The council chamber hums like a forge before the strike—heat without flame, silence stretched tight across stone. My grandfather sits on the high seat, my father beside him, both carved from the same unyielding rock. I stand at their right hand, every inch the dutiful prince I was bred to be.

Then the herald’s voice carries through the hall.

“From Alqualondë—His Majesty Olwë Singollo and the Princess Cynthia Singollo, the Black Swan of the Havens.”

For a heartbeat, even the torches seem to falter.

You enter behind your father, robed in black sea-silk that gleams like wet stone. The onyx crown rests against hair white as fresh snow, the long braid shifting when you move. You bow with courtly precision—nothing more, nothing less—and the sound of your voice when you offer greeting hits harder than any battle cry I’ve ever heard.

Fifty years vanish.

Every command, every warning I obeyed dies on my tongue. I keep my chin high, eyes forward, knuckles white on the edge of the table. I am a prince. I will not look.

Except that I do.

Dwalin’s fingers close on my arm, rough leather against mail. He leans just enough for only me to hear: “Steady, lad. Not here.”

For an instant, our eyes meet across the council floor—yours calm, unreadable; mine, I hope, the same. The weight of the throne’s gaze burns between my shoulder blades. I can feel Thráin’s disapproval before he even speaks.

“Attend, Thorin,” my father murmurs, voice quiet steel. “You are here to listen, not to stare.”

I nod once, wordless. The lie tastes like iron. I force my shoulders square. The prince of Durin’s line does not flinch.

Olwë speaks of trade—pearls for ore, silk for silver—but I cannot hear the words. All I hear is the rumor that reached Erebor’s gates last winter: that the Sea-King seeks a suitor for his daughter, that alliances are being considered. My jaw locks until the muscle jumps.

Your gaze flicks toward me again, brief as a breath. Enough to undo years of discipline. Enough to remind me that silence has never been the same as forgetting.

But memory is a sharper weapon than any forged here.

Stone. Darkness. The lower mines long ago. We had slipped away from the feast, the clang of hammers fading behind us until the only sound was dripping water. You stood before a vein of mithril glittering like trapped starlight and whispered something about light belonging everywhere—even underground. I remember reaching out without thought. You turned, close enough that the lamplight caught silver in your lashes. The kiss had been small, almost clumsy—one breath, one heartbeat—and then gone, swallowed by the mountain. And I know, with the same certainty that forged this mountain, that no span of years will ever dull the taste of that first stolen breath in the dark.

I school my features back into calm. The prince they trained me to be.

And still—behind every measured word of policy, behind every glance my grandfather exchanges with Olwë—I can feel the echo of the one truth I will never be able to speak aloud:

I’d heard it first in the lower mines, carried on the gossip of smiths—how a dozen suitors from Lindon to Dale had already sent gifts, how the Black Swan would soon be bound to another realm.

The Sea was never mine to claim. And yet, I have never stopped belonging to it.. I cannot watch you be promised to another...