HEART OF A KING

Chapter 3 ~ Still just after chapter 14 of Griffon, four days after return from Mordor

When Thranduil knocked on Romiël's door, he received no answer. The logical assumption was that she was asleep and anyone else would have returned later. But Thranduil was of an inquisitive nature and also not one to be denied, so he opened the door quietly and looked in.

The sight before him was not at all what he expected.

Leaning far over the balcony rail, with her nightdress plastered to her posterior was Romiël. Thranduil stepped into the room and raised his eyebrows.

While the posterior in view was still much too thin, he did recognize that it had a pleasing shape. Thranduil pushed aside several raucous thoughts that sprung to mind and walked up behind her.

"You seem to have a penchant for hanging off of this balcony," Thranduil said and then only his Elvin reflexes saved him from getting a black eye as Romiël straightened and whirled, her hand lashing out defensively.

Thranduil caught her wrist and watched as the primitive fight in her eyes dimmed to shame.

"You startled me," Romiël said, dropping those haunting gray eyes.

Thranduil gently caressed her wrist for a moment before letting go. "Did I injure you?"

Romiël rubbed her tender skin and the King could see that it was reddened where he had caught it. She was still so thin that the slightest abrasion caused bruising.

"I am all right. I have suffered worse," she said bitterly and Thranduil recognized the symptoms of a mind that wanted to heal, but was having difficulty getting on with the task. He needed to begin working with her. He needed to talk to her as well . . . eventually.

"I suppose I need not ask if you are feeling nervous," he said gently, avoiding subjects that he was not ready to discuss yet.

Romiël laughed a little then and ran hands over her arms as if she were cold. "I jump at the slightest sound. It is so strange." She shook her head sadly, "During my . . . imprisonment, I reached a point where I did not care what they did to me. I did not even react. It was as if I lived in a fog."

"But the fog has lifted and your mind now recognizes the atrocities that were done to you and you are prepared to fight so that they do not happen again."

Romiël looked up at him then. "You are so wise," she said with a touch of envy in her voice. "How do you know such things?"

"I have had much experience with Orcs and their foul ways," Thranduil said. He leaned his hands against the railing and looked down at her casually. He was not ready to discuss yet why he had left so abruptly the other day. It would mean revealing feelings that he typically revealed to no one. It was far easier to talk about Romiël's troubles, though that was hard enough.

At least for now.

"You will heal, Romiël," he said quietly, remembering one who had not healed all those years ago. But he would not fail Romiël as he had failed Unilyn.

"You sound so certain," Romiël replied just as quietly, "but my mind is like a battered animal in the cage of my own fears. I thought that returning to Mordor and facing it would help, but it has not."

"I believe that it did actually," Thranduil disagreed. "What you did took tremendous courage. In time that courage will sink back into your soul and your mind will recognize it for what it is."

He shifted so that the side of his hip leaned upon the rail. "Now, what was it that caught your interest so?" he asked, deliberately changing the subject. The tension in Romiël's face told him that she needed some distraction from her thoughts. They would need to delve into her pain slowly.

"They are baking sweet cakes in the kitchen today!" Romiël answered and her voice was practically a wail. "I can smell them!" She waved in the direction of a kitchen window set at the level of the ground just to the left and below her balcony.

Thranduil could not help the chuckle that escaped him. "If you long for some, then I will have a servant . . ."

Romiël shook her head, interrupting him. "They will not let me have any."

"Nonsense! They will not deny my order."

"Alede says that I am not to have any sweets for another week," Romiël said with some irritation, another sign that she was beginning to heal. "I am to eat only bland foods until then." She pouted up at him rather prettily.

The pout momentarily robbed him of speech, even though he knew she did it deliberately. Obviously the Orcs had not taken her sense of humor. Thranduil had a feeling he would enjoy encouraging it.

He had to clear his throat before he could speak.

"Then I will fetch the cakes myself and they will not stop me."

"No, please do not," Romiël, said, placing a small hand on his arm. "They will tell Alede and she will scold me."

Thranduil raised a brow. "Is Alede such an ogre?"

