I know they are coming before I see them.

The horses smell wrong.

Not merely hard-run, but dragged too long beneath a will that does not tire. Fear clings to them, thick and sour, ground into hide and breath alike. Beneath it—iron. Old blood. Orc-blood. Azog’s trail does not fade. It gouges itself into the world and leaves the land sore beneath it.

That is why she is near.

I am already standing when Gandalf crests the rise, the Company strung out behind him. Dwarves tense, hands close to weapons, eyes sharp with the knowledge that something hunts them even now. Thorin Oakenshield meets my gaze without blinking. He looks like a man who has run out of places to retreat.

I step aside and let them in.

The door shuts. Firelight fills the cabin. I pour milk into wooden cups, steady and white, the simple act anchoring me while memory presses close. Gandalf watches me as he always does, eyes measuring not my strength, but my restraint.

“We were told to come here,” he says. “We are being hunted.”

“Aye,” I answer. “That much is plain.”

“By Azog,” Thorin says.

The name lands heavy. It always does.

Gandalf does not look at Thorin when he continues. He looks at me. “We were told Azog fears you.”

“Fears,” I repeat without humor. “No. He remembers.”

“Who told you this?” I ask.

“A woman,” Gandalf says quietly.

The room tightens around the word.

He chooses the next with care. “She looked like death in mourning. White-haired. Hollowed. As though the world had already taken everything it could from her and found it insufficient. She named herself Mornelúnë.”

“No.”

The name sits wrong in my ears.

The word is out of me before I can stop it.

Every Dwarf stills.

“No,” I repeat, slower now, voice rough. “That is not her name. That is the name darkness gave her when Morgoth remade her...”

Gandalf’s brows draw together.

“Her name,” I say, each word deliberate, anchoring myself to it, “is Lírissë.”

The room feels suddenly too small.

“My sweet one,”

I say before I can stop myself. The words come out low and rough, dragged from somewhere older than caution.

The room stills.

Kíli’s head snaps up. Bilbo blinks like he has overheard something private. Even Thorin’s gaze sharpens.

“What did you just call her?” Kíli demands.

I do not look away from the fire. “Sweet one,” I repeat. “That was who she was to me in the dark.”

Bilbo’s voice comes careful. “Affection, then?”

“It is not comfort,” I answer. “It is remembrance.”

Gandalf’s brows knit. “Then that is not her name.”

“No,” I agree. “That is what the dark calls her. Her name is Lírissë.. she was once a Teleri Elf before morgoth took her and made her into what she is now...”

Thorin breaks the quiet. “What is she to Azog?”

“Property,” I answer at once. “Tethered. Remade.”

The fire crackles low.

“What bound me was iron,” I continue. “Steel and pain. Those bindings that could be broken with time and rage. What binds her is deeper than steel. Woven into what she is now. She cannot leave him behind.”

Kíli frowns. “Then why help anyone at all?”

“Because she remembers what choice felt like,” I say. “And because she still tries, where she can.”

I see her as she was—white hair dulled with ash, face hollowed by hunger she refused to satisfy, hands steady as she pressed stolen food into mine and told me to live. Not for her. Just live.

“She fed me when she could,” I say aloud. “In hiding. If Azog had seen it, he would have made a lesson of us both.”

Silence stretches.

My poor sweet one, I think, the words pressing hard behind my teeth, never meant for the open air.

“She will be near you only because Azog is near,” I finish, voice steady again. “And if she lifts a hand to help, it will be from inside her bindings—because that is who she has always been.”

The fire crackles. Outside, the night presses close.

Hope stirs—dangerous, unwanted—but it is not clean.

She is alive.

And if she is near, it is because she is still paying the price.

I do not know whether I will see her again.

Only that if I do, it will be because Azog has drawn too close