"You're what?"

"I'm pregnant. The healers say I'm just a couple of weeks away from giving birth."

"Dis, that's... that's great but why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I only knew a couple of days ago."

"But," Arien interrupted. "If you only learnt a couple of days ago how can you be going to give birth so soon?"

"Dwarf pregnancies are much shorter than those of men and elves," Dis explained. "I think it comes from us having so few dwarf women." She grinned. "Our bodies want to populate the world faster."

"Dis," Thorin said. "This is amazing."

"I know," Dis looked up at him. "I'm going to have a child."

Thorin smiled, wide and genuine, and hugged her.

"Does Farin know?" he asked as they pulled apart.

"No," she said. "I wanted to tell you first."

She turned to Arien. "So, did my brother beat you up?"

***

At dinner that night, the talk on the royal's table, and, she guessed, on every table in the dining hall, was of Dis's pregnancy. Over and over, people would come and congratulate Dis and Farin, telling them that they would be great parents. Whenever that happened, Farin would just take Dis's hand and smile at her, eyes full of admiration and happiness. And for some reason, Arien felt a flash of jealousy at that look. She wished... she wished she had someone who would look at her like that. Love her like that.

Thorin and Arien hadn't mentioned what had happened in the training room between them. In fact, they hadn't spoken to each other at all since then, but it was there, the way he had looked at her, the feelings that had gone through her.

"Yes, yes, we know about Dis and her pregnancy," Frerin snapped when Thrain opened his mouth to congratulate his daughter yet again. "And I'm sure everyone is very happy about it, but," he glanced at Arien. "We have more pressing matters to discuss."

From the confused looks that passed between Thorin and Dis, Arien guessed that they hadn't heard about this.

"Didn't you know?" Frerin asked, his brown eyes dancing with what Arien could only describe as malicious glee. "Haven't you heard the news?"

She could see from Thorin's expression that he did not want to admit to his ignorance, so she spared him the trouble.

"I haven't heard it," she said.

Thorin's look of gratitude was definitely worth Frerin's mocking smile.

"Well, Elfling," he began. Arien stiffened at his use of the name Thror had used for her. "I've heard a rumour that a dwarf-sized, elf-like figure has been seen wandering the woods near here. She looked rather like you, they said, only she had brown hair and grey eyes. She carried a curved sword that had elvish inscriptions running all down the sheath, and..."

Arien stopped hearing him. She just... stopped. Frerin had described her mother. And he had spoken as if she was alive. Alive.

"Her name," she whispered.

"What was that?" Frerin asked. He was grinning at her. Mocking her, she realised.

"Did they say her name?" Arien repeated louder.

"Oh yes." He paused, with the air of a lion savouring a juicy piece of meat. "It was Gilwen."

A roaring filled her ears, her head, her world.

Gilwen.

Her mother. Who should not be alive. Who had been slaughtered by orcs a hundred years ago. And yet...

She stood up, her chair scraping on the stone floor.

"Arien," Thorin warned.

She barely heard him.

She was vaguely aware of Frerin sitting back with a triumphant grin on his face, of Dis staring at him with a look of fury in her eyes, of Freris saying

"That is enough, Frerin."

And of Thorin half standing in his chair, a hand on the hilt of his sword, and a look of such burning rage on his face that Arien wondered how Frerin wasn't hiding under the table.

"Arien." Thorin's voice was strained.

She ignored him.

Ignored him and turned, breaking into a fast walk as she marched down the hall. She had to get out of here now, before the tears started to fall.

That roaring still sounded in her ears as she burst through the doorway and broke into a run.

There was no going back.

Arien was trapped in the circle of time, trapped in the ever-changing tide of a river.

There was no going back.

She had to get out of here.

***

Bastard. His brother was a bastard.

Thorin said as much, but Frerin only grinned wider. As if he didn't have a single regret about what he'd done, about how... how he'd made Arien feel.

"Where do you think she'll go?" Dis asked.

Thorin didn't speak, and it was his mother who said

"She'll probably go out of Erebor. Leave through the main gates. Run to the forest. To be alone."

Thorin tried to calm his breathing, tried to prevent himself from beating Frerin to a bloody pulp.

And that was when one of the servants ran up to him.

"Prince," he panted. "We've just received word. A band of orcs have been seen in the southern part of the forest, heading towards the gates. They will be here by sunrise."

Thorin's whole world froze.

The southern part of the forest was where Arien was running to.

She'd run blindly, he thought, consumed by grief and rage.

Run into the forest, in the dark of night, unaware that not only was she running into the trees.

But into the waiting clutches of the orcs.