High in the Clean Blue Air by StarSpray

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Thirteen

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Imloth Ningloron was in fact the valley that Maglor had thought it was—a wide bowl-shaped thing filled with flowing water in between the green grass and yellow flowers. Under the bright spring sun it sparkled and seemed to glow, all emerald and gold. He’d visited it before in his youthful wanderings, but he found he liked it better now, with the sprawling house in the center and the outbuildings and workshops beyond. The gardens and orchards lent a splash of bright rainbow color, and though it was quite different at first glance, the feeling of it was so like Imladris that following the road down into it felt like coming home. 

Elladan was the one to say so, and Celebrían laughed. “Good!” she said. “I tried very hard to make it so.”

“It’s perfect,” Elrohir said.

Huan trotted along beside Maglor. Pídhres lay over his shoulders, watching Huan warily. She did not usually mind dogs, in the little time she had spent in their company, but Huan was no normal dog. Maglor scratched her behind the ears as he looked around, drinking in the flowers and trees and the streams and ponds. He might have missed the forests of Imladris more keenly, except that the hills beyond the valley, between it and the towering Pelóri, were thick with trees, and there was nothing stopping him from slipping way into their cool shade if he ever desired it. 

Everyone in the household had turned out to greet them, all of them more than eager to welcome Elladan and Elrohir at last. Maglor dropped out of the saddle and found himself also surrounded by old friends, though they were taken aback by Huan’s presence—especially since he refused to leave Maglor’s side, to Pídhres’ clear dissatisfaction. “No, I don’t know why he is here,” Maglor said more than once. “But I can’t very well make him go home if he does not want to.”

His things had been taken to his room already, and his clothes and harp unpacked for him. The room itself was similar in size and shape to his room in Imladris, and similarly decorated in shades of blue. The wooden floor and the furniture were of a different, lighter colored wood, and the hearth was smaller, but there would be little call for warm fires here except in the very heart of winter. Likewise the windows were bigger, letting in the fragrant breeze. He leaned out of one to look out over the valley. Pídhres had vanished as soon as he’d set foot inside the house, off exploring and making herself at home. No doubt she would acquaint herself with the kitchen and the cooks, and charm them all into slipping her treats and tidbits at all hours. Huan, of course, had followed at Maglor’s heels. 

“I really don’t need you watching my every move, you know,” Maglor said to him, turning away from the window. Huan ignored him, nosing instead at his satchel until it tipped over and opened, spilling some of the contents over the rug. “What are you doing, you ridiculous animal?” Huan raised his large head and woofed at him reproachfully. “There’s nothing in there that needs immediate unpacking.” Maglor went to pick up the satchel, and felt the crinkle of paper under his fingers. “Oh.” He glared at Huan as he sat down on the floor. “You want me to open these, don’t you?” He pulled out the letters—the ones from his brothers. Huan lay down, pressing against Maglor’s leg. That head would rest on his legs if he tried to get up, Maglor thought. He sighed, and stared down at his name, in Curufin’s neat script and Caranthir’s scrawl, which was not unlike Nerdanel’s except that it was a little neater. “And if I don’t want to?” he asked Huan. “If I want to toss these back into the bottom of my bag and forget about them?” Huan only looked at him with that same reproachful expression.

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Maglor called, glad of the distraction. Elrond came in, and raised his eyebrows at the scene. “I think Huan might be plotting to kidnap me,” Maglor said. 

“I hope not,” said Elrond. He joined them on the floor and said to Huan, “Please do not kidnap Maglor. We are all very fond of him here.”

“I hope he listens to you, son of Lúthien,” Maglor said, “but if I disappear without a word, I suppose you’ll know where to look for me.”

“I’m glad you can joke about it,” said Elrond. “Are those the letters you received on Eressëa?”

“Yes.” Maglor sighed. 

“Well, if Huan will allow it, set them aside for now and come walk with me. I want to show you the gardens.”

Maglor gladly tossed the letters back onto his bed and got to his feet. Huan huffed and butted his head into Maglor’s back, nearly knocking him over. “Enough, Huan,” Elrond said. “The letters are not going anywhere.”

Huan relented, but still followed them outside. The gardens were as large and sprawling as the house, and there were many bridges and stepping stones laid out to cross the myriad streams and little rivers that flowed through the valley. Gazebos and benches were scattered everywhere, offering places to sit and rest, or to gather, or to seek solitude. “Celebrían thought of everything,” Maglor said as they stepped over a bridge over a series of tiny falls down which water foamed and churned. 

