Again and again, her trembling fingers would not be able to keep a grip on his. Cold hands would fall back against a marble slate, and her sobs would begin anew as she struggled to pick them back up again.

Her father would come forward, and with a heavy sigh he would close his son's eyelids. A moment or so would pass in which the world was draped in utter silence, and then Lothíriel would be lead away down some bleak corridor. When she had travelled an immeasurable distance, she would be pushed through a doorway and into a room that held her brother's corpse as it had been when she had first seen it.

In this dream, she relived that violent grief time and time again.

I woke with a start, groaning aloud as sun stroke my eyes. It was late, much too late. Sluggish and troubled yet by my dark nightmare, I dressed in my usual grey shift dress. As soon as my hair was braided and pinned up, I snatched the handful of tomes and scrolls I had been studying the night before and exited my bedroom.

I took the quietest halls and passageways I knew of to reach the library in time for my studies. I was in little mood for chatter, and not in any mood at all for condolences. I knew also that I had a good chance of having my knuckles rapped for every minute I was late.

By some miracle, Minluzîr was late as well. I set at once to arranging my tomes about me in a way that would appear studious and labored, but as I did so, I found myself listening in on a unforeseen conversation.

"What time are they to arrive, my lord?"

That was Arnubên, my father's Captain.

"Sometime this evening, I believe. His company was to have spent the night in Pelargir,"

"They have made good time, then. And have met no trouble,"

My father laughed, and as the noise grew louder I could tell that he was coming nearer.

"It is impossible to travel any land and not find trouble in these times, Arnubên,"

My father then rounded the nearest bookshelf, and I straightened myself as my eyes met his.

"Well met, daughter. How are you this morning?"

"Fair, thank you," I said, tipping my head to the Captain as I spoke. He smiled in return.

"Minluzîr is not yet here?"

I shook my head, nervously tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear. My father stood a good distance from me, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that there were some tidings he wished to share with me. There too was the awkward stillness that had enveloped us both ever since my brother's passing.

"I will have you excused from this morning's studies, Lothiriel. Walk with me,"

I did as he bade, and we walked in silence from the Library. After bidding Arnubên a good day, my father led me out into the gardens.

I sighed as the sun touched my face. Dol Amroth had been struck with fierce storms in the last several nights; great gales carried in by the sea. Today, the sky was clear and the air was crisp.

"Have your studies been going well, Lothiriel?" My father asked, turning down a path that led to his favorite row of daffodils.

"They have. I have been studying the history of Harad lately, and I find it quite interesting,"

At the mention of Harad, my father's fingertips went to the long scar across his collarbone.

"That is good,"

A sharp ferocity had entered his gaze, and his voice grew distant. I was no stranger to this mood of my father's, for it was one that he exhibited whenever talk of war triggered some memory of his.

For a moment, we carried on in a very uncomfortable silence. When at last we reached my father's favorite flower bed, we settled on a nearby bench.
"We will soon be joined by King Eomer of Rohan, my dear. He has come to arrange new trade agreements with Dol Amroth, and he should be here for some time,"

The news was not shocking to me, nor even surprising. We had had many guests from distnat lands as of late, for Middle Earth had changed in the way that had politicians and tradesmen squirming. Borders had been redrawn, trade agreements had withered as goods were destroyed. Those that had been enemies had been thrown into neutrality out of necessity, and allies were now strained to reforge their brotherly bonds. Such was the nature of our time.

My father turned enough to catch my eye, and suddenly I was concerned.

"You are nineteen, Lothiriel. If it had not been for the War, you would have been married years ago,"

I understood, then. It was me that was to be the trade agreement.

All at once I felt nauseous. A fell warmth spread to my legs and stomach, and my head throbbed.

I could not leave this life I knew.

"You don't mean... you don't mean to...," I stammered. My father took my hands, and upon noticing the way that they shook, he pulled me closer to him.

"Be strong, daughter. Nothing is set in stone, no arrangements have been already made. And I would not throw you to this man before knowing more of him myself. But if some bond forms between you, then yes...you are to become his wife,"

I could not help it. I cried. And I ran.

I ran far, and I ran fast. I passed the gates of the palace grounds and I ran through the streets of the city at a break-neck speed. Past vendors and apartments. Through the ghettos and the oldest parts of the city.

