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The news does not reach Elwing until it is too late. Her captain Hestoril jogs up to her, breathless and dishevelled, dark shadows under her eyes. She comes out of the sea-mist clinging to the shore in the dim hours before dawn, and her footsteps draw Elwing out of her thankless watch over empty waters.
“My lady,” Hestoril says, and with some difficulty Elwing tears her gaze away from the water to look at her. “My lady, the Fëanorian usurpers…” Hestoril spits upon the sand almost as soon as the accursed name passes her lips. “They are here.”
For a moment Elwing closes her eyes. An attack before daybreak. Fell deeds done in the dark. She has known this day would come, has known it in her bones ever since she held the Fëanorions’ letter in her hands, and saw the fateful eight-rayed star stamped in blood-red ink at the bottom of the page. She has known it, yet it comes so soon, too soon, and Eärendil is still away from home.
“Rouse everyone,” she says at length, as she knows she must, and her voice rings out clearly over the crashing of the waves. “Bid those that are willing to take up arms and fight.”
But Hestoril does not do as she is told. “My lady,” she starts again, shifting from foot to foot, plainly uncomfortable. She was a marchwarden, once, one of the finest among King Thingol’s warriors; she has never been known for mincing her words. “My lady, they are after the jewel. Perhaps we could avoid this altogether if—”
“It is not theirs,” Elwing hisses, pressing a hand to her breast, to the jewel nestled there in its necklace. Its light shines through her, through skin and bone and muscle, turning her flesh to living flame—the jewel that her father wore, and her grandmother before that, torn from the crown of the dark Power in the North at the uttermost end of hope. It is her wergild, for her father’s death, and her mother’s, and her brothers’. But more than that it is her people’s jewel, a light in the darkness of these days, keeping them united, keeping them safe. No creature of Morgoth would dare lay eyes upon it, but there are fouler things than Orcs in these lands.
Maedhros wrote to her not too long ago, eloquent words but ultimately meaningless. It is our birthright, he said, and perhaps if he had chosen different words she might have considered parting with the jewel. But that word, birthright: she has a claim to the Silmaril as much as Maedhros does, or perhaps more. His father created it, that much is true, but is creation the only thing that matters in this world? What of rescue? What of protection? Through all the bloody history of the Silmaril, her family’s blood has left the deepest stain.
“We fight,” Elwing says curtly, suddenly realising that Hestoril still lingers, waiting for a direct order.
Hestoril nods, once, lips set in a thin line. She will obey, Elwing has no doubt about it. Hestoril was the one who led her out of her home so long ago, by secret paths unknown to any save her family’s most trusted servants. As for the others, Elwing will not demand that they join her in battle; those who wish to flee may do so freely. She has never claimed a sceptre or a crown. She is not their queen. This is a haven, for rest, for safety. Few here are bound to her by oath or duty.
She is still dressed in yesterday’s clothes; she never went to bed last night. She picks up her skirt and runs barefoot across the white sand, to her little house on the shore that she had built after Eärendil’s departure. She cannot bear to have the sea out of her sight these days.
The creak of the door as she opens it sets Elrond and Elros stirring in their cot. It is so dark here, and so quiet, a little slice of life untouched by the violence outside. In later years she will remember this moment, the cruelty of it, that she has to be the one to wake her boys and plunge them into their new mutilated reality.
“It’s time to wake up,” she murmurs, crouching down by the cot where her sons sleep entangled.
“Too early…” Elros mumbles, rolling over, but Elrond picks up on something in her tone that makes him sit bolt upright, a look of grim determination on his young face.
“They’re here,” he whispers, as though he’s always known they would come.
Elwing forces herself to breathe out slowly, through her nose, so she will not weep. She reaches out a hand and smooths down Elrond’s hair where sleep has left it messy. She lets her fingers linger, just for a moment.
“They are, my heart. We must go.”
Elrond nods, once, in a strange echo of battle-hardened Hestoril.