“She did,” Elrond agreed. “There is the path that leads to the workshops,” he added, pointing to a white gravel pathway that vanished between two enormous lilacs.

“I shall go explore them as soon as my chaperon allows it,” Maglor said, earning himself another head butt from Huan. 

Elrond smiled, but only a little. “Here, this is what I wanted to show you.” They came to a hedge, unexpected in the midst of the wider open gardens, where the view was blocked only by occasional shrubs or trees. Beyond it a mallorn tree grew, almost entirely finished shedding its golden flowers in favor of dark green and silver leaves. Maglor followed Elrond through the gate and found himself in the midst of a memorial. It as not like the grand monument that the Elves of Eressëa had erected for the Edain; it was instead a collection of small and personal remembrances—devoid of historical meaning but filled with meaning of a more important kind. There were a handful of statues, but more stones with symbols or names engraved on them, or sculptures of something more abstract but made with great love, nestled gently in among flowers and bushes and small trees. 

And there were graves: three of them, there under the mallorn tree. “The hobbits?” Maglor said quietly. Elrond nodded, and Maglor stepped forward to kneel before them. They had no markers, but they needed none—not here. Snapdragons grew around Bilbo’s small mound, and forget-me-nots over Frodo’s, and Sam’s was shaded by a rosebush. Maglor remembered visiting him in the Shire before he sailed, as he trimmed his rosebushes and talked of maybe taking a cutting or two with him, if he could be sure they would survive the voyage. At least one had, and Maglor was very glad of it. 

“Did Frodo find the healing he sought?” he asked, looking back at Elrond. 

“He did.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Maglor rose, and looked around further. One of the few statues in the garden was of Gilraen, hands clasped together at her breast as she gazed upward toward the sky, or toward the branches of the mallorn tree. 

“Gilraen has been often in my thoughts, lately,” Elrond said softly, coming to stand by Maglor. 

“And in mine,” Maglor said. 

“Celebrían cannot bear to ask you, but…were you there, at the end?”

“Yes.” Maglor held out his arms and Elrond stepped into them, trembling a little. “Her grave lies atop Cerin Amroth, covered in niphredil and elanor and simbelmynë. Her grief was bitter, and she could not bear the thought of being buried under stone in Minas Tirith, but she found peace in the end. And her children and their children are strong and fair, and wise and kind.” Elrond wept, and Maglor stroked his hair. Tears pricked his own eyes. “Estel rests in Rath Dínen, with Merry and Pippin on either side. He passed beyond the Circles of the World in a time and manner of his own choosing, and he was entirely at peace.” 

“As Elros did,” Elrond whispered. 

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Thank you for staying with them when I could not.”

Maglor tightened his arms just a little. “They were happy, Elrond. So very, very happy.” 

They sat on the grass beside the hobbits’ graves, and for a time Maglor spoke, and Elrond listened, of all Aragorn and Arwen’s children, and their children, and the things they had built and the deeds they had done. Huan had not come into the memorial garden with them, perhaps realizing at last that his presence would not always be wanted. Elrond leaned on Maglor’s shoulder, weeping quietly, and when the tears stopped he straightened, refreshed from the release of them, rather than wearied. He turned his gaze up toward the mallorn tree as the breeze picked up, sending the branches waving and the leaves dancing. A few flowers drifted down onto the grass before them. Maglor reached out and caught one in his cupped hands. Like the month of May, he had a particular fondness for mallorn trees and their flowers, and the golden winter leaves—almost the very first thing he had seen upon his waking after being rescued from Dol Guldur. There was no other shade of gold that he thought so beautiful as a winter mallorn leaf. He was both unsurprised and very glad to find such a tree here in this place. 

“Galadriel planted it,” Elrond said after a little while, his voice steady again. “From a seed she brought from Lothlórien.” 

“The one in the Shire still thrives,” said Maglor. They had stopped by Bag End on their last journey west to leave little gifts underneath it for the Gardner family. Celeborn had laid his hands on the smooth silver bark and sung a quiet song of growth and resilience, though the tree hadn’t really needed it. The soil of the Shire was rich, and its roots ran deep and strong. “As does the White Tree.”

“I am glad,” Elrond said in a low voice. He ran his fingers over a few small forget-me-nots. “I am glad that Celebrimbor returned to us before Frodo left. They spoke a great deal and I think it helped them both.” He took a breath and said, more lightly, “And now Gimli too is come. No one was expecting that—except perhaps Gandalf, but you can never quite tell with him.”

