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Gil-galad felt a headache brewing as he watched the two young peredhil in front of him.
The recovery of the two lost princes had sent a frenzy of cheer throughout the camp when everyone had realized they had somehow, beyond all hope, survived. Blankets had been found to wrap around their shoulders and the spread from the kitchens rivalled the food delivered to Gil-galad himself. The table had not been set to the same standard, he noted, but perhaps that was for the best. The wide-eyed, lost look in the peredhil’s eyes tugged his heartstrings painfully enough, and he could not bear to think of how much worse it might be if they were confronted with the rules of polite society with no introduction. They had been held hostage by kinslayers since they were six. There was little chance the sons of Fëanor had bothered to give them an education. It was enough of a miracle that they had survived, let alone had the courage to escape and take provisions for the journey with them. He took a seat opposite the youths and spoke in a gentle tone.
“I know this must be frightening for you. Understand that we did not come for you before because we did not know the kinslayers had you, not because we do not care.”
An eyebrow twitch from the twin on the left, and the one on the right curled his lip slightly. “Your army could not have taken us without consent.”
Was anger better than the cowed fear Gil-galad had expected? He would have to consult the healers. If anger was what these victims needed, then he would endure hours of yelling to let them heal.
“Perhaps we could not have taken you without their consent, but we would not have knowingly abandoned you to their torment nonetheless.”
The twins exchanged a dark look, doubtless recalling the cruelty of their captors all too well. Gil-galad’s heart ached. Rather than letting them dwell on their dark past, he continued,
“You will have as long as you need to recover from your ordeal. Once you are able, we will see to your education. There are many things young lords such as yourself must learn, and you will have the opportunity to pursue learning for your own enjoyment once you have obtained a basic education.”
“Indeed,” the twin on the left said. They stood in unison and bowed. “May we be excused, my king? We desire rest.”
“You may,” Gil-galad allowed, blessing them with a smile. Whatever difficulties lay ahead of them, it could only be a good sign that they already felt comfortable asking him for what they needed. They were not with kinslayers now. They were safe (or as safe as anyone was in Beleriand), and Gil-galad was willing to wait for them to realize that in their own time.
It was not until late in the night, when all others had gone to bed, that he heard muffled voices coming from the peredhil’s quarters. His very heart plunged into ice when he recognized the language as Quenya, and the Fëanorian dialect at that. But creeping closer and listening revealed the voices to be nothing more than the late-night chatter of the peredhil between themselves.
“Torment, he says, as if our fathers were servants of the Enemy!”
“I don’t know, I felt pretty tormented during Atya’s poetry classes.”
The first twin let out a quiet snort of laughter. “Or whenever Atto cooked.”
“At least he never embarrassed us by giving us just one knife and fork when we were at home. Does he truly think we don’t know how to eat properly?”
Gil-galad walked swiftly away at the burst of giggles that followed that comment, wondering what was worse, the words themselves or the thick Fëanorian accent with which the peredhil spoke. He could only pray his fears were meaningless and the twins had not been turned to treachery by their captors.
*
He introduced the tutors to the peredhil one by one: reading, writing, vocabulary and linguistics, mathematics, poetry, riding, and swordcraft. The peredhil listened, each with exactly one eyebrow raised. When Gil-galad asked if they had any questions, one said,
“Do you truly think most of you have anything to teach us? Our gra” – here he was interrupted by his twin, who spoke much louder and drowned out the last word entirely.
“I apologize for the insult given, however unintentional, for Elros has ever been the more impatient of us. He means only to say we have already received a very complete education. Maglor taught us especially in poetry and song, though we were taught also in the foundations of both Quenya and Sindar, that is, writing, vocabulary, and linguistics. Maedhros taught us also three tongues of Men, though he could not promise their speech to be as constant as ours, so our way of speaking may sound archaic to those alive today.”
“To say nothing of our lessons on mathematics, economics, astronomy, history, geography, etiquette, dancing, horse riding and husbandry, smithing, weaving, healing, herblore, warcraft” –
Gil-galad held up a hand, relieved when it won him the silence he had hoped for. “Enough. I am pleased your education has not been neglected as badly as I feared. With your consent, you shall be assessed, and tutors shall be arranged to correct any errors the kinslayers may have introduced you to.”
