Chapter Text
Chapter 28
How would the bards frame the scene?
The morning sun alights upon the White City’s walls, casting a gilded glow, making the Citadel facades blush like maidens on the eve of their wedding, while the plumes of the courtyard fountain pour forth in streams of molten gold. The King and his valiant men take to their saddles; their sword pommels gleam with a righteous fire, their proud steeds snorting softly and pawing the gravel in their eagerness to face the open plains and endless skies, instead of walls and cobbles. The retinue’s cloaks billow fetchingly in the conjured breeze – for the story’s sake, though not a breath stirs on Minas Tirith that morn. The elven warrior stands amongst them, his noble mien serene and resolute, his golden hair swept back from a sculpted profile, over a broad, sky-blue-clad shoulder. The gates are open, the road beckons. An anguished cry, and lo! The damsel flings herself before his stallion’s hooves, her gauzy shift aflutter around her slender form, her hair unbound, her willowy arms outstretched toward him.
Now, the reality might’ve been a tad less poignant. For one, the damsel’s willowy arms were corded with muscles that should’ve gone to a couple of bullocks, and her unbound hair was disheveled around her sunburnt, pillow-creased face. The morning sun didn’t quite gild her surroundings so much as it bored into her eyes, making her temples throb in time with her heartbeat.
Ah, but let the poets dream.
“Wait…wait!!” Willa screeched, cringing as her own voice crashed inside her skull; a pitch that would’ve given any bard a migraine. “You can’t just leave. You can’t!”
Up until the last moment, she hadn’t known whose horse had almost trampled her, single-minded in her mad dash towards the courtyard, and the thought of gone, gone, gone striking against her ribs like a battering ram. Hallways had passed her in a blur; or, rather, she’d passed them, barreling down staircases and corridors out of sheer instinct. Down, she needed down, and out, where she could see him.
All of her life, Willa had lived in fear of mockery, for unlike the popular saying, a little ridicule might not kill you outright, but it was as drawn-out a death as a life sentence. It took away your joy, your hopefulness, slowly but surely, until every step outside was bitter with dread. Now Willa raced past servants and nobles alike with her shift billowing after her. Her naked feet struck a wet tattoo against the pristine marble floors. Her calves were on fire. Her breath came in wheezing pants, but the side stitch of her fear spurred her onward. Shouts and slurs spiked after her, but she forgot their sting as soon as she heard them. Her only terror was that someone might try and stop her, costing her those precious few seconds that might make the difference between Glorfindel’s life or death. All of his misery, and of her dark forebodings, coalesced into a leaden knot that settled deep in her belly.
The bell had called out its tally, and she was late, too late.
With every hallway crossed, Willa thought some scrambled thing: of this one fight proving one too many, the strength of Glorfindel’s arm failing him after holding true for ages. Of him laying on a field of poppies just beneath those walls – so close yet out of reach, his blood mingling with their garish petals, his head resting on some rock instead of the soft lap Willa wished for him. She feared an ambush, or a spooked horse, or the accidental sweep of a friendly blade he’d not forestalled, imagining only the gentle bafflement of his expression as he crumpled to his knees.
Her Pa had died not even a mile from their home, while Willa had been washing the dishes, oblivious of losing him.
She felt a wild-eyed tightness in her chest, like a stifled scream.
Glorfindel’s last words would never be reproach, she knew, so willingly he offered of himself to others. He was almost rebellious in his kindness, like a dandelion in the pavement; boundless with the belief there was still good in this world worth protecting. But why, oh why, couldn’t he see how much of it he carried in himself? Fear for him was twisting inside her, a wobbling cup of panic that threatened each moment to spill. Pa, Gareth, and now Glorfindel. Willa was losing them all, one by one. By the time she blew through that last door between her and the courtyard, her heart was already halfway to breaking.
The low sun blinded her, turning the world into a haze of white. Gravel seared her bare soles with angry lines, but Willa pushed past the pain. Stone screeched under iron-shod hooves. The lawn and the white tree tilted and swam before her eyes as she made those last staggering steps, and threw her arms out in supplication.
“Wait…wait!!”