Maglor laughed. “They made it then, he and Legolas? I’m glad, though I told them it was a mad idea.”

“Gimli was welcomed with great honor, when we all got over the shock, and they are currently guests of Aulë.” Elrond rose to his feet, and Maglor followed him out of the garden. “It is always quiet there,” Elrond said as the gate swung shut behind them. 

“Thank you for showing it to me,” said Maglor. 

“There will be something placed there for—for Aragorn and Arwen, sometime soon. I do not yet know what it will be.”

“There is no hurry,” Maglor said.

“I know.” 

Huan reappeared, muzzle and feet wet from whatever stream he had been splashing around in. Maglor ran his hand over Huan’s head, scratching behind his ears the way he did for Pídhres. “What else have you got to show me?” he asked Elrond. 

Elrond smiled. “The courtyard by the library, to start,” he said. “It was Bilbo’s favorite spot to read—and where he drank many cups of tea with Finrod.”

“Of course he did,” Maglor laughed, as he followed Elrond down another path lined with white and grey stones. “Terrible gossips, the both of them. It surprises me not at all that they were friends.”

As Maglor and the twins and Lord Celeborn settled in, preparations began in earnest for Midsummer celebrations, which would double as a welcoming celebration for all the newcomers. Fewer guests were expected than Maglor would have thought, but then he recalled the festivals held in Tirion and in Valmar and Alqualondë, and was relieved that Imloth Ningloron would be smaller. 

Huan continued to follow at Maglor’s heels as he went about the valley. It was the subject of many jokes and silly songs, and the source of much frustration for poor Pídhres, who as it turned out did not like to share. Maglor was her person, and Huan was an interloper and usurper. This provided even more material for Lindir’s songs, which were not only teasing but catching, so Maglor even caught Celebrían humming them as she tended to her orchards and her roses. He didn’t mind—the songs were very funny—though he would have preferred it if Pídhres could keep her claws sheathed when she sat on his shoulder. 

A few days before they expected anyone to arrive for Midsummer, Finrod appeared with Celebrimbor in tow, and several bottles of wine in hand. They found Maglor in the pottery workshop, where neither Huan nor Pídhres were permitted, at last digging his hands into a lump of clay and humming one of Lindir’s sillier songs about dogs and cats. He was alone that afternoon, and did not notice anyone coming up the path until Finrod’s shadow fell over his wheel. “Hello, Cousin,” Maglor said, looking up in surprise and letting the clay collapse beneath his hands as the wheel wound down to a stop. “What brings you here?”

“You do, of course,” said Finrod. He held up a bottle of wine. “We are going to get drunk, you and I and Celebrimbor.”

“We are?” Maglor leaned over to look past Finrod at Celebrimbor, who leaned on the door frame and shrugged. “Why?”

“Because Finrod says so,” said Celebrimbor. 

“So put that away and wash your hands,” said Finrod. “We’re going off into the woods so as not to disturb my niece and her husband.”

“You think no one else gets drunk in this valley?” Maglor asked even as he rose from his seat to obey. The clay went back with the rest, his plans of an afternoon shaping a vase dashed. 

“Not like we will,” said Finrod, following Maglor outside to a nearby stream. “There is one thing the three of us have in common, and I think I am going to burst if I do not talk about it soon with someone who understands.”

Maglor knelt to scrub the clay off his hands, and frowned into the water. “What do we have…” His hands stilled, and he watched the pale cloud of clay sloughed off of them float away downstream. “No,” he said. 

“Yes,” Finrod replied.

“No, Finrod.”

“Do you know who the last person who successfully said no to Finrod was?” Celebrimbor asked. Maglor glared at him. “Right, I don’t either.”

Maglor made himself rub the last bits of clay off his arms and stood to face his cousin. “I am not going to get drunk and talk about—about that,” he said. 

“Have you ever spoken of it?” Finrod asked. 

“That isn’t—”

“Because I haven’t,” Finrod went on, “except once to Nienna, while I was still dead. It helped, of course, but even she cannot truly understand. Come on—what is Huan doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Maglor said. Huan trotted around the corner of the workshop. “But he won’t leave me be.”

Finrod frowned at Huan, who sat down and scratched himself. “…Well, I suppose he won’t go telling tales. Come on. There’s a small glade up in the hills that is quite pleasant this time of year.”

As Finrod strode off, Celebrimbor looked at Maglor. “He won’t leave either of us alone until we go along with it, you know.”

“I can’t, Tyelpë.”

