Note:  Again, chunks of speech - and the events themselves - have been taken from Appendix A: The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen.  Because there really are some things you shouldn't change.

Devotion

Glorfindel watched Elrond compassionately as his family gathered round him in the Hall of Fire.  He had thought he was in pain before, the golden-haired elf mused, as his much-loved foster son had pulled away from his care, resenting the painfully-arrived-at decisions to conceal him in open sight in the hidden valley.  Yet Estel – Aragorn’s impulsive desire to put as great a distance as he could between himself and Imladris had been far less painful than watching him lose his heart to the elf-lord’s Undómiel.

It was not, he had told his friend emphatically, that Arwen returned the boy’s obvious devotion.  She was kind to him, it was true, but no more than that.  And Estel, he was sure, would soon learn to relegate the elleth to some distant corner of his heart and accept the practicality of begetting heirs for his house on one of his own people.

Glorfindel sighed.  Not that he, any more than Elrond, believed it.  Estel had the all the dogged loyalty of which men could be capable.  And Arwen – Arwen kept her own counsel.  She said nothing – but she was still here.

The singing spun round him like a web, twining fair elven voices in patterns of sound, supported by rippling strings and plaintive pipes, in songs some of which were as ancient as he was while others were as fresh and young as Estel. 

He froze suddenly in recognition of one lay, sung now in a voice that was no longer a joyful boyish treble.  Estel – Aragorn’s voice had matured and his clear baritone had developed confidence.  Even, Glorfindel thought, if its owner was still some decades short of achieving wisdom. 

‘I will stop him,’ Elladan murmured in his ear.  ‘Then I will take him outside and beat some sense in him.’

‘No point,’ Glorfindel shrugged, glancing at Elrond’s pale face.  ‘It will take greater powers than any you possess to change what has happened.’

‘Perhaps we should have left him with the Rangers,’ Elrohir sounded weary.  ‘But Adar needed to speak to him first – we could not leave him among his people, ignorant of his name and lineage.’

‘It is not your fault,’ Glorfindel said.  ‘Nor yet Arwen’s.  Not even Estel’s, really.’  He sighed again.  ‘It may turn out to be the one thing that enables Aragorn to endure the years ahead – I cannot tell.  But it is not comforting your adar.’

‘Well, that has stopped him,’ Elladan said gleefully.

Glorfindel turned to look.  ‘What has?’ he asked.

‘Arwen has slipped out of the room,’ Elladan pointed out.  ‘And Gilraen has gone to sit where Estel can see her watching him.’

‘I cannot imagine that she is any more impressed than your adar.’  A hint of a smile lifted the corners of Glorfindel’s mouth.  ‘The more she is exposed to the vagaries of elves, the more Lady Gilraen values the common sense of the Dúnedain.  I think I might prefer to confront Elrond than come up against the displeasure of Estel’s naneth.’

‘That,’ Elrohir declared, ‘is because you can manage Adar without breaking sweat.  You have much greater difficulty organising females – whatever their race or species.  Naneth and Arwen had you wrapped round their little fingers – Arwen still has!’

Glorfindel’s eyes narrowed.

‘We, of course, respect you enormously,’ Elladan added hastily, ‘and would never consider challenging your authority or questioning your omniscience.’

The elf lord held his gaze coolly until Elrond’s son looked away.

‘If only we could say the same of Estel,’ Elrohir sighed.

***

Gilraen cornered her son by entering his chamber before he had fully woken, knowing that even his reluctance to hear her opinion of his behaviour would not impel him to leave unclothed.  She had, she reflected, looking round the room, respected his privacy over the last several years, since he showed signs of being embarrassed by the care of his naneth – but this was not an occasion for such scruples.  Aragorn – she smiled as she allowed herself the use of his name – Aragorn, Arathorn’s son, needed to hear what only she could say, and he was now too old and too wily to be chased through the halls of Imladris in the game they had enjoyed when he was too small to escape from her.

‘Go away, Elrohir,’ her son groaned as the door closed behind her.

‘Guess again,’ she said.

‘Naneth?’ He emerged from beneath the pillow, his hair wildly dishevelled and the shadow of a beard discolouring his jaw like a bruise.  He looked, she thought, her heart contracting, both very young and very human in this elegant elven haven.

‘Naneth!’ he protested, pulling the fine linen sheet up over his shoulder and flushing under her inspection.

