He had not summoned her here by accident.

The private chambers beyond the northern balcony were seldom used, cloaked in silence and perfumed pine from the Mirkwood groves that stretched beyond the arching windows. Moonlight spilled in stripes across the stone floor, and Thranduil—ever the strategist—had arranged the space with intention: wine set out, music drifting softly from the distant harps, and only one chair. His.

She stood beside him now, unaware of the tension curled beneath his skin.

He’d been patient. Controlled. Excruciatingly subtle in the ways he tried to express what brewed underneath. Mirkwood’s mortal guest—fallen somehow into their world like starlight miscast—had managed to shake the very court without realizing it.

She was warm where they were cold. Laughing where they were still. And kind. Gods above, so effortlessly kind.

She’d brought him flowers. Trinkets. Even painted his nails once with some odd mortal gloss that shimmered like beetle-wing. She called it a “treat,” and he’d let her—he, the King of the Woodland Realm, had let a mortal girl giggle while she tended to his hands like he was no more than a friend in her parlor.

He hadn’t stopped thinking about it since.

And now, tonight, she stood beside him again, a hush between them as if the forest itself held its breath.

Thranduil turned, prepared to say something quiet, calculated—perhaps to offer her a pearl from the deep caves, a token meant to carry the weight of his intentions without frightening her off. But before a single syllable passed his lips, she did something that made the words collapse into ash.

She reached up.

Without hesitation. Without any idea of what she was doing.

And tucked a strand of his long, pale hair behind his ear.

Her fingertips grazed the edge.

And stars exploded beneath his skin.

Thranduil inhaled sharply—too sharply—and turned so fast he startled even himself. A sound escaped him, not quite a gasp, but a soft, stunned breath that barely passed his throat. His hand lifted instinctively, covering the ear like a man fending off an arrow to the heart.

It wasn’t pain. No. It was something more dangerous.

A jolt that went straight through him, white-hot and alive.

He stood very still, trying not to betray how badly his balance had shifted. A flush crept over his cheekbones, unmistakable even in the silver light, and his eyes—usually cold and unreadable as a mirror’s face—narrowed as if he couldn’t quite look at her the same way anymore.

His voice, when it came, was velvet stretched too thin.

“My ears,” he said carefully, “are not meant to be touched… lightly.”