The loud thud of Arien's fist hitting the sandbag was the only sound, the only sound that echoed around the now empty training room. The other dwarves had left, leaving Arien to train alone. She had no idea why she didn't stop, but... maybe it was because no matter how hard she tried, no matter how tired she was, the endless exercise distracted her from the guilt that she had not chosen Rivendell and her friends. Had not chosen her people and her homeland. And yet somehow, they didn't feel like her people. It didn't feel like her home. Not anymore.

This mountain, this kingdom felt to her more than anything like home.

And there, the body attached to the familiar steps Arien only heard because he wanted her to was the reason she felt that way. Was what had drawn her here, to this place of vast halls and glittering gems and comforting, unchanging foundations. Strong arms wrapped around her waist as Thorin said into her ear

"It's late. You should rest."

"Like you're going to sleep tonight," she replied. "I know you'll be lying awake all through the hours of darkness, worrying about your grandfather."

He flinched at her words, and she immediately felt guilty for teasing him.

"What's wrong?" she murmured.

"That madness I told you about on our journey, like he is slipping away from us; it's worse. He won't eat, he doesn't sleep. He barely leaves the gold."

"Maybe it's just a phase. I'm sure he'll be fine given time."

It was a lie, but...

He turned her round to face him, looking deep into her eyes. "You don't believe that."

"No, I don't," she said, still unnerved by the intensity in his gaze.

"And the people in the Grey Mountains," he went on. "Incinerated by someone. Something."

"And?" she said. "What of it?"

"No one has claimed it as their own."

"That does not affect us."

"I don't trust it," he muttered.

"You trust nothing."

He met her eyes. "I trust you."

They hadn't broken each other's gazes once during their conversation, and now something changed in the atmosphere around them. It became taught, charged with tension. Thorin leaned down and brushed his mouth against hers.

"I trust you," he repeated. "And I will always trust you, no matter the armies, the mountains," another feather-light kiss "Or the forests that separate us."

"Where did you learn to make such pretty speeches?"

She felt his smile against her skin. "I've been having lessons with my father."

Arien chuckled, but her laughter was quickly shut off as Thorin kissed the corner of her mouth, then the other. As he nipped her lower lip. Arien gasped and pulled him closer, kissing him full on the mouth, shudders running up and down her body as his hands roamed everywhere, as if he couldn't touch enough of her, couldn't kiss her fast enough. His kiss was searing, plundering, so much so that she forgot words for a while. Forgot everything but his name.

"Thorin," she moaned.

He pulled back from her then, his breath coming in pants, and surveyed every inch of her with that warrior's assessment that missed nothing. When his gaze lingered on her breasts, hardly covered by the low cut see-through blue shirt she still wore, his expression turned ravenous. Then his gaze slid lower. Lower. And when it lingered on the apex of her thighs and his eyes glazed, Arien whispered

"Thorin."

He saw the question in her eyes then, silent and desperate and so full of need. Arien's hand, which was settled atop his sculpted chest, felt his heartbeat pick up even as he brushed a thumb along her cheek.

"Are you sure?" Thorin murmured, his voice a deep rumble that she felt in her core. Lower than that, actually.

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," she told him.

Thorin kissed her again, his mouth warm but hard and insistent. A small, needy noise came from her throat as he whispered his answer onto her lips. His hips shoved against hers, a hand slipping under her shirt, slowly, carefully unbuttoning it.

And Arien thought nothing would ever be the same again as Thorin claimed her mouth with his own, a deep, lust-filled groan coming from his throat as she wrapped her legs around his waist. And she was glad of it. Right down to her very bones, she was glad of it.

Thorin backed them toward the wall, never tearing his mouth from hers, and the cool marble against her back compared to the heat and hardness of him pushing into her front...

"Please," Arien breathed, digging her nails into his lower back for emphasis.

Thorin's low groan was his only answer as his mouth moved lower, doing things to her jaw, her ear, her neck that made her forget language for a while. Arien panted through her gritted teeth as he dragged his tongue over the spot where her neck met her shoulder.

"Please."

And as Thorin removed the shirt she wore and left it lying on the floor beside them, as his mouth roved lower, a hand sliding up the plane of her torso, she wondered if it were possible to love someone enough to die from it. If it were possible to love someone enough that time and distance and death were of no concern. She bucked her hips against his, realising that somehow her underwear –– that all her clothes –– had at some point joined her shirt on the floor. When the hell had that happened?

Arien spread her hands over his chest, tugging his tunic, his shirt, the coat he was still wearing over his head. He sucked gently at the spot on her neck where her life-blood thrummed and pounded beneath her skin. Then sucked harder. Heat pounded through her core, spread through her body.

Then Thorin pulled back.

She reached for him, letting out a noise that might have been a word or a moan or his name. But he only thoroughly surveyed her bare, naked body, his sculpted chest heaving. He swallowed.