“That’s what the wine is for!” Finrod called over his shoulder. “Come on!” He was at his most imperious, missing only the Nauglamír and the crown of Nargothrond upon his head. He wore a circlet of jade instead, and strings of jade beads around his neck and rings of emerald upon his fingers—resplendent and princely, and clearly prepared to be insufferable. 

“I can’t believe I ever missed you,” Maglor said as he and Celebrimbor followed after. Finrod only laughed. Huan, of course, kept pace with them, coming up between Celebrimbor and Maglor so they could both rest their hands on his head or his back. Maglor was glad of his company in that moment, rather than merely resigned. 

“My father and uncles have left Grandmother Nerdanel’s house,” Celebrimbor said quietly. “They have gone on some journey out into the west, as you all used to when you were young.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Celebrimbor took a breath. “Maedhros met with Fëanor. It was not planned and it…did not go well.”

Maglor halted, all kinds of horrible things coming into his mind. “Define not well, Tyelpë.”

“No one was hurt,” Celebrimbor said, “but Maedhros had words with him and then—well, I didn’t see him afterward, but I have not seen my other uncles so united in anything since returning here as they were in getting him somewhere far away.”

“Are you coming?” Finrod called from far ahead of them.

“Yes, we’re coming!” Celebrimbor called back. They started to walk again. “But—well. Fëanor is back. Grandmother has spoken to him. I don’t know how that went, but he did not come back to the house with her. I went back to Tirion then—and then Finrod came to drag me out here.”

Wherever Fëanor went, Maglor thought as they left the paths of the garden and struck out across the meadowland beyond, he was sure to end up at Imloth Ningloron sometime. Maglor’s return was no secret. He could think of a few reasons his father might want to come find him. None of them were good. Last and least of Fëanor’s sons, he had been called, and it was still too easy to imagine those words in Fëanor’s own voice, as he remembered the arc of the Silmaril as it soared through the air into the Sea. 

By the time they came to the glade that Finrod had spoken of, Maglor was a little more willing to take a large swig when the first bottle of wine was presented to him. He was not willing to talk, however. Not about Sauron, and certainly not about Fëanor. They sat beneath a large beech tree, and Huan lay with his head on Maglor’s lap. “I am still shocked to see him away from Celegorm’s side,” Finrod said, pointing at Huan with the bottle.

“It was Celegorm that sent him,” Celebrimbor said. He took the bottle and took a sip. “All right, Finrod, this was your idea. I do not want to talk about it any more than Maglor does.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, either,” said Finrod, “but if I do not I will burst, and at least I know neither of you will pity me for it.”

“We cannot be the only ones you can talk to,” Celebrimbor said. “You were not alone—”

“I led them into that place once,” Finrod said, uncharacteristically sharp—but sharp like broken glass, jagged and pained, rather than sharp like a blade. “I will not take them back in memory just for my own comfort.”

Maglor drew a knee up to his chest; the brand there hurt. “At least he did not know who you were,” he said before he could bite his tongue. 

“He knew enough, after I was foolish enough to challenge him.” Finrod took the bottle back. “Did you try? You would have done better than I.”

“He challenged me,” Maglor whispered. He buried his hand in Huan’s thick fur, and couldn’t make himself look up. “But I…even before that, I was diminished. I resisted him for a time but it was not enough. And later…I tried to sing the foundations down, but he…” His other hand went to his mouth. He made himself stop touching the scars and held out his hand. The bottle was pressed into it, but he barely tasted the wine when he drank. His mouth was full of the taste of blood, and his throat ached with the memory of Sauron’s iron grip. 

Celebrimbor took the bottle and drank. “We did proper battle, with armies and songs and everything we could muster,” he said as he passed it back to Finrod. “It was hopeless from the start. We just needed to give everyone else time to get away; I did not even know that Elrond was coming. No messages had gotten through the siege.” 

“He had his Ring then,” Maglor said quietly. 

“Yes. He did. And I gave him the rest.” Celebrimbor was staring at his hands, flexing his fingers. Maglor reached out to take one of them in his own. Celebrimbor had a smith’s grip, but his hand shook as he closed his fingers around Maglor’s. 

“Not the Three,” Maglor said. 

“They were not there to surrender.”

“But you never told them where they were,” Maglor said.

Celebrimbor looked at him. “How do you know that?” he asked. 

Oh. Maglor looked at the bottle that had somehow ended up in his grasp again. He did not take another drink. “What is in this wine?” he asked instead of answering Celebrimbor’s question. It was meant to be a joke, a distraction from what he’d just revealed, but his voice shook too badly for it.

