The Day Transcending Night by StarSpray  

As you awake with morning's hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
     Do not stand
         By my grave, and cry—
     I am not there,
          I did not die.
- “Immortality” by Clare Horner

- - 

Second Age 1697

In the centuries since the end of the War of Wrath and the start of a new Age, Lossenol and Daeron and Eluréd and Elurín had kept moving. They had all been in agreement that they wanted to see more of the world than just their small corner of Eriador and the Ered Luin where they had spent the twins’ childhood and then the War of Wrath—and so they had. They had lingered in the west until the kingdom of Lindon was established and Elros had sailed away with the Edain to their own island kingdom, and then they’d set off. They had visited Khazad-dûm and their Dwarven friends from the Ered Luin who had settled there after the loss of their own cities, and had crossed over the Misty Mountains to find the vales of the Anduin, and had crossed that river and come eventually to the Sea of Rhûn and the wide lands beyond where both Elves and Men lived, many entirely ignorant of all that had been happening in the west. Then they had come back over the mountains to find new cities and realms had sprung up in their absence. Númenor had flourished and mariners had returned to Middle-earth to found new cities—and, to Daeron’s dismay, to fell trees for their ships with little heed given to the forests they plundered. 

Lindon was thriving, and so was Eregion, the realm founded by the last scion of Fëanor in Middle-earth—Celebrimbor, son of Curufin. Eluréd and Elurín’s kinsman Celeborn and his wife Galadriel were also to be found there, but Daeron and Lossenol had chosen to avoid the city when Eluréd and Elurín had gone to visit them—Daeron because he did not care for cities or very much for his old acquaintances out of Doriath, and Lossenol because he wanted to avoid the Noldor, and particularly anyone who had once known or followed the Sons of Fëanor. He had been one of them, once, and that service had taken him to Doriath—and there he had been caught in a cave-in that cost him his left eye and all of his memories of the time before. It was only because Daeron had recognized the light in his good eye as that of one who had been born across the Sea that he knew with certainty that he was a Noldo at all. 

He’d left all of that behind, and he did not want it back, even now.

They’d ventured east again, but there were stirrings now of some dark power growing in the south, where mountains rose in strange formations and fumes spewed into the air to cover that land in shadows. It reminded Lossenol too much of Angband, and Daeron had reminded them all that Sauron had never been caught—Sauron who hated the line of Lúthien, and who had battled with Daeron himself as the world broke apart after the war, and lost. 

So they’d come back west, though not quite back into Eriador. They’d found a spot south of the White Mountains among some gently rolling hills, near a clear flowing stream, and chose that place to settle for a while. They built a house and a stable for their horses, Daeron sung up his Girdle of protection, and after a couple of years Lossenol started to think they might be able to put down roots. But that was a dangerous thought—the last time they’d done it, those roots had been violently torn up by war and dragonfire. 

And it seemed it might happen again. Eluréd came back from a hunting trip with the news they’d feared. “Armies are marching west,” he said even before he stepped through the door. “Through the Gap, passing over the Angren into Eriador. Their banners are black and bear the sign of a great red eye.”

“We’ve seen that before,” Elurín said. They had seen one or two in the east, but had never learned whose sign it was or where they came from. “Men or orcs?”

“Both,” said Eluréd. “Daeron, Lossë, we—I think we might be able to stay here, safe. But Elrond will not remain in Lindon—he’ll march out with Gil-galad, if he isn’t already in Eregion. They must know that this is coming.”

“We can’t follow the armies north,” said Daeron. “That is just asking for trouble. We might go west instead, and make our way north along the coast, but that will take a very long time.”

“What if we followed the coast as far as the Númenórean havens on the Gwathló?” asked Elurín. 

“You think they will involve themselves in this?” Lossenol asked, doubtful. 

Elurín shrugged. “At the least they might let us sail with them north to Lindon, and from there we can ride out to catch up with Elrond.”

“I can’t ride into battle,” Lossenol said. 

“Nor can I,” said Daeron, “but we might still be able to do something to help. And—if this is Gorthaur, as I fear…it’s only a matter of time before he learns of us. We have not made a secret of our movements in years past.”

“We can come back, after,” said Elurín. “The Girdle will hold, won’t it?”

“For a while, and I suppose there’s no reason to expect those armies to come this way—there’s no one here, except us.”

Lossenol sighed, and reached for his bag. “Better start packing, then.” 

They left the next morning, moving swiftly but carefully through the woods and hills, north and west, passing around the White Mountains and then striking due west toward the mouths of the River Angren. The lands were more open there, thanks to the timbering of Númenor, but the skies to the north were hazy, and the wind carried the faint scent of smoke. “At least this time it’s not a dragon,” Eluréd murmured. 

“No,” Daeron said grimly. “It’s worse.”

Summer was waning by the time they reached the coast, some ways south of the Angren’s mouth. It was misty and cool, and the beach was not sandy but pebbly. They made their camp in a small bit of woods, everyone quiet and thoughtful. Usually Daeron would take out his flute or Eluréd his harp, but no one was in the mood for music. Eluréd leaned against Lossenol, head on his shoulder. “Something is about to happen,” he murmured after a while, voice faint and distant. Elurín turned sharply to peer into his face, and Daeron looked up from the fire he was tending. “Something—big.”

“How big, birdie?” Daeron asked softly. “For us or for the world?”

“Both, I think. There’s—the Shadow is growing, and I cannot see past it. Eregion will burn—all the holly trees will wither, and the doors of Khazad-dûm will close.”

“Lindon is still strong,” said Daeron after a moment. “Gil-galad is strong. And I think if they are called upon the Men of Númenor will send aid. They must remember the ancient friendship of the Edain and the Eldar.”

The next morning Lossenol woke from a dream in which he was looking for someone, but upon waking he couldn’t remember who. It wasn’t the first time he’d had such a dream, though it had been years since his lost past had tried to assert itself in his mind. He lay for a while, curled up around Daeron under their blankets and cloaks, and listened to the birds in the trees. There were more of them than there should have been, even this late in the year. They were all fleeing the fires and battles in the north. 

Then he heard a voice, distant, somewhere south of them. The song sounded familiar, though something about it made Lossenol think it should not have been as mournful as it was. And the voice—he could have sworn that he knew that voice. It made his head hurt, a sharp pain just behind his eyes. He closed them and buried his face in Daeron’s hair, trying to ignore the voice and the pain, but even after it faded away the feeling of knowing persisted, and at last he got up, careful not to wake Daeron or the twins, and slipped away from their camp. Mist hung over the shore, and he saw no one. The wind picked up, blowing off of the water and casting the spray across his face. Without knowing why he ventured closer to the water’s edge. The stones were cold under his bare feet, and before he realized it he’d gone far enough that the waves washed up over his ankles, making him yelp and stumble back, feeling suddenly as though he’d been jolted awake, like he’d been half-dreaming before. 

He also felt like something was threatening to unravel inside of him. He needed Daeron—he needed to return to Daeron and—

A hand caught his wrist as he turned away from the water, and Lossenol cried out, spinning around and then freezing in place, confronted with a figure in the shape of a man but made mostly of sea foam and water—but with eyes that burned like stars, that bored into his, igniting the pain in his head again. “You are not one of Melyanna’s,” the figure said, tilting his head as he regarded Lossenol with something like curiosity. But curiosity from Ossë, Lossenol thought, was a dangerous thing. “So why does her power lay over you…?”

“Please let me go,” he whispered. “I didn’t—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

But Ossë ignored him and leaned forward, looking even more closely at him. A healer had done the same, once—a woman Daeron had known not long after they had met, who had tried to see what it was that kept Lossenol’s memories locked away. It had hurt in exactly this way, blinding, dizzying, enough to make him forget about everything except the pain and how much he needed for it to stop. 

Daeron had been there, last time. He had sung the pain away, and then he had sung Lossenol to sleep so he could recover. But Daeron was not there now, and Lossenol couldn't even cry out for him, and this pain was a thousand times worse. His knees gave out, but he hardly felt the stones when he hit them, or the waves when they washed up over him—violent waves, towering waves that caught and dragged him back into the water, where Ossë’s power enveloped him, nothing at all like Daeron’s, or even the twins’—it was the power of storms and of tides, all wildness and danger of the Sea. 

I see, Ossë’s voice echoed through his head. Lossenol opened his mouth to scream but only bubbles came out. This should be interesting. I think it is time you remember your name, son of Fëanor. Let’s change the words to this verse of the Song, shall we? 

Everything went dark. 

The great hall of Menegroth was half-flooded, fountains overrun and their water mingling with dirt and blood, running dark in the flickering lamplight. Before the dais where once Thingol and Melian had sat in splendor, he locked swords with Dior Eluchíl, both of them half-wild things in their fury. His sword slid home first, sinking through a gap in Dior’s armor—and Dior just grabbed his arm, yanking him in closer. “I know what you seek here,” he snarled in his ear, “and you won’t find it. The Silmaril is gone—and I am not as merciful as my mother. She spared your life—I refuse you death. Death would be too easy for you, Celegorm son of Fëanor.” The words buzzed through his ear, echoing oddly through the din of battle around them. “You’ll live to see the ruin of all you have wrought and the loss of all you hold dear.”

“You’re a little late for that,” he growled, and tried to push Dior off, but he would not be moved. 

“We’ll see,” said Dior, and only then did he release his grip, falling back against the thrones. His blood spilled over the dais, and he raised his eyes to the ceiling to speak another word, and then a terrible cracking sound erupted around them, and someone called Celegorm’s name, and—

He jerked awake as the Sea spit him out. He couldn’t breathe, there was just—water, his lungs full of it, and his stomach and his nose and—he somehow rolled onto his front, choking and retching until at last the water started to come out, but it wasn’t enough, he was still drowning—

“Atya!” Elurín’s hands found his shoulders. “Atya, what happened? Are you all right?”

That wasn’t right. He couldn’t be—he wasn’t—he heaved and water spilled out of his mouth and nose, and suddenly he could breathe again. He collapsed against Elurín, and was vaguely aware of Eluréd and Daeron running down to kneel by him too, all of them talking over one another. He couldn’t say anything. His throat burned and everything tasted like blood and saltwater. Everything hurt. His head, his shoulder—it was like waking up in Ossiriand all over again.

“Lossë?” Daeron’s hands were warm on his face. “Lossë, look at me.” He opened his eyes with effort. Daeron’s face swam before him. “It’s all right. We’ve got you. Just rest—you’re safe.”

There was something wrong with that, but he couldn’t think of what it was. Lossë wasn’t his name—or—it was his name but it shouldn’t be. It was not a name he deserved, but he didn’t…he couldn’t…

Eluréd and Elurín picked him up, carried him back to the camp where the three of them peeled off his soaked clothes and dressed him again in clean and dry ones. Daeron carefully dried his hair and combed it, and then wrapped him in blankets by the fire. Through it all he couldn’t do anything but cough up more seawater and shiver. “Sleep, Lossë,” he murmured, power wrapping around the words.

“N-no, please, I don’t—”

“Shh, it’s all right.” Daeron’s hand was on his face again, which was wet. He began to sing, a familiar song to chase away pain and to bring rest. He’d sung it in Ossiriand—it was the very first song that Lossenol had ever heard him sing. 

No, not Lossenol, that wasn’t—he wasn’t…

He slept, and his dreams were jumbled and confused, his life before blending strangely with his life after. He woke hours later, as evening fell, feeling battered and bruised and furious and afraid and relieved and devastated all in equal measure. When he rolled over his face hit Daeron’s leg, and Daeron’s hand immediately came to rest on his hair. “Don’t get up,” he murmured. “Just rest.”

He wouldn’t be saying such things if he knew. 

“He didn’t just fall into the waves,” one of the twins said from across the fire. “Something happened.”

“There was someone else there,” said the other. He thought that it was Eluréd speaking now—both twins were sometimes burdened with foresight, but Eluréd’s always seemed to be a little clearer.

“Ossë?”

“Who else? I think we would all know if it had been Ulmo himself.”

“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” said Daeron. “And then—I’m sorry, songbirds, but I don’t think we can continue on to Lindon. Not with Lossë in this state. As soon as he’s able to travel I think we should go home.”

“Of course,” said Elurín.

“M’not…” he tried to say, but his tongue felt too thick in his mouth, the words in his mind unable to get to his lips. That had nothing to do with the curse that had locked way his memories—it was a lingering effect from getting his skull bashed in when Menegroth had collapsed. These days it rarely bothered him—only when he was especially tired.

“Shh,” Daeron murmured, thumb stroking over his temple. “It’s all right.”

He drifted, unable to stay awake but unable to quite fall asleep either. Daeron sang quiet songs, and Eluréd played his harp. Memories marched through his mind, out of order and making little sense at first. But by the time morning came he felt able to sit up, even though his head still hurt terribly, and—

And he remembered. Everything. His childhood, the Darkening, his father’s death. Himlad. The Dagor Bragollach. Nargothrond—

No. He flinched away from that. He couldn’t think of Nargothrond. And then—the Nirnaeth, and Doriath…

He looked over at Eluréd and Elurín, seeing them just starting to stir. It was another grey and misty morning. Somewhere a bird called in the trees, alone and plaintive. He looked away from the twins, feeling sick. He’d known that they looked like Lúthien—Daeron had said so, often—but now he remembered, he knew exactly how true it was, and how true it was that they looked like their father. 

Dior couldn’t have had any idea how far his curse would reach—how it would entangle his own children. Celegorm deserved every bit of it, but Eluréd and Elurín didn’t. Daeron didn’t. Daeron had saved his life without knowing who he really was. They’d both been happy for him to leave his forgotten past behind, but thanks to Ossë that was now impossible. 

He couldn’t go to Lindon. No one would accept whatever help he could offer. He would find even less of a welcome from Celebrimbor in Eregion. But he couldn’t go home. Once Daeron and the twins learned the truth—that was it. It wouldn’t change anything they’d been through together and it certainly didn’t change the fact that Celegorm loved all three of them more than he thought he’d loved anyone besides his brothers, but he couldn’t stay. He covered his face with his hands, unable to bear the thought of losing any of them but knowing it was inevitable. It was like a knife shoved between his ribs.

“Lossenol?” Daeron stirred, and sat up, and the knife twisted. 

“That’s not my name,” he said into his palms. 

For a moment Daeron was silent. Then he said, “Yes, it is. It was a gift from Eluréd and Elurín.”

“But I can’t—” He lifted his head, met Daeron’s gaze, and—

He knew Daeron, by now. He could read him as well as he’d once been able to read Curufin, able to have a conversation in a glance. He could read that look of apprehension in Daeron’s eyes, could read the way he held himself very still, the way he spoke so carefully—just like he had in the very beginning, in the flet in Ossiriand, when they hadn’t known each other, when Daeron had been afraid of him. Celegorm couldn’t tell now if Daeron was afraid of him, but he was afraid, and…

Oh. Oh this was worse. He wasn’t going to lose Daeron—because you couldn’t lose something you’d never had to begin with.

“…You know, don’t you? You know who I am.”

“Lossë…” 

“How long—when did you—have you known all along?” He scrambled backward, almost falling over in the leaves. “You knew who I was and you never told me?”

“You didn’t want to know—”

“But I asked you! I asked if there was anything you knew or even guessed, and you lied—” He’d lied over and over again, when he claimed he didn’t know why the sight of Gil-Estel hurt, when he talked around his lost memories, always offering support if he ever chose to try to recover them but never actually encouraging— “But why—what would you—” If Ossë’s breaking of Dior’s curse had been like the world turning upside down, this was the world turning sideways. Everything looked wrong. Everything was called into sudden question. “Have you just—just been laughing at me all this time? At having a kinslayer under your thumb—”

“No!” Daeron cried. “It’s not—I didn’t know, I thought I could guess but I wasn’t sure, not until—”

“Not until what?”

“Until the Silmaril appeared in the sky and your Oath tried to wake up—but even then—”

“You lied to me! What else has been a lie?” He fell back again when Daeron started to reach for him. “Don’t touch me, Daeron—you—”

“Lossë?” The twins had woken as he raised his voice. “What’s going on?”

“Ask Daeron!” Celegorm snapped. “He knows. He’s known the whole time—he let you—he let us—”

“It’s not like that,” Daeron said, very quietly. “You know it’s not. Lossë—”

“That’s not my name!”

Silence fell over the camp. Then Elurín asked, very carefully, “What is your name, then?”

He didn’t look at the twins. He couldn’t look at the twins. He could barely look at Daeron, and he couldn’t make his tongue work. He couldn’t even choke out his own name because he knew what it would do to them. The knife twisted again. Every breath burned; he tasted blood in the back of his throat. 

Daeron didn’t answer the twins either. Instead he reached for the pendant around his neck—they all wore them, matching leaves carved of wood taken from the woods of Eriador, where they’d made their home until the War of Wrath, and carved by Daeron. Celegorm still had his around his neck, and if a part of him wanted to fling it away, the greater part never wanted to take it off. Daeron now pressed something on the edges of his, and it opened like a locket. Out of it fell a small flash of gold. “Your name is Celegorm,” he said finally, very softly, and held out his palm. Both of the twins froze, but Celegorm still couldn’t make himself look at them. “You were wearing this when Finglas brought you to me in Ossiriand. I guessed who you might be, then, but I did not know.”

He took the object that Daeron held out, and choked on the sudden grief that welled up at the sight of it. A pendant, small—a golden eight-pointed star. Curufin had made it—it had been one of the last things he’d made just for the sake of making something beautiful, before he had turned his mind entirely to blades and armor and weapons. He’d made such pendants for all of them, the same way Daeron had carved the leaves, but Celegorm didn’t know if any of his brothers had managed to keep theirs until they reached Doriath. He’d never taken his off. 

“Was it all lies?” he heard himself ask, then. “Was it—all this time, have you just…”

“You know that I haven't,” Daeron said. 

“No, I don’t know! I don’t think I know you at all!” He scrambled to his feet and fled, ignoring Eluréd when he called after him. The stones of the beach were cold under his feet, and he slipped more than once, falling into the waves and soaking himself all over again. In the water and the waves he thought he could hear Ossë laughing, but it didn’t matter. He just needed to get away.

He didn’t stop as the morning drew on and burned away the mists, drying out his clothes and hair and leaving him itchy under the salt that remained behind, though eventually he had to stop running. He walked through the heat of the day, through the first part of the afternoon. The grief that was clawing its way through him was not going to kill him, as much as he wished it would. He understood, now, what Dior had meant. Somehow he’d known that when Celegorm had entered Menegroth he hadn’t expected to leave it alive, even if he had told himself he was not courting death. He’d known that they would never get their hands on the Silmarils—not any of them, no matter who held them—and he had known their house was cursed, and he the worst of them all. The Everlasting Darkness had not seemed like a punishment, then. 

Finally, he stumbled, and then fell to his knees, hitting the stones hard but hardly feeling it past the searing, horrible, rending wave of loss that finally rose up to choke him until he opened his mouth to scream it into the uncaring wind. 

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Over the course of several weeks, Maglor had taken up sculpting—of a sort. He had gathered up driftwood and stones and seaweed, all in plentiful supply on that particular stretch of shore, and had spent many hours losing himself in putting them together in shapes that, at long last, looked the way he wanted. Six statues now stood in a row several feet above the high tide line. Anyone who happened to pass by, unlikely though it was, would recognize them as people, but he thought only he would know them for his brothers, from Maedhros to Ambarussa. 

As he hummed to himself, adding a few small stones to finish Curufin’s face, a sudden scream rent the air. It was a terrible, ragged sound, and under Maglor’s hands the sculpture of Curufin shivered and then fell apart—and so did Caranthir beside him, and Maedhros, and the twins at the end of the row. He stumbled back with a cry of his own, looking at the piles of wood and stone that were all that was left of his weeks of labor. 

Except one. Celegorm’s statue had lost a few stones, but it remained standing. Maglor stared at it, and then turned away, looking northward up the beach from which the sound had come. He’d heard faint music from that direction the day before, and had almost thought he recognized it—but then, he’d thought, what would bring Daeron of Doriath to this part of the world?

That scream, though—Maglor recognized the sound, if not the voice. He’d screamed like that himself before, long ago when the world had broken around him and Maedhros had cast himself into the fire, and he had been left alone with nothing but a sword and a burned hand and a grief that he’d thought for a while would either kill him or drive him mad. He could see no one, but somewhere just out of sight, someone was in pain. He thought they must also be lost—that kind of scream didn’t tear itself out of someone if they were not utterly, horribly alone. There was probably no real comfort he could give them for whatever had happened to drive them to such agony, but he could at least make sure they were all right—that they were not hurt, that they had food, and perhaps shelter. If they really were alone, maybe he and they both could take comfort in someone else to share a fire with for a night or two. 

He picked up his sword—better to be safe than sorry—and made his way up the beach, thinking of shared campfires and trying not to think about the fact that the last person with whom he’d done that had been his brother. The stones crunched pleasingly under his boots, and he hummed in time with the waves that washed up over them. Occasionally he paused to pick up a shell, and once for a bit of sea glass—his favorite thing to find, always pleasantly smooth and cool against his palm.