“Come, Elros,” he says, nudging his brother awake.
Elwing cannot bear to leave their side, not even for a moment, but she must. She gets to her feet, striding across the room to her own bed and dragging out a large chest from underneath it. She draws a sword from its depths, thin and wickedly sharp, gleaming coldly in the dim light. Her father taught her how to use a blade when she was younger than her own sons. You are the princess of Doriath, she remembers him saying. You must be able to defend it.
She slashes the sword across her skirt, severing the fabric just below the knee. She needs to be able to move unencumbered.
“I’m scared,” Elros says from the cot as screams sound from outside, loud and far too close. His voice is strained and high-pitched, sleep entirely forgotten, and Elwing thinks of how young he is, how young they both are. It should never have come to this.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” she tells him, and though she means her words to be soft and comforting, she has to raise her voice above the din of battle. She bends down to scoop him into her arms, balancing him on her hip with her free arm. She presses a kiss to his chubby cheek and tries not to think of how much it feels like stolen time.
“Will you be okay on foot, Elrond?” she asks her other son, and he gives her a nod, standing to attention like a proud little guardsman.
Without another word she takes her boys outside, and what greets them is carnage. How are they here already? she thinks, desperation pounding inside her like a second heartbeat. The Fëanorian troops are tearing into her people like wolves among sheep. There are screams, shouts, the clash of steel against steel, and for a moment Elwing stands frozen, caught in a timeless nightmare. For a moment she is a girl again, bundled out of her room by gauntleted hands, the crash and clangour of battle seeping into her bones.
“Emig,” Elrond says, tugging at her sword hand now lax at her side as Elros wails in her ear. “Emig, let’s go.”
Her resolve sharpens, like steel, like the edge of a blade. Her sons must live; her sons will live.
She turns and runs, Elros clutched to her side and Elrond following close behind. She is fast, but she cannot blend in, not with the Silmaril shining like a beacon at her throat.
“Halt, jewel-bearer!” cries a voice and she does not need to turn to know to whom it belongs. The minstrel, Fëanor’s second son: his voice booms across sea and sand, deep and lyrical, and it seems to echo in her very bones, bidding her be still.
But she will not be cowed by a song of power. Melian was her foremother, and Lúthien also, and the Silmaril blazes upon her breast with a fire that cannot burn her. She has power of her own.
So she presses on, cutting down a soldier who leaps in front of her, her blade sharp enough to slice through armour as though it were nothing more than butter. Elros buries his face in the crook of her neck, and when she turns her head to check on her other son, Elrond’s face is pale and streaked with gore that is not his own.
But there is something else that she sees. Something which makes her blood run cold, makes her stop dead in her tracks. A tall Elf is emerging from the fray, his hair red and his sword dripping blood onto the white sand beneath his feet. If he could ever conceive of mercy, his eyes do not show it.
Elwing has a sudden vision that makes her want to rend the flesh from her own bones: her sons taken from her, put to the sword, or worse, to torment; her baby boys used against her, their every breath in their captors’ bonds an injury that burrows deep within her, into heart and bone and marrow.
Her mother and father are gone, her brothers forever lost, her husband’s fate unknown. But she has her sons, and she has the jewel. Nothing else matters. Nothing else is worth dying for.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers to her boys, and prays that one day they might understand.
She sets Elros down with a calm that comes from somewhere deep within her, a place she cannot name. She takes Elrond’s hand, so small within her own, and draws him near so that they are both standing before her, mirror images, fair and far too young. She plants a kiss upon their foreheads, each in turn. The battle around her is dying down. It was never going to last long. Her people are brave, but they are not soldiers; they could never hope to face the Fëanorian forces in open battle and emerge victorious.
Her boys are crying, and she wipes away their tears, holds their little faces in her hands. Kneels down so she can look them in the eye.
“What’s happening?” Elros asks but Elrond remains silent.
