Chapter Text
It began, as such things often did in Rivendell, with a polite summons bearing Elrond’s seal and far too much poetic flourish.
The messenger had not even reached the treeline when she appeared — a ripple in the air, a blink of light, and then her pale form unfurled among the shadows like mist rolling off a forgotten glacier.
Milky skin kissed by moonlight. Curls the hue of fallen cherry blossoms in late frost. A gown like onyx water, dark and fluid, cinched with a silver belt shaped like crescent moons.
She stood with all the serene detachment of a spirit who had walked this world far too long and found most of it beneath her. Even the trees hushed as she stepped into the Last Homely House again.
“Summoned?” she said coolly, appearing just behind Elrond like a vengeful memory.
Elrond didn’t flinch. Of course he didn’t. He only smiled — slow, secretive, wicked. “You did say to use the ring if I encountered something… grotesque.”
“And you thought of me?” Her tone dripped with offense, but her eyes sparkled with hidden amusement. “Flattering.”
“It is flesh-eating,” he said smoothly, leading her down the stone halls. “A curse out of Rhûn. It dissolves mortal muscle from the bone and sings lullabies in the dark.”
“Hm. Charming.” She glided beside him, hands folded like a queen tolerating peasantry. “Did you at least save a piece for me?”
Elrond’s lips twitched. “Of course. I would never waste the chance to impress you.”
She stumbled. Just slightly.
He noticed.
She recovered quickly, turning her head to arch a brow, but her cheeks had gone faintly pink — and not in the way they usually were. “You know I’m too old to be flustered by flattery.”
“Are you?” he said, and oh, he was enjoying this.
She turned away, sniffing. “You’re smug.”
“I’m right.”
“Smug,” she repeated, eyes narrowing. “And your hair’s too perfect. Again.”
He laughed, genuinely this time, and the sound curled in her chest like an ember tucked into dry tinder. They hadn’t seen each other in nearly a century, and yet they fell into this dance like it had only been hours.
She kept her stride slow, elegant, purposeful — but inside, her stomach twisted annoyingly.
He never meant those things. He never said them when it mattered.
Just when he wanted to see her react.
She hated that it worked.
⸻
Later, in the healing halls
She crouched over the afflicted man. The flesh at his shoulder was blackened, sizzling like rot touched by starfire. A rune, unfamiliar and snarling, writhed under his skin.
“Hmph,” she said, frowning. “This is child’s play.”
Elrond raised a brow. “A child’s play that eats people alive.”
“Yes, well. Mortal children are appallingly creative.” She extended her hand, and her fingertips glowed a warm, cold gold. “Hold his arm still.”
Elrond moved to comply without question, watching her work. She was precise, detached, efficient — until she paused and muttered, “Your pulse just spiked.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I said—” she glanced up, smug now, “—your pulse. It rose when I started chanting.”
“You noticed?” he asked, tone teasing.
“I always notice.” She stood, the curse now trapped in a swirling glass phial. “You’re very loud, Elrond.”
He stepped closer. Too close. “And you still come when I call.”
There it was again. The crack. The flush. She hated him for it. She loved him for it.
“Be careful,” she said sweetly, brushing past him. “The last elf who tried charming me ended up married.”
Elrond chuckled. “And yet you remain perfectly single.”
She paused in the doorway, just long enough for him to see the barest tilt of her lips.
“Not everyone who’s loved me survived the experience.”
And then she was gone — a ripple in the air, a blink of light, and silence.
________________________________________
The Hall of Lore was unusually crowded for a morning council. Warriors from Lothlórien and scouts from the Blue Mountains were gathered in a semi-circle, all awaiting Lord Elrond’s next orders regarding the curse.
A scroll lay unfurled before him, detailing new findings — the mark of the curse had reappeared in Gondor, etched into the chest of a fallen soldier. Its whispers were growing louder.
Glorfindel leaned in. “Should we wake Erestor?” he asked dryly. “He’s been asleep since the first mention of ‘flesh-eating.’”
“No need,” Elrond replied, sliding a ring from his finger. “I’ve called someone else.”
The air in the hall shifted. The ring pulsed once.
Then the shadows stretched at the far end of the room.
A gust of wind. A shimmer of moonlight.
And there she was.
