Their blindfolds were removed some time later, and Morwinyon squinted against the sudden light. Lothlorien was not soft around the edges as Imladris had been. The light was hard-edged and silvery, and the trees had not been shaped into dwellings. Dwellings had been built into and around them when they were not built of white gleaming stone - or maybe it was white wood polished to a sheen. Morwinyon reached out to run a finger along a wall as they climbed the stairwell around a trunk and still could not be sure. She felt watched, but not with ill-will. The presence felt disconcertingly neutral.

Haldir beckoned them onward and they followed, still surrounded front and back by elves. Kili took it all in with awe, at one point walking backwards up the steps so he could look up into the trees.

One of the elves snickered. Morwinyon glared.

"Do they nail the boards to trees?" he asked, still walking backwards. "I can't see anything of the sort, but it that doesn't mean they couldn't be hidden."

"I do not know," Morwinyon replied. "We do not live in trees in the Greenwood, if you recall."

Another elf muttered something about how that might be the problem.

"Courtesy would not go amiss," Haldir called without looking back.

"Courtesy for elves," Kili muttered in Khuzdul.

"They are ignorant and poorly-travelled," Morwinyon said at her usual volume in Sindarin. "I am sure that were they to step outside their own land even once they would learn better."

Haldir shot her a look over his shoulder. Morwinyon tilted her chin up and looked past him as they stepped onto a landing.

"Morwinyon Thranduilien," a woman's voice said, deep and sure. Morwinyon felt a tug inside of her somewhere near her heart: she wanted to listen to it.

Morwinyon told herself sternly that she had felt a similar fascination before when she went to fight a dragon. Smaug had not ensnared her - not for long - and her cousin would not at all.

A light laugh sounded in her mind, and Morwinyon frowned at the woman standing before her.

"I am not sure of the ethics involved with entering someone's mind, but I am sure that I do not like you in mine," Morwinyon told Galadriel.

"You have my apologies," Galadriel said, inclining her head so more lances of silvery light reflected from her silver and gold tresses and gesturing widely with her free hand. Her other, Morwinyon saw, rested on the arm of an elf Morwinyon had not noticed. Everything in the wood focused on Galadriel to the point her husband seemed at first invisible. Galadriel continued, "It is, as with many things, habit. I will do better."

Haldir glared at Morwinyon, and Kili glared at him, and Morwinyon, to forestall any further unpleasantness, said, "We come on behalf of your granddaughter, who asked us to ensure the safety of Aragorn, son of Arathorn. We thought to catch up with his party, but we could not find their path, and my brother is with them. I thought of you and your knowing, and how you might know…"

Morwinyon trailed off, making a face. She thought herself eloquent, usually.

Galadriel laughed again, aloud this time, but not cruelly. "You ask that I look into their minds, when you do not care for me to look into yours?"

"I am not a hypocrite," Morwinyon snapped, drawing herself up. Haldir took two steps forward, conveniently stopping between Morwinyon and Galadriel.

"Do not tease her, Altariel," Celeborn murmured to his wife. "Laeriel never took it well either."

Galadriel laughed once more. "Laeriel was a bit of a hypocrite, husband, and she knew it. Her daughter is not Laeriel, though, and I think she is tired of the comparison."

"Unto death," Morwinyon said, not entirely truthfully. "I thought you might have heard news, or seen something."

"I have seen many things," Galadriel replied. "Not all of them will come to pass."

"That's spectacularly unhelpful," Kili said. Morwinyon could not disagree.

Galadriel smiled and said, "You may look, if you choose."

"Not me, thanks," Kili said, though Galadriel had not really been talking to him. "I make my own future."

"Knowing what may come to pass does not mean you do not make your own future," Galadriel pointed out, eyes still on Morwinyon. "It means only that you have more information than before."

"You want me to look," Morwinyon said. "Why?"

"Different people see different things," Galadriel said. "I confess to curiosity. It is my besetting sin."

Celeborn snorted.

"The witch rumors sound truer and truer," Kili said in Khuzdul.

Galadriel smiled at him, and he blushed.

"Witchcraft indeed," Morwinyon said dryly in Khuzdul, nudging him, and in Sindarin said, "Show me what you wish me to see, if you believe it will help us."

Galadriel shrugged. "I did not say it would."

