So Comes Snow After Fire

16.iv

Tauriel was waiting for him again when Kíli arrived at Ravenhill. She was dressed, as she had been last night, in one of her light elvish gowns that skimmed over breast and hips and fell in a profusion of flowing skirts. Her hair, too, tumbled freely down. Kíli had never seen her so beautiful, but perhaps she seemed especially lovely because he had come to her for the last time.

Once she had greeted him, she asked, clearly alarmed, "What happened to your face?" Thanks to his mirror, Kíli knew how bad he looked: in addition to the cut running along his cheekbone, his face had bruised.

"Ah, I broke a pickaxe and a piece flew off," he admitted. It sounded so childish now.

Tauriel sighed in sympathy and gently touched his cheek. Her fingertips were cool against his lightly inflamed skin.

"Take care it doesn't go infected, meleth."

He nodded, and then she took his arm, and they wandered together down to the shore of the tarn, as they had during many happy evenings of courting. The sky shone gold with the late sunlight of summer, and the water sent the light back at them from a thousand rippled mirrors. How was it, Kíli wondered, that the world could still be so beautiful when everything good was ending? A storm, with rain or hail or snow, would have been far more appropriate to this scene.

They stopped at the far end of the lake, as they always did, and Kíli knew that the moment he had been dreading all day had finally come. He gathered Tauriel's hands in his and looked up at her. The expression in her green eyes was very sweet and very sad.

"Tauriel, I don't know how to say this," he began, and the words seemed to stumble awkwardly from his tongue.

"Kíli," she said softly, brushing her thumbs across his fingers.

"I—" She knew what was coming. Of course she knew. But to speak it aloud was hard, so very, very hard. Kíli gathered the breath that had deserted him and opened his lips again, but Tauriel stopped him with a gentle shake of her head.

"This is farewell. I understand," she said. He could tell she was fighting to keep her face controlled, but still two tears escaped her eyes.

Kíli pulled his hands from hers and laid them on her cheeks, stopping each droplet in its course with a thumb, but at his touch more tears soon followed.

"Tauriel, I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I never meant to hurt you." And yet he had, all the same.

"I do not blame you, dear one," she said. "What we want has proved impossible, but I am glad we tried. Perhaps you were right when you once said this must all be a dream. It has been a beautiful one, though the waking is painful."

"I wish I were not a prince, Tauriel," he declared, still holding her face gently in his hands as her tears fell over his fingers. "I would gladly give up my royal birthright for you. I don't need to be counted a king or a son of kings. But if I do not accept my role as prince, then my brother will lose his own right. And it is not my right to take that from him." His voice nearly broke on these last words.

"I know," Tauriel whispered, and then laughed briefly, the sound almost a sob. "You are a prince in more than name: your character is most noble. And I love you the more for that."

"Ah, amrâlimê," he sighed, pressing close to her.

Tauriel sank down to her knees, and Kíli drew her against him. With her head cradled on his shoulder as he stood taller than her now, he could almost imagine he was sure enough and strong enough to protect her. Almost. Hadn't he stopped lying to himself now? The only way to protect her was to let her go.