The mountain has never felt so small.

I stand beside my grandfather’s throne, the gold-lit hall stretching out before me as the doors open to admit the Teleri procession. White light from the forges glints on pearl-trimmed cloaks, on silver hair braided in sea-born tradition.

But then she enters, and every other shape dissolves.

She is not robed in white or blue like the rest of her kin. She wears black—deep as midnight, gleaming like obsidian caught in starlight. The hem of her gown whispers over stone, fluid, controlled, every step precise as a knife stroke. Even from across the hall, I see the subtle swell in the silk where daggers rest hidden against her hips—hidden, but not truly concealed. Elven grace should not mingle with weapons so easily.

Yet with her, it does.

Her long white hair is bound back with a slim coronet of blackened pearl. Her eyes, pale as winter light on still water, sweep the hall without fear or hesitation. She is young only in skin; something older rests beneath—something carved from tide and time.

A Princess of Valinor. The Black Swan of Alqualondë. A legend—and far more than the songs suggest.

My breath stutters.

She moves with the bearing of a warrior, but the silence of a shadow. No clatter of boot, no swish of cloth, no wasted breath. I have never watched an elf walk as though the air parts for them alone.

I find myself leaning forward, unsure when I began.

That's when Balin leans in to Dwalin. “That’s her,” he whispers loudly, as if I cannot hear him. “The one betrothed to the Fëanorion. The red-haired one.”

Maedhros. Of course.

My jaw tightens. My heartbeat does something unfamiliar—like slipping, faltering. She stands beside her father with effortless dignity, chin lifted, unreadable as carved onyx. I tell myself it is nothing. A foreign princess. A political arrangement. Nothing more.

But then she turns.

Just a fraction. Just enough.

Her gaze brushes mine—light as a feather, sharp as a blade.

It is not a greeting. Not even an acknowledgment. Only a glance, nothing more.

Yet something inside me shifts, dangerously.

My pulse hammers beneath my ribs. No court ornament, no sheltered maiden—she is a storm in silk, a weapon wrapped in moonlight and shadow. A single dagger hidden under her sleeve glints as she moves, and the sight of it rattles me more than it should.

I have sparred with warriors twice my size, stared down dragons in old tales—but none of that prepared me for her.

Thrór steps forward to welcome Olwë, and the hall fills with ceremonial words. I hear none of them. Not truly.

Instead, I watch the Princess— Black Swan of Alqualondë, heir of a sea-born line older than the sun— and realize with a sinking, impossible certainty:

I am smitten. Utterly. Hopelessly.

And she is promised to another.