I find Fíli and Kíli arguing in low voices near the edge of the camp, both of them glancing toward the trees as if they expect the forest to answer back.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, trying for casual and missing by a mile.

“We’re short a pony,” Kíli says. “Just gone.”

“Vanished,” Fíli adds. “Thought you might take a look. Burglar and all that.”

My stomach sinks. Of course it’s a pony. Of course it is.

Kíli looks at me rubbing the back of his neck. “Fíli says it wandered. I say something took it.”

Fíli lifts his hands. “You’re the burglar,” he adds, grinning like this is all a bit of fun. “Thought you might… burgle up an answer.”

I swallow. I’m not fond of answers found in the dark.

Still. I nod. Because that’s what I do now.

I follow the path where the ground’s been disturbed, telling myself the sensible things: ponies wander, forests are strange, nothing is ever quite as dire as it feels at first. I rehearse them all as I go, my feet carrying me farther from the campfire and closer to a smell I very much do not want to think about.

Blood.

“Oh dear,” I mutter. “Oh, I really don’t like this.”

The path bends—and there she is.

I stop so abruptly I nearly trip over my own feet.

She’s crouched beside the pony, or what’s left of it, thin shoulders hunched, hands red and trembling. For a heartbeat my mind simply refuses to cooperate. It scrambles for a category that will make sense of what I’m seeing.

Not a spider.

Not an Orc.

A woman.

An Elf?

No. That can’t be right. And yet—she’s shaped like one. Or like one that’s been… wronged. Whittled down to something too narrow, too hollow, as if the world has been taking pieces from her for a very long time and never put any back.

I make a noise. Not a brave one.

She jerks, startled, turning toward me with eyes so red it knocks the breath right out of my chest. She doesn’t lunge. She doesn’t hiss. She just freezes, like a startled deer caught mid-step.

“Oh—oh dear,” I say again, because apparently that’s all I’ve got. “I—hello. I’m terribly sorry to interrupt. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I mean, I did, but not like this.”

I clap my hands together, immediately regret it

because she flinches.

“Are you—are you all right? That’s a silly question, of course you’re not all right, no one looks like that if they’re all right. I mean—” I gesture helplessly at the pony. “Did you find it like this? Or—did you—oh dear.”

I feel like I should be afraid.

That thought comes very clearly, very sensibly.

I am not.

What I feel instead is something awful and aching, like I’ve walked in on a cruelty I was never meant to witness. She’s so thin. Painfully so. Hunger clings to her the way smoke clings to clothing, and it’s not the sort of hunger one fixes with a sandwich and a cup of tea.

I glance back toward the camp, heart hammering. “This is… this is a bit of a problem,” I whisper to myself. “I don’t suppose you’d fancy tea, would you?”

She doesn’t move. Her hands shake harder now, like standing still costs her more than feeding ever did.

“I don’t have anything,” I say, voice dropping despite myself. “Not anything useful. I’m very good at being a host, usually. That’s my thing. But I don’t think tea will help you, and that’s—well, that’s dreadful, really.”

I speak without thinking—some foolish, hurried thing meant to sound kind—and she flinches at once, crouching low as if the sound itself struck her. My heart lurches.

“Oh—no, no, I’m sorry,” I whisper, horrified. “That was my fault. I didn’t mean to startle you. Truly.”

I take a small step back, giving her space, my mind racing in frantic little circles.

I should call the Company.

I should run.

I should do something sensible.

Instead, I stay.

Because looking at her, I don’t see a monster.

I see someone who looks like she’s been starving in more ways than one, and I haven’t the faintest idea what to do about it.

And that, somehow, feels worse than fear ever could.