‘My son,’ she said, striving to conceal the pity she felt for one who had yet so much to learn.  ‘Your aim is high, even for the descendant of many kings.’  Aragorn’s colour deepened and he did not pretend to misunderstand her.  ‘This lady is the noblest and fairest that now walks the earth.  And,’ she added firmly, ‘it is not fit that mortal should wed with the Elf-kin.’

Aragorn lifted his chin defiantly.  ‘Yet we have some part in that kinship,’ he said, ‘if the tale of my forefathers is true that I have learned.’

Sighing, his naneth sat beside him on the wide bed.  ‘It is true,’ Gilraen conceded, ‘but that was long ago and in another age of the world, before our race was diminished.’  She reached out to caress his cheek.  ‘Therefore I am afraid, my son, for without the goodwill of Master Elrond, the heirs of Isildur will soon come to an end.’  The sorrow in her voice carried more conviction than any wrath.  ‘And I do not think that you will have the goodwill of Elrond in this matter.’

Her son met her eyes briefly, reading truth in her glance before flinging himself back on his pillow with a groan of despair.  ‘Then bitter will my days be, and I will walk in the wild alone,’ he declared.  ‘For I will love no other than the fairest elf-maid to dwell in the world since the days of Lúthien Tinúviel and the line of Elros Tar Minyatur will end with me.’

‘Such will indeed be your fate,’ Gilraen agreed, determined that her son should understand the consequences of his choice.  ‘And your people will dwindle and fail, who have striven over centuries to protect your line and hold true to their faith that the king will return.’

Aragorn did not reply.  It was too much, she sighed, for one of his tender years to absorb over so short a time.  Love and duty, exile and authority: the weight of so many hopes resting on his untried shoulders.  And yet, she reminded herself, she had been little older than he was when she wed the Chieftain of the Dúnedain and become mother, widow and sacrifice.  She had in a measure the foresight of her people, it was true, but this was no time to speak more of her foreboding.

She smoothed the untidy hair back from his face.  ‘I will say no more,’ she said, ‘other than to remind you that your task lies elsewhere, my son, and you must be ready for it.’  She eased her fingers through the tangles.  ‘Imladris is not the world, Aragorn.  It is apart from all that you need to know and understand.’  She blinked back her tears with determination.  ‘You must leave this haven, my son,’ she told him, ‘to become who you are meant to be.  For only then might you be able to achieve your heart’s desire.’

***

‘He is dazzled by you,’ Elrohir complained.  ‘He called you his shining star, for goodness sake.  It is not fair, Arwen.  Can you not do something about it?’

‘What?’ Arwen demanded, weaving daisies into her brother’s braids as he rested his head on her lap.  ‘If you have any advice for me, I am willing to hear it!’

‘We run,’ Elladan admitted.  ‘There have been occasions when a daughter of men has become overly interested in one or other of us – we have always found that distance and time dispose of the problem.’

‘I am not being driven out of my home,’ Arwen stated firmly.  ‘And I am not being cruel to him.  He is a sweet boy.’

‘You are not seeing him at his best,’ Elrohir informed her.  ‘He does not normally trail around with his mouth open . . .’

‘Drooling,’ Elladan added.

‘And writing bad poetry,’ Elrohir concluded in disgust.

‘It is not that bad,’ Arwen protested.

Her brothers looked at her incredulously, until she grinned in acknowledgement.

‘Estel’s talents include fighting with blades and staying on almost any horse,’ Elladan said, ‘and he is not bad with a bow. . .’

‘He understands battle strategy and can speak several languages fluently – in which he can curse very inventively for his age,’ Elrohir added, ‘but his attempts at poetry cannot be described as anything but dire.’

‘He has a very pleasant singing voice,’ Arwen considered, ‘and he is remarkably good-looking.  Much handsomer than his adar or daeradar.’

‘He is naturally scruffy,’ Elladan insisted.  ‘And he is growing whiskers, my sister.  Like a horse.’

‘He has beautiful eyes,’ she countered.

‘Like a horse,’ Elladan nodded.

Elrohir reached up and grasped her wrist.  ‘You are not really interested in him?’ he asked with some concern.  ‘He is our little brother – but he is a man, Arwen!’

‘He is as yet a child,’ Arwen retaliated.

Her brother met her eyes, recognising that her response was not a denial.  ‘Adar will do all he can to keep you apart,’ he warned.

‘Aided, I suspect by my brothers, our grandparents and every elf and Dúnedain from Mithlond to Mordor,’ she said dryly.  ‘You do not need to worry.  I have no intention of eloping with him on the strength of a few weeks’ acquaintance.  But neither am I about to make any binding undertakings – not about Estel and not about anyone else.  I will make my own decisions, my brothers.  And I will have that clearly understood.’

