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He stands, the cold grey sky above him, the wind carrying the scent of salt and smoke and blood, his sword held loosely against the throat of a small dark-haired boy.

The roof of the glorified hut that serves as Sirion’s royal palace is surprisingly large. There is space enough for them to cluster at one end, Maedhros and Maglor and their soldiers and their two little hostages – one each. At the other end stands the young queen, her dark hair whipped up behind her in the breeze, the holy light of the jewel shining at her breast.

“Your children for the Silmaril, Elwing!” calls Maglor. His voice is not as powerful today as it was, once, his throat scratched nearly raw by smoke and something darker. The words alone will have to suffice. “There can be no fairer trade!”

The boy shudders before Maedhros. He holds his sword still.

Elwing is little more than a child by the reckoning of the Eldar. She has the looks of her foremother Lúthien, but none of her power. The memory of another pair of twins lost to the cruelty of the sons of Fëanor must follow her in her dreams. Surely, she will give them the Silmaril.

She takes one step backwards, and another – and falls.

The twin Maglor holds cries out, but Maedhros’ hostage is silent. Maedhros turns to his brother. He sees his own shock mirrored there. “She jumped,” Maglor says numbly.

He has lowered his sword. Maedhros has too. The Silmaril is lost. The city burns behind them.

“Eluréd!” The forest is so dark, without the Girdle of Melian to protect it. The monsters of childhood tales must dwell between these trees.

“Elurín!” Which way would he have gone, as a child fleeing a darkness that had descended unbidden on his home and slain his kin? The question, as it turns out, is not academic: Maedhros was at Formenos when Morgoth killed his grandfather and stole the Silmarils. He rode, immediately, for his father.

“Eluréd!” These boys have no father. Dior sprawls in a pool of blood – his own or Celegorm’s? – at the foot of his throne.

“Elurín!” He does not trust too well the evidence of his eyes and ears – cannot, after Sauron – but sometimes he thinks he sees them, small dark-haired shapes flitting ahead of them through the trees. Once, he thinks he hears them calling out to each other, their voices higher and lighter than his own. “He’s coming this way!”

He realises, then, but it is long hours still before he stops wandering, before the bitter truth of it brings him to his knees: he will never find them. Every step he takes drives them further into the forest, further from him, the monster of their childhood tales.

Maglor finds him there, his tunic still stained with blood – Caranthir must have succumbed to his wounds at last – and puts a hand on his shoulder, and says evenly, “Nelyo, can you tell me where you are?”

He supposes he must look as though he has slipped into some horrifying memory, but there are fresher torments these days than Angband. “Doriath,” he croaks. He does not say: I could not find them. He does not say: The Silmaril is lost and we are kinslayers twice over for nothing.

Maglor draws him to his feet, leads him back to the ruins of Menegroth, and Maedhros says nothing. But in his head he is still calling, will always be calling. Eluréd! Elurín!

It is Celegorm who is Oromë’s favoured, but that is not to say the rest of them cannot enjoy a hunt. Today they have all been shooed out of the house, because their father is at his forge and their mother in her workshop, and Maedhros must attend to a whirlwind of shoelaces and scraped knees and missing quivers as he tries to hustle his brothers outside before either parent loses their temper entirely.

Into this chaos arrives Maglor, with his golden harp in one hand and two twin babies in the other. “We’re to take the Ambarussa, too,” he announces cheerfully. “Do you think I can fit my flute in Tyelko’s pack?”

Maedhros snatches the twins from him with a gasp, but they do squirm rather a lot, and he is too distracted to give Maglor a quelling look before Celegorm says, indignantly, “You can do no such thing!”

“I would like to bring a book, if Káno is bringing his harp,” little Curufin pipes up.

“Nobody is bringing anything else, and you are all to get outside this instant,” says Maedhros. “Carry your own pack, Moryo, my hands are full.”

“Here, I shall take Telvo,” says Maglor, who has slung his harp over his shoulder. He eases the baby from Maedhros’ arms, flashes him his gentlest smile. “One each!”

One each, indeed, thinks Maedhros, following his brood of brothers outside, into the waxing light of golden Laurelin. Amras, almost the very youngest of them all, coos in his arms. He will teach him diplomacy and the art of making charming conversation, and also how not to stare overlong at one’s half-cousin’s lips, as soon as he has worked that out himself; and Amrod will be Maglor’s and will learn how to sing so sweetly the birds themselves stop to listen, and he will always love their mother best.

It seems quite fair.

“But why did she jump?” Maedhros asks, one evening.

Elrond and Elros are abed, or at least supposed to be. It is just the two of them in Maedhros’ chambers. It will always be just the two of them.

Maglor does not answer, so Maedhros continues. It is a question they have turned over often enough between themselves, over the years. The boys have, too, although they try not to let Maglor know that. “We would have let them go, had Elwing given us the Silmaril. We would have let Sirion go.”

“Kinslayers we may be, but call us never unreasonable!” says Maglor, with an ironic smile. It is usually the other way around, Maglor hungry for some scrap of redemption, Maedhros no longer willing to run from the truth he learned in the darkness around Doriath. “Why indeed did she jump? There was no Oath binding her.”

“The Silmaril, perhaps, was more precious to her than her sons,” says Maedhros; but the suggestion is ugly. One could believe it of a father, perhaps – and how many times has Maglor promised the boys that their father is coming back for them, until they stopped asking? – but a mother should have chosen anything, traded anything for her sons. They have discarded this hypothesis long ago.

“Perhaps,” says Maglor, “she was faced with an impossible choice: to trust a dark enemy whose swords were still red with the blood of her kin, or to abandon those she loved to the enemy’s tender mercies, and hold on to that which she still had.”

