He no longer feared she would bring a knife to his bed but she hardly needed to; she could hold his own words to his ribs like a blade. “What is it you fear?”, she said. “Why won’t you go back to Valinor?”

Almost, almost, surely only that he wanted to see it, surely that was not truly kindness in her, and yet he was weak enough to let her fool him. “Melkor said -” he began, and then felt his blood rush back like molten steel, like wrath. “Some things are not for you, Galadriel.”

When she dreamed that night she walked in Valinor herself, back in the time of the Trees when everyone she had loved was still alive. She had not thought of Middle-earth because there was nothing to seek in it; she walked alone through the lands of summer and tried to remember who she had once been. 

Then he was there, sitting cross-legged under a tree, looking up at the great jagged peak of Taniquetil. That she would dream of him here felt jarring enough but as he turned to greet her she realised he seemed more vivid than the land around him, more real than her dream-world, almost as if…

“Get out.” The grasses seemed to ripple in the wake of her snarl. “Is having so much of me still not enough for you? You must follow me through my memories as well, you cannot even leave me at peace in my own dreams?”

“Oh,” he said, “oh, I see,” and then began to laugh, louder and louder until he flopped onto his back in the long grass. “My vicious vengeful little warrior, you even followed me here.”

“Followed you, when you - ”

Without ever once moving that she could see he was on his feet before her, her face cradled in his hands. A grin and a kiss to her forehead: “Out, little elf. Not for you.”

She woke alone in his bed. When she touched the sheets beside her they were cool as though he had been gone for hours.

She did not sleep at all on the journey to Edhellond. There was a cold wind the whole journey, chilling her ungloved hands as it came whispering from the sea. She kept her eyes on the road ahead of her and rode long into dusk, letting her horse rest only when the pale winter warmth of the sun had gone completely. 

At the little town of Linhir, itself built around grander Numenorean ruins, people came out to greet her. “Queen Galadriel,” they called her as they handed her flowers, and she learned that he had already promised them the fairest queen in all the land as theirs to watch over them.

Her lands, the ancient road, the rambling straggling woods. Her lands, the sharp steep mountains her path circled past where startled herds of deer broke cover and raced away over shale-covered slopes. Her lands, the vast marshes down to the sea, the blue sky reflected in still waters, the vast flocks of tall pink birds skimming the water’s surface where they stood. 

She had hoped being away from Pelargir would clear her head. In some ways she felt much more sure now, confident of the place she had made for herself in their city at his side, and yet still everything seemed to happen outside the time that passed elsewhere. Was it two years ago she had boarded the boat for Valinor? Twenty, perhaps? Elves never marked the passage of time as much as mortals. Surely it should not matter, surely it should be the least of things that mattered. 

Although she did not miss him his absence was less of a relief than she imagined. Part of her was always searching for him still, braced for his hand on her arm or his voice calling her name. 

She was losing herself, maybe, but then she had been losing herself in her quest for him since long before Númenor. She did not belong in Edhellond but not Lindon, either, not Valinor any longer, not Doriath long gone below the waves. Pelargir she could not trust and nowhere else would trust her. Perhaps this was what he had been thinking in giving her this empty land after all. 

She felt almost dizzy as she grew close to Edhellond, the constant sound of the wind a neverending howl in her mind. The white towers high on the sea cliffs seemed almost a mirage to her and she thought for a strange moment it might have faded into nothingness; or even that she might have herself, that she would arrive and call out and have no-one hear or see her, that she would wander through its streets as nothing more than a memory. 

But then she reached the gates and Elrond came running to greet her, and she found she was crying so hard she could barely speak. 

“You’re here, you’re really here,” he was saying, “Galadriel I have missed you so very much, I feared I would never see you again,” and his arms were warm around her, and the world became brighter and stronger and louder after all. 

They were given a place for quiet, private discussion high in one of the towers where they would not be overheard, far above the churning sea below. Edhellond was further north but less sheltered, exposed to the cold sea winds high on the cliffs, and their little circular room held a warm fire and blankets woven with swan-feathers. Their hosts here had given her miruvor - a welcome? Or had she seemed as though she might need to be revived? - and brought them all food and mead in plenty. She felt as if she was home from war. 

“So he knows Elrond is here,” Mithrandir said, stretching out his long legs from the chaise. “But not me?”

“Not you. I did not know myself for sure until I arrived.”

“Safer not to say,” Elrond supplied. And more uncomfortably, to her: “I don’t know if he reads what I write to you, so I always assume he will. I didn’t wish to do anything that might worsen your situation. If he knew he might have insisted on accompanying you here. Or stopped you coming altogether.”

“He might have allowed me anyway. It amuses him to think I would try to act against him.” She had no words for how she felt here and wondered if there were songs that spoke of it, somewhere: a haven, a belonging, the desire to feel like herself again so overpowering that it was hard even to think about all that lay outside these circular walls. “Mithrandir, where is Nori?”

“Back with her people. For now, at any rate. I suspect she might wish to join me again if I go travelling beyond here. She did rather enjoy Numenor. But! For now, we found her people and her family. They had been driven off their usual route by orcs, it turns out, but they have found some alternative lands that seem a little safer. Very resourceful people. Adaptable.” His face fell into furrows as he peered at her. “Those were very well organised orcs, from what I hear. In military formation. And the elves in the east have reported similar. Have you heard anything of this in Pelargir?”

She had not. “Then they must have a commander.” Orcs alone might fight and rob and kill, but they would not form themselves into military campaigns, not without someone who could command them. But she would know, surely she would know… “Sauron has not gone to the east at all. I don’t know how he could be doing this.” It was the truth, but it sat uneasily with her all the same. 

Elrond tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair while he thought, something she remembered his mother doing all those years ago. “We cannot be sure it is him. If there was one moriondor aiming to lead them there may well be others.”

“Maybe.” And still, still. She bit at a thumbnail, thinking, trying to convince herself there might be other dark forces beyond him that could operate without his agreement or even his knowledge. It did not seem likely. “If I speak of this to him I don’t think it would gain us anything. He would hardly tell me if he was behind this and he would know to act more carefully. We need to learn more.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Elrond offers. “We’ve been trying to build back alliances with the Silvan elves in Rhovanion. Whatever I hear, we’ll find a way to let you know.” 

Mithrandir grunted in agreement. “It seems odd he would be assembling forces to the east if he truly seeks to make an alliance with the elves. If that is in fact what he seeks. What do you think?”

But she didn’t know, despite turning the question over and over and over in her mind since he had first suggested it. “I think he wants to go back to Eregion because the rings were made there,” she said. “Whatever alliance he might seek, I am sure that is part of it. I do not know what he plans but I am sure he would not leave such a power to the elves alone.”

“Hmmm.” Mithrandir leaned back, nodding softly.

“You wear one of his rings yourself,” Elrond said. “And that one he made. Is that - do you choose to? I mean, would he know if you took it off?”

She had never asked herself that question before; she had never taken the ring off. So far from his own it felt only ordinary jewelry to her now, a plain silver band with nothing to mark it. 

Mithrandir leaned forward to look at it, tipping her hand gently in the firelight. “Seems unremarkable. But so can the strongest of things seem unremarkable. It may not be safe, Galadriel. I can’t sense it doing anything here, but I can’t be sure that it never will.”

She curled her fingers back into her palm, bringing her hand and its ring down to her lap. “It protects Pelargir.”

Elrond bit his lip. “Galadriel… So you said, but it may be more dangerous than you imagine. Could it harm you?”

“It can harm him.” She turned it with her thumb, trying to sense any of the chill that seeped out of it when it was doing something, but it was warm as her own skin. “I have had many offers of friendship and sympathy but no-one will send me soldiers or weapons or any way to fight him. The ring is the only way I have found to weaken him and hurt him, even in small ways. I will keep it.”

“We would not take it from you,” Mithrandir said. “Nor anything else that helps you. I’d only caution you to be careful. He has let you keep it, after all.”

“He likes that it ties me to him.” She turned it again on her finger, nothing more than a thin shine of metal. “He dreams of Valinor sometimes,” she said, entirely unsure why this of all things was what she chose to tell them. “I would not have seen that without the rings.”

Mithrandir’s eyebrows disappeared into the lines of his forehead. “Interesting. Interesting, indeed.”

She did not dream of Valinor herself that night, nor of orcs in battle lines, nor of Pelargir or the lands of Eregion, of rings or weapons or war. She dreamed of her apple seeds growing, pushing tiny green shoots through the earth, ready to cover all her lands in orchards. 

Chapter Text

Long ago, ere Sauron deluded the smiths of Eregion, Galadriel came there, and she said to Celebrimbor, the chief of the Elven-smiths: 'I am grieved in Middle-earth, for leaves fall and flowers fade that I have loved, so that the land of my dwelling is filled with regret that no Spring can redress.' 

‘How otherwise can it be for the Eldar, if they cling to Middle-earth? said Celebrimbor. 'Will you then pass over Sea?’

'Nay,’ she said. 'Angrod is gone, and Aegnor is gone, and Felagund is no more. Of Finarfin's children I am the last. But my heart is still proud. What wrong did the golden house of Finarfin do that I should ask the pardon of the Valar, or be content with an isle in the sea whose native land was Aman the Blessed? Here I am mightier.'

'What would you then?" said Celebrimbor.

'I would have trees and grass about me that do not die - here in the land that is mine,' she answered.

(Tolkien, from 'The History of Galadriel and Celeborn' in 'Unfinished Tales’.)

The smith had never known youth. The Maiar were formed beyond Arda and had no need to grow into being within it the way elves and mortals did, pulling its substance into them like a tree through its roots. He had never known the innocence and folly of childhood, the tottering victory of first steps, the slowness of ageing wisdom.

He had chosen Arda, though, when that choice was given to them. He had chosen physical form. He remembered well the new moments of that existence, feeling the air he had sung into being wrapped around him, soaking him in cold and motion, drawn into new lungs in his first staggering gasps. He remembered how much it had all seemed in that overwhelming siege of what he now knew as senses, mountains tasting of metal, trees screaming praise, the hammer of oceans. 

He had worked at Aulë’s side, first in Arda’s making, and then in its refinement, and then in the smaller pieces, tools and towers and jewels, watching Aulë teach the Noldor. He had crafted great and beautiful things for this great and beautiful creation. He had loved it, in his way, enough to refuse to down his tools; he had loved it enough that he had never forgiven the slowing of that first glorious rush of creation, that song and all its wonders replaced with - with what? With trinkets for the elves, with distractions and joys mattering as much as great things, with muscle that burned and a mind that craved and Mairon, patience, Aulë’s hand on his shaking fist, trying so kindly and so ridiculously to soothe him.

And so he had not been soothed, and so he had chosen another way. If Manwë and the others would not care for what greatness could be wrought then he would follow one who would, one who would promise him all the things of his own, all the great joys of his visions. And then when that too turned to smoke and despair in Melkor’s madness, when Melkor himself fell, he had looked out over the rubble and ruin of Middle-earth and known what he must do. What he had been created, surely, to do.

For the Valar did not care for Middle-earth and the Valar never had. Even their precious elves had to be coaxed away with the promises of trinkets in Valinor. He had feared, when they came for Melkor, that this was finally ended - he had feared that when they sent Olorin, it was as the vanguard of another vast army come to drag him back. But no, no. The Valar had never cared; they had only ever come when Eärendil the Mariner himself had gone to beg them, and now that they had given Eärendil a ship and a jewel and a wife remade as a thing of wings and soft feathers, they would go back to their councils and their discussions and their useless, self-indulgent inaction. Only Eärendil had shamed them - briefly, temporarily, and now it seemed forgettably - into doing anything at all. 

Galadriel was not welcome in Edhellond, quite, but she was not made unwelcome either. She was received as an emissary from her own lands and told she might stay as long as she chose. She stood before Raindis and Maethion to negotiate over the empty lands that were now named as hers, assuring them she would be no threat to Edhellond, that their people were free to come and go through her lands as she chose. She was glad he was not there to hear her say my lands. 

They gave her a silver bracelet to mark the agreement made, looped three times around her arm, studded with pearls: freshwater for the stream that would divide her land from theirs south of the city, saltwater for the seas they would share. “And in commemoration of all we hold in common, daughter of Eärwen,” Maethion added, fastening it at her wrist.

“Better me ruling those lands than him,” she told Elrond later, who said “I didn’t disagree.” Better her peace than Sauron’s menace, better Edhellond bordering elf-lands than lands he claimed directly as his own. “They can say what they will about the Noldor.”

“Did they?” 

“Not the Lord and Lady. A few others, in passing. I pretended not to hear.”

He smiled, kind as ever. “You will make a politician yet, Galadriel.”

There would have been a time when she would have turned on sniping comments about Noldor declaring themselves queens and lords before the full breath was past their speaker’s lips. Now, she found she cared less. Or not less, perhaps, but differently; their ignorance of the true nature of the threat she and her people had fought over long ages seemed almost childish. That they would challenge her for being Noldor more than for being associated with him was barely worth anger.

“I am not so naive as to imagine my lands are fully mine,” she said. “He would not give power away. But he will let me do as I wish with them so long as it pleases me, I think. He likes appearing more generous than I imagine him to be.”

“Yes,” Elrond said, “well,” and she thought of the rings he had given the elves again and knew he was doing the same. A question, unresolved, weighed over them like a sky heavy with storm. 

She was not breaking her oath, because she had only ever sworn to forgive him the evils of his past and not anything he might be planning in the present. She had not left, because she still planned to return. And she was fulfilling what Finrod had sworn to do, still, because she would find what Sauron was planning and stop it before it began.

She walked by the sea and remembered Alqualonde, playing in the warm rippling waves as a child, the jewels scattered over the beach as she fell giggling in a tumble of brothers and cousins and sand. She studied what she could about the Southlands and the realms that should come under the crown Sauron now wore, the ones he said he would not seek to take by force. She studied what she could of her own empty, wild lands. She talked with Mithrandir about Middle-earth, which fascinated him, and she talked with Elrond about everything. 

They spoke endlessly about the rings. Surely there might be some ripple of darkness at the edge of their powers, surely some trickery concealed in their effects? Surely the fading would somehow continue. Perhaps unseen, perhaps hidden away in shame; a growing rot beneath a lake, a coastline eroding a shore, each new thing built somehow smaller, poorer, frailer than what preceded it. 

But no, it seemed. The realms of the elves flourished across Middle-earth as far as Elrond had been able to establish, and the lands of the Noldor in Lindon and Eregion shined. 

“There are some who believe it has returned us to the glories of our realms in Beleriand,” Elrond said. “Even the slower fading of the past ages reversed.”

“He would not create such a thing for our sake.” They were walking in the terraced gardens built into the cliff side, where paths of broken slate weaved between banks that would cascade green and blue with sea holly in the summer. She had been in Edhellond long enough by now that none of the elves who occasionally passed noted the three of them with anything more than a nod. 

“It is always possible,” Mithrandir said, “that he has done as he said.”

“No, there will be something else. There will be some trick in this.” 

“Knowing him that does indeed seem the most likely possibility.” They stopped at the furthest point and Mithrandir leaned on his staff, looking out to the distant hills of Pinnath Gelin across the bay. “Although even if he has told you the truth - a case could be made, I think, that attempting to recreate the glory of Valinor here on Middle-earth is arrogance in itself.”

The wind picked up again, stronger and stronger since the calm seas of the morning. The edge of Galadriel’s sleeve caught on her pearl bracelet. Below them a bay and a distant headland, empty and bleak; white sand wrapped in a band around the base of cliffs, gannets swooping and diving like arrows into the water. “Arrogance,” she said.

“The fading of the elves here and their realms is part of Eru’s plan, for whatever reason we cannot fully understand. To attempt to stall and reverse it -”

“These lands fade because of Morgoth. Because of what he sowed through Arda in its making. Why should we accept this? Valinor was protected, why should Middle-earth lie abandoned?”

Mithrandir lifted his hands in surrender. “If Middle-earth were being abandoned, I and my order would not have been sent here.”

Elrond touched her arm gently. He had been watching the sea beside them in silence for a while and she wondered if he was remembering the long-gone realm where he had lived as a child, the white towers and the high cliffs at the mouth of the Sirion. Would he even remember it so well? They had never discussed it and he and his brother had been so young. 

His intent was to calm her but she did not much wish to be calmed. “I have endured this not only because of the oath I swore but for my people and for the good of Middle-earth,” she said. “Would you tell me this is evil? That the true good would be to abandon Middle-earth to him?”

“No,” Mithrandir said. “No such thing. What you have done is for the love of this place and its people. I would only caution that what he has done may seem to serve the same purpose while still leading to very different ends.”

She had no wish to argue any more, and not with Mithrandir who had only ever shown her kindness. “I have spent too many years as the only one who could sense his evil still lingering here. Sometimes the burden has felt very heavy to carry, and I fear having to take it up again,” she said, and Mithrandir nodded. “Have you heard any more from the others in your order?”

No, he hadn’t, and it seemed it was no every time. No, they had not been able to gather any more knowledge about the orcs. No, there was no more detail on the rumours of strange cults far in the east grown up around the great sorcerer, the necromancer who had once called himself Mairon. 

And no, there was nothing more yet to be learned from Eregion. Celebrimbor met the inquiries with a slightly baffled defensiveness but with what seemed to be genuine honesty underneath it. Sauron had arrived, and named himself, and kneeled humble before the Noldor who had been victorious in his war, and offered to show his good intention by helping with their plight. He had not returned since. 

“Send them back,” she said. “Sauron has done something there, I know it. There is something he does not want me to find.”

Mithrandir blew out a long, curling cloud of breath into the winter air. “I can’t send anyone anywhere. We are all given our own freedom to work as we choose. But I will suggest to the head of my order that this warrants further investigation.”

“I don’t think you did know as much as you’re saying. I think you’re remembering it that way now because you want to.”

She thinks of Celebrimbor as a child in Valinor, given his own little workbench in the forge, surrounded by adoring uncles. “You forget that I knew my cousin a great deal longer than you.”

The days passed, and then the weeks. And then one night she heard him: a whisper she could barely distinguish from the wind, saying her name again and again. 

She did not answer. She tried to sleep, lying beneath soft white blankets, not thinking of him at all.

Galadriel. Not anger in his voice, nor victory. My love, my queen, my light. 

She curled her hands into fists, ignoring the cold chill of her ring. 

The smith moved softly in the unseen world. 

Edhellond’s winter gales could last for days, beating sea against rock, tearing salt from the spray to leave it dusted on walls and shutters once the storm finally eased. There was a beauty in storms that he had forgotten to see for long years. Beneath the noise and chaos new layers of sand smoothed under the waves, hungry seabirds waited to feed on some tasty new creature from deep waters hurled flapping and helpless onto the beaches, salt formed itself back into sparkling crystals. 

His warrior was sleeping through this, which he found amusing. No wonder it was taking so long to teach her the value of peace. He would not invade her dreams here - he was gentle and considerate and kept to his word - but he could carry her out of them for long enough to see her. And so he did, settling her gently in her images of the tower room where she slept, calming the storm for her so that the wind turned to a whisper and the sunlight spilled in around the edges of her shutters. 

“Galadriel.” She thought herself asleep still and so she slept there before him, lips slightly parted, hair poured gold over her neck.

“Galadriel.” A hand on her head, spanning the curve of it between finger and thumb. He would not need to measure her for her crown - he knew the form of her as well as his own by now - but he longed to show her all the same, hold his carefully crafted work against her hair, let her choose between a hundred different works of art he could give her. He had crafted such beauty, once. He could amaze her.

She pushed her head snug against his palm, the way she did sometimes when she was drowsy or peaceful or too exhausted to rage and tear at him any more. 

“Galadriel,” a third time, and louder. 

She woke and gasped and seized him all in the same moment. He let her pull him down beside her, flopping belly-up in surrender onto the bed, calm beneath her fury: “How are you here, you said you would not follow me, you said I was free to travel as I wished -” 

“Calm, I’m not, I’m not. This is another place.”

She released him and pulled away. He felt the thrum of her thought moving through the vision around them: a fine enough room decorated with the whirls and spirals of the sea-elves, a great painting of some long-gone city on the wall, blankets folded neatly on a footstool, a dark blue dress lying over a screen beside the bed. 

“See you’ve made yourself at home,” he said.

“If you are not here then how can you see anything?”

“Because it’s from your mind. You could change it if you want. It’s yours, not mine. I only came to talk with you. Can’t I miss you?”

Her face hardened. “You miss me as one of your possessions out of place. I have been gone barely any time.”

“Better part of two months.”

“Must I obey your curfews?”

“You could be nice, you know.” Rather than sit up to face her he stretched out on his back, watching her waver between anger and annoyance. She curled her ankles up to her thighs with her bare feet barely a hand’s reach from him. “You were meant to be negotiating us an alliance,” he said. “It shouldn’t take this long.”

At that she tucked her head a measure. A finger’s breadth maybe. He found himself again caught with the desire to measure her, chart and span and tally every precious thing. She seemed ashamed and he wanted to reassure her that all would be well. “Such things are not a simple matter,” she said. “You cannot expect the elves would send us their armies.”

“We don’t need armies. We need promises they’d come if we did. Then they won’t need to, and we’ll have peace.”

“Do we not have peace now?”

“For the moment.” She of all people should understand why he couldn’t rest content with threats barely beyond his borders. 

She slipped down easily from the bed and went to one of the windows, unlatching the shutter and letting light fill the room. Fingers splayed across the stone sill she lifted herself up on her toes, a stretch passing through her from feet to tilted chin. For the perfect shape of muscle in her calves he would almost cast aside every plan he’d ever made. 

“How are you doing this?” she asked without looking at him. 

“I’ll teach you.”

“As your master taught you?”

“No.” He was growing weary of her incessant need to make everything difficult, to fight and fight him for the sake of it. Such a waste. 

The air thickened with his irritation and she turned, startled, and he said “Come back” before she could push him any further off course. “Come back. Never mind the elves here if they won’t help us. We’ll go to Eregion together, we’ll have more success there. I’ll have them make you a crown.”

“No,” like a slam against his hands. He felt them twitch back and curl in on themselves. “Not Eregion.” Her own hands she gathered together before her, wrapped each together, and he thought: ah. Not Eregion, is it.

“You’d better not be plotting against me, now,” he said. “You did swear me an oath.”

“I have kept it.”

“Then why is my bed cold and my queen far away talking to wizards who hate me? Stay there if you want, I’ll go alone. I’d rather you at my side but you can continue doing as you please.” Yes, he would very much rather her at his side. The thought of taking her to Eregion with him, the elves seeing her beside him, his arm around her waist, maybe, her head turned to hear him, filled him with a cold flood of desire. The only thing better would be taking her there heavy with his child, his hand on her swollen belly as the elves came to kneel before them. He could show her that. He could - 

No.

She stayed by the window as if these dream-walls were real, as if she could not turn them all aside if she wished it. A glance assured him she was still wearing her ring, at least. Unrefined, that ring seemed to him now. Unpredictable in what it could do. But he had come to need it, need all the pieces of her it could show him, need it enough to let it make him weak. Would she agree to let him reforge it into something that played a little easier to his bidding? Not if it was his idea; perhaps, if she felt it was hers. 

“I have found us some defence for Pelargir,” she said. “Elf archers. Even if it would not be enough to hold back an army, few would attack and risk a further war with the elves.”

An interesting idea. Elves did make good archers. Her too, probably; he had never seen her with a bow but he knew she had helped Arondir teach the younger ones sometimes, and this seemed now like a lapse, a missed piece in his desire to gather all of her into one precious thing in his arms. “And where did you find archers?”

She looked down at her clasped hands and he felt the shiver of her uncertainty. There was something unfinished in this, something she had not planned to bring to him yet. He felt, for the strangest moment, ashamed. “Some of the tawarwaith, the Silvan elves, seek new lands. The ash from the volcano has damaged their forests north of the mountains. I will allow them to settle in my lands here in return for their agreement to defend Pelargir should any threat come to us.”

“Clever.” And it was, and she was, and he was proud and pleased and should have been content with that. But the wood-elves weren’t the ones he needed; he needed the craft of metal and stone, wisdom and learning and lore, the Noldor from their grand cities trailing the light of Valinor in their steps. “I don’t think they could hold off Númenor’s armies, though. It’s not enough.”

“Númenor would not risk the rest of my people coming to their aid.”

“Númenor, unless Pharazon’s arrogance has entirely blinded him and I’m not ruling that out, is not so foolish as to assume they would without seeking to find out. You elves are fighting each other all the time, why would the Noldor come to help?”

“I am trying,” she snapped. “I will bring Elrond to Pelargir. He can speak for Gil-galad, he will discuss it there. Is that enough for you or must I bring you whole armies of elves before you will learn patience?”

The thought of her bringing armies to him was a delicious one, but he hadn’t come here to anger her. She seemed a little too far from him now and in more ways than distance. He needed her back, and calmer, and willing to grant him at least some trust. He held up his hands. “I’ll wait,” he said. 

A quick, small nod, her eyes almost closed. Relief and he could sense it, for the fabric of this illusion was made up of such things; each fibre of it sang and thrummed with feeling. 

“I have missed you,” he said. “I have missed singing to you. I would prefer you home even when you use me as a scratching post to sharpen your claws. It’s cold without you.” 

Cold was not what he had intended to say, but it was cold he had been thinking of and now the thought of cold was laced through this place too. His brave warrior shivered in the sunlight. The void would be cold; cold from lack of heat, dark from lack of light, lack of time, lack of hope. Lack of sense too he supposed although he had no doubt that Melkor would find some way to make him feel it all, a nihilistic scream tearing him to chaos again and again and again. He could still hear the orcs chanting sometimes, soaked deep in his memory: death to light to law to love. 

“I will still have them make that crown,” he said.

“Make me a crown yourself if it matters to you.”

It was becoming too much. He would need to turn away before something broke in him. He wanted to hold her light between his hands one more time, but when he reached out to her she stepped neatly aside with her bare feet firm on the floor she had willed into solidity.

The smith watched them cross the plain towards him, their forms half-blurred in the snow, Galadriel’s pale mare hardly visible. There was little snow in his new realms but sometimes the sea winds beat against the mountains and turned the whole world dazzling white, the soft fury of a dying winter whirling everything to incoherence. 

His own horse had grown impatient waiting and pulled to be gone, stamping clumped snow out from cold hooves. He clapped the hard muscled neck and muttered wait, wait and the animal shook foam from its frothed mouth and pawed at the snow. He found himself amused at the attempted disobedience and tried again, this time nudging its mind more directly, not talking to the horse in the manner the elves did but rather in the path of its own thought. The ache of being away from a herd; the comfort of a known place to return to; the order of companions returning, a hierarchy, a place all would fit. All will be well, he thought. All things are returning to their place. The horse relaxed, head lowered, ears drooped back in ease, and together they waited.

Galadriel greeted him with silence, meeting his warm words with a steady unbreaking stare. A snowflake settled on her eyelashes and melted slowly against her skin. She tugged her cloak straight and brushed aside the snow that had settled in the valley behind her thigh. Elrond, too close to her, did not bother to conceal his wariness but was at least cordial in his greeting: a bow of the head and a dropped arm, a due obeisance for a king in his own lands.  

The smith nodded in return. (He was a king, indeed. But kings come and go, and kingdoms the same; great dynasties tumble and all the children of Iluvatar might seek to be without kings, or might be gone altogether, the land given over to others or birds or nothing at all. There would always be a need to craft things, though. There should always be smiths.) “Herald,” he said.

Elrond pulled his head back a fraction, the tension in his face not reaching his grey eyes. “I am here as an emissary. We are not at war.”

“A promising start.” He turned his horse to lead them home.

They dined in the large hall, where she seemed constantly surrounded by flocks of happy Southlanders welcoming her home. Elrond played the diplomat well, cheerful and friendly. Elves could not be trusted too easily - and the smith counted his own among that - but Elrond, despite all his own tangled ancestry of fraught kingdoms and feuding elf clans, seemed nothing but genuine. 

The smith was not a monster, truly. Monsters walled themselves away in fortresses hidden high in the ice. Monsters did not welcome their enemies and host them within their great halls, nor let their queens entertain themselves with treachery. Monsters would be taking quite different approaches by now. But he, patient and generous, would be kind. 

“It’s traditional for emissaries to bring a gift,” he said, laying his hand over Galadriel’s beside him. “But I shouldn’t be greedy when I already have the greatest gift the Noldor could have given me.”

Barely moving, Galadriel pinched the flesh of his smallest finger between finger and thumbnail. It smarted like a sting. 

“I meant it affectionately,” he said. The tiniest breath of a scoff in return, and across the table, Elrond watching with a mild, steady expression. “No mind. We should leave the negotiating for tomorrow and discuss easier things tonight. Apple seeds, perhaps.”

Elrond kept his shield of polite curiosity, but Galadriel seized on that immediately. “What of them?”

“We’re growing them for you.” Arondir was, in a row of tiny clay pots sheltered under glass. “Half have sprouted. Better than we thought.”

“Half.” Something in her fell. 

“I can send more, perhaps,” Elrond said, and deftly swept the subject aside by talking about the flowers that grew in Pelargir as he remembered it long ago. 

Later that night she came to him in the library. It had books, now, not many but a few, and scrolls held on shelves made from narrow rails of wood. He was pleased to see her stop to look at them almost despite herself, the silver-inlaid bindings bright as she lifted one book down from its place.

“Gifts from our friends in Harad,” he said. “I would like our realm to be a place of learning and wisdom.”

“A noble aim.”

“You sound surprised. What else do you imagine I would like?”

She placed the book back upon its shelf without opening it. “Smoke,” she said, coming to stand before him with neither hesitation nor distance. “Shadows and phantoms and torment. Werewolves. You seemed fond of wolves when you took my brother’s fortress in Tol Sirion.”

Finrod, again. Foolish, noble Finrod, dying for someone else’s oath. How easy he and Beren had been to defeat and how much endless incessant trouble they had caused him ever since he had. 

“If you thought I would do that to Pelargir you would not have left,” he said. “And how are your lands? Do you like them? I noticed the ruin of an old watchtower on that headland south of Edhellond. It would make a good place for some settlement.”

“Perhaps.” The proud tilt of her chin, not entirely meant for him. She had maybe accepted his gift faster than he had expected her to but he had always known those lands would please her. “I will let the elves who settle there decide.”

He moved aside in the window seat and gestured for her to join him. The cat curled at his shoulder mrow- ed in annoyance and jumped down to the floor. Galadriel came to sit beside him with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, managing to seem simultaneously guarded and at ease. “The elves there will accept your claim to the land but they will not consider themselves your subjects. They will never bow to you,” she said.

“Will they bow to you?”

“I would not ask them to.”

“Oh, but I think you should.” The lightest, softest touch to her face. She would look so well in a crown. Not some frippery of leaves and flowers as the elves wear when pretending themselves humble pastoral creatures, but a thing of nobility and might. “You will make those lands glorious,” he said. “I look forward to seeing it. Did you miss me, my queen?”

“No.”

He kissed her anyway and she tasted like snow in pine forests. He let her take the lead, only supporting her with a hand light on her back as she moved to kneel astride him. “I think you missed some of me,” he whispered into the hollow of her collarbone.

“I told you I will not live half a life here. It does not change what you are.”

“And what am I?” he asked, purring the question into her skin. She was warm beneath his hands now although still in too many layers, light hose under her dress, boots she had not bothered to kick free. “Haven’t I made you a queen? You can have realms as fair as Valinor, you can have gold and light and apple trees that do not die in lands of your own. What kind of monster would grant you this?”

She bit hard into the flesh of his upper arm, his sleeve barely muffling her sharp teeth, and he hissed in long-awaited pain. “You know what you are.”

“Reforge me, then,” and he let the anger of her hands and her teeth be the fire for it, let her hammer out her hate on his body as if she could make him anew. 

“If you had told me.”

“If I had told you, you’d have had an army of elves at my gates. But I’ll tell it now if you’re going to insist.”

It was true that Celebrimbor had never known the being calling itself Halbrand until the day it rode into Eregion, promising craft honed in the workshops of Aulë. The smith disliked lying anyway if he could avoid it, feeling in it a cheapness he need not stoop to, and it was especially so with her: she would accept or reject him in the knowledge of what he was and she would not ever be able to accuse him of lying to her. So: he had not lied. Celebrimbor had never before seen Halbrand.

Celebrimbor had seen Eärendil the Mariner, deep within the layers of a dream.

Years it had taken him to master that skill well enough to walk in another’s mind uninterrupted. Years in his fortress of ice seeking, shaping, learning, with nothing to push him on but little broken pieces of vision: the ore the dwarves had found, the skill of the jewel-smiths in Eregion, the disordered ruin of Middle-earth all around him. No use to appear to Celebrimbor as he was, that would never have worked. No use to make it a vision, for he did not then have the power - he would not without the work of the elves. Better by far to find an existing memory and a face he could take, shaping it into something indistinguishable from memory. 

So: a great chambered hall, somewhere in… Nargothrond? No. The Havens of Sirion, maybe? But Celebrimbor would not have been there. Well, no mind where it was. Some elf-city where crowds of them moved, pushing through a little too close together, steps a little too fast. There had been a battle or there was going to be a battle and the promise and fear of it sweetened the air. 

Celebrimbor, pinched and anxious, greeted him with an absent smile. “Have we met?”

They had not. They would.

You should try this, he would say at the start. You should seek this. Small things, easy things, easy for one like him but impressive for the elves. He waited until that had worked before trying another. 

You can mend this. You can aid this. 

Then, weaving whispers of mithril and the work of the dwarves: I believe that one day, your future will be in my son’s hands.

Then, Maybe you can redeem your family’s name. Maybe you can make something great enough to mend all that your grandfather broke.

Then, I do not believe the Valar would abandon us. I believe they will come to our aid. Maybe they will send an army. Maybe they will send others, as emissaries in their stead. But I will not believe they do not care for Middle-earth as we do. I will not believe they would let it fade and die.

And Celebrimbor would wake in Eregion, and shake his head still bleary with sleep, and the dreams would sink through the seas of his consciousness until they settled into memories of long ago. 

If I should ever go to find the Valar, Eärendil said, I will have them send us aid.

And, All things can be mended, even our families, even our pasts.

And, You will know their emissaries. I will have them bring you a gift. 

Chapter Text

“You’ll pull me from the milk-white steed,
And let the bridle fall
The Queen of Elfin she’ll cry out,
‘He’s won amongst us all!’

“They’ll turn me in your arms, Janet
A lizard and a snake,
But hold me fast, nor let me go
And I shall be your mate.

“They’ll turn me in your arms, Janet
A hot iron in the fire,
But hold me fast, nor let me go
To be your heart’s desire.”

(‘Tam Lin’, traditional)

The dress was dark blue and silver, a fine shimmer in its brocade pattern. He sent two of the servants to dress her in the fuss of folds and laces required and to braid her hair with silver ribbons and ropes of pearls. This took long enough that they had not finished when he arrived and so he leant against the doorway to watch, arms folded, grinning. They had reached an agreement some months before that he would leave her be in her rooms - that she would have, at her request, one place in this city that was hers alone - and although he kept his word it was only in the most literal of senses. 

She disliked being kept in place, unable to properly look at him without turning her head, keeping still only for sake of the young servant whose hands had been shaking with nerves to be so close to her. She disliked the fuss of this costume and the way its sleeves lay heavy on the backs of her hands. “What is this for?”

A short huff of a laugh. “It’s a gift for you. From our new friends in Harad.”

She had sounded more short-tempered with him than she had intended and had no wish to discomfit the others, so she stood in silence as the girl finished her hair. Annas, this one’s name. There had been a time when Galadriel knew the names of everyone in Pelargir, their families and their work, but there were too many now to remember. 

“Thank you,” she said to both of them once they were done, and they curtseyed to her, still a little too quiet and cowed by her than she would like. 

Sauron stepped politely aside for them as they left and then resumed his position against the stone, beckoning her closer with a nod of his head. “No thanks for me?”

He had been insufferably smug ever since she had returned, a glow of self-satisfaction cast over everything he said. He had succeeded in another treaty with one of the distant Southlands chieftains in her absence - an agreement that he would serve as their liege and they would continue to manage their own affairs, a reasonable enough arrangement and therefore one she could not fully trust - but it was not only this. He was pleased she had returned, he was pleased she had brought Elrond, he was pleased to dress her in finery and have his shining jewel-draped queen stand at his side for all to see. And above it all he was pleased, surely, with the knowledge that he had been able to summon her back when he wished to. She felt both in place and out of it, as though the twined silver belt of her dress was holding her fast to a place she both cared for and despised.

“It is unnecessary,” she said.  “All this. I have known Elrond since he was a child.”

His hand rested light on the small of her back as they walked together through long corridors, now grown familiar to her. Others passing in twos and threes greeted them with quick, bobbing bows, a few words of greeting, an admiring look at her dress. He met it all with the same magnanimous pride and waited until they were alone before murmuring, “Do you not wish him to see you dressed as a queen?”

“Do you wish to humiliate me before the elves?”

“Humiliate.” He stopped in the confidence that she would too and looked her over from head to foot, purposefully slow. “I hardly think this humiliates you. And I’ve seen Noldor in grander robes than yours.”

As had she, in the earlier days when their realms spanned Beleriand. There had seemed so much freedom then in dress as in everything; a rush of possibility, of unfettered creation. There was nothing truly wrong with the dress she wore now except that she would not have chosen it and he had. “It is unnecessary for you to be part of this discussion. You feel entitled to negotiate on behalf of Pelargir yourself with the Harad chiefs.”

“I was here. You…” He ran a curved finger down the line of her jaw and tipped her chin up towards him, his smile growing as she jerked her head away. “You had other things to attend to, I’m sure. Matters you don’t discuss with me.”

“You are implying -”

“I’m implying nothing.” 

Even in the short months away from him she had forgotten something of the sense of this, when he would stand a measure too close to her and lean in to whisper, not quite touching, his physical presence a weight on a balance between intimacy and threat. 

“You can have your entertainments,” he whispered. “I don’t want you tame. But whatever it is you’re doing, Galadriel - remember that your oath still holds, and remember that if they convince you to turn on me I will take an army and I will burn down every settlement in Lindon.”

She would not step back. She would not give him so much as a flinch away. A threat in itself exposed a weakness, coming from him. “What army?”

“That’s your answer?”

“What army.”

His hand trailed down her arm, shoulder and elbow and wrist, and fell away. “Maybe I should ask my queen to find me one.”

“Maybe you should remember that we have between us one half-ruined city and some empty lands, and you should have more important things to do than to threaten me.” 

“Hmm.” His lips brushed her cheek and she felt the thump of her heartbeat in her own. “Pelargir is a beginning. This is only a first foundation for everything we shall have. And I will not let you, or Olórin, or Gil-galad, or whoever else you’re passing time with now take it from us. We will not always be so weak, my love.”

She thought again of orcs gathering somewhere distant to the east. For the first time since Olórin had told her of them, she could truly believe it was his work.

They sat around three sides of a table, Elrond and Sauron facing each other and she between them as if placed in the role of a mediator. It was, as she had expected, fraught. The very normality of everything around her seemed to jar: the familiar grain of this table, the weave of the great patterned tapestry in red and gold behind her, and here her old and dear friend, and here her enemy. 

“We have no wish for any hostility with Númenor,” Elrond said. “It is a cause of sorrow to us, not anger, that Númenor has forgotten so much of its friendship with our people.”

Sauron nodded, amiably enough. “It was your brother’s kingdom, wasn’t it?”

“Once.”

“Surprised they never sent you if they’re so sorrowful about it. I would.”

Elrond smiled, eyes down over folded arms. “You would have been disappointed, I fear. The Númenoreans have stayed away from us for as long as they have stayed away from Middle-earth. Longer, if anything. But we would not seek war with them.”

“None of us here seeks war,” Sauron said. “I’m trying to avoid a war. They want Pelargir.”

“You know this?”

“It’s a reasonable assumption. Would the elves prefer I waited for a war fleet to arrive before making any plans? If they take Pelargir they’ll want all our lands next, including Galadriel’s.”

Her lands. Her lands, all but empty, a few scattered human villages and some travelling elves, five Númenorean watchtowers slowly collapsing into ruin along the coast. Soldiers had patrolled here before Gil-galad declared an end to the war but they were gone now. Some of the Silvan elves she had granted land to in return for archers would be coming to settle there soon, maybe, but for the most part it was a land long abandoned. Númenor’s roads were overgrown, and the forests once devastated for ship timber now vibrant and tall once again. 

Her lands. A part of her still felt wearily that she should have tried harder to refuse them, but it seemed so pointless when she was already denied so much else.

“Although that would only be relevant if the Noldor accept Galadriel’s claim, of course,” Sauron said.

Elrond seemed as untroubled by that as he had by anything else, but she imagined her own annoyance was plain enough to see. “We are not here for you to make jibes about elves,” she said. “This is a negotiation. Negotiate.”

At that, he laid his hands palm-up on the table. “I’ve got nothing left.”

Such an admission would have unsettled her at one time, but she knew him better, now. Knew how he used weakness to turn the assumed superiority of others against them, knew how different he sounded when something truly had shaken him. 

“Perhaps,” Elrond said, “if we can make no headway with the matter of land, we would do better with the matter of the people living in it. I can at least say that we will agree to protect Pelargir’s people against anything that directly threatens them if that is needed. This would include Númenor, should it ever come to that.”

Sauron was silent for a moment or two, drumming his fingers on the table with a rain of tiny thuds. “That’s a little vague for my liking,” he said.

“As it is for mine, but it’s the only way I can see to make progress.”

Sauron nodded to Galadriel as though he would ever be generous enough to let her make such decisions for Pelargir if his mind was not already made up. She thought of the shining walls of Pelargir of old, the empty expanses of land that were now hers; of standing with Finrod in the first spring they had known in Beleriand, looking out over vast, endless plains. “Would this protection be extended to the elves and humans in my realms?”

Elrond hesitated a moment, then nodded.

“Then yes,” she said. And beside her, Sauron smiled.

The sun was high in the clear midday sky when she went out with Elrond to see the city. The high towers cast long shadows over empty streets now swept and repaired, their paving shining now that all the dirt and debris were cleared away. 

Although large parts of Pelargir still lay in ruins, it no longer felt as though ruin itself was its true ruler. The heart of the city was all but cleared now, buildings either repaired or torn down to reuse the stone. In the distance she could hear the masons from Harad at work, the shouts and the strike of metal on stone. 

“Threatening Lindon,” Elrond said once they were well past the inhabited parts of the city. He did not sound particularly angry, nor surprised.

“Threatening Lindon to warn me, I think. Lindon itself is incidental.” There was a warmth to the sunshine that spoke of early spring, but the cold wind coming from the coast still chilled her.

Beneath their feet, the road was broken and pitted now. Mud from cart-tracks marked the stone; there was work underway further down the Sirith to rebuild one of the old stone bridges, replacing the wooden pontoon bridge built with planks and barrels. This year they planned to start work on the far side of the river, turning some of the least ruined buildings into workshops and granaries. 

“That’s hardly an improvement,” Elrond said. “We cannot risk you being placed in more danger.”

She felt a familiar tension pull through her. “If I am left out of our discussions on this matter then all of Middle-earth may be in more danger.”

“Yes,” Elrond said, “but.”

They reached the river and turned down onto the long walkway which still ran alongside it, overgrown with jostling vegetation. A bumblebee, the first she had seen this spring, hovered before them for a moment before diving away towards the river. Elrond crouched to stroke the head of a sunbathing cat which stretched out its back in a long crescent arc, paws kneading at air. “How free are we to speak here?”

They were the only people there, and there was no-one who could take word back to him. She had come to be suspicious of every unseen shadow between buildings, every sleeping cat; but she would not have this city smother her in silence. “Free enough. I wish you could stay longer.”

He nodded, giving the cat a last rub behind the ears before standing. “I’ll write. I promise.”

“And he will not keep me from Edhellond. Whatever he has said, I will not be left here with no possibility of continuing this fight. You need me for this. You will not -”

“Galadriel. Peace, I’m not your enemy.”

No, he wasn’t. She breathed in calm with the river air, let herself think of stillness. 

“I have regretted convincing you to get onto that boat since it departed,” he said. “I am sorry, and I should have trusted you, and I’ll trust you now. But I won’t endanger you. You are right that we need you. You are wrong if you think I’ll allow that to come at the cost of whatever safety you have here.”

They kept walking, stepping over the twisted stems of vines that lay in snaking curves over the path. “Set up a council, then,” she said. “With - whoever you wish. You know who I would choose. I will be part of it as much as I am able.”

That seemed to come as a relief to him, and they walked in an easy silence for a while further.

“He is not as I expected,” he said. “The way he behaves to you. Was it for my benefit or is he always that way?”

“He is mostly as you see him.” 

She had not spoken much to either he or Mithrandir about how Sauron treated her, except to confirm that she was not hurt. Neither of them had asked if she shared his bed - out of kindness, most likely, or tact - and she had no wish to share anything about the balance she had found in this life here. There was no way to explain, even if she cared to, how she had sought him out in the library the evening they returned; how he had let her rage and hate him with his hands patient on her bare skin, whispering you missed me, you missed this against her fury, until all she had left was yes.

“Here,” she said instead, and after another ruined bridge they were there.

The carvings by the river were easy to find now they had been cleared of all the overgrown vegetation and their stone scrubbed clean until they shined. Sauron had not only allowed but encouraged this, coming to watch as more and more of them were returned to their former glory. 

Morgoth bound in the great chain Angainor; Morgoth howling in agony as Fingolfin struck a wounding blow to his armoured foot; Morgoth pulled from the depths of Angband by the Valar themselves. Above it all, Eärendil’s ship Vingilot soaring between the stars, the Silmaril taken from Morgoth shining bright on its prow.

The smith was not without compassion. He would not have minded elves if they would only let him be. But they never had let him be - and even now, even when they should have been carefully bound under peace treaties and truces, their very presence managed to disturb it. 

That elf, anyway. The young prince -

“He was not a prince.”

“Really. Descended from that many lines of royalty? That’s a prince as far as I care. That and you being so fond of him were the only reasons I ever let him get so close.”

The young prince left that afternoon, presumably for Edhellond or for a ship to Lindon or wherever it was scheming elves went to carry out their plans. And the warrior, who had been so sharp and strong with him there, waited until his horse was a mere fleck of shadow in the distance before bowing her head and sobbing.

He wanted to comfort her but she would not accept it, still too bound up with anger over whatever poison the elves and Olorin had been tempting her with when she was away. Even through her tears she pushed him away and snarled “leave me be.” When he still would not abandon her she turned her back on him and walked back to the city alone.

She was not there for dinner. She did not come to him in the evening. It was late into the night by the time he went to look for her and found her in the first place he should have thought, a little room high in one of the towers. She was kneeling, her blue dress gathered around her like a pool made of twilight. The very sight of her stilled him: the pearls and shimmer in her hair, the perfect curve of her bowed head, the way the candle-light seemed to collect in her, gathered and nurtured, turned into being. 

Before her was the little row of apple seedlings in a line of earthenware pots. She was singing to them light and low. He thought of watching Yavanna weaving leaves out of the air, when he was still so young and new that every blade of grass seemed to him a fresh wonder. 

“I’ve missed you,” he said, coming to sit behind her. “I am glad you are home.”

She stopped singing, but only that and the irked huff of breath gave him any answer. Well, she had been like this last time she returned from Edhellond. It had passed.

He said her name and got nothing at all. She stayed perfectly collected, a sculpture, a dream. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You are not.”

“I’m -” But he forced it down. No, he would gather himself, be an unshaking defence against her fierce but chaotic attacks and wait. “It does not please me to see you unhappy.”

“How inconvenient for you.”

Almost a year now since he had brought her to Pelargir, and truly what was a year to beings like them: the flick of seasons, the blink of the sun. He had always known it would take longer than this. He had always known that his proud warrior who had hunted him for centuries would not give ground to him so easily. He had, truly.

He lifted her hair gently in his hands, torn between the desire to leave it just as it was or to unfasten her braid and comb it loose with his fingers. He would very much like to spend the best part of the night in undressing her, hours savouring each ribbon to untie, each hook to unfasten, each lace pulled loose. 

“Pearls, for your bracelet the elves of Edhellond gave you,” he said instead, running the back of his hand over the fine ropes in her hair. “And I think the same for your crown as well. Pearls and apple tree leaves. Would you like that?”

She shook her head out of his hands as if he was no more than an irritating fly and leant over to shield her row of seedlings. “You ask what I would like from you?”

“Name it and you can have it. Within -”

“- reason , as if you care.” She swatted his hand away from the pots. “Don’t touch these.”

“Have no fear, your little trees are safe from me.” 

He gathered up her hair again and this time she let him, bowing her head so that his hands brushed the back of her neck. His thoughts were tangled with grandeur. He wanted to ride beside her at the head of great processions to distant kings, the shout of crowds around them and thrown flowers trodden beneath her horse’s hooves; he wanted to keep her for himself, for no eyes but his own as legends of her spread through all their realms.

“Name it,” he said again.

“Give me masons to rebuild one of the outposts on my coast.”

“Of course.” She would have let him kiss the curve of her neck, he was moderately sure, but he resisted. Best not to push her when she was so delicately balanced. He let her hair fall light again and moved to sit beside her. “I’ll design it for you if you like. Did you have a particular one in mind? I thought the old fortress near Edhellond would be a good place to begin. You could have a port there.” Oh, she was so tempting, and he was playing games with himself more than anything else by holding back still. “There, you see? I’m kind.”

“Kind?”

“I’m kind to you.”

“You are not kind.” She would not even look at him, turning her head back against the fingers light on her cheek when he tried to coax it. “You think kind is gifts and promises. You cannot feel it. You are a hollow thing. A monster.” 

Centuries of patience cooled and hardened in his veins. “Reconsider what you say to me.”

“Or you will do what?”

“I have shown you nothing but kindness -”

“You threatened Lindon.”

I took no pleasure in that, he should have said, but he could remember too well the change in her breath, the flicker of fear in her eyes. “I have shown you far more kindness than was ever shown to me in the face of treason,” he said instead.

“Treason. You flatter yourself.”

“Do I. So what are you doing, hmm?”

“What are you doing? You hide your intentions from me because you know I will fight you until my last breath.”

Patience came to him a little easier now. She had fought him so long she was still caught up in the momentum of vengeance. She would see, in time. “Because I cannot risk you ruining what needs to be done,” he explained. “Earn my trust. Work with me. We desire the same things.”

“No.”

“Let me show you.” But she twisted out of his grip, watching him warily, scrambling back but not away. “Please,” he said. “Please, Galadriel,” and finally she let him take her hand and bring her soft through the edges of his mind into a different place.

The dungeons were cold, dark, choked with the smell of smoke and blood and horror. He was getting more practised at this now. He could build it well enough from his own memories, arranged just as he wanted her to see. No others here; only the sounds howling down the twisting corridors, and him, and her. 

She turned fast, looking from wall to wall to wall and back to him. He could see that she was already thinking like a cornered soldier. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s not real. I only wanted you to see.”

“To see -” Her voice broke apart into a gasp, and she reached out a shaking hand to him, stopping short of touching his neck. “What did this?”

“Knife? Claw, maybe. Forgive me for being vague on the specifics, it all got a little repetitive after a while. Do you know where this is?”

Another look at the walls, but this time more careful. She ran a hand over the obsidian, thinking, deducing. “Angamando,” she said. “Angband. Is it?”

“Well done. This was my cell.”

A roar from somewhere distant, thrumming through the walls. She flinched and lifted her hand away. “No. You ruled here in the years he was gone. You were not a prisoner, you were a commander.”

“I was. You can guess how delighted my former servants and prisoners were to find me back here in chains. How very, very welcoming everyone was to me.”

“What happened,” she said, almost whispered and lost in the shrouding dark. Then, louder, demanding: “What happened?” 

“You asked where I went after Lúthien took my fortress. I hid, like I told you. I’d already failed him. He would have punished me anyway if he’d found me. So I stayed in the forest in the north and kept myself in - another form, it doesn’t matter. Quiet and small and out of the way. Years like that. But I was careless, I was impatient. I would dream of what I could do. I thought - he was weaker then - he would rant and rage for days, he couldn’t plan - meaningless, all of it, everything was -” 

Other sounds now, beyond his planning or control. Tramping feet in the corridor, some orc laughing. He held her forearm and she stumbled closer, head tipped back to look up at him, maybe afraid, mostly furious, but it helped and he could think again.

“I convinced myself I could weaken him,” he said. “I thought I was stronger. I could have taken this place for myself. Or if I couldn’t, maybe he’d at least - I had been alone for so long. You don’t know . You think you’re alone here where you can have anything and anyone you want. I was alone, Galadriel.”

He had forgotten how the walls would feel that they were closing in on him, the chaos and noise of it all if he tried to sense another sane mind. Orcs, and the scraping fat bulk of a dragon pulling itself through distant tunnels, and running water for a thirst he could feel but never slake. 

She tried to twist her arm out of his grip but he couldn’t allow that, not here. “Is this a threat?” she spat. “Are you saying you would do this to me?”

“Not a threat. A way that you might understand.”

“Do you expect me to pity you?”

His own dried blood marked the stone floor here, a pattern of faded shapes. He had not intended to bring that detail into this. He remembered hanging in chains on the wall, looking down at the edges of bloodstains and grains in stone, losing himself in imagining it was some vast map of a continent: here a coastline, there a river, beyond a mountain range that would have made a perfect place for a fortress.

“I will mend what I have broken,” he said. “They would have me thrown into the Void with him. I was not always this, I was not always what he made of me. I can mend it. I can -”

More footsteps, this time heavy in armoured boots with the stone almost screaming beneath them, a familiar dragging limp. Closer. Closer.

