Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tirindë receives the note from Mandos just like everyone else related to Caranthir. There is no convincing the Vala that she and her husband are sundered, despite many attempts both before her estranged husband’s re-embodiment and after. Still. Tirindë was raised to be dutiful and dutiful she remains, and thus is attendance on the requisite date outside the Halls of Mandos along with no less than seven Fëanorion sons, her former mother-by-law and the scowling, flame-eyed patriarch himself, who still burns as brightly as he ever did even though his current hröa never stood under the light of the Two Trees in the days of long ago.

Tirindë bore many uncomfortable Finwëan family dinners in her youth. This occasion is even worse than those long-ago meals where the two eldest sons of Finwë were at constant loggerheads and everyone else pretended fruitlessly that it wasn’t happening. Perhaps things would have been different if something had acknowledged it, Tirindë muses, but she, the part-Vanyar wife of Fëanor’s middle child, had hardly been the one to do it. At least today they are out in the open air.

Amrod and Amras are the two she finds most bearable (including her own former husband) and so Tirindë stands close to them, incurring a glare but nthing worse than that from Fëanor. Caranthir is on the other side of his mass of brothers, studiously ignoring her, and Tirindë does likewise to him, instead allowing herself to be drawn into the Ambarussa’s loud speculation on who the reembodied individual might be and their possible relation to Caranthir, who is steadily reddening in the face.

She always found his involuntary flushing charming, her smooth and dissembling husband always betraying his true feelings in the pinkness of his cheeks and ears.  Tirindë says nothing of it now, focussing stradily on the entrance to the Halls, closed now but soon to open, hopefully, since Fëanor is getting louder and more obstrepuous with every passing minute.

“– keeping us waiting, the nerve,” Tirindë hears. She hazards a glance at the cluster of brothers. Poor Maedhros has that line between his eyebrows which usually suggests he is developing a headache from the strain of keeping the peace within his family. He was called Nelyafinwë when she first met him, thousands of years ago now in the year of Tirindë’s debut, when a scowling scarlet-cheeked nér had caught her eye, barely of age and clearly hating every minute he had to spend socialising.

Caranthir had been Morifinwë, then. They had both been too young for epessë; Tirindë has always liked her husband’s Sindarin name ever since she heart it, more than his mother- or father-names; Caranthir. It rolls neatly and cleanly off the tongue. In the early days of their love Tirindë had still borne her mother-name; Lossiel, white blossom maiden, a fairly generic name as Elven names go, for the pale flowers her mother used to hang in her cradle. The epessë Morifinwë had given her, watchful woman, had come from the long nights where she could not sleep, sitting in the window seat of their bedroom in Tirion, waiting for the dawn. He would find her there, often times, and bring her back to bed by the hand or sometimes by the lips, her sharp-featured and sharp-voiced husband turned sweet under her touch like some miracle of the Vala – or perhaps, like some small miracle of their own devising –

Caranthir looks over at her sharply. Tirindë clamps down harder on her side of the bond – do not do not, you will have nothing of me just as you have taken everything I had of you – and his lips press together thinly as he turns away. Relish it, Tirindë thinks savagely. She wishes her husband all the joy the ache of the sundered bond that she has lived with for more than six thousand years. He could not have felt it in the Void, or in the Halls of Mandos, where Fëanor and his sons recently arrived to, when Maglor arrived on these shores of Valinor and was ceremonially presented the Silmaril that has for so long now lit the path of Vingilótë through the skies. Maglor had given the thing back, of course – that had been part of the arrangement. The last Silmaril had returned to the hands of its creator’s child, and thus the Oath of Fëanor had been fulfilled – there had never been any provision that it had to stay with Fëanor’s kin once it had been reacquired. Thusly Tirindë’s husband had been released from the Void from Mandos – Eönwë had been heard from north to south, east to west of the Blessed Isle announcing it. And from there only a short year later Tirindë had received the customary, black-edged envelope inviting her to the re-embodiment of a loved one – someone close to her, she corrects herself, since it has been long since she could call her husband beloved.

She had waited beside Maglor, her once upon a time good-brother, who was flanked on the other by Nerdanel and supported by his foster-son Elrond (son of Earendil and Elwing, Tirindë struggles often to remember how everyone is related to each other) but there had been scores of others. All of Fëanor’s kin through his father’s second marriage and his stepmother besides, young Telperinquar (Celebrimbor, she’d had to correct, he preferred the Sindarin version), Thúlien, although Tirindë had known from from long acquaintance that she was only in attendance so she could spit at Curufin’s feet and curse him anew.

Mandos had released them all, one by one. First Fëanor, blinking in the brightness of the Sun – which of course he never would have had the chance to see before his death. The Tree-light of old had not been in him, lost along with his former hröa. He had scarcely the chance to look around before Maedhros had followed him, and something of the ice in Tirindë’s chest had cracked open at the sight of her former father by law embracing his oldest son, Neylo head and shoulders taller than his father like always, tears dripping down their proud faces. She had heard a soft involuntary sound from Maglor, and then he was rushing forward as Mandos released Celegorm -silver hair flowing, hunter-eyes unchanged from his youth – and then from behind the knot of hugging Fëanorions had appeared Caranthir.

He looked much the same as she remembered him, although time had dulled the harsh angles of his face and the intensity of his silver eyes from her memory. Tirindë locks eyes with her husband through his mass of celebrating brothers and wishes she hadn’t; Caranthir is still raw from Mandos it seems, because instead of the icy glare she had been so accustomed to at the end, his narrow face breaks into a broad smile.

His coolness she could bear. His warmth scalds Tirindë like the touch of a flatiron to bare skin, and her feet had moving before she thought better of it. She had fled like her husband was a spectre of the old days rather than the once-centre of her beating heart, building up walls against the brief flicker of his fëa against her own, through the long-dormant bond that has burst into renewed life.

All of Tirion had been alive with the news of the return. Whether with joy or fury it seemed to matter not in those early days of Fëanor and his sons’ long-awaited (or dreaded) return home. Tirindë had buried herself in her books and ignored every knock that rapped on her door, from the vendor selling Fëanorian red banners to her own mother. More than a week had passed before the knock that came was the one she had been waiting in trepidation for; three sharp raps, and then the turn of the knob.

Attempted turn. Tirindë had locked the door three times over and barred it for good measure. No one was coming through without her consent, although she soon regretted it, because then he started to speak.

“You cannot bar me from my own home,” Caranthir calls, voice clipped with anger. How familiar it is! If Tirindë closes her eyes she could be back once more in the days before Fëanor’s exile to Formenos, when tensions in their home simmered constantly, threatening at any moment to boil over.

“I had the last of your things sent to your mother’s,” Tirindë replies, hating the unsteadiness of her voice. On the other side of the door – simple wood that suddenly seems like nothing at all – she hears her husband sigh and brace his hands on the doorframe. “And the deed to the house was transferred into my name many years ago. This is not your house. It is mine, and you are not welcome here.” Her voice hitches. “You have been gone too long,” she says, voice wobbling, and to her horror starts to sob into her knees.

Caranthir says nothing. He had always hated it when she wept before, finding reasons to get away from the house when Tirindë was crying. She got so accustomed to being on her own when she was miserable, at first Caranthir’s absence had hardly felt like a change. “Don’t weep, ‘Rindë,” he says eventually, voice strangled, further evidence he is deeply uncomfortable with her tears.

“Don’t call me that!” The volume of her voice surprises her, as does the anger in it. “You are reembodied, my lord. Take the opportunity you have been granted and find yourself a new nís to chase. I know the concept is not unfamiliar to you,” she adds, rather nastily even by her own measure. The news had filtered through from other Returned Eldar that her husband had taken a mortal paramour while in Middle-earth. Tirindë’s initial surprise had melted away to rage and grief at first, before long solitary years taught her resignation. She had only found it out long after her husband had perished, their marriage-bond snapping abruptly in the night, leaving her with her own mangled half stretching out into nothingness. If her husband had spent his last years carousing with a mortal, then Tirindë could only pity the poor woman who had taken up with her unpleasant, faithless husband.

“It wasn’t like that,” Caranthir says, frustration in his voice, but Tirindë has no desire to hear more. she stops her ears, ignores his entreaties, and stays curled up quietly by the fire until at last Caranthir storms away.

That had been the winter. Now it is spring, and another black-edged invination has brought her here. Idly she ponders who it could be as the Ambarussa’s theories grows ever more strident and inventive. “Care to make a wager, ‘Rindë?” Amras asks, expression wicked. She smiles fondly at her very youngest good-brother. (Caranthir’s scowl deepens.)

“Oh, put me down for five on ‘long-lost son by Sindar princess’, if you must,” she replies dryly, handing over her coin. Amras grins and pockets it before turning back to his co-conspirator. “You got that, brother?”

“Five on ‘long lost son’, got it,” he confirms, scribbling with a stub of charcoal on a grubby scrap of parchment he filched from Makalaurë. The Ambarussa are already looking around for their next taker, but the thundering frown on their father’s brow stops them in their tracks.

“I do not approve of gambling,” Fëanor rumbles darkly. Amrod and Amras exchange a glance, their shoulders firming in unison.

“I’ll bear that in mind, Father,” Amrod says coolly, before he and Amras adroitly step around their father and go cosying up to their second-oldest brother. “Moryo, fancy a flutter? Whether your improbable long-lost son looks like you –”

“Or has horns and a tail,” Amras finishes. Caranthir is almost at explosion point, Tirindë notes from long experience. Thankfully, the vast doors of the Halls open, and all eyes turn expectantly to the small gap in the walls. A moment later, a small figure steps out.

If she is of the Eldar, then Tirindë has never seen her like before. Visibly female, and wearing the thin undyed robe that all of those who return from Mandos are dressed in. But hair chopped short of an indeterminate shade of dull brown, a weathered face with heavy eyebrows, and small hands that bear the marks of hard work, even at this distance.

Caranthir makes a strangled sound. Tirindë looks at him, watches his jaw work uselessly for a while before he finally manages to spit out a name.

“Haleth.”

The nís had been looking around with interest, but at the sound, she looks over at the group of assembled Eldar. Tirindë watches her eyes narrow and realises all at once that this is not the kind of individual to be crossed.

“Caranthir.” The word come out as a hiss. “What Elvish devilry is this, you scheming stiff-rumped self-important braggart?” Oh, Tirindë approves of this. The stranger – Haleth – stomps over to the stunned form of Tirindë’s husband and jabs her forefinger into the highest point of him she can reach – a soft spot just underneath his collarbone. Caranthir’s hand flies to the injured place at once.

“Ow! Haleth,” he protests, but he does not sound entirely outraged. Flustered mixed with fond, Tirindë would say, and she is very familiar indeed with her husband’s voice and mannerisms, even despite the years.

“Why am I here?” Haleth demands. “What did you do? I am meant to be with my people, with my family –” Her voice catches, but she shakes it away and renews the full force of her glare on Caranthir. “If the so-called Gift of Men can be taken away simply because one lets an oversized Eldar scarecrow between their legs a few times, it isn’t much of a gift at all!”

Oh. This is Caranthir’s mortal lover.

Not all of the assembled individuals take this with Tirindë’s equanimity. “You bedded a mortal?” Fëanor asks in appalled shock. Evidently he has not heard the rumours. Caranthir whips around, his arms folded across his chest, cheeks flaming.

“Like no one else in the family ever did it,” he hisses, his sharp eyes raking over several of his brothers, who suddenly look like they’d rather be anywhere else.

“So this is Valinor?” Haleth says, looking around, clearly unimpressed. “Thought it’d be bigger. No matter. Undo whatever petty Elven mischief you’ve wrought, ill-conceived thief of my lands, and let me be away.”

“I didn’t do this!” Caranthir says, sounding more animated than Tirindë has heard him since he was reembodied. “I have no knowledge of how you came to be here. You know full well that If I had my way I’d never see you again, you harping she-demon.” Haleth raises that same deadly finger again at him. “Do not prod me again,” Tirindë’s husband warns her, although Haleth does not look like she is in any kind of mood to take heed.

“If I may.” A Maia has slipped out of the Halls while all the focus is had been on the simply delightful Haleth as she berates Tirindë’s faithless husband. “Lady Haleth of the Haladin, you have been deemed exempt from the statutes pertaining to mortals and granted entry to the Blessed Realm, pending the re-embodiment of your husband, of course. Lord Mandos asks me to convey his apologies for the delay.” The slim white figure of the Maia folds its hands peaceably, as if washing them of what is to follow.

All the Fëanorions start to talk at once. “My what?” Haleth says, as Fëanor rounds on his middle son. “I never married him!” she says to the Maia, gesturing to Caranthir, now getting thoroughly scolded by his parents. “I wouldn’t have even if he’d asked.”

“He didn’t need to,” the Maia says serenely. “By the laws and customs of the Eldar, you were wed.” Haleth still looks completely staggered by the revelation that she was married to Caranthir, as though it had the same probability as the sun rising in the opposite direction and tap-dancing across the sky.

“He’s an arrogant arse,” she snaps. “What laws? What customs?” The Maia now gives off an air of being slightly uncomfortable. It’s impressive, given it doesn’t have a discernible face.

“You lay together and made a vow to Eru Ilúvatar,” it says primly. Caranthir is turning a darker shade of red as Nerdanel lectures him about safe sex and the holy bonds of marriage. Haleth is fuming.

“I might have said ‘oh god’ once or twice and he talked in that forbidden Elvish language a lot –” Haleth stares at the Maia as comprehension seems to dawn in a sickening rush. “Is that why I could hear him swearing sometimes in the back of my head? I thought it was just a side effect of too many axe blows to the face –”

The doors of Mandos are still open. They are not being closely looked at, but Tirindë has been staring at them while trying not to laugh hysterically and then break into tears, which is how she is the first to notice when the next figure steps out. “Excuse me?” As one, the Fëanorions, Haleth, and even the Maia stop what they are doing and stare the newcomer down. “I’m looking for my children. They’re probably grown by now…” She trails off. “You know, you all look remarkably Elvish for mortals.”

There’s a horrible awkward silence. “They are Elves, stranger,” Haleth growls, crossing her arms over her chest. The mortal – for she must be so – looks relieved at the sight of one of her own kind.

“Thank you, lady. I take it these are not the realms of the mortal dead, then.”

“Indeed not,” Haleth replies. “Valinor, the Blessed Realm, and so on. That bunch –” She jerks a thumb in Tirindë’s general direction, including Fëanor and his kin in the same rough gesture. “You ever heard of the royal house of the Elves?” The stranger smiles.

“Of course. In my time I was very friendly with one of them.” Tirindë has a horrible sneaking suspicion she knows which one. Caranthir takes this moment to pop out from behind his taller mother; the stranger’s smile intensifies. “That one! Moryo –” Tirindë distinctly hears Fëanor choke on air – “I’m sorry I left you.” Tirindë wasn’t expecting her to say that, or for her husband to stagger as though he’d been struck a blow.

“Ishilde,” he says, voice hoarse. “I found you, after.” Ishilde is taller than Haleth, slimmer as well, although still strongly muscled for a mortal, and for a female mortal besides.

“I knew you would,” Ishilde replies, and takes a step towards him; it is as though Tirindë and all the rest are holding their breath, in a still bubble of time where only Caranthir and Ishilde are free. “I regret that I had to put you through it. Did my body go home to my babies, at least?”

Caranthir nods. Any other nér might be weeping, but Tirindë’s husband is hulled with steel, and he does not break, although his eyes are so full of sorrow. “I made sure of it.” They are only a foot apart now. Ishilde smiles, and raises a hand to Caranthir’s cheek; he closes his eyes at her touch.

“You have ended our agreement with honour, my lord,” Ishilde says warmly, her bright eyes gleaming. Caranthir, still red and still with his eyes tightly closed, covers her small human hand with his much bigger one. “I am grateful, for the chance to bid you farewell before I go on to meet my kin.”

There’s a small sound behind her, almost like a cough, if a metaphysical being could do such a thing. It shocks Tirindë and her husband’s family from their stupor, and even surprises Caranthir and Ishilde, although not Haleth; Tirindë is sure nothing short of a moderately-sized avalanche would perturb Haleth. “Actually.” The Maia this time is as featureless as the other, but somehow manages to give off an aura of masculinity despite it; it draws itself up with something like self-importance. “Ishilde of the House of Hador, you have been deemed exempt from the statutes pertaining to mortals and granted entry to the Blessed Realm, pending the re-embodiment of your husband –”

“We’ve heard this before,” Haleth interrupts. The Maia looks in her direction – more accurately, it tilts the face-part of its form in her direction. “Don’t tell me the bastard did it again.”

“I – I was grieving, after I felt you pass,” Caranthir says, stricken. Tirindë feels the very faintest stirring of pity, but she might be the only one. Fëanor is outraged, Nerdanel disappointed, and Caranthir’s brothers somewhere between both, except perhaps Maglor, who might have had the opportunity to grow a sense of humour in all his demented wanderings, if his crooked little half-smile is anything to go by. “I was – alone. No. I was lonely. And Ishilde was –”

“Lord Caranthir,” Haleth says, and Caranthir draws his shoulders in on himself in something like a flinch. The title is clearly not meant to honour him, but rather as a way for Haleth to put distance between them. “Allow me to be plain. The state of your bed and any and all of its inhabitants are of less interest to me than the contents of Morgoth’s chamber pot.” Tirindë shudders as the mention of the fell lord even as she admires the eloquence of the insult. “If you fucked –” A low rumble of disapproval amongst the males; Nerdanel shushes them. “If I may continue. If you fucked half the mortal girls in Beleriand, I don’t care. Even if you fucked them on the High King’s throne with a Silmaril hanging from each tit, I don’t care.” Haleth doesn’t look angry anymore. She just looks very sad.

“Well said,” Ishilde says, very quietly. She too looks grieved. She says to the Maia who accompanied her, “I would like to go to my family now, please.”

A voice pipes up behind her. “I wouldn’t mind seeing my family too.”

Tirindë’s only overwhelming expression of this one is that she is young. Caranthir has buried his face in his hands; Haleth looks from him to Ishilde and then to the newcomer, who is smiling brightly at them. “Let me guess,” Haleth says bitingly. “You bedded Caranthir of Thargelion, and perhaps a deity was mentioned?” The newcomer’s sweet little face transformed into an expression of wrath.

“Amon Ereb, actually,” she hisses. “But there’s only one Caranthir. Morifinwë Carnistir, the promise-breaking great prat. He owes me blood, for what he left me with. He owes me –” Her voice cuts off. Caranthir has lowered his hands, exposing his face.

“Nimidh,” he says, with the air of someone bracing himself for the blame.

“You,” says Nimidh in a tone that pronounces doom. “Have you nothing to say for yourself then? It’s only a quick trip, Nimi,” she says, in a voice that is obviously attempting to be a poor parrot of Caranthir’s. “It won’t take long at all. I felt you die,” and her eyes are brimming with tears.

“I did not mean for you to feel it,” Caranthir says helplessly. Tirindë couldn’t look away if she tried. She is engrossed, and so is Fëanor and his boys. It makes sense, after all. They love anything that relates even tangentially to themselves. “I wanted you to live freely. To love freely. Not to be washed out to sea along with all the rest of the filth I wrought.”

Nimidh strides over and slaps him. Caranthir must have seen the strike coming, could have easily blocked it, but for some reason known only to himself allowed Nimidh’s hand to make contact. She gasps from the sting of the slap in her hand, before raising it to hit him again. But before she has a chance to land her blow her face crumples into an expression of utter desolation. “You left me!” she says, as though it is the greatest sin she could accuse him off, and walks the two steps forward to hide her face in his chest.

“Oh, Eru,” Caranthir says, looking rather frantic. Nimidh wraps her slim arms around his waist, turning her head to the side; improbably, Tirindë meets her eyes before the mortal closes them as she weeps as though her heart has been broken. Caranthir’s expression is rapidly migrating towards panic. “What do you want me to do?” Nimidh glares up at him before burying her face in his shirtfront again.

“Just shut up and hold me, you stupid pillock,” she replies, voice thin and strained by tears. Caranthir’s face softens. Awkwardly he wraps one arm around Nimidh’s thin frame and cradles the other behind her head; Tirindë’s heart rises up out of her chest and into her throat. Her husband always held her the same way, before everything changed.

There’s another Maia trying to get everyone’s attention. “Nimidh of the…” It trails off. “Where are you from again?” Nimidh sniffs audibly; Caranthir withdraws a handkerchief from a pocket, for a moment so solicitous that Tirindë wants to weep.

“I was born in a refugee camp north of Amon Ereb,” Nimidh says as she wipes her face. “I don’t know which House I’m from. Most of us didn’t know, towards the end.”

The Maia does not appear pleased with this answer. “Well, then. “Nimidh, you have been deemed exempt from the statutes pertaining to mortals –”

“Don’t bother, Oniló,” says the first Maia rather wearily. “Apparently this isn’t his first time wedding a mortal.” It points with a cloudy hand to Haleth and Ishilde, who are engaged in fierce inaudible conversation, one eye on Caranthir at all times as though they expect him to turn into a serpent and bite them. At the appearance of the third Maia Haleth takes Ishilde by the arm and stalks over to the servant of Mandos at once.

“– don’t belong here with his lordship and his pointy-eared brethren,” Haleth is saying furiously. “I don’t even like him –”

“Haleth,” says Caranthir rather helplessly. “No one alters the decisions of Mandos once he has set his course.” Haleth flicks a dismissive hand at him.

“You just wait,” she says darkly. “Once I’m done talking to this very nice faceless person, I’m going to take it out of your hide.” Caranthir blanches. Clearly Haleth’s threats have some weight behind them.

“And you bedded this woman,” Maedhros says in wondering tones. As though waiting for the opportunity to bite someone’s head off, Caranthir turns to him and snipes something vicious and bitter about his brother’s own choice in partners, chiefly Findekáno son of Fingolfin. In less than the time it takes to ignite a hearth fire the assembled Fëanorions are at each other’s throats, only Nerdanel and Maglor standing off to the side, mutually shaking their heads at their family’s discord.

Ishilde and Haleth are whispering again. Nimidh stands off to the side, looking rather lost. Tirindë takes pity on her and walks over to the abandoned mortal. “Hello,” she says, and Nimidh gives her a shy smile. Smaller even than Haleth and very thin, but with lovely big hazel eyes and a sweetly kissable mouth. Tirindë can see what would have drawn Caranthir to her. “I am Tirindë of the Ñoldor, once wife to our mutual acquaintance Caranthir Morifinwë.” Nimidh sizes her up and Tirindë allows the inspection as the mortal looks her over. There is little chance of Caranthir butting into their conversation. He is now in the thick of a raging mass of his kin.

“Good morrow, Lady Tirindë,” Nimidh says. “Forgive my outburst of emotion. The last I saw of my lord, he was leaving to fight with his brothers.” She casts a glance back at Caranthir, who is currently trying to argue with Maedhros, Celegorm and Fëanor simultaneously.

“There is nothing to forgive, Lady Nimidh,” Tirindë replies. Nimidh’s eyes widen.

“I am no lady,” she protests at once. Tirindë arches an eyebrow. She is beginning to enjoy herself. The mortals are all wonderfully interesting in their own ways, and it is very nice to see Caranthir experience even the smallest iota of the discomfort he has put her through for millennia.

“If you are wed in the eyes of Eru Ilúvatar to a son of Fëanor, I am afraid ‘lady’ is the very least of the titles one acquires,” she says. Haleth and Ishilde have ended their aside and are staring at Tirindë suspiciously, as though expecting her to cut Nimidh’s soft white throat at any moment. “I fear my home is small and plain, good women of the Edain,” Tirindë says, addressing all three of her husband’s mortal brides. “But it is open to you, since we seem to find ourselves bound to the same – what was it? Oversized Eldar scarecrow?”

Haleth grins. She is missing teeth, making it something of a grim sight, but all the same Tirindë returns it. “Called him worse in my time,” she says.

“As have I,” Tirindë replies. “He missed our hundred anniversary because he forgot the date. It was the same as it had been for the hundred years prior –” Ishilde snorts.

“My first husband couldn’t remember my name-day to save his soul,” she says. “He had other virtues, though.” She waggles her eyebrows and Nimidh laughs even as Tirindë feels the tips of her ears go red.

“My thanks to whichever of you taught Caranthir that interesting thing he does with his tongue,” she says warmly. Haleth cackles.

“That was me. I pity you, Tirindë of the Ñoldor. He must have been a dreadfully dull lover to you here in paradise because the amount of things I had to teach him –”

Ishilde’s stomach cuts Haleth off with a loud growl. She wraps her arms around her middle, looking faintly embarrassed. “Sorry,” she says. “Only I think it’s been two Ages since I had something to eat –”

Tirindë is laughing before she knows it. “It is not far to Tirion,” she assures the women. “We’ll take my husband’s horse and those of two of his brothers. Let them walk back to civilisation.” Nimidh casts an anxious look over at Caranthir, spewing insults now and pointing one long finger at Celegorm.

“Is he all right?” she asks lowly, even as Tirindë begins to chivvy her up the path away from Mandos, Haleth and Ishilde following behind.

“Oh, he’s probably having the time of his life,” Tirindë says, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice as she waves a farewell to Nerdanel and Maglor, still a captive audience to their kin’s foolery. “All his brothers to argue with and his father as well. I doubt he’ll even notice we’re gone.”

The horses nicker patiently and accept their new riders, bearing them away to Tirion. Tirindë sneaks glances at her new companions as they go. Ishilde rides as if she is part horse herself, while Haleth does so competently but with no great joy. Nimidh is the worst of the three of them; as Haleth and Ishilde ride on ahead, calling out observations on the landscape around them to each other, Nimidh slows her mount to a trot, keeping pace at Tirindë’s side. “I didn’t get the chance to ride until I was almost full-grown,” she says, voice quiet in the still afternoon, the clop of hooves the only other sound. “Arms and armour went to the men first. When I was fifteen our camp was overrun by servants of the Enemy. Those of us who survived went to Amon Ereb. They tried to train me then, but I was too small to be much use to the infantry. They taught me to ride, though. And Caranthir –” Her expression brightens, as though just the sound of his name brings her joy enough to illuminate her from within. “He had me assigned to the stables, then the archers. I could draw a bow well enough at least.”

“You love him.” Tirindë hadn’t meant to say it, or to reveal so much of herself in her tone. Nimidh glances at her.

“You don’t?” Tirindë grimaces.

“it’s not that simple,” she hedges. “He wronged me, terribly. I told him if he went away I would call him mine no more. The stories of what he and his brothers did –” Tirindë shakes her head as if she can shake away the memories. “We were no great love match. Fëanor still cared to make political alliances in those days, and my father was a wealthy cloth merchant.”

“Was?” Nimidh asks softly. Tirindë forces a shrug.

“He followed our prince east,” she gets out, even though the words catch in her throat. “As did my two brothers. None of them have been released from Mandos yet. They say there are those in the Halls too wounded to be healed. The ones that felt the direct touch of Morgoth and his lieutenants.”

“Angband,” Ishilde says. She has fallen back with Haleth to ride with them, four abreast on the earthen track that leads to the main road to Tirion. “A fearsome place.” She spits. “May Moringotto and all his servants be damned to the blackest of pits.” Tirindë sees some opportunity to be useful.

“The Valar came to Beleriand, eventually,” she says, well aware that the last word could be considered blasphemy, or at the very least politically inadvisable. “They fought Morgoth for four decades until the land itself sank beneath the waves.” All three mortals make almost-identical sounds of distress; Tirindë looks from one to the other, startled.

“Our home,” Haleth says, sounding deeply grieved. Ishilde nods, and Nimidh lays her hand over her own heart, murmuring something to herself too quietly to catch.

“Oh, yes,” Tirindë says, belated remembering that of course Beleriand and its drowned kingdoms had been their home. “I am sorry.” She clears her throat. “The Valar locked Melkor in the Timeless Void after his defeat, and there he remains. Three Ages have passed since. Many battles fought against by Men and Elves and Dwarves against Morgoth’s last lieutenant, Sauron, the Deceiver. He was called Gorthaur in your time,” she adds, and the mortals nod.

“Three Ages before the last of Melkor’s filth was washed away,” Haleth remarks. “It makes our efforts against him seem very paltry and poor.” Tirindë is aghast.

“Indeed not!” she says, her voice ringing out louder than she intended as they turn onto the paved path to Tirion. “Your efforts were both noble and good.” Haleth shakes her head.

“I lived long enough to die old in my bed,” she says, with a trace of bitterness. “No honourable death in battle for me.” Ishilde shrugs.

“I died with a sword through my belly.” Both Haleth and Nimidh wince. “It was in battle. Some might call it honourable. I call it bloody agonising.”

“One would expect so,” Haleth confirms. She looks over at Nimidh. “And you, girl?” Nimidh is looking away, into the trees nearby, something painful in the set of her shoulders.

“Orc camp,” she says distantly. Ishilde snorts.

“That’s not a way to die,” she teases. Nimidh shrugs.

“It is when you’re in the slave pen, and you saw what happened to the last three girls they took.” Silence falls over the little group, exceedingly uncomfortable. Tirindë breaks it.

“Did they do the same to you?” she asks gently. Nimidh finally turns around. Her face is as empty as if it were carved of marble in one of Nerdanel’s workshops, Tirindë thinks.

“Probably with my corpse,” she says bleakly, and they ride on in silence until the gates of Tirion come into view.

The grim sorrow has been banished. There are too many beautiful things in Tirion, too many delights to feast the eye upon; even Nimidh cheers up at the sight of the tiled streets and fountains, sea blue and jade green and cream and white. The banners hanging in the Fëanorian district where Tirindë still lives, crimson and gold with the eight-pointed star embroidered in the centre. “Caranthir’s star,” Ishilde says quietly, staring up at it.

“Fëanor’s star,” Tirindë corrects. “The firstborn son of the first High King of the Ñoldor, Finwë.” Haleth jerks in the saddle; the reins nearly fly out of her grip.

“His lordship’s a prince?” she demands. Tirindë shrugs.

“He was once,” she explains. “The kingship passed from Finwë to Fëanor to Maedhros, but he gave up his crown to his grandfather’s second son, Fingolfin. And from there it passed to Finwë’s third son, Finarfin – although there are those who wish for Fëanor to have his crown returned to him,” she adds. “But it was conditional on his release from Mandos that he seek neither power nor dominion, and challenge not the peaceful reign of his brother.” But Haleth just looks relieved.

“He was unbearable as a lord, as a prince I might actually have to kick him off a cliff,” she says, dismounting neatly. The reins of the four horses Tirindë gives to the two nearby stable hands who serve the stable on the next road over; the eight-pointed star on the animals’ tack and reins will ensure the lads see the horses safely back to their home. Tirindë expects Caranthir to come flying up the road at any moment, horse lathered to a frenzy and its rider in a similar state, but no such vision of rage and frustration descends. Tirindë ushers the three mortals into her house, aware of the prying eyes of her neighbours, who never have never quite approved of her, devout Fëanorians that they are. Many would have welcomed Caranthir into their homes in a heartbeat, so the occasional times he turns up to shout at Tirindë’s locked door are viewed as just further examples of her extreme failure as a Fëanorian bride.

“Come in,” she says, and escorts the mortals through the ground floor of her home into the kitchen at the rear of the house. Her housekeeper has been by earlier – there is a loaf of bread on the rough-hewn wooden table, resting safely under an arched net to protect it from insects and vermin. Tirindë puts water to heat in a pot over the hearth, and shortly her new acquaintances are tearing into the loaf of bread by the handful, not even butter to liven the plain fare, and gulping down mugs of tea and clear cool water from the well. “Is it just me, or does food taste better here?” Nimidh wonders, her earlier distress tucked away carefully from view.

“The air is cleaner and more fragrant,” Ishilde agrees, brushing crumbs from the front of her thin, ragged robe. She scowls down at it. This, Tirindë can help with. She rises and her three mortals follow behind her, past the lounging room; Haleth slows to a stop as they pass it.

“Caranthir used to keep a room like this in Thargelion,” Haleth offers, staring at the furniture. “Almost identical, it was.” Tirindë feels a stab of irritation. Her husband is not the kind of nér to indulge in sentiment. No doubt any similarities of his new home to their old were entirely coincidental.

Tirindë contents herself with, “This is my home, not Caranthir’s,” although her reply is tinged with just a touch of asperity. She leads the mortals down the stairs towards the bathing chambers on the first level below ground. But she looks at her home through fresh eyes as she does. There is little she has changed since Caranthir departed their home, she has to concede. Where tapestries have worn away or furniture broken, Tirindë has merely replaced them with similar objects, almost as though she has been expecting subconsciously for Caranthir to come home, all of this time.

To hell with that, she decides. She’ll paint the kitchen orange if she wants to. How he would loathe that!

The tub in the subterranean bathhouse is big enough to sit ten, water steaming into the air, just the faintest touch of sulfur present in the steam. It is fed from below far below ground, with plumbing in some places in Tirion to guide the hot water to where it needs to go – or more commonly, like Tirindë’s home, allowed to bubble up in vast stone bowls cut into the rock. As she takes in the sight, Ishilde whistles quietly.

“He said there were sights in Valinor as pleasing to the eye as could be dreamed of,” she says, dipping a hand in the pool sunken into the floor. Haleth grates out a laugh.

“I think he meant the birds and the trees and the pretty buildings, shield-sister,” she replies, already shedding her robe and stepping into the bath. Nimidh is only half a step behind her – white-limbed, slender in places and round in others, her body marked all over by healed flay marks. But she sinks up to her neck in the water with a sigh of pleasure as Ishilde joins them, her body older and marked at the belly from childbirth, arms still strong with muscle. Haleth had been under the water too quickly for Tirindë to gain her measure, but the mortal woman looks a little younger than Ishilde to Tirindë’s inexperienced eye.

“You feed us, you bathe us.” Haleth’s voice tears Tirindë from her musings, perched as she is on the lower stair of the winding steps that lead up to the main part of the house. “Do you intend to collect upon our debt, Lady Tirindë? Or do you yet plot some vengeance for our physical congress with your husband, exact revenge for his betrayal on those he betrayed you with –” Tirindë holds up a hand. Haleth falls silent, although she doesn’t look entirely happy about it.

“I abjured my husband long before he set foot on the shores of your homeland,” Tirindë states. “He betrayed me first, in his dogged refusal to consider any path but the one that led to wrath and ruin. My father and brothers went with him, and never once did he honour the vow he made to me on the occasion of our wedding, that my kin would become his, that he would protect them with his life. A few shiny gems were more important to him than that. I have the space, that is all,” she says, with a little helpless shrug. “And little else better to do with my time. There is only so many books to read or embroideries to poke at. I still have my pride, and my honour, however poorly Caranthir has kept his. You are of his House, regardless of yours or my feelings upon it. And so I am honour-bound to aid you.”

“Could have used you in Middle-earth instead of your daft husband,” Haleth mutters as she begins to scrub at her stubborn tangles of hair. Ishilde tuts and begins to help her. Nimidh’s hair is too short to need detangling, the bare fuzz on her scalp giving her shaved head an odd look of vulnerability. Tirindë shifts on her stone perch, wanting sleep desperately. Or failing that, wine.

“I meant to come,” she offers up. “All the males of my family left. I was the eldest daughter; it was my opportunity to see my family cared for in their absence. And the boats were meant to return –” That distant blaze across the sea! In the velvet darkness of that endless night. It had heralded doom for Tirindë, as much as it had signified life.

They speak for some times of trivial things. When she sees the mortals begin to droop tiredly in the water, Tirindë goes up to fetch a handful of spare linen shifts from the days when her sisters still used to come and stay for a month of two, before they both married. When Haleth and Ishilde and Nimidh are all dry and dressed – the sun now dipping towards the horizon, staining the sky with orange and pink – she escorts them to the spare bedroom.

Tirindë doesn’t need to tell them twice. They all climb onto the bed at once; Haleth already has her eyes closed when Tirindë leaves the room, pulling the door most of the way shut behind her. Nimidh is not far behind her, yawning and curling up on her side, although Ishilde is staring intently at the moulding of the ceiling, at the pattern of leaves and vines and flowers as though committing it to memory. It is sweet, Tirindë thinks, that the two older women have Nimidh tucked in between them, as though to protect her. In her kitchen once more, she pours herself a glass of wine and takes a small tray of fruit into the lounging room, and settles in to wait for her husband.

The lamps have long been lit when Caranthir finally arrives. Tirindë had not locked her door this time, and her husband does not bother knocking at it. He merely opens the door, his feet heavy on the soft carpet of the hall, and then comes through the doorway, his long black hair in disarray, a line between his eyes and his shoulders bunched up as though awaiting a blow.

“I take it you didn’t have them thrown into the gorge.” Tirindë seethes at his words. He stands there, in dusty riding leathers splattered with mud, as odd-looking for an elf as he has always been, and insults her.

“I am not the one who has needed constant reminding of what courtesy is for the last six thousand years,” she replies sharply. Caranthir puffs up like an irate rooster, and once this would have been the beginning of a nasty fight, but the anger goes out of him like a punctured water bladder. Tirindë stares. He didn’t learn that in Valinor.

“I am trying to thank you, ‘Rindë.” With his arms crossed, his narrow, pointed face and his moon-glow eyes, Caranthir looks very like Tirindë’s husband of old. She pushes this knowledge away and locks it deep inside herself. She cannot weaken now.

“You’re not doing a very good job of it,” she retorts. Of all things Caranthir smiles, thin and needle sharp, but real.

“I have never managed to remain eloquent around you, my lady,” he says, voice rumbling pleasantly. It has lost none of its old effect of turning Tirindë’s knees to butter, even though the last time Caranthir had spoke thus to her, it had oozed with mocking amusement, as though the act of seducing her was a wonderful trick. Cruel, he’d been, and very beautiful, even though Tirindë was aware that Caranthir was considered the plainest of Fëanor’s sons. That was one of the reasons her father could afford him for her, Tirindë knows. Plain, and no great craftsman; an acceptable sacrifice to bring the part-Vanyar daughter of a wealthy merchant into the fold.

“Spare me the false flattery,” she says, sharper than she’d intended. “Your mortals do not wish to be here. They desire to be with their mortal kin. They slumber now, but if you are still here on the morrow, I doubt very much they will have anything polite to say to you.” Caranthir grimaces.