The allusion is not lost on Maedhros. He breaks into a bitter laugh. “Would that I had found Morgoth’s mercies quite as tender as those boys have found yours!” 

Maglor’s mouth twists, and Maedhros repents. “Káno,” he says. It is all he can say. This matter, too, has been discussed rather exhaustively over the centuries. Don’t be angry with me, he had pled at first, shaking off thirty years’ conditioning by the shores of Lake Mithrim, before he had understood why Maglor wept at his bedside. A rescue party would only have provided him with new thralls, he reasoned as his mind and body grew stronger. I would not be here if not for the months you spent at my bedside, putting me back together, he said, and Our people needed a king, and You did as I ordered, before I rode out to treat with him, and those had all been true. I would have done the same thing in your place, he said, and that had been a lie. But he has said all this, and Maglor still looks at him sometimes with that desperate aching sadness, and the cold truth remains: Maglor left him to Angband, and so all he can say now is his brother’s name. “Káno.”

It will have to do. He has said everything else, but he can never say, I forgive you.

He wakes and knows where he is, knows the white cloth of the healing tent and the cool linen sheets beneath him. The lieutenant’s bed was never cool.

“Good morning, Nelyo,” someone says gently. Maglor, then. He only ever wakes to one of two voices, and the other calls him Russo.

When he turns his head he sees his brother sitting at his bedside, watching him intently. A small smile curves his lips as Maedhros meets his gaze. “May I change your dressings?”

They always ask him that, but Maedhros doesn’t know what will happen if he dares to refuse them, to say no, so he nods cautiously. He does not like it when they prod at him, but Maglor’s fingers are very soft and careful, and he explains each step he is about to take: “I’m going to put some fresh salve around your wrist, now, Nelyo, to help with the pain, and now I’m going to bind it up again. You’re doing very well.” The praise unsettles him. What will happen if he does badly, he wonders? Will they shout at him, or beat him, or send him back?

After his dressings have been changed and Maglor has fed him a few spoonfuls of broth, Maedhros is settled on his back on the bed. He does a lot of lying in bed these days. He supposes it is preferable to being chained on the mountain, but at least then he knew what to expect.

No – he is being ungrateful. He mustn’t be ungrateful, or they will take away the food he can barely keep down and whip him and chain him—

He realises that Maglor is talking, tries to focus on the actual words and not just the lilting melody of his brother’s voice. “Pityo is coming to sit with you this morning,” he is saying. “Would you like that? And once the council is over, I shall come back and sing to you for a while, if you like.”

He would like that now. When Maglor sings it is hard to think about the other things, the dark things. And besides, Maglor’s touch is one of the few he can tolerate to feed him and check his bandages. But he should not be ungrateful, not when Maglor is taking time away from his duties to care for him, and so he nods.

“And here he comes!” Maglor says cheerfully, as Amras ducks through the flap of the tent. “Good morning, Pityo. I had better be off, but I will see you in just a few hours, Nelyo.”

For all his supposed hurry he pauses to whisper urgently in Amras’ ear. About him, Maedhros supposes, watching detachedly. People are always having whispered conferences about him these days, perhaps deciding whether he has earned his next meal or another day in bed. So far it seems he has satisfied them.

Then Maglor casts him a last look, guilt smouldering in his eyes again, and leaves. While Maedhros is puzzling this over, Amras sits down by his bedside. He does not fill the quiet with gentle chatter as some of the others do, merely watches Maedhros.

At last, he says, “I have missed you very much, Nelyo.”

He might be expecting a response. Those who are here the most never expect Maedhros to speak, but others might, so he ventures to say, “I missed you too.” There, is that right? Amras smiles, which is good, but it is a hollow smile, which is bad. Maedhros is sure he remembers Amras’ true smile. It involved dimples. “You – you look sad,” he says cautiously. “Did I… upset you?”

The smile disappears. “Oh, no, Nelyo, not at all,” Amras says. “I am only sad to see you hurting. And – well.”

Maedhros tries his best to remember. “There were two of you,” he manages. “Ambarussa. Pityo and—”

“Telvo. Telufinwë was his name.”

Shame floods Maedhros, because he knew that, of course he knew that, how could he ever forget his own brother’s name? “But Telvo burned,” he recalls. His breath hitches and he tries to regain his composure. “It was my fault.”

Tears glimmer in Amras’ eyes. “No, it wasn’t, Nelyo,” he says. “You stood aside at Losgar, remember? The rest of us burned the ships, but you didn’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I was meant to look after you,” Maedhros says, but he does not argue further. Arguing only ever leads to punishment. “Oh – don’t cry – I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“You didn’t make me sad, Nelyo,” Amras says, brushing away his tears. “I… I am always sad.”

Maedhros considers this. “So am I,” he confesses. “I used to dream of being rescued. I didn’t think it would be so hard.” He bites his lip, horrified. He has admitted his ingratitude aloud, and now he will pay the price.

But Amras doesn’t seem angry. He smiles wetly. “It is very hard,” he says, “to keep on living.”

“How do you do it?” Maedhros breathes. “How do you go on when you have lost so much?”

Amras’ gaze slips past Maedhros’ face to rest on his bandaged stump. Then he meets Maedhros’ eyes again. “Tyelko takes me hunting,” he says. “Moryo sits up with me when I don’t want to sleep. Káno always knows the right thing to say, and Curvo always listens. It will never stop hurting, you know. We burned him alive.” The shadow of terrible anguish flits across his face. “But it is possible to go on. And you will have all the help I did in it, Nelyo, and more than that. Our valiant cousin spends more time here than he does in his own camp, after all!”