“No -”  

And he was back in Pelargir, his Pelargir, with the softest, goldest being he had ever desired still held against him close as armour.

Chapter Text

I will build my love a tower
By yon clear crystal fountain,
And on it I will build
All the flowers of the mountain.

(Traditional)

“I was so tired,” she says. It’s a memory now, years and centuries behind her, but she can still feel the ripple of it like sediment hardened into rock. 

He says he knows, which is both true and not. When he’d carried the weight of Middle-earth and found himself alone with the exhaustion of it he’d been on a dark throne, ruler then of Angband, his master back among the Valar pretending at repentance. Pretending, he was sure, for that was the plan all along and Melkor was too broken for otherwise; but he’d heard the rage and ruin later, the screams into unyielding stone, the tears from a body that should not have known how to cry, and he had wondered whether pretence had become something else after a while, something that shattered when Melkor tried to bend it back.

“I didn’t think you would pity me,” he says. “I wanted you to stop thinking it was so simple.”

“You wanted me to stay away from Mithrandir.”

“Well,” he says. “I'm hardly going to apologise for that."

The smith had learnt his warrior well enough by this point to know when it was best to step back from her, to give her all the room she needed and nothing to fight against. But she had noticed him doing this by now and even this annoyed her, and he was left with nothing except her silence and the sight of her back as she turned away from him.

For days, weeks maybe, after he showed her that one memory of Angband she avoided him. He endeavoured to remain cheerful, to let her keep her space, to neither question nor push nor ask to know what she did with her time. She would take her horse and ride far up into the hills, returning only in the hours before nightfall and going to her rooms without a word to him. He gathered that she was speaking to Bronwyn about the city, and keeping a close watch on the plans to repair -

“You neglected to mention that you watched me.”

“I let you be. That’s what matters.”

“You didn’t trust me.”

“Can you blame me? Anyway, you’d -”

“It matters to me that you could not even trust me enough to leave me be for a few hours.”

“I did leave you be.” He huffs out an irritated snort of air, and she shakes her head, silent and unrelenting. “Fine, have it your way.”

She would take her horse and ride far up into the hills, returning only in the hours before nightfall and going to her rooms without a word to him. He followed her, once or twice, careful to stay out of her sight - to ensure her safety and the safety of Pelargir, only - but she stayed alone in the growing spring woods, left her horse to graze, and sang lightly to herself or only sat in quiet with her back against a tree.

He gathered that she was speaking to Bronwyn about the city, and keeping a close watch on the plans to repair the older ports. He let it all go, too, allowing her the space she craved. Perhaps he had pushed too far in threatening Lindon; perhaps he had pushed too far the other way, trying to show her why he had to. Either way he had shaken her, and the best thing to do until she had learned to trust him a little better was to leave her be to steady herself.

She gave the apple seedlings to Arondir to care for, trusting only the nurturing hand of elves. The smith could, by this point, have done more himself; he could have brought them into growth faster, stronger, had them protected well enough against frost and wind and gnawing insects that she would have them as whole trees before she knew it. But she did not want him to touch them, resented him even looking at them, and so he let it be.

When she told him she was leaving for a while without saying where he knew she was trying to goad him, trying to see what he would do if he thought she was meeting with the elves or the wizard again. “As it pleases you,” he said. “May I ask -”

“No.” She had already readied her horse and packed her bags, and he noticed the blanket she always took to sleep on when she was on the road, rolled behind her saddle.

He reminded himself to be patient. He reminded himself to think of her not as a queen, not a warrior now, but rather as a half-tamed wild thing, untrustful of his kindness and poised to flee. He bowed his head in agreement and held down his cupped hands for her to spring light onto her horse. “Be safe, then,” he said.

Something in that must have been enough, because she turned her horse back after only a few paces. “I am going to my lands,” she said. “To see the tower you spoke of rebuilding.” And without waiting for an answer she was gone.

The smith spent some time without her, careful not to leave the city itself in case she had others watching him. There was no need, anyway; there was nothing he couldn’t do from here. He helped with more of the rebuilding work, spent time in the forge creating new things, thought of more designs for his warrior queen’s crown. (He should have planned his own, too, the long-dead king’s circlet he wore a lesser thing than his realm deserved. He even tried for a time - but his mind was too filled still with other crowns, with spikes and iron and stolen jewels, and so he left it for now. At least Galadriel’s he could make a thing of light and beauty.)

He set the carpenters to make her a throne. 

He walked by the river and thought of grand ports and gathering navies, of how the water would shine with sunlight bounced from white sails. He thought of fleets - Númenor’s, maybe - waiting for his command, and hers. He thought of the glory the elves had made of their own lands, and the empty places he and Galadriel had ridden through on their journey to Pelargir, and the crumbling ruins that were all Númenor had left of its own ambitions here. He thought of Armenelos as it was today.

He waited a fair time, a long time, before setting out to find his queen.

This time he travelled himself. She hadn’t liked him finding ways to reach her through the unseen world before, although he suspected she would have liked it even less if he had had come to Edhellond in person. He had considered it, a little - a small royal procession, a herald or two, some of the banners his people had made him. Her fury would have been delightful but she would have been even less inclined to come home through her own will, and that was truly what he sought.

He wondered if he would find her conspiring with wizards who hated him. He wondered if he would find her holding court in a woodland realm, the Silvan elves laying their cloaks at her feet. He wondered if she might have grown tired of the Sindar in Edhellond denying her the respect she was owed and demanded the city for herself, and he would find her on a throne, a crown already on her head. But he found none of these things; his warrior queen was sitting alone on a carpet of grass in the ruins of the tower by the sea, cross-legged against a ruined stone wall, a book on her lap.

“You never really thought I would conquer Edhellond.”

“I liked to imagine it. You in a crown. All of them bowing to you. You were away with the elves there for so much of that winter. It pleased me to find new ways to imagine you when the nights were long.”

She laughs, but it’s not without warmth. “You are ridiculous.”

“I would have bowed to you, too.”

Galadriel considered refusing to even look up at him as he unsaddled his horse, wondering how much more peace she might eke out before he demanded her attention, but decided against it. Her book had been a gift from the elves of Edhellond before she and Elrond left: a history of this place, before and after Beleriand was ruined. There seemed relatively little to know, and that in itself she found quite pleasing.

“No elves?” he said, unbuckling the bridle and turning the horse away with a pat to the shoulder. “And none of my brothers and sisters?”

“Is that what they are to you?”

He shrugged, in relatively good humour. “It’s the best I can explain it to ones like you. Or cousins, maybe. Given your cousins that might be a better way.”

She refused to get to her feet, and so he came to sit beside her, unrolling the parchment scroll he held and smoothing it out for her against the pages of her book. It was a plan for the tower, rebuilt in grandeur and, she would concede even in her annoyance, beautiful. He had taken inspiration from the arcs and circled terraces the Noldor preferred, his designs drawing out the beauty of the ruins that remained without being limited by them. The work was only sketches but already far more detailed than she would have expected, the work of many long hours even for him. 

“Some ideas I had,” he said. “But this place is yours, you can do as you like with it.”

“It’s beautiful.” Not praise, only a statement of fact there seemed little use in denying. That he could make beautiful things came as no surprise to her any longer - she had seen him working in the forge, she had seen him rebuilding Pelargir. 

“I’d make all of this beautiful.” He took the scroll from her, and the book too, looking at it with a vague interest before resting them both carefully on the crumbling remains of a wall. “But first I would build this for you. If you like it this way. If you don’t, you can have it different, as you choose.”

“Why?”

“A gift.”

“Why?”

Something in his voice drew tight as a bowstring. “You never questioned me giving you these lands before.”

“Are they a reward for my obedience? As you were given my brother’s fortress?”

She was already braced for his anger, the heels of her hands pressed into the turf so she could be on her feet in an instant, but instead the tension seemed to collapse from him and he leaned back, head tipped up to the sky. “Oh,” he said.

Silence, for a time. She did not care to break it. 

“I would make this land beautiful,” he said eventually. “I would make this as glorious as Valinor. You know I could. You saw what my work did for the elf realms. And if you listen to Olórin, to any of them, they will convince you not to allow it. They believe it should fade and die because Melkor ruined it. They think once he has damaged something it cannot be saved.”

No, she thought, as if she was trying the sound of it. No, it would not be that way. She imagined how she would say it, how the words would feel in her mouth, but it felt like an echo of someone else's words. She studied the pattern of threads sewn at her cuff, loops of white and gold.

“They would take Pelargir from you, too,” he said. “They would let Númenor have it. They would take all the realms away from the elves, all of them, and they would leave Middle-earth to fade.”

“And you would save it. You, after all you’ve done.”

“That’s why I need you. You will be my light and I won’t fall to the darkness.”

“You chose -”

“And I am trying to undo it. I am trying. Please,” he said. There was a vulnerability within it, and a defiance within that: there, see how I lower myself to beg you; there, see how small you want to make me. “Please, Galadriel. Trust me a little. Just a little. Give me ten years, I’ll build you a palace here however you want it, I won’t go near Eregion, I’ll show you. Please.”

Too many lay dead between them, too much broken and cast into ruin. Nothing could make up for what he had done; nothing could undo it. “You chose to follow him,” she said. “I would never have chosen you.”

A taut drawn breath, but then he nodded, of all things. “I gave you less choice than I had and showed you more kindness. It’s better that way. I’ve spared you more than you know.”

“Spared me?”

His fingers lifted her chin, light as the first sun of the morning, turning her to look at him. “I need you. We need each other. None of them understand.”

Silence, again. She resented that it was almost comfortable; that she had grown close enough to him despite herself that it could have been, in other circumstances, in other conversations.

She pulled back from him and wrapped her arms around her knees, looking past the vine-wrapped stone into distant blue. “I was remembering one of my cousins,” she said instead. “Aredhel. We crossed the ice together once. She was a princess in Gondolin in the years before it was ruined. She was - forced to wed. An elf, not one of your kind. He loved the stars and the dark and he kept her from the sun. Everything that happened to her, and her death, and her son’s death, and Gondolin’s fall, all of it was so terrible, and yet all I could think after it all was how awful to be denied the sun.”

His expression stilled, hardened. “I’ve denied you nothing.” 

She had not been particularly close with Aredhel as they grew up but the journey across the Helcaraxë made its own bonds. Aredhel had been a hunter then, a thing of sinew and strength. Galadriel could picture her now knelt down with her bow behind a snowbank ready to take down birds for their food, her dark hair in a thick rope of a braid tied with silver, the arrow quick as a blink and the pied gull falling from the sky in a tumble of black and white. They had walked in the dark for years; they had loved the stars as all elves do. But to have been denied the sun once they had seen it, they who had known the light of the Trees, must have been an indignity almost beyond bearing.

“I’ve never wanted to restrain you,” he said, still kneeling beside her. As ever he seemed caught between a plea and a mock and a threat, a state of endless indecision, a coin tossed in the air forever turning and turning. “You would restrain me.”

“If I did you would hate me for it.”

“I might.” He took her hand although she wouldn’t relax it, cupping it between both of his in some mimicry of affection. “Or not. I like to give you things you desire.”

“Because it unsettles me.”

“Yes,” he conceded, grinning pleased as though she’d solved a riddle. “But not only that.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, his lips softer than she’d remembered as she curled her fingertips against the edge of his teeth. “You desire me.”

It wasn’t so simple as that, but all the same she turned to him as he let her go and in a moment he had her pulled hard against him as he left a biting line of kisses down her throat. The stubble of his beard scratched at her skin. She reached for him and he caught her hand firm as steel, held in the air beside them. “Be tender,” he said.

“Tender?” It came out as a laugh, although she hadn’t intended it.

“Should I show you how?” He cradled her down, excruciatingly gentle, the cool grass against her back and the soft scent of spilling blue flowers beneath her head. “Tender is this,” he said, running a soft hand down the underside of one leg, bending it up to kiss her knee as he slid off her boot, and then repeating it again with the other. “Tender is this,” lifting her hips to tug down the riding breeches beneath her dress, a gentle roll hip to hip as he freed them. 

The sun was high above them with the deceptive cold brightness of spring. She closed her eyes and felt its light on her face. Her hand was already furrowed into his hair without her thinking it, and when she brought him down to kiss her he instead turned his face away and lay his head on her chest. Through the pull of her ring she could sense the edge of his thoughts, blurred overlapping outlines like shapes behind a curtain; he was watching the sun in her hair and imagining gold shimmering on water. 

Everything was incomplete here. Her lands and her tower, Pelargir and its ruins, Middle-earth and its broken kingdoms; and she, last soldier of a long war, last child of a royal family, a mockery of a marriage and an oath she wanted only to break. There was too much space in her now, a howling void where she once had felt whole. 

She nudged him with her forehead, wordless, and he grinned and called her a cat, propping himself over her with an expression she couldn’t name and couldn’t face. She twisted away beneath him and when she rolled herself up to sit he caught her just as she came upright as if it was a dance they’d rehearsed a hundred times. “No,” he said and tugged his tunic over his head, and brought her hands down to his bare chest, holding them against his skin.

She could feel the hammer of his heart beneath her palms, the fine wires of scattered hairs so unlike an elf’s. She could feel armies marching in the rush of blood through veins, continents colliding in the smooth movement of muscle. He tasted faintly of salt as she kissed the padded curve of his ribcage, and he groaned, head back, hand cupping the back of her head. “Like that,” he said, “yes,” and she found that she was kneading at him with the hand that held his hip, feeling him smooth and soften beneath her.

“I don’t -” he began, but whatever it was ended in something hard and swallowed as she pushed the flat of her hand under his belt, snug between cloth and flesh. He watched for a moment unmoving and then his own stumbling hands pulled at his belt buckle. 

With the greater space that allowed she could run her knuckles down the notch of muscle that ran from hip to groin, drawing a soft noise out of him. He never troubled to restrain anything of himself, let every moment of his pleasure show. His human body was no more his than any of his other disguises had ever been but he revelled in it and craved its every sensation. 

He guided her wrist until she was holding him loosely in her palm, stiffening harder at her touch. Again, the demand of his eyes - see what you do to me, see how you weaken me, see what power you have over me - as if he was paying her tribute and insisting she recognised it.

She drew a loose circle with the pad of her thumb. He grunted, and she felt the sound of it like a soft blow in her chest. There was a satisfaction in this although one she could not have described in words. She thought instead of the curve of his shoulders, the lines of tendon in his neck, how smoothly they moved together.

When he lay her down again with his hands splayed across her back she felt that he was gathering her in somehow, as if she had drifted beyond her own bounds. “Shhh,” he said although she’d not made a sound. Her dress he removed slowly as if he was unwrapping it, unwrapping her, as though she was some possession sent with care and jealousy over whole realms, and she would have resented what she meant to him if he could ever decide on that himself. Control, and the loss of it, maybe. Something like hope.

His touch was gentle, almost hesitant, tracing curling flames on her skin. She felt herself gasp. He pressed his forehead against hers and said “all the beauty in Arda, I had a hand in its making,” and then kissed the line of her jaw until she arced back for him, all the way he liked. “You know this,” he said. The back of his fingers stroked the curve of each breast as though she was too much to touch directly, and he kissed her again so soft she whimpered in longing for more. “You know me.”

“I didn’t know what you were.” 

“You know me now.” 

He came down to lie beside her and lifted her knee over his hip, sighing satisfied at the way they notched together. She wanted him in a way that felt like pain, like blood returning to her hands after too long in the ice, pushing its way through sluggish, resistant veins. She could feel the Helcaraxe again, the heavy creak of snow tramped beneath her boots, the brothers and cousins around her all lost now, the long curving line of those behind them following in the trail they left. She could feel her fury and her grief: the loss of Doriath, the waters flooding over Beleriand, Finrod’s face cold as a statue under her palm. She could feel all she had wanted, and what it had been like to lose it. She was not whole but it no longer mattered that she was broken. 

His shoulder under her palm was damp with sweat and unmoving when she pushed against him. “Now,” she said, but he was still as marble, hand still holding her knee fixed in place, head shifting only to let him kiss the tip of her ear. “Please, touch me,” and this time he at least seemed to hear her, running his hand from thigh to hip then down around the curve of her buttock to kindle slow fire between her legs.

She could feel him hard as stone against the inside of her thigh, one movement and he could have been buried deep inside her, but he pulled away a little and used his hand instead, pushing in tiny circles inside her until she almost sobbed with frustration. “You can have whatever you want from me,” he said, his voice heavy and hoarse, and eventually reached further in a slow, dragging stroke until his touch was just where she wanted it and she felt all of her past and present draw together into a blinding light. “There,” she said, hardly more than breathing, and he said “I know, I know,” as she broke apart in tiny cries against him. 

He gave her a moment to curl into him like that, wordless as she shook and twisted and gasped. As she started to relax he rolled onto his back and took her with him, holding her hip firm in place. “Tender, remember,” he said, looking down at her palm on his chest steadying herself. He reached down to stroke again at the slickness between her legs, the intensity of his touch almost too much to bear. “You need me,” he said and she nodded, impatient. “You need me,” again, and this time she understood he was waiting for a response.

“Yes,” she said, and “now, now,” and wondered vaguely what else she might have said if he’d continued to insist: that she needed him, that she wanted him, that what she felt with him inside her was like surrender and victory both, that she wanted to forget it all and have it never forgotten. 

But he was satisfied enough with what he had. He angled himself against her, kept her angry and wanting for a moment with just the tip of his length pressed into her, and laughed, and said “I love seeing you like this,” and then held his hands steady on her hips as he drove up into her with one heavy, unyielding stroke.

A strand of his hair fell down against his eye but when she reached to smooth it away he caught her hand, fast and fierce. He seemed undecided on what to do with it for a moment and then turned it at the wrist, bringing it down to the point at the top of her straddled thighs that pulsed and yearned for more, moving her own fingers in steady small circles until she felt everything tense, her and him and the very world around them. Then he pulled her hand to his mouth and sucked at her fingers as though he was starving, and when she came again it was with a shock that struck her sightless for a while, losing everything except his laughter and her body singing to her, this, this, this, as he thrust up into her. 

When she came back to herself something in him seemed to have slipped and come loose. 

“Shhh, don’t,” he said as she steadied herself, although she had barely even breathed let alone spoken. She tried to meet his eye but for the first time he turned away from her, wrenching roughly to the side: “no,” he said, “don’t, don’t, ” and then he was quiet, and when she looked down at him he was glazed and distant and gone.

She expected it to be brief. Usually he was back to himself in seconds, as if it had never happened, and said nothing of it so that she was always unsure if he even knew. This time, though, he stayed gone, and her words were met only with cold absence. One hand dug into the muscle of her thigh, almost enough to hurt, but he didn’t react to her in anything other than the rocking, silent thrusts. 

“Come back,” she said, tracing her nails soft over his chest, the way he usually liked. “Come back,” a nibbling kiss to the side of his throat. And when that brought nothing except his silence and her own frustration, the odd and uncanny blankness in his face, she pulled his head up between her hands and said, “Mairon.”

He drew in a desperate draught of air like a drowning man pulled to shore, and for a moment his eyes were the same slit yellow cat-like fury she’d seen back when she left him injured in a tent after the volcano. He grabbed a handful of hair at the back of her head and wound it around his fingers, pulling her down close to hiss “mine, you are mine, Galadriel,” and then wrapped his arms around her back to hold her as close as he could against him as he moved in her. “Mine,” he said, and it was right, again, and she felt her own pleasure build and build with his, and he whispered “please please please” against her until he came hard and gasping and strong.

She let him hold her after and the wind was cool against her skin. She thought of new trees and long-gone cities, and the cold, vast sea.

Chapter Text

Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die.
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
The Cities rise again.

Rudyard Kipling, ‘Cities and Thrones and Powers’

The years passed, one after another, full of small things but uneventful in the cold eye of history.

“No, you left out our journey home.”

He stops, considers. “Was it eventful?”

“Let me tell it.”

He nods. He won’t ever get into the habit of granting her easy victories, not even now - and most likely she wouldn’t welcome it if he did. Theirs is a peace not found but forged, long years in the crafting. Still: the years since then have been long indeed. He will never age but he can feel the aging of Arda, its long weariness, its ache that called the elves home. The past remembered as all that happened weighs on him; he would rather remember it as a story, a legend, something to be passed down to fascinated children who will know the smith and the warrior only as heroes in a great tale, who will never know them as they were.

“Yours, then,” he says, and stretches out with his fingers laced behind his head, and listens.

They rode home slowly. The weather was bright and clear, and they spoke of little except Pelargir: plans for bridges, trade with Harad, the need to find more boats somehow. 

She had never wished for Pelargir, nor these lands, nor any of this. She had dreamed of her own realms but not this way and not with him. Never with him. Yet here she was in the lands she had accepted as her own, with the city waiting for them now shining and beautiful and growing back out of its ruins like spring leaves on a tree thought dead. 

The road that once ran from the coast fortress had been little used for centuries and showed it, covered over entirely with grass and clover in parts. But Numenor had built roads that could support marching soldiers and carts bringing heavy loads of timber to its shipyards, and so the road remained, visible sometimes as paved patchworks of stone, sometimes only as an even cut through the forests where trees could not find a foothold. There were waymarkers still showing miles from Pelargir, now grown over with moss and their carved lettering worn away by age and rain.

Numenor would not want land itself if they came here, most likely. They might even let the Silvan elves she had allowed to settle here stay, so long as they allowed Númenor to take the trees, the timber. If they came - if they came - to claim this land, they would lay waste to the forests as they had before and care nothing for all within them.

Setting up her bedroll in a hollow under a bank of willows on the first night, she thought of their long ride from Lindon. It felt far longer ago than it truly had been. She remembered small things: the smell of woodsmoke, the day she had counted every single one of her horse’s hoofbeats, the way he spoke once of Yavanna’s love for the small flowers, the forget-me-not and bittercress that grew alongside their path. 

Once they settled for the night he held her and sang into her hair, low and sweet. She fell asleep in the warmth of his arms - but when she dreamed it was of fighting him, their swords ringing out metal strikes across her empty lands. A parry, a block, a step and dodge and weave, and she could not strike a blow against him but danced out of the reach of all of his. 

“You took me from my people,” she said, catching his sword at her waist and turning it away. “You pretended to be my lost husband.” A spin, a jump back, a strike at his neck, easily blocked. “You thought you could make me forgive everything you had done and you hated me because you could not.”

He didn’t speak. He never did in these dreams. He only fought her, gaining no ground and giving none either, around and around until their feet turned the earth into endless rings of mud.

When she woke, to a cold grey morning and the sound of distant birdsong, he was watching her as though he had never slept at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He didn’t say what he was sorry for, and she found she no longer cared to ask.

“There. That’s enough, that's all.”

The years passed, one after another, full of small things but uneventful in the eye of history. 

The smith could be patient when the world around him allowed for it, but it was easier when he had something to craft. Long years in the snowy wastes of Hithlum with nothing to do but hide from his master and wait had not been so easy. Here, though, time was less difficult: he had things to make, things of beauty to bring into being, and he could wait.

He spent long hours drawing out plans: for Pelargir with new docs and rebuilt bridges, for his warrior’s tower. This in itself was calming. He would work long into the evening, under candlelight when the days grew shorter, piles of plans and notes around him, ink sent by the elves as a gift, papers and pens. 

He hired builders from the southern realms and sent some of the younger ones from Pelargir to train with them. Theo showed a skill for it but kicked against the limits of an apprenticeship and eventually they let him go back to his place in the city guard, to Bronwyn’s annoyance.  “He has courage enough,” the smith said. “Let Arondir teach him calm because I can’t.” And Arondir did, guiding by quiet example, continuing to guard the city and its people.

The smith wondered from time to time exactly how much Arondir trusted him. Unlike the Southlanders he had known a Middle-earth before Beleriand fell, a Middle-earth where Melkor’s armies were vast and terrible. He might not have Galadriel’s boundless anger but he would not have the humans’ easy trust either. But he cared for the people of the city, and it was an easy enough matter to let him serve in a way that protected them regardless of their king, particularly when Bronwyn handled much of the day-to-day running of the city.

The smith planned bridges, new port buildings out of rubble, smithies and workshops. The city’s walls needed repairs and rebuilding that seemed endless but this was work that needed to be done alongside everything else. Pelargir was still so fragile, pressed in on all sides by potential enemies: the elves might one day choose to turn on them, the tribes gathered under the smith’s crown might see its growing grandeur and decide to seize it while they could, there were still orcs in the lands to the east, and in the west the island kingdom lay silent and waiting, a dark beast in the sea.

“You spend so long thinking of us as surrounded by enemies that we might as well be under siege already,” his warrior queen chided him.

“And didn’t Melian do the same with Doriath? Very strong enchantments she had in place all around. What was that for, to keep out squirrels?”

A slight dancing smile at the corners of her mouth, that look he knew very well indeed. “Melian was not forever thinking of war.”

“Nor am I. I’m thinking about not needing one.”

He was tying jewels into her hair, tiny rings around neat narrow braids, fine chains and loops gathered back into ornate silver leaves. A compromise, one reached in small steps over a long time: he could do as he pleased with her hair, but the dresses she wore in their throne room would be made by the elves. 

She wore red today, deep and rich as wine. She had sewn this one herself. It suited her well, here in the first sun of the morning, sitting at his writing table where the light was the best. The lace at her neck felt as delicate as gossamer under his lips.

“No,” she said.

“We have time.”

“I don’t have the patience for you to spend any longer redoing my hair after.”

“You just dislike staying still.” Another rope of braid fastened in, a looping curve studded with silver. Her attendants could do this well enough but he preferred to take care of it himself when he had the time, creating new patterns, never tiring of the way her hair felt between his fingers. “Are you happy, elf?”

Her smile caught slightly, as if it were snagged on the edges of his words. “Here? In Pelargir?”

“In general.”

She took a while to answer. “No,” she said. And then, “Sometimes.”

Another few braids, held between his fingers as he twisted a thicker section of hair back into a rope. “You would not have been happy if I had left you in Lindon. You would have been unable to move against me and the elves would have given you nothing.”

She snorted at that, a small huff of breath that gave away little. Otherwise she stayed quiet and let him finish her hair in silence. 

Once he was done he set her crown on top of it, pearl and silver decorated with patterns of curled apple tree leaves. She reached up to adjust it the way she always did, no matter how carefully he placed it.

His own crown remained the same gold circlet he had dug out of a burial mound a day’s ride from Lindon. Some lost king, his name and kingdom and language now all forgotten under ages of grassroots and stone, who must have lived and died before Galadriel even set foot on Middle-earth. Now he was only crumbling bone below chambered rock lying among grave-goods: bronze weapons and clay pots, strings of amber beads and cloth long disintegrated. The pale skull had seemed to snarl back at the smith as he tugged the crown free and he’d said “not like you need it now, is it,” as he sat in the grave brushing off the dirt with his sleeve.

He would have another in time. He would make his own. Or more - why settle at one? Yes, several perhaps, one suited for battle, another for holding court, one grand creation of chained jewels for meeting with the people of the south, one of fine filigreed silver for the elves of the north. He would not lack for crowns. 

He walked along the high terrace now with his warrior, his beautiful elf queen, the long way to the throne room they shared but worth it for the views of their city. It pleased her to see it flourish. It pleased him too although his ambitions for it likely reached beyond hers. There were ships in the harbour now, with the river-mouth a cold sheet of silver beyond them and past that the endless ocean disappearing into a haze. 

They had a kingdom now, or something much closer to one. They had ships of their own which could navigate the wide Anduin with ease and go out from the coast as far as the isle of Tolfalas in the bay or with wood and stone to build the watchtower that now kept guard over the seas. They had treaties with most of the little fractured tribal kingdoms around them, grateful for the protection of a Maia king even if his powers were still so modest. 

And he had his queen, who had now stopped to look out over the city with her neat hands folded on the stone. She was silent but there was a coldness in her gaze that said too much.

“You’re going back to your lands,” he said. “Aren’t you? You always leave when you look like that.”

“I always return.”

He gathered her close in his arms and although she still did not turn to face him she relaxed against him, let his chin come to rest against her crown. 

It was possible to imprison a warrior, but not a queen; as it was possible to persuade a queen with treasures and comforts and land, but not a warrior. She seemed always to be dancing away from him in those years. But she trusted him, he thought, a little more; she seemed less quick to anger and the anger she did allow was a more familiar and practised one that she had little interest in concealing. 

She had settled into familiarity with the comforts she would allow herself. She would share his bed, although he was not to share hers; she would sit beside him on their thrones, or at the grand feasts they now held every few months to celebrate the turn of the seasons. She cared for the fields and the crops around Pelargir, and her little apple trees still growing. She led defence practices with Arondir and brought the Silvan archers from her lands in companies that changed twice a year. She seemed, if not happy, at least somewhat at peace.

And then after a while something would turn in her again, and he would see the steel in her grow brittle and defiant against everything she surrounded herself with. She would become short-tempered with him and more vicious once again in his bed. Sometimes she would go away to her lands then, alone, and spend a month or two or three with the elves. At others she would go out to the higher land where the river cascaded down in waterfalls and sit for a while, days at a time, alone. When he came out to find her she would sometimes tell him she was leaving for a time and sometimes she would lean comfortable in the curl of his arm and talk about things only they remembered: Valinor, and the Trees, and Aulë’s hand smoothing metal filings off his workbench, each one turning to a tiny star as it floated to the ground. 

Today she was still here with him but he could feel part of her already drifting and distant. He put his hand over hers as it rested on the capstones and nudged at the edges of her mind, only gently but enough. She was storm-tossed and troubled and somehow unclear, as though the heavy sea-fogs that covered Pelargir on summer mornings had settled on her soul. 

His own doing, maybe. Likely. He should not have asked if she was happy when no answer she gave would please her.

He kissed the lace at her neckline again and this time she did not object. She turned her head slightly for him, closing her eyes, letting him touch and lift and move her just so against the stone wall. 

She never sought light from him for she had enough of her own and he had little to spare. What he could give instead when she was like this was a certain clarity: sharpness like the edge of a sword, sight like clear water, a remembering when she was lost in the turmoil of her mind. 

“Calm,” he said, “calm, this is better, be calm,” feeling it run through her as a shiver. 

“I don’t ask for your counsel,” her words quick-bitten and harsh. But she moved with him as he guided her. He could be careful, gentle even; he could be sure not to mar her braided hair, nor even displace her crown. He liked his Queen greatly just like this. 

She gasped a little at one point and that was all the sound there was for a while.

He showed her unity, everything working together. He showed her how the way the threads of her pleasure gathering together and reweaving themselves was the same as the stroke of his hand on her thigh, the same as the rays of the sun casting long lines of light on the ocean, all of them notes in the same chord. “See,” he whispered, “see,” trying to hold his own focus as the joy of her pleasure nearly overwhelmed him.

She would go, no doubt. She would go away to her tower by the sea and sleep alone in her soft blue bed, sit by the young apple trees she had taken there and talk to them as the elves did, watch the sea and dream of her brothers, her parents, her cousins. It was fitting for her that she should have her kingdom and her elves and her fortress and all of his gifts she wished for, just as she pleased. 

And then she would return home to him.

Galadriel woke in a hollow of soft leaves, the cape she had kept as a blanket pulled around her in the chill of the night. The Silvan elves were already laying out bread and fruit and water and for a while she lay just listening to their voices, the soft sounds of Sindarin mingled with their own language. She had learned it herself in Doriath long ago, when Celeborn’s endless yearning to know more about the world beyond the safety of their borders had been possible to sate with books and study. She had even learned some of their songs then and was well received for that here, although they teased her well for her Noldor accent.

The Silvan elves did not live in the same manner as the Noldor and so she was not their Queen in the sense that she would have been to her own people. They still accepted her as Queen in their own meaning of it, though, and that was enough, or perhaps it was better. They were their own people with their own customs, their own legends, their own strange dwellings twining up high into the trees. They accepted her protection and they sent archers for Pelargir, and both of these things they seemed to consider less important than the manner of their ordinary lives, the days spent under the canopy of trees, the evenings in long feasts of food and song, the endless stories they told in verse and song, created by one taking up another’s story and then passing to another, and another, under the stars.

Arondir came with her, sometimes, and seemed more himself among them than she had ever seen him; he laughed with a lightness she could barely imagine in him in Pelargir. He brought Bronwyn, sometimes, and Theo once, and she had thought at first this was so that they could meet his people, but she wondered now whether his true intent was so that both Bronwyn and Theo could see him as he was among them.  

This time, she had travelled here alone. She had planned to come anyway but this was earlier than she thought; Pelargir felt like her home until its very familiarity turned it into a prison, and she found herself suddenly wrenched into resentment, wanting to be away from the city, from him, from everything she had helped him make. 

There were three children among the Silvan elves, currently sitting together on a great curved tree root playing some game of dice and leaves she didn’t understand. They were a cause of great celebration and they were likely also a reason why the elves had chosen to travel here, away from the lands where danger seemed more present. At times, she wished she could think less about that danger, that it would prey less on her mind when there was so little she could yet do; and at times, she longed only to take a company out with her to hunt what orcs remained and learn who they answered to.

She had brought up the orcs once with him once, and once only. Even that seemed dangerous enough, the sense that she might be advancing on some trap all too keen in her mind. Still, he knew why the Silvan elves in her lands had travelled west and so it would surely have been more suspicious if she had not raised this with him, and so she did, over one of the meals they still shared in the evenings sometimes alone.

He seemed untroubled. He said only that the orcs would be raiding for food, disorganised and lost without any there to feed and house them and give them purpose, and it wasn’t worth trouble.

“The reports are of them fighting in formation,” she said, refusing to let him shrug it off so easily. “This suggests a commander on the field and some sort of strategy.”

He looked up from his fish pie and for a moment he seemed to be watching her, a sharper look in his eye. “Yes, you said.” And then, more lightly: “They keep to what they’re used to, that’s all it’ll be. Besides, we’re keeping watch on the north. If they start moving we’ll know.” 

Afterwards, she thought - did I say that?

“You did. You did.”

“Not to you!”

“It wasn’t a lie, was it?” He stretched out the muscles in his back and shoulders, watching dust-motes dance in the sunbeams overhead. 

The wardens watching the road arrived late in the afternoon with Elrond. He was a few days earlier than she had expected; there had been a fair wind for most of the sail from Lindon, and then fine weather from the ride from Edhellond. The journey would have been shorter still if his ship had taken him to her tower on the coast, but this, they had decided, was unsafe. The wardens might not be the only eyes watching these lands and one elf riding from Edhellond would be easier to miss than one ship arriving from Lindon. 

As ever, the news he brought was carefully clipped and tidied before it was presented to her. Nothing further on the orcs, although there were rumours of more movement further to the west in Rhovanion. In Eregion, where two of the Istar remained close to Celebrimbor and his jewel-smiths, little again: no messages from Pelargir, no sign of any contact, and Celebrimbor swore there were no others he was working with.

“He wouldn’t lie.” They were sitting alone by the bank of a stream on a carpet of bright grass and blue speedwell flowers, and it all seemed a world away from war and orcs and whatever dark magic she had sensed in a fortress in the snow in Forodwaith. “I don’t think he would lie. And if you say the Istar are teaching them new ways of crafting, what would they want with Mairon? But I cannot believe he is doing nothing.”

“Mairon,” Elrond said.

It was not an accusation, although it maybe should have been. She allowed herself to be ashamed for the space of three long breaths - allowed herself to fully feel it, all she had given away, all she had granted him - and then dismissed it. “I can hardly continue to call him Sauron the Abhorred if I am to sit beside him on a throne.”

“No,” Elrond said, “of course, no.”

“And if any of you would question my loyalty over a name -”

“No. Truly, not. No-one has questioned your loyalty, Galadriel. If anything, the fear is quite the opposite.” He was looking a little past her, the way he had always done when there was something he was not quite saying. “You are in a difficult position in Pelargir. There’s still concern - quite substantial concern - over what that position might become if you were to confront him over any suspicions.”

“Then there are things you have been ordered not to tell me?” A deliberately evasive smile, and no answer. “There are. Elrond. Tell me.”

“Well.” He shifted position, gathering his knees underneath him. “Specifically, things I have been told not to tell you unless you ask, which conveniently for both of us you just did. Curumo and Alatar believe that he has continued working with the smiths of Eregion, somehow. The rings they have made since he left there - I haven’t had the time to explore this as well as I would like to, but it seems the magic they harness is quite considerable. It suggests a power beyond the abilities our own people should be able to find. But that’s all, Galadriel. It’s suspicions and worry, it’s nothing concrete.”

“You still told me.”

“You still deserved to know. But you can't raise this with him, not yet. Wait until we have something more. Just - be careful. Whatever you call him, be careful.” 

She watched the stream running, cold and clear water coming down from the hills and through these woods on its journey to seek the sea. This new knowledge wasn’t much, perhaps. It wasn’t enough to act on, and barely enough even to guide her emotions. She could choose fear, perhaps, at what new evil he might be creating; she could choose hope that she might yet be free of the vow she’d made. But neither choice seemed quite right, and what she felt instead was neither of those things.

She stayed with Elrond and the Silvan elves for several weeks more, and then a while longer again after Elrond left. It should have been an easy time, a nourishing one. It should have been the way it usually was, where every day among her own people felt a little brighter, the sun a little warmer, the taste of each meal a little sweeter. It had, to begin with; but after Elrond’s departure back north to Edhellond she felt more and more that she must return, that every day away was an absence from duty. 

She hoped this would subside after she set off for the long ride home but it did not. Instead she made the days longer and pushed her brave mare further, whispering kindness and thanks as they set off with the sunrise and rode long into the dark. She had become accustomed to this road, now, and her mare knew the way home without guidance. 

As they travelled, she remembered the first times she had come here: first with Arondir to beg Edhellond for aid, and then with Sauron (and she let the name hiss in her mouth) so that he could show her the lands he’d given her, smug and joyful and warm against her as he held her on the meadows of clover by the sea, and then finally alone coming to meet Elrond and Mithrandir and continue her fight in the only way left to her. All of this had been only a few years: not long as elves consider time, but a heavy, dragging eternity in her memory now. 

Night was falling softly as she approached Linhir by the river, with little light left in the day and her tired mare stumbling over loose stones on their path. She had thought to press on if there was anyone at the ferry but by the time she arrived had almost talked herself around against it: one night here, an inn where her horse could be fed well and rested, and they might even make up the time the next day.

But in the distance, where the great island of Tolfalas was a dark outline against the dusk sky, she could see a bright flame burning. It was the beacon at the watchtower, giving the signal they had built it for and hoped never to need: Enemy ships are coming.

Chapter Text

Gold wings across the sea!
Grey light from tree to tree, 
Gold hair beside my knee, 
I pray thee come to me,
Gold wings!

William Morris, ‘Golden Wings’

It was a little over a day before Galadriel reached Pelargir, her horse sweat-soaked and exhausted. The road back had seemed so much longer than it usually did, a fine mist of rain that soaked her for most of the journey only adding to the sense of endlessness. Too far, she’d been too far. 

Pelargir seemed oddly small to her as she drew close. There were archers already arrayed on the city walls in numbers surely too small to make a difference against an invading army, and she thought it’s not enough , and then that it would never have been enough; nothing they had done could have been. 

There were no ships in sight as she approached: not in the city’s ports, not in the great mouth of the Anduin, and not as far back as she could see between the land and the isle of Tolfalas where the beacon was still burning. They must still be beyond it, then, slow-moving in the still air. Still, she did not doubt the threat was real. She had heard his voice in her mind not long after leaving Linhir, Galadriel, come home, the beacon is burning, come home, as the silver ring grew cold on her hand.

“I know,” she’d growled at the time, unsure whether he would even hear her. It wasn’t until some time later that she realised he’d not spoken to her this way before outside of her dreams and wondered if he was growing in power or if he had been capable of it all along.

She had spent most of the journey thinking of Pelargir. It had been only six years she had been here, barely much at all in the great passage of time, and yet each year had seemed to etch something within her of this half-ruined city slowly turning from rubble to order. 

She remembered those archers when they had first come, laughing to each other, sitting in circles on the stone to sing as if they barely noticed the southlanders watching them with long-ingrained suspicion. They did as she asked, they followed her orders, they called her their queen and bowed to her, but unlike Arondir these elves had never fought in another’s armies or for any force but their own. Their duty here they seemed to take much in the same manner as her claim to the land; they respected it out of politeness, as they would any such strange customs of another whose guest they were.

Mairon they had regarded with more suspicion, albeit no outright hostility. To begin with he had made a point of drawing her attention to this and pretending to be shocked. She couldn’t tell whether he disliked having anyone in his city who doubted him or whether he liked having elves that served at his command however indirectly. Perhaps it was both; with him such things were often both. 

She remembered how they had walked together along the city walls when the archers were first there, him with his hands clasped behind his back leaning over to whisper to her: “Should I keep my distance from you? Would they look at you poorly if I took your hand?” And then when she snapped at him to stop, “Should we pretend you’re only here as my captive?” 

“Enough.”

He was light and laughing, a confident bounce in his step she only saw in him when he was particularly pleased about something. “I’m only trying to think ahead. They might disapprove of you sharing my bed.”

“You would hardly care if they did. You like that, you like thinking of my people knowing it.”

“Oh, that’s…” A new smile broke like a flame from burning firewood. “Maybe a little. Yes, I do. I like elves knowing that I have their golden princess and she is all mine and I can fuck her every -”

His hand caught hers in the air, halfway to his face. 

“Now,” he said. “That’s not very gentle of you. I was only going to say that I wouldn’t be too troubled for my part if they knew how you please me.”

“And what of how you please me?”

“The feared lieutenant of Morgoth down on his knees for an elf? Yes, why shouldn’t they? I’ll serve you however you like, you know that.” He forced her hand in closer, close enough to kiss the edge of her wrist. “But my point, fair and gracious queen, is that I won’t have you humiliated. If they look at you poorly I’ll throw them off the walls myself. You only need give the word. And if you want me to keep three paces apart from you while we walk the walls of our city… then I’ll do that too.”

He felt like the air before a storm, charged and heavy. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” she said, wrenching her wrist from his grip. “Go and make something.” And he laughed and bowed and let her be.

Working with his hands did not exactly calm him but it settled him, channelled his energy into certainty and focus. She had wondered if this was because his work in the forge reminded him of what he had once been but he was the same way with hunting, too, and the same with sex. There seemed to be something in the physicality of the world that he craved. She could not truly believe that he loved Middle-earth as he had told the elves for it was not love she saw; rather it was a hunger, a need, a never-sated longing for the very matter of Arda, and to have his own hands be the one crafting and shaping it down to every tiny detail.

For her, there was another kind of calm found in the making of things. As the city grew steadier on its feet she found she had more time, and less need - sometimes, reluctantly conceded - to live forever on her guard. She taught herself how to work designs into leather and made bridles and harnesses and book bindings in elaborate patterns: falling leaves in long-lost forests, stars over the ice floes of the Helcaraxë, swan-ships safe in a far distant harbour.

There were workshops enough now but she preferred to work in daylight, sat cross-legged with a board on her lap on their terrace. There were enough buildings repaired and rebuilt in Pelargir now that its people no longer needed to live crowded together in whatever shelter they could find, and so its king and queen had this now too, a space of flowering vines and sunlight where she would work for hours and he would sit with her, talking or reading or thinking or simply watching her in peace. 

They sent guards out to greet her at the gate, guards she knew who met her with tight, thankful smiles and escorted her back through the city. Silent crowds of people with worried, pinched faces stopped to watch her pass, her horse keeping up a stumbling, tired trot. “The king -” she began as they came to a halt in the main square but he was there already somehow without her noticing he had appeared. She had found his ability to do that menacing once; now it felt more of an annoyance than a threat.

“That’s not your horse,” he said, sounding more casual than he should have done, as she swung down from the saddle and one of the stable-hands took her reins. She patted the horse’s dark neck where the reins had left lines of frothed sweat and whispered her thanks for its bravery and patience and strength. It rubbed its head against her side and told her in its own way of aching hooves, thirst, pride. “Where’s your horse?”

“She was too tired to travel fast enough. I had to leave her at Linhir. They will turn her loose to find her way back once she’s fed and rested.” They had offered a rider as well, but Galadriel couldn’t risk anyone coming to Pelargir now. She had barely had the time even to say goodbye to her beautiful, loyal mare who had brought her all the way from Lindon, only long enough to run one of the horse’s long ears through her hand and whisper her thanks. 

“Ah,” he said, “well, at least you came.” 

He walked her up the stairs with his hand on the small of her back, telling her that he had her armour ready and waiting, that the ships were not far now, that she had time to change but little time to talk. He was already dressed for battle himself in a mail shirt with a sword at his side. 

They passed others, hurrying, gathering shields and food, and she saw eyes widen to see her and hands reach out to her as though she had come to save them and felt it all wrench at her soul. She greeted them all in passing and was glad that he hurried her on.

He led her up to one of the rooms that had become more and more one of their own, a sitting room with a great carved fireplace and a thick woven rug that had been a gift from one of the southern tribes. Her armour was already here as he had promised and he watched her undress, leaning back on his hands against the table where her gambeson and mail were already laid out. When she glared at him he only shrugged and said “I’ve missed you” and didn’t pretend to make it an apology.

“Be useful at least. Tell me what you know.”

He laughed under his breath and brought her gambeson to put on, holding it politely for her arms and then fastening the long row of buckles down the side himself. “It’s three ships,” he said. “We know that much.”

“Númenor?”

“Of course Númenor.”

“Then three could be the head of a larger fleet. They have -”

“Do teach me about warfare, Galadriel.” He pulled the mail chausses over the soft wool leggings she wore, belting them at her waist. “We’ve had several reports back from the island now and no sign of more ships. They’re also travelling slowly. Could mean they’re waiting for a fleet to catch up or could mean they’re telling us they’re not hostile. Maybe they’re planning to try peace talks first. They’re warships either way, though. Arms. Arms, elf, move.”

She let him help her into the mail shirt. It had been years now since she’d worn armour but it was easily familiar, the weight of it on her shoulders, the muffled sound of the metal being pulled into place. “How far away are the ships now?”

“A few hours by my reckoning. Could be longer if they keep dallying but I’m not inclined to have them find us unprepared. There, now.” He fastened the belt around her waist and stepped back to look at her. “Very nice,” he said, but was moving to the next thing even as he spoke, taking the white cloak that lay folded on the table, the one that carried the sigil of her father’s house. “This and your crown, I think.”

“My crown, for fighting?”

“For avoiding a fight that we can’t win. Unless you brought a few thousand armed elves with you we’ll need to talk our way out of this one. Fortunately for you,” gathering the cloak around her shoulders and fastening it at her throat, “I’m good at that.” He was grinning, confident, pleased.

Her first thought was to challenge him on whatever plan he had devised without her, but she bit it back and let him place her crown on her head and twine her loose hair through his fingers, the way he liked so much to do. “Leave your hair like this, I think,” he said. “Let them remember who you are. You know I thought the ships would make it before you? That would have been an interesting one. Stalling a Númenor war-fleet with tales of an elf-queen they couldn’t see.”

As it would have happened, no doubt, if she hadn’t already been travelling back. It was rare she was ever unable to meet his eye but now all she could see was Pelargir under siege and she could not look at him, their rooms, any of it, her mind choked with images of a burning city. 

He cradled her face in one hand and his thumb stroked her cheek. “You’re here now.”

“I would never abandon them.”

“I said that. Even before we first came to Pelargir. I told them you’d come back.” 

She could not afford to lose focus before a battle. She could not afford to let him distract her with this, with the memory of what he’d done. There was too much here now, too many layers of what he was and pretended to be, she could barely think through it all.

She pulled away from his hand but he said “Listen,” and kissed her so gently, so sweetly. “If Pelargir falls I don’t want my last memory of you here to be like this. I want to remember what we built here.”

“Don’t -”

“We. Come with me, come on.”

She didn’t object, or didn’t object enough, and he led her back out into the main hallways, through corridors and stairs and towers and terraces until they stood on a high viewpoint looking out over Pelargir; not over the river, where the ships must be drawing closer even now, but across the rooftops towards the hills. Below them she could see the greater part of the city, spread out before them like a tapestry. All the buildings they’d mended, the roofs they’d rebuilt, the carvings cleared of weeds and dirt and brushed clean again, the streets broad and full of colour, the people milling around far below. 

“We made this,” he said. “This is ours. My lady of light, my queen,” and he laced his fingers through hers, and the pull of him and the ring and the last six years were like a tide drowning her, dragging her down into endless water. 

He kissed her and she found that in that one moment she wanted nothing else; that with him, the warmth of his hands on her back and his arms snug at her waist, the scent of him familiar against her, she felt herself again. A soldier and commander and queen with her city to protect. A blade, focused and sharp.

“Generous of you to tell it that way. I thought you’d have been far less kind.”

“But it is what happened. What I felt. I wanted…” She isn’t sure what she wanted, so much. It feels important to know the story and to know it is her own. Surely - although she would rather not think of it - she will be asked again. “I wanted to tell it the way I remember it. It has to be true.”

“That’s truth, then. What I said to you.”

“Would you have told the truth if this was your part, then? You would have said that you were deceiving me -”

“I was not -”

“Letting me think you believed those ships were a threat to us.”

He laughs. “They might have been. And maybe I kept a few things back from you. A few! I truly didn’t know what would happen. I needed to know I had you.”

“Did you have me?”

His hand on her face is light and soft as the afternoon sun. “Not enough.”

They went down to the river together to greet the ships, her dagger at her side and her sword held by a soldier who kept behind her. Their people drew aside for them on the wide streets and bowed as they passed. She said nothing.

It came to her only as a passing thought, but one that she couldn’t quite shake: she had seen him afraid. She had seen what he was like when he thought Mithrandir had come, when he thought the Istari were bringing the armies of the Valar again. She had seen what fear looked like for him - and it did not look like this.

“As I said. Not enough.”

The smith watched the great ships draw in. They came more slowly than a war fleet should, more formidable than a peace envoy would. He could see soldiers out on their decks already with Numenor tabards over scale armour. 

“Why black sails?” his warrior murmured beside him, too quiet for their city guard to hear her. 

“So they have.” Not in place of their normal sails, but draped over them on the higher spars. “Maybe they’ve turned corsair since we last visited.”

A growled sigh. She was beautiful waiting for battle, his warrior, every part of her braced and proud and perfect, but she had very little tolerance for anything she considered a distraction. Him, in particular.

“It’s mourning,” she said. “Someone has died and now they have brought warships to us.”

He could feel the tension in her and the fear, and the memory of all those elf-cities long gone. He wanted to reassure her but there was little she would hear. Once again, Pelargir did not have enough. Not enough guards, not enough defences, not enough supplies to withstand a siege even if it did. 

If he’d still had the power he’d once known he could have wrapped it in enchantments, hid it away, filled the river with visions of sea-serpents and wyrms and great fanged fish with a terrifying intelligence in their eyes, water-spirits that would rise chanting from the waves with armour made from sailor’s bones, until the warships turned tail and fled. But he was not so strong, then. His strength was a spare thing still fleeting and fragile and he was still learning what power meant without a master to channel it. He had needed to follow a more traditional way.

There was a cold wind off the sea as they stood watching the three ships draw in, a bare few dozen of them on the stone walkways by the quay. Not an army, not even pretending. Few people spoke and what there was came hushed and hidden. He wondered if they were waiting for word from him or from Galadriel - an order? A speech? A call to die with honour? He could feel fear from them, even a little from the elf archers, all wrapped around their feet like morning mist. 

“Hold fast,” he said. “There’ll be no battle if I can help it.”

The port at Pelargir had been built for Númenor’s great ships. This, in retrospect, was something he should perhaps have corrected when it was repaired. Their own ships were still few then and not enough to block the port, not even enough to slow the great warships that approached. He noticed his warrior’s eyes linger on a smaller ship docked at the shore with its sails furled, one of the sailing scows they used to travel back and forth to the watchtower on Tolfalas, and said quietly to her, “What are you thinking, elf?”

“You could have returned to Valinor.”

Never predictable. “Be glad I didn’t or you’d be facing down Númenor on your own.” 

She huffed another sigh and went back to her elf archers, who were discussing in whispers how many soldiers the warships held.

The ships themselves stopped and stilled in the deep water in the centre of the channel. Anchors dropped, sails furled. Nothing else seemed to happen for a very long time, and then the lead ship put down a smaller rowboat with maybe a dozen figures within it. 

He felt the elf archers beside him move and barked “Bows down” at the same time as Galadriel commanded the same in their language. They obeyed. He humoured himself that they might even have been listening to him rather than her. 

The little boat made its way slowly to the quay, a small thing against the bulk of the warships behind it. The soldiers were in rich blue tabards over scale armour, swords sheathed at their side. The smith wondered if any were the swords he’d made for them; wouldn’t that be fitting. For here they were pretending at friendship, maybe, or peace, or at least some sort of civil treaty rather than sending in all their soldiers together to take the city they claimed as theirs, but they had brought an army all the same.

He beckoned two of the nearest humans over, boys of barely fourteen years who had worked at the port since winter. “Get the rope and tie their boat for them. Stay polite.”

Galadriel caught his arm and he put a hand over hers. “It’s all right, be calm.”

“You are sending children -”

“We're short on soldiers. Trust me now.” He tightened his hand on hers until she pulled it away in discomfort, her lips pressed closed. She was unhappy, which he disliked, but it would be well. The rowboat had come close enough now that he could see the faces of its passengers: they had sent Elendil.

“Galadriel, with me,” he said, and commanded the rest to stay back, the archers to keep bows ready but down, and her to walk at his side, glorious in her white cloak and her silver crown, down to greet the emissaries of Númenor. 