After a while he saw a figure up ahead, huddled on their knees as the waves foamed around them, doubled over and heaving with the force of their sobs. It was a heartbreaking sight, and Maglor hurried forward, really worried now that they might be injured too, or that they were half frozen from kneeling in cold water, especially since they had no cloak or jacket. “Hail, stranger,” he called while still some distance away, not wanting to frighten them before he got too close. “Are you lost? I have—” He broke off when their head jerked up. Tangled and damp silver hair fell forward over it, but the part of the face he could see— 

Maglor halted, and then stepped backward, horror taking hold of him in place of the concern. That face belonged to his brother—but that wasn’t possible. Celegorm was dead. Maglor had seen himself when the ceiling of Menegroth’s throne room fell in. They had searched all possible exits afterward, spending days digging through rubble and snow to find anyone who might have survived, might have been trapped, or even just bodies—but there had been no one. Menegroth had become both Dior’s tomb and Celegorm’s, when they slew one another before the thrones. 

And yet here was Celegorm, wide-eyed, stumbling to his feet, slipping on the wet stones—

No, it wasn’t possible. He’d gone mad at last, maybe, to be seeing ghosts like this. Maglor turned and fled. He heard the ghost call his name, hoarse and almost as he remembered Celegorm’s voice, but he did not turn back. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. If he wasn’t dreaming it was a trick and he did not want to know who had found him or who would use his brother in such a way—and Celegorm, of all of them. Wouldn’t some enemy try to use Maedhros instead? It didn’t make sense.

He reached his broken sculptures just as Celegorm caught up. “Maglor, wait!” He grabbed Maglor’s wrist, and then when Maglor twisted to try to pull free they both went down, landing hard on the stony beach as Maglor struggled to get free, turning and hitting and even trying to scratch— “Maglor—Maglor, please! Stop!” It was the please that made Maglor fall still, staring up at Celegorm as he straddled his chest, both of them breathing hard. Celegorm was soaking wet, his face splotchy with tears, and the left side of it was a mess of scars around an eye gone milky with blindness. “It’s me,” he said. 

“That’s—no, that’s impossible,” Maglor whispered. “You’re…I saw you—”

“I’m sorry.” Celegorm sat up and then pulled Maglor up after him. His embrace was tight, almost painful, as he buried his face in the folds of Maglor’s cloak. “I’m so sorry.”

It was really him. Maglor didn’t think he could dream this up, didn’t think any kind of madness could conjure this. He wrapped his own arms around Celegorm, eyes burning. “You’re really here?” he whispered.

“I am now. I’m sorry. Cáno, I’m so—”

“Stop apologizing, I don’t—you’re alive—” 

They sat like that for a long time, just holding one another, weeping, both of them apologizing and then telling the other to stop, over and over again. Maglor had so many questions but he also didn’t care about any of the answers because whatever had happened, his brother was alive and he had him back. For so long he’d been entirely alone, and now all of a sudden he wasn’t, and it was equal parts terrifying and such a relief that he didn’t know what to do with it. 

Eventually, Celegorm noticed the sculpture that was still standing. He sat back, staring at it. “Is that—is that me?” 

Maglor glanced at it, and almost wanted to laugh. “Yes. I made—I made all of you, but when you screamed earlier, all the others broke apart.” And that made him remember the scream itself, and all the agony that it had held in it. “Tyelko, what…what brought you out here? What happened?” He reached up to brush his thumb over the scars beneath Celegorm’s blind eye. “Where have you been all this time?”

Celegorm’s expression crumpled, and he leaned forward to hide his face in Maglor’s shoulder again. “I forgot,” he said into the fabric of his cloak. “I forgot everything. I woke up in Ossiriand and I didn’t—I didn’t even know my name.”

“But you know it now.”

There was a sound that might have been laughter, if it didn’t also sound like crying. “I remembered this morning. Or—it started yesterday, but I woke up this morning knowing everything. And Daeron…”

“Daeron?” Maglor gently pushed at Celegorm’s shoulders until he drew back. “Hang on. Let’s not sit out here in the open; it’s getting cold.” The sun was sinking toward the west, and a chill wind was picking up. “And you’re barefoot, Tyelko—”

“Oh.” Celegorm looked down at himself. His clothes were of good make and not nearly as worn or patched as Maglor’s, but he was still damp and bedraggled from kneeling in the surf, and when a gust of wind caught them he shivered. “Left them back at the camp.”

“You can get them tomorrow, maybe,” Maglor said. “Come on.” He took Celegorm’s hand and led him away from the beach, past the tough patches of shore grass and into the trees where he had made his own camp. It wasn’t much, but he had an extra blanket that he wrapped around Celegorm’s shoulders before kneeling to restart the fire.

Celegorm looked around. He held himself carefully, and there was a tightness around his eyes that suggested he was in pain. When Maglor asked, though, he just shrugged. “Headache. It’s…it’ll pass. Probably. It’s not as bad as this morning. Or the ones I used to get.”

“Because you’ve just remembered…?” Maglor ventured. 

“Yes. And—sometimes it just hurts. Sometimes it’s hard to—to talk. Feels hard now.” He lowered his gaze to his arms looped around his knees. “From getting my—my skull bashed in. Sorry.”

Maglor tossed another stick on the fire. “You know I’m not really a healer, but I know some songs…”

Celegorm shook his head, once. “It’s as healed as it’ll get. Most of the time I don’t—hurt at all.” 

“I see.” Maglor sat back on his heels, and looked at his brother. It had been a very long time, and they were both greatly changed, but almost Maglor wanted to say that Celegorm had changed backwards. Besides the scars, he seemed more like the brother he had known in their youth, when they’d grown up together racing horses and sharing secrets, long before they’d sworn any oaths or come to Middle-earth where Celegorm had turned into someone hard and sharp and dangerous, not only a hunter but a predator, bitterly angry. Those edges had softened again, rounded out like the coastline that he had watched slowly turn from something jagged and broken to something smoother, more natural. The sadness was new, though—that awful, bone-deep grief—but it was also familiar. It was something they shared. “I’m not really good at speaking to other people anymore, either,” Maglor offered after a few minutes. “Not for the same reasons, I just…I’ve been alone for a very long time. No don’t apologize,” he added quickly when Celegorm flinched and opened his mouth. “It’s not—I didn't it like that. See what I mean? I’m sorry. Just…”

Celegorm reached over and took his hand, the right one. It was scarred over now, a faceted pattern of ancient burns across his palm. “Does it still hurt?” Celegorm asked softly.

“No. Gets stiff sometimes—it’s just an old injury now.”

“Is it…it’s true, isn’t it. What they say of Nelyo.”

“That he threw himself into the earth?” Maglor said softly. Celegorm nodded. “Yes. I didn’t see what he was doing until too late—I couldn’t reach him.”

“I’m sorry,” Celegorm whispered. “If I wasn’t going to die in Doriath, I should’ve been there.”

“I’m glad you weren’t there, Tyelko. I’m glad you never tried to touch them—that you weren’t burned. Wherever you’ve been, I’m so glad you didn’t continue down the same path we did.”

As night fell, the wind carried down from the north the sound of a flute, mournful and haunting. Celegorm shuddered at the sound and leaned hard against Maglor. “Is that Daeron?” Maglor asked. Celegorm nodded, but didn’t speak. “Will he be looking for you?”

“I hope not. He—he knew. All along. And he never…” Celegorm shuddered again and fell silent. 

There was a story there. Maglor rather hoped Daeron would come looking, if only so he could be the one to speak to him. They’d only met once, at the Mereth Aderthad. Everything had been so hopeful then—it felt like another lifetime, now. He remembered Daeron well—he had been talented and clever, and both easy and fun to talk to. There had been an air of lingering melancholy about him, and he had held himself somewhat apart, except when he and Maglor had slipped away to talk alone. It had been the easiest friendship that Maglor had ever fallen into—they’d both lived and breathed music in such similar ways, but thought differently enough that their conversations had always been interesting, that they both had had much to teach and to learn.

It hadn’t lasted. But he’d done his best to pass on what Daeron had taught him to Elrond and Elros later. He still remembered the songs that Daeron had shared with him, and the ones they’d played together by the Pools of Ivrin. And now he had no idea what to make of whatever this connection was between Daeron and Celegorm. It sounded as though they’d been together since the aftermath of Doriath, which meant that Maglor owed Daeron an enormous debt, for saving his brother’s life. But something had happened that morning or the day before, and Maglor couldn’t guess whether it was something either of them had done, or the result of some outside force. 

Ossë had been laughing, the day before—but Maglor often heard his laughter on the wind, and had only thought that it heralded a storm to come in the next day or two.

“We can talk more tomorrow, if you’re feeling better,” he said. “Want me to sing you to sleep?”

Celegorm’s breath hitched. “Yes please,” he whispered.

Maglor stroked his hair and sang a silly and quiet song from their youth, long ago and far away. He hadn’t written it, but it had once been one of Celegorm’s favorites. He felt Celegorm shudder in his arms as more tears escaped, but he did not keep fighting the exhaustion that soon dragged him down into sleep. 

Once Celegorm was asleep, Maglor tucked both blankets around him, and then slipped away, venturing back out onto the beach. He could still hear Daeron’s flute. It was tempting to go find him—he’d thought about it before, though those had just been passing fancies on days he felt particularly lonely and had remembered the rumors that Daeron, too, had disappeared to wander forever alone in grief. Until now he’d never had any idea of where to even start looking. But the temptation passed quickly; he wouldn’t go, now—not without Celegorm. 

They would have to go in the morning though, Maglor thought as he returned to the camp. Celegorm had left Daeron barefoot and with no supplies—not even any weapons. Maglor sighed and joined him under the blankets, wondering what kind of confrontation had made him do such a thing. Celegorm rolled in his sleep, throwing an arm around Maglor’s waist and murmuring something unintelligible. Maglor wrapped the blankets around them both and stared up at the stars through the tree branches until he fell asleep, wondering what he’d done to deserve such a miracle.

In the morning he woke confused, wondering why he was so warm, and then he opened his eyes to find Celegorm still curled up around him, though he was already awake. “Tyelko…?”

“Cáno.”

Maglor rolled over so they were both lying on their sides facing each other. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” he whispered. “I missed you so much…”

“No you didn’t.” Celegorm didn’t meet his gaze. “Not—before Doriath, I was—”

“You’re my brother. Of course I missed you!”

“I was a monster,” he whispered. “I don’t…it feels like someone else did all of that. But it wasn’t someone else, it was me, and then I—Cáno, I’ve made it even worse—”

“What do you mean?”

“Dior’s sons. They were—another Ent found them, brought them out of Doriath. To Ossiriand.”

“Another Ent…that’s what happened to you, too?” That explained why they had found no trace of him, maybe, if an Ent had discovered him and carried him away. It had snowed hard—those signs would have been covered quickly.

Celegorm nodded. “Daeron was there. He said he’d felt called back west of the Ered Luin. And then the Ents brought us to him, where he was spending the winter in this old flet…”

“So the Ent and then Daeron saved your life. And Dior’s sons’.” Maglor frowned, a few vague memories from the War of Wrath coming back to him. “We heard rumors of mighty singers keeping the mountains clear. Daeron’s name was mentioned, but I don’t think I really believed it was him.”

“That was him—him and the twins. I was there too, but I’m no singer, not like you. Or them. But—they didn’t know who I was. And I didn’t know who I was, except that Daeron knew me for a Noldo, and the Ent had told him something of what had happened in Doriath, so…they knew I was a kinslayer, but not that I was the very worst of all of them—”

“Tyelko…”

“Except Daeron did know.” Celegorm pulled a small pendant from his pocket, a golden star on a slender golden chain. Curufin's work. “He kept this the whole time.”

“He must have had a good reason for it,” said Maglor. He reached under his shirt to pull out the matching pendant that he wore. Celegorm touched it with light fingers and then looked away. 

“Probably,” Celegorm said after a moment. “But it’s…he lied. All this time, and…I don’t know what else he might have lied about.”

“You can ask him,” Maglor pointed out. 

“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I want to know the answer. And—I don’t think I can ever see the twins again.” 

Maglor recognized that misery—he knew it intimately. “I’m sorry, Tyelko,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“They called me their father,” Celegorm whispered. “Me and Daeron both—even though we tried to tell them not to. And now they know that I’m the one who killed their real father, and…”

“I was the reason Elrond and Elros lost their mother,” Maglor said after a moment. “I did not kill her as you killed Dior, but I was there—I and Maedhros—when she threw herself with the Silmaril into the Sea. Because of us. We found the twins afterward and I insisted that we take them with us, because Sirion was burning and Ambarussa were dead, and I didn’t know whether anyone would come from Balar before orcs or worse came on our heels. I meant to send them back to Gil-galad much sooner than I did, but it wasn’t possible. It was too dangerous. So I raised them as best I could, and I loved them—I still love them, so much. And they loved me too, at least until we parted ways. It’s impossible to know them, those children, and not love them. But that love grew in full knowledge of what I had done—I never hid it from them or tried to lie. I wish I could tell you that Eluréd and Elurín’s love will survive this, but I don’t know. I don’t know them.”

“Why didn’t you ever go back? They looked for you—Elrond and Elros. Until Elros sailed to Númenor, they searched for you.”

Maglor swallowed hard past the sudden lump in his throat. “I didn’t know that. I just—I don’t remember very much from then, from the time after Nelyo died. When I came back to myself I was miles away and—I don’t know how much time had passed. I don’t even know how I survived. I wasn’t trying very hard.”

“Cáno…”

“I’m better now. It was a long time ago.”

“But you’re still out here, all alone—”

“So are you.”

“That’s different. I was…” Celegorm faltered, and then hid his face again. “We were going to follow the coast up to Lindon. There’s war in the north. It started a couple of years ago but even more armies are marching up through the Gap this year—it’s getting bad. And Tyelpë is there. And—Elrond.”

Fear gripped Maglor’s heart in an icy fist. “What do you mean, war? War with whom?”

“We suspect Sauron,” Celegorm said, “but we don’t know for sure, it’s just what Daeron fears most. We’ve spent time in Lindon—we stayed there after the war until Elros left—but for a long time we were in the east—traveling, exploring. We only came back west a few years ago. There were stirrings in the east—some power arising, bearing the sign of a great red eye.”

“I haven’t heard anything of that…but then, it has been a very long time since I sought out news.” He had thought all wars were over—except for maybe little petty ones between kingdoms, but nothing that would involve the Elves, especially not Gil-galad’s realm, or Celebrimbor’s. He did know of Ost-in-Edhil and some marvelous tales of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, but he’d never dared to venture that far north. It was just safer to remain far away, just better if the only audience for his songs was the Sea and the gulls. “I have thought that the fall migrations began early this ear—there are more birds, and not all the same ones that I usually see this far south.”

“They’re fleeing the fires. It…last time I saw birds flying like this, a dragon had come east of the Ered Luin.”

“What?”

“It was right at the start of the War of Wrath. It was slain—Elurín helped do that, and Eluréd was furious with him for weeks afterward—but not before all the woods between Lake Nenuial and the mountains and the dwarf road were burned.” He paused for a moment. “Including our home, near the Lhûn.”

“But you all got away,” Maglor said faintly.

“Yes. Elurín still has the scars, though—he was splashed with its blood when it finally died.”

The way Celegorm spoke of the twins made something under Maglor’s ribs hurt. It was so obvious that he loved them, the same way Maglor loved Elrond and Elros. Even just the fear of this new rift was breaking his heart, and Maglor didn’t know what to do to help. “We should return to your camp today,” Maglor said. “You need your things. If they won’t speak to you, I can go in your stead.”

“The twins won’t be any happier to…well, maybe they’ll speak to you. Elrond has told us a little of you, and I think he and Elros told Eluréd and Elurín more.”

“I’m glad they were all able to meet,” Maglor said. “But—come on. I’m sure I can make Daeron listen to me, at least. We were friends once for a little while.”

“I know. He’s spoken before of the Mereth Aderthad. I think…he might be glad to see you.” Celegorm sat up. “I just…never realized…”

“Do you know what it was that made you forget?” Maglor asked as he rolled up the blankets. “Or what brought the memories back?”

“I do,” Celegorm said, but he didn’t elaborate. Maglor didn’t press for more. There would be time—what a strange and wondrous thing, to have time with his brother!—and just then he was more worried about Celegorm getting proper shoes, the rest of his clothes, and his weapons. He kicked dirt over the fire’s ashes and reached for Celegorm’s hand. 

It was a long walk to where Celegorm had made camp with Daeron and Dior’s sons. He’d left them early the morning before, and had walked, he said, until he couldn’t anymore. They did not hurry, and Maglor filled the silence with small stories of his own wanderings, of some of the places he had visited and some of the things he’d seen. Celegorm was quiet, as he hadn’t ever been before, and they both stuck close to one other, hand in hand, shoulders bumping. It was another bright day after the morning fog burned off, the sun warm even though the wind held a chill. 

By the middle of the afternoon, Celegorm slowed, scanning the woods ahead. Maglor glanced around himself, but saw no sign of any other person. “They might have left,” Celegorm said after a moment. It was hard to read his tone. “But…come on. It’s just up ahead.” He led the way off the beach into another wood, not unlike the one where Maglor had made his own camp. They found the spot easily, though Maglor would not have known without looking closely that anyone had camped there at all if it were not for the pack and bedroll left behind, with a sword and a bow and quiver set beside it, neat and tidy. A pair of boots was there too, and Celegorm sighed and went to dig out a pair of socks so he could put them on. He pulled out what looked like small woodcarvings first, paused and stared at them, and then shoved them deep into the pocket before finding what he was looking for.

“Now what do you want to do?” Maglor asked. 

“Dunno. Hadn’t thought much beyond…facing the birdies.”

“The who?”

“I started calling them songbirds as a sort of nickname when we met, when I started teaching them bird calls. It stuck. For a while we called them Pínfileg and Pínamrent in front of strangers. That lasted through the War of Wrath.” Celegorm pulled on one boot and reached for the other. “Daeron had a price on his head out of Angband, like you did. We learned that the hard way, and afterward there was nothing he was more scared of—of someone coming after him and finding Eluréd and Elurín too. But even since they stopped needing those names, we call them our songbirds. Birdies.”

“I used to call Elrond and Elros my little stars,” Maglor said after a moment.

“You know their father’s the one carrying the Silmaril now? Eärendil—little Idril’s son.”

“Yes, I heard that. I don’t remember when.”

Celegorm finished lacing up his boots. “…I think most of the news we got east of the mountains came from you. I used to go visit the Dwarves a few times a year.”

“Ambarussa visited them sometimes—or we sent other messengers. We did some trade, though there was precious little we had to offer except news.”

Celegorm suddenly closed his eyes. “Stars above,” he whispered. “They were right there. The year the boys turned fourteen—the first time I took just one of them with me to the mountains. Kóri told me Amrod and Amras were on the other side of the pass, but I didn’t…”

“You didn’t know, Tyelko.”

“I should have.” He rose to his feet. “I’m going to see if I can find out where they’ve gone. Daeron said something about going home, but that was before they realized…” 

Maglor waited while Celegorm disappeared into the woods. He looked around, feeling like someone else was nearby. His hand strayed to the hilt of his sword, but he let go as soon as he realized it, and crossed his arms instead. He hoped that it was Daeron who was still there, or somewhere they might find him quickly. In time, hopefully, Celegorm would see Daeron’s lies for the kindness they were. In keeping that secret for so long, he’d saved Celegorm’s life—and most likely the lives of many others, for Maglor had no doubt of what would have happened if Celegorm had returned to them after Doriath, even wounded. Without that forgetting—he would have still been so angry, and it would not have been good.

Finally, Celegorm returned leading a horse. “They’ve gone. One horse went north and east—most likely Daeron’s. I can’t find signs of the others.”

“Might they have gone on to Lindon, as you were planning before?”

“Maybe.” But Celegorm looked troubled. “Only—they wouldn’t want to be parted from Daeron. Especially Eluréd. But if…if they’re as upset about the lies as I was…I don’t know.”

“Maybe they just need a little time,” Maglor said. “It only happened yesterday. Maybe they’ve gone by another route and will join with Daeron later.”

“But it’s autumn.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Daeron, he—it’s not a good time of year for him. It never has been, but it was really bad for a long time. He came close to fading entirely, before we met, and once or twice afterward. He hasn’t come that close since before the War of Wrath, but…” Celegorm’s fists clenched and loosened at his sides as he seemed to be debating with himself.

Maglor asked carefully, “Did you…speak, about this? Or did you just run off as soon as you realized?” He saw Celegorm bristle. “I don’t mean—no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to accuse you. I just—you can’t erase more than a thousand years of companionship in a few minutes. Are you two—”

“We’re not lovers.”

“All right—but you do love him. That’s obvious. We can follow Daeron—we can—can go to your home, and you and he can have it out. It will be slower going for us, since I don’t think your horse can bear us both as far or as fast as Daeron riding alone, so you both have time to think about what you want to say.”

“I don’t think he was angry,” Celegorm said after a moment. “I think he was afraid.”

“All the more reason to go after him, isn’t it? If Eluréd and Elurín have gone to Lindon, we cannot follow. At least, I can’t. But it sounds to me as though they will choose to follow Daeron too, and maybe we’ll find them there also when we arrive.”

“I don’t want to drag you into this mess. I—”

“You’re my brother. They’re your family—so that makes them mine, too, after a fashion. Anyway, I did consider Daeron a friend, for a short time, and I have missed him. I would like to see him again.”