Romiël laughed. "Nay, but she is very strict about my health."

Thranduil considered for a moment. If he knew his soon to be daughter-in- law well enough, he would guess that she was being overly cautious. Alede was fiercely protective of her patients. Prisoners were always given bland food for the first few days, but Romiël was past that stage. Coming to a decision, he unfolded his arms.

"She will not scold, if she does not know." With a wicked wink, he swung himself over the balcony and dropped lightly to the ground heading in the direction of one of the small ground level windows.

~ ~ ~

Romiël watched him with her lips caught between her teeth. Thranduil was an impressive Elf. He was tall, as all Elvin males were, but he was also broad of shoulder, not bulky like a man, but noticeably more brawny that most Elves. The rich velvety timber of his voice and his astonishingly handsome face only added to his appeal.

Even if he did not hide a tender heart beneath that aristocratic exterior and fierce intelligence, she knew that she would find him attractive. But the combination was more than she could bear and Romiël knew that in only a few days she'd come to fancy him quite terribly.

The stern, logical part of her mind that had kept her alive in the prison, reminded her that her infatuation was probably due to Thranduil being the first Elf who had lifted her into freedom after her escape from Mordor.

But the other part of her mind, the sentimental romantic part that had spent 700 years locked away, told her that her attraction had nothing to do with gratitude and everything to do with the extraordinary Elf that Thranduil was. It also ignored the logical part that reminded her that she was but a commoner and Thranduil was a King.

She watched, fascinated as he slipped a thin dagger between the window and the frame, unlocking the catch that held the window fast. Where had he learned such techniques, Romiël wondered. Was he a thief as well as a king?

Quietly, Thranduil eased the window open and slipped gracefully inside. Romiël waited, her ears straining for the slightest sound, but she heard nothing. After several moments her leg began to feel the strain of holding up her weight. Since she still could not use her splinted leg, she lip/hopped with her crutch over to the chair, silently cursing her injury. At least her broken arm was mending quickly now. Alede had said that the splint need only stay on a couple more days.

A thump startled her out of her thoughts and she looked up to see Thranduil standing triumphantly before her.

She looked around. "Where . . . did you drop from the sky?" she asked, her lips curling into an amused, but perplexed smile.

"I had to avoid being seen," he said with a mischievous wink.

Romiël laughed as he produced a cloth wrapped bundle from behind his back. Obviously he had enjoyed his little adventure.

Together they tore into the still warm sweet cakes, the caramelized sugar crumbled on their lips and melted on their tongues. Nothing had tasted this sweat to the she-Elf in centuries and she closed her eyes in rapture. When she opened them finally, Romiël found that Thranduil was watching her as much as she had been watching him.

She set her honey cake down, her mouth suddenly dry.

Thranduil set his down as well, looking into her eyes, now gone as dark as rain clouds, but certainly not as cold. Heat shimmered in the air between them, an attraction that was as strong as it was sudden.

But then he had never been a patient Elf.

"My wife died," he said without preamble and across from him, Romiel's eyes widened in surprise. "She was killed by a Greymalcin, though I did not know it at the time. I tried over and over to heal her with the same method that I used on you. But it failed."

Romiël let out the breath she had been holding and nodded in understanding.

"That is why you had such a look of guilt upon your face yesterday, because it worked with me, but not with her. I am sorry for your loss," she added softly.

He sighed. It was such a soft and mournful sound, she nearly did not hear it. "Thank you," he replied.

"No, it is I, who thanks you. You have given me release from my pain and the strength to wish for a better life." Her eyes dropped then and she said sadly, "I lost my husband as well."

"In Mordor?"

"Hmm? Oh, no," she shook her head, trying to shake away the memories as she did so. "He was not captured. He was human. So, I lost him to the slow march of time that wreaks such havoc upon men and leaves the First Born to carry on alone."

Thranduil was stunned. He had not known that she had been married, let alone to a human. He looked at her carefully. What could have made her wish to marry a human? Though he would have liked to ask her, something held him back.

"I am sorry for your loss as well." He hesitated. "Did you have a child?"