The soldiers came ashore first, in two short lines that faced one another, standing perfectly in formation and on guard, heads held high. Then Elendil in grander robes than the sea-guard tunic he’d worn those years ago, confident and at ease. There was no sword at his belt.

No, he should have a different name. The captain? The sea-captain had not come with a sword -

“Why should this matter? Why not say his name?”

“It’s a story, Galadriel. Different things matter in stories. Even ours, if you tell it right.”

The sea-captain, whose name meant ‘elf-friend’, had not come with a sword. He bowed to the warrior first and then to the smith beside her. “Númenor brings its greetings and its friendship,” he said. “And if you’ll receive us, our queen, Tar-Miriel, would welcome your hospitality now in Pelargir.”

“Of course,” the smith said. “You’ll always be welcome here.” 

His warrior was less reassured than she should have been, although he knew her well enough by now to catch the little, hidden signs of relief she didn’t realise she showed: she stretched out the fingers of one hand down at her side, she breathed a little easier. “Your sails,” she said. “You come here in grief.”

The sea-captain conceded that with a nod and a calm, steady expression that gave away nothing. “We mourn for our king,” he said. “He should have been here with the fleet. He was lost to us shortly before we left for Middle-earth. In honour of his memory, we made the journey in his name.”

“My sympathy for your people’s sorrow,” the smith said, ignoring the way that his warrior’s narrowed eyes immediately flicked to him. 

Chapter Text

I’ll give you gold, I’ll give you pearl,
I’ll give you costly rich robes to wear,
If you will spare me a little while
And give me time my life to amend,
And give me time my life to amend.

(‘Death and the Lady’, traditional.)

It seemed to Galadriel that the arrival of the ships was like the eye of a storm, with everything settled for a moment in a strange calm. Before there had been a whirl of activity in preparing the city for an attack, and then everything had stilled in quiet as they watched the ships come in. Now everything was back in motion again, but this time to receive the newly arrived Númenoreans as guests. Everything was moving and everyone was busy, and Mairon at the centre of it all was organising every last move just as well as if he was commanding forces in battle.

Galadriel watched it all unfold, refusing to take any of the roles he tried to assign to her. They all seemed relatively pointless and done with the intention of keeping her occupied some distance from the port. She felt troubled in the midst of a crowd otherwise giddy with relief. 

He, of course, noticed this. The third time she made it clear she would stay at his side, he made a point of leaning needlessly close to her in a ridiculous parody of intimacy to whisper into her ear, “don’t you trust me?”

“No,” she said, a response more reflex than reason. 

He laughed. “Were you hoping for a battle? I’ll find you some orcs.” Clapped her on the shoulder and turned his attention back to the legion of arrangements that had to be made, each one of which he seemed to insist on having a hand in. 

This gave her no reassurance at all, of course, but then it was hard to seem hesitant among a city that was so glad. The tension seemed to have unravelled so fast it had left Pelargir almost unbalanced, staggering on its feet as if dizzy from a dance. Even Mairon acted like he too felt little more than relief and celebration.

Only Bronwyn, who came to them with arms folded and two fingers drumming impatiently against her elbow, seemed anything less than enthusiastic about all that was happening. She shot a quick, almost apologetic glance to Galadriel, but to Mairon was direct. “You are letting an army camp in the shadow of our walls.”

He rolled his eyes, but Galadriel sensed no malice in it. He trusted Bronwyn well enough to leave much of the city’s operation up to her. Whatever uneasy alliance they may have had in Pelargir’s early days had stabilised itself and been built, like the city, into something stronger. Galadriel remembered Bronwyn telling her that he had brought them Adar’s head once as proof of his good intentions; she had assumed at the time that this was a message to all of the Southlanders, but over the years it seemed more likely that it was a gift chosen for Bronwyn more than any of the others, in the knowledge that if she would support him then the others would follow.

“Better than having them on this side of the walls,” he said now. “And I can’t very well tell them to leave half their soldiers on the ships. Where else would I put them?”

“On the other side of the Sirith from their horses,” Bronwyn said before he had even finished speaking.

“It’s a hostile move. They won’t accept that.”

“Then leave some of their soldiers with the horses on the far side and the rest over here. We have better grazing there anyway. I don’t like the idea of a fully armed and equipped army so close as that.”

“All right, show me where you mean.” He took Galadriel’s hand in a move that was at the same time affectionate and mocking, and said “Coming with us, I assume?”

She shook her head. She needed to be alone for a while, to piece together all of this in her mind until the shape of what she was missing became more clear.

“This would have all been so much easier for both of us if you weren’t so suspicious of me.”

She shakes her head because no, it wouldn’t. Perhaps he doesn’t even believe it himself. Sometimes his objections to the way she tells this story feel more like a habit than anything else, as if he owes some token protest to his own past self.

“You could have spared us all that pain,” he says, and now with this she isn’t even so sure he doesn’t truly believe it, doesn’t want to convince her, doesn’t believe in some part of his ancient soul that knew existence before the world was born that he could somehow change the past if she would only agree with him the present.

She allows herself to wonder, for a moment. If she had decided to trust him despite her worries, believing that he would at least protect Pelargir, what would have been different? He would have reassured her and she would have let him push down her suspicions, and maybe in time she would have come to believe there had never been any ground in them anyway. Maybe in time she would have learned to trust him over any unease she might feel; maybe in time he wouldn’t have needed to reassure her because she would have reassured herself, choosing his future and whatever may lie in it.

And then. And then.

She pictures different castles, different thrones. A world that would bloom beneath her feet like the lawns of Valinor. Middle-earth screaming as he tears it apart to remake it -

“Don’t,” he says, as the thought of it shudders through her and comes out as a sob, “don’t, we don’t - I’ll stop. All right? It didn’t happen, let it be.”

She lets him calm her, his hand soft and light as he strokes her hair. He used to try to convince her it would not have been that way, if she’d only gone along with him. He no longer does.

The soldiers were settled according to Bronwyn’s wishes, in the end. They were soldiers and this was an army and none tried to deny it - theirs was too great a force to be merely an escort for their queen. Still, it was a smaller force than Númenor could have summoned and for that she tried to be thankful. 

They did not receive Míriel in their throne room. “Seems impolite,” he said, “too formal, makes us look combative,” and while it seemed ridiculous for him to be saying this while they were both in armour she nodded and accepted it. Instead they greeted her at the dock where she was aided ashore by a younger woman in a dress the colour of Armenelos sunsets, soldiers at her side. She no longer wore a blindfold but her hand rested on her attendant’s arm. 

Mairon bowed and smiled and charmed them all, welcomed them to Pelargir and asked how Númenor fared, and accepted answers about fishing hauls and newly-built canals that seemed to dance around some other truth none of them wished to discuss. Together they walked up to the main square, with Míriel’s attendant quietly describing the city to her as they went: its streets, its colours, its statues, the crowd assembled to watch them. The soldiers kept their gaze fixed straight ahead and their step even. 

There were servants to take their guests to their rooms, but Míriel politely refused, saying that she had had plenty of rest on the journey and that they had a great deal to discuss. She did, however, dismiss all of her guards and the attendant at her side - all of her retinue, in fact, except for Elendil. 

Mairon remained his ever-charming self and agreed to all of this, although Galadriel noticed some distraction flickering in him, pulling his attention away. He excused himself as the Númenoreans left and had Galadriel escort Míriel and Elendil into the room they used for discussions of treaties and all such matters of diplomacy. She assumed he was checking on the guards - it always rankled him to have other soldiers in his city - but when she glanced back it was Míriel’s attendant he was speaking to, one hand on her shoulder, whispering something intently into her ear. 

“Who is that?” she asked quietly when he came back to them a few short moments later, and he only smiled and said “Elendil’s daughter” as though this was explanation in itself.

They took seats around the leather-topped table with its great map of Middle-earth, the one Galadriel had carved and inscribed herself. It had taken her weeks of steady, meticulous work to create, but full years before that to gather all the maps she could gain from Harad, from Edhellond, and (reluctantly, with some negotiation) from Lindon, to make it as accurate as she could. The forests were detailed in tiny perfect trees, the mountains marked with snow at their peaks. Great fish and serpents dived in the depths of the oceans.

Servants from Pelargir brought them clear water drawn up from the well that morning, seed-cakes and candied fruit, and tried not to stare too obviously at the queen as they withdrew. Elendil poured Míriel’s water for her. “A grand city you’ve built here,” he said. “Isildur told me of it.”

Galadriel thought of Isildur on the ship to Middle-earth those years ago, demoted to a stable-hand, coming up to the deck to see the first glimpse of land. “Is he well?”

“He is,” Elendil said, “thank you,” holding her eye long enough that she understood his thanks were for more than the polite inquiry.

Míriel kept her hand next to her cup of water with her fingers just brushing its edge, but waited until Galadriel and Mairon had each taken a sip of theirs before drinking. “When I was a child, I heard stories of Pelargir in its grandeur,” she said. “I remember a great book my father would read to me with paintings of it as it was. Please forgive my people if they seem to stare at it a little too blatantly. In recent years they have begun to think of it as that great port of Númenor’s still. You must remember that what they see is the world of a child’s picture-book, where things are far simpler than they are.” Another sip of her water. She seemed more determined than she had before, less divided between duties, and yet no less torn. “I dearly welcome the hospitality you have shown us so far despite our arrival in warships. I would have sent word to you if our circumstances had allowed it.”

“Of course,” Mairon said.

“Of course,” she followed, “we are not the only ones who concealed something of our intention.”

And Mairon laughed, spinning the tension into gold. “I did that when we first met, a little. I’ll grant you that. It wasn’t my intention to bring your people into a war, though, nor for the volcano to ruin our victory.”

“And nor for me to name you a king to the Southlanders?” 

His shrug was easy and light. “Some miscommunication. Which I’ll concede I took advantage of. They know what I am now, all of them, and I rule here at their welcome. In truth, when Elendil first brought us to your island, I’d had enough of ruling and war. I only wanted to be a smith.” His hand closed around Galadriel’s on the table before them, no attempt at subterfuge, and as her ring grew colder she felt his voice in her mind, a far darker and sharper hiss than the honeyed tones that passed his lips: Quiet, trust me, I know what I’m doing. 

Míriel smiled. “One of the Maiar, a journeyman smith in our forges.” 

“You have some good smiths. I was fairly impressed.”

“Indeed.” She drew something out of a hidden pocket in her robes and placed it out on the table between them: a Númenor guild-crest. Its metal shone dully in the sunlight. “A gift that our dearly mourned king was very keen that you should have. He intended to give it to you himself.”

An insult, it would have been, and Galadriel felt every muscle in her own hand tense in his. “What happened to him?” she said.

Don’t, Mairon’s irritated voice chided her. She stayed calm and untroubled and replied and would Míriel not find it strange if I was to sit here in silence letting you speak for both of us?

“He drowned,” Míriel said. “A short time before we were due to sail for Middle-earth. His servants found him in one of the palace bathing pools. Otherwise, you should know, Númenor would have come with many more ships and he would have been here in my place. Better for you that this did not happen.”

Mairon nodded, slow, thoughtful, and Galadriel thought of Númenor preparing for war: a fleet of ships readied, soldiers marching, swords forged on the very same anvil he had worked at. Pelargir could never have withstood them. “I do not believe war would have been your wish,” she said.

“Galadriel,” Mairon said. She lifted a hand to silence him. 

Míriel smiled, although there was little humour in it. “War is not my wish. But I have spent seven years ruling with no power, not even to have my own name. Númenor is bitterly divided and if I displease Pharazon’s supporters too greatly I will be deposed just as my father was. You say that you rule at the sufferance of your people, Lord Halbrand - Tar-Mairon - whichever you wish us to call you. However true that may be for you I think it is even more so for me. I will already face rumours that Pharazon’s death was a murder carried out at my command. So, yes, I come here with an army even though I have no wish for a war. I have a great number of my own people here with me who are watching me very carefully for any sign that I will concede too much to the elves. Galadriel, Númenor has not forgotten Middle-earth. We have not forgotten our old friendship with the elves. But we are grieving, and in our time of grief we are not yet back to ourselves.”

“I’m no elf, though,” Mairon said, taking the guild crest, waiting for Elendil to murmur briefly to Míriel. “I take it your people are all expecting me to receive this crest? A grand gesture to put me in my place?”

“Everyone who heard Pharazon’s speeches about you, yes. It was quite a central point.” 

“And you have a small army here itching for a fight and you need something to throw to them.” He turned the crest over and over in his hand, leaning back in his seat. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but Númenor’s territory here once extended much further east, didn’t it? North of the mountains, south of Rhovanion?”

Elendil, who had been watching in silence up to that point, raised an eyebrow. “I hope you’re not suggesting we pick a fight with Rhûn.”

“No, no, not Rhûn. Around here.” He tapped at the mountains further west, just before they turned southwards towards the Anduin. “Around here, you had these lands once. We’ve heard a lot of reports of orcs here. The human villages get raided, the elves have left. Galadriel has been concerned for some time but we haven’t been able to spare soldiers of our own for something so far distant. With your ships, though, that’s a few days’ sail and another few days’ ride. You get some old Númenor lands to fight over, your soldiers get the battle lust out of their blood, and we don’t need to worry about orcs coming further south for a good while. And this…” He flipped the guild crest in the air and caught it in the same hand, closing it neatly into his palm. “I’ll wear this while you’re here. I see no shame in being a smith.”

There was a great feast, because of course there was a great feast. How else to welcome visiting queens? The island people built a camp outside for their soldiers, and the smith had the people of his city bring them whatever they could - food, water, beer, gifts, even when it cut into their own stores, for hospitality now was more important than whatever may face them the next winter. The island people were friendly enough now but it did not take much for a crowd to turn.

So he gave them food and blankets and shelter and cards and dice and he walked around their camp patting people on the back and being cheered through spilling mugs of beer, and sent his warrior queen out to visit them herself despite her reluctance. And he threw them a feast in his great hall for as many as he could welcome there, and he fed them on all he could while apologising for the humble fare in his great city, and they laughed and praised him and their own queen smiled, just a little, and every moment made his own city feel safer.

His own warrior queen was out of armour now, dressed in fine blue silk from Harad. She sat beside him at the feast with a glass of untouched wine and frowned when she thought he wasn’t looking. She would speak to the island queen but said she wished to do so alone; she would share only a few brief pleasantries with the island people so long as the smith was by her side. She was, as a whole, not behaving as hospitably as he would have liked. 

He should have paid more attention to this, and did not, and would come to regret this greatly in time, but during those days her behaviour was more of an annoyance than anything else. He had too much else to do. 

“Try to seem a little more welcoming to our guests,” he whispered as he poured her wine, and she only hissed air beneath her teeth as she sighed.

“What you said to me was, ‘try not to make it seem as though I have an invisible knife to your throat the whole time you are with me.’”

“Well, you were.”

He caught her later in the half-privacy of a darkened corridor, pressing her back into a tapestry. Sometimes she welcomed his hands on her like this, too hungry to wait any longer for her, the keenness of his body pushed against hers as he whispered in detail everything he planned to do to her. Not so this time. She was tense under him, pulling her head away when he went to kiss her. 

“Stop it,” he whispered, barely loud enough to be heard over the sounds of laughter and argument and music still spilling out into the palace all around them. “I need to speak with you and I don’t want anyone looking too closely.”

“You need to speak with me.” And oh, she was angry with him, enough of a snap to her voice to divide him between wanting to snarl back at her and wanting to have her right there.

No. A distraction, either way. He could not afford distractions now, and not her the most delicious of them all.

“Stay here,” he said, holding her wrist, and she stilled. “What is it you want from me, Galadriel? I’ve headed off a siege. I’m dealing with the orcs you’re so bothered about. Númenor is willing to be on good terms with us again. And yet you’re still not happy. You avoid me, you won’t come to my bed, you barely say a word to me at dinner. What is it, love?”

He wanted to touch her again and calm her the way she liked, the way he knew he could much of the time, but again she pulled away from his hand. She seemed about to say something angry and therefore perhaps truthful but bit it back. “And you are too happy,” she said instead. “You are too pleased with yourself.”

“Should I be sorrowful? Were you looking forward to a war? Maybe you were. Did you think I’d die heroically defending the city so you could go back to the elves, hmm? Perhaps you’d have pushed me off a battlement yourself, the look in your eyes tonight.”

“As someone pushed Pharazon?”

“As I imagine someone pushed Pharazon, yes. If they had any sense at all. And you’re not mourning his fate, so what - is - this? Do you think I killed him myself, maybe? Flew there and back when you weren’t looking?”

She said something about never truly knowing what he would do, and even though he had her close enough to feel the warmth of her body through their clothes she still seemed somehow too far away.

He looked back to the broader hallway behind them, the not-so-distant figures still far too numerous. It wasn’t as if the two of them arguing would have been much of an event to the people of Pelargir, but he could do without anyone from Númenor finding any reason to wonder if anything was amiss.

No - this wouldn’t do. “Galadriel,” he said, softening his voice, pulling back just a little without letting go of her arm. “Of all things, surely you trust me with Pelargir.”

That caught her, and he saw her stumble over her anger. She would not believe that he’d allow Pelargir to come to harm.

Lips to her ear, voice softer still, no need even to push at the edges of her mind, he knew her well enough by now. “You know anything I did would keep our home safe,” he said. “You know that.” And when she wouldn’t respond he could read enough in her silence and her glance downwards, avoiding him. 

“I’ll have them put you at the front of the attack,” he said. “I’ll ride at your side. Is it your horse you want? I can send someone back for her if she doesn’t get here soon.”

“It’s not that.” At least this time she didn’t pull away from his hand as he brushed the back of his fingers down the line of her jaw, although she wouldn’t lean into it, wouldn’t soften for him the way he was used to. 

Something was wrong, he could sense it. Somewhere there was an interruption, a break, a knot in the cord that bound them. Something was out of order and therefore unpredictable and it was not in their guests from Númenor but in her - although he’d saved Pelargir, he’d placated Númenor, he’d found an army for her to take to the orcs she insisted on worrying about. He was long used to her discontent but there was no reason for it now and against all his careful work it felt too much of an irregularity. 

He should have known, then. He should have been more careful. 

“Whatever’s troubling you, you need to put it aside for now,” he said. “Míriel has people whispering in her ear constantly.”

“That is to describe what she cannot see.”

“To describe anything she wants them to describe. She’s survived Pharazon long enough to get her kingdom back, she’s sharp.”

“Do you believe she killed him?” 

A clever enough guess. “Do you?”

“No,” she said, although she didn’t sound too certain. Behind them, the clatter and noise of musicians setting up instruments and the whine of a fiddle being tuned. She looked away from him again, distracted, pulled towards the crowded happy clamour of the hall. 

“Dance with me,” he said. “Don’t give them reason to think we’re divided while we have their army just outside our walls.” 

And whether it was that, or whether she’d finally allowed herself to remember that she didn’t hate him as much as she wished to, she nodded.

He should have been more careful. He had already started to lose her by this point and hadn’t seen it - too busy managing everything else, too much confidence in how well he knew her. But she seemed still his as they danced, and he let himself drift into merely being glad of it. How beautiful she was with the shimmer of gold thread in her gown, her hair gathered back into chains of pearls. How perfect it was to feel her move with him, how well her steps matched his. 

She loved to dance and how he had loved first discovering that several years before, seeing her spin in circles of celebrating Southlanders after Pelargir’s second harvest. He had stayed back at the table then and only watched - her goodwill was still a little too fragile, a thing fine and gauzy as a butterfly’s delicate wings. He had been content enough to see her put down her anger and resentment, however briefly, and take pleasure in living.

Now, feeling her turn in his arms, the twist of her hand in this as she span, her laughing breath light on his neck, he let himself believe he’d finally got her. 

Clever, his little warrior. Clever and merciless and cruel.

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t correct him. “You were too pleased with yourself. You became careless.”

“Evidently,” he says, “yes. And why don’t you tell the rest of that.”

Back in his chambers he seemed to her to unfold within himself, kissing her so fiercely he had her lifted back against the wall. He had been the measure of calm in company as the regal king he could play so well: dancing with Elendil’s daughter, impressing the soldiers with tales of far-away Harad, wearing the guild crest proudly on his royal robes. Here, it was all cast aside.

He no longer needed to pretend at being mortal but he still valued the guise of it. He could limit himself and bind himself inside his own pretence, seem entirely human to those he spoke with. He could spin out their own arrogance into something he could use, make tapestries of deception from it to suit his own purposes. And if she had watched this without protest knowing that one of these purposes was the protection of Pelargir, then she could not even claim herself deceived.

Alone with her he all but tore against his own constraints, barely contained within the limits he had played with such ease at dinner. She could sense his Maia being within his mortal form overlapping and overpowering, making it seem no more than one of his exquisite crafts. A smith’s aide, he had claimed himself to her once. Like so much he said it was truth woven through with deceit. She had thought it a humble thing; he had meant her to hear it that way and meant it also as an unspoken boast.

Her hand touched the guild crest he still wore and she felt his grin, the stubble on his jaw prickling her neck. “Want me to keep it? You liked me as a smith.”

“When you deceived me?”

“This again? Galadriel.” 

He undressed her confidently, swiftly, not pretending at any hesitance. She was familiar to him now and the knowledge of that struck her in a way it had not done for years, a prickling discomfort under her skin. Suddenly his hands on her were too much and she grabbed at his wrists to hold him back. 

He raised his eyebrows, a teasing, mocking look licking over his face like flame. “Do I need to persuade you?” Lifted one of her hands and kissed down her bare forearm, so soft she could barely feel it, but she sensed that underneath he was burning.

She thought of him as a smith now as he eased her and moulded her and lay her down, undressed her and stroked the outlines of her body in an intent and serious admiration, whispering words from tongues she barely knew into the softness of her stomach, the curve of her hip, the sharp turn of muscle in her calf. She could feel her body sing for him as he struck its resonance with the turn and stroke of his hand. “There, now,” as he eased the first keening cry out of her, rewarding her with his fingers pushed deep inside her. “Why do you pretend you don’t want me?”

“I haven’t -”

“You have. You do. I’m tired of this, Galadriel.” 

She felt the murmur of his mind nudge against hers and forced her own thoughts into order. There would be no suspicion, no distrust, there on the surface for him to sense. He wouldn’t be searching anyway - he wanted to feel what she felt and he would hunger for that even if it left him vulnerable. 

“There,” he said, curling his fingers inside her, the edge of his thumb stroking too-slow circles that made her arch up into him. “There, that’s perfect. Oh…” She thought he might lose himself in it the way he often did, perhaps even leave her with a chaotic blur from his own mind to sift through, but he kept better control this time and slowed even further to leave her frustrated and him amused. “You can be patient. I’ve been so patient with you. Now, tell me why you still fight me.”

“I can’t trust you.”

“Oh, but you trust me here.” He kissed down from one collarbone over the swell of her breast, teasing her nipple between his lips. “You don’t question me here.” 

It would have been easy, so easy, to give in. She could already feel her body yielding to him and her pleasure growing like spun molten gold deep within her, drawn out and out. She didn’t want to fight him; she wanted to sink into this like it was turning her to sunlight.

No.

“I know what you are,” she said.

“You want what I am. Come on, Galadriel, why deny yourself all of this? I could do so much more if you wouldn’t fight me so much. You’re willing enough here, why won’t you work with me in a war chamber as well as in my bed?”

She didn’t answer and he moved fast and fluid, grabbing the soft flesh at the back of her thigh and forcing her knee up as he drove into her. She felt her back arch from where they were joined up to the top of her spine, snapping her head back into the softness of the bed. It was almost painful like this but not quite; he liked her balanced between things just like this, unsure of where she wished to fall. 

There was something less controlled in him now. “You need not lie,” he breathed, harder and faster now within her, aroused not only by her desire for him but by his own ability to shape it. “I need this, tell me. Tell me what you’re fighting and I’ll give you what you’re yearning for.”

There, now, he was careless and vulnerable. “I can’t trust you,” she said again, and let her voice break at the end of it, and as he seized on her senses like a dragon hoarding gold she stepped around the edges of his mind and skimmed what she could from the surface without his knowing it. 

“That’s not enough,” he said, “give me what I want, give me what I want, tell me why you do this.”

“Please,” she said, almost beyond thought, and he slowed himself and his voice in her mind whispered harsh of ice and still and calm, pulling her back. She twisted under him in frustration.

“Tell me,” he said, and she could almost see fire dancing in his eyes as he grinned. 

She thought of metals in a jeweller’s hands, warmed and eased to pliant softness. “Because I will not let you change me.”

“But I will make you perfect,” he said, bracing himself against her, pushing her knee higher as he dragged the flat of his hand down to touch her in small, pulsing circles as he moved in her again, bringing her to a desperate, crying release. He came himself not long after that with a muted roar that was both the mortal sound of an animal indulging itself in instinct and something more, something that called beyond the matter of the world itself, and she thought: he would mend me as he would Middle-earth, he would turn me into one more part of his vision. I will not. I will not.

Afterwards he lay quiet for far longer than she was used to from him, stroking her hair as he stared up at the ceiling. “I have never allowed anyone to weaken me the way I allow it with you,” he said once, and that was all.

She thought for one brief tense moment that he knew what she’d seen in his mind but he seemed too distant for that. He barely even seemed to know he was speaking more to himself than to her. 

There had been a memory of pain, a burning splitting thing that he felt break through him and into the stone beneath.

There had been forests and snow and distant shouting armies, and him a creature of fangs and fur pressed low against the ground, and a sense of - not anger, maybe, but discontent - a furious if I could if I could if I could, and beneath it a loneliness so terrible it would have sought its enemy if only to know something more than itself.

But these had been older things, things she had seen before. What was new this time was a memory that seemed far more recent: him walking in the streets of Pelargir at night, quiet in the shadows, a hood pulled up to hide his face, going to something that was his alone.

She would not slow the preparations for the campaign, she decided. She would do more good as part of the planning; she would lead best at the head of the attack. And if she sensed that he longed for this too, riding at her side at the head of a Númenorean cavalry to seek down their enemy together, then it suited her well enough to allow it. She would not give him any reason to suspect her, and she would do all she could in two days to find out what he was hiding. 

The next morning after breakfast he had her attendants come to dress her and then brushed her hair himself, braiding it in a simple crown over long, flowing waves. His fingers danced as they wove in sunlight, and she discussed weapons with him happily enough. Once he was done, she said calmly that she wished to sit by the river for a time alone so that she might think in silence and gather her thoughts before a battle. A small thing, an unremarkable thing; and even Mairon did little more than nod in passing as she slipped away into the city.

The cold morning mist from the sea was already almost gone, and the day’s heat was starting to sink into marble and stone and statue. The city was busy at this time of day anyway and was excited and eager on this of all mornings. As she walked, people caught her arm to talk about the orcs with excitement or with all-too-well-remembered horror in their voices. She kept her responses short as she could. She had - surely, surely she had - a task to fulfil.

Streets wound away from her, market awnings were pulled down over pavements, Númenor soldiers in twos and threes who wandered the city to look at this place of their ancestors bowed to her. It was comfortable and familiar. She could walk these streets without thinking, now; but no, not this morning. 

Perhaps not, she tried to convince herself as the wide-paved street crossed the first canal. Perhaps it is nothing after all. Perhaps I am being unfair to him. 

“I do not believe you ever thought that. You did not.” 

“I was -”

“You” - a chiding tap on her chest - “are only thinking this now, because you know you were being unfair to me. This is guilt, displaced. This is not what happened.”

“Guilt?”

He has the decency to look briefly embarrassed. “Guilt or something like it.” 

The bridge was covered in climbing flowers at this time of year, light pink with rims of gold, on the side that catches the sun. They were familiar to her now as are all parts of her city, and she stops to notice that the day was far enough advanced that the little flowers had opened fully, nodding in the light breeze and the sun.

What was she searching for? There was nothing obvious, nothing wrong. Nothing at all, perhaps. But the feeling of something hidden here, something he had managed to conceal, will not leave her be. It pulled and tugged, it echoed in the soft fall of her boots on stone. 

There was nothing out of place. Nothing at the small fishing quay, where they have painted great eyes and gulls’ wings on the little boats that go out to the mouth of the Anduin. Nothing in the loud clatter of wheels as carts haul piles of sheared sheep’s wool down from the fields. Nothing in the crowds of half-grown children daring each other to jump back and forth over the little inlets of the canals. The heat is calm and calming. The city seemed almost drowsy. She thought that she might sit for a while by the water to gather her thoughts and consider whether - 

No. There was something here, something whose existence he did not want her to know about. Something he had hidden here in her own city right beneath her eyes. 

She headed back the way she came, away from the water, intending at first to take the longer way around the main square and circle from the gates up to the city walls. She made herself concentrate on the south of the city as she retraced her path to take in the side of the city she had not seen before, but she saw nothing. There was surely something somewhere in Pelargir but it did not seem to be here. Only the people, the noise, the little pink flowers on the bridge.

The little pink flowers that grew on the north side of the bridge. 

She shook her head - the heat seemed already draining, even so early in the day, even for an elf - and looked again. The bridge, the little footbridge which was unremarkable, the flowers on one side and the bare stone on the other which she could not quite seem to focus on. She walked closer to touch it but when she lifted her hand to the stone she found it tangled in diamond leaves and little pink flowers - once again, she was facing north. 

Here. Here, then. 

It took a stronger will than she thought to need, and underneath the soft, warm lullaby of the sun it felt as if she was struggling into some howling and relentless wind, but she turned around and forced herself to look beyond the bridge to the south At first it seemed there was nothing here worth looking at - some buildings, that she knew of, some thatch that needed repairing on the low workshops, and an old tower with ivy trailing around its tiles that they used for… for…

She felt that it was something ordinary, something so unremarkable it barely warranted even putting into words. Something that did not require her to be here - shouldn’t she be walking somewhere else? Shouldn’t she leave, leave soon? Weren’t there other things, surely, surely, that needed her attention more than this oh-so-insignificant tower?

She had battled stronger forces than this and won. She touched her hand to Finrod’s dagger, cool and soothing at her side, and remembered his vow - and hers - and walked steadily and swift up to the tower and inside. 

It was half-ruined, and seemed even more so within. Empty except for a cat that darted past her and out through the arched doorway. There was ivy inside, too, swooping swallows looking to build nests, and twining vines of some sort (she didn’t recognise them, and what was this?) growing over the spiral stairs that led up to a floor she could not see. Still, she felt something in the heat whispering to her that it was nothing, surely nothing, an old ruined building, they had so many, why not leave now, why not leave. 

She had never set foot in here before. She knew all of Pelargir and yet this place was new to her.

The vines seemed to weave under her feet as she stepped onto the staircase.. A trick of the light, perhaps, or an illusion of the heat, a shimmering mirage. The sun had perhaps gone to her head. They seemed almost to want to snake over her feet and curl around her ankles, for a while, and it was so convincing she found herself drawing back the dagger ready to strike at them and free herself - and then they were only vines again, only something unremarkable and ordinary lying at her feet. The illusion - the heat - whatever it had been - was gone, and she could see clearly again. She pressed on. 

At the top of the tower was a small room, clear of swallows and vines and ruin, immaculate, and almost empty. In the middle of the room was a raised marble stand and upon that, covered in a black cloth that she pulled away, a dark clear sphere. A palantír. 

The air was colder here and seemed somehow clearer. The noise of the city was distant, far below. She felt herself again, purposeful and sure. She placed her hand on the rounded cold surface, and -

Another high tower, this one with tall, vaulted windows, beautiful tapestries, a view down to the bay far below, but all broken somehow with fissures across her view. Still, she could see well enough to recognise it, for she had stood in this very room before. This was Armenelos, this was the palantír that Míriel had kept. 

Númenor. Of course he had some way of speaking with Númenor. Of course. She thought of Pharazon lying drowned in the water just before the ships were due to sail.

The Armenelos tower-room was empty, now, and there was little she could do from here. If she used the stone as it was intended she would be able to see through stone down to the city and the ports beneath - every detail of it, every detail, he must have seen everything , she felt it like a weight in her chest - but there was little else she would be able to learn here, and far more she might learn in this little tower room in Pelargir. 

The marble stand of the palantír was notched at several points. She had used palantíri before, and recognised this well enough. She moved around, cupped the stone beneath her hands, and looked again.

Another stone. A different one, here - this one was whole and whatever affliction had befallen the one kept in Armenelos was absent, for she could see clearly. And here, this was too familiar - these were elves she could see, milling blurred and slightly unfocused in her sight. There were workbenches of some sort, tools held on the walls. She pulled back to focus only on the room where the palantír must be, and saw a quiet study, empty but for bookcases, trailing ivy, designs half-sketched lying in piles on a desk (too like his own in the library in Pelargir). The owner of this study was absent, it seemed, but if she cast about - there , on the wall, a beautifully inlaid and enamelled design of a Feanorian star. This was Celebrimbor’s study. This was Eregion. 

She felt herself almost wobble for a moment, her feet almost, almost sway. But she could not afford herself the luxury of shock now. 

Eregion, then. Elrond and the Istari had been right; his work had continued all the time that she had been here. But palantíri could do more than communicate this way. If there was a way to sense what else he might have done, what else he might have looked towards in this world or in others… 

She stretched out her hand so that her silver ring made contact with the stone, and thought of him and what she knew of his mind, of remembering, of recalling, of pulling back -

She saw orcs, in a long, well-formed phalanx, their awful hands holding weapons aloft. The sound was unclear at first and then it burst out in her mind all at once:

Death to light, to law, to love!
Cursed be moon and stars above!
May darkness everlasting old
that waits outside in surges cold
drown Manwë, Varda, and the sun!

She pulled her hand away and turned aside and it still didn’t seem enough to rid her of that vision, their chant ringing in her head, the smell of blood soaked over the armour and weapons they carried, the horror of it. She felt she could barely breathe through it all let alone draw a sword and fight. But she would need to - she had to go, now, to warn Míriel, warn Elrond -

And then his voice, not in the strangely metal echo of the palantír inside her mind but from in the room behind her: “You shouldn’t be here, Galadriel.” 

Chapter Text

And the very next town that they come to,
Oh, he’s bought her a wedding ring,
And he’s bid her dry up her rosy cheeks,
And she should follow him.

“For it’s love for love that I do want,
And love for love again,
And there's none for you but me, dear girl,
None for you but me.

There’s comfort for the comfortless,
And honey for the bee;
But there’s none for you but me, dear girl,
None for you but me.”

(‘The False Lover Won Back’, traditional)

“"Here," said he, "are the keys of the two great wardrobes, wherein I have my best furniture; these are of my silver and gold plate, which is not every day in use; these open my strong boxes, which hold my money, both gold and silver; these my caskets of jewels; and this is the master-key to all my apartments. But for this little one here, it is the key of the closet at the end of the great gallery on the ground floor. Open them all; go into all and every one of them, except that little closet, which I forbid you, and forbid it in such a manner that, if you happen to open it, there's nothing but what you may expect from my just anger and resentment."

(‘Blue Beard’, Charles Perrault)

“I will admit that I had become impatient” he says. “Lost sight of too much. Some things were working better than I had thought and others were moving too slowly. It was a poor combination.”

“As that is a poor excuse.”

The faint echo of a smile, a hundred previous iterations of the same argument recalled. 

The tower, then. The smith's tower, the only place in Pelargir where he did not want his warrior to tread, and therefore the first place she had found when she turned on him. The only thing he had denied her, or near enough -

“No.”

“No?”

“No. You will not tell this. This is mine.”

He was watching her. Had been watching her for a while, perhaps. Little use in pretence, even if it had been something she ever turned to; the smooth darkness of the palantír was statement enough of what she had done, and what he had done. 

Her first thought was to run but he was already blocking her path back to the doorway, surely deliberately. “And how goes your pleasant little walk, Galadriel?”

“What have you done?” 

He smiled, a cold and humourless thing. “Trusted you more than I should. But you’re here now, so well done. Are you pleased with yourself?” One step towards her and she backed away, her hand going quicker than thought to the dagger at her belt. “You’d better not imagine you can hurt me.”

“Númenor,” she said. “Pharazon’s death. That was you.”

“Not solely me but yes, I had a hand in it. What do you care about Pharazon? He would have brought an army to take the city from us. He did far worse to Miriel than I’ve done to you. You’re not going to mourn for him.”

Everything seemed to be breaking, all of it lying in shards all around her. “You had Elendil’s daughter kill him.”

“I tried to work with Pharazon, I’d much prefer Númenor stayed amenable. He had too many followers shouting his praises and so here we are. Eärien married his son, you know. She was one of his side. She was in a very difficult position and we had common interests. You name her and they’ll hang her from that white tree and I don’t think you want that. It’s done now, anyway, so why don’t we - Galadriel take your hand off that knife.”

He had steadily backed her against the wall, advancing slow and careful as a cat on its prey. Now he stopped a couple of paces distant. From here she should have been able to hear the city outside but it was entirely silent; the air was close and thick and pressing on her, the heat of the day seeming to sink deep into her skin. 

She kept her hand on the hilt of her dagger, thinking of Finrod and Valinor, of jumping from the boat with it held safe in her hand. How many battles she’d fought, how many miles she’d travelled, with Finrod’s dagger always there at her side. She’d been so sure of the path set out for her, and leaving it had been so unthinkable that only now was she coming to understand she might have lost it long before meeting a man named Halbrand.

“I did this for Pelargir,” he said, and the words dragged like a weight inside her. “Give me your hand. Give me your hand, my love, my queen, my lady of light, it’s all right, you can trust me, you trust me.”

For a moment, she wanted to.

As he reached for her she dodged fast to her right and ran, back away from the window and out into the room. She almost made it but he moved faster. His hand closed on her elbow and as she stumbled the wooden floor beneath her seemed to shimmer, to vanish, and -

She was standing on their terrace late on a summer evening. Swifts soared between the towers, colouring the sounds of the city with their high, trilling cry. The pomegranate tree in its great blue pot was heavy laden with fruit, some of them overripe and splitting open with rich red seed like jewels.

“This is not real,” she said, less sure than she wanted to sound.

He smiled. “Look at our city. Look at what we’ve built.”

She had always loved the view from here: the streets stretching out below, the great river just visible in the distance. She had built this. She had repaired roofs and cleared rubble, had sifted through the ruins for anything they could use, had pleaded with the elves for help when that first long winter had seemed such a threat. 

And all the time, all the time he had deceived her.

She turned away and closed her eyes to it, but she could still hear the swifts calling.

His hand settled on her shoulder and she could feel the soft touch of his breath on her cheek. “Tell me what else you saw in that palantír, Galadriel. Tell me and I’ll set your mind to rest.”

She kept her eyes tight closed and thought of the room she was really standing in. Grey walls and plain, empty wooden floors, an arched window with lead lattices and slightly uneven glass. She couldn’t truly feel the breeze in her hair. She couldn’t truly hear the birds. It was all a lie.

“Galadriel,” he said. “Galadriel. Listen to me.”

“You have nothing to say that I wish to hear.” 

“I don’t think that’s so.” His hand on her face was so gentle, his thumb running over her closed eyes. “Think of our city. You don’t want to see it but you know I’m right. Would you have it besieged and burned? I’ve kept it safe.”

“Whatever you have been doing in Eregion was not for Pelargir’s sake.”

“Eregion, then,” he said, and the world around her lurched and jolted and settled again. 

The noise of the swifts was gone; instead, a different light birdsong, chattering all around her. A colder wind, this time, and the whisper of it through branches. When she opened her eyes there were gold leaves beneath her feet.

She thought at first this was Eregion and he had brought her here to - what? To gloat about his work, to convince her Celebrimbor was acting alone? But looking at the golden trees around her she realised it was somewhere different, older, with a feel to it long since lost from Middle-earth. Doriath, it must be Doriath. And yes, it was - across the stream she could see the winding parade, the ribbons and silver banners of celebration, the laughing barefooted children dancing on the lawns outside Menegroth. A moment of summer-bright colours, kept wrapped away in the darkest vaults of her memory as if it might fade every time she dared to gaze on it. Oh, she had been so happy.

He was behind her now, his hand on her waist familiar and warm and almost safe. She forced her mind back down into focus - this wasn’t real, this wasn’t true - and said “if you are planning to impersonate Celeborn again I will tear your throat out with my hands.”

“I don’t think you’d do that.” But the voice was unchanged, he was still in the appearance she was used to - he had spared her this, at least. His arms at her waist pulled her tight back against him and his lips lingered on the tip of her ear, and how many times had he held her like this, how many times had she allowed him - wanted him -

“It’s beautiful here,” he said. “First time I’ve ever seen it. Melian kept it safe from creatures like me, of course. We couldn’t touch Doriath.”

And how she had loved it, and how she had been glad to stay, seasons at first then years, unspooling calm and languid and endless as those summer days. The war had been only a faint whisper in the back of her mind and she could ignore it as long she chose. 

The elves in the parade seemed not to see her and she wanted to draw closer to them and call names she had not spoken for centuries. She could cup her hands in the stream’s cold water and drink and drink, and maybe she would forget she was dreaming, forget it all, stay here forever.

“I don’t want you in my mind,” she said, and the words felt like they were dancing away from her, slipping between her fingers through the currents of the stream. 

He held her close and warm and his arms felt like armour against her, like the comfort of battles when everything fitted into sense. “I only seek to do the same as Melian did here. But where she was satisfied with a little forest kingdom surrounded by enemies I won’t be, I’ll do more. You won’t need to worry about keeping things out at the borders. I’ll mend all of it, Galadriel. It’ll all be the way it should be. The way your elf kingdoms are now, the way your lands that I gave you are growing to be, that’s how it’ll all be. That’s what I want. And I need your help, I can’t do this alone.”

“My help? When you’ve -”

“Your help, yes.” A catch in his voice for the first time, a slight pause where something else should have been and had gone unsaid. “Come with me to Eregion,” he said, “talk to the elves with me, help me, help me make it all the way it could be,” and she felt something true beneath all his deceit, something she could hold. The Istari had warned Celebrimbor and the others, and they had listened, finally they had listened. Almost like freedom, the understanding: her oath did not call her to support him in whatever new evil he might be creating. She was released.

“I will not help you,” she said. “I will never help you again.”

He didn’t let her go, barely moved at all, but she felt the distance anyway. “You disappoint me, Galadriel,” he said, and the leaves below her seemed to dissolve into each other, briefly becoming something different and stranger than she had words for. She tried to pull out of his grasp but he had her held fast, pulling her down. The darkness seemed to rise and swirl in front of her until she was too dizzy to fight, too dizzy to think.

When it cleared there was a campfire before them burning strong. She could hear the crackle of damp wood and the heavy smell of it in the evening air. She was cold, so cold, a chill right through to her bones, and her hair was in damp strands lying across her shoulder. She was sitting on winter-sparse grass, half pulled back into his chest, his arms still around her and him and the fire the only warmth in the world.

“I remember this,” she said.

“Our journey to Pelargir. I know I have fonder memories of it than you. I want you to remember all the same that I was kind to you. I cared for you. I was not the monster you thought me to be.” 

She had felt newly unafraid that night after her near-drowning. She had allowed him to hold her and fallen asleep in his arms, his cloak wrapped around her the way it was now. The rushing torrent of the river had reminded her of her purpose and her fight and had shown her that she wanted to live - that no matter what despair she had felt she had not yet surrendered. Even when she crawled ashore on her hands and knees, coughing water onto cold shingle, she had felt more content than she had since the day he came to Lindon. 

She did not struggle to free herself from him now. There was no point; they were not even here, they were somewhere in a tower in Pelargir high above the city, and fighting him in this dream would gain her nothing even if she took the comb-knife she wore in her hair and struck him in the heart with it. 

“You know me better now,” he was saying. “I didn’t keep you prisoner, whatever you feared. I didn’t harm you. I gave you your own lands and that’s more than the elves ever did. I had a tower by the sea built for you, just as you wanted it. It was always my plan to tell you more in time once I could trust you would understand. I know you’re angry but look beyond your anger with me for a moment, Galadriel, and I can show you such great things.”

No doubt he could, no doubt he could spin her wonderful visions and entrance her in dreams built around everything she wanted to see. And she did want it, part of her, even now - the part of her that had always wanted Halbrand even before she knew his other names, the part of her that hadn’t cared which of those other names she called him.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh. Galadriel.”

“We are not discussing -”

“But we could. I might quite like to. This can wait, can't it? I don't see why it can't. Please.” The back of his hand brushes against her shoulder, and there's something fiercer than want in it, something narrower than desperation. 

“You wish to hear me call you that," she says.

"Would that be so terrible? We are hardly in any great hurry, here. We have as long as we like to tell this. We have all the time we want."

She closes her eyes too fast at that, and there are no tears but there might have been, and there might still be. "Let me tell it," she says. 

"I didn't mean that way."

"Let me tell it."

She reached up to the comb in her hair and he caught her wrist. “No hasty decisions,” he said. “I’d gladly let you kill me here if it would help things, but I fear it’ll just give you a taste for blood.” And then let her go to take the comb out and hold it in her cupped hands, staring down at it and it alone. Back in Pelargir (no, no she was in Pelargir) this comb was back in her rooms in the complex of buildings they now called the palace, kept safe in a cedar box with a few other treasured things from Lindon. It was replicated perfectly here: the fine metal filigree work, the inlay, the weight of it, the coolness of the metal. 

She turned it to flick the hidden blade out and then back in again with the turn of the thumb, ignoring the amused huff of breath in her hair. She kept it now not as a weapon - she’d always known she would have only one chance to use it, and he would not be so careless again - but as a reminder: that the elves had not abandoned her, that she was not lost. 

“I don’t want you in my mind,” she said, stronger this time.

“Might be we’re in mine.” A gust of wind caught the smoke from the fire and blew it towards them for a moment and her eyes stung as though it were real.

Perhaps she could wake herself from whatever enchantment he had used to bind her. She tried closing her eyes and drawing deep inside her mind for the pull of her silver ring and what it might be hiding. There was something, a faint sound like a chime, just at the edge of her consciousness -

“No,” he said, and she was snapped back to the grass before the fire, her hold on her ring and what it held swept from her mind. Although she had felt no time pass, the night seemed to have already fallen upon them and the sky was near dark now. The sun’s light was almost gone, the stars hidden under cloud. The trees around them seemed only a black, indistinct shape of ink. “No, love,” he said. “I need you here for a while. I need you to remember.”

“If you think I have forgotten a single day of this -”

“I think you’ve forgotten I was kind to you,” he said, his lips so close to her neck she could feel his words on her skin. “I think you’ve forgotten I didn’t have to be.”

“Will you threaten me now?”

A long silence, only the crackling wood of the fire and the sound of his breath. Sparks glided up into the air and disappeared in the darkening draw of night. “I told you I have to mend what I helped to ruin. All of it. You can’t expect I would be satisfied with Pelargir alone and you certainly wouldn’t be. Look what we’ve done with Pelargir together. We built it back from rubble, we made it something beautiful. Look how thankful our people are. We can do so much more! We can make it so glorious and you want that just as I do. I know you do. Come with me to Eregion, I’ll show you.”

She let herself turn a little in his arms, let him cradle her head against his chest, which he needed little invitation to do. She could close her eyes to what she had seen and turn her back on what she knew and he would allow her the deceit as long as she wanted it; he would make her world a bright and shining and wondrous thing, and in return she would not look at what he was doing beyond its edges. And in time, perhaps, she might tell herself stories about why it was best this way, why the things saved justified those lost, why his anger and cruelty did not matter so much if she did not have to see them. 

She imagined herself seated on a great throne looking out over realms beyond counting, all that she might ever want, made all the ways she wished it, and her Maia husband standing beside her with his head bowed in homage, a flickering darkness behind him that his form blocked from her sight. 

“And will your orcs make things beautiful?” she said.

His arm tightened around her shoulders for a moment, and although she could not feel it she knew his hand had drawn back, fingers curled up into strained claws the way he always did when trying to hold in anger. “There’s a great deal you don’t understand, elf.”

“I understand orcs.”

“Then you’d know they’re made to serve an end. What else should I do with them? When we rebuilt Pelargir, we used the tools we were left even when they were broken and ugly. You expect me not to do the same with whatever I have here when I have so little, I am so weak, Galadriel, I can’t even get orcs to do as I want, it has been close to intolerable.” He held her closer without even seeming to realise it, lost in his own thought, and although she could not see his face she imagined him staring beyond the fire into the darkening mountains beyond: to the wild lands beyond Rhun, to the great forests where ents and wild men and stranger things than either still walked. 

The darkness grew and blanketed them. The fire did not die down but rather faded, the colour draining from the flames and the sparks dimming and dimming until there was nothing left but night. And then a softness, a warmer light, a world of familiar shapes and the grass under her hand was a woven blue blanket that the people of Pelargir had made for her. They were in a tower, but not in Pelargir; she was on the coast south of Edhellond, in the ruined Númenorean tower he had mended and rebuilt for her. This was her place, her tower by the sea, her refuge. Her rooms. Her bed.

Bringing her to Doriath had been awful enough, the knowledge that he must have sifted through her memory for something to use against her leaving her feeling tarnished and charred. But here, here, where he had always let her be, this was somehow worse. He had barely ever set foot here since the rebuilding was done, letting her withdraw here as she chose and stay as long as she wished. And now…

She pulled out of his arms and he made no effort to resist, falling back lazily onto the bed. “I will make you this offer,” he said. “Come with me to Eregion. Trust me. You’ve seen what I can do. Trust me and work with me and stop fighting me so pointlessly, and see what we can make together. It will be wonderful.”

“And if I refuse?”

“If you refuse me now it will still be wonderful, although perhaps less so for you. I have not let you stop me before and I will not now and all you would achieve is making things needlessly difficult for both of us. But you won’t refuse me. I have been so kind to you, I have given you your own lands, I have let you rule Pelargir at my side, I have allowed you to turn away from me and come here whenever you liked, I have let you speak with Elrond and Olórin about me - don’t look at me like that. We both know what you’ve been doing.” 

“I have never -”

“You have, though. Yes you have.” 

He reached out to her and she crawled back, and then further, down from the bed and back on bare feet until she was pressed against the soft tapestry hung on the far wall. No comb-knife in her hand now, no dagger at her side, only the silk of a nightgown she did not remember ever wearing here. Of course, of course, he had known far more than she thought. All that she’d believed hidden from him, all those small mentions of things that he seemed a little more familiar with than he should have done - he had known, he had watched her, it had all somehow been under his eye. 

“Get out,” she said. “This place is not yours, my mind is not yours, get out, you will not deceive me any more.”

Her ring started to grow colder, a slow chill spreading over the back of her hand, wrapping around her wrist. A gust of wind blew in from the open window, turning over papers and ruffling the edges of the bedcovers where he still sat. He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t get angry, now. That’s not going to help you.”

“Get. Out.”

“You’ve been working against me for years. I know the elves are watching me. Are you going to pretend you’re horrified now that I’ve continued my own work?”

“The work you told me you had forsworn. Orcs, after all your sweet words of healing.”

Another squall of wind and this time the book left open on her table slammed shut, the ornaments of painted shells went tumbling to the ground in a tiny fracturing cascade. She remembered the time she had almost drowned them both in some illusion of the rings and wished, not so much that she had tried harder or tried again, but rather that she could still be there now with her fury never tempered, her resolve never compromised. 

“Galadriel,” he said, “come here.”

“I am not yours to command.”

“Defy me then.” His tone was casual enough but a great heaviness seemed to fall on her all the same. She was tired, suddenly, so tired that even thinking of how to fight him felt like walking upstream in a strong current of water, the effort of it dragging at her. Her knees gave way and despite herself she was falling, falling -

- and then she was lying curled on the soft blue blankets of her bed again and he was beside her, stroking her hair.

“When we first came to Middle-earth together,” he said, “I wanted you to stay with me. You would not listen , and all you achieved in that was to cause yourself far more sorrow than you ever needed and you ended up in Pelargir with me anyway. This is the same. You can work with me now or you can defy me and fight me and find yourself at my side anyway. We have the same goals. We desire the same things.”

“Nothing I desire would require armies of orcs.” Her voice was sluggish, barely focused, as if she had been dragged from some deep unconsciousness. Her head ached terribly. 

He kissed her lightly on the forehead and kept on stroking her hair. “I’ve been trying to get the orcs under control, and you’d know all this already if you hadn’t turned to Olórin and Gil-galad over me. My little traitor. But even your treachery I turned to something better, see? Now I know better what needs to be done and I know you will help me.”

“You deceived me, you let me think -”

“I let you do exactly as you wished, elf. I trusted you’d tell them everything you knew and so I was judicious about what you knew. I can tell you more now. You will come to understand, I’m sure of it. You’ll see more clearly once this rage of yours calms. You love me.”

“I hate you.”

No anger in his reaction, more a half-amused pity. “And what does that matter? That’s the way it has to be sometimes. I know. You can hate me all you like, sweet one. But you know you love me and you know you’ll end up at my side anyway, so what does it aid either of us to make this more difficult? You did swear an oath to stand at my side no matter my past.”

“What you are doing here is not past.”

“ And, you agreed to come with me here as part of my peace deal with the elves. And you have a city now and a people who love you, who need you. Would you cast all that aside because you are angry with me today? Break your oath, destroy our peace, betray your people and Pelargir all for the sake of hating me?”

It was so hard to even think clearly now, so hard not to fall into the soft murmur of his words and the caress of his thumb over her cheek. She felt adrift in her own mind. Doriath seemed so close again, and Pelargir so far. She felt that she could sleep here, if she wished; that she could simply curl into him and close her eyes and when she woke it would be well, somehow. He would make it well. 

She grabbed at her memory of the orcs and their chant as though it was the last thing between air and drowning: death to light, to law, to love. She would have a true thing to wield against his deceit. 