"You are the least helpful," Morwinyon told her, and Haldir glared as Celeborn turned amused eyes to his wife. Galadriel only smiled again, and motioned for her to follow.

"I only look into it?" Morwinyon asked.

"As I have said."

Morwinyon looked.

Tauriel glanced over her shoulder, knocking arrow to bow, and frowned. Fili, older than she remembered him looking, stood in the throne room of Erebor, shoulders back and chin raised. She could not see who sat in the throne - Thorin, she supposed.

Legolas frowned too, elsewhere ona river, looking up as if directly at her, and near him were two men - which was Aragorn she did not know. The dwarf with him was obviously Gimli, and there was something about Bilbo in one of the four hobbits' faces.

Dis stood looking over a mountain valley, Thranduil looked up from a desk of papers, someone Morwinyon could not see breathed shallowly in the dark, and Elrond smiled directly at her.

The mirror changed, and Morwinyon fell into it.

Morwinyon/Laeriel braced both feet against the dragon's hide and pulled. Delu came free slowly, reluctant like it wanted to stay in Dagnir's throat. "None of that," she said through gritted teeth. "I have use for you yet."

It popped free finally, and she barely caught herself before taking a nasty tumble. She cast around for something to clean the blade of dragon blood, which would erode steel and burn her skin almost as badly as dragon fire. The damage to her hands could be healed, given a skilled enough medic, but her sword would not recover.

"Dragons," she muttered in disgust as she settled for wiping Delu on a leathery wing as best she could and sheathing it. "Always mucking everything up."

Then she heard a gurgling sort of cough, and thought suddenly of how she had not heard a sound from Thranduil since… she could not think of when. She started towards the noise, trying to convince herself that she did not feel any sort of doom descending.

She ignored the thought that she had heard the sound centuries before, on a mountainside as barren as this valley.

"Thranduil!" she called. He was not where she had seen him last – of course, there had been a large dragon stomping around. Obviously he would have moved, but she would have thought it equally obvious that he would then look for her. Maybe he was, and they had missed each other through some trick of the smoke or shadow of the dragon's corpse, upon which she wished a healthy dose of rot and maggots.

Her first reaction, when she found him, was stark denial. Denial of memory, of Gil-Galad lying burned and broken, denial of that body being Thranduil's, perhaps even denial of the event itself. There was no body: it was some strangely shaped rock.

It was not a strangely shaped rock. She stood over the corpse, whose skin had run and stretched like wax. The effect was, oddly, confined mostly to the left side: the right, were she to turn her head just so, looked only as if he was surprised. She wondered what she was supposed to do now – Gil-Galad had been alive, still, when she made her way to him, had been able to tell her everything would be all right.

Removing the armor was pointless, if he was dead. Removing him was pointless too. Had that been his dying breath she heard, when she was busy fussing with Delu?

She went to sit beside him, and Delu got in her way as a sword on her belt never had before. Even when she was young, blades had always hung easily from her belt, and she had never had difficulty adjusting them to whatever position she chose. She stood again, fingers clumsy on the belt buckle as she tried to undo it. Finally she managed, letting Delu hit the ground with a too-heavy thump, and she knelt back down.

"You could not dodge?" she asked finally, voice too loud and echoing. "All of this time, and you could not dodge?"

He did not answer, obviously. She kept talking.

"What am I supposed to do now? Go home? Tell everyone that you died because you could not dodge one measly blast of dragon fire? Tell them you died because I took my eyes off of you for a moment? It should have been you killing the dragon, not I! What am I supposed to tell our son, who made me promise I would always bring you home?"

She sat for far too long. Ríndir and a small contingent of scouts came looking for them.

"Go away," she said tiredly when he approached cautiously. "You were right, we should have brought more people, but will you go away?"

"Lady," he said quietly. "It has been a full day since Dagnir fell."

"Since I killed him," she corrected.

"Yes," he said slowly, as if he was not certain who she meant. Laeriel was not entirely certain herself.

"Go away," she said again.

He hesitated, but in the end he, and the others who had followed him, did.

She had been half afraid they would send Legolas next, at which point she would have to leave off sitting beside Thranduil, but they did not. If they had sent Legolas, she would have to admit to breaking her promise.

"I told him I would say no to Mandos himself," she said. "The problem with making promises you do not know how to keep is that eventually it comes time to keep them."