“I…all right. We’d better get going, then. It’s milder this far south but it’ll still get cold, and you don’t have any decent gear.”

“It’s decent enough.”

“It’s in tatters, Cáno—oh no, what did I say?”

Maglor wiped his sleeve over his face to catch the sudden tears. “Nothing. It’s fine. I’m fine. I just—stars, Tyelkormo, I missed you so much.”

Celegorm wrapped him up in a fierce hug. “You won’t have to ever again,” he said. “Never again.”

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Daeron watched Lossenol—Celegorm once more, now—disappear through the trees toward the shore with a terrible, sinking feeling in his chest. It felt like the end—it was the end, at least of this chapter of their lives, and it did not seem as though the next one would lead to anything but more heartbreak. He’d expected nothing less, but he had not expected it to happen now. Not like this. He closed the locket pendant around his neck, and gripped it tight for a moment, though it didn't offer the same kind of comfort that it usually did. 

For several minutes there was silence. Then Elurín said, “You really knew all along?”

“I guessed,” Daeron said without looking at him. He didn’t want to see whatever was on their faces. “It was why I tried to keep distance between you in the beginning, do you remember?”

“I remember,” Eluréd said quietly. “I remember also that we were all meant to find one another.”

“But he—” Elurín began.

“Don’t try to rewrite the past, Elurín,” Eluréd snapped. It was rare that his temper showed, and Daeron hated that he was the cause of it now. “You were as sure of it as I was, and I am still sure of it. What happened this morning does not change all that happened before. He’s still our Lossë.”

“He killed our father, Eluréd.”

“We knew he was a kinslayer—that he was in Doriath. And I would wager anything that it was our father who placed the curse on him that locked his memories away. We can never know why, maybe, but the three of us would not be here, now, without him.” When Daeron finally looked over he found the twins glaring at each other. Elurín was the one who looked away first; he grabbed his boots and stormed away into the trees, heading away from the beach, in the opposite direction that Celegorm had gone. Eluréd watched him go in silence before looking back at Daeron. “What other secrets have you kept, Daeron?” he asked, quiet now, and wary.

“None. I promise, Eluréd—that is the only one.”

“Why keep it so long?”

Daeron turned to restart the fire, coaxing flames from the still-warm coals. As he added a few twigs and watched them catch he said, “Selfishness and fear, mostly. He told me once that he feared what would happen if he remembered—it wasn’t as though he could remember absolutely nothing. There were flashes, some things he just knew or understood about himself. He was sure that if he ever remembered what he had lost, the grief of it would overwhelm and kill him. I just didn’t want to lose him—especially not like that.”

“Do you think that will still happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should someone go…”

“No. We aren’t who he needs right now.”

“Then who…”

Daeron sighed. He put a larger stick onto the fire. “He’s just remembered his brothers,” he said softly. “His brothers who are all dead—except maybe Maglor, who is lost. I’ve told you before that I met Maglor and Maedhros at the Mereth Aderthad. It was obvious to me that they loved one another—just as much as you and Elurín do—and you know yourself how deeply Lossë—Celegorm—loves. He grieved them even when he did not understand why, and now it will be worse.”

“He shouldn’t be alone,” Eluréd said. 

“Give it a few hours, birdie. And be prepared for him to send you away again.”

“Just because I don’t get angry like Elurín doesn’t mean I’m not as stubborn as he is.”

Daeron couldn’t help but smile a little. “You get it from Thingol,” he murmured. 

“I think we get it from everyone.” Eluréd got up and came to wrap his arms around Daeron. “I’m not angry with you, Ada,” he said. “But I wish you hadn’t kept this secret so long.”

“I hadn’t actually thought about it in a very long time,” Daeron said, leaning his head against Eluréd’s. “But whatever happens—I do not think we should go to Lindon.” Vague but plausible tales, and the fact that no one they met expected to see Celegorm son of Fëanor in the company of Daeron of Doriath or Dior’s sons, was usually enough to keep probing questions at bay. Or it had been when Celegorm had not known the truth himself—it would be very different now.

“Maybe not,” Eluréd said, though he sounded doubtful. “But—but Celebrimbor, is he not—”

“I think he is beyond our reach now, Eluréd. And he will have had ample warning, surely, and Gil-galad will be marching out with his own people—I do not think any of us would make much of a difference in this war. Especially not now.”

Elurín came back after a little while, and then he and Eluréd left the camp. Daeron heard their voices rising and falling somewhere out on the beach, but he remained where he was, waiting for Celegorm to return. It was hard to readjust the name in his mind—Celegorm had answered to the name of Lossenol far longer than he had ever answered to Celegorm, and Daeron realized he didn’t actually know what his Quenya name was, since the Noldor had not always chosen direct translations when taking names in Sindarin. He passed the time by reorganizing Celegorm’s things, setting them aside for when he came back—just in case he returned only to take them and leave again. He got out his flute but couldn’t make himself play. Then he got out a knife and a bit of wood and carved little animal figures for a few hours. Among them were a sparrow and a lark, and these he tucked into a pocket of Celegorm’s pack as a reminder of Eluréd and Elurín, who Celegorm had himself named Pínfileg and Pínamrent, long ago when they needed new names to keep themselves hidden from the Enemy. 

He had just started a carving of a fox when a sudden scream reached his ears, carried on the wind. He dropped the fox and it rolled into the fire as he scrambled to his feet. Out on the beach Eluréd and Elurín had turned southward, and before Daeron could say anything Eluréd took off at a run. Elurín remained very still, and didn’t pull away when Daeron reached for him. “I’ve never heard anyone make a sound like that before,” he said quietly. 

“Neither have I,” said Daeron, “but I know the pain that causes it. Elurín, I’m sorry.”

“I just don’t…I don’t know how to…knowing this, is that why you were so quick to give them all grace? The Fëanorians?”

“I think I would have managed it eventually—but yes, without Lossë it would have taken longer. We were able to come to know him freed, at least in part, from his Oath, and from all that had driven him to swear it in the first place. The Oath led to cruelty and bloodshed, but it was also a cruelty to those who swore it. I find myself resenting Fëanor himself now, far more than any of his sons.”

“You sound like Elrond,” Elurín said after a moment. “He said something similar once—about the Oath being cruel to them even more than anyone else.”

“It was a torment to Lossë, too, even if he didn’t understand what it was or why.”

“I remember you said once he would have to reckon with the shadows that we could see in him. Did you mean the Oath, or did you mean this curse’s undoing?”

“Both, though the Oath has long been over and gone.”

The wind off of the water was cold, and Daeron did not like the echo of laughter that he heard on it. He retreated to the campsite, and Elurín followed. They spoke little; Elurín fixed the strap of a saddlebag, and Daeron fixed lunch—enough for all four of them, though neither Celegorm nor Eluréd reappeared until late—and then returned to his carving. And when Eluréd did return, he was alone. 

“There is someone else down the shore,” he said as he dropped to the ground beside Elurín. “It’s Maglor.”

Daeron looked up. “Did you see him? Does he know—”

“They’re together. I saw them through the trees and I heard them talking—but I did not intrude, or stay to listen.”

“…That’s it, then,” Elurín said. “He won’t be coming back.” 

“We don’t know that,” Eluréd protested.

“There’s still all that’s happening in the north, and we should…”

“I think Daeron’s right—we’re not meant to go to Lindon, at least not by way of the coast,” Eluréd said. “I think we were meant to come this way so Lossë could reunite with his brother. But I do not know what we’re supposed to do now.”

It was a relief, in a way, not to need to continue on to Lindon. Daeron had been uneasy about it from the start, though he had never been given such knowledge with the kind of clarity that Eluréd often was. “I think if any of us stay here, it should be you two,” he said after a moment. “I’m the source of this—all of this, but even if he chooses to leave again with Maglor, I believe he will at least give you the kindness of a farewell. You should stay and wait. I will leave in the morning to go home.”

“But Daeron…”

“It’s better this way. Especially if Maglor is with him. I do not have it in me to face him if he is wrathful.”

“Nothing good ever happens when we split up,” Elurín said. 

“This is different, Elurín. And I’m only going back home—you know exactly where to go to find me. Just—stay to be sure that Lossë is all right, please. For his sake and yours. If he comes back with you, all the better—but if he doesn’t, please at least do not part in anger with him. And after this—at least when next you see Elrond you can tell him with certainty that Maglor lives.”

The night passed very slowly. Daeron played music until the twins fell asleep, and then kept playing, finding himself reaching for old and melancholy songs that he had not even thought of in many years. Most of them dated back to his days of solitary wandering, before he’d ventured back west just in time to have a half-dead kinslayer and a pair of very young children dropped in his lap. At the time it had been terrifying. He’d had to keep all of them alive on his own in the middle of winter while storms raged outside and orcs prowled the land, and until they had made it across the mountains he’d feared that any moment Celegorm would remember who he was—and that he would be wrathful. Now he could look back and know it to be the best thing that had ever happened to him. If he had been left alone he was sure that he would have faded after just a few more years, just lain down in some shadowed forest glade in Eriador and died, and no one would have ever known. 

It had been a very, very long time since he’d felt himself in that kind of danger. But the year was waning, and that was always when he felt most tired, and most prone to melancholy. He could feel it creeping up on him already—his decision to return home without waiting for Celegorm was in part because he wanted to crawl into his own bed and hide from the rest of the world, even if it would be colder than it usually was without anyone else in it. He wasn’t sure what he would do if this really was the end—and of course it coincided with the rise of the Shadow again. Whatever anyone else said, Daeron was sure that it was Sauron marching through Eriador even at that moment, setting fire to the ancient woods and plundering all that stood in his way. If he could no longer serve his master he would seek to make himself master, and it had been foolish to ever expect that he would simply fade away into nothing, as they’d hoped after the War of Wrath had ended. And this time, Daeron wasn’t sure there was anything they could do to help. Especially not when they had no idea what was happening and no way to find out.

In the morning, he packed his things up and embraced the twins in turn. “Be safe,” he said. “Take care of each other.”

“Are you sure one of us shouldn’t—”

“I’ll be fine. I was journeying alone long before I met either of you, remember? This isn’t so far—and I’ll be moving more quickly than we did coming west.”

“Just be careful, please,” Eluréd said. “And—promise you’ll be at home when we return?”

“I promise, birdies. I have no intention of slipping away without a word.” Daeron had to stand on his toes to kiss their foreheads. “I love you both so much. I’ll see you soon.”

It was more than a relief to leave the coast, to enter into more familiar terrain. He’d liked his visits to the seaside in his youth, especially going out under the stars so it felt less like they were floating on the water than they were flying through the heavens. But the autumn shore was a cold and dreary place even when the sun was shining, and at least inland he did not have to worry about what Ossë might do next. 

When he finally reached their little house nestled at the base of a grassy hill that rose out of the forest, he let out a sigh. “It’s nice to be home, isn’t it?” he said to his horse. Limral twitched an ear. He patted her neck and dismounted. It was very quiet. He’d never spent more than an hour or two alone in this place before, maybe an afternoon while the twins and Celegorm were out hunting or just wandering through the hills. Now he faced days, perhaps weeks of solitude, except for Limral’s company. He brushed her down and made sure she had everything she needed in the stable, and then went into the house. It was empty and dark, and when he lit a fire in the hearth it felt as though it did little to chase away the chill.

The days passed slowly. He found things to fix around the house, and made preparations for the winter; though this far south it was unlikely to snow much, it would still be cold. He played his flute for hours, and wandered aimlessly through the hills. The only real difference between this and his wanderings after leaving Doriath was that he had a sturdy roof and a real bed to come back to—and somehow that made it worse. 

It was late one morning when that changed. Daeron was still in bed, half-awake but unwilling to rise, when he heard the front door open and the sound of voices. He paid enough attention to count two of them before pulling the blankets up again. The twins were home, and he was sure one of them would come looking sooner or later, but it was so hard that day to make himself care about anything. 

Then the bedroom door opened and Celegorm said, “Daeron?”

Daeron rolled over and sat up. “Lossë?” He regretted using that name immediately, seeing the way that Celegorm went stiff. It was dark in the room, though, and he couldn’t see enough of his expression. “What are you…”

“Where are the twins?”

“…What?”

“Eluréd and Elurín, Daeron. Where are they?”

“Are they not with you?” He still felt stupid and sluggish and sleepy, and now a frisson of fear shot down his spine. He hadn’t really worried about the twins in so long—but it was still a horribly familiar feeling, made worse for the unexpectedness of it. “I asked them to remain behind so you…”

“Well, they didn’t. I found tracks that pointed to them returning here, a little behind you but moving fast.”

“They didn’t. I came back alone, and if they followed they haven’t yet arrived.” Daeron pushed the blankets down and got out of bed. “But I thought I heard—”

“Maglor’s with me.” Celegorm stepped back. “I found him after I left you. I’m going to see if I can pick up the trail again—see where they split off from yours.”

“Lossenol—”

“That’s not my name.”

“But—”

“I’ll be back soon.”

And with that, he was gone. His tone the whole time had been flat and expressionless, and Daeron didn’t know what to do with it. He looked back at the bed, tempted to get back in and hide under the blankets, and then turned away to dress, so at least he wouldn’t have to face Maglor in his nightshirt and with his hair a mess. Still barefoot, and still finishing his braid, he wandered out into the main room, where they had a table for dining in the little kitchen, and a large hearth with comfortable chairs and cushions set before it. From there one could reach the loft where the twins had their bedroom, and the storeroom next to Daeron and Celegorm’s room, and the doors outside, one facing toward the stable and the other leading out into their garden, which was empty and harvested now, ready for the coming winter. He found Maglor standing by the window near the front door with his arms crossed, watching Celegorm ride away. After a moment he turned around. 

When last Daeron had seen Maglor they had both been very different. The Mereth Aderthad was a long way away and a long time ago. Maglor had been bright-eyed and fierce and friendly, with garnets in his hair and laughter on his lips. Daeron had been still struggling to recover from the loss of his father, but the feast—and Maglor’s friendship—had done much to raise his spirits. Even after all that had come afterward, he’d always looked back on those days with a sort of wistful fondness. Now Maglor looked tired, worn out, in patched and slightly ragged clothes, the light in his eyes dimmed though not yet extinguished. “Daeron,” he said. His voice, at least, was unchanged. It was so strange to hear it again now, in such a different place, after so long.

“Maglor,” he said, feeling wary and not bothering to hide it. 

“It’s been a long time.” Maglor seemed to hesitate. His hair was very long, falling in loose and tangled waves over his shoulders and across his face. It made it difficult to read his expression—but he didn’t seem angry. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “For—well. Everything.”

Daeron blinked at him. “For…oh.” He meant for Doriath, for Sirion, and all the rest of it. “I forgave you a long time ago. And I’m…”

“If you are going to apologize for saving my brother, please don’t. I’m not—I’m so glad you did what you did, Daeron. You saved him in more ways than one and—” Maglor’s voice wavered and he turned away, back toward the window. “I had thought him lost long before I thought him dead. You’ve given him back to me and I don’t know how I am ever going to repay that.”

“Please don’t. You don’t owe me anything for it,” Daeron said. He had been prepared for anger, for blame, for bitterness. Not gratitude. “Please don’t thank me for telling such a lie—”

“I know he’s still upset, but he’ll come around. He just needs time. We’re here because he was afraid that you might be in danger of fading.”

Daeron’s eyes burned and he turned away quickly, going to pick up the kettle to set over the fire that someone had restarted. “I’m fine,” he said without looking back over his shoulder. “Do you…what do you plan to do next?”

Maglor laughed, very quietly, without much mirth. “I haven’t made plans in centuries. I’ve just followed the winds and tides. This is farther inland than I’ve been in decades. It doesn’t matter to me what we do, as long as I can stay with my brother.”

“I would be very glad if you stayed,” Daeron said quietly. “Both of you. I—I have missed you, though maybe that sounds strange to you…”

“It doesn’t. I’ve missed you too. I thought about looking for you once or twice, but I didn’t know where to start, and I didn’t think you would be very pleased to be found by me anyway.”

“Elrond would also be pleased to see you.” Daeron risked a glance then, but Maglor had turned back to the window. “He asked Eluréd and Elurín once to keep an eye out for you.”

“Elrond’s better off with me far away,” Maglor said. 

“I used to say things like that,” Daeron said, “and neither of my twins would hear it.”

“You are not a kinslayer.”

He thought of his dearest friend from Doriath, and a cord around his neck, and a desperate struggle in the woods while the earth shook apart around them, and suppressed a shudder. “That’s debatable.” Daeron went to get out a jar of tea, a sweet-smelling blend of gorse flowers and chamomile. 

Celegorm returned just after the kettle sang—much sooner than Daeron had expected. “They’ve gone north,” he said without preamble as he stepped through the door. “They turned before the mountains, heading toward the Road—a couple of nightingales saw them.”

Daeron set the kettle down hurriedly before he dropped it. “What do you mean they’ve gone north? They can’t have—”

“They did.”

“But—” Daeron stopped, feeling suddenly very cold. “Oh no. They’ve gone to Eregion, rather than Lindon.”

Celegorm spit out a curse. “They’re going to get themselves killed! This is Elurín and the dragon all over again—”

“One of them might have seen something,” Daeron said. “Or—I don’t know, perhaps they spoke to Ossë after I left. We could hear his voice on the wind…”

Celegorm’s face went white at the mention of Ossë, but he didn’t otherwise react. “I don’t care why they did it. We have to go after them and then I’m going to tie them up and—”

“Lossenol—”

“Do not—”

“But—”

“This doesn’t change anything else. Cáno and I are too big to share a saddle with as fast as we need to go, so he’ll have to ride on Limral with you.”

“I…all right.”

“Tyelko,” Maglor said quietly.

“Everything else can wait until after we get the songbirds,” Celegorm snapped, and stormed back outside adding over his shoulder, “No more splitting up!” When the door slammed shut behind him Daeron flinched. 

Maglor sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“He has every right to be furious with me,” Daeron said. “I knew that this would end someday—and that it would probably end badly. Can you put out the fire?” He scooped the unused tea leaves back into the jar as Maglor moved to the fireplace. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

When he emerged from the house, fully dressed and ready to travel quickly, he found Celegorm and Maglor by the stable having what looked like an argument. At least Celegorm seemed angry. He glanced at Daeron and then quickly away, going to mount Lhimmir. Daeron went to where Limral was waiting patiently, and kissed her nose. “You don’t mind carrying both of us, do you?” he asked her. She snorted and nosed at him, and then he looked to Maglor. 

“It’s been rather a long time since I spent so much time in the saddle,” Maglor said as he approached. 

“You’re likely still a better horseman than me,” Daeron replied. And indeed, Maglor sprang lightly into the saddle behind him, and did not seem to have any trouble keeping his balance as they set off, following Celegorm at a swift pace, west and then sharply north, skirting around the White Mountains heading toward the River Angren and the Gap of Calenardhon. 

When they reached the Road they stopped, surveying the burned out plains to the east and the smoke-filled horizon to the north. “Who…?” Maglor began, voice faint. “I know you said you thought it was Sauron, but—”

“This is Sauron,” Daeron said. “This feels like him.” Celegorm glanced at him briefly, expression unreadable. Both of them had had close encounters with Sauron, and Celegorm had the scars on his back to prove it, but Daeron had been the one to battle him—and win, narrowly, thanks to Eluréd. Or at least they had both survived—Daeron still wasn’t sure he could call that fight won. 

As they continued on, still moving as quickly as they dared, Daeron chanted words of concealment, taking the shadows under the cloudy and smoky sky and turning them to his own use. After a little time spent listening, Maglor joined him, his voice rich and overflowing with the power of the tides, strengthening Daeron’s own spells and wrapping around them a kind of freshness that cut through the smoke and brought to mind the Sea. Thus they passed unseen up the North Road, passing the ruin of Tharbad and continuing on toward Ost-in-Edhil, the heart of Eregion—the city of Celebrimbor, son of Curufin. 

Celegorm reined in Lhimmir as they drew near to the city and turned sharply off the road. Daeron followed, and they found at the base of a hill, hidden behind familiar enchantments, the remnants of a hastily made campsite. “They were here,” Celegorm said. “Recently—today.” He dismounted and climbed the hill. Daeron and Maglor followed, and from atop it they saw Ost-in-Edhil. It had once been beautiful, bright and sprawling, with tree-lined avenues and fountains sparkling in the squares, with bright windows of stained-glass and crystal lanterns that lit the night. Now smoke rose in dark pillars, and black banners rippled along what remained of the walls. 

“Oh, Tyelpë,” Maglor breathed beside Daeron. 

“Listen,” Celegorm said. “Do you hear that?”

There was a voice on the wind, coming from the city. Daeron knew that voice, and he recognized the song—it was a song of defiance, of light and life and breaking chains and crumbling walls. “Eluréd!” He started forward, but Celegorm grabbed him just as another voice erupted, nearly drowning out Eluréd’s. “Lossë, let go, that’s—”

“You can’t just go in there without—”

“He’s singing alone!” Daeron struggled against Celegorm’s grip. “He never sings alone! Something’s happened to Elurín—let go, we have to—”

“Wait,” said Maglor, grasping his other arm. “Wait, listen.” 

