The moment I step through the round green door of Bag End, something inside me goes utterly still.

The room is loud—voices layered over one another, laughter, the scrape of chairs on the floor, Bilbo fussing near the hearth as though he might be swallowed whole by the number of dwarves crowding his home. Gandalf stands to one side, staff planted, watching everything with that knowing calm of his.

I am halfway inside when my breath leaves me.

Ríkdâsha...

She stands near the table, turned slightly toward Dwalin as he speaks to her. Her hands are folded loosely at her waist, soot-darkened beneath clean skin, the hands of a worker, not a courtier. She is dressed simply, plainly—exactly as she always preferred.

Alive.

The world tilts.

For a heartbeat I am back in fire and smoke, stone screaming as it split, shouting her name into dust that never answered. I had buried her in my mind because I had to. Because a king in exile cannot survive hoping for ghosts.

And yet there she is.

My chest tightens so sharply it borders on pain. I cannot move. I cannot look away. I am losing the room, losing the sound, losing everything except the impossible fact of her standing there, breathing, whole.

Then I see the braid.

It is woven at her temple, dark hair drawn back in the old way, falling down along her collarbone. And threaded into it—unmistakable even at a distance—is the small glint of pale metal.

Mithril.

My hands remember the weight of it before my mind does. I forged that bead in the deep places of Erebor, shaping it small and smooth so it would rest against her skin without burden. I had placed it in her hair myself, fingers shaking as we spoke our vows in the dark, stone listening where no one else would.

She still wears it.

The realization strikes like a hammer to the chest.

She never believed me lost.

Just as I never strayed.

Years of mourning, of restraint, of silence crash together inside me, and I have to force myself to breathe. I want—foolishly, dangerously—to cross the room, to reach for her as if the Mountain has simply returned what it stole.

I do not.

Because Dwalin is speaking to her.

It should mean nothing. He is only talking, his posture easy, respectful. He does not know. No one does. Not Gandalf. Not Bilbo. Not the Company gathering around the table.

But the sight of another standing close to her—another voice directed toward her attention—sets something raw and feral alight in my chest.

My Wife

My Queen

The thoughts come unbidden, instinct older than crown or exile, bound by vows that never broke.

I swallow them down.

I have no right to act. Not yet. Not when I do not know if she is ready. Not when I do not know if she will look at me and see a ghost in return.

She has not turned.

I take one step farther into the room, and the sound finally shifts. Someone laughs. Someone notices my presence. The Company begins to settle, eyes lifting toward me as I take my place among them.

And then—slowly—she turns.

Our eyes meet.

The room disappears.

There is no anger in her face. No accusation. Only shock mirrored so perfectly with my own that for a terrible moment I am afraid she will vanish if I move too quickly, if I breathe too hard.

We stare at one another like creatures startled in the wild, caught between flight and faith.

Her hand lifts slightly, as if she might reach for the braid at her temple. Mine twitches uselessly at my side.

Around us, the Company falls silent.

Everyone sees it at once.

The stillness. The recognition. The way the air tightens between us as though something vast has just been named without words.

I do not speak.

Neither does she.

But the Mountain, which once took everything from me, has returned my wife.

And I am suddenly, terrifyingly aware that nothing—crown, quest, or stone—will ever matter the same way again.