The Iron Hills are never quiet.

Feasts here are forged from noise—tankards slamming, deep laughter shaking the rafters, boots beating out rhythms on stone. Nothing stills this hall. Nothing.

Until the doors open.

The torches gutter for a heartbeat, as if the light itself tries to follow you inside. And then you step through the threshold—and every dwarf in the room forgets how to breathe.

You are tall. Not“Elven tall.” Not “regal tall.”

Seven feet if an inch—long-limbed and moon-pale, a silhouette carved from winter starlight.

Your gown is moonsilk, flowing in silver ripples. When torchlight catches it, the fabric refracts the light itself—white, cold, shimmering—like someone dipped the cloth in frozen moonwater. It moves with you, fluid and weightless, a river stitched to your body.

And your hair—

Not gold. Not silver. Not pale.

White. Pure as new snow. Every strand a thread of winter. Even your eyelashes are white, ghost-pale against skin so fair it looks like moonlight lives beneath it.

The crown of birch rests against your brow, pale bark and silvered leaves like frost clinging to branches in deep winter. No one in Middle-earth needs to be told what you are.

Teleri. Royal blood. A line the world thought ended.

Dáin Ironfoot rises to his feet, voice thundering through stone:

“Honor the hall! The Iron Hills welcome Eärwa Singollo — Queen of Taur Im Duinath, Lady of the Living Rivers, Keeper of the Moonwell! Long has my house called her ally!”

The hall erupts—cheers, blades on shields—but all I hear is the sound of my own heartbeat trying to escape my chest.

I lean hard into Fíli’s shoulder. “Fíli. Fíli—Fíli—I’m in love.”

He grabs me by the back of my coat. “No you are not. Sit. Stay. Do not disgrace us.”

I’ve never seen anyone like you. Not in Erebor, not in Dale, not in all my travels.

“Her hair— Fíli, her hair is snow. Actual snow. Is she real?”

Fíli looks skyward like he’s asking the Valar for patience they did not give him. “Kíli. Stop making sounds.”

Dwalin mutters, “By the Stone… lad, pull yourself together.”

Balin—who has lived long enough to know every legend alive or dead—goes pale and quiet.

“That is the last of the royal Teleri line,” he murmurs. “Of course you have never seen her like. There are no others.”

My bones stop working.

The last. The only.

I try to stand up straight, to look dignified enough for a queen to notice. I push off the bench—

—and my boot catches on the table leg.

My chair slams over backward. My mug launches into the air. Ale splashes across the stone floor and very directly onto Thorin’s boots.

Silence. Then Thorin inhales like he’s preparing his own funeral.

Fíli drags me upright by my collar. “You will sit. You will not move. If you breathe too loudly near her, I am dragging you outside.”

But I can’t stop staring.

You shine under the torchlight—snow-white hair, birch crown, moonsilk like flowing silver—and I swear Mahal forged you specifically to ruin any chance I ever had at dignity.

And I know, absolutely, completely, hopelessly:

I’m finished.