“Sauron,” she said, the sound of it sluggish and hushed through heavy lips. 

He stilled and his smile hardened, and she felt the languor that had near overcome her loosen its grip. “You haven’t called me by that name for years.”

“Get out of my mind and leave me be.”

“And let you run back to the elves with all of this? No. You’ll be reasonable. You will stay here for as long as it takes you to see sense on this and you will not ruin everything for both of us purely because you’ve never learned when to put down your sword. Your Sauron, your terrible foe who did Melkor’s bidding - I am not what you once thought me to be and you will not call me that name.”

“It was Sauron who served Morgoth,” she said, speech coming easier to her now. “But it was Mairon who chose Morgoth.”

For a moment his eyes narrowed, darkened, pupils becoming cat-like slits as his face turned to a silent mask of fury, and then - 

- and then she was somewhere else, the sun beating down on her hands. The bed beneath her was hard sea-soaked wood now, splintering and battered, moving in a gentle bob on the breeze-blown waves.

She knew where this was without needing to look any further, even as she pushed herself up to her knees. 

“I think I have been kind to you long enough,” he was saying, just beyond her sight. “I think you should spend some time reflecting on your alternatives.”

She turned to confront him but he was no longer there. There was no sign of him, no sound, not even the echo of his mind. She was entirely alone on a raft in the middle of the Sundering Seas.

Chapter Text

I’ll spread sail of silver and I’ll steer towards the sun 

And my false love will weep, and my false love will weep

And my false love will weep for me after I’m gone.

(‘As Sylvie Was Walking’, traditional)

The smith saw his warrior’s eyes flicker beneath closed lids. Her lips moved silently; she was calling his name, maybe. It didn’t matter.

If he had been truly the monster she thought him he would have brought back not only the raft but the storm with it and left her to drown in the sea. See how much she’d appreciate being without him then, sinking down and down far beneath the waves, fighting for air without him there to bring her back to the surface. But knowing his warrior she would have preferred to let herself drown rather than call for his aid anyway. 

“You make everything difficult, Galadriel,” he said, knowing she was beyond hearing him. She had chosen to turn away from him and she had refused to listen and she would not see reason, and so he would give her a place without him for a time. Let her have what she so greatly claimed to desire. A kindness, in its own way.

“How was that kind? How was that kind, to leave me on the sea alone when I told you how I had feared it?”

“Hard to imagine you fearing anything.” He kisses her forehead and takes her hand in his own, gentler than it could be. “Maybe I forgot.”

“Did you forget?”

He weaves his fingers through hers: a fastening, a binding. “No.”

It might not feel much like a kindness to the warrior, but she was so lost in her own anger by then she would not even have thought of all he’d spared her. He could have kept her in a prison cell as he’d been kept, bound in chains, bound in a form that could not free itself, left to lick his own blood from his hands as the orcs barked at him like dogs. There had been no pity for him then nor hope for it, no reprieve, no kindness. Even Melkor’s rage turned from him after a while and if it had been terrible enough to be in its focus, left pleading and pathetic, it was almost worse to be left with indifference. There were others who clamoured for his role as most favourite, as most despised traitor; he was left all but forgotten, a mewling half-mad relic of a time gone by.     

And then the Valar came and Angband was broken apart, and he lay in the ruins of it all (of Beleriand, of Middle-earth, of Arda - such plans he’d had, such glory, and here he was in smoke-blackened rubble where nothing could live). And he begged for mercy before Eönwë who looked down on him and said: no. No, this is not enough punishment, not for you. No, I shall grant you no pity. No, you are not forgiven, you must suffer more than this.

She sighs.

“If you want me to tell the story,” he says before she can interrupt, “you have to let me tell it. If you’re that keen for Eönwë’s story you should ask it of him. I’ll grant him no favours in mine when he never had any for me.”

But she’s already turning away, staring out through the uneven glass of the window. A segment of sky, the haze of green on distant hills. “Say what your intent was,” she said. “How long would you have kept me there?”

The smith had no use for a queen kept sleeping in a high tower, wrapped safe in enchantments. His intention was only to give her some time to reflect until she might come to reason. As she would, he was sure of it still. This had gone poorly in a way he should maybe have better anticipated and he would need to think on that later, but it would not be beyond mending. 

Besides, he was lost by then in visions of better things. 

He thought of riding at the head of an army once again, the blood and mess and chaos of it all mattering less now than the glory of victory to come, the satisfaction of hundreds beside him doing his will. Even here with his warrior queen sleeping beside him he could hear the victory songs ringing in his mind.

He thought of working with Ossë as they churned the seas to foam, brought cliffs crashing down into water, tore up the sand and the sea-floor and remade it all into coastlines of vast and terrifying beauty. Such freedom there had been then. They were given all the power they wanted and left to use it as they willed, Melkor’s voice always whispering to them of more and greater and all that could be possible without needless restraint. Mairon had joyed in mastering how to change form within the matter of Arda, crafting it through will alone, turning from fin to scale to leaf to cry to striking tooth and tearing claw within the curl of a single wave. How glorious it had all been when the future held such promises.

He thought of what he might make here, never-dying trees and beaches scattered with jewels, stone towers climbing beyond sight into the clouds, whole mountains carved into palaces for his elf queen that would be grander than Thingol’s halls in Menegroth and more beautiful than her brother’s in Nargothrond. He thought of what Numenor could do once aligned with his will. He thought of showing his work to Aulë, of all the Valar gathered around to admire it despite themselves.

But beneath all of his visions something chafed at him, displaced and unsettled, and the only thought that brought him peace was a memory of something that was barely greatness at all: lying in the sea-grasses with his warrior queen in his arms, the first time she had agreed to ride out with him to see her new lands. She had been watching the birds wheel in clouds over the outgoing tide, her head on his chest, her hair soft beneath his hand. Something almost like peace.

He didn’t return. Night came, and she was still on the raft; morning followed and nothing changed. She could not will herself to wake from his enchantment no matter how she tried, and her ring remained stubbornly inert on her hand. Around her, the sea reached from horizon to horizon without sight of ships or land. 

At first she waited, expecting him to be back before too much longer had passed. He was surely not done with berating her, with wheedling and threatening and trying to turn her to his will. He had never wanted a prisoner in her, she believed that much. He wanted a queen at his side, working to his purposes, seeing his greatness. He would punish her by letting her believe she was alone on the raft and then he would return. Surely, he would return. 

When the sun rose after the first night and she could stand it no longer she tried one last time to pull herself from this enchantment (impossible, nothing, the sea as real as if she was truly back upon it, the ring only a dull piece of metal). And then she jumped into the water and felt the cold shock of it around her as she kicked free of the raft and swam. 

It was pointless, most likely. This was his mind, or maybe hers; at any rate there was no distant coast to reach, no Numenorean sea-guard to cross her path this time. But she could at least move and do something other than wait, and so she did, although as the day beat on the sea seemed to grow heavier around her and each stroke of her arms gained her less and less distance. She pushed on anyway, through exhaustion and into pain, ignoring the salt water in her eyes, the weight of it in her hair dragging her down, the way each wave seemed to hit her a little harder, until she could truly go no further and had to stop and tread water. And then her outstretched hand brushed against something floating before her - the raft, waiting for her once again. 

She cursed him to the open sky - Sauron, Mairon, deceiver, betrayer, servant of Morgoth - and waited, either for his anger or his laughter. Neither came. Only silence, endless silence, and the voiceless beat of the waves. 

He must have left, she thought. He must have left her here days ago and gone east with Numenor’s soldiers, leading them into the lands of his orcs. Or perhaps no time had passed at all; perhaps they were both still in the tower room in Pelargir, caught between one heartbeat and another as she stumbled in his grip. 

She refused to grant him her fear or despair. He would have nothing. Instead she recalled poetry and song of times gone by, occupied herself with memories of Doriath she had long since put away from her own sight. Then Nargothrond, too, and Sirion, and the hills of Beleriand shrouded in fog. 

On the second night (and the third, and the fourth), she lay on her back on the raft staring up at the sky. The seven stars of the Valacirca, the sickle placed as a warning to Morgoth, were still there. Perhaps he had meant her to see this for some twisted mockery of his own purposes; perhaps it was a sign that he had trapped her in her own mind, not his, and in doing so had left her with the memory of those stars lighting her way after she leapt from the ship.

She thought of her cousin Maedhros, hung in chains on a mountain-side for thirty years. Surely he must have despaired, time and again. Surely hope must have forsaken him many times over before Fingon freed him. Surely she was stronger than Maedhros whatever foolish oath she had sworn herself. Surely she could bear this, whatever this might be. But she still wept, watching her salt tears fall into the sea; and whether it was in helpless anger at all the evil he might be committing now, or in rage at herself for ever believing otherwise, or in sorrow for what she had lost, she could not even say. 

The fifth day passed, the sixth, the seventh. More, perhaps. Almost certainly more.

And then there was another voice, so quiet she could barely hear it, saying her name.

Her mind was full of voices by then, cluttered with memory and song and plans over strategy so that she need not think of him . This she could almost have believed was only another one of those and to begin with she did - she knew better than to grasp at hope here. But it kept calling to her, and calling to her. Galadriel? Galadriel, where are you? Come back. I call you back. 

She tried to focus on it. To begin with it was still too faint, but then it grew stronger, and stronger still. It seemed almost familiar, although she couldn’t place it - it was too wrapped up with the sounds of the wind and the water as though trying to form itself into sense from the sounds around her. Galadriel. Galadriel, can you hear me?

It was not him. She would know if it was him; surely, she would know. “Who are you?” she said, but the voice kept calling to her as though it could not hear. 

She tried to focus on her ring again. This time, though it was sluggish and dull, she felt it respond a little; just a little. It grew slightly colder and then as the voice called again, some tone beyond sound in it seemed to call out across the waves. “I am here,” she said, and this time something shifted - a hand on her shoulder shook her, a voice in her ear, calling, calling, she was not here, she was -

She was curled on the floor of his hidden tower room, scattered dry leaves around her and Mithrandir letting out a long, deep sigh. “I feared you were beyond waking.”

“Where is he?” She scrambled up to her knees, steadying herself with a hand on the floor as a wave of dizziness swept over her. Light dust covered her sleeve, and she saw now down her left side too. She went for Finrod’s dagger at her side - gone. Of course, gone. And the palantír gone too, the stand where it had been empty. “How long was I here? How did you find me?”

“One question at a time, and all of them later. We need to hurry.” He helped her to her feet and steadied her as she stumbled. The solid floor of the tower room seemed for a moment to sway like the raft on the waves, and she was hit with the fear that this was another trick, another deceit, she was not freed, she was still there, she was - “You’re safe,” he said. “I promise. But we must go, now. He’s on his way back.”

There was a white cat lying on the narrow sill above her, watching her through one half-open eye. Other cats sat in the rafters above them, looking down. “We must go,” Mithrandir said again, and this time she nodded. The white cat flicked its tail but stayed where it lay.

Outside was bright afternoon sunshine and noise again, and a city that felt newly alien to her. “The stables,” Mithrandir said, “now,” and she led him on the most direct route, a crooked line of alleys and footbridges and cut-throughs between buildings. People turned to watch as they passed and she saw fleeting surprise and confusion on their faces, heard her name murmured in her wake. 

“We’ll make for the coast,” Mithrandir said. “There’s a ship waiting for us beyond the view of your guard towers. He can’t be more than a day away and he’ll search for you first to the west, I’m sure.”

“A ship?” She stopped against a vine-covered stone wall, the paving beneath them worn into smooth channels under long-gone generations of passing feet. 

“A ship to take us to Lindon. I doubt he’ll send Numenor’s fleet after the elves. Not yet, at least. We’ll be safe once we’re on the water.”

“I can’t leave.”

Mithrandir shook his head but the look in his eyes was not without kindness. “Pelargir is not safe for you, Galadriel.”

“And will it be safe with me gone? He’ll consider it a betrayal. He’s threatened to make war on Lindon before if I turned on him.” Something he had said to her before, about what happened to cities that other people’s armies fought over, came back to her mind with an unpleasant strike and the clamour of swords and the smell of dried blood and smoke in her mind. “Pelargir isn’t his alone. It is mine.”

“Hmm,” Mithrandir said. “I suppose it is, if you claim it so. I won’t tell you what to do. But he is returning and he will be here very soon, and if you’re still here I do not think he will permit you to do much ruling or indeed much of anything until you agree to do as he wishes. Even then, I think your freedom would be very much curtailed. You’ve spent seven years balancing on a blade’s edge, Galadriel, and that I’m afraid is gone. You can either serve him or fight him. If you choose to serve him he will turn on the elves anyway sooner or later, and they will be worse for it with you working against them. If you choose to fight him you cannot do it from here. You’ll be his captive and his hostage and it will not stop him from any war he chooses.”

What he was saying made sense, she knew. And hadn’t she longed for this, truly? She was no longer bound by an oath that kept her from acting on his past now that he had chosen to do more evil in the present. She was released.

She called over the nearest townspeople, a few farmers and a guard heading towards the east gates. “Find Steward Bronwyn,” she said. “Tell her to meet me at the stables. Hurry.” And then paused, lost herself between footsteps. 

“The stables,” Mithrandir reminded her, not unkindly. “We need horses.” But she shook her head and took his wrist and brought him with her back through narrow alleys, across the corner of a square, the walkway of a canal, up to the guard tower at the base of the city walls. 

The Silvan elves seemed to know even more than the Southlanders that something was wrong. Three of them met her in silence, bows already in their hands, cool eyes noting her and Mithrandir both. “How many of the human guards are still here?” she asked, but knew the answer even before they confirmed it: barely any, all who could fight keen to go with Numenor and battle the orcs. Oh, she had been so foolish.

“You need to leave,” she said. “All of you, now. I must go before he returns and I can’t protect you when he learns I am gone. I do not believe he would bring harm to Pelargir -” (and even saying this felt like a betrayal and a failure however much she believed it, was desperate to believe it) “- but elves will not be safe from him. Go back to Dor-en-Rían and warn them all that he cannot be trusted.”

She had not named him, she realised, and worse, she had not needed to. Not a single one of the elves questioned her or seemed in the slightest surprised. 

She felt frozen in time again as she watched them run. All the years in this city, all the work she had done with him to rebuild it and make it beautiful, and now she was leaving it undefended. Every moment of the last seven years seemed to come upon her in a roaring rush of air, the weight of it all almost too much to withstand.

She had been a queen, here. But she was a warrior still. 

“No,” she said, as Mithrandir began to speak, “Don’t comfort me, I have no wish to hear it.”

Mithrandir shook his head and seemed no more for a moment than an ageing, tired mortal man. “If you do feel that you must stay -”

“No. The stables, this way.”

The stables were quiet, half-occupied at this time of year with only the horses that might be needed in a hurry. Thankfully Galadriel’s milk-white mare was among them and whickering softly to see her for there would have been no time to go out to the high pastures to bring her down. Galadriel twined her hands into the long wiry mane and tried her best to explain: we must leave, we must move fast and travel far and I don’t know when we might return. The horse nuzzled at her hair, faithful as ever. 

She did not bother with saddle or bridle this time. There was no time to pack anything she needed, not food or clothes or a bedroll, not any of the treasured things she would have wanted to take with her. No time for farewells and explanations that were sorely needed. Barely time enough to wait for Bronwyn, and even that accompanied by Mithrandir’s grumbling about how little they could spare. 

Bronwyn was there before too much longer, though, out of breath as though she had run part of the way. “Are you leaving again so soon?”

“I never left.”

A silence that hung between them a little too long. “We thought you had gone to seek help from the elves. I saw you ride out.” It was not quite a question, but neither was it a disagreement.

Mithrandir’s horse pawed at the straw beneath its hooves, impatient, and he muttered something calming. Between Galadriel and Bronwyn there were only dust motes spiralling in a blade of sunlight, and silence, and seven years gone since the last time they had stood here this way: Bronwyn faithful to her city and Galadriel leaving it behind.

“The king has chosen a path I cannot follow and I will not stay here as his captive," she said. "Tell them all I am going back to the elves for a time. But I will return. Tell them I give them my word I will return here. And him, make sure he hears that.”

Too much to say and not enough time to say it. Not even words enough that could fit between Bronwyn’s loyalty and Galadriel’s, bridging a divide that was both immense and so narrow that Bronwyn closed it with one clasped hand around Galadriel’s. “Travel safe,” she said, and tears brimmed in her eyes.

The world stilled, slow as the dust in the sunlight. “I would not leave if there was any way -”

“Don’t tell me,” Bronwyn said, stepping back, and efficiency settled itself round her again like a cloak. “Take care on your path, Galadriel.”

“May Elbereth protect you, and may the stars light your face,” Galadriel said, and sorrow echoed in their footsteps, in the hoofbeats of the horses through paved streets, in the wind that blew back her hair as they left the city behind them, the thunder of hooves like a drummed lament for Pelargir.

Chapter Text

Our ship she’s ready to bear away
Come, comrades o’er the stormy sea
Our snow white wings they are unfurled
And soon she’ll wave in a watery world.

Do not forget, love, do not grieve
The heart that’s true cannot deceive
My heart and hand I’ll give to thee
So farewell my love, remember me.
(‘Our Ship Is Ready’, traditional)

It was fifteen miles from Pelargir to the boat waiting for them and the whole way she felt that he was just behind her, his hand reaching out, his fingertips brushing her hair. The only roads were droving paths, half overgrown in summer, where the hooves kept up a regular beat over hard-packed earth. The grasses were high as the horses’ knees and the trampled trail left in the riders’ wake would be easy to track. They discussed leaving even these paths to stay beneath the cover of the woods and keeping their tracks better hidden, but decided against it. Speed was better than secrecy if there must be a choice between the two. 

There seemed little point in discussing whether or not he would come after them when she knew full well he would, so instead she asked Mithrandir what had happened with the battle: where Sauron had taken Numenor’s soldiers, what had been waiting for them when they arrived, how many had survived. She wanted to know more than this too but could not bear to ask. Surely surely he would not bring orcs to Pelargir, surely he hated orcs too much. Surely Pelargir was his beautiful thing, his prize.

It would have made little difference what she asked, though, for Mithrandir knew little more than she did. He had reports that there had been a battle and that there had been orcs. He had reports of ships returning. He knew nothing more. “Other eyes are watching,” he said, “news will come to Lindon, have no fear,” and it was no reassurance at all for she had little else but fear. 

More land passed. Ribbons of streams to cross, old moss-grown Numenorean waymarkers, herds of wild goats watching them warily. They kept as much speed as they could without exhausting the horses. She turned back only once, before the track met the dense woodland that lay like patchwork between this and the coast; turned, and stopped, and looked back at Pelargir where it lay like a pale jewel in the distance, half shrouded in fog. 

Mithrandir pulled up alongside her and said her name more in sorrow than anger, and she snapped “You will let me look at it.” 

He nodded, silent.

“It was my home,” she said, letting the tears run unobstructed down her cheeks. “It was my home and now once again I have abandoned those people to him."

“Last time you left they came to no harm.” He spoke unhurried and thoughtful even through their great haste. “There are many reasons to fear, but there are still some reasons to hope. There are always reasons to hope.”

There might be, indeed. She had known hope in Pelargir almost despite herself, in the shape of rebuilt walls, growing children, harvest celebrations and new apple trees. She could remember the feel of sun-warmed stone under her palms. None of these would serve her now. “Hope is an army,” she said, and turned away from the city, back towards the sea.  

They left the road a few miles from the coast where it curved away back towards Linhir. From there the journey was maddeningly slow, through dry scrub woodland littered with fallen branches from the spring storms, nothing except rabbit-tracks to guide them as the horses picked their way carefully through. Mithrandir maintained that this was the correct route, though: an arrangement already made, it seemed, a contingency plan set out years before now.

The knowledge of such things being planned around her, for her, without her knowledge, was like a third presence riding with them and one she did not welcome.

She did not quite resent it; she had, after all, told them to plan what they needed in order to fight him whether or not they could risk her knowing it. Hardly much surprise that she should be the subject of any of those plans. But the thought of plans being made - of there being perhaps some evening when she sat on her terrace working patterns into book bindings while the swifts sang; or an afternoon when she rode out to the foothills of the White Mountains in a light spring rain, feeling such peace in the whisper of the rain around her; or a night when she lay in his bed, when he whispered promises into the hollow of her throat, tell me what you wish, my queen, let me serve you as the back of his hand ran shiver-soft down her side; all of this while others sat in some distant chamber discussing her - this thought was an irritation chafing against her mind.

More immediately troubling, besides, was the understanding that this was a plan which may or may not be in place. Mithrandir had assumed there would be a ship because the plan called for a ship, but he himself had come down from the north and by land. There might, therefore, be a ship waiting as the plan called for, or there might not. Elrond might be waiting for them only a short few miles away, or he might have sent another, or there might be no-one at all. 

The sun pressed heavy on them even under the shade of the trees. A branch snapped beneath the weight of a hoof; a sand-coloured lizard darted away to bury itself in the patchy grass beneath a dead tree. She thought, only three more miles, perhaps, three at most, and every breath and every step took her one further from Pelargir, one closer to sanctuary.

Then out of nowhere her name, spoken so loudly and so clear she whipped her head around expecting to see him beside her. Galadriel.

Her horse stopped, uncertain, flicking its ears back for guidance. Mithrandir drew up beside her. Other than the birds and the lizards, the bees and the tiny creatures scuttling beneath bark, they were the only ones here.

Still, his voice, now a chaotic maelstrom of fury and pain: Galadriel Galadriel you will come back I was not finished my work is not finished I never allowed this you would not hear me I need you come back come back come back come NOW 

She curled her hand around the ring as it grew colder. 

Mithrandir stopped alongside her. “What did you hear?”

“Him. But not here - in my mind. He is searching for me.” 

“I feared that,” Mithrandir said, and seemed old in a way that Sauron had never seemed to her, although both of them were older far than the mortals whose guise they wore. “Can he sense us here? Can he see you?”

“Not if I do not wish it.” She was stronger now, more practiced. He could call to her this way - she knew that from her last journey back to Pelargir - but he could not step unbidden into her mind, could not weave his thoughts into hers as he had done before. He would hear not a whisper from her until she wished it. 

Mithrandir began to say something but she shook her head, whispered to her horse, and set off again. Three miles. Two and a half, maybe. So close, now, so close.

Galadriel, still his voice in her mind, Galadriel, Galadriel, come back, you cannot do this, you have nowhere to go, who will take you? Turn around or I will find you anyway and it will go better for you if you do not defy me again. 

Then silence for a while, until the trees thinned, until she could see the first sight of marram-covered sand dunes in the distance. The last stretch of their journey: along the coast past the next headland, to a bay where a boat might or might not be waiting.

(And his voice again in ragged scraps of fury: come back come back I will find you anyway)

The air was colder as they drew closer to the sea, and a fog drawing in over the waters made the whole of the sky seem darker. Or perhaps it was darker. They had been riding a number of hours now, surely more than half a day, and she had little sense of time. “Is this evening?” 

“Approaching evening.” 

“How long was I there?”

More thought before answering this. “I can’t truly say. Many days, certainly, and perhaps weeks. It appears he was able to create some illusion of you leaving Pelargir that was convincing enough that several people swore to me they had seen you go. But we knew you had found his palantír and I was sure he would not have let you leave lightly after that.”

His palantír; they had known of it, then. Again, the sense of illusion; not only from him but now from her friends and allies who had allowed her to believe her peace was something else than it truly was. And yet she had asked them to work without her as they needed and what else might that mean than this. 

(come back or I will burn every one of your apple trees, I will ruin your elf lands, I will salt the earth so the forests stay gone, do you think I won’t?)

This last length of their journey felt more exposed than ever, his voice in her head and the endless sky above. She pressed her horse on, faster, faster, trying not to think of what else they might do if the ship was not waiting for them.

(come back or I will demand the elves give you back to me, Noldor, Sindar, Avari, I don’t care where you’ve gone, I will have you dragged back as a prisoner, you are mine, you are mine)

She knew the water was too shallow for a ship of any size to draw up in the bay, and so was already looking out to sea as they rounded the headland for the shape of a ship at anchor. The fog was heavier, though, and she could see little, and the land down to the narrow strip of marly beach was too heavily grown with long sea grasses to see any better.

(come back come back I cannot bear this)

And then she saw Elrond standing beside a small rowboat pulled up in the sand. Sanctuary and safety, a future still uncertain but no longer without hope.

There was too much to say and yet none of the words would come. Elrond’s hand on her arm as she jumped down from the horse was as unfamiliar as though he were a stranger to her, and his voice seemed to be coming from some great distance away. She busied herself with saying goodbye to her horse - go north, go to the elves - as Mithrandir spoke briefly to Elrond of the tower and the missing palantír.

“He has reached the city now,” she added, not turning to look at either of them. “He has been trying to speak to me. He does not know where I am.”

A silence from both of them, weighted and wary. 

“Your ring,” Elrond said. “You are still wearing that ring he gave you.”

“And without it I would not know he was searching for me.”

“I think we could reasonably conclude -” Elrond began, and then evidently thought better of it and said instead “Is it worth it, if you must hear whatever he chooses to say to you?”

“Yes," she snapped. "And we must go now before he finds our trail."

She watched from the rowboat as the horses climbed the snaking path back up through the dunes and were soon lost to sight. Better this than look at the water. Better than that. Better to -

No. Because she had looked at the water.

Better than to remember.

But she had remembered, surely, how could she not have remembered.

Something had been better surely, she had felt such a need for that, for a decision she had made with the boat, with the sea - it -

“Enough. I can’t.” She runs a hand down her face.

“So, don’t,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. Not to me, what would I ask you?”

But she turns away, sits up. Gathers back her hair and does not look at him as she dresses. “I am going to walk down to the lower path. I wanted to see the poppies in the cornfield.”

He reaches out - not far enough to touch her, only enough to trace the curve of her back in the air. “Go on, then.”

The room is smaller and lesser when she’s gone. Without her, without stories to spin into grandeur for her, there is only what his own eyes see: wooden rafters, white, uneven walls. A cloak of hers that she won’t need in the summer. Boots of his, neat against the wall. A letter left on the low table with its parchment so old and brittle that it’s hard even to unfold enough to read. (And he wouldn’t, anyway. It’s hers; and he knows what it says; and he has no wish to see Elrond’s handwriting again.)

He should remember his own story, now. But here is where it breaks into pieces and he can’t make it whole, and all he can do is to gather what’s left together and hope that when she comes back they’ll make sense. 

The smith remembered:

Returning to Pelargir laughing and victorious, his hair soaked black with orc-blood, the soldiers around him thumping the staffs of their lances on the ground, all of them drunk on battle. Everything was right until it wasn’t - and he couldn’t place the fault until the steward’s son beside him said “Where are the elves?” 

No elves. No guards to defend the city. Only the steward herself, waiting for them at the quay, still as one of Pelargir’s statues. He saw her come to greet him, and he saw her lips form his warrior's name, but of all the words she spoke only one of them mattered: gone.

And then the victory he’d set spinning like a great wheel splintered and fell in on its own axis, and from then on it was all broken shards. 

He remembered, vaguely as if looking through dark water at an indistinct and muffled scene beneath, what happened after. He remembered shouting the news of their victory, leading the Numenorean soldiers in a cheer that his own people echoed even louder - relief, it was, relief because they were all watching him now, all of them waiting for his lead. So he gave them their joy and he gave them their victory, and he stepped aside and bowed for the island queen as she led her soldiers back into Pelargir. Then he told the steward’s son to bring his hunting hawk, now, and as the soldiers filed into Pelargir he rode out alone. 

Gone, the hawk wheeling up into the sky. Gone, the roads in all directions reaching out beyond his sight. Gone, when he tried to call her again and again through their rings to nothing, nothing, only silence. Gone and he already knew that even the bird’s sharp eyes would see nothing of her.

His scream tore the air around him, ripping the fog into ribbons. 

After that what he remembered was only fragments. 

He remembered the shine of her knife as he turned it over and over again in his hands until the movement became its own purpose. How the moonlight shone on the roofs of his city from the terrace where he stood, and no-one came to disturb him. How he had spoken out loud as though she were there: I would have given this back to you Galadriel and now look, now where are you, now what can I do.

He remembered a time - then? later? - when they found her horse, heading north alone along the old cart-road towards Linhir, its neck and shoulders still caked with dried sweat. How he’d calmed and soothed and rubbed his knuckles into an itchy point below its ears. “Where’s she gone, girl?” he’d said. And the horse had pinned back its ears, wary of him, and the two Southlanders with him had looked at each other in silence where they thought he couldn’t see.

He remembered the island queen coming to negotiate with him again, the sea-captain beside her, and beside him his steward in place of his queen. He remembered his hands tracing the leather map as he heard the island queen’s propositions: Numenor would keep its ruined villages, could seek to build a new settlement at the crossing point of the Anduin for collecting the timber it yearned for to make its boats, but would claim none of the lands to the south or west of that. Pelargir and its lands and its alliances he had made and its towers and bridges and canals and halls he had rebuilt would be his, as long as he wanted them. 

He humoured all this, played the statesman and allowed them their deal with just enough haggling over borders to let them believe it a victory. But his hands ran over the map the warrior had made again and again, and the long rippling curves of water carved in the rivers felt like the waves of her hair.

When she returns there is a crown of woven poppies upon her head, and she seems lighter, less constrained in the armour of tensed muscle and frown she wore earlier. He knows better than to resent her gaining this through being apart from him. It isn’t always this way, and when it is - well, he’s done plenty to deserve it.

He gathers close in his arms all the elements of her he does and doesn’t claim, her pride and her grief and her beauty and all the years gone and children grown. He would kiss away each battle he’s fought, if he could; everything he’s ever done, everything he’s wished to do, all turned to nothing in the softness of her skin and the fire of her eyes.

“I know enough,” she says when he begins to tell her the pieces he remembers, as though he’s a wolf bringing her his prey and lying shamed and silent at her feet. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters -”

“Not to me. I know all this.”

“You know all this anyway.” He lets her go and folds his arms behind his head. “What are we doing this for, then? Do you want me to tell only the parts that entertain you? I can oblige you in that if you like. Are you in a knife at my throat mood or a demanding I fuck you harder mood?”

“You know why we are doing this.”

“I thought I did.” When she holds out her hand he takes it, folds his fingers over hers, but does not look at her. “One of the reasons. But there’s more than that, isn’t there? We’re part of the story of Middle-earth now. Others will tell it but none of them will know it like us. It matters that we say it.”

She is looking past him, distant, biting her lips together. “Say it, then.”

And he tells her the fragments he remembered when she had gone; and she does not interrupt, does not react, says nothing at all, until it is time for her part again.

On the ship Galadriel sat on deck, unmoving, staring out at the sea. There was a cold, heavy fog over the water and although their ship was staying close to the coast in these seas, the shore was already hidden from sight. It was morning again but the very sun seemed drained of colour. 

Someone, she was barely sure who, had lent her a heavy blue cloak but the chill of the fog seemed to seep through it anyway. She held it closed at her chest with one fist that grew colder and colder, and found she did not wish to move even to adjust her own grip. 

Elrond came to sit beside her again, huddled close enough that for an odd moment she thought of them as two gulls perched on a sea-cliff. This time he held out a heavy piece of bread baked with dried fruit. “You missed breakfast.”

She took the bread but held it on her lap. “I fear I am still there,” she said. “I fear this is part of his illusion. He might let me believe I had escaped only to show me I could not.”

Elrond nodded, looking down at the sea with her. The lines of white foam on the wave-tips were in a constant dance of breaking apart and rejoining, and it struck her then that she must have been sitting here for hours. “What would help you? I could tell you something he doesn’t know. When I first met you as a child, on the beach in Sirion?”

“He knows of that.”

“Ah.” He kept himself calm and expressionless, as even as the lull of the waves. “What about... My mother told me once she made you a necklace of seashells when she was young. Does he know that?”

“No.” A memory, sudden and sharp: the thin line of shells, half-broken, mother-of-pearl shimmering in the sunlight. Elwing, orphaned herself, caught between the sorrows of her past and the sorrows yet to come, a serious grey-eyed child standing barefoot in sand on the same beach where her sons would later be found huddling together as the havens burned. 

“Or what about that time I met you on the road back to Lindon and you were plastered in mud, do you remember? Your company had been out in the marshes and you’d been fighting, I don’t even know what you’d been fighting, something awful I’m sure, and you were all covered head to foot in grey mud and I didn’t even realise it was you until you started speaking.”

“You said I looked like a toad.”

“A frog. I said a hibernating frog.” He pulled her closer with an arm around her shoulders and she let herself smile as she leaned into him. “You are here,” he said, “I promise it.”

“Stay with me.”

“I’ll sit here all the way to Lindon if you want.” 

The boat rose and fell against the waves, making what seemed to be good speed. There was as little to be seen in the water as there was beyond it: dark clumps of seaweed like indistinct shadows beneath the surface, sometimes the pale ghostly form of a jellyfish. She watched it all in silence, huddled against Elrond’s side.

“I had hoped the fog would clear before now,” she said in time. “I wanted to see my lands again.”

“You will.” A slightly too confident tone in his voice as he pulled her close for a moment. “You will, I’m sure of it. Maybe Pelargir too in time.”

“Pelargir will be sooner. I told them I would return.”

She felt the light exhale that was not quite a sigh. “No-one would hold you to -”

“I gave my word. Those people deserve more than to be abandoned to him and whatever he will choose to do. I cannot bear to think of Pelargir coming to harm, you know that. I will only come to Lindon if I can fight him from there. We cannot withdraw to our own sanctuary while he continues all the evil he has been doing. He will pay for all of this.”

“Galadriel, I know. I wouldn’t ever expect otherwise of you. There will be fighting to come, I’m as sure of that as I can be, but for now…” Whatever he intended to say, if he had intended anything at all, drifted away in unspoken breath on the wind. “Tell me something about Pelargir,” he said instead. “Something beautiful, something you love.”

She told him about the canal bridges rebuilt, the stone shining bright in the sun, and the black swans that came in winter in vast flocks near the harbour. She told him of the games the children played in the squares and the call of the swifts in the summer. She told him of the thick summer sea-fogs that sometimes blanketed the city in a grey, chill mist, and the flowers that poured down the south-facing walls in waterfalls of purple, and the tiny green lizards that would sometimes rear up on their back legs like miniature dragons to threaten each other, scales glittering green as jewels on their backs. All of this, and more, as the waves passed them one by one by one and the land beyond the mist drew further and further away.

Chapter Text

Look not in my eyes, for fear
  They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
  And love it and be lost like me.
One the long nights through must lie
  Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
  Perish? gaze not in my eyes.

(AE Housman)

The smith was unused to walking the streets of his city alone. His people left him be now - whether that was out of fear or kindness he didn’t really care - and his guests kept their distance well enough, and so there he found himself, first one evening and then the next, pacing from one side of Pelargir to the other with no company but the sound of his own footsteps. 

It shouldn’t matter, not at all. The warrior had been away from Pelargir for longer than this before and he’d never minded too greatly. He’d certainly never before found himself avoiding the terrace where she liked to sit in the evenings. But then, before she was never truly gone; she was only visiting the lands he’d given her, she would always return, and after that first time when he had grown impatient without her and she’d been angry and tearful and hated him for it, he’d learned to let her come and go as she wanted. It had worked, this balance they had found. He missed the way she always was when she came home again, both glad to see him and not, unsettled and reluctant to rest, startling beneath his hands as though she were a wild bird brought down in a storm but wanting him all the same. 

Once, the year before - no, two years before, it was the year the Sirith burst its banks in spring rains and they’d had to bring the sheep down from the lambing pastures early, new lambs slung over horses’ backs - she’d come home earlier than he expected from one of these journeys he kindly allowed her. She was there when he returned to the city that day close to dark, mud on his clothes and the endless bleating of nervous sheep still in his ears. 

“You’re home,” he’d said, and she had looked him over wordlessly and then turned away and led him following behind her through unlit corridors, out to a window alcove where the last of the fading sun turned her hair to burnished gold. 

“And why is this relevant to this story now? I was many leagues away.”

“It’s what I was thinking about. I was dreaming of you all the time, awake or asleep. It was more real to me than the days felt. Or.” A dancing, teasing kiss at the edge of her jaw, one she turns her head for. “Or you can tell me what you were dreaming of.”

She almost smiles. “Pressing my brother’s knife into your flesh?”

“Please.” And he stills her before she can speak, fingertips on her soft lips, the hunger in him trembling. “There, you see? All these years, I’m not even different.”

“You’re home,” he’d said again, and “I missed you,” and she’d drawn him in closer, her hand on his neck, her thumb playing at the roughness of his stubble. He held up his own hands scratched and blackened with grime and greasy from sheep fleeces: “I can’t touch my queen like this.”

There would have been a time long before Pelargir when he could. There would have been a time when he’d have taken delight in that and more, in seeing her shining hair dulled and her brilliance ruined. So he’d thought, anyway. So he’d presumed, so it had seemed, when Melkor still tried to show him there was a beauty too in destruction, in being unbound from the bindings of another’s creation. But he was not that now and he would not mar her light with darkness; he would allow it to shine on him and show him remade and glorious.

When he knelt for her she lifted the folds of her dress for him. His hands never touched her, fixed on the sill either side of her hips as she leaned back against the window glass murmuring I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you into the soft skin of her inner thigh. I’ve missed you as he heard her gasp - such a delicate delicious thing. The scent of her was overpowering and honey-sweet, her impatience for him almost as enthralling. He cared about nothing else.

She ran her fingers into his hair, not seeming to care that it was matted down with sweat and rain. He would sometimes give her one hand to hold the way she liked while he touched her with the other, bringing her to trembling, mewling, broken pleasure beneath his mouth, but not this time, no - this time would be his lips and his tongue alone. Slowly, though, so slowly at first, enough that her next indrawn breath turned to a growl for she never wanted slow when she was like this, but nor did he want fast. He wanted to savour every tiny piece of her, each sweet, pink fold, to taste and suck and graze his teeth over, to circle and stroke with his tongue in long, slow strokes. 

She was wet already; she must have wanted him as she’d watched for his return, she must have been yearning for him, no wonder she couldn’t even wait for the time it would take to reach his bedchamber. His fingers pressed so hard into the stone he thought it might shatter beneath his grip and he took his time until she whimpered and then gave her more, just as she liked him, fast and greedy and strong. 

She was never coy. In all she wanted she was sharp edges and certainty, as much in this as in anything else. All the same she was quieter than she might otherwise be and when he eventually looked up he saw she had the back of her hand pressed to her mouth to muffle her cries so that no passing ears would hear them. He almost laughed - what did he care? Let them all come to see, if they wished, let them know how he served his queen - but she cared and so he would let her have this. She was so close, then, already tense and shaken with tiny, shivering movements, her breath coming faster and faster, and it was only a little longer before she broke apart, a soft, keening cry escaping between her lips and the hand she’d now clenched into a fist. 

When he stood she touched the wetness on his lips and his chin. She was flushed and beautiful even with her face half-hidden in shadow. Still she had not spoken, and he determined that she would, that he would hear her beautiful voice yet. “Up,” he said, “I won’t move you,” and she understood him and laughed beneath her breath as she reached down for his belt. Simple work enough she made of it to unfasten and free him and take the length of him in one cool hand, and his body almost betrayed him even at that touch; he had to close his eyes for a moment to gather himself.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, “you were away too long, you’re always away too long,” and pulled her close against him, around him, with the cross of his forearms over her back. “Call me my name, call me my name, Galadriel, call me my name.”

She breathed Mairon against his throat and he was somewhere else, somewhere perfect. This was what he needed. This was what he was meant to be, enveloped in her light; this was an end and a beginning, this was how it should always have been. “Your ring,” he managed, carried on the tatters of broken breath, and he would have begged but he didn’t need to for she brought her hand to his face again, this time cradling his cheek with the metal touching his skin, enough that he could sense:

- she was burning with a fire that did not destroy but kindled her, that brought all of her to perfect focus, her grief, her pain, even her anger at him, all sharpened into the point of a flame; she was alive and so bright with it, she was again the bold and fierce Galadriel who had crossed the Helcaraxë, who had never known doubt, who had never felt numb.

I will be your Mairon, he thought, I will be your admirable, I will be your excellent, I will remake the world for you, I will make it fit for my queen, and when she came again he could restrain himself no longer and bit at her neck as he spent himself inside her, his hands still closed around empty air. 

So: she would come back, as she had always come back. She needed him, as she had always needed him. She was not gone. She could not be gone.

His footsteps echoed in the empty alleys of his city as though there were two walking together.

“They avoided you?” she says.

She knows little of the detail of this time as he knows little of her time with the elves in the north, and both therefore feel like unexplored land to navigate through, full of hidden things and dangers. “They were watchful around me,” he tries. “No-one would speak of you. It was different, the air was wrong. It was… I’m not sure how to name it. Unbalanced.” 

“They must have been afraid.”

Perhaps, in their minds, or perhaps that’s what she was told. But he’s seen fear in people he’s ruled before and says “I wouldn’t say that.” 

“I was afraid for them.”

“Because you thought I would bring orcs to Pelargir, which I did not. As you would have seen if you had stayed. I could have -”

“No.”

He takes her hand and traces circles with his thumb, a small and limited thing, a shape with no hidden corners and no broken points, contained and understandable within itself. “I was lost with you gone,” he says. “Maybe before then too. I was so sure of my path even when it was falling away from me. But when you were gone it was – I can’t even put words to it.”

A silence. Only the birds singing in the distance, some song of their own that cared nothing for all this land had seen, or lost, or never known. 

“You will tell me of Pelargir,” she says. “You will tell me what you did.”

The island queen and her people were still there, celebrating their victory and talking in great sweeping promises of their plans. The smith was annoyed more than anything. He wanted them gone; Pelargir did not need soldiers eating through its winter supplies and he had much work to do without them. But while they were his guests he would be their charming host all the same, balancing grandeur with just enough weakness that they would not consider him a threat (easy enough in their arrogance), thanking them for their assistance against the orcs. 

He asked the sea-captain’s daughter to walk with him one evening. She was a little wary of him still - wise enough, so she should be - but no less than she seemed wary of her own people, and agreed readily enough. He showed her the pillars carved into statues on the great road up from the docks, naming her ancestors for her: Tuor, Idril, Nimloth, Dior. He was a king himself, in his golden robes and his circlet crown, with his smith’s guild crest pinned proudly at his chest. 

“Is your brother well?” he said once they were past any errant listening ears.

“Isil? I’ve hardly seen him in three years.” A determined and hard-won calm in her smile. “Both my brothers are with our grandfather in the west.”

“Mmm. Safest. Although now, I’d hope a little better? For your family at least.”

She only shrugged.

They turned west, climbing the long run of steps up to the city wall. The sea-captain’s daughter was dressed in the dark red of rich wine and he saw distant heads turn to follow her from the ground as they passed. Up here there were none to listen. No more elf archers. Only a cool wind, blowing back her dark hair.

“I know I owe you,” she said. 

“And I you. An arrangement of mutual benefit, and for our people as well.” She did not seem much reassured, but that didn’t have to matter. “Does your husband suspect any of it?”

“No. I’m – no. I don’t think he would. He’s, he doesn’t really…” She tucked her hair back behind her ear, some quick nervous gesture he’d seen previously, and the smith was lost again in visions of his own queen and all the tiny things of her he missed. 

“Made for a different time,” he suggested. 

The sea-captain’s daughter nodded in relief. “A better time. He’d always have thought we could talk his father round.”

“And he’s not going to start making any plans about naming himself King of Men, is he?”

“No. I told you.” 

The smith could believe it, well enough. The old king’s son hadn’t seemed much interested in Pharazon’s ambition. A shame in some ways, for Kemen seemed somewhat more persuadable, but on balance it was better that he hadn’t. Much harder to remove them both from the picture if it had come to that; and the sea-captain’s daughter seemed fond enough of her husband to make it a lot more challenging than disposing of Pharazon had been. 

They turned a curving corner in the walls, heading up parallel to the main canal. The wind was stronger here. In the distance he could hear sea-birds calling. 

The sea-captain’s daughter – who’d be a queen one day, most likely, her children heirs to the throne of Númenor – looked out towards the ocean. “I should tell you. Before we sailed, Isildur sent me a message. I don’t know how much he knows but he knew I was coming here with the queen and he begged me not to trust you. Galadriel he thought safe but not you.”

Ungrateful little brat of a boy. Not that it was much of a surprise, given how many other lips had been whispering in his ear – a wizard, and the elves through him, no doubt, and a warrior, the smith’s own queen, who had cruelly deceived him -

“Cruelly deceived?”

“I found it cruel.”

“You did not.”

- and a warrior, the smith’s own queen, who had cleverly deceived him.

“I presume he sent something similar to your father,” the smith said.

“I don’t know. Yes. Probably. They still talk. I wanted -” She stopped before forming the words to warn you.

Alliances of all kinds were such delicate, fragile things. “And what about you? Does he suspect anything you’ve done?”

A quick shake of her head. “Nobody knows.”

“Elves might.” 

She stopped, still as a statue.

“All right, no, stay calm. Galadriel found out. Not my intention. She might have told others, the elves in the north. I don’t know what’s been said. And it’s me they’d blame for it, I’m sure of that much. I’m only telling you this because elves don’t always think too carefully when they’re angry.”

The sea-captain’s daughter pressed her hands together, trying very, very hard not to seem afraid. Of him, of elves, of her own people – she’d hardly lack for fears.

“It’s me they’d blame,” he said again and draped a companionable arm around her shoulders, encouraging her onwards. “If you need sanctuary, if it comes to that, you’d always have it here.”

“Here.” And then a silence, lost to thought. They crossed the canal and passed the broad walkway beside it, busy now with the day’s work over for many and the summer sun still warm. For a moment he saw a glimpse of golden hair below and it must be her, surely, it was so obvious that she should be here walking in the evening sun - and then the woman turned aside and was someone else.

Beside him the sea-captain’s daughter was gathering her confidence. Not greatly, not yet; she’d have a way to go before she was queen in her own right. Still, her head was raised a little, and her step firmer, her shoulders back. “I thought it would haunt me,” she said. “I thought I’d have nightmares about killing him. The poison or his face or something. I don’t. Nothing. Not a moment. What does that say about me, do you think?”

“You’d ask me?” He sounded incredulous to himself but that wasn’t his intention. What he felt was something closer to gratitude, or satisfaction, or some seam between the two.

“There’s not really anyone else I can ask.”

“True enough.” And she’d done better than he thought, hadn’t she? Even now she needed little from him. She’d keep a close eye on her father and her brothers herself, she’d be wary of anything sought from the elves, and she’d bring it to his attention if it began to escape her grasp. “You stopped a war,” he said. “You saved a lot of soldiers’ lives. They’d have died pointlessly for nothing. Even if Númenor had won I’d have made Pharazon pay for it, you’d have been wrapped up in Middle-earth for years, you’d have ended up at war with the elves and you’d have lost. You would never have kept Pelargir. I’d burn it to ashes before that. You saved your people all of that and all it cost you was one man’s life. If you’re not troubled? I think that says you know a good deal and you’ll make a good queen, if Kemen stays heir.”

She was a little too sharp to receive that solely as praise, but it did seem to reassure her all the same. “And where’s your queen?”

And where was his queen, indeed. Sailing on some distant sea, or dining in a high tower with elves crowding around to ease her and entertain her and pour her wine. Sleeping sweetly on a bed of ferns in a hidden forest where a carpet of sweet bluebells scented the air. Or training an army, or hunting down orcs, or gathered around a map on a war table, planning an attack with her commanders. He’d put no faith in peace deals with her involved. 

“My queen comes and goes as she pleases,” he said. “Have no fear. I’ll find her and I’ll find out what the elves know, then I’ll send word to you.”

“Yes. Yes, thank you.” A little uncertainty, there; the sea-captain’s daughter looked away, then back. “Did you choose her? Galadriel. Was it a political match?”

Other than the absence of the elf guards, Pelargir looked like it should. Streets still busy, the evening air still loud with carried ribbons of conversation. It was nothing compared to the grandeur of Armenelos, not yet, but it was proud and prosperous and strong and it would be greater still with Numenor at its side. It would be well. It would all be well, all of it, and his warrior would return if he had to drag her back in chains. 

“I chose her,” he said. “And she me.”

“And where was my queen?”

Galadriel was, at the time, still on the deck of a ship, one hand to the ash-grey mast, watching the land draw in little by little. From here, the tops of the mountains were lost in mist, and the harbours of Mithlond still too distant to see any of its buildings or boats. 

Always, still, his whispering voice.

You can hear me. I know you can hear me. You won’t answer me, you won’t give me anything, fine. I will speak anyway and you will listen to what I say.

The sea was calm and the wind was light, barely there at all, and they advanced at a frustratingly slow pace. Part of her wanted to leap once again into the cold waiting sea and twist like a fish as she hit the waves. She’d get there little faster, perhaps, exhausted but at least using all the strength she had, if the currents of this coast didn’t take her first. 

You think to punish me. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? You think you can punish me this way. It’s not your place, elf. Turn and come back and I will be merciful. I would always have come back to you, Galadriel, it was only intended for a short while. You will not let me finish things and you blame me for work you don’t understand.

“Elrond,” she said. He came to her without questioning and she took the hand he offered, turning her face into his arm to hide her eyes.

A breath out, not quite long enough for a sigh. “Again?”

“The same this time.”

You will not LISTEN -

“I don’t like that he can still reach you here,” Elrond said, the measured cadence of his words hinting at a careful consideration.

The scent of Elrond’s cloak against her face was of elf dwellings and the clear bright air of Lindon, striking against something deep within her with the resonance of a treasure long buried for safekeeping. So many things she had missed. Back in Pelargir the Southlanders still wore the rougher weave of poorer cloth, even him some of the time (your husband, a mocking voice that was no-one’s but her own this time whispered to her, your husband, your king). In more recent years he had grown fonder of the damasks and brocades sent as gifts from the south, finely sewn with patterns of silk and gold. Always, he loved gold. 

- with no pity with no care -

“He is angry enough to give away more than he intends,” she said. “There is use in it.”

“There is more use in having you safe.”

“If we must fight -”

“If we must fight, then you will serve us better as a commander with a clear head. Galadriel, you know I’m only concerned for you. I doubt whether he would even give away anything useful at all. He managed to keep so much of what he was doing hidden from you for years.”

“As did you.”

She regretted it as soon as she had said it, although to a lesser degree than she might have done, and looked up to see Elrond’s sad smile. “I never kept anything from you lightly,” he said. “And I very much dislike that I kept anything from you at all. I’m sorry, Galadriel.”

“You were still right to do it.” The voice in her head still raged, but quieter, now, easier to ignore; there was nothing it said that she had not heard before. “I would never have forgiven you if you had compromised our defences for my sake.”

He laughed. “Oh, I’m sure of that.”

A ragged band of dark-winged birds flew over their ship, heading inland. It was still too early in the year for the vast migrating flocks she had watched from Pelargir. Summer in Lindon was cooler, with sun long into the evenings. Nowhere here had ever quite felt like home to her in the way that Nargothrond or Doriath had; she had always felt she was here only in between duties elsewhere, her mind always on the next campaign. She had her own rooms, though, rooms that Elrond said had been kept for her for whenever she might return, and although once again she would be thinking of soldiers and arms and battle campaigns she would be doing that from a place made by elves. 

She watched the birds fly further and further away from their ship towards the awaiting coast, and let herself listen once again to the voice that was still calling to her. 

You can hear me I know you can hear me please, Galadriel, please.

He would have no answer from her. 

Chapter Text

There is wind where the rose was,
Cold rain where sweet grass was,
And clouds like sheep
Stream o’er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought warm where your hand was,
Nought gold where your hair was,
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was.

(Walter de la Mare, ‘November’)

There were crowds waiting at the docks when Galadriel's ship finally reached Lindon. Perhaps they had recognised the ship itself; perhaps they had seen her, standing out on the deck for the whole of their approach. Truly, she did not even care to ask. She was lost in the comfort of welcomes and friendship, of hands in hers and thanks that she was home and safe and back with her people. 

She wanted almost to sob in relief. She wanted almost to stay here with them and talk and think about nothing else at all except how happy she was to be home, how greatly she had missed it here, how much she already felt revived by the very air itself. But she had not abandoned her duty. 

Gil-galad waited behind the others. He greeted her with a bowed head once she reached him, quiet and staid. “Again you have found your way back to us,” he said, and then gripped her arm, stronger than she was expecting. “And I don’t believe I have ever been so glad to see you, Galadriel.”

She thought, as they walked together away from the quay, that he could have said far less – and far more. That his words seemed chosen for their whole audience, as much as for her, and that he had told her before all of them that he did not consider her return here to be an unwelcome one no matter what it might mean for Sauron’s claimed peace treaty. That there might have been a need for him to say this to assuage others who in his silence might say otherwise. She had never been particularly interested in such double-talking diplomacy, but had seen it practised to a fine art in Pelargir enough to recognise it now and admire in some distanced way the careful nuance it involved.

Beyond this, though, she did not care. She walked at the High King’s side and thought of armies under her command once again, the weight of a sword in her hand in battle.

The room they gathered in was one she knew well from dozens – hundreds, maybe – of meetings about war. It was light and clear and brightly decorated, its arches and curlicues far from the solid stone lines of Pelargir. She noticed it now in a way she never had before, not even when she returned from years out in the wilds. It seemed strange and desperately welcome all at the same time. 

Here, she had brought back battle reports and rumours of Sauron’s followers. Here, they had studied vast maps of all the lands from Forodwaith to the South and charted where their lines might need to be reinforced, where the lurking remnants of the enemy might be most likely to break through. Here, she had come to argue as her companies were reduced from hundreds to barely a handful. Here, Gil-galad had once told her he feared there would never be an end to the war that she would accept. 