This last is a warming thought, but Maedhros passes it over in favour of another question. “And – and you?” he asks. “Will you help me?”

“Of course I will,” Amras says.

“I didn’t help you, though,” Maedhros says. “I wasn’t here. I’m sorry…”

“Oh, Nelyo,” says Amras. “It is not about owing, and it is certainly not your fault you were not here. Besides, you have helped me already, by coming back to me.” He smiles. There are dimples.

The gladness in Maedhros gives him courage enough to reach his hand towards Amras’, and when his little brother’s fingers wrap around his own he is surprised to feel no instant shudder of revulsion. He is very tired now, but Amras is still smiling so kindly, and maybe he will not be angry after all if Maedhros does not want to talk anymore. Maybe he is right, that there is a path out of the bewildering haze in which he finds himself. Maybe – maybe.

Maglor has been putting Elrond and Elros to bed. When the last notes of his lullaby dwindle into silence, Maedhros moves from the doorway into the pool of candlelight spilling from the boys’ bedchamber. They are asleep already, one with his head on Maglor’s lap, the other wrapped around him like a kitten. Maglor rests one hand on each of their small dark heads and meets Maedhros’ gaze.

“So,” Maedhros says, pitching his voice low, “you would love them, and see yourself redeemed?”

“I would love them,” says Maglor, “and not allow questions of morality, nor my deserts, to keep me from doing what is right for once.”

“They aren’t yours,” says Maedhros. “We took them from the ruined remnants of their people as hostages. You have no right to love them.”

Maglor never rises to the bait. “And yet I love them,” he says. “What else would you have me do? Turn them out of doors to freeze to death?” He sucks in a breath. “Nelyo, I didn’t mean—”

“No, you are right,” Maedhros says. “I failed their uncles. Perhaps, had I found them in time, I would have also taken them as hostages for the Silmaril, and taught them to love the ones who had killed their parents, and wear the star of our house on their cloaks. It would still have been an evil.”

“We have both done more evils than I care to think,” says Maglor. “I will not account my love for Elrond and Elros among them.”

Maedhros laughs without humour. “Very well, then,” he says. “Love them as you will. There is no harm in thinking yourself redeemable.”

“A gracious gift indeed!” says Maglor. “For what are any of us without something to love?”

But all Maedhros loved was trampled into the mud at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad – no, was buried at Menegroth – at Sirion – sits on a small bed in the fastness of Amon Ereb with two children around him and a knowing look in his eyes. Loving Maglor cannot redeem Maedhros. It cannot undo the Kinslayings, nor save two small boys who vanished out of knowledge in the forests of Doriath. But he can love his little hostages, and Maedhros will not take this from him, when they neither of them have anything else left.

His bedchamber should be empty, this many hours after the Mingling; but in the pale gleam of Telperion Maedhros is not surprised to see grey eyes glitter up at him from where his brother sprawls on his bed.

“I was under the impression,” he says, as he begins to remove his jewellery – Father has developed a habit of passing off his wondrous creations to his eldest son as he finishes them, claiming they are still not quite right, and so Maedhros attends every court event decked out like a magpie – “that I was the only son of Fëanáro invited to the feast, and that everyone else was supposed to be in bed.”

“I was under the impression,” Maglor mimics, “that you would be in my rooms to spill your heart out anyway, and so I might as well save you the trouble of waking me by being ready for you here.”

Maedhros sits haughtily down on the edge of the bed. “I have nothing to say to you,” he says, though the giddy smile in his voice gives the lie to his words.

Maglor snorts, sitting up to unravel the elaborate braids in Maedhros’ hair. “Of course not,” he says. “Was he there?”

Maedhros groans, covering his face with his palms, but Maglor ruthlessly pulls his hands down again, peering at his face before breaking into a grin. “You’re blushing. He was there, wasn’t he? Did you exchange helpless pining looks and make everyone around you uncomfortable all evening? I speak from no personal experience whatsoever.”

“I am not pining,” Maedhros says crossly.

Maglor raises an eyebrow at him.

Maedhros flops dramatically down on the bed. “Káno, he’s wonderful.”

“So you have said, many times,” says Maglor. “Sit up, I haven’t finished with your hair. Did you put all these braids in just so that he might toss you a compliment?”

“Maybe,” says Maedhros, “but he had golden ribbons in his braids tonight, so he won.”

Maglor laughs aloud. “This is the strangest courtship I have ever witnessed,” he says. “Firstly, of course, you are cousins. Secondly, you both adorn yourselves like preening peacocks to impress the other, and then give each other significant looks every time you meet instead of actually talking! Thirdly, despite all this increasingly ridiculous behaviour, you are both convinced there can be no hope of your affections being returned.”

“Firstly, we are half-cousins,” says Maedhros.

“I beg your pardon. The distinction, I am sure, is critical.”

“Secondly,” says Maedhros, ignoring him, “I cannot talk to him; he would be able to read all my feelings on my face, and it would be exceptionally embarrassing for me. Thirdly, he is equally friendly to everyone, so it would be vanity unprecedented to assume he actually cared for me – like that. And fourthly—”

Before he can make the very reasonable point that his father detests Fingolfin and so the entire affair is pointless, there is a little rap on the door. One small red head is poked into the room, quickly followed by an identical one.

“Hello, little ones,” says Maglor. “It is rather late for two small birds to be flitting around the corridors by themselves, is it not? Come here.” With his free hand he pats the side of the bed, and in an instant their smallest brothers have sprung up beside them. Amras lays his head in Maedhros’ lap, and Amrod snuggles into Maglor’s side.

“A nightmare?” Maedhros asks, combing his fingers through Amras’ soft red locks in much the same manner that Maglor is smoothing out his own hair.