Up until that moment, she hadn’t known who’d hear her. Her voice came like a rush of water, slow and distant. The air felt rare – like up in the mountains, or so she’d been told, and her lungs burned with the greedy need for more, more, her heart threatening to burst, her pulse the frantic wings of something wild yearning to break free. Willa stumbled, aware only dimly of falling, the notion too distant to summon real care. She was falling, was all, her legs heavy and her heart, heavier still. “It’s nothing, child,” Pa had used to say when Willa came back with skinned knees and, in matters of her heart, Pa was always right. This pain would be the least of those yet to come. If Glorfindel had left, leaving her to live on with regret….
“Wilhelmina!”
His voice, so close, so dear. Willa turned a watery eye in that direction, toward the soft crush of gravel under nimble feet. Something warm snorted into her face, smelling of horse and hay, right as Glorfindel alighted to catch her into his arms.
Trust him to uphold the poets’ hopes, even when she wouldn’t.
Relief turned Willa’s knees to water. “You can’t just leave. You can’t!”
Her voice bounced off the white stone, staggeringly rough and raucous. Her mouth tasted stale, like the dregs of last night’s drink clinging to the back of her throat. Willa squinted up at Glorfindel, at his beautiful face framed by the gold of his hair, and the bewildered pinch of his perfect eyebrows, like she’d just turned into a trout between his hands. Over his shoulder, she saw the court assembled before the palace steps: the King and his retinue, their wives, the pages, and even the Queen, come to bid her husband goodbye. The men’s cloaks hung limp in the non-existent breeze, a sheen of sweat already gathering on their noble brow, while the women’s kerchiefs drooped like wilting blooms. Banners held aloft wavered along with the arms that held them, the sound of a trumpet petering out. A gust of heavy silence fell, punctuated only by the muffled squeak of leather gloves as someone shifted their grip on their reins.
They were all staring at her, from King Aragorn, his eyes quietly curious, to King Éomer upon his Firefoot, whose mincing hooves threw sparks against the stones. The youngest of the crowd gaped unabashedly, elbowing each other under the caparisoned arc of the horses’ flanks.
Shame flared up in Willa, swift and searing, burning a path toward her cheeks. For a heartbeat, she sought to hide behind him, to breathe in his iron-forged scent and forget they weren’t alone. But Pa had taught her better than to cower on the road of rightness, and turn away when it darkened.
“Wilhelmina, be at ease,” Glorfindel cajoled, his face a study in patience. “It is alright. I….”
“No, it’s not!”
His eyes rounded with confusion; she could tell he was as baffled by her vehemence as a newborn fawn by a thunderclap. Yet, for the first time in her life, Willa felt both wildly unsure, and unwaveringly certain of what she must do. That was the scariest part about it: that she’d no idea what she was doing, but at the same time, she knew exactly why she had to.
She forced herself to take a long, burning breath.
“You can’t go. Please. Please,” she begged him, her hands fisting in his tunic. “I don’t want you to. Not like…not like this. It’s Sera Hagglewort all over again, can’t you see?”
Glorfindel blinked. “Who?”
The name stirred no recognition in him, and why would it? Willa imagined just how raving mad she must look and, for an instant, she thought he might usher her back to bed. Despair spiked through her, yet he endured her shaking him with the stoicism of an ox, determined to gather every fragment if it would ease her fright. Willa shivered with the enormity of it; of making him understand how dear he was to her, how dark the path without him.
At once, Glorfindel made a noise of dismay – something between sternness and sorrow – and unclasped his cloak one-handed to wrap it deftly about her shoulders.
“Not important.” Willa waved an impatient hand – her last free hand, before he swaddled her with sky-blue wool. “Or rather yes,” she added quickly, ashamed of her choice of words, “but not right now. It’s just…you have to trust me. Don’t go. If you did, I’d never forgive myself if you…if something….”
Her words were falling over each other, a flood of tangled thoughts she could hardly keep pace with. Anger cut off sorrow, which cut off fear. Here he was, safe and sound for the time being. The most immediate of her worries had been cauterized, but there was still a raw, bleeding ulcer underneath, chafing that it’d fallen to him to lead yet another charge against a foe not even his own, as though his strength were there to be borrowed at anyone’s whim. How convenient it must be, to have an Elf-lord sitting around, that you could send all over Middle-earth to fight your battles in your stead!
