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“We need horses,” she said. “Swift, sure-footed. Your best.” She scarcely met his eyes.
Memory had not exaggerated her beauty. She was just as he remembered, her eyes bright and keen, hair sleek and dark as a raven’s wing, her body still taut and and strong. Softened slightly, perhaps, but if anything - if anything, more beautiful than ever.
“You won’t stay?” Celegorm said, quietly, unable to keep the hope from his voice. Her eyes flickered away.
“No,” she said, nearly toneless. “I won’t stay. I cannot. My brother-“
Turukano, he thought. Of course. Turukano in his hidden city. “What are you fleeing?” he asked, and half reached out a hand, but she drew back, something cold in her eyes. He let it fall. Not forgiven, then, in spite of this request. Not forgiven.
“Nothing,” she said, but glanced away.
“I can protect you,” he said, without thinking, and her eyes blazed as they snapped back to his face.
“I do not want your protection, Tyelkormo. Do not think I have forgotten the ice. Do not think I have forgotten anything.”
“Mother?”
Celegorm turned his head sharply, startled, and just caught Aredhel’s look of dismay out of the corner of his eye. A young elf stood in the doorway, looking back and forth between them. Gangly and too skinny for his height, still, but beginning to grow into himself. Dark haired, his eyes clear and grey.
Finwë’s eyes. The inheritance of all his children.
“Lomion,” Aredhel said softly. “Wait for me outside, please. I will only be a moment more.”
His features were not Aredhel’s. Someone else’s, unknown. But his eyes were, and something about his bearing, about the way he drew himself up and frowned slightly, just between the eyebrows. Somewhere in his chest his heart was trying to scream. Her son, he thought. Her son. It wasn’t time that had softened her body, but birth, the nursing and raising of a child.
Any last hope he’d had withered on the vine, unplucked. “Go,” Aredhel said again, and the boy retreated. Lomion, he thought. Child of the twilight.
I would have loved you for ever and ever, Celegorm thought, almost desperately. Ireth. Forever and eternity. I would have loved you. “Whose?” he asked, dully.
“Mine,” Aredhel said, almost with defiance, her chin lifted. “He is my son.”
But not mine, Celegorm thought. The screaming in his heart died, quieted. So be it. So be it.
“Take my horse,” he said. “And the dapple mare. She’s swift, and smart, and will carry you well.”
Aredhel almost seemed to slump. “Thank you,” she said, quietly. “Tyelko…”
“Don’t,” he said, almost harshly. “Just…don’t.” He turned away from her. “Go. Get back to your brother.”
He heard her hesitate, and then turn. He did not look at her. Was thinking of watching her ride back in Aman, the laughing smile on her face and the way his heart had leapt like a deer springing into motion.
A deer now arrow-shot, lungs filling with blood.
“—I would have forgiven you,” she said, quietly. So quietly he might have imagined it. He did not look at her. Did not.
“He’s a handsome boy,” he said, finally. “I…I wish you both safe travels.” Be safe. Please. I need you to be safe somewhere, even if you’re not with me.
A moment, and a rustle of fabric. Then a light hand against his cheek, and she leaned up and pressed a light kiss to the corner of his lips.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “that it wasn’t…that it wasn’t different.” She slipped out, a white bird taking flight once more.
“I’m sorry too,” he said, when she was gone, and closed his eyes. Thought of a dark-haired son with Finwë’s eyes in his arms, Aredhel’s fingers light on his arm, our son, Tyelko, look how beautiful he is.
He held on to that thought for a moment, one beautiful, exquisite moment.
And let it go.