"You are so beautiful, Arien," he breathed.

She knew he didn't just mean the skin and face and bones.

She ran a hand down his chest, lifting her mouth to a small scar on his shoulder, the wound small and jagged. She kissed it once, twice. Thorin was so tense she thought his muscles would snap. He made to claim her mouth again, hands dragging down her back with male possessiveness. But she lifted a hand to his chest, halting him dead. And smiled against his skin, allowing herself to flick her tongue over that scar. He groaned deep in his chest, his hands sliding to her waist.

"You are mine," he growled, a hand slipping down to caress her thigh. She moaned as his tongue ran over her skin, his mouth going lower, lower... Arien gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders, Thorin's deep growl rumbling against the skin of her breast. She arched, urging him to take more, take harder.

He ground into her, exactly where she needed him, her breast still in his mouth, teeth grazing her nipple, and oh god, she was going to explode into starfire.

"I love you," he whispered. "And you're mine."

She tried to speak, tried to tell him she knew, but... She didn't need to, and she couldn't. Couldn't find words as Thorin's hands ran along her thighs, to her ribs and her waist, then back down, closer and closer to where she needed him. As she realised that with him, with her prince, there was nothing and no one that could hurt her, that she would never again be alone and wandering, never again be a forgotten, pain ravaged girl with nothing and no one left to live for. He was hers, and she was his, and that fate had been decided for them from the moment they were born. He was her home, wherever he might be.

Arien moved, hips undulating, begging him to go go go. So Thorin did, sliding a large finger into her, his tongue still flicking against her breast, and she bucked her hips, needing to grind herself against him, to do anything to ease the building ache between her legs.

Nothing and no one could hurt her, and she would change nothing of what had happened in her life if it had brought her to him.

Thorin scooped her from the wall in a smooth movement and carried her to the soft sand of the sparring ring, laying her upon it with a gentleness near reverence.

Her reach for him, hauling him atop her, was anything but.

Thorin laughed quietly against her warm skin as he slowly moved his mouth lower, spreading her thighs, baring her to him. And then his head dipped between her legs. She gasped out his name, reached for him, her hands tangling in his coarse hair. His tongue flicked that one spot, a finger sliding into her again and working her open for him in a way that made it difficult to think, and oh, god she was going to fly out of her skin, she was going to explode. Her hoarse cries of his name shattered through the empty, fire-lit training room, and Arien let go of all pretense at reason.

Her hips undulated in demand and desperation and the need to feel him, to feel all of him against her, inside her...

"Arien," he growled, her name a plea.

"Please," she moaned. "Please."

The word was his undoing. He lifted his lips to hers, letting her taste herself on his mouth, his tongue, letting her feel him pushing against her with impressive demand. She dragged her nails down his back and breathed his name, over and over.

And for the first time in over a century, Arien found herself unafraid –– found herself not afraid at all as he rose over her again, a hand braced in the sand beside her head, fingers twining in her hair, while the other guided himself into her. At the first nudge of him, she forgot her own name. And as he slid in with at first gentle, rolling thrusts, filling her inch by inch, she forgot who she was and where she had come from and everything she had once promised to be.

And then Thorin was seated deep in her, trembling with restraint as he let her adjust, and she could barely think enough to remember how to raise her hands to cup his face. There were no words in his eyes; none in hers, either.

Words did not do it justice. Not in any language of elves or men or dwarves, not in any world.

He leaned in, claiming her mouth as he began to move, and they let go entirely.

She dragged her hands down his powerful, muscled back, over scars from battles and terrors that she would do anything to erase. And as his thrusts turned deeper, she dug in her fingers, dragging her nails across his back. His hips slammed home at the claiming in the touch, as he gasped her name over and over, as she moaned at each thrust. His hands tightened around her hips, gripping them as he took what was his and his alone. And those hands, that had dealt out death with brutal efficiency and lethal accuracy, but that would always be gentle with her, always love her...

Release blasted through her like wildfire. And though she could not remember her name, she remembered Thorin's as she screamed it while he kept moving, wringing every last ounce of pleasure from her.

She slammed her hips up to meet his, and Thorin's own release barrelled through him, and he groaned her name so that she remembered it at last. Arien held him through it, on and on as he spilled himself in her, as he gave her a brutal kiss to contain his roar.

He remained atop her when he at last stilled, remained in her, his lips barely a hairsbreadth above hers. She was trembling with... with whatever he'd done to her, her body. Thorin buried his head in the crook of her neck, breathing the words over and over onto her skin,

"I love you, I love you, I love you."

She only held him, tears glistening on her own cheeks at what they'd done, the perfection of it.

Her king, her heart, her mountain.

He had and would always be so.

No longer would either of them be alone and wandering. No longer would they be ashamed.