‘But you will listen to advice, Arwen?’ Elladan asked.

‘I will listen,’ she agreed.  ‘I may choose not to follow it, but I will always listen.’

They relaxed together, comfortable as only siblings can be, as the song of the waterfall stirred memories of past times when they had sat watching the valley beneath them.

‘He said you were like your daeradar,’ Elladan said suddenly, clearly puzzled.  ‘I cannot see any resemblance, myself.  Daeradar is like moonlight, whereas you are dark as a winter’s night.’

‘Estel has never seen Celeborn, orc brain,’ Elrohir told him impatiently, ‘and even he is not blind enough to make that comparison.  He meant Eärendil.  The brightest star in the sky.’

Arwen said nothing, but flushed slightly. 

The twins exchanged glances and Elladan cast up his eyes as they moved to flank her.  ‘We will be here for you, little sister,’ he said staunchly.  ‘No matter what, no matter when.  Now and for ever.  As long as you need us. You can rely on us.’

She took a hand of each of them and clasped them tightly.  ‘I count on it,’ she said.

***

If only, Aragorn wished fiercely, things could go back to the way they were.  Before – before Elrond’s words had stolen from him the adar he loved to return to him a father he could not remember.  Before he had been burdened with an ancient destiny.  Before the star-kissed eyes of Lúthien’s living image had torn away his heart. 

He swallowed nervously.  It seemed hardly any time ago that Elrond’s face would have brightened to see him and he would have run into his foster-adar’s arms, eager to tell him of all the discoveries of a day packed with learning and adventure.  But Elrond’s face was pale now and his eyes dark, as the shadow of a distant fate came between them.

Elrond smiled at him, sad smile though it was, and beckoned his foster son to join him before the cold fireplace, where only sprays of leaves blazed in crimson and gold.  Aragorn sighed and fidgeted as the elf lord watched him as if wishing to store away the memory of his face.

‘Aragorn, Arathorn’s son, Lord of the Dúnedain,’ Elrond said finally, taking refuge in formality, ‘listen to me!  A great doom awaits you, either to rise above the height of all your fathers since the days of Elendil, or to fall into darkness with all that is left of your kin.  Many years of trial lie before you.  You shall neither have wife, nor bind any woman to you in troth, until your time comes and you are found worthy of it.’

Dropping his head, Aragorn blushed scarlet, then paled.  ‘Can it be that my naneth has spoken to you?’ he asked.

‘Oh, Estel,’ Elrond said, his voice no more than a sigh.  ‘No, indeed.  Your eyes have betrayed you long since.’  He inspected the young face, but folded his hands together to restrain his urge to take his foster son in his arms.  ‘But I do not speak of my daughter alone.  You shall be betrothed to no man’s child as yet.  But as for Arwen the Fair, Lady of Imladris and of Lórien, Evenstar of her people, she is of lineage greater than yours, and she has lived in the world already so long that to her you are but as a yearling shoot beside a young birch of many summers.  She is too far above you.  And so, I think, it may well seem to her.  But even if it were not so, and her heart turned towards you, I should still be grieved because of the doom that is laid on us.’

‘What is that doom?’ Aragorn asked, his voice strangling in his throat.

‘That so long as I abide here, she shall live with the youth of the Eldar,’ answered Elrond, ‘and when I depart, she shall go with me, if she so chooses.’

In the silence that extended between them, Aragorn could hear the whisper of the breeze in the trees and the buzz of bees.  Birds sang and the horses in the distant meadows called, but in Elrond’s chamber the air was still and filled with sorrow.

‘I see,’ said Aragorn, ‘that I have turned my eyes to a treasure no less dear than the treasure of Thingol that Beren once desired.  Such is my fate.’   Swift memories passed through his mind of tales he had been told throughout his childhood – of the love of Beren and Lúthien, of Tuor and Idril, the great friendship of Túrin Turambar and Beleg Cúthalion, of Finrod and Bëor: tales told so that he would learn not to be ashamed of himself as a man among elves, to teach him that he was as necessary to Ilúvatar’s creation as the elves who surrounded him – and for a moment he felt cheated, as if the stories had been no more than sops to please one who was somehow lesser.   Then suddenly the foresight of his kindred came to him, and he said, ‘But the years of your abiding run short at last, and the choice must soon be laid on your children, to part either with you or with Middle Earth.’

