The sun had wholly set and the moon had risen by the time they returned to their campsite, mouths swollen and hair dishevelled. Thorin would not let go of her hand during the whole walk back. But Arien wasn't complaining. No, she wasn't complaining one bit. When they got there, they found to their relief that the ponies had been too busy eating to bother trying to escape, and as she watched them Arien realised that she herself hadn't had anything to eat that day. And that she was starving. She'd been too busy wallowing in her pain and grief, letting herself fall into the abyss that waited in her soul. They were supposed to have reached the Misty Mountains by nightfall. But as Arien watched Thorin pull their bedrolls down from the saddle packs with smooth, sure movements, she didn't regret losing that one day of travel. Not if it meant those moments on the hilltop, not if it meant this joy that seemed to fill every inch of her, joy so complete that she almost felt she could die from the force of it.

Just then, she saw the Taurhelim dagger still lying on the grass. A bolt of pain went through her chest, a numbness that she shoved as deep into her shattered but slowly, slowly mending heart as she could. She wouldn't give that pain one inch, not now that she felt as if she could breathe, as if some weight she hadn't known existed had been lifted from her shoulders. Not when she felt alive, alive as she had never felt before in almost a century of existence. She knelt and picked up the dagger, carefully wiping away the dust and dirt on the sheath. There were words engraved on it in beautiful, swirling elvish script.

Frost and embers, shadow and light, life and death.

None can survive without the other. I am a dealer of all.

Arien smiled, and strapped the blade to her waist.

She saw that Thorin had laid out the bedrolls and was now taking food out of the packs. She stepped toward him, the sword at her back and dagger at her waist now a constant weight. She reached up to help the Prince –– her Prince, she thought with no small amount of pride –– undo the food bags, their fingers brushing. She revelled in the feeling of his callused hand atop hers as he caught it and kissed her fingers.

Thorin leaned in closer, his scent wrapping around her as he murmured

"Will it be my bedroll or yours now, Arien?"

She swallowed, glancing sidelong at him. His lips were swollen, his face flushed and eyes simmering with want. For her.

Arien's blood heated, her core near molten. But she managed to pull away from him and make him sit on his bedroll. She nearly leaped atop him, too.

"You are still a Prince," she managed to say primly, though the smirk on his face was enough to shatter any tether she kept on herself. "And while there is no official law about... half-breeds, I do not think your grandfather would approve of us. So I intend to keep things unnoticeable."

Thorin's answering smile was anything but. So was the way he growled

"Come here."

Thror could go to hell.

Arien's heartbeat pounded through every inch of her as she held his burning gaze and settled in his lap. Thorin's hand cupped the back of her head, fingers twining in her hair as he brushed a kiss over the corner of her mouth. Then the other. As any restraint on herself melted completely and she gripped his face in her hands and kissed him. Thorin's fingers brushed her delicately pointed ears as a tiny noise escaped her. He groaned when her hips undulated against his, the sound so full of need she felt it in her core.

But it was Arien who pulled away, standing up and grabbing anything, anything she could find from the food bags. Anything to distract herself from the desperate want, the need for him she felt in her body, her soul.

His eyes were dark when she tossed him an apple.

"What do we do now?" she whispered, even as she settled onto the bedroll beside him.

He looked at her, in a way that felt as if he could see right into her heart, and there was no fear, no hesitation in his voice as he said

"We go on. Nothing and no one can stop us from doing this, nothing can tear us apart, Arien. And if they try..." he smiled, a wicked, wild thing. But comforting. "Then I will tear them apart until they are nothing but ashes and dust floating on the wind."

His smile grew, his eyes lighting as she moved closer to him, unable to stop herself, that smile a blessing and a beacon in the dark.

And when she rested her head on his shoulder, when his hand ran through her hair in soft, taunting caresses... Arien smiled as well.