The Mountain is never quiet, yet when the herald’s voice rose above the murmur of stone and steel, something in the hall stilled.

“King Olwë Singollo of Alqualondë — and his daughter, the Black Swan.”

The doors opened, and the sea walked into the heart of the mountain.

Olwë entered first: robes of turquoise and pearl, hair silver as moonlit tides, a crown shaped from starlit shell. Dwarves bowed because they had to, but even pride was forced to silence before a king who had seen Valinor with his own eyes.

He came for a purpose — to renew the old trade between sea and mountain. Pearl-steel, moonsilk, wine aged under starlight, star-inked maps that revealed constellations only in moonlight. Our forges wanted their salt-quenched steel. Their shipwrights wanted our mithril and mountain-silver. A partnership older than many kingdoms.

I knew all of that.

But I forgot every piece of it the moment you stepped into the hall.

You were not dressed in the colors of the Teleri. No white. No sea-blue. No silver. You wore black — pure, fluid sea-silk that swept the floor like a tide pulling back from moonlit sand. Your crown was onyx carved into swan feathers, each edge glinting in mithril light. Your skin was palest pearl. Your hair… it was white. Not silver. Not gold. White — even to the lashes that framed your eyes.

Nearly seven feet tall, and the hall that dwarves built to make kings feel small suddenly felt… insufficient.

You walked like a woman who had earned the right to stand in black — a warrior’s stillness beneath a queen’s grace. Every dwarf in the room stared, but none of them saw what I saw. They looked with curiosity. I looked with something far more dangerous.

My breath caught. It was not loud — a small, sharp hitch — but Dwalin heard it. His eyes flicked toward me, then toward you, then back again with a look I have never seen him give another living soul.

And beside me, my father’s posture changed. Thráin’s jaw tightened, his hands curling around the arm of the throne. Thrór leaned forward — not in welcome, but in warning.

“Do not,” Thráin muttered under his breath. A command. A threat. A promise of consequence. Without turning his head, Thráin spoke from the corner of his mouth, voice like a hammer striking cold iron.

“Restrain yourself, Thorin. She is Teleri Elf.. and no dwarf prince courts a Queen of the Sea without shattering the Mountain.”

But I could not look away.

You were everything impossible — the sea made flesh, moonlight sharpened into a blade — and for the first time in my life, I understood how a single heartbeat could ruin a man.

My father and grandfather might forbid it. All of Erebor could stand against it.

But Mahal strike me down if I could force myself to unsee you.