“I do not blame them,” he says, and to Tirindë’s surprise, sits next to her on the divan instead of his old chair – why oh why hadn’t she thrown it out, Tirindë agonises – and leans his head back against the wall with a low sigh. “They shared some traits, but none more than a ferocious independence – much like you, my lady.” Tirindë stares at him.

“You must be thinking of another nís,” she replies tartly. “Nothing about me has ever been considered ferocious –” a small smile passes over Caranthir’s lips, weary, fond – “And I can hardly be considered independent from you.” Caranthir arches an eyebrow. He has closed his eyes as if in tiredness.

“Do you truly think so?” he asks, but does not allow her space to answer. “My dear. ‘Rindë. You have lived without me for so long. You have maintained your dignity, and your elegance, and your kindness. Truly, although it burns my pride to say it, you never needed me at all, or the shield of my father’s name to allow you to live on your own terms. You would have stuck to your course as keenly as you have if you had never met me at all.”

Tirindë is on her feet before she knows it. “You –” Her voice is shaking with rage; Caranthir opens his lovely eyes, the furrow between them deepening. “What choice did you give me? You left me, and you burned the boats that would have reunited us – I know what you did,” she snaps, voice low, almost a snarl; Caranthir flinches. “Kinslayer how many times over? Tell me, was it your torch that burned your brother alive, on the orders of your father, gone mad with spite and rage?”

Caranthir has turned the mottled red which means he is truly enraged. But he remains seated, his lovely hands working in and out of fists on his knees, although his glare is enough to peel paint. “Mistakes were made,” he bites out, nearly shaking with fury. “Many of them, and by none so much as me. But it is cruel of you to bring Haleth and Ishilde and Nimidh here, and use them to wound me. I know you care not for what I feel! I know you think I feel nothing at all. But Haleth and Ishilde and Nimidh are innocent in all of this.” He stops, breathing heavily; Tirindë stares down at him. He knows her so little, she finds herself thinking, to think she would harm the mortals to harm him. Slowly, she sits back down; Caranthir watches her like he would a loaded crossbow, aimed at his heart and poised to strike.

“One accidental wife is one thing. Two is another. But three –” Tirindë shakes her head. “You should have told them the consequences of bedding with you.” Caranthir looks away. His flush of rage is slowly fading into a blush of a different kind, his ears scarlet from tip to lobe.

“I did not know, with Haleth,” he says lowly. “Our fëa were so different, like oil sliding on water. But ai! The sight of her, head to toe with black blood and scarlet too, having held off an orc battalion for a full week…” Caranthir looks almost dreamy. Tirindë sighs, and hands him her wineglass; he takes a distracted sip, still floating in the waters of memory. “Incandescent with battle fever, and as prideful as Father at his haughtiest. How could I not desire her, when she was like nothing I had ever known before –” Caranthir seems to realise abruptly that he is extolling the virtues of his mortal wife to his rejected Eldar one; he flushes again. “Forgive me,” he says, voice controlled again. The furrow between his brows has returned. “I forget myself.”

Tirindë had not minded. She had been enchanted. “You do,” she says. “But I did not mind it. It is the first evidence in six thousand years that you still possess a heart.” Caranthir gives her a crooked, lop-sided little smile at that. Some of the spiky carapace he had once worn around himself like armour has been chiselled away. Tirindë had known since the night of her wedding that much lay beneath Caranthir’s sharp tongue and quick temper; a wry, dark sense of humour, a surprising gentleness with beasts and the very young, a certain nobility of spirit that he kept deeply hidden. Tirindë does not doubt he could still work up a fine head of steam should he be provoked, but whether it was death or Middle-earth or the Halls of Mandos that has given him some ease of spirit he did not possess in Valinor of yore, she cannot say.

“You know of my heart, my lady,” Caranthir says now, softly. “You were the first to know the truth of it.” Tirindë stands. She goes to the kitchen, brings another glass and the bottle; Caranthir had not stirred to follow her, as though he knew precisely what she intended and that she would return to him. Such arrogance, Tirindë thinks, and cannot muster up any anger towards it.

“But not the last,” she says, when she has furnished her husband with a glass of his own. “Haleth you have spoken of, and Ishilde too; loneliness, despair. But Nimidh?” She aims a sharp glance of her own at Caranthir. “She is so very young, Morinya.” Caranthir’s head, which had been tilted down examining the facets of the cut-glass goblet in his hand, flies upwards. Tirindë could bite her tongue for her mistake, but it matters not now, that she had slipped and called Caranthir by the old endearment, his shortened father-name with the possessive suffix attached. “Old habit,” she snaps, but Caranthir’s bright eyes have softened.

“Ah, my watchful wife,” he says warmly. He is closer to Tirindë now than he has been in so very long, for all they are sitting at their respective ends of the divan, a gap of over a foot between them. “Lossi.” Tirindë flinches.

“Don’t,” she says softly. Caranthir tilts his head.

“Why not?” he asks, setting his wineglass aside. His empty hands, folded loosely in his lap, seem a greater danger than any Tirindë has known in millennia. He could reach out. He could try to touch her, and she fears she does not have the strength to deny him.

“You have four wives,” she reminds him. “I am surprised Eönwë has not already arrived on my doorstep to summon them to Máhanaxar, given the trouble your grandfather’s comparatively meagre two has caused both Valar and Ñoldor.” Caranthir’s face goes into the familiar sneer at this. “Although perhaps not,” Tirindë says thoughtfully, and the sneer melts away. “After all. The Valar took offense at Finwë wedding two living níssi. Mortal women are not níssi. There is no precedent for this.” There is a terrible hope growing in Caranthir’s face. “Surely you don’t want to keep them here?” Tirindë asks him, aghast at the thought. “Against their will! They wish to return to their kin, to the rightful place of the Edain after death, wherever it may be.” Caranthir folds his arms over his chest, a stubborn set to his chin that Tirindë knows very well.

“They have not spent a full day in Aman,” he snaps. “I intend to show them what they will miss should they leave.” He rises to his feet. “I will return at two hours past dawn, my lady,” he says, and Tirindë realises that the flicker of the old warmth between them has gone as surely as if it never was at all.

Tirindë wakes the mortals only a few minutes after Anar rises over the horizon. “Our husband will be here by the second hour,” she informs them, when she had herded the three mortals down to the kitchen for breakfast, still in their shifts and rubbing their bleary eyes. “He wishes to take you to all the great sights of Tirion, in an attempt to convince you to stay.” She eyes the shifts wearily. “I regret that the differences between our statures is such that I have no clothes that would fit you,” she says, as Haleth pours the tea, small scarred hands steady. Tirindë accepts the cup poured for her and sips at it, inhaling the steam gratefully. It is pleasant to allow someone else to do the work, for once. “But cloaks I have aplenty. My family’s business is cloth and the working of it, and I would be honoured to take you there to source appropriate attire for you.” Nimidh’s eyes light up at the words.

“We cannot pay you for any of this,” Haleth says abruptly. Ishilde nods beside her, jaw set, as though the notion of owing a debt is deeply disturbing to her.

“There can be no debt between family,” Tirindë says firmly. “And that is what we are, at least until the situation with Caranthir is settled. If it is your wish, you may sew the clothes yourself. But allow me some small chance to atone for the wrong done to you by my husband’s actions, unintended as they may be.”

It takes some more persuading, but not much. With Nimidh wrapped in a blue cloak, Ishilde in purple and Haleth swathed in forest green, Tirindë walks with them the short distance to the combined warehouse and store now run by her sister Seríssë and her husband Quilinquon, both of whom have received their epessë from their work. Seríssë is already up and in her studio when Tirindë pokes her head in; she throws down the silvery thing she had been embroidering at once with a cry of delight.

“Elder sister!” Seríssë comes and embraces her; Tirindë clings on perhaps a little harder than she usually would, and Seríssë’s light eyebrows fly up.

“I have come to beg a favour of you, onórë,” Tirindë says humbly as her sister draws back from their embrace, brow knitted with worry.

“Anything for you,” Seríssë declares. “But you look frightful! Pale, and so cold –” Her warm hand touches Tirindë’s cheek, and her sister’s expression of concern deepens into true worry.

“I am well enough,” Tirindë says, shaking her little sister’s hand away despite the rush of warm contentment at even such a small and simple touch. “Come into the main workroom. I have models for you to dress.”

In the workroom where Tirindë had left them, Haleth and Ishilde and Nimidh are looking around them in wonder. Even Haleth, the sternest and most controlled of the three, cannot contain her fascination as she rubs a thumb over a bolt of shining golden velvet. Nimidh, who Tirindë strongly suspects has the makings of a seamstress in her, is peering at one of the vast looms as though trying to figure out how it works, while practical Ishilde has already found a measuring tape on one of the worktables and is measuring Haleth’s shoulder-width and scribbling down numbers on a scrap of parchment.

“Noble ladies.” The three mortals look up, although Haleth still frowns at the title. “May I present my sister Seríssë of the Houses Alta and Lindalë, the mistress of Altalannë. Dear sister, I have the honour of knowing the ladies Haleth, Ishilde and Nimidh of the Houses of the Edain.” Seríssë arches an eyebrow at the formal language. “Through no fault of their own the ladies find themselves stranded in our country. Why not come to the greatest dressmaker in Tirion to find them appropriate garments?” Now Seríssë’s eyes are dancing with amusement.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Lossi,” she says, and goes over to the mortals. “Hail and well met!” They startle slightly, evidently not expecting a nís of Aman to know the correct greeting of the Edain. But Seríssë has been mistress of their father’s workshop for nigh on six thousand years. She has had ample time to meet the many Returned and listen to their tales. “I see you know your way around a measuring tape, good lady,” she says to Ishilde, picking up one of her own and urging Nimidh to come closer.

“This will go more easily if you just call us by our names,” Haleth says gruffly as Ishilde does her inseam. Seríssë nods, her focus already on her work.

“Very well. You should just call me Seríssë then, or broideress if you’re feeling formal. Lossi, go get the sample books. I’m not letting these women go until they have all have a wardrobe fit for a Fëanorian.” Tirindë casts her sister a woeful look.

“Does the whole city know?” she asks when she comes back with the heavy sample books stacked in her arms. Seríssë has already finished measuring Nimidh and has sent the young mortal into the stacks of cloth to look at the options; she is now onto Ishilde.

“Scandal takes very little effort to spread, as you well know, sister mine,” Seríssë says. “Not one but three! Morifinwë was busy indeed in his efforts in the East. Haleth, what colours do you like?” She is writing feverishly into the little book she wears on a string around her neck. Of all her parents’ children, Tirindë thinks, Seríssë has been blessed the most by the hand of Miriel Serindë, the first broideress of the Ñoldor. Miriel dwells yet in the halls of Vaire, but her gift runs strong in the blood of the Ñoldor, even amongst those she is not directly kin to. Tirindë has some small amount of it, but not the love or passion her sister bears for the craft.

Haleth has been considering colours while Tirindë wool-gathers. “I know not,” she says at last. “We had little variety amongst my people. Undyed linen, or rough spun wool from our brown sheep. Black, sometimes, from a dye we made from ebony leaves. Dull reds and yellows from lichens.” Seríssë is nodding, casting her appraising eye over Haleth from crown to toes.

“Your complexion wants rich colours,” she says at length. “You are swarthy, with olive undertones, and brown of hair. Dark reds and jewel tones of green and blue. And your shape… you are what we call a pear. I know exactly how to dress you. Quil!” she shouts, and in quick order a slim short nér comes into view. Tirindë hides a smile. Quilinquon only comes up to his wife’s shoulder – the Vanyar blood runs strong in Seríssë, less so in Tirindë herself – but he is one of the best-humoured amongst the Eldar that Tirindë has ever known.

“My lady,” he says, voice warm, and then, catching sight of Tirindë, “Verressë!” Tirindë smiles and accepts the brief hug, before Quil goes to his wife’s side. “You have found three new friends to stab with pins, my dear,” he says with deep affection. Seríssë, draping bright blues and greens against Haleth, slaps at him fondly.

“Fetch me the bronze and copper blends we got in from Tol Eressea last month,” she directs. “And the black brocade.” She looks over at Tirindë, the slightly mad light of creation in her eyes. “Full court wardrobe, I assume?” Haleth stiffens in indignance.

“You will be summoned before the High King, no doubt,” Tirindë tells her gravely. “And if you want to petition the Valar to be allowed to go to the realms where your kin abide, you will have to go to Máhanaxar, where they dwell. I am afraid they are not in the business of coming to Tirion,” she adds with grim good humour.

“So this is necessary,” Haleth sums up as Quil returns burdened with armfuls of gleaming metallic cloth. Her eyes widen. “Even that?” There is a pleading note in her voice. Tirindë understands suddenly, as though the thought is not her own, that being fussed over by seamstresses is more unpleasant to Haleth than facing down an orc battalion. It wasn’t her thought, Tirindë realises. Which means –

She reaches out with the voice of her mind instead of her lips. Haleth? Can you hear me?

Haleth jerks. Seríssë, who had been pinning the rough draft of a dress to the mortal’s frame, sticks her with a pin. Tirindë feels the faint echo of the tiny sting in her own leg.

“Who said that?” Ishilde says from across the room, where she is looking at examples of formal robes in one of the sample book; next to her, Nimidh claps a hand to her leg, the exact same place that Tirindë had felt the phantom touch of the pin. And fainter even, since he must be some distance away:

Yes, I can hear you.

Caranthir. Tirindë shoves her mental walls back into place, but it is far too late.

They break for lunch, if only because Seríssë needs to soak her fingertips in ice water. Tirindë tosses a lump of cheese at her sister, who catches it neatly between her teeth and continues dictating ideas to her husband, who is dutifully recording her words beside her.

It is not very appropriate. No one is standing on ceremony, least of all Tirindë, feeding her sister by hand on the floor of the workroom, a scattered whirlwind of cloth and fabric scraps all around them. But neither are Caranthir’s mortals – Tirindë is horrified to realise she is already starting to think of them as her mortals. They too are on the floor; Haleth is eating like it might be snatched away from her at any moment, Nimidh is intermittently gnawing on a heel of bread and stitching tiny, scattered flowers in silver thread over Haleth’s new jewel-toned robes, the mass of cloth in her lap. Ishilde is frowning at her cup.

“Are you saying he can hear us thinking?” she asks. Tirindë tilts her head and offers her sister a grape, which she accepts.

“I don’t think so,” she replies. “We have to open our minds to communicate through the fëa-bond. Your minds are open, because you have not been taught to protect your thoughts. I am actively blocking Caranthir, because I am still very angry with him. I must have let down my guard for a moment. I will try not to let it happen again.”

“What she’s not telling you,” Seríssë says, shaking ice water from her fingertips and wiping them heedlessly on her skirts, “is that it is very unpleasant to block a fëa-bond. I’m surprised you don’t have a constant headache,” she adds, giving Tirindë a hard look. She offers up a sheepish smile in exchange.

“Only near-constant, sister,” she demurs. Seríssë just shakes her head, but Tirindë turns back to Ishilde. “The bond each of you have with Caranthir is weaker than the one I have with him, simply because mortals bond differently to the Eldar. Mine likely magnifies yours. And you three are connected with me, because we all share Caranthir as a bond-mate.” Haleth has stopped eating and is gazing at her with horror.

“That no-good pointy-eared moron,” she says, in a tone that could almost be considered fond. “He just fucks up everything he touches, doesn’t he?” Seríssë snorts; Haleth refocusses on her sharply. “I take it you don’t like your brother by law, broideress.”

“It was a source of much joy to our parents, that our little Lossi was betrothed to a son of the House of Fëanor,” Seríssë says, now picking up her mug of tea and tossing it back despite the lukewarm temperature it must have reached by now. Tirindë makes a face at her, and receives one back. “Never mind that they treated her like she was lower than them.” This is an old grievance, one that Tirindë herself has learned not to dwell on. But the grudges of sisters on one another’s behalf are much keener than the grudges that one’s own self bears. “The great Fëanor, having a nís with Vanyar blood for a daughter by law! Never mind that we’re far more Ñoldor than we are Vanyar, my hair colour aside.” She tosses that golden mane in indignance as if to accentuate her point. “Never mind that my sister had more sweetness and kindness in her little finger than the whole wretched bunch of them. Caranthir looked down on us from the first – but worst, he looked down on Lossiel.” Tirindë shrugs.

“He did like me, in his way,” she offers. “He was an awkward stripling when we first met, both of us on the cusp of becoming adults. Mostly he wanted to please his father.”

“What about you?” Nimidh asks softly. All three mortals are hanging on her words, for all Haleth and Ishilde claim they feel only fury for their Eldar husband. “Did you love him?”

Tirindë smiles, but she knows it is full of sorrow. “Oh, the first moment I saw him nearly lose his temper at the midsummer ball,” she says. “Red-faced and fuming, trying to pretend he wasn’t even as we danced and he stepped on my feet.” He’d been so tall, hunched awkwardly down to hold her hands in his. Tirindë had had one last growth spurt at the end of the summer, bringing her to a respectable Vanyar five foot eleven, but Caranthir had always towered over her. She looks over at the mortals, allowing mischief to take her over. “You must have had to stand on a box to kiss him,” she says to Haleth and Nimidh, who are both only a handful of inches over five feet themselves. Seríssë laughs softly to herself as she urges Ishilde up on her feet to begin pinning her into a set of raspberry-coloured robes with gold trim.

“Chairs are useful,” Nimidh says offhandedly. “In his study at Amon Ereb –” Seríssë snorts again, and Nimidh seems to remember herself. “Oh,” she says, flushing. “It’s probably not appropriate to talk about such things amongst company.”

“Young lady, we are Quendi – the speaking people,” Quil says frankly. He is doing the hems of a dress Nimidh had liked the look of, one of many mostly pieced together in the storerooms merely waiting for the finishing touches. Dove grey with a girdle of peacock blue and silver embroidery around the neckline and sleeves, it will suit her very well, with her pale skin and dark green eyes. “You will find it very difficult to offend us.” Ishilde laughs.

“A challenge!” she declares, pink-cheeked – her skin blushes easily, much like Caranthir’s. her hair is nearly as black as his, but veined through with silver threads. This is the longest Tirindë has had to look at these mortals, to scan them for traces of understanding why these three caught her husband’s eye. Haleth’s strength and tenacity she sees, and Nimidh’s sweetness and fragility she understands well enough, but Ishilde?

Her smile, Tirindë decides as Seríssë makes a biting comment about Caranthir’s nose and Ishilde tilts her head back to laugh. Her sense of humour. Caranthir would have been drawn to it like a moth to a lamp, when so much of his own laughter had been eroded away.

She thinks, Morinya, even after all these years, you break my heart.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t tried here yet,” Seríssë says an hour before sundown. It may be spring but the days are still short, the equinox not due for a month or more yet.

“I don’t think he actually ever knew where Father’s shop was,” Tirindë says. They are almost finished. The mortals are in one of the fitting rooms putting on their fine new clothes, although just the day dresses for now; Quil has already left with the horse and cart to deliver several large parcels and chests to Tirindë’s home in the Fëanorian district. “A marathon effort, sister mine.” Seríssë smiles.

“You helped,” she reminds her. Tirindë’s own fingertips are burning. She has not done this much stitching in one day for many years.

“there is still more work to be done. Half the robes aren’t finished yet, but I had Quil take them anyway. I’ll come to you morrow after next to work on them. A fine excuse to visit my sister.” Tirindë arches a brow knowingly.

“And to dress in Alta colours and walk as showily through the Fëanorian district as possible?” she asks her sister. The colours of the House of their birth are silver-grey and amethyst, as different from Fëanorian red and gold as can be asked for. Lindalë, Seríssë’s House by marriage, is subtler, leaf-green and ivory.

“You know me too well,” Seríssë says lightly. Anything else she was going to say dies as the fitting room door swings open and Nimidh steps out.

“Ai, Nimidh,” Tirindë breathes. The day dress is meant to be relatively plain and unremarkable, but nothing that Seríssë sets her hand to lacks her passion and gift for her craft. The amethyst cloth is a shade or two lighter than their own Alta colours, but the silk falls in exquisite draped layers, exposing Nimidh’s sharp collarbones, her thin wrists. She should look strange and ugly to Eldar eyes with her head of tawny fluff, but instead it gives the young mortal an air of grave dignity far greater than her years.

Next comes Haleth. The sapphire blue emphasises her dark eyes and brings out rich tones of brown in her hair, cinched at the waist and falling in a rustle of satin to flare at the bottom. The dress is completely sleeveless – Haleth likes to keep her arms bare, she’d said – and the strong biceps and forearms should look odd and unfeminine, except for the twine of silver-blue ribbons at her wrists, the loops neatly secured; Haleth could easily secure a blade there. there are slashes in the sides for easy movement. And then Ishilde, lavender silk blouse and a pair of trousers with legs so wide they look like skirts to the untrained eye. High neckline and buttoned sleeves, and her black hair scraped back into a hasty braid; as sober and proud as any King of Men.

“Fine feathers,” Haleth says gruffly. Nimidh swishes her skirts happily.

“I’ve never worn anything as pretty as this in my life,” she says. Ishilde says nothing, but she keeps sneaking glances at herself in the tall mirror that runs along one wall of the workshop, like she cannot look away.

Tirindë has tears pricking at her eyes; to her surprise, so has her sister. “Getting sentimental in your old age!” Tirindë tells her, flapping a handkerchief in Seríssë’s direction; her sister mops at her eyes.

“I have no daughters of my own,” Seríssë tells the mortals as she dabs at her cheeks. “Forgive my foolishness. Only I have longed for a day like this, to dress up beautiful girls – you are all girls to ones as old as us,” she adds when Haleth opens her mouth; she has gained Haleth’s measure well enough throughout the long day of needlework and fittings.

“We cannot repay you,” Ishilde says softly. “For giving us dignity, in this strange place, where we are looked at as half-savage – not by you, Tirindë,” she says. “But that is how Caranthir’s kin looked upon us, even his mother. We may hold our heads up now, knowing we wear the works of one of Valinor’s greatest craftswomen.” Seríssë flaps a hand at her, clearly pleased.

“Enough, before I lose my composure once more! Go home and rest, and make sure Lossi does as well.”

They cut a fine trio walking through the merchant district, three mortals in the very latest Eldar fashion and glimmering with silver and gold embroidery. Tirindë feels almost plain in comparison, even though her green silk day dress is respectable enough indeed. As they cross the bridge into the Fëanorian district, red and gold banners replacing the multi-coloured ones of merchants and craftsfolk alike, a dark-haired Ñoldor youth actually stops in his tracks.

“Good evening, ladies,” he says. Tirindë is fairly sure she saw him scowling at the four of them this morning, but she is not inclined to be cruel.

She had locked the door to her home this morning. Thus the individual standing under the eaves has had to wait, probably quite a long time. The tall Noldo turns – Tirindë had already known his identity from the sudden throb of the fëa-bond in her chest – and stares openly. Tirindë can’t help but preen as she breezes past her husband to unlock her door.

“I believe I have dressed your wives far better than you ever did,” she murmurs, just soft enough that the cruelty of the words is magnified by the gentleness of her tone.

The mortals have paused in the street. Nimidh is the first to step forward, her smile genuine, even if the tremor of her thin pale hands is giving away her nerves. “Caranthir.” She rises on the very tips of her toes to kiss him lightly on the cheek; he has to hunch down for her to reach. Nimidh’s smile changes, becomes something pleased and secretive; she hums as she passes by Tirindë to enter the house.

Haleth folds her arms over her chest. “What have you got to say for yourself?” she demands. Unfortunately Caranthir’s ability for higher thought appears to have been knocked out of commission by the appearance of three lovely women whom he is technically married to, because the words fall out him like they have no thought behind them whatsoever:

“You look beautiful.”

Haleth blushes. Her cheeks stain a deep dark red. She stalks past Caranthir as though he had said the foulest of insults to her instead of an awed compliment. That leaves Ishilde, whose trousers rustle in the faint wind, the sunset touching her crown of inky hair and turning the silver strands gold. When she speaks at last, it is with accusation.

“I want to see my children.” Caranthir flinches. He is so open with these mortals, Tirindë marvels. He was never like that with her. But then, he chose his mortal lovers. He did not choose Tirindë, not freely.

“I did not plan this, my lady.” Hesitantly Caranthir comes forward, holding out his hand to Ishilde. “But I will try to fix it. It is only…” His eyes rove over her greedily, taking in her strong tall form, the swell of her breasts beneath the cloth. “You are as fair as the moment the sunrise touches the Sea.”

Ishilde does not smile. She does not blush. And she does not take Caranthir’s hand. “You say this to me in front of your wife,” she says softly, as deadly as a knife in the dark. “Your true wife, who you have dishonoured not only by your own actions but by mine. I would not have bedded with you if I knew you had a wife still living.”

“I did not,” Caranthir says, clearly stung. “She denied me. She renounced me, and she renounces me even now. Do you not, Tirindë?” The epessë stings. He must have loved her once.

“Woe to me that we cannot be uncoupled from one another,” Tirindë says bitterly. “When you have had three wives whom you love, what need can you have of the one you never wanted and never loved?” Caranthir’s eyebrows fly up into that familiar once-beloved V over his long patrician Finwëan nose, but Tirindë is years past allowing herself to care. “But what Eru has seen united cannot be sundered by anyone less. And so I have remained, alone, without spouse or child while you at least had the obliteration of the Void to soothe your wounded pride. Too much a Fëanorion for my own kin and not Fëanorion enough to yours! You took everything when you went. I have remained Tirindë, if only because Lossiel loved you, Moryo, and Lossiel is long gone.”

Then she flees up the stairs to her bedroom to weep.

Long after the sound of Caranthir stomping away is gone, there is a soft tap at Tirindë’s door. She sits up from her bed, wipes her red eyes, and calls, “It’s all right.” The door swings open to reveal Nimidh, with a lamp in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Haleth is behind her bearing a tray with buttered bread and broth, and Ishilde brings up the rear, holding nothing but bringing with her much all the same.

“Ai,” Tirindë mutters. “It must be late. Forgive me. I am truly an appalling host.” Haleth looks grim in the flickering lamplight, except Tirindë had seen her blush red as a berry, her sternness falling away like armour to be abandoned after the battle is done. She sets the tray down on the small table beside Tirindë’s bed and sits down in the chair nearby it.

“You have had much to endure,” she says. Nimidh presses the tea into Tirindë’s hand, sets the lamp down on the floor, and climbs onto the bed beside Tirindë without so much as a by your leave. It is difficult to believe she has only known them a day and a half. It is as though she has known them for years.

“Why does your sister call you Lossiel?” Nimidh asks.

“It was the name my mother gave me, when she birthed me,” Tirindë explains. “My epessë, Tirindë, was given to me by Caranthir. Only my kin still call me Lossiel – or Lossi, when Seríssë is being impatient,” she adds.

“You must still love him, if you wear the name he gave you,” Ishilde says. She is still standing. The flicker of the lamp throws shadows into her face.

“It was simpler,” Tirindë protests, but Ishilde’s expression gives her nowhere to hide. “And I did still love him,” she admits. “For many years. But he has no desire to take me to wife again, and I will not be pitied by a kin-slaying prideful son of Fëanor the Mad.”

“Your pride is not insubstantial itself, Tirindë,” Haleth says. Tirindë offers up a tired smile.

“No one is perfect.” She finishes the mug of tea and rests it in the valley of her crossed legs. “You must be weary. Tomorrow no doubt you will wish to see the High King, to seek his counsel in petitioning the Valar. I should not keep you.”

The three mortals trade glances. Then very carefully Ishilde comes to sit beside Nimidh on the bed, and something unfolds between the four of them, as delicate as a flower, as strong as mithrilled steel.

We have decided to stay with you for a while, Ishilde decrees, in words without words, and Tirindë should argue with them, she knows, only she is so very grateful not to be alone.

Chapter Text

Tirindë sleeps until well after dawn, and wakes to an empty bed. She is certain at least two of the mortals dozed off here around midnight, but whether they decamped to the spare room before or after sunrise, she cannot say. She stretches, still in yesterday’s fine linen chemise; it had bunched around her hips and knees while she slept, but the crinkles shake out of the cloth easily enough. She finds a thin silk wrap in her wardrobe and puts it over the linen, heading down the stairs. The bedroom she once shared with Caranthir takes much of the upper level, with the rest a storeroom no doubt meant as a dressing room. But for all Tirindë is a cloth merchant’s daughter, a broideress’s sister and something of a seamstress herself, she does not have too much in the way of clothes. She had more in the days of yore when the Trees still stood, but she was a prince’s wife then.

The small sitting room on the middle floor has been taken over by a vast array of cloth and clothing, with more still being unearthed from the boxes and chests Seríssë had sent Quil over with yesterday. Tirindë pauses in the doorway and watches Nimidh and Haleth methodically sorting through piles; Nimidh looks up at the sound of Tirindë’s foot on the squeaky plank in the hall.

“Your sister has very little sense of the small or insignificant,” she says. Tirindë leans against the doorframe and offers a weary smile.

“When it comes to needle and thread, yes,” she agrees. Haleth holds up a filmy soft thing of pale blue, encrusted with pearls at the hem and neckline.

“Which of us does she think this will suit?” she demands. Tirindë enters the room, takes the silky dress in her arms.

“Me, I think,” she says with a frustrated sigh. “No matter how many times I tell her I have enough formal dresses given that I never go to court –”

There’s a sharp whistle from below. Haleth and Nimidh trade glances and get to their feet. “Ishilde said she’d call us when breakfast was ready,” Nimidh says by way of explanation, and hooks her arm through Tirindë’s as Haleth goes on ahead.

“You call that a summons? I heard similar sounds from the barracks as a lass,” she is telling Ishilde as Tirindë lets Nimidh escort her into her own kitchen. Ishilde has been busy. A porridge of oats and dried fruit that Tirindë vaguely recognises from her own panty is bubbling over the hearth, while Haleth is setting the table with Tirindë’s own imperfect chinaware, bowls and mugs. “Can’t imagine his lordship sitting down to breakfast here,” Haleth comments, but her tone makes it clear this is a compliment rather than an insult. Tirindë looks at the worn wooden table, with its dents and scrapes and occasional burn littering the surface.

“We used the dining room then,” she says, and then elaborates, “It used to be the next room down the hall. I tossed the table and chairs out when Caranthir followed his family to Formenos. It had been a wedding gift from one of his brothers.” Haleth laughs grimly to herself.

“We take back our power as we can,” she agrees, and brings forth a jug of cream from the coldbox and a jar of honey from a shelf. Tirindë stares wonderingly at it all.

“Did I have all this in my larder?” she asks. Ishilde snorts.

“You ought to fire your cook. You had some hard tack wrapped in leaves and a knob of butter that had spoiled.” Tirindë reddens.

“The domestic arts have never been greatly favoured in me,” she admits. “I can do enough to keep myself alive, and often go out for the evening meal to one of the districts. We had servants, once. I contend myself now with a housekeeper who comes thrice a week in the mornings. Anything else seems excessive, for one nís living alone.”

“Well, there are four of us now,” Nimidh says, and something like surprise must flicker across Tirindë’s face, because the mortal hurries to add: “Although we can find other lodgings, if we must –”

“I would be grateful for the company,” Tirindë says firmly. Nimidh relaxes, and continues pouring tea; Tirindë doesn’t know which cupboard they dug the teapot out of, because it’s much larger than her usual one.  “And the additional tongues to lash our husband with, since he seems intent on coming to call.” Ishilde sighs. With her hands wrapped in towels, she brings the pot of porridge over to the table and sets it down easily.

“He courted me with the same stubbornness,” she says, voice wistful, although Tirindë thinks it is less for Caranthir and more for her past. “It didn’t seem to matter that I was past my prime, nearly forty years, and that I had four children.” Tirindë listens, fascinated, as Ishilde spoons porridge into her bowl with a great ladle. Eagerly she begins to eat, burning her tongue in the process. Strange, how much better food tastes when one does not prepare it oneself and has such lively company to dine with. Strange indeed.

“Which market did you go to?” Tirindë asks. Haleth points vaguely to the north. “Oh, the one on Luinil Way,” she says, and then frowns. “Wherever did you get the coin?” Haleth smirks, and points to Nimidh, who colours a bright pink but thrusts her hand into the pocket of her dress to produce a handful of coins. Tirindë takes one and holds it up to the morning light streaming through the kitchen windows. She cannot hide her surprise. “This is very old,” she says, turning the golden coin over in her hand. “It is stamped with the image of Finwë, our first High King. Coins such as these have not been minted in more than six thousand years.” She hands the heavy disc of metal back to its owner. “There is more to you than meets the eye, Nimidh.” The mortal only flushes deeper.

“Caranthir is a very easy mark, when he is focussed on other things,” she mutters into her tea. Tirindë feels her eyebrows raise.

“Did you – you pick-pocketed Caranthir?” she asks, trying and failing to hide her glee. Haleth and Ishilde are smiling as well, even as a shame-faced Nimidh ducks their gaze. “Where in Arda did you learn that?”

“From Lord Amras, in Amon Ereb,” Nimidh replies softly. Tirindë loses her hold on herself and laughs heartily.

“Oh, you are a delight indeed,” she says to Nimidh, who looks both embarrassed and pleased at the compliment. “And more fool Caranthir, to be carrying around coin from the Noontide! I suppose he had it hidden away somewhere. He was never overly trustful with his treasures.”

“The market vendor was pleased to see it indeed,” Haleth says in amusement. “Unrelatedly, you now own a goat.” Tirindë gives up and puts her head down on the table, shaking with laughter.

“I have had more joy in the past two days than in the previous hundred,” she declares. “But whatever shall we name the goat?”

Ishilde suggests, “How about Caranthir?”

Over the gales of renewed laughter, Tirindë thinks, how sweet it is, to have friends.

Bathed and dressed, Tirindë descends the stairs of her home once more, golden silk whispering about her as it rustles with her steps. She has brushed out her hair and let it flow down her shoulders and back in stark defiance to the usual elaborate braids and adornments of the Ñoldor. In her lounging room, her mortal friends are waiting, dressed finely and neatly. “Are you certain of this?” she asks them. Haleth, resplendent in black trousers and emerald blouse with a fine silver brocade coat, nods.

“Among my people, one’s mother-by-law is regarded to as key to a happy marriage. A discontented mother-by-law causes strife between a man and his wife. Or a woman and her wife,” she adds. Tirindë is saved from having to comment on that interesting tidbit by the arrival of Ishilde and Nimidh, both dressed and ready for to leave.

“I need to find a tanner and an armour-smith,” Ishilde complains as they step out into the bright daylight. “I just don’t feel right without at least a cuirass and a dagger.” Haleth makes a low sound of longing.

“If their clothes are this pretty, imagine the swords,” she says in a tone bordering reverential. Nimidh, on Tirindë’s other side, gasps.

“I used to have this little brace of throwing knives about the length of my finger,” she says, holding said digit up for comparison. “Steel with a different-coloured jewel in each pommel and a leather vambrace to keep them in.”

“What happened to them?” Ishilde asks with interest. Nimidh grimaces.

“I saw an orc picking his teeth with one the week after the battle,” she says, her tone indicating it can only be one battle she means; the one that she was taken prisoner after.

“I don’t wish to ruin your dreams of plate and mail, but armour is forbidden here in Valinor,” Tirindë interjects. “As are all weapons. Even hunters have to petition the Valar to bear a bow or spear.” Striding along at top speed, Haleth is outraged.

“Even Caranthir would have let us keep our weapons, had I consented to be his vassal,” she says. “And he was a proud, arrogant –”

“Hairpins,” Ishilde says.

“What?”

“Hairpins,” Ishilde repeats. “Steel pins with sharp points. They look innocent enough, but one good jab to the carotid artery would get the job done.” Nimidh nods.

“Oh, yes. I knew a man once who had a bad leg. He used to hide a sword in his cane.” Tirindë blinks. This is escalating far out of the realm of her experience and understanding.

“Hah! Very nice,” Haleth says, appreciative. “We’d have to make the blades ourselves, of course. But it can’t be too difficult –”

“I was a smith’s apprentice in my youth,” Ishilde puts in.

“Perhaps we should meet with Nerdanel first,” Tirindë suggests hastily. “She may be able to advise you on suitable craftsfolk to speak with.”

“A fine idea,” Haleth pronounces, and to Tirindë’s relief there is no further talk of swords or concealed weaponry. She points out the occasional attraction to the mortals, but mostly they are content to walk in the spring sunshine until they have passed through the city gates.

There are carts with horses available to hire outside the city, but scarcely has Tirindë begin to approach one of the vendors when she hears her name being called. “Aunt Tirindë! Aunt Tirindë!” She turns, and to her surprise and delight sees her nephew-by-law Telperinquar, Celebrimbor as he prefers to be called now. He looks so much like his forebear Fëanor that it makes Tirindë unsettled for a moment, and long has the last of his childhood left him, the round cheeks and innocent smile. Tyelpë had been on the cusp of adulthood when he has left with his father and uncles for Middle-earth, so that is how Tirindë remembered him, at least until he was reembodied. The tall flinching ner that had emerged from Mandos had seemed a stranger to her.

It is better now. She can find young Tyelpë in Celebrimbor, in the simple braid his black hair is tied in, bereft of the common Ñoldor ornaments, and in the dust on his knees and ink on his sleeves. She lets her nephew by law embrace her warmly. “Aunt, it is so very good to see you,” he assures her. Tirindë, touched, rests her hand on the curve of his cheek, and Celebrimbor, who often dodges such affection these days, allows it.

“And you, my nephew,” Tirindë replies. She looks past him to the waiting cart loaded with parcels and boxes, and the team of horses attached to it. “Wherever are you going, taking half the contents of the market with you?” she teases. Celebrimbor ducks his head, ears flushing pink.

“I am making the monthly delivery to Grandmother’s,” he says. “Between Adar and Grandfather, they have ordered enough glass and steel to build a dozen lighthouses.” Tirindë smiles.

“Well, you know Fëanor’s opinion of running out of materials mid-project,” she replies. Celebrimbor winces; they have both heard Fëanor’s diatribes on being disturbed while working too many times to count. “Ah, here they are. Celebrimbor, nephew, I have made some new acquaintances.” The mortals had been off admiring the horses in a nearby fields, but they had edged over, no doubt curious about the ner talking to Tirindë who look somewhat like Caranthir, even if the resemblance is less marked than Celebrimbor’s to Curufin. “Nimidh, Haleth, Ishilde. This fine young elf –”

“Auntie, I’m not a hundred anymore,” Celebrimbor whines, sounding like nothing so much as an embarrassed adolescent. Tirindë just shakes her head.