“I agree,” Elros said, his eyes bright and eager, but Elrond hesitated. Gil-galad offered him an encouraging smile. Of the two, he seemed more timid, though Gil-galad had yet to decide if that was Elrond’s nature or simply the role he had taken to appease his captors.
“There will be no shame in areas of weakness. Any gaps in your education are through no fault of your own.”
Elrond bowed. “If so, then the sum of my knowledge and skills is due to my teachers. It is not I who is to be assessed, but Maglor and Maedhros, and their skill in raising and teaching my brother and I. On their behalf, I accept.”
While Gil-galad attempted to process that, Elros laughed and clapped his brother on the shoulder in congratulations. Elrond, meanwhile, looked Gil-galad directly in the eyes with a faint smile on his face. For the first time, Gil-galad was forced to consider the idea that he may not be dealing with two desperate Fëanorian hostages, but two beloved Fëanorian sons. His stomach wrenched at the very thought. The kinslayers ought not have confused the children by making them see Fëanor’s kin as their own. He could only pray that they had not corrupted their minds and hearts too deeply. They were, at very least, open about their allegiance, soothing his instinctive fears of treachery.
Gil-galad dismissed the tutors with a wave of his hand and invited the peredhil to sit, racing through scenarios in his head. Each scenario was more dreadful than the last. Nevertheless, when he wondered what was the worst the kinslayers could have done to them was, there was only one answer.
“Did they make you swear to anything?”
Elros gave a derisive snort. “If they could make us swear to never swear, they would have.”
“Understand, we saw first-hand what the Oath did to them,” Elrond said gently, as if he were the one consoling a child. “They told us plainly what they swore (though not the words) and all that came after. I cannot imagine anything that could compel my brother or I to swear any oath after that. Nor did they send us here to undermine you, but in the hopes that we might have a brighter future than they expect for themselves. Whatever crimes they have committed, whatever crimes they will commit, they wanted Elros and I to be free of it.”
Gil-galad stared at him. He was a king, he reminded himself, not a youth, and he would not groan or curse in frustration, no matter how desperately he wanted to. Were all peredhil like this? Or their talent for being annoying a product of time spent with kinslayers? Cautiously, he said,
“Given how you speak of them, I would not have guessed their identity, nor thought that you would agree to leave them.”
The smile on Elrond’s face grew. “We argued. They ordered us to come here weeping and desperate, cursing them as kidnappers and claiming we had escaped. We insisted on following them, even at the risk of our lives. In the end, we compromised.”
“We realized they were planning on escorting us into your camp unarmed and surrendering. The only way we could get them to leave was to come ourselves, alone.”
The smile on Elrond’s face grew fixed. “As my brother says.”
“You hadn’t been going to mention that part,” Gil-galad said. He should disapprove. He did disapprove, heartily, but he also had to deliberately dismiss the urge to laugh. For the first time, he had sympathy for the kinslayers. Oh, these two little nightmares must have had them wrapped around their fingers. There was something satisfying at the thought of two of history’s greatest monsters brought low by two mischievous little peredhil, especially since the twins seemed to have been genuinely unharmed.
“It is best for everyone involved if you and they do not meet. For now – they have delivered my brother and I safely to you, and you can say you reclaimed us from the sons of Fëanor.”
“And you chose not to paint them as kidnappers.”
“Lying may serve us in the short term, but wins few friends in the long term. Atto knows this, but he is remarkably stubborn when it comes to our safety.”
“As he should be,” Gil-galad said, and decided not to question further and risk finding out which kinslayer had won the title ‘Atto’ from his kidnapping victims. So long as no one told Gil-galad explicitly, he could claim plausible deniability, and that seemed like a precious thing at a time like this.
*
The educational assessment was a disaster. The twins proved embarrassingly skilled at nearly everything they turned their hand to. They corrected the Quenya tutor on three separate occasions and both spoke and wrote with a fluency that suggested Quenya was their preferred tongue over their native Sindar. When asked, they admitted to speaking mostly Quenya in the past, though the twins assured him Maglor had gone to “frankly embarrassing lengths” to ensure they knew also of the culture they had been stolen from. But whatever additions Maglor had added to their curriculum, the twins appeared to have been taught to the standard and breadth any child of house Fëanor would have expected. They discovered a mistake in the accounting exercise they were given, recounted and analysed many tales from history, and demonstrated a disturbingly detailed knowledge of Beleriand, including regions the kinslayers should not have had such detailed knoweldge of. Of herblore, both showed great promise, though Gil-galad was alarmed to find Elrond already matched a fully-trained healer in skill. When asked, he shook his head and explained with grief in his voice,
“I am still a student. There are many things I cannot heal.”