“It’s not right,” she griped, not for the first time. “Why does it have to be you? Why does it always have to be you? You’re done bleeding for others, do you hear me?” She shook him again, weakly, as the enormity of her task sunk in. “Oh, Ivon. I’ve never even told you, just like Háulf, and now he’ll never know.”
There was no way around it.
Those words must pass her lips, and she best summon them quickly. Already, she could tell the crowd was growing bored with the spectacle, impatient. Court ladies, clustered in their finery, pressed lace kerchiefs to their mouths, eyes narrowing at the sight of her disheveled appearance. Horses pranced and shied, chomping at the bit; pages held their bridles taut, and several noblemen had turned in their saddles, brows raised. One of the pages was gnawing at his fingernails.
“I should’ve said something to Gareth, too, and I didn’t, and he still left, because I didn’t even try to stop him. And I can’t bear it, not again. The not-knowing.”
Willa was buying herself time, for there was no going back from this, no takesies-backsies. Against the soft folds of his tunic, her palms grew sweaty with that deep-seated fear, her pulse beating thickly in her veins.
Willa the Trollkin. Willa the She-bear. Don’t go into the woods alone, boys, or Will Fernbottom will take you.
“Forgive me, but…I fear I do not understand.” Glorfindel was growing restless against her, frustration coloring his voice. He still held her staunchly, and yet with some desperation, as if he felt her unraveling and didn’t know which end to catch. The anguish on his face struck Willa in the chest with the cold gauntlet of terror.
She had to try. “If you leave without…without a word, or even knowing…. It’ll haunt me forever. And if something happened…. How am I supposed to live with that? I wouldn’t forgive myself, not ever.”
Her fingers tangled in his baldric, and Glorfindel made that dismayed noise again, disentangling them one by one as though he feared they’d break. As he bent towards her, Willa saw, over the slope of his neck, one the nobles from the King’s escort lean towards his neighbor.
“…The same happen to my Uncle Brunen,” he muttered with an aggrieved shake of his head. “Started slurring and babbling nonsense. The healers said he’d burst a vessel inside his brain. He’s not been quite the same since.”
His words jostled something inside her, like pieces of a puzzle falling into place. Anger, Willa had learned long ago, was a better driver than grief, and there was something in her that was sick of fear and awe, of gazing at the skies and wondering what someone would allow her.
“You probably think I’m being ridiculous, and I know you don’t feel the way I do. I mean, why would you?”
She gripped the straps of his baldric hard enough to leave a mark, drawing a small cry from Glorfindel’s lips. His gaze was cast wide, his face worry-warped. His clutch at her tightened, like she was being torn from his arms against his will.
He hadn’t flinched away, not once, for all that she sounded like an old crone squawking dire pronouncements from her porch. Even now, he had no qualms in letting them see him tender, no more than he’d thought twice about laying his pride at her feet. His wrathful past laid bare, his wondrous hair shorn. His cherished virtues set aside, even: cheating the guards, and conspiring to smuggle an ogre out from under their nose. Glorfindel had drunk her wretched coffee, and held her when she wept. He’d trusted her at every step, with every decision she’d taken.
He’d never ceased to believe in her, and perhaps it was high time she did, too.
“But I don’t care.” Willa’s voice scraped from her throat. “I can’t regret this, even if you end up hating me for it, even if…even if you never want to speak to me again.”
There was a savagery in her, of hope and terror. Better to act before that fear dragged her back, to leap before her mind reared. Her grasp on him tightened, even as Glorfindel leaned in to ease her effort, making a fool of himself all over again.
“Tell me, he begged with that same ragged rasp that voiced his nightmares, “what ails you? What would you have of me?”
Not every debt is measured in coin, King Éomer had said, and, oh! How it hurt to hear, this plea of saying what she wanted out loud, as much as his tears and his ravaged moans. Willa wanted to make a hint of it, to make him guess; anything that’d spare her from feeling so damn vulnerable and exposed, but she’d kept too much from him already.
In this, at least, she could be truthful.
“Everything.”
She pushed herself on tiptoe against the jagged gravel, and kissed him in front of the entire crowd.
