The messenger pigeon arrived the next day.

Fili had been watching the sky anxiously since Kili's return the previous afternoon. It was as he took his turn at watch on the battlements that he saw the sun flash off the bird's iridescent feathers when it landed at the dovecote near the front gate.

It was a frustrating few minutes before the prince could find another dwarf to take his post, and then a mad scramble through a maze of corridors and galleries to reach the King Under the Mountain.

"What is this insult?" Thorin was booming as Fili hurried into the throne room near a quarter of an hour later. Kili was standing in front of their uncle looking unaffected.

"Insult? What? What's going on?" Fili's eyes went to his brother. "Did Sigrid accept, Kili?"

The darker brother smiled at him. "Not yet, Fili."

"A month of courtship!" Thorin snapped, throwing a slip of parchment at Kili's feet. "Bard means to make a prince of Erebor - my heir! - beg for his daughter's hand."

"It's not begging, Uncle," Kili explained. "It's courting."

"Begging."

"Sigrid is Bard's firstborn. Do you expect him to hand her over like a paper doll? What harm is there in the line of Durin demonstrating a little romance?"

"It is unseemly for the heir of Durin to prostrate himself for a daughter of Men. She should be grateful for the proposal, not demanding caveats!"

"Be sensible, Uncle. Bard loves his daughter very much. It would be unseemly for him to marry her off without due vetting of her intended. There is no loss of face here on either side. Let Fili sweep the Lady Sigrid off her feet. It will only strengthen the resulting union between our houses, and it will set Bard's mind at ease. Besides," the younger prince added with a wink in Fili's direction, "there's nothing like a grand romance to silence the complaints of any naysayers. It could be the stuff of sagas, Uncle, and we dwarves do enjoy a good saga."

Thorin gave his younger nephew a withering look from under his heavy brow. "Balin was right about you, Kili," he observed in a dry tone. "You are become a silver-tongued devil."

The king sighed heavily. "Very well. I will agree to this… courtship, such as it is, but don't take my agreement as acquiescence. I will brook no further insult to my blood and bone. Make sure that is understood."

Kili bowed his head respectfully. "As you wish, Uncle."

Thorin gave a brusque nod and strode down from the throne's dais, snatching up the discarded parchment along the way. In passing he paused at Fili's shoulder. "Don't embarrass our forefathers, Fili," he said with a stern look, pressing the note into his nephew's hand before sweeping out of the hall.

"Well that went as well as could be expected," Kili chirped when they were alone, bouncing on the balls of his feet and looking altogether too pleased with himself.

Fili blinked at him. "Kili?"

"Mm?"

"What the hell is going on?"

+%+%+%+%+%+%+

Fili had first become aware of Sigrid's plague of suitors two months ago. In the year that had passed since their encounter at the lake he had been too busy with the day-to-day running of Erebor to spend much time in either Dale or Lake-town. The cities' reconstruction moved much faster in the summer months and there was simply no reason for Thorin's heir to split his time so heavily between the cities of Men and his own people anymore. The job of a Crown Prince was not one of ease, especially not when there were soldiers to train and outfit, crops and livestock to be harvested and housed, and wages to be paid. The King Under the Mountain was without a doubt the ruler in Erebor, but it was Fili to whom the clerks came when it was time to pay the bills.

So it was on one of his increasingly rare trips to Lake-town – the fishmongers were charging an increasingly high price for their trout, though Fili knew for a fact that Mirkwood had seen no such increase in cost – that he had encountered the Lord Fribble.

Lord Fribble hailed from Gondor. He was a great round meatball of a man, with jowls that would have made even Bombur cluck his tongue with distaste. His brown hair and thick mustache were glossy with perfumed oil, and the top of his head was clean-shaven in a perfect circle – the clear refuge of a balding man – so that the dome shone pink and shiny in the sun. Even in the late winter chill he was covered in a fine sheen of greasy sweat.

Fili found the man to be loud and obnoxious, but as it never hurt to make acquaintances in other realms he struck up a conversation at the local pub over two large mugs of ale and a couple plates of stew. That was when he'd learned the man's purpose for visiting.

"Come to try m'hand at wedding that gel over yonder in Dale," the fat man said around a mouthful of sausage and potato. Fili felt an instant dislike for any man who would pronounce 'girl' as 'gel.' "What's her name. Daughter of the Lord there."

Fili had nearly choked on his beer. "Lady Sigrid?"