‘Truly,’ said Elrond.  ‘Soon, as we account it, though many years of men must still pass.  But there will be no choice before Arwen, my most beloved daughter, unless, you Aragorn, Arathorn’s son, come between us and bring one of us, you or me, to a bitter parting beyond the end of the world.’  He closed his eyes briefly. ‘You do not know yet what you desire of me.’  He sighed, and after a while, looking gravely upon the young man he had learned to love as a son, he said again, ‘The years will bring what they will.  We will speak no more of this until many have passed.  The days darken, and much evil is to come.’

Aragorn rose automatically as Elrond stood, and tears stung his eyes as the only father he had known drew him into an embrace that was as loving as any he remembered.  ‘Yours will be a hard path and a long one, my son,’ he murmured, kissing the unmarked brow before him, ‘and I cannot see the twists and turns it will follow.  But I know that you are as gallant a man and as bold as the most valiant of your ancestors.  The borders of the hidden valley will always remain open to one who is as a son to me.’

In a last moment of childhood, Aragorn clasped convulsively the lean figure of the tall half-elf and rested his head on the shoulder before him, before releasing him to step back.  ‘I will not dishonour you, Adar,’ he said, ‘or the teaching that has been given to me here.’

‘Return home when you can, my Estel,’ Elrond said softly, cupping the young face in his hand.  ‘You will always be welcome among us.’

***

‘His is a cruel destiny,’ Arwen said as the pale winter sunlight brightened her hair and reflected from the needle in her slender hands.

‘Cruel,’ Gilraen agreed with resignation, ‘yet a necessary part of something that is greater than us all.’

‘He is so young.’

‘Younger than Elrond Half-Elven when he lost his parents to the needs of Middle Earth?’ Gilraen asked.

Arwen raised her eyes from her stitching.

‘He has a chance to save much of what is best in the world,’ Aragorn’s naneth remarked.  ‘It may well cost him all he is and all that he might be – but I refuse to believe that there is no chance of success.’

The elleth continued to watch her.

‘It is not easy to live the life of a Dúnedain,’ Gilraen said conversationally.  ‘For all we live longer than most men, we strive to keep alive a tradition that faded from the world a score of generations ago.  We live simple lives unseen, wedding late and bearing sons whose task is to protect those who barely know we exist.  We bolster ourselves with the knowledge that we are the descendants of Westernesse and that what we do is part of who we are – but we fade.  What to you is memory is to us but legend.  My son is young among us, true, but he is of the lineage of kings and to him it is given to bring hope – not only to the Dúnedain, but to the whole of Middle Earth.’  She rested her hands in her lap and gazed at the ordered gardens beyond the window, her eyes seeing them not.  ‘I shall not live to see him succeed or fail,’ she mused, ‘but you will.’  Her eyes sharpened.  ‘You will.’

The Evenstar of her people, Gilraen thought.  Was prophecy involved in that, as in so much else, or was it merely the darkness of her hair that had led to her name?  It seemed as unlikely as her son answering to the name Estel.  She felt again the twist of pain that bound her to Elrond.  Hard enough, she acknowledged, to have spent a quarter of a century enduring the knowledge of her only child’s burden.  How had it been for him, to fear for the best part of an age that his success would cost him his daughter?  Little wonder that he fought it as best he could.  But he knew.  It was in his eyes as he looked at her – in his hand as he held her – in his voice as he murmured her name.  A cruel sundering for one who had lost his brother to mortality and his parents to a fate more alien still.  Still, she thought, he could at least hope to be reunited with his wife in that place beyond the sea.  And one’s children were lent only – to be loved and raised and freed to live their own lives.  But she found she still hoped that Elrond would not be divided from his sons.  He deserved all the comfort he could be given.

‘Why should you not see him succeed?’ Arwen asked.  ‘You are young among the Dúnedain.’

Gilraen shook her head.  ‘I think he needs to be single-minded,’ she said, ‘and I have played my part.’  She smiled faintly.  ‘I am content,’ she stated.  ‘It is not I who will be needed to help him endure to the last.’  She studied Arwen’s pale face.  ‘I hear that the groves of Lothlórien are beautiful, my lady,’ she remarked, ‘and that men are unwelcome under their shade.’

‘That is so,’ Arwen allowed.

‘My son needs not to be torn,’ Gilraen spoke carefully.  ‘His life will be hard enough without spending many nights alone beneath the stars yearning for what he can never have.’