It was nowhere near gentle, nowhere near soft, this collision that felt more challenge than kiss. Glorfindel’s mouth was open with surprise when Willa crashed into it, and she found his teeth behind his warm lips with her eyes closed, sharp and hard. Someone gasped, beyond the rampart of his body. Outrage or delight? Willa couldn’t tell by sound alone. The taste of copper flooded her mouth where her own front teeth scoured her tender flesh. Glorfindel smelled of chamomile and metal, of far reaches and summer grass, but his taste was that of something faintly sweet and wistful, like meadow honey. Willa drew back to behold him, bottom lip stinging, her heart a gaping maw.
Shock had made him stone-still.
The stricken look on his face reminded Willa of that first day, when she’d asked him for his name, and he’d regarded her as though she’d slapped him. Glorfindel’s arms still encircled her, holding her up in case she collapsed, without realizing how close that moment was. There were scant inches between them, filled with their mingling breaths. Hers, shallow and blustery; his, slow and cautious, his chest barely moving, as though she’d drawn a blade to his heart, and he feared to impale himself should he so much as inhale.
Willa stood before him teeth clenched, every muscle in her body strummed tense and tight. It hurt, somewhere between her lungs and her breastbone, seeing him so guarded against her. Something shameful burned behind her eyes.
The murmur of the assembly had died down, replaced by a silence thick enough to be felt, as if the air itself was holding its breath. From the tail of her eye, Willa saw a matron in the back of the crowd raise her hand to her brow, pretending to fan herself as though overtaken by a swoon. She dragged in a tight breath, teeth hard against one another. She almost pitied them, those sheltered souls, whose morning had been made by her impudence.
Glorfindel stared at her. She stared at him.
His composure shattered, like ice beneath his feet.
“Meldanya,” he choked out, a man under torture, and sealed his lips to hers in a bruising kiss.
Someone from the throng let free a joyful whoop.
Glorfindel’s hands flew to her hair, her neck, the small of her back, pulling her as close as he could, and then closer still. One hand gripped the jut of her hip, raked her up his thigh so that their chests pressed together and her feet lifted off the ground; the other shoved his cloak off her shoulders. A moment of disbelief, before Willa rushed forward, nothing timid nor maidenly about it. The leather of his baldric creaked in complaint as she clung to him for dear life, while Glorfindel pushed into her, his kiss frantic. Desperate. His lips on her jaw, her pulsing artery, her clavicle. Lower. It was like he couldn’t get close enough, deep enough, and every crumb of space between them vexed him. He made a sound low in his throat, almost of pain, and Willa flinched. She made to tear away, bitter with the certainty she’d ended up hurting him after all – her strength, her size! – but he let out a breath that slipped into a noise that was half-sob, half-purr, and had a heat to it like fresh coals. His grip on her tightened.
He kissed like a man with nothing to lose; like someone who’d just stumbled upon a new language, and knew only how to speak it in the present. Only here, only now, only her. It stoked in her a fire she’d never tended, wild and unfettered. She yearned for it to burn her to pieces – for him to burn her to pieces. It felt like leaning out an open window in the tallest tower of the Citadel, reckless and light-headed, and with every clever press of his tongue, Glorfindel made that casement crumble, pushing her toward an inevitable, ruinous fall.
Willa squeezed her eyes shut until she could bear the sweet ache in her chest. She’d wanted him so badly, and here he was, in her arms.
Wanting her. She’d ample evidence of that by now.
Yet, just as abruptly Glorfindel stopped and pulled back, pupils wide, mouth swollen. His eyes fell closed, the shock of golden lashes pressed fervently against his flushed cheeks. Beneath his scalemail, his chest rose and fell raggedly, his breath shuddering out of him before he fell to his knees. A ripple of astonished murmurs surged through the crowd. Wounded, he was wounded, came Willa’s first frenzied thought, before strong hands cradled her thighs. Glorfindel bent his head, making an altar of her hips.
“Have you any idea what you have done to me? Years upon years, I have waited….”
