The fire burns too high.

I told them not to stack the logs so close, but they never listen when my voice sharpens. They think anger is noise. They mistake it for volume. Fools.

I stand with my back to the hearth, hands clasped behind me, forcing stillness into my limbs the way one forces a blade back into its sheath. The hall is quiet—stone and shadow and banners that remember what they were raised for. The marriage banner hangs among them now, dark against the pale walls, its sigil newly stitched, its meaning already heavier than the cloth can bear.

She enters without announcement.

I feel it before I see it—the shift in the room, the way the air tightens, like a breath drawn and held too long. I do not turn at once. I make myself wait. Control is a discipline. I am trying to learn it.

When I finally face her, she is as she always is: black-clad, composed, distant. The Black Swan of Alqualondë, daughter of Olwë Singollo, now my wife by law and history, if not by anything resembling choice.

She does not bow. She does not soften. She does not look at me as a man.

Good.

I deserve no gentler measure.

“Sit,” I say, and even to my own ears the word carries too much heat. I temper it at once. “Please.”

The addition costs me more than any blade ever has.

She takes the seat across from mine with impeccable courtesy, as if courtesy itself is armor. Her silence is immaculate. It does not invite. It does not accuse. It simply exists between us, wide as the sea that no longer welcomes my name.

I take my place as well, slower than I wish to be, careful not to let my temper move before my body does. The table has been set elaborately—too elaborately. As if silver and abundance could make up for memory. As if fullness could erase absence.

It cannot.

I know what she sees when she looks at me. I know the history that stands behind my name like a shadow that never quite leaves the ground. The taking of the ships. The fracture. The moment when kin became distance, and distance became something that could never be crossed cleanly again.

My father Fëanor wanted the Swan-ships of Olwë.

He took them.

I wanted something else.

I wanted her.

Now she is my Wife

We both got what we desired. History will mark that as victory. It will not trouble itself with the cost.

I study her face—calm, unreadable, carved from restraint rather than stone. She does not flinch beneath my gaze. She does not look away either. There is no fear in her, only a wall I cannot seem to scale, no matter how fiercely my nature urges me to try. She sits composed... pale hair falling like moonlit silk, black gown cut with quiet authority, eyes calm and distant. The Black Swan carries loss with dignity, offering courtesy without warmth.

“I know what you think of me,” I say at last, my voice low, controlled by effort rather than ease. “You have every right to it.”

The fire pops behind me. I do not turn.

“This marriage was not meant to be kind,” I continue. “It was meant to endure. That is the truth of it. I will not insult you by pretending otherwise.”

My fingers curl against the table, then still. Again. Always again.

“But I am trying,” I add, and there is no grandeur in the admission. Only frustration, stripped bare. “I am trying not to be only what I was made in. I am trying not to let fire be the sole language I speak.”

I pause, searching her face for something—anything—that might tell me whether my words strike stone or water.

“I would have you look at me one day and see more than the sum of my father’s choices,” I say quietly. “More than the moment that bound us.”

I do not reach for her. I do not ask for forgiveness. I am not foolish enough to beg for what cannot be demanded.

“I want your regard,” I finish, anger banked, not extinguished. “If I must earn it in patience, then so be it. I will learn that lesson as many times as it takes.”

She remains silent.

As expected.

Still, I stay seated. I do not rise. I do not retreat.

Fire can wait.

Even fire can learn.