So Comes Snow After Fire

17.ii

"Your highness!" Audha looked up from her book as Kíli was ushered into her receiving room. "This is a surprise."

She had surely been expecting his brother, but if she was disappointed, her face did not show it.

Kíli approached her and bowed. "Good morning, my lady." He glanced aside at the lady's maid seated beside her and offered a polite nod of acknowledgement. Damn. Of course she would have a chaperone, but Kíli had not considered how awkward this conversation would be with an audience.

"Prince Kíli," Audha returned, inclining her head respectfully. "To what do I owe this honor?"

"Miss Audha, I have spoken to your father, but this matter"— he had almost said business —"cannot be concluded until I have your approval, as well."

"Ah," she said, laying aside her book then. "Will you not take a seat?"

"I— I would prefer to stand." Kili felt as if he still had some control of his fate if he met it on his own two feet. Seated, he would have felt more like a sentenced prisoner. "Would you join me?"

Audha took his offered hand and they strolled together till they reached the far end of the room, where they paused beneath a rich jeweled tapestry bearing the crest of the Blacklock clan in gold and green threads.

Looking up at him with her steady, serious gaze, Audha hardly seemed Kíli's inferior in size, though in truth she stood nearly a head shorter than him. If her will matched the boldness of her glance, she would be strong, in her own way, just as Tauriel was. And yet Kíli could not find her earnest stillness nearly as appealing as Tauriel's own elven poise, which had always seemed to hide a quick current of energy beneath the surface.

"Audha," Kíli said, trying to banish the thought of Tauriel's face, "I have asked to marry you."

Her glance darted to his left wrist, which still felt bare without the silver bracelet. At their very first meeting, Audha had noticed Kíli wore Tauriel's token.

"You are free to choose me," she observed.

"I am."

"And your brother," she went on, "He concedes his interest? I was presented to him first."

Kíli knew she had favored his brother from the beginning. Fíli, he supposed, must have seemed to her far more sensible and mature than his younger brother, who had disregarded tradition and expectation to marry an outsider for nothing more than love. What would she think knowing Fíli, too, would choose for love if he could?

He said, "The truth is my brother has loved a girl from our own clan for some months now." Audha's eyes did widen slightly in surprise at this, and Kíli went on quickly, "Oh, there has never been any formal agreement between them. But still, it would be very hard on them to be kept apart."

"I see," she said.

"You once told me that we cannot always have what we want. I tried to dismiss what you said then, but, well..." He shook his head, partly to acknowledge his earlier error and partly to deny the tears that nearly threatened to betray him. "You were right. But I can help Fíli gain what he wants. He deserves that much, Audha."

She stared at him for a few moments, but Kíli could not guess what she was thinking.

"You love your brother," she said at last.

"I promise: as your husband, I would offer you the same loyalty." Kíli could not say "love;" not yet. Perhaps in time he could come to offer Audha the affection a wife surely deserved—indeed, he did hope so, for her sake—but even so, he was not sure he could ever call the feeling love. There was only one woman whom he would ever truly love.

To his surprise, Audha responded by asking thoughtfully, "Kíli, how did you cut your face?"

She reached up to touch his cheek, and Kíli flinched back from her fingers.

"Forgive me; it must hurt," she apologized, a sympathetic frown finally disrupting her impassive features and turning them softer, more gentle than Kíli had yet seen them. "I should have thought first."

" 'S all right," Kíli stammered. He had only thought of the last hand to offer that same touch. In this moment of weakness, he felt suddenly more vulnerable than if he had stood before Audha naked. He wanted desperately to take refuge in a jest, rather than admit to her that he had cut himself being rash and stupid, just as she surely already guessed.

"I should've known better than to use a rusty pickaxe. It broke," he admitted with some effort, somehow knowing it mattered that he tell her the truth.

She did not ask what a prince was doing with ruined tools or tell him he looked no better than a brat who'd been in a street fight. Audha only sighed and said, "I am very glad it missed your eye."

"Um, thanks."

Audha nodded, seeming as embarrassed as he was now. She looked down to his hand still clasped in hers and laid her other hand over it.

"Kíli, I will have you," she said softly.

Mahal and Blessed Durin, what was he supposed to say? Kíli could think of nothing, and yet surely she deserved some acknowledgement of the fact that she had just agreed to marry him.

After a few desperate moments, he raised her hand and kissed it. And then, grateful for a diversion, he remembered that he had brought her a gift.

"Would you honor me by accepting this," he said, offering her a light silver pen. He hoped she would not look too closely at the little leaves etched into the shaft. But he had had no time to craft her something new; this gift once meant for Tauriel would have to do for a first courtship offering. He and Audha would still observe the traditional courtship period despite Kíli's agreement with Lord Andvari.

"Thank you," she said, and took the pen from him with a gentle hand.

Kíli followed her back to the chair where she had been seated earlier and watched her tuck the pen carefully away into a small purse.

"I'm sorry, but I must beg you to excuse me," he said then. "I should prepare for the general council meeting later."

"I won't keep you," she returned, and Kíli wondered if she, too, wanted to be alone now. Yet to her credit, her expression remained calm and polite, whatever she felt.

"Good morning," he said, and bowed once more before he went out.