Perhaps most surprisingly at all, both twins had been trained to fight. Both favoured their left hand with a sword, though they wrote right-handed. It was not until they stepped into the sparring ring that Gil-galad felt the first prickle of fear. When the twins had said they knew how to fight, he assumed they had been given standard, preliminary training in swordcraft. He had not expected to fight with a ferocity that would make even one of Morgoth’s chieftans think twice about crossing blades with them. There was a snarl on Elros’ face as he lashed out as his brother, and Elrond’s eyes were cold. Even wooden training swords could cause damage if one had the inclination, and the peredhil fought with them as though their very lives were on the line. It was all too easy to imagine this ending in blood.
In one swift move, Elros slipped past Elrond’s guard and slammed the flat of his blade against his chest. At the same time, he pivoted to the side and kicked at his ankles, destabilizing his brother and sending him crashing to the ground. For a moment, Elrond simply lay there, blinking at the sky with his brother’s blade at his throat. Then he laughed.
“I’ll never forgive Atto for teaching you that. I yield!”
Elros cast his sword aside. The world righted itself as Gil-galad felt a rush of relief he hadn’t thought to look for. Instead of commenting, he watched in silence as Elros hauled his brother to his feet and pulled him into a hug, slapping him on the back and telling him exactly what mistake he had made in the fight. Had he not just seen them fighting like something out of a nightmare, Gil-galad might have thought them no different than any other pair of soldiers in the camp. They turned as one to Gil-galad and bowed.
“Have we proven ourselves worthy of using our own weapons?” Elros wanted to know. Gil-galad allowed that they had, curious to know what weapons the kinslayers might have allowed their captives to have. Elrond’s sword was a slender blade of Noldor make with an unfamiliar maker’s mark and elegant copper decorations about the hilt, but Elros bore a hand-and-a-half longsword of dwarven make. When Gil-galad asked for the stories behind the blades, they hesitated. Elros spoke first:
“At Amon Ereb, there were many great weapons. When he deemed us ready for our own swords, Maedhros took me there and guided me to Narþil, knowing as he does the way in which I fight.”
“Narsil,” Gil-galad corrected automatically when he heard the lisp, earning himself a vicious glare from Elros and a polite, blank look from Elrond who said,
“Narþil,” lisp still firmly in place.
Gil-galad sighed. Elros may be the more openly rebellious of the two, but something told him that it was Elrond who would be the cause of more headaches.
“As for me, I did not earn the right to my own blade until a year later, and then I had the skills to craft my own, with Maedhros’ aid. It is not as fine as some of the other swords we had, but it is the one we made together.”
If Gil-galad had thought them vicious in battle before, it was nothing compared to how they fought with their preferred weapons. At first, he thought Elrond may now have the upper hand on his brother, moving like the wind, dancing in and out with a new grace now that he knew the length of his sword down to the micron. He had a horrible certainty many of his soldiers would have been cut to pieces in seconds. But all his efforts broke on Elros like water upon rock, who with Narsil was unmovable, and each strike he dealt would have been deadly if dealt in earnest. Not for the last time, Gil-galad found himself glad the twins had entered his service and were unlikely to be met as his enemies on the battlefield.
*
Cautiously, Gil-galad started to introduce the twins to their birth culture. Of Eärendil, he taught them the line of Fingolfin, which he found they already knew, and of his skill as a mariner, which they had been told, but had little practical intuition for. Elros openly envied his time at Sea, which was promising, and Elrond said,
“I have no memory of him, but his actions were courageous and honourable.”
They were less open to hearing of their mother. They had been taught her descent also, but while they had known details of some of Fingolfin’s line, they knew little more than the names of Elwing’s descent beyond when they had interacted with the sons of Fëanor. Elrond winced when he mentioned his lost uncles and shook his head, casting his eyes up to the ceiling.
“I do not understand. I know our fathers are frightening to strangers, but they are not more frightening than the Enemy! They would not have hurt them!”
