Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Part 9
(third in my unofficial series, after In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Legolas/Elrohir, references to Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: Many revelations lead to a calamitous choice.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: Thank to all those who have kept the path thus far, and I apologize for the extended wait on these latest chapters!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the moderators of Library of Moria, Melethryn, Adult Fan Fiction.Net, and other sites of their ilk for all their wonderful, tireless work and for keeping us up to our ears in fic.

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Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Part Nine

The air was sweet when he woke, a misty mélange of peaches, plants, candle fumes, and the chrysanthemum beds that surrounded his disordered alcove.

Echoriath had never been roused amidst such a glorious chaos. Though the greenhouse itself was manicured to a fault, if somewhat overgrown, his own space was in utter, enthusiastic disarray. The sheets were emphatically rumpled, even torn in places, stained with juices, drink, and other saucy expenditures. Those candles that had not burned out were overturned, their wax bled overside or splattered across the floor tiles. The left rod of drapes had collapsed over the flowering cactus of the southern patch, some pillows had been flung among the western poplars, to say nothing of the odd, buttery substance congealed on the side of his easel, purportedly out of harm’s way. On the way table, shards of gouged fruit dried in oozing pools of oil, the salve jar practically swiped clean early that morn by desperate, servile fingers. The vinegaring, nearly drained carafe of miruvor told the sordid tale, as did the flushed body that blanketed him.

To say that their loving had been uproarious, revolutionary, and divinely molten would be to scornfully underrate the bedding of his still youthful immortality. The overwhelming emotion of their betrothal had carried into the first, smoldering coupling of the night. Engulfed in the scorching, sapphire flame of Tathren’s eyes, Echoriath was ordered to strip with exacting deliberation, the slip of each clasp timed as drops from a faucet. With the baring of each subsequent stretch of skin, each muscle and sinew, those aquamarine pools further rippled with reverence, until Echo stood naked before him, not a swatch of cloth concealing his limber frame, not a shadow over his resplendent soul. Tathren had then requested that he be similarly, painstakingly undressed. By the time the last knot of those velvety breeches had been loosed, both elves were veritably quaking.

Yet his immaculate lover had not rushed them, laving hot-tongued caresses over his entire form only to then take his mouth with supreme delicacy, delving as if the fleshy cavity were unknown to him. Ripe aureole had been worried with wispy fingers, Echoriath so tightly wound that even a ghostly touch stung sharp. After a rapturous eternity of fondling preparation, he had been taken with no less care; Tathren sinking into the most sacred part of him as if luxuriating in a long-soak bath. Completion had come almost as an afterthought to the sensuous slow-dance of their overwrought bodies, the melding of their worshipful gazes, the ethereal mating of their spirits. They had lain, entwined, for nearly an hour after, content to stroke the other’s soft-cheeked face, to sigh, to stare adoringly into the neverending deep of a beloved’s eyes.

That was, until Echoriath had a fit of coughing, his throat parched from crooning moans.

Baited by this, Tathren had begun to feed his lover a peach, then decided Echo might find the pulpy fruit all the more delectable if smeared across his chest. He had, indeed, and more places besides, the back of his thighs were soon devilishly sticky and his buttocks of the most savory plumpness the darkling elf could ever have imagined. Their capricious lust ignited, they had sucked, ground, and writhed through the night, with no rest for the adventurously wicked, no release so sating as to quench their mutual, manic thirst. Each had been taken once, then again and again, no insinuation too artful, nor overture too bold; the salve had flowed as freely as the quick gulps of miruvor, before another taunt had them twined anew.

Though he had no distinct memory of Tathren’s eventual collapse - over him, as the revels had so flirtingly begun – the claws of strain, the chafing flanks, the unspeakable gnaw within him all indicated that they had had no energy left to medicate themselves. Yet even as he ached beneath his lover’s braised, bruised, and seed-clammy body, his desire wrenched to life against Tathren’s supple abdomen, thoughts of a warm tongue, of moist lips smoothing along his hard erection too luring to evict from his raw senses on this barely nascent morn. To distract himself, he blinked his eyes clear, pawed at the chain around his neck, and lifted his sterling band into view. With a secretive smile, he pushed a curious finger through, soon admiring how the exquisitely crafted jewel improved his coarse architect’s hands.

Nimble archer’s fingers soon clasped his own, bending the knuckles forward for the perusal of serene ocean eyes. With a glimmer of a grin, Tathren kissed the fingers, the knuckles, the ring itself, then brushed too-enticing lips over those of his lover.

“Forever,” he vowed anew, then pressed against his reddened mouth with ravenous insistence.

He ground their hips together, their shafts suddenly as sprightly as dueling broadswords, their gorgeous friction blindsidingly electric. Echoriath bucked up, hard and eager, as he groped the waytable for something suitably salve-worthy. Tathren snatched up a vial of heather-scented oil, the thickest of the few remaining balms, then shifted off long enough to douse their laps as generously as syrup over honeycakes. He worked the young elf until his engorgement was spuming, then took up his own thorough anointment. The sight of Tathren teasing himself was almost too much for Echoriath to bear. With avid eyes and a lust-leadened tongue, he watched the able hand cull itself to scarlet-swollen readiness. So sinfully arousing was the view that Echoriath tugged a meaty leg around his waist and urged his beloved to mount him.