Now she knew so much of their enemy, more than she ever had before. She was no longer reliant on scraps of tales from centuries gone by or rumours overheard by a passing traveller in a distant inn. She knew how he thought and what he valued and how he planned. And beyond that, she knew a thousand little things of the reality of him: the way that when heavy rains came he would spend hours at night listening as though entranced; the way he would always pour her glass first of the honeyed spiced wine brought from the lands to the south of the great river; the way he would stretch his arms above his head after a day working in his forge, always the same way, first one and then the other, and she would watch the muscles move across his shoulders. 

None of these things would matter now. 

Gil-galad had been sent word that Númenorean ships had come to Pelargir but did not know of all that had happened beyond that: the death of Pharazon, Míriel retaking her crown in her own right, Sauron’s offer to work with them to retake some old settlement south of Rhovanion, the tower, the palantír, what it had shown her of Armenelos and Ost-in-Edhil and distant chanting orcs. But it seemed some of this he had learned already. Orcs had been raiding the elf and human lands over the mountains for some time now, under some command that was never revealed, and Eregion – Eregion, he said she would be told about fully in time.

She caught herself before demanding she be told of this now, immediately. She was a soldier again here and not a queen, after all. So instead she reined in her impatience and relayed what Sauron had admitted to her of what he had done, and how he had left her in the tower– although here she left out the detail of the raft and the sea, saying only that he had kept her entranced under some enchantment in a place where she could not reach anyone.

“You cannot abandon Pelargir to him,” she said after relating all of this. “You cannot. Elrond agreed in your name that the Noldor would protect the people of Pelargir if they were under threat.”

“And you would be prepared to lead an army against him?” 

“Of course.”

“He and who else? If we find he has brought orcs to Pelargir I would give you an army now but what would you do if it’s Númenor’s soldiers he has at his side? Declare war on them to save the Southlanders from a king they’re still loyal to? What if all he has is the Southlanders themselves – would you ride against them, for the sake of fighting him?”

No. No, she wouldn’t, and Gil-galad would not grant her soldiers for it even if he thought otherwise, and all in this room knew it. Beside her Elrond lowered his head, the trace of a wry and humourless smile dancing over his face. She was caught in inaction once again.

“No,” she said. “But he has orcs. He said twice that he has has been trying to control them.”

“His fortunes seem to be turning on that front,” Gil-galad said. “Those we hear of seem well controlled enough, even if they’re not in the numbers he’s accustomed to.”  

“Then must we wait until he has armies already assembled before we move against him? He has told me he will not be content with Pelargir. How many lands would you grant him before we fight?”

Gil-galad sighed. “And where do we fight, Galadriel? And who do we fight? I don’t deny he’s a threat but we still don’t know what he is doing and I will not waste forces through haste. The messenger Mithrandir spoke of will bring us news from the battle in the south, Edhellond will send word of what he does in Pelargir with you gone, and I will send a messenger to Celebrimbor and the Istari in Eregion. For now, we wait.”

“If he has brought his orcs to Pelargir -”

“Then anything we do is already too late.” 

She felt an old and long-practiced anger with him begin to rise again like heat in her blood, but while his tone was unyielding it was not unkind. Nor was he wrong, however much she might hate to admit it. 

“We wait,” he said again. “We wait and then we can move. For now, at least let us welcome you home.”

The celebration they held for her was grander than the one she remembered from her first days in Pelargir. No ruins here, no feast held in a hall with swallow’s nests still high in the rafters above long-broken windows. Those present were her own people speaking her own tongue. Still, it was that day in Pelargir that came to mind above all else as she moved through the crowds and dancers: the Southlanders watching her in wonder as she drank a strangely bitter wine from a chipped goblet, Sauron whispering to her in Quenya, be kind to them, Galadriel, I have told them so much about you.

It was so dearly welcome to be back here among her own people, and for a while she found it easier than she had thought. Even the hesitancy that many had around her was satisfying, in its own way; they had not been comfortable with her leaving but they had not been uncomfortable enough to protest it, and now she was back and the deal she had made with their enemy for their sake was impossible to ignore. 

It was not beyond her imagining that Sauron would demand her return with threats of outright war. Perhaps he might even promise to cease his activities with the orcs. But she could not believe he would ever agree, even falsely, to constrain his ambitions to Pelargir and the Southlands, to be merely a king when he could make all of Middle-earth as glorious as he wanted. 

She stayed for a while, longer than she expected, finding safe conversation in discussions of times long past, watching Elrond weave through crowds playing the charming young politician. Then when the moon was full in the sky she slipped away from them all and made her way to the memorial trees, retracing her steps from a celebration years before. If she had argued further then – pressed them more on the necessity of following the enemy’s traces and insisted on being given soldiers, or at least refused to be sent to Valinor – would their fortunes have been any better? Would he truly have been content to remain a smith’s assistant in Númenor? In all her time in Pelargir she had never come close to believing it, but she had begun to think that he believed it, somehow.

The carved faces looked down at her. Finrod, Fingolfin, Lúthien with Huan at her side, Glorfindel. She had always imagined she would be here too one day. Instead she walked among them, alive, the enemy’s ring on her hand, the memory of his whisper soft against her neck.

The ring itself she had been permitted to keep. Gil-galad did not want any craft made by the Enemy’s own hand here, but it seemed there had already been a number of discussions with Celebrimbor and the Istari about her earlier refusals to remove it and all were assured Sauron could not do anything with it beyond her knowledge.

He was silent now. None of the elves had followed her here either. She was granted the peace of solitude in this place for as long as her duty would allow it.

His queen’s rooms were tidy and undisturbed. He had not set foot in them for years at her request, an accord he had been all too happy to grant her. Now her absence seemed itself to be a presence waiting here for him in the emptiness; it greeted him with a smile and a raised hand made of shadows, it said Mairon in a voice of endless whispers.

He lay down on the bed that still smelled faintly of her and watched the patterns of sunlight on the wall. The sheets were soft beneath his palm. Mere weeks since she had slept here and already it felt like she had been gone centuries. He had always thought she would fill this place with elven things so she could feel she was still among the Noldor, but she never had; the walls were bare, the surfaces neat and clear, all of her treasures kept safely beyond sight. 

There was a roar in his head that grew louder and louder again. He let it take him like a wave that swept through this quiet place and he was thrown off his feet for a moment, water crashing above him, salt water forcing the last of the air from his lungs, trapped in a world he had sung into being with a screaming terrible voice pressing him down and down and down through water and mud and stone, there is no escape, Mairon, there never was, I have remade you. 

There had been a time when that voice was gone. There had been a time when he looked at the first sunrise and heard only the sighing wind and the distant sea. How desperately he had scrabbled for hope, then.

No more than a few moments before he drew breath again on the soft linen of his warrior’s bed, but the sun had already moved forward in the sky and the lattice of shadows cast by the window lead was spilling over onto the floor. 

He thought of her lying here the way she liked to sleep sometimes with her hand folded against her face. She would be back among the elves now, unless that was a ruse to trick him and she was… where? If elves were gathering armies against him she would be at the head of that, surely, and if they were not she would be demanding they do so.

He tried again to reach for her, pulling on the threads of the unseen world that linked her ring to his. She had not yet shut him out; perhaps she did not know how. Still there was nothing of her to reach, no sense of her at all. It felt as if he was speaking into the wind. Galadriel. Galadriel. Will you not listen, will you not even listen to me. 

Nothing.

He got up and smoothed the creases from the sheets with his hands, left her bed looking as neat as it had when he arrived. Beneath the window, her writing desk and its wooden chair waited as though she might return any moment. A curtain was pulled back to the side of the arched doorway, tied with a red silk rope. Beyond that, a smaller space, and her clothes hanging in neat rows, fur-lined winter boots nestled alongside her lighter shoes. He touched the sleeve of a cream-coloured dress but even the sense of it was too much. He lifted down the cloak he had given her with the sigil of Finarfin shining bright, and let the rest be.

Another space. Here an armchair, a fireplace, a circular woven rug that had come as a gift for her from one of the tribes to the south. Here a bookshelf with a neat row of books. He lifted down one: Quenya poetry, but nothing in it marked. If any of it held any particular meaning for her she had left him no way to know it. 

There was a chest, too, kept out of the way beneath the window. Within it, a collection of things she kept to herself: the comb-knife she had once held to his throat, nestled in a cedar box with inlaid pearl, a treasured memory of the elves or of the time she had nearly killed him or both. A necklace he did not recognise. A stack of letters, tied with a linen cord. 

These letters he lifted out and looked through. They were all written in the same hand, signed with a single E. The smith thought of the herald’s calm face looking on him with Lúthien’s grey eyes and swore, again, that the boy would pay for any part that he had played in the warrior’s absence. 

“You will give Lúthien her own name?”

“Nothing else I might name her would please you, believe me.”

But here were the letters the herald had written her. He scanned the first, and then the second and third and fourth, his sight seizing on scattered lines from each page:

- which I never would have forgotten, of course, but Durin was so -

- had been away all day in a fishing boat and returned with barely more than -

- or known at all of Harfoots. Mithrandir believes them another race of Men, which -

- only the footprints of a fox in the snow. It was so quiet. I thought of you.

Nothing useful and no plans, only notes of elves doing unremarkable elf things and memories of times past, scattered glimpses of a life that had fitted around her quest to hunt down her enemy.  

He seized the stack of them together again and felt the paper fragile beneath his hands. It could be lost; it could be burned. It could be scattered in pieces on the waters of the Anduin. It could give him more than any of that, more of her, things she had kept from him, he could search through it and take all the things she had never told him, if she would deny him her presence she could not deny him this, she had left him -

His hands were shaking. The strangest thing, to have crafted this physical form himself and yet not be its master.

He rewrapped the stack of letters in their linen cord and placed them back into the chest, unread. 

The messenger arrived at the city gates in the first light of morning, having ridden through the night once the safety of Lindon was within reach. She had parted from Mithrandir and gone east to watch the battle and then had taken a harder path to Lindon, following the great river north until the bridge the dwarves had built, then following the high climbing pass through the mountains and the old East Road to Mithlond. There had been wolves and heavy storms with rain that lashed down over treacherous paths on the mountain road.

The wardens in Mithlond gave her food and miruvor cordial, dry clothes and a bandage for her wounded arm, and summoned Gil-galad and Elrond and Círdan and Galadriel and Mithrandir who was still there with them as if the presence of all of them together could compel the news about the battle the messenger brought to be something they wished to hear. Galadriel, second in the room after Elrond, paced the room as they waited. The space felt strangely short of air and the sunlight without warmth. 

There was no conversation as the others arrived. No greetings. Only Gil-galad spoke to thank the messenger, a Silvan elf who had served in the Eastern armies, and then they took their seats and waited for her to tell them of the battle she had seen.

The orcs, it seemed, had assembled in a valley they had already claimed as their own on the edge of the lands still devastated from the volcano. They were reasonably well organised and fought in tight formation. The human soldiers came down on them just before dawn, evenly matched in numbers but greatly outclassing them in force with the advantage of horses and speed and better arms, Númenor’s soldiers at the front, a band from Pelargir in support. The orcs were driven back from their shelters out onto open plains and with the help of the sun were all but destroyed. And he had been there at the head of the battle, fighting with Númenor against the orcs.

Her relief was not total - there was no doubt some other plan of his that this played a part in - but it was relief, all the same. He had not led the Númenoreans to their deaths. She had not failed in allowing it. Whatever else might come, there was at least this. 

They questioned the messenger a while longer. She had been too far distant to hear anything but the sounds of battle, but had seen the soldiers wandering the field to retrieve arrows, seen the celebrations after the battle, seen Sauron cheered and feted by his own soldiers and those from Númenor both. No indication that they had hunted down the straggling orcs that escaped, although he was not careless and might still have sent soldiers after them afterwards (or not, or have let them live for his own reasons, she thought, to take back word of what he had done to others who would still not obey him). The orcs had some sort of a commander with them but it seemed this was only another orc. There was no sign of them showing any obedience to Sauron, no sign that they knew he was coming. They seemed to be the same orcs that had been harrying the elf and human settlements in the south of Rhovanion, driving out farmers, stealing cattle and grain, but it was difficult to tell from such a distance.

The messenger became apologetic for not following more, seeing more, being able to answer any more of the questions that by then only Galadriel was asking, and Mithrandir put a calming hand on Galadriel’s arm. She breathed in cool dawn air and closed her eyes for a moment. “That is all,” she said. “Thank you for bringing this to us.”

“He must have decided he has less need of orcs than of Númenor,” she said later once the messenger had been taken away to rest and it was only the few of them alone. “He dislikes orcs.”

“Dislikes?” Gil-galad leaned back in his chair.

“Only because his visions are grander than orcs. He does not care what they do, he never has, he only cares that they are foul and disobedient and not the glorious armies he believes he deserves. If Númenor would give him soldiers I think he would consider that worth sacrificing orcs.”

“Then you think Númenor has given him soldiers.”

“No.” There weren’t enough, surely. If he had helped them to retake one of their old ports on the Anduin or further to the east then they might have been grateful enough to him to give him something in return, more for the stability such a victory would give Míriel’s reign than for the land itself. But they did not have soldiers to spare and they would surely never give him any for his command alone. He had always disliked that Pelargir’s elf archers answered to her, not to him, taking orders from Arondir in her absence; and he did not trust Númenor at all. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what he is doing, but I will find out. I swear it.”

"We will," Gil-galad said.

The queen of the island nation and her train of soldiers finally left, departing in their great ships. Fewer soldiers departed Middle-earth than had come here, but mostly that was not in sorrow – there had been few losses in the battle and one garrison had been left behind to guard Númenor’s latest prize. The ruins of their old settlement to the east spanned a small port where the great river ran deep, and beyond it a town huddled against steep cliffs looking out on rich land and deep forests, on the edge of the blackened expanse of ruin from the volcano. A great thing to bring news of back to their people, no doubt, even though it wouldn’t please them as much as Pelargir itself would have.

There were crowds at the docks to wish the islanders farewell, a jostling mass of shouts and laughter with children lifted onto shoulders to wave at the departing soldiers. Beneath the noise the smith could hear other, quieter currents: a man grumbled about the churned-up mess the horses’ hooves had left of the paddocks, a group of tailors argued over who was to be paid for repairing uniforms; a girl consoled a friend over the heartbreak of a departing sailor. There had been a little too much of that last for the smith’s liking. He knew mortals well enough not to expect otherwise, but it left a little too many potential complications for his liking. He did not want any divided loyalties when it came to Númenor. 

His steward stood beside him, faithful as ever if a little quieter since his return. Her loyalties lay with Pelargir and therefore with him too for as long as they had that in common; nonetheless, the things that the warrior had said as she left had troubled her. 

“Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading west for a few days,” he said now. “Anything you need of me while I’m gone consider it granted.” 

The steward nodded, her eyes still on the line of passing soldiers. “West?”

“Out to Galadriel’s lands.”

It might have caused her some concern, that, or at the very least raised some questions, and he watched her carefully for anything she chose to give away. She only nodded again.

The island queen came towards the end of the line of soldiers, the sea-captain’s daughter walking beside her with the queen’s hand on her forearm. A grand and regal sight that even the chattering crowd hushed a little to watch. 

He stepped forward to wish the queen farewell and good winds back to Númenor, and they spoke a little of peace and prosperity to come. The finer details had already been arranged in private discussions; this was for the watching crowd more than anything else, a promise of continued friendship and alliance. But that was all for the future. For now, he saw them on their way, exchanging a short nod with the sea-captain’s daughter before they stepped onto the waiting boat. 

He had other things to deal with.

Elves were hard to find when they didn’t want finding. This wasn’t a problem the smith had faced often - more usual was elves appearing when they weren’t wanted, in places where they shouldn’t be - but he’d tracked them before. He would have done that the same way now if he could, in wolf-form, slunk down belly close to the ground at the head of a pack, chasing the trails of scent written on the land, guessing their path as they walked in running streams to hide their trail, listening for the lying birdsong in the trees overhead. 

That was all beyond him now. He was trapped in the cage of this form, limited and weak, and all the power he’d been able to regain only made it increasingly, inescapably obvious how much he still lacked. So he was one man on a tired horse (his own; he’d meant to take his warrior’s knowing they would recognise it, but the animal hated him and could not be relied on), alone on the old road, searching for elves without a single one of them in sight. 

At the ford town of Linhir he was welcomed in a hushed, cautious way. They had always been hesitant around him – too close to the elves, too many generations of whispered stories where he was reduced to a monster that prowled in the dark to threaten disobedient children – but with his warrior gone they barely even bothered to hide it. No matter. They could learn to obey their king in her absence. He politely requested a meal and a bed for the night and a rest for his horse, and held out a handful of shining coins from Númenor as payment. They looked at the money as if it was an exotic treasure and did not refuse him. 

In the morning he rose late, feeling no particular hurry. In truth he had still not decided what he would say once he reached her elves. Archers would be useful but he would not trust these ones without his warrior at his side. Information about where she had gone and what she might be planning would be more useful still, but he doubted they would give him anything at all. Part of him hoped that she might be there with them, however unlikely that seemed, and as he ate the generous breakfast the innkeeper had prepared for him he consoled himself with visions of her walking down the old road to greet him.

He set off in the sunshine and made good speed north towards the elf settlements. He had travelled this road before but always at her side or with her agreement, ever since the first time he had brought her here to look at the lands he’d given as her wedding gift. She had been so uncertain then. So many things at once still, snapping at him for trying to jest with her on the road, but fierce and keen in his arms when they stopped to rest. She could have demanded whole mountains of him then; there was nothing he would have denied her. 

There was an old waymarker half-covered with tiny purple flowers by the first curve in the road. He had waited here to meet her once before when she had returned from her elves in time for the harvest preparations. He had stood just here as he watched her approach on her white horse, the brightest and most beautiful thing in all the land. 

This time, he captured the image of it in his mind: the sun, the grass growing in the road, the shadows cast on the stone, the little clinging stems of the flowers. He wrapped his words around it and spoke them out loud, here and through the Unseen: Galadriel. Galadriel, look. Do you remember where this is?

She did not quite reply but for the first time there was a reaction, so brief before she hid it from him: an indrawn breath, the sense of a gasp. A hint, perhaps, of hope.

“It was a threat! You wanted me to know you were in my lands and I could not stop anything you might do.”

“It wasn’t a threat.” He is silent for a moment. “It wasn’t only a threat. I missed you so much.”

“You said you would tell this story and I cannot even believe what you say.”

He takes her hand, wrapped tense into a fist, and she lets him although she does not move and the shape of her shoulder braces against him as she turns away. “It’s not like that,” he says.

“Then what is it like?”

“I didn’t go there with a plan. I didn’t know what I was going to do. What kind of story does that make? And you are hardly better. You won’t even say why you kept your ring.”

“It was a weapon, you had given me a weapon -”

He raises an eyebrow and she huffs away from him again, one palm down firm on the sheets – there will be no further discussion on this now.

It was only a faint and fleeting thing so brief he could almost believe he imagined it. He tried to call her again, and then again and again but she was silent. 

The elves would be watching him, no doubt. They were always watching the road between Linhir and Edhellond. So, very well, they could watch him ride out to the next waymarker a few miles distant - a place he knew his warrior had greeted them before - and they could send someone to speak to him there, or they could keep hiding. 

He had considered coming with others. An army at his back would have been pleasing. Númenor’s army, perhaps even more pleasing; he could have shown them the vast spans of forest covering this land, the tall pines that would have made excellent masts for their ships, the strong oaks that could have built them another fleet twice over. Show them that, loudly for the benefit of all the elf-ears listening from the forests, and then ask the elves nicely if they’d consider speaking with him. But Númenor might start getting ideas, then. Best not to bring their army; best not to bring any force he could muster himself. Best to come like this, alone, outnumbered, surely harmless.

There was no-one there, when he reached the waymarker and the meadow of soft grasses beside it. A stream coming down from the mountains gained strength here but was still easy enough to ford, even on foot, and its splash and the chirp of grasshoppers was the only sound there was. It was as if the land itself was empty of elves now and he wondered for a moment if they had gone after all; withdrawn back to Edhellond, or further north still. She might have told them to do that and for all her protests that these were not her people to command, he had no doubt they would have listened. 

Unlikely. 

He wheeled his horse around and yelled out towards the thickest parts of the forest to the east: “Elves! Send someone to meet me here at midday.” Then he left the horse to graze and walked further out himself: a mile, another, another, until he was climbing the sparser, scrubbier land of the rocky sandstone hills. He lay in wiry parched grass under an olive tree and stared up at the sky. 

There was a voice that was easy to reach for, easy to echo. He only needed to try a little and there it was in the whisper of the windand  the distant crash of waves against sand and shingle: Everything you make will be ash in your hands, Mairon. Everything you do will serve my will. 

He didn’t argue with it any more, only listened and let it rage for him.

You failed in this before you even knew it. It will all turn to failure in the end. Your great plans, your shining visions. How pleased with yourself you were to have bargained with the elves and now they will turn against you anyway: they will keep your rings and they will keep what you taught them and they will come with greater armies than you can call and they will take your city and take your crown. You will be nothing, nothing, even the Valar will forget your name.

A thin ribbon of birds flew overhead, crossing from the river delta to the coast, ignoring him entirely. 

You can’t even command orcs well without me, can you? What do you plan to do with them, Mairon, when they barely even fear you? You who once talked a sleeping dragon from its den and had it do your bidding.

He could feel his lips forming the words and found he didn’t even care. It was as though this was all something mildly unpleasant happening to someone else.

Burn her lands, kill her people, teach her not to defy you like this. No, better: get her back first and make her watch as you do it. Tell the elves to bring her to you with her hands tied behind her for she can’t be trusted otherwise. Make her kneel and look on as you cut their throats. No: make them beg her for mercy as you hold your knife to their throats. Make them plead with her to turn back to you. No, her knife, use HER knife -

It was not the first time he had thought of such things, although now even the words and the wishes and the thought of her pleading with him could spark little feeling. There had been so much rage that he let it run off him like a rainstorm, pouring in rivers over his skin. 

He might do this. He might do anything. 

The elves were waiting for him when he got back to the clearing, a small group of them armed and watchful. He nodded at them amiably enough and went to fetch his horse as it grazed by the banks of the stream, swinging himself up onto its back. The elves were all on foot but there were a dozen within sight and the sense of more waiting in the trees. 

“Glad to see you’re still here,” he said. “I thought all the elves were afraid of me. Which one of you do I speak to?”

The one that stepped forward was not someone he recognised from the archers that had guarded Pelargir. Celaer, he gave his name. He was armed with a knife at his side and a bow on his back but his hands stayed empty and his voice was calm. 

“Celaer,” the smith said. “Where are my archers, elf? There was an agreement.”

“An agreement with Galadriel.”

“And she ended that, did she?” No answer to that, which made it clear enough the answer was yes. “Seems capricious of her. How do you know she won’t turn on you next? You’re only here because she permitted it. Foolish to rely on her.”

“Have you come here -” one of the elves began but Celaer cut her off with one hand out. 

“You should let her finish,” the smith said. “It’s a fair question. Why did I come here? What do you think, elves? Lots of timber here. Lots of rich earth I could use for farming. Pelargir’s going to grow, you know, and I’ll have other towns with it, and they’ll need land for food and wood. Why should I let you stay here when you’re doing nothing to aid me? I can’t trust elves.”

Celaer remained unreadable, implacable. “Did you come to propose a treaty with us?”

Had he? Hardly. Anything he forced the elves to do they would begrudge him and be unreliable and untrustworthy for it, that much was sure, although the thought of elves in chains bringing in the harvest came to him briefly and was quite pleasing. “You should be proposing one to me,” he said. “You should be pleading with me.”

“Pleading?”

His hand found the hilt of the knife at his belt. “Why not?”

The arrow came with no warning, a whip-fast hiss through the air from his left aimed straight at his neck. Not a bad shot; even if he’d been in armour it would have been well-targeted at the exposed skin just below his ear. Good archers, elves. 

He caught it in one hand without needing to look and snapped it into two between thumb and fingers, then dropped the broken pieces to the ground. The look of fear on Celaer’s face was so very satisfying.
The smith turned his attention to the trees. “Show yourself, archer.”

“Please,” Celaer said, “he’s young, please - mercy -”

“Show yourself.” And when there was still no movement: “You, or all of them.”

The elf that came forward then still had his bow in his hand and a quiver of arrows on his back. He did look young, as much as it was possible to tell with elves, and terrified and defiant with it. He said nothing but held his head high and met the smith with only a slight tremble in his stance.

“Brave,” the smith told him. “But not wise. You think one arrow could kill me?”

The archer curled his lip. “It was with a single arrow that Eärendil brought down the dragon Ancalagon.”

Brave indeed, and determined to die that way. The smith grabbed his collar and lifted him to his toes, just a little too high for balance. “Interesting way to beg for mercy.”

“You’ll kill me anyway.”

“But I might have killed you fast.”

 The elf was little enough weight to hold this way, not even trying to fight him, pointless though that would have been. The others watched, frozen, bows drawn but not firing, fear in the air like the first taste of snow. Oh, he had missed this. And how long had he allowed himself to be distracted and talked into mercy by the presence of his warrior? Truly, it was as if it was she who had wrapped him in enchantments - 

“Stop it.”

“It’s relevant. I promise. Let me finish.”

As if it was she who had wrapped him in enchantments, and he still held by them now. He remembered an earlier journey, their long road to Pelargir, when he had run down one of the bandits that waylaid them and threatened her and thought to intimidate him, of all people – run him down at her command, and then brought the man before her alive so she could do as she chose. And she, still breathless and bloodied from battle, had instead pleaded for his life. 

The elf glared at him. No-one spoke.

“Child,” the smith said. “Do you know my queen? Galadriel, do you know Galadriel?”

A wordless nod, eyes so wide they were ringed in white.

“You be glad she likes me to spare people.” He dropped the boy and sent him stumbling with a shove, and wheeled his horse around to address all the elves hidden in the shadow of the trees as well as those surrounding. “These lands are Galadriel’s,” he called, and his voice echoed out, over the forests, over the streams and the hills and the trees, out to the mountains and to the sea. “Everything here is hers. You change nothing, you do nothing here that she has not agreed. You will guard all this realm for her until she returns. Do that well and I’ll leave you be.”

It didn’t matter if they agreed or not, so he didn’t wait for an answer. 

He made good speed along the road south. He should reach Linhir well before nightfall, and would have them find him a place in the small inn there and bring him food and drink as they bit their lips to silence and shot each other looks when he turned away, and then he would tell them the same as he had the elves. This was Galadriel’s, all this land. Let her have it all her way. When she came back, it might be to peace or to warfare and ruin, it might be to a lesser, fading land that would not match his glory, but whatever she faced she would have none to hold responsible but herself. 

She would regret what she had done. This much, he was sure of. He could see a vision of her now, dressed only for some reason in a shift like the one she had worn on the raft, barefoot on the stone floors of their palace in Pelargir. “You were kind,” she was saying, confused, not sure how to make sense of it. “You were kind.”

“I was,” he would say. “And you should have appreciated that when you had it.”

Chapter Text

Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonnie bird,
That sings upon the bough;
Thou minds me o’ the happy days,
When my false love was true.

Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonnie bird
That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I sat, and sae I sang
And wist na o’ my fate.

(Robert Burns, 'The Banks O Doon')

Galadriel first came to Lindon in its earliest years. This realm of exiles, huddled against the mountains in the last remnants of what had once been Beleriand, had been founded in a victory that felt more like despair. Morgoth was gone, yes - but so were all the lands the Noldor had claimed, the ruins of kingdoms they had sworn to return to, the white towers of dearly missed homes. Even peace itself felt strange, as if they had woken to find themselves wearing the ill-fitting clothes of another. And so Lindon’s first towns were built along the line of the coast from where the Noldor could look out to their drowned lands below the waves and to Valinor beyond that, long distant over an ocean of unnumbered tears. 

Now she sat with Elrond high on one of the lookouts, looking down over the white-sailed ships that dotted the calm bay beneath like distant gulls. Not warships; there were no new warships yet, although plans had been made and preparations begun. These were fishing boats and light crafts built for nothing but pleasure and she had little interest in them. Beyond and far distant another boat with Edhellond’s sigil barely visible on its light yellow sail was making its way little by little towards the harbour.

It was summer still, but autumn began to draw in earlier this far north from Pelargir and this high exposed place was circled by a cold chilling wind. Galadriel clasped her hands together although more to keep each one occupied than to guard them from the cold. “If he has done anything, anything, I will not wait here patiently any longer.”

“You’re hardly waiting patiently as it is,” Elrond said. “And I know, and I feel the same, truly I do, but you have to concede the High King might be right about this. At least for now.”

Galadriel flung her head back, hitting the stone behind her a little too hard. “He should have given me a company.”

“He offered.”

“Ten soldiers, and no further south than the Gwathlo and no further east than the Hithaeglir. What can I do with that?”

“It’s more than he’s granting anyone else.”

On the sea the ship was still an hour away, at best, and there was little else to do but watch. “This morning I thought I should have accepted it after all. But then I would not have been here today for the ship. I feel sometimes - I have felt – I don’t know where I should be and everywhere I go seems like a failure to be somewhere else.”

Elrond lifted her clasped hands in his and pressed them to his chest. “You are here and I am immensely grateful for it. But if war must come, at least don’t strike the first blow against our own high king. Please?”

She smiled a little despite herself.

The news the Sindar brought from Edhellond came wrapped in so many caveats that she barely knew what parts of it she could put any faith in at all, but some things at least seemed certain. Númenor’s ships had left. Pelargir was preparing for the harvest as usual with no report of orcs. Sauron had gone out to the Silvan elves in Galadriel’s lands and ordered them to leave her lands the way she wished them, and then had left. 

Gil-galad seemed pleased although he said little. Instead, when the Sindar had finished telling him all he wished to know, he called Galadriel and Elrond to his side and told them they would be coming with him to Eregion to join Mithrandir there. There was more to know, he said; and there would be more to do after that, but it could wait. 

Later back in her rooms, Galadriel determined she was relieved above all. Relieved and immensely so, once again, for even if this too was a temporary reprieve – as she did not doubt it was – it was a reprieve all the same. And yet part of her wished that Sauron would move, that she would be spared the necessity to spend any longer in this uncertainty, neither one thing nor the other.

“It’s still good, though,” Elrond said, sitting comfortably on the armchair opposite her, his head tipped back a little to catch the sunlight. “I know how worried you were.”

“I am still worried. I would never have allowed the tawarwaith to settle there if I had thought this would happen. I should never have allowed it anyway.” She hid her face in cupped hands, covering the tears that Elrond would be too kind to comment on.

These rooms had been hers since the city was built, and while her time here had always been temporary it had been pleasant enough. They had kept everything for her when she went to Pelargir; it was as if she had only been away hunting down orcs once again. There were fine curtains that diffused the light rather than hid it for she loved even the early summer sunrises, and a great tapestry of a dancing crowd in the halls of Nargothrond, the candle-light sparkling on the wall above the dancers. 

She did feel safe here and at home here as much as she did anywhere, and little by little she felt its effect on her. It was not so much healing as it was being repaired; as though she was still wearing her ancient, worn-away chainmail and finding each morning that bright new links had grown. She had missed this place and her people, missed them so dearly, and still she could not shake the sense that any relief and comfort she found here came at the expense of a duty now more pressing than ever. 

“If they feared him enough they would have gone when you left Pelargir,” Elrond said. “They don’t take orders from Noldor.”

“And if they don’t fear him, it is my own fault for letting them believe him less of a threat than he is. I think sometimes that was one of his intentions in choosing me and in pretending such – not kindness – maybe courtesy to me all the years I was there. That if even Galadriel could seem happy in his company then why should anyone else worry.” She palmed tears out of her eyes and let Elrond rest a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I must have seemed happy in his company.”

“That is not a fault in you.”

“I was happy. Sometimes.”

“I know.”

She leaned her head into his hand, grateful for its warmth. “I think he believed himself he was being kind to me. He never thought I would leave. He was so shocked. I still imagine I understand him far better than I did, but maybe that too is deception.”

Elrond’s hand squeezed her shoulder in wordless reassurance. “Has he spoken to you again?”

“Not since I last told you.” Two weeks, almost – and even then barely a word, only a plea of I miss you, I miss you, come home, as though he no longer expected a reply. “I wish he would. At least I might know what he is thinking.”

“Perhaps he’s trying to find a better way to reach you,” Elrond said, and while his tone was mild enough she knew the suggestion behind it. Elrond had been concerned for some time that Sauron was been able to reach across some distance to meet her in her dreams; that he might try to do so again, and that if he did he would see more than she wished him to about where she was and what she might be planning.

“I am stronger now,” she said.

“As he’s strong? The enchantments he had on you in that tower, Mithrandir said he could barely break through them himself even with Sauron leagues away.”

“I have kept him out.” And at Elrond’s unconvinced look, “If I failed it would be as I told you, I would at least sense him and be able to wake myself.”

“If you’re sure,” Elrond said. “If you are very sure.”

She was, although she had little desire to set out exactly why. Sauron had for the most part left her dreams alone as he had her when she was away from Pelargir with the Silvan elves in her own land. But when they were together in the city itself, he had come to her dreams again and again even as she slept beside him; had lain her down in mirage-soft meadows, whispering to her of a world fit for his queen. She knew how to bar him, how to shutter what she let him see, how to bring him closer. 

She shook it all from her mind. This was a time for clarity and direction and she was sorely lacking in both. “I need to speak with the king again. It will take weeks to travel to Eregion and back and I must know what his plans are now.”

“I would advise -”

“Get me an audience with him or I will find him myself. Please, Elrond. I have done so much waiting.”

She met Gil-galad beneath the trees, in one of the small stone amphitheatres that were dotted through Lindon’s cities. It was empty apart from them and Elrond, who had brought her there without complaint albeit with no attempt to hide his disagreement with her choice. The first of autumn’s falling leaves drifted across the stone seats. On previous evenings she had seen it filled for songs and plays; there was still laughter and joy in Lindon even if the elves were preparing for war. 

There had been many times before when Gil-galad met her somewhere like this beneath trees and sky, although in the years before Pelargir (before Númenor, before Forodwaith, before him) it had more often been indoors within council chambers. She had not thought to remark on it at the time – so little seemed relevant, then – but now she wondered if he had been trying to remind her of her place, walled in by the crafts and glories of the Noldor. 

He seemed unsurprised now as she outlined her position. Sauron might not be moving as far as they could see, but any time they gave him would only allow him to further build his own strength. But: “He seems in no haste,” Gil-galad, and Galadriel felt her hand twitch briefly closed. “We will move when it is right. For now, we have more time to consider our own approach.”

“And how many years would you have us consider it?”

His gaze met hers, calm and level and ageless as marble. “Perhaps until I have commanders I can trust to follow my orders.”

“Trust?”

“Galadriel,” Elrond said, but his voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far distant. The sun reflected in blazing light from one of the leaf-points of Gil-galad’s crown and for a moment she thought of how strange it was that the title should have come to him at all. Fingon and Turgon dead, her own brothers gone too, and she the daughter of Finarfin and this young prince with a crown.

“If I was to send you east, Galadriel,” Gil-galad said, “with the soldiers you want, with the arms you want, but east, not south, not to the orcs and not to Pelargir – would you go?”

The thought of having an army at her command again felt right in a way that little else did, and she tried not to let it lure her. “What use would there be in sending me away from the enemy?”

“You would refuse, then.”

“I would -” She swallowed, the taste of decades of this anger bitter in her mouth. “I would seek to know your reasoning.”

“And you would follow it if it pleased you, and refuse if it didn’t. As ever. You might think me a fool, Galadriel, but if I was once too complacent once to the threat our enemy poses you were too reckless. I cannot have a commander I cannot trust. I cannot have a commander who will not trust me.”

Still the sunlight, clear and bright and yet almost stifling now. She thought of the long years before that fortress in the ice and how many times she had continued on her own path despite Gil-galad’s wishes. She had paid him some token obedience but he had been distant in Lindon and she fighting orcs and cave-trolls in the wastes of the north, and her soldiers followed her and his wishes mattered little. 

Until the time she had come back to Lindon to demand more soldiers to follow the reports of a hidden fortress far north in the ice; by then her company had been so far reduced over the years there were barely a dozen left, all her requests for replacements for those injured and lost unanswered. So she had come to Lindon herself, and: No, Gil-galad had said, the diplomatic niceties finally gone. No, no more. Your duty is over. The war is done. This is an end to it.

She should have knelt before him and laid her sword at his feet. Instead she had turned her back and called her remaining soldiers to her side, and left.

“Which of us was correct?” she asked him now.

Gil-galad seemed unsurprised by the question. “I have spent a long time wondering that myself. Maybe neither of us.”

She thought of light, and of the days in the north when the sparse sun had cast them no warmth at all. She thought of Gil-galad pressing a knife into her palm the day she left for Pelargir.

Beside her, Elrond moved one foot slightly, a tiny scrape in the silence. She did not turn to look at him. Instead she bowed down to one knee and dropped her head, the commander once again, and said: “East.”

He is running a hand down her arm, again and again, a touch soft as a sleeping breath. Beneath her sleeve he can feel the outline of the bracelets she wears, the reminder still of their children far away. 

“What you should have done,” he says. “is demanded that army and then come south after me.”

“And you would have surrendered to the elves? And all would have been well?”

“I might.” His thumb pauses at the seam at her elbow, stitched with tiny flowers. “You’ll never know.”

She shakes her head, but he doesn’t think he is wrong, exactly. He doesn’t know what he would have done. There had been so much possibility in the past; each day could have frayed into a hundred futures, or so it felt. It would be years before she held his hands in hers and he felt himself falling and knew it could only ever have come to this.

“Lie down with me,” he says. “Tell me about Eregion.”

“Tell me about Pelargir.”

“You missed it.” He eases her back into his arms, and she doesn’t resist but she doesn’t seem to quite see him. “You should have come home, you know.”

“And have you imprison me in a cage of my own fears again?”

“Galadriel.” He nuzzles a kiss into her jawline.

“It is so important for you to believe it might all have been well. Even now. Even -”

“Don’t,” he says, resting his fingertips light on her lips. She is wrong but maybe not entirely so. Of those hundred futures that weren’t almost all would have ended in ruin and darkness, this he knows for sure. But maybe. Maybe. He has spent most of existence dreaming of roads not taken and chances turned aside – not even she can shake that in him now.

“Eregion,” he says.

“Pelargir.”

“Fine.”

In Pelargir, the days passed quietly as harvest time approached. The fishing haul was good that year; long rows hung in the smokehouses, a good replacement for some of the supplies that had fed Numenor’s armies. In the hills, they sorted the sheep and brought down those that needed more weight into the richer pastures nearer the city. 

Once a bad storm came in from the sea, leaving the lower road flooded and some of the roofs damaged in the high winds, and one of the smaller rowboats left half-submerged after it was beaten against the side of the quay. There were discussions about appointing teachers for the children, for though the Southlanders seemed to value reading and writing little, their smith-king did not want a realm of fishers and farmers. 

A hunter caught a rabbit with pure white fur and they made a collar from it for their king’s royal robes. The condition of the roads -

“Is this all you intend to tell me?”

“You asked to hear of Pelargir. This is Pelargir, this is what happened. What else would you like to know? That the smith missed his warrior dearly, that every day without word from her felt cold as winter?”

“That you were consolidating your alliances with the clans south of the great river and extending your influence down along the coast to deter any Númenor settlements you could not control?”

She can hear the grin in his voice even without looking at him. “That was later.”

“Not so much later.”

The smith thought of his queen, too. He thought of her a great deal.

He remembered a time some years before, not long after he had brought her to Pelargir. This was when she would sometimes join him in the evenings as he requested, when they agreed they could each ask one question of the other. But she had not come for several evenings, this time, so he had gone to find her where she spent her days away from him searching the ruins. 

There were parties organised for this closer to the city’s heart, but she she preferred to work alone, further out, where Pelargir was so far lost to rubble that even the once-great walls were overgrown with grass and growing trees. He never questioned her on this. It seemed to please her, being alone.

Now as he approached she was sitting in what had once been a doorway with her back against the stone arch, sorting through something on her lap. She noticed him approach; he saw her pause, flinch almost, and then ignore him, a new tension in the line of her jaw.

“Brought you food,” he said.

“I don’t want it.”

She could be pleasant enough to him when occasion called for it, although it was never warm. He had no illusions even this was for his own sake; more likely she did not want the people of this city to see her as here through anything but her own will. But here, with no-one to watch them but the occasional cat picking its way through the ruins, she did not care even for that.

He sat down beside her. She held a tarnished plate of some sort and within it, a mixture of leaf-litter and dirt that she was sorting through, picking out bright points shining within it. “Coins?”

“Beads.”

He picked out a few himself: turquoise and bronze and coloured glass. The cord that held them on some necklace or bracelet must have long ago rotted away in the rain. “Do you think someone planned to come back for these, centuries ago?” 

“Elves were not consulted when Númenor abandoned its settlements here.” 

“I’m sure.” He took a few of the smaller turquoise beads out of the dirt and held them out in his palm for the collection she was making at her side. She hesitated, and then accepted them. 

“I didn’t see you yesterday,” he said, and she set her shoulders back and exhaled in a long, angry breath, not looking at him. “Can I ask you a question here?”

“If you must.”

“And will you answer?”

“How can I -” She stopped, and gathered herself. “What is it?”

“You can ask me something first.”

It was a true offer, but he wasn’t expecting her to take it. At this time she was still speaking to him as little as she could manage and spending her days with her focus set on the ruins far distant from all he’d managed to rebuild. But answer she did, and without any hesitation: “Did you hear my cousin sing when he was held prisoner?”

He was jolted, disoriented. She would not look at him although her hands stayed still as marble on the plate she held in her lap. 

“Narrow it down, elf, you had a lot of cousins.”

“Maitimo. Maedhros. Your master took him prisoner and chained him by his wrist on Thangorodrim for years upon years.” 

“That.” The siege, the elves. Angband. “No. I didn’t.”

She might have explained, then, but she didn’t, only nodded a little in acknowledgement and went back to sifting through the leaf-litter for what little bright things were left. 

It was peaceful then, if it was little else. There was no movement except for the clouds’ slow drift across the sky and a sleeping cat stretching out claws like daggers from one paw as it dreamed of hunting. A humble and ruined place and nothing close to greatness. Not yet. 

“So, question for you,” he said. “Sometimes I think you would have preferred to come here as my prisoner than as my bride. Is that true?”

“I am your prisoner.”

“You with your fine cloak I had made for you, with your lambswool blankets to sleep on?”

“A pleasant cage is no less a cage.”

“I’ll take them away, then.”

“Do,” she said, and held him firm in that clear blue gaze, endless as the sky.

“You’d rather no comforts at all,” he said. “You’d rather me be cruel so you can imagine me cruel.”

She went back to sifting the dirt through her fingers. “I know too much of your cruelty to have any need of imagining it.”

“And I can’t change, then?”

“No.”

“I couldn’t intend to put it right.”

“How would you put it right? Bring back all the dead? Undo all the wars? Return Finrod to me and Angrod and Aegnor and all I have lost, my husband, my -”

“You told me,” he said, although he disliked interrupting her for she would know she was angering him. “On Númenor. I told you I’d done evil and you told me I could make up for it if I only followed you.”

“If I had known what you truly were I would never have said such a thing.”

“You thought me mortal, what’s it matter? What evil did you think I’d done – killed someone else’s brother? You said there was a way back for me. You said, elf. You said come with you and save the Southlands, and here we are.”

She was glaring at him as though she wanted to strike his face. “Elf,” she said, and for a moment he thought she might, but instead she cast her plate down in the dirt and left.

Elrond caught up with her before she had reached her rooms, flushed a little from haste. “Wait. Galadriel, wait.”

She stopped and allowed him to gather his breath. “Did Gil-galad send you?”

“No. It’s -” A look over her shoulder and a grimace of annoyance at others approaching: a group of four, talking amongst themselves, no indication that they had even noticed the pair of them. “Somewhere quieter?”

She followed him to a tower landing, where the spiral stairway was bathed in the light pouring down from the cupola above. Elves built with light as if it was as essential as stone and the fine spires and great windows and arches of this city felt far distant from the heavy walls and sharp angles of Pelargir. Still, she almost expected to find herself there again at the turn of every corner, to see high ceilings and painted murals, inlaid mosaics and statues of long-gone mortal kings. 

She had developed a habit of touching the walls around her to remind herself she was truly here, and did that now as Elrond assured himself they were alone. The stone was cool and the red-leafed vine growing on it light on its fine trellis. She thought yet again of the tower where she had found the palantir and the thick roots covering its stairs. 

“You can reconsider what you agreed to,” Elrond said. “And you should. It was the High King’s original intent to bring you to Eregion before even suggesting anything to you about soldiers and arms. He saw your anger growing today and he was trying to avert any repetition of the kind of antagonism you had with him before. I don’t believe he even expected you’d agree, or not so soon at least. He has said he will allow you to reconsider after we reach Eregion. Or now. Or whenever you want to. You don’t need to take any soldiers anywhere.”

“And what lies in Eregion that might make me change my mind?”

Elrond’s lips thinned in a faint apology of a smile. “I haven’t been told either. They were careful about what they I knew in case I was captured when I came south to meet you. But you see, that’s my point – you don’t know what we’ll learn there so how can you know you’ll still want to take an army and head wherever it is the High King might send you?”

It isn’t wanting, she thought, but she had given up on trying to find a way to explain this to Elrond long years before Pelargir. It wasn’t wanting; it wasn’t a desire for something beyond her. It was a wholeness and a purpose, it was as if she alone was holding the past still clenched tight in her hands, refusing to let it all that had once mattered to her fade and die and be forgotten. 

“I must do this,” she said.

“But that’s what I have been trying to tell you, you don’t. You don’t even know what you would be fighting or where or when or any of it.”

“I would still be fighting.”

He shook his head although the words unspoken annoyed him, but when she took his hand he made no attempt to stop her. Elrond had been grown before Pelargir was even built but he still seemed young, both by elves’ standards and by her own. In his own way he was less trusting of peace than she was. He had been born in a time of calm that even then felt brief and tenuous to all who dwelled in it and in some sense she felt as if he was still caught in that tension, unable to even imagine a peace that was not maintained through argument and vigilance. 

“I am not at peace here,” she said. “I cannot be at peace here. I need to lead soldiers again. I feel as if I have no purpose here, no place, I don’t even know what I am after he -” and she caught herself with her words stumbling on her lips, unsure what she was even intending to form them into. “After all that has happened,” she said. “But I know I am a warrior and I need to be fighting again. I have made my choice. Nothing I hear in Eregion is likely to change it.”

She is soft against him, light, and she turns to him only when she is finished. He has heard some of what happened those many years ago in Lindon, of course, but not this, exactly – not the discussions with Gil-galad or Elrond, not her reasons for choosing what she chose. Not Elrond's response, which it seems she does not intend to include.

He wonders if she expects him to comment on this, favourably or otherwise. Instead he only kisses her brow. “My warrior,” he says.

Chapter Text

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

(W. B. Yeats, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’)

The smith’s people spoke of their queen still. He knew this well enough, although he never heard it - there were too many sudden hushes when he approached, too many briefly shot glances they thought he couldn’t see. But none of them asked him where she had gone and none of them asked him when she might return. 

“I heard it otherwise. I heard that several of our people did ask you, and your reaction was such that no-one dared again.”

“And how do you expect me to tell a story if you want me to take account of anything everyone may ever have said? It doesn’t matter.”

“Someone told Elrond. Later, when -”

“It doesn’t matter, elf, leave it be.” He lifts her hand to his lips, pressing a line of kisses along her fingertips. “I should have kept him in that cell.”

As harvest approached, he realised they were waiting for her. She had always been there for harvest. She helped with the work, for even though Pelargir’s population had grown greatly all hands were still needed at harvest and even the children worked in the fields. Every year she was there for the celebrations when the work was done, when there was dancing and feasting and joy late into the night. Every year, she made flower crowns to place on the heads of newly-wed couples. That she should be gone for a time in summer was only to be expected, and that there should be some rumoured conflict with her husband – well, that too had happened before. But always, always she came home for harvest. 

So now they expected she would come back as she always did, riding in from the west. They expected that whatever argument she had had with their king would be put aside; that she would come home and she would dance at the harvest feast and the strange tense feeling that had settled over Pelargir like sea-fog would be gone, and all would be well again.

This was never said to him. Even those closest to her, Bronwyn and Arondir, who knew more than they should about her leaving; had in some sense permitted her to leave (although he kept his anger about this constrained, knowing who had taken her and knowing there was little that either of them could have done); there was a careful balance of silence around the subject. The others, all the people of Pelargir, seemed to know without needing to be instructed in it that he had no wish to hear her name.

And yet, he would not have her forgotten. Her cape covered her throne as it sat empty beside his, the sigil of Finarfin blazing out. Her crown sat beside him. Her knife he wore at his own side, unsure still when or how he might use it but certain regardless that he would need it to hand when the opportunity arose. Her horse was kept well and cared for and none were permitted to ride it. At any time she could have walked back into Pelargir and found their city awaiting her, her name held silent on its lips. 

She never came. No word from her, no sign. Not a letter, a note; not a promise. 

It was enough to consider his pact with Gil-galad and the elves broken already, truly, and he had enjoyed considering what he might do about that, at times when his duties allowed. But harvest was busy and left little time for such daydreams. Pelargir might have a powerful king, but not one so thoughtless of his people that he would not work alongside them when every hand was needed.

The weather stayed fine, that first year without her. The crops were bountiful. And at the great feast, he lifted his glass to a hall of people watching him and said “To Galadriel, wherever she is,” and felt the tremor of her name pass through the crowd. 

“I missed it,” she says. “Pelargir itself and all our people there. I was afraid for them and I missed them too.”

“And me.”

“Not you.”

“You did.” Forehead against hers, a teasing, nuzzling laugh. “Just a little, you did, you did.”

“Not you. No. I was…” It is easy to dismiss him for he would give up pushing at her before too long, she knows; for all the bluff and confidence in his voice now he would be happy if neither of them spoke about this time at all. But she must say what is true. She must know what the truth sounds like, on her tongue and in her mind. She has made her decision. 

“A little,” she says. “I missed what I had hoped you could be. I missed believing that there might come a time I could trust you.”

She doesn’t intend it to sound as sharp as it does, but there is truth in what she says without thinking as much as there is in what she considers. His lips press into a thin line and he rolls back, away from her. 

It was a fresh bright morning when they set off for Eregion, she and Elrond and the High King and a retinue that seemed to her excessive but that made for an enjoyably broad band of companions. This far north autumn was already near and the air was chill despite the sunshine. Galadriel was ready before all the others, and was already waiting in the courtyard looking down at the mist-covered bay below when the horses were brought over. 

“Yours,” one of the stablehands said, handing Galadriel the reins of a mahogany-dark bay with its long mane bound up with flowers. Galadriel might be a soldier but this was not yet a war expedition. “Her name is Morilindë.”

The horse pressed her head against Galadriel’s side, and Galadriel rubbed at her shoulder and spoke quietly of soft green paths and easy journeys and the joy of running fast over the open plains. Around them the courtyard grew noisier as others arrived, calling greetings to each other, swinging bags and bedrolls into position behind saddles. 

She thought that Elrond would come with the High King but instead he arrived alone. He greeted the horse before her, running one ear through his hand. “Morilindë, keep her safe,” he said, and then to Galadriel, “A good horse. You can trust her.”

“I wish I had been able to bring my mare from Pelargir. I told her to go to the elves.” A familiar sorrow swept through her and she busied herself with checking the packs, needlessly adjusting one buckle. “I half feared the High King might ask you to stay behind here.”

“Oh, there’s enough aspiring diplomats here who are fully capable of spending a few weeks overseeing arguments over who scuffed the paint on whose fishing boat.” He ran his hand down the horse’s neck. “Are you sure. I know you’ll say you are, but please, Galadriel, think about this before answering. Are you truly, truly sure this is what you want to do?”

“We spoke about this before.”

“Yes, we did, and since then you’ve been – I don’t know. Single-minded. It’s -” A quick glance over her shoulder, and his voice quietened a little. “You have agreed to everything and you have not challenged a single thing and it is not like you. No-one here questions your sense of duty and me least of all, you know that. But I worry that you are treating this as some punishment you must endure.”

She quieted him with a hand on his arm, and leaned in until their bowed foreheads pressed together. “You worry too much, my friend.”

“And yet you aren’t disagreeing with me.”

No; but it was hard to describe how she truly felt. There was a joy and a lightness in her heart, a certainty that whatever she had sacrificed to gain this new sense of purpose was worth it. She was eager to be gone, and not in order to leave Lindon behind but so that she might finally, finally act again, and cease this interminable waiting.

“Would you prefer that I argued with the High King again?” she said, seeing her growing smile reflected in his own.

“Very much no. I only want to know that you are happy.”

A voice called out from the other side of the courtyard, “Herald Elrond!”

“I need to be a soldier,” she said. “That is my happiness. Now go and find your horse or you truly will be left behind.”

He shook his head, resigned, and put a hand over hers as it rested on his forearm. “You need be nothing but yourself.”

As they left the city the sound of the horses’ hooves was muffled in fallen leaves. There was a thin, shrill cry of birds in the distance, and the road ahead of them empty and the horizon vast. She rode at the High King’s side with her head high and proud, and felt her heart sing, and found herself not even wishing to look back. 

The smith did not sleep in the days after the feast. He did not seem to need sleep as much, now; without her he was both weaker and stronger. At night he sat on her terrace where weeds now grew up between flagstones, and watched the stars, and thought of how cold the wind had been on the bleak plains in the north after his master was taken back to Valinor. 