Outrage in his voice, low and heated, as if he somehow suspected her of holding back on purpose. It was jarring, to go from having her hands full of him to this – Glorfindel kneeling, Willa standing there, unsure of what to say or do. Goosebumps rose on her skin where his hands, his mouth, his teeth had been. Her breaths came rapidly, far too shallow.
He wasn’t the only one with a hunger to sate. She was no warrior, yet she’d matched his desperation kiss for kiss, pulling him down by the hair until it came free of its braids and he, of that galling restraint of his. Glorfindel was cast down before her now, undone, his skin flushed with more than summer heat, his blood pounding at his offered throat. Willa threaded her hands through his locks, burnished gold running though her fingers like water, and he let her; a hunter caught in his own snare, stealing only an open-mouthed brush to her wrist for his compliance. She’d liked his hair better when it hung long and heavy to his hips, but it would grow back, she realized, the hope a sun-warmed fruit bursting on her tongue. They’d have them yet, those hours, days and years together that Aegnor and Andreth never had.
Willa took a filling breath, then another, her chest now only covered by crumpled linen. She put a hand to Glorfindel’s shoulder to steady herself, but it had the opposite effect. Beneath her touch, he trembled like something just born.
“Command me, bind me, hold me here…I know no will but yours. Only ask me to stay, and I am held by you forever.” He gazed up at her, a supplication in those burn-blue eyes. “Will you have me, all that I am?”
Yes, Willa wanted to shout, her breathless joy like a song that begged for singing, loud enough to stick it to the world that’d scorned her. Yes, yes, a hundred times yes. But Glorfindel winced, then; a slight widening of his eyes, and the scars on her knees tingled with the memory of sharp edges.
“Get up,” she groused, the sight of his suffering a raw ache, like a wound prodded. “Get up, if you truly mean it, and ask me again.”
Glorfindel blinked up at her, brow furrowing. “This is most irregular,” he muttered, his voice tinged with baffled insistence, “I am declaring myself, and it would feel most improper without kneeling.” He cast a worried look around, as if the whole world might be taking notes, then fixed her with an earnest gaze. “So it has always been done, or so I am told.”
“Not between us. I’ll have no man of mine hurting for my sport, or anyone else’s for that matter. Now stand and ask me again, or I’ll have no part of it.”
She became gradually aware of a steady trickle past them, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves swallowed by gravel; the command for departure had been quietly given, it seemed, with neither the pomp nor the gravity Willa imagined as befitting a campaign. She was also aware that Glorfindel had drawn her even closer, and was tense in a way he’d not been moments before. As if bracing for her to be torn away, or him, taken. Not that anyone paid them much heed, beyond the obvious good-natured glee. Everybody loved a wedding and, in the absence of one, a love confession was the next best thing.
The standard bearers, as solemn as their function required them to be, were still men, and they tried not to grin into their beards as they rode past. The young, kindly pages followed, their eyes blown wide with awe or envy; Willa felt her eyes on her, as though she’d been a book they’d been forbidden from reading. The first of the King’s escort followed: riders from his guard, squires, provisioners. All gave the two of them a wide berth, like a shoal of perch around a basking pike.
Slowly, it dawned on her they weren’t dressed for war: too much light cloth and too little steel on their backs – or fear in their eyes. Only the king’s guards carried weapons: short swords in scabbards, and bows and arrows, as if for hunting. Even Queen Arwen, who watched the procession inch out the gates from the palace steps in a gown of smoky grey, looked unperturbed, though for all Willa knew, she was one of those women who fared much better with a husband far away. Willa knew well the look of grieving women, the Claribel Rowans and Suyins; women who’d seen their loved ones leave with no promise of return, but the Queen’s eyes weren’t those of a widow.
A shadow shrouded Glorfindel’s face, and Willa squinted up to see King Éomer smirking down from his horse, surrounded by equally jolly riders of his personal éored. The sun fell in shafts into the courtyard, lighting the Tower of Ecthelion up like a candle, and setting his flaxen hair ablaze.
“I shall not say I’m entirely pleased,” he chuckled, leaning down from his saddle, “for I was rather looking forward to a rematch between Firefoot and that long-legged beast of yours.” He looked a man who’s been given a gift on another’s birthday, his eyes crinkling with mirth under the dark slash of his brows. “As it stands, I’m obliged to call this a forfeit, my Lord Glorfindel, and I’ll expect those ten crowns upon our return.”
