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There are thousands of rooms in the palace and he knows them all.
His favourite, however, is the master chamber, his father’s room.
Every night, at bath-time, he likes to run in there, giggling as he hides under the enormous white bed. He know how to challenge the stoic patience of the Queen’s maids, that only after a long time of pleading, and then threatening the young elf , are able to lure him out and to push him in a tank full of bubbles. A mere attempt to make him decent, after a day spent running in the woods.
The rooms smells of jasmine and orange blossom. The fragrance is light and welcoming and the little one loves that smell. It reminds him of someone, but he can’t quite recall who.
There is a vanity, in the corner opposite to the window. The oval frame of the mirror is made of silver and nacre and when the sunshine hits it, it shines, projecting a rainbow all over the walls.
Often, that’s the very reason why Legolas loves to go in the room: to see the magic of the mirror, even though he knows he can’t touch it. He has promised so to his Ada, and an honourable elf always keeps his word.
Legolas is only five years old, and there are many thing he still doesn’t quite understand, but his eyes are always attentive when he looks at his father. They open wide, full of pride and devotion, they stares at those sharp features longer than anyone else, longer than it feels right - Thranduil thinks. Legolas’ eyes are wise, they don’t just look, they see.
They see a solemn sadness, a painful but composed nostalgia that the little prince is too young, too naive to comprehend.
Something in his memory tells him that love is the best remedy to despair, but at five years old, Legolas can’t explain love and the only thing he can do is to pull his father’s cloak and reach out to him.
A shadow always darkens the king’s eyes when he looks at his son, as if he didn’t know what to do. It is just a brief moment, before Thranduil manages to gain back his fierceness as he kneels to the prince’s height.
The little elf’s hand rests on his cheek and only then a half smile, a sweet smile for once, softens the kings face and a light sigh escapes from his lips.
*
Every now and then Legolas has nightmares, full of fire, orcs and spiders. He wakes up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, and even if he knows he shouldn’t, he jumps out his soft little bed, and with his feet echoing on the floors, he wanders the palace’s hallways, lit in the moonlight, and he reaches his father’s room.
He quietly walks to the bed and he snuggles in it. He cuddles up against his father’s chest and he falls asleep safe and sound.
Thranduil keeps telling him that he has to be brave and fight his fears, but he has never dared to send him back to his room. After all, it the middle of the night, loneliness is sharper and cruel and even grown ups are scared.
*
Thranduil fingers are soft when he combs Legolas’ hair. Every morning he braids the silver locks, and every night he undoes them, while the price sits on the balcony and chats about the sky or complains about how boring the whole process is.
Most of the times the king does’t pay too much attention, he just grabs the silver brush from the vanity: sometimes his grip on it his so tight that his knuckles hurt.
He never looks at the mirror while Legolas is with him.
He waits to be alone, he takes his crown off, he undoes his cloak and sits in front of it.
He knows that sooner or later he will have to show Legolas the true power of the mirror.
It is the most precious object in the whole palace, a wedding gift from the wizards, enchanted, able to shows the last images it has captured, forever.
Thranduil whispers elven words and it is not long before he sees himself to put a pearl’s necklace around his wife’s slender neck. His lips on her skin, her scent -jasmine and orange blossom - his hand on her shoulders, her hands on his wrists. She sees her blush, then she smiles and tilts her head, moving her hair to make space for his kisses. He sees her laugh, he hears her laugh, he sees himself looking at her and he gets lost in her gaze, he hears her voice rumbling in his chest.
He stays still in front of the mirror, until it has nothing more to show. Then he goes to bed, hoping that the little prince will visit him.
The way he looks at him is the same as hers.
*
Legolas heart beats loud in ins chest, it pounds in his hear and the noise is deafening.
Tears burn his face, fear shakes his whole body, he looks shocked at the disaster in front of him.
The racket of a mirror smashing to pieces is the most horrible noise he has ever heard.
That afternoon, while he was running in his favourite room to hide from the maids, his feet slipped on the floor and he crashed to the vanity. The mirror shook and then fell to the floor.
Legolas is paralysed with fear now, he hears his father’s frantic steps getting closer and closer.
The king enters the room, his hair and clothes floating around him. Legolas’ guilty, worried eyes are fixed on the his face and the little elf sees something that makes his stomach sink. Thranduil’s so well put together, intimidating facade crumples, swept away by a look of intolerable pain, so devastating that, for a moment, the prince thinks that his dad is about to collapse to his feet. For a moment everything is still, and Legolas doesn’t even dare to breathe. He keeps staring at Thranduil, looking at him in the eyes, and something, deep down in the blue, beaks and the pieces of that something, hurt the little one more than words could do.
But Thranduil is imperishable, and manages to keep all the fragments of himself from disintegrating, and before it’s too late he regains his control.
Legolas gets close to him, his tears falling to the ground and they mix with the mirror’s splinters as he waits in silence.
The king’s hand barely moves, but for the young prince is enough. He bows and gets out of the room, closing the door behind him.
That evening, someone else’s hands comb his hair, and it’s a different brush to untangle the silver locks.
The whole palace smells of jasmine and orange blossom: the fragrance isn’t pleasant anymore, it is too strong and penetrating.
Thranduil never leaves his room.
Legolas waits for him, sitting on the floor in front of the locked door that doesn’t open for days.
The scent fades and then disappears.
Legolas never smelt it again.
He learnt to put himself back to sleep after his nightmares. And his hands never touched his father’s face again.