Whether those golden eyes were so enthralled by his patient impalement on the intruding shaft or his brute pulls on his own tight-spiked erection, Tathren cared little. He perceived but love alone in those burnished orbs, tinged wanton, but blazing with a kindred soul’s radiance. As his battered, exhausted body was plundered once again, he surrendered himself wholly to the bliss of his Echo’s love.

“Beauty,” he rasped, on the verge of a momentous end. “My beauty, I will never forsake you.”

“Do what you will, melethron-nin,” Echo crowed in response. “I am yours; ever, eternally yours.”

With a raising cry, they spent themselves, the feeling too intense to keep them longer. When Tathren slammed down on his drenched chest, neither elf could help the giggles that shook them, as they kissed, clutched, and lingered in celebration of their most tender and endless love.

Until, that was, a water bucket clanked against the stone tile, lurched over, and spilt. Their groggy heads whipped around to witness Elladan’s bashful, hasty retreat.

**********************************

His eldest son was more gray-hewn than silvery when the noon hour struck, his eyes studiously downcast and his gait itinerant as he eased himself through the balcony doors, one haunch at a time. With a look of consternation, Glorfindel rose from his armchair; the rustling of the parchment documents he perused causing Cuthalion to mark him, then sigh with palpable relief. His son shuffled over, crept into his arms, and hugged him with disturbing vehemence; he had not been so embraced by his child since his tender years.

Cuthalion, however, appeared in no mood to discuss what ailed him.

“Thank you, Ada, for the wondrous revels of yestereve,” he murmured into his shoulders. “Truly, I have not passed a more pleasant night.”

“Your gratitude would be better blessed on Erestor,” Glorfindel humbly replied. “Despite the arrival of his lovely daughter, he managed all the arrangements.”

“Have you seen her?” Cuthalion asked, seemingly loathe to release him. “Is she fair?”

“As a dew drop on a willow leaf,” Glorfindel elaborated. “Her name is Miriel, after Haldir’s naneth. With eyes as verdant as a springtime meadow and Erestor’s lush sable hair.” At that description, Cuthalion veritably withered from him, padding over to his seat so lugubriously his father thought he heard his very bones creak. Yet his son remained unprepared for even the most gentle inquisition. “You best take some oats, to hardy you. I fear your brother may tarry awhile yet.”

“If he indeed presents himself,” Cuthalion snarked, rather ungenerously considering the subject at hand was his dear twin. Seeing his father’s baleful glare, he sighed morosely. “Some porridge would be fine, Ada.”

After calling on their cook, Glorfindel perched not in his favorite armchair, but in the seat beside his muted son. Though the young elf had dressed meticulously, his hair was strangely unbound, the lissome silver sheathes curtaining off his angular face from all but those directly before him. Glorfindel rested a testing hand on the apex of his shoulder blades. With an assonant purr of gratitude, Cuthalion curved in his back and allowed him to stroke down. The frankly concerned father set a patient rhythm, not a word between them in the long minutes it took the steaming bowl of oats to arrive, naught but silence even when his son essayed a mouthful. He paused but a second when Talion scooped up his spoon, enough to meet two solicitous eyes amidst a tumble of unfettered locks, then resumed, caught as he was between frustration and some vague, paternal satisfaction.

Frustration eventually won out, as it often did with the Balrog-slayer.

“Come now, my brave one,” Glorfindel urged him. “What gloom is this that has beset you on such a triumphant morn? The first of your true majority, rich of talent, kind of heart, possessed of such charms –“

“*Saes*, Ada,” he grumbled. “Speak not of my charms, for I have… I have discovered their limitation.”

“Limitation?” Glorfindel pressed on, sensing that his son’s need to confess himself was quite easily provoked. “Tell me not Esmerithil has spurned you so cruelly on your very begetting-day?!”

“Would that I had sought pleasure in Esmerithil’s arms,” Cuthalion mused, plunking his spoon into the thick of his porridge with a resounding splash. “To speak of eyes as green as meadows…”

“I was sure you had finally convinced her,” Glorfindel quietly noted. “But which, then, did you take to bed? Is she the cause of your dismay?”

“He,” Cuthalion admitted. His father’s eyes went wide. “Olonlir, the seafarer, was my… I had thought to…” The silvery elf suddenly mewled aloud, so forlornly Glorfindel wanted to embrace him anew. “Oh, Adar!! I am no elf at all…”

More than ever before, Glorfindel became aware of the hairsbreadth thinness of the ice on which he currently tread. Between elves of any gender, bed-play with an innocent in certain telltale ways could lead to a multitude of embarrassments, even for one so experienced in other arts as his randy son.

“He gave you no pleasure,” the tense father guessed, fearing the worst.

“None at *all*,” Cuthalion groaned, with such acute disappointment the golden elf thought he might drop his face in his oats from shame. “He is an elf of such rugged beauty, such repute for gentility and tenderness in the love-arts, I thought I would have no end of ecstasy. He is gallant as his renown, truly, he was so soft with me. But I…”

“You have found yourself out, ioneth,” he smiled sympathetically. “As a lover of maids.”

“I *so* wanted, Ada, to enjoy him,” he sped on, unable to damn himself now that the secret was out. “His kisses were sweet, I cannot fault his touch. I was roused, for a time, when he bent to please me…” He bit his tongue, afraid he had passed the limit of father-son allowance, but Glorfindel squeezed a supportive hand into his side.