Leöra stepped through the veil of reality like a sigh — draped in a whisper-thin white gown that flowed behind her like frost smoke. Pale pink curls tumbled loosely around her shoulders, pinned back only by a thin silver circlet. Her hazel eyes swept the room slowly, bored and unbothered, like she’d been summoned from far more interesting things.
She didn’t bow. She didn’t speak.
She simply walked.
Straight past the stunned crowd. Straight past Glorfindel (who gawked). Straight to Elrond’s side.
“Well,” she said, voice low and dry. “It must be serious if you called me twice in one century.”
“I missed your company,” Elrond replied far too smoothly, offering her a seat beside him.
She blinked. Twitched. Betrayed exactly one (1) moment of flustered confusion before sitting like it hadn’t affected her at all.
The silence in the room was loud.
Someone whispered, “Who is she?”
Another murmured, “Is she a Maia? No, wait—was that teleportation?!”
“She didn’t even bow—”
“Did she just touch Lord Elrond’s scroll?!”
“Did he just smile at her?”
Glorfindel watched all this with the quiet pain of someone who had seen this before and regretted not taking bets on it. “You know,” he said under his breath, “if Elrond summons her one more time, we’re legally required to hold a wedding.”
Leöra rolled her eyes. “Tell your warriors to stop staring unless they’re offering tea.”
“They’re not used to me summoning healers,” Elrond said, unfazed. “Let alone ones who arrive like thunderclouds.”
She turned, hand hovering over the cursed scroll. “That’s because most of your healers beg to be summoned. I require a good reason.”
“You always ask for tea first.”
“It’s called self-respect.”
Another whisper — bold, foolish — cut through the room.
“She speaks to him like an equal,” someone gasped.
Leöra slowly turned toward the voice, eyes cold and lazy. “That’s because I’ve known him since he couldn’t grow a proper beard.”
A stunned pause.
Elrond coughed lightly, looking at the ceiling. “That was a temporary condition.”
“Mmhm,” Leöra said, already skimming the cursed notes. “And yet I remember centuries of ‘almost-beards’.”
One of the junior healers dropped his quill.
⸻
After the Council
“She called him Elrondion, did you hear that?”
“I thought only Gil-galad used to do that—”
“Do you think she’s—like—a past lover or something?”
“Past?” Glorfindel snorted behind his wine. “Oh no, they’re very much ‘present,’ trust me.”
Back in Elrond’s study, Leöra tilted her head at a cursed tooth in a crystal dish.
“This is absolutely vile,” she declared.
Elrond watched her with open fondness. “So are most things that dare to challenge you.”
She froze.
Again.
“You are the worst,” she muttered, cheeks betraying her calm with the faintest blush.
“You say that,” Elrond murmured, “but you always come when I call.”
She turned away before he saw her smile.
______________________________________
It had become a joke, now.
Every time Leöra appeared — always unannounced, always radiant, always vaguely annoyed — a ripple of chaos swept through Imladris like an excited wind.
The first summon had been met with awe.
The second? Scandal.
By the third, whispers had evolved into full theories, charts, and at least two secret betting pools.
So when she appeared again — this time in a sheer black gown that shimmered like obsidian rain — and word spread that Elrond had summoned her again—
—Glorfindel immediately stood up and declared, “Someone find Erestor. We’re planning a wedding.”
No one laughed.
Because no one doubted.
“She’s here again,” gasped Lindir, clutching his harp like a lifeline. “She touched his arm this time. He didn’t even blink.”
“She smiled at him,” said a scout, pale. “With teeth.”
“She told Lord Elrond to shut up and he laughed.” A young apprentice was crying into a pillow in the hallway.
“I heard he gave her his study key,” someone whispered.
“I heard he gave her his bedroom key.”
“I heard she already has both.”
Glorfindel simply sipped wine from a goblet that hadn’t left his hand in three days and muttered, “That’s because they’re married.”
The hall froze.
“…what?”
“Oh yes,” Glorfindel went on calmly. “Elrond had it all drawn up centuries ago. Said if she ever stopped showing up, he wanted her to have the land. ‘Name’s on the deed,’ he told me.”
“She doesn’t know??”
“She never asked.”
⸻
Meanwhile, in Elrond’s private garden
Leöra was pretending to ignore the way Elrond watched her.
It was difficult.