“You will always be young to me. Good ladies, this is Celebrimbor son of Curufin, nephew to your esteemed husband Caranthir.” Celebrimbor’s eyes widen but he recovers himself admirably, executing a low bow not out of place in the court of the High King.

“Ladies of the Edain, greetings. I am honoured to make your acquaintance.” Nimidh and Ishilde both look at Haleth, as if deferring to her as the oldest of the three. Haleth looks Celebrimbor up and down as if taking in his neat but well-made clothes, his plainly braided hair, and the towering height he has inherited from Nerdanel and her side of the family.

“Celebrimbor,” Haleth says eventually, without even the pretence at an honorific. “Well, lad. I suppose we’re your other aunties, then.”

Celebrimbor blinks, as if processing these words is very hard on his brain. “I see,” he says, when it becomes obvious to all that Haleth intends no further explanation. “And where do you head on this lovely day, my, ah… aunties?”

“The same direction as you, it seems,” Tirindë replies. “We intend to call upon Nerdanel. Hopefully she is not too deeply ensconced in a project –”

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you,” Celebrimbor says diplomatically; Tirindë smiles at him. “Well, never let it be said that a scion of the House of Fëanor allowed his kinswomen to travel alone. Might I offer you a seat in my cart? I assure you I can be a most pleasant travelling companion,” he adds, smiling a little at Nimidh, who is both pleased and embarrassed to be the focus of his attention, if her pink cheeks are anything to go by.

“We accept your offer,” Haleth says regally, as much a ruler now as she no doubt was in the days of leading her House.

“Good luck finding somewhere to sit in amongst all that nonsense,” Tirindë says in an undertone, low enough for only Celebrimbor to hear. He only shakes a finger at her before giving Ishilde his hand to ascend the cart, as lordly and sophisticated as he had been as a boy. You would not know to look at him of the privation he had endured, Tirindë thinks, at the hands of the Enemy. She gets into the cart last, settling her skirts around her as her nephew climbs up himself and takes up the reins. “Póna, Ñollotdil, Fallënil,” he says as he urges the horses onwards. Tirindë turns her face to the sun and the cool breeze that is blowing, closing her eyes.

“Only you would call your horses ‘flower-friend’ and ‘seafoam’,” she says lightly. Celebrimbor laughs.

“You too would develop some creativity after a few hundred years with Adar,” he replies. “He calls a grey horse ‘sinda-rocco’ and a brown horse ‘varnë-mairo’ and simply reuses these as he deems appropriate. Which is forever,” he bemoans.

“What does he call a black horse?” asks Nimidh from further back in the cart, sandwiched in between a large crate and a pile of cloth bags.

“Bad luck,” Haleth suggests. “A black horse on the horizon means death is riding towards you.” Ishilde shakes her head.

“No, that’s a grey horse,” she insists. “A black horse means a bad crop.”

“How can every black horse mean a bad crop?” Nimidh wonders. “There are more black horses than crops. Is it a set amount? Say, six black horses equals one bad crop –”

“Six black horses mean six deaths,” Haleth says. “A grey horse is a good sign.” Ishilde just shakes her head.

“The Haladin are not known for their ability to interpret signs and portents,” she says, deliberately arch as though to rile Haleth further. Haleth, however, refuses to fall for the bait, at least for now.

“I do not recall the House of Hador being any better,” she retorts pointedly.

“Should we interrupt?” Celebrimbor asks Tirindë quietly as the mortals continue to bicker. Tirindë shakes her head.

“No,” she replies. “They are merely enjoying themselves.” It is confirmed not by her own judgment, but by the low thrum of contentment in the back of her head. It is strange to be connected to anyone at all after so many after millennia alone with her own broken marriage bond, but Tirindë likes it. If she has any great skill, she has always known, it is the ability to adapt to any situation. To being the elder sister of first two boys and then two girls, to marrying into Valinor’s most infamous family, and even beyond that, to the business of keeping her family together while war raged in the East and her father and brothers died.

“I would expect you to be angrier, Aunt, at Uncle Caranthir’s infidelity.” Celebrimbor seems relaxed as he guides the horse and cart down the road, but there is some hidden tension beneath the surface that Tirindë cannot divine.

“I have exhausted my ability to be too angry with your uncle,” she replies. “I had to, or spend the last six thousand years and more burning with unfulfillable wrath.” Tyelpë looks away, abashed.

“The Oath,” he says softly. “I know. It was terrible, watching them all die in Beleriand, unable to stop it or calm their rage. I hardly saw Father for years before he died. And Uncle Maedhros, Uncle Maglor, how terribly they suffered.”

“How terribly their victims suffered,” Tirindë says. “You are close to Lord Elrond, Maglor’s foster-son.”

“I am,” Celebrimbor confirms. “Although Elrond considers Maedhros his father too, however little Maedhros can bear to consider such a thing. He loves him,” he adds when he sees Tirindë does not understand. “Maedhros does not believe he deserves love in return.”

“Feanorions,” Tirindë says, and she trades a look of bemused acknowledgment with her nephew. “They’re never happy.”

“You know, Aunt,” Celebrimbor says. “Mortals have a saying, that shit flows downhill, if you pardon the offensive language.

“Oh, I heard worse than that when your mother gave birth to you,” Tirindë reminds him warmly. Celebrimbor grimaces.

“Ugh. Anyway, that’s what I think it is. How it works. Uncle Fëanor is unhappy, so all his children are unhappy, and then they make everyone’s lives unhappy –”

“I think I understand,” Tirindë says, patting his hand for emphasis. Again Celebrimbor freezes at the touch, albeit less so than before. “Has anyone taken your grandfather to see Queen Miriel since his Return? I myself have not the pleasure, but I know my sister has been to her workshops more than a dozen times.” Celebrimbor shakes his head.

“He will not go, Auntie,” he says sorrowfully. “Vairë’s Halls reside within her husband’s, after all, and Grandfather spurns the Valar even now.”

“Too proud by far,” Tirindë says bitterly. “Like all his line. Yes, even you, nephew,” she says affectionately. “How you have grown, dear Tyelpë.”

Celebrimbor’s hands jerk on the reins and then fall lax. The horses, deprived of a steady hand to lead them, begin to meander towards the edge of the road and the ditch that runs beside it. The mortals shout in alarm in the back of the cart; Tirindë grabs for the reins and guides the horses back to the centre of the road. “Nephew!” she explains, but one look at Celebrimbor stops her cold. He is white to the lips, so pale Tirindë half-thinks she can see the veil of death settling over him, sweat beading his brow and eyes turned inward. “Nephew,” she says again, but this time in fear.

“Breathe, lad,” Haleth says gruffly, swinging herself into the driving seat on Celebrimbor’s other side. he is breathing, but very fast, tiny shallow puffs of air that make Tirindë feel breathless just to behold them. Haleth takes Celebrimbor’s lax fingertips and sets them against her own wrist. “Breathe. Feel my heartbeat anchoring you to the here and now. Match your breaths to mine. In, out. And in again…” It is like some strange magic Tirindë has never seen before. Slowly, Tyelpë’s breathing matches Haleth’s and begins to settle.

“Thank you,” he croaks eventually. From the back, Nimidh offers him a flask of water from the basket she’d brought with her, and Tyelpë gratefully accepts it, draining half the flask at once. Wiping his mouth in a manner most un-Ñoldor-like, he says ruefully, “Forgive my ill manners, aunts.”

“Worry not about your manners!” Tirindë cries. “Forgive me, dear nephew, for whatever I said to unnerve you so.” With the reins in her hands she cannot hold Celebrimbor’s; Haleth clicks her tongue and holds a hand out for the reins. Tirindë gives them over, and Haleth steers them along as nonchalantly as if she did so every day, while Tirindë takes both her nephew’s in her own.

“It is not your doing, Auntie,” Celebrimbor says thickly. “Only. That is what he used to call me, you know.” Tirindë cannot keep her eyebrows from flying up.

“I was warned not to use your Quenya name for that very reason,” she says softly. “But even the diminutive as well…?” The smile that crosses Celebrimbor’s lips is a grim and awful thing.

“I am afraid I fell to the wiles of the Enemy in more ways than simply those of creation, Tirindë,” he says, visibly bracing himself as though he thinks she will revile him at the revelation.

“My darling,” she says instead, fiercely, and wraps her arms around him. Tyelpë clings to her much the same way he did six thousand years ago, leaving Tirion for war. “Better for him he has been unmade. A swift kick in the stones would be on the cards for him otherwise.” It produces a watery laugh from Tyelpë.

“Which Enemy do you speak of?” Ishilde asks. Tirindë looks over her shoulder to find that both mortals in the back of the cart have moved forward. “Morgoth?”

At the name, Tirindë clasps her nephew to her a little tighter. “Long after Moringotto was chained, his lieutenant rose to fell power in Middle-earth,” she says. “He had many names. In your time he would have been – Gorthaur, I believe.” All three mortals shudder.

“We named him the Deceiver, later,” Celebrimbor says, his face still against Tirindë’s shoulder. He draws back and wipes at his eyes with his sleeve. “Only after many years was he defeated. I was dead by then,” he adds with a deprecating shrug. He takes back the reins from Haleth, his hands steady once more.

“So were we, lad, do not fault yourself,” Haleth replies sternly. “Nephew, I regret that my death meant I could not defend you from that evil.” Tirindë stares. It should be absurd, a mortal suggesting to one of the Eldar that she could better defend him than his own self. Except Haleth says the words with such quiet dignity, such purpose and intent, that it is plain she means it with every fibre of her being.

“Regret not, Aunt Haleth,” Celebrimbor says. Up ahead, an earthen path leads away from the road towards a small knot of trees. They are almost at their destination. “Many tried to defeat Sauron, and many failed.”

“Still,” Haleth says, in a tone that strongly implies that if she had been amongst that assembled force, Sauron would have been rendered little more than a scorch mark on the floor. Celebrimbor gives Tirindë a quick, private smile.

“Haleth was an experienced warrior and a true and noble leader to her people,” Tirindë explains. “Her bravery was such that your uncle Caranthir desired greatly for her to remain near Thargelion as his vassal, or so the stories tell.”

“Oh, I know,” Tyelpë replies at once. “He used to speak of Aunt Haleth occasionally, when he had been in his cups.” Haleth snorts.

“No doubt railing against the stubbornness of women and the stupidity of mortals,” she says dryly. Tyelpë coughs.

“More of the valour of the Haladin, and the great regard he had for their leader,” he replies. Haleth goes very still. “He came to visit in Nargothrond shortly after your death, I believe. He got very drunk and wept on Uncle Finrod’s shoulder. It was most undignified.” Haleth makes a sound. It is not the snort from earlier. It is very low, and full of pain.

“Would that he was so free with his praise when I was alive,” she says bitterly. “Things might have been very different.”

“They were,” Ishilde pipes up from the back. Haleth twists around to look at her. “Perhaps not with you, but he learned the lesson well enough. He would call me sweet names sometimes, and stroke my hair.” Celebrimbor laughs as though he cannot help it; he looks alarmed at once.

“Forgive my outburst, Aunt Ishilde,” he says. “It is only – amongst the Ñoldor, hair is very, ah – intimate. only close kin can touch one another’s hair, and after marriage, only a spouse. By Uncle Caranthir’s standards, it is a very bold way of declaring affection.”

“He would pet mine, too,” Haleth says softly. “Only when he thought I was asleep, though. It was usually cut short for practicality, but once I had to shave half my head and the first time he saw me thus he looked like someone had stabbed him through the gut.”

“Ñoldor cut their hair when they grieve.” The words do not come from Celebrimbor, this time, who is guiding them through the small thicket towards the large house in the distance. It was Nimidh who had spoken, although her eyes are turned inward, seeing something long in the past. “I don’t know who told me. Perhaps Lord Amras… anyway. After Caranthir was slain, I shaved mine off.” She rubs a hand over her head of half-inch long fluff. “And I did so every month thereafter.” She shrugs. “It was not like anyone knew I had been his paramour. I could not put mourning braids in my hair as Dwarves do, or weep at Caranthir’s pyre as I could have for one of my own kind. But the hair…” She touches it again, somewhat ruefully. “Everyone understood that.”

“A noble and honourable tribute,” Celebrimbor says solemnly. “Will you let it grow now he is Returned?” Nimidh’s hand hovers uncertainly by her scalp.

“I don’t know,” she replies. “I am not sure I have stopped mourning yet.”

There is a commotion nearby, the sound of hoofbeats. Tirindë takes her gaze from her mortal friend and looks around; shortly, a mounted rider appears from around the house, his stream of silver hair unmistakeable. He is joined by another rider, daintier and with thick braids of dark hair, who shades her eyes against the sun and then gives out a cry of recognition.

“Who are they?” Haleth asks. Haleth has taken an interest in the complex genealogy of the Ñoldor noble families, although Tirindë thinks this is more by necessity than of choice.

“The nís is Irissë, daughter of Fingolfin, who is Fëanor’s brother – half-brother,” she corrects reflexively. Anyone who had been heard making the mistake of calling Indis’ sons Fëanor’s true brothers had been in for a fiery tongue-lashing, once upon a time. “And the silver-haired rider is Celegorm, Fëanor’s third son, Caranthir’s older brother.”

“Caranthir is fourth,” Haleth hazards, a note of uncertainty in her voice. “And then the smith, and then the twins.” Tirindë gives her a smile as Celegorm dismounts, going into the house, and Irissë begins to trot towards them with her cousin’s horse running by her side.

“Yes,” she confirms. “I know not which of them will be here in their mother’s house. They had their own dwellings, before the Darkening. But Nerdanel has been so delighted to have her boys home again, I do not think they have moved on again.”

“Give it another six months,” Celebrimbor says, who had been watching with interest. “When Grandmother gets the itch in her fingers to begin another study in marble and kicks them all out. Ah, Aunt Irissë,” he says, as she draws up beside them.

“Tirindë, Celebrimbor. How odd to see you together,” she says, with her usual bluntness. Tirindë smiles. “And you have adopted some mortals. Never let it be said that charity does not begin at home, wife of my cousin.” Haleth is already bristling.

“It is not charity but kinship, my lady,” Tirindë says, with the slightest edge of a bite to her voice. Haleth relaxes, and Tirindë wonders. Does she trust Tirindë to fight this battle at least, the kind that Haleth and Nimidh and Ishilde are ill-suited for, the delicacies of placating the House of Finwë? “These ladies of the Edain are as kin to me as the sisters of my own blood, since my husband has pledged troth to all of them, if inadvertently.” Irissë’s lovely face gives way into a fierce smile as Celebrimbor pulls the horses to a stop.

“I am pleased to see your spine remains intact, Alta’s daughter,” she replies. “You need it, around the chaos of wilful and stubborn Feanorions.” Celebrimbor climbs down from the cart. To Tirindë’s surprise and approval, he offers his hand to Haleth first, who looks mildly baffled but accepts it. Properly, he should have assisted Tirindë first, and although Tirindë cares not for such pettiness, she knows many who do.

It does not escape Irissë. Her eyes narrow briefly, before her face smooths over once again. “Well!” she says, and laughs. “Brace yourselves, good ladies of the Edain. My cousin returns, and he does not come alone.”

Indeed not. Celegorm is striding towards them, and flanking him is Curufin and Amrod. “My father and uncle,” Celebrimbor hisses to Haleth as he assists Tirindë down safely to the ground. Ishilde and Nimidh have not waited to be so gallantly aided; they jump down as one, hitting the earth heavily as their skirts resettle around them.

“My son,” Curufin says warmly as soon as he is in earshot. Tyelpë’s ears turn red at the tips but he goes to his father at once, allowing himself to be pressed into a brief but strong embrace. It warms Tirindë’s heart to see it, her nephew reunited with his father once more, when for so long they had been sundered in both intent and purpose. They begin talking at once in low voices, beginning to unload the cart. Tirindë knows that this is about as polite as Curufin ever gets, and ignores the rudeness.

“My lady,” Celegorm says abruptly when he is a few feet away, and executes a formal if somewhat ungracious bow. He says nothing to the mortals. “I fear we did not receive notice of your intent to visit.” Tirindë raises an eyebrow. Haleth is on her right; Nimidh and Ishilde at her left, and she is not afraid of any son of Fëanor, even this one, the most dangerous.

“Most likely because I did not send any notice,” she replies. Celegorm’s eyes narrow a touch; Tirindë stares him down. I am not the kinslayer here, she tells him with her eyes, or the one who has betrayed his own honour more times than can be counted. No ósanwë passes between them, but all the same Celegorm receives the message; his fingers twitch towards the hunting dagger at his belt. “I am the wife of your brother Caranthir, and such I need no invitation to visit my own kin. Or have the laws of hospitality changed under the roof of Nerdanel the Wise?”

Celegorm eyes her with dislike. Of Caranthir’s brothers, he had liked her the least, in the days of the Noontide when she wed his brother. “She is no Ñoldo!” she had heard him rant once, his bull-headed pride in his bloodline even stronger than his father’s. “No true Ñoldo at any rate. Father, do we need allies so badly that we must sully Morifinwë with someone so very far beneath him –” And then Tirindë had entered the room and all four of them had shut up very fast, Celegorm and Fëanor, Maedhros, and her poor husband to be, scarlet cheeked and livid.

Tirindë does not often pity her husband. But it was no easy thing, to be the middle son of Fëanor, and the least gifted of them all, at least by the metrics that Fëanor measures such things.

“Sister,” Amrod says. He is of variable temperament, her second-youngest brother by law. Even reembodied, he still bears the marks of fire on his face and hands, the death that his mother had predicted. Sometimes he is light and gay as he was in his youth, other times weary and cynical. He gives her a tired smile. So today is one of the grey days.

“Telyo,” Tirindë says in reply, instead of engaging with Celegorm further. She goes forward and clasps his hand with her right, raising the left to his scorched cheek. He closes his eyes. So young, this sweet boy was, when he went away to war. “My heart is gladdened by our meeting.” A little formal, perhaps, but she knows Telufinwë will remember those days well.

“Uncle Caranthir developed strange tastes in his later years,” Amrod says in the Vanyarin dialect of Quenya, which is different enough from the Ñoldor that the Eldar and mortals around them are frowning save Irissë, who knows it from her grandmother.

“I’m told Middle-earth is strange enough to alter even the most stubborn of hearts,” Tirindë replies in the same tongue. Amrod’s eyes are warm now with amusement; he had learned the tongue from her during the Noontide, in an act of adolescent rebellion against his father. Celegorm is steaming, so Tirindë switches back to Ñoldor Quenya in an attempt at diplomacy. “No doubt my good-mother is within. If you would be so kind as to lead us to her, Telyo, I would be much obliged.”

“You are not welcome here,” Celegorm says abruptly, his eye roving over the mortals at her side and his expression suggesting he finds all four of them gravely wanting. “No traitor to the House of Fëanor may enter our home.” Tirindë looks up at him, his rising temper, his handsome face darkened with the same old cruelty and rage.

“I wonder that you were released from Mandos so promptly, Turcafinwë,” she says, letting her contempt seep into her pronouncement of Celegorm’s father-name. “Are not the Halls designed to allow one to experience peace and reflection? It seems you have learned very little despite your contemplation and the sword Dior Eluchíl put through your bowels.”

Amrod closes his eyes as if beseeching the Valar for patience. Celegorm’s face has darkened further with fury; he raises one shaking hand as if to throttle her and steps forward with murder in his eyes. Tirindë’s mortals cluster closer around her as if in protection and Telufinwë reaches forward to try to curtail his brother’s reach, but both sons of Fëanor are halted in their tracks by the stern voice that calls from the door of the house:

“Tyelkormo!”

Nerdanel the Wise is wearing dusty trousers and shirt, barefoot, her riotous coppery hair bound up in a simple braid. She is as tall as ever, but all physical features fade in the face of her sheer wrath. Celegorm quails as though it is Morgoth striding towards them over the grass and not his own mother; Celebrimbor and Curufin cease their conversation although it is plain they have had no idea of the confrontation taking only a few short feet away. Smiths, Tirindë thinks fondly, watching Nerdanel approach.

“Do not think this is ended, Vanya,” Celegorm hisses, before he skulks off to his mother’s side. Tirindë enjoys the sight of him being thoroughly dressed down for a moment, before her gaze slides over to Irissë, nonchalantly eating an apple from her saddlebag as though her cousin had not been about to do Tirindë bodily harm.

“As I will not forget your inaction, Aredhel,” she says quietly to Irissë, whose pale cheeks redden in anger at the hated name. “Or would you have let him butcher me on his mother’s doorstep?”

“I fight no battles now but my own,” Irissë retorts, tone quiet but just as fiercely as Tirindë’s. “You should not bait him.”

“He should not allow himself to be baited,” Amrod says levelly. “Nor should he hold onto the old prejudices so closely as though they were of his own conception. Father is better now about all that nonsense. But Tyelko cannot let it go.”

“I fear this is all far beyond me,” Ishilde says. Nerdanel is now haranguing her son mercilessly, poking him in the chest for emphasis every few words as Celegorm hangs his head as though in shame.

“It is all old foolishness, my lady,” Amrod replies, tone respectful. “I fear explaining it would take longer than it took the first time around.”

“I’ll try to summarise,” Tirindë says at Nimidh’s beseeching expression. She is rapidly learning she can deny the young mortal little. “It comes down to blood. Although King Ingwë of the Vanyar is High King over all the Eldar, many amongst the Ñoldor once thought of themselves as wisest and cleverest among us. Fëanor encouraged this line of thinking, once, because his mother was a Ñoldo before she died, and his father’s second wife, whom he disliked greatly, was a Vanyar. Like me,” she adds. But the mortals are still bewildered.

“And this is controversial because…?” Ishilde asks.

“The Eldar do not remarry, lady,” Telufinwë says. “Nor do they sunder their unions. And my grandmother Miriel was not technically dead when my grandfather remarried.”

“How can you be not technically dead?” Haleth asks, clearly sceptical.

“I said it was complicated,” Amrod replies with a twisted little smile. “Tirindë must explain it better, later. My mother is coming towards us.”

Indeed she is. Nerdanel is marching an unhappy Celegorm towards them. Tirindë digs deep and manages to put on a smile that is somehow warm and genuine. “Greetings, my mother by law.” Nerdanel regards her for a long moment; Tirindë resists the urge to squirm under her gaze, as cool and hard as the stone she shapes. But then there is a smile, small but real, lurking around the corner of Nerdanel’s mouth.

“And to you, my daughter,” she replies, noticeably leaving off the ‘by law’. perhaps only to punish her son more, but Tirindë likes to think she and Nerdanel get along well enough. Tirindë is perhaps too well-behaved and meek for the nís who once married Aman’s most infamous bachelor and bore him seven sons, a master in her own right of more than a dozen forms of sculpture. “And these are Carnistir’s mortal companions, I take it? Your sister has been at them with her needle, I see.”

“Haleth, Ishilde, Nimidh,” Tirindë says, indicating each woman with an incline of her head; all three bow very low. “Haleth is of the Haladin, and led them for many years. Ishilde hails from the House of Hador, and distinguished herself admirably before falling in battle during the Nírnaeth Arnoediad.” Nerdanel winces very faintly. “And Nimidh lived in Amon Ereb.” No doubt Nerdanel notes the lack of detail about Nimidh, from the narrowing of her eyes, but fortunately she says nothing of it.

“Well!” she says instead. “I would not have expected it of my middle son to have the sense to court so many courageous and gifted women. He was hard enough to drag to altar with Tirindë here.”

“Any man would be lucky to have Tirindë, be he Elf or mortal,” Haleth replies stiffly. Tirindë pats her arm.

“Nerdanel means no offense, my friend,” she assures her. “Caranthir wanted to marry me – in his way, at least. But he was dreadfully shy when he was young.” Nerdanel lets out a bark of laughter.

“Come into my home, fair ladies. No son of mine will trouble you. And yes, he was painfully shy, my Carnistir! He used to hide in the attic during social occasions. Our home then was much larger,” she adds, shadows coming into her eyes. “I came here after the loss of my husband and children. Now I find myself trying to squeeze them into the smallest nook and cranny! I do not wish to leave,” she says, “and my children do not wish to leave me, at least for now.”

She takes them into the house. It has three levels much like Tirindë’s little villa, but sprawls much more over the ground and first floors than her own. Nerdanel may have come here alone, but not for nothing did she choose a home with an attached stable, forge and multiple workshops, as though she was waiting for many more to come. But the kitchen is cosy and warm, as is the adjoining sitting room, where Nerdanel hustles them into and then disappears back to the kitchen.

“How did someone like her create Caranthir?” Haleth says at once. “She’s lovely. He is snooty, snappy, can’t say a word he hasn’t ruminated over for a month in advance first –”

“Arrogant, unfriendly, blowing hot and then cold like a storm that can’t make up its mind,” Ishilde agrees.

“Storming around Amon Ereb as though the sky itself had personally vexed him,” Nimidh adds.

“Not to mention the way he used to wear a set of clothes for half an hour and then change and put the barely worn ones out to be washed,” Tirindë puts in. Her unexpected addition to the now-familiar Caranthir-diatribe takes the bitterness out of the room, and all four of them laugh, with varying degrees of fondness.

“Is he skulking around here somewhere, I wonder?” Ishilde asks. Before Tirindë or the other mortals can reply, though, a rasping voice says from the doorway:

“He’s out with Kano.” Tirindë jumps. Maedhros, Nelyafinwë, the eldest of Fëanor’s sons – he stands there bearing a tea tray carefully, balanced on his one good hand and the hook Tirindë thinks still looks far too sharp to be worn so casually in Valinor. “Mistresses Haleth, Ishilde, it is a pleasure to make your reacquaintance. Mistress Nimidh, allow me to extend to you my greetings and welcome.”

Tirindë sits still. All three mortals are appraising Maedhros, in the way three pack predators would assess a much larger one. “You look less like you’ve been dragged through a bramble bush, at least,” Haleth says finally. Maedhros just looks at her as he sets the tea tray down.

“Mother will be along shortly.” He disappears, and Tirindë breathes out a sigh of relief. Maedhros is ever an unknown quantity, as likely to be fey and terrifying as he is to be the peacemaker of House Fëanor once more.

“He must have looked terrible before,” says Nimidh, innocent and utterly without guile. “If now is an improvement.”

“You know, I lost a toe during a bad winter when I was around fifty,” Haleth says conversationally. Tirindë frowns, unable to keep up with the sudden change in topic. “But when I came out of those Halls, it was back again. And I’d lost my scars.”

“I haven’t,” Nimidh says quietly. Haleth pats her knee.

“Still. I wonder why Mandash didn’t put The Tall’s hand back on?” Tirindë raises an eyebrow.

“‘The Tall’?” she asks. “And its Mandos, not Mandash.” Haleth waves a hand.

“Irrelevant. We used to call him The Tall back in my day, because he bloody well was. It was easier than whatever name the Elves were calling each other that week.”

“It is unusual, that all of you speak Quenya so well,” Tirindë remarks. “I understand it was outlawed in Beleriand.” Haleth blinks.

“Well, Caranthir used to speak it – in bed,” Nimidh says, the last words hushed as though she doesn’t want his mother to accidently overhear her saying it.

“That’s generally not the best way to learn an entire new language,” Tirindë points out. Ishilde frowns.

“It was just – sort of – there, one day,” she says slowly. “In my head. I learned the other, of course. But that came gradually. I knew the Quenya much better, like I’d always known it.” Haleth shakes her head, expression dark.

“Bond?” she asks Tirindë.

“Bond,” Tirindë replies.

“It must be strange,” Nerdanel says, re-entering, as quiet on her feet as Maedhros had been. “To have my son Return, and then his paramours so soon afterwards.” Tirindë shrugs as her mother by law hands her a cup of tea.

“They are his wives by our customs as much as I am,” she replies. “And yet no law has been profaned or skirted around. They are mortal women, bound to an Eldar male. I am an Eldar female, bound to an Eldar male and through him three mortal women. What Caranthir feels or thinks, I cannot say. But already I feel as though I have known them years.”

“Carnistir will not speak of it to me,” Nerdanel says quietly. “Nor to his father.”

“Perhaps he fears your disappointment,” Nimidh says absently. She flushes when all attention turns to her as she slowly shreds a scone. “It is not your way, is it not? To love more than one in the span of a life, even if that life lasts a thousand years. But in the refugee camp where I was raised, often two women would share the same man, or vice versa. Children would be born knowing they had a blood-mother and a milk-mother, or two fathers. No one batted an eye.”

“Dear Nimidh,” Haleth says gently. “You lived in a time of great hardship and turmoil. No one would fault your people finding love and comfort where they could. But it was not so common in my time.”

“But you still had common-marriage, between two women or two men,” Nimidh replies, a little more steel in her voice than before. “Ishilde, did the Hador not also have this?”

“Such folk lived quietly, when I was young,” Ishilde replies gently. Nerdanel sets her teacup aside.

“I sense that your arrival here today was not by chance nor lightly considered,” she says. “If you wish to unburden yourselves, I strongly urge you to with some haste. My sons and their father will not be away indefinitely.”

“You sent the boys out?” Tirindë says, surprised. Nerdanel’s lips twist.

“I told Aredhel to distract Tyelko and sent Curvo and Tyelpë to waylay Fëanáro,” she says. “Kano is with Carnistir, and Maitimo has gone off to read. We will not be disturbed for now, but that will change soon enough.”

Haleth sighs. “Let me be plain then,” she says. “My first thought and that of my compatriots was to leave this plane and go to our kin in the realms of mortal dead. However,” and here she casts a glance at Tirindë, “there appears to be reasons for us to tarry here a while, at least for now. This – fëa-bond –” She makes a face as though describing a dead rat. “Is part of me, and of Nimi and ‘Shilde. Thus we must be blessed by our husband’s mother, or at least make peace with her, because no marriage – even one so bizarre as this – can succeed without her favour.”

“But you do not wish to be Carnistir’s wives again,” Nerdanel says slowly, when she has absorbed all of Haleth’s words. “Or am I mistaken? Tirindë has denied him since his Return – not that I disagree with you, good-daughter,” she adds. “My son has erred gravely, as has his father. And I myself have not rekindled my bond with Fëanáro, although I allow him to dwell beneath my roof as I cannot find it in me to deny him his sons around him. but – forgive me the bluntness,” she says, tinging a faint red. “But you would not allow him to return to your bed.”

“I would not,” Haleth says.

“Not at this time,” Ishilde agrees.

“Er,” says Nimidh.

All four of them round on her at once. “Er?” Haleth demands, with such outrage one might think her personally offended. “That pompous braggart? You would let him between your legs again – pardon, Tirindë, Lady Nerdanel,” she adds belatedly. Nimidh is very flushed, and also very defiant.

“You lived noble lives,” she spits out. “You were respected by your kin and your people. When I first saw Caranthir, I was a raggedy bruised filthy little thing barely out of childhood who had never known a clean day or a warm bed. And him! Six foot eight and gleaming, his hair down to his waist like midnight silk, in a breastplate so shiny I could see my own worthless reflection in it. I thought he was a god! I thought he was the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Nerdanel says, in a voice like lead: “He seduced you.” Nimidh tosses her head; Tirindë can almost see the length of tawny hair she might have had, in a kinder life.

“I seduced him!” she declares. “Amon Ereb was half Eldar and half Men all mixed in together. I cleaned up, grew up. When I was nineteen there was some feast or another, and when I saw him sitting alone at the high table I went to him as though for a moment I could belong so high – the nerve!” She laughs; it isn’t kind, as though mocking the proud youth she had been. “I sat on his lap and whispered in his ear – he was so shocked it took him a full minute to even reply –”

“You wily little harlot,” Haleth says, but far from condemning, her tone is full of admiration. “Saw a pretty man and you took him, then?” Nimidh nods. She is still red in the face, but flushing now in triumph.

“Middle-earth is very different indeed,” Nerdanel says, sounding dazed. “Such a thing would never happen here in Valinor.”

“Maybe Valinor needs more mortals, then,” Nimidh says, her eyes flashing dangerously. “I know what I am. I know what I want. I’d go to him again in a heartbeat.”

“Mother.” In the doorway, Maedhros looms. “Forgive my intrusion, but Father has returned.”

Nerdanel goes to speak to Fëanor, and Maedhros stays. “You reached a great age for your kind, Haleth of the Haladin,” he says, as though the previous conversation had not been interrupted at all. “And you, Ishilde of the Hador. My brother himself took your body home to your family.”

Ishilde nods. “I would expect no less from him,” she says. Maedhros’ gaze, eyes clear and cool and the colour of black ice, switches to Nimidh.

“But you, I do not know.” Nimidh has scarcely lost her flush from earlier.

“I outlived your brother by two years,” she says tightly. Maedhros gestures to his own face, and then to Nimidh’s.

“I see we bear the same marks.” His gaze is very level, but there is no kindness in it. But Tirindë cannot deny that the harsh slash marks on Nimidh’s forehead and cheeks match the ones etched into Maedhros’. But where Maedhros’ scars have healed to slim white lines, Nimidh’s are still red and raised, and angry.

“It is how the uruk mark captives,” she replies stiffly. “So even if one escapes, they can still be known for what they are. I was in the camp for three weeks before my life was ended.”

“They learnt it from their masters,” Maedhros says, voice still very steady, as though by some effort. “Sauron the Deceiver gave mine to me by his own hand.” He walks across the room, and there is still something of the old Maedhros in his stride, the ghost of the son of Tirion’s prince showing through all the changes time has wrought on him. He leans down and touches Nimidh’s cheek very gently. “My adopted son Elrond lives in Tol Eressea,” he says. “He is a healer. I will write to him and ask if you may visit him there. He has given me some peace,” he adds with an ironic little smile. “He may well be able to give you the same.”

“Nelyo.” Fëanor stands in the doorway. Tirindë rises on reflex, and her mortals do the same, copying her as she takes a knee. “Do you seek to steal your brother’s mortal companions from him?” His voice is like the roar of a wildfire and the crack of thunder all in one; death has taken little of what made Fëanor magnificent from him.

“No, Father,” Maedhros says, going to his father’s side, head and shoulders taller than him. “I was telling her of Elrond.” Fëanor smiles. It is a lovely thing, and a sight that Tirindë dreads. A happy Fëanor is more dangerous than the angry one, because the joy can leave him in less time than the wind takes to lift an autumn leaf into the air.

“My grandsons are very different, but equally perfect,” he says, in his old way of announcing his opinions as pure fact. “Now, Tirindë, wife of my son. When will you take him back and be an obedient wife once more?” Tirindë firms her shoulders.

“When I am satisfied he repents of his actions, my lord,” she says, forcing her voice not to quaver. In the old days, one did not speak softly to Fëanor, because it irritated him. Nor did one speak loudly to Fëanor, because it would also irritate him.

“Well, there is evidence enough that he did not lack for company in Middle-earth,” Fëanor replies. “Now, up off your knees, mortals. And you, Tirindë,” he says, perhaps realising that it is not good manners to keep one’s daughter by law on her knees. “Let’s have a look at you.”

He goes to Nimidh first. “Well, then? What’s your craft?” he demands. Nimidh, shorter than him by more than a foot, is awestruck. Tirindë can’t blame her. She was only an adolescent the first time she saw Fëanor, and she had been able to think of little else for weeks. Not in a romantic way, but simply because Fëanor consumes all thought.

“I – I stitch, my lord,” Nimidh says lowly, clearly expecting to be scorned. Instead Fëanor smiles broadly and takes her hand, pumping it with his own a few times before laying a smacking kiss on the knuckles.

“A broideress! Like my own lady mother,” he says, his face softening just for a moment before he recovers himself. “Excellent, very good. And you. Tall, black-haired one. Is there some Noldo in your family line?” Ishilde does not look frightened. Actually, she looks like she is trying not to laugh.

“I am afraid not, noble lord,” she says soberly, but amusement is dancing in her eyes. “All my ancestors were mortal to the bone.” Fëanor laughs.

“Well, it was worth a try. And what is your craft?” Ishilde is still holding it together, if barely.

“I was an apprentice smith in my youth –” she begins.

“Ha! Another one of my kind!” Fëanor announces triumphantly.

“– but in later years I worked amongst the stonemasons.” Fëanor’s triumph fades, but only a little.

“Well, it is not smithing or jewelcraft,” he says, “but not a dishonourable profession. Useful! Very good.” He lifts her hand and kisses it as well. Tirindë cannot deny her father by law can be very charming, when his mood is sunny.

“I suppose it is my turn,” Haleth says. Fëanor turns to her.

“Indeed! Tell me your craft, good woman.” Someday Tirindë must ask her where she gets her nerve from, because Haleth does not falter. She does not smile, or give Fëanor even a fraction of an inch. Instead, she announces, as cool as a winter morning:

“I do not have one.”

Fëanor looks as stunned as if Morgoth has returned from the Void and personally punched him in the face.

“No – no craft?” he says weakly, like such a thing had never entered his conception of the world. “None?” Haleth folds her arms, supremely unconcerned.

“I can do many things,” she replies calmly. “I can sew and build and spin. I can weave a little, and cook. I can thatch a roof. But my heart lies in none of them.” Fëanor looks at her like he has never seen a thing like her. When he speaks, his voice is calmer, and wondering.

“In what does your heart lie?” And Haleth, as bold as any Ñoldo king, replies:

“In war.”

“I think he’s gone to have a lie down,” Nerdanel says. “Whatever did you say to rattle him so?” Haleth smiles, secretive, pleased.

“I am afraid that the intricacies of what disturbs Eldar males escapes me, good lady,” she replies. Nerdanel looks at Tirindë as if for illumination.

“Indeed, it remains a mystery,” she says blandly. “Perhaps the peculiarities of our modern world bemuse Fëanor still. You remember what he was like when he saw the Sun for the first time.”

(“What is that?” he’d bellowed. “A great hanging boil on the face of Arda! I will lance it! Nelyo, bring me my sword – Nelyo, why do you only have one hand –”)

It had not improved from there.

“I think we will take our leave,” Tirindë says. “When Tyelpë returns from wherever he has gone with his father.”

“You will be waiting for some time.”