“I have performed the act enough times to hear it described, Talion,” he encouraged him.

With a fearsome blush, Cuthalion continued: “No matter how accomplished his talents were… I found I could not… I could not spend. He thought me nervous, so we moved on to his pleasure. In my shame, I felt I had no choice… but I could not stomach his seed. He laughed at this!! Which burned me some, I must say…”

“Perhaps he is not so gentle as others claim,” Glorfindel remarked. “It is rather uncouth to laugh at a lover who has knelt to you.”

“In his defense, he is a rather merry creature,” Cuthalion pursued. “Indeed, were it not for his mirth, he may have taken what followed with far less grace. He again succeeded in rousing me some, so much that I found myself balmed and readied before I even noted the salve had been brought out. By this time, I was quite wanting of release, so he prepared me well and… I will save you some details, Ada, but to relate that… once the pain was eased, I… I was unmanned. He found his end well enough, and I have a sore backside for my trouble.”

“There are curative ointments, my dear one,” Glorfindel pointed out, not completely understanding the problem. “I regret the lesson you learned last eve was so unsatisfying, and on such an important night, but a little rest and a long soak in the mineral baths -“

“Ada, you do not mark me!!” Cuthalion mewled again, so sorrowfully Glorfindel brushed a tear from the silver elf’s cheek. “I cannot lie with an ellon and take pleasure!! I am… so poorly made that I can love with naught but maids!!”

“What is so shameful about lying with maids?” Glorfindel questioned him, astonished at this bizarre outburst. “And you are by no means poorly made, son of mine, child of the most hallowed warrior of his mighty generation, glorious and savage in every deed, second Lord of Imladris and first in my heart. The very color of your hair sign of your blithe grandmother’s influence!”

“But I will never love as you and Ada-Dan,” Cuthalion glowered, though chastened by his father’s words. “Your love is so pure, so ardent, so… bountiful. I will never know such an essential connection with another, not as Echoriath will with-… with one of his choosing.” In the face of his father’s utter, bemused shock, he muttered on. “I long to be so immaculately regarded, to know the passion that quakes and sunders you so… so becomingly!! Yet now I will never be so loved…”

Stifling a heartened chuckle, Glorfindel wove pacifying arms around his frazzled, misguided son.

“Ioneth, you will love as thunderously we,” he whispered to him. “But with the mate of your heart. That such a one will be a maid does not lessen the force of the love you will come to bear her. Think on your grandsire and his beloved, Luinaelin and his mate, how brutally Rumil has mourned the passing of his wife to Mandos. Think you the love these couples share any less than that I hold for your Ada-Dan? That Elrohir holds for Legolas?”

“Nay,” he replied hesitantly, allowing his father’s reasoning to penetrate.

“You have been hurt in your explorations, Talion,” Glorfindel continued. “For that I am saddened. To lie with one who does not please you is one of the most cutting acts in our existence. But that, my brave one, is the nature of risk, and you were bold to take him on, even if the result was rather insipid. You must take heart in that.”

“But where is *my* melethron, Ada?” he groused. “The one who was born beneath a blessed star, who was meant for me alone? You and Ada-Dan have set us a daunting precedent, one Echo-…” Cuthalion bit his very tongue, struggling to save himself. “One he will surely match.”

Glorfindel smirked wistfully, but did not break his hold. “Your brother will pass trials of his own. Though love’s discovery and indulgence be not one of them… he will be sharply tested. This path he has chosen…” His father averted his eyes, just then, such that Cuthalion almost pressed him on it. “No matter, nin bellas. You will have your beloved, Talion, fear not. Perhaps the Valar fashion her grace as we speak.”

“By Elbereth, I hope she is finely made,” his son sighed, but seemed cheered by their talk.

“For you, ioneth-nin,” Glorfindel insisted. “She can be naught but of the very radiance of the Lady herself.”

Just then, they were unceremoniously interrupted by the batter of boot heels on the balcony planks. Elladan, his brow as storm-periled as Cuthalion’s had been abashed, strode out among them, with all the severity of a weary guard-captain and without a second glance at his troubled son.

“Leave us, Cuthalion,” he commanded. “I would speak with your Ada privately.”

“Talion is fraught, meleth,” Glorfindel informed him, with a meaningful glance. Cuthalion stayed his ground, guessing well enough the matter at hand, for none other would cause a lord to act so ignobly among kin. “Can the Council not be stayed awhile?”

“This is no matter of Council, Glorfindel,” he stated with the barest of restraint. He did, however, take in his son’s bleak countenance. /Would there be no end of urgency?/ “Saes, ioneth.”

“Nay, Ada-Dan,” the silver elf stood his ground. “I will have my earful, if my gentle brother is to be slighted here.”

Elladan’s eyes, hard as mithril, bore into him as never before. “I would rather gut my entrails and feed them to a nest of wargs than slight a child of my siring. If you think me so base, then I wonder at your allegiance with this house.”

“*Elladan*,” Glorfindel stopped him, rising to rest a calming hand in the hollow of his mate’s back. “Slight not the eldest son while defending the younger.” His mellow eyes locked with his husband’s dark stare, he gestured towards an armchair. With a formidable snort, Elladan sat. Without taking his supportive gaze off his mate, he instructed his eldest. “Go to your brother, Talion. I fear he will have need of you.”