They took turns telling the tale of Beren and Luthien’s theft of the Silmaril. The telling was smooth and lyrical until it came to the actions of the sons of Fëanor, at which point the twins turned awkward and stared at each other. After a long pause, Gil-galad tapped lightly on the table to remind him he was waiting. At length, Elrond winced and then looked Gil-galad in the eye and said,
“Our uncles, Celegorm and Curufin, were wrong on many counts. Not only were their actions cruel, but they demonstrated malice and selfish corruption beyond the madness of the Oath. But it is difficult to hear of our kin coming so close to a Silmaril, even if it was in madness and ruin.”
Gil-galad considered the response, trying to decide which point he had the best chance of arguing with. The twins had referred Eärendil as “our birth-father” and Elwing as their mother, which was something, but none of their extended family had been referred to with any title, and there were leagues between “birth-father” and “Atto and Atya”. But to hear them come so close to siding with the Fëanorians was chilling.
“You value the Silmarils so highly?”
“We don’t give a damn about the Silmarils,” Elros snapped. “We care that people are stupid enough to keep killing and dying for them.”
“Whether we like it or not, the fate of those we love is tied to the Silmarils. Personally, I wish grandfath – I mean, Fëanor had never made them, but asking Fëanor not to make things is like asking the stars not to shine,” Elrond said, commenting Fëanor’s temperament as though he had not been born long after Fëanor’s death.
A wise king knew when to surrender so he could fight another day, and Elrond nearly referring to Fëanor as “grandfather” was a sign that this was a losing battle. Gil-galad wrapped up the lesson quickly and began to plan his next attempt at teaching the twins their history. They were, at least in part, Noldor, and the Noldor had a great love for heraldry and symbols. A time would come when the twins needed to found their own House, to mark them as lords in their own right and not merely overgrown children. He planned their next lesson around this concept, taking them through the symbols and heraldry used by the great families of the Noldor and the Sindar and explaining how the identity of a House and a new lord developed.
“The first thing you will need to choose is your heraldry or sign. Your father Eärendil’s was the six-pointed star for both.”
“And mine shall be the eight-pointed star, like my fathers’ and my fathers’ father,” Elrond said promptly. A very familiar headache began to pound behind Gil-galad’s eyes. Part-elf, part-human, part-Maia, and all mischief, why had no one warned him? And to think, most people were foolish enough to think Elrond was the good one. He put a hand on Elrond’s shoulder and adopted his best appeasing voice.
“Those close to you have learnt to understand your attachment to House Fëanor, but this is a public statement. And to cast aside your family so quickly” –
“To cast aside my family so quickly for political gain would be reprehensible,” Elrond said. “I am sure Eärendil is great, but it was not he who raised me.”
Before Gil-galad could protest further, Elros leaned back in his chair, swung his boots up on the table and declared, “I think I’ll go with seven stars, personally. Seven stars above a white tree. It came to me in a dream.”
“Seven” – Gil-galad started, then exhaled slowly. He had learnt quickly that arguing with Elros was a fool’s errand. He was capable of diplomacy and patience, when it suited him, but most of the time he let his temper run hot, especially when it allowed him to give insult or annoyance when Elrond was too polite to do so.
“Why does your foresight only ever show you things that irritate people?” Elrond wondered. Elros simply grinned back, taking a large gulp from a cup of wine and gesturing widely with his hands as if to proclaim his innocence.
“Atto always said I was the talented one.”
Rage flashed in Elrond’s eyes, and he leaned across the table. “He did not!”
Oh, no. It usually took a great deal to set off Elrond’s temper, but his brother had a special talent for getting under his skin when he wished to, and family was a delicate subject for the both of them.
“Boys” –
“Atto said” –
“He wouldn’t, Atto always” –
“Boys,” Gil-galad repeated, this time louder. Two angry peredhil turned to glare at him, fire flashing in their eyes. He took a moment to consider what his assorted father-figures would have said and adopted a stern, disapproving tone. “I’m sure your fathers thought highly of both of you and would be honoured by your choice. They would not be honoured by the two of you squabbling like children over which of you they loved more. We will discuss the matter of Houses no further, but I want you to think on your behaviour.”
Elros’ mouth snapped shut mid-sentence and Elrond’s face fell. Gil-galad sent a silent prayer to the Valar. When he had taken in the peredhil as his kinsmen, he had never considered he might end up holding up the good opinion of the sons of Fëanor as something desirable. But the idea of Maglor and Maedhros disapproving of their actions shamed the twins deeply, and they apologised to one another and made amends, discretely wiping away tears as they did so. Elros excused himself shortly after, but Elrond lingered a while.