Nimidh gasps. Caranthir is in the doorway, exactly the same as he’s always been, except Tirindë feels her bond pulsing in her chest for him in time with her heart. “My brother and nephew have wandered off to peruse a local ore formation,” he explains. “The horses are eating. Mother, I would have thought you’d send for me.”

“We came to see her, not you,” Haleth says harshly. The light in Caranthir’s eyes dims a little. Oh, he cares for his mortals, Tirindë realises, wretchedly. He had loved them, all three of them. Why had he never turned the glow of that regard in her direction? What was so loathsome in her that he could not have spared for her even a crumb of his love?

“Tirindë.” Ishilde’s voice breaks her out of her thoughts. “You’re crying.” Oh. so she is, Tirindë realises. Useless. Can’t even be in the room with him for a minute without falling to pieces –

“Oh, ‘Rinde.” Nimidh gets up from her chair to perch on the arm of Tirindë’s and embrace her. The sudden unexpected warmth as well as the pleasure of being touched by one she is bonded to – even faintly – shatters the thin hold she had on herself, and she begins to cry in earnest. “‘Rinde. Don’t weep, liebling. It’s not so bad as all that.”

“It’s easy for you,” she sobs. “You were chosen. He chose you. They made him take me, and he never wanted me, wouldn’t even give me a baby to give me a shred of comfort.” Nimidh shushes her gently and hug her closer.

“I think she means you,” Tirindë hears Haleth say dryly. There is the sound of footsteps, and furniture moving, and then Tirindë is being transferred as lightly as a doll from Nimidh’s breast to strong, warm, familiar arms.

“No!” she says, and wriggles valiantly in Caranthir’s grip. “No!”

“Yes,” her husband says, his voice low and so sweet, like it had been in the days of their youth, when he had not loved her but he had liked her, at least a little. She would interrupt him at his ledgers or his books and take him by the hand – he’d been shy at first, but it had melted away in the warmth of their bed –

“I don’t want your pity,” she spits, acidic. But the tears are too many, held back for too many years. Oh, she has cried, and often. But not these wild, unrestrained howls of grief, for the life she’d glimpsed before it slid through her fingers like water.

“I don’t pity you, Lossi.” Lossi! How cruel of him to bring back that old sweet-name. “Open to me, Lossiel, my lady. Let me back in.” But Tirindë shakes her head.

“I will not,” she vows. Caranthir just sighs and shushes her gently. Somehow he has borne her down to the floor and has her cuddled up against him, his lips against her hair, the scent of him – ai, so well known, so well loved! – all around her. It makes her reckless. It makes her weak.

“Morinya,” she gasps, and Caranthir shudders like he’s been hit. Even now he is disgusted by her affection, Tirindë thinks miserably, and tries to extricate herself from his embrace.

“No, Lossi. Don’t fight me.” She hits him on the chest, but it is like striking a wall.

“I will fight you,” she insists through tears. “I will, I will. I won’t let you conquer me.” Caranthir laughs, harsh and bitter.

“When have you let me?” he asks aloud. “Never. Never have you needed me or asked me for anything. We lived almost as brother and sister, except when you relented and allowed me into your bed –” Tirindë gasps.

“Relented?” she cries out. “Allowed? It was me dragging you, always, from your books or your brothers or your own stubborn pride. We slept together every night, I never once barred you from my side –” Caranthir pulls back so she can look him in the face. His hair is a mess, his eyes wild. He is beautiful.

“You wed a lesser Finwë,” he snarls. “The very least of my father’s sons. Was I supposed to find joy in it, that I could not weave you beautiful silks or create jewels for your hair or bring honour to your name by the work of my hands?” Tirindë just stares at him. She has stopped crying now, but a terrible force of emotion is building in her all the same, just as powerful as the tears.

“I didn’t care about any of that!” she roars, and the force of it stuns Caranthir into silence. “I didn’t want jewels or clothes or any of it, I wanted that scowling blushing boy I met at my debut.” Caranthir is rapidly mottling into shades of red and purple, his eyes slits of white fire. “I wanted us, you and me, and I didn’t care if you were the son or a prince or a stable hand, you were you, and I wanted you to be mine –”

He kisses her. Caranthir is kissing Tirindë for the first time in six thousand years, and its not very good. They both taste like salt – was Caranthir crying? Surely not – and his hair and her hair are getting in the way, it’s an awkward angle to slot their mouths together and he accidentally nips at her lip. Tirindë squeaks and Caranthir pulls away, his mouth twisting down in unhappiness, shoving a hank of hair out of his eyes with one hand. “This is going terribly,” he says, voice thick with frustration. “I wanted to be better at this for you.”

Tirindë kisses him again, and quite without intending to, releases the tight block on the fëa-bond. It is like sinking into a warm bath after years of being cold, or feasting after starving for an Age. Caranthir floods back into her mind and this, this is what she’d been missing, except when they were young he had always held himself back from her and she always had to guess at what he was thinking. Now he is pared open to her like the pages of a much-beloved book, and all her memories take on a different hue –

The night they’d met, and she thought he’d thought her just another empty-headed Vanyar because he wouldn’t speak to her, when truly he’d been struck dumb by the sight of her rippling curtain of dark hair, not black like his own but mahogany and chocolate and chestnut, the colour of all things living and alive, and her dark eyes so like those of his grandmother Miriel who he has only known from paintings, how could she be anything but Noldo, so lovely it makes him weak –

The sight of her in Telperion’s light, Tirindë had thought him unmoved, but Caranthir had been almost incoherent with want seeing her there perched in the window seat, his, his own, to keep, and never knowing the right thing to say to her –

He was inside her, and it was like breathing for the first time, something innate and necessary he hadn’t known he was suffocating without, her hands at his back, at his shoulders, Laurelin painting them both in gold, and she’d looked him in his eyes and he’d thought I should say I love her but then she moved and he lost the thought to time –

“Oh, Caranthir,” Tirindë says softly. There is more, so much more than that, too much to wade through for now. “Why didn’t you say?” His eyes are so bright and so, so beloved.

“Why didn’t you?” he replies, just as soft.

“Because you were radiant,” she says, and brushes back the thick black locks from his forehead. “Ai, you were radiant. And I was –”

“You were never less to me,” Caranthir says, pressing kisses to her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose. “I could have throttled my brothers every time they insulted your birth.”

“You still may have the chance to,” Tirindë says dryly, and Caranthir makes a hoarse sound like a laugh. “Morinya.” She snuggles herself into his chest – broad, strong, his heart beating like a call to arms. “You know your other wives can sense us.” He stiffens against her.

“I cannot renounce them,” he says, voice low and wretched. “I do not wish to grieve you, when we are only barely reconciled. But I am bound to them as surely – you are looking at me strangely.” Tirindë shakes her head.

“I do not wish you to renounce them,” she says. Caranthir gapes. “And while we may be reconciled, it will take time for me to trust you again. Do not take me for granted,” she warns him, stern, before she allows herself to smile. “And I will not take you for granted.”

“It is a deal, my lady,” Caranthir replies solemnly, and Tirindë gives into temptation and kisses him again.

Chapter Text

“So we have been here three days, and we have managed to reunite Caranthir and Tirindë. This is excellent work.”

Haleth pronounces these words with the preciseness of a general rousing her troops before battle. Tirindë raises an eyebrow. “We are reconciled, somewhat,” she replies lightly. “But there is much for Caranthir and I to do before I would consider allowing him to live beside me once more.”

“I can’t believe you thought he didn’t love you,” Nimidh says, for about the sixth time; Tirindë just smiles wryly at her. “You are very loveable! I am very fond of you already, after such a short time as this –”

“You have an open heart and a kind soul,” Tirindë tells her; Nimidh ducks her head, pleased but embarrassed by the compliment.

“Getting used to him in the back of my head again will be more work besides,” Haleth grumbles. Tirindë regards her, thinking. After Tirindë’s still-mortifying outburst, the mortals and Nerdanel had come back into the room, and Caranthir and Tirindë had gone back to being appropriate and calm and Eldar again. Tirindë can hardly believe now how unbalanced she’d been, desperate and wild and striking Caranthir with her fists, but she cannot deny it has helped. She had slept the night through untroubled by dreams or fits of wakefulness, and had woken in the morning as birdsong trilled outside and light filtered through the filmy curtains of her window.

Her husband had bid her farewell with a very proper kiss to the hand. Nimidh had allowed him the same, Ishilde had even given a small and frosty smile. Only Haleth had remained unmoved, and Tirindë understands why. Of Caranthir’s mortal paramours, she had known the very least of his kindness. In Valinor during the Noontide Caranthir had been sharp and moody and Tirindë had struggled to understand much about him, but despite his father-name Morifinwë, he had not been touched by darkness. But in Middle-earth in Haleth’s time, after the death of Amrod and Fëanor, after Maedhros’ terrible imprisonment in Thangodrim, tested by the privations of war and worry and fear – Caranthir would have been a very difficult person to love.

And yet Haleth had managed it. It is a sign of the purity of Haleth’s character, Tirindë thinks, although Haleth is far too unkind to herself. Haleth exhibits at all times a guarded wariness, a bitter awareness; I am not lovely, I am not made for peace or gentleness. Haleth’s living years had been ones of turbulence and strife and sheer stubborn hard work to survive; three days in Aman is not enough to put that down. Even in the beautiful clothes that Seríssë had made for her, Haleth still walks like she is at war.

Perhaps they may do something about that, Tirindë thinks, and files the thought away for later. “I must admit, I have never been so aware of him as I am now,” she says. The fëa-bond had been subdued and repressed by Caranthir before the Darkening, and then blocked by Tirindë since. As it is now, warm and open enough that she could speak to him from here should she feel the need – Tirindë has never known such a thing. Her tie through Caranthir to Haleth, Ishilde and Nimidh is fainter, but she could still reach them from several miles away, she is certain.

Come. Speak to me, she entreats Haleth. The closest Tirindë can come to describing it is something like a web, with individual filaments between each but an overarching connection amongst them all.

Nimidh makes a pained sound. “It’s very odd,” she says aloud. “I can feel you doing that, but I can’t tell what you’re saying.” Tirindë tilts her head, fascinated.

“Can you sense Caranthir?” she asks. Ishilde, the least interested of all of them in the metaphysical workings of fëa-bonds, looks up from the book she has propped up against the milk jug on the principles of stonemasonry.

“He’s eating breakfast and arguing with his brother about how to approach the High King to purchase a parcel of land.” Having delivered this news, she goes back to her book as if nothing had happened.

“Why does he need land?” Nimidh wonders. Haleth releases a sharp bark of laughter.

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s going to build Barad Caranthir, the Valinor edition.” At this Ishilde looks up.

“Good, he owes me,” she says with fierce satisfaction. “Whoever he appoints as chief architect, I want to be their apprentice.”

“What if he appoints himself head architect?” Tirindë asks. A brief flash of alarm flickers over Ishilde’s face as if she never considered such an unpleasant notion.

“He’d be too busy,” she says, but her voice was uncertain. “He always was in the old days…”

“When he filled up his time trading with Men and Dwarves, neither of which live here in any significant number,” Haleth points out. “Or guarding against Morgoth and his forces, also no longer a concern.” Ishilde shudders.

“Ugh,” she says eloquently. “Can you imagine trying to learn anything from him? He’d be snappy and dismissive if you failed to understand something on the first try.”

“And you’d have to work with him day in, day out,” Nimidh puts in. Seeing the looks she’s receiving, she protests, “I liked him very much back then. But if I hadn’t been riding patrols with the guards every second week, I might have strangled him every time he criticised my stitching. You sew a crooked eight-pointed star one time –”

You know I can hear all of this, Caranthir says into the liminal space where the bond resides. Tirindë drops her spoon, Haleth curses, Ishilde almost upsets the milk jug, and Nimidh just sighs.

“As well you should,” Tirindë says, both aloud and through the bond. “It is your doing, after all. Most males only have to endure the haranguing of one irritated wife, but since you have gone and acquired more than your share –”

Not on purpose, Caranthir says, sounding almost sulky.

“Why do you want land from the High King?” Haleth demands, also aloud but – clumsily but capably – through the bond. There is something like a flash of surprise.

You can’t expect I will stay with my mother until the end of my days, he says, a thread of impatience in his voice. Nor do I find I can reside comfortably in a city, after the sprawl of Middle-earth. I intend to found a small citadel, and invite those of my previous holdfasts to live in the surrounding lands –

“And tax them mercilessly as you did in Thargelion?” Haleth demands. Tirindë winces as Caranthir at once goes haughty and cold, like a burst of frosty wind down her spine.

That was for defence against Morgoth. Here in Valinor, there is no need to keep a standing army ready at all times.

You are aware that by law, your wife is entitled to half your estate and land, Ishilde says. She is still looking at her book, but her eyes are no longer moving. Of course, you have four wives, and it would be poor form indeed to cheat any of them. Thus it can only be concluded that each of your wives is entitled to a fifth of all you own, with the last fifth remaining to you.

What do you know of the laws of Valinor? Caranthir demands, radiating discomfort and unhappiness at the thought of slicing up his estate.

Your wife has a library and I have eyes, Ishilde answers, supremely unconcerned. I have no further interest in this particular conversation. Please arrange for my fifth of your land to be relatively flat with an appropriate source of running water. Like shutting a door neatly in someone’s face, Ishilde closes her side of the bond and goes back to her book.

“It’s unsettling how good you are at this,” Tirindë remarks. Snippily, Caranthir adds, Indeed.

“Why would you even want to live near him?” Haleth asks Ishilde sharply.

“At least I would have independence,” she replies calmly. “If I decided the land was not to my liking, I could sell it and find a place more to my tastes. I must remind you that our previous careers of disembowelling orcs are not in great demand in this country. We cannot prevail on Tirindë forever. So unless you would like to bunk with Caranthir in his mother’s attic –”

So much to parse through. Tirindë notes her own amusement, Haleth’s disgust, Caranthir’s strong denial. Loitering under it all is Nimidh’s, hmm, that actually doesn’t sound too bad, coupled with a memory of lying against a strong tall cool male, her head pillowed on his arm and legs twined around his own, on warm furs beside a fireplace, and the low hum of his voice in Quenya over her head as his fingers picked out tiny braids in her flowing locks of hair –

Nimidh! Caranthir sounds very flustered. That’s – that’s private –

“Oh, it’s not like you haven’t done it with all of us,” Nimidh retorts. Caranthir’s frustration intensifies.

Goodbye, ladies, he says firmly, and Tirindë’s awareness of him is doused as neatly as a candle.

“Running away again,” Haleth says aloud. “Typical. But Ishilde’s not wrong. If we’re going to live her for a time, we have to learn to make our own way.” Nimidh nods. Ishilde looks up from her book.

“What do you do for money?” she asks Tirindë bluntly. Tirindë should be offended – such questions are not in good taste amongst the Eldar as much as she thinks they are around Men – but Ishilde is always blunt, and never means to affront.

 “Caranthir was no Fëanor when it came to craft, but he dabbled. Here in Valinor, if for whatever reason husband and wife become estranged, it is beholden on the male or the higher in status to provide for their spouse. In my marriage Caranthir is both, and he left many of his works here.” Tirindë shrugs. “Trinkets mostly, but the demand for works of the line of Fëanor has only grown over the millennia, even the lesser objects. I will occasionally take a commission from Seríssë, if it is a design or work I find myself interested in, and I help her in the busy times of the year. I have enough to keep myself in bread and books.”

“But not enough for us all,” Haleth says. Tirindë nods.

“I for one would like to live in his keep, once he establishes it,” Nimidh says. “I want space to stitch, and the freedom to come to Tirion to learn from Seríssë and the other masters. She already said I could,” Nimidh adds defensively, although no one had contradicted her. “Once she saw my embroidery, she said she would gladly take me on as an apprentice, even a part-time one.”

“You are very talented, and my sister is always in search of those who share her passion,” Tirindë says gently. “As for Caranthir, he is duty-bound to give you a place in his home, or a home of your own if that is what you prefer.”

“I would prefer to be with my kin,” Haleth says bitterly, standing and going to the kitchen door to glare out the window. From behind, still in her morning robe with her hair an unkempt mess, Tirindë can see the tenseness of her, the frustration. “The clothes are very nice, Tirindë. But I have not spent a day without a blade by my side since I was four. It feels unnatural, like bending a willow branch too far out of shape. Even a hidden dagger would be some relief.” Tirindë frowns.

“If you are found to bear a concealed weapon, the punishment is stern indeed,” she says. Haleth turns, and the expression of misery is such on her face that Tirindë rushes to say the next words. “So you must not be discovered. The blade must be obtained in secret, from a trusted smith. And we must fashion a holder for it that fits beneath your clothes.” Haleth stares at her; Tirindë feels the back of her neck grow warm from the scrutiny.

“You truly would do this,” Haleth says, almost wonderingly. “Go against the laws of your people, for someone you met only three days ago. Someone who is lesser than you by far.” Tirindë frowns.

“None of you are lesser than me!” she says sharply. “Is that what Caranthir taught you, that the Eldar think of the race of Men as less than them?” Tirindë demands. Haleth looks away, a reluctant confirmation. “We are all children of Eru Iluvatar. The House of Fëanor may have their delusions about their importance to Arda, but I do not agree. Caranthir was born the son of a prince who was the favourite son of our High King. It has given him absurd notions about his station. I see myself as no greater than any daughter of Men,” she adds earnestly. Haleth is still looking away.

“You can let yourself be angry about this, Haleth,” Ishilde adds, closing her book sharply. “That he took the lands that were your home, and gave you nothing you could accept in return. That his love was not kind.” Haleth swipes a forearm over her eyes.

“There is no good come of dwelling on what cannot be changed,” she growls.

“But it can change.” It is Nimidh speaking now, her thin hands clasped together. “Perhaps we will go to the lands of our kin, in time. Perhaps this place is for us to resolve the grim unspoken sorrows of our lives before we go beyond the sight of this world.”

“Why not then are these lands inundated with mortals who have been disappointed in life?” Ishilde wonders. Nimidh smiles.

“Perhaps because they have not the sense to bed themselves one of the Eldar,” she replies archly. “In all the years of Arda, how many mortals have wed an Elf?” This is directed at Tirindë, who frowns.

“Only three that I know of,” she says. “But they all concern the royal lines of various kingdoms. Beren and Lúthien –”

“Even I know that one,” Haleth puts in.

“Tuor and Idril, and most recently Aragorn of Gondor and Arwen Undómiel. Lord Elrond’s daughter,” she adds, to Haleth’s questioning look.

“Why is it always Elf women and mortal men?” Nimidh wonders aloud. “Are we mortal females considered too base, too unscrupulous and low for the Eldar to swear themselves to?” There is something dark and ugly in her tone, lurking beneath the surface. This is well out of Tirindë’s scope of understanding. Mentally she plucks on the tie in her mind to her husband.

Lossi? What is it? Should she be stirred, that he sounds so surprised and pleased to hear her call for him?

I need you. Instantly she replays the words back to herself, their suggestiveness, and feels heat crawl up her neck. I mean, I need your assistance with your wives. She gives him a brief mental outline of the direction the conversation has taken. It takes barely more than a moment.

I see. The mental equivalent of a sigh. I have… business in the old quarter in Tirion. I will stop along the way to collect you all.

Tell the others, Tirindë suggests, and say nothing of my involvement.

Very well. The bond flickers shut.

Wives! Caranthir booms a moment later. Tirindë winces; the volume of his mental voice has shot a lance of pain directly into her skull. I have need of you.

“What kind of need,” Haleth says suspiciously, as Nimidh, who seems to communicate better in ideas and pictures than words, offers a kaleidoscopic array of options: riding shooting sex fixing his braids talking sex –

One that requires clothes, Nimi, Caranthir says firmly. Nimidh droops a little. I will ride with haste to Tirion.

“Bring one of your more sociable brothers,” Tirindë suggests. Caranthir radiates uncertainty, so she adds, “Or I could ask Finderato. He lives the closest out of your cousins –”

Fine! The Ambarussa might be interested to ride into town, Caranthir gripes. Father and Curufin are already in the forge, and there they will stay until sundown. Tyelko is still sulking. I could see if Nelyo or ‘Laure will come –

“We’ll be waiting,” Tirindë says firmly, and because she can, gives Caranthir a brief flash of what will be happening next; all four of his womenfolk, nude, bathing together in friendly companionship –

You are cruel, Lossi, Caranthir says, but he cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered cold now. The bond snaps shut; Tirindë is used to it but the mortals all reel like they’ve been slapped upside the head.

“He was different at the end,” Haleth says abruptly. “Didn’t you feel it?” Tirindë shrugs.

“All I did was inform him we’d be going to bathe after this,” she says guilelessly. “I can’t imagine why that would have rattled him.” Ishilde snorts.

“You told him that all four of the people he’s ever bedded are all about to be naked together, and you thought he wouldn’t be roused by it?” Tirindë merely blinks at her, the very picture of innocence, and Ishilde realises, throwing her head back to laugh. “Subtle indeed, ‘Rinde.”

“You can’t still think he desires us,” Haleth says. Nimidh throws her a sharp look. “What? He’s home, amongst all his Elf friends and family. He’s not scraping the bottom of the barrel anymore.” Ishilde just lets out a deep sigh.

“I want a bath,” she announces, and as Tirindë follows with Nimidh close on her heels, she ponders. Does Caranthir still desire his mortals?

In truth, she doesn’t believe he ever stopped.

In the sunshine, Haleth’s skin and hair gain a warm golden hue that favours her very well. Impatience is written into every line of her body and her foot is tapping as though she cannot help it while she waits. Ishilde still had her nose in her book from earlier and Nimidh is talking to the child of one of Tirindë’s neighbours, earnestly conversing with the small Eldar girl. What they are speaking of Tirindë cannot imagine, but then the girl pulls out her doll and starts showing Nimidh its face and hair and clothes. Nimidh’s expression is very soft, absorbed utterly as she is in the child, so much so that she doesn’t even notice Caranthir approaching.

He stops when he sees Nimidh at the child. Something passes over his narrow features, something almost wistful, before he looks up and sees Tirindë, and hardens his expression. Tirindë turns to the messenger beside her and hands him a coin and a letter. “To Altalannë in the craft district,” she tells the adolescent, and he nods, hurrying off at once. Duty done, Tirindë turns her attention back to her husband.

He is not alone. He is accompanied by not one but four other Eldar; chief amongst them is Maedhros, and beside him is Fingon, his half-cousin and rumoured lover. Caranthir was also able to convince the Ambarussa; Amrod and Amras walk side by side and in perfect step with one another as if they had never been parted. Burn scars still linger on Amrod, and Amras looks visibly older than his twin, but they are together.

“Hail and well met!” Fingon calls, and then something else in a lilting tongue Tirindë doesn’t know. But Haleth and Ishilde both exclaim in recognition and go to him at once, their voices rising and falling.

“Taliska,” Nimidh says, having said goodbye to her small friend. She makes a face. “Or about three different dialects of it, anyway. You’re going to insult one another at the rate you’re going,” she calls. Haleth just shakes a hand at her in response.

“Do you know what they’re saying?” Tirindë asks Caranthir, who is watching his two wives converse animatedly with his half-cousin with an indecipherable expression on his face.

“Some,” he says, and then winces. “It is a harsh language to the ear. And the manner in which sentences are structured makes no sense.”

“It is a practical language, not an elegant one,” Maedhros agrees. In the old days he would have worn the black of Finwë’s House or the red and gold of Fëanor’s, but since being reembodied Maedhros has softened, even if he is fiercer by far than he was when Tirindë knew him. She knows he was a prisoner of the Enemy for some thirty years, but she has not heard him speak of it; indeed, this is only the fifth or sixth occasion she has met him since he returned. Fëanor’s firstborn has had as much to say to his brother’s Vanyar wife now as he did before, which suffice to say is very little.

Thus Tirindë is surprised when Maedhros offers her his arm. “My lady,” he says gravely, his shock of thick red hair tied back simply, without the accoutrements the Ñoldor are so fond of. Tirindë takes his arm gingerly. She is accustomed to feeling of a height with most of the Eldar, but Maedhros stands at well over seven feet tall. Fingon, walking at his other side, is dwarfed by him.

“My lord,” Tirindë replies carefully as they begin to walk down the street. Maedhros had been polite but formal yesterday; perhaps he will be the same, and speak to her as if she is a distant friend of the family to be made nice to. It is a welcome change from his dismissive manner from the days of the Noontide, even as it cuts Tirindë anew that her husband’s family never viewed her as anything more than a trifle, and an irritating one at that.

Caranthir has talked a reluctant Haleth to taking his arm, while Ishilde is chatting merrily with Amras and Nimidh walks beside a silent Amrod. However the silence is not an uncomfortable one; Nimidh has a thin hand curled into Amrod’s elbow and his shoulders are relaxed, not tense.

“Nine companions,” Maedhros remarks. Tirindë looks up at him in question, and a tinge of red comes into his otherwise colourless face. “Forgive me. It is something my son has said, from his tale of how Sauron was finally defeated. Nine companions set out from Imladris, Elrond’s House in Middle-earth. They were called the Fellowship of the Ring.”

“I have heard of this,” Tirindë replies. Maedhros raises a thin red eyebrow at her in reply. Fingon is quiet next to him, but Tirindë notes how their fingertips brush together every few steps or so, as though they cannot bear to be parted for long. Six thousand years is a long time to be separated, she supposes, although she managed well enough. The gold chains woven into Fingon’s braids gleam in the sun, jingling softly with each step. “It was nobly done.”

“Elrond was our captive in Middle-earth.” Startled, Tirindë looks up at her brother by marriage. “Kano’s and mine. Elrond and his twin grew to love us, although I cannot fathom how or why.”

“Some hearts are big enough to love even those who sin against them,” Tirindë volunteers. Maedhros’s thin scarred lips split into a smile. Tirindë supposes it is for Fingon, but Maedhros is looking right at her, seriously and taking her in. it is unfamiliar. She is not sure she likes it.

“What do you think might have happened to those mortal women, if you had not taken them in?” he asks quietly. Tirindë follows his gaze now to the six walking ahead of them, each mortal beside an Eldar male. Even tall Ishilde is dainty next to Amras, and Nimidh, the smallest of the three, barely reaches Amrod’s collarbone.

“It has only been three days since their arrival,” Tirindë hedges. “I cannot speak as to what still might happen to them.”

“Such is the nature of mortals,” Fingon says gravely, his usual merry smile subdued. “To wreak such change in a very short period of time.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Tirindë replies, voice clipped. “I had no opportunity to see Middle-earth.” Maedhros’ expression dims.

“I stood against my father’s actions at Losgar, you know,” he says quietly. “Your father and brothers were also unwilling.”

“It didn’t stop them from doing so,” Tirindë snaps. Ahead, Caranthir’s head twists around, attuned to the change in her tone. She waves her free hand at him irritably – I’m fine, don’t fuss – and he turns his attention back to explaining the city layout to Haleth, who is very slowly warming to his unusual patience. “Nor from becoming kinslayers at Alqualondë,” she continues, voice quieter but no less cold. “Nor from dying fruitlessly, pointlessly in Middle-earth, their fëa so wounded that they will likely never return from the Halls of Mandos. My mother lives still,” she adds pointedly. “Every year she makes the pilgrimage to the Halls, to beg for their return. And still Mandos is silent, and no one will even tell us how they died, to be so terribly damaged –”

“Your father was taken prisoner and tormented cruelly in the fortress of the Enemy,” Fingon says gently. Tirindë draws in a deep breath, stunned, yet some long-held inflamed wound in her chest feels as though it is being lanced, hearing the truth at last. “Your brothers were still alive when I died –” Maedhros flinches, but swallows and begins to speak.

“Ítamo perished in the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, like Finno,” he says, voice rasping a little more than before. Tirindë can’t close her eyes because they are still walking at a steady pace, but in her mind she sees her brother as he had been; tall, with their father’s Vanyar colouring and too young to go to war. “Ëarnion survived him only by two or three years; he was killed when riding patrol. Amras was with him when he died.”

“And what of the others?” Tirindë demands bitterly.

“Others?” Maedhros asks. Tirindë looks away from his pale face, trying to compose herself. She is not near tears. She is running red hot with rage.

“My marriage to Morifinwë brought more followers to your father’s host than simply my own blood kin,” she says harshly. “More than fifty of my father’s weavers, his household guard, their friends and their friends’ sons went with you. The sum total of my worth,” she adds, the bitterness overflowing out of her like some terrible poison from the depths of her throat. She is still arm in arm with Maedhros, as though they are merely taking a spring stroll rather than unearthing millennia-old resentment. But then, Tirindë is very good at putting on a polite façade while raging inwardly. She didn’t learn that while Caranthir was gone. She learned it long before. “‘That Vanyar bitch’ – I know that’s what you and your brothers used to call me – I imagine you used them as battle fodder, my kin, and those as good as, and you don’t even remember who they were –”

“You cannot expect me to have personally known every Eldar who fought with us,” Maedhros says, his voice very controlled. Beside him, Fingon bumps their elbows together, and some of the tension leaks out of him. “And I rue greatly any slight I made against you in my ignorance, Lossiel. If I could return your father and brothers to you, I would.” He studies her for a long moment; it is up to Tirindë not to steer them into any nearby pillars. Her skin crawls under his inspection.

“Russo, she is right,” Fingon says calmly. Maedhros turns his head to his cousin, and Tirindë exhales, relieved to be out from under than grey-silver gaze. “I have been reembodied far longer than you, remember, but I also spent longer in the Halls. Elenamo and Ítamo and Ëarnion drift there, in fragments of themselves –” Fingon shudders. “As I was, after Gothmog slew me.”

“Why then do you walk these streets, and my family remain within?” Tirindë demands. “Oh, you need not tell me, I know full well. My family are only common Eldar, not kings or sons of kings. I do not doubt that their healing is not considered as important as those of others, who spend merely a year in the Halls before they are once more set loose.”

“All are equal in the Halls, Tirindë,” Fingon says solemnly. He doesn’t look right without his usual impish smile and merry demeanour. Nor does it sit comfortably with Tirindë that he had called her by name as though they were equals, when she is very far beneath him.

Maedhros’s arm is like iron under Tirindë’s grip. She has only just now realised that she is on his bad side, the one without a hand. It doesn’t bother her, of course. But it is strange he would so openly bare a weakness to one he does not consider family. “This is heavy discourse for such a fine day,” Maedhros says finally, voice straining for civility.

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” Tirindë says, voice dripping with sarcasm. To think, she has not known she could be so unkind until this moment. Ahead Caranthir and his brothers have come to a halt, conversing quietly, and the mortals are nowhere in sight. “I fear my knowledge of etiquette and correct behaviour is far less than your own.” She is pushing it now, she knows, so she withdraws her arm from Maedhros’, dips a low obeisance to him and to Fingon, and sets off towards her husband and the twins on her own.

“Whatever did you say to Nelyo, he looks ready to pop,” Caranthir says lowly when she reaches him. Tirindë hazards a glance back; Fingon has his hands on Maedhros’ shoulders, speaking quietly but firmly into his face.

“Nothing that I would not like to say to you as well,” Tirindë replies.

“Oh, good, we’re in trouble again,” Amras mutters, seeming to think she means him and his twin as well.

“Oh, not you two, Ambarussa,” Tirindë says, managing to summon up a smile from the depths of herself. “I could never be wroth with my two favourite Feanorions.”

“Now we know that’s not true,” Amrod says quietly, and when Tirindë raises an eyebrow at him, elaborates: “Tyelpë is one of your favourites, it is plain to see. Therefore one of us, Pityo and I, must consider ourselves discounted –”

“Very well, my three favourite Feanorions,” Tirindë amends, and is rewarded with a rare small smile.

“Your nimble tongue saves you again, good-sister,” Amrod says. Tirindë looks around.

“Where have Ishilde and Haleth and Nimidh gone? Surely you have not lost them,” she teases gently. Caranthir huffs.

“There is a training yard for the city guard a very short distance away,” he says, jabbing a thumb in what is presumably its direction, his face red with ire. “They heard the clash of training swords and were gone before I could stop them.” Tirindë smiles. Deliberately, she casts Maedhros out of her mind, puts her memories and grief for her brothers and father in a small dark place at the edge of her mind. She can do nothing about it now.

“Well, I will follow them,” she says brightly. Caranthir frowns at her; he can tell when she is putting on the face she puts on for the outside world, to keep her true feelings locked tightly inside. “We may not be able to lure them away for some time. All three possess something of a warlike streak –” She stops mid-sentence. “Which I suppose was the appeal for you,” she realises slowly. “A stark foil to your dull complaisant wife.” Caranthir looks pained. So do the Ambarussa, although more because their brother’s marital affairs are being discussed aloud, and they have similar sympathies regarding their older siblings’ love lives that most younger brothers share; namely, none.

“It was not like that,” Caranthir says, a note of pleading in his voice.

“I do not want to argue,” Tirindë replies. “I have done enough of that today already. I too will follow the sound of swords.” And she marches off at once.

True to Caranthir’s suspicions, she finds her mortal houseguests at the training yard. It is a large, fenced space with a pavilion-like shed in one corner, where a few Eldar lounge taking a break while long lines of paired-up guards run drills with various weapons. The same drills they have probably run for millennia, Tirindë thinks wryly. Haleth and Ishilde and Nimidh all stand leaning against the fence, although Nimidh is only taller than it by perhaps a foot, surveying the training guards. When Tirindë draws up beside Haleth, she sees their inspection of the situation is not critical in nature, but rather longing.

“I was seventy-nine when I died,” Haleth mutters to Ishilde. “And now! I have the body that I had in my early forties, but with all the canniness and subtlety of those later years. My fingers itch for a blade, even a practice one.”

“Surely we can just sneak in and pick one up without being noticed,” Ishilde says. Tirindë coughs, and when Ishilde looks at her, gestures to what they’re wearing; light day dresses in silks or velvet. “And now look at them,” she says, pointing to the guards, who wear boiled leather or light mail, male and female alike. “There is perhaps a little difference there.”

“We could raid the armoury,” Haleth says, voice hungry. “They won’t miss a breastplate or two –”

“We call that ‘theft’ here,” Tirindë cuts in warningly. “The city watch wouldn’t fail to arrest you simply because you’re mortals.”

“Good ladies.” Tirindë turns around, and her mortals do the same. Amrod stands there, at something like parade rest, hands loosely clasped behind his back. His old burn scars stretch grotesquely when he speaks or moves his face, but Tirindë is long past noticing. “My brothers and cousin have gone to attend to some business. They asked me to stay to guard you.”

“You mean to supervise us,” Haleth mutters, and turns back to the training yard abruptly, as if to indicate this conversation is of very little interest to her.

“Or to keep up from stealing swords,” Nimidh says, impish little smile softening Amrod’s weary expression just a touch.

“Perhaps I only want to get to know my new sisters by marriage,” he says, which earns him a huff of disbelief from Haleth. Amrod steps forward until he too is leaning against the fence at Tirindë’s side. “Moryo is a dark horse indeed, to get himself bonded to so many credible women.” Ishilde gives him a very faint smile, before examining him more closely.

“You’re the one who burned, then.” Tirindë closes her eyes briefly. Is tactlessness a mortal trait, or did Caranthir merely find the three most straightforward women in Arda?

“Indeed I am,” Amrod replies lightly, nothing that Tirindë can divine in his voice. “I did not live long enough to stain my hands as deeply as my brothers, but there is blood enough on them regardless.” Ishilde nods. her gaze is back on a pair of guards practicing overhead blocks with swords.

“Telyo,” she replies, and Tirindë sees Amrod only barely restrain a flinch. “Your brother used to whisper your name in his sleep. Well, his strange Elvish sleep,” she adds, and then: “When he slept. He used to work himself near to exhaustion, I nearly tied him to the bed once just to get him to rest for an hour or two –”

“He was no better with me,” Nimidh pipes up, her eyes on a rack of unstrung longbows a few feet away. “Once I conspired with Lord Amras to slip a sleeping tincture into his wine, he was so bad. Half-delirious and ranting about taxes and income for lands that were taken by the Enemy decades ago.” Amrod smiles.

“I’m sure you found my twin a willing collaborator in your scheme,” he says, but the gentle tease doesn’t land; Nimidh is so frank and honest, she sometimes misses double meanings, Tirindë has noticed.

“He was worried too,” she says guilelessly. “He was one of my instructors when I learned to shoot. You look very like him,” she adds, looking Amrod up and down. “I know he missed you. Sometimes on patrol he would tell us stories about the mischief you and he got up to in the Blessed Realm.”

“He is the other half of me,” Amrod replies, just as serious. “We were not made to be apart.” Haleth coughs.

“My brother and I were the same,” she says abruptly. Amrod raises an eyebrow, surprised. “Haldar and Haleth. He was the heir, for all I was three minutes the elder. But he died with our father, and I became chieftain after all.” Amrod nods.

“The loss of one’s twin is a sundering that few ever learn or understand,” he says. Haleth nods fiercely, although she doesn’t look away from the guards.

“Hey, you! Elleth, by the fence!” A guard is coming towards them, his words floating over on the wind. Tirindë freezes, feeling her cheeks go hot and guilt swamping her even though she knows she is doing no wrong. But the guard isn’t looking at her, instead at Nimidh, and his voice isn’t angry.

“You mean me?” Nimidh asks. The guard pulls off his helm, and Tirindë understands. A thin long-healed slash mark decorates each cheek and across the guard’s forehead.

“Yes, you. Who are you?” he asks, clearly fascinated. “I thought I knew most of us who Returned with slave marks. But I’ve never seen you before.” Nimidh shrugs, and points to the rounded curve of her ear.

“Probably because I’m not from around here,” she replies. The guard is stunned.

“You’re mortal?” he asks, voice astonished. “I don’t understand. How are you here then?”

“We accidentally married an Elf,” Haleth says, voice very dry. “Apparently that’s enough.” The guard nods, but his focus is on Nimidh.

“Well, consider yourself welcome, stranger,” he says, executing a swift informal bow. “Those of us who felt the direct lash of the Enemy are a company of sorts, here in Valinor. We look out for one another.” He eyes Nimidh carefully. “Although you look barely healed! Were you only very young when you died?” Tirindë raises an eyebrow, and the poor lad seems to recall himself. “Apologies, fair lady,” he says, and bows again; Nimidh just looks flustered.