“No, I—”

“Shut up, Daeron!” Celegorm clapped a hand over his mouth, as Eluréd’s voice rose again. Daeron could not catch all of the words, and could not even begin to guess what Eluréd was trying to do. That song sounded like one of Iarwain Ben-adar’s. “That’s a distraction,” Celegorm said. “He’s keeping Sauron busy.”

Daeron didn’t think he had been this afraid even when facing Sauron himself. His knees gave out and he sagged back against Celegorm, who let go of his mouth to wrap his arms around him fully, holding him up. There was nothing they could do that wouldn’t ruin whatever plans Eluréd and Elurín had laid—there was nothing they could do but listen. Daeron found he couldn’t bear to look, and without thinking he turned to Celegorm, hiding his face in his chest.

The song cut off abruptly—on both sides, before Sauron’s voice rose again, chanting and heavy and horrible, but only for a minute before it too stopped again. Daeron heard himself make some kind of awful noise, and Celegorm’s arms around him tightened even as he started shaking too. The sudden silence was heavy and suffocating, and none of them dared to move. All Daeron could imagine was Eluréd and Elurín in chains, or dead—bloodied and cold with empty staring eyes—and he thought that if anything would kill him now it was that.

Please let them escape please let them be all right please please bring them back to me please I’ll do anything—

Then after a few minutes more Maglor gasped. “Look!”

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“This is a terrible idea.”

“I’ve asked you a dozen times if you have a better one.”

“I don’t, but I also think trying to recreate Tol-en-Gaurhoth is not going to go how we think it will.”

“We’re not recreating Tol-en-Gaurhoth.” Eluréd glared at Elurín. “If anything, we’re recreating Angband.” Between the two of them it was usually Elurín who struggled to contain his temper; Eluréd was more prone to tears than to anger. Now both of them were on edge, feeling the weight of what they were going to attempt—and feeling the stark and conspicuous absence of both of their foster fathers. 

Elurín’s mind kept tripping over the name, though, when he thought of Lossenol—of Celegorm. It was still impossible to reconcile the one who had raised them, who had gently teased them and taught them to use a bow and to fight with a sword and a staff and a knife, who had helped Elurín learn how to use the fury that sometimes bubbled up inside him to his advantage, rather than allowing it to take him over, who was always, always there to lean on—with the one from the tales of their grandparents. The one who had turned Nargothrond against Finrod Felagund and who had then led the attack on Doriath that had turned their entire world upside down and cost them both their parents and their sister. Half of him never wanted to see Celegorm again, and the other half wanted desperately to go back a handful of weeks in time to when they had been a family, whole and happy. 

Or as whole and happy as it was possible for people like them to be. He had always known they were a little broken, all four of them, in different ways. It was just that together they did not feel broken. Now, with the four of them scattered and he and Eluréd about to do something very stupid, he felt both already broken and very fragile, as though he might shatter into a thousand tiny pieces at any moment.

With effort he thrust those feelings down, and tried to focus on what was before them. They crouched behind some rocks atop a hill, looking down at Ost-in-Edhil burning ahead of them, as they had for days now as they worked out what they were going to do and how. The morning before they had seen most of Sauron’s armies march out of it, heading north, and had heard the sound of distant horns. “He’s probably dead,” he said. 

“He’s not,” Eluréd replied. “I just know it. Gorthaur is still there too—he wouldn’t stay without reason.”

Elurín knew it too; it was the kind of knowing that came from outside of him, like hearing a snatch of music on the breeze. It probably was something like that, really—something of their great-grandmother in them answering to the Great Music that still echoed through the world. Eluréd was better at listening to it than he was, but he still heard most of the same things. “All right,” he said, and turned to slide back down the steep hillside to where their horses waited. “Let’s go. You distract him, I find Celebrimbor, and then we hope to outrun all the orcs.”

It was the last part that worried him most. Getting into the city wouldn’t be hard with it now mostly empty—they could sing up disguises for themselves easily enough, and pass unseen by all but the keenest of eyes. He had no doubt either that Eluréd’s distraction would work. They were both much stronger singers now than they had been even during the War of Wrath, and neither of them were wounded or wearied, or weakened by lack of food as Eluréd had been when last he’d come up against Sauron. Elurín even thought that he should be able to find Celebrimbor, wherever he was held, with relative ease. He had songs of seeking, and they had met before, albeit briefly, and so he would be easy to recognize. 

Getting him out, if he was hurt, would be harder. Getting away without being followed by an army of orcs and men and whatever else might be serving Sauron now—that would be nigh impossible. The city was only mostly empty.

Eluréd sang the songs of hiding and of disguise as they made their way, cloaked and hooded, toward the city. No one stopped them when they rode in—indeed, there were very few guards, for most of the army that had remained behind was busy looting and destroying what they could not take. There were others too coming and going from the south, messengers on horseback, and so they passed unremarked. Elurín glanced at Eluréd, who kept his gaze on the street ahead of them, expression grim and set. 

Neither of them were strangers to war, but this was new to Elurín. He did not really remember the sack of Menegroth, and a skirmish in the woods or on the banks of a river was very different from the aftermath of a city put under siege. As they went on he became less and less convinced that there were any survivors, let alone Celebrimbor himself. It was as though Sauron sought to not only reduce the city to rubble but to grind the rubble down into nothing. The hatred in the air was thick, sour-tasting and acrid. 

The only building still mostly intact was the great hall of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, though it was blackened and its windows were broken, and blood stained the steps before it; the great doors were twisted and broken, hanging half-off their hinges. Figures came and went out of them, hurrying and slightly hunched. “He’ll be in there, if he’s anywhere,” Eluréd said quietly. It was silent in the square, though elsewhere there were all kinds of strange and terrible noises. Fires burning. Stones breaking. Raucous laughter. The occasional scream. “You’ll have to find another way in.”

Elurín dismounted and whispered calming and comforting words to Rhawhul, while wrapping him up in shadows to hide him in the remnants of what had once been someone’s lovely house, its roof tiles now shattered on the ground and its walls caved in, its gardens and window boxes broken and burned. “Meet you here,” he said to Eluréd, who nodded as he also slipped off of his horse. They embraced, holding on very tightly for a few moments. “Love you,” Elurín whispered.

“Love you too. Be quick.”

“Be careful.” Not be safe—there was no hope of safety, not there.

Elurín slipped soundlessly around the walls of the hall, and soon found a small window into what looked like a storage room—or at least a room now full of boxes and broken crates, piled around haphazardly. The window was already broken, and he hoisted himself up and in with ease. Then he went to the door and opened it just a crack. The hallway outside was dark and silent. He loosened his knife in its sheath and waited. After some minutes, somewhere else in the building, someone screamed. It was a horrible sound, too much like Celegorm’s scream back on the beach, and Elurín flinched back, nearly losing his balance when his heel hit one of the boxes. He steadied himself, heart pounding, and made himself stay still, stay hidden.

After what felt like a very long time, he heard Eluréd’s voice ringing out, singing one of Iarwain Ben-adar’s songs, bright and merry and impossible to ignore. He didn’t move, hardly dared to breathe, and after a minute he felt a shift in the air. Sauron was in the building, and he had heard. Elurín slipped out of the storeroom and down the corridor. He stopped at a turning and turned to press his palms to the stones. The stones knew who had quarried them and who had shaped them, and when Elurín turned his mind to the thoughts of the earth he nearly recoiled for the screams of the stones under his palms, the horror at the defilement of this city and the crumbling of all that had once been so beautiful, of the blood spilled over them and the deaths of so many who had been brave and clever and strong. Tears pricked his eyes, but he could hear Sauron raise his voice against Eluréd’s, chanting spells of revealing, of finding, of a spider drawing its pray to the center of its web; heard Eluréd’s song change to one Lúthien had sung to them when they were very small children. A dangerous choice, but effective. Finally, underneath the agony, Elurín found what he sought. He took off down the halls at a run, slowing only at corners, and almost always finding them empty. Where he didn’t, he murmured words of sleep, an echo of Lúthien’s long-ago singing, that dropped both orcs and Men before they even knew what was happening. He didn't know how long it would last, but he didn’t dare try to put the entire building to sleep, for Sauron would surely notice. As he went his heart pounded so loud in his ears that he felt certain he would be caught just from that.

Finally, he came not to stairs leading down into basements or anything that might resemble a dungeon, but to a large room, once bright and airy, with high ceilings and wide windows. Now it was hazy with smoke drifting in through the broken glass; a fire burned in the forge, spewing forth even more. Papers were scattered around; furniture was broken. Tools once used to make bright and beautiful things were set out now and bloodied with far worse uses.

And upon the floor, chained to an anvil, covered in blood and with a pool of it slowly spreading across the floor beneath him, was Celebrimbor. Elurín murmured a curse and rushed forward. The chains were bitterly cold when he tried to loosen them, and Celebrimbor barely stirred when he finally found something to break the links. He slumped sideways before Elurín caught him. For a moment he though he was too late, but when he pressed his fingers to Celebrimbor’s throat he felt a pulse, weak but there. He pulled bandages out of his satchel, glad that Eluréd had thought of it, and bound up the worst of the wounds. The freshest one was a cut down the center of his chest, stopping abruptly just past his ribs as though interrupted. Blood immediately soaked through the bandages, but there was no time for anything else, not even songs. Then he somehow got his arms under Celebrimbor’s, and hauled him up, draped over his shoulder. 

Now came the hard part. He went more slowly back to the storeroom he’d found before, afraid that Sauron had noticed the chains breaking, or that he knew someone was sneaking around behind him. But Eluréd was doing his part well, his voice rising and falling, stopping and starting as he led Sauron on a merry chase through the city streets. In the storeroom, Elurín set Celebrimbor down to check on him. “Celebrimbor,” he said, taking his face in his hands. “Can you hear me?” He stirred but didn’t wake. His skin felt feverish; the bandages were entirely soaked with blood. “Just stay with me, all right?” Elurín brushed the hair back from his face, which was smeared with soot and blood but otherwise unhurt—his head and his hands, the only parts of him untouched. “I’m going to get you out of here.” He had no idea if Celebrimbor could hear him. He pulled out more bandages to wrap over the ones already there, working as quickly as he could.

Then he heard footsteps in the hall outside, and when he looked he realized that blood had dripped onto the floor—had left a trail right to them. His own blood ran cold, and he grabbed his knife, rising just as the doorknob started to turn. He reached the door as it opened and barely got out of the way of the sword that came through ahead of the guard. He grabbed his arm and yanked, finding a gap in his armor and thrusting his own knife home before either of them could do more than grunt. Slowly, he knelt, lowering the body to the ground, before pulling his knife free. Blood flowed out and began to pool on the floor. Elurín left him blocking the door, and shoved a few boxes in front of it as well, and then turned back to Celebrimbor. With effort, he hoisted him onto the windowsill, and somehow got out himself without knocking either of them to the ground. His heart thudded against his ribs, and it was hard to breathe. He kept thinking that he wanted his fathers, and then tried to push those thoughts away, telling himself that he didn’t, that it was far better for Daeron to be at home and safe, and that Celegorm wasn’t his father, not really—that when they were out of there and Celebrimbor was safe there would have to be a reckoning. 

He didn’t want there to be a reckoning. He didn’t know what he wanted—he only knew that everything had changed and everything he had once thought certain had turned out to have been built on a foundation of shifting sands. And somehow that had led him here.

There was no one outside, so Elurín dropped to the ground, and pulled Celebrimbor after him. He staggered and lost his balance under the weight of him, his knee striking the cobblestones painfully, but he heaved himself up again. Just to the horses. One step at a time. Then they could make a break for it, trusting to speed rather than secrecy. 

Eluréd was on the other side of the square when Elurín finally made it to where they’d hidden their horses. Others had come to see what was happening, but no one moved to interfere. Sauron stood on the steps of the hall, a tall figure shrouded in shadows, his face hidden from Elurín’s view. Rhawhul and Mithrenvos stamped and shook their heads as Elurín reached them, still calm enough but increasingly nervous with the power swirling through the air. It took all of Elurín’s strength to get Celebrimbor into the saddle, and then he only just managed to pull himself up afterward. As he did he whistled like a lark, and a second later Eluréd’s voice faltered, as though he were suddenly weakening. Sauron laughed. It was a terrible sound, and Elurín shivered. Celebrimbor made a soft, pained sound. For another minute Eluréd played at pretending to be struggling on, trying to win whatever battle Sauron thought was being waged. As he did he moved, carefully, through the shadows and the haze of smoke that shrouded the streets, before his voice broke entirely. Sauron’s voice boomed out, and Elurín cringed. The horses did not panic, but it was a near thing. Eluréd sprang out of the shadows and scrambled into the saddle, breathing hard. It hadn't all been an act. “Go, go!” he gasped, and Elurín urged Rhawhul forward. They charged down the street, and if Sauron didn’t realize what they had taken, he realized very quickly that some kind of trick had been played. His voice chased after them, but he was just a few seconds too slow, and their horses, gifts from the horsemen who dwelled in the northern vales of the Anduin, were swift and surefooted, and even more eager than they were to be away from that place.

They finally escaped the city, charging past some orcs near the gates who tripped over themselves in their surprise, and headed south, toward the hills where they’d stopped to make their plans. Elurín looked over his shoulder and saw activity erupting around the walls and gates, but no one gave immediate chase. They didn’t know yet what had been done, what had been stolen out from under Sauron’s very nose. It was far too soon to celebrate—but he looked at Eluréd, who was bent forward over Mithrenvos’ neck, grey-faced with exhaustion, but also grinning, and felt incredulous laughter bubble up in his chest. 

It wasn’t over yet. But they’d done it. 

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No, no nononono— 

Celegorm couldn’t breathe. The smoke in the air took him back to the Dagor Bragollach, to Himlad burning around him, to that frantic flight south—he’d been thinking of it all the time they’d been making their way north, since there had been precious little conversation, all three of them preoccupied with fear of discovery and fear of what they’d find, and no room for anything else that needed to be said. He knew he was now holding on too tight to Daeron, but couldn’t make himself loosen his grip. It was impossible to tell what was happening in the city, where Eluréd or Elurín were. Where Celebrimbor might be. Please be safe, please be safe, please get out. If there had been a way to escape before the city was overrun, surely Celebrimbor would have taken it. He’d escaped Himlad, long ago. He’d escaped Nargothrond. He’d survived the War of Wrath and the breaking of Beleriand. Surely he could survive this too. He had to. They all had to. If he lost Eluréd and Elurín and Celebrimbor before he could even try to speak to them again—

“Look!” Maglor exclaimed, grasping Celegorm’s shoulder and pointing at the road. Two horses—familiar horses, with familiar riders—raced down it, heading south toward the hill where they stood. 

For a moment Celegorm thought he was going to faint. Then he sucked in a breath and grabbed Daeron’s shoulders. “Daeron, look!” He turned him, and Daeron cried out, falling to his knees, half-sobbing in relief as he covered his face with his hands. “But what’s that—”

Elurín spotted them and called out as he and Eluréd veered off the road and came around the hill, halting as Celegorm and Daeron half-slid, half-ran down the slope to meet them, Maglor following a few steps behind. “What are you doing here?” Elurín demanded.

“What are you doing?” Celegorm retorted. “You just charged into—”

“We had to find Celebrimbor,” said Elurín, and then Celegorm looked—really looked—at the figure slumped in the saddle in front of him. Behind him Maglor made a soft sound like he’d been punched in the chest. 

Daeron had gone to Eluréd, who looked like he was ready to faint himself, swaying in the saddle, though he was aware enough to reach for him. Celegorm went to Elurín, resting a hand on his knee as he looked at Celebrimbor. He was a mess, covered in blood beneath hastily applied bandages that were already soaked through, and shivering under the cloak that Elurín had wrapped around him. “Are you all right, birdie?” Celegorm asked quietly, looking up into Elurín’s face. It was hard to read. He did not seem pleased to see any of them. 

Yet he had Celebrimbor in the saddle in front of him.

“I’m fine,” said Elurín. “I had the easy task. But we can’t linger—he’ll find out what we’ve done soon enough.”

“Go home,” Daeron said. He’d recovered himself, and now spoke calmly and firmly, though his voice still shook a little, and there were still traces of tears on his face, his braid half-unraveled around his shoulders. “You need to get home. When you’ve recovered a little, sing more power into the Girdle. It will keep you hidden, even from him.”

“What do you mean you? What will you be doing?” Elurín asked. 

“Distracting the Enemy. He’ll recognize my voice—he’ll take my bait, as he took Eluréd’s. I’ll lead him north, maybe, or west, and—”

“No!” Elurín cried. “This is why we didn’t tell you! You can’t just leave—”

“—and when I’ve managed to lose him, I’ll make my own way home,” Daeron said, still remarkably calm, as though he hadn’t been uncontrollably frantic atop the hill just a few minutes before. “Just as I once promised you.”

“It will be more effective with two of us,” Maglor said suddenly.

Celegorm spun around. “Maglor, you can’t!”

“You go with them. I’ll stay with Daeron. Between the two of us we can take on Sauron. He was only Morgoth’s lieutenant—”

“He’s stronger now,” Eluréd said. He pushed himself up in the saddle with effort from where he’d been almost lying on Mithrenvos’ neck, face grey with exhaustion. “There’s something different about him. You can’t—you can’t fight him. Even both of you at once.”

“We won’t,” said Daeron, squeezing Eluréd’s hand. “We’ll do just what you did, birdie. But we can’t stay and argue about it. You need to go. Stay together.” Daeron looked at Celegorm as he spoke.

“No!” Celegorm said. “No, we all stay together, and—”

“And we’ll all be followed, then,” Maglor said. He came to Celegorm’s side, and reached for Celebrimbor, who hadn’t stirred through any of this. 

“They’re cold—” Elurín began when Maglor reached for the manacles still on Celebrimbor’s wrists. But Maglor just murmured a word and they snapped open, falling into his hands with a heavy clink. Celebrimbor’s wrists beneath them were red and bloody, the skin rubbed raw. If the metal was as cold as Elurín warned, Maglor didn’t seem to feel it.

At that moment an enormous boom! echoed over the hills around them. The ground shuddered; the horses whinnied, and Daeron had to lunge forward to grab Lhimmir and Limral's reins to keep them from fleeing. Eluréd and Elurín retained control, but only with effort. This was what woke Celebrimbor, at least a little. He mumbled something, turning his face into Elurín’s shoulder. 

“He’s found what we’ve done,” Elurín said. “We need to go.”

Celegorm looked at Maglor, who wrapped an arm around him and kissed his temple. “I’ll be fine,” he said softly. “We’ll all be fine, but not if we don’t move now. Stay with Tyelpë. I love you, and I’ll come back to you—nothing in the world could keep me away now.”

“You’d better.” Celegorm released him only reluctantly. He stepped back as Daeron moved to say a quick farewell to Elurín; when he finished Celegorm caught his arm. “You keep that promise, Daeron,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t you dare not come back to them.”

“You’re hurting me,” Daeron said quietly, holding himself very still.

“Good.” But he released him immediately. “Just—just come back.” He couldn’t stop being angry if Daeron went and got himself killed. He couldn’t even start to try to make sense of everything that had happened until they were all back together somewhere safe. 

“Lossë,” Daeron said as Celegorm turned away. He’d answered to that name for so long that turning around was automatic, and as he did Daeron threw his arms around him, holding on more tightly than he ever had before. Celegorm’s arms came up to hold him in return before he could think to stop himself; without thinking he lowered his head, hiding his face in Daeron’s hair. If this was the last time— “I promise I’ll come back to you,” Daeron whispered. “I’m so sorry.” He held on for only a few seconds, and then he let go, leaving Celegorm feeling horribly empty and bereft. 

“Maglor, take Lhimmir,” he said, hearing his voice shake a little and not knowing what to do about it. “You both need to move fast.” Maglor nodded. “Eluréd, I’ll ride with you.” He swung himself into the saddle behind him, and wrapped an arm around Eluréd’s waist. It wasn’t just that Maglor needed a mount of his own—Eluréd looked like he might fall without someone to hold onto him. “I’ve got you, birdie,” Celegorm murmured.

“I know, Atya,” Eluréd sighed, leaning back against him. 

“Be safe,” Daeron said to them, and then he and Maglor were gone, charging away back up the road, north and west. After a minute Daeron’s voice rose, louder and stronger than Celegorm had ever heard it, almost shocking in its defiance against the shadow that hung over Ost-in-Edhil. Listening to him then, one might never guess that he had been rendered speechless and almost silent with terror on top of the hill. Having now chosen his course of action and committed to it, he seemed to have forgotten his fear.

“Come on,” said Elurín, and urged Rhawhul forward, moving away from the road, more east than south. Celegorm followed, continually looking back over his shoulder. They pushed the horses as hard and as far as they could, and made their camp long after sunset. It was cold, but they did not dare risk a fire. Celegorm helped Eluréd down and tended to the horses, and then went to kneel by Elurín, who was taking a closer look at Celebrimbor’s wounds. “It’s very bad,” he said quietly, without looking up, “but I think he will live. If we can get him home.”

“Elurín, will you help me sing protections?” Eluréd asked. 

“I’ll do it. You rest.” Elurín finished tying off the last bandage and went to pace around the camp. In the distance they could hear the howling of wolves. Sauron was no fool. They just had to hope that he had spared only a few to send south, and that most would follow after Daeron. And that Daeron and Maglor together would be able to evade them.