“Your master.”

“Well, because.” He plays at the corner of the sheet, running it through his fingers again and again. “In years before the sun and the moon. He was. That’s how I thought of him.”

And hadn’t he been so faithful, so loyal, so good. Hadn’t he been the best and most careful servant. Hadn’t he spent long nights then staring up at the dark sky thinking of his master in Valinor bathed in the light of the Trees: in some position of pretended servitude no doubt, working away at small and thankless crafts, but walking among bright grasses and shining stone. Being called brother; being welcomed home. 

“And when I was gone? How did you think of him then?”

He does not know how to answer. 

The warrior’s knife belted at his side felt more of an anchor to her than anything else – a charmed talisman, perhaps, a great and magical treasure. And he knew that whatever else she might miss she would certainly resent having to leave this behind. The rings, though, had done little since she had left. The harvest might have been good, Pelargir might still stand strong, but he was reasonably sure that with hers far distant and its wearer opposed to him his too would cease its protective effect. 

He had been too careless; he had moved in haste, but in the wrong direction. It should never, never have come to this. He had told her once that he would see his realms crumble and fall into the sea before he’d lose her, and he had meant it. Now where was he? Lost and betrayed and left behind, a city that stood firm and a queen that was gone.

The smith looked to the north, then to the south. To the north lay the lands of the elves: her Silvan companions in Dor-en-Rían, the Sindar in Edhellond, and beyond them the kingdoms of the Noldor. To the south, clans and kingdoms of men, scattered across the lands in a fine but strengthening web of alliances. 

He turned the ring on his finger, letting himself sink into the form of it, the shape, the shine. He said her name, and then he said: It’s harvest. You missed harvest.

And this time, she answered.

Galadriel lay beside the dying embers of a campfire, pleasantly filled with food and song and company. She was determinedly not thinking of the last time she had come this way at the side of a creature calling itself a king; nor of all the times before that with soldiers at her side and a hard and bitter course ahead of them. This time she had furled herself tight into the constraints of duty, resolved to stay within the course set for her. She would be an arrow, swift and sharp. 

Elrond still seemed uneasy with her decision or what he suspected might lie behind it. He was cautious with her, careful, each apparently casual question a test to soothe his own mind. But even he was calming with time, reassured by her certainty: I need to be a soldier again, Elrond. I need to fight him. I need this more than I need anything else. 

They were making good time to Eregion. She still knew little of what awaited them there, other than Mithrandir and others of the Istari she had yet to meet; Celebrimbor, to whom she had not spoken since he arrived in Lindon with Sauron those years before; and something hidden, some information she was yet to learn. Gil-galad had made it clear he would not speak of it until they arrived and she had accepted this without argument. In the meantime, she had not lost the joy of being with her own people once again and even the knowledge that war most likely lay ahead and all her mistakes behind could not shake that. They sang old songs and shared tales that left her laughing almost too hard to speak. She had forgotten what a gifted mimic Elrond could be and watching his face change and his voice drop a tone into Círdan’s exaggerated weariness was a bright treasure. 

And then, almost lost to sleep, safe and settled under the star-bright sky, his voice once again speaking to her of harvest. 

It shocked her, more so than it should. It seemed to her that it was not him calling to her this time but Pelargir itself. She thought, no, and curled herself tighter in the pleasant fog of early dreams, but this time it was not enough. Her memories whirled around her like dancers, dragging her into their wake. She could keep him out but she knew Pelargir would haunt her all the rest of the night and long beyond. 

And… perhaps she could know more, this way. What soldier refuses a chance to see the enemy’s plans?

She thought of the clearing in which they rested and rebuilt it in her mind, without the others and the campfire, without even her bedroll. She had learned how to do this well enough over the years; he had even taught her himself a little. The ring cooled her hand with its soothing touch. 

“Sauron,” she said, and he was there before her.

It seemed he was not expecting it. His eyes widened, guarded, as if he thought this some kind of trick. For a moment she saw herself through his eyes: alone curled on forest leaves, barefoot, clad only in a simple sleeping gown for sleep.

 “Galadriel,” he said. “My light.” And she saw the tremble in his hand as he reached for her, understood his fear that she might break away and cast him from her mind at any moment, and felt herself pleased. 

“Tell me you have not harmed Pelargir,” she said. “Tell me you have brought no ill fortune to any of our people, in the city or in my own lands.”

“I swear it.” A hand on hers, lifting her to her feet. He felt so warm it was almost real, the strange music of their rings singing in harmony to weave this world of illusion around them. “Galadriel, come home.”

“I have no home.”

“That’s not so.”

“You took my home.”

He took a strand of her hair, coiling it around and around his finger. “You are angry with me still,” he said. “You have been listening to people you should not trust.”

“And I should trust you?”

“Many things would be simpler if you would trust me.” When she looked away he caught her chin, lifting it so that her eyes met his. “Come home. This is all so needless.”

“Have you forgotten what you did to me?”

He smiled, bleak and humourless. “No.”

“When I come back to Pelargir it will be with an army.”

“You will look so glorious. I can see it now. And then will I have to beg you to spare Pelargir?” His hand at the back of her neck, now, pressing her insistently closer. “Perhaps you will defeat me and your soldiers will have me dragged before you and thrown at your feet. I would be your helpless prisoner. Would you like that?”

“Do you think this a game?”

“Come home. Come back and it can be as if all of this never happened. I will make amends for my, for – I was thoughtless. You had angered me and I could not allow you to ruin what I was trying to build but when you come back I will make amends for it, I promise you.”

“What are you doing in the east?”

“East.” She could sense his annoyance even through the strange, tense air of this vision. 

“Tell me the truth. Tell me what you are doing with the orcs.”

Again he took a length of her hair, bringing it round to her chest, this time stroking it gently between thumb and forefinger. “I’ve never lied to you, Galadriel.”

“I saw it in the palantir.” Even to think of it sickened her. The form of them, the sound, grotesque hands shaking weapons towards the darkened sky. “They were chanting an oath of loyalty in the Black Speech. To you, to your master. Will you deny it?”

“They are…” She saw the hardness in his face, around his jaw; the barely kept-in anger. “No, I won’t deny it, but what do you expect of me? It takes a long time to teach orcs new things. It doesn’t matter. They’re temporary. I need to fix a few things and then you can have a Middle-earth free of orcs if you want. You can kill them yourself when I’m done. My gift.”

“What do you seek to do with them now?”

At that he tipped up his chin, looking down at her, smug, and she knew the time for anything he might offer was gone. “My beloved traitor. This can all wait, Galadriel. Come home to me first.”

Pointless, all of this. And yet in some way perhaps there was a use in it after all, for if she could not gain any new information about his plans she could at least have this certainty about his intentions. That should in itself have been an ending, a cut sharp and clean; and yet it was not. “Traitor?” she said. “You betrayed me, you betrayed me, how can you talk to me of my home after all you have done? How can you imagine I could ever return to be at your side now that you have proven to me what you are?”

And there, finally, she saw him shaken enough that the shell of self-satisfied pride cracked. “No, Galadriel. You know what I am. You have seen my work. You would not disregard all of that for the sake of a few small things, done for good, done to protect -”

“As you protected me?”

She watched his hand fold and unfold into a fist around her hair. “I would have come back.”

 “You imprisoned me inside my mind, my fears, I told you I feared being alone on the raft, you knew, I told you when I was lying in your bed beside you and you kept that and you used it and you betrayed me and now I am to believe you are not precisely what I knew you to be all along?”

Something in his eyes reminded her of an animal caught in a trap. “Let me make amends.”

“Nothing you could do would make amends.”

“Come home and I will give you anything you might want.”

“It was never my home. It was a cage and you my captor.” She grabbed his hand at the wrist, pulling it down and away from her, and forced back his mind with the smooth shield of her own, and sent him out and away into nothingness as she pulled herself from sleep. 

Galadriel awoke under the trees surrounded by her sleeping companions. She could see Elrond’s dark hair beside her, his face turned away. All was quiet but for the crackle of the fire and the low murmur of those still awake. She stared up at the sky and thought, for the first time in years, of her days spent on Numenor; how the sun had beat down on the water, and how she had trained those young soldiers in the market square, a laughing, bluffing brave army in waiting. 

The smith was – nowhere, for a while. The comforting and familiar blankness came and he drew it around him. Then steadily, slowly, grew the sounds that had found him again and again after all these long ages, seeping through the cracks in any armour he ever wore. Screams and echoes, and a hammer striking down against an anvil; the hiss of hot steel quenched in water; an uneven step dragging closer and closer, the ever-wounded foot scraping on the stone floor outside his cell. The laughter of orcs gathering to watch.

Sometimes it was pain, inescapable and terrible, coursing through him like fire as he turned from one form to another to another to another and the manacles and his master’s grip held him firm.

Sometimes it was pity, and that was worse. 

His master’s hands were ever burned from the Silmarils but they could be soft all the same and the heat in them something close to soothing. His voice, lowered to a hush: my precious, my precious, my most beautiful creation, did you forget whose you were?

And -

And it didn’t matter for there he was back in Pelargir, the firm stone of the terrace around him, Galadriel’s knife in his hands held so tightly that the pattern of the hilt was printed into his palm. The sun was almost above the horizon.

When the city awoke he would begin making preparations to leave. He would not go north, not yet. He would take the steward’s son and leave the steward guarding his city, and he would go south. It was tiresome and he had no wish to be away but there were things to put in motion there before his greater work could continue.

South, first. South, and then east, where the clouds were already beginning to glow with the first light of dawn. 

Chapter Text

The water is wide, I cannot get over
And neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both shall row, my love and I.

When cockle shells turn silver bells
Then will my love come back to me,
When roses bloom in winter’s gloom
Then will my love return to me.

(‘The Water is Wide’, traditional)

She told Gil-galad and Elrond of the night’s confrontation with Sauron as soon as they woke, huddled by the banks of a stream a distance away from the others. Of the orcs she repeated what he had said exactly, but of her final words on his betrayal she only summarised her anger and his repeated wish that she return. Gil-galad accepted this in his usual impassive way; Elrond bit at his lip and looked at her pointedly, but said nothing. 

“This confirms much of what we already thought,” Gil-galad said when she finished (concluding that she had, as she had known she could, pushed him away and out of her mind). “We can discuss more when we reach Ost-in-Edhil. Do not allow him to speak to you in this way again. There is too much danger in it.”

There was, no doubt, but there was danger in everything. “It could be more use to us than danger," she said. "He has already threatened Lindon with harm if I should turn on him.”

Gil-galad raised his eyebrows, just a little. “I hadn’t forgotten, Galadriel.”

“If he felt there was a chance I would falter in my resolve and return to his side he might give away more than he would otherwise be willing to say. We may have no use for this now, but it could still serve a purpose in the future.”

“It could,” Gil-galad said. “And it could be a greater danger still. For now, at least - no more. We will consider the matter again if the future brings us a time when I consider that danger to be less than our gain.”

There would have been a time when she would have rankled at that. Her judgement, her risk to take. Now, though, she felt little enough desire to speak with Sauron again as it was; she had said what she wished to say and gained as much as she might. Now it was easy to think in the confines of a soldier, with her orders close around her as armour. 

Elrond kept close to her as they returned to their camp, where the others were already gathering the horses. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, in a tone that did not invite any further discussion. 

They rode on through a bright, crisp morning, the sunlight sharp on the distant hills. She felt light herself and unburdened riding beside Elrond. There were many days of travel still to go, but it seemed not to matter so much now; there was joy enough in the journey itself.

As noon approached, there were discussions in the company ahead about whether to stop and rest the horses for a time or whether to keep on until dark. By this time Elrond had been asking her questions for the better part of an hour - casual enough on the surface of it but with an insistency that suggested he was not prepared to leave this be. And neither this nor the distance still to go nor the memory of the last time she had travelled this path could shake for a moment her calm. She was content, she thought, in a way that she had not been for too long, in a way that she would not allow anything to jeopardise or damage. It seemed to her at the time that nothing even could.

“You have been dancing around your real question for hours now,” she said, not without fondness. “Whatever it is you want to ask me, ask it soon before you exhaust yourself.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “I’m not trying to interrogate you.”

“You think I should not have spoken with him at all.”

“I think -” He seemed lost for a moment, looking down at the packed earth road beneath the horses’ hooves. “I think the question of whether or not you should have done matters less to me than the fact you did, when you have not done before. Why?”

It took a while to answer him, and longer than she had expected. The answers themselves felt so close until she reached to grasp them. “Because I wanted to learn all I could about what he is planning, and there seemed some chance he might tell me,” she said. “And because I have felt – better, since we left Lindon behind. More sure of my path and certain enough of my footing that I know nothing he said might make me falter. And because he said it was harvest, and I wanted him to swear to me that he had not harmed Pelargir or its people. I wanted him to say it.”

Elrond nodded as she spoke, seeming neither surprised nor disappointed. (Had she expected him to? Perhaps she had, she realised.) “Do you trust more that they are safe now that he has sworn it?”

“I think so. Yes. I think, whatever he is doing, he will keep Pelargir as it is for now. He knows that if he causes it harm he will have the elves and Numenor both turn on him and he is not strong enough yet for that.”

“But it must have been hard to speak to him all the same. Even if he reassured you, maybe even especially then. I don’t underestimate that.”

“I told you, I am more sure now of -”

“That’s not what I mean.” They had been speaking quietly as it was but now he dropped his voice to a hush, barely louder than breath. “You lose nothing by acknowledging that was difficult, Galadriel. I will think no less of you for it. He mentioned harvest. You told me of those harvest festivals and how much they meant to Pelargir. I remember how you always wanted to be there before the work started. He threatened you and you would not answer him, he begged you and you would not answer him, and then he mentioned that and you did. And to have him speak to you about commanding orcs, about the way he left you in a place of fear? About what he did to you? You seem so untroubled by all of it and I will not believe you are.”

“If you think he exploited some weakness in me to -”

“It’s not weak!” Hissed louder, and he quieted at the flick of a head in their direction. “I don’t call it weak,” he said. “In that letter I sent with you when you left for Pelargir I said that you were the bravest and most determined person I had ever known. I meant that and I mean it still. You faced something you must have feared very greatly and you did so for Middle-earth, for your people, for peace. And it isn’t any fault or flaw in you to find this difficult to think of or to speak of, especially not with him.” A long-drawn breath. “Just as it is not weakness if not all of it was as terrible as you feared it might be.”

“Do not for a moment think you can -”

“Galadriel,” he said, hands outstretched as though offering surrender.

She licked her suddenly-dry lips and looked away. “Please. Enough.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“Enough.” And she nudged her horse on ahead of him to catch up with the High King and his companions.

The smith planned out his journey carefully. There was a path by land and another by sea and neither were ideal. The road would take too long and be beset by heat, and from reports that had reached Pelargir, lions half-starved from several long dry summers inclined to hunt unwary travellers. He half believed that and half didn’t, and largely didn’t care, but he couldn’t afford to take an armed guard when Pelargir was still vulnerable and couldn’t risk too much time away from it when an army of elves might still be gathering against him. 

That left the sea, which would be doubtless faster and should be calm at this time of year. Calmness was not a guarantee on that coast, though, and their best sea-going vessel was small. They would need to hug the shoreline past the mouths of the Harnen delta, and would risk encountering Corsairs with less interest in diplomatic negotiations than those he was aiming to reach. 

But then, the way of a king is not an easy one. Sometimes all paths are treacherous.

His steward told him that he should have asked Númenor for aid. They could have spared a few soldiers for Pelargir and would likely have granted them after his agreement to let them keep their land north of the mountains. It would have left Pelargir better defended, she said, and given him more options than he had now for the journey he wanted to make south. 

The smith let her talk and leaned back in his chair. Her willingness to speak plainly to him was not something he minded, for the most part. She cared for Pelargir and for him only as much as he benefitted it, and it was, likely, less clear to her how any of his present work might do that. “I don’t trust Númenor,” he said once she had made her case.

“Do you trust anyone?”

Did he? A little, perhaps. No more than that. Trust was a tenuous thing and a dangerous one; it could make someone weak. “I trust you, don’t I?”

The steward did not disagree with him on that. The city was under her control in his absence, after all; there were none others he would have given it to.

“You trusted her so well that you took her son with you as a hostage.”

He laughs at that. “You have strange ideas of what being a hostage entails. He was proud to be there! There were enough others who wanted to go with me that I could have taken a quarter of the city if I wanted. Theo was clever and brave and keen to be useful.”

“And.”

“And what?”

“And, say the rest.” 

Matters of prisoners and hostages are not often discussed. There are some things which are too painful, still; there are wounds that cannot be healed, no matter what he does, no matter what he could do. When Galadriel speaks of Finrod now he only bows his head and listens. But for this – for all of this – exceptions must be made.

“And,” he says with exaggerated care, “yes, I also knew that Bronwyn and Arondir likely wouldn’t start making any troubling plans in my absence if I had Theo with me. But that doesn’t make him a hostage.”

She does not disagree with him but she is distant, again, turning in his arms to stare up at the wooden beams of the ceiling. “I was so afraid for Arondir,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have touched Arondir. I’d have lost Bronwyn if I had.”

“I didn’t know what you might do.”

“Really?” he says. “Seems to me you were very good at guessing exactly what I would do.”

She shakes her head, the annoyed way she does sometimes as if whatever he’s said is a particularly irritating fly she is trying to dismiss. “I couldn’t know. And that was later.”

“Suppose it was.”

The king decided to go by sea. A fast journey was more important than a safer one, and although he disliked the water – Ulmo’s realm, still, and Ossë's, and Uinen’s, and he hated the way it sounded, its unsettling music always in his mind – he would dislike being gone for too long even more. He was reasonably confident the elves were not bringing an army south just yet but elves were unpredictable. 

He watched his people preparing the ship on the morning of their departure, checking the sails that all bore the sigil of the Southlands, anchor and ropes. There was excitement in his fellow travellers, the small crew considering themselves fortunate to be chosen; voices shouted from ship to quay over the docks, bickering happily about food supplies. 

He told the steward’s son to oversee it – the boy was a grown man, now, young still but more than responsible – and went off alone, wishing to walk the streets of his city one more time alone before leaving it behind. 

His warrior had always liked the more distant reaches of the city, retreating with the ruins as he rebuilt. He had let her have this for it seemed to be what she wished but he had spent little time there himself. His first thought, then, was to go out that far, down to the still-ruined land down by the western wall, a place of overgrown stone and sunbathing cats and lizards. But as he came to the banks of the river where the long fishing boats were moored, he saw the carvings that Númenor had made when the city was new and stopped there instead. 

He knew these were here, of course. He had briefly considered having them broken apart, chunks falling into the river, a blank space to rebuild something better, but his people had seemed to like them here and his warrior came here herself sometimes to sit near them. Now he looked at them again himself for the first time in several years: a tableau of defeats. There was his master, bound in chains by the Valar. There was Eärendil's ship soaring above the seas, the white bird flying to meet it. There were the armies of the Valar, come to Middle-earth once again, orcs and dragons and balrogs falling before them. 

Inaccurate, all of it to a degree and some of it entirely, but he would allow them such freedoms for art. Numenor had built itself on stories of victory and what better way to found this city than to carve those stories into stone? No, it was good that he had allowed these to stay, at least for now. He needed to be sure of what stories would replace them. 

He sat by the river’s banks and watched the reflected sunlight play across the carvings: a dragon’s curled tail, the great wings of an eagle, Eönwë's sword lifted high. And he thought of the further carvings he would have in Pelargir and in cities yet to come. Great fleets of ships, of course. Beautiful towers of shining bright stone, reaching high into the clouds. His warrior in her crown. And apple trees – yes, her apple trees, strong and tall and laden with fruit.

On his way back to the docks he stopped at a walled garden near the palace where one of those apple trees was growing. Not enough to be called an orchard, and really there was little here at all but for herbs grown where it was warm and sheltered and this one apple tree, growing by itself. The smith was alone here, and the high walls kept out much of the noise of the city; it felt that he could have been anywhere, some abandoned place, something new.

The tree was still small, its trunk narrow and trained against a pole to keep it supported, but growing. Its leaves were still green despite the advancing season and new shoots had appeared on its highest branches, with tiny light-green points of furled leaves emerging. There were even new blossoms since the last time he had been here, growing fresh as if it were spring. The lower boughs were laden with red fruit, the harvest not quite yet ripe but so heavy it was already bending down the branches with its weight. 

Her other apple trees he had left be; she had others to care for those, and some she had taken out to her lands by the sea. But this one, glorious, growing with a vitality she could surely not have foreseen – this one was his. 

Galadriel avoided Elrond for the rest of that day and all of the next, and it was not until after they crossed the Baranduin at the ford that she held back her horse until he came alongside her. “Sorry,” he said, as though their conversation had only just been interrupted.

“There was an inn,” she said. “We rode past it in that village.”

“With the chickens outside? Did you want to stop there?”

There had been a small crowd out by the side of the road watching the elves pass, silent and staring, neither hostile nor welcoming. Messy-haired children held tight in the hands of their parents, a dog chided for barking. She had searched the faces but seen none familiar. “When I came with him to Pelargir, we stayed at that inn. There was a serving girl there. I was hoping to see her. I would have liked to tell her – I don’t know. I would have liked to thank her for being kind to me. I thought to stop and ask for her but it has been seven years, now, a long time for their people. Maybe she is not there. Maybe she would not even remember me. There must be many travellers who seem sad and will not say why.”

Elrond nodded, slowly and carefully. “I had thought we must be following the same road that you would have done with him.”

She had not spoken often of that journey to Elrond, and when she had it was only to report things Sauron had said of his intentions for Pelargir. Of her own fears and sorrows and the things that had happened – the inn, her near-drowning in the Gwathlo, how close she had come to killing him and how she had found herself unable in the moment to do so - she had said nothing. 

It was a balance she had continued in telling Mithrandir and Elrond - and by extension, Gil-galad and the others – anything of her life in Pelargir. She would report on where Sauron might be at any moment, of anything he had said of orcs or anything suggested of his plans. When they asked if he had harmed her she confirmed that he had not, and this although true felt in its own way a kind of dishonesty. Or perhaps, if not dishonest, then incomplete. She had never tried to describe even to Elrond what her time there felt like; her decision to live a full life rather than a half one in Pelargir had been hers alone, not relevant to any of her discussions with others, not relevant to their fight. 

Now she rode beside Elrond for a while without speaking and was content enough simply to be in his company. Elrond had been a friend for a great number of years and her time in Pelargir would have been considerably less bearable without him and the letters he had sent her from Lindon. He had stayed close at her side since her return and she had wondered, sometimes, whether this was his decision or an order of Gil-galad’s he was following. Perhaps it was both. 

“I do miss Pelargir,” she said. “And my lands, and the elves there. And my tower by the sea. I do not miss him.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“So now you need not say it.”

A careful, measured pause. “I am sorry you miss Pelargir,” he said. “I am very glad that you found enough good things there to miss. I only meant to say that if Pelargir was a cage to you – and I agree that it was – finding ways to bear your captivity would not make you complicit with your captor. You have endured so much.”

“And you worry so much. Leave it be.”

“I only -”

“Elrond, you are my very dear friend and I value you beyond measure. Leave it be.”

He closed his eyes and smiled, then nodded so deeply it was close to a bow. “All right.”

A little south of the ford they turned east towards Eregion and left behind the road she had followed with Sauron. The sky was still bright, the distant mountains sharp and clear against it. Ost-in-Edhil was some days’ travel further at their current pace, perhaps seven or eight, but she found herself thinking less than she had expected to about what they might learn there. She felt freed from past and future alike, at peace with the mist and yellowing trees and birdsong, content with the autumn day around her. 

Chapter Text

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

(W.H. Auden, ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’)

The night before they reached Ost-in-Edhil she dreamed of the raft again. The sea-soaked wood beneath her hands was warm in the sun, and the boards creaked a little in the motion of the waves. There was no land, no ship, no companion, no life at all in the sky or in the water and no answer to the curses she yelled at the wind.

“You dreamed of it?”

He’s careful, the way he holds her. There’s nothing in the past that could break the peace they have now (surely, surely) but it feels so fragile all the same. Or perhaps not fragile but dangerous in other ways: a sharp thing, full of hidden blades. He doesn’t dare pull her close.

She ignores his question anyway. “If Mithrandir had not reached me, what would you have done?”

“I hadn’t decided. You know that, I’ve said -”

“I want to know what story you tell yourself.”

He tries out the feel of different words, silent in his mouth. “I would have come back to you.”

“And then?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“Galadriel –” No, no. He gathers himself. “If you’d reconsidered. If you’d realised you were being unreasonable. You might have been willing to speak to me more kindly.”

“Kindly?”

“You asked what story I told.”

She does not disagree, and there’s a slight nod, barely visible, to herself more than him. “And if I had not reconsidered?”

“You would. In time.”

“And until then? You would have left me on that raft until I was prepared to beg you for my freedom?”

This time no words are sufficient. Every one turns to breath as he tries to speak it. “I turned to begging before you did,” he says in the end. “I begged you to come back before you’d even been gone a day.”

She purses her lips but is silent for a long while. Then she says, “I still dream of it.”

So does he.

When she woke it was with a sickened feeling and a deeper exhaustion as though she had not slept at all.

She sat up slowly and stretched out her arms before her, rounding her shoulders and shrugging away the lingering fogs of sleep. The grass around her was damp with dew. Not far away, Elrond was speaking quietly with several others by the ashes of last night’s campfire.

They could have stopped earlier, in the first town they passed near Eregion’s border. They would have been welcomed and feted and treated well. But Gil-galad had wanted to press on so that they might reach Ost-in-Edhil sooner, and so they had made camp in the woods once again.

It was not a hardship. She had missed sleeping beneath the stars in Pelargir, and not even known that until she began to spend time in her own lands with the elves there. Her journey south with Sauron had been too full of fear and sorrow to think about much else, and later, when she first went to her lands with him at his insistence, it had been – hard to describe. Nights lying on the soft carpets of sweet-smelling thyme, watching the stars, his hand in hers almost tentative and she wondering if this felt more like victory or surrender. But sleeping beneath the night sky with the elves she had felt a sense of belonging; a quiet unremarkable security that she had not realised how desperately she missed.

And she had chosen that, and chose it again. Every time Pelargir pressed in on her too much, every time she forgot herself enough to think it almost bearable, she had backed away to her own lands. If she had instead stayed in Pelargir then Sauron would have had less opportunity to advance his plans without her. If she had stayed in Pelargir, Elrond and Mithrandir would have learned less about the plans she did know, they would have been less prepared now. If she had stayed it would have been intolerable and too tolerable together.

She remembered the feeling of it, the discomfort like shifting ice beneath her skin, the realisation that for one or two or five or ten days she had lived too much of a full life here. That she had lain at his side in his bed late into the morning while the sun warmed their bare skin and he tried to find ways to make her laugh. That she had watched the children learning new dances in the village square and thought of future years when those children’s own children would do the same thing, and she would be here watching them, too, and it was not the horror it should have been. That she had sat by one of the canals, perhaps, watching the sun set, and thought that it had been a good day. Sometimes she would recite all of these like she was passing sentence upon herself as she rode west from the city, away to her refuge. Sometimes she would only want to run.

And he had recognised well enough that she needed that time spent away from the city with her own people, her tower by the sea, her – not freedom, but – an ease, perhaps. He had never sought to stop her going, had for the most part let her be and waited for her return. He had only teased her sometimes about how she would come and go at will and how much more of an elf she seemed when she returned to him.

She thought of her last time there with the elves, waking just like this beneath sheltering trees to the first light of dawn. How vast the woods had seemed; how small the raft had been after that, keeping her held in place.

She placed a hand palm-down on the earth of Eregion beside her and breathed in the morning air.

They reached Ost-in-Edhil in the afternoon. Riders had been sent ahead from the border to herald their arrival and they were greeted at the city gates in a happy welcome. At Gil-galad’s command, Galadriel rode at his side at the head of their party. It was a statement, she had no doubt, about her, about her place in all this, and she felt some unease again about what stories might have been told about her in this of all places where Sauron himself had been welcomed as a guest not so many years ago.

It had been an even longer span of years since she last visited Eregion herself. There had been little need for it in her duties and she rarely had time or inclination for anything beyond those duties. The last time had been a hundred years before, perhaps, or greater; then, too, a meeting of war commanders, a plan for routing all remaining orcs from the mountains. Now, she would have that again. She held her head high as the city guards bowed to them, and determined not to grant any audience to sorrow.

Their horses were led away and they were shown to their rooms, Gil-galad surrounded by a small flock of servants and hosts, and Elrond darting back and forth as more and more of Ost-in-Edhil’s people seemed to want his attention. He had mentioned spending time here before a time or two when they met in Dor-en-Rian, but it was clear he was more familiar here than she had realised and very much in demand. He got as far as calling her name over the crowd before yet another one of them grabbed his arm, and she saw him all but roll his eyes in annoyance before resetting his expression into a calm smile.

It could wait, she called back to him.

They were given a little time to rest before the formal reception planned for them. The journey had not for the most part been a tiring one, but she welcomed the time alone all the same. The room she was given was pleasant with white-flowered vines growing across the rafters and a view out across the Glanduin to the woods of dark holly trees beyond.

She had few belongings with her but then, little was needed. There would be armour here, and clothes for a soldier, and the robes she had been given in Lindon would do well enough. Certainly, she had more than when she came on the boat with Elrond and Mithrandir: only the dress she had worn in Pelargir, then, and the pearl bracelet given to her by the Sindar in Edhellond.

And her silver ring, of course. He had left her that.

On the ship she had considered throwing the ring into the sea. She could not stand to think of him having any claim left on her in any sense at all; even the braid he had put in her hair she had pulled out again with shaking hands as she stood out on the deck, looking back towards fog-shrouded land. But she had known, even then, that she could not risk parting with something so powerful as the ring in a moment of anger. Perhaps here where it had been forged she could learn ways to use it for even greater things. Perhaps, even against the hand of the one who made it.

When Elrond finally came to find her he looked both distracted and apologetic, as though he had not yet found a moment of peace himself. “I had intended to introduce you to several people there, but by the time I untangled myself you’d gone.”

“There will be time later, I’m sure.” She didn’t much care, and it probably showed, and Elrond was too polite to do anything but nod.

“I’m sure, yes,” he said. “But I also wanted to speak to you about Celebrimbor, and… well. Various things. Before you met him yourself. I was half expecting to find him here, actually. Has he spoken to you?”

He had not, and in fact she had not seen anything of the Lord of Eregion at all, something Elrond acknowledged with a slow nod. “Maybe he’s avoiding you,” he said. “Well. I’m sure he’ll be at that excruciating-sounding dinner they’re hosting for us. In the meantime, maybe it would be better if I showed you.”

His smile was a little too bright and forced to not augur something else she would doubtless dislike, but she agreed, all the same.

Ost-in-Edhil was much as she remembered it. Grey stone and beautiful spires, buildings carved into the rock, bridges narrow and broad spanning the junction of rivers and the two weaving streams that led down to then. It reminded her a little of Pelargir – everything reminded her of Pelargir, it seemed the city had in some sense clung to her as she left and was still refusing to let go – but unlike Pelargir which had changed almost beyond recognising in seven years, Ost-in-Edhil was much the same as when she had last seen it a century before.

There were some differences, though. There were dwarves here, which she did not expect. Not many, but some, passing in the crowded streets and clearly familiar enough that none turned to look at them. “Elrond,” she said.

“Indeed.” He nodded a brief greeting to someone he recognised and then led her aside into a small courtyard, a trellis of wild roses growing in its centre and a stone bench that awarded them a little privacy. “Celebrimbor has been working with the dwarves from the mountains north of here. Some friends of mine, actually. You know there was always some element of a connection with the dwarves here but there’s more now. They’ve been working together.”

“On rings?”

“I am assured not.” An apologetic smile. “Other projects, all manner of things.”

“Is this after Sauron came?”

“This was before. I think. I’m… still a little uncertain on precisely what’s happened, I will confess. I am very much looking forward to whatever it is we are due to learn about here because I have been trying to solve the puzzle for some years now and failing. Anyway, that’s not – well. What I wanted to tell you for now is that they have helped Celebrimbor to build a new forge and that most of his work has been carried out there.”

“His work with the rings,” she said. “His work with the palantír.”

Elrond nodded.

The forge itself, when they reached it, was vast beyond her expectations. It seemed almost palatial in its proportions, a grand monument to the craft. She remembered Sauron’s much smaller workshop in Pelargir and how she had once questioned him about being satisfied with such a humble place; he’d laughed and dismissed it as if it didn’t matter at all. She felt the same sickened exhaustion she had that morning, waking from her dream of the raft.

“We must find Celebrimbor,” she said, feeling her hands already tense. “I must speak with him now.”

But Elrond was guiding her not across the courtyard towards the sweeping steps, where a flurry of Celebrimbor’s smiths were already departing, but rather around it, to a great statue that stood at its centre. With a sinking feeling in her throat, Galadriel recognised the symbols of the three jewels at its base; and looking up at the statue itself, saw the face of her uncle looking out on Ost-in-Edhil and its forge as though it was all a grand monument to his work.

For a moment it was hard to even think. She had been so set on what Sauron may have done here directly that she had forgotten what Celebrimbor might be capable of all by himself. The arrogance, the ridiculous short-sighted stupidity of it, that of all things Celebrimbor should -

"I know,” Elrond was saying quietly, having it seemed steered her back into an alcove away from the smiths who were looking at her with a little too much interest. “It’s why I wanted you to find out about all this before you saw him.”

“You told me Celebrimbor has been working with you and Gil-galad and Mithrandir and the other Istari for years. I assumed you meant he could be trusted.”

“And I do believe he can be. On this. I know this all seems – not the most prudent of decisions, given everything, truly, Galadriel, I don’t like it either and I suspect we came far close to Sauron gaining a foothold here than any of us knew at the time, but he didn’t. That’s what matters. He didn’t.”

She remembered Lindon, in those awful days when they were preparing to leave. She remembered the day Sauron arrived with Celebrimbor at his side, laughing – laughing – at the jokes he made. She remembered how his hands had lingered a little too long on the rings before handing them to Gil-galad. “Does Celebrimbor wear one of those rings now?”

A brief, stiff nod.

She looked again at the statue. Fëanor was captured masterfully, a hammer in one hand and in the other a jewel he held up to the light. His expression seemed both determined and content. No ruin around him now, of course, no bloodshed and drawn swords, no burning ships, no murdered kin. All of that was yet to come from the moment this captured. And yet it had always been there, locked behind that too-hard gaze.

“I had always wondered how Sauron was able to fool Celebrimbor so easily,” she said, her own voice sounding brittle and bladed to her ears. “After he was witness himself to so much of the evil done by the enemy, after he turned his back on his father and uncles for their part in the bloodshed. I thought he could never believe such lies. I see now that I may have overestimated him.”

Elrond continued his efforts at reassurance, thin though they seemed, as more of the people passing them in the courtyard stopped to stare in increasingly unsubtle ways. Galadriel did not care. She had known there might yet be some difficulty in convincing her own people of the necessity to fight but to find herself already so outmanoeuvred, her own family’s arrogance turned once again against them, a grand forge built for a monster and a statue for a murderer and Sauron himself having all of this done for him with, surely, the least of all effort – this was beyond bearable.

There were a few who tried to stop her as she paced up the steps, through the great doors, along corridors and hallways with a quietly (and not, she felt, very convincingly) protesting Elrond at her side. She ignored most of them except to demand that they showed her to Celebrimbor, and eventually someone did.

Celebrimbor was within a great chambered hallway involved in some intense discussion with several of his smiths. At first he did not even turn around to greet Galadriel and Elrond, waving aside the younger assistant who meekly tried to interrupt him. But when Galadriel barked his name he stopped mid-sentence. “Galadriel,” he said.

It occurred to her then that perhaps he had not been told she was coming. Perhaps no-one had. Perhaps it had not been Gil-galad’s plan to bring her at all, at first - or if it had been he had kept that knowledge from Celebrimbor and his people for some reason he had chosen not to give her. For Celebrimbor’s face was as pale as though she was some awful vision suddenly appeared to haunt him, and he did not even seem to see Elrond at all. He approached her slowly without once taking his eyes from her.

“Galadriel,” he said, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

“What were you thinking?” she all but snarled. “What did Sauron tell you?”

And that question, at least, seemed to come to him as no surprise. “He said we should redeem both our bloodlines.”

She remembered Númenor, saying those very words in another forge to a man she knew as Halbrand. She remembered standing by an anvil swearing she would stand by him, she would do whatever was needed to have him get her that army, she would swear an oath to it if it was the only way. She remembered her hand cool against the iron, the oddly blank look on his face as he named himself: Mairon, student of Aulë.

She held on to her cousin as if they were drowning together, and she did not even try to stem her tears.

“I did mean it, you know. Just as much as you did it when you said it.”

She sighs. “How convenient for you.”

“He wanted what you did. That’s all. We all wanted the same, at heart. We all three of us wanted to mend something.”

She thinks of mending, and the different ways it can be done. She thinks of a time very long ago - before Middle-earth, before the war, before the deaths - when she stood beside her uncle in a forge and listened to her grown cousins laugh and tease each other as her uncle showed her how to hold a hammer.

“Tell me what you were doing, then,” she says. “Tell me how that was mending.”

The steward’s son was young, and brave, and had, in the way that so many young brave mortals had, a longing for adventure that he barely tried to keep hidden. As they sailed south he stayed on deck as much as he could watching the coast pass: long expanses of golden sandstone rising in towering cliffs above them, no life to be seen but vivid green grasses and sea-birds, distant woodland and an occasional herd of wild goats. It wasn’t much but it was more than the boy had ever seen before and the smith let him look on it all in wonder without much interruption.

Corsair ships appeared within sight as they drew closer to Umbar. They were always far enough distant to be no immediate threat, but keeping pace well enough that it was obvious the smith’s ship was being watched. Well, no matter. So long as they weren’t attacked it would be to their benefit as much as anything else if their arrival was known, if even now word was being sent back to the fortress city by messenger birds to say that the king of Pelargir, the king of the Southlands, was coming. Let them wonder a little.

“Why don’t they come closer?” the steward’s son muttered, chewing at his lip. From this distance even the black eye on their sails must have been barely visible to him.

The smith leant down with folded arms on the railing beside him. “They don’t need to. They can see us well enough.”

“You said they’re humans. They’re not – you. Or elves.”

“Humans with spyglasses. And plenty of other things you won’t have seen in Pelargir, I’d bet. Númenor isn’t the only place with impressive crafts.”

The sun was hot here, uncomfortably so. The smith was more than the mortal form he took but he was still too frustratingly limited by it. He was glad when their ship rounded the next headland and turned so that the sails cast a shadow over them.

“Not much longer,” he said. “We’ll be in more sheltered waters from here.” Although, in truth, their journey had been calm enough the whole way. There had been dolphins leaping in the wake of their ship for a while, and once ahead of them a shoal of flying fish that had the crew from Pelargir shouting to each other in wonder. It had pleased the smith to watch them content with the voyage even though he had no love of the sea himself.

“You should say you were afraid of the sea.”

“And would it make a difference?”

“To me.”

He lets the promise of this hang in the air. There’s a hope in it, perhaps. “I didn’t feel afraid, then,” he says. “I was. I must have been. But it didn’t seem that way. Or I couldn’t see it, through everything else.”

Pelargir might be a port city, but its people weren’t sailors. They would need far more than eight years for to consider themselves anything but land-bound Southlanders by nature, dreaming only of better pastures and good harvest dances. This might have annoyed the smith and no doubt would, in other times, but now he only found himself rather charmed by them.

The steward’s son was the first to spy the fortifications ahead, terraced walls on the far side of the bay. “There,” he said with some satisfaction. But the smith laughed and explained that wasn’t their destination; that was some kind of lookout, maybe a small town grown up around it. Their destination was the ancient city itself, a much vaster thing.

Umbar had been here before Númenor crossed back over the ocean; Umbar had been here before the elves wandered this far south, perhaps even before orcs had gathered in the far mountains. Umbar was older than Pelargir, older than Númenor, older than the war. And the smith had grown rather tired of bowing and scraping to the arrogance of powers that considered themselves better than he. He was fond enough of his loyal Southlanders, but for what was to come he would need greater powers than that.

Umbar was a wondrous place, a city that seemed as if it would still hold new wonders if you spent a hundred years here. Those were the words of the steward’s son but the smith did not disagree. He had travelled to Harad before although only to the lands on the far side of the Anduin, ruled over by clan lords. They had cities there, and masons who’d trained his own, and skill enough at fighting that he was already starting to build what he could of a plan to use that to his own advantage, but they did not have a city like this.

As his anger over his warrior queen’s absence had cooled, he had found it replaced with a new thing. A determination, perhaps. A vision or at least the possibility of one. He had been thrown off-course before and found his feet again; he had despaired before and found hope again. And he had lost his beautiful warrior before and brought her home again, riding at his side, glorious in her shining white cloak.

This, then, would be another step along that path.

Umbar was a vibrant blaze of colour. The ships in its great harbour bore the red sails of the Corsairs along with others, white and green and gold, their hulls painted in repeating patterns and lettering in a script he didn’t know. Behind the high fortress-like walls were white buildings inlaid with intricately-decorated tiles, gardens set out in immaculate symmetry, fountains inlaid with gold, a sigil of a whirling sun repeated again and again on walls and doors and streets and ceilings. Although the landscape around the city was semi-arid with only a few patches of low-lying vegetation spanning the rocky ground, there was a richer world hidden on the far side of its high towers, where irrigation channels turned the land into a bright patchwork of fertile earth stretching out either side of the low river.

The smith was impressed. There seemed little point in hiding that, and he passed on his compliments on the place to the guards who met their ship. They had been surrounded by smaller boats as soon as they approached near the harbour but, it seemed, not as an act of hostility; instead they were guided in to a waiting bay at the moorings, and met by a reception of blue-robed city elders who greeted him, suitably, as Tar-Mairon.

The rest of their small crew had been kept near the ship and under guard, although it seemed a very generous guard. They were shown to a building overlooking their ship, with vast tiled rooms and beds if they wished, and brought food and drink and told to rest. “We know you are not sea people,” one of the Haradrim explained in a strangely accented but fluent Westron. “We welcome you to take your rest on land.”

The smith and his steward’s son were taken up through the steep city streets, crowded with people who stopped to stare at them, up beneath archways patterned with such delicately mosaics that the steward’s son gaped at them with no effort to hide his wonder, up to the great tower that cast its shadow over the bay. In a vast throne room, behind a banqueting table laden high with food, Umbar’s king awaited them.

Enmesharra wore robes of copper-brown and necklaces of pearl and turquoise. There was gold twisted into the many braids of his long hair, and at his side a sword with a handle so inlaid with jewels it was clearly not intended to be wielded. He smiled broadly as he came to welcome them, holding each by the shoulders and kissing their foreheads. “You’ll eat!” he said, waving them both towards the table with a broad smile. “You’ll eat. Such a small ship as that can’t have served you well in terms of comfort.”

The steward’s son, uncertain and seeming every part of his youth, looked between the food and the guards and the king. The smith clapped him hard between the shoulders. “Of course, and our thanks. We’d not turn down your hospitality. And I am very tired of salted fish.”

Although the table was vast, it was only the three of them who sat to dine. The guards stayed in their position at the doors and silent servants shuttled back and forth with plates and jugs. The smith took a bite of the first thing before him, a deliciously-roasted bird with a smoky taste he didn’t recognise. “Eat, Theo,” he said. “If they were going to poison us they’d have killed us before we got here.”

Enmesharra gestured to one of the servants to pour another glass from the vase she held. “If I was going to poison you I’d have done it in Pelargir.”

The smith allowed himself to take his ease here, enjoying the fine meal provided for them and the richness of this place beyond it. Pelargir was a greater place than it had been when his people claimed it, certainly, but Umbar seemed greater than Pelargir was even in its prime. Nothing here was scarce, nothing was ruinous. In its bounty and grandeur it reminded him of Armenelos although, he sensed, that wasn’t a comparison those here would welcome.

Their host was cheerful and talkative, speaking with enthusiasm on topics of conversation carefully chosen to be neutral. The dolphins that leapt along their boat, a common occurrence at this time of the year, always welcomed by Umbar’s sailors returning home (from where, he didn’t say). The dry summers of the past few years. Yes, he too had heard reports of lions on the road north; always hard to tell what was a real threat and what a traveller’s tale, and some of the traders were known to tell tall stories about the dangers of roads to their competitors, but certainly lions had been known to come that far west before. “Even to the banks of the Anduin, in the past,” he said. “But that was before you were in Pelargir. Before Pelargir itself, I believe. We have records. I can check.”

“It’s a good command of the language you have,” the smith said. Conversations about Pelargir were not where he wished to begin this.

“It’s spoken here a little. We’re fond of languages in general. We like to think we collect them. I have some Quenya, too, although less than I’d like.” An easy, relaxed smile. “And with that said I don’t think you came here to discuss languages. So tell me, Tar-Mairon of Pelargir, what brings you? Is Númenor sending you to do its bidding now?”

“Hardly,” the smith said, keeping his own smile just on the right side of pleasant.

“But you do have a friendship with them? And yet you keep your lands, which is more than they’ve allowed us in the past. You know they claimed Umbar once? Ruled from here for three generations. It never lasted, though. They left us, or they stayed and married us and had children and became us, and when we regained our city it was just the same but with better fortifications. We’ve seen Númenor come and go more than you have.” He bit into the cracking pink crust of a meringue. “Well. Maybe not more than you have.”

“We have an agreement with them,” the smith said. “We can’t match Númenor in power.”

“And why can’t you, precisely? A Maia should be more powerful by far than all Númenor’s human lords and ladies. Didn’t one of you raise Númenor from the sea? Can’t you. I don’t know. Sink it again?”

The smith handed his empty glass to the servant beside him and they all watched in silence as she refilled it near to the brim. “Not that simple,” he said. “We’re at our most powerful when one of the Valar works through us. That’s how Ossë made the island, for Ulmo. Alone we’re weaker. I’ve done what I can for my lands and my queen’s lands but I can’t conjure myself armies.”

“Done what you can.”

“They’re protected. Our crops grow well. Our people thrive. Things don’t die so easily in the lands I rule.”

“And everything is a little stronger,” Enmesharra said. “A little brighter, I heard it described? Luck seems to favour you.”

“It’s not luck. It’s craft.” He held up his hand with the silver ring. “It’s this. I can’t use the power of the Valar so this is what I have instead.”

“I heard that, too.” Another bright smile. It wasn’t false, exactly; it was more that the king’s smiles held more than his words said, and carried a suggestion that the things that made him happy might extend far beyond the boundaries of the current conversation. “So what brings you to me, Maia? What can’t your craft build for you?”

“Ships,” the smith said. “Ships and the skill to make them and the crews to sail them. I don’t trust Númenor and I can’t hold them off without ships of my own. You have all that.”

Beside the smith, the steward’s son drew back from the table and sat a little more upright. He was young, still, barely more than a boy, but he was grown well enough. He didn’t need telling that this was a negotiation and that the smith was to do the negotiating.

“I do have all that,” Enmesharra said. “And it’s worth more than you can offer. We don’t have ships to spare, Maia.”

“Ten ships. Build them here, I’ll get you the timber.”

“That would still cost you more than all of Pelargir. We’ve had two summers of drought.”

“Ten ships, and the crews to sail them until they’ve trained my own people.”

Enmesharra leaned back in his chair and cleaned his hands on the rich red cloth handed to him by one of his servants. “The only thing that might buy you all that is the silver ring you wear.”

The smith laughed. “I’d not give this away for all the ships in your harbour. But if it’s powerful rings you want – for ten ships and their crews, I’ll make you one just like it. How does that sound?”

Chapter Text

So if lovers are losers then what price the game we are playing
And what price the man who has not got the money to pay
Whatever’s before me is nothing to what I have come through
For the lost and the lonely and those who have nothing to say.

My darling once told me that loving was better than living
And I told her survival for me was the easier game
I couldn’t live with her and now it’s I can’t live without her
I thought I’d feel different but somehow I still feel the same.

(‘Lovers’, Adrian Mannering)

There were three of the Istari gathered in the little council room at the head of the tower. Mithrandir, who had already greeted her like an old friend (and truly it seemed that way to her, too, although seven years was little time at all in the life of elves); Rómestámo, in sapphire-blue robes and dark hair twisted back into a patterned scarf upon his head; and Curumo wearing shining white. Mithrandir kept his Sindarin name, she noticed, and not the Quenya ‘Olorin’ that Sauron had called him. She had asked him whether this was at the wish of the Sindar but he said only that he considered the name a gift he was honoured to bear.

“We are here to discuss a number of things,” Curumo began. “But before any of them are even uttered here - your ring, Galadriel.”

“What of it?”

“Having something of the enemy’s work here while we talk does not sit easy with me.”

She turned it on her finger and considered the things she might say to this. That she surely knew this ring better than he did? That Celebrimbor and Gil-galad, sitting at either side of her, were even now wearing rings made from the enemy’s work albeit not by his own hand? But in the end, she removed it with a simple twist and handed it to Celebrimbor. “Tell your smiths to study it. I would like to know what I can of its powers.”

“Of course,” Celebrimbor said, slightly taken aback. “Of course, I’ll – certainly. Yes.”

The meeting was adjourned briefly while Celebrimbor’s gwaith-i-mirdain were sent for, and a trio of smiths had a hushed conversation with Celebrimbor before carrying her ring away in a small grey-lined box. Elrond, at the far end of the table, leaned over a little to catch her attention and raised an eyebrow. She shook her head briefly and ran her thumb over her bare finger, again and again and again.

“I knew. As soon as you did that I knew. I could feel it.”

“I thought you would.”

“So cruel to me.” He kisses her hairline just beside her ear, the softest, finest fuzz brushing his lips. “I deserved it, I know I deserved it. I’m not arguing.”

“You’re always arguing.”

Curumo would not speak again until he was satisfied they were alone. None of Celebrimbor’s smiths were permitted to be present, nor any of Gil-galad’s attends other than Elrond. The corridors beyond the council room were cleared and checked, and Curumo even got to his feet to look out to the little courtyard below them.

“Really,” Mithrandir muttered, “without emptying the entire city I do believe we’ve done enough.”

“And how many of your conversations with Galadriel did he hear already?” Curumo snapped back.

Mithrandir sighed but did not look anything beyond irritated. If it wasn’t for the sickening twist within her stomach, Galadriel would have found it amusing to hear Maiar bickering again. Although most of those in Valinor worked in harmony there had always been disagreements, small matters of little importance yet always with a long and barely comprehensible history behind each. Celeborn had been so shocked to hear this when she once mentioned it in passing; the only Maia he had ever known was Melian, and Melian had always seemed far above such things.

Oh, she could not think of him now.

It was something about being here that brought such thoughts to mind, surely. It was something about this room, the very elvishness of it, the greenery and the sculpted stone and the way its broad windows gathered pools of sunlight. There was a great hearth with a fire ready but unlit, and wall hangings of enamelled metal in diamond shapes showing landscapes so abstract that they were more of a suggestion than an image: an ocean, a forest, a city by the sea.

She could not think of him here. Or if she must then at least let her thoughts place him soundly in the halls of Mandos, singing beautiful songs of forests and away from all of this.

“We know that Sauron has been moving his forces in the south, around the lands ruined by the volcano,” Curumo began. “That much is no secret to any of us, I’m sure, although some of the details are still unknown. What has been better concealed is his other work. What he has tried to do here in Ost-in-Edhil. What he may have succeeded in doing in the east.”

“What did he try to do here?”

Rómestámo held out a hand palm-down for calm. “What did he tell you he was trying to do here?” His voice seemed barely perturbed at all, as calm as if this was all old and familiar news to him. As, she supposed, it was. “Did he speak of Ost-in-Edhil to you at all?”

But he barely had. Only a time or two, as she set out to them: that he had wanted her to come with him here, that he wanted her help to persuade the elves.

“Because his plans here were stopped,” Curumo said with evident relief.

“Elrond said – before - you were afraid he was still working here, somehow.”

“We were. It turns out that we were looking in the wrong places. Or at least the wrong times – the present, not the past.”

 Celebrimbor took over from him then. “He began trying to influence us here long before he arrived. Trying to influence me, I should say.” And at length and without flinching from any of the words he spoke, he set out what Sauron had done: his infiltration of Celebrimbor’s dreams as Eärendil, his manipulation of the gwaith-i-mirdain to develop the foundations of his ring-craft, the way he had set out the ground for his arrival by promising a messenger from the Valar, bringing a gift of a palantir. That Celebrimbor had been so convinced at first by all of this that he had resisted Gil-galad’s warnings, and Galadriel’s too, those years before in Lindon; that it was only with the arrival of the Istari and what they had shown him that he had come to reflect on what he had been convinced to do, and realised the depth of the deception that had been so carefully woven around him.

There was silence after he finished. Elrond seemed truly shaken in a way Galadriel had not seen in him for a long time, and spent a few moments staring down at his splayed hands on the table before him. “My father,” he said, a shake in his voice. “When you said that you remembered my father speaking to you of the role I would play, with the mithril – was that a true memory?”

“Given the circumstances –”

 Elrond nodded, lips pinched thin.

Gil-galad turned towards him and although no words were exchanged, something clearly passed between them, for Elrond seemed to recover himself a little.