“You say, ‘All is forgiven, soldier,’” Amrod says to Tirindë in an undertone; she flashes a brief glance to him, startled but grateful.

“All is forgiven, soldier,” she parrots obediently, and the guard looks relieved.

“Would you be interested in seeing our armaments?” he asks, with the air of one who loves to fight and can’t imagine anyone else would not feel the same. But Nimidh hesitates.

“Would we not be in the way?” she inquires. The guard dismisses this with a toss of his blonde braids, smiling brightly.

“Indeed not, my lady. This small squadron here has only the Returned in its ranks. And we were all one people to the Enemy,” he adds, a thin flash of something dark and melancholy showing briefly, before it is tucked away once more. “So it is no strange thing that we all consider ourselves one people now.”

The mortals need no further invitation. They hop nimbly over the fence – the guard seems surprised that all three intend to accompany him, but covers this swiftly and begins to escort them around the yard, showing them this and that. Tirindë just watches with a smile as Ishilde and Haleth manage to divest two guards of their practice swords with a mixture of guile, charm, and bluntness (Haleth’s contribution). In short order they have both tied up their skirts to the side – still modest, but with greater ease of movement – warmed up their muscles, and begun sparring with some force. Ishilde is taller, with a greater reach, but Haleth is quicker, and they are reasonably well-matched. Meanwhile Nimidh is talking with the guard from earlier beside the rack of bows, and when he gestures she selects one, fingers running carefully over the carved wood. The bow is unstrung, but Nimidh does this easily despite her small frame.

Tirindë looks behind herself at the sound of voices. A small crowd of Eldar have amassed, all who seem to be aware that these are the mortals in their midst. Back in the training yard, the guard has escorted Nimidh to the shooting range, where she is selecting an arrow while talking intently to another two Eldar with similar scar lines on their faces. They back away from her to a safe distance, and Nimidh nocks her arrow.

“She won’t be able to draw that,” a male voice says nearby with confidence. Tirindë resists the urge to give the speaker a nasty look, but Nimidh’s eyes have narrowed, as if she’d heard the slight. Swiftly and without fuss, she draws the bowstring back and looses her arrow. It flies neatly through the air to hit the target almost dead centre. Nimidh strides over to the straw dummy in the midst of the stunned silence to yank the arrowhead clean of the target. “I must have deconditioned a little,” she remarks, almost to herself, but it is perfectly audible, since all the chatter has gone mute. “But then there’s very little exercise to be had in an orc camp slave pen.”

“Feel like an ass now?” Amrod says dryly behind her, and there is the sound of clinking coins. Tirindë turns around in time to see a scowling Eldar male handing over a small pouch to Amrod, who smile now is broader than Tirindë has seen from him all day.

“Mortals might be strong, but their skill will always be less than that of the Eldar,” the nér mutters, the same voice that had doubted Nimidh before. Amrod just laughs.

“Be gone before you lose any more of your money,” he declares, and with a huff, the nér stalks off. Tirindë can tell Amrod is resisting the urge to gloat.

“Your brother will be unhappy with this display,” Tirindë says in an undertone. “Will he blame me, do you think?” Amrod shrugs.

“More likely he will blame me, good-sister,” he replies. “A poor guard I have been! Letting them shoot bows and swing swords. But look how happy it makes them,” he says, voice softening. “You cannot lash a carriage horse to the plough and expect it to accept the change immediately. If Moryo thinks they will settle down and live quiet docile lives here, he is mistaken.” Tirindë smiles up at him.

“So young, but so wise,” she teases gently. “I do not know that Morifinwë has had a chance to think anything about them yet, nor they about him. I think he is flummoxed utterly that they intend to stay.” Amrod frowns.

“Moryo is always plotting something,” he argues. “And why do they wish to stay? Surely there is nothing here for them.” Tirindë shrugs.

“It seems they have developed some small fondness for their host,” she answers, watching Nimidh pepper a straw mannequin with arrows while a guard holds a watch up and another shouts a number every time she hits the target. At the fifteenth arrow the guard with the watch shouts ‘time!’ and Nimidh is surrounded on all sides by congratulations and praise. She looks a little dazed, Tirindë thinks, but very happy.

“You have acquired a legion of fans,” Amrod remarks dryly, when Nimidh fights her way free of her admirers to accept a flask of water. She drinks it rapidly, still pink in the face with exertion and pleasure. “Fifteen arrows a minute! Very impressive. But then, I would think no less of an archer trained by my brother,” he remarks, and Nimidh blushes.

“He was a fine teacher,” she says, and Amrod slips her the little velvet coin pouch from earlier.

“My winnings, from shamelessly betting on you,” Amrod tells her, patting his pocket which jingles merrily. “And a share of the profits to the victor, as is our custom. Now, don’t argue,” he says, raising a hand to forestall the protest Nimidh looks like she is about to make. “Tell your warmaking compatriots to put down their swords. It is noontime, and that means lunch, and I believe it is on its way here even now.”

Indeed, a group of young Eldar approach, bearing large platters of cooked meat and smoked fish and cheese, loaves of bread, bags of oranges and figs, flasks of water and mugs of ale. “Amrod, I think you are mistaken about how much mortals eat,” Tirindë says, watching the small army’s worth of food approach.

“It would be impolitic not to share with your mortals’ new friends,” Amrod says. “And rude besides! We will have a fine lunch, and whatever crumbs Nelyo and Pityo and Moryo manage to scare up will look paltry indeed beside it.” Tirindë gives in. there is no sense in arguing with one of Fëanor’s sons.

“For a Feanorion, you have an abundance of common sense,” she commends. But Amrod’s expression shutters.

“Perhaps that is why I wanted to come back,” he says, and is gone, to direct his small legion of servers to distribute their spoils. Tirindë perches herself up on the fence, munching an apple and thinking.

Caranthir and his brothers and cousin return when it is almost dusk. Long have the guards dispersed from the training yard to go to their own homes; Tirindë could have done the same, except her mortals seem determined to wait Caranthir out. So they have decamped to a nearby teahouse and taken over one of the small upstairs rooms outfitted with sofas and comfortable chairs and small tables. They had fitted in a little time for some shopping, so now Nimidh has a basket of embroidery supplies, Ishilde a dozen books, and Haleth a number of small items she had deemed necessary for her continued existence. Nimidh is not embroidering now but knitting, needles clicking briskly together as red wool becomes something new under her hands. Ishilde is sketching in a blank book of papers loosely sewn together, and Haleth – Haleth has a small travel chess set in front of her and seems to be playing herself, moving the pieces one way and another as she makes notes on a scrap of paper and mutters to herself.

Amrod is sprawled on one of the sofas with his eyes closed and Tirindë’s soft floppy hat over his face, which he’d stolen when she wasn’t looking. She knows better than to think he is asleep. Amrod still considers himself on guard duty, which means he will be on watch until he is relieved. It should not be much longer, Tirindë thinks. When they’d arrived at the teahouse Tirindë had sent Caranthir a brief flash of their location through the fëa-bond, and had received back a sense of weariness, sore feet tramping on irregular cobblestones, darkness and a musty odour filling up her nose. Wherever he is, it is a secret of some kind, and Tirindë does not want to nor need to pry it open.

A maid pokes her head through the open door; Tirindë smiles at her. On her left Amrod is already getting to his feet as though to assess the threat the intruder brings. “Lady Tirindë, your husband awaits you outside,” the maid says. Tirindë flips her a coin and chivvies her mortals to their feet, although they are already packing up their small crafts and preparing to leave.

Downstairs the sun is gilding the street orange-gold, and Caranthir is at the front seat of a small cart, which is loaded with small chests. Amras lounges in the back, but he hops down at once to give his hand to Haleth. “Allow me, good lady,” he says with a smile, and Haleth climbs up into the cart. Ishilde and Nimidh receives the same swift but cordial treatment, and then Tirindë herself. She ends up somewhere nearer to the front of the cart than the others, close enough to smell that musty smell from earlier clinging to Caranthir’s clothes. She wrinkles her nose.

“Don’t tell me you were down in the sewers.” Amrod and Amras have settled themselves in; Caranthir clicks his tongue to the horses and they set off at a trot.

“I wasn’t down in the sewers,” he answers as if by rote. Tirindë scowls at the back of his head.

“Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear,” she snaps. Caranthir doesn’t turn around – can’t, he needs to keep his eyes on the road, but Tirindë knows his tells by now. His shoulders are hunched, stiff, the back of his neck pink.

“I heard you gave Nelyo the verbal equivalent of a horsewhipping,” he says neutrally.

“Nelyo is a grown lad, I’m sure he can handle it,” Tirindë replies, aware of the edge of viciousness in her voice that seems come so easily of late.

“If you have some transgression to lay at the feet of House Fëanor –”

“But there are so many, how can I possibly pick only one,” Tirindë says snidely; Caranthir ignores it.

“– then I suggest you bring it to me rather than cast up my failures to my elder brother.”

“May I suggest we discuss this somewhere else than the street, and without the current audience,” Tirindë suggests through gritted teeth. “Ambarussa certainly don’t care to hear our marital disputes, I am sure, and Ishilde, Nimidh and Haleth have their own concerns to bring to account with you.”

“And you’re going to guide the horses into that inn over there unless you concentrate,” Amras pipes up from the back of the wagon. Caranthir curses and redirects his course.

Ishilde, Haleth and Nimidh are unusually quiet; Tirindë looks back at them to find Haleth is the only one with her eyes open, shining in the coming dark like that of a cat. Ishilde and Nimidh are leaning against one another, Nimidh’s head on Ishilde’s shoulder and Ishilde resting her own on Nimidh’s shorn crown. It’s sweet, like two overtired kittens that have curled up in a corner together and gone to sleep. It is equally sweet that Haleth is still awake, guarding her two charges. At Tirindë’s glance she raises her eyes towards the sky as if appealing some higher power for patience before glancing significantly in Caranthir’s direction. It conveys her meaning utterly; can you believe the nerve of him? Tirindë muffles a laugh.

“What’s in the chests, Moryo?” Amras calls to his older brother.

“Nothing to concern you,” is the reply.

“It must be from before we left for Middle-earth,” Amrod muses. “And not perishable, to have survived all these years in your secret storage location that is definitely not in the sewers.”

“Pityo,” Caranthir warns ominously. “You are not so old that I will not dump you out of the cart entirely and tell Mother you fell into a hornet’s nest on the way home and could not be saved.”

“Hah!” Amras says. “If you came home without us, Ammë would beat you with a shoe and send you out to find us again. She will not countenance the loss of her sweet baby boys again.” This is said with a distinct degree of smugness.

“Amras, you are at least several centuries old, depending on which calendar one reckons by,” Caranthir calls back to him, voice weary in a way any older sibling would instantly recognise.

“And our sister by law Tirindë is thousands of years older than you, Moryo,” Amrod points out. “You are no longer older than her. You should respect your elders more.” Tirindë lifts her eyebrows, pretending at shock.

“You sail dangerous waters, little brother, by mentioning a nís’ age so boldly,” she tells him; Amrod’s burn-scarred face creases into a smile, both with humour at her comment and with pleasure at the appellation she’d used for him.

“Oh look, here we are,” Caranthir says hurriedly. Amras sighs, deprived of his opportunity to torment his older sibling, but takes charge of the mortal women, chivvying first the drowsy two inside and then Haleth, who doesn’t miss the opportunity to raise an insolent eyebrow at Caranthir before going indoors. That leaves Tirindë to supervise the transfer of roughly half the chests into her vestibule, Caranthir and Amrod stacking them roughly against a wall before Amras emerges again.

“Tell Ammë I’ll be home in the morning,” Caranthir tells his brothers, who alight the cart once more after Tirindë kisses them both on the cheek and squeezes their hands in farewell. They trundle off into the distance, and once she is certain they are out of earshot, Tirindë turns to her husband.

“And where do you intend to stay? Certainly not under my roof,” she snaps, unfamiliar weariness tugging at her. Usually she would not feel this tired until much later in the evening, when Ithil is high in its path through the sky. Caranthir looks little better; he stifles a yawn with one hand.

“Ishilde, Nimidh,” he explains at her look. “They’re tired, so we’re tired. The downside to twining one’s fëa with a mortal,” he adds.

“Or having one’s fëa twined,” Tirindë says darkly. Her husband leans against the stone wall outside her house and just shakes his head.

“I will find a room in an inn somewhere,” he says. “Rest assured I have no desire to cohabitate again with someone who still finds me reprehensible, despite yesterday’s evidence to the contrary.” Tirindë feels herself flush.

“Oh, you think you’re so very clever, don’t you,” she flares. “Ambarussa aren’t wrong, you know. Eight thousand years you were gone from me. Do you think it’s so easy to pick up the threads of an old life?” Caranthir’s moonglow eyes glint at her. Telperion is long since lost, Tirindë knows full well, and yet she fancies a glimpse of the silver tree remains yet, at least in Caranthir’s eyes.

“I know how difficult it is,” he replies, and she should not yet find him so lovely. Red-cheeked, narrow face and pointed chin and severe black Ñoldo eyebrows drawn together. He is not a handsome nér, not by Eldar standards. It is only that Tirindë loves him. “Three months back from both Void and Mandos, and the only time you will stomach me near you is when my mortal paramours come back from wherever they dwelt before. I might think you feel more acutely for them than for me, if it were not so absurd a notion –” Something must show in Tirindë’s face, because Caranthir goes very still. “You do,” he says slowly. “You do care for them. Me, you can barely tolerate for ten minutes at a time, but them, you take them straight into your heart, the place from which I have always been barred –”

“Mandos did not rob you of your dramatics, husband,” Tirindë says, very tired. “At least come into the house before you shout accusations at me in the street.” Caranthir glares, but obliges enough to come into the vestibule with her, the better to whisper-shout calumnies at one another. “You tied them to me,” she hisses, keeping an eye on the open door to the lounging area where presumably the women are resting. “You love them, so I love them. And I love them all the easier because I have no quarrel of any kind with them. They are easy to love –”

“And I am not,” Caranthir bites out. Tirindë throws up her hands.

“You burned the ships that might have brought me to you! You valued your wretched Oath over the lives brought to you by the plighting of my troth to you, the bonds of marriage and fealty which led my kin and friends over the Sea in service of your father’s vengeance – and for what? My kin will never leave Mandos. My family will never be whole. And yours –” Tirindë shoves him in the chest, hard; when did he get so close? Did he come to her, or has she badgered him this corner without knowing – “Yours live at liberty under the Sun in your mother’s house, your father who went mad and betrayed nearly everyone he ever knew has known no consequence, no reparations, for the lives taken in wanton brutality at Alqualondë and lost in ignorance in Middle-earth.” Caranthir is staring at her like he’s never since her before. It makes Tirindë feel powerful, but not in a good way; it feels greasy, sickening, like her belly is twisting inside of her. So she says no more, but her chest heaves regardless, sucking in air that doesn’t seem to help at all.

“What reparations could be made?” he asks at length. “There is no wergild that could be considered enough to begin to cover our sins –”

“How can you say that when you have not made an attempt at a start!” Tirindë says, and pushes hard against his chest. “You have not even said that you are sorry!”

The word hangs in the air between them, as palpable as flesh. Caranthir’s expression calms, iota by degree, and his shoulders come down from around his ears, his spine slowly relaxing. “That is true,” he says lowly, and takes just one step closer. With the lessened distance between them Tirindë goes from looking in his face to staring at his chest, but before she can raise her chin Caranthir’s hand is there, light on the side of her face and tilting her head up to meet his eyes. “I am sorry, my wife,” he says softly, in a tone that could almost be considered gentle. Tirindë looks up at him, takes in the lines of his face that are so much harsher than they should be, given his life was cut short so very long ago.

“I know you are, Morinya,” she says, and breathes out the last of her fury as she meets his pale-silver eyes. “But I am only one elleth, and there are many more you and yours have wronged.”

“The girls are asleep,” Haleth says.

Tirindë turns to see the mortal leaning against the doorway of the lounging room. Haleth’s expression is unreadable, her arms crossed over her chest. “I am not surprised,” Tirindë says. “They pushed themselves hard in the training yard today. I am surprised you have not yet joined them.” Haleth makes a face and taps her temple.

“You two fighting makes my head hurt,” she mutters. “It’s like a shard of ice through my eye. So you should stop doing it.” Tirindë casts a glance at her husband, who meets it levelly.

“I think we have aired enough grievances for one night,” Caranthir says coolly. “If I could trouble you for a glass of water before I go – all this discord has dried me out terribly –” Tirindë rolls her eyes.

“Trouble is right,” she mutters, but lets him follow her docilely enough into the lounging area, Haleth ahead of them both. Tirindë goes in the direction of the kitchen but Haleth waves her off, faster and lighter on her feet than both Caranthir and Tirindë herself at this time. So instead Tirindë sits in one of the armchairs, and looks for the other mortals. She does not have to look very far. On each of the two sofas, Ishilde and Nimidh have been covered with blankets and tucked in, a pillow placed under both of their heads. “Oh,” Tirindë says, stopping short. “They are so sweet.”

“Yes,” Caranthir says. He too has melted into a chair; as quiet as a whisper, Haleth brings him his water. “Danke, liebling,” he says – it is Taliska, Tirindë thinks – and watches Haleth flush a bright and angry red before she storms off to the kitchen again to clatter dishware together angrily.

“She’s like a cat that raises its hackles every time you try to give it a stroke,” Tirindë observes. “Only with you, though. I’m sure she’d let me stroke her if I tried.” Something about the last sentence feels strange, and Caranthir is certainly giving her a very odd look. But then, Caranthir is a very odd sort of nér himself, so Tirindë puts it out of her mind.

“I will take my leave,” Caranthir says, and makes a decent attempt at standing up. He almost gets there, but flops back down to the chair at the very last second. Haleth returns just in time to see him stagger and huffs to herself. The weariness is showing in her now, in her drooping eyes and sagging posture.

“We will need to work on this,” Tirindë says wryly. “I will go mad if I become this exhausted every time the sun sets.”

“It has only been three days,” Caranthir reminds her. “Give me but a moment more. I will collect myself and go.”

“Oh, he can bunk with me,” Haleth says, now past exasperated and well on her way to exhausted nihilism. “I wouldn’t say the same for Nimi, but I think I can manage to keep my hands off him for one night. If you will deign to have him under your roof, Tirindë.” Clearly she has heard more of the conversation than Tirindë thought.

“Since I think it will take all my effort just to stagger up the stairs to my bed, I will allow it,” she declares with some small attempt at dignity, and pats Haleth’s shoulder as she passes her. “Mara lomë, Haleth. And you as well, Morinya.”

Tirindë’s bed looks so inviting, she doesn’t even dress for bed. She merely pulls off her dress and climbs under the sheets in her sleeveless white shift. Sleep claims her almost as soon as she lies down, but gives her enough time to wonder if Haleth will let Caranthir hold her as she sleeps, before the tide of dreams takes her away.

Chapter Text

Haleth eyes Caranthir and very resolutely does not wonder if he wants to hold her while she sleeps.

She had dressed for bed in the longest, plainest nightshift that she could find, one of several tucked into a parcel that Seríssë had sent back to Tirindë’s house with them. In her youth Haleth did not bother with such fripperies – she slept bare, and if anyone happened to espy her without clothes then the only shame could be on their part. Or in the field she slept in mail or armour; either way there was no need for long skirts that twine irritatingly around her legs when she rolls over in her sleep. But she does not want to give Caranthir any impression that she welcomes his presence in any bed Haleth herself also occupies, and besides, it would feel odd to sleep nude in Valinor, this so-called holy realm that had always seemed beyond such petty notions as sleepwear and sleep when Haleth had been alive.

Or so Caranthir had made it sound. Haleth shakes off the thought when a knock comes at the closed door; she clears her throat.

“Enter.” Caranthir droops into the room, looking worse than she could remember seeing him ever in the years of her life. “Gods, Caranthir. Sit down before you fall over.” It is not care for him that motivates her, she reminds herself. It is only that if he fell over Tirindë would probably hear it, and she would insist on coming and scooping Caranthir up in that honourable way of hers. ‘Rindë had been as weary as the rest of them. Caranthir obeys, sitting down on the edge of the bed, beginning to remove his boots. Haleth purses her lips. “That’s my side.”

Caranthir looks at her like a man begging a higher power for patience. Slowly, he rises and comes around to the side of the bed nearer the window. “Does it matter?” he asks, voice slow and heavy as he unlaces the handsome knee-high boots he wears, much prettier and finely made than any she ever saw him wear in Middle-earth.

“Window side is less defensible,” Haleth says abruptly. “If someone came at me through it, being on the door side gives me a split-second longer to defend myself. Door at least locks.” Caranthir raises one of his heavy black eyebrows.

“But you didn’t lock it when I came in,” he reminds her. Haleth scowls at him.

“It would be rude to lock Tirindë out of one of her own rooms,” she snaps. Once he would have snapped back, but either time or tiredness has drained some of the bark from him; Caranthir merely nods and removes his socks. His feet are very large and very pale, and exactly as Haleth remembers them. Time at least has not changed that.

“Would you allow me to remove my breeches?” he asks. Haleth opens her mouth to snarl at him, but Caranthir holds out a forestalling hand. “My shirt is long enough to conceal me, my lady. It is only that they are uncomfortable to sleep in.”

This Haleth can seize upon. “Damned foolery,” she mutters to herself, pointedly turning her back. There is a rustling sound as Caranthir presumably unlaces himself before the soft rustle of folding cloth. “This place has made you lose all the common sense we bashed into you in Middle-earth. Making and wearing clothes you can’t sleep or fight or fuck in –”

Caranthir coughs. “As I recall, it was you bashing most of the common sense into me, my lady.” There is a louder rustle as he settles himself under the sheets. “You may turn around now.”

Haleth does so. The bed is easily big enough that Nimi, Ishilde and Haleth herself have been able to comfortably bunk together thus far with only a minimum of accidental elbowing. But Caranthir is much taller than all of them, taller even than Tirindë, and much broader besides. “Keep your hands to yourself,” she mutters, and climbs up into the bed – it is at least as high as her waist, sized as it is for Eldar and not mortals. She blows out the last candle on the small table beside her, and then they are in darkness.

She hears Caranthir sigh next to her. “I do not bed unwilling women,” he says, before adding, with a touch of reproach in his voice: “You might remember that.” Gods, but she does. She had been the one to approach him, Thargelion’s lord, draped as he was in silk and ermine, gleaming like a star. Haleth had been a week from the battlefield at that point. The sudden break from the fighting had made her skin itch all over, and although she’d bathed four times there was still black orc blood in the cracks where her fingernails met her flesh. Scarred hands, calloused hands, and she’d put them all over Caranthir, his skin as white and clear and clean as any maiden in the first blush of youth, and nearly completely hairless but for the daintiest dark fuzz around the base of his cock. He’d been beautiful, but not in the way of a woman. Caranthir had been undoubtedly and resolutely masculine, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, lean with muscle and bitter with both her refusal of his offer and the shadows that weighed his shoulders down.

It had not mattered to Haleth. She had fucked him like it had been her last day alive, taken him inside her as he’d gasped and clutched her hips as she rode him. The prettiest mount she’d ever had, she’d found herself thinking, and that had been the last time she dwelt completely alone inside her mind, even though it would be many years before she knew it.

Did you know? That you had bound me to you? Caranthir jolts. From her research in Tirindë’s library, Ishilde had been able to tell both Nimidh and Haleth that it is possible to speak only to one connection of the bond at a time – Tirindë certainly seems adept at it, but then, she has had practice – but Haleth does not recall how Ishilde had described it now. This conversation between herself and Caranthir is only private because they are the only two awake.

Not at first, he answers, cautiously. He lies on his back beside her; she remembers that he used to sleep curled on his side, eyes wide and unseeing, in the old days. In Thargelion, certainly not. But after you left – I would see flashes. Of skies I had not seen with my own eyes, forests, rivers. The house you built for your brother’s wife and your nephew. Haleth flushes, embarrassed, and not sure why. She fights the urge to turn over and away from him.

Not everyone can live in high towers above the muck of the world, she says in exasperation. Caranthir makes a frustrated sound aloud.

“I am not trying to insult you,” he snips.

“Why not? it served you well enough before,” Haleth bites back in reply.

I was made to see – the error of my ways, he retorts stiffly, through the bond. It is wildly different, Haleth thinks, conversing this way rather than aloud. Aloud and in the dark she has only his verbal tells to divine his mood, and he does not have many in them. But through the bond there is multitudes more – his own exasperation, his stubbornness, and underlying it all the keenest sense that he is so very pleased to have her back.

Did Ishilde and Nimi whip you into shape? Haleth asks, instead of commenting on his distinct and unsubtle gladness in being beside her once more. Surprisingly Caranthir chuckles.

Ishilde said the way I spoke to women was appalling, and wouldn’t see me until I learned to behave myself. And Nimidh – ah, little Nimi. If I snapped at her she would look at me with those terrible wide eyes, utterly unable to conceive of why I would try to hurt her. She taught me gentleness, and Ishilde taught me fairness.

“And me?” Haleth says bitterly, unable to continue speaking to him through the bond, his mental voice dripping warmth and devotion. “I suppose you learned nothing from me but how far you’d allowed yourself to stoop.” This time she does not fight the urge to turn away; she rolls onto her side away from Caranthir, towards the cold edge of the bed, even though the heat radiating from his body had been very pleasant indeed.

“And you?” he repeats, voice puzzled. “Ai, Haleth, you taught me so much. The honour to be found in the race of Men. The strength.” His hand is hesitant against her spine, as tentative as the first time she woke in the night to find him curled against the line of her back, cock hard against her arse, fairly shaking with need. “If I had never known Haleth of the Haladin, I would have been so very much the poorer for it.” He always could turn out a pretty compliment when he wanted to, Haleth thinks viciously. He had then. He’d moaned in her ear and said something gravelly about how sweet it was to be with her as Haleth had tilted her hips back and taken him inside her. He’d rubbed at her cunt with his free hand until she’d peaked – had Tirindë taught him that, how to pleasure a woman? Haleth had wondered it idly then, since he had always been forthcoming that he had once been married. But it is different to see the lady Elf Caranthir had wed, had claimed he was sundered from, a claim she knows now to be truth. Tirindë has confirmed it. Caranthir must have been mad to displease her.

“Tirindë is remarkable.” Behind her she feels more than hears Caranthir stiffen. “Already she cares greatly for Nimidh, and is fond of Ishilde and myself.”

“Nimidh inspires protectiveness in others,” Caranthir replies gruffly. There is a rustle of sheets as he resettles himself; it sounds as if he has rolled over as well, but facing Haleth rather than turning away from her. “And Tirindë has always thrived in caring for those who need it the most.”

“Is that why she chose you, then?” Haleth remarks without thinking it through overmuch; the hand tracing gentle circles on her spine stops for a moment, before continuing. She will tell him to stop, presently. After a minute more.

“It is difficult to say.” Caranthir’s voice seems far away, his tone thoughtful. “She certainly let it be known she had a tenderness for me. In that time my father sought to find us matches that could assist with his political aspirations. Not that he would have been a very good king,” he adds, with bitterness of his own now in his voice. “But we didn’t know that then. So much that we did not know then!” But he seems to shake it away. “It was disclosed to a select few wealthy and influential families that a union with a son of Fëanor might be within their reach. And Tirindë’s father was very wealthy, although he did not take much of an interest in the shifting power struggles of the Ñoldor. But he loved her. And when he saw how much she seemed to dote on the strange, awkward middle child of Fëanor, the least of them truly but that his eldest daughter seemed to see as a prize nevertheless –”

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Haleth says ruthlessly, cutting into the story before Caranthir has a chance to turn himself maudlin and resentful.

“Ai, if it please you, my lady,” he says almost teasingly, before resuming his tale. “And so my father agreed to the match on my behalf. And I did not fight him on it, because I so very wanted to be useful to him, in any way that I could. My brothers were outraged on my behalf.”

“Because it was arranged?” Haleth asks. She can think of no other reason.

“Because Tirindë’s father is Vanyar. Or at the very least, has a Vanyar name, and led a Vanyar House. In truth Tirindë has perhaps less than a quarter Vanyar blood, but it was enough to disgust and dismay my brothers.”

“Because your grandfather’s second wife was a Vanyar woman. Elf. And your father didn’t like that.” It seems absurd to Haleth, and she says so. “Women die in childbirth every day. It is not dishonourable, for a man to find a new woman to mother his children.” Caranthir laughs shortly, and there is little mirth in it.

“The race of Men are indeed wiser than the Eldar in many respects,” he says dryly. “It all seems so foolish now. We tell ourselves it was the influence of Morgoth, walking among us spreading mistruths and discord. But it started long before that. Even I –”

“Wait. Morgoth walked among you?” Haleth repeats, astonished. “And you didn’t kick him in the jewels at the very sight of him?” Caranthir laughs again, but it is lacking the joyless edge from earlier, sounding much more like true amusement this time.

“No doubt we would have, if we knew what dread and terror he would bring! But he claimed to be remorseful, and donned a fair face to deceive us, and the Valar decreed him redeemed. In those times, very few dared speak against the Valar.”

“I would have,” Haleth mutters sullenly. Or at least it would be sullen, if she could muster up the spite for it, but Caranthir’s hand still feathers along her spine like the brush of his long eyelashes used to against her cheek. “I would have kicked him in the jewels and in the arse, too. Along with that great steaming pile of dung Sauron, for hurting our nephew.” Caranthir’s voice, when it comes, is surprised.

“Our nephew?”

“Of course our nephew,” Haleth replies stiffly. “Yours, mine, Tirindë’s, Ishilde’s and Nimidh’s, now. Family ties amongst my people are very strong. Any blood of yours is now mine.”

“You may come to regret that,” Caranthir says softly, a thread of something vulnerable in his voice that Haleth is not able to decode. “My blood relations are responsible for most of the travesties committed in the First Age.”

“Does it not strain your mind to imagine there were two whole Ages afterwards?” Haleth asks. “Where our lands were submerged and nearly forgotten, and all trace of our names and deeds washed away by both water and time?” Caranthir exhales.

“You understand,” he says fervently. “So few others do. Six thousand years! My mother has crafted wonders without count in that time. Tirindë has lived most of her life without me in it. And the wheel of time ever marching on. My irrelevancy in the annals of history is humiliating in the extreme.”

“Caranthir the Irrelevant?” Haleth mocks gently, and where once he would have turned blistering hot with indignation, Caranthir only laughs with her.

“It seems so, my lady,” he replies, grimly but not without an element of self-deprecating humour. “We should sleep.” Haleth nods, before realising that in the dark he won’t be able to see it.

“Guten nacht, Caranthir.”

“May pleasant dreams find you, Haleth.”

Haleth rises with the sun, as she did in all the days of her mortal life and for the past four of this strange new one. Caranthir is still abed when she creeps from the room, although Haleth allows herself one look back at him from the open doorway. He sleeps on his back, his Elven eyes wide and unseeing – the first time she had seen him sleep so, it had unnerved her down to her very bones – and so Haleth closes the door, goes in search of tea and toast.

Nimidh and Ishilde still rest on the sofas in the cool darkness of the lounging room, but in the kitchen Tirindë has lit a fire in the hearth and has water boiling for tea. She too has not bothered to bathe or change out of her sleeping shift, although it falls much shorter on Tirindë, with her longer limbs.

“Good morning, Haleth,” she says as she pokes at the flames in the hearth.

“Same to you,” Haleth replies gruffly. The exhaustion that had dulled Tirindë’s eyes last night has been washed away with sleep; she gleams in the morning sunshine. The light picks out strands of dark copper and half a dozen hues of brown in the unbound hair long enough to touch her elbows. Her dark eyes are fixed on the view out of the open door to the garden, where sparrows are twittering gleefully and pecking at the scattering of grain on the rough paving stones. “I would have thought the house of a princess would be fancier,” Haleth says before her better sense can stop her. She winces inwardly, but Tirindë’s eyes do not falter from the small birds pecking at their breakfast or dabbing their beaks into the water fountain nearby.

“I am no princess, Haleth,” Tirindë replies wryly.

“Well, a high lady then.” Tirindë does flick her eyes to Haleth at that, but not for long. She whistles, and a starling flies into the kitchen and lands on her outstretched finger. Tirindë gently begins to feed it crumbs of bread.

“My father was wealthy, but he did not allow his children to sit idle when there was work to be done. Our riches were not just for us but for all Eldar, he would say. Even here there are those who are poor or whose infimity means they cannot work, even before so many came back maimed and injured from the wars. To be of the workshops of Altalannë is to serve, Father would say.”

“Radiant cloth,” Haleth muses. The starling chirps as Tirindë pets its tiny head.

“That is the direct translation, yes. But it means more than that. To be clothed in radiance. To be honourable, and deal honourably with others. You might have noticed that the Eldar are very high and mighty sort of folk,” she adds self-deprecatingly. Haleth sips her tea.

“You might be a shade less so that others,” she teases, and is rewarded with the peal of Tirindë’s laughter, like chiming golden bells. “Why don’t Caranthir’s eyes glow anymore?” It is a trivial question, but Haleth has so many that perhaps the inconsequential is as good a place as any to start. “Yours do.” Tirindë passes a hand over her eyes self-consciously.

“The Eldar who saw the Two Trees before the Darkening are called the Calaquendi, the Elves of the Light. Telperion and Laurelin, and the light that came from them, was so powerful as to alter the nature of our very fëa and soak into our hröa. Soul and body,” she adds, and Haleth tips her mug at her in thanks. “When Caranthir died, his fëa and hröa separated. He was granted a new hröa when he was reembodied, but his current form has not walked under the Light of the Trees. Hence, he bears no luminescence in his eyes.” Haleth taps her mug in thought.

“Eldar are odd,” she pronounces.

“One gets a little odd after all this time,” Tirindë says, a small smile on her face. She looks up from her starling – the bird flies back out the door, sated for now – and past Haleth into the doorway. “Nimidh, good morning.”

“Ugh,” the young mortal says back, grimacing as she drops into a chair. “I think I’ve thrown my back out sleeping on a sofa all night.” Haleth hides a grin as Tirindë says mildly:

“Are you sure it wasn’t the six hours of archery yesterday?” Nimidh gives a sour little smile.

“I’m so deconditioned,” she bemoans. “I’ll have to start running again in the mornings just to build my stamina back up.” Haleth nods.

“I could stand to join you,” she admits. “This body might be a vast improvement over my ones of seventy-nine winters, but there is always better to strive for.” Nimidh nods.

“And riding twice a day,” she adds, rubbing one of her thighs for emphasis. “Maybe weighted weapons for two hours after breakfast. Just to really get back into form.”

“For which battles do you prepare for?” Tirindë asks lightly. She is shredding the last of her bread with both hands; in a swift motion, she goes to the door and throws it into the garden, where delighted birds swarm it at once. There is something tense in her shoulders. “We have peace here in Valinor.” Nimidh shakes her head.

“There’s always the Dagor Dagorath,” she says darkly. Tirindë whirls around.

“It’s a myth!”

“So was Valinor, practically, when I was young,” Nimidh rejoins quickly. “Or as good as. Mortals in Valinor, even more so. But I’m here, Haleth’s here, Ishilde’s here –”

“I’m upright but I’m not conscious,” Ishilde decrees, stepping into the kitchen and making a beeline for the teapot. Nimidh makes a face at her.

“How come you’re not stiff from the sofas?” she demands. Ishilde, in blatant disregard of anyone else who might want tea, simply lifts the pot and drinks directly from the spout.

“But the leaves,” Tirindë says faintly. “Isn’t it full of the leaves?”

“And without milk and sugar? You animal,” Nimidh tells Ishilde. Ishilde just sets the emptied teapot down and goes rummaging in the pantry for breakfast.

“I’m not stiff because I died in my prime, albeit with a sword in my bowels,,” she says, voice slightly muffled. “You’re sore because you spent three weeks tied to a post in an orc camp with your muscles atrophying.” Nimidh grimaces.

“You did what?” Haleth resists the urge to flinch, although she notes both Tirindë and Nimidh lose that particular battle. She twists around to see a rumpled Caranthir step into the kitchen – thankfully with breeches back on, but shirt untucked and hair loose – and aim a look at Nimidh so intense it could almost strip paint off the wall. Nimidh is always pale, but now she is so bloodless she could almost blend in with the curtains in the kitchen window. “Orc camp? Nimidh, certainly not, not you –” There is a note of pleading in Caranthir’s voice, as though he is begging her to tell him otherwise.

Nimidh folds her hands in her lap. She is very small, and very dignified, and her eyes are dry. “I lived for only two more years after you were slain in Doriath,” she says evenly. “I was captured on patrol and taken to one of the orc camps outside Amon Ereb. There was a pen, with slaves in it. First they marked us,” she gestures to her face, “and then they took us one by one to the leader’s tent. There were only women in that pen. I’m sure you can work out what they used us for.”

Caranthir’s face is a study in devastation. He takes one staggering step forward, then another, and then rushes to Nimidh’s side like an unseen rope pulls him towards her. His knees seem to give out, and they crack as they impact the stone, but Caranthir seems to take no notice of it. “They used you for…” His hand rises, shaking; his voice is just as unsteady. “Nimi, no. Not you –”

“Not me,” Nimidh agrees. “But I was to be next. Two of them took me to the river to wash in the morning. The stupid chump to my right didn’t even notice when I swiped his belt-knife,” she says bitterly. “They put me back in the pen. Darkness fell, and I used the knife to get myself loose.”

“And you escaped,” Caranthir says, hope dawning in his eyes.

“I didn’t escape,” Nimi replies, and the hope dies. “I talked with the other girls. There were twelve of us left then. We came to an agreement.” She takes a deep breath. “I slit Eira’s throat first,” she says ruthlessly; Caranthir makes a small noise like a wounded animal. Tirindë’s dark eyes are glistening with tears; Haleth can’t see Ishilde because she’s too busy staring at Nimi, who continues doggedly through her tale despite the sheer ghoulish horror of it. “She was only fourteen, they would have ripped her apart trying to get inside her. Then Angharad, Cerys, Alia, Efa. Lowri, Kitrin, Olwen, Isuelt. Tylda, and then Bertha. And then me,” she adds with a tired little shrug. “Of course, it was poor steel to start with, and after all of that work –” She mimes a sawing motion over her own throat that unfortunately needs no translation into words. “But I didn’t want their blood on their own hands, in case suicide is one of those sins that bars you from whatever halls await Men after death. They were only poor farm girls, they’d never held a weapon a day in their lives. They were innocent. I wasn’t by then.”