“Thank you. The transition to life here is strange for us, and we have lost many things we held dear, but I would not lose my brother.”
*
War was chaotic. Even a simple sortie to introduce his charges to riding with a unit could change to pitched battle in a heartbeat, and in battle, luck mattered as much as skill. Luck, Gil-galad thought grimly, that was thrice against him: once for stumbling across a large party of orcs where there should be none; twice for bringing no healer; and thrice for the orc-spear that slipped past his guard and speared him in the belly. Gil-galad fell from his horse with a grunt. The battle rampaged around him. He saw Elros behead his attacker, and moments later he narrowly avoided getting trampled by one of his own lieutenants. Little good it would do him with a wound spilling his life-blood so rapidly! Still, he grit his teeth and clung to consciousness as best he could.
It seemed he did a poor job, because he woke to the sound of arguing voices. One was his second in command, saying something about a corpse, while the other was Elrond, insisting that he could help. Gil-galad groaned and opened his eyes in time to see Elrond push his commander aside. He dropped to his knees beside Gil-galad and examined his injury with a steady gaze and calm, practised hands, as if he were used to tending to mortal wounds. He demanded a list of a dozen different herbs and a pot of freshly boiled water. Once satisfied his commands were being heeded, he pulled his harp-case from his side and pulled out a harp carved of a pale wood the likes of which had never grown East of the sea. He played prettily enough, but when he sang, Gil-galad felt the pain wash away with each breath just as waves beat down the coast day by day. His voice was deep and clear as a mountain lake yet warm as a summer’s day, and Gil-galad was glad to hear it. For a while he drifted, neither asleep nor awake. Then at last sleep took him, and he knew no more.
When Gil-galad opened his eyes once more, he was in his own bed. His wound had been freshly bandaged and the room smelled of fresh herbs he could not identify. A guard stood alert near the bed, but of his healer, there was no sign. He was brought water, and he drank a little. Once recovered enough to sit up a little, he asked,
“Where is Elrond?”
The guard looked sheepish, which Gil-galad knew was never a good sign. “He is confined to his quarters, my king, as is his brother.”
“Confined?” Gil-galad protested, and gave orders for Elrond to be brought to him at once. One guard fetched another, who fetched two more, and in a matter of minutes Elrond was brought before him. There was an expression of tranquillity on his face, despite the gag in his mouth and the ropes binding his wrists before him. Despite his situation, he bowed to Gil-galad when he entered.
“What the – release him at once!” Gil-galad demanded, taking note of which guards responded gladly and which still looked at Elrond with suspicion. Elrond, for his part, merely rubbed at his wrists and thanked Gil-galad with a smile. When Gil-galad asked why he had been gagged and bound, he said dryly,
“They didn’t like my singing.”
Without waiting for further invitation, he stepped forward and checked the bandages and seemed pleased by what he found. Instead of a fatal wound, he had only a large scab. It was, Gil-galad supposed, what a mortal wound would look like if some miracle allowed it to heal.
“I am glad they found a skilled healer for you after they took me away. I would hate to think you had come to harm simply because your people fear me.”
The thought that Elrond had noticed the discontent of his peers was discomforting, but hardly avoidable given the day’s events. “They pity you, not fear you.”
“They pity Elrond Eärendilion, but fear Elrond Maglorion. There is a reason Atya told me not to reveal my skills except at direst need,” Elrond said. He took a seat on a chair beside the bed, looking remarkably at ease for one who had just made Gil-galad’s life much more difficult. Up until now, he had been able to maintain a paper-thin divide between the peredhil’s adoptive fathers and Maglor and Maedhros, but to hear Maglor referred to as “Atya” so casually removed any hope Gil-galad had of maintaining the distance. And if he had taught Elrond to sing as he did, then no one could deny Elrond had been adopted into the fold. Survivors from Sirion told stories of the dreadful singing that shook the walls and cut as deep as any blade.
And yet Elrond had used it to heal.
That, he thought, said more of Elrond than it did of the skill itself. Outside of Gil-galad’s own inner circle, the one group that welcomed Elrond unconditionally were the healers, and they often exchanged knowledge of herblore and other healing arts. It was not what one would expect from Fëanorian.
