Arafinwë stared at the crown in his hands in utter incomprehension.

It hadn’t been fashioned for him and suited him little, so he didn’t even try to place it atop an unworthy head that was bowed with grief and filled with the echoes of blood and death.

“My wife,” he whispered hopefully.

“The Lady Eärwen is also being prepared for her new role.”

How cold these words sounded, cutting him to his shivering core.

Eärwen had never wanted this! She’d been happy as the wife of someone so far down the line of succession that nobody had ever tried to censor her wild ways.

Alas, the waves she’d ridden and tamed were now sullied with the blood of her kin, and she was as much a prisoner of the circumstances as her ill-fated husband.

“My mother then…” he pleaded, ashamed of his puerile, needy behaviour.

The servant’s face betrayed a momentary flash of earnest pity. “She retired—the grief's too great to bear.”

Arafinwë wanted to scream, but he doubted that his lungs would even sufficiently expand to allow for such a vain indulgence.

In that instant, he resented Indis for being allowed to wallow in her loss while he, still in his mourning garments, was mercilessly being primed for a throne he’d never coveted.

How was he to lead a people who could certainly see the stains upon his honour and soul?

How was anyone to follow one who’d deserted his own brothers in the face of adversity?

Oh, but the horrors he’d witnessed! Even now, he could smell the cloying stench of blood permeating the wet sand and hear the sharply ringing clangour of clashing steel.

“You’re awaited,” the servant informed him insistently before withdrawing as if unable or unwilling to remain in the presence of a king in whom he had no true faith.

Turning on his heels, Arafinwë spun out of control for a long, breathless moment.

His usually perfectly tidy room was suffocatingly cluttered with things that weren’t his. There lay a cloak that Ñolofinwë had worn as he’d stood at their father’s side—proud, glorious, and hopeful.

Just beside it, nestled in their shrine of velvet, sat the breathtaking fruits of Fëanáro’s crafting genius.

Nausea rose in Arafinwë’s throat as he fully understood that he’d be expected to wear these items upon his own guilty flesh to be made into a living, breathing, suffering monument to those who’d departed never to return.

All his life, he’d watched and venerated his older siblings, and now he was to take the place over which they’d fought so desperately.

Alas, he’d always suspected that it had been their father’s love more than his seat they’d hungered for, and Finwë was dead.

Everything had lost its meaning—the world Arafinwë had taken for granted and believed to be unshakeable had fallen off its axis, and he certainly didn’t know how to set it right again.

Impuissant anger eclipsed the overwhelming panic then—this had never been the plan. There had been so many—some might have claimed too many of them—and it had always been understood that they’d help, counsel, and guide one another as their people transitioned from one stage of their existence to the next.

Now, he was alone.

His brothers had disappeared in a flurry of bared steel and spraying blood to conquer land and sea in their insatiable quest for something they weren’t sure they’d find.

And he was here, stranded and lost within a palace that no longer felt like home.

If only a single soul could take pity on him and help him.

Once more, Arafinwë whirled around, half-expecting his mother, his wife, or his brothers to sweep into the room to chide him for dawdling.

Ñolofinwë would know what to say.

Fëanáro would impress upon him how to carry himself with grace and confidence.

Eärwen would mock him for donning the lavish insignia of his station.

He waited. He hoped. He was disappointed.

The door to his private rooms, which he’d have to vacate soon to sleep in a dead man’s bed with the ghosts of those he’d betrayed by faltering without ever truly finding his way back, stayed firmly closed.

Shutting his eyes and conjuring up the diaphanous echoes of those who’d turned this house into a ruin, Arafinwë smoothed his trembling hands down the simple, dark robe he was wearing.

The crown was digging painfully into his palms, but he stubbornly carried it in his hands like a bell meant to alert the gawkers to the unspeakable loss and insidious danger he’d borne and survived.

Even though he felt as if he could barely stand, the young prince, who’d soon be king of the ashes, found that his steps were strong and regular as he entered the buzzing throne room.

Bravely, he struggled through the throng of mendacious, potentially hypocritical courtiers; finally, he collapsed upon the icy, uncomfortable chair that had been built to be filled by bigger, stronger, better men than him.

Ushered through a discreet side door, Eärwen strove towards him.

She looked like a stranger in the formal gown they’d put on her, and her radiant smile had dimmed to a dull and joyless mien that only vaguely resembled the mother of his children.

Arafinwë clasped the accursed marvel of gold and precious stones in his lap more tightly as he tried to reduce the surface of contact between his flesh and the hated chair of power that cradled his brittle bones.

“We shall prevail,” Eärwen whispered insistently, the embers of her fortitude flaring to life. “They’re not dead, and they might well return one way or another. Until then…we shall do our duty.”

Her smile wavered as she followed his wide-eyed gaze, frantically sweeping across the room to find the familiar, encouraging faces of his lost family.

“We shall do them proud—we shall prove them wrong. We can…”

She didn’t say “thrive” for she wouldn’t lie to him in his state of extreme vulnerability.

“Endure,” Eärwen promised.