Weeks. Arien had been travelling for weeks since Glorfindel had left her, and it somehow still felt as if she'd barely got more than two miles. Her food had run out in the first week. By the second, there was no more water. The elves had never taught her how to ration things. If she was honest, she supposed she'd been rather pampered during the ninety-seven years she'd lived with them.

At least they'd taught her to hunt and fight. She could still remember the endless training sessions that had left her body peppered with scrapes and bruises. Which meant that her lack of food didn't worry her so much. No, the two daggers the elves had given her were sharp enough to kill a deer or rabbit. It was water that was the problem.

While she was still near Rivendell the streams and rivers had been plentiful, their purity unquestionable. But now, with the Misty Mountains far behind her and the last straggling trees of the Greenwood barely visible on the horizon, any water she did find was more often than not undrinkable.

And now there was the problem of how she was going to cross the lake. The great expanse of water stretched on before her, wide and unbroken, her only path onwards. She had nothing to cross it with, and the water could very well freeze her to death if she tried to swim it. She could stay here, but if the orcs found her, if anyone found her...

She took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders. She could follow the river bank for as long as possible, staying northward, and then ––

Arien didn't know what sense, exactly, picked up on it. Not smell or sight or sound, for there was nothing beyond the lapping water and the weak sunlight and the rotting loam from the nearby trees. But –– there. Like some thread in a great tapestry had snagged, her body locked up. Something was out there. She could sense its presence, as surely as she could sense her own. Arien scanned the landscape around her, but found nothing. Nothing that might provide cover for anything following her except... except the copse of trees rustling innocently in the slight breeze to her left.

Arien casually unsheathed the two fighting knives at her side, her breath slowing to match the sigh of the wind as she listened for any indication of what and who was following her. The world around her murmured with life.

But she could feel it –– feel something out there.

Someone was hunting her.

She tightened her grip on the knives.

She only wished she had somewhere to run.

***

Prince Thorin of Erebor had been following the girl for three days now.

Crouched in a thicket tucked between two trees, he watched her draw her weapons, her body tensed and stiff. He'd first spotted her kneeling by one of the only drinkable streams outside Dale, looking so pathetic and lost that she'd snagged his interest. She was delicately built, small enough that he might have thought her barely past her first bleed were it not for the full breasts beneath her close-fitting leathers.

Those clothes had snared his interest immediately. The elves of the Woodland Realm wore similar ones –– all the elves did. Yet this girl... she would barely come up to his chin if they stood side by side. He was considered tall amongst the dwarves, but... she was dwarf-sized. Yet peeking out from beneath her hair were delicately pointed elven ears.

And when she turned in his direction, her forest green eyes scanned her surroundings with an assessment that was too old, too practiced, to belong to a child. At least eighteen –– maybe older. Her pale face was dirty, gaunt. She'd likely been on the road for a while, unable to find food or water. Her red-brown hair remained long and flowing despite those weeks of travel, framing her grimy face. Beautiful, he couldn't help thinking.

Thorin remained hidden, watching her scan the hills, the lake, the trees.

She knew he was out there, somehow.

Interesting. When he wanted to stay hidden, few could find him.

It didn't matter. She was in his kingdom, and the laws of his grandfather stated he had to bring her back for trial before the king. Every muscle in her body was tensed, and she gripped those daggers in a way that told him she knew precisely how to use them –– but she gave the trees one more sweep with those startlingly green eyes, forcing a soft breath through her pursed lips, and crouched down by the lake, reaching for the water with slender fingers.

Thorin eased from the thicket, not even a twig rustling at his passing.

The girl brought her cupped hands to her mouth and drank, closing her eyes as the water wet her no doubt parched lips, unaware of his approach. Good.

It was time to see just how well she used those blades she carried.