“When did Maglor teach you to sing thus?”
“You should be resting,” Elrond told him, but the question brought a smile to his face so warm it made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Still, I will risk a short story, if only so you are armed with the truth should others try to convince you of some made-up tale. Atya first taught me as a child. He tried to teach us both, of course, but Elros never got the knack of it, though we did not understand why at the time. Atya was pleased with my progress for a while, but then,” and here Elrond paused, allowing himself a small laugh, “my voice broke.”
“Broke?” Gil-galad echoed, aghast, and one of the guards listening turned pale. Elrond only laughed harder.
“Something that happens to Men as they grow. The tone of the voice cracks and deepens before settling into the tone of an adult Man, or, in my case, half-Man, though it sounds quite awful throughout. Atya wept for hours, convinced he had somehow harmed me through his singing lessons. He refused to believe it was normal until Elros’ voice went two weeks later. It was a full six months before he would let me sing again, and once my voice stabilized I had to learn from scratch, and then I nearly wept myself.”
Despite himself, Gil-galad laughed. It was not often the peredhil made it so plain that they were half-elven, but it had plainly shaped their lives and driven their guardians to distraction. Pleased with the reaction, Elrond bid him good-night and instructed him to rest. Still smiling to himself, Gil-galad settled down to sleep with lightness in his heart.
*
Even in war, a king maintained a court, and the twins had been kept from a formal introduction for long enough. If they had been quivering, traumatised wrecks, that would be one thing, but hiding them any longer would only be seen as suspicious once the truth of their behaviour came to light. Gil-galad worked himself day and night to ensure all would be well for the introduction. But as the day drew closer for their formal introduction, he began to see how ill-suited the twins were for such a task.
“You’ve had no formal training in etiquette.”
“You think we were raised as savages?” Elros asked, raising an eyebrow. He then elbowed his brother in the ribs and said, “Sing him the cutlery song, go on.”
Elrond sighed. “I am not singing the cutlery song. I am not Atya and you are no longer a child who cannot even remember a simple setting for six courses.”
Gil-galad considered asking about the cutlery song, reflected on the fact that it framed a six-course banquet as simple, and thought better of it. Instead, he asked them a series of questions regarding formal etiquette and behaviour at court. Their answers were flawless, revealing they knew just how much insult and affection they displayed every time they spoke with him. The next day, he raised another problem, making his tone as gentle as possible.
“You have no father-names.”
Elrond’s lips curled in the crooked little smile Gil-galad had learnt to fear. “On the contrary, we have too many father names that reveal rather too much to a group of people who wish our fathers dead. We are called ‘peredhel’ often enough. That will do.”
Elros groaned. “I cannot wait to be free of this,” he said, and refused to explain further. Whatever it was, it could be no good thing, for the smile on Elrond’s face vanished.
The next day, Gil-galad applied the one lesson he had learnt, and asked instead of stated.
“Do you have finery appropriate for court?”
The twins exchanged a look. At length, Elrond spoke. “We would appreciate your opinion. What we have may not be appropriate.”
They led Gil-galad to the room that had been set aside for their use. Out of deference for their privacy, fearing they had had none in the past, none had entered their rooms since they had taken up residence amongst Gil-galad’s folk. They left things to be cleaned in a small basket by the door and handled all cleaning within the room themselves.
Instead of the filth Gil-galad would have expected from two youths of their apparent age, the room was kept clean and tidy. One corner of the room was set aside for maintaining and storing weapons and armor. Herbs were growing from a small pot in the window sill, while flowers hanging from bits of string dried in the breeze. A tapestry depicting a scene from Aman hung on one wall, and a desk held a small stack of books in several languages. Two paintings hung on the wall, one depicting each of the kinslayers. Elros pulled a chest from under his bed and opened it, humming in satisfaction. Gil-galad’s eyes widened.
“Oh, no, tell me Atto didn’t pack the blue one,” Elrond groaned from beside him, as though fabric that glimmered like the depths of the sea itself was a burden simply because it was the wrong colour.
“He did. There’s a note!” Elros exclaimed, and Elrond was by his side in a heartbeat. The twins read the note pressed side by side and then read it again, as if frightened it would disappear if they looked away. There were tears in both pairs of eyes, but Elrond managed a weak laugh.
