The trees know me.

That is the first problem.

Birches rise pale in the half-light, bark like bone, leaves whispering in a tongue that is not mine. The air smells of river-mist and cold stone. Every step of my pony feels wrong here—too loud, too clumsy—as if the forest itself resents iron and dwarf-flesh.

Taur Im Duinath.

Her realm.

“We should not be here,” I mutter, fingers tight on the reins. “This path is folly.”

Ahead, Gandalf does not turn. “This path,” he says, “is the quickest way to the Mountain. Unless you have discovered a road through solid rock, Thorin Oakenshield, we take this one.”

Fíli rides just behind me, quiet. Kíli’s bow creaks as he fusses with the string, eyes flicking from tree to tree.

Only the distant rush of a hidden river and the soft hiss of leaves.

“She will not want us here,” I growl.

Bombur huffs. “If she even remembers us.”

I flinch.

Balin eases his pony alongside mine. “She remembers,” he says. “Some wounds do not forget the hand that made them.”

I stare straight ahead.

“We are being watched,” Dwalin rumbles. His hand has not left his axe since we crossed the first boundary tree. “I can feel eyes on my back.”

“You can feel eyes on your back in an empty tunnel,” Bofur mutters, but he keeps his hat low.

I push forward until I ride level with Gandalf.

“You know whose forest this is,” I say.

“I am not blind,” he answers. “The crest on the stones was a clear hint.”

Crescent moon. Twin rivers entwined.

Her sigil.

“I did not agree to this,” I say.

“You agreed to my guidance,” Gandalf replies. “You wish to reclaim Erebor before dragon and darkness swallow all chance of it? Then we move swiftly. Taur Im Duinath lies between us and the Mountain. We cannot go around without losing weeks.”

Weeks I do not have.

Years I have already lost.

Ale on my tongue, the dwarrowdam’s mouth on mine. The look in her eyes when she saw. White hair in firelight. A mithril bead between my fingers.

I swallow.

“She will turn us away,” I say. “If we are fortunate. If we are not—”

“If we are not,” Gandalf cuts in, “she will do as any wise ruler does when armed strangers cross her borders. She will investigate.”

Kíli edges closer. “Uncle… what exactly happened here? I thought the Teleri just… disliked us. In general.”

Bofur snorts. “Aye, well, this dislike has a name, laddie, and it is not ‘general.’”

“It is enough,” I say. “We pass through. We do not linger. We will be gone before she even knows we were—”

I stop.

The lie tastes foul.

“She already knows,” Balin murmurs.

The first step over her root, the first river-stone under our boots, the first breath of dwarven smoke in her clean, cold air—she would have felt it. This forest is not merely ruled by her. It is bound to her, river to sea, vein to heart.

My hands tremble on the reins.

Dwalin rides up on my other side, jaw set. “Say it,” he mutters.

“I owe you no—”

“Say it,” he repeats, low and unyielding. “Else the lads will hear it from a tree, and I’ll not have that shame.”

The Company pretends not to listen. They fail.

My voice feels like rust.

“I broke a vow,” I say at last.

The words hang between the birches like a sentence.

Dwalin grunts, not unkindly. “Aye. Lad broke a vow. She’s not likely to want us in her forest. And she probably already knows we’re here.”

Fíli frowns. “A vow? What kind of vow?”

“The sort,” Balin says, before I can answer, “that ends with a braid cut to the floor and left there.”

She took the entire braid I had woven into her hair, the one that hung just before her ear, the one that held the mithril bead I forged for her and cut it off.

Kíli is silent now.

So is everyone else.

Only the forest speaks: leaves whispering overhead, river murmuring somewhere ahead.

I fix my eyes on the trail, on the faint glimmer of water through the trees.

She cut the braid.

She cut the cord.

She was right to do it.

And yet, as we ride deeper into her realm, every step feels like walking toward a judgment long deferred.

If she appears, I do not know whether I hope she will look through me—

or look at me at all.