The road offers no mercy for unresolved things.

I ride at the head of the Company, reins tight in my hands, eyes fixed forward as the Shire thins behind us and the land hardens into something more honest. Hooves and boots fall into rhythm, the familiar cadence of exile and endurance.

She rides within the line.

Too close.

Not beside me. Not behind. Near enough that I feel the shift of air when she adjusts her pace, near enough that I catch the contrast every time the light changes—black armor worn for survival, not ceremony, and hair white as frost pulled tight down her spine. The Black Swan, they called her once. A warning dressed in mourning.

I slow without meaning to.

She adjusts with me.

I tighten my jaw and urge my mount forward again. She does not fall back. She never does.

It should not bother me.

It does.

Every mile is friction. Every correction I make feels necessary until it leaves my mouth, and then it feels like something else entirely—too sharp, too quick, as though my restraint is slipping through cracks I refuse to acknowledge.

She rides wide at times. Chooses ground instead of formation. Anticipates terrain before I give the order. It is competence, plain and undeniable.

And it infuriates me.

I correct her pace. She corrects the distance without a word. I halt the line abruptly; she stops cleanly, unruffled, as though she expected it. The Company notices. Dwalin watches me more than the road. Gandalf, curse him, says nothing at all.

Her silence is worse than argument.

It leaves me nowhere to direct the anger but inward.

By the time we make camp, my temper is stretched thin as wire. The fire is lit. Packs are dropped. Watches assigned. Routine, blessed routine—until I feel her presence at the edge of the light.

She unpacks with care, methodical, efficient. Armor loosened but not removed. Hair freed from its braid, white against black like a blade drawn clean.

Then she reaches into her pack.

I snap before I think.

The sound of my own voice startles the Company into stillness. I don’t need to hear her answer to know she’s taken the words as they were meant—an order dressed as a rebuke.

She stills.

The moment stretches too long.

Then, deliberately, she puts it away.

Not hurried. Not cowed.

The fire crackles louder than it should. Someone clears their throat. No one meets my eyes.

She withdraws beyond the firelight, leaving the camp colder for her absence.

I stand there long after, fists clenched, knowing with brutal clarity that this anger is not about discipline, or command, or music, or pace.

It is about proximity.

About the way she rides too close and never yields ground. About the way her silence forces me to hear myself. About the pressure of something unspoken pressing harder with every mile.

Stone holds.

But even stone remembers the tide.

And as the Company settles around me, I know this road will not grow quieter with distance.

Only sharper.