There was something strange about the way the steam curled from the cup in his hand.

It rose in shapes it should not—spiraling patterns like Elvish script left unfinished, sigils he had seen only once before in the margins of ancient texts buried beneath the foundations of Lindon. The tea was ordinary. The herbs were from his own gardens, gathered with care that morning. And yet, it did not feel ordinary.

Nothing had, since she arrived.

The day she fell into Rivendell, the sun itself had seemed to stutter in the sky.

She’d appeared just beyond the Bruinen, dazed but unbroken, clothed in strange fabrics and surrounded by a quiet pressure that made the leaves lean in. The guards had frozen. Time had slowed. Even the water had seemed to hesitate before continuing its run. When he’d laid eyes on her—so deeply wrong for this place, and yet so vividly alive—it was as if a thousand years of stoicism cracked and gave way to something feral underneath.

She did not know what she was. Or what she meant.

But he did.

He had watched the Lady sail West. Watched his own heart fracture at the dock, a clean, noble sorrow. It had been poetic, righteous, worthy of song.

This—this obsession clawing at him now—was not.

It was not clean. It was not poetic. It was not noble.

She sat across from him, wrapped in a shawl one of the housemaids had lent her, her hands cradling her cup like she needed its warmth to stay grounded. And he couldn’t look away.

He did not speak of what had changed since she arrived. Not aloud. He didn’t speak of how the stars no longer followed their old paths, how the moon had become brighter, how the birds had begun to sing songs he didn’t recognize. He didn’t mention that a mirror in his study cracked when she touched it, or how Erestor now dreamt in languages no scholar of Arda had ever learned.

He certainly did not speak of the whispers that now echoed through the library halls—voices from books not yet written.

There was no lore for her. No prophecy. No place in the Song.

And yet… she had displaced something. Tugged at the root of the pattern until the threads began to loosen. Fate unraveled around her. Even the Valar, silent beyond the sea, had not intervened. Or perhaps they, too, were watching. Waiting.

She lifted her cup to her lips, unaware that every motion she made sent tremors through the delicate structure of his mind.

He wanted to study her. He wanted to possess her. He wanted to lock the doors of Rivendell and throw away the key, make the valley bend around her until she no longer remembered the sky she’d fallen from. He wanted her to need no one but him.

And how easy it would be.

The others still debated what to do with her—what could be done. But he had already decided. The moment her fingers brushed his while accepting that first cup of tea, he had decided. She would not leave. Not for the Shire, not for Lórien, not even for her own world. No portal would open. No farewell would be given.

The valley would obey him.

He watched her speak, her voice soft with wonder as she asked something about the shape of the trees, about how the light looked like it was caught in the branches.

He smiled.

Not the cold smile he wore before council. Not the formal serenity of a half-elven lord. No. This smile was quiet, sharp at the edges. A little cracked. A little too hungry.

"You belong here more than you know," he said softly, swirling his tea, though he could barely taste it now.