“Grapes,” said Finrod. “And I think some spices, but Elenwë is horrible and cruel and won’t share the recipe. How do you know? I thought you had never come to Eregion.”

Tears stung his eyes, and Maglor shook his head. He did not want to talk about this. He closed his eyes but he just saw Celebrimbor in torment. 

“Did he show you?” Celebrimbor whispered. “Uncle, did he show you what he—oh, oh.” He moved closer to put his hands on Maglor’s shoulders, pressing his forehead to Maglor’s temple. “That was pointlessly cruel,” he whispered.

“It was all pointless,” Maglor choked out. 

“It is over,” Celebrimbor said. “It is as you said on Eressëa. He is gone, and we are here.”

“Blessed be the race of the halflings, and may their Shire remain forever green and fair,” Finrod said, raising the bottle in a toast to the sky before taking another drink. “And more than that, Macalaurë. You survived.” 

“Do not mistake that for strength, Felagund,” said Maglor. “I kept my tongue and I kept my hands and my life but only because he wanted—he wanted—” He couldn’t say it, and had to cover his face with those unbroken hands, shuddering with the memory of cold stone against raw and bleeding flesh, the memory of a needle dragging coarse cord through skin, of the weight of earth above and around him, blocking out all air and light and slowly crushing everything that made him himself out of him. 

With his eyes closed he did not see Finrod move, but he heard him muttering at Huan until the hound moved, so Maglor was crushed between his nephew on one side and his cousin on the other, both of them whole and alive and always stronger than he had ever been. “My strength failed in the end,” Finrod said. His voice wavered at last, either from drink or grief. “He locked me in dungeons that he had delved beneath the beautiful tower that I had built, and one by one he slew my dearest friends, the only ones who would follow me out of Nargothrond—no, Celebrimbor, do not apologize! I would never have asked it of you!—and when he sent the last wolf I did not think I was buying Beren anything more than just a little more time. I had tangled him up in my own doom, I thought, and in trying to fulfill my oath I had instead led him into the hands of the Enemy.”

“But he lived,” Celebrimbor said softly. “And he lived because of you.”

“Eldarion wears your ring, the ring you gave to Barahir,” Maglor whispered. He leaned against Finrod, who shook with sudden sobs. They were all weeping by then, more than half drunk on both the horrors of the past and the wine. “This was a terrible idea, Felagund.”

“I’ve had many terrible ideas,” Finrod said when he had recovered enough to speak, voice thick still with tears, “challenging Sauron to a duel of song not least among them—but this is not one.”

“If we were meant to feel better for it,” Celebrimbor said as he opened the second wine bottle, “then it has been a failure.”

“The feeling better comes after,” Finrod said. He paused, then added, “Maybe after the hangover.”

“I was fine before you dragged us out here,” said Maglor. 

“You cannot even speak your brothers’ names,” Finrod said. “How is that fine?”

“That has nothing—nothing to do with—” 

“Doesn’t it?” Finrod asked. “What about the way you wear your hair loose so you can use it to hide at a moment’s notice, or the way you no longer perform, or even speak when in company?”

“None of that—” 

“And what about your mother?” Finrod asked.

“What about my mother?”

“You haven’t yet gone to see her. But she already knows what happened—”

“Finrod,” Celebrimbor said.

“I don’t want her to see it.” Maglor pressed his hands over his mouth again, and silently cursed the wine. He curled in on himself, hating this weakness, hating the scars, hating the way that Finrod could see him so clearly. Huan lay in front of him, head against his legs where he had them drawn up. His mother had all of his brothers back already and they were—perhaps they were not all well, but they were whole. She did not have to look at them and see the remnants of horror and pain. 

“She’s already seen it,” Finrod said quietly. “It was she who brought the palantíri out—just so she could look for you. What did Sauron do to make you stop believing that we all love you?”

Sauron did not do that, Maglor thought, but knew better than to say—even drunk. Sauron did not have to do that; I did that, long before I ever came to Mirkwood. It was one of those truths that lived deep in the shadowy places of his heart, that he could bury underneath sunshine and music and his cat and the company of Elrond and his family most of the time—even almost all of the time—and it was enough. It had to be enough.

“That is what he did,” Celebrimbor said, of the three of them the one that understood Sauron best, better than anyone ever should. “He sought out the most—the deepest and most tender parts of you and just—just hit them until they broke apart. He did not kill me so much as he unmade me, little by little.” His voice broke, and he stopped speaking for a moment. Then he said, unsteadily, “I’ve never said that aloud before.”