"Aye, that's her. Dale's on the move, y'see; up and coming. Excellent investment. Always got t'be on the watch for new opportunity, lad. Always got t'be striking out for the horizon." He took a deep draught of his ale, froth clinging to his mustache. "Quite a pretty gel, too, from what I've heard. She'd better be, too. I'd hate t'have come so far in this blasted cold for a homely gel. But got t'do it now, y'see, 'fore all the young fellows come crowding 'round in the spring. Nothing like springtime to make a lad start feeling his oats, eh what?"

Fili hadn't heard much after that. He'd paid for his meal and begged off any further conversation, blaming prior commitments as he hurried out the door. A few surreptitious inquiries at other establishments were all he needed to know that Lord Fribble was far from the first man to come seeking Sigrid's hand in marriage. Fribble was not even the most odious suitor to come visiting; at least according to the little girl he found feeding an apple to his pony. "One of 'em was all spotty and 'arf 'is face were droopy," she informed him as she patted the pony's silky muzzle. "Oh, and there were that fella from up north what looked like a fish. 'E didn't 'arf 'ave a mean streak, too. My Da called 'im a right bastard..."

The ride back to the Lonely Mountain had been very lonely indeed.

"If I'd known you were so interested I'd have told you months back," Kili had told him that evening after supper, once Fili had spent a good twenty minutes railing at Bard's stupidity for subjecting his daughter to such ugly, evil-tempered, greedy, gluttonous pigs.

"What?" That had sent Fili into a stuttering silence. "You knew?"

"Course I knew. Unlike you, I'm not the heir. I'm the spare. It's my job to chat up our neighbors. I'm over at Bard's place at least once a month. Didn't you notice?"

Fili admitted he hadn't.

"That hurts, brother. That wounds me."

"Shut up. In case you didn't notice I'm busy trying to keep our house in order while you're out carousing with the natives."

"I don't carouse! Well, not much anyway."

"Why didn't you tell me? About Sigrid?"

"I didn't think you cared."

And that was it, wasn't it? Nobody knew he cared. Why should they? Fili hadn't spoken a word to anyone about what happened that afternoon in that secluded cove off Long Lake, and he knew Sigrid hadn't either. He didn't care what people thought of him, but he wouldn't stand for anyone sniggering about Sigrid.

They'd managed a few brief encounters – nothing more than a touch of a hand here or a fond smile there – in the immediate wake of their tryst, but then everything had simply gotten too much. Fili's duties in Erebor had grown exponentially, and Sigrid's duties as the Lady of Dale had kept her more and more at her father's home, overseeing the day to day administration of the town as her father worked on expanding Dale's influence and drawing in more trade. There had simply been no time to be together. There had been no time to even decide if being together was what they wanted.

And now he found out that for the past six months she'd been playing the unhappy hostess to an increasingly determined crowd of suitors, all of whom (in his mind's eye) were as bad as or worse than Fribble.

Naturally it had been Kili who'd come up with the idea to marry her. "You know, if it bothers you this much why don't you ask for her hand?" the younger dwarf had suggested after three weeks of Fili's increasingly-difficult-to-disguise gloom "Thorin's heir and the Lady of Dale? You've got to admit it sounds good."

"Don't be an ass, Kili. Just because you got your lady love doesn't mean everything can be fixed with pretty words and proclamations of affection."

As always his idiot brother couldn't stop smiling after the mention of Tauriel. "Who says I'm trying to fix anything? And anyway, if anything needs fixing it's your mood. Last time poor Ori came 'round to call you to supper you nearly took his head off. I think a woman would do you well. Take the edge off."

"I'm Thorin's heir," Fili'd snapped. "I have to marry another dwarf. Who ever heard of a half-breed as King or Queen Under the Mountain?"

"I want you to think about what you just said when you've got a passel of nieces and nephews with pointy ears running around this place."

"Anyway, Sigrid would never say yes. What would she want with me? I'm a damn dwarf! She could have her pick of any of the men in Lake-town or Dale."

"But she hasn't picked any of them, so I don't think there're any she fancies. And she clearly doesn't like any of these prats who keep coming 'round to ask her to marry them or she'd have said yes by now."

"Kili-"

"It's obvious you like her."

"Kili, shut up."

"I know you think you're subtle but you're not. I thought Sigrid had a bit of a one-sided crush on you, what with her always asking after you when I stop by for a visit. But it's not one-sided, is it? These last three weeks you've been ornery as a goblin, ever since you found out that there've been other fellows courting her. Fellows who aren't you."

"Kili. I said. Shut. Up."

And then Kili had said the seven most terrifying words Fili had ever heard; and he said them with a smile.

"Don't worry, brother. Leave it to me."