Thanks for the reviews, leelee202 and DaddysLiitleGirl! I'm serving you all some more angst and pining this week. Also, I tend to work ahead, so I have more written than this—and I like to look at it a few times before chapters go live... anyway, I've got some steaminess coming up in the next post. Some things went in a direction that surprised me... you'll see! Enjoy this chapter, and happy March!
Only a short time later, I was ushered into the prince's chambers. One of the healers was urging him to recline back, but he would not.
"Sleep," the elleth was telling him gently. "The body repairs itself in sleep…"
"But it is full daylight," he protested.
"...Yes, your highness, it is. And you've a great deal of healing to…"
They saw me.
"Filauria," Legolas said suddenly. "Tell them to let me up."
I smiled and gave curtsy to the room in general, then requested that a chair be drawn up to the bedside so I might sit near the Prince.
"Filauria," he said again. "You must make the healers see reason."
I scooted a bit closer to him in my chair.
The prince's eye were a sparkling blue today. His hair, for the first time in my recollection, was unbraided and fell silkily around his broad shoulders. The room smelled of him—of clean but convalescent male—not unpleasant.
"How are you today?" I asked him.
"Well enough," he answered stoutly. I noticed that a mountain of pillows had been smashed up into the headboard behind him.
"Are you in pain?"
He nodded. "Of course. A great deal."
It was a testament to my kin, and I didn't doubt him. A man might lie just where the prince was now, screaming, unable to draw breath, even. The prince's pain was only evident in the new lines around his eyes, the slight clench to his handsome jaw, and the way his fëa vibrated like a struck bell.
"So you are in pain," I said soothingly to him. "Why this rage to get up and walk around, then?"
He glanced at me, then out his window, eyes lighting on branches and birds, boughs and brooks. "I hear what they are saying," he conceded. "That I am lucky to be alive. The wound is serious, I know. And I know I am to sleep and rest and let the healers do their work. But the medicines they give me for the pain do not help, and I think I would be easier if I but had something to focus my mind on."
I grinned at him. "That is why I have been summoned, my prince."
He looked incredulous. "I daresay you'd never agree to sneak me out of here…"
"No, I would never. But I am the royal bard, after all. I live my days in service to you!"
When he still looked at me appraisingly, I added, "I come to distract you, highness. Songs, stories. Poetry."
"Ah."
Legolas looked skeptically down at the two volumes in my hands, but nodded. "I've always loved listening to you perform. Dearly. I just…" And he looked longingly out the casement again. "I suppose there's nothing for it," he said suddenly. "If I must stay here and get through this…"
"And you must," I interjected.
"We may well make it as pleasant as possible." And he gave a heavy sigh as if about to endure a lecture of some sort.
Amused, I opened Ragnaril the White. "I am so pleased you appreciate my company and the time I take out of my day to demonstrate my fealty to you and the house of the Greenwood."
He looked chastened. "I'm sorry, Fil."
I glanced up at him.
"Filauria," he corrected himself, looking stricken.
"It's all right," I told him softly. "Those I count friends call me that."
Legolas gave me a small, tentative smile. "I'm glad." There was a pause that felt deafening, and then he added, "I've been very frustrated. Please, forgive me."
Trying to ignore the way my heart had leapt in my chest at my familiar childhood endearment on the lips of Legolas, Prince of the Mirkwood Realm, I swallowed hard and began reading.
He did not sleep.
A healer came to Thranduil's private rooms early the next morning and examined the scratch the Elvenking had sustained in his side. It was angry-looking and weeping, but the ellon confirmed it was not poisoned. Careful fingers spread a thick salve over the area, and then clean, dry bandages were applied to his waist.
"Highness, with all due respect," the ellon scolded gently, "What were you thinking?"
Thranduil could only watch, fascinated as the deft fingers worked the fragrant salve into the wound.