She reached blindly for Thranduil's hand – the right one, the one that did not have bone showing – and tried to will health into him, as she had seen Elrond do. Of course, Elrond was the best healer of the age, and also his patients were alive. Nothing happened.

"I do not know how to do this," she snarled, but she did not let go even when starlight filtered down through the slowly dissipating smoke.

Was his hand warmer? She blinked, and could have sworn his eyelid twitched. "Thranduil?" Nothing.

"I am going to take that as a sign," she said. "Do I pray? Do I-" the smoke cleared further. More starlight filtered through.

Morwinyon-as-Laeriel knew she had never prayed before, not really. Her upbringing had not lent itself to it, not with a Feanori ancestor in a Sindarin city, but she knew the Valar: she knew who starlight belonged to, and she knew who might take pity, and she knew too who death belonged to.

"Varda, Elbereth, whichever you prefer, I ask you as best beloved and mother of all – after a fashion – do not let him leave. Nienna, I have had so much of sorrow and borne it well. After a fashion. I do not ask for myself – no, that is a lie. I ask not only for myself – do not let him leave. Mandos, who has so many of my loved ones, I ask that you leave this one. Please?"

Starlight became solid, like glowing pillars, and a voice brushed across her mind.

But Quellë, death whispered - of course death knew her mother-name. What will you give us?

Morwinyon/Laeriel came back to herself with a jolt, and for a heartbreaking moment thought she had been hallucinating. Then Thranduil jerked, gasping and choking, something bubbling in his lungs as he tried to scream in pain, and she went to work prying off the armor.

She could feel the energy humming through her hands and into him, could nearly feel his hurts. She concentrated on his lungs: breathing seemed as though it would be the most pressing issue. When she sat back, exhausted, Thranduil looked up at her. His left eye was white and staring: she had not erased the rest of the damage entirely, or even healed it all.

He was breathing though, and as she watched his left hand reached up to hover at her collar, almost touching but not quite. She grabbed it and held it to her cheek, reaching out to touch his face with her other hand, running careful fingers over his brows, his cheekbones, his lips.

"Laeriel," he croaked. It was half a question.

"Yes," she said.

"It was dark," he said, voice small and hoarse. "It was dark, and you were not there."

"But I am here now," she said, hand falling to fist in the tattered remains of his shirt. "I am here now, my heart, I am here."

He nodded, right hand coming up to cover the hand she clutched at his shirt with. "Do not leave again?"

"No," she said.

When they staggered into the camp Ríndir and the scouts had set up just outside the mouth of the valley – more accurately, when Morwinyon/Laeriel staggered into camp with an unconscious Thranduil in her arms – there was dead silence.

"I will need a stretcher," Morwinyon/Laeriel told Bruinith, Ríndir's second. "I do not think it would be good for him if I were to carry him all the way to the Halls."

Bruinith shot Ríndir a worried look, but he nodded sharply. Morwinyon/Laeriel wondered when, exactly, her people had stopped obeying her orders the moment she gave them.

"I will need a messenger sent to Lord Elrond as well," she said. "With all haste, if you please. Tell him I would like to see him with the same."

"Yes, Lady. But, perhaps you would like to…" Ríndir trailed off.

Morwinyon/Laeriel looked at him.

"Perhaps you would like to put him down?" he said cautiously. "It cannot be comfortable, carrying him."

"He asked me not to leave him," she said, shifting for a better grip.

"You need not," he said, coming towards her slowly. "But here, let me help you lay him out-"

He reached for Thranduil's arm and, swearing long, loud, and creatively, leapt backwards when the elvenking curled back into Morwinyon/Laeriel.

Morwinyon/Laeriel raised her eyebrows.

"He lives," Ríndir exclaimed. "But Lady, I saw him dead at your feet, I saw him melted-"

"Yes, well," Laeriel said, as Morwinyon felt herself fading away. "I did not care for that state of affairs."

Morwinyon fell farther or perhaps up, she could not tell, gasping as if she was truly underwater. She jerked finally to a halt over Mirkwood. There was a long thin path of ash though no fires burned: she looked for the cause, floating gently down until she landed. Her feet left no imprints.

Orcs swarmed through the trees to either side, shrieking and laughing, breaking limbs and leaving gouges in tree trunks with teeth and nails, but they held no torches and seemed to avoid the burned area. The edges were too neat, Morwinyon noticed. There was no charring of other tree trunks, just the wild tearing destruction of a people who had been so long denied anything beautiful that they had to destroy what beauty they found.