Guards and peddlers alike called out to me to stop, but none recognized me.

I ran because I could think of nothing else that felt at all appropriate to do.

It was not until I found myself at the docks that I stopped.

Bright sails fluttered high above the ships moored in the bay. Sun glanced off of the crystalline waves, and the calls of gulls, fishermen, and mariners all sounded out between the long wooden ramps and the moorings. The sight cleared my head, and breathing in the rich, salt-tinted air did me eve better.

This was my home. This was Dol Amroth. I had never left home, never been more than two hours from this very spot.

Rohan, a land I had seen only in maps and the pictures I had painted in my head, was so far away.

^^^

I was found rather quickly by a pair of guards.

"My lady," one said, taking me carefully by the shoulders. "We are to take you back to the Palace,"

I shrugged his hand away in spite, but followed the men through the streets as asked.

My father waited at the gates, his back erect and hands behind his back. Ashamed, I lowered my gaze.

I knew what was to come; I was to be humiliated before the guards now assembled on the lawn.

"Look at me," he said, and I looked up.

"You have been told not to leave the palace grounds without an escort. You disobeyed me, Lothiriel."

At once, he took me by the shoulder and spun me about. The cold sting of his riding crop fell onto the back of my legs twice before he twisted me around again.

"You are a young woman, Lothiriel," he told me, "You are expected to behave as such,"

I could understand clearly what he meant by that. I was to be married off whether I protested or not.

Mortified and in a good bit of pain, I limped to my bedchambers in silence.

^^^

My brother found me in my rooms sometime later.

"Leave me be, Amrothos," I said, slumped in the armchair facing the one window I had. It over looked the cityscape and the market beyond the palace walls, and the sea beyond that.

"I came to bring you tea," he said, rounding my bed and coming to stand by me. I felt him look down at me, and I turned away.

"Oh, don't act so sullen. It's not like father hasn't taken his crop to you before. We've all felt it,"

"I hate it," I murmured, aware of the fact that I sounded like petulant child.

Amrothos knelt beside me and put his hand on the back of my head. I turned around to meet his eyes.

"Father loves you, sullen and all,"

I doubted it. From my own reading and the court gossip I'd overheard, royalty across the world and ages all bent love into some wicked, empty thing. Power drowned out true love, and loyalty was the only currency worth any value in a family trapped by political bonds.

My impending marriage to a Horse-lord was proof of that. So too was my own parent's marriage; a marriage that had entered into chaos before ending in tragedy.

Amrothos left soon after, and my tea, left on the table nearby, went untouched. I spent the remainder of the day and well into the night brooding, ignoring the calls and pleas of my handmaid as she attempted to get me into bed. Everything around me felt heavy and dark, like the moments after one wakes from a nightmere.

Was I acting childlike? Yes. Could I have been finding some worthwhile activity to serve as a catharsis for my frustration? Certainly. But a voice in my head told me that I would find only trouble.

Plus, my husband-to-be was to arrive that evening. Locked in my bedroom, I was sure to avoid him and his merry gang of Knights. I was fully prepared to spend the entirety of my evening imagining him as some hulking monstrosity that spoke in halting Westron and guttural barking noises, and so I did. I imagined this faceless character in all manner of compromising situations that would have become the laughingstock of Dol Amroth. I'll admit that once or twice I even imagined him dead. It was good fun, dreaming up such preposterous things in my own head, and it did seem to ease my own anxiety.

Before I at last succumbed to sleep, I had a disturbing thought.

I was certainly over-reacting, for that was the job of any young woman. But what if I did come to like him? What if I grew to even love him? Would I hate myself for dreaming up these things twenty years from now, when we created children and a life of our own?

I laughed away the thought aloud, convinced that my imagination had at last run away from me.
But part of me was not so sure. Part of me longed to meet this man. Part of me longed to love him... if a King and a Princess bound by a marriage of necessity could indeed love.

"Tomorrow," I said into the dark, "I will not be such a coward,"

Chapter End Notes:

Minluzîr: Sky-friend.
Arnubên: King-servant.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Adûnaic and Sindarin are the langauges of choice for those of Dol Amroth. The above names are the former.