Romiël nodded, a wistful smile upon her face as she remembered. "My little girl was only two when I was captured. I do not think she ever understood what happened to me. Our . . . connection," she did not use the word 'song' that would have been impolite, even though she was only speaking of the song between mother and child. "Our connection was not strong because she was so young. I think she grew up believing that I had abandoned her and gone to the West. She never seemed to be able to understand me. I tried," Romiël said with remembered anguish. "I tried so hard to make her understand, to tell her where I was, what had happened to me. But she did not comprehend and I felt her death long ago. Now . . ." her breath caught in her throat, "there is no one."

Thranduil could feel her pain as if it were a cold wind. He tried to imagine what it must have been like, endless day after endless day in that prison with only her anguish and suffering for bitter company.

Thranduil stood abruptly, moving his chair around so that he could be closer to her. He reached out, taking her good hand in his warm ones, his twilight gaze boring into her with its intensity. He stroked a thumb gently across the frail skin of her hand, the gesture filled with sympathy, with a shared loneliness.

"Will you share song with me, Lady?"

Romiël felt the heat flood her face, though she knew that he did not mean what she wanted him to mean. But it was difficult with his brilliant eyes gazing at hers to not have the sweet, hot emotions flood through her.

"I . . . Alede had told me that many of the healers were using song to help the members of my clan. I had wondered who would wish to work with me . . ."

"I wish to," Thranduil said and there was just enough iron in his voice that Romiël thought he might make it a command if she refused. Though her rebellious spirit was beginning to awaken, she knew that she would not refuse.

Nevertheless. "We are strangers, you and I," Romiël said and there was strength in her own voice as well.

Thranduil snorted softly, amused and determined all at the same time.

"We are hardly strangers. We may have only met a few days ago, Lady, but I am well acquainted with courage and strength, and . . ." his hand drifted up to the side of her face, "and true beauty."

The heat drained from Romiel's face and pooled elsewhere, making her feel slightly dizzy. She tipped her chin up so that he might not see just how much his words, his nearness effected her. Though it would matter little. In a moment he would know all of her thoughts.

"Yes," she said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. "I will share song with you. But I warn you," and her eyes were stormy once again, but with a different emotion, "it is a dark path you seek to tread. I am damaged in ways that cannot be seen and cannot be reset." She held up her splinted arm.

"Then let us heal this damage and I will lift you out of darkness." Thranduil took a hold of the arms of her chair and without any effort, dragged it around so that it was facing his own. Her knees ended up sandwiched between his and when he leaned forward, he slid one hand around to the back of her neck and touched his forehead against hers.

Romiël's eyes fluttered shut, unable to keep them open with him so near. She took a deep breath and opened her thoughts . . .

And the sun flooded into the dark pathways of her mind, burning the shadows away with an intensity that set her on fire. Romiël cried out and her hand flayed around in desperation until one that was nearly twice the size of her own and certainly twice as strong, caught it.

She clung to Thranduil as his song blazed hotly into her soul and gave herself over to him.

~ ~ ~

A/N: Well, I guess sharing song with Thranduil would be a bit . . . intense, wouldn't it? lol *big grin*

As I'm sure you've already guessed, I adore Thranduil. If there is a Mary Sue in my stories, it is Thranduil. While I love his good qualities - passion, fierceness, strength - sadly, he gets his bad qualities from me - impatience, intolerance, bossiness and a general air that everyone should do my bidding. lol! Actually, I'm not *quite* that bad, but I do have my days. ;) (And just for the record, Thecla disagrees with this self- analogy, but I think that's just because she's so sweet. ;) lol!

Special thanks to Angaloth and JastaElf for the identity of the bearded Elf in Tolkien's history. It is indeed Cirdan, I just couldn't remember the name and was too lazy to look it up. :D

And special thanks to all of you for reading! This was just a something that I had to try out. Thranduil still intimidates me waaaaaaay too much to write a full story about him. But writing this little sidepiece is really quite fun. I apologize for the lack of plot - I'm sort of testing the waters, as it were. ~ Nebride