Nimidh is finished. There is a horrible silence, but Haleth is saved from having to break it by Ishilde, who is never short of something to say.

“What,” Ishilde says, into the devastated kitchen, “the honest fuck.”

“Nimi,” Tirindë says hoarsely. The tears have long since escaped her eyes and fallen down her cheeks. In a swoop of white linen and long brown hair, she goes to Nimidh and kneels beside her, tall enough that even with Nimidh sitting in a chair Tirindë can still envelop her in her arms. “Oh, my dear brave girl.” Nimi nuzzles into Tirindë’s shoulder for a moment, but her head twists around to look at Caranthir. He too is crying, openly, silently, all his haughtiness and pride cracked open.

“I should never have gone to Doriath,” he says, his voice a ragged, ruined thing. “In truth, I did not want to. Only the Oath –” He pauses, and then looks around. “I never told you, did I? Any of you. About the Oath.”

“Worry not, my lord,” Ishilde says, tone brittle. “Your Eldar wife has filled us in on much that you neglected to mention.” It is difficult for Haleth to say what Caranthir flinches harder at, the words or Ishilde’s flinty voice.

“Nimidh, forgive me,” he says, hands outstretched, a supplicant. But Nimidh deliberately turns her head from him and rests it again on Tirindë’s shoulder, as clear a dismissal as any Haleth could have given herself. Caranthir’s face falls. “I would do anything to change the past and spare you such pain,” he says, voice cracking.

“I’m afraid that is impossible,” Nimidh says levelly. She rises neatly from her chair. “I will go and bathe. Haleth, Ishilde, will you come with me?”

“Aye,” Ishilde agrees. “Anything to get out of here.” The two women leave the kitchen arm in arm, and Haleth follows, but something makes her look back. Tirindë has gone to Caranthir and placed a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her like a man drowning.

 “Oh, Lossi, I don’t know what to do –”

“Come here, Morinya,” Tirindë says softly, and Caranthir turns on his knees to bury his face in her sensible linen shift. He puts his arms around her waist and sobs, and in profile Haleth sees his long nose press against Tirindë’s stomach before his curtain of loose black hair falls forward and obscures his face. Tirindë sighs and puts her hands on his face, cradling him against her.

This is not for Haleth. She leaves, but the tableau of embracing Eldar man and wife stay with her, as though seared into the backs of her eyes.

“So do you think we’ve talked about all our trials and tribulations yet?” Ishilde asks. She is up to her neck in the jasmine-scented water of Tirindë’s bathing pool, sitting on the small ledge as she scrubs Nimidh’s back for her. “There’s nothing else that needs to be bled before we can set the break?” Next to her, Nimidh just tilts her head with a sigh.

“I didn’t want for him to know just yet,” she admits. “But that was for selfish reasons; I didn’t want him to look at me any differently. Perhaps it is for the best.”

“And that is a terribly mixed metaphor, Ishilde,” Haleth adds. Ishilde gives her a lopsided smile in return. Haleth returns to washing her hair with the odd liquid soap resting on a small ledge by the bath.

“Do you think everyone who lived in Middle-earth had a horrible death?” Nimidh muses. “Or am I just special?”

“My death was a peaceful one, even as I raged against the fact of it,” Haleth replies frankly. “And I saw many of my people go gently into whatever waits beyond. So no, I don’t think everyone in our lands and our time died cruelly. But many did.”

“Do you think it’s different now?” There is a tremulous edge of hope in Nimidh’s voice.

“I have heard that it is,” Tirindë says, coming smoothly down the steps. Haleth looks away instinctively when Tirindë pulls her shift over her head before stepping into the water, but despite it she still manages to catch a half-glimpse of long golden Elven limbs. “Orcs have been all but eradicated. Men still make war upon one another, but with the malicious presence of Sauron dealt with, I have been told that it happens less and less.”

“One can’t blame the gods for everything,” Haleth mutters. “Mortals can drum up plenty of spite for one another regardless of a rogue Maia fucking about in the East.”

“I defer to your judgment, Haleth. You would know your own people better than I,” Tirindë says agreeably.

“Can they be considered our people?” Nimidh wonders. “With so many years between our lives and theirs?”

“I like to believe some iota of myself remains, in whatever descendants I have been fortunate enough to have,” Ishilde comments. Out of the four of them, Ishilde is the only one with children, Haleth knows, although she herself had loved her nephew like a son. “It is pleasing to me that the blood of my forefathers runs through the veins of living Men and women even to this very moment.”

“Even if they cannot walk your father’s lands, or know the place that you were buried?” Nimidh asks. Ishilde only inclines her head in agreement.

“It gives me great pride to think that one of my distant kin might have borne arms in the battles that finally defeated Morgoth and his lieutenant,” she replies, a distant look in her eyes, as though imagining those great battles in her mind’s eye.

“The great cause of my life was to fight,” Haleth says aloud. “To attack, to defend. What purpose can I find now, I wonder? I am not made for peace.”

“Just because you never knew peaceful times does not meaning you cannot find some purpose in them,” Tirindë says gently, her throaty voice more of a comfort than Haleth wants to admit. “And we have some room to negotiate, at least where what you will be allowed here is concerned. We could argue in the court of the High King that weapons and armour are a vital part of your cultural traditions, and an exception should be made to allow you to bear them. Ishilde could apprentice to the architect’s guild if she so desires, as Nimidh wishes to in my sister’s workshops. Surely we could find something for you to do that will bring you some serenity of mind, Haleth.” Tirindë hesitates, and it is with a degree of reluctance that she says the next words: “Of course, if you wish to leave these lands and reunite with your kin, we could certainly discuss this with the High King as well –” She looks miserable at the very thought even as her honour forces her to make the offer, Haleth thinks.

“Not at this time,” she replies firmly, and Tirindë relaxes. “I’m done with bathing for today. Is Caranthir still lurking around upstairs?” Tirindë shakes her head.

“I’ve sent him into the garden for now, I can fetch him when we’re presentable,” she says. “I think he’s already up to his elbows in the fountain repairing the damaged piping.” Haleth snorts.

“‘The least of Fëanor’s sons’, he says. But put a broken thing in front of him and he can’t resist tinkering with it.” Tirindë’s eyes gleam with humour.

“The whole family are like that, I’m afraid,” she confides. “The most peaceful times I ever spent with them was when they all had a project under their nose.” There is an air of distinct fondness about her when she adds: “Caranthir used to knit the loveliest scarves for winter. But the last one he made me turned to dust long ago.”

Caranthir, knitting, Haleth thinks as she swathes herself in one of the heavy towel-like robes that hang on the hooks near the bath. It would seem laughable, except she has seen him do it, long ago in the first months of their courtship, when her people stayed in Thargelion, first to recover from the battle and then to prepare for the long journey east. Caranthir knitted with fine bone needles made of ivory and chased with gold, and the wool that disappeared into the clicking points of his labours was superior to any Haleth had ever worn. But he had made her a scarf, and gloves to protect her hands against winter’s chill, and Haleth saw many of her people equipped with similar that she could swear were the work of his hands, for all they were anonymously given. Haleth resolves to go to the marketplace and purchase him a new set of needles as soon as she has the coin to do so. He may well have thousands of them here in these lands of paradise, but it would a diplomatic move, to show him she remembers the things that brought him happiness.

“I rue the need for such contrivances,” she mutters as she puts on a light cotton shirt and thick linen breeches, pulling on the soft calf-skin boots that reach her knees, long enough to tuck her breeches into. The whole ensemble is less than useless for stopping a blade, although she doesn’t mind the ease of movement. But any commonplace Elf is quicker and more agile than even the greatest fighters among Men; Haleth never had to fight any of the Eldar, but she imagines the best way would be to overwhelm them with sheer strength. That had been the way orcs bested Elves, in the days of her youth, and it had been used to devastating effect. That, and superior numbers; orcs seemed to breed as easily as rabbits.

She stomps out to the garden after brushing her teeth and hair, having scowled at herself in the looking glass, the same reflection she’s always known, seeing the flaws in it. The strong nose and jaw, better suited to a male than a woman; the heavy eyebrows, the full mouth that does not suit the rest of her face at all. Once her nose had been twice broken and a scar had bisected her right eyebrow; an orc had bitten a chunk out of her neck before she’d hewn him in twain. Even the toe lost to frostbite, and the wrinkles that had deepened as she aged – all of Haleth’s past has been obliterated from her face, as though she has never belonged anywhere at all.

With that pleasing thought in mind, she finds Caranthir still digging around in the fountain, sleeves rolled to his elbows but still splattered in mud regardless. “Almost got it, Lossi,” he grits out as Haleth approaches, bent over the fountain with his back to her.

“Tirindë will be pleased to hear it,” Haleth replies. Caranthir starts, glances over his shoulder, but his hands remain steady in the fountain’s inner works, busy, unceasing.

“No doubt you are pleased to see me thus,” he retorts dryly. “You would have been once, to see me stripped of my dignity, covered in dirt with not a single jewel in sight.”

“The mighty lord of Barad Caranthir,” Haleth muses. “Proud and cold and unknowable. Do you know, I think this suits you better.” Caranthir ducks his head. She can’t see his face, but the tips of his ears and the back of his neck are turning red. It always amused and sometimes delighted Haleth at how easily he would turn red and stammering in private, even as he would wear the cold carven face of a lord in court. Caranthir grunts, something in the fountain making an unpleasant crunching noise, and then as Haleth watches there is the sound of trickling water and the fountain begins to flow again. “Neatly done,” Haleth says; Caranthir straightens to his full height, turning to face her.

“‘Neat’?” he echoes, gesturing to his muddy shirt.

“Cleverly done, then,” Haleth amends, and goes to him, passing his lanky frame to sit at the fountain’s edge. “Come, sit with me.” Caranthir blinks but warily comes to perch beside her, shoulders hunched in slightly, resembling nothing so much as a very large and bad-tempered bird of prey. “When do you go to petition this High King of yours?” she asks. Caranthir scowls.

“Finarfin is little enough of mine,” he grumbles, but a brief glare from Haleth brings him back on topic. It is pleasing to see she has not lost the knack of managing him. “Soon. The next petition day is little more than a week away, when those amongst the Eldar can appeal directly to the High King.” He glances at her keenly. “Why do you ask?” Haleth shrugs.

“I will be coming with you,” she says. Caranthir raises an eyebrow. “Me, and your other wives. All four of us,” she adds, when Caranthir’s raised eyebrow arches.

“For what purpose?” Haleth gives him a smile. It does nothing to take the apprehension from his face, but that was not her purpose. It had always unsettled him most when she would smile at him before pronouncing some terrible idea, and she is not so far from her last mortal life that she has forgiven every one of his many transgressions. The times he was short with her, or deliberately rude or simply uncaring – Haleth knows she is prickly, trying, even difficult to love. But she is soft inside like all beings, made of red meat and white bone and pride easily injured, and the thousand tiny cuts still sting.

“Well, I want the right to carry weapons. So do Ishilde and Nimidh. But we also want a great sprawling patch of land for you to build your little towers on, so we can annex chunks of it for our own purposes.” Caranthir is staring at her in horror. “A fifth of your estate, remember? We could claim most of it between the four of us. The profits of your farms, your flocks, your mines – or you could simply give us our own land to muck about on, and be free of having to tithe your precious wealth to your mortal by-blows.”

“It pains me when you refer to yourself as such,” Caranthir says stiffly. “I never considered you so cheaply.” Haleth snorts, and Caranthir gives her a reproachful look.

“Oh, stop it, I wasn’t a lady then and I’m not a lady now and you’ve always known that,” Haleth tells him tartly. “You gave me little reason to think otherwise.” Caranthir now has the temerity to look injured.

“At first,” he protests. “I was angry at everything, still mourning my father, my brother’s imprisonment and return, giving away his crown like it was nothing. But later,” he entreats, his silvery eyes soft, lashes long and thick and black, and it is as though the past was only yesterday, Haleth feels barely thirty again, staring into those eyes as lovely as rainclouds lit from behind by the sun. “Later, my dear. Oh, surely I was not so bad?”

Haleth grunts. In truth, he had been better as the years went by, when she had made sporadic visits to Thargelion, increasing in frequency after she handed over the leadership of her people to her nephew in her mid-sixties. And Caranthir had still wanted her then, even though Haleth felt more a hag than ever beside him, when his fair elven form had not even aged a day. He had still held her and kissed her and put his cock into her, when every hair on her head and body had gone grey, when her hands had lost their strength and dexterity, when the years shrivelled her full figure away. “Better than most mortal men, anyway,” she admits reluctantly. “Don’t know why you bothered. I wasn’t much to look at by then.” Caranthir laughs, and Haleth tenses for a moment before she realises it isn’t cruel or mocking, but disbelieving. She looks away from his face, because his expression is so open and trusting that it hurts to look at for too long.

“Not much to look at? You were my wife,” he says, as blunt as he always was before. “To me you were always lovely.” Haleth stares down at her hands and feels something dark and knotted in her begin to slowly uncurl.

“Why me?” she asks, staring down at the paving stones, their chips of orange and red standing out against the grey. “You could have had any of your own kind from your court, or the fairest, tallest, sweetest of mortal women from any corner of Beleriand. They would have fought one another to be your paramour. Why choose a crochety, ill-tempered, ugly warrior-woman who would snap at you as soon as kiss you? I hadn’t lacked for lovers before you, my lord.” The old title comes out without her mind’s permission, a relic from her youth, when she would default to formality when strained. “But none of them were like you.” Caranthir sighs, and then his long-fingered elegant hand is taking her own, wrapping around Haleth’s fingers gently. Haleth stares down at their entwined hands, one lovely and Eldar, one small with stumpy mortal fingers, the entire conundrum of her love affair with Caranthir in microcosm.

“You spoke the truth to me.” Caranthir’s voice is hushed. “You looked at me like I was only a – a Man, different to you but also akin, as though the lordship and castle were as irrelevant to you then as I see they were now. You wore your heart so plainly –” His voice catches. “So openly. I heard you sing the funeral dirges for your brother and father with your voice cracking in grief, and I felt –” His grip tightens. “I felt the loss of my father, for the life I had left behind, but for the first time it did not feel as though the world itself was torn asunder. You never lied to me. You never expected anything of me but I treat you fairly and honestly as a leader, and decently as a lover. I wasn’t Caranthir the Dark with you, or Morifinwë, or any of the names I’ve had. I was me. And with you, for the first time in my existence, I felt that was enough.” He stops at last, breathing heavily, and Haleth feels numb, but for how the tears on her cheeks feel like ice water in the still-cold air of the early morning.

“Oh,” she says blankly. Caranthir nods; she can just see the motion from the corner of her eye, not daring to look at him full in the face. “I suppose that is a lot.”

“Quite,” Caranthir replies. “As to your looks –” Haleth braces herself. “I found you utterly different from my own kind, as the day is to the night. There was no question of comparing you to any other. One cannot compare the clear faceted beauty of a diamond to the gleaming lustre of an ink-black pearl forged in the ocean’s deep.” Haleth feels her face turning red, cheeks heating. “You are you, Haleth of the Haladin. And I was proud to call you mine.”

“You’re such an ass,” Haleth mumbles. “Why couldn’t you have been this nice to me while I was alive?” Caranthir sighs deeply.

“Because I did not know how,” he admits. “I never spoke like this to Tirindë. We were civil, and we could always find our way back to one another in bed, but I did not think she loved me; I know now she thought I did not love her. I thought there was no chance my political marriage would turn into one of love, and she was so young – we both were – we did not know how to bridge the divide between us, and I thought we had forever.”

“Maybe the Gift of Men really is a gift,” Haleth mutters, scrubbing her sleeve against her eyes. Caranthir shrugs; she chances a glance up at him, his brow furrowed and his thick eyebrows drawn together.

“I certainly did not consider it so when you died,” he replies. His sense of hearing is better than hers, because he adds: “Tirindë is chivvying Nimidh and Ishilde along. They will be with us momentarily.” Haleth nods.

“Mistress Seríssë is coming today to finish up what couldn’t be completed at the workshop,” she tells him. “She doesn’t like you much, so you might want to make yourself scarce.” Caranthir smiles, a wry quirk of the lips.

“Come. I must speak with Lossiel before she arrives.”

Haleth follows in Caranthir’s wake as he strides indoors. In the lounging room Tirindë and Ishilde and Nimidh are chattering, but when Caranthir enters they fall silent. He says nothing, but goes to the vestibule, disappearing for half a minute before returning bearing one of yesterday’s dusty chests.

“A treasure chest,” Nimidh says with a thread of excitement in her voice; Caranthir glances at her just for a moment, eyes softening. Then he refocusses, and Haleth watches as he opens the chest’s heavy lid.

“Come and see, then,” he invites, and Haleth wanders over to peer into the chest’s dusty interior. All she can see is darkness lit by a thousand tiny sparkles, and then Caranthir lifts out a necklace half a metre in length, all sapphires strung together on a string, each one perfectly round and gleaming and the size of Haleth’s fingernail, the colour of the night sky just after the sun has set.

“Morinya,” Tirindë breathes. “Is this one of yours?” Caranthir shrugs, but his ears are pink again.

“I kept all my best works safely secured,” he says, and reddens further. “I meant to tell you where they were before I left, but –”

“But I wouldn’t speak to you,” Tirindë finishes gently. “And you had to leave so quickly. I understand.” Caranthir nods, a jerky strained thing.

“I regret it,” he says, voice clipped. “Because you have had to live so humbly in my absence, far below what befits you as a princess of the Ñoldor.” At that Tirindë laughs, but she accepts the string of sapphires from him and drapes it carelessly around her neck, as though the priceless jewels are less to her than a garland of flowers.

“You could have left me the equivalent of your father’s vaults at Formenos and I still would have lived simply and disdained crowns and thrones, Morinya. You know that about me.” Caranthir turns to dig around in the chest – Nimidh and Ishilde are unearthing endless sparkling trinkets from within it, exclaiming over their finds, but Haleth is more interested in the conversation between the two Eldar.

“I know that now,” he mutters, and rifles around in the chest. “Here. For you, my lady.” He puts something heavy and cold in her hands; Haleth knows what it is before she even looks down, instinctive. The dagger is around eleven inches in length, the pommel chased gold inlaid with tiny emeralds, the scabbard the same. When she draws the dagger free of its sheath a few inches, the edge on the blade looks as sharp as the day it was forged.

“Pretty enough,” Haleth manages to say, the words forced out through the lump in her throat. It’s not much in the way of praise. But Caranthir’s face softens like she’s given him the highest of compliments.

“Until you find one of your own that suits you better, my lady,” he replies, and turns back to his chest of wonders. But Haleth looks down at the glittering deadly thing in her hands, with what must be Caranthir’s maker’s mark stamped into the hilt, already aware that she will not relinquish this one without a fight.

Chapter Text

Seríssë comes halfway through the morning, her sewing basket hooked over her arm, draped in deep violet satin and smiling. “Hail and well met, Haleth!” she calls. Haleth, on the sunny bench by Tirindë’s front door, looks up and cannot resist a smile. Seríssë, with her streaming golden hair and bright eyes, has one of those faces that radiates good will and friendliness.

“A pleasant morning to you, Lady Seríssë,” she replies. Seríssë makes a face at the formality but does not comment on it, instead going into the house. Haleth follows, wondering how it is that Seríssë seems to trail sunshine in her wake.

The seamstress sets down her basket in the lounging room and goes up the stairs as freely as if she were in her own home. “Lossiel! Come down from your bower, there’s work to be done!” Haleth trails along behind her as Seríssë goes to a closed door across from the spare bedroom and opens it. Bright light floods into the hall, motes of dust caught in the rays flurrying at the change in air. “I swear, it’s a waste. She has one of the loveliest workrooms in the Fëanorian quarter and hardly uses it.”

“It was Caranthir’s,” Haleth says, remembering a stray comment Tirindë had made once. Seríssë tuts, going to the windows and throwing them wide open, letting the morning air in along with the light. “Before he left.”

“It may have been his first, but it is hers now. Along with everything under this roof.” Seríssë dusts off her hands. “Go fetch my sister, Haleth. I will marshal Nimidh and Ishilde to bring the things I sent over last week. By my word, we will have you ladies ready for whatever ignoble gathering Fëanor’s son plans to throw at you.” Haleth nods, but a thought occurs to her.

“My lady, my companions and I attend to accompany Lord Caranthir –” The title nearly sticks in her craw – “– to the High King’s court the next time it meets.” Seríssë’s flurry of motion ceases, her face going slack. “I have been informed our current accoutrements will not be sufficient. Might we purchase such garments from you, or make some arrangement –”

“Valar take all of that!” Seríssë cries out. Her fair Elven face has gone as pink as the bloom of the first spring roses in Brethil. “You mean to tell me that my sister, who has not gone to court in centuries, needs a full court wardrobe? And not just her, but yourself as well, and Nimidh and Ishilde also! Does she think I am a witch or a sorceress, that I can snap my fingers and simply magic clothes out of thin air!” She storms off, heading in the direction of the upper level, and presently Haleth hears the sound of two quarrelling female voices, sounding nothing so much as a pair of squabbling fishwives.

“– doesn’t need to be your work,” Tirindë is saying in exasperation, coming into the workroom and raising her eyes skyward, as if begging the Valar for patience. “There are dozens of seamstresses and needle-wielders in Tirion. We could easily go to one of them –” Seríssë makes a noise rather like that of an irate eagle and comes into view behind her, arms laden with gowns of silk, satin and velvet.

“If you think my sister and her paramours are going to wear another thread-house’s stitchery to the High King’s court, then you are as mad as that wretched husband of yours –”

“They’re not my paramours, precisely,” Tirindë rejoins, throwing a pleading glance at Haleth, who just spreads her hands innocently. Tirindë shoots a brief glare at her, along with the mental impression of a flick to the ear through the bond.

“I find it much easier to think of them as something of yours than anything of his,” Seríssë says tartly, draping her armload of dresses over the dust-covered loom in the corner. “I mean no offense, Haleth. I’m sure Morifinwë had certain… charms to recommend himself.” Her tone makes it clear she can’t imagine what they could be.

“Being rescued by an Elf-lord six and a half feet tall in very shiny armour was something of an enticement,” Haleth drawls in reply. Seríssë sniffs.

“I must defer to your superior knowledge, my lady. Now, Lossiel. If you’re going to go to court, then that is what we must work on at once.”

“And possibly the equinox ball,” Tirindë adds, which is the first Haleth hears of it, but she can tell it is significant from the look that Seríssë gives her older sister, the curious horror-joy-stress seen on the face of any crafter faced with an impossible task, albeit one that will bring them a great deal of delight.

“The ball?! Lossi, that is barely three weeks away,” Seríssë entreats. “Do you care nothing for my poor fingertips?” Tirindë is barely hiding a smile now.

“Well, if it’s too much work, I am sure Mistress Tintilallë just down the avenue at Urya-nelma would welcome any kin of Fëanáro, sister. I could go now and make an appointment to be measured up –” Seríssë swats at her sister; Tirindë nimbly dodges away.

“No kin of mine is going to court wearing anything but Altalannë and full well you know it, Lossiel, so stop playing games. Besides,” and a wicked kind of joy comes into her face at this, “It will take more hands that just yours and mine and young Nimidh’s.” Tirindë frowns.

“I would think that Quil would have to stay at the workshop –” Seríssë’s expression is positively feral with delight now; Tirindë stops at the sight of it, clearly rattled. Haleth is enjoying the sight of Tirindë flustered and rather un-Elvish too much to rescue her. “Oh, no. Not Mother. She’ll be insufferable. I don’t need any more lectures on how I’ve failed in my duties as a wife and as a daughter.”

“Mother has the finest hands and the daintiest needlework outside Vaire’s workshops,” Seríssë says, with an air of triumph. “And she’s a workhorse like one rarely sees these days. She can stay with Quil and the children and I if you don’t want her here, since you seem to have enough houseguests to concern you –” Her voice has turned sly, the tone that of one sibling teasing another, and suddenly Haleth misses Haldar so much her chest aches with it.

She coughs to clear her throat. “I’ll fetch Nimi and Ishilde,” she says roughly; Tirindë gives her a concerned look on her way past.

Haleth? Are you all right? The light touch of Tirindë’s mind against Haleth’s own sets the hackles up on the back of her neck. Tirindë retreats as if sensing Haleth’s disquiet, but the gentle support of her presence stays, loosening the sudden knots in Haleth’s shoulders and the tight grip grief had made around her throat.

Fine. Is your mother really that bad? Tirindë sends back a wave of mingled affection and frustration.

She is a very fine broideress, Seríssë is not incorrect about that. But we speak rarely. The last time I heard her voice was when Caranthir returned and she shouted at me to be a good wife to him through my door for two hours. A memory comes with the words; sorrow, tears, Tirindë curled up on her bed as fists hammered at the door to her home. She will not be polite to you or the others, and she will not hesitate to tell me how foolish she thinks I am being to have you in my home. I will refute her. But I do not wish for you to be hurt.

It takes more than a disgruntled Elven mother to hurt me, Haleth retorts.

Perhaps. But could you say the same of Nimidh? And you know Ishilde does not suffer fools easily. Haleth grimaces. It’s true about Ishilde. And Nimidh is very easily hurt.

I can’t find those two anywhere, Haleth tells Tirindë a few minutes later, when her search for the two younger women comes up short. A sense of distracted busyness comes from Tirindë before she gives Haleth a reply. Ah. They’ve gone to the marketplace and the bookstore.

For what? Haleth asks, before reconsidering. No, don’t bother. I’ll find them myself.

The coins from Caranthir’s chest of wonders jingle heavily in Haleth’s pocket. She is uncomfortable with both their weight and their value – very infrequently in her years in Middle-earth did she carry funds greater than a few dented silver circles. Most kingdoms had their own mintage, but the plain discs of silver could be converted easily enough to the coinage of whatever place she found herself in. Even the knowledge that in this fair Elven place there are no bandits or cutpurses cannot steady Haleth against keeping a wary eye on her surroundings.

She finds Ishilde and Nimidh merrily haggling with a short Elven female who appears to be enjoying the banter as much as the two mortals. In the bustling marketplace the Elf has a cart set up with a bright awning, crates of fruit shaded from the mid-morning sun. “I couldn’t let them go for more than five copper pennies each,” the vendor is saying, gesturing to a box of bright red apples.

“Five copper pennies!” Ishilde exclaims. “Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing. In my day a full box could be bought for two silvers!”

“You lived more than six thousand years ago, sister,” Haleth puts in dryly from behind her. Nimidh pouts at her, looking so young for a moment that it hurts Haleth just to see it.

“Let Ishilde have her fun, Haleth. We can go look at hairpins instead,” she beseeches. Haleth allows her arm to be taken as the sound of Ishilde and the fruit-seller bargaining begins again behind them.

“Nimidh, your hair is an inch long. What need have you for hairpins?” Haleth asks, as Nimidh steers her over to a much larger stall with wares gleaming brightly in the sunshine.

“I don’t,” Nimidh replies serenely. “Not for my hair, at least. But I would imagine if you poke one into someone enough times, it would incapacitate them sufficiently.” Haleth just shakes her head.

“In these lands?” Nimidh is smiling, a bland polite thing that tells Haleth she is aware of all the scrutiny they are currently under, two mortal women in a land of Elves and gods.  Haleth does not herself have the skill to hide her emotions so neatly, so she dons her least offensive scowl and hopes for the best. “Who here do you imagine you are poking all these holes in?”

“In my life I have never been safe,” Nimidh replies, her tone as light as if they were speaking only of the weather. “Have you? The Great Enemy once walked amongst these people and they were either too naïve or too blind to see him for what he was.”

“He is imprisoned now,” Haleth reminds her. “And his lieutenant.” Nimidh tosses her head, the first outward sign of her inner agitation.

“He had many lieutenants. Not all of them were fell to look upon.” Nimidh sweeps the bright airy marketplace with a look that suggests she thinks an orc or a disguised Balrog could be hiding behind any corner or stall. “To these people the deeds and doings of our time are ancient history. But to me they are as fresh as those apples Ishilde was haggling over, and I cannot forget.”

They arrive to the stall of shining things, where a male Elf with rings in his ears is talking to another. To Haleth’s eye the other is much younger, perhaps even still in adolescence; his mouth falls open when he sees exactly who his customers are. “Mortals!” the boy blurts, and Haleth cannot restrain the arch of her eyebrow.

“Ladies,” corrects the older one. “I beg you forgive Lónion his frankness. Might I assist you this fine morning?”

“We seek hairpins,” Nimidh says. “For my companion, not for me,” she adds, when the Elf’s eyebrows climb a fraction towards his hairline. He looks as Noldo as Caranthir does – long black hair, grey eyes, strong features – but the boy with him is more Teleri, silver-haired, with clear blue eyes. Haleth is becoming more familiar with the differences between Elves – in her youth they all looked the same to her, gleaming and beautiful, seeming as tall as the trees.

“I see. Does my lady favour silver or gold?” the jeweller asks, gesturing over to a small array of pins and hair sticks.

“Silver,” Haleth says firmly. Gold was worn only by mortals with more money than sense when she was alive, and the thought of wearing it herself makes her skin crawl. “Or even steel, if you have it.” The Elf is giving her a very odd look. “Mortal hair is very coarse and thick,” Haleth tells him.

“As it happens, I do have a few made of steel,” the jeweller says slowly. “The result of my cousin’s experiments in plating common metals with precious ones. But they remain unadorned –”

“Good,” Haleth replies curtly, and for her pains receives another odd look. “The Atani tend not to adorn themselves as the Eldar do,” she says, inventing wildly and trying to ignore Nimidh’s very faint smirk beside her. “We are aware of our status as second born amongst the children of Eru, and do not try to rival their beauty.” The jeweller is nodding, apparently satisfied with this explanation, but his young companion is less so.

“That’s not right!” the boy bursts out. Haleth raises an eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter when you were born. Mortals deserve pretty things as much as we do.” Nimidh coughs; Haleth knows her well enough to know she is hiding a laugh.

“You are very bold, Master Elf,” Haleth tells the youth soberly as the jeweller hurriedly packages up her hairpins. “Do you wish to be a jeweller yourself?” The boy makes a face.

“I want to be an adventurer,” he says at once. “I want to go to Middle-earth! But Ma says I can’t. Ma says any of us that go there will lose our light and fade, that it’s not for us anymore.”

“Your mother is not incorrect,” Haleth replies. “And there are many terrible things in those lands. Wolves, bears, trolls and orcs.” The lad is not deterred; if anything, he is absorbing her words with delight. “When I was your age I didn’t have a choice to be a jeweller, or anything else for that matter. I learned the sword because if I did not then I would likely die before my twentieth summer. It was the way of things.”

Unfortunately, her dark words have not deterred her listener in the slightest. “Brilliant,” the boy gasps. Haleth just shakes her head, and the jeweller comes back with her parcel; Haleth hands over a heavy golden coin in exchange.

“Is this enough?” she asks; the jeweller goggles at her.

“It is enough more than twice over,” he says, and makes some fuss about finding her the correct coinage in return.

“Buy the boy a training sword with it, and let him whack around in the yard with it until he loses interest the notion of doing it for a living,” she advises, before pulling the jeweller aside. “He doesn’t look much like you. Is he your son?”

“My grandson,” the jeweller replies. “He comes to market with me so his mother can work in the mornings.” His dark grey Noldo eyes are very worried. “Many lads his age feel the same. With the influx of those from the East who returned at the end of the last Age, the old tales come alive for them once more.” Haleth shrugs.

“I don’t know about fading and whatnot. But there is always work in Middle-earth for an enterprising lad with a sharp blade and the skill to wield it.” She feels sorry for the stricken jeweller. “I do know that forbidding him to learn the battle arts will only make him want it more. Better to let him train with the soldiers for a month. He will weary of rising before the dawn and being hit with staves, and come home and behave again. You will have him making hairpins in no time.” The jeweller offers her a weak smile.

“Thank you, lady,” he says, and Haleth is surprised at the depth of genuine gratitude in it. “I have never been to war myself. “I am thankful of your perspective, and your willingness to share it. Please, come back any time. I would design you a pendant in your House’s image, should you wish it.”

They are so generous, this Elvish people, Haleth reflects as she makes her way back to Nimidh, who has moved on to inspect a set of steel sewing needles. “Do you not have enough already?” she asks, having seen the inside of the sewing kit Nimidh had acquired yesterday.

“An unfortunate aspect of craft is always wanting more tools to work it with,” Nimidh replies; a female Elf at the next stall over barks out a surprised laugh.

“Truer words have never been spoken!” the stranger agrees, and after picking through a box of buttons a moment longer, goes to speak to the shopkeeper. Nimidh watches her go with something like affection.

“They are a merry people, the Eldar,” she observes. Haleth nods, but her attention is on a fine pair of knitting needles, made of dark gleaming ebony. Nimidh follows her gaze. “Oh, pretty. I didn’t know you knitted.”

“I don’t,” Haleth says gruffly. “But Caranthir does. Did,” she adds, unsure which verb is the correct one. “Thought he might like them.” Out of the corner of Haleth’s eye, Nimidh’s heart-shaped face softens even further.

“You’re sweet, Haleth,” she says fondly, and leans in to kiss Haleth on the cheek. Her lips leave a strange tingling feeling behind that Haleth resolutely ignores. “He’d like them, I think. Why don’t you get yourself a set? I can teach you.”

“I don’t have the time,” Haleth says reflexively. It is an old response, worn into her like a groove from many years where it was the truth. Come visit me in Thargelion, Haleth. We can ride and hunt rabbits, and I’ll show you the waterfall I found where the stars are clearest and brightest – What had been her excuse that time? It’s too close to winter. My nephew has the ague. We had a bad harvest. It hadn’t mattered what the excuse was. Of all the times she had been invited to Barad Caranthir, only a few had she accepted. Precious few. There was always the work.

Nimidh’s hand is still on her arm, the younger woman’s expression patient as she waits for Haleth to work through her thoughts. “That would be kind of you.” Haleth says finally. “I would like that.”

Nimidh smiles at her.

They meet Ishilde again at the entrance to the market, where she waits with her purchases. “Did you buy everything the fruit seller had?” Haleth asks, narrowing her eyes at the multiple cloth bags over Ishilde’s sturdy arm, but accepts the burdens when they are shoved in her general direction.

“Do you wish to starve? Because I like Tirindë very much, and she is a very kind soul, but on my life she eats like an Elf,” Ishilde replies tartly. Nimidh laughs.

“A morsel here and a morsel there,” she agrees. “I need something more robust in me. Is that what the hens are for?” Trailing along behind Ishilde are six chickens on a string, little rope collars around each bird’s neck tethering them to one another. All the chickens Haleth has ever known would have rebelled against even the mildest of tethers, but Valinor chickens seem to be of a more docile temperament.

“And the goat?” Haleth asks pointedly. In Ishilde’s other hand is a halter for a brown and white nanny-goat, which is plodding along behind her meekly.

“We can’t call it Caranthir, she’s a girl,” Ishilde says. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Haleth says in exasperation. “I meant why do you have a goat?”

“Oh, she’s from the other day, when we went out to get supplies for breakfast but all we had was those big ugly coins that Nimi filched from our husband,” Ishilde says, a fairly longwinded explanation. Haleth winces.

“Can we not call him that?” she asks. Ishilde frowns.

“But he is our husband,” she replies, with the air of one stating only the facts.

“She’s not wrong,” Nimi interjects, eating grapes straight out of the bag; Ishilde aims a swat at her. It misses, which is unsurprising given the chickens, the goat, and the other bags she is still holding.

“You’ll ruin your lunch,” Ishilde scolds, a distinctly maternal tone in her voice. “And you’re squashing the bread.”

“Give it here,” Haleth says, but they are almost back at Tirindë’s house. Still, Nimidh hands over the bread, but instead of through the front door Ishilde leads them around to the rear of the courtyard, through the unlocked back gate.

“We should get a lock for that,” Haleth says, despite knowing perfectly well it is unnecessary in this peaceful land. Her instincts will not be quashed, however hard she tries to push them down.

“I concur, but not right now,” Ishilde replies. “Now, I’ll deal with the livestock. Go and put the kettle on for tea.” Having received her orders, Haleth goes inside and does as instructed. Faintly she can hear Series and Tirindë talking on the next level up, their Eldar voices chiming resonantly together.

“I’ll go tell them we’re back,” Nimidh says, and skips off to the stairwell; Haleth watches her go, frowning. In short order Ishilde reappears, takes over the kitchen, and dismisses Haleth from her kettle boiling duties. Haleth wanders off, vaguely discontented. She cannot abide having nothing to do. There is always work –

There is no work. Haleth sits down heavily on one of the sofas, in the cool interior of the house that seems so dark now after the full bright sunlight of outside. She realises, dimly and with a sort of distant sense of distress, that she is on the verge of full-scale panic. There is no work. What is she to do without work?

She reaches for the shadowy thread in her mind without consciously realising it. Caranthir, she says, or she thinks she says, it’s hard to tell.

Haleth? What is it? He sounds irritated at first, but some of her distress must cross from her to him; his voice becomes much gentler almost at first. Are you all right?

There’s no work, she thinks at him, almost hysterical. There’s nothing for me to do. I cannot live like this. I am not made for stillness, for calmness, for quiet. It is suffocating. I cannot breathe -

“Dear one.” Tirindë is there, suddenly, as though by intervention of some divine unknowable mercy. Her arms are so soft, but veined underneath with strength; it is acceptable for Haleth to collapse into them. “It’s all right. You must slow your breathing, Haleth, or you will faint.” Faint? Haleth has never fainted. Has never been anything so fine, so dainty, so delicate as to have the capacity to swoon like a maiden. She is hewn from sterner stuff than that, ancient granite, rusted iron, the things one uses to make and build, not anything so soft as flesh –

“I know, you’re very strong. But you must listen to me now. You have worked all your life, worked beyond the limits of what anyone should have to endure. But that is not all you are. You are a daughter, a sister, an aunt. This is the bedrock of you. Not the labours you were bound to.”

“Easy to say,” Haleth says into Tirindë’s shoulder. Her breathing has slowed, but she still feels completely adrift.

