The Unexpected | LotR Fanfiction

Chapter 43

My fingers ran over the smooth blue-purple stone Legolas had given me all that time ago. I still have not asked him why he gave away his mother's stone to me.

I gritted my teeth and bowed my head in shame.

But I did what I had to do. I must keep Legolas away for his own safety. I'm radioactive. I'm too dangerous. Sauron has too much influence over me and that darkness... it's rising again. What if it accidentally kills him? Or does something worse?

What about the Uur Rauko? If—when I control them... what if I command them to kill him? After all, I won't be myself. I'll just be a puppet of Sauron.

But until that happens, I'll do everything I can do to prevent that from happening. I won't kill innocents. I refuse.

I still remember the first time I had killed an orc. Afterwards, I had barfed up the contents of my stomach on the green ground. I knew that it was an evil creature of Morgoth. But it was still a creature. Still a living breathing thing.

It never got easier to kill. Only easier to reason with myself that I was doing a good deed for Middle-Earth.

But if I killed an innocent... If I killed Legolas...

I would never be able to live with myself.

So, he has to stay away, at least until I get this darkness under control. And when Sauron is gone forever.

And Legolas is still immortal while I'm mortal. Even though I should be immortal, being conceived by two elves and all. In sixty years I'll be dead (If I don't die before then) and he'll be left with a broken heart, never to see me again. Not even in Valinor.

I couldn't do that to him.

But... It seems I already have.

His confession still rung in my ears.

He... loves me.

He loves me.

I dropped my head in my hands and wept.

*********

She doesn't love me.

The thought left silence in my mind. All other sounds were drowned by the crashing quiet, only one thought swimming admits the deep depths.

"Your Highness?" Leofwyn's voice brought me back to the world of noise.

Words came slowly to me. "You may speak."

"Forgive me, I should not talk about personal things with a prince, but are you all right? Something seems amiss." She wore an innocent smile, green eyes alight. Like Lumornel's.

What's wrong?

She doesn't love me.

"You're right, you shouldn't talk about private things with a prince." Without another word, I left her behind, her mouth hanging wide.

The grief in my heart threatened to take over me. Pain exploded in me as if it were my heart being cleaved in two.

I leaned against the wall for support, gasping for a certain kind of breath that would never come. Unbidden tears bit at my eyes, clouding and obscuring my vision before I blinked them away.

This pain...

I clutched at my chest--as if I could bind my heart back together.

But I can't do that. No, this pain would inflict itself on me. Perhaps forever.

I need something to occupy my thoughts. I need answers.

I strode down the hall towards where Duvaineth was being held.