Arwen smiled.  ‘Are you saying that it would be better if I returned to my grandparents’ care?’  She lowered her work and turned her attention to Aragorn’s naneth.  ‘He is not the first – or even the tenth – of Isildur’s heirs to look at me with eyes dark with longing.  He would not be the first among them to remind me of the choice of Lúthien.  Who is to say that he will not transfer his devotion to a maid of the Dúnedain and live happily with her as others have before him?  He is young,’ she added softly, ‘even for a child of men.’

‘He is young,’ Gilraen allowed, ‘and he needs all the help that we might offer him.’

Arwen set a careful stitch in her embroidery, so that a silver star shone from the midnight cloth.  ‘I will consider what you say,’ she agreed.  ‘I am loath to leave my adar, but it might be as well if I were to return for a time to the Golden Wood.’

‘As I will leave Imladris to join my kin,’ Gilraen sighed.  ‘For the time of secrecy is past and I am no longer needed here.’ 

***

‘Once more,’ Elrohir warned, releasing the arrow to strike the heart of the target.  ‘One more mention of Estel – one more sigh – and I might just turn the next arrow on you.’

‘I had not realised,’ his brother admitted, ‘how much time we had spent with him – and how much of our energy he had absorbed.’

Elrohir lowered his bow.  ‘It is ridiculous,’ he said flatly.  ‘We spent centuries as warriors before his arrival and we will spend many more defending Imladris now he has gone.  We trained him well, my brother, and prepared him for his task as much as we could.  We cannot follow him like a pair of sheepdogs and protect him from whatever threatens him.  He is grown.’

‘He is grown,’ Elladan conceded, ‘but he is still our little brother – and it does not feel right to abandon him to the dangers of the wild while we sit snug and sheltered in Imladris.’

A snort of suppressed laughter made him turn.  Glorfindel rested his elbows on the rail, his hair braided away from his face and his tunic sweat-streaked. 

‘You look as if you have been enjoying yourself.  To whom have you been teaching a much-deserved lesson now?’ Elrohir grinned.

Glorfindel flicked at his tunic to remove a streak of dust and lifted a single eyebrow.  ‘Just a little exercise,’ he remarked. ‘But I would be happy to take on either or both of you, should you so desire.’

‘Such an honour,’ Elrohir said swiftly, ‘is only merited by my adar’s first-born.’

Elladan threw him a look of disgust.  ‘I would not wish to put you to so much exertion, Glorfindel,’ he said politely.

Glorfindel grinned.  It was good, he thought, to see that he still maintained an automatic authority over the Elrondionnath, despite their added years and skills.  Círdan, he had noticed, could do it still with Elrond on their rare meetings – and the power to send a mature elf back to the schoolroom with a look was not to be under-estimated.  Of course, there were those who would debate whether or not the twins deserved the adjective ‘mature’, but he knew better.  Their light-mindedness was largely an act – a defence against the black dog that had seized them after their naneth’s wounding – and hid a sense of responsibility and duty of which most were unaware.

‘Estel is old enough to make his own way in the world,’ he advised them.  ‘But that does not mean we have abandoned him.’  His fingers picked at the thong holding his hair back.  ‘You have ridden with the Rangers over many years – there is no need for you to desert them simply because Estel is now among them.   Carry on as you did before he came to us – as you did when he was a child.   Avoid his patrols until he has settled into his new life, but be around.’  He grinned ruefully.  ‘You will be no more wrong in that than in staying away.’

‘We will be wrong in whatever we do?’ Elrohir asked dubiously.

‘Of course.’  Glorfindel shrugged.  ‘Think back.’  He untwisted the braid and shook his hair free.  ‘If I kept you close, you thought I did not trust you to behave – yet when I sent you out under a different captain, you felt I did not think highly enough of your skills to have you on my patrols.  You were unbearable for a while.  If your naneth had not been there to talk me round, I might have considered stitching you each in a bag and disposing of you at the bottom of a deep dark hole.’  He returned their scowls with a bland smile.  ‘At least Estel will only sulk for a few years.  We had to endure the best part of a century of your growing pangs.’

The twins exchanged glances of exasperation.  ‘In time, we must sail,’ Elladan declared, ‘if only so that we can seek out those to whom this piece of perfection will always be an infuriating elfling.  I would give a great deal to see him humbled by one who knows precisely the stories that will make him squirm like a fish on a hook.’

‘Perhaps,’ Elrohir agreed.  ‘When we are no longer needed here.’