I knew you in that time, Caranthir says through the bond. Haleth jolts. For some reason she thought he would have gone once Tirindë was here. You were a force to be reckoned with. To your people you were leader, father, mother, everything. You gave everything you could, and kept nothing for yourself.

“I kept you.” The words would not stay in; Haleth could not have restrained them if she had tried. “I was selfish about you. I left my people and the weight of my mantle to come and be your woman. If only for a week. If only for a day.”

I remember, Caranthir says, somehow soft in the shared place where her mind is adjacent with his. I remember how hard it was to persuade you to accept. There is a glimmer of humour in him when he adds, I remember how you bargained with me. Three nights in my keep for a new plough? ‘It has to be fair,’ you would say. ‘A new plough is worth a week for certain.’

“I had to give my people something for my selfishness in abandoning my duties,” Haleth mutters.

I would have given you a hundred ploughs and the horses to pull them. But you were so stern. ‘It has to be fair, you lanky Elvish pillock’. Next to Haleth, Tirindë lets out a low laugh. I loved that about you. Your strength. But you could let your strength go, Haleth, and you would still be you. And I would love you still.

“Lunch is ready!” Ishilde trills, coming into the lounging room. “Oh.” She pauses at the tableau in front of her; Haleth slumped against Tirindë, whose long fingers are combing gently through her hair. “I’m interrupting?”

“Not at all,” Haleth says, and forces herself upright. “I’m being foolish, and making a mountain out of a molehill. I’m fine.”

Haleth goes through the rest of the day mechanically. The dramatics of the morning had not repeated themselves; after the midday meal Tirindë had sent Haleth off for an afternoon sleep in a tone that brooked no argument. “Use my chambers, they will be the quietest,” she had added, imperious as any queen, and so Haleth had settled down for a time in the soft afternoon sun filtering through Tirindë’s gauzy curtains, in a bed that smelled sweet and safe.

She surprised herself by sleeping all the way through to the evening meal, when Nimidh came to lead her by hand to supper, bleary eyed and still half-asleep. Ishilde had handed her a bowl of pumpkin soup and a piece of buttered bread, and Haleth had eaten it, mind still blissfully blank and peaceful, dodging the occasional concerned looks from her two mortal companions. She had not dreamt, in her afternoon slumber, except for light pleasant things, her brother when he’d been young, her mother’s face. Caranthir’s chambers in his city, long ago, in lands now deep under the sea.

After supper, as docile as Ishilde’s chickens, Haleth sits on one of the sofa’s in Tirindë’s lounging room and watches Nimidh knit for an hour or so. Eventually there is a knock at the door, and a few moments later Caranthir’s tall form comes into the lounging room. To Haleth’s dull surprise he comes directly towards her, locking one strong hand around her bicep and half-dragging her out through the kitchen and into the garden.

“Now, then,” he says, as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening, black eyebrows raised, pretty mouth pursed, “Take a swing at me.” Haleth just stares at him; Caranthir tuts like she’s being purposefully obtuse. “Put your fists up, woman. You’ve never shied away from thumping me in the past, there is no reason to hesitate now.”

“I don’t feel like fighting,” Haleth says slowly, and it’s a shock, to realise the truth of it. The numbness has enveloped her from the crown of her head to her toes, and she cannot shake it off of her. It is as a miasma of dark mist around her, a thing of despair, of sundered hope.

“That I should live to hear such words from Haleth of the Haladin, who never met an orc she didn’t wish to disembowel!” Caranthir cries. He comes close enough to touch and pokes her rudely in the ribs, his long thin finger unerringly finding a soft spot and prodding in mercilessly. Haleth growls at him, something beginning to kindle in her chest.

“Stop it,” she snaps. Caranthir just raises one of those smug eyebrows of his and pokes her again, this time in the soft flesh just below her collarbone. “Ow! Stop being a child, Caranthir. I’m not going to hit you.”

“I see your fire has been thoroughly doused, my lady,” he replies, smug expression so grating that Haleth’s fingers itch to slap it off him. “I confess it comes as a surprise, that you are so easily shed of your belligerence.” She glares at him. “The peaceful air of this realm can soothe even the most incalcitrant of mortals, it seems. Or perhaps I misremember, and you never had much fight in you. Is that the reason you allowed your brother and father to die? Because you were no true warrior at all, merely a woman playing at swords, and never as skilled at them as the very worst warrior amongst the males of your kind –”

It is pleasurable, Haleth thinks, to watch her hand smash into Caranthir’s nose and the scarlet blood come bursting out of it at once

“Haleth!” His voice has taken on a whining nasal note, and he is holding his sleeve to his fountaining nose, doing very little to contain it. “You didn’t have to do it that hard!”

“You were asking for it,” Haleth says, very coolly, her pulse thundering in her ears. The miasma of despair has all but faded. She feels very present, and very much alive. “Literally, Caranthir, you were asking me to hit you.” She considers him; his bloody nose, the eye that is already blackening. “You asked me a few times, actually. I should oblige you again –” But he catches the fist she was about to drive into his belly with the hand not holding his bleeding nose. Haleth growls again and raises her other fist, but Caranthir delivers a swift knee to her belly that has her gasping and nearly bringing up her supper.

“You cheat, Morifinwë,” she snarls, barely registering the use of his Quenya name.

“And you hit like a bloody hammer,” Caranthir snaps. Haleth gets her breath back and dives towards him, stamping her heel down hard on his instep, Caranthir’s soft Valarin boots doing exactly nothing to protect him. He lets out an aggrieved howl – Haleth grins spitefully to herself – and grabs her with both arms, clean off her feet; they wrestle briefly before Haleth gets a hand free and cups the back of his neck to bring his face down towards hers.

She meant to bite him, or smash her forehead against his, but the moment his lips are within range of her own Haleth forgets entirely about harming him. Caranthir’s moonglow eyes are gleaming with ire, his nose is still bleeding sporadically, blood down his chin and staining his tunic; Haleth thrums with the heat of him against her. She drags him down the last half inch to her lips, kissing him for all she’s worth, and after a half-moment of slack inactivity Caranthir seems to understand what’s happening and kisses her back. He tastes of blood, iron-rich, metallic, but it would hardly be the first time Haleth kissed him with a bloody mouth; she sinks her other hand into his thick black hair and takes his mouth with her own. Caranthir groans, a rumbling sound Haleth knows better than her own heartbeat, and his grip on her changes, one hand grabbing her arse so shamelessly that Haleth can hardly believe it, the other arm banding around her back to lock her tight against him.

“You wild woman,” he whispers when Haleth tears her mouth from his for breath, and is on her again almost before she has a chance to fill her lungs, his tongue plundering her mouth, the taste of him turning her savage and feral against her.

“Your woman,” she pants out, and it might sound submissive to Eldar ears but it was always the way she’d talked to him before; she was his woman, and she would keep him as much as she could. He must remember, because Caranthir shudders and swears roughly, the hand on her arse gripping her harder and rocking her brutally against him – gods, he is hard under his stupid Elven trousers, the impractical flowing robes doing little to conceal him.

“Yes,” he says against her mouth. “I’m yours,” and it lights Haleth up like a wildfire blazing in the dark. She is hardly in control of herself or her hands; one still has a death grip in Caranthir’s hair as she bites at his white throat, his flawless neck, the other hand against the hard muscles of his lower back, holding on for dear life. She could live like this forever, she thinks dizzily; she could die like this right now –

“Caranthir!”

Except for the look on Tirindë’s face.

She stands in the doorway to the kitchen, bare foot, holding a lamp. Night has fallen while Haleth and Caranthir grappled in the dark – she hadn’t noticed, but then, she’d been rather busy – and the lamp in her hand glows brightly, giving plenty of illumination to show Tirindë’s devastated face.

Haleth jumps a full foot away from Caranthir as though he’s got the plague.

“Which one of you is bleeding?” Tirindë demands, coming down the steps into the courtyard. “For Valar’s sake, Morifinwë. Did you hit her?” Tirindë’s tone is very displeased; it makes Haleth feel like a misbehaving child. From the way Caranthir shuffles his feet very slightly, she’s not the only one.

“I hit him, Tirindë,” Haleth offers meekly. Tirindë turns the gimlet-eyed stare on her.

“I provoked her, Lossi,” Caranthir volunteers nobly. Tirindë turns her head to glare at him instead; Haleth is relieved to be out from that beam of disapproving maternal concern.

“Don’t ‘Lossi’ me, Morifinwë,” Tirindë says sharply. “The nerve of you two! Brawling in my own courtyard! I should send you back to your parents at once, Caranthir, so you can tell them to their own faces why you felt the need to hit a mortal woman.” Caranthir winces.

“Aren’t you cross about the – other thing?” Haleth asks, hating that her voice is almost inaudible. Like it matters, Tirindë approving of her; like it’s important, to keep remain in her good graces.

“It’s not my business,” Tirindë declares, in a tone that conveys that she considers it very much her business, but she does not wish to discuss it at this juncture. “Now come inside. Both of you need to wash the blood of your faces, and if you wish to have a straight nose ever again, husband, you should let me see to it.” ‘Husband’ is clipped out in distinctly disdainful tones. Haleth seizes the opportunity to be seen as more biddable than Caranthir and leaps towards the kitchen door. She rushes through washing her face and hands in the small washroom down the hall, and goes back to the kitchen to find Ishilde and Nimidh there as well, both with arms crossed over their chests as they survey Tirindë poking at a flinching Caranthir’s nose.

“Hells, woman,” Caranthir growls at his wife, who merely raises her eyebrows at him. “Are you trying to fix it or make it worse?”

“Both seem viable options to me at this time,” Tirindë replies placidly, and when Caranthir opens his mouth to continue arguing, Tirindë seizes his nose with both hands and does something to it that causes a nasty cracking sound and a howl of pain from her patient.

“Lossiel!”

“Better now,” Tirindë says with satisfaction, and wipes her hands on a nearby towel. “You might want to wash the blood off now, Morifinwë. You’ll have a spectacular pair of bruised eyes tomorrow.”

“Not the only thing that’s bruised,” Caranthir mutters to himself, beginning to hobble away but seemingly unable to resist slanting a half-guilty, half-desiring glance at Haleth before he goes. She looks away, trying to ignore the heat she can feel rising in her cheeks.

Ishilde looks from Haleth to Caranthir’s retreating form and back again, and as usual puts things together at once and says so in the most tactless manner possible.

“You fucked him?”

This blunt statement has a multitude of varying effects on those of them still in the kitchen. Nimidh says, “What?” and levels a displeased glance in Haleth’s direction. Tirindë just sighs softly to herself, wiping her bloodstained fingertips on a towel. Haleth crosses her own arms over her chest, feeling the urge to defend herself.

“Of course I didn’t,” she snaps back, but any further words are curtailed by Tirindë, who has arched an eyebrow and stood up from the table.

“You certainly seemed to be heading in that general direction when I interrupted you,” she says, voice as dry as a creek in summer. Nimidh gasps in outrage.

“You hypocrite!” she cries, thumping Haleth hard in the arm. “You act like you wouldn’t touch him again for all the jewels in Beleriand, but then you go off on your own and let him between your legs without so much as a ‘by your leave’!”

“He provoked me,” Haleth snaps back at the younger woman. “He goaded me into hitting him –”

“And I suppose he goaded you into putting your tongue in his mouth as well?” Ishilde asks wryly. Haleth feels herself flush deeper.

“… no,” she admits. “I did that of my own volition.”

“Is punching him something we’re all allowed to do?” Ishilde wonders. “I wouldn’t mind introducing him to my right cross.”

“Perhaps once I have healed from my current wounds.” Caranthir mutters, limping back into the kitchen. Nimidh scowls at him.

“Are you hobbling because she kicked you in the jewels?” she demands. Caranthir blanches, which on his currently mottled-red complexion looks very odd indeed.

“Heel to the instep, actually,” Haleth murmurs. Tirindë just shakes her head at the four of them.

“Enough. It is late, and I for one want to go to sleep. Husband,” she says to Caranthir, and he startles. “It is time for you to leave.” Caranthir pouts.

“You summoned me,” he says sulkily.

“To talk to Haleth, not to provoke her into fighting you,” Tirindë returns evenly, although a muscle is twitching in her jaw. “We have only seven days now before petition day. I do not wish to see you here in my home until at least three of them have passed. Your bruising should have resolved by then.”

“Lossiel,” Caranthir says, a pleading note coming into his voice, “If I go home like this, Mother will skin me.” The mighty lord of Thargelion, Haleth thinks, afraid of his mother’s displeasure. Truly, these are staggering times to live it.

“Then don’t go home. Or get Nelyafinwë to smooth it over. But you will be going now, Morifinwë. And I am going up to bed.”

The three days pass mostly uneventfully.

Faintly on the other end of the bond Haleth can feel Caranthir sulking pointedly, but it is easy enough to tune out after a while, like the hum of a persistent cicada. Less so is the feverish work of the seamstresses in the sun-drenched workshop. On the second day comes the threatened arrival of Tirindë and Seríssë’s mother, a stately golden-haired Eldar called Calimissë, one of the few Elves in Tirion Haleth has ever seen with visible marks of age. Calimissë has silver streaks at her temples and faint lines bracketing her mouth and at the corners of her eyes, but she is every bit as quick as her daughters, both who have her straight nose and slim, elegant hands.

“What do you think?” Seríssë asks the older Eldar anxiously as Calimissë finishes her inspection of the four gowns currently pinned to dressmaker’s mannequins in the workshop, taking shape a little more every day.

“They’ll do,” Calimissë says dismissively, but at the expression on her daughter’s face, makes a visible effort to soften her tone. “They’re lovely, my child. But what do you intend to do for their robes?” Seríssë gestures to the pile of black silk currently draped over a table. Calimissë frowns. “Black? Surely not.”

Black, Haleth has learned, is the colour of the royal house, of the line of Finwë. She herself had been a bit dubious at the thought of wearing it – “It’s provocative,” Calimissë insists over lunch that next day. “Fëanáro will spontaneously burst into flame at the very sight.” Seríssë sighs, gnawing daintily at the carrot and celery salad Ishilde had made her. Seríssë does not eat the meat of animals, and she prefers much of her food raw.

“Fëanáro is not king, Ammë,” she says patiently. “Arafinwë is. And it must be black, to show they are every bit as much of the royal house as any of them. They are Caranthir’s wives –”

“Would that we had known his proclivities then! I would have not allowed him to bind yourself to one such of him,” Calimissë sniffs, giving her eldest daughter a significant look.

“Proclivities? Meaning mortal women?” Tirindë asks, her voice gone cold as iron. Calimissë waves this away as though it is less than a puff of smoke.

“Proclivities meaning bigamy, my daughter,” she says, pointing at Tirindë for emphasis. “I care not whether an Eldar weds their own kind or any other. The doings of another’s bedchamber do not concern me. But multiple marriages –”

“To be fair, I wasn’t alive yet when he married Haleth and Ishilde,” Nimidh puts in, trying to be helpful. Calimissë’s expression softens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all the Eldar seem to have a soft spot for Nimidh. Perhaps because she looks so young, or because of her sweetness.

“Nor was I alive when he married Ishilde and Nimi,” Haleth points out. Calimissë frowns.

“But my daughter was,” she returns sharply. Tirindë sighs, the sigh of all daughters whose mothers vex them.

“We were estranged, Ammë,” she reminds Calimissë, sounding as though she is doing so for something like the thousandth time, if the weariness in her voice is anything to go by.

“If black the robes must be, then they must be embroidered at least,” Calimissë says, evidently deciding that another argument with her daughter about Caranthir is not as important as talking about craft. “And fitted. None of that shapeless sackcloth you see around the place these days. Silver thread for the young one. Bronze for the tall one, and gold for the angry one. You, my daughter –” She studies Tirindë as though dressing her in her mind. “White-gold, I think. We will need to go to the tailor’s district. I intend to depart in an hour.” She leaves the table in a flurry of embroidered robes and dignity; Seríssë and Tirindë slump at once out of the iron-straight posture they tend to assume around their mother.

“Since the general has conveyed her orders, we must but obey. Nimi, do you wish to come?” Nimidh flinches slightly. She had said little throughout lunch, as though lost inside her own thoughts.

“No – I think not,” she says rather vaguely. Haleth raises her eyebrows at Ishilde, who offers her a similar expression in reply. It is unlike Nimidh to turn down anything related to stitchcraft, for all Haleth has known her such a short period of time. “I think I’ll take a walk,” Nimidh adds, and is gone before anyone has a chance to ask further questions. Haleth tucks her curiosity away for later, and spends the afternoon instead in the fenced courtyard behind the house, sawing a number of smooth wooden staves down to size. Nimidh had found them in a draper’s shop, meant for the hanging of curtains, but they are both smooth and strong enough to be suitable for stave practice, if perhaps a little thinner than Haleth is accustomed to.

She spares a brief longing thought for the glaive she’d used in her youth, six feet of polished ash topped with an eighteen-inch castle-forged steel blade. Her shorter stature should have made wielding such a lengthy weapon an impediment, and indeed by the time she was in her mid-forties Haleth no longer had the brute strength required to use the weapon effectively, but she had still practiced with it every day until the very last, when her fingers lacked the strength to hold it.

It had been the beginning of her end.

Still, simple staves will have to serve for now. No quarterstaffs are they, Haleth thinks grimly to herself, but they will do. She runs a few drills idly – the sound brings Ishilde from inside the house, and they go a few bouts. Ishilde is strong, with impressive reach from her long limbs and height, but Haleth is faster; still, they are about evenly matched. “You learned from your father?” Haleth asks as she blocks an overhead strike; Ishilde shakes her head.

“Mother, actually. Our branch was matrilineal, and my mother was in our chieftain’s own honour guard. I most like would have followed her, but –” Ishilde shrugs, and Haleth understands it well enough. War. Morgoth. The repercussions of the Ñoldor's flight to Beleriand.

Haleth has not had the opportunity to be alone with Ishilde for this long before. She studies the other woman as they weave in and out of one another’s reach, aware that Ishilde is taking the opportunity to do the same. “Of Caranthir’s choice in wives, at first glance we must seem the most alike,” Ishilde says. Surprised, Haleth nearly gets her fingers whacked. “But further observation tells a different tale. I am grateful to the civilising influence you must have had on him, but I also feel that he would have been an inequal partner to you.” Her dark eyes meet Haleth’s for a moment, before they both look away, intent once more on their bout.

“He was grim and callous, aye,” Haleth agrees. “But one shrouded in sweetness and compliments would not have won me over. I was short-tempered and prickly, and I liked his frankness, his disinterest in feigning guile or good cheer. I wanted a rock to break myself upon. I was not disappointed.”

“Perhaps in your youth,” Ishilde allows. “But later –” Haleth grimaces despite herself; Ishilde does not fail to notice it. “The first time he snarled at me in bed - not as part of venery, but with intent to wound - I sent him out of my chambers with just his shirt and boots. I would not be spoken to like I was less than him. Did he do the same with you?”

“Often enough,” Haleth admits, “but I did not give him an inch. His petty cruelties I allowed to wash over me like fell water. I did not think then I absorbed much of them. I know differently now.” The knowledge had dawned upon her slowly as she came into middle age, and her visits to Thargelion had lessened. Only in her sixties, when she had not seen Caranthir for almost seven years and he had come to Brethil in outrage at her perceived neglect, did she come to know the fullness of what she wanted from him. be sharp, yes, and let me scratch red lines into your back and suck love-marks into your neck, but let me tender with you too – Haleth had not allowed the words to cross her lips. If Caranthir had divined some of it, and softened his tongue when he remembered to do so, it was not by Haleth’s urging.

She should have urged him. she should not have been so proud.

“He has offered some regret for his actions,” she says aloud now. Ishilde had waited patiently for her to speak again; both now out of breath, they mutually take the opportunity for a breather. Haleth sits down on the stone ledge of the fountain to catch her breath; Ishilde folds neatly to the cobblestones and begins stretching her legs. “In truth, he has been sweeter to me in the past days than the sum of all my time with him in Middle-earth. I imagine that is your doing,” she adds, allowing a thin smile to tilt up the corners of her mouth; Ishilde shrugs.

“And little Nimidh, the wee temptress,” Ishilde laughs. “Offering herself to him so brazenly! It is the only way to get anywhere with Caranthir, to shock him into acquiescence.” Haleth’s smile broadens.

“Indeed,” she replies with some mirth. “She would not hesitate to take him back into her bed, should the mood take her.” A moment of hesitation. “I am less inclined. It perturbs me still that I was married despite knowing it, and to one already wed no less. What of yourself? Would you take him back once more?” There is a sly note to Ishilde’s tone. “You certainly seemed like you were not reluctant, if Tirindë’s word is anything to go by.” Haleth frowns.

“Was she angry?” she asks, hating the worried note that infects her own voice. Ishilde raises her eyebrows and gets smoothly to her feet, in excellent shape for a woman in her early fifties. But then, Ishilde died in battle. She would not have gone to war any less than her best.

“No,” she replies. “Perhaps a mite jealous, but of who, I could not say.” She strides off, having managed to disturb Haleth’s equilibrium yet again. Ah, Ishilde and Caranthir. She can see why they were drawn to one another. By the time Haleth settles herself and comes into the house, Ishilde has supper cooking on the hearth, Calimissë and Tirindë are arguing about embroidery styles in the workroom, and Nimidh has returned from her walk. And if there is something like a secret hiding in Nimidh’s eyes, Haleth does not notice it.

Chapter Text

Caranthir says, “My exile bore unexpected fruit.”

Haleth resists the urge to roll her eyes at him. “You could simply say, ‘good morning, wives, I have something to tell you.’” Tirindë makes a very un-Eldar sound to herself; it almost sounds like a snort.

“Thank you, Haleth,” Caranthir says rather pointedly. “As I was saying –”

“Did someone say fruit?” Nimidh asks, appearing from around a corner. “I wouldn’t mind a pear if we have any.” Haleth watches the first tinge of pink start to appear in Caranthir’s cheeks. He is so very easy to wind up, it’s almost unfair.

“No, Nimidh,” Caranthir replies, with a startling amount of patience for him. “I meant metaphorical fruit.” Nimidh pouts at him and Haleth notes with no small amount of amusement that now Caranthir is reddening because he is vexed and because Nimidh is giving him bedroom eyes.

“That’s much harder to eat than a real one,” Nimidh replies, and has the audacity to bite her bottom lip; Haleth watches Caranthir track the movement, his expression going a little fixed and dazed. “Still, I suppose I could wrap my mouth around it one way or another –”

Haleth explodes into peals of laughter; she can’t help it. On the sofa across from her, Tirindë is giggling quietly while she works at her mending (Nimidh tore a hem yesterday). “Ishilde, you’re missing it!” Haleth calls in the general direction of the upstairs levels. Caranthir is blotchy white and red all over, staring at Nimidh like she’s grown a second head.

“What is the matter with you?” Caranthir demands. Nimidh must take pity on him, because she straightens her posture out of the beckoning slouch she’d been in and goes to take a seat.

“My apologies, my lord,” she trills, and then ruins it by giving Caranthir a peck on the highest part of him she can reach as she walks past. Caranthir touches his fingertips to his chin with a stymied expression.

“You’re not saying it right,” Haleth says. Caranthir’s head swings around like he’s watching a sparring match. “You should be saying it, ‘my apologies, my lord’,” dropping her voice a little, roughening it slightly, until it sounds freshly fucked and entirely indecent. Caranthir’s eyes pop open wider and he sits down next to Tirindë, who pats his arm absently.

“Like this?” she asks, and then proceeds to say the words in a tone so filthy and seductive that Haleth herself starts to react a little. Nimidh squirms uncomfortably; Haleth would wager good money that Caranthir is starting to get hard just from this.

“You contain hidden depths, Tirindë,” Nimidh praises. “Doesn’t she, Caranthir?” Caranthir opens his mouth but no words come out. Now it is Haleth’s turn to feel a little pity.

“All right, we’ll stop. For now,” she adds, and Caranthir swallows. “What unexpected fruit did your absence bear?”

“Fruit?” Ishilde bellows from the courtyard, where she must be feeding the chickens and the goat none of them can agree what to name. “There’s half a punnet of strawberries I think and perhaps a few apples, but if you want more get off your hintern and go to market yourself!”

“Hintern?” Tirindë asks.

“Arse,” Haleth supplies bluntly. Tirindë goes a faint shade of pink.

“I see. Well, go on then, Morinya. What do you have to tell us?” Caranthir is clearly sulking; he just glares at them instead. Tirindë sighs as though she’s dealing a deeply frustrating situation, and then Caranthir flinches.

“Ow! Lossiel, that hurts! Don’t poke your nose into my mind.”

“Well, you were being childish,” she replies, unrepentant, before looking up at Nimidh and Haleth. “His mother was none too impressed with his broken nose –”

“Not broken,” Caranthir mutters, “Just badly bruised. Very badly bruised.” Tirindë continues as if he had not spoken.

“And wants us to come to supper. Well, not supper,” she amends, at a glare from Caranthir. “More like afternoon tea, and then supper. There will be music, and singing.”

“Well, of course there will be,” Ishilde says, coming in from the kitchen. “Elves don’t know how to celebrate any other way.” She waves at the four of them as she heads upstairs, no doubt to change out of her dusty housedress.

“Unless there’s wine,” Nimidh chips in. “I once obliterated myself on elderflower cordial during a Tarnin Austa and woke up on top of a haystack with no shoes on.” She snickers. “Luckily Lord Amras was passing and helped me down.”

“You never told me that,” Caranthir says, voice stilted, expression hard. Nimidh shrugs.

“I was only sixteen, or thereabouts, and a raggedy little waif of a thing at that. Far below the notice of the high lords,” she teases. It doesn’t help; Caranthir’s expression only grows more displeased.

“But not beyond the notice of my younger brother, it seems,” he mutters darkly. Nimidh laughs, a high, mocking thing.

“Are you jealous? You need not be. He was only being gallant.”

“Was Amras not counted amongst the ‘high lords’ you speak of?” Tirindë wonders. “He is a son of Fëanor, after all.” Nimidh makes a face.

“Well, technically,” she concedes, “but he didn’t seem like it most of the time. He wore plain leathers and mail, and his hair was braided simply. And he talked to us – to Men, I mean. As though we were equal to him. I never saw that from his brothers. Lord Celegorm once nearly tripped over me in a corridor because I was so far below his notice.” There is no recrimination in her voice, as though the words are merely plain unvarnished fact.

“And I?” Caranthir asks. His expression has changed from displeased to sorrowful. “Did I speak to you as though you were my equal?” Even Haleth feels sorry for him now, and Nimidh is of far softer heart than herself. She rises and goes to him, plonks herself down sideways on his lap. Caranthir nearly overbalances, bracing his boots against the floor, one hand rising stiffly to rest on Nimidh’s lower back.

“You’re the same as you always were,” Nimidh says, in tones of deep frustration mingled with sincere affection. She kisses him neatly on the tip of his long straight nose; Caranthir flinches back from it, a desperate hunger coming into his face. Haleth shifts uncomfortably. She knows that expression. It is not lustful, but of a deep, profoundly yearning nature. Caranthir longs to be loved. Haleth had known this, once.

“In what way?” Caranthir asks, voice hoarse. Haleth sneaks a glance at Tirindë; she is watching the events unfolding beside her with a faintly astonished look on her fine Eldar features.

“You’re silly,” Nimidh tells him. “And you’re sweet.” Caranthir at once flushes a deep brick red, his complexion having only just recovered from his earlier vexation. Haleth can tell at once that these were things Nimidh had only ever said to Caranthir when they were alone together, words that Caranthir could only allow himself to have with the defence of solitude around them. His eyes dart briefly over to Haleth.

There’s no need to feel embarrassment. After all, everyone here has seen you naked, Haleth remarks through the bond, tapping her mind briefly against his own for emphasis. Caranthir swallows, and looks back up at Nimidh, still perched atop him like a little queen on her throne. Very slowly, he leans forward until his head rests against the small swell of her breasts and tucked neatly under her chin. His eyes close, and he only starts a little when Tirindë reaches over and catches his lax hand with her own.

“She is a great comfort, is she not?” Tirindë says softly to their husband. Caranthir nods, a jerky little thing, eyes still closed, lashes thick and black against his flushed cheek. Nimidh hums and kisses the top of his head.

“You don’t keep your braids as neat as you used to,” she comments. “Or wear as many sparkly things in them.”

“It doesn’t seem worth the fuss,” Caranthir says, eyes still closed. “And fashions have changed. It would have been considered indecent in my youth to wear one’s hair loose and without adornment as so many do now. But times are different.”

“You can blame the Third Age for that,” Tirindë says wryly. “I swear one morning hair adornments were in and the next they were out. Brocade, too, and satin slippers. And of course I have not been allowed to wear red since your father was exiled to Formenos.” She sighs, a fond nostalgic sound, of someone who loves to wear clothes and make them. “No matter. We have been summoned, and I for one dare not displease the matriarch of the family. Haleth? Do you wish to go?”

“Will the food be good?” Haleth asks in reply. Nimidh giggles.

“Tolerable,” Tirindë replies. “Ambarussa are surprisingly good in the kitchen. so is Tyelpë. Morinya, who else will be attending?” Caranthir is not paying attention. Perhaps because Nimidh is running her hand through his long ebony locks.

“Hmm? Oh, everyone,” he replies vaguely, when Tirindë repeats his name for the second time.

“That is less than useful, husband,” Tirade says, her voice dangerously calm. Caranthir must be familiar with the tone, because his eyes open at once, his posture straightening.

“Yes. Of course. Mother and Father, obviously. All my brothers except for Tyelko – he’s with Oromë,” he adds, at Haleth’s raised eyebrow.

“I’m surprised your father allows it, when he will not even deign to visit his own mother in Vairë’s halls,” Tirindë remarks, a thread of anger in her voice.

“Tyelko does not listen to Father anymore,” Caranthir replies. “Neither does Káno. Nelyo does so only nominally, and then does as he pleases. Curvo –” Here he shrugs helplessly, as so many have done when it comes to Curufin. “He can barely be dragged from the forge or the workrooms. I doubt we’ll see him.”

“And Ambarussa?” Tirindë asks. Caranthir scowls.

“Well, one Father burnt to death and the other never stopped hating him for it…” He trails off. “Káno’s adoptive son is attending, Elrond.” He says the Sindarin name with just the barest hint of distaste. “And his wife. ‘Laurë has not stopped humming to himself for days, he’s so pleased.”

“Well, why should he not be?” Tirindë asks. “He loves them. Why should he not delight in their presence?” Caranthir looks pained but says nothing.

“Because they’re not Fëanorions by blood,” Nimidh chips in. When three faces look at her with surprise, she makes a face. “I listen!” Caranthir’s arm tightens around her a fraction.

“Dear girl,” he says with affection. Tirindë’s expression softens even as Haleth looks at it. There truly is not even the tiniest bone of jealousy in her, Haleth thinks. She is joyous to see Caranthir happy.

“Anyone else?” Tirindë asks. Some instinct makes Haleth look down, to where Tirindë’s free hand is knotted up in a fist, knuckles turning white from the pressure. Perhaps the tiniest bone of jealousy, then.

“Ilwëmë may make an appearance.” Tirindë makes a soft sound of surprise.

“I did not know she and Makalaurë were even on speaking terms again,” she marvels. Caranthir grimaces.

“They are on more than that, if what I happened to see in the garden two weeks ago is anything to go by.” Tirindë makes a high-pitched sound of joy.

“Oh, Morinya! Makalaurë and Ilwëmë, reunited. And Maedhros and Fingon! It is almost like old times again but better – Maedhros and Fingon thought no one knew about them in the old days, but it was obvious,” she explains for Haleth and Nimidh’s benefit.

“Obvious to some,” Caranthir says darkly, shaking his head.

“Because they are cousins? Or because they’re both men?” Nimidh asks.

“Because one was the son of Fëanáro and one the son of Ñolofinwë,” Tirindë replies. “Two and a half Ages in the Void has mellowed your father, Morinya.” She sighs. “Now if only Thúlien would thaw –”

“Curufin took her son away from her. That kind of sundering is very hard to forgive,” Ishilde says, coming downstairs in a fresh dress. Haleth raises an eyebrow at her.

“Do you know everything?” she asks frankly. Ishilde just smiles.

“I was my liege lady’s courier for a time,” she says dryly. “It is very hard to get out of the habit of observing everyone.”

“Afternoon tea, Ishilde? At our esteemed mother-in-law’s abode? Our day is free, since my dear mother is at the workshop today, no doubt making Seríssë wish she could pack her off back to Tol Eressea.” Tirindë adds. Ishilde shrugs.

“As long as I can bring my books and papers with me,” she replies. Caranthir smiles at that.

“Most certainly. Craft is very firmly encouraged. Bring your own, or Father will find something for you whether you want it or not.” Caranthir says this is a tone of ironic amusement, but Haleth hears the truth ring it in all the same.

At precisely midday Tirindë chivvies them down the street towards the city gates. Haleth leads the way, armed with woven bag and wicker basket (and dagger strapped to her inner thigh, and four steel hairpins sharpened to fine points in a small pouch in her pocket). She waves to several Eldar along the way who she had come to know. So few days in this strange Elvish city, and already many of its occupants know her name and greet her warmly. It is obvious at times which of them have never known the need to regard strangers cautiously, as innocent and gay as children. Others greet Haleth with a touch of reserve that she recognises, the wariness that comes when one never knows if an unfamiliar face will bring danger along with it.

Nimidh strolls behind her, chattering blithely to Caranthir at her side, who had accepted the large bag Ishilde had foisted upon him without so much as a blink. Like Haleth Nimidh has forgone a gown and has a plain linen shirt tucked into trousers – Haleth’s are dun brown, Nimidh’s dove grey. Her boots are a polished brown leather, as is the belt around her waist. Nimidh’s are both black.

Ishilde walks next to Tirindë. They are in billowing skirts to their ankles and the same sturdy leather boots as Nimidh and Haleth. But Ishilde’s shirt has short sleeves that reach her elbows, while Tirindë’s are full and end with a border of lace at the rest. Ishilde sports a fitted bodice in dark blue; Tirindë a flowing, sleeveless overrobe in delicate blush. But both tall, both with long loose hair pinned back to keep it from their faces – and they are walking alongside one another in silence, but in absolute peace.

They make reasonable time to the edge of Tirion, the bright white walls gleaming in the morning sun. Caranthir leaves to find transport. Haleth sets her basket down at her feet and looks around. There are a large group of Eldar preparing for a hunt; Haleth sees Nimidh eyeing their recurve bows with envy. Haleth amuses herself for a time trying to puzzle out what they’re saying, but along with the two Elvish languages she knows there is another one mixed in, a light trilling tongue spoken mostly by the handful of Eldar with the silver hair. One looks up suddenly as if he had sensed Haleth’s eyes on him. His expression changes, moving from amused to violently disturbed in less than a heartbeat. Haleth halts on instinct as the Elf’s companions turn to see what has unsettled him so, and their faces darken as well.

“Kinslayer,” the first one utters hoarsely, staring past her with a mix of unbridled terror and virulent dislike, his hand going to his hip as though seeking a sword that no longer hangs there. There is a sound behind her; despite her instincts telling her not to take her eyes from a prospective enemy, Haleth turns, to see Caranthir, stricken and frozen in his tracks behind her.

“Calm yourself, Gilitíro,” one of the Elf’s fellows says to him, but it seems to settle him naught. Gilitíro advances, hands bunching into fists.

“You dare walk in these lands as though you have not drenched your hands in blood to the very shoulders, Fëanorion.” The words drip with malice – and an ancient, unhealed sorrow. “When the blood of my kin stains you still. I would have justice –”

“The House of Fëanáro made reparations against thy people long ago, nelya,” Tirindë says, as polite as a fine Elven lady at an afternoon tea, but no less firm for it. She steps between Caranthir and the furious stranger easily, and her slim frame suddenly seems a considerable bulwark indeed. “Wergild was offered, at length, and accepted. If thee wish to bring thy ire against my kin by marriage, thou must at first go to your king and declare thyself unsatisfied with the amends made. Of course, thou could try your fortunes against my husband here. However…” Tirindë hums a few lilting notes; the air around Haleth gains a sort of static charge as it seems to flow past her to Gilitíro. He shifts, clearly uncomfortable, and then Haleth sees why; the threads of his right sleeve have unwoven themselves and are busily stitching his arm to his tunic, until the limb is trapped helplessly against his side. “I assure thee that I am equal to the task of defending my husband, even without a weapon.” Tirindë’s eyes narrow. “Unless thou wish to wear your collar as a tighter fit?” The Elf’s already pale face drains of the last of its colour.

“Indeed not, great lady,” the second Elf says, visibly unnerved. “Permit me to extend my sincere apologies to thee on behalf of my sworn brother. And – and to thee also, Lord Caranthir.” This is said as though the speaker’s throat is lined with razors. Caranthir jerks a single sharp nod. He is mottled red with supressed fury.

“Lossiel, our transport awaits,” is all he says, although Haleth senses he wishes to say far more than that. Haleth falls into step with Tirindë, who obligingly slows the pace of her long legs, while Caranthir stalks on ahead.

“You don’t usually speak that formally,” Haleth remarks as their husband strides off. Tirindë sighs. She looks very tired. “And I didn’t know you could unravel people’s clothes just by humming at them.”

“It is a gift of my family line,” Tirindë replies. “And the Teleri accused Caranthir of the crimes he committed in the old days. It was entirely proper to remind them that the House of Fëanor – what remained of us in the West, after Fëanáro and his sons were gone – laboured heavily to provide what restitution could be offered.” She makes a soft, sad sound as they draw near to the cart where Nimidh and Ishilde already sit, waiting for them. “So many of Nerdanel’s finest works now grace the Halls of the Teleri. Nearly all of my wedding jewels, and Thúlien’s, and Ilwëmë’s – they were given to the Teleri wives and daughters whose sons and husbands were slain.” She gives Haleth a hand up into the cart, then climbs in herself. “I sewed tunics and gowns and shrouds until my fingers bled. Thúlien grew healing plants and fruit trees in bushels, and transplanted them into Alqualondë’s gardens with her own hands.  And Ilwëmë.” Tirindë shakes her head in pity as Caranthir (scowling mightily still) heaves himself up into the box seat and snaps the reins at the horses. “Poor little nís. She was younger than Kanafinwë, much younger. They’d only been wed a year or two before Fëanor was Exiled. Of course Káno went with his father. Ilwëmë stayed in Tirion.”