His nod to Willa was that of begrudging respect, meant not so much for an equal as an accomplice. The notion made her scowl, which only made him laugh the harder.
“Come, my friend,” came a deep voice, a timbre resonant like that of a bard or a storyteller. “It appears that Lord Glorfindel has found himself rather urgently engaged in affairs more compelling than a simple visit to Emyn Arnen. In light of these pressing matters, I propose we formally release him from his duty.”
Indeed, if anyone had stories to tell, it was him: Aragorn, named Elessar, King of the reunited kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. It was said of him he’d been foretold long before he was born; that he’d served kings before taking the throne, and roamed the wilds among the Dúnedain. He’d entered a mountain haunted by ghosts of traitors, and rallied them to his cause. He’d faced Sauron as an equal through one of the seeing stones of old, before leading armies to victory on the battlefield. It all seemed too vast, too staggering for one man’s life, but one glance of him on horseback betokened he was no ordinary man. He wore a black silk tunic embroidered with a white tree crowned with stars. Upon his brow sat a circlet of hammered silver; a thin, fine crown, much too modest for the ruler of so vast a kingdom. Beneath it, his gaze was keen and far-reaching, almost preternaturally so. Willa remembered that he’d been raised by elves, including Glorfindel – her Glorfindel, and knew the kindness in his eyes wasn’t feigned.
“Lady Wilhelmina,” he addressed her, as though she were indeed a highborn lady instead of a wild-eyed peasant, “consider your objections noted and upheld. I will personally see to it that Lord Faramir and Lady Éowyn are informed that our good Lord Glorfindel is otherwise occupied.”
There was a glint of humor in his grey eyes, and Willa colored deeply. She now saw her desperate flight in all its foolish glory, and how her worries had been vastly exaggerated. This was no foray, but rather a leisurely ride toward a peaceful province, to visit to the Lord of Ithilien and his lady wife – King Éomer’s sister. A ripple of quiet laughter spread through those of the assembly who’d overheard the King’s words, and Willa shrank a little under their gazes, before steeling her jaw and jutting up her chin. She regretted many things – not least of which was crying over Finn Greyfield, who’d not deserved half the tears she’d shed – but if there was one thing she’d never be made ashamed of, it was loving Glorfindel, or standing up for him.
A dull pain throbbed beneath her temples. “Thought you meant to send him off to some new slaughter like your personal pig.”
King Éomer guffawed in earnest. Glorfindel drew a shocked breath as he rose, his fingers skimming her hips to nestle possessively at the small of her back. “Peace, meldanya. He is a friend,” he murmured, stirring the fine hairs above her ear, but King Aragorn’s low laughter was warm and genuine.
“A simple visit to Emyn Arnen, Lady Wilhelmina. Not, I assure you, a charge into shadowed lands.”
“Wasn’t to know that. Your Majesty.”
“No indeed.” If her cheek took him aback, he didn’t show it. “As for you, Glorfindel, my old friend, I shall take your absence as my own failing, and ask that you remain here,” he added, as if weighing his words with all due gravity, the map of laugh lines tiptoeing around his eyes. “Consider it my wish, if not quite an order, that you prioritize the safety of that which you hold dearest.”
“I would apologize, Estel,” said Glorfindel, a pout still lingering in the curve of his mouth. “My loyalty remains unwavering, yet my path is lit elsewhere, and I would follow it for as long as it welcomes me.”
He beheld her anew, stiff with longing. Willa could tell by the line between his brows he’d been dreaming up this grand gesture for quite some time, only to have it shut down so firmly. It galled him, her refusal to let him woo her at his detriment – almost as much as it galled him to forfeit their little outing – but this is how it was going to be, or not at all. He appeared torn, eyeing Asfaloth waiting nearby as though considering throwing Willa into the saddle before him, but the King swept those doubts aside with a firm shake of his head.
“And none here question it. It is indeed time you founded your own home, a haven where peace might at last find you. The time of the Eldar is coming to an end.” His eyes flickered to where his Queen stood, pale and straight as a beacon in the morning sun. “I would see you make the most of it.”