“My brother is in the finest company of all,” Cuthalion underlined, quietly refusing this father, as well. “I serve him best here.”

“Then perchance you may explain to us,” Elladan grumbled, his face peaked. “Why he has kept his heart so stubbornly away? On which occasion in your upbringing we went so terribly wrong as to not deserve such vital information as the growing love between he and his *cousin*? That I should step so innocuously into the greenhouse and discover them writhing as only longtime lovers could, without the decency of foreknowledge of such an essential chapter in my own son’s immortal life? Can you, Talion, illuminate me as to the reason I have been banished from the confidence of my most tender child, one who has ever sought my succor, my regard? What error or judgment or paternal fault has caused me to loose such a prized station, such a…” His darkling father looked out over the treetops, his eyes brimming with hurt. “What have I done? Ever have I told him that any elf of his heart would be welcome in our home. That he is loved in return by such an elf as Tathren, whom we already esteem as our own, is but…” Glorfindel had him close before a tear could fall; he knew how Elladan hated to weep openly, his watery eyes sign of his ultimate vulnerability where his sons were concerned. That desolate stare soon breeched his own, as his brittle husband sought consolation. “Has he come to so fear our scorn, meleth? Have we given him such cause?”

“Never, Ada,” Echoriath himself replied, as he and Tathren came out onto the balcony.

The pair were recently showered and groomed. Though informally clothed, they had taken great care in their appearance, selecting sober yet flattering raiment, intricately braiding their almost entirely restrained locks, and concealing their love scars, so as not to further goad their betters. Yet naught could hide their unbound affection; their arms and hands linked possessively, their eyes luminous from their night of loving, their satiny skin nearly incandescent under the supple morning sun. The veil of secrecy over their relations had been emphatically cast off, no longer did they suffer the repression of their mutual regard. In every motion, every gaze met, they were as one.

When they moved towards the table, all assembled held their breath, as if in deference to their beauty. Echoriath left Tathren’s side but an instant, to kneel before his red-eyed father.

“Forgive me, Adar,” he begged him. “I have behaved basely. In our defense, we had chosen to declare ourselves this very morn, but that alone cannot not dismiss the injury we have done you.”

“Yet still do you fear our reproach,” Elladan mused. “You fear *me*.”

Echoriath bowed his head solemnly. “You are not the only elder who must approve us. I daresay if you had been, we may have been more forthcoming.”

“None must *approve* you!” Cuthalion protested. “Show me the elf that denies you your love, for I will show him my broadsword!”

“Peace, Talion,” Tathren almost chuckled. “Let your brother and father be mended. And let me beg amends as well, Ada-Dan, and to you Ada-Fin, for my own culpability.”

With a mighty sigh, Glorfindel responded: “As for confessions, I must make my own, in turn. To you, melethron-nin, if no other. I have long suspected such relations were taking place between you, pyn-neth, but feared any common knowledge of such an affair would forever taint the flow of emotion between you, sunder both your budding romance and your cousinly bond. I once felt a similarly crushing pressure in the early days of my binding with your father, I could not fathom what such intense scrutiny might do to elves not passed their two hundredth year! That you cared enough for your friendship and your growing love to conceal yourselves until the time was ripe is perhaps not trusting of your betters, but it is sign enough of the sanctity of your affections, the esteem in which you both hold your beloved and his fragile heart. So I, in turn, kept my tongue, perhaps not for the better.”

To his surprise, Elladan swiftly clasped his hand and caressed it dotingly. “Nay, meleth, you were wise to do so.” Though his eyes continued to glisten, they were now imbued with the first glimmers of joy. The elf-warrior felt suddenly a moment greater than his petty cares transpired, a watershed event in the history of their close family. He released his husband to cup his anxious son’s face, almost disbelieving the comeliness and benevolent presence of the elf that knelt before him. “And you, nin ind… how love becomes you! Ever has its promise nourished your sheltered soul, but, now flourished, you are timelessly richened by its constancy.” He kissed his darkling son on the forehead, then helped them both to rise. A heartening smile, with some little traces of trepidation, greeted Tathren. “Take care of each other, my brave and tender ones, for you are both hopelessly dear to us.”

“And do us the courtesy of foretelling us of your eventual betrothal,” Glorfindel teased them with an up-pointed brow, only to educe fearsome blushes from the young couple.

Echo blinked furtively at Tathren, who took charge: “Indeed, your cunning is unparalleled in these fulsome lands, Ada-Fin.” It struck him, then, that this further revelation might only displease Ada-Dan all the more, but he continued nevertheless, mindful of even more dire consequences to any ongoing secrecy. “The gift I so taunted Echoriath with, just days ago, was… was more than a mere token. It was… a promise.”

By this time Echo had extricated his ring chain, to the astonishment of all.

“We are not yet formally betrothed,” the darkling elf explained, with characteristic timidity. “Neither of us can say where we might be in so short a span as a year. We are but sworn… we will be bound, in time.”

“Naught could bring us greater joy, ioneth,” Elladan beamed at him, then wrapped his arms around them both. Cuthalion, as was his want, tackled them from behind, once they were embraced by each father in turn. Glorfindel was so blindstruck with emotion, he could barely speak.