"To take that extra time, first with the prince and then… well, I don't know what you did after that. Why did you not call for aid? Sire, if the blade had been poisoned…"
"But it wasn't," interjected Thranduil vaguely, allowing his attention to focus on the Mirkwood outside his window—chill and snowy.
"And thank the Valar," added the young ellon.
The king only nodded to himself.
After the healer left him, he dressed and then set out to walk the compound, hoping to find distraction of some sort.
He was glad that daylight had dawned at least. The events of the previous two days had been traumatic, though he had to admit it was nothing to the horrors he had seen in battle.
Twice, he looked in on his son and found him sleeping, and he even surprised himself by arriving at the bard's door—at Filauria's door. He named her now, because she'd put herself in danger for the court. She may have helped to save the prince. And he named her to comfort himself, because he could not seem to put her sweet voice out of his head.
The evening that she'd warbled that love song in front of the whole court—directing her attention at Legolas—flashed brightly in his memory then, and he wondered yet again just who this elleth was to his son.
Would she join the royal family at some point? If and when Legolas recovered, would she become Thranduil's daughter-in-law?
He snorted derisively at himself.
A chill draft reached him as he stood in the hall, and he shivered. Silvery wind brushed the gentle drifts outside, lifting crystalline dustings of snow high into the air. So late, he thought. It was so late in the year already. Soon, the winter solstice would be upon them.
He had no idea what to do. He was worried sick over his son. And if the Elvenking was honest, he'd hoped to meet the bard by chance in one of the vestibules, but she was nowhere to be found. Probably resting, he thought guiltily. As you should be.
In the end, he decided to wander into the upstairs library with a mug of mulled wine.
Others in the compound seemed to float past him, understanding that he was troubled and wanted most to be left alone.
He found himself something to read—some obscure, morose poetry that fit his mood, and waited. For what, he did not know.
After some hours, Thranduil peered out into the Mirkwood and found that it had stopped snowing. He felt bleary, his mind halting and his body misused—he needed sleep. He would seek his bed, he decided.
On the way back to his apartments, Thranduil chanced to look in on Legolas and was surprised to find Filauria also in the room attending him. She had lain a dusty old book down on the coverlet and was pointing out something to the prince—something visual, a picture or a map, by the look of it.
He watched them darkly for a moment, feeling weak.
For the first time in a while, Legolas appeared easy, quieted, and comforted. The Elvenking recalled times when his son was a very young ellon and the nightmares had come… only the wife of Thranduil King was ever able to soothe and calm the young prince. His own efforts to the purpose were bootless, no matter how hard he tried.
Now that the prince had matured into a near-perfect specimen with broad shoulders and sculpted limbs, the connotations were entirely different.
Her quick hands illustrated something intangible in the air, tracing unknown patterns there as she explained something to Legolas. A few soft strands of her coppery brown hair had fallen down around her face, and Thranduil ached to see it. How had this happened? The bard had found her way to his halls and somehow found purchase there, her roots beginning to wind as deeply down into the fertile soil as did the ancient trees of the Mirkwood.
He hoped she would never leave. And if she should agree to give her heart to his son, he never wanted to see her again.
Over the next few weeks, Legolas became more familiar with the walls of his chamber than he imagined any creature ought. But those close to him continued to urge him to rest, and so he continued to recover.
He began to request that Filauria come to his rooms and attend him, which she seemed happy to do.
He even enriched his understanding of ancient elven lore, content to listen to the bard and ask questions after she had recited or read to him.
It was infinitely more interesting to hear her accounts of elvish history than he remembered from his days in training. She had a way of looking at the information from all sides—considering race, gender, religion and culture in her disseminations—that was fascinating to him.
Thranduil Elvenking visited him often, checking in brusquely before offering his good wishes and departing. Legolas noticed one afternoon that his father never stayed long if Filauria was there. Strange.
Well, he thought, incoherently. Perhaps he's gotten over his... interest…
And then the prince fell back into healing sleep.