“His work in the east likely started earlier,” Rómestámo went on. “After Morgoth’s fall there were a number of – cults, I suppose is the best word for it  – that developed around Morgoth-worship him. Sauron turned these to his advantage and made himself the centre of their focus. It remains unclear to us what he was attempting with this. He does not seem to have done a great deal with them in the past. They had some kind of dark sorcery but not as much as they might. Alatar, another one of our order who remains in the east now, believes he kept them as a form of contingency – he believed they might prove useful to him but did not yet have a clear idea of how. But in recent years this seems to have changed. We have heard rumours of spies and scouts advancing westwards, crossing the Carnen, and of orcs and others gathered beyond. Galadriel, did he mention anything of this to you? Anything of the east, of Rhûn?”

“No,” she said. “No, never.”

“Unsurprising,” Curumo said. “But I’m afraid even that isn’t all. Did he speak to you of the volcano?”

“Yes. But -” She told them again of the conversations they had had on the eruption years before, how he swore he had not caused nor wanted it. “Was it a lie?”

Curumo and Mithrandir looked at each other. “Maybe not a lie, entirely,” Mithrandir said. “We don’t know how much he had planned before returning to Middle-earth. What we can be certain of is that the volcano has a use for him beyond creating a land for orcs.”

“A use -”

“The volcano has never calmed since that first eruption.”

She swallowed. “No.”

“Because he doesn’t intend it to. It’s his forge. It’s a place he can continue making rings and anything else for himself and for his allies without even the limitations he had here, for whatever purpose he chooses. You know his power is growing, and so is his greed and ambition. He will not settle for less than he feels he deserves. It’s a forge.”

She felt as if some great discordant noise was clamouring in her ears. “I don’t believe,” she said, but her voice trailed off and she realised she had not even been speaking out loud at all.

The others continued discussing the detail of this for a while: the heat that a volcano can reach, its distance from Pelargir, the reports of orcs already carving out passages and staircases into rock. She felt as if she was floating, somehow, distanced from all of it, until Mithrandir said her name and she realised it was not for the first time.

“Then what do we do?” she demanded of him, of the others, of Gil-galad. “Talking will not stop him. What do we do?”

And Gil-galad, who had until then been silent for the whole discussion, spoke. “You, take soldiers east beyond Eryn Galen and watch the border lands with Rhûn. Learn what you can and keep back what you can. Elrond will go south to the settlement Númenor established and try to agree some sort of peace with them before Sauron can turn them any further to his will. I think they would be more open to hearing from the brother of Elros than from any of us. In the meantime we will do what we can to watch Pelargir and whatever he might be attempting to do there, and continue to build up our armies again before we need to move.”

“You can’t just leave him -”

“I have no intention of just leaving him.” And he signalled to Curumo, who passed her a small, round wooden case with a small chain inside – a necklace, it seemed to be - looped around on itself three times.

The chain was the colour of silver, but felt a little too heavy when she lifted it from its case. Its circular links moved smoothly against each other as she turned them in her hands. There was something strange about it, a little like the feel of her ring but more unfamiliar; a shimmer, almost, in her mind. It reminded her of far-distant oceans and music left long ago. “What is this?”

“When the Valar came for Morgoth once before,” Curumo said “they bound him in the great chain Angainor to bring him back to Valinor. This is a lesser thing for a lesser being, but it will serve the same purpose.”

She poured it from hand to hand. “How could something as slight as this hold him?”

“Once fastened into a circle it will hold him, I assure you. For an elf it would do nothing, but for him it will hold him no matter what he does. We can’t kill him, we can’t destroy him, the chances of him agreeing to leave Middle-earth of his own will seem slim, and so: this. Forged at Aule’s own hand. We have been calling it Ancahuanva.”

Jaws of Huan. She placed it back in the wooden box, careful to coil it just as it had been before. “If you had given this to me when I was in Pelargir I could have stopped him then.”

“We did consider that,” Mithrandir said. “In our view it was too dangerous. We believed he was watching some of our conversations with you somehow – correctly, it seems - and we knew he was suspicious of what we might persuade you to do. If you had returned to Pelargir with this, the chances were simply too great that he would have taken it from you, and then we would be without it and he would have been in possession of a weapon to use against one of we Istari. We are unlikely to have two chances with this.”

“Then we do what? Defeat him in battle?”

“Ideally, yes,” Gil-galad said. “We stop him borrowing soldiers and making new alliances, and then we defeat him in battle.”

She imagined what it would be like to be riding south with Gil-galad now at the head of vast armies of elves, his blue starred pennant beside them. She imagined what it would be like to strike Sauron down on the battlefield herself. If they had found him earlier back in those snows in the north, if she had perhaps searched a little harder, pushed her company a little more, perhaps, perhaps…

She closed her eyes and thought of the forests in her lands, the fields of sea-grasses rippling in the wind.

“Send me east, then,” she said. “Give me soldiers and send me east.”

She found it hard to sleep that night. It was not worry or fear that pressed upon her, but instead a sense of blankness; a feeling that what lay ahead of her was so far distanced from her life in recent years that she could not even see anything of what it held. There was satisfaction in that of a kind, but not of a great degree.

She sat awake for a while watching the stars from her window, and when she felt no more inclined to rest after several hours she dressed herself again and went out to walk the stone streets of Ost-in-Edhil. It was not entirely quiet even at this time of night – as with Pelargir, there were carts arriving and bakers beginning their work silhouetted in the glow of distant doorways. No-one disturbed her, though, and she found her way back to the garden where she had briefly sat with Elrond. She sat alone looking out over late-flowering roses and allowed herself a little time to think of her years spent in Pelargir.

The memory that pressed upon her most in this moment was an unremarkable one, and she was not at first sure why this of all things had come to mind now. She had been lying in his bed, in his arms, his forehead pressed against hers and the braid she wore to sleep looped loosely around his hand the way he liked, and he had been speaking to her of a time long before anything she had known.

“I have no words for it in your tongue, nor in mine,” he had said. “We did not understand what we had made with our song until it was shown to us, and then it was… the fulfilment of it. Our song made into being. But you. The Children of Iluvatar. We never understood you. We weren’t meant to, that was hidden from us. You and all the part you might play. Now, I believe maybe it’s the same. We are meant to learn you, we are meant to understand you. Already I think I know you better. The sense of you, the will of you, it’s all – you were meant to be mine. That’s what you are. I just had to learn it so it would be as clear to me as sky and earth and water.”

She had refused to look at him. “Don’t talk like this.”

“Like what? Of you or of what I am?” And when she hadn’t answered, only swallowed the tightness in her throat down again: “I can play at being Halbrand again if that’s what you want.”

“Don’t.”

“You don’t like that either? Elf, you confuse me sometimes. You’re a puzzle.” He took hold of her hand and pressed it to his hair, then his lips. “Here. I have this mortal body, it’s all I can make. I’m weak. You’re lucky. Here, feel, it’s real, isn’t it? Halbrand was just me, Galadriel. It was all true, everything I was for you. Still a smith, see?” He touched her hand to the muscles in his forearm and shoulder.

She pulled her hand out of his and ducked her head down and even though she was still pressed against his shoulder into the sharp scent of his sweat, it was away from him enough. “Stop this. I don’t want any of this, stop it.”

She was so sure of  his response that she had braced herself for laughter and the inevitable teasing that always pressed a little too sharp, but he stayed silent. Only the way he began stroking her hair after a while, careful and regular and soft, gave her any indication that he had not disappeared within himself the way he sometimes did.

And she felt, herself, ill at ease. A strange kind of discomfort ran like water beneath her skin, ice-cold and hard to bear.

There had been a time it had all seemed so empty. She had lost the substance of her joy, her laughter, her grief and despair, all of it a faint and muted outline of what it was. She had been determination and duty alone. Until her company had turned on her; until Elrond and Gil-galad had sent her away; until the raft, and Númenor, and those briefest of moments when she had allowed herself to think of feeling it all again.

She could stand that again, if she needed to. Surely she could stand that again. She could draw away from him now and leave this room and deny him all the willingness he craved from her, let him coax and threaten and beg and grant him nothing. She could live half a life here, if she chose it, just as she had done in the north for so many long years before.

But she lifted her head and kissed him, softly at first, waiting for a smug declaration of victory that never came; and he murmured her name and pulled her closer.

Here in Ost-in-Edhil the night air was cooler, autumn already settled in. She could hear the whispers of a hushed conversation on the path beyond the wall as some couple passed by.

Where the ring had been on her hand there was still a faint indentation, slightly redder than the skin around it. She rubbed her thumb over it and thought of Pelargir, of her rooftop terrace, of how she had gone there sometimes alone to watch the stars.

Sometimes alone. Sometimes with him.

They gave her sixty soldiers. She had commanded more in the past (many more, armies more) and would have welcomed more again, but even in her determination to be back out leading soldiers and cutting down orcs she conceded sixty was enough for now. She knew only a few of them and had not led any before, and there were too many ways to falter with unfamiliar soldiers. She could not risk losing them; she could not risk failing.

As she read down the lists she was given of names and histories and skills, she thought again of her own company. Whittled down by time and war, they had still been so loyal for so long through so much until that day in the ice and she longed for them again now. It would be hard to rebuild such familiarity with entirely new soldiers – hard, and yet, perhaps, in itself a kind of healing.

(At least those left were home in the West now, far from all of this. At least Thondir had not followed her from the ship to drag her back as she had feared he might. At least she had been right to return to Middle-earth, and the mistakes she had made with Sauron could now finally be unpicked one by one like the threads of a half-finished tapestry.)

The next few days kept her so busy there was little time to rest, and she was thankful for that. She had to meet as many of her new soldiers as were already in Ost-in-Edhil, and learn as much of them and their experience as she could. She needed to ensure they would be well equipped and armoured for months spent out in unfamiliar terrain. She visited the forge only once but Celebrimbor’s smiths were still studying her ring, and although they offered to give it back to her she told them to keep it for longer to better learn what they could from it.

There was no mark on her finger now and no sign that the ring had ever been there.

Elrond found her sorting through maps. By that point, the great table was spread with them and half the floor beneath it, and she had pinned some smaller parchments behind her too. It was irritating that their knowledge of this part of Middle-earth was so poor: maps of the broader area showed little more than mountains and rivers, and the smaller ones contradicted each other incessantly. Here a forest spread down to the edge of a banks of a river marked unfordable; but here, the forest was a marsh and the river barely a stream. Here there was a great and ancient road; then a map drawn later noted that it was gone with no trace left; then another, yet later, added it back again with no commentary at all.

Elrond found a space on a chair beside her for the tray of food he was carrying. “Can I help?”

“Kneel on the corner of that one. I ran out of weights and the scroll keeps turning up.”

Instead, he searched the desk at the far side of the room and came back with a small but heavy ornamental bowl. “I fear the archivists here more than I fear you,” he said by way of explanation.

She could not help but smile. “Have you been sent here to watch me?”

A pause a little too long. “No,” he said.

“Previously?”

“Previously… yes. But not in the way you make it sound. I’m not a spy sent to test you, Galadriel.”

“But it was felt that I needed a minder.”

“It was felt that you needed a friend.” He stilled her hand as she reached for another map. “That’s all. I promise.”

She nodded, suddenly unsure that she could trust herself even to speak.

They sat together for the rest of that morning, condensing and combining all the scattered threads of information as best they could. Elrond was more help than she had allowed herself to appreciate and she was a little taken aback by how much it seemed he knew. “Perhaps you should be taking armies east,” she said, “and I should be the one carrying peace treaties to the Numenoreans.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m less skilled with a sword.”

“You aren’t so bad.”

“I’m less skilled at camping out in the wilderness while covered in orc blood.”

“And I’m less skilled at diplomacy?”

“No… Yes. Well, yes. But you know I’m being sent as Elros’s brother as much as anything else. I have little hope it’ll lead to anything anyway but we must try, I suppose.” He released the final map from the awkward position in which he’d been holding it and got to his feet, stretching his arms back at the shoulders. “He would have hated all this.”

She thought of Elros, so like his brother in appearance and so different in temperament. Yes, he would have hated all of this and would have said so, loud and at length.

“I am sorry for what Sauron did in impersonating your father,” she said. “To have so few memories of one lost makes those related to us by others even more precious.”

“Oh, it’s…” He seemed briefly transported to some distant time and place, with only the faintest of smiles on his lips. “It’s. It’s not fine. But really… I have had a fair sufficiency of fathers as it is.”

This made little sense to her at first. Eärendil had been gone since Elrond was young. And then she remembered. “You don’t include -”

“I do, though. They were my foster fathers whatever the circumstance that brought that about. So, three fathers. And whether we succeed at this or fail, I have hope I will have done something to make at least one of them proud of me.”

Don’t, she wanted to say. Don’t think like that, don’t talk like that. But he would not hear it – not from her and not from any other. The cousins she knew as murderers he had found some strange way to hold in his own memory. They had orphaned him but they had raised him, Maglor had taught him songs of beauty and of grief, Maedhros had ensured he was tutored as a Noldor prince but with all the knowledge that could also be gathered of his Sindar kin.

She gathered up her notes on the maps and the two where they had tried together to combine all the information that seemed most likely to be accurate, and went to see if Celebrimbor had finished studying the ring.

The smith returned to Pelargir in good time, with fair winds on calm enough seas. His people were joyous at his return. Their ship was met at the quays by crowds of his people with flower garlands, with songs -

“That did not happen.”

“Yes! Yes it did. They liked me.”

“You speak as though all of Pelargir spent your absence in mourning.”

He laughs, pats her arm, watches the way the sunlight glows on her skin. Is it evening? They’ve been talking for days, or so it feels.

He gets to his feet, bare on the rough boards of the floor. The window isn’t facing west, not directly, but he can see through the tint of the clouds that it’s already low in the sky.

Well, and what’s to do about that. They have the whole night if they want. And the next day, and the next.

She is watching him, he can tell. He doesn’t look round. “Perhaps the songs were later,” he says.

His people were happy enough at his safe return, and Pelargir had come to no trouble in his absence. As ever he was pleased to see his city again with its shining rebuilt walls and its colour and life. It was not the city he would want; nothing was as he would want it, and only little by little was the world starting to assume some better order. It was well enough for now, though, and if his warrior back in her elf kingdoms found it to be a miserable place by comparison, she might remember that those kingdoms only flourished still because of his work.

The steward’s son found him later that day, when welcomes were over and tales related. The smith was sitting in the walled garden beside its single apple tree watching clouds drift overhead. It was good to be back on land; he had never loved the sea.

“Theo,” he said. “Missing Umbar already?”

“No.”

It was unconvincing, though. The smith nodded at the new knife at the boy’s belt. “A good blade they gave you.”

“It’s not like yours.”

The smith hadn’t really been holding the dagger for any particular purpose, but sometimes its weight in his hands was a grounding thing. Something about the way it always felt cool no matter how long he’d been holding it, something about the patterns on its hilt he was now so familiar with. When his warrior returned he would kneel and hand it back to her.

“I liked going,” the steward’s son said. “Not because of Umbar. Because it felt like I was doing something. Like I was part of it. More than mending fences and learning to fire arrows.”

“Fences and arrows are valuable things.”

“Yes. But…” There seemed to be something irritable within him, prickling beneath his skin. “When I held that sword-hilt before the volcano, the one Waldreg said was – yours – Was it yours?”

“Wasn’t his.”

“It felt like power. It felt like I could save everyone if I held it. I’ve never felt anything like that since. Being in Umbar and being part of getting those ships, it wasn’t the same, but it was – it was closer than anything else.”

A flock of starlings passed overhead; not one of the huge dark clouds of birds, but a smaller, briefer thing, some part separated from the whole.

“I see,” the smith said.

“And I don’t want. I’m not saying I want to go back there. But if there’s other places. Things like that. I just… When those Numenor ships came in it felt like we were so small again. It was like being back in the village waiting for the orcs.”

The smith nodded.

The steward’s son couldn’t quite look at him, attention divided between the conversation and the knife he held. “And with Galadriel and the elves -”

“So what’s your worry, elves? Numenor? Talk to me.”

The steward’s son sat down beside him, unwound and half-smiling, a slump in his previously rigid shoulders. “More Numenor. If they see we’ve got ships from their enemies what are they going to think? We didn’t even ask them for ships. Won’t they be angry when ten ships from Umbar arrive?”

“They’re free to give me eleven ships if they like.”

“What if they don’t?”

“You think they’ll turn on us.”

“Why won’t they?”

“All right.” The smith put his warrior’s dagger back at his belt, safely fastened away. “Talk me through it. Why would they?”

“They want Pelargir back.”

“That’s right, they do. Why?”

“It’s theirs.”

“And?”

“It’s theirs, so they want – I mean it was theirs. They think it’s theirs.”

“But why do they want it. What does it give them to gain it?”

The steward’s son thought a moment. “They’d have an extra city, a port city. And then they’d control the mouth of the river.”

“That’s part of it. And now, what do they lack?”

“Timber? Forests.”

“Pelargir won’t give them forests.”

“I don’t know. Food? No. I don’t know.”

“Umbar annoys them, Umbar doesn’t worry them. Umbar isn’t powerful enough or ambitious enough to be a threat to them. We’re certainly not. So what does scare them? Where does their threat come from?”

A longer silence, but the boy was sharp. “Each other. They have all those factions and their king dying. It’s unstable.”

“That’s it. They fear each other.”

The steward’s son nodded. “So… That’s why you gave them their land up the river, isn’t it? So they’d have that instead of Pelargir.”

“And so they’d have a fight. They wanted a fight, they wanted a victory.”

“Why won’t they want Pelargir as well? They’d get a fight and they’d have the city.”

“Who would they be fighting?”

“Well. Us. But we’re low men. Not you but the rest of us, most of us. We’re not like them.”

“Doesn’t matter, does it? You’re like them enough that Pharazon’s faction can say you are, and that destabilises Miriel. Plus, the Noldor agreed they’d come to the aid of the people of Pelargir if it was under threat and I’ve made sure Miriel knows that. She won’t fight elves.”

“Would the elves do that, though? With…” He didn’t finish – the warrior’s name was not spoken a great deal now, not in the smith’s hearing.

“They might, and that in itself is enough of a threat. I’ll need to keep close enough to Numenor to see how that develops. And you can be part of that if you like. I think you’d be good at it and you’re right, you’re wasted mending fences. Want to?”

“Yes,” the boy said, sounding so much younger than he was. “Yes. Thank you. I won’t let you down.”

“I know,” the smith said. “You won’t.”

Once the boy had left, the smith stretched back on the ground and looked up at the apple tree. It was bursting with fruit, far more than it should be, and taller and stronger already than any tree of its age should have reached. Its leaves were a fine dark green and the bursts of flowers on its upper branches white. There was not another like it; even the trees the elves had wouldn’t grow like this.

There, he thought. There, Galadriel, I’ll grow you an orchard like this. I’ll grow you a forest. They won’t fade, they won’t die. You’ll have ripe red apples all year round any time you like.

He picked the nearest apple off its branch and weighed it in his hand. It was a little larger than an ordinary apple, perhaps, but there wasn’t much in it. The vivid gloss of its red peel was dappled with a finer yellow on one side where it had faced the sun.

He took a bite from it – and immediately spat it out, hurling the apple at the nearest wall where it burst apart.

Its flesh was a fine juicy pale, he could see that much. The fruit itself was as perfect as one of Yavanna’s own crafts. But inside, it tasted like ash.

Chapter Text

Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.

- T. H. White, The Ill-Made Knight

“I was thinking,” he says. “This is meant to be our story, the one they’ll tell of us.”

“The truth.”

“An irrelevant distinction, but if you insist. My point – It was so long before I saw you again. Truly saw you. And so this part’s not our story, is it? It’s other things.”

“Other things.”

“You’re being pointlessly difficult. Come here. Stand with me.”

She does, which he didn’t expect. She rests her hands on the sill and looks out at the distant trees and he remembers her long centuries before, on a ship from Númenor in the bright armour he’d made her, looking out at the sea and refusing to turn to him. How confident he’d been, then.

“You would rather I ignored all you did,” she says. “Still.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what would you prefer, to miss out everything until I returned? Or after? Everything before Nára was born?”

“Obviously not.” Even the thought of their daughter, of that daughter, casts a strange light on everything he might want to say. He feels so exhausted again. Perhaps they don’t need this, any of this; perhaps he can just lie down with Galadriel now, curled up against her light, and let the future care for itself.

But she will not have it, not with that smirk in the corner of her mouth he loves so much. “Perhaps you would rather ignore how I returned at all?”

“Perhaps no-one will even remember.”

“I think they will remember you dragging Elrond here as a prisoner.”

“I didn’t drag him.”

“I think he will remember it.”

“He was barely even in a cell. He had the freedom of the city or as good as. I came back once from – it doesn’t matter, I came back – and he was telling stories about Pelargir to a whole crowd. He was the most pampered, well-treated prisoner I have ever held.”

“Other than me.”

“I don’t like you saying that.”

“Those first seven years in Pelargir -”

“I didn’t treat you like a prisoner. You weren’t a prisoner. I loved you so much.”

“And you didn’t know how to love a thing without breaking it.”

He thinks of dead apple trees, of visions of Middle-earth blistered and cratered below his feet. Of Galadriel left lying on the floor of his tower room as peaceful as if she were sleeping as he kissed her soft on the lips, and took her dagger.

He has ways to justify this. That she was warned. That he would have come back to her. That he had told her not to betray him, he had told her again and again she would regret it if she did, what did she expect might happen? It would all be so easy; it would be like falling into an old familiar song.

She is right, all the same. She is right and he is glad beyond telling that he never broke her.

 “All right,” he says. “All right. Tell as much of the rest of it as you think matters.”

It took longer than Galadriel would have liked before her soldiers were ready to leave. Many were serving as wardens at the borders of Eregion, and others were out on a scouting party into the mountains following reports of orcs. Other than the few she had from the entourage Gil-galad had brought from Lindon she was forced by necessity to wait for them to arrive in a slow trickle, day after day.

But even with all this, it felt less frustrating to her than it would have done even a few short weeks ago. There was, at least, a plan; there was an enemy front to investigate and intelligence to gather. She knew more than she had and even though the knowledge sickened her it was better than to be sickened than ignorant.

In the meantime she talked with the soldiers she had gathered, learning as much of them as she could, and held endless  conversations with armourers about what equipment would be needed and when. Gil-galad was content to let her make all the decisions for this campaign as she wished and to authorise whatever she asked for in terms of supplies and support here in Ost-in-Edhil. They were more in accord than they had been for many years, and she found she could even enjoy his company at dinner. Above all, it was a relief to be a respected commander again rather than a relic of a bygone war.

Elrond left for Khazad-dûm and returned again with reassurances: there was no indication that Sauron had tried to work with the dwarves directly, or that he had tried to obtain mithril through any routes at all. “But we wouldn’t know, would we,” Curumo had grumbled, “that’s the very point of how he works,” and the Istari had argued between themselves about it for the better part of a day, and Elrond had excused himself from the discussions and gone to prepare for his journey south to the Númenorean colony.

Galadriel’s ring remained in Celebrimbor’s workshops where his jewel-smiths studied it night and day in ways she found interminable, not least because they seemed to discover so little about it that was of use. Every time she saw it, it was somewhere different: once resting on white silk on an otherwise empty bench, once held in a tray of glowing coals. Whatever they might be learning from this, though, seemed to prove as little use to them as it was to her. She felt herself growing impatient.

The day after Elrond returned she found her ring suspended in water in a strange glass container whose faceted sides shone shards of light through its centre. Two of the gwaith-i-mírdain were observing it at a distance, one of them writing careful notes from the other’s commentary – a long list of measurements. Their voices were hushed as though in reverence.

She could simply take it, of course. She wondered if they would try to stop her if she did.

“Where is Celebrimbor?” she said, and they turned towards her in perfect unison as though they were on two sides of a mirror.

“I don’t intend to leave Eregion without it,” she said.

They sat together in a little plant-filled room above the arching vaults of the main workshops, where there was barely room for two stools between a writing-desk and a telescope. Celebrimbor’s own office was occupied with more of his assistants working on something else relating to rings. Their work seemed to expand to fill all the space and all the time available and even so she could tell Celebrimbor had barely slept, a deep weariness ground into him like dust on a traveller who had been too long on the road. The promise of her ring, and the uncertainty of how long she would allow it to remain with them, were too great to neglect for anything else.

“We are making progress,” he said. “I appreciate it might not seem that way -”

“Can you tell me whether Pelargir is any less protected with me and the ring gone?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Can you tell me the limits of its powers? Can you tell me how I can use it against him?”

An apologetic excuse for a smile. He had known she would ask this; he had known he would not have what she sought. “Incomplete answers would be less use to you than none at all.”

“Then what is the point of you even holding it? I did not lend it to your jewel-smiths for their entertainment.”

“We are trying, Galadriel.”

“Try harder.”

“Do you think I’m not doing all I can?” His voice had become brittle and sharp at the edges.

Galadriel had never been particularly close to her cousin. As a child he had been Fëanor’s beloved grandson in Mahtan’s forges, given his own workbench with a stepstool and a pair of gloves too big for him, fussed over by a flock of adoring uncles, of an age with her and some of the others but rarely joining their games. Later in Beleriand he had seemingly followed his father in a quiet and awestruck devotion until Finrod was betrayed; and then he had turned from all of the Fëanorians and gone, so she presumed, somewhere else. She had never known him without the heavy weight of his family borne on his shoulders. Even now with all of them gone, he barely seemed freed from it.

But now there were only the two of them left. Gil-galad and Elrond were generations removed, and Maglor, if he even still lived, was long lost and would not want to be found. However foolish Celebrimbor’s decisions they were unlikely the worst their ill-fated family had managed, and she had made enough poor decisions of her own. She could afford to be kinder.

“Surely you saw Sauron make that ring,” she said. “It was only a bare few years ago. Surely you know it.”

But Celebrimbor was shaking his head. “When he made that pair of rings here he told us they were a small thing. A trial, a little project to try his own hand. Not of a kind with the three we made. He worked on them mainly alone and we – Well, we let him, which I won’t excuse now. What matters is that we’re starting from close to nothing with this. All I can tell you with certainty are things you must already know. I can tell you that your ring is linked to his in a way that distance won’t affect. I can tell you that its powers probably are less than the three made for the elves, but they’re more loosely contained and this makes them harder to define. It’s more sophisticated than I believed and at the same time it feels unfinished in some ways. Made in haste.”

She remembered years before on their first journey to Pelargir, Sauron fallen to his knees in the wake of a storm their rings had made together and staring at her in – awe? Horror? It was hard to tell but oh, she had liked to see him so shocked by what she could do with his creation. She had remembered wanting him drowned and knowing she would willingly drown herself with him, and how reassuring the swell of water had felt as it crashed over them both. But here, in this little tower room in Ost-in-Edhil, that morning on a far-away hillside seemed closer than ever before.

“You helped him,” she said. “After that. He spoke to you through the palantír. Didn’t you even discuss it? Did he say nothing?” She could feel a familiar anger beginning to warm her again, comforting as a fire in winter.

“About the two he made here – no. Well, little. Nothing useful to us now. He was so focused on learning more, making more. Making Middle-earth mended and beautiful again. He even had me doubting the Istari to begin with. I was so sure he was telling the truth about what he wanted to do.”

And how many times had Sauron told her this same thing, all but begging her to believe him.

“He deceives himself,” she said, swallowing down the bitterness in her mouth, thinking of her soldiers even now being fitted for armour that could hold off orc blades.

Celebrimbor’s smile was brief and spare, but it was there. “At least there is hope now,” he said. “We have learned so much more about the ring-craft and now that we are working with the Istari things are progressing even faster. With Sauron required to work alone I have a reasonable hope we’ll learn all he knows and more before too much longer. If you’d leave the ring here for a few more months -”

“Months?”

“Will you consider it, at least?”

The room was too small, suddenly, its walls seeming to press the air in around her.

“You can’t ask me this,” she said, getting to her feet a little more rapidly than she intended.

Elrond was already preparing to leave the day the messenger arrived. She had hoped he might stay a little longer – she had missed him more than she expected when he went to Khazad-dûm, his absence far sharper than it should have been when she was long used to not seeing him for many years at a time. But the negotiations with Numenor could not wait any longer.

They were walking by the Glanduin and she was telling him that she hated the thought of him riding so close to Sauron’s lands – it was dangerous, Sauron would have no qualms in seizing an emissary and particularly not one close to Gil-Galadriel and dear to Galadriel, he should at least consider more soldiers as escort – when someone she vaguely recognised as a gate guard out of uniform came down to meet them with a paper in her hand. Galadriel was so lost in Elrond’s imminent journey that for a moment she assumed it was somehow related to that, but it was handed it to her instead. A letter, folded and sealed, bearing her name in a too-familiar hand.

“I take it that’s from him,” Elrond said once they were alone again, the gate guard dismissed with too-abrupt thanks.

She nodded without looking up from the letter she held. Its wax seal was still the one she was familiar with, the sigil of the king of the Southlands. She had almost expected he might choose something else. “He knows I’m here,” she said.

“Or it’s a guess. Or he sent messages to every elven settlement he could think of.”

Possible, yes, but she couldn’t make herself believe it. She broke the seal and unfolded the letter where they stood.

My lady Galadriel, my queen, my wife, the brightest jewel of Pelargir.

Elf, you have removed your ring. I am sure this was at the insistence of others. Your elf-lords still wear theirs, I do not doubt – remember that if you are ashamed to wear any gift of mine. For now, since I cannot speak to you as I would like and since I cannot bear to be without any way to reach you at all, I resort to pen and ink.

I do not plan to stop, Galadriel. I will mend the harms I have caused and I will bring beauty and order back to Middle-earth. You have a part in this – a part which I have insufficiently explained to you, and, in truth, have only recently been able to fully understand myself. You are needed for this work and I will not be denied you. I would tell you more but for that you must come to me. If they will allow you, of course. If they will not, perhaps I will come and get you myself.

I know you dislike orcs and you dislike that my current plans require them. I rather dislike orcs myself. As I promised, you may kill them yourself when I am done. I sometimes cannot abide thinking of this and sometimes like it very much indeed, but at any rate I’ll have no more use for them and I did offer. They are a tool to achieve an end, and you may tell your friends that I might never have needed to resort to it without the constant threat of my jealous, small-minded brothers intent on stopping me. My orcs will be temporary, Galadriel, but what they intend for Middle-earth will not.

I do not plan to stop, and nothing you can promise or threaten will make me. But if you come back I will let you choose how you wish it to be. All of our lands will be kept in beauty and glory as your elf kingdoms are now – at my gift, I remind you. I will build you castles even more beautiful than the tower I designed for you. I will let you rule any lands you like. I have been careless and thoughtless with you and I will make up for it. I will. I am not accustomed to loving anything as I have loved you.

I miss you so dearly. I am sure you must know this but I will say it all the same, and if it is my pride you wish me to sacrifice then consider it laid at your feet.

I am afraid for you, Galadriel. There are other forces at work in Middle-earth who would use you for their purposes as you fear I have used you for mine. I have never lied to you. Can your other allies say the same? Your elves who gave you to me? My own kind? Olórin seems harmless to you but he is not. They have their own aims in this. You may be in more danger than you realise, and I too far away to help. I doubt they would be so foolish as to imprison you but I am sure they will have lied to you and misled you and done all they can to make you weak and small. Tell them to give you back your ring and see what they say.

You have punished me enough, elf. Come home.

It was signed Tar-Mairon in his neat, looping script, and below that a postscript:

Your horse is back in Pelargir. I found her near Linhir while I was searching for you. Don’t fear, she is well cared for; no others are permitted to ride her and I would not dream of her being harnessed to a plough, so for the most part she does little except grow well-fed on sweet hay and allow children to braid flowers into her mane. She has bitten me twice, though. I am sure you will be proud.

She handed it to Elrond without a word.

He said nothing himself as he read through it, only his slightly widened eyes indicating any reaction at all until he reached the looping signature at the end. “He still calls himself Tar-Mairon, I see.”

It was the name he had used those years ago when he came to Lindon to demand her as his bride, when Elrond had pleaded with her not to go, when all the hope she’d had seemed to be crumbling in her hands – but since her return she had not heard a single one of them use it. He was only Sauron now. The elves would not be deceived again.

“He places great value in names,” she said. “But it makes little difference really. He is the same creature whatever he calls himself.”

“Mmm. And he begins by calling you elf? Charming.” He folded the letter back up neatly until the broken edges of the wax seal touched again, and returned it to her hand. “This is a threat, I think.”

“Not only that. But yes.” She wanted to say more but it felt impossible to encompass with words. There was so much of him in this letter, the disconnected, unpredictable way he had about him when he was unsure what he wanted to be – it would be like trying to describe the precise constraints of a storm. “We will go to Gil-galad immediately.”

Gil-galad proved easy enough to find, although the Istari he insisted on summoning to the discussion took longer. Curumo and Rómestámo were with Celebrimbor in his workshops, and Mithrandir appeared from seemingly nowhere only after they had been located, joining them for the last part of their walk down the wide, busy street to where Gil-galad awaited them.

Her letter was passed around, read, re-read, frowned over and discussed. They disagreed on whether he was planning to attack, whether the threat was immediate or not, whether this was a distraction, whether it should change any of the plans made for the various companies due to depart at the same time as Galadriel’s. Gil-galad was confident that the lack of any references to Eregion directly meant that Sauron did not know where she was and had sent the same letter to other places too, but he was the only one of them who shared that view. Curumo reminded them of Sauron’s earlier wish for Galadriel to come with him to Eregion and, presumably, persuade Celebrimbor to resume their earlier work. Rómestámo was concerned about the reference to orcs above all. Mithrandir said that Sauron always had been excessively petty.

Galadriel sat through this in silence for the better part of half an hour, listening, but feeling all the same as though their conversation was happening far away and their voices carried to her on the wind.

“I will speak with him myself,” she said.

“No,” Gil-galad said in the same quiet, tense tone he had used for the whole discussion, and Curumo and Elrond immediately agreed: no, it was unwise, it would gain them nothing and potentially lose them more. He could not be trusted anyway. It was pointless to attempt any sort of parley with him.

“This is pointless,” she said, raising her voice enough to silence them all. “This is achieving nothing. I will not risk him coming here after me. He has to hear from me that I am leaving and that none of you control what I do. So long as he believes he can still persuade me, he might refrain from doing anything to jeopardise that.”

“Anything such as the orcs he already told you about?” Elrond said, sounding more annoyed than anything else, and Rómestámo was shaking his head. But Galadriel was thinking of orcs marching on Eregion, of beautiful Ost-in-Edhil burned and ruined. An awful, metal taste came to her, a fear she had known for centuries but rarely felt so immediately as now.

Gil-galad tipped his head back a little. “He makes a fair point, Galadriel. But I’ll hear you on this. You know him better than we do.”

“She does not,” Curumo said.

Mithrandir waved a dismissive hand in his direction. “She may know what he is now better. Your information is a little outdated.”

“We are not here to command the elves,” Rómestámo said, his deeper voice cutting across both of them. “High King, please continue.”

Gil-galad waited a moment longer than necessary before speaking, a pointed silence that Galadriel was more accustomed to having aimed at her than others. “Do you plan to convince him you’ll return?”

“No. He wouldn’t believe it if I did.”

“Then you risk making him angrier.”

“He’ll still try.”

“And when he fails?”

“He’ll tell himself he has years still, he won’t give up. But I think he is growing impatient. That’s why he spoke of coming here to get me himself. He wants an excuse to bring his armies here and attack and he is convincing himself I might even thank him for it.”

Gil-galad acknowledged this with the briefest of nods, his expression unreadable. “And what about what we risk if you speak with him again? Celebrimbor says we still do not understand your ring particularly well. We know he has grown stronger – what if he can hear your thoughts as well as your words?”

“Then -” He can’t, she had intended to say, but could she even say that much with confidence? “I will have three of the Maiar here with me. Surely they can prevent him.”

“I still dislike it,” Mithrandir said. “We can. Yes, I’m sure we can, but I dislike this and I dislike that he’s convinced you. That ring is his creation and any gift of his will serve his purposes more than anyone else’s.”

Gil-galad’s jewelled ring was still on his hand and for a moment she thought to point this out to them, that no-one here questioned his right to wear it, or Celebrimbor’s to wear his. But no. She knew already what they would say - that Gil-galad’s and Celebrimbor’s rings, and Cirdan’s to a degree, had been the subject of much careful study here in Eregion. That hers was less known. That hers was made by his own hand, was linked in some way to the one he wore himself. That it was not safe and could not be trusted and nor could any plans that involved it.

She knew then, with absolute certainty, that she would take her own ring back and that they would allow it. She would not allow Sauron to put such thoughts of mistrust in her head. She would prove him wrong.

“Mithrandir was able to pull me out of his enchantment before,” she said, speaking to Gil-galad but for the ears of all of them. “I will speak with Sauron once.”

There was a long, heavy silence. She wondered what she would do if they forbade her entirely to take her ring back and realised that she did not know.

But Gil-galad only nodded, as if deferring to her.

The smith did not have grand workshops, nor flocks of jewelsmiths to serve at his command.

“I will not feel sorry for you.”

“I wouldn’t expect it. Not even with you off in your elf city in peace and comfort while I -”

“Peace and comfort?”

“While I had to be content with what I could make from Pelargir.”

She sighs, but it’s more in irritation than anger. He can be happy enough with that. He can stretch out here beside her and be content that her anger is reserved for parts of this story, not the whole.

But he can remember all the same how those days felt: all of it crumbling in his hands.

The smith had his library, still, and the neighbouring room now his warrior had no use for it. His desk was still there and the tapestries but her chair, her books, her crafts, these he had removed. The floor now held a number of low tables, upon each of which was a different part of what had once been a tree. Here, leaves and blossoms still on branches; here, thinly-sliced cross-sections of branches. Here, the fruit. Here, sawdust. Here, a line of leaves neatly set out, segmented, dyed, arranged and pinned in pieces. On each table were sheafs of his own notes, all in careful order.

It was morning, although he could not say which morning. The limitations of his body had begun to anger him, pulling at him with the distractions of exhaustion and hunger. In his past the smith had been able to lose himself in his work for as long as he wished. Such days, it seemed, were some way distant now.

He did not hear his steward until she was all but shouting his name, her hand in a tight grip on his arm.

“Bronwyn.” He set down the measuring weights he held, the rounded bronze warmed by his hands. “What is it? I told you to take care of things.”

She drew back a little at the tone of his voice but the better part of her attention remained on the work tables around them. “This was Galadriel’s tree.”

“Galadriel has other trees.”

She lifted a sprig of leaves from the pile before her, now dry and starting to curl at the edges. “Why have you cut it down?”

“Tell Arondir I’ll do as I choose in my own city.”

“Arondir is not the one asking you.”

“Well, then.” Anger came to him all too easily in those days, but for now, at least, he could bite it back. It would do him little good to have his steward turn against him at a time when he had so few allies. So he smiled. “My work with this one failed. I’ll learn why and then I’ll succeed with the rest. We’ll plant more trees. We’ll have whole orchards.”

She didn’t seem to find this compelling – he knew her well enough and he was growing all too familiar with that strange set in her voice, a clarity in her turned opaque - but she at least left him be at his work after that. And she would be convinced, in time. Mortals most of all found it hard to see beyond the immediate and understand what small things sacrifices were in the greater picture, more shining and glorious than any they had ever seen. Elves at least understood a little more when there were no wizards whispering in their ear.

He did not look up from his work again until it was near dark and the candles needed lighting.

All of this, then, meant that he was unclear how long had passed until he sensed his warrior once again. He was measuring time only in the progress of his work at this point and there was still little enough of that. Already he could feel despair like an ache growing greater and greater within him. All of this, all his work, dragging himself up from nothing to try again and again and again, only to be betrayed by those he had trusted.

And then as if she had been sent to him again – his hope, his light – he felt his ring echo with the tone of hers, and her voice calling his name.

He wanted to pull her close. He almost could. Although she’d learned well with the ring he’d made for her, and she’d listened with care to all he’d taught her of how to use it – and he doubted she’d mentioned that to her cousin -

“I did.”

“You didn’t mention that.”

“Should I tell you every conversation I had? You can assume I told them everything I had learned about your ring and what it could do.”

“Did you, now? Everything?”

She ducks her head a little, hiding something from him – amusement or embarrassment or perhaps both. “Broadly.”

- she was not as strong as he was, nor as skilled. Still, when he felt her resist he did not pull too strongly against that. The thought of losing her now when he had her so close was intolerable.

Instead he let her bring him into the place she had made. It was a wood of some kind, pathless and unrecognisable as anywhere in particular. There was nothing to be seen but trees and leaves and wet grasses underfoot – not a building, not a stream, not a mountain, not a coastline. The sun was invisible behind a blanket of grey cloud. There was a definite elvishness about it all the same and he had little doubt that if he wanted to he would be able to pull this illusion to pieces and see what she might be hiding beneath it.

No. Not now.

Now, what mattered was simply that she was there. She was wearing a dress he didn’t recognise, soft greys and silvers, tiny blue flowers embroidered on curling vines across her shoulder. Unlike their last meeting, she had bound up her hair as though to keep it from his touch. She seemed crafted from something unyielding – steel, perhaps, or marble – and he remembered how she had been in her first months in Pelargir, how determined she had been to keep fighting him even when she had found herself with no ways left to do that except in the tension of her body and the blaze of her eyes.

“Galadriel,” he said, his hands folded over the curves of her shoulders, his cheek pressed to hers, leaning into her as a drowning man might embrace land. “Galadriel.”

“Don’t touch me.”

He lifted his hands away, palms up facing her, his head cocked to the side, and stepped back. Let her have what she wished. “Are you safe?”

“Safe?” Shock was fast replaced with dismissal – she turned her head away from him the way she always did when she felt his words did not deserve her response. (And even this, he missed.)

“Come back,” he said. “Come home.”

At least this made her look at him once again. “I will not return,” she said. “And I will not be anywhere you might search for me. I have made sure of that. Do you hear me, deceiver?”

“I hear your words, elf. Now hear mine.” He could move faster than she expected, and his hand closed around her wrist before she could pull it away. “It is not for you to punish me.” The growl in his voice was like a crackling flame. “It is not for you, do you understand? I will not bow to my own kind, I will not bow to the Valar, why should I kneel for you? But I will. I will if you wish it. I cannot do this without your light. Everything I try turns to ash.”

He had startled her, he could tell that much. She tried to free her hand and couldn’t and he could see the flicker of fear in her eyes. But where he had expected her to lose at least a little control of their surroundings she held firm – nothing changed at all in the endless forest around them.

He should have been more cautious around this and seen in it a power greater than she could hold (at least yet, at least yet – he still intended to give her this and more once she finally stopped being so needlessly stubborn). But he was distracted and grieving, for her, for his plans now and long past, for all the promise he’d lost.

“Come back to me,” he said. “I have suffered greatly. Does that please you to know?”

“Not enough.”

“I’ve served a crueller master than you, Galadriel. Do you think to frighten me? Here.” He released her wrist and pressed her brother’s dagger into her hands, noticing the perfect little gasp she made as she realised what she held. “Here, take it. Punish me if you will but at least do it fast.”

She laid the blade of the dagger sharp and snug against his throat. With the turn of her wrist she could have drawn all the blood she wanted but she kept it flat, her cold, hard eyes inches from his. “Harming you here would achieve nothing.”

“You’d enjoy it.”

“I will not play your games.” She let go of him and stared down at the knife. “This is mine, you took it from me.”

“Then come and get it. Your city waits for you. I wait for you. What is it you want of me? Tell me what I must do before you will return to me.”

She would not answer; she would not even look at him. She would only stare down at her dagger, as solid in her hands as if it were really here.

“Tell me,” he said, but there was only silence.

He knew better than to trust her and so he was ready when she tried to sever the connection between them, stopping her before she could truly begin. “No,” he said. “No, you look at me, you look at me. I need your light. I need you. I will not let you do this.”

But there was something else, something stronger, something taking her out of his grasp, he couldn’t -

He pulled on all the strength he could manage, drawing from the Seen and the Unseen worlds both, roaring his rage at Olórin and the others, You will not take her, you will not take her -

She seized his hand. “Disband your armies,” she said. “Burn your ships. Put out the volcano and have the Southlands return to green once again.”

And then she was gone and he was left alone - cast back to his dark room and his stacks of wood and leaves and apples and endless, pointless notes.

Ost-in-Edhil was full of noise the next morning, crowds already gathering along the streets to watch Galadriel and her company pass. Departures always took far longer than they should – there were goodbyes and last-minute checks, questions shouted back and forth between the soldiers, a sudden decision to replace a bow, a delay while someone was sent running back to the armoury. And yet they always seemed to come too soon all the same.

At least, she thought, she need not bid farewell to Elrond just yet. It had been agreed that the two groups would depart together, passing through Khazad-dûm thanks to Elrond’s friendship with the dwarves before separating: he to head south down the Anduin and hopefully reach the Numenorean colony before Sauron heard word of his journey, and she and her party to go east, across the river and to Oropher’s city upon Amon Lanc before leaving again for the lands east of the Greenwood. It was unlikely she would return to Eregion before the summer, and by that point Elrond may well have returned to Lindon. Years might pass before she saw him again.

And she could not yet bid farewell to Elrond, not with so much left unsaid.

There had been plenty of discussions since her encounter with Sauron the day before. Elrond was there for all of them, suggesting a joint departure through Khazad-dûm, supporting Mithrandir in his arguments that they should focus as much on the coast as on the land and send word to Círdan immediately. Every time she had tried to speak with him privately, though, he had been otherwise engaged. It was always in an appropriately polite and reasonable way – he needed to speak with Gil-galad, he had borrowed a book from someone and must return it before the evening – but she knew him well enough to understand his evasion for what it was, and the knowledge of it gnawed at her.

As the time for their departure grew unavoidably closer and Elrond had still not arrived, she went searching for him herself and found him outside Celebrimbor’s forge. He was sitting on one of the stone benches, alone, looking out at the statue of Fëanor.

“You told me once it was bad luck to leave on an unfinished argument,” she said as she sat down beside him.

“I wouldn’t call it an argument.” The briefest twitch of a smile. “I don’t want to argue with you.”

“I would prefer you argued with me than avoided me.”

His smile broadened a little at that and she thought he might say something about her fondness for argument in general, but instead he gestured towards the statue before them. “Do you think he looks like Maedhros there? A little, around the eyes.”

It gave her no great pleasure to look upon a statue of her uncle, but look she did all the same. “More like Curufin.”

“I thought Celebrimbor looked like Curufin.”

“Not greatly. When he was younger, a little.”

“Sometimes I wonder what our world would be like if all of them still lived.”

He said it with such a casual, absent tone that her first impulse was to correct him: clearly he could not have thought of it, not truly. But after all she had not come here to argue with him. And so she tried herself for a moment to imagine a Middle-earth where her cousins and her uncle had survived, had divided up all of it into realms between them, were perhaps even now gathering forces against Sauron for surely none of them would have allowed him to gather strength in the way he had.

The closer she attempted to picture it, though, the more it fell apart in a mess of logical inconsistencies beneath her thought. If they all lived they must not have ruined Doriath, and Elrond would not have been born, and there would have been no Silmaril held by the elves of Doriath to fight over, and so perhaps Lúthien had never held it, and Sauron had never lost Tol Sirion to her, and then he would – be greater? Or lesser, and never have been able to hold Finrod and Beren and the others in the first place. She remembered the memory he had shown her of Angband, and the time before that when she had seen without his intending it his capture by Morgoth, the hissed failure, coward, traitor in his ear. What would have happened without this? He would have fought at Morgoth’s side in the final battles, surely; and then maybe he would have been defeated then, and the world they lived in now would be one of peace.

A peace ruled over by seven Fëanorians and their father. Hard to picture.

No, it made no sense. She could not separate her cousins from the fabric of the world and its sorrows as it was. Surely, neither could Elrond.

“You dislike that I spoke to Sauron,” she said. “I know that.”

“I dislike that you are trying to fight a war by yourself. And I dislike that he knows it and he knows what to say to make you respond to him, and you do, you still do. You can’t fight him on your own.”

It might have been an argument, another time. But now she leant back where she sat and felt the sun on her face. “It was not so long ago, my friend, that you were concerned I was too willing to obey Gil-galad.”

A laugh at that. “True. I worry about you in multiple ways.”

He always had, although to her he still seemed barely removed from the child she’d found on that burning beach. He had always seemed too wise for his age and too young for his wisdom.

“Come with me to say farewell to Celebrimbor,” she said.

Inside, Celebrimbor’s forge was as busy as ever. Those working here – hurrying through the corridors, or standing in twos and threes to talk in the vine-filled alcoves – nodded at them in greeting as they passed. She was sure she was not imagining the way that some of them looked at the silver ring on her hand, subtly in an attempt to to avoid her notice.

Celebrimbor they found alone, sitting at a desk stacked high with old books she did not recognise. He looked a little startled to see them both in their travelling cloaks. “You’re leaving already? I had planned to say goodbye.”

“We’ve spared you the journey,” Elrond said.

Galadriel wrenched the silver ring from her finger and placed it down before Celebrimbor, on the page he was currently reading. “Keep this,” she said. “As many months as you need. Find a way we can use it against him.”

They left Ost-in-Edhil in good spirits later that morning, with she and Elrond together at the head of her soldiers. It was a clear, cold day, perfect weather for travelling, and her armour shone bright under the sun.

Chapter Text

Rest you here, enchanter, while the light fades,
Vision narrows, and the far
Sky-edge is gone with the sun.
Be content with the small spark
Of the coal, the smell
Of food, and the breath
Of frost beyond the shut door.
Home is here, and familiar things;
A cup, a wooden bowl, a blanket,
Prayer, a gift for the god, and sleep.
(And music, says the harp, And music.)

(Mary Stewart, The Last Enchantment)

“You should be comfortable enough telling what came next. You’ve told it to the children often enough.”

She had when they were young. Some of them had cared more for tales of adventure and battles than others but all had loved hearing of their brave warrior mother and her journeys in the east and the terrible creatures she had battled, the brave people she had fought alongside.

“I think this requires a different kind of telling,” she says.

He shakes his head, chiding. “So I’ll do it. Let me do it. I’ve heard you tell it often enough.”

And she thinks: this is avoiding, this is because you hate to face what you were doing. And she lets him, all the same. There will be time enough for confrontations in the story to come and even he will not be able to avoid that.

The warrior travelled through the mountains, across the great river and through the forest. She walked with dwarves and humans and elves and ents, beneath strange skies and over sands that shimmer beneath the sun. Her brave soldiers -

“Whose names I always listed.”

“How did you even remember?”

“By telling the story. How else?”

He concedes the point on that in good enough humour, and she doesn’t remind him that he once knew all the names of all his commanders, their subordinates and the subordinates below those, every detail of who fit where in his vast webs of control.

She and her brave soldiers fought terrible monsters. There were dark things that crawled from pits with scales and rotted fins, lunging with their terrible gaping mouths to pull unwary elves down into rivers. There were wargs in packs and their terrible cry would echo from the stone hills as they hunted. There were orcs with foul breath and poisoned blades. And there were terrible, terrifying mystics casting illusions, too. A great worm the size of a serpent rose to lunge at the elves with its blind eyes and fangs like daggers. Laughing dancing figures in the marshes tried to trick them, separating them from their friends in the mist, leading them out into the water to drown.

But the warrior was courageous and clever and she kept her soldiers safe. For months they stayed in the lands near the river, driving back the forces of their enemy where advance parties had encroached and seeking to learn all they could of the forces behind them.

The warrior would dream sometimes of her ring -

“I did not say that to our children. Nor to you.”

The warrior would dream sometimes of her husband the smith, left behind in their city by the sea. She would remember the beauty and peace of their life together in Pelargir. She would dream of sitting beside him on their terrace as she crafted fine things with her hands, and how they would speak together of the things they had once known: of Aulë’s workshops, of the mists that once shrouded the mountains in the north of Beleriand, of a raft that had once held them both far out at sea.

"I did not tell them I had dreamed of this.”

“And if you can truly tell me you didn’t dream of this I’ll take it back.”

He watches the outline of a smile dance over her face like broken sunlight on the ocean’s waves. “Perhaps I should tell the story from here.”

“One last thing.” He lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses the pads of her fingers. “Please.”

The warrior had not been able to rest in her great elf kingdoms. The comfort had seemed a burden to her, and the hands of friendship fell like shackles. But here, out far from all of them in strange lands with few allies and little comfort, she allowed herself to be an elf among elves once more. Slow as the turning seasons, she felt the comfort of belonging. Her soldiers knew the stories she had once held alone and the songs she no longer needed to remember. She was no longer the only one of her people who saw danger where others saw only peace; she was no longer the only one who must keep watch.

She would lie on the hillsides by campfires as her soldiers told their stories of home, and she would watch the great flocks of birds gathering at the end of the summer to fly south. She was content.

For a moment it seems she will argue with this but the words fade unspoken on her lips. Instead she curls into his side, nestles her head in the hollow of his shoulder and spans her fingers over his chest. She is quiet for a while – long enough that the story waits, held, resting in potential, between them. And then finally she says “Thank you,” and begins her own telling.

It was almost two years before she saw Elrond again. She had heard a little, through messengers sent back and forth between her soldiers and Eregion through the elves of the Greenwood: he had returned from the Númenorean colony safely, had seen none of Sauron’s forces, and had been met with a reception that was not hostile but did not result in any offers of alliance with the elves.

“But these things take time,” he said. “They didn’t cast me out. We can build from there.”

This was their first meeting since they had parted by the great river. After the best part of two years out in the upper reaches of the Carnen where it flowed red down from the Iron Mountains, Galadriel and her soldiers had returned to the Greenwood for a time to rest and replenish their supplies. Elrond was here on one of his regular journeys east to reinforce Gil-galad’s fragile links with Oropher and his realm. It was only chance that he had still been here when she arrived, and she was dearly glad of it.