“You must go without me,” she says, and it is as if someone else is speaking through her, someone whose heart isn’t being torn to pieces. “The cove west from here, where you used to look for seashells with Atheg. Go, and hide in the cave there, as far in as you can. I will come find you.”
Do they know that she is lying? It does not matter. There is no other choice. She can hear footsteps on the sand behind her, still some distance away but relentless as waves in a storm, or the coming of doom; she knows that their time is up. The cove nestles underneath an overhanging cliff, unseen from the shore above. It will be the safest place for her boys. They will hide, and they will live, and when Eärendil returns he will find them. And if Eärendil does not return… well, anyone in her household who still lives will know where to look, if they have a mind to. Even if no one comes for them, she knows her boys are resourceful. She has raised them so.
“Not without you!” Elros wails, taking her hand in a chubby fist and tugging at her, trying to get her to move. But Elwing pushes herself to her feet and holds herself still as a stone. Not even the Valar descended from their holy thrones would be able to unlock her feet.
“I love you,” she says, pressing her sword into Elrond’s small hands. “Don’t look back.”
She watches as Elrond drags his brother away, as they run across the sand, dwindling to two tiny specks adrift in the wide lands. She raises a hand to touch the wetness on her cheeks. She half-expects blood, but it is only tears.
She turns, then, and it is through the steel of her will alone that she is able to wrench herself around to meet her fate. This ends here, she thinks wildly, picturing the faces of her boys, picturing a world of impossible peace. This ends with me.
“Fëanorion!” she cries, tearing the necklace from her throat and lifting it high above her head so the jewel catches the sun as it crests over the horizon. The sand and sea are bathed in a sudden radiance, and for a moment everything is still. For a moment there is still beauty in the world.
But then Maedhros steps towards her, and the stillness shatters. “Give me the jewel,” he says, and his tone brooks no argument.
Elwing runs. She runs in a winding path, buying her boys as much time as she is able, until the sand turns to rock under her bare feet. She runs west, upwards, towards the cliffs on the borders of Arvernien.
She hears Maedhros behind her, giving chase, but he is slow in his armour and cannot catch her.
She runs far, her feet at ease leaping among the rocks from a childhood spent in the woods of Doriath, and only stops when she reaches the first of the cliffs stretching west towards the Cape of Balar. This is the furthest she will go; she will not lead him to the cove where her boys are hiding.
She waits for him at the cliff’s edge, the Silmaril in her hand. The wind is picking up, the sun inching upwards into a murky sky that threatens storm. She can hear nothing but wind and sea and her own thundering heart.
Maedhros, ever lagging behind, finally catches up.
The wind stirs his hair, and it flies about his head like a corona of blood. His eyes are hard, hard as the rock beneath their feet.
“Give me the jewel,” he repeats, hand outstretched.
Elwing laughs. She does not know where it comes from, but her throat opens and her lips part and she laughs, harsh as the cry of gulls.
“You forfeited all right to it when you brought your war to our shores.”
He steps closer; she cannot step back, for the cliff ends in a dizzying drop into the churning waters below.
“This is needless,” he says, and there is something a little like sorrow in his voice.
Elwing closes her ears and her heart to it. “Yet here you stand, bathed in the blood of my people.” A beat passes, and she cocks her head at him, unmoved and defiant. “That was also needless.”
“Give it to me, and you have my word this will end.”
“Your word means nothing,” she spits at him, baring her teeth, nearly shaking with anger as sudden as a cataclysm. The sea roars behind her, cold droplets spraying up and flecking her bare legs. “I do not barter with murderers.”
He lunges at her, but she is faster. She steps back into nothingness, pressing the Silmaril to her chest, over her heart.
She screams as she falls, or she thinks that she does. She’s been here before, in her dreams, in her nightmares.
There is a sense of peace as she hits the water, of rest, of fate fulfilled.
She sinks, as she always knew she would. She thinks of her boys, and she does not fight the sea as it drags her under, into darkness.