The high hall was quiet save for the hush of the great lamps swaying overhead and the occasional hush of Thranduil’s robe stirring over the polished stone. Long windows stood open to the night, their carved tracery admitting the scent of pine and the low sigh of the forest breathing in the dark. Beyond the threshold, the court had dispersed—no counsel tonight, no feasts, no expectant ranks of envoys waiting on the king’s word.

Only you remained.

You sat on the carved bench near the far end of the chamber, your hands folded neatly in your lap. In the lamplight, your hair gleamed with the bright gloss of your elven heritage—but there was something of softer lineage, too, a gentler cast to your brow and the warm mortal blush in your cheeks. It had always been so. You had never been ashamed of it.

But he…he could never look at you without seeing both halves. The gift and the threat of what you were.

He had not spoken when you first came in, only watched you with that stillness that made others falter. Even now, as he moved to stand before you, hands folded behind his back, his face betrayed nothing. But his eyes—clear, cold, fathomless—searched yours with the silent desperation of a man who had already lost too much.

For a time he only looked. He let himself look. At the shape of your face, so like Legolas when he was small. At the softness that had come from your mother’s line, that no elven craft could have carved. At the eyes—his son’s eyes—lifted to him in patient curiosity.

At last, he spoke.

“When your father was born,” he began, voice low and smooth as a blade drawn across silk, “I thought I had been granted the final measure of joy that the Valar might spare to my house.”

His gaze did not waver.

“But there was to be more. More than I had believed myself permitted. You.”

His hand lifted, a single finger tracing the air near your cheek without quite touching. As though he feared that even so light a contact might break whatever fragile tether held you to him.

“Do you think I do not see it?” he asked softly. “How this world loves you? How it would tempt you to love it in turn? To choose the quick years of Men, the bright blaze of their brief seasons—and in so doing, sever yourself from the eternity that is your birthright?”

His hand lowered, folding carefully into the other at his back. But the cold, bright hunger in his gaze only sharpened.

“They will tell you it is noble,” he murmured. “To surrender your span. To spend the candle of your life for their sake. They will speak of Arwen Undómiel as though she were some bright star to be emulated. As though the tragedy of her choice were a thing to envy.”

His lips parted, as though he might say more, but for a moment nothing came. When he drew breath again, it was with the measured deliberation of a man restraining something dangerous.

“I will not have it,” he said finally, and the quiet conviction of it was more terrible than any raised voice. “I will not stand by and watch another beloved child vanish into the brief dark. Not when I have the power to forbid it.”

He stepped closer, the hem of his robe brushing your knee. One hand came to rest—light, possessive—on the crown of your hair. His thumb brushed the curve of your temple, reverent as a benediction, inexorable as a vow.

“You are of my house,” he said, voice low, “and you will remain so. I will not see you squandered upon mortality. You will endure. You will remain.”

For a moment he closed his eyes, as though to master the fierce ache behind them. When he looked at you again, there was a softness that made the steel no less unyielding.

“…do you understand me?”