Celegorm remained where he was, and rested his hand on Celebrimbor’s forehead. He couldn’t tell if he hadn’t woken because Elurín had ensured it, or if he just couldn’t. “Oh, Tyelpë,” he sighed. “I’m so sorry.” Celebrimbor still didn’t wake, but he turned his head slightly, into Celegorm’s touch.

Eluréd slept, but neither Celegorm nor Elurín did. They remained watchful and tense, listening to the sounds of pursuit in the distance, which veered off toward the west sometime late in the night. “They’ll think we’ve gone west—even without Daeron and Maglor’s distractions,” Elurín murmured after a while. “West toward Lindon.”

“Hope so,” Celegorm murmured. The tension between the two of them, he and Elurín, was so thick he felt like they would both suffocate under it. Eluréd had not really looked him in the face either before he had fallen asleep, but that might have been because of the same feelings, or just because he had been too tired. He’d also still called him atya, but Celegorm thought that was just old habit. “Elurín—”

“Not here.” Elurín still didn’t look at him. “Not yet.”

“Can I at least ask why you went to Ost-in-Edhil in the first place?”

“Someone had to get him out, and we were the only ones who could.”

“But without telling Daeron—”

“He would have tried to stop us.”

“With good reason.”

“I know. That’s why we did not tell him, and why we did not wait for you. Eluréd followed after you, you know—we knew you’d found your brother, that you were all right. We waited until you returned for your things, and left when we heard you and Maglor make your plans to return home. We wouldn’t have just left otherwise—but we knew you’d try to stop us, or insist on coming with us, and it wouldn’t have worked if you had.”

He hadn’t known that Eluréd had followed him. He should have noticed—but most of that day felt like a blur, now, and after he’d looked up to find Maglor standing on the beach in front of him he hadn’t had room to think about anything else, and even afterward he hadn’t been as watchful as he should have been—obviously, since he hadn’t seen the signs of them still being nearby, and then had missed seeing where Eluréd and Elurín had turned away from Daeron’s path. The agony of remembering was still fresh inside him, but he could look back now and see that without it he never would have turned south—he would have continued on north toward Lindon and Maglor would have stayed where he was, and neither of them would have ever known just how close they’d come to one another. Again.

And without that remembering, Eluréd and Elurín would not have gone off on their own. Celebrimbor would still be in Sauron’s hands, suffering—dying.

Maybe this was what Ossë had meant—though Celegorm wasn’t really prepared to give him that kind of credit. Not when the memory of his lungs filling up with water was still so fresh.

They didn’t speak again that night. In the morning Elurín managed to get Celebrimbor to drink a little water, and then they went on—this time Celegorm rode with Celebrimbor, and Eluréd and Elurín shared Rhawhul’s saddle. Wolves howled behind them, but Elurín led them through the woods in a winding course, swiftly heading south, staying close to the mountains, using all the tricks both Daeron and Celegorm had taught both Eluréd and Elurín to throw off pursuit and to hide their passing. It was a longer route than the one they’d all taken north, but they had no choice—to take the road was to be seen, whatever they did to hide themselves. They just had to hope that Celebrimbor would make it.

As the days passed, blurring together into a haze of exhaustion and fear, Celebrimbor woke a few times, but never for very long; he was in too much pain to do anything, even to make much noise. Celegorm hated to see him like this, hated that they had such a long way to go, and it was with enormous relief that he recognized at last, after far too many days of travel, the break in the southern arm of the White Mountains, and the path that led to their little house in the hills, and an even greater relief to finally feel the Girdle Daeron had sung up close in around them like Daeron’s own arms, warm and familiar and safe. They all breathed a sigh as soon as they felt it. 

At home, Celegorm dismounted, and carefully slipped Celebrimbor out of the saddle. Eluréd came to take Mithrenvos’ reins, and Elurín held open the door. “Your bed?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Celegorm said, and in just a few minutes they had Celebrimbor in the bedroom, a fire going, and water fetched to heat. Elurín and Eluréd were both skilled in healing, far more skilled than Celegorm, so he just did what they told him and then tried not to get in the way. There were wounds to stitch and songs to sing, and after a while Celebrimbor stirred, crying out hoarsely, struggling to open his eyes until Elurín managed to calm him and sing him back to sleep. 

This was all far too reminiscent, in some ways, of Celegorm’s own rescue from Doriath. He didn’t remember it, but he knew that an Ent had carried him from Menegroth to Ossiriand, crossing the Gelion, all in winter—and he still didn't know how he’d survived that trek. It had left him with a multitude of scars and some injuries that had never fully healed, even besides Dior’s curse. And that had just been battle wounds and a cave falling in. This was different. This was worse. 

He caught himself thinking then that if this was like his own rescue it was even more like Maedhros’, and had to escape the house and flee into the woods to be sick, all that awful grief welling up again—not just for what Maedhros had suffered in Angband, but how his life had ended. And they had been so close—Celegorm had seen him across a battlefield, and had turned away on purpose. From his brother. He had been right there in the camp when the last two Silmarils had been taken—he just hadn’t understood what it was that made him want to get up and go, and so he’d let Daeron keep him away. And Maedhros had died, and Maglor had been lost.

And now his nephew had nearly died and might never fully heal from this ordeal the same way Maedhros had never fully healed from his, and Celegorm hadn’t been there. Again. He hadn’t even wanted to be there because he hadn’t known. 

“Lossë?” Elurín had come out to find him. Celegorm straightened, spit the lingering taste of bile out of his mouth into the leaves, and tried to catch his breath. “Are you all right?” Elurín asked from behind him. 

“No. How’s Tyelpë?”

“Sleeping. Real sleep, this time. I don’t know when he’ll wake—but he will wake.” Elurín waited until Celegorm turned to face him, and then said, “I don’t think I can ever call you—Celegorm.”

“That’s…that’s fine. And if you don’t want to call me anything, if you want me to leave—”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t know what I want. It’s—I can’t—you can’t be the same person. I can’t make it work in my head, and I don’t…”

“I’m sorry,” Celegorm said. “Elurín, I’m so sorry.”

“Is it true, though? I know what all the histories say, what the tales and songs say, but did you—my father…”

“Yes. Or—he triggered the cave-in, I think, but I had already delivered a killing blow.”

“And he’s the one that cursed you to forget.”

“He—yes. I don’t remember Doriath very clearly, but I remember that.” Elurín nodded once. He was pale and exhausted and Celegorm could see how much all of this was hurting him. “I’m sorry,” he said again, wishing there was something else he could say, wishing his apologies didn’t sound so meaningless. 

“If you hadn’t forgotten…what would you have done? In Ossiriand?”

“I wouldn’t have hurt you, Elurín.”

“Because you would not have been able to, or because you would not have wanted to? You told me once that you thought you had been so angry that it crowded out everything else, and—”

“That was true. But I—even at my worst I would not have hurt a child.”

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

“That’s…I deserve that.” If he were to be completely honest, he didn’t know if he believed himself either. He didn’t know what he would have done if he had woken up alone and in pain and still knowing who he was and what he thought he wanted, with a stranger and two children bearing Dior’s face trapped in the flet with him. But he wanted it to be true. He wanted to have always been who he was as Lossenol, or to have stayed the way he had been as Tyelkormo in his youth far away in Treelit Valinor, to have never been what Celegorm the Cruel became.

“I don’t know what to do.” Elurín dragged his sleeve over his eyes. “Just—come back to the house please. Please don’t leave when Daeron comes back.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise you won’t.”

“I promise, birdie. I’ll stay until you send me away.”

When he stepped inside, Eluréd rose from his seat by the fire and came to wrap his arms around him, hiding his face in Celegorm’s shoulder. Elurín disappeared back into the bedroom. “Please don’t run away again,” Eluréd whispered.

“I won’t, Eluréd. I wasn’t now, and I’m sorry that I did before on the beach.” Celegorm kissed his temple. “You should get some sleep.” They were all tired, but Eluréd had had the harder part of the rescue, had had to again endure Sauron’s full attention, and was still recovering.

“Can’t. I keep dreaming, and Daeron isn’t here to sing them away.”

He fell asleep anyway, there by the fire with his head on Celegorm’s lap. Celegorm sat and stared at the flames and listened to the occasional rustle from the bedroom where Elurín sat vigil over Celebrimbor, and to the wind whistling around the corners of the house. He thought of Daeron and Maglor, and hoped they were all right. He thought of Celebrimbor’s broken body and prayed for the first time in centuries. Please let him be all right. He doesn’t deserve this. Not Tyelpë. He’s always been the best of us. Please let him live. Please, please… 

And then he thought of his other brothers, all of them dead, out of reach in Mandos. He wondered if Vairë had woven his fate into her tapestries, if they knew what he had been doing, where he had been, if they’d even bothered to look. He wondered if Curufin was watching even then—if he knew what had been done to his son, if he knew that neither Celegorm nor Maglor had been there to protect him when he needed it most. He remembered when they had received word of Nargothrond’s fall—of the battle that killed Orodreth, and of the city taken over by Glaurung. They hadn’t known then that Celebrimbor had made it out alive, and Curufin had gone still and silent for days, and then he’d locked himself in his forge to work until he couldn’t lift his arms anymore; they’d all thought he would fade away, until word came at last that a remnant had made it to the Mouths of Sirion and Gil-galad on Balar, and that Celebrimbor was with them. And now…

It wasn’t a good idea to dwell on those thoughts, he knew. He would suffocate under the weight of all his failures if he did, and he couldn’t afford to. He didn’t want to die—and not only because he did not want to come to Mandos and have to face all of his brothers there. Or his father. Or—others. Maglor had been glad to see him, but Maglor had also been alone for centuries. Whatever else he was, Celegorm wasn’t stupid—there would be a reckoning eventually, when the shock of it all finally wore off, or when they were finally all somewhere safe. It would be ugly on all sides. He just needed to keep it together until then—until Sauron was driven back to his dark lair somewhere in the southeast and he could be certain that Celebrimbor would be safe. Then he’d face whatever was coming for him, and he’d take it, and—well. He couldn’t guess what would happen after that. Probably nothing good.

He breathed a sigh and stroked Eluréd’s hair when he murmured something in his sleep. “I’m here,” he said, and Eluréd sighed, relaxing again. 

Was Dior somewhere in Mandos, watching, or had he passed beyond the Circles of the World upon his death? Could he see what was happening, who had raised his sons in his absence? Could Nimloth? Did Elwing know who her brothers had stayed in Middle-earth for?

Elurín emerged from the bedroom late in the evening, and Celegorm went in to take his place. In the soft candlelight Celebrimbor looked even worse, his bruises livid and the skin underneath them ashen. “I’m so sorry, Tyelpë,” Celegorm whispered. He rested his hand over Celebrimbor’s, over the bandages encircling his wrists. Celebrimbor, of course, didn’t answer. He didn’t even move except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest. 

It occurred to Celegorm only then to wonder what it was Sauron had wanted. And to wonder where Gil-galad was, why no help had come to Ost-in-Edhil, what had started the war in the first place. Well, that last question was easy enough to answer—Sauron sought to take his old master’s place. But why now?

The night passed slowly. Celegorm paced and tried once or twice to nap, but he was restless, and so tired that he couldn’t sleep even if someone didn't need to be awake for Celebrimbor. Then, as dawn started to break and pale light came through the window, Celebrimbor stirred. Celegorm went to his side, reaching for his hand—and then hesitated, remembering suddenly the look of horror on Maglor’s face when they’d first seen each other on the beach. It should not be him there when Celebrimbor woke. Even if he was in his right mind—it would be too much of a shock.

He didn’t open his eyes, though. He just made a soft, pained sound, head lolling on the pillow. Celegorm leaned down to kiss his forehead, and then retreated. “He’s waking, I think,” he said to the twins, who both looked like they had just rolled out of their own beds, and were half-heartedly making breakfast. “I should not be the one there when he does.”

“He’ll panic no matter who’s there, probably,” Elurín pointed out.

“Yes, but—he thinks that I’m dead.” Not to mention the last time they’d seen one another. Celegorm remembered in a strange, distant sort of way how angry he’d been, though he didn’t think he had been surprised, exactly, when Celebrimbor had disavowed them and refused to leave Nargothrond. It all felt now like it had happened to someone else. There was no anger left—like the fire inside of him that had ignited with the Bragollach had been doused, somewhere between Menegroth and Ost-in-Edhil, leaving him cold and empty. But he had no idea what Celebrimbor would think now. “He’ll mistake one of you for Elrond, at worst. But if he wakes up to me…”

“I’ll sit with him.” Elurín slipped past Celegorm without looking at him, disappearing into the bedroom.

“You should sleep,” said Eluréd after a moment. “Take my bed for now. Later we need to speak of our winter stores.”

“I’ll go hunting later, after I’ve slept. Maybe someone can make the trip to Edhellond in the next few weeks, if it’s safe.” It wasn’t too far, and the journey would be a quick and easy one if the weather held. Sauron seemed to be concentrating all of his attention on the north; hopefully he had left the southern havens alone.

“Atya,” Eluréd said as Celegorm turned away. He froze; that was deliberate, not the name just slipping out through a haze of exhaustion. “I’m not going to stop calling you that. It’s still true.”

“I don’t think your real father would approve, Eluchilion,” Celegorm said. 

“I love my father, and I miss my father, and sometimes I hate my father,” Eluréd said, quiet but blunt. Celegorm turned to stare at him in astonishment. “If I wanted to, I could name ways in which every single adult in our lives hurt us or failed us when we were young, except perhaps Daeron. There is nothing simple about what happened then or who we are now, and many things can be true at the same time. I can resent what my parents chose to do even as I understand there were forces moving in the world far bigger than any of us, and I can hate what you did and love you for all that you’ve done since. I can wish things had been different and understand why they could not have been. I am a contradiction, just in the fact that I was born—it is not so hard for me to hold more of them in my heart. But I don’t care whether Dior Eluchíl would approve of my choices now. Nor Nimloth, nor Thingol, nor anyone else. They have not lived my life. They do not know me. I chose to love you when I was six years old and Elurín and I gave you the name Lossenol, and I chose to call you my father when I was ten, and I choose to keep doing so now, and if no one else can see that that is not a rejection of Dior or Nimloth, then that is their affair. I don’t care.”

“Eluréd…” Celegorm heard his voice break. He didn’t want to start crying again; he felt as though he should have run out of tears by now. “I love you. Both of you. That I remember who I am, now—that doesn’t change the fact that I love you more than anything.”

“I know, Atya Lossë.”

“But it changes everything else.”

“Not everything. And not for the worse—not if we don’t let it.” 

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Everything hurt. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, Celebrimbor was vaguely aware of horses, of movement, of broken ribs grinding together, of cold and wind—and then of warm hands on his face, and familiar voices speaking to him. The voices, he knew, were a dream—his father was dead, and all of his uncles. If Annatar—if Sauron thought that he would be lulled by such tricks, he would be disappointed. 

But when he woke fully, the pain had lessened, and he was—he was warm? He was in a bed, tucked under soft blankets, his wounds bandaged. The smell of athelas hovered in the air, and sunshine unfiltered by smoke came through the window, framed by climbing ivy, autumn red. The bedroom was comfortable, lived-in and neat, the bed wide and piled with pillows and soft blankets. A bowl of water sat on the small table next to it, the water greenish and with a few wilted leaves floating on top. 

Carefully, he sat up, ignoring how much it hurt. He looked down to see bandages wrapped around his wrists and his arms, around his ribs to hold the broken ones in place—but his hands remained unharmed. There was relief in that but also a kind of horror. Anna—Sauron—had been saving that particular torment, hadn’t yet wanted him irreparably broken. Someone had dressed him in a loose fitting nightshirt. Through the bedroom door he heard muffled voices, and some other sounds that were so normal and domestic that he almost felt dizzy. He didn’t understand how he had gotten here, where here even was, what had happened. 

With effort, he got himself out of bed, and on unsteady feet he crossed the room to the door. Even that handful of steps over soft woven rugs scattered across the smooth wooden floor left him aching and struggling to catch his breath. But he opened the door anyway, dreading what he would find but needing to know. If this was really some illusion, or…

The door opened into a wider room, with a large hearth at one end, and comfortable chairs and cushions set around it. A pair of cloaks hung on pegs near the door, and a bow and quiver was set on the floor beneath them. One dark-haired figure knelt by the hearth, just tossing a new log onto the flames. Sparks flew up as it landed. The room smelled of dried herbs and burning wood, and fresh bread. Near the door another pair of figures stood, one stripping off a pair of gloves as he said, “…dressed it, but I’ll need your help to finish—” He broke off, looking over to see Celebrimbor. 

The world tilted. Celebrimbor didn’t hit the floor only because the one who’d been tending the fire caught him in time.

“Tyelpë,” Celegorm said—Celegorm who was dead. Who had left Nargothrond without ever looking back, not even once. Who now stood framed by sunlight coming through the door behind him, half his face hidden behind a fall of silver hair, worn loose instead of his usual tight hunter’s braids. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in his throat and he choked on it. “You shouldn’t be alive,” he said, and watched his uncle flinch back. That wasn’t right. Celegorm never flinched. He was never afraid—when Celebrimbor had been a child, Celegorm had been full of fearless laughter. Later, in Beleriand, he had been full of fearless rage. “What—what kind of trick—” 

“It’s no trick,” said the one holding him up, and there was something about the way he said it, something about the way the words felt, that hurt in an awful, horribly familiar way.

“Don’t—no, no—Ann—it—I won’t—” He tried to pull away but none of his limbs wanted to work. His uncle had always been fearless, but fear was all that Celebrimbor knew now, and he could feel it clouding all of his thoughts until there was nothing left except I won’t tell you you’ll never find them they’re out of your reach you can’t ever have them—

Someone murmured something in his ear, and everything melted away into warm darkness.

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Maglor did not look back as he urged Celegorm’s horse after Daeron’s. Lhimmir responded eagerly, tossing his head and swiftly lengthening his stride. In one hand he held the manacles from Celebrimbor’s wrists, the metal unnaturally cold, and as they charged up the road he threw one ahead, just before following Daeron as he veered west and north. Daeron lifted his voice, a sudden defiant chant against the shadow ahead of them. Maglor could feel when it was perceived by the Enemy. He did not yet join his voice to Daeron’s. Sauron would probably expect Daeron to be nearby, if he had recognized Eluréd and Elurín. He would not expect Maglor, and he didn’t know yet when would be the best time to reveal himself. 

He dropped the second manacle some distance from the first, breaking away from Daeron momentarily to head in a more southward direction as though they had split up, before finding a stream to ride through back north until he left it to follow the sound of Daren’s voice. Hopefully it would be enough of a hint—something small and easily overlooked, perhaps, but if it was found all the more believable for it. Sauron would not believe that Daeron would call attention to himself if he intended to stay with Celebrimbor and the twins—but that they would all head west, Maglor hoped, would be believable. Lindon was where they would find protection, where anyone with sense would try to take a wounded Celebrimbor. 

That was the kind of thinking Celegorm was better at, Maglor thought, looking back to see movement behind them as he finally caught back up to Daeron. Celegorm would have been able to lay a better false trail. If they were lucky, Maglor’s poorer attempt would just confuse their pursuers further. At least it wouldn’t point them direct south. “They’ve seen us!” he called to Daeron, who had stopped singing to catch his breath.

“Good,” Daeron replied, and glanced back himself. He had been nearly overcome with fear outside of Ost-in-Edhil, but now his dark eyes were hard, his expression set. “Can you hide us? But do it badly?”

Maglor nodded and as Daeron turned more directly northward he began to weave his own enchantments, trying to mimic what he had seen of the twins’ and of Daeron’s in taking the shadows around them for his own use. He did not have to try to do it badly—he found them slippery and hard to grasp. His own ways of hiding himself were different, and his tongue tripped over these new songs. In the end he was just good enough; the pursuit continued, and they stayed just far enough ahead of it that they could hide when they really needed to and not be caught, only to emerge for Daeron to taunt Sauron again with songs that brought sunlight piercing through the clouds, scattering the orcs with their bright beams; Maglor sang more quietly, unheard by any but Daeron, calling up winds to chase away the smoke and bring fresh air rushing through the burned out woods to scatter the ashes and lift the hearts of anyone else who might be out there whether they were fighting or fleeing. They pushed the horses as hard as they dared, and stopped for only a few hours at a time, shrouded in shadows and smoke as they passed through the burned and burning remnants of once mighty forests. 

During one such rest, after days of the chase, when they had reached the edges of the devastation, Daeron looked around, grief in his eyes. “I wandered these woods for years, long ago,” he murmured, sitting with knees drawn up and arms wrapped around his legs, looking strangely small for one who could wield such power in his voice. In the distance orcs called and wolves howled. Sauron was somewhere not far away, but his sight was not yet so keen that he could pierce Daeron’s shadows. “They were deep and dark and cool, ancient even then, and so beautiful.”

“What drove you here?” Maglor asked. “Why did you leave Doriath?”

“I tried to follow Lúthien. The Girdle turned me around and I emerged from Region in the east rather than Neldoreth in the west, and…” Daeron fell silent. Maglor waited, and listened to the horses breathing and to the whispering sound of ashes blowing over the ground. The air smelled heavily of smoke. “I was not well, in those days. I—well, you knew me a little, you must have seen something of it, the melancholy I’ve never really been able to shake.”