Amrod nods vigorously. “Ambarussa dreamed a big wolf came and ate us,” he says.

“A big wolf! One of Oromë’s, was it?” asks Maglor.

“Maybe,” Amrod says dubiously.

“It was bigger than all the other wolves,” Amras explains. “And – and first it nibbled Ambarussa’s ear.”

Maedhros moves his hand from Amras’ hair to tweak his impossibly tiny ear. “This ear?” he says. “I don’t know if such a small ear would be very filling, for a big wolf. In fact, I think a very big wolf would probably be too far off the ground to even see two such little boys.”

“We aren’t little, Nelyo,” Amrod protests.

“Well, in that case you will be able to fight off any wolves that charge at you,” says Maglor. He pulls out Maedhros’ last hairpin, and Maedhros sighs in relief as his hair tumbles loose to his waist. “But Tyelko will probably get there first, anyway! You don’t think he’d let a wild wolf eat his baby brothers, do you?”

“Káno! We aren’t babies!”

Maedhros laughs. “You’ll always be our baby brothers,” he says. He leans back against Maglor, throwing one arm around him and Amrod while the other curls around Amras. Their dear faces, all turned towards his, are very lovely in the silver light.

Your love will not redeem you – Maedhros knows! He learned what he was, after all, in the black mirror of Angband: Kinslayer, ship-burner, disappointing son, failed High King, faithless lover. Suspended on  Thangorodrim, he knew what he deserved. But he was denied the justice – mercy – of death, cut from his prison by the one he loved, the one he had wronged, and for many centuries after he tried to give himself over to that reprieve – to loving, and being loved. His protests struck down at every turn: You are not a bad person, Russo, they lied to you.

But I burned the ships, he would argue; the easiest sin to disprove, after all. Or as good as.

You stood aside; and your house has done penance aplenty, whatever my brother might say! Besides, we crossed the Ice of our own free will.

As if the losses of Fingolfin’s host were the only deaths caused at Losgar! But then he would say, And I was not true to you – the lieutenant—

Russo! Something as close to anger as that beloved voice ever came. Never say that the violence done to you by that foul servant of the Moringotto was any fault of yours!

Very well, Maedhros would say, if he were determined to persist, but what of Alqualondë? Even you cannot absolve me of that.

He would falter then, for a brief moment; then laugh lightly, and point out that Maedhros had suffered enough to wash away that first sin; or he would remind him that he, too, had bloodied his sword on the defenceless Teleri; or he would just press his warm mouth to Maedhros’ and tell him that he loved him anyway. And Maedhros would submit to the glorious force of his adoration, and believe himself exculpated.

All that is many years in the past. He has not heard that voice for decades; and he learned anew, in Doriath, what he should never have allowed himself to forget. His love did not redeem him. Nor did it bring his beloved – the hero of so many childhood tales, a valiant warrior and a Kinslayer both – anything but the lash of a Balrog’s whip.

He thinks all this as he stands at the door of Elros’ sickroom, and thinks too that Maglor loves these children, past hope or redemption. It will be a dark stain on him if one dies now: his own Doriath, maybe. Maedhros would spare him that.

“Elrond, tend your brother,” he says. The rough scrape of his voice startles the watchers at Elros’ bed, both too engrossed in the small invalid to notice who was lurking at the doorway. “Maglor, with me.”

Maglor stutters out half a protest as he rises obediently to his feet. His face is grey with exhaustion.

“He is already a more accomplished healer than you are,” Maedhros says brusquely. “Allow him to work uninterrupted, and take some rest so that you might better care for Elros when you wake.”

Maglor does not argue further, perhaps remembering his long-ago vigils at another sickbed. He presses a kiss to Elros’ fevered forehead, and another to Elrond’s pale cheek, before stumbling towards with Maedhros is waiting. As soon as the door closes behind them, he sinks against Maedhros, his tears immediately soaking the front of Maedhros’ tunic. He can still cry, thinks Maedhros, with some vague surprise, before he curls an arm around him.

Maglor always switches to Quenya when he does not wish the children to overhear, even though he has been teaching them the language for some years now. “Nelyo, I cannot—” he chokes out, burying his face in Maedhros’ chest.

“Hush,” Maedhros says, muffling his voice in his brother’s hair. “Elrond has remarkable talent, and there is still power enough in your songs. You are doing your best.” When did he turn into this grim-faced creature, unable to conjure up some comforting lie? Why can he not say, He will live?

“To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well,” Maglor quotes. “And they are my best thing, Nelyo, the only good I have ever wrought, he cannot—”

“I know, Káno,” Maedhros breathes, as if that ever helped. “Sleep a little. I know.”

Curufin has crafted him a new crown. Their gems – not the most famous work of their father’s hands, but still lovely beyond measure – they must save for trade with the Sindar, so it is a simple circlet, copper and gold. In the torchlight, Maedhros can imagine it must gleam like flame against his red hair.

He does not want to wear it. This should never have fallen to him. But, as usual, it matters not what he wants, so he sets it on his head with hands that do not shake, and strides out of his tent. His faithful mare has been saddled already, and he mounts her with easy grace, as if he is simply riding out from Formenos for a day’s hunting. Their camp is still in disarray, with no proper stables. He will have to see to that soon, or Maglor will.

Celegorm will not come to wish him luck; not Celegorm, who until recently has never needed luck, with Oromë’s blessing on his every shot. He lost that after Alqualondë, but he has still not fully adjusted to the very concept of ill fortune. Caranthir will not come, because he disapproves of the entire venture, and is expressing this by sulking. Curufin will not come, because he will regard it as sentimental weakness to do so.