Oropher’s stronghold on Amon Lanc was a fortress, built against and into the sheer face of the rocks. From its watchtowers the king’s guards could see as far east as the Anduin and south to the edge of the lands scarred by the volcano, which still spat angry clouds of grey smoke and fire into the skies.

The Silvan elves who had settled in Galadriel’s lands in Dor-en-Rían had lived there, once, in the bands of woodland that stretched out into what had once been lush green land below the mountains. They could have come here to the Greenwood but Oropher’s reign was not loved by all; he had always been set in his own ideas and distrustful of others. Still, he had heard enough of forces rising to the east and south to work with Gil-galad now, and he was welcoming to Galadriel, who he had known in Doriath, and to Elrond, and both of them had been received with comfort and friendship now.

Tonight they sat by a warm fire in a comfortable room hung with tapestries as the rain beat down against the windows outside. The lands of Oropher and his Silvan queen stretched for hundreds of leagues into the north, a vast and beautiful forest realm. Oropher had gone east after Beleriand fell, wanting nothing more to do with the Noldor and for the most part little even to do with his own Sindar. He had not sought Valinor; he had not even sought to make a new Doriath here in the east. He had wanted instead to return to a life that the elves knew when they first awoke, as if the Valar had never come at all.

Galadriel had never found this an easy thing to understand, and had little sympathy for Oropher’s views on anything after his refusal centuries before to aid Gil-galad. But now, the growing activity to the east had troubled him enough to agree they should act, and to provide what aid he could to Galadriel and her soldiers.

Galadriel had intended to go back. The plan had always been that she would return before winter and report to Gil-galad all she had seen, and then depart again before the snows came. As it happened, though, they had tracked a band of orcs far into the north and to turn around would have meant losing their trail; and so she had sent one soldier as a messenger back to Eregion with reports on all they had found and her request to stay until the spring. Gil-galad had not only allowed it but had granted her permission to stay as long as she felt was best for her mission, so long as she kept him informed through messengers.

And so she had stayed. First a season longer than she had planned, and then a year, and then longer. Her soldiers were eager and happy to be out with none of the weary drag she remembered from her old company towards the end of that command. She, too, was content.

A log fell a little in the grate, dislodging a cloud of sparks. Galadriel turned it with the poker so the flames reached its unburned side. Her sleeve pulled back on her wrist enough to expose the bandage around it, and Elrond said “I thought you hadn’t been in danger.”

“Warg bite. It wasn’t healing well so they wanted to lance and re-dress it here.”

“A warg being close enough to bite you does seem at least moderately dangerous.”

She waved aside his concern – one warg, separated from its pack, no great threat. But in truth it had caught them off-guard.

She and a band of twelve had tracked it for the better part of a day aiming to find the rest of the wargs that were harrying the dwarves of the Iron Hills. The plan had been to kill it if it noticed them, using a technique that had always worked well enough before – she and two others would confront it, and knowing it was outnumbered it would turn and run into the waiting ambush of the rest. This warg, though, had looked between the three elves once, twice, and again - and then had leapt straight at Galadriel.

The force of it threw her to the ground and its jaws were around her sword-arm as soon as they hit the stone. Her feet could get no purchase on the rain-soaked slate as she struggled to right herself. The thing was heavy, its foul-smelling fur rough against her face, its teeth breaking the chainmail over her forearm. She couldn’t even feel the pain then but she knew it had injured her as its front paw pulled her sword free of her weakened hand. And yet all of this had happened in a bare few seconds – her comrade yelled as he reached them, his own sword raised high.

The warg seemed to look directly at Galadriel as it decided what to do. There was a cold, terrible intelligence in its eyes. And then it released her arm but instead of turning on its other assailants it lunged for her throat.

She ducked beneath it just in time. Its teeth struck the mail on her head, scraping along the metal with an awful sound, its breath hot in her hair. Then its weight collapsed on her lifeless as its dark blood spilled out from the sword run through its side.

“It went for you rather than save itself,” her lieutenant said when they met again back at their camp. “I don’t like that.”

“Maybe it recognised me as a commander.” This sounded thin and unconvincing even to her own ears. “Wargs are different here. I don’t know. We will take more care in future.”

But when they found the pack that one came from their attack was too fast and too bloody to know if the other wargs were behaving the same, and they had met no more since then. Galadriel had done her best not to overthink what had happened – the warg must have recognised her as leading her soldiers, and that was all.

And yet here she was anyway, with a poorly-healed warg bite on her arm and the volcano still burning in the distance. Sauron had done nothing to dismantle his armies. The reports she had heard from the commanders to the south said that his power seemed to be growing, if anything; that the orcs were better organised now, that more of the Haradrim to the south were calling him their king. She had not truly thought he would do as she asked – of course, no, he was far too entranced with his own power to surrender it – but she had not expected him to give up so swiftly on having her back at his side.

And here was Elrond, looking at her with much the same restrained concern as her lieutenant had. “Can I see it?”

She held out her arm and let him unwrap the bandage. He had studied some healing, she knew, and proved himself gifted at it – perhaps through his part-Maia ancestry, or perhaps simply because he was good at taking care of things.

Oropher’s healers had lanced the wound on her arm, cleaned it and bound it up with sweet-smelling salves. Already it looked - and felt - better than it had. Still, Elrond frowned as he touched the skin around the injury. “When did this happen?”

“A month ago.”

“A month?”

“Warg bites always look worse in the healing.”

He examined it a little longer before binding her arm back up with a swift, practised neatness. “We seem to have different ideas of what constitutes danger.”

But she had come here to aid others’ safety, not her own, and Elrond knew that well enough even if he disliked seeing what it meant.

They talked late into the night as the fire slowly died down in the grate. Elrond seemed to have spent most of the past years travelling as Gil-galad’s emissary while the High King himself remained in Eregion with Celebrimbor and the Istari. But all matters relevant to the building war had already been discussed in detail earlier with Oropher and his advisers, and now what was left was smaller things: stories from Lindon, from Eregion, tales of friends she had not seen in far too long. He was adept at sidestepping any issues that might cause her concern or further questions but even though the conversation was light enough she found herself missing home with a sharp keenness she had not felt since Pelargir.

Elrond never asked when she might return over the mountains herself, nor reminded her that she had planned to be back much sooner than this. She knew what she would tell him if he did. There was much work to do out here, more than she had thought; she and her soldiers were needed and she could be of more use here with a sword in her hand than sat at a council table in Ost-in-Edhil. And it was working well enough. She was sent reports of the larger elven armies to the south, she could keep Gil-galad informed of what she had learned of the east, and there was no interruption to her work beyond what little was needed to come back once a year to the Greenwood. Likely Elrond already understood this; and, besides, as Gil-galad had already agreed, there was little he could really say even if he wanted to. But he would give her no indication that he did.

Although she would not have said it even to Elrond, the truth was that she had surprised herself with her willingness to stay out here for so long. Even now she felt no pressing need to return or to demand that Gil-galad sent her south towards Sauron’s lands. She still found herself running her thumb along the base of her finger where her silver ring used to be; she still woke sometimes startled that it was not upon her hand. Once, struggling to shake off a bleary half-remembered dream, she had confused it with the wedding ring she had lost centuries ago and felt a terrible, dragging guilt that it was gone before she remembered who had given this ring to her.

And her ring was serving a use in itself in Ost-in-Edhil, she knew. Celebrimbor and his jewel-smiths continued to study it and use it to unpick more of the art Sauron had taught them. There were new rings being made, now, faster than Celebrimbor had at first thought possible. There would be greater power for the elves and their allies in the years to come. That silver ring was more use back in Eregion than it could have been upon her hand; and if she still felt its absence sometimes, then that was no more than habit.

“It’s good to see you happy,” Elrond said after she told him of the vast flocks of migrating birds that came to the Iron Hills in the summer and how she had been woken every morning by the cry of geese. “Even if it’s fighting wargs and trolls and all the other things you told me about.”

“Happy?”

“Content, if you prefer. You know I had my doubts when you agreed to come out here. I can see a little more clearly now what you were seeking.”

“But.”

“I didn’t say but!” He tipped his glass up to let the last drops of wine fall down onto his tongue. “It’s good to see you again, alive and well and finding whatever kind of peace it is you find in battling terrible things. Let’s leave it at that.”

She hadn’t thought of it as a kind of peace but that was as good a description as any. Despite the fighting and the cold and the horrors they had seen, despite the gnawing fear of what Sauron might be doing, despite all the uncertainty that lay ahead, she was back among elves and she was in command again.

“Content is a good word, I think,” she said.

That night she lay in a soft bed under piles of blankets as the rain battered against the windows, and her mind was so full of thoughts of past and future both that she thought she might be awake until the sun rose. Speaking with Elrond stirred up too much, a disturbance to her neatly organised thoughts. It was not unwelcome – seeing him was never unwelcome, not truly, and certainly not after years had passed – but it was at least enough for sleep to elude her.

There had been no further word from Sauron since she left Eregion. No more letters; no envoys; no message sent with a treaty or a threat. Nothing, since she had taken off her ring for the second time and felt his scream echo deep in her mind.

The comfort of the bed was stifling. She wrapped a borrowed gown around her and padded over the stone floors to the window. There was little to see beyond the heavy curtain she pulled aside – the stars were hidden behind heavy clouds and the sheets of rain would have hidden any settlement beyond the forest, if there were even any to see. But she knew that if she could see far enough to the mountains there would be light: the volcano’s fires, still burning.

Well, little use in thinking of it now. As there was little use in thinking of a time years before by the sea where they had gone to watch the winter swans fly in, her hand in his hair and he whispering you love me a little, that's all I ask against her bare flesh; as there was little use of thinking of the look in the warg’s eyes when it lunged at her throat.

She returned to her bed not expecting it to bring any true rest. But the fatigue of months out on patrol caught up with her and lulled her into a sleep that was both deep and mercifully dreamless.

Chapter Text

“No,” said Huw. “She was made for her lord. Nobody is asking her if she wants him. It is bitter twisting to be shut up with a person you are not liking very much. I think she was longing for the time when she was flowers on the mountain, and it is making her cruel, as the rose is growing thorns.”

(Alan Garner, The Owl Service)

It was still dark when Galadriel awoke to Elrond calling her name. The rain had eased and she could see the light of burning lamps out in the courtyard below her window, but the sun was still well below the horizon, only the thinnest grey light suggesting the dawn to come. From the corridor she could hear the drum of running feet and the noise of shouting voices.

“Orcs,” he said.

She dressed quickly, not bothering to take her hair out of the braid she kept it in for sleeping. Elrond had brought her armour and helped her shrug the mail-shirt over her shoulders. It had been cleaned well enough but not yet fully repaired; the damage of the warg’s teeth was still visible in the broken links on her forearm.

A memory nagged at her: the day Numenor’s ships came to Pelargir, and Sauron fastening her armour. She shook it aside.

Elrond summarised their situation as she pulled on boots and gloves and belted her sword at her side. A band of orcs had come from the east, skirting the southern flank of the Greenwood, travelling by night and using the bleak, overcast weather to hide themselves well during the day. There had been no word from the guards at the furthest outposts – either the orcs had managed to get past them unseen, or all the march-wardens were dead. But a scout had seen them in their approach a little before sunset and had fled back to Amon Lanc, arriving exhausted and blood-spattered with a poisoned arrow in his back and calling out a warning that had almost come too late.

Her room was at the far end of the fortress and by the time they arrived in the main courtyard it was crowded with armour and noise, Silvan archers shouting orders back and forth, Galadriel’s own soldiers already gathered in neat lines under the command of her lieutenant. Oropher, already in armour himself and with a long sword at his side, nodded a greeting. “Give me half of yours,” he said. “We’ll channel the orcs into the valley and fire from above. You and the rest stay here in case we need to fall back.”

“I will go with you.”

“I can handle orcs.”

“And I have been fighting them for centuries. I will go with you.”

“As you insist, then,” he said, and turned back towards his own archers.

Elrond rolled his eyes, and even against the noise and clamour of assembling soldiers Galadriel found herself biting back a smile.

Oropher’s plan was reasonable enough. One of the streams that ran through the Greenwood had carved out a valley that was broad downstream but steepened sharply higher in the stream’s course, until it ran between two almost sheer walls of rock, the water itself pouring down a cascade of waterfalls. The orcs could be carefully channelled into it before they realised it was a trap and then left with no route to escape. It had worked in the past, it seemed. But there had not been orcs in the Greenwood for many years now, and these ones were no lost and wandering band.

Galadriel and her soldiers stayed hidden near the stream at the point where the cliffs began to narrow. Oropher’s split into two groups, one to wait on the cliffs above the steepest point of the narrow valley and the other to fan out among the trees and channel the orcs closer. Hidden in the shadows of ferns, Galadriel watched the grey-cloaked archers seem to disappear like smoke among the trees. Then there was nothing for a while but the tramp of orc feet - first in the distance, and then growing closer, and closer, and closer.

The archers let them come closer than she was expecting and she realised the orcs must be following the stream itself. At the time she only thought of this as fortunate – it would make an ambush far easier if the orcs did not realise there were elves anywhere close. It did not even feel so great a threat, now. Oropher seemed barely troubled, Amon Lanc was so well fortified it could have been defended with only half a dozen of them left. She signalled to her lieutenant across the valley - approaching us, unaware, stay quiet - and waited for what would surely be a swift and decisively victorious fight.

 But the orcs slowed and then stopped altogether as soon as they reached a thicker copse of trees. When the archers began to fire she heard the sound of their bows – the shfft of arrows in flight, the thump of a bowstring released – but from the orcs, no cries or shouts at all, only the heavy and dull sound of arrows hitting wooden shields.

Something was wrong. Orcs should not be so silent. Orcs should not stay in place when under attack. She could not see the orcs themselves from where she hid but she could see the pale blur of cloaks moving in the woods beyond as Oropher’s archers drew closer to them.

And then from the copse that hid the orcs, she saw a light. Small as a clenched fist, perhaps, and not even bright, but the pale greenish glow of it was all too familiar. She had seen this before in the orcs sent after them by the strange sorcerer figures that never came too close; she had seen it dancing in the marshes beneath the illusions they had created to lead her soldiers terrified and confused to their deaths.

The archers were drawing closer still, now, far closer than they ever should have come in what must be frustration or confidence or both, and she had no way to warn them.

Danger, her lieutenant signalled.

To act now would mean breaking cover, coming down on the orcs from the valley and lose the chance to herd them into the arrows of the other archers waiting above. But the alternative might be watching these archers go to their deaths.

Go in three, she signalled back, and then to those on her side, and within a moment all their eyes were on her. Thirty hands tapped out time with her as she counted down. Three. Two. One. And then as one they broke from their hiding place.

It was not a fast battle, nor an easy one. As soon as the first Silvan archer crossed some invisible line near the orcs the air above their heads turned opaque and shimmering with some strange magic and then broke into illusions, the figures of multi-headed snakes striking down at the elves. It was mere minutes before her soldiers reached Oropher’s but by then the archers were already falling back in terror and confusion, an easy target for orc blades.

At first, slipping in mud and wet leaves, she wished desperately for the rest of her soldiers still back at Amon Lanc. Two years fighting with them was not a long time but it was enough that she knew them, she trusted them, she could be confident they would know what to do in a way that she could not with the Silvan archers. But as the battle went on she began to think it might be better they were still at Amon Lanc after all – that if she could not hold the orcs here there was at least another strong line of defence behind her. What had seemed at first such an easily-managed threat was fast beginning to seem insurmountable.

The orcs fought carefully, better-trained than she was used to, in close formation among the trees. They were armoured better than she had seen for a while. They seemed to have an endless supply of arrows while the Silvan archers were wasting theirs in their confusion, firing at the illusions rather than the enemy, needing her constant yelled reminders to target the orcs, target the orcs!, although they were hardly able to hear her over the roar of battle. She saw one archer fall, and then another, and then one of her own soldiers struck almost in half by an orc blade.

She realised too late that she was trying to do too much: bring her own soldiers round to the far flank of the orcs, protect the Silvan archers, keep her focus on the fighters and ignore the illusions, and keep the orcs from breaking to the north and an uninterrupted path to Amon Lanc, all at the same time.

She did not see the orc advancing on her from the trees until her lieutenant screamed “Galadriel!” across the battle. She dropped to a knee just in time, felt the sword sing through empty air above her, turned and swiped with a dagger to find the orc already balanced and ready to strike her again. It stepped back as she advanced – and then back again – and then as she drew back her own sword, it threw back its head and bellowed one word in the Black Speech: Target. Then her name, roared and rough on its curled lips, until the other orcs came running.

She killed the one she was fighting first, dodging a sword-blow that nearly severed her arm from her shoulder. And there was another, and another, and more coming at a run, even their illusions forgotten now.

At least they were finally moving.

She yelled the command to retreat and signalled back in the direction of the valley, hoping the others would understand, and thankfully they did. The terrain was poor beneath them, rain-soaked mud and hidden roots. She kept the line of soldiers steady as they fell back and back and back with the archers covering them from the side.

They could not make it as far as the cliffs where they had intended to trap the orcs without being trapped themselves, but to her eternal gratitude they did not have to. Oropher had already brought down the other soldiers poised for the ambush and had them hidden in the scrubland of ferns and rocks near the stream. They were of an even number with the orcs but had the advantage of surprise, and then of Galadriel’s soldiers turning back to the advance as soon as they realised what was happening. The orcs had no more time to summon more illusions, no more time to retreat. The battle was over swiftly.

Galadriel helped her lieutenant to her feet from underneath the outstretched arm of the orc he had killed. Out of breath, exhausted, and covered in mud and dark orc blood, he nodded his thanks. She had already turned away from him before he could speak.

Oropher listened to their reports of the battle in a cold, expressionless silence. He had lost many and had come close to losing more – his own son Thranduil, Galadriel learned, had been with him on the cliffs.

“I did not realise they sought me,” she said, feeling the very ridiculousness of the words as soon as they had left her lips. How could she not have realised that. How could she have been so foolish as to ignore her previous encounter with the warg. How could she have been so arrogant as to think Sauron would not want her dead. How could she have missed so much, so much, that something like this could have caught her so far off her guard.

Oropher dismissed her with a flick of his hand, in a gesture she would have been outright furious to see had it not come after so much of his sorrow. “Orcs casting illusions. This is new to me.”

“We have not seen it before. The mystics that sometimes go with them, yes, but not -”

“But you have seen the illusions before,” he said.

“Yes. Further north, as I told you -”

“Not what I was thinking. Doriath. Melian used similar craft in Doriath.”

Galadriel remembered it too. Melian had been kind and gentle, and just and merciful, and had dearly loved the beauty of her land and all the people within it. She had cultivated peace and safety and the very trees themselves had grown to her song. And at the borders to meet any invader that might ever make its way through the Fence, she had created things of nightmare.

“His powers are growing stronger,” she said. “We must warn Gil-galad. He can send you more soldiers.”

“I have no wish for Noldor armies in my lands.” Oropher’s hand tapped against the carved, living wood of his throne, marking an uneven beat. Standing beside Galadriel Elrond met her eye briefly and then bowed in assent to the king, who did not acknowledge him.

“Tell Gil-galad this,” Oropher said, after an uncomfortably long silence had passed. “I’ll continue allowing all I’ve allowed. You can bring soldiers through the Greenwood. We will build our own watchtowers, better than we’ve had, and if he wishes to send us assistance we will note his goodwill. But what I truly wish is one of those rings, Galadriel. Elrond says they are making more in Eregion and I am meant to find this reassuring. How should this reassure me? If we are to battle one of the Maiar and my lands are the front against his forces, then I want the crafts of the Maiar to fight him.”

“That was the Greenwood. And now you should take your turn in the telling for a while.”

But he won’t. He laughs and distracts her with talk of other things - forests in other lands, the stubbornness of elves. He asks for more of the battle so that he might picture her again bright and glorious in armour cutting down her foes. He moves beneath her hand as though he is flowing water.

“In time,” he says. “Patience.”

“You don’t understand. I was offering you a mercy. But if you will not have it – then, listen.”

She knew she was angry as they made their preparations to leave. It came through in the snap of a wrist, the tug of a buckle too tight on her borrowed horse’s pack, a turn so sharp her lieutenant stepped back from her. But there was enough anger to draw from, enough anger to spare. She had lost four of her soldiers in the battle with the orcs; Oropher had lost more. They were buried under the trees of the Greenwood and would know no more war, and she would avenge each of them thirty times over.

“It’s not your fault,” Elrond said for the third time, as they waited in the courtyard for the rest of the travellers.

She did not look at him. “I led our enemies here. They sought me.”

“Hardly the same thing.”

“I should have known.”

“How?”

“Because of the warg, because of – because of him, I -” She stepped back from Elrond’s hand as it reached her arm, refusing a sympathy she could not bear. “I did not think he would seek to kill me,” she said, her voice dry and strange even to her own ears.

She still could not quite believe it. That he would want her captured, yes – that he would want her to suffer for her perceived betrayal, surely. But that he would want her dead, and not even at his own hands or in his own presence, seemed too much to imagine. She could not hold the thought of it in her head; it was tangled with too much else, now, memories of his hands so oddly careful in her hair, of his grin as he poured her wine, of him riding beside her out to the sea for no other reason than that she liked to watch the winter birds come home.

Her words seemed to catch Elrond unexpected, and while he was far too careful a young diplomat to let much of that show she could read enough in his voice. “An additional complication. Yes.”

“I can’t make sense of it. He was so desperate for me to return to him. It makes no sense that he would order his armies to kill me.”

His mouth formed a silent ah. “I’m sorry.”

“I am not asking for your sympathy.” The last of the checks to her pack done, and nothing more to do until they brought her horse. Beyond this courtyard the soldiers who would be returning to Eregion with her were already ready and waiting. She had no wish to be further distracted by Elrond’s questioning.

Still, when his hand caught her arm she stopped.

“Then what are you asking for?” he said, his tone turned from conciliation to resolve. “If you’re seeking my agreement that he would not do this then I can’t give you that. I can’t.”

“We need to leave,” was all she said. “We are losing the morning.”

As they followed the winding paths that would lead them out of the Greenwood, the silence wrapped them like a burial shroud. She tried not to think of Sauron beyond what was needed and yet she could not shake the mark of him, struck down into her like the teeth of the warg, the blade of the orc.

A memory still pulled at her, one more than the rest: an evening years before, at the coast near Pelargir. It stung as every memory of Pelargir did, as if it were an arrow-head still lodged beneath her skin and any touch near it was pain. As they passed slowly beneath the trees with the sound of footsteps and hoofbeats muffled in the leaf-litter as if the Greenwood itself shared their grief, she let herself remember.

It was her third year in Pelargir then or perhaps the fourth. She tried not to think in terms of months and years and centuries, only of sunrise and sunset and the change in seasons. She had found a rhythm, a pattern, and a life that was – bearable.

The wild swans came every year to the sheltered coasts near Pelargir, their flocks stretched out in lines across the sky. She sat now in long grasses to watch them in unhurried peace. Beside her, Mairon waited in silence, although whether it was the swans he was watching or her or perhaps the landscape itself she could not tell. Perhaps it did not even matter. At least for today she found she did not even care what reasons he had for accompanying her here; he was content to sit with her watching the birds fly in against the steel-coloured sky, and he had not tried to dissuade her. Tomorrow could take care of itself.

The autumn air was cold and she had sat unmoving for long enough to feel its chill. It was not yet enough to be uncomfortable – Pelargir was so mild, even its winters barely touched by ice – but she wrapped her hands together all the same. When Mairon moved to pull her back against him she did not object.

“Sun’s going down,” he said, nuzzling his chin into the top of her head. “I don’t mind if you want to ride home in the dark.”

She leant back into the warmth of his arms. She had not planned to stay here so long but she had no wish to leave, not just yet. There was a calmness in watching the winter birds return; there was a peace in being here by the sea, looking out over the foam-maned waves. And she had nothing that required her attention elsewhere. Pelargir had found its feet by now, and there was no need for its people to devote their days to mending roofs and scraping through ruins. Her determination to defeat Sauron had not ceased and she did not trust him and yet for now, there was little to do; she would wait while the seasons turned around her and one day, one day, tomorrow or next year or five hundred years in the future, she might be free.

“I’m in no hurry,” he said, and kissed her neck, softly at first and then stronger when she did not pull away from him. “I like it here with you.”

The scrape of stubble against her skin was still an odd sensation, one that she could not quite decide whether she found pleasant even now as she found herself wanting more. She moved her head aside as he unfastened the clasp of her cloak with a practised and confident swiftness to his hands.

“Very demanding,” he murmured, his voice unexpectedly soft against her skin.

She did not even look away from the dimming sky and the calls of swans. “I have not demanded anything of you.”

“Oh, you have.” More kisses, from her collarbone to the tip of her ear. Her dress was a simple enough one woven here in Pelargir, laced at the back; she knew he was hesitating to ease it loose, that he loved the way he could take his careful, attentive time in unwrapping her. “Everything’s a demand from you, elf. I have to spend every day proving my loyalty.”

“I never asked for it.”

“Even more of a trial. See, now, you won’t even look at me.” One hand pulled her dress up to her hip and his broad fingers ran across the swell of her thigh. Even through the thin riding breeches she wore beneath her dress she shivered at his touch. “What must I do to make you look at me, Galadriel?”

“Sing,” she said.

His laugh was a soft chuckle into the back of her neck, his teeth grazing her hairline. “Very well.” And he sang to her, almost wordless and all of it beautiful, his voice conjuring the sense of flight for the creatures of the air: the lift of warm air currents beneath wings, the freedom of a wheeling turn, the joy of being part of a great flock, soaring high over the land as it fell away beneath.

She let herself relax back into the warmth of his arms and his breath against her neck, and wound her fingers through his until her ring seemed to be singing too in a high and wordless harmony with his. He could make everything seem so beautiful when he wished it.

He kept singing as his other hand came down between her legs, nudging aside her clothes, teasing her with the frustratingly soft stroke of his fingers. When he was in such a mood he would not seek any more until she asked for it, she knew. Sometimes she would ask; and sometimes he would reduce her to whimpered, whispered pleading, and sometimes she would grow angry with him and snap out her orders and demand he pleased her, and every time he would say I love you like this, I love you just like this.

This time she seized his hand in her own. “Don’t play with me,” she said.

Laughter again. “You’re impatient. You want me.”

“You know that.”

The exhale of breath against her neck was so sharp it was almost a bite and he pulled her back against him, enough that she felt him already hard against her lower back. “I like it very much when you say that to me.”

No hesitation in him now and nor would she want it. She turned in his arms, his hold on the small of her back keeping her close as he covered her face in rough, broken kisses. She made swift work of pulling his shirt loose from where his belt held it, enough to hold the curve of his ribs in each hand splayed thumb to fingers as if she could contain him within the span of her grasp.

She stroked the furrow at his spine with her nails as if he were one of the city’s cats and he stretched back against her touch, with the curve of movement turning to a groan as it reached his lips. He never cared to be quiet, but here there were none here to hear them beyond the grasses and the swans and the night sky above.

“Elf,” he said, his voice rough and rasping where he had bruised kisses. “I saw you once in the north with your soldiers. Two hundred years ago maybe. Three.”

She stopped. He didn’t, pulling her up to his hip so that she was straddling his thigh, rocking her with his hand still on her back. “You were beautiful. You were hunting orcs and you were glorious.”

“I was hunting you.”

A grin. “Don’t interrupt.” And more kisses to her neck, her chest, mouthing against the collar of her dress as if he were an animal worrying its prey. “When we were on Numenor that’s what I remembered.”

“You never told me this.”

“Told you what? Told you what I was thinking of as I pleasured myself at night? You in the snow and you fighting me and you bound hand and foot before my throne. I never could decide which I wanted most but it was the warrior. My bright warrior. My love.”

“You are a monster,” she said through her teeth. Still, she did not fight against his embrace, nor his lips on hers, nor the tide of pleasure that was surging in her as her thighs tightened around his.

When she gasped he all but purred at the effect he had on her, kneading at the small of her back. “I’m many things,” he said.

She ran a hand through his hair, not gently. She felt a sudden need to hold him even more than this - all of him bound against her and nothing between them. She watched how tense each tiny muscle was, the play of movement at the corners of his lips, the steel in his forearm as he took her hand and guided it down to his breeches where she could feel him already hard and yearning for her. Many things - and all of them, she thought, a brawling crowd within him.

“You did not dare fight me then,” she said. “Coward.”

His laugh was a buzz against her neck. He pulled her closer into him and closer again. She felt the strange lift of it as he took her hand in his so that their rings touched together, the odd feeling that was almost like falling as she felt it grow cold, and he said “oh, that’s – stay here, stay like this,” and held her and rocked her and kissed her until the wave seized her and broke her apart, a rushing flood of it pouring through her.

She was barely back to her senses when he lowered her down onto the grass, the aftershocks still shivering through her. He knelt to nuzzle between her thighs with a surprising gentleness. “You’re beautiful like this,” he said, and then returned to his careful attentions, his lips and his tongue keeping her trembling without pressing the intensity too far. Enjoyable, and deeply so, but again she wanted more – the feeling of him close, of their bodies wound together. When she pulled him up with a hand in his hair he barked out a delighted laugh.

She would not pretend her desire was not her own. She would not pretend anything in this: not the way it felt like a kind of completion to have him inside her, nor the pleasure she took in the easy way he could keep her floating from wave to wave of bliss. And when he turned his mouth against the line of her collarbone and whispered you love me a little, that’s all I ask, you love me a little, you do, she said: yes.

He always liked to watch her, afterwards. There was something  peaceful in him then that she rarely saw otherwise. Now he sang again softly as he stroked her hair, so quiet she could barely hear anything in his lifting, calming voice.

She slept for a while and when she woke it was long past sunset. The sky had cleared; the stars were scattered out over its darkness, a beautiful tapestry of light.

“A fine night,” he said.

But it was cold, and the grasses beneath her rougher than they had seemed, and she felt a discomfort turning in her.

“You’re not coming back to Pelargir with me,” he said, kissing her ear. “Are you?” His arm draped over her felt oddly heavy; the armour of a fallen foe.

“I will return before winter,” she said.

He laughed, sharp and humourless. “You always get the same look about you. Fine, go, and I hope you remember when you’re off in the lands I gave you and the tower I built for you how generous I am with my gifts.”

She did not pull away from his arms but she curled in on herself. He held her closer and began to sing again of flight: of soaring, of climbing, of the spray of the water far below. And it was not enough to change her mind, but it was enough that when she relaxed in his embrace, ran her own hand over his back from shoulder to shoulder, he was not surprised.

“You knew flight, once,” she said, a thumb curving down the outline of his shoulderblade. “Didn’t you? And now you can’t. You are limited to this. Is that why you sing of it?”

She felt the jump of muscle in his arm as it tensed around her. “Galadriel.”

“Is it?”

 With her head resting against his chest she could not see his expression but she could feel him swallow and his breaths come faster, shallower, before easing again. “Tell me what I have done to wrong you, that I might serve you better,” he said.

There was an odd tone to it; not the biting mockery she had anticipated but an absence, almost.

He did not move and when she looked at him he was growing distant already with something in his eyes already shut and gone. And so she pulled his face to hers so he would see her, her hand less than gentle on his chin. “You have made me a cage,” she said. “You resent me even going as I will within its bars.”

He was quiet for a long while, moving only to stroke her hair. And then he said, “I don’t think of you as a bird in a cage. I think of you as like the swans. You go and I don’t stop you, and when the year turns you fly back again.”

She laid her hand palm-down on the long grasses beneath her, grounding herself to the earth and its growing things. She did not have freedom but tomorrow she would be gone and away from him, with the Silvan elves in her lands.

“Love me a little,” he said. “That’s all I want.”

“You will never be content with a little of anything.”

He did not answer. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the call of another flock of swans heading for land.

And then he is still, lost between a past that is theirs and another than is his alone.

“Mairon,” she presses him.

“Yes.” Shakes his head and swallows down the wordless howl of it all and thinks of a smaller thing, then smaller again. A stone in his hand, half the size of his palm.

The smith held that stone in the running waters of the Sirith. A small thing, a broken irregular shape half-buried in river mud. He rubbed away the dirt with his thumb as the river washed it clean and held up a dark, smoky cluster of crystal embedded in pale limestone.

It was not a particularly fine gemstone. There were not such things near Pelargir. Still, it might serve for some jewellery the next time he needed to trade something made by his own hand. For a while he had played with the idea of using Pelargir’s dark quartz in the crown he was yet to fashion for himself, but this seemed ever more insufficient now. The circlet he had taken from a long-dead king would do until he could craft something worthy of his station.

The smith had made crowns before, for himself, for his master. He had made his warrior a beautiful crown of pearls and silver apple-tree leaves. He had a freedom now that he had rarely been granted when he had toiled under the bounds of another, but he was still smaller than he wished, still weaker. Sometimes it felt he could still feel the shackles around his wrists and his master’s voice too soft: you have failed me, you have failed me.

And the drag of a gloved hand down his cheek: you were so precious once.

And the warm breath in his hair: my broken thing.

Day after day the smith had pulled at his chains and tried to tear them from the stone walls of his cell, fingers scrabbling pointlessly at the rock, for something to give him purpose more than in any hope he might succeed. At this, too, he had failed.

Try to break away, his master had said. Try all you wish. It will gain you nothing. You are what I have made you.

“I will mend your crown,” he had tried. It was a damaged thing now, the central Silmaril cut out from the dark iron that surrounded it. “I can make it beautiful, please -” But his master had only lifted him by the neck and thrown him back against the wall, and his useless, weak body had hit the stone and slumped down again.

Further upriver a pair of swans took flight, their wings clattering noisily on the surface of the water. The smith watched them go with a dull and muted interest. Pelargir, he was near Pelargir, travelling home. This was the Sirith. He was a king.

For the smith had known much of failure. He had tried for age after age, for one master then another then none. Too many of his plans had broken apart in his hands; too many of those he trusted had turned on him. But here, he had… something. Hope, perhaps, or something akin to that.

When he walked back to his city it still seemed a little unreal. A strange thing, to be so limited by the confines of what seemed to others as a mortal body. A stranger thing that his people here all treated him as such despite knowing what he was as though appearance created habit. But it did not matter greatly.

It had rained. The streets were wet and the reflections of lanterns dancing on glistening stone. His people moved in drifting clouds of colour as though they were floating past him, clothes of brown and blue and green from the dyes made here, brighter scarlets and violets of cloth from Harad. He heard their greetings, faint as the scent of woodsmoke; he passed the glowing lights of their houses and workshops, the little havens of shelter they had built here under his protection.

A baker called him over and pressed a barley cake into his hands as her apprentices packed away the day’s unsold loaves. He bowed and thanked her and it seemed to him for a moment he could keep her laughter in the feel of the cake he held, all of it mixed, the scent and warmth of gratitude.

They wanted such small things, his people.

For the most part his steward took care of the city now. The smith’s attentions were otherwise engaged, carrying out the work he alone could do. He was not always here now and when he was there was little time to wander through the streets like this. Still, his people seemed happy to see him, unquestioning of the work that took him from them for weeks and months at a time. Perhaps, he thought, they were merely glad that they had not lost him as they had their queen.

His servants had prepared his bedchamber without his word, lamps lit and a fire burning in the grate. It was a welcome sight after several weeks of resting in far less comfortable places. Perhaps he had become a little too used to the limitations and weaknesses of this form and the comforts that could come from easing their burden.

He slept well that night.

“It was fine, you see. I had Pelargir. I was patient -”

“You were not.”

“I was as patient as I could have been with so many working against me. Elves and wizards and even the dwarves working with them. And you, too.”

And her, too.

Galadriel rode beside Elrond as they left the Greenwood behind, watching the distant mountains draw closer as they passed through the grasslands lying between forest and river. It was a sad and quiet journey with her heart as grey as the cloud-laden sky above. For almost two years she had kept her soldiers safe and watched their bonds of a shared mission grow into friendship, and not lost a one of them until the Greenwood. Now there were four who would never return; four more names to add to the list of those Sauron had taken from her.

But her. That he would try to have her killed, and in distant lands beyond his sight, not even the will to fight her himself – this, she still could not make sense of. And perhaps her discomfort with this was no more than a lingering strangeness from her time at his side but she had learned to pay attention to things that did not seem to fit, when it came to him.

She had known he was alive and dangerous when all others believed him gone. When he had still been whispering in Celebrimbor’s dreams and she hunting him in the north she had been the only one who knew that his evil was only waiting, the only one still determined to hunt him. Even in Pelargir when Númenor’s ships arrived, it was her sense that his manner did not match his words that led her to find his tower and his palantír and the work he had been carrying out in secret. She should not dismiss her instinct now when it had served her so well before.

Perhaps he did want her dead. Perhaps he had grown tired of her and given up on persuading her back to his side, and had given his armies orders to kill her so that she could trouble him no longer. She hated the thought of this and hated that she hated it but she could not wholly dismiss it.

Perhaps, then. But perhaps he had not. Perhaps his armies were operating without his direct orders or outside his control, acting with an autonomy he would surely be furious about if he knew of it. Perhaps his hand stretched less far than he believed. Perhaps he was weaker than he thought. Weakness and disorder and failure – all these, he feared. Having her forever lost to him he had once feared too. And hadn’t he taught her himself how to use an enemy’s fears?

Still they rode in silence, the only sound a quiet swish of horses’ hooves brushing through wet grasses. She thought of Eregion beyond the mountains and Ost-in-Edhil ready to welcome them back, and of her ring, waiting for her.

Chapter Text

They name thee before me,
A knell in mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me--
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well--
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met--
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?--
With silence and tears.

(Lord Byron, ‘When We Two Parted’)

Scouts had caught sight of them near the borders of Eregion and when they arrived in Ost-in-Edhil it was to a welcoming crowd. It reminded Galadriel of all the times in the past she had brought soldiers home to Lindon to such a reception, in the years before the elves grew tired of her search for Sauron.

She might have felt vindicated by everything that had happened since - she would have, once - but instead she found herself understanding a little better how her people had allowed their desire for peace to blind them. The elves were tired of war; tired of all those many centuries of loss after loss, of seeing their homes and their cities burnt to ash, their friends lost, their kin gone. What she had once seen as apathy she saw more clearly now as weariness and fear. Yet even amid all of it there was hope and joy and courage, and hands of friendship to welcome them home.

She brought Elrond and her lieutenant Inglor to speak with the High King and the three istari. It took many hours to describe all she had seen in the Greenwood and to answer all the questions they directed at her: the orcs, the trolls, the wargs, Oropher’s demands, what of the dwarves in the north, what of the humans to the east. What, in particular, could she tell them of the strange sorcerers that seemed to lead the forces she fought in Sauron’s name, leaders of cults dedicated to him and to Morgoth since long before he had come to Pelargir.

It was near dark by the time she had finished answering their questions, the winter night drawing in early. Still, she was long used to providing reports such as these. Saying the names of her dead soldiers was also a burden she was well accustomed to bearing, although this one had never grown easier; she bowed her head as she named them, and Inglor repeated their names after her, and the room fell silent for a moment in their honour.

In return for all she told them, she learned more herself about the other fronts of their simmering war although there was little she had not already gathered from Elrond. The commanders in the south reported more soldiers, gathered from the tribes and nations that now called him king. They reported he had ships now built by the shipwrights of Umbar. They reported orcs coming down from the mountains, although in smaller bands than she might have expected. But of Sauron himself, there was little news, save that his alliance with Númenor remained fragile; there had been no overt hostility from him but neither were they lending him armies, and he had refused to allow them to rebuild and improve the fortifications at the river crossing on the island of Cair Andros.

They had reports from scouts that were less reliable, information pieced together from rumour and overheard talk in taverns. She believed it well enough all the same. They said that he travelled south with others from Pelargir, strengthening the alliances he had made there, but more often when he left the city it was for the burnt wasteland that had once been the Southlands. There, he would stay for weeks at a time before returning. Sometimes he had been seen with orcs; more often he was alone. He had not told anyone what he was doing there, but that he now had more rings - powerful rings, prizes for those who agreed to bow for him and pledge him soldiers and builders and iron and stone and all that Pelargir might ever seek – on this, all seemed agreed.

And still, he did not seem inclined to leave the safety of his own realms. He had not commanded any armies himself since the day he had ridden with Numenor’s soldiers, leaving Galadriel behind in Pelargir. If their only hope was to defeat him in battle and place the chain Ancahuanva upon his neck then their hope was still beyond reach. Gil-galad felt that this at least gave them much needed time to prepare; Galadriel, for her part, found it less reassuring. As the king spoke she looked over at the istari and found Mithrandir and Curumo both sharing the same expression of concern and doubt.

There were things to be glad of, too. The elves in her lands said he had left them be. They had still chosen to abandon the settlements they were building to the south and move further north towards the protection of Edhellond, but they were safe - at least for the moment. And Pelargir and its people seemed to be flourishing, with trade routes now well established to the south and to Numenor’s colony in the east. This was no longer the city of ruins that had lacked so much at first: food and iron, tools and ships, needles and cloth and pots for baking. Now its great walls were all rebuilt and its farmlands spread out vast around them, a growth no mortal king could have achieved in the ten years alone he had held it.

She wished she could let it be enough to know that the people of Pelargir did not suffer under his hand. She wished she did not find herself wanting to know more of it: whether her terrace was still the same, her apple trees taller now, a book of poetry she had left unfinished still on the shelf where she had last placed it. I will return, she had told Bronwyn.

She put it out of her mind and returned her attention to the room, where Gil-galad was summarising what they knew of Sauron’s likely sites for outposts in the white peaks of the Ered Nimrais.

When they were finished it was long past nightfall. Even she found herself tired, the journey and the battle in the Greenwood both wearing on her. She bade goodnight to the others but caught Elrond’s arm before he could leave, and asked quietly for a private audience with the high king as soon as he could manage it.

Elrond glanced back at the departing istari and elves and kept his own voice low. “He did say we would meet tomorrow so that Celebrimbor can -”

“Alone. Please.”

She could see the question all but formed on his lips already, but he did not speak it. Instead he nodded, and wished her a more restful night than they had found at Amon Lanc.

Elrond came to find her at dawn. She had slept little and was already dressed, watching the city slowly ease itself from sleep beyond her window. They walked together through quiet corridors and spoke little.

Gil-galad was alone in his rooms, although a fire was already lit and burning in the hearth. Before him on a low table was bread still warm from the baking alongside plates of butter and honey, pitchers of water and of fine-steeped tea.

She bowed her head in greeting but when she turned to bid Elrond goodbye, Gil-galad held up his hand. “He stays,” he said.

“I asked for a private hearing.”

“You did, and I have enough concerns about what you want to say that cannot be said before the Istari and Celebrimbor. If this requires sending away Elrond too then my concerns become even greater.”

It would have been easy to leap to anger. Too easy, truly. Her old anger had not left her but it no longer seemed as overwhelming as once it had, just as she no longer felt hollowed out from everything but grief and fury. “He stays,” she said.

The food was good, and she found herself less troubled than she once would have been when Gil-galad seemed in no hurry to hear her request. He cut a pear with a small silver knife and shared it with both of them. The tea he poured was blackberry leaves and yarrow with honey to sweeten its bitterness. She had made something similar the year before when camping with her soldiers, but it was years since she had drunk it from fine carved cups like these.

“Have you come to seek new orders?” Gil-galad asked her when the better part of the bread was gone. “Or have you come to suggest better ones?”

She gathered herself, drew on the calm that was not yet beyond her and ignored Elrond’s thin, tense smile. “Neither. I came to discuss a concern which I do not yet wish to bring to all the others.”

Gil-galad’s hands laced themselves around his cup. “Go on.”

“I told you about the orcs targeting me and I told you that a warg had done the same some weeks before. The only reasonable conclusion is that the forces we were fighting have learned who I am and consider me a threat.”

“It would seem so,” Gil-galad said, his face betraying no sense of whatever he might be thinking.

“I do not believe they are following Sauron’s orders in this. I believe he has less control over them than he intends. If I am correct, this is a weakness we can exploit.”

Elrond said nothing, but looked from her to the king who leant back in thought. Silence seemed to stretch across the table between them, making the dawn-warmed wood seem cold, the fire’s crackle newly distant.

“Exploit how?” Gil-galad said eventually.

“You have said you will send soldiers to bolster Oropher’s forces. The east will grow more significant as a front and he will not wish to ignore it. If he learns that his forces are acting outside his orders and against his wishes he will be furious. He can’t stand to lack control. We could use this against him to draw him north then isolate his forces from reinforcements. We could defeat him and place that chain around his neck. We could act now, we would not have to wait while he gathers his forces and his strength.”

Gil-galad did not dismiss her immediately as she had feared he might. He mulled the thought of it in silence for a moment, then turned to Elrond and said, “Your thoughts on this?”

“In honesty?” A glance to Galadriel that was almost apologetic. “It seems a great deal of planning to gamble on an assumption. Several assumptions. For all we know his forces were doing exactly as he ordered.”

“No.”

“Galadriel -”

“All right.” Gil-galad barely needed to raise his voice to silence both of them. “Galadriel, convince me he does not simply want you dead.”

She looked down at the fine grains of the table, like the smallest waves captured in stillness. In truth, there was little she could even put into words. Her conclusion had grown ever more certain in the journey here, built on all the memories of her years in Pelargir and after; his need for her, his conviction that she was needed for his great plans, the way he would sing to her and talk with her of Aulë, his furious howl the last time she had spoken with him - you will not take her.

But she had not forgotten what he was. She had not forgotten all those dead at his command, nor the scope and horror of his cruelty. She had not forgotten Finrod.

“If he does want me dead he would want it to be at his own hands,” she said. “I know him. I know this. Neither of you trusted me before when I warned you he was still a threat and our war was not over. I ask you to trust me now.”

Silence followed in the wake of her words, treading heavy between the three of them. She did not look away from Gil-galad.

Gil-galad blinked once, slowly, unhurried. “Even if you are right and your plan works, you want us to goad him into battle on the assumption this was not his entire plan all along. This requires a little more than trust.”

“I have followed your orders faithfully for two years -”

“Two, out of two hundred when your loyalty was far less reliable. Do you understand what I have at stake? If you are wrong and this is all some part of his plan we could lose far more than a battle. If he defeats us and finds a way to take the rings, we are lost. Whoever survives must leave these shores or hide in the woods like Oropher.”

It was not a no. It was still not a no.

“Elrond,” she said.

Elrond’s manner was refined, careful, as if his words were planned and polished from the very start of their conversation. “The idea seems worth consideration. We do need to lure him out. But – it is a risk and we could be playing into his hands. I suggest that we learn more before we act on this. We send more scouts to the east and south and we watch and we wait, and we find out more about what he is doing and what he intends. And if you are correct and he has less control over his forces there than he wishes then we consider going ahead with this plan. It isn’t you I don’t trust, Galadriel. It’s him.”

This was progress, and more of it than she might have expected. And it was not enough.

“I have faster ways to find out what he is doing and what he intends than sending scouts into their camps,” she said.

“Your ring?” Gil-galad held out his own, turning his hand slowly so that its gem glittered in the dawn sunlight. “I seem to deal in rings as much as he does these days.” he said. “Oropher demands a ring. Amdir demands a ring. Raindis in Edhellond would demand a dozen if I had them to give. Does it feel wise to you, that so much of our efforts rely on work learned from him?”

But she had hated her ring far more than Gil-galad could know, until she had found it could turn against its maker. “If we can use his work as a weapon against him then so much the better. We should not waste our advantage where we have it.”

He looked beyond her to the great arched window out towards the forests of Eregion, and for a moment was thoughtful and still. “Very well,” he said. “Ten years to better prepare our forces and our outposts. Numenor in alliance with us, or at least with a promise I can rely on not to turn hostile no matter what he might offer them. More evidence of what is happening in the east and wherever else his control may be fraying. Gather me all of that in ten years and we will go ahead with your plan, Galadriel. But if you wear that ring, you do so here with the istari present. It does not leave Eregion. Is this agreed?”

She gathered her gratitude and her resentment of it and her questions and her anger and the odd shock of surprise that he had agreed at all in any form, and pressed them all into a neat and silent nod.

“I didn’t realise he forbade you from taking back your ring. You bore that better than I would have expected.”

“I was a soldier under his command and the ring was a weapon.”

He nods at that, something more than mocking and less than agreement. “As you say so.”

“And now your turn.”

“Well, now… I don’t think it’s time for my story just yet. But I’ll tell yours for a while.”

The warrior stood on frost-covered grass, a winter’s sky heavy with unfallen snow above her. Around her in a loose circle were wizards and elves together standing a silent guard. None spoke; the only sound came from birds in the distance still heralding the morning, their brave song defying the winter’s chill.

The warrior took the silver ring in her hand. There was no sign in her face that she cherished it or had missed it, although perhaps she held it a little too long in her palm as she looked upon it. So small a thing, to bring her so much fear and doubt. But the warrior had never flinched from duty and she placed the ring back upon her finger.

She jolted as if some strange power had seized her and she turned to her friends with unseeing eyes. For a time none of them moved. Then the warrior swayed - and she fell down to her knees, and then down again until she lay on the white crisp grass as though in peaceful sleep.

Try as they might, none could wake her.

"No. Stop, I don't want you telling this."

As soon as the ring was on her finger she felt his attention swerve to her. It seemed as if a great, searching eye had narrowed its focus upon her, and for a moment she stood at the centre of something ancient and nameless she could barely withstand – and then she was back in winter meadows once again and he was standing before her.

“Galadriel,” he said. “My beautiful, my queen. Where are you? I have missed you so.”

He was wearing fine, regal robes she had never seen before, patterns of birds and lambs and flames in cloth-of-gold. Upon his head was the same circlet she had known him wear in Pelargir. There was a grandeur about him, something that seemed to shine more brightly than she remembered.

“Galadriel,” he said again. His hand on her shoulder felt heavy, warm, alive.

Something was different. She could not feel the anchor of her own ring as she once had and his presence was too strong. He did not seem angry as he had the last time she had spoken to him this way; he seemed confident, cool and implacable as stone.

Deep within her mind she reached out to the Istari waiting just beyond this illusion. She did not intend to leave; she wanted only the reassurance that they were there, a hand to cling to if the way ahead became clouded and her path home unclear.

Sauron smiled. “No,” he said. “Not this time, my love.” And as he took her hand in his the world went white.

The road ahead of her was dusty and well-trodden. It must be late summer; the grasses beside them were drooping with full seed-heads and the river not far away was low in its banks, a sluggish flow through bands of baked-dry mud. Above her the sun blazed, a pitiless, shadeless heat.

“Galadriel,” his voice was saying. “Look at me.”

The gold in his robes shone so bright she could barely bear to see it. He was riding beside her, his horse’s neck and shoulder damp with sweat and the dust of the road turning its glossy coat dull.

Galadriel’s own horse flicked back an ear to her, and Galadriel wound her hand into the wiry white mane before her, steadying herself in the saddle. The horse was familiar, she felt, but she could not place it nor remember its name. She whispered a request to halt and it obeyed.

“Galadriel.” His own horse came to a stop beside her, sunlight glimmering from its bridle decorations. “Are you well? What’s troubling you?”

“I am – no, I -” Her voice was dull and dry and she longed for water. “It is too hot.”

“Mmm. It is at that. My fault.” He looked up to the sky, shading his eyes with his hand. “No matter. We’ll be there soon enough and you can rest.”

“There?”

He nodded to where the road curved round ahead, and beyond a band of trees she saw the towers of Ost-in-Edhil awaiting them. “You don’t remember?”

The heat seemed to burn within her now, a discomfiting, sickening thing. She could barely think beyond it. The river was not far from them; she thought of wading into its cool waters to her waist. “I need water,” she said.

He produced a flask from beside his saddle and held it up to her lips. She drank without hesitation. It was cold as snow-melt and deeply relieving. “Better?”

It was and so she nodded, although she still felt far from herself. Lightheaded, perhaps; as though she had been dancing for hours.

Her own clothes, she saw now, were rich and elaborate with lines of pearls stitched into her sleeves. There were golden bracelets at her wrists and her neck was draped with perhaps half a dozen necklaces, shining bright in the sunlight. And – and -

She placed her hand upon her belly where the dress was gathered into pleats over its considerable swell.

His voice was a purr through the exhausting heat. “Is the child troubling you?”

“The child?”

He was smiling, not unkindly. “Let’s go,” he said, and her horse rocked back into a walk at the sound of his voice. She felt so dizzy that she might fall; she kept her hand twined tight into her horse’s mane.

When they reached Ost-in-Edhil it was to a clamorous and joyful welcome. Elves whose faces she vaguely recognised lined the streets and bowed as they passed, their familiar faces caught only in glimpses. There were heavy blossoms of purple and yellow hanging down from the walls, clouds of butterflies with bright-patterned wings fluttering one to the next.

For a moment she was sure she could hear Elrond’s voice shouting her name, but try as she might she could not see him in the crowd. It was hard to even think through this drowsy heat she could not seem to shake.

They reached one of the larger courtyards and he sprang down from his horse before it had even come to a halt, then helped her down from hers with a steadying hand at her arm. “You don’t look happy to be here,” he whispered, his breath soft against her ear. “Why aren’t you happy? Everything is well, Galadriel.”

“Why would elves bow to you?”

“They’re bowing to you, my love.” And he turned her to face them, his hand sitting proud on her stomach. There were cheers and shouts, and his proud grin, and the heat and the butterflies and the distant smell of smoke, an odd, acrid thing. The daze of it all was smothering.

“The Queen needs rest!” he called over the noise. “We will have more time soon. For now – if you’ll excuse us. It has been such a long journey.”