“Atya’s right, you do always make a mess of your hair on formal occasions.”
“He was right about you, too,” Elros countered, and Elrond’s cheeks turned pink, but his smile widened further. Elros passed him the letter, which Elrond took to the desk and carefully filed away in a journal. From the chest, Elros proceeded to draw a series of formal garments, many made from fabrics beyond the Sea or set with jewels made by Fëanor himself. The twins exclaimed and sighed in turn at each item, often referring back to when they had worn them in the past. Beneath the last item of clothing, Gil-galad caught a glimpse of glimmering jewellery that he didn’t even want to guess the value of. Elrond cast a critical eye over their selection, and his expression fell.
“Alas, they have not packed my favourite! But I could not have worn it here anyway.”
“Oh, I would have paid to see that!” Elros cackled. “With the heraldry in the skirt? I think the court would have fainted!”
“I know, but it used to be Atto’s, when he was young,” Elrond said wistfully. “And it swayed just right when dancing!”
“Ah, Russo, we spoiled them,” Elros said, affecting a voice that sounded nothing like his own and also nothing like Maglor. “We’ve raised two princes of Aman in war-torn Beleriand.”
Elrond collapsed into laughter, sitting next to his brother and leaning against him. “Your impersonations are worse than your singing.”
“And you have forgotten we have a guest.”
“I trust him,” Elrond said, looking at Gil-galad with a smile. “After all, we have never lied to him.”
“No, you simply find new limits to break day after day,” Gil-galad said promptly, causing both twins to dissolve into laughter. Despite himself, Gil-galad felt himself smile, too. The poorly-imitated Maglor had a point, if Elros’ words truly came from him: Maglor and Maedhros had managed to raise two fearless young peredhil who laughed readily and trusted a king who opposed their fathers even as Beleriand collapsed around them, and that was more than most parents could claim. It was not enough to balance the horrors they had unleashed upon the world, but it was something.
*
Introducing the peredhil to court was simultaneously the greatest and worst night of Gil-galad’s peacetime reign. On one hand, the peredhil conducted themselves with perfect dignity, showing grace and manners that would make even the strictest tutor proud. They held discussion with various courtiers, danced with confident elegance, and showed themselves surprising adept at political manoeuvring when they were not flaunting their chosen house for all to see. For Gil-galad, many of the Fëanorian habits possessed by the twins had become nothing more than background noise, but the court was exposed to it all in one night. Both twins glimmered like Noldor princes when they entered the room. They were dressed as finely as any great lord, and Gil-galad considered it a credit to his negotiating abilities that he had talked them both out of wearing red.
They bowed deeply to Gil-galad upon entry, thanking him for his hospitality and heaping praise upon him both poetically earnest (Elrond) and affectionately sarcastic (Elros). He tried to keep an eye on his charges throughout the night, and at each turn, there was another little reminder of their past. The twins favoured Noldor dances, not Sindar; they were both used to richly spiced food, even in times of war and scarcity; they were skilled at turning conversation away from their childhood and family without ever revealing a single detail, suggesting Gil-galad was being given special treatment.
No surprise hit harder than when he listened to a conversation between Elrond and a survivor of Sirion and realized that, even in Sindar, Elrond carried a faint accent. It was not so obvious as his stubborn use of the Fëanorian variation of Quenya, but it was there, and that was enough to make Gil-galad’s heart grieve for him. Whatever he had been given in return, his native language had been stolen from him.
“They are no longer ours,” some whispered to one another. When he heard such whispers, Elros snarled, stepping forward as if to fight, but his brother held him back. There was just as much tension in the line of Elrond’s spine, and his chin was slightly dipped as if he were braced for impact, but his eyes were filled with pity as he said,
“They clung to the idea of us long after we were gone. Remember how we felt when the Silmaril first appeared in the sky? They have clung to their illusions far longer than us, and losing them will hurt all the more.”
“We were children,” Elros countered.
“Yes. And remember how gentle our fathers were with us, despite what it meant for them?” Elrond asked, grief entering his voice. Elros sighed.
“I hate it when you’re right.”
Elrond gave him a sad little smile and clapped him on the shoulder, then stepped away to speak with one of the very elves who had been so distressed by his entire identity. Gil-galad watched with a hollow feeling in his chest and resolved to never make his charges comfort him in that way again.