“I remember,” said Maglor. He could see it at that moment, in fact—had seen it when Daeron had come out of his bedroom, looking exhausted and half-afraid of what he would find even there in his own home. “The weight of it seemed to lift a little at the Mereth Aderthad.”

“It was your friendship that did it. I did truly enjoy our time together there, as I had not expected to.”

“I did too. And—I’m sorry. For the secrecy and…”

“I know.” Daeron dropped his gaze to the ground. “I was still mourning my father, at the feast. Both my parents really, but he had only just died a few years before. But that all got worse and worse, especially after the Dagor Bragollach. We lost so many of our people, and—one of my dearest friends was abroad in Dorthonion when the fires broke out. And then came the whole business with Beren, and I acted foolishly, and…I know now that I was wrong, but it seemed to me then that I would not find much of a welcome if I returned. So I didn’t.”

Maglor knew what that was like. He didn’t know what to say in response, though. With Celegorm it had been easier, because even now he still knew his brother. He had never really known Daeron, even if it had felt as though they knew one another so well so quickly at the feast. And he was still too used to solitude—to having nothing but the sand and water to speak to.

“Thank you for coming with me,” Daeron said after a moment. “You didn’t have to.”

“Of course I did.”

“Celebrimbor is your nephew—you could have gone with them.”

“I will be of more use to him—and to them—here with you. I have gotten very good at remaining hidden, over the years, even if I’m still not quite as good as you.”

“I have always been good at it,” said Daeron. “But—you didn’t have to do that either, you know. Stay hidden. It has been a long time since we were last in Lindon, but I would not be surprised to learn that Elrond still searches for you.”

Maglor looked away. He didn’t want to speak of Elrond. Even forewarned by Celegorm, just seeing Eluréd and Elurín had hurt, like glimpsing Elrond and Elros again. Up close there were plenty of differences, of course, but they had the same eyes. “Elrond is far better off under Gil-galad’s protection than he ever was under mine,” he said after the silence started to weigh on him. “And by now—I would only be an unwelcome intrusion. I used to go sometimes to the borders of Lindon, to sit in taverns or wander the edges of harbors and listen to news. I never heard that he looked for me, but I know he’s well. I know Elros lived long and well and died—died in peace. That’s enough.”

“We both know it isn’t,” Daeron said quietly.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be for you, but you know what I’ve done.”

“So does Elrond. He’s known all along—Eluréd and Elurín haven’t, and they have to grapple with it all now, but that’s not their fault, or Lossë’s.”

“Why do you call him that? Lossë? Was it because you met in winter?”

“The twins gave him the name Lossenol,” said Daeron, “a few days after he woke up without remembering his own. I thought then that the forgetting came from his injuries, and that he would start to remember himself sooner or later—sooner, I feared. But the twins—even at six years old they just knew things, sometimes, and they insisted from the start that the four of us were meant to come to that place at that time. They were right, I suppose—I don’t think any of us would have survived the First Age otherwise. The nickname Lossë came later, after we started teaching them Quenya. And now—even now, it’s very hard for me to think of him as Celegorm.”

“He has answered to your name for him longer than he was ever Celegorm,” said Maglor. 

“You call him Tyelko.”

“Tyelkormo—his mother-name. And he calls me Cáno, from my father-name Canafinwë.”

Daeron nodded. “And…Curvo, would that have been Curufin?”

“Yes.”

“He used to mumble names in his sleep, sometimes, though less and less as time went on. Curvo is one I heard most often, but I recognize Cáno now too. And Nelyo—I cannot guess who that might be. I did not know, in the beginning, who he was. I guessed, and I was almost certain I was right, but…”

“Nelyo was Maedhros—his father-name was Nelyafinwë. Your silence saved Tyelko’s life,” Maglor said. “I maintain that—but why did you stay silent?”

“I was afraid,” Daeron said after a moment. “Of him—of the Oath. I still thought for a while that he would remember on his own, and until we actually crossed the Ascar that spring, near to the Sarn Athrad, I thought we would part ways—I had told him where Amon Ereb was, and we both half-expected to see your people patrolling up the river. Then—well. Things happened, and he saved my life, and by then the twins had attached themselves to both of us, and at least we were united in wanting to keep them safe above all other things. In time I stopped fearing that he would hurt any of us, should the Oath wake—but I knew it would take him away, back into Beleriand, and losing him like that frightened me even more. He also told me, more than once, that he did not want to remember who he was. He knew enough—that he had been a kinslayer—and he did not want to go back.”

“It sounds as though his forgetting was a blessing,” Maglor said. It hurt, a little, to know that Celegorm had chosen to stay away—but the knowledge that he had been able to make that choice, and the fact that it meant that he was there, now, more than made up for it. 

“He used to think so. I have often thought that the person I know is who he was before ever the Oath was sworn.”

“I don’t know if the Oath can be blamed for all of it. We were all changing for the worse long before the Darkening.”

“Well, the Oath and the war, and I’m sure all kinds of things I am ignorant of. But I could see how it hurt him whenever it stirred—even though he did not understand what was happening. It was such a terrible thing that you all bound yourselves to.”

They both froze at the sound of hoof beats far too close. They passed by, heading west. When it fell quiet again Daeron rose to his feet. “We should go.”

“Where is it you want to lead them?”

“I think we’ve led the Enemy himself far enough away that we should think of making our own escape—south again down the coast, and pray the power of Ulmo helps to hide us.”

“You don’t want to make for Lindon? To tell Gil-galad…?”

“I don’t know where Gil-galad is,” said Daeron. “I would be shocked to learn that he remains in Lindon, and we can’t go searching for him through all of Eriador. But I also think—for now, the fewer who know that Celebrimbor lives, the better. We can’t make further plans until he has recovered. Between the two of us I think we can hide our passage so that even Gorthaur cannot see.”

“Are you sure you want to slip away now?” Maglor asked. “I have not yet revealed—”

“Nor should you. All we meant to do was distract, and we’ve done it.”

“You say we, but I have hardly done anything.” 

“I wouldn’t have gotten this far by myself.” Daeron busied himself with his horse, adjusting a few things on the saddle. “Were I alone I would have no choice but to seek shelter in Lindon. I wouldn’t have had the strength to both call him after me and hide myself from him. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We aren’t out of danger.”

“Thank you anyway.”

It was harder to make their way toward the coast entirely undetected. They had to balance between moving quickly and moving quietly, and Maglor could feel Sauron putting forth his power to seek for them. His banners bore a great red eye, and now he understood why. They spoke little, except to the horses or to decide where to make camp. They had broken away from the North Road very early on, heading more west than north, crossing over the Gwathló through the marshland north of Tharbad, and eventually they came to the shores of a river, brown and lazy. “This is the Baranduin,” Daeron said. “If we follow it north we come to Goldberry’s country.”

“Who?”

“The River-daughter,” Daeron said, as though that was meant to make things clearer. “But if we follow it south we’ll eventually come to the Sea, and then we can make our way along the coast. You know that land better than I do.”

“I do, and I do not think we should follow the river or the coast—not if we do not want to spend many weeks more in the saddle than we must. The coast is winding and long. If we cut straight south from here, if I remember right, we should reach the Sea near to the mouths of the Gwathló, and from there we can follow the shore to the Angren—and then we can follow the same path you took back to your home.”

“Having gone in a very large circle,” Daeron murmured. “Yes, all right—I just do not know what to expect near Lond Daer. That’s farther inland than the river mouth, but seems to me that all of Eriador will soon be overrun.”

“All the more reason to take what shortcuts we can.”

They turned south, passing through woodlands that had not yet been touched by the fires of Sauron, but which had been thinned by the logging of the Númenóreans. When they came to the coast they had to backtrack up the Gwathló to find a place to cross—which was hard, even with the horses, for it was wide and deep. After that they returned south to the Sea, and when he caught a glimpse of it on the horizon Maglor couldn’t help but sigh. “You missed it?” Daeron asked. 

“I did.” It was big and wild and dangerous, and by now it was as familiar as his own music. Here the beaches were sandy and wide, and they made very good time as they gave the horses free rein. The wind in his hair smelled of salt rather than smoke, and Maglor sang out in praise of it and of the sun on the waves. Daeron did not join him, but when they slowed to a walk he was smiling. “What?” Maglor asked. 

“Your singing. I’m just glad to hear it again.”

For a while they rode in silence, listening to the waves and to the cries of the gulls and the other shorebirds. Then Maglor said, “I know you say you have forgiven me, but what of Eluréd and Elurín?”

“For Elrond’s sake if nothing else, they will be kind to you. But…” Daeron sighed. “They did not take it well. The…revelations. Of course, the way they learned was not how I would have wished to tell them. I don’t know what your presence on top of it will mean.”

“I still think Tyelko, at least, will come around. He loves you—all three of you.”

Daeron glanced at him, frowning a little. “We have not been lovers, you know, your brother and I. It looks like we are from the outside, I know, but it’s never been like that.”

“I haven’t seen you together enough yet to know what it looks like to me,” said Maglor. “But everyone thought we would end up having an affair at the Mereth Aderthad, remember? Or that we did have one, I can’t quite remember which rumor won out—that we were both just pining after one another or that I actually got you into my bed.” He did remember Maedhros subtly encouraging both rumors just because he thought it was funny—and there had been little enough then that got Maedhros to laugh that Maglor hadn’t had the heart to protest.

“That was just because two rival musicians coming together would make a good story,” said Daeron, rolling his eyes. “Just as it makes a better story for me to be Lúthien’s spurned suitor than what the reality was.”

“Were you not?” Admittedly Maglor had only heard the stories afterward, and he hadn’t really paid that much attention to Daeron’s part in them, but he had not thought to question it.

“Stars above, no. I loved her—of course I did—we grew up together, she was one of my dearest friends, more like my sister or my cousin than anything else. I still betrayed her to her father—twice—but not because I was jealous. I was just—afraid.” Daeron’s mouth twisted unhappily as he looked ahead, down the beach. It was a cold day; they had been on the move for many days, and autumn was more than halfway gone. Clouds had started to gather as they’d raced down the sands, now hiding the sun, and fog was rolling in. The shore could be an eerie place on such days, with sounds echoing oddly. “That is the root of all my mistakes. Fear.”

“Mine too, I think.” Maglor looked back toward the sea, at the ghostly forms of the waves tipped with pale foam. The wind shifted slightly. “We should find shelter. A storm is coming.”

Eventually they cut inland once more, until they crossed the Angren and Daeron recognized the land again. He took the lead, and they made good time, passing through a break in the White Mountains that marched south and, as the year waned and frost gilded the last stubborn leaves still clinging to the tree branches, they came to the hills where Daeron and Celegorm and the twins had made their home. Maglor felt again the power of Daeron’s Girdle closing in around them, and shivered a little. “Could you teach me to sing something like this?” he asked. 

“Yes of course,” said Daeron. “I daresay we’ll have plenty of time, this winter.”

When they emerged from the woods to the clearing where the house and stable were at the base of a tall and grassy hill, they found Eluréd and Elurín already outside waiting for them. Daeron dropped out of the saddle and disappeared into their embrace. Maglor dismounted more slowly, and took the horses toward the stable, where he found Celegorm waiting. “Tyelko—”

“Cáno.” Celegorm threw his arms around him. “Did you take the longest route you could find?”

“Sort of.” Maglor hid his face in Celegorm’s shoulder. “I’m all right. We’re both all right—no one ever caught up to us, and I never had to reveal myself to the Enemy. But I do not know what is happening in the north now. How is Tyelpë?”

“He’s—he’s healing, but slowly. Elurín thinks Daeron might help him better than they can.”

Maglor drew back to look at his face. “Have you spoken?” he asked.

Celegorm shook his head. “He knows I’m here. That I’m…not dead. Or at least he saw me, but I don’t—I don’t know whether he believed any of it was real. He sleeps most of the time, and it’s only lately I think that the songbirds have been able to really speak to him while he’s awake. I don’t go in there then. I think Elurín told him about you, one time when he was clear-headed enough for it.”

“That’s for the best, probably. I don’t want to be the cause of more fear.” As they had drawn closer to their destination Maglor had grown increasingly anxious—of being introduced properly to Eluréd and Elurín, but even more of having to face Celebrimbor. Celegorm had at least had the excuse of not knowing, but he had knowingly and deliberately stayed away, even though he had long known exactly where his nephew was to be found. He had been so sure that it was the right thing—that both Elrond and Celebrimbor would be better off for it, that they did not need him to intrude on the lives they were building for themselves. That surety was crumbling, now.

It was still so shocking, the fall of Eregion. That no one had come in time. He didn’t understand why.

And the only way to learn was to speak to Celebrimbor. 

“Maglor?” Celegorm said softly. It was so strange, this gentleness. Strange but wonderful. Maglor kept finding new things he needed to thank Daeron for—Daeron and Dior’s sons. They had saved Celegorm in so many ways that he didn’t think any of them were even aware of. 

“I’m all right,” he said, and wrapped his arms around Celegorm again. “I love you, Tyelko. I missed you.”

“Love you too,” Celegorm whispered. “No more leaving. No more parting—please.”

“No, no more. It was necessary, but I don’t want to do it again.”

They cared for the horses, and then Maglor followed Celegorm back to the house. They both hesitated before going inside. Maglor wanted to ask what Celegorm had been speaking to the twins about all this time, but he couldn’t quite get up the courage. Inside they found one twin sitting by the hearth, tuning a harp. “Eluréd,” Celegorm said, and he looked up. “This is—Maglor. My brother. Maglor, this is Eluréd.”

Eluréd looked at Maglor. His eyes were so like Elrond’s. “Elrond made us promise once that we wouldn’t try to break your nose if we ever met,” he said. Celegorm made a vaguely strangled noise. “But you would deserve it, you know. For leaving him.”

“Not the rest of it?” Maglor heard himself say and then bit his tongue hard. Celegorm covered his face with one hand.

“I think you’ve already paid for the rest of it,” Eluréd said, looking pointedly at Maglor’s hand—the burned one. Then he went on, “I went to Edhellond for supplies just after we got back, and found someone selling old clothes that might fit you—at least they’d fit Lossë well enough, and you’re the same height.”

“You…didn’t have to do that,” Maglor said. “Thank you.”

The other twin, Elurín, appeared in the doorway that Maglor thought led to a bedroom—it was at least the room where Daeron had been when Maglor and Celegorm had arrived before. “He’s awake,” he said, looking at Celegorm. 

“Does he know—” Celegorm began. 

“Yes. He’s past the panic, but he’s been waiting for you for days, and doesn’t understand why you haven’t spoken to him.”

“Didn’t you—”

“No,” Elurín said. His jaw was tight; he was not nearly as calm as his brother. “I can’t tell him anything because I don’t understand either.”

“Elurín—”

“Just go. One of you. Both of you.” Elurín glanced at Maglor, and his eyes were hard. “At least Lossenol didn’t know. I’m sure your nephew is eager to hear your excuses.”

“Elurín,” Eluréd said quietly, “that’s not helpful.”

“I don’t really care.”

“No, you’re right,” Maglor said. He squeezed Celegorm’s hand and then went to the bedroom door. Inside he found Daeron humming a quiet, soothing song as he dropped a few leaves into a bowl of steaming water. The fragrance filled the room, bringing to mind an early spring morning, smelling of dew-damp grass and fresh wind off of the mountains. Maglor wondered if it was what spring in Eregion had smelled like. 

Celebrimbor lay curled up on his side in the bed. He looked more like himself now, a little more like Maglor remembered him—his wounds were still bandaged, but there was no blood to be seen, and his color was a little better. He was still very pale, though, and too thin, and his expression was almost listless, the light in his eyes dimmed. Daeron glanced up and offered Maglor a small smile. Then he turned to say something to Celebrimbor, and then he left, resting a hand briefly on Maglor’s arm before he slipped out of the room. 

Celebrimbor sighed, and sat up, wrapping his arms loosely around his legs. He did not look surprised, exactly, to see Maglor, but he did look wary and mistrustful. His hair was loose, falling in dark tangles over his shoulders. “Uncle,” he said, voice quiet and rough.

“Tyelpë.” Maglor crossed the room to sit on the edge of the bed. “Tyelpë, I’m so sorry.”

“I looked for you. I—when I built my house, in Ost-in-Edhil, I made a music room and I built an extra bedroom that no one ever—it stood empty, because I hoped you would hear about all that I did and…”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…after everything that happened, everything I did, I didn’t think—”

“Is that really what you think of me? That I would have turned you away, my own uncle? The only family I had left?”

Well, put like that… “No,” Maglor said. “But I…I just thought it would be better. That you would be better, if I wasn’t there.”

“I wasn’t.” Tears slid down Celebrimbor’s face, and he didn’t try to wipe them away. He looked terribly young. “But I’m—I am glad you weren’t there when he came.”

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t,” Maglor said.

“No, you don’t under—” He looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. But I’m here now. So is Celegorm.” Maglor reached out, laying his hand over Celebrimbor’s, not quite daring to do more just yet. “He did not remember you, Tyelpë. I stayed away for—for many reasons, none of which I’m realizing now were good enough. But he did not remember, not even his own name. That saved him, long ago—saved his life and saved him from the Oath.” He wanted to say that it was the only thing that had kept Celegorm away, but he didn't think he could. He thought that the same guilt that weighed on his spirit would have kept Celegorm far from Ost-in-Edhil too. 

“Who else survived, that I didn’t know about?” Celebrimbor asked. 

“No one. I thought he was dead too. A large part of Menegroth fell in on itself—I thought that he was buried underneath it.”

“Was—Uncle Moryo, or my father—” His voice broke.

“They died there. I sang their funeral rites and we built their pyres by the banks of the Esgalduin.” It had been too cold for graves, and they had not dared to linger any longer than it took to give what honors they could to the dead, friend and foe, though Maedhros had insisted on searching for Eluréd and Elurín long after it was proved hopeless. They hadn’t even been able to do that much at Sirion; it had been luck that had made Maglor stumble upon Elrond and Elros where they’d hidden themselves. “I don’t yet know the full story, how he forgot or how he remembered, or what he has been doing all this time. We found one another only a few weeks before we followed Eluréd and Elurín north to Eregion.”

“And then you led—him—away from me,” Celebrimbor whispered. “So he knows that you—”

“He knows that Daeron was there. Not me. I thought I would have to reveal myself, and maybe I will yet, but for now he knows nothing of me, or of Tyelko. We hope that he believes you have escaped west into Lindon.”

“Elrond is out there,” Celebrimbor whispered.

“I know, but—it did not seem to me as though anyone had come to Eregion’s aid. Why, Tyelpë? What kept Lindon away?”

“They did come. There was battle outside our walls—to the north, maybe that is why you did not see, if you came from the south as Elurín has said, I don’t know. I don’t know how long ago it was. Elrond came. I saw his banners. But—we tried to prepare, but he—Sauron, he knew what to expect. Knew what I would do.” Celebrimbor looked away again, and Maglor wanted desperately to ask how, but did not think he would receive an answer. “Galadriel left years ago for Lórinand with Celebrían. But even she would not be enough—not against his new strength. Celeborn remained behind—I think he got most of our people out. But I don’t know. He would have laid those plans in secret.”

Maglor felt sick. There was no reason to keep such plans secret from Celebrimbor unless they both knew that he would either fall with the city—or worse. “You could have fled, Tyelpë,” he said.

Celebrimbor looked back at him. Under the wounds and the tears and the shadows in his eyes he looked so much like Curufin—who looked like Fëanor, who looked like Finwë, and Maglor was reminded suddenly and horribly of what it had been to return to Formenos in the dark, to find what awaited them beyond the twisted wreck of the doors. “No,” Celebrimbor said, “I couldn’t.” And Maglor did not try to argue.

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The stream that flowed out from between the hills—the reason they had chosen that particular spot to build their house—was fed by a cold spring nestled in between the hill they’d built their house by and the one next to it. The water was frigid all year around, and since toting bucketfuls all the way to the house for baths had sounded like a miserable prospect, they’d built a separate little bathhouse next to the stream with two luxuriously large tubs inside set over a space for fires to heat the water, tucked right at the bottom of the hill behind the garden. It wasn’t the same as the hot springs that Melian had called forth deep inside Menegroth that Daeron sometimes remembered with longing, but it was the next best thing.

After doing what he could for Celebrimbor, Daeron retreated to the bathhouse, and busied himself in building the fire and then filling the tubs, eager for a long soak to chase away the ache of so many days in the saddle, and to wash the smell of smoke off of his skin and out of his hair, and thinking that Maglor would want a similar soak too before long. 

Celebrimbor was healing well, though very slowly. Sauron’s power still clung to his wounds, in spite of all Elurín and Eluréd had done to try to chase it away. Daeron thought he had fared a little better, though he wasn’t sure why, and if needed he thought he could call on Maglor to help. For the moment, he thought that having both of his uncles with him would do as much or more than any song to start healing the wounds on Celebrimbor’s spirit, which were far worse than those of his body. 

As he stoked the fire and waited for the water to heat, the door opened. “Ada.”

“Elurín.” Daeron sat back on his heels. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Mostly.” Elurín knelt next to him. “I just—I missed you.”

“I’m sorry, birdie. I missed you too.” It had felt like an enormous weight had been lifted from him upon returning home to find both the twins there, safe and unharmed. Those weeks in the saddle had seemed like years, and his thoughts had been constantly with them. He would never forget what it had been like on that hilltop, hearing Eluréd’s song end so suddenly. It had been even worse than watching Elurín’s battle against the dragon, long ago.