He wasn’t being subtle.
His hands were behind his back, posture relaxed, but his eyes kept flicking to her face, waiting. Always waiting.
“Your new robe is flattering,” he said casually.
She fumbled the herbs.
“Shut up,” she said, calmly.
He grinned.
She stood, dusting petals off her skirt, and fixed him with the sort of look that usually felled lesser men. “You’re flirting more than usual.”
“Am I?” Elrond tilted his head. “Must be the married bliss.”
“What bliss?”
A pause.
A longer pause.
“…Elrond?”
He blinked innocently. “You didn’t read the deed I sent with the second message?”
“I burned that scroll because it was attached to a severed tongue,” she snapped.
“Yes, well,” he coughed, “my apologies. That was an unfortunate delivery. I assumed you’d read it anyway.”
She stared. “Elrondion. What did you do?”
He smiled — infuriatingly, tenderly, smugly. “Technically, you’re already my wife.”
“Technically?!”
“There was no ceremony,” he admitted. “But your name is on the deed, and I did file it with the Council of Elders.”
She gaped.
He stepped closer. “I told you, Leöra. You always come when I call. So I made sure you’d always have a place to return to.”
Her hands twitched.
Her voice cracked. “That is the most manipulative romantic gesture I have ever—”
“Thank you,” he said warmly.
She stood frozen in mortified affection, completely undone.
And from a balcony above, Glorfindel raised his goblet. “To the most passive-aggressive elven marriage in recorded history.”
_______________________________________
1. The Valley-wide Wedding Panic
Word had spread.
Not whispered. Not gossiped.
Spread. Like wildfire. Like prophecy.
Leöra was married. To Elrond.
And she didn’t even know.
Which made it, apparently, everyone else’s business.
Servants were measuring archways for floral garlands. Glorfindel had hand-selected a choir. Lindir was composing a ballad in four languages. The seamstress was weeping with joy while holding bolts of pale silk, sobbing, “Her hair is pink. We must honor it.”
Meanwhile—
Leöra: barefoot in the herb garden, covered in dirt and thorns, absolutely done with this plane of existence.
“Why is someone measuring me while I harvest wolfsbane?” she muttered as an assistant hovered near her waist with a measuring string.
“You have radiant bone structure, my lady,” he whispered reverently.
She threw a sprig of mint at him.
⸻
2. Pretending Not to Be Married
In the council chamber:
“I am not married,” Leöra said, sitting beside Elrond, very composed, very sure of herself.
“You’re on the deed to the house,” Glorfindel said helpfully.
“That doesn’t mean I’m—”
“You signed it.”
“I did not—”
“You accepted the key. You wear it.”
She looked down.
There it was.
Tucked between layers of silk. The key Elrond had given her. His crest etched into the head. Worn like a pendant. Always.
She flushed.
“I didn’t know what it unlocked.”
Elrond finally looked up from his scroll, voice warm: “My heart. And also the wine cellar.”
She passed out for emotional reasons, but blamed it on “a light spell of anemia.”
⸻
3. When She Finally Pushes Too Far
It happened in the forest, on the trail to one of the outer villages. The curse had touched another child — and Leöra, ever the quiet flame of resolve, had insisted on going herself.
She worked for three days.
No rest. No food. No water.
Even the elves who’d come to revere her whispered that she looked like moonlight stretched too thin.
Elrond arrived the morning after the child had stabilized.
“Where is she?” he asked, voice low.
“In the glade,” someone said. “She hasn’t slept.”
And there she was — sitting in the grass, fingers trembling over a bundle of soaked gauze, eyes glassy, breath shallow.
“Leöra—” he said gently.
She looked up, tried to smile—
—and crumpled.
Elrond caught her.
Held her like something ancient and precious, lifting her off the ground in one smooth motion. She was burning up.
She whispered, half-conscious, “You can’t be mad. I fixed it…”
“I’m not mad,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’m terrified.”
He took her home. Didn’t leave her side. Bathed her brow, whispered old songs only she knew, cursed the stubbornness in her bones and kissed her hand like a vow.
When she woke, days later, he was asleep at her bedside, still in formal robes, fingers tangled with hers.
“You’re very dramatic,” she croaked, voice hoarse.
“I’m married to you,” he replied without opening his eyes. “Dramatic is inescapable.”