“That is why I brought the wine,” said Finrod.

“He knew how to do it because I had trusted him. He did not need to find your secrets immediately, Finrod, because you had companions—he could take them away instead, one by one, until there was nothing left for you but the darkness, and if you had not died he would have—” Celebrimbor shook his head. “He—he did it to himself when he made the Ring, and the Ring tried to do it to everyone who took it up. When he looked at you, really looked…”

“It was like a weight,” Maglor whispered. “Like a knife. Like—like a brand.” His hand went to his chest. 

“He put visions into my head, too,” Celebrimbor said. “I don’t remember them now, only that they were there once. I asked Námo to erase them—I begged for it, and he took pity on me in the end.”

“He did not bother with such things for us,” Finrod said. “The wolves in the dark were enough, and the cold iron, and the dripping stones, and the knowledge that I had brought them there.” He was shivering a little. Maglor wrapped his arm around Finrod’s middle, and Finrod leaned on his shoulder. “Maybe if he had learned the truth of me he would have done more. And, maybe, if I had chosen a different route north—”

“Don’t,” said Celebrimbor. “That way lies only madness, and you know it.”

They finished the second bottle of wine in silence. Maglor thought that he should tell them how Sauron had silenced him at the last moment before his rescue, but he couldn’t make himself form the words. He couldn’t speak, either, of the slow and painful return to music that had come even after he could speak again. Bad enough they’d both noticed everything else.

“Well, this was not fun at all,” Finrod said at last. The afternoon was wearing on. “It was cathartic, though. I can’t remember the last time I wept so hard. We should do it again sometime.”

“Absolutely not,” said Maglor. He felt hollowed out, though in a strange and clean sort of way—like he’d purged some lingering poison by speaking some of it aloud, though he’d never admit it to Finrod, who would only be smug about it, and then really insist that they do it again.

“I don’t think I have ever been this drunk,” Celebrimbor muttered as he staggered to his feet. “This is worse than that stuff Thranduil’s son brought.”

“Sing something for us, Maglor,” said Finrod. 

“You sing something,” Maglor said. He did not try to stand, and instead leaned forward to wrap his arms around Huan’s neck, pressing his face into the thick fur so that the trees would stop spinning. 

“I can’t think of any appropriate songs. You’re better at mournful laments—or do all the tales get it wrong?”

“Ugh, no laments,” said Celebrimbor. “Come on. I would like to return to the house before it gets dark and one of us breaks an ankle getting out of the woods.” He reached down to haul them up, one by one. Huan licked all their faces thoroughly, leaving them spluttering and protesting and then laughing, because if they didn’t laugh they would start weeping again, and none of them could bear more tears. 

Elrond met them in the garden just outside the house, and looked between them in astonishment and then alarm, for their faces were still red and splotchy, and Finrod’s eyes were swollen. “What in the world have you been doing?” he asked. “Why do I feel as though I should be scolding you like wayward children?”

“Finrod can explain,” said Maglor, “for it was his idea.”

“I merely followed my elders,” Celebrimbor said, swaying on his feet. 

“What’s your excuse?” Elrond asked Maglor. 

“Finrod is insufferable when he doesn’t get his way.”

“I beg your pardon,” Finrod protested, attempting to sound dignified but ruining the effect by falling into Maglor. “I am never insufferable.”

“You are often insufferable,” Maglor said. “And full of terrible ideas.” 

“You all three need to go sleep whatever this is off,” Elrond said. Maglor couldn’t quite tell if he was trying not to laugh at them or not. 

Outside of Maglor’s room, Celebrimbor halted and turned to him. “It was all lies in that place,” he said. “Nothing he told you was true. You know that, don’t you?”

Even a liar like Sauron could take the truth and use it to his purposes, Maglor thought. “I know,” he said out loud. Celebrimbor gave him a doubtful look. “Don’t mistake this afternoon for—for anything like normal. I meant what I said—I was fine before Finrod came with his awful ideas, and I will be fine when this wears off.” He reached out to brush a strand of hair from Celebrimbor’s face, and cupped his cheek for a moment. “I’m only here because you did not give up the Three,” he said quietly. “Your strength saved my life, Tyelpë.” 

A few tears escaped to slide down Celebrimbor’s face before he turned away to return to his own room. Huan all but shoved Maglor into his, toward the bed. “If you had wanted to be helpful you could have stolen Finrod’s wine before we drank it,” Maglor informed him, and received a deeply unimpressed look in return. With a sigh, he sank onto his bed and let himself fall face first into the pillows.