“Please never do that again.”

“I hope that I won’t have to.” Daeron reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind Elurín’s ear. “But at this point I think we all know better than to make such promises. Whatever happens, we’ll all do what we must. Have you and Eluréd spoken to Lossë?”

“A little.” Elurín leaned over to rest his head on Daeron’s shoulder. “It’s just—I’ve felt like—like when you got back everything would be easier. But it isn’t.”

“It’s only been an hour,” Daeron said. “I’m so sorry, Elurín. I wish you hadn’t had to learn all of this in such a way, or that we all had to part as we did so soon afterward.”

“Were it up to you we never would have learned.”

“Well…maybe. I’ve always known the truth would come out eventually—the truth of who he is, I mean. But I did hope that my own knowledge of it might remain a secret forever.”

“How?”

“Well for one thing, I hoped that if he remembered his past it would be by his own choice, and that we would all have some warning—some time to prepare.” Daeron sighed, and watched the flames dance over the wood. The heat felt nice; he’d been feeling chilled ever since Ost-in-Edhil, and he’d not used that kind of power since facing down Sauron at the very end of the War of Wrath. He was exhausted. “You know,” he said after a moment, reluctant to speak of it but feeling that he had to, “there are ships that depart from Edhellond—”

“No,” Elurín said.

“But you could—”

“We aren’t leaving you. Lossë can’t go, anyway. Nor can Celebrimbor, or Maglor. The leaders of the Exiles—the ones that refused to go back after the end of the war—they’re not permitted to go. Even Galadriel couldn’t if she decided she wanted to.”

“You want to stay with Lossë?” Daeron asked. 

“I want to stay with you.” Elurín sat up. “I’m—I was angry for a while, that you’d lied to us, but I understand why you did it. I think in time I might even be glad of it. But I don’t know how to not hate him for what he did. I don’t know how not to love him, either, and it’s—I don’t know how Eluréd can balance it. I can’t.”

“Oh, Elurín.” Daeron wiped away a tear as it slipped down Elurín’s cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

“I just—when I felt this way I used to go to him, because he always knew what to say to help me work through it, but I can’t now, and…”

“You can. You can say whatever you need to say, and he will listen. This new remembering does not change who he is. He loves you, Elurín. He’s loved you almost as long as I have—and only because I’ve known you a few days longer.”

“We were where we were all supposed to be,” Elurín said. “And—and we’re where we’re supposed to be now. I know that. I just don’t know what we’re supposed to do. Or how to make it stop hurting.”

“Talk to him, Elurín. It might not be solved in one conversation, or even many, but I know he does not want to lose you any more than you want to lose him. And when you do talk to him, listen, too. Listen to what he has to say.”

“Are you going to take your own advice?”

“I’m going to try.” Daeron got to his feet. “But right now I am very tired, and very sore, and very dirty.” 

Elurín left him after the water heated, promising to tell Maglor there was a bath awaiting him if he wished, and with a sigh Daeron finally sank into the steaming water. He felt the chill in his bones start to leave almost immediately. The air was steamy and fragrant with the athelas he’d dropped into the tub, feeling a need of its virtues, the way it seemed to cleanse the spirit the way soap cleansed the skin. 

After a while the door opened, letting in a burst of cold air before Maglor closed it behind him. When he didn’t hear any other movement Daeron raised his head, and found Maglor looking at him oddly. “What?”

“Sorry.” Maglor quickly looked away. “Just—I didn’t expect such scars on you.”

Daeron glanced down to where an old scarred over bite-wound covered much of his forearm; there had been a great deal of damage to the skin, so it didn’t even really look like a bite as much as it looked like something had torn into him, and it had not healed cleanly even under the care of skilled healers. “Sauron and his wolves caught up to Eluréd and me, just after the War of Wrath,” he said. “You remember when the Gulf of Lhûn opened?”

“Of course I do. It felt like the whole world was going to break apart.” Maglor stripped, revealing plenty of battle scars of his own, and climbed into the other tub. His sigh mirrored Daeron’s. “Thank you for this. I can’t remember when I last had a hot bath.” Then, after they sat in silence for a little while, he said, “I haven’t thought of that time in—so many years. But you were there, weren’t you, when the Gelion dried up and the Sea came rushing in? I remember your voice, now, warning us of the waves.”

“Yes.”

“And—I remember someone else calling out a warning of the balrog. At the time I didn’t really pay attention to the voice, just the words, but…it was Tyelko, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Daeron said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Maglor said, as the door opened again. “Not to me. Not for saving his life.”

Celegorm paused in the doorway, a bundle in his hands and an odd look passing over his face. Daeron sank a little lower into the water. “I brought you clean clothes, Maglor,” Celegorm said after a moment. 

There was a familiar tightness around his eyes and Daeron said before he could stop himself, “Lossë—does your head ache?”

“Of course it does,” Celegorm said, not quite snapping. “Everything aches.”

“Do you want—” Maglor began.

“If either of you start singing at me I’ll hit you so hard that you start forgetting things.” He dropped the bundle on the bench by the door and left. Daeron flinched when the door slammed shut behind him. Maglor sighed. 

“I deserved that,” Daeron said after a moment. 

“No, you didn’t. I’ll talk to him—”

“No, please don’t.” Daeron ducked his head under the water to wet his hair, and reached for the soap as he came up.

They were silent for a while. Then Maglor asked, as he reached for soap for himself, “Where did you get that scar around your throat?”

Daeron touched it, though there wasn’t really anything to feel. It was a thin, pale line that he rarely thought about anymore. “Someone I knew had been taken,” he said. “Enthralled. He—even unto the end it seems the Enemy wished me taken too, or killed, and he caught up to me the day you fought that balrog by the Gelion.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died. I killed him.” He had used his own power to reach into Menelas and break the enchantments that held him bound to the will of the Enemy, but he had not been gentle—there had been no time—and after so many years of torment and the shock of the sudden release, Menelas had not been strong enough to survive it. But he had been himself when he had died, and at least they had gotten to say a real goodbye, though that was small comfort. Daeron still thought of him often, especially in the autumn when all that sort of grief seemed heaviest—all the terrible things in his life seemed to happen at that time of year—but he did not often remember that he still bore the marks of that final fight. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

By the time Daeron returned to the house he felt clean but still apprehensive. He twisted his hair into a damp braid as he walked, and when he stepped inside he found even more tension awaiting him. Eluréd sat with his harp near Celegorm, whose face Daeron could not see as he stared at the fire. Elurín was chopping something for dinner, scowling down at the knife in his hands. Daeron had not heard raised voices, so he thought this must just have been what it was like all the time he was gone.

“Celebrimbor is asleep,” Eluréd said as Daeron set his dirty clothes in the basket near the bedroom door.

“Good.”

“We need to think about where we’re all going to sleep this winter,” Elurín said. “We’ve been taking shifts, someone staying up with him—but I don’t think he needs it anymore. Eluréd went to Edhellond a few weeks ago and brought back extra pillows and blankets.”

“I don’t mind taking the floor,” said Daeron. “Down here or upstairs.”

“We can all take turns,” said Eluréd. “Celebrimbor needs a proper bed, but I think the rest of us will be fine. Maybe come spring—if it’s still too dangerous to leave, we can build another bedroom.”

“Maybe,” Daeron said, glancing at Celegorm, who hadn’t moved or spoken. It did not seem wise to think much of that kind of future—it seemed as uncertain now as it had during the War of Wrath. “Did you hear anything in Edhellond of what’s happening in the north?”

Eluréd shook his head. “Eriador burns. That’s all anyone knows.”

Maglor came in after a little while. He went to Celegorm, who immediately sat him down so he could comb out his hair for him. Neither of them spoke, and Daeron tried not to watch, instead going to help Elurín. He did not think they would be able to stay there. Certainly Celebrimbor couldn’t. Come spring, when they could travel at least without fear of foul weather north of the Gap, and he was stronger, they needed to decide what to do. The fewer who knew that he lived the better—but that could not be sustained for long. And there were many in the north who needed to know that he lived. Daeron wondered if there was a way to get word up the Anduin, to Oropher or to Amdír. Probably not without either all of them going up the river themselves, or separating—and he was no more willing to split up again than the twins were. 

Though it might happen anyway. Daeron looked at Celegorm again, who was whispering to Maglor as he tied off a braid. Maglor leaned his head back against Celegorm’s legs, eyes closed. Celegorm glanced up and their gazes met—and he looked away. Daeron averted his own gaze, wishing that he knew what to say. How to fix this. If it could be fixed. 

Elurín disappeared into the bedroom with dinner for Celebrimbor. He seemed to have taken personal responsibility for him, perhaps because he had been the one to carry him out of Ost-in-Edhil. Celegorm and Maglor spoke quietly together, and Eluréd ate quickly before disappearing outside, murmuring something about tending the horses. That left Daeron more or less alone, so after he ate he picked up his own harp and started to play, choosing melodies more or less at random, just wanting to fill the silence. 

The next few days passed similarly. Celegorm wouldn’t look at Daeron and only spoke to him when absolutely necessary. Elurín did the same to Celegorm. Celegorm also avoided the bedroom, though whenever Celebrimbor was awake Maglor went in to sit with him, to talk or to play quiet music, and started sleeping there at night. Celegorm spent most of his time outside, with the horses or going hunting, to shore up their supplies for the winter. 

“You need to talk,” Eluréd told Daeron after a week. “We can’t go on like this. I feel like I’m going to go mad.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” 

“Stop apologizing to us. Talk to him.”

That was much easier said than done. Daeron had been trying, but Celegorm was avoiding him, and if he pushed too hard he feared it would just end up in a fight. Maybe that was what needed to happen, but he didn’t think he could get through it, didn’t think he could make himself heard without breaking first, if Celegorm was in the mood to shout at him instead of listen. 

As evening fell he climbed the hill behind the house. It was cold, and frost crunched under his feet, but atop the hill he could look up and see the stars, the diamond bright spill of them across the sky. It was almost too late to glimpse Gil-Estel away in the west, but he saw it glimmering just above the horizon. To the north the Sickle shone—but there would be no intervention from the Valar now. Daeron did not have the same strength of foresight that the twins did, but he did know that. Their wars sank continents, reshaped the world, and he did not think they would choose to do it again. 

The wind picked up, sharp and cold, as he stood there and watched Gil-Estel disappear behind the distant mountains, and an idea came to him—a way to make Celegorm listen. Daeron thought about it carefully, put together the words and turned them this way and that in his mind, adjusting and readjusting until he was confident that it would work for him and only him, that he would only be making a point in a way that couldn’t be ignored, not binding himself to something that might grow out of his control. Finally satisfied, he went back down to the house. 

The twins were both with Celebrimbor; Daeron could hear their voices through the door that stood ajar. Someone laughed, and he thought that was a good sign. Maglor had his harp on his lap, picking out a simple tune. Celegorm was just putting the kettle over the fire. “I need to speak to you,” Daeron said. Both brothers looked up, but he kept his gaze on Celegorm. He couldn’t make himself use that name—it felt wrong in his mouth after all this time—but he didn’t want to end this before it began by calling him Lossenol. 

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Celegorm said.

“Tyelko,” Maglor said quietly.

“I’m not—”

“Please,” Daeron said. 

“No—”

He made himself sigh with more exasperation than he really felt. “Fine, then. I suppose I’ll just have to swear this binding and probably-misguided oath with no other witnesses than the stars.”

“What?” Maglor said, fingers fumbling over the harp strings as Celegorm straightened so quickly he nearly smacked his head on the mantelpiece. Daeron just turned and left, heading back up the hillside. After a few seconds he heard the door bang open, and Celegorm call his name, but he didn’t slow or look back, not until he reached the top of the hill. 

“What do you mean swear an oath?” Celegorm finally caught up, grabbing Daeron’s arm like he had before they’d parted in Eregion. His grip wasn’t quite hard enough to hurt now. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Of course not.” Daeron pulled himself free and stepped back, wrapping his cloak more tightly around himself. Maglor caught up then, out of breath and looking alarmed. 

“Then are you stupid?” Celegorm demanded. “What kind of oath—”

“I’m not stupid,” Daeron snapped. “I’m quite clever, actually! How else was I going to get and keep your attention?”

Celegorm relaxed slightly, but his scowl deepened. “So it was just another—”

“I didn’t say that. I need you to listen to me, Lossë.” Daeron took another few steps back, so he stood at the very top of the hill. His breath misted before him, and he inhaled deeply the freezing air before going on, this time in deliberate Quenya. “By the stars that saw my birth and have guided me all my life, and by the wind that gives me breath, I call upon Varda Elentári and Manwë Súlimo to witness this oath, and by the Flame Everlasting at the heart of the world I swear,” he had to raise his voice when Celegorm tried to interrupt, “I swear that the only secret I ever kept from you was your name, and that from this moment until the sun rises in the morning every word I speak is the truth, plain and unadorned; if I raise my voice in a lie this night, let it be taken from me forever.” He felt the oath take hold, could almost feel the heavy weight of Manwë’s gaze and the star-bright attention of Varda, and knew that his swearing had been witnessed. He shivered, and not from the cold.

Celegorm stared at him. After a moment, behind him, Maglor laughed—abrupt and incredulous. “That’s a dangerous thing to swear, Daeron,” he said.

“I know,” Daeron said. “It lasts until the dawn—then I’ll be free to lie as much as I please.”

Celegorm’s expression was hard to read. He was in the habit these days of wearing his hair loose so that it fell over the left half of it, Daeron supposed just in case Celebrimbor happened to see him before either of them were ready to confront how much he had changed. It meant now that most of his face was in shadow, and all that Daeron could see was his good eye, glimmering with ancient Treelight. “You shouldn’t have to bind yourself to the truth in order to speak it, Daeron.”

“I don’t,” Daeron said. “That isn’t why I’m doing this. It is so you will believe me when I speak the truth.”

“Can you blame me for not believing you?” Celegorm demanded. “I should’ve realized it long ago. You were always so ready to lie—when you made up stories about who I really was, or—”

“Of course I will lie when I think it’s necessary. Or did you really want to tell everyone we met that you did not remember anything of your past? Do you think anyone would have believed that, even though it was true? Maybe they would not have guessed at the real truth but they might have taken you for a thrall of Angband, or worse. Those stories kept questions at bay and they kept you safe.”

“But you—it should’ve been my own choice—”

“It was your choice,” Daeron said. “It was always your choice. If you had chosen to try to remember I would’ve done anything I could to help you. I’ve told you that, over and over. I just—the Oath kept trying to wake, and I couldn’t let it. In the beginning I didn’t know what you would do—what it might drive you to do, after all you’d already done in Nargoth—”

“Don’t,” Celegorm’s voice was almost a snarl. “Don’t speak to me of Nargothrond!”

Daeron couldn’t help but flinch—that was not a tone of voice he had ever heard from Celegorm, and he did not like it—but he moved on. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt the twins—after just a few years I knew you wouldn’t let your Oath hurt them either. But you—you also told me more than once that you feared that to remember would be to have grief overwhelm you so that you died.” At this Daeron heard Maglor make a noise, but he didn’t look away from Celegorm. “I love you,” he said, “and I didn’t want to lose you. I still don’t. I’m—I am sorry that I have hurt you, and I’m sorry that I did not speak the truth sooner, but I can’t say that I’m sorry to have lied in the first place. Because I don’t regret it.”

“I would’ve forsworn it,” Celegorm said, very quietly. “I would’ve. For you.”

“We tried that,” Maglor said, even more quietly. “It just made everything worse.”

“I could’ve done it. I—”

“You would have tried.” Daeron stepped forward and took Celegorm’s face in his hands, thumbing away the tears. “You would’ve tried, and all you would have accomplished was hurting yourself. You would have had no choice in the end but to return to your brothers, and everything would have been so, so much worse.”

“In keeping this from you, Tyelko,” Maglor said, “he gave you back your choices. That is how he saved you.”

“And afterward?” Celegorm asked, ignoring Maglor, keeping his gaze on Daeron. “After it was gone? I felt it—when the Oath was fulfilled, when it was over. I just didn’t know what it was. You had to know, too. So why—”

“You know that I know what it feels like—to be so overwhelmed by grief that it nearly drowns you. You watched me struggle against it for years—you saved me from it. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone, least of all you.”

“I didn’t kill me, though,” Celegorm whispered. “I’m still here.”

“But both of us had good reason to believe it would. It might have—if Maglor hadn't found you—”

“No.” Celegorm shook his head and stepped away. “It’s—it was never going to kill me. That’s the curse. If I’d known—”

“Lossë—”

“If you had told me in time, I might have been able to stop Maedhros. He might still be alive. Don’t follow me.”

“Tyelko,” Maglor said, catching his hand as he turned to walk away. “Where—”

“Just—don’t, all right?”

Daeron wrapped his arms around himself as he watched Celegorm disappear down the other side of the hill. After a moment Maglor asked, “Does the oath bind you to truth entirely, or just when speaking to him?”

“Entirely.”

“I’ll be careful what I say, then.”

“No, it’s all right. I haven’t bound myself to answer questions if I don’t want to—I told you, I’m not stupid.”

“No, but neither am I, and I haven’t missed what you’ve implied about my father in saying so.”

“I don’t necessarily think he was stupid,” said Daeron, “but I also don’t care how brilliant he might have been. I’ve forgiven you all that you’ve done, you and your brothers—which is not to say I found it easy—but I do not think I will ever forgive him for putting it all in motion. It was thoughtless at best, and horrifically cruel to everyone on all sides no matter how you look at it.”

Maglor sighed. “Sometimes I think I hate him, too,” he said softly, “but—well. I knew him before it all went wrong, and all you know are the tales. He was brilliant and he was full of fire, and I think he went mad at the end, after his own father died. But before that he was—” His voice wavered and he stopped to inhale deeply, letting it out slowly as it misted in the air before him. “He loved us, with all that fire that was in him. He did—he was a good father. But he was burdened with a grief that no one else could share, or even understand, and I think it ate away at him over the years, little by little, even before Morgoth was released and set his sights upon the Noldor. I hope he found healing in the Halls. I miss him more than I could ever hate him.”

“You’re right, I didn’t know him,” Daeron said. “But I know you, a little, and I know your brother much better, and I know what Fëanor’s Oath made you do and what it did to your brother when he would not follow its call—even when it was not truly acting upon him. I have always tried not to indulge in hatred—it’s a poison, and I would be the worst of hypocrites if I nursed it in myself after counseling Elurín as I have, over and over, not to. But I cannot find it in me to give Fëanor the same grace I can give you.”

“I understand. I wouldn’t ask you to. I love my father but that doesn’t mean I would know what to say if I ever saw him again.”

They returned to the house together. Eluréd and Elurín were back out in the main room, and looked up with identical frowns. “What were you doing out there for so long?” Elurín asked. “It’s freezing, Ada.”

“Where’s Lossenol?” asked Eluréd. 

“He needs some time to himself,” Daeron said. “We spoke. It was—difficult.”

Eluréd narrowed his eyes at him as he sat down. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something different about you.”

“He swore to tell nothing but the truth until the sun rises,” Maglor said. 

“You swore a binding oath?” Elurín exclaimed. “What—”

“I needed to talk to Lossë, and he wouldn’t listen to what I said any other way,” Daeron said. “As far as bindings—it lasts only until the morning. It’s nothing that can be twisted around to hurt anyone.”

“Unless you say something hurtful because you have no choice.”

“In which case I can just refuse to say it. I’m not compelled to answer any question put to me. I knew what I was doing—I swore it to make a point, and I was careful.” Daeron leaned back in his seat and accepted the blanket Eluréd handed him. Maglor sat on the floor near the fire, crossing his legs. “Will you play something for us?” Daeron asked him. 

“What would you like to hear?”

“Anything you want to play.”

“All right.” Maglor picked up his harp again. It was carefully and skillfully carved of driftwood and lovely to look at. Daeron wasn’t sure where he had gotten the strings for it, but its sound was sweet and light, and he was still as skilled as he’d ever been. Eluréd and Elurín went back to what they’d been doing, murmuring quietly to one another as they worked, and Daeron let himself drift, eyes closed, the fire warm on his face. 

Sooner than Daeron expected, Celegorm returned, looking tired and with his ears and nose red from the cold. Eluréd dragged him over to sit by the fire—on the floor in front of Daeron’s chair, where he had often sat in the evenings before everything had gone wrong. Daeron reached out before he could think better of it, picking a few leaves out of his hair and flicking them onto the hearth. To his surprise, Celegorm leaned back against his legs, resting his head on his thigh.

“I have one more question for you,” Celegorm said after a while. “It’s been bothering me for a long time.”

“Anything,” Daeron said softly. 

“Where’d you hide my sword when you stole it that one time?”

Maglor’s fingers slipped on the harp strings as Eluréd and Elurín both choked on startled laughter.

“When did I take your—oh, that. Behind the goat pen.”

Celegorm snorted. “Of course. Should’ve known.”

“Can I ask why you stole his sword?” Maglor asked. 

“He nearly got himself killed when a scout out of Angband came into the woods where we were living,” said Daeron. He found another leaf and pulled it free of Celegorm’s hair. “We quarreled afterward, and I didn’t want him going back out and tearing his stitches. He and the goats hated one another, so behind the goat pen was the on place I knew he wouldn’t look.”