Tathren, however, made some telling remarks, as they sat down to table. “If only my own Adar had joined us…”

A chill hush swept over them, as frosty as the north wind at winter’s beckoning.

It was Elladan who dared speak first, echoing his husband’s earlier sentiments. “Alas, nin bellas, I fear Glorfindel’s self-cautions may prove perilously accurate. I would take the greatest care in informing my brother and his mate of your… your togetherness.”

“I know it,” Tathren whispered, looking to Echo for solace. He found ample sympathy there, and no little reverence.

“I, too, would that they could share such a resplendent meal, meleth,” he seconded. “And with such… such company.”

“They have been fraught, of late,” Elladan commented carefully. “Their bond ever-strong, even as Elrohir has been ailing.”

“We are not the only ones to secret,” Tathren countered softly. “They will not tell me what has so beset him, though I mark the strain well enough.”

“Nor are we free to tell of it,” Elladan excused himself and his too-silent husband. “Perhaps… perhaps this timely revelation will but reconcile you with them.”

“Perchance,” Tathren murmured, his face paled and doubtful.

“You must not tarry, in this,” Glorfindel finally spoke up, with the crispness of a guard-captain. “Elrond just sent word. Disaster has struck in Laurelin. The northernmost glaciers have melted with the spring, causing such a flood as to sunder more than half of their settlement. None were harmed, thank the Valar, but the frontier is set back years. The children and some worthy parents are boarding their ships presently, though their builders will yet remain. Some will be housed in shore-side towns, others will camp in our wilds. However, the need for new compounds, new domains is supremely urgent. The Council will take emergency measures… all adventuring parties have been sent amendments to their initial orders, and two other companies will depart within a month.” Rather than gasp at this news, all three pairs of tear-drop ears pricked up for further elaboration. “The richest commission, due south to the shalerock caves, will be the longest. Though the region can be reached by sea, the hope is to eventually score a trail through the mountains. This part of the journey, with the proper surveying, will be brutal for all concerned, spanning over a year’s time on this chore alone. The valleys beyond are lush, fertile plains, with woods that rival our own. I am told, with the encircling mountains, the spot bears a strong resemblance to Gondolin.”

“Encircling mountains,” Tathren smirked at his beloved, squeezing his hand in anticipation. “*Echoriath*. The site beckons you, lirimaer.”

“By our own master builder’s bid,” Glorfindel also acknowledged his son. “The city itself will take two years planning, while a ship is built for the return. With the envoy of supplies landed, the instruction of the foremen should take another year, at most. Five, in total, with time allotted for whatever difficulties may arise.”

“I can build a ship,” Echoriath reminded them, shaking with excitement. “And a bridge. Many, if needed, along with docks, wells, talans, great halls… a city!”

“You need hardly list your talents, ioneth,” Glorfindel chastened him. “The commission is already yours to undertake or refuse. Thorontir and his company are sworn to you.” He sighed softly, eyes lingering on the last of those companions. “All but one.”

“My apologies,” Tathren suddenly declared, rising. “But I must speak with my fathers. Have they been appraised of the dire turn of events in Laurelin? Of the Council’s decision?”

“Stay, my brave one,” Elladan instructed him, with a pointed look. “I believe we must best accompany you, this day. When last I saw Elrohir, he was nearly purpled with fever. Legolas rushed him home.”

“Is he unwell?” Tathren demanded. Without bothering to wait for an answer, he leaned into Echoriath’s reach and cupped his cheek. “Meleth, I must go to them.”

“Saes, Tathren, await our company,” Glorfindel advised him. “This is no small matter you will appraise them of.”

“If Ada-Hir is ill, I cannot wait,” he insisted. “I swear I will not speak of aught but well-wishes until you come, but I must not be kept from him. Ada-Las will have need of me. I have already spent the night at revels, while my Adar were poorly.”

“Go, melethron,” Echoriath encouraged him, despite his fathers’ resignation. “After our meal, I will come presently.”

“Hannon le, Echo-nin,” Tathren smirked, before kissing him farewell. Stealing a bun from the waiting tray, he spirited away.

“I am anxious over him,” Elladan concluded. His argent eyes looked upon his sweet, well-grown Echoriath, no longer entirely his own. “Though I confess, the thought of parting with either of my sons for half a decade weighs even heavier upon me. A month is far too brief a time to be reconciled to a life without my dearest children.”

“Or a time when my brother is far from me,” Cuthalion seconded.

“Or a time when our family will live apart,” Glorfindel finished for them. “Best enjoy the present company while we may.”

With a communal nod of acceptance, the family said a prayer of thanks to Elbereth and tucked into their meal.

**************************

Despite the obscuring curtains, the sallow rays of springtime’s brief remission lit the chamber a cool, cobalt blue, as if the elves within were ensconced in a mermaid’s cove. The expansive green coverlet, of an aquatic shade, twined around the listless, embedded elf like seaweed filaments around a beached cast-away, as tendrils of his ebony hair wilded across his sandy-white pillow. Legolas leaned against the hull-husk of the headboard, his pale fingers stroking through the wispy ends so as not to wake sleep’s delicate hold on his exhausted mate.