“We had no choice,” Caranthir says stiffly, his shoulders set.

“I’m not criticizing, Moryo,” Tirindë replies. “We are long past that. So we made reparations for Alqualondë.  And then later, to the Iathrim that fell when Doriath was destroyed, as they Returned one by one from the Halls of Mandos.” Caranthir is silent, the only other sounds the whickering of the horses and the roll of the cart’s wheels in the dirt. “And later still, to those poor souls that felt the wrath of Maedhros and Maglor and Amras at the Havens of Sirion. Eventually there were no more gems left to offer or works of our hands to submit, not that they had truly ever been enough. The High King intervened and spoke to King Olwë on our behalf. King Olwë was kind enough to take pity on us, the four Dispossessed wives of a Dispossessed House, and declared our reparations sufficient.” There is silence for a few moments.

“Your wedding jewellery?” Caranthir says eventually, something raw in his voice. “The troth gifts that I gave you?” Tirindë rolls her eyes.

“Is that truly all you garnered from that?” she asks, seemingly rhetorically, because she does not wait for an answer. “We had to do something, Morifinwë, to show how deeply we rued the actions of your father and brothers. Of your actions. Or have you failed to notice since your Return that your mother and I wear not a single gem or jewel?” Caranthir jerks his head around at once; Haleth takes pity on him and hoists herself onto the box seat, taking the reins from his nerveless hands. Relieved of his task, he turns around at once, a simmering pillar of rage to Haleth’s right.

“Olwë had no right,” he hisses. “Nor did Finarfin, to impose such terms –”

“No one forced us to give up our trinkets, Morifinwë,” Tirindë says, sounding impossibly old, with a weariness to her words that falls like a weight. “And in the face of all those ruined lives, they seemed small and paltry things indeed.” Caranthir is still incensed; Haleth feels it radiate from him like smoke from a wildfire. “If anything, you should be glad of heart that Olwë granted mercy and respite to the House of Fëanor. The entire House,” Tirindë adds pointedly. “Even those who were Exiled or not alive at the time. As for the High King, he negotiated again on our behalf with the Iathrim and the refugees from the Havens, as they emerged one by one from the Halls. Had we not secured those agreements in the years that have past, all those chests you hauled up from Manwë knows where could be seized for reparations.” Caranthir flushes darker; evidently he has not thought of that. “Or the lands you intend to ask the High King for.”

“My father’s lands,” Caranthir says furiously, turned around fully now and clearly itching for a fight. “They belong to my House by right.” Tirindë sighs.

“Fëanáro put a sword to his own brother’s throat,” she reminds him. Haleth butts a shoulder against Caranthir’s in an effort to calm him somewhat, but it makes no difference to his ire. “You may claim as you wish that it was Morgoth’s influence, but I would remind you, husband, that Morgoth spoke with many Eldar during his deception, and none of the others ever tried to kill their kin.”

“He didn’t mean it,” Caranthir says, voice hushed, but no less wrathful for it. “He wouldn’t have done that. He just lost his temper –”

“Precisely why so many of us preferred Ñolofinwë to Fëanáro as the prospective High King of the Ñoldor,” Tirindë replies. Caranthir’s voice, when it comes, is strangled.

“Us?” he echoes in indignant disbelief. “Even you, Lossiel?”

“I never spoke a word against your father, Morifinwë.” Tirindë’s voice is tight with her own suppressed anger. “I was an obedient Fëanorion wife. But even I could see he was unstable. I was loyal to my House by marriage. But I will not deny that I thought he would be a poor king indeed.” She sighs again. “It matters not. Events fell as they did, and none of us can change them.”

“It matters,” Caranthir says. He has managed to control his voice and the mottled flush of fury is fading from his face, but he is still as tense as a bowstring at Haleth’s side, and still glaring at his wife like she has put a knife into his heart. “It matters. If you doubted Father, and I followed him, then it means you doubted me.”

“You knew that,” Tirindë says. “Yes, I doubted the wisdom of taking a vast hoard of treasure into the wilderness guarded only by a scant few. I told you as much. But I did not doubt you, my dear one. I knew you would hold fast to your kin. I knew you would lay down your life for them. And I was correct, was I not? You swore the Oath along with your brothers, forsaking all other bonds, even mine. You did not even ask me.” The ancient hurt in her voice almost takes the breath from Haleth’s lungs. It is so easy to forget, that Tirindë has lived near to eight thousand years, and nearly all of them sundered from her husband.

“Káno and Curvo did not ask their wives –” For once, Tirindë cuts Caranthir off, with a mirthless laugh that sounds like it has dwelt for centuries in her chest.

“Kanafinwë was barely a yen married, and Thúlien and Curufinwë were living separate lives, much like your parents. But you and I, Morinya.” The tenderness in her voice. “I thought we were united.”

“Lossi –”

“No. I do not wish to speak of this any further, and we are almost at your mother’s estate. You might make an effort at calming yourself.”

 Caranthir turns around again to face the front of the cart, his long legs dangling down from the box seat. Haleth glances at him from the corner of her eye, still tense, hands fisted on his knees. On whim alone, she reaches over and twines her fingers through his knotted fist, until his own lie straight and lax. Caranthir startles at first, then offers her a sheepish smile.

“I am of little use to you, my lady,” he says in an undertone, as behind them Nimidh draws Tirindë into conversation with a determinedly cheerful air. “Or to anyone else, it seems.”

“Self-pity doesn’t go well with your complexion,” Haleth tells him bluntly. “Nor with your bearing. Buck up and stop sulking.” Caranthir releases a short shark bark of a laugh.

“Always can I rely on you to thoroughly puncture my sense of dignity, Haleth.” But the anger has drained out of him as easily as rain into a culvert. Caranthir and Tirindë make one another think, Haleth realises. But they are unpractised at giving one another comfort. It was not always so, she thinks, only that too many long years of separation and disappointment have led them to forget.

Are you all right? Haleth asks Caranthir’s Eldar wife, mind to mind. She receives the mental equivalent of a frustrated sigh in return.

I am, Tirindë says. I only wish he would stop behaving as though all of this is new to him. he has been Returned for over three months now. I doubt very much his mother would have failed to appraise him of how the House of Fëanor stands with the rest of our people –

Tirindë falls abruptly silent. Oh, she says, when Haleth gives her a light tap through the bond. Of course she hasn’t told them. Nerdanel has tried to wrap her boys up in her love and shield them from harm. All harm, even the wounds of the soul or spirit. I wonder if even –

“Caranthir?” Tirindë says aloud. “Has your father seen Queen Miriel since his Return to life?” Next to Haleth, Caranthir jolts slightly.

“No,” he replies after a short pause. “I am aware her body was moved to Vairë’s Halls, in honour of the work of her hands. But Father will not countenance entering the realm of a Valar, even one so innocuous as Vairë. Moringotto’s deception burns him still.”

What is it? Haleth asks Tirindë. What aren’t you telling him?

Fëanáro’s mother returned to life some centuries ago now, Tirindë says, a grim wariness accompanying her words. I believe he has not been informed. I thought it wilful cruelty, that kept him from going to her. But perhaps – Her mental voice is coloured with uncertainty. Perhaps it was merely ignorance.

Should we tell Caranthir? Haleth replies. She receives the mental equivalent of a shake of the head back.

Not now. We are almost at our destination. I will inform Fëanáro, later.

The cart rolls into the courtyard of Nerdanel’s villa, the horses stopping of their own accord by the far wall. Like a ghost arising from the crack of the earth, Caranthir’s younger brother Amrod appears and unhitches the horses without saying a word. He gives Haleth a wry half-smile as he goes on his way, the horses’ reins held loosely in his hands, heading towards a nearby field where several other beasts are grazing peacefully.

“Carnistir!” a voice sings out joyfully. Nerdanel appears from around the house, her arms held outstretched. Caranthir ducks his head but goes to his mother all the same to be embraced. he is an inch or two shorter than her, Haleth notes with amusement.

“Hello, Mother,” Haleth hears as she herself approaches Nerdanel. Caranthir’s mother releases him after placing a smacking kiss on his forehead – pink already in the sun but reddening further – as she turns to Haleth and sweeps her up in turn.

“My good-daughter,” Nerdanel says warmly. “All four of them! Come, come. We are in the field. You are the last to arrive.”

Haleth follows in Nerdanel’s wake. They round the house together, and go through a broad gate into what could loosely be described as a glade, or perhaps an orchard gone to fallow. The trees still stretch upwards towards Valinor’s impossibly clear blue sky, but in the centre perhaps two dozen have been felled, their stumps still protruding from the ground, Caranthir’s family scattered all around.

Fëanor is in the middle of the throng, of course. He is speaking loudly to Curufin and Celebrimbor, gesturing with one hand while scribbling feverishly on a scrap of paper balanced on his knee. Nearby, Maglor is sitting with his back against a stump, his lute in his lap but his eyes closed, as though the sound of his father sermonizing at someone is the sweetest lullaby he could ask for. Perhaps it is. And scarred, watchful Maedhros has his head in Fingon the Valiant’s lap, his eyes only two slits of pale fire, his one good hand and his stump folded peacefully over his chest. Fingon has one hand on Maedhros’s cheek and the other holding a fan of cards, being soundly beaten at piquet by Amras.

The pleasantly domestic scene is obscured when a slim female Elf stalks out of a small copse of trees. Haleth halts, partly because she doesn’t know the stranger but mostly because she is carrying a very capable looking longbow. Thus she is overtaken by Tirindë, who shares none of her hesitation, instead going to the Eldar female with a cry of, “Ilwëmë!”

As Nimidh and Ishilde draw level with her, Haleth takes stock. It takes her a few moments, because Ilwëmë Cariondo Fëanorion defies explanation. From Tirindë’s description of her, somehow Haleth had expected someone shy and retiring. But although Ilwëmë is not as tall as Tirindë, only three or four inches taller than Haleth herself, there is nothing delicate about her. She is heavily muscled for an Elf, and although her garments are much like what Haleth and Nimidh are wearing, there is a dagger hanging from her belt that looks very well made and frequently used, and a quiver of arrows at her back. Her armaments aside, by far the most noticeable of her features is a slightly crooked nose, probably from multiple breakages, and the mass of scar tissue where once her right eye used to be.

Haleth likes the look of her at once.

Ilwëmë has submitted to being embraced by Tirindë, the two Eldar talking at one another in the queer silvery tongue that Haleth now knows is the language of the Teleri. How many languages do you know? Haleth demands in indignance directly to Tirindë’s mind, but receives back only an impression of laughter.

“I heard you had obtained three new wives, but it is something else indeed to see in person,” Ilwëmë comments. This is directed at Tirindë, not Caranthir, who is now standing beside Ishilde and purpling rapidly.

“One never know when one might require another life partner, my dear,” Tirindë comments dryly, but there is wickedness sparkling in her Tree-bright eyes. Ilwëmë’s singular eye is the same, if different in colour. They are both very old.

“Enter the fray with me, then, and gird thy loins, sister. Káno’s father has been his usual pontificating self, of course, but at least the wine is good. Finno’s here, of course. Ingo and Amárië turned up without anyone expecting them. They’re in the stables with the girls and Maglor’s kid.” Ilwëmë’s Quenya is very informal, with the occasional Sindarin loan-word, and prominently absent the lisp that marks Caranthir and his family’s Quenya. Tirindë touches the other Elf’s cheek tenderly, before heading into the throng of Fëanorions. Haleth shuffles her feet.

“Nice,” she says, gesturing to Ilwëmë’s eye, because she can recognise a fellow warrior at a hundred paces, and this one is both very close and very obvious. The Eldar female cracks a wry smile; she is missing one of her front incisors, and her canine teeth are very slightly pointed.

“Guess what caused it,” she says, and slings her bow over her shoulder, heading towards a firepit a little way away from the group, to avoid the smoke. Haleth follows, considering, then takes another look as she sets down her supplies on a blanket nearby, already half-covered with victuals and bottles of all descriptions.

“Too messy for an arrow,” Haleth muses.

“Shaft would have been too thick as well, not proportionate enough to fly. If it was, it wouldn’t have just taken your eye, it would have skewered your head onto whatever was behind you.” Haleth nods in response to Ishilde’s contribution.

“You got hit with a piece of wood with a nail sticking out of it,” Nimidh surmises. Ilwëmë smiles again. It’s not particularly attractive to look at, and only vestiges of traditional Eldar beauty remain, as though Ilwëmë has taken care to claw as much of her former loveliness away as possible.

“And the little lady in grey wins the prize,” Ilwëmë crows, and tosses her bow and quiver to Nimidh. “Keep it,” she advises, when Nimidh catches it on instinct. “One of my former paramours is a bowyer. He still sends me a new one every autumn. Trying to get back between my sheets, most like.” Haleth grins.

“And how long did you spend in Middle-earth?” she asks. “Only you’re very sensible for an Elf.” Ilwëmë stretches, her eye on Ishilde, who has already knelt down beside the firepit, rifling through a bag. Haleth’s mouth starts pre-emptively watering when Ishilde pulls out cheese and bread. This soft western country is spoiling her something terrible.

“Only three and a half thousand years or so,” Ilwëmë says off-handedly. Nimidh, inspecting her new bow, makes a surprised sound. “Yes, don’t be deceived by my youthful appearance, fair lady,” Ilwëmë says, her voice lightly mocking, although more towards herself than anyone else. “I went over for the War of Wrath with the High King’s host. Kicked Morgoth’s army from one end of Beleriand to the other, then went over the mountains. By the time High King Gil-galad was killed in the last battle of the War of the Alliance, I was done. I was ready to come home, and start carving stone again.” She catches Haleth’s startled glance. “My House are mostly architects and stonemasons. Your Morifinwë studied with my uncle for a time.”

“Ishilde likes buildings,” Haleth contributes at once; she knows Ishilde would not have brought it up herself. She ignores Ishilde’s glare and crouches down beside the firepit. “Go talk to Ilwëmë about cornices and capstones. I’ll feed the troops.” Ishilde’s expression is now half-grateful and half-cross still.

“I’ll give you cornices and capstones,” she mutters, but rises and goes with Ilwëmë. Their voices fade off into the distance, and Haleth loses herself in the simple process of toasting bread, putting slices of cheese on top, and setting it on the plate to melt.

“Hello!” Haleth jumps. No higher than her waist, a tiny Elven sprite is peering up at her with the wide guileless eyes of true innocence. The child points at the firepit with just the faintest glint of avarice in her expression. “That smells really good!” The girl is no bigger than a mortal child of five or six, but old enough to eat a bit of bread, Haleth judges. So she fishes a small piece off the hotplate – strange, that her fire-callouses have come with her from her previous life – and transfers it carefully into the moppet’s palm.

“Blow on it, it’s hot,” she advises. The child puffs out her cheeks and puffs air onto the bread, before evidently deeming it cool enough and jamming the whole thing into her mouth.

“It is hot!” she declares through chomping jaws, but Elves must have a better tolerance for such things, because she is not distressed by it. Haleth is contemplating giving in to the girl’s pleading eyes once more when a fair lovely voice calls from behind her.

“Lauriel!” The child pulls a face and scurries off, in the direction of a tall male Elf coming towards them. For a moment Haleth is pulled back in time, to the days of her youth. For all he wears simpler clothes and much simpler braids, for all his eyes no longer glow with the radiant light of the Trees, Finrod Felagund has not lost any of his singular charm.

He lifts up his daughter into his arms, voice taking on a scolding lilt. “Where did you go? What made you run off like that –” The words die in his throat when his gaze meets Haleth’s.

“Cheese on toast, I think,” she says, her own voice rasping. She holds up the piece she was about to hand to the child, as though as evidence. “She’s got good taste.”

Finrod’s face has wreathed into a bright disbelieving smile. “Haleth!” He bounds over like he’s a young Elf again, setting his daughter down to lift Haleth firmly off her feet into an embrace. “I heard you were here,” he chatters, putting Haleth back down on her feet (his daughter takes the opportunity to pluck the bread from her lax hand and scuttle off). “By the stars! I never expected to see you again –”

“it’s Caranthir’s fault,” Haleth replies, but Finrod had known her well enough to tell when she was jesting, once, and it appears he still does now.

“I will gladly lay this at my cousin’s door,” he says. “You look marvellous! Oh, you must meet my Amárië – Amárië!”

“You may shout my name, Ingo, but it will not help me walk faster,” calls a sedate silvery voice. Finrod looks chastened.

“You would have found me an infinitely more sensible ellan in Middle-earth, Haleth, if Amárië had been there to keep me in line.” Haleth scrambles to rescue her burning toast from the firepit. She seizes a large flat earthenware dish and dumps her slightly charred offerings onto it, walking back to the group of lounging Eldar – Tirindë is speaking earnestly with Maglor, whose eyes are open now.

“What is it?” Fëanor asks in fascination, hand already reaching out for the dish as Haleth sets it down on a stump beside him. his son Curufin, seated to his left, sniffs.

“Peasant food,” he says dismissively. Of course, Fëanor being Fëanor, this does little to dissuade him. Haleth hears him repeat, “Peasant food,” in a fascinated tone, and then a distinct, audible crunch, and a cry of delight. “Oh, this is superb – Tyelpë, have you tried –”

“Haleth, my Amárië,” Finrod says warmly when Haleth returns to the firepit. She sees now what had delayed the Eldar lady; Amarie bears two small bundles, one in the crook of each arm, and the girl-child from earlier is clinging to her leg, standing her own two small feet on Amárië’s bigger one and demanding a ride.

“Lauriel, you know better than to bother Ammë when she’s carrying the twins,” Finrod scolds, although he doesn’t truly sound angry as he accepts one of his baby daughters from Amárië. Haleth receives a lovely smile from his wife, who bends down from her superior height of about five foot ten and brushes a kiss on each of Haleth’s cheeks. Haleth can already feel herself flushing, as wrong-footed now amongst the ever-graceful Eldar as she had been in her twenties.

“A star shines now on the hour of our meeting,” Haleth manages to remember, dredged up from a memory of some formal dinner she’d attended at Thargelion a lifetime ago. Amárië smiles at her though as if the greeting was as fine as any turned by the very noblest amongst the Eldar.

“I hope our daughter did not steal too much of your cooking, Chieftain Haleth.” Haleth smiles back. Talking about children she can do. For some grief-stricken years, conversation about her nephew was all she could manage with her sister-by-law.

“Merely ‘Haleth’ will do, esteemed princess,” Haleth replies. Amárië makes a very ignoble face, and Haleth laughs aloud in reply. “Or is it ‘noble queen’? Dowager queen?” With each title Amarie’s grimace deepens.

“While I did not relish the many years that I was parted from Ingoldo, at least I did not have to play queen in Nargothrond.” Finrod, bouncing his daughter and staring adoringly down into her little face, does not seem offended in the slightest. “I would rather muck out stables. And I do not enjoy that at all.”

“I always found it a good place to clear my head,” Haleth admits. From wherever they had been cloistered, Ishilde and Ilwëmë appear once more. go sit and be entertaining, Ishilde says, clearly through the bond; it feels odd to Haleth, when she attempts to speak mind-to-mind to Nimidh or Ishilde, much less natural than speaking to Tirindë or Caranthir. But she does as told, accepting the tankard of ale that Ishilde passes her and finds herself a spot to perch amongst the flock of chattering Fëanorions.

Finrod and Amárië follow her; the once-lord of Nargothrond throws himself carelessly down on the ground once he has seen his wife seated on a chair nearby, both twins returned to her arms once more. “You look well, for someone who I hear became supper for a werewolf,” Haleth tells him. Finrod’s lovely face does not change, but Haleth hears a soft indrawn breath from Amarie, and regrets her bluntness. But it was always how she had spoken to him before, albeit in Taliska, and Finrod had never acted as though he minded.

“And you look remarkably alive for someone who should be firmly in the realms of the mortal dead, Chieftain Haleth,” Finrod replies dryly. “I am pleased to finally be able to collect my winnings from the wager I had with my cousin. Amras didn’t think you’d be able to convince Caranthir into bed with you.”

“No, I said he was too stiff-rumped and moody to appeal to a lady of the Edain, who not least amongst her triumphs had fought a battalion of orcs off for a full week.” Amras chips in, throwing down his hand of cards in disgust; Fingon must have recovered himself enough to win. Haleth waves an embarrassed hand in front of her face, displeased to find herself the sudden centre of attention. Finrod has a sly smile on his face; so this is his petty vengeance.

“What did you use for a weapon?” Fëanor wants to know, and Haleth barely restrains a flinch as the greatest of the Eldar to ever live drops himself down heedlessly in the dirt to her right. “No, don’t tell me, let us guess.” Elves love to make a game of things, Haleth reflects sourly, even of something like this. “A flail?”

“Not in quarters that close,” Maedhros replies. “And she doesn’t have the height for it.” Shows what you know, Haleth thinks, imagining again her lovely long glaive, its blade of tempered steel, the ash treated until it was as hard as stone. “A thinner blade to poke through the holes in their armour, but with a cutting edge for throats and behind the knees. Longsword.”

“No points for Himring,” Haleth says with a smile. Maedhros huffs, but she can just see one of the corners of his mouth is curled up very slightly.

“Twin swords,” Maglor says lazily, fingers drifting idly over the surface of his harp. “I myself was no novice at their use, once.”

“You’ve lived long enough to try every weapon ever invented, you’re disqualified,” Amras retorts, and Maglor laughs soundlessly to himself, gaunt features coming alive again, if only for a moment. “Permit me to throw the warhammer into contention. The chieftain has both the muscles for it and the necessary brutality – I intend no offense, my lady.” Haleth grins.

“None taken,” she replies, and is about to ask for Celebrimbor’s opinion, when a familiar voice stops her.

“She favoured a glaive.” Haleth looks over to her left, from where the voice had come from. Caranthir stands at the edge of the group, something about the way he stands signalling unsureness. “And she was glorious with it.” Now Haleth knows she is blushing.

“It was an essential skill, in those days, to be able to fight and fight well,” she mutters. “Anyone who couldn’t defend themselves did not live long.”

“A brutal time,” Ilwëmë says softly. She is sitting against a stump, and her lone eye is clouded, as if seeing something far away. “Only the strong survived. Is that why you would not stay in Thargelion, with Caranthir? You feared to lose your strength?” Surprised, Haleth nods.

“That was part of it,” she admits. “Perhaps we would have been safer, as an Elven lord’s vassals. But I could not countenance it, to cleave myself and my people from freedom. And there was the small matter that I was in love with him by the end of our first month in his keep.” She can feel Caranthir’s gaze scorch her even at this distance. Had she never told him that, Haleth wonders to herself. That she loved him almost from the first? “A chieftain who has their head in the clouds cannot be trusted to make sensible decisions, and I could not trust myself. That one day I would make a decision not in my House’s best interest but in my own. Brethil was far away.” She shakes her head. “And there was no chance of falling in love with any Elf but Caranthir. All the rest were too flashy.” Next to her on the ground, Finrod puts a hand to his heart, feigning wounded. It breaks the tension; Haleth feels the many eyes leave her. Relieved, she reaches for her cup and drains it.

“Surely you do not mean me, my lady,” Finrod is jesting lightly when she lowers it. Haleth raises an eyebrow.

“Gold filigree, gold jewellery, and there was enough gold in your hair to attract every magpie in a mile radius,” she replies tartly. There is a wave of laughter and Finrod, still as good-natured as he had been all those years ago, waves a hand in defeat.

“Surely the lands of Elu Thingol were no refuge, though,” Fëanor objects. Haleth eyes him.

“Weren’t you dead by then?” There is a low wave of nervous laughter, mostly from Fëanor’s sons, as though hoping to recapture the good mood by optimism alone.

“I am a student of many histories, good lady,” Fëanor replies, but a vein of frost has entered his voice.

“It’s not history to me,” Haleth points out. “It was my life. Thingol asked for nothing in return, except that we keep our lands free of orcs. Caranthir would have been my lord.”

“He would have been your husband,” Fëanor says in return, black brows furrowed. Haleth shrugs.

“I didn’t need a husband,” she says, and can’t restrain herself from adding, even though she knows she shouldn’t: “Particularly a kin-slaying Oath-bound one.”

Caranthir flinches. Maedhros is sitting up now; has done so casually as though he meant to all along, even though his cool pale eyes have sought Haleth out and are signalling, rather urgently: Don’t.

Fëanor rises to his feet. Haleth blinks up at his towering figure. “Forgive me,” he says stiffly. “I find myself in need of a walk.” Haleth watches him stalk away, and braces herself. Caranthir will have words to say about her riling his father. She is not prepared for Ilwëmë, lithe and muscled and scowling, to get to her feet also.

“You said it would be different, Kanafinwë,” she seethes, a flush of pink in her cheeks, her one eye snapping with rage, her hands bundled into fists. “That we wouldn’t have to tiptoe around him anymore, if I came back into your family. But you’re all the same as you always were. Cowardly little boys – oh, we can’t possibly upset the great Fëanáro – if he’d tried to hurt her would any of you even lifted a finger to stop him –” Haleth has the feeling that this rant has been bottled up inside Ilwëmë for a very long time.

“Ilwëmë,” Maglor says wearily. “Please don’t.”

“Please do,” Haleth says, her own blood roused, an ugly fever simmering in her veins. “Go on, tell him. Tell him about your three and a half thousand years trying to fix his father’s mistakes. Tell him what it felt like to fight in the mud and blood and filth for even one minute more of life. Tell him about the orcs that came pouring out of Angband and killed your brother and your father while he sat in his gleaming towers and failed to save anything worth saving –” She realises what she says too late. “Oh,” Haleth says to herself. “I didn’t realise I was still angry about that.”

Ilwëmë is in front of her. She puts out her scarred right hands; Haleth uses it to haul herself to her feet. “Come with me,” she says. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Makalaurë was too old for me,” Ilwëmë says.

They’d walked until Haleth was thoroughly out of breath. She had the sense that Ilwëmë could have gone on for miles yet, but instead the Eldar woman had sat down on a fallen log and tossed Haleth her waterskin. Haleth listens while she tries to steady her breathing.

“He was. I came of age only a few Valian years before Melkor and Ungweliantë destroyed the Trees.” She spits on the ground in disgust at the names, a distinctly Mannish trait. “He could have had anyone – I mean, anyone. Nelyafinwë was making a name for himself as a junior statesman at the palace, Turcafinwë had the Hunt, your Caranthir kept himself busy. No one but Thúlien could drag Curufinwë from the forges, everyone loved the twins. But Makalaurë. He was the crown jewel of their House. Birds would fall senseless out of the sky at the sound of his voice. Maidens fell at his feet when he played. But he wanted me.”

“And what were you?” Haleth asks her gently. “Too young to know better?” Ilwëmë nudges Haleth’s shoulder with her own, as though in agreement.

“I lived in Alqualondë until it was time for my debut,” she says. “My mother is Teleri, my father Noldo. I hated having to come to Tirion. The noise, the bustle, the way Noldo would look at the colour of my hair and judge me for it. For all that Míriel Þerindë herself was silver-haired! It did me not a whit of good.” Haleth hears the ancient ache of an unlovely girl in Ilwëmë’s voice. it is not unfamiliar. “Makalaurë was the final performance at the debut ceremony, at the beginning of the season. He was – unearthly. That such a voice could exist! I was not entranced. I was terrified.”

“Sensible girl,” Haleth approves. Ilwëmë takes another drink from her waterskin, passing it back to Haleth companionably.

“Indeed. But everywhere I went that spring, it seemed that he was there also. Tall and lovely, his hair pure Noldo black, his eyes that perfect translucent grey, like smoke-diamonds. He was everywhere! Paying someone a pretty compliment, bent over their hand to kiss it, but his eyes gleaming into mine. I could not escape him. It was like being entrapped.”

“You must have changed your mind at some point,” Haleth remarks.

“So must you have, if you came back to Morifinwë.” Haleth dips her head in agreement, and Ilwëmë resumes her tale. “My debut finished at the end of summer. I was pleased to be able to go home, and not. All season, there he had been, and not a word he had said to me. Until the very last day. He found me, in the Queen’s gardens at the palace, when the party was almost over. He came over to me by the hyacinths. He took my hand. He said, please don’t go.” Haleth makes a sound of sympathy. “I know! The nerve. He stood there, so nervous, shuffling his feet in the dirt. His hand was clammy when he took mine. And I thought, it is me, who terrifies him now. With what I might say. With what I might not say.” Ilwëmë shakes her head, almost in despair at her old self’s hubris. “Needless to say, I did not go home.”

“You liked that you made him wrong-footed,” Haleth guesses. “It made you feel strong.”

“I liked who I was in his eyes,” Ilwëmë corrects. “I liked how green with envy those cruel Noldo girls had turned when they saw me walking with him. I liked the thought that I was frightening, and bold. Our courtship was not overlong. My mother did not approve. She approved less, later, when he sullied his hands and his blade with my own kin’s blood. When his voice became fell and cruel, and he turned it to violence and wickedness. When I heard that they had taken the swan-ships, I knew I would not see him again. I picked up a sword. I have not let one go since.” Haleth glances down pointedly at Ilwëmë’s empty hands; the Eldar woman laughs. “Metaphorically! So you see, I know something of loving impossible Fëanorions, and blaming them.”

“Caranthir said he saw yourself and Lord Maglor in the garden in a compromising state,” Haleth teases. Ilwëmë raises an eyebrow.

“Lord Maglor?”  Haleth curses.

“Sorry, old habit,” she replies. Ilwëmë shrugs.

“They called him prince in my day. Lord is somewhat of a descent from that.” But Ilwëmë grows silent. “I let him kiss me,” she admits. The expression in her eye is far away. “It was like kissing a stranger. Not only because of the long distance of years between us. But because he is changed. My proud peacock love. He has dulled his feathers and discarded his pride. He had to bend to kiss me the same, though. I had missed that.” She gestures to her face. “I thought my scars might repel him. but he is scarred too, from worse than a lucky orc with a broken floorboard.” Her head twists around. “There’s someone coming.”

Shortly Haleth can hear it too, careful soft feet in the leaf litter. “Who goes there?” she calls, and the footsteps stop.

“My lady Ilwëmë, chieftain Haleth,” replies a gentle male voice, a little deeper than most Elves, that speaks Quenya with an accent most like Maedhros and Maglor’s. “Dusk will be falling soon. Would you not come back to the fire?”

“Has Fëanáro managed to restrain himself, Elrond?” Ilwëmë asks.

“He went into the house. Aunt Tirindë followed him, and Lady Nimidh. When they returned, haru was much calmer, and haruni Nerdanel was with them. It is almost time for the singing.” Ilwëmë shakes her head and rubs at her eye.

“More singing,” she mutters. “I cannot get away from it.” Still, she rises, takes one last pull from the waterskin before hanging it back on her belt. Haleth follows her, until against the dimming light a tall Elven figure becomes visible. Elrond Peredhel, the scion of about four different bloodlines (or so Haleth has been told), and Maedhros and Maglor’s adopted son. He looks the part, Haleth finds herself thinking, and whatever half of him is Man, it does not show in his bearing.

“I hope they don’t expect me to sing,” Haleth mutters to Ilwëmë as they approach. Easily, Elrond falls into step beside her, and it feels more companionable than Haleth might have thought. Perhaps the mortal in her blood senses his, and feels a kinship. Or perhaps it is Elrond’ faint resemblance to Caranthir in hair and eye colour, although his face is sweeter and gentler by far.

“On the contrary, my lady. Haleth,” Elrond amends, when she glares up at him. “You are a guest, and one of honour besides.”

“Compared to Eldar voices, mine sounds like a tin kettle about to boil mixed with gravel,” Haleth tells him bluntly.

“Then it is fortunate you will not be compared as such,” Elrond replies gravely. “It is not a thing to be feared. The sound of your voice is less important than the words of your heart.” To Haleth’s other side, Ilwëmë snorts.

“Is that what Kanafinwë told you? He’s gone soft. He would have beaten one of his musicians with his conducting stick for so much as a single flat note, once.”

“He never beat us, my lady,” Elrond replies, a thread of something dark and steely through his voice. Ilwëmë sobers at once.

“I did not mean to imply as such, Elerondo,” she says. “I would never. Not that.” Haleth is missing something crucial here, but at her other side Elrond relaxes, so it must now be forgiven.

“There are blankets by the fire,” he says. “Come. Warm yourselves. All is well.”

As they step from the last of the forest, Amrod is leaning up against a nearby tree. There are more fires lit now, and many lanterns scattered around, hanging from tree branches or cunning wire holders staked into the ground. He ambles over to Haleth as though he hasn’t a care in the world. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he murmurs, as Ilwëmë gives Haleth a brief touch on the elbow in farewell – Elrond the same with a bow of his head – and heads off.

“Oh? Did it hurt?” she asks. There is no fear of giving offense here; she knows Amrod quite well by now.

“If you go by numbers,” he says, blithely ignoring her quip, “There’s almost enough Fëanorion wives now for Fëanorion sons.” Haleth snorts. “Except Moryo is hoarding four of them all to himself. Typical,” Amrod remarks, and Haleth outright laughs.

“I’m sure there’s a girl out there for you, Telyo,” she says, the unfamiliar endearment slipping out without thought. Amrod raises an eyebrow in reply, the one irregular in places from where his burnt flesh no longer grows hair.

“Do you want tea or wine?” he asks instead of commenting. Haleth stares at him. “Tea and wine. Understood,” he says, and shepherds her over to one of the fires, where several bundles of blankets rapidly resolve themselves into Nimidh, Ishilde, Tirindë, and Caranthir. Her once-love looks up at her with wide unsure eyes, a lock of his raven hair falling over his brow, and it hurts her heart, how much she loves him. Instead of sitting down in the spot to his right clearly meant for her, she drops to her knees in the dirt and kisses his forehead, before tucking herself in against his side, draping his arm over her shoulders.

“I – Haleth, I –” She bumps her head against his shoulder and he falls silent.

“Peace, Morinya,” Tirindë says. She has her back against a stump, her eyes tilted up at the magnificent spread of stars overhead. “All is well.”

Haleth nestles against her – her husband, what a notion – for a while until Amrod deposits two mugs beside her. With a grin, he goes over to the next patch of seated revellers – his twin amongst them. Amrod sits down beside his brother and rests his head on Amras’s shoulder, who puts an arm around him without pausing in his conversation with his parents. Fëanor looks up and meets Haleth’s eyes; she waves one hand at him in silent apology. The lines around his eyes deepen, but he waves one back.

The singing starts slowly. At first there is merely a hum, low, male, steady. Haleth can pick out Fingon in it, and Fëanor, and the sound of Maglor’s harp. From there the hum becomes words, and accompanying the shimmering notes of the harp is a flute and then the sweet singing notes of a fiddle. Caranthir begins to sing; Haleth can feel the sounds vibrating in his chest, the silky sombre words he sings audible amidst the higher voices of the female Eldar. From here Haleth can see nearly all of them; Elrond with a pretty female Eldar who must be his wife Celebrían, his back propped against a stump and his legs spread to allow his wife space between them, her head resting back on his chest and his arms around her middle. Amras with his flute and Amrod beside him; Nerdanel’s face in the darkness shining with joy to have her sons with her again. Many voices, and many tunes; a clamour of sound and life, and the stars over all of them. Celebrimbor with his head on his father’s shoulder, for all Tyelpë is taller than Curufin by at least a head. Maedhros and Fingon, holding hands, and Fëanor watching them with a smile hiding behind his eyes. Maglor playing his harp and looking at Ilwëmë like he cannot get enough of feasting his eyes on her, and Ilwëmë pretending not to look back.

Haleth gives up on trying to hold back, and lets herself sing along.

The music ebbs and flows. At one point, there is only Tirindë and Ilwëmë singing, in the trilling silvery language of the Teleri, accompanied by Maglor’s harp. And then Nerdanel crooning a lullaby in Quenya while Celebrían sings the same song in Sindarin, and Ishilde – to Haleth’s surprise – keeping time with them in Taliska. Caranthir mouths the words into Haleth’s hair – at some point he had buried his nose in the top of her head – and Nimidh slouches against his other side, nearly dwarfed by the cloak he has thrown around her. Ishilde has her head in Tirindë’s lap, and Tirindë is stroking her hair slowly and gently, like one would a hesitant cat. Haleth is warm, and comfortable, and happy. The song comes out of her slowly; Quenya, for those around her, although Haleth had heard it first in Taliska, when she was a child.

“Thee'll walk unscathed through arrow fire.” It is almost so soft that even she can barely hear it, but Maglor must be able to, because the notes of his harp change at once. It gives Haleth heart. “No orcish blade will cut thee down. No broadsword wound will mar thy face…” It is quieter now. Caranthir is looking down at her, his bright clear eyes fixed on her face. “And thee will be my ain true love,” she sings, and the harsh angles of his face soften. “And thee will be my ain true love.”

“And as you walk through death's dark veil,” starts another voice, much lower; Fingon winks at her from across the irregular semi-circle of gathered Eldar. Of course he would know a Mannish love song, Haleth thinks; there were plenty of rumours once upon a time about him and the House of Bëor. Haleth joins him for the next line, along with Finrod’s fiddle, mournful and sweet: “No dragon’s fire will prevail. And those who hunt thee down will fail…” Caranthir sighs and presses a kiss to the top of Haleth’s head. She feels more than hears the words come out of him. “And you will be my ain true love. And you will be my ain true love.”

“The battle leaves no room for doubt,” Ishilde chimes in. Haleth raises an eyebrow at her. They sing the next together: “The general cries, "Here comes the rout!" They'll seek to bind me from north to south. I've gone to find my ain true love.”

“The field is cut and bleeds to red,” Nimidh adds, voice pretty and louder than Haleth would have thought, given the size of her. “And Varda’s glow shines on my head…” Six different voices join for the last few lines; Fingon, Haleth herself, Ishilde, Nimi, Ilwëmë – and Caranthir. “And let the healers count me dead…” And then more; Fëanor, Nerdanel. Amrod and Amras, Celebrimbor, and even Maglor’s rough, rasping tenor, so ruined from what Haleth is told it was before, and yet alive. Alive yet.

“When I've gone to find my ain true love… I've gone to find my ain true love.”

“It is a lovely thing,” Caranthir says, his voice soft, his heartbeat keeping time under Haleth’s ear, “to find indeed.”