“I was fine,” Celegorm said, and it was such a relief to be having this argument again that Daeron almost wanted to cry. 

“You definitely weren’t. And I can’t lie, so you know I’m right.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works—”

Daeron leaned forward to wrap his arms around Celegorm, hiding his face in them and in Celegorm’s hair, cold and smooth against his cheek. “It’s exactly how it works,” he said, and then whispered, “Do you forgive me?”

Celegorm covered Daeron’s hands with his. “I don’t know,” he whispered back, but tightened his grip when Daeron made to pull away. “But—swearing any oath at all was stupid, Daeron.”

“It was for you.”

“I know. Thank you. Never do it again.”

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Elurín watched Daeron lean forward to wrap his arms around Celegorm, and then looked away. It had been weeks now and it was still next to impossible to reconcile any of it in his head. Celegorm mostly seemed the same as he always had, except he was quieter, more careful in what he said when he spoke to either Eluréd or Elurín—and he kept his distance, waiting for them to choose to close it. Eluréd was willing—Elurín couldn’t make himself do it.

On the one hand, he understood what Celegorm was trying to do, and was grateful. On the other, he just wanted his father to come and help him, as he had his entire life. 

Then he thought that if one issue was going to be forced that night, they might as well force another. It had been weeks, and still Celegorm was entirely avoiding Celebrimbor. That was understandable, mostly; Celebrimbor been caught up in nightmares and feverish fears for many days, especially after he’d first stumbled out of the bedroom and seen all three of them, and it was only very recently that he had started really believing either Eluréd or Elurín when they told him that he was safe, that this was no trick, that they were far away from Eregion and somewhere Sauron would not find him. But he had met with Maglor calmly enough, and though he hadn’t asked again, Elurín knew that he was waiting for Celegorm to come to him—only Celegorm seemed determined not to.

He got up and went to the bedroom, finding Celebrimbor out of bed and curled up in the chair they’d put by the window. He was looking out at the stars, and there were traces of tears on his face. “Celebrimbor?” Elurín shut the door behind him. 

“That’s my uncle’s music,” Celebrimbor said without looking at him.

“Yes, it is. You should come out and join us.”

“Is my other uncle there?”

“Yes. Another reason you should come out, if you think you can walk that far.” Celebrimbor had been very slow to heal, even though his injuries had not been nearly as bad as Elurín had been expecting after some of the tales he’d heard of others put to torment. But then, Celegorm had been injured by Sauron during the War of Wrath, and even those hurts—inflicted almost incidentally and in passing—had taken a very long time to heal. Elurín still did not know why that had been, but he thought that the even deeper wounds to Celebrimbor’s spirit were in part what kept his body from healing as it should. “He hasn’t wanted to frighten or upset you,” Elurín added. 

“I think it’s a little late for that,” Celebrimbor said. He looked over at Elurín. “I’m sorry. I know I should, but I still don’t know which one you are.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Hardly anyone can tell us apart in the beginning, and you have plenty of more important things to worry about. I’m Elurín.” He walked over and pulled up his sleeve a little, to show better a scar on his arm. “I’ve got more scars than my brother, though that’s not very helpful at first glance since they’re all mostly covered.”

Celebrimbor looked down at the scars. “Those are burns.”

“I helped slay a dragon once.” He had burn scars splashed across his right arm and his chest, and even now sometimes he dreamed of it—of the dragon, of drowning in its blood. Only the end of the War of Wrath when the world had split apart had been more frightening than that very first battle in which he’d taken part. The rest of the time he’d had Eluréd beside him—he could do almost anything without fear if Eluréd was there. “Come,” he said, and held out his hands. Celebrimbor accepted the help up, swaying only a little once he was on his feet. “Someone needs to tell Lossë how stupid he’s being, and I think you most deserve to do it, all things considered.”

“Lossë? Is that what you call him?”

“Yes. We named him Lossenol, Eluréd and I, since he had forgotten his real one. It got shortened to Lossë when we started properly learning Quenya. It’s been so long now I don’t think I can ever really call him—any of his other names.” He couldn’t even make himself say it out loud. Elurín wrapped Celebrimbor up in a robe and then took his hand to lead him out into the main room. When he opened the door Maglor glanced up and smiled to see Celebrimbor, his hands never faltering on the harp strings. Celegorm also looked up, and Elurín saw how he went stiff—a precursor to leaving, except that Daeron leaned over again, putting his hands on his shoulders and whispering something in his ear. Elurín looked at Celebrimbor, who was very deliberately looking away, glancing around the room, taking in all the little details. But he came willingly when Elurín led him over to sit between himself and Eluréd, who smiled and handed over an extra blanket.

“I’m glad to see you up, Celebrimbor,” Daeron said. Celebrimbor nodded. Daeron rose from his seat and went to fill the kettle, murmuring something about tea. Maglor, watching both Celegorm and Celebrimbor, deftly moved his hands on the strings and changed the song he was playing. Elurín didn’t know it but both Celebrimbor and Celegorm seemed to, judging by how Celebrimbor’s breath hitched just a little, and Celegorm turned away. Elurín exchanged a glance with Eluréd, but when they went to get up, Celebrimbor grabbed Elurín’s wrist with surprising strength. Elurín immediately settled back, though Eluréd still got up, resting his hand on Celebrimbor’s shoulder for a moment before going to help Daeron with the kettle and the tea. Maglor glanced over at Celegorm, and then kicked his ankle surprisingly hard—until that moment the two of them had been so very careful and gentle with one another.

“Ow, Cáno—”

“Stop being stupid, Tyelko.”

“I’m not—”

“Uncle,” Celebrimbor said, and Celegorm fell silent. His hair had fallen forward again, hiding the left part of his face. “Why won’t you look at me?”

When Celegorm didn’t answer, Maglor said, “He doesn’t want to upset you, Tyelpë.”

“I’m already upset,” Celebrimbor said, voice tight. He hadn’t let go of Elurín’s wrist, and Elurín could feel the slight tremor in his hand. “I already—” He broke off and inhaled sharply when Celegorm pushed his hair back and turned his head. “Oh,” he said, very softly as he exhaled. The scars were not shocking to Elurín—they never had been, since he’d been there to see the wounds when they were fresh, to watch Daeron change the bandages and worry over them. But he supposed they would be if he had ever known what Celegorm looked like without them—if he had once known him well and then been parted from him for years uncounted, only to reunite and see him so changed. Celebrimbor had seen Celegorm since they’d returned home, but only once, and he’d still been half out of his mind with fear, and even then Elurín thought that part of Celegorm’s face had been hidden.

“I’m sorry, Tyelpë,” Celegorm said quietly.

“For what, in particular?” Celebrimbor asked. He was still trembling ever so slightly.

“For—everything, but right now for—I don’t know anymore. Everything I do seems to be the wrong thing.” He rose to his feet and left then, ignoring Maglor when he called after him. Celebrimbor watched him and then got up himself, stumbling a little before he reached the door. 

Elurín looked at Maglor, who sighed and ran his fingers over the harp in a cascade of descending notes. “They were very close once,” he said, answering a question Elurín didn’t know how to ask. “We all doted on Telperinquar, of course, but…”

“Celegorm and Curufin—in all the tales, they are always together, like you and Maedhros.”

“They worked well together, in the same way that Maedhros and I did. That was why Maedhros set them both in Himlad. And they worked well together because they were very close, much like Maedhros and I. Not to say that all seven of us were not close—we were—but in large families it’s only natural for some to get along a little better than others.” He smiled, but it was a very sad expression. “And now our family has shrunk, though not as much as I had thought.”

“Are you really not…do you not care that Daeron—”

“You have never known my brother at his worst,” said Maglor. “He lost himself long before he forgot it. In keeping the truth from him Daeron not only saved his life but brought him back. I could not save my other brothers—it would have been wonderful to have gotten him back sooner, of course, but I have him now. That’s more than I ever thought I would get, and I do not think I can ever repay Daeron for it.”

“You owe me nothing,” said Daeron, bringing mugs of steaming chamomile over to hand to Elurín and then to Maglor. “I should have revealed the truth long ago—and you should not have had to suffer alone for so long.”

“I would not call it suffering,” Maglor said. “Maybe in the beginning, but…” He looked down at the mug in his hands—everything always seemed so surprising to him, even the simplest of comforts. Elurín wondered if he was trying to convince them or himself that he had not been suffering all this time. To go from seven to one—Elurín glanced at Eluréd, who came to sit beside him so their shoulders pressed against one another. To lose Eluréd would be to lose half of himself. He’d already come close once, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to survive such a loss. To hear what had befallen Elwing had been nearly unbearable, and they had not even really known her, had not seen her since she was a baby.

“I would,” said Daeron, his thoughts seeming to run along the same track as Elurín’s. And he would know—he’d also lived in self-imposed exile for many years, though still far fewer than Maglor, and for less reason. Every time he thought of it Elurín’s heart hurt a little, and he wasn’t sure that he liked feeling something of the same for Maglor, who had also been in Doriath, and who had later been at Sirion.

Celegorm and Celebrimbor came inside then, Celegorm ushering Celebrimbor ahead of him and muttering something about it being far too cold. They vanished into the bedroom, the door clicking shut behind them. Eluréd watched them, and then got to his feet again, tugging on Elurín’s hand. They bid Daeron and Maglor goodnight and retreated upstairs. When their own bedroom door shut behind them, Elurín let out a sigh. 

“You’re still angry?” Eluréd asked him. 

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I don’t know how you can just…”

“I told Atya—maybe I’ve just thought about it more than you have—but I don’t find it that hard to accept that many things can be true at once.” Eluréd sank onto his bed, looking down at his mug. It was warm in the room, with the heat from the hearth downstairs rising up into it. Elurín sat down next to Eluréd and leaned on his shoulder. “Do you ever get angry with Adar Dior?”

“All the time.”

“But you still love him.”

Elurín didn’t answer right away. There were some thoughts that felt like the worst of betrayals of the family he’d lost, and he hesitated to speak them aloud—but if there was anyone in the world who could understand, it was Eluréd. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “If he were here—if he were to appear on our doorstep tomorrow morning—I don’t know what I would do, but I don’t think I would be happy to see him. I think I would hate him.”

“I think so too,” said Eluréd, “but I still love him at the same time. Him and Naneth. And Elrond loves Maglor—didn’t Maglor do almost the same to Elwing that Celegorm did to Dior?”

“Elwing isn’t dead. And Maglor never lied to Elrond.”

“Lossë never lied to us, either. And you know why Daeron did.”

“That’s not what I meant. Elrond never had to—he always just knew.” Elurín sat up straight. “And he’s out there somewhere. Fighting a war while we’re just—sitting here feeling sorry for ourselves.”

“We can’t do anything more until Celebrimbor is recovered,” said Eluréd. “And winter is coming on—even the Enemy can’t fight through the snows. Elrond is…” He paused, gaze going distant. Elurín also took a moment to try to pierce the shadows that hovered over the north, but both Eriador and the future were beyond his sight. “I think he’s going to be all right,” Eluréd said finally. “He’s important. The Enemy knows it, but the Enemy has always underestimated our line. We just proved that, didn’t we? I don’t think he will learn his lesson—or at least he won’t learn the right one.”

“I want to go see what’s happening—just past the mountains,” Elurín said. 

“No.” Eluréd grabbed his wrist. “We’re safe here. That I do know. I’ve been singing more into Daeron’s Girdle, a little every day. So has Daeron. If Maglor can sing his strength into it too, it will be nigh impenetrable.”

“But not forever. He’ll learn eventually that Celebrimbor isn’t in the north, and then he’ll come looking.”

“By then we’ll be gone,” Eluréd said. “We can’t stay here forever, I know that, and maybe when we leave we can’t ever come back, but we can stay at least through the winter, and I think maybe we’ll have to stay a little longer—I feel we were horribly lucky to get through the Gap the way we did, and if we go north too soon we’ll find it overrun. And that means you need to talk to Atya Lossë, Elurín. You have to learn how to live with what has always been true—if you don’t, if all of us can’t trust each other, then we’ll never make it.”

They each had their own bed, but Eluréd curled up in Elurín’s that night—as he had most nights that they were able to go to sleep at the same time since returning from Eregion. Elurín lay with his arm around his brother and stared at the dark ceiling, listening to the soft sounds of a harp and a flute harmonizing downstairs, and wishing he could find the same balance that Eluréd could. Sometimes, lately, he wondered if he had made the right choice after the war—if he should have followed Elros instead. There were very few thoughts that he kept secret even from Eluréd, and that was one of them—in the light of day he could look into his own heart and know that he didn’t truly regret his choice, but in the dark, when doubts crept in, it was too easy to long for something simple, to long to be someone like Elros who could look at death and see it for the gift it was and to accept it with a smile and open hands, leaving the trials and woes of the world behind forever.

He slept poorly, and gave up sometime around dawn, slipping out of bed without waking Eluréd, and out of the room without waking Daeron who had taken Eluréd’s bed that night. After going out to do some chores around the stable and to make sure the horses were all right, he came back inside to find Celegorm stirring the embers on the hearth. Elurín stared at him, thought about what Eluréd had said—knew that Eluréd was right—and turned away instead, aware of Celegorm’s gaze on him after a moment, and both grateful and resentful that he didn’t say anything. When Eluréd came downstairs he glanced between them and sighed. 

Elurín just couldn’t do it. Everything he wanted to say got lodged in his throat, burning like bile, and he still didn’t even know what he wanted. And he couldn’t just go off into the woods for a few days or a few weeks to try to figure it out on his own because it was too dangerous. This had all happened at the worst possible time. 

Celebrimbor ventured out of the bedroom after a little while, slightly unsteady on his feet but looking a little more at ease than he had the night before. Elurín put on a smile for him, because none of the turmoil was his fault, and was gratified to get a smile in return. Celegorm rose from the hearth to speak briefly to Celebrimbor, before disappearing outside. “Is all well?” Elurín asked once they were alone. 

“I don’t know. Maybe it will be.” Celebrimbor sat at the table when Elurín gestured. “I haven’t thanked you yet. For saving my life. So—thank you.”

“You’re welcome, of course,” said Eluréd as he got out the ingredients for porridge—it was the kind of day where something thick and hot would be welcome.

“But what—what happens now? We just—stay here while Sauron burns the world down?”

“We stay here through the winter,” said Elurín. “Eluréd and I were speaking of it a little last night—come spring, I thought we might try to head north up the Anduin, if we can get across the Gap without anyone noticing. Our kinsman Amdír dwells in Lórinand. We can at least learn from him what has been happening.”

“Galadriel is there also,” Celebrimbor said after a moment, as Maglor came from the bedroom and Daeron came downstairs. “I suppose she might already know that I’m—”

“She doesn’t,” Daeron said. He went to put on the kettle for tea.

“She can see almost anything in her mirror,” Celebrimbor said doubtfully. “Maybe you do not know her well, but…”

“It’s true that she and I have never been much more than acquaintances,” said Daeron, “but I was Melian’s student much longer than she was, and I learned all of the same tricks of seeking—and how to counter them. When I sung up the Girdle that hides us now, it was in part to keep out of her sight. I cannot take that part away without unsinging the entire thing, and it’s far too risky.”

“But why would you want to hide from her, particularly?” Celebrimbor asked. Then, “Oh. My uncle.”

“Yes. Going north to Lórinand is most likely the best and safest course—but I won’t deny that I am not looking forward to meeting Galadriel again.”

“Nor am I,” said Maglor with a slight grimace.

“It won’t be that bad,” said Celebrimbor, though he did not sound very certain. “She’s tried before to find you, Uncle, and not for the reasons you fear.”

“I’m glad to know that,” Maglor said after a moment, after his face did something complicated. “She and I were friends, once. When she was very young. But I doubt she will be as pleased as you and I to see Celegorm.”

“Well, maybe not, but…”

“There are bigger things to worry about,” said Eluréd as Celegorm came back inside, “than what happened centuries ago. If Galadriel can’t put the past aside, then perhaps she is not as wise as she would like us all to believe.”

“I’m sure Galadriel can put the past aside as well as anyone else,” Celegorm said, voice quiet but tone flat, expressionless. He sounded so unlike himself that Elurín glanced over at him in alarm. “But she won’t forget what I did to her brother. Nor should she.” He paused to kiss the top of Celebrimbor’s head, and then went into the bedroom. Maglor sighed; Celebrimbor just looked deeply unhappy. 

Elurín hadn’t forgotten about Nargothrond, exactly, but he hadn’t really thought about it until that moment—he had been caught up in Doriath—but of course that was only the last in a long line of terrible deeds done by Celegorm son of Fëanor. He had, though, forgotten that Finrod Felagund was the brother of Galadriel. He glanced at Eluréd, who shook his head warningly. Elurín bit his tongue, and then said aloud, “Celebrimbor, after breakfast, do you want me to show you our bathhouse?” Celebrimbor had bathed, of course, since his coming there—but washing out of basins was very different from a proper soak in a large tub. 

“Yes, all right,” Celebrimbor said after a moment, speaking quietly. “That sounds nice.” Maglor leaned over to murmur something in his ear, and he nodded at whatever it was. 

Elurín finished eating first, and went out to start the fires in the bathhouse, and to fill the tub. He chose soaps that Eluréd had brought back from Edhellond, fresh-smelling without being overpowering, and laid them out as Celebrimbor arrived, shivering a little with the cold winds that had picked up. “I feel as though I should be apologizing to you,” he said as Elurín turned to him. 

“You? For what?”

“For—in Nargothrond, I knew what my father was doing, but…”

“That was years before I was ever born—before my father was ever born. You need not apologize to me. What could you have done, anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Celebrimbor stared at the water in the tub, leaning against the door with his arms crossed. “Nothing, maybe. But I don’t know because I didn’t try.”

“You bear no responsibility for the actions of others,” Elurín said. “It would have never occurred to me that you should. You are not your father.”

“I’m my father’s son,” Celebrimbor sighed. “Even when I try not to, I follow in his footsteps—his and my grandfather’s.”

Elurín knew the ways in which he, too, was his fathers’ son—or at least the ways in which he was Daeron’s, and Celegorm’s. He could never know in what ways he was or was not like Dior except in looks. The thought made something hurt inside of him, and he tried to bury it under more pressing concerns. “Well, you don’t have to apologize to us. Or thank us, really. We’re—sort of family, in a way. Or something like it. Not just because we have a few cousins in common.”

“I suppose we are.”

“The water’s hot enough now. Do you want me to wash your hair for you?”

“You don’t have—”

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to help.”

“I…all right. Can you also tell me how you got into Ost-in-Edhil to find me in the first place?”

“Mostly,” Elurín said as he helped Celebrimbor undress and step into the tub—he was still too thin and unsteady on his feet, and his wounds were still tender, “mostly it was because Gorthaur thought himself so secure that he let most of his people head off to destroy whatever was next, and all of his attention was focused on you. Really, we just sung up disguises like Felagund of old, and rode right in. And then Eluréd distracted him while I snuck into the hall to find you.”

“And—that worked?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Elurín smiled at him as he picked up a bar of soap. “He must have thought that Eluréd was attempting to be Lúthien—but he forgot that we are two, and not only one—and we were not there to demand his surrender. I suppose he forgot, too, the tricks our grandparents played in Angband.”

“He doesn’t forget,” Celebrimbor said, voice very carefully flat. “He just knows himself to be more clever than his old master.”

“Well, he wasn’t—not this time.”

“He will never forget this.”

“I know.”

“He is more powerful than you realize, Elurín.”

“I could feel his power,” said Elurín. “So could Eluréd. You do not need to fear that any of us will try to challenge him directly—Eluréd’s songs were a feint, meant to distract and nothing else. We knew what he would expect, so we gave it to him.”

“But that’s not…” Celebrimbor fell silent. Elurín didn’t try to ask him more. Instead he just lathered the soap through Celebrimbor’s hair, and felt the way he relaxed, slowly, in the hot water and under Elurín’s hands. After a while Celebrimbor said, very softly, “There are other reasons I should apologize—to you and to all the world. I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“Did you swear an oath that bound you to kill anyone that stood between you and a few shiny rocks?” Elurín asked, trying to shelter behind flippancy as something very like dread started to coil in his chest at Celebrimbor’s words.

“No. Worse. Sauron—he wouldn’t—he would not be what he is now were it not for me, and my work.”

Elurín paused in reaching for a small pitcher to rinse out Celebrimbor’s hair. “Did you aid him willingly?” he asked. 

“Yes—but also no. I did not know, then, who he really was. But I had been warned not to trust him.”

Elurín moved around so he could look into Celebrimbor’s eyes. What he saw there was the memory of terrible pain, the weight of terrible guilt, and something that looked far too much like despair. “He has ever been a deceiver, like Morgoth before him,” Elurín said finally. “You were deceived—the fault for that lies in him, not you. If there was a way to defeat his master, there is a way to defeat him.” He was not Eluréd, with his steadfast and unyielding faith in the fact that they were all where they needed to be, doing what they needed to do—he was just stubborn, like those who had given him life and those who had raised him; and he had seen what the world could be like free from shadows and war, and he was not about to simply stand by and watch it descend into darkness again. “We are all of us here still alive when by rights we shouldn’t be. I don’t know what that means, yet, but it means something. And that gives me hope.”

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