A shadow passed swiftly over Glorfindel’s bright face.  ‘That time will come,’ he said confidently, ‘when your naneth will welcome you as you step onto the quay.’

‘And we will send messages ahead,’ Elrohir murmured in his brother’s ear, ‘with all those who leave before us, to ensure she is accompanied by Glorfindel’s most embarrassing relations.’

***

Elrond leaned on the frame of the balcony door and watched his daughter as she drifted across the garden below him, selecting from the late flowers blooms with which to decorate the family rooms.  Rusts and dark golds, he thought, had replaced the roses of summer.  Darker colours that fitted his mood, scented with the fragrance of endings.

He closed his eyes briefly.  Just for a moment he had seen Celebrían there among her flowers and his heart had lifted, but his daughter’s dark hair, so like his own, had swung forward and the illusion had passed.  His summer was long gone and he was left with the chill of loss and the decay of all his hopes.

Should he have given in to Celebrían’s longing for more children?  Would that have made this – this offering of all he most cared for – any less painful?  Or would it, as he had feared, just have given him more to lose?  Yet was not Estel his son?  Not of his blood, whatever any might think, but of his heart.  And did not that make it worse?  How could he hate one he had raised, who trusted him, who loved him and whom he loved in return?  It was not his fault.  It was the fault of neither of them. 

He drew a ragged breath and forced himself to leave go of the tension inside him.  As yet the knowledge was his – not theirs.  He was facing the admiration of a boy for a vision of perfection and the kindness of his Evenstar.  It was only he who feared what would come of it.

Yet he could stop it, he knew, if he would.  He could push Estel into a duty match with one of his own kind and use Arwen’s love of her family to make her reject the impossible demands of any link between her and the Dúnedain.  He might even be able to persuade his daughter to put the Sundering Seas between them and be reunited with her naneth as she waited for the age to end.  But should he?

‘Adar?’  Arwen sounded doubtful.

He forced himself to smile easily.  ‘My daughter?’  He sighed.  ‘I was lost in the past,’ he told her, extending an arm to invite her into his grasp.

‘It would seem that your thoughts were painful,’ she observed.

‘Sometimes pain is necessary,’ he said.  ‘It is part of living and growing.’  He stroked her silken hair.  ‘It is part of loving.’

She twisted one of his narrow braids round her fingers as she had done when she was a child.  ‘Love should not be accompanied by pain,’ she said disapprovingly.

‘Ah, but it is,’ he sighed.  ‘And it is often the sweeter for it.’  He rested his cheek on her head.

Would he have refused to wed Celebrían had he known the agony he would have to endure in her wounding?  Would he have relished the years with her more had he known they would come to an end?   Would their separation have been even more intolerable had he not believed with all his heart that they would be reunited?  

He knew deep inside himself that he could not have turned away from the love he felt for her.  Not for his parents, whom he had hardly known, not for the demands of his friends, not for his duty to his king.  The elf he was now, he was because Celebrían loved him.  He could not deny his daughter that, simply because it did not suit him.  Because he would rather have her safe and by his side – now and for ever.   She had her part to play in the fate of Arda – as much as his parents had, as much as Elros, as much as Estel.  He would have to live with the pain.

Arwen’s eyes sparkled mischievously.  ‘I do not know what my brothers have done to irritate Glorfindel,’ she told him, ‘but they are looking remarkably unkempt and smelling rather less than fragrant.  He had better watch out – they are no longer youths and their revenge might be rather more effective than it used to be!’

‘They will have to become a great deal more subtle before they can catch out that old fox,’ Elrond laughed, putting his concerns to one side.  ‘Glorfindel has the advantage of age and authority – and he is not above using them.’

‘But my brothers also have an advantage that they will not hesitate to employ,’ she remarked primly. 

Her adar dropped a kiss on her hair.  ‘Glorfindel will simply take whatever you do to him out of their hides,’ he said serenely.

Arwen smiled, cat-like.  ‘I know,’ she said and hugged him.  ‘Sometimes it is possible to hold the balance of power while doing nothing – and then tweak the strings that make them all dance.’

‘You are evil, my daughter,’ Elrond told her, shaking his head.  ‘Your naneth taught you too many of her tricks.’  He smiled.  ‘She would be proud of you.’

‘I miss her,’ Arwen murmured, the shadows in her grey eyes making him catch his breath.  ‘I will always miss her.’

Silent, Elrond closed his daughter in his arms.  There was nothing he could say or do without imposing his own choices on her.  All he could manage was to love her and support her while she needed him – and leave the rest to her.