But here is Amras, awake very early, or perhaps never gone to sleep at all. He approaches on rapid steps, and reaches up to seize Maedhros’ reins with barely restrained urgency. His mare, used to his little brothers’ unpredictability, does not startle. Maedhros wishes he had some of her placidity. “Take me with you,” Amras begs. “Please, Nelyo.”

Maedhros looks down at that white staring face and tries not to feel anything at all. “I will not do that,” he says. “This is a parley, Pityo. Not some doomed gallop towards certain death.”

“Then why,” Amras says, voice utterly expressionless, “are you taking triple the force that was agreed upon? Just for show, I assume?”

“You know why,” says Maedhros. “It would be… imprudent to trust the Moringotto to keep his word.”

“Imprudent,” Amras echoes. Then he says, “You have not been the same since Atar died.” Alone of all the brothers, his voice does not tremble on the word Atar. Alone of all of them, he has shed no tears for Fëanor.

No, thinks Maedhros, I have not been the same – he was not meant to lead us here, to this bleak and foreign land, and then die on us without a thought, with the greater part of our army abandoned in Araman and you in some dark daze I cannot shake you out of and Telvo – Telvo—

Aloud he says, “If all goes well, I am going to bring you a Silmaril, Pityo. That will… that will make it better.”

“And if it does not go well?” That is Maglor. His eyes are red-rimmed; he must have wept for many hours after their furious argument last night. “If you are ambushed?”

Then Curvo will make you a new crown, Maedhros thinks. “I will not be ambushed.” But it might not be so awful, after all, to die heroically on the battlefield, attempting to fulfil his mighty Oath while defending the Elves of Beleriand from the Great Foe. Amrod burned, and his father burned: and for Maedhros will it be the long, cold decline?

Maybe Amras knows some of what he is thinking. He says, unhappily, “I wish you would take me with you,” and then walks away.

Maglor, twin-of-his-heart, certainly knows what he is thinking. He reaches up a hand and Maedhros squeezes it; for a moment they might be the only two people in the world. Maglor, like Amras, is pale. Maedhros has not heard him sing for a long time.

With his other hand he puts his fingers under his brother’s chin, pushing it higher. “Remember what I told you,” he says. “If it is a trap, then the whole party will be lost. There will be no heroics to recover my body.” Maglor flinches, but the message is too important to spare his brother’s delicate feelings. “You won’t come after us, will you?”

“No,” says Maglor. “Nelyo…”

Maedhros nods and pulls out of his grasp. He must turn away from his agonised gaze now or he never will. “With all luck I will be back within the week, bearing a Silmaril,” he says. “Keep the camp in order until then.”

“Any further commands, my King?” Maglor says bitterly.

“Yes, actually,” says Maedhros. “Look after Pityo.”

He rides away, to where his company is waiting for their High King, and does not look back.

He waits until the last notes from the harp have died away before approaching the door of the makeshift schoolroom. Soon enough, Elros and Elrond tumble out, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. Elrond draws up short when he sees Maedhros, but Elros, who is bolder, lifts his chin defiantly. They are not afraid, exactly, but certainly wary.

Good. Someone has to be their monster.

“Run along, boys,” he says quietly. “It’s time for your lunch.” Music lessons, as a particular treat, are usually reserved for the fractious hour before lunchtime.

“We wanted Atya to eat with us,” Elrond says. “He tells the best stories.”

Well, that is a new development. “Maglor will join you shortly,” he says. “Off you go, now.”

They will not disobey him – even obliquely – twice, and after the barest hesitation Elros tugs at Elrond’s elbow and they scamper off down the corridor. Maedhros pushes open the schoolroom door. He has several things to discuss with Maglor – food supplies, scouting parties, why exactly he has conned their hostages into regarding him as a father – but he stops short at the strange look on his brother’s face as he tidies away his music.

He glances up when Maedhros comes in. “Why did she jump?” he says without preamble. “How could she leave them?”

That answers Maedhros’ third question, at least. He should embark on a lecture about the moral and strategic implications of adopting hostages, but for some reason he instead says, “They seem rather attached to you.”

“They are—” Maglor’s vaunted eloquence seems to fail him, trying to describe the twins. “How could she jump?”

“When she still had something to love, you mean?” Maedhros says. “Perhaps that wasn’t enough.”

The window is open. He goes to stand beside it, gazing out without seeing at Amon Ereb’s pitiful fortifications. He misses the chill air of Himring.

Maglor’s gaze always turns sharp and gentle at the same time when Maedhros stands near a long drop. “It is a terrible thing, to will one’s own destruction,” he murmurs. “For death is the Gift of Men, and the Eldar are bound to the circles of this world until its ending.”

But he could not release the hell-wrought bond, and Maedhros in his torment begged for death a second time, the songs run. Maglor should know – he wrote more than one of them. Even those pretty tunes can cause great unease. Maedhros has heard lesser minstrels skip the lines entirely, which of course ruins the story. There are no songs sung of the third time he begged for death, angry and empty by the shores of the great lake. Nor has anyone told of the countless times he tried, in great ways and small: refusing all food for weeks on end, until it became bitterly apparent that the Eldar could not die of starvation; taunting the orcs and laughing in Morgoth’s face, trying to provoke them into snapping his neck; attempting to wrap his chains around his throat and squeeze, but of course they were never long enough for that; dashing his head time and again against the unforgiving cliff-face.

Maglor knows almost everything, but he will never know how many times Maedhros has willed his own destruction.

“Elwing was Half-Elven,” is all he says. “Perhaps the Gift was hers to take.”

Maglor comes to stand beside him and squeezes his hand hard enough to bruise. “Still I cannot comprehend it,” he says, almost pleading. “When she had something to love.”