Neither had he slept, night last, but this was of little consequence where Elrohir’s wellness was concerned. His husband had been so lighthearted at revels, even one so attuned to the elf-knight’s dissonant moods as he had failed to remark the tremors that intermittently shook him at his desire’s prolonged restraint. Legolas had believed Elrohir to have taken a half-dose of the draught in late afternoon, so as to assure his ease. His ever-doting husband, however, had wanted to feel the heat of their flirtations, wanted his quicksilver eyes to reflect hunger at his comeliness, wanted to be entranced all over again by the spell of his archer’s affection. Yet he had failed to inform said husband of his decision. Elrohir had been so accomplished in its playing out that Legolas had only remarked how violently flush his countenance had become at the latest possible hour, when his husband, woozy from his relentless efforts to smite his want, had nearly fainted in his arms. Alternately raging with fever and seizing with shivers, Legolas had quickly borne him home, but enflaming his agony by brewing a dose of the draught.

With penitent, yet desolate eyes, Elrohir had sipped down the foul concoction as Legolas had cooled his brow with a compress; his scathing self-beratement tempered by his fair husband’s absent stare. Once the tonic took its dulling effect, Elrohir had focused his keen mind on the cause of Legolas’ unspoken distress, he had not been right since returning to their table from his garden stroll. In a pained whisper, Legolas had confessed the whole of his under-bridge discoveries, which had immediately curdled the last of Elrohir’s reserves of paternal sweetness.

The elf-knight had been enraged as Legolas had never seen before, his pupils but spear-tip pricks in his adamantine eyes. As the drug would not let his anger properly flare, his innards had been nearly liquefied by the corrosive news. The rarest of maladies among elfkind was purging, so rare Legolas had never seen aught but overly intoxicated men suffer from such undignified maladies. Elrohir, however, had then been harrowingly beset, such that the blonde elf had summoned Erestor in the dead of night and begged him as he had never in all his years to provide a remedy that would not be summarily vomited into their tub, the only receptacle voluminous enough to contain Elrohir’s now-bloody retches. As he had cradled his rather frighteningly stoic husband – trust Elrohir to bear this most ungracious of ills as blithely as a dying swan – waiting on Erestor’s pungent tea and waiting out the latest wave of nausea, a remote part of Legolas had been thankful for this distraction, this respite from their imminent, sure to be fractious discussion: how to approach their belligerent son. Despite his ongoing misery, Legolas had been certain there was yet a sliver of Elrohir’s reasoning mind dedicated to the very same, impossible question, even as he had grappled for the rim and had spat crimson globs of phlegm into the bath.

He’d succored the darkling elf with fleeting, feeling kisses between scalding gulps of tea, best consumed at peak temperature to effectively hot-wash his intemperate stomach. The earlier draught, Erestor had judged, had already seeped in enough to numb his testy desire (thank Elbereth), which left Elrohir weakened, but acutely wakeful. Yet he’d insisted Legolas tuck them both into bed; he’d gratefully thanked and done so. There, his pacified elf-knight had exposed himself to him as never before: how poorly he esteemed his own paternal graces; how terrified he was, in Tathren’s infancy, that the child would never regard him as a true father; his utter heartbreak at word of this deception.

For the one who had been so lightening swift to accuse them of dishonesty had inveigled them as mercilessly as the Mirkwood king himself; not through the urging of his Sindar blood, but through his very own devising.

At dawn, when Elrohir did not yet sleep, Legolas had sung his beloved a lullaby. Though the elf-knight had been lulled into a yet fretful slumber, his husband prayed that even slender hours of rest would replenish him some for the coming confrontation. When word of his father’s sickness would be commonly known, Tathren would not tarry in harkening to them.

Legolas yet wondered whether this should hearten him.

With a last, careful embrace of his lax mate, the golden elf slunk off their bed and slipped out of their chamber. Though neither would welcome nourishment, they could not forgo even the most tentative of fast-breaking if they hoped to survive the day; Elrohir was all but spent of sustenance and his own stomach was stone-hollow. A potent tea would be necessary to even the smallest scrap of consumption, he would start there and wait for culinary inspiration as to what, if anything, he might coerce Elrohir to eat.

To his shock, the table was already set. A pot of the pungent herb tea had been recently brewed; it awaited them, along with thin sheets of toasted lembas, diluted honey, and dried shards of sour plums, a fruit Elrohir detested but the best remedy for his ailing innards. He expected a dismissive Loremaster to follow the sounding of boot-clops in from the kitchens, but instead, his son appeared. As Tathren laid out a basket of oat biscuits, Legolas tensed such that he feared his spine might snap. He had kept iron-clad counsel over his emotions while Elrohir ached, but at the sight of his injurious yet ethereally radiant son, Legolas verily thought he might weep.

Before he could lift his eyes again to behold the preternaturally stunning creature that had for months mislead them, Tathren remarked him.

“Ada,” he whispered, so as not to disturb his resting father. “What illness has befallen Ada-Hir? How does he fare? I met Erestor in the glade, but he would not detail the worst of it…” Tathren moved to embrace his obviously battered father, but the spike of a steel-capped stare kept him back. “Ada?”

“Saes, Tathren,” Legolas rallied to temper his ire. “I would not Elrohir be taxed by your presence, for the moment. Leave us in peace and return for the evening meal.”

“How might my presence be taxing to Ada-Hir?” he asked incredulously, then better examined his brittle father. Never had he seen him so burnished, so distraught. Though fear for his other father’s health gripped him, he dismissed this tiny rebuke as born of exhaustion and essayed another tact with practiced patience. “Ada, by your eyes you are pained and weary. Rest awhile. I will tend to-“

“Tathren, my compliance with this charade hangs but by a spider’s thread,” Legolas broke in. “Return to your home and await us there.”

