Chapter Six

Thranduil screamed so hard that it echoed across the valley and up into the stars. His fear possessed every fibre of his being; the strength in his arm alone threw Arwen back.

"Hold him down!"

Arwen pressed back down on his arm and on his leg just above his knee. Elrond took the other side.

"Thranduil, listen to me! You are hurt, but you are safe!" Elrond yelled above Thranduil's voice. "Thranduil, you are injured and you must lay still!"

Arwen was halfway up the bed before she realized what her plan was. She laid a hand on the side of Thranduil's face and bent close to his ear.

"Shhh," she whispered. "Hush now. Lie still."

Thrashing turned to trembling, turned to ragged breathing. Arwen went on murmuring comforts to him, unsure if she had any approximation of Aradess' voice in hers, but it seemed to be soothing him. She bit back any reaction when he seized her hand in his, his palm slick with sweat or blood.

"We… have… to go…" Thranduil gasped.

"We will," Arwen said. She raised her gaze to where her father stood.

Elrond looked no less terrified now that Thranduil was still. He glanced at their joined hands, at their nearly pressed together faces. Pale and mutilated Thranduil next to his wide-eyed, vital daughter.

"Do you feel anything?" Elrond asked softly, nodding towards Thranduil's wounded hand.

Arwen shook her head. "I'm all right."

"Stay there. I need Elladen and Elrohir to do something for me. I won't go far." Elrond paused halfway out the door. "If you need anything or feel anything, call for me."

Arwen settled in her position, sitting down on the edge of the bed, rearranging her hand around Thranduil's. The longer she stayed beside him, the calmer he became, even though she had stopped speaking. Though it had come to a terrifying head, Arwen took Thranduil's desperate fight out of sleep as a good sign of his will to live.

She had not truly understood her mother's optimism that Thranduil could survive nigh anything, not until she had seen the wreckage of his body that had come long before these dark injuries. The right side of his body was almost completely covered in burns—down his torso, over his shoulder, up the side of his face. Huge scars marred the other side of his ribs. Arwen could not fathom what it took for him to keep his scars hidden, what the constant glamour cost. How many had ever seen his true form? Though Arwen knew of Thranduil's stubbornness more by reputation than experience—an absurd thing to consider while she nearly lay in bed with him—the proof of the brutality he had survived helped forgive his less peaceful qualities.

"It looks like this," Elrond said as he swept into the room, Elladen close behind him. "Athelas. An old remedy forgotten by most by this age. I'm willing to try it, if you can find it."

"Of course, Ada," Elladen said, but when he noticed Arwen, the resolution left his face.

"I'm fine," she assured him.

Her comforts meant nothing as Elladen's gaze moved from Arwen to Thranduil. She watched her brother's grey eyes trace the lines of the scars.

"It's just for his hand," Elrond said, bringing his son back to focus. "Whoever attacked them had terrible magic in their arsenal. I have never seen the like of something like this, and I don't want to see it advance any further. In everything I've read and everything I've tried, I think athelas is the best course."

"I'll go," Elladen said. His own voice seemed to finally spur him.

As she watched his leave, Arwen hoped his search would be double successful: that he would find the athelas for Thranduil, and Elrohir for the sake of his own sanity.

"What will it do, Ada?" Arwen still spoke softly even though Thranduil seemed to have fallen back into his deep sleep. She stroke her fingers over his, so cold, the unnatural grey of his flesh more pronounced next to her healthy pale skin. With her other hand, Arwen brushed her thumb across his forehead. Only the cold sweat of subsiding fear, no fever.

"Athelas is as old remedy from Numenor," Elrond said, circling to the other side of the bed. "It should purify the wound."

Arwen watched her father think.

"The riddle of the wound remains," he said, softly enough as to be speaking only to himself. "If it is poison or…"

"What else could it be but poison, Ada?"

Elrond showed no sign of hearing her and was silent for a long moment. "When the Black Breath blows and death's shadow grows and all lights pass… come athelas."

"But the Black Breath would mean—"

"It could not be, calad-nín," he said, smiling at her, showing the depth of his exhaustion. "But it is my hope that the athelas will work all the same."

"Why don't you go see Naneth?" Arwen suggested. "I can stay with him until you return. She's resting, so you won't be gone long."

What little reluctance Elrond had was worn down at Arwen's insistence. He hauled himself and what seemed like the weight of the world out of the chair on the other side of the bed, and left the room.

Arwen gathered her legs onto the bed and stretched out alongside the King of the Woodland Realm, still holding his injured hand, still breathing against his neck.

"You are a warrior of your people," she said, not sure if she was still trying to speak as Aradess or if she spoke as herself. She had never said so many words to him in all her life as she had in the past few minutes. Her voice had soothed him before, even if he was too deep in his unconsciousness now to hear her; it did a little to help her too, now that she lay in the silence, in the dark. She talked on until she put herself into some meditation that took her she knew not where. Perhaps it was not a matter of where but when: Imladris, her home, before it had become so suffused with death. The golden valley, slowly turning green with the coming spring. But there was also a smell of smoke, a wreath of it around the house, tendrils reaching in.

Arwen opened her eyes and had to squint against the bright sunlight pouring through the window. Elrohir stood over her, still hooded and wrapped in his grey cloak. The grimness that had haunted his face the day before was tempered with some of his usual humour.

"Good morning," he said as she blinked up at him.

"Elladen was…" Arwen sat up, stiff from laying so resolutely still on the edge of the bed. Thranduil still slept soundly beside her.

"He found me. And I was so glad to go flower-picking in the middle of the night," Elrohir said with a playful roll of his eyes.

"You found it!"

"We did." Elrohir offered his hands to help her up. "But I hear it was you who did Ada proud."

Arwen got to her feet. Her only response to her brother's compliment was to blush. Wrapping her hands around the back of her sore neck, she joined her father at his worktable against the wall. He was tearing handfuls of athelas into a porcelain bowl.

Elrond glanced up at her, quickly returned to work, then looked back at her, staring. He laid his damp hands on the sides of her face. She was so pale.

"Arwen, go with your brothers," he said urgently. "I do not want you to come back here."

"Ada—"

"Go now, Arwen. Lie down," Elrond said.

Banished, Arwen left with her brothers. She walked between them, taking each of their arms in a gesture of reunion, but truly, she felt weighed down, nearly faint, as that smoke began to fill her memory. Elladen and Elrohir found the will to laugh at whatever they were talking about, but Arwen could not. She wanted to collapse, to cry, and she could not entirely understand why.