Maedhros tears his gaze from the window and looks at him. Maglor has been afraid for such a long time. “I have that too,” he says, and is rewarded with a smile.

He wakes in the – not morning. There are no mornings anymore. But he wakes all the same, with the smell of salt and smoke and blood on the sea breeze, the dark expanse of this new continent stretching out behind him.

His father and brothers are gathering on the shore, beside the swan-ships’ blackened husks. In the dim light of the torches Maedhros gazes west across the dark waters, as if Araman could possibly be visible from here. The Sundering Seas! Well-named they are indeed, for they are sundered until the world’s end now, Maedhros and the one he loves. I will never see him again, he thinks, trying out the shape of the notion. Fingolfin and his sons and their mighty host will turn back to the Valar, and beg their pardon for the Kinslaying – and shall it be granted? He was so beautiful at Alqualondë, the bright light of battle in his face and the blood of the Teleri on his sword; no-one could fail to pardon someone so beautiful. So he will live in Tirion and Maedhros in Beleriand and Elves will forget that their names ever ran together as a paired set, never one without the other.

Speaking of which—

His father has been regarding Maedhros coldly as he approaches, the first of his sons to ever speak against him; but now his attention turns to pale-faced Amras, who says, “Only six of us have gathered here this dark dawn. Did you not then rouse Ambarussa my brother, whom you called Ambarto? He would not come ashore to sleep, in discomfort.”

The smell of salt you would expect, beside the sea. Smoke, too, after the burning of the ships. But blood—?

“That ship,” says Fëanor, “I destroyed first.”

Someone makes an aborted lunging motion towards the ruin of the white ship nearest them. Celegorm, maybe. Someone cries out, and then stifles the noise halfway through. Maglor, perhaps. Someone – it sounds like Caranthir – says, desperately, “He might have leapt—”

“No,” says Amras, who stands very straight now. His eyes are terrible to behold. “He is dead. Then rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children, and Umbarto was its true form. Fell and fey are you become.”

Their father stares at his six sons huddled together, and then turns away, silent. Amras’ hands are shaking. The rest of him is very still.

Maedhros wants to scream and never stop, to empty his stomach in the bloodstained waters, to leap aboard Amrod’s ship and sift through the ashes until he finds him, curled up sleeping under some particularly heavy piece of timber, whole and perfect. Instead he embraces his brother – his youngest brother, now – and grips his shoulders hard with hands that held no torch last night. A gesture, only. Worse than useless.

Over Amras’ head he meets Maglor’s horrified eyes, but his brother cannot long hold his gaze.

At this time in the evening Maglor is always found in this particular sitting-room; today, as expected, he is sitting on the tattered couch, humming as he reads over the latest scouting reports. Less expected is the dark-haired boy scowling at his studies at the small desk. Maedhros is about to disappear back down the corridor when his brother glances up and spies him. “Good evening, Maedhros,” he says with a smile. “Come and join us, if you will. Does something ail you?”

“My shoulder,” Maedhros says slowly. It is not anywhere near the whole truth, but Maglor understands enough of that anyway. “Where is your brother, child?”

“You can call me by name,” Elros says, not lifting his eyes from his work; “we know you can tell us apart.”

Maedhros sits down next to his brother, and then, exhaustion overcoming pride, lies down and rests his head in Maglor’s lap like a child might instead. “Be as that may,” he says, attempting to maintain some measure of his usual forbidding tone – it is useless, the boys have not feared him for years – “you have not answered my question.”

Maglor has laid aside his reports, but he takes up the quiet hum again as he rubs the aching muscles of Maedhros’ twisted right shoulder.

“He went to check on the kittens,” Elros says, “but he’s on his way back now, he just stopped to fetch the Quenya dictionary first.”

Maedhros does not question this absurdly precise answer. Elrond and Elros, he noticed from the earliest days of their captivity, have always had an uncanny sense of the other’s presence. It brings to mind Amrod playing hide-and-seek, laughing as he threw open the cupboard door where Caranthir and Amras were ensconced: I found you! It brings to mind Amras, wavering on the beach, but with eyes like clear stars: He is dead. The certainty in his voice, more than anything else, seems to echo down the centuries.

Sometimes Maedhros wonders, did Maglor know? Those thirty years – did he truly not realise that Maedhros was still alive, by some bitter definition of the word? Did some part of his heart that was not solely his own never cry out to him, save me?

But it is hard to think of that now – pointless, too, when a tender hand is cupping his cheek, and the hummed melody is slowly dispelling some of the darkness gnawing at the edges of his mind.

“I thought those kittens were to be drowned,” he says, although without any real severity. “Stores are low, and winter approaches.”

“Atya said we might keep them, and train them into mousers,” says Elrond, who has just arrived. The book is tucked under his arm; he hands it to his brother and then sits down on the footstool, watching Maedhros and Maglor with bright, interested eyes. “What’s wrong with your shoulder, Maedhros? Can I help?”

Maglor stops humming. “The damage is very old,” he says. “It cannot be fully healed. But, if you like, tomorrow I shall show you some of the salves used to soothe torn muscles.” Elrond nods eagerly.

“Is this what you have been teaching them?” Maedhros asks drily. “Herblore and Quenya?”

Elros, still at the desk, snorts.

“Not only that,” Maglor says lightly. “They have both memorised the Noldolantë! I need not compliment your excellent taste again, boys.”

Elrond giggles. “I think it the finest lament ever written, Atya,” he says. Maglor pretends to preen a little, and even Elros stops glaring at his work long enough to snicker. Maedhros rolls his eyes, which makes Elrond giggle harder.

