Luthelian rested her hand against her forehead, the dizzying effects of her head injury not entirely having left her.
“For the remainder of this mission, your duty is to watch the camp. You will not wander from your post.”
“But, my lord! That is unfair. I can help the others scout.” Surely, he would not make her entirely useless during their time in the Hithaeglir. Her head pounded more as her temper rose.
Lord Dolthafaer stepped forward, looking thunderous. “I am your Lord. I have given you an order.”
Could he not see that she had never expected to get lost or be buried under a snowdrift? She had come outside to think, not even leave the keep entirely like Yrill and Tancamir. And yet, she was the only one he would punish, forcing her to stay at the keep, standing watch and missing any chance to go out and look for the lost elves.
Suddenly, she remembered the way the Ambassador and her Arrow Lord had been talking with one another in a corner of the keep. Had not the Ambassador said that he would see what her lord thought of her conduct towards him? Only minutes after her conversation with Lord Parnard, she found herself permanently assigned to stand watch. The Ambassador must have said something to Lord Dolthafaer to turn her lord’s favor away from her. She would have to speak to that Ambassador about this, and she had nothing kind to say.
* * *
“You know, of course, that the Lord Ambassador has spoken to me.” Lord Dolthafaer confronted her.
“Yes, after I had requested that he not do so,” she replied evenly. She really was disappointed that the Ambassador had gone straight to her lord after she had asked him not to.
“And who are you to make demands of a Lord of Bar-en-Vanimar, Luthelian of Imladris?”
Luthelian looked up with a firm expression, but a questioning glance. Her Arrow Lord had never addressed her that way before. Why had her request sounded like a demand?
“It was a request, my lord?”
“He tells me that you were rude to him. You accused him of having a hand in your situation. You threatened him.” Lord Dolthafaer’s voice fell harder as he continued listing her offenses. Could the Ambassador not chastise her, himself? She could not understand why he had to go to her lord. It was true, her words came out harsher than intended. The Ambassador had chuckled at her confinement to the camp and she had felt her blood boil. He was especially infuriating when her head was ringing every second from her injury under the snow. Evidently, she had stoked his ire. So this is what came of crossing the Lord Ambassador.
“I did not threaten, I requested. I believe I used the exact word ‘request,’ as I am doing now,” she tried to explain. Thinking back, her words had been hurtful but she had never promised the Ambassador any harm. After all, what could she possibly do to the Lord Ambassador of Bar-en-Vanimar?
Lord Dolthafaer groaned under his breath. “He took it as a threat. And even were it not, the rest is truth.”
“He seems to have a dislike for me,” she offered.
Dolthafaer snapped then, “I do not care.”
Luthelian flinched then, the hurt evident in her eyes. The conversation was taking a turn that she had not expected. Her head started to pound more furiously, the dizzying headache returning, but she resisted the urge to bring her hand to her head. The rest of the Arrow Lord’s words rang in her ears, sounding muffled and far away.
She had disobeyed a direct order.
She blamed her own foolishness on others.
She demanded reasons…exceptions.
She spoke out of turn.
She disrespected him. She disrespected Parnard, another Lord of Vanimar.
All because she could not accept her own faults.
Then, suddenly, her ears attuned themselves sharply to her lord’s next words, as if knowing they would seal her fate. They rang with all too much clarity.
“I cannot have you by my side if I do not trust you to follow my command. You are hereby dismissed from the Arrow.”
Luthelian looked up, her eyes pleading and hurt. “You do not care of my opinions?”
Lord Dolthafaer gave her a long look, then. “I care. I am unhappy, Luthelian.”
“Then why will you not hear what I have to say?” Up until now, her lord had only heard the Ambassador’s account. Would he not be slightly more understanding if she explained her frustration at being punished differently than the other Arrows…how the Ambassador stared down at her when she passed…how…
“Because it does not matter.”
Luthelian blinked, her train of thought cut off. In that moment, she saw her memories sundered apart into dust. All her hours training on the practice fields at dawn, her careful scouting on their previous trip into the Hithaeglir, the days she spent watching and studying her lord for instructions, were reduced to nothing with a few words from the Lord Ambassador.
* * *
Her feet landed in the snow, then lifted off immediately as she ran without making a sound or print. Her heart pounded against her chest, urging her ever faster in the snow until she found the perfect one. She had seen it without looking for it – her soul leapt for the haven of safety and her arms reached for the branches above her, her hands and feet finding their way up the tall pine. She clambered up, long chestnut hair swaying down her back, faster and faster, until the air ran out of her lungs and she collapsed, her forehead resting against the rough bark of the trunk. She gasped for breath as unbidden tears began to fall, crystallizing into icicles when they hit the air, and the howling wind drowned out the sound of her sobbing.
She heard nothing. And she felt nothing except for the sorrow that clutched her heart and was ripping her to shreds from the inside, out.
A Lord of Vanimar was everything. And she, nothing. This, she would never forget.