“Ada, what is this brusque manner?” Tathren questioned him, provoked despite himself.

“Why do you not heed to my requests?!” Legolas barked. “Your sire asks a service of you, he would that you perform it without delay.”

“My *sire*?!” Tathren snorted, then schooled himself. This was no time for immaturity, there was some dark mischief afoot. “Ada, why are you so sharp with me?”

He again stepped towards his father, who retreated even further back into the foyer and turned adamantly away. When a hand flew up to cover his mouth, an icy fear, such as the young adventurer had never before known, stilled the blood in his veins. His father, the most hallowed archer of Mirkwood, one of the Blessed Nine of the Fellowship, son of Thranduil and of the hardiest Sindar stock, such a bold, vicious, and battle-worn elf as the renown Legolas… wept. His father wept.

Yet in his sorrow he was far from silent.

“You have not come to succor us,” Legolas acidly accused him. “Nor to inquire after Elrohir, his entrails knotted with illness at the news of your… Such easy kindness comes too late, Tathren, to suck back all the bile he’s spewed into the bath, to bequeath him a night-span of unblemished slumber. We know of your relations with your… your…” The young elf was assaulted by spurning red eyes, though his tears had not abated. “No ready table could save him knowledge of this grief. Of your deception.”

“Why do you not name him my father?!” Tathren demanded, yet disbelieving he could be the cause of his Ada-Hir’s torment. “Why do you not name me his son?!”

“What son smears *such* a father so basely?” Legolas wondered morosely. “In the court of your esteem, we are but penny-hungry fools; there to merry you in maudlin times, but a bane to your ambitions. And they are plentiful, are they not? To live independent of our cloying care, to reign yourself as one unfettered by familial ties, to roam these lands in search of… I cannot say what you search for. You would never confide to me the purest yearnings of your heart.” Tathren was nearly sick himself, so stabbing were his father’s words. “From tender youth, twas Elrohir who kept your confidence, and rightly so, for he is one of such reliance, such even-handed reason and unwavering constancy, Eru himself would seek him out for comfort. Even in your earliest adventuring days, you ran to him upon your return. Yet upon mooring in Aman, your have thought yourself above your steady father’s advisement and marked not how you wounded him with your tactfully phrased rejections. I fear this latest betrayal was the fatal blow.”

“Nay!” Tathren cried, unmindful of the need for quietude. “Ever have I… have I… Ada, I have come this very morn to tell you both, that you might join with us in our joy. We are… we are promised. We kept the knowledge of our relations from you, true, but Ada-Fin and Ada-Dan were no more appraised. We feared… in truth, we feared you would be too concerned over the maintenance of our cousinly friendship to countenance our newly sprung affections and… perhaps wrongly, we waited out the blooming of our… our *love*. For we love each other, Ada, and will eternally.”

At that foolhardy declaration, a dark figure breached the entering archway and loomed by the hearth. Elrohir, ghostly pale, waited out Legolas’ response, but the archer had eyes only for his mate. Though despairing eyes they were, they warmed some at the sight of him so resolutely upright. His own mithril orbs were hard as that impenetrable substance, yet tinged with a deadness Tathren had never had cause to witness before. The horror of it pierced him, quick and to the core.

When none else dared speak up, Elrohir expounded with the coldest of reasoning.

“If you love your cousin as you say,” he pronounced. “Then you best delay your declarations until you have proved worthy of such entitlement. An elf but a day past his true majority is perhaps innocent enough to believe your embellishments, but were he to examine the manner of their weaving, he might find the cloth frayed in patches.”

“Ada, you are bold-“

“Hold your tongue!!” Elrohir admonished him. “Are you not the very elf who accused us of deception for keeping your grandsire’s murderous intentions secret? Was your own deception not born in that very time of housing with the *very same* cousin you would now espouse after not a year’s courtship?!”

“Nay, Ada, I sought not to deceive you!!” Tathren vehemently insisted. “I only sought time to foster our growing love…”

“Since summer last,” the elf-knight further charged him. “You have undertaken a relation of which you had full knowledge we would not approve, waited a sixmonth on informing us of its existence and took up residence with this elf to further inveigle us. Though I admit we would not have taken news of your courtship kindly, we have only ever held your happiness dear and would have worked to understand the feelings he evoked in you. As we will yet endeavor to accomplish, despite your grievous behavior.” Elrohir paused to center himself, but only began to quake. “I cannot yet truly speak of how… how this madness of yours has cut me, Tathren. You have severed the bond of trust between us. As I recall all the moments I thought you had confided in me, when you merely pulled the hood further over my eyes, in order to… you have besotted a child of my brother’s siring, I hope you of mettle enough to pledge yourself in earnest to him!”

“*This* is the ore your are verily mining,” Tathren spat back, aggravated by his insinuations about Echoriath’s honor. “Will I never escape the blight of my Silvan blood, not even before my own father?”

“Go from this house!!” Legolas snapped, as Elrohir began to sway. “I will not have you besmirch your father *and* my people in one fail blow.” Distracted by his mate’s needfulness, he abandoned his next words in favor of cottoning to the elf-knight.