Morwinyon had not until this moment realized that she considered Mirkwood beautiful.

She looked up the path towards her father's halls and saw a lone figure walking, arms stretched out and behind them as if relishing the forest. Where her fingers trailed decay followed, spreading from her hands until the branches turned skeletal and the leaves crackled brown and finally the tree entire crumbled into dust, raining down like dirty grey snow. Ahead of the figure were so many different rustlings that they came together in a roar - the creatures of the forest fled before the figure, even the spiders, shrieking and hissing.

A long curtain of pin-straight hair fell past the figure's hips, darker than the gleaming black metal of the crown set into their head. It rose in jagged points, and the base was hidden so well in their hair that Morwinyon could not see it. They were tall and wore armor to match the crown, but only one hand was gauntleted. The rest of their arms were bare and pale, as if sunlight had not touched them in a century or more. Something about her was familiar.

Morwinyon blinked, and the scene wavered: she saw the doors of Thranduil's halls flung open, and orcs pouring in. She was closer to the figure now - close enough to tell in the way of elves that the figure was a woman.

Nurchon charged out, cutting down orcs and launching himself at the enemy's captain, who deflected his blade with a twist of her one armored hand and reached out to touch him between the eyes with her flesh and blood hand. Her mother's lieutenant fell, horror twisting his face far more than the black bubbling veins the orc's leader left him with. She stepped over his body.

Morwinyon was in the kitchens, in her vantage point in the little twist of root that no one else had ever found. Cevendis the baker did not cower when orcs invaded her kitchen - she was a silvan elf, and silvan elves did not cower for anyone. She and her fellows used their territory to their advantage: an orc was shoved into the blazing hearth, and kitchen knives were wielded with frantic enthusiasm. Every silvan in the kitchen clawed at faces and bit and snarled to the very end, when Morwinyon tried to look away and could not.

She saw Bruineth fall and Tundir, who fired arrows grimly into the mass of orcs until he ran out, and Súliel tried to drag him back and failed and fought until she was the last elf before the throne room door and then she fell too. Morwinyon tried to look away again and found herself on the other side of the throne room doors, watching them bend under the weight of the orcs outside.

"-as many as you can," her father said behind her, and she turned. Thranduil stood with Delu in hand, visibly shaking even if his glamor held.

"I am not sure we can make a difference," Inwiel said, her face taught and pale. Her daughters stood with her, armed and armored, and Rindir stood with what Morwinyon realized were the last of the scouts. All told there were perhaps fifty elves in the room. None of them, she realized, were Noldor.

"Even one fewer will help Elrond and Galadriel," Thranduil said.

"What captain is it?" Inwiel's eldest, Elien, asked. "They do not chant a name."

"Why here?" Peliwen added. She was less composed than her sister, but then Elien had joined the scouts and Peliwen was a clerk.

"Does it matter?" Thranduil asked. No one answered.

Thranduil stepped falteringly to the front and stood, Delu raised, and waited,

"Do not let them take you," Morwinyon heard Inwiel murmur to her girls just as the doors crumbled like the trees.

Morwinyon noticed the hand first - it was not a gauntlet as she had first thought. It was a skeleton hand, every fingerbone worked through with wires and joined by tiny wheels so it flexed almost as a real hand might. The bone pieces were yellowed with age, the end fingerbones cracked around shards of metal that had been driven into the tips in a mockery of fingernails. The whole thing was secured to her arm with metal - it looked as if someone had poured it over her wrist and let it drip down to her elbow.

Morwinyon noticed the crown second, for the spikes were not secured to a base but set into the woman's skull. Those in her forehead showed raw and weeping wounds around them.

As the orcs exploded into the room and the enemy captain reached out to hold Thranduil's throat in her metal-and-bone hand, the other plucking Delu from him as easily as breathing. Morwinyon was not entirely sure the woman's hand had actually touched Delu before it leapt from Thranduil's. The woman lifted him from the floor, his face went slack, glamor abruptly gone, and Morwinyon finally understood why she looked familiar: the face she saw was her own.

"I am returned, Thranduil," she said. "Are you not pleased to see me?"

She squeezed, and Morwinyon looked up and away, back to Lothlorien and her cousin's too-sympathetic eyes.