He clicked his tongue, urging his steed into a canter that had him catching up with his retinue, the last of which was barely past the gates.
“Enjoy your stay in Minas Tirith, my Lady,” King Éomer added with a wink, “I trust you will find it thoroughly rewarding. My Lord…”, before spurring Firefoot into a canter, and following King Aragorn out of the Citadel.
Just like that, the courtyard emptied, save for the stableboys at work with the picking up of heaps of manure left by the noble destriers, and the few stragglers hanging back to see what else of interest might happen. A clever lad built like a hoofpick crept close to seize Asfaloth’s reins and lead him away, grinning so cheekily that Willa suspected at once he was the one who’d cheered. Upon the stone steps of the palace, the Queen graced them with a small, serene nod that might’ve been approval, before she deftly rounded up her ladies and glided back inside. It seemed to Willa that for the first time, her ageless gaze had grown less burdened with the weight of years, younger, and more impish, as though she’d known well the price of privacy in places with many eyes.
It was a strange feeling, that of their sudden solitude; a quiet akin to a long-awaited celebration, where every joy lies just ahead, yet so sweet is the thought of it that delaying the moment brings its own pleasure. Glorfindel’s grip on her waist firmed, long fingers splaying to cover more skin over the fabric of her shift, scouting for any sign of hesitation. Willa leaned into him like a lonely reed, brazen and a smidge wanton. She closed her eyes, and draped her arms around his neck as his nose nuzzled her temple.
“You spoke of sparing me discomfort,” Glorfindel rumbled against the shell of her ear, his breath warm and meadow-scented. His tone was laced with reproach. “And yet you leave me waiting, breath held, for your reply.”
His lips brushed her jaw; a bold incursion to secure his ground, and she tilted her head readily, surrendering her throat to his conquest. She knew the distance between their bodies down to the inch, feeling the places where they didn’t join keenly, and others where they did even more so.
“You’re looking rather comfortable, from where I stand.”
“Perhaps I hide it well.” His teeth grazed her jumping pulse, laughter deep in his throat. “So, will you have me, entire, or am I doomed to linger in this agonizing wait, fearing you might change your mind?”
Thoughts of what that wholeness entailed had Willa shivering, but not for cold. She slivered her eyes like a cat to find him watching her, his gaze ignited with an inner fire. “Thought I made my designs on your person rather clear, back there,” she grumbled, and tried to pull him down once more.
“Hmm. And what of my heart?” A purr, low and teasing, with a peculiar ache threaded under the sound. “Have you designs on it as well? Tell me you would be mine as much as I am yours. I would hear it from you.”
He was looking at her, shoulders rising and falling. Waiting.
‘I would’, he’d said, but Willa heard ‘I need to’, a truth as raw as her own wanting, where others dreamed and dithered. She took a long, searching look at his face, and saw his fear beneath those languid airs and mussed clothes, his lower lip chewed halfway to bleeding. He looked an orphan wondering if he’d been good enough to be loved, and the sight stirred in her a tenderness woven through with an unspeakable sorrow. Willa’s very soul ached at the thought of him being hers, for to love meant the risk of loss, and with it, the threat of suffering once more. But it hadn’t occurred to her until now how Glorfindel might feel the same, he who’d lost so much already. His life had been one long corridor of drafts and doorways without handles, and he was chilled to the bone.
Willa didn’t cry at his loneliness, even though she thought she might. Instead, she raised a hand to cup the hard plane of his cheek. The look on Glorfindel’s face was something breaking; his lashes fluttered as he leaned into her touch, like he could neither help himself, nor muster up a fight.
“I’m yours, now and until the end of my days.”
His throat bobbed. A slow breath he’d been holding blew out of him, before he rested his forehead against hers. “It is custom among my people to wait a year before marriage,” he only muttered – in pained tones, that much shall be said – and it was Willa’s turn to look at him askance.
“Can you wait a year?”
A beat elapsed, before Glorfindel let out a throaty groan of surrender, and surged down to kiss her once more.
Pa had once told her that the elves had fifty words for music, and the dwarves had a hundred words for stone. Willa wished she had a thousand words for love, but all that came to mind was the way he sighed against her lips, and there were no words for that.
The End