There is peace, even now. There are these laughing children, years older than their lost uncles will ever be, and the smile on Maglor’s face – wistful, but a smile, still – and the gentle fingers on Maedhros’ shoulder, promising a little relief from the pain, at least.

The silent meal is abruptly punctuated when Amras curses and flings a platter at the wall.

Maedhros flinches. His vision turns white for a moment.

When he comes back to himself, Maglor stands beside him with his steady hand on his shoulder, and he is saying, soothingly, “You’re in Amon Ereb, Nelyo. You’re safe.” He turns a chilly gaze towards Amras. “Do you care to explain yourself?”

Amras looks guilty and furious at once. His face twists. He does not look like himself at all – does not look anything like Amrod, whose cheeks had still had some of the softness of youth, who had borne no scars until he burned. Amras looks like Celegorm, who died with a fearsome snarl on his face, like a crazed wolf. “Look at the pair of you,” he spits. “Maitimo and Makalaurë, the perfect princes! How lordly you’ve both always been, how virtuous—”

“You have never had much talent as a wordsmith, Pityo,” Maglor says, his voice deadly quiet. “Speak plainly or not at all.”

“Very well.” Amras stands up. Stew drips down the stone wall to his right. “To the Everlasting Darkness we doomed ourselves, should our deed fail! We did not know then what we had called upon ourselves. Ambarussa – Ambarussa did not know.” His voice catches. “But now we have a chance to redeem the Oath, at least in part, and we sit idle in our fortress instead!”

“Elwing asked only for time,” says Maglor. “It would be dishonourable not to allow that much.”

“Elwing asks for time so that she can hide the thrice-stolen jewel away, once her husband has returned to defend her,” Amras sneers. “We all know they will never give it up. And as for your so-called honour – well, what of theirs? Of Tyelko’s and Moryo’s and Curvo’s who died in vain, and Ambarussa’s who never even knew what he was dying for? Should their honour not be upheld as well?”

“Oh, you talk like a child!” Maglor never raises his voice around Maedhros. This tone is as close to shouting as he comes. “Tyelko led us all into the slaughter of innocents, and you speak of his honour? He and Curvo both gave that up in Nargothrond! And now, out of some misguided notion of love, you would have us bloody our hands again!”

“Yes, because you’re such an innocent yourself,” Amras snaps. “Or did my eyes mistake me when I saw you killing at Alqualondë and Doriath? Did you not hold a torch at Losgar, brother mine?”

“I did,” Maglor says. His hand has tightened on Maedhros’ shoulder. “And I regret it. I would not repeat my mistakes. Perhaps I am twice-accursed – thrice, for I burned Telvo’s ship just as surely as you did – but I see no reason to bring more damnation upon my shoulders. I assure you, they are quite burdened enough.”

“Well, that is the root of the question, is it not?” Amras says, suddenly contemplative. He might be a child in Tirion, debating some point of rhetoric with their father. “Do we cling to some deluded idea of virtue, and leave our brothers to the Everlasting Darkness? Or shall we take their damnation on ourselves and redeem our Oath?”

“I weary of this,” says Maglor. “The decision is not for either of us to make.” He sits down beside Maedhros with an air of finality.

“That, it is not,” says Amras. “Nelyo.”

Maedhros looks at him. How grey and hard his face looks, his cheekbones gaunt, his eyes staring. What does it feel like, to know you burned your own brother alive? But perhaps Maedhros knows that already.

Long years ago, when he still thought death was the worst thing that could happen to a person, Maedhros rode to Angband to parley, and left his little brothers safe behind him, thinking to protect them. Even before that, he stood aside as they set fire to the swan-ships of the Teleri, and found little comfort in his own clean hands.

He says, “We will go to Sirion.”

But for the sword-wound in his gut, Celegorm looks alive: his hand still grips the hilt of his own sword, run through Dior’s heart, and his ever-expressive face is locked in a warlike grimace. Not so Curufin, whose entrails lie some distance from the rest of him; his throat, too, has been cut so deeply that his head is only barely attached to his neck.

Caranthir is still alive. His bubbling gasps for breath are almost the only sound in Menegroth’s throne room. In an instant Maglor is kneeling over him, breaking into a song of healing with no conviction behind it; soon enough he will give it up, and turn to a lullaby instead.

Maedhros does not watch. He gives Dior’s body a cursory glance, but it is plain to see that the boy-king of Doriath was not wearing the Silmaril when he died for it. Neither was his wife, who lies behind him, dead on Curufin’s sword.

“The children, then,” he says. “They must have given it to one of their children. Where are they?”

“Not in the nursery,” says Amras. There is blood on his face. He does not appear to have noticed it.  “My people have searched it. It seems only the girl-child still slept there, but it is deserted now. The sons, Eluréd and Elurín, are a little older, and might have fled somewhere within the caves of their own accord.” He pauses, and then adds, “Twins.”

“They could have had the Silmaril with them, then,” Maedhros says urgently. If they find the jewel – well, it will be too late for Celegorm and Curufin, but they will not have died in vain, at least. Perhaps Caranthir will be able to look upon its light before he dies; or perhaps the partial easing of the Oath’s grip will be enough to save him.

“They did not,” rasps a new voice. One of Celegorm’s people, kneeling in a corner of the hall; he had not seen her before, among the piles of bodies. Her grip on life looks more tenuous than even Caranthir’s.

Maedhros crouches down before her. “What do you mean? You found Dior’s sons?”

She coughs and blood wets her lips. “They were hiding. We searched them. Nothing.”

“It must be with the daughter, then,” Maedhros tells his brothers over his shoulder, although Caranthir is past listening and Maglor too focused on his task to pay attention. He tries to gentle his voice for the dying soldier. “And where did you leave the boys? We have no quarrel with Dior’s innocent children; we should make sure they are safe before we pursue the jewel.”