Elrohir, however, was far from bested: “If you think me one who loathes those of Silvan ilk, then you affront not merely my devotion to you - child I have nurtured out of love alone - but the very merit of my binding!! I will not suffer such a cruel tongue, not ever from one I have held so dear.”

Though Tathren was instantly repentant, his shame singed something ferocious when Elrohir began to hack with coughs. His father’s fingers was soon spattered with scarlet drops, as he desperately sucked back wheezes of air. Tathren flew to the table and, trembling, poured a generous cup of the tea. By this time, his darkling father was withered into an armchair, Legolas petting his hair and whispering troths of love. Tathren guiltily proffered the cup. He knew, then, that he must confess his last, most gutting secret, lest he never again know his fathers’ proud regard. He waited until Elrohir had drunk several decent gulps, until his choking gasps had evened and his chest settled into a hesitant rhythm of breaths.

“Will you… will you not tell me what ails him?” Tathren asked, almost without breath himself.

“He has the lusting fever,” Legolas taciturnly replied, with no little reluctance. “Of one who is longtime bonded and would procreate with his mate. His ailment was at its apex, when he learned… the medicament so smote his rage, that he took ill.” When Elrohir shoved the cup away, Legolas rose to fill it again. Before passing, he upbraided his son. “Your future binding does not bode well, if you cannot find an apology for your very fathers.”

“How can I beg apology,” Tathren cautiously pointed out. “When I hold secrets still?”

Legolas sighed wearily, then fetched the tea without comment. Tathren tentatively approached his darkling father. He knelt before him, hoping to catch his gaze with greater ease, but Elrohir was by now nearly doubled over with the strain of attentiveness, of fury. Coupled with the desire to maintain his poise, the need to reproach through centered reasoning, and the chore of concomitantly experiencing the vicious throes of healing, the elf-knight was further wrecking his lithe frame by the passing moment. A groggy stare lifted to meet his woe-eyed son’s, his skin as if blued with ash.

“Tell me,” he rasped, struggling to reach for his tea cup.

“I would tell you first of our love,” Tathren essayed, his own stomach curdled with apprehension. “All that you have missed through my… my negligence. My disrespect, for your care.” He reached out to place a gentle hand on his father’s knee, but Elrohir curled away, into his husband’s arms. “I love him, Adar. He lights my soul, amplifies the ardor of my eternal flame and glorifies the dark recesses… We fumbled, at first, into courtship, but once it had begun the feeling of our togetherness, of our common endeavors, of our dreams swept us up and… here we are.”

“Indeed,” Legolas repliqued sharply.

“Forgive me,” he pleaded, caught in a gust of emotion. “Forgive me, saes, Adar-nin, but I must follow where he leads me. His is the only note in the melody of my existence that has sung true.”

“We two had notes of our own,” Legolas grunted. “Once upon a time.”

“He is your *cousin*,” Elrohir objected, changing tact. “Innocent of the world, an elf of humble routine… he has idolized you since infancy, Tathren, how do you mark a difference between that behavior and this? What do either of you know of the sacred love of bonded elves?”

“I know of his love,” Tathren swore to him.

“What does he know of himself?!” Elrohir chided, with exasperation. “Will you keep your binding vows as vigilantly as you kept filial loyalty to your fathers?”

“Do you forbid me to bind with him?!” Tathren demanded, leaping to his feet. “Then upon our return I shall defy you!!”

Silence reigned for but a second of misapprehension, both fathers fearing the worst.

“From whence will you return?” Legolas asked anxiously, an eye ever stuck to his waning husband.

Tathren stood straight as a soldier, then declared: “The Council is decided. My beloved, the innocent, has been commissioned to the southern passage, through the mountains and beyond. My company has championed him, and I depart within a month.”

If Elrohir looked wan before, he was verily waxen at this vow-breaking affirmation of his deepest, most disheartening fears. With a last, anguished effort, he crawled into Legolas’ arms, then mumbled his desperate need for respite to his mate. Eyes of arctic frost pierced into the young adventurer, warned him away from his own home.

“No longer can your Ada bear such ungrateful words from one he veritably cradled,” Legolas seethed. “Nor can I stand to see the very vow I wrought from you so casually dismissed, and under such grave circumstance. Think on your actions awhile, Tathren, before we speak further.”

Unable to digest such a harsh dismissal, Tathren gripped to Elrohir’s arm, as Legolas lifted him to his feet.

“Ada, I would aid you,” he stubbornly insisted.

“Nay, Tathren,” Elrohir murmured, the strength to entirely remove his hand eluding him.

“I am an elf of this house!” he pleaded. “I would succor you, Ada… *Saes*, Ada-Las, you too are weary… let me be of some use to you… let me make amends…”

“*Nay*, tathrelasse,” Legolas offered him a gentle word, seeing his overwhelming distress.

In a last, vain attempt, Tathren moved towards his retreating fathers, halted them, then bent to kiss Elrohir’s flush brow. After the most timorous of gazes, the elf-knight shut his eyes.

“I knew not, afore, by what other means you might injure me, ioneth,” Elrohir whispered, so soft and feeling Tathren though he himself might weep. “My body is in agony. My heart is cleft in twain. Have you come to break my very spirit?”

Elrohir could then stand no more, and so collapsed against his waiting, worried husband.


End of Part Nine