The hall filled slowly, the sound of parchment and armor and whispered protocol echoing off unfinished stone. Morning light spilled through the half-built arches, catching on dust and gold. I had risen before dawn to rehearse the words Gil-galad expected me to speak: careful, neutral, measured.

By midmorning, I’d forgotten them all.

The herald’s voice rang clear through the chamber:

“Her Grace Cynthia Linquëlassë, Sovereign of Taur Im Duinath, Lady of the Living Rivers, and Keeper of the Moonwell.”

For a heartbeat I thought I’d misheard. Then she entered, and the years between us folded like pages turning.

Silver and moss—those same colors that once shimmered along the Silverduin when she rode beside me, her voice calm as running water. The birch circlet still crowned her pale hair, though now it gleamed like moonlight forged into metal. Every movement was composed, unhurried, as though the air itself parted to make way for her.

I stood before I realized I had done it. My pulse betrayed me; the quill in my hand slipped, ink running across the parchment.

The envoy I had once been—the nervous young half-elf sent to prove his worth—rose within me like a ghost. I remembered every word she had spoken in that forest council long ago, every measured silence that taught me diplomacy was not talk, but listening. I remembered how the rivers of her realm had mirrored the stars, and how I had sworn, silently, to write to her when I returned to Lindon.

I never did.

And now she was here, walking beneath the banners of a valley I had built with her stillness in mind. The others murmured greetings; I managed none. My voice would not have obeyed me if I’d tried.

She must hate me, I thought. For my silence, for my cowardice, for letting years stretch between words that should have bridged them.

She took her seat opposite me, calm as ever, eyes unreadable from this distance. Gil-galad began the meeting—speeches of trade, defense, and alliance—but the sound came to me as through water. Every thought circled the same truth:

I had built this place to remember her. And now I had to pretend it was not true.

How was I to survive an entire council seated across from the very memory that founded my home?