But the face of Celegorm’s servant contorts in a snarl very like her lord’s. “We left them in the forest,” she hisses. “Let the Grey-elf brats freeze or starve! Dior must pay—”

Maedhros beheads her before she can finish her sentence. Then he straightens to his full height. Celegorm’s followers have taken the heaviest of their losses, but there is still a small knot of them gathering in the throne room. He strides over to them. “Can any of you deny this?” he demands. “The sons of Dior were abandoned in the forest to die?” None of them respond. “This is orc-work, and it will not stand,” Maedhros warns. “My brother may have led you here, but I am the lord of our house, and I promise you this: when I return, you will all answer to me for this crime.”

“When you return?” Amras asks dully.

“I have to find them,” Maedhros says. “I will not have child-murder to my name as well.” As he leaves the throne room he breaks into a run, letting all his grief and horror sharpen into one single point of purpose. When he emerges into the forest, the cold midwinter air is as harsh as a slap. He begins to call out over the wind: “Eluréd! Elurín!”

Amras was not yet dead when Maedhros last saw him, but by the time they come down from the rooftop – with Elwing’s little sons, but without the Silmaril, again – he has bled out. Stabbed in the back, Maglor reports, likely by one of his own.

Maedhros tries to think of the child he loved in Tirion, but the only image that comes to mind is Amras at Losgar, very still beside the blackened swan-ships. “Good,” he says tonelessly. “Have a pyre made; there is no time to bury the fallen. We must leave before Gil-galad arrives.”

“What about these children?” Maglor gestures towards where one of his captains is guarding the hostages.

Maedhros glances over at them. Elwing’s sons are dark-haired like their mother. He does not know at what rate the Half-Elven age, but they seem quite small. “What about them? Leave them for Gil-galad.”

“Gil-galad’s are not the only forces approaching,” says Maglor. “There are orc-bands nearby, I am told. It might not be safe to leave them.”

Maedhros looks at him. There are still tears on his cheeks for Amras. Do the sons of Elwing look much like her brothers, he wonders? Maedhros never saw their faces.

“They’re dead, you know,” he says. “You can’t have them back.”

“I know,” says Maglor.

How many hours did Maedhros search, before he knew? How many times did he think they were just ahead of him in the next clearing, only to enter it at a run and find it empty?

He lifts his good shoulder in a half-shrug. “Do as you will,” he says. “Eärendil might still return. We may be able to use them to bargain.”

Maglor does not ask, For what? He goes over to speak to the little boys, crouching down so that his eyes are level with theirs.

Maedhros finds himself beside Amras’ body. They have no cloth to cover his face with, although someone has closed his eyes. Maedhros thinks of a fist clenched on his reins and a desperate, pleading voice: Take me with you.

“I am sorry,” he says eventually. “For Losgar.” He pauses, but there is nobody but the dead to hear him. “I would have spared you, and held a torch in your stead, had I known. Would that have helped?”

There is nobody but the dead to answer.

They stop running, at last, on a rocky outcrop some distance south of the camp. There is no other sign of life for miles. Around them, Beleriand is breaking. The sea rushes in, hungrily, from the west; to the east great cracks of fire are appearing in the ill-used earth.

Maglor has wept throughout their flight; now he falls to his knees and gives in to choking sobs that shake his whole body. Maedhros sits cross-legged before him and waits. Elrond and Elros were standing together in the host of the Valar. They had cried out when they recognised Maglor and Maedhros.

At last his brother raises his head. His face is wet with tears, his sword with blood: so it always is. Maedhros has loved him for as long as he has known what love is, but that will not save either of them.

Maglor stares at the wooden box he has carried all this way. “Morgoth sent us your hair in a coffer like this,” he says eventually. “I think I burned it.”

“What did you do with the hair?” Maedhros asks, oddly curious.

“I kept it,” says Maglor. “Sometimes I thought I would put it in a locket, and wear it forever around my neck as a token of my grief. But then I was not sure I had the right to mourn someone I had murdered.” His lips turn up in a terrible parody of a smile. “Then I started writing the Noldolantë.”

“Did you mourn Telvo?” Maedhros murmurs.

“Of course,” Maglor says. “But now…”

“I did,” says Maedhros. “But I grieved for the rest of you, too. For the guilt you had to live with. I would have taken it from you – from you, most of all.” Here is another way to avoid saying, I forgive you.

“I know that,” Maglor whispers.

Maedhros looks at the wooden box, whose contents will condemn them more surely than any lock of red hair. So this is where the long, cold decline must end: in burning, after all. In this last little brother – his first little brother – with wet eyes and a gentle voice, who still hopes to find himself redeemable.

Maedhros opens the box.

The light of the two Silmarils makes the tears on Maglor’s face shine silver and turns Maedhros’ own hair to flame. Nothing so beautiful could pardon him. But they will not suffer Maglor’s touch either; they will burn Maglor’s fingers, the same fingers that have massaged the tension from Maedhros’ shoulders and twisted around a single lock of his hair, the fingers that gripped a sword at Sirion and a torch at Losgar, that plucked soothing lullabies from harp-strings on too many terror-soaked nights and bound fresh bandages around his right wrist.

Maedhros could take both jewels, and run – but he only has one hand. Why is it that however far he goes, he will always end up in the woods of Doriath, searching for a redemption forever denied him? It was not even possible, in the end, to take his brothers’ damnation on his shoulders. Now Maglor will touch the Silmaril, and know, and Maedhros cannot protect him from this.

He should not be surprised. Every deed he ever dared was doomed to end in failure.

“One each, then,” he says, and reaches.