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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (7/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

Summary: Elain lies about a vision and winds up as the Night Court’s emissary to the Spring Court, trying to prevent the Dread Trove from falling into the wrong hands and wrestling with the gifts the Cauldron imparted when she was Made. Lucien, asked to join her, must contend with secrets about his mating bond. Meanwhile, Tamlin struggles to lead the Spring Court in the aftermath of the war with Hybern. And Vassa, the human queen in their midst, wrestles with the enchantment that turns her into a firebird by day, robbing her of the power of speech and human thought. Looming over all of them is uniquet peace in Prythian and the threat of Koschei, the death-god with unimaginable power. With powers both magical and monstrous, the quartet at the Spring Court will have to wrestle with their own natures and the evil that surrounds them. Will the struggle save their world, or doom it?

A/N: There's a scene between Tamlin and Elain in this chapter that I really enjoyed writing... and also, this is the chapter where Things Start Happening. I hope you enjoy -- thank you for reading! ❤️

This morning, Elain had decided she was going to get information out of Tamlin even if she had to provoke him. After six weeks in the Spring Court and a month under Vassa’s tutelage, she’s had little more than small talk and some slightly awkward conversations with the High Lord. His remarks to Lucien over the dinner table are still strained, arranging visits to the villages but never the Spring Court borders, never anything of substance.

Yesterday, on her weekly visit, Mor had asked if there was any new information, and when Elain shook her head and forced a shamefaced little blush, the look on Mor’s face had shaken her. Mor hadn’t been disappointed. It was as if she’d always expected Elain to fail to gather the necessary information, even with her pretty speech about how Elain had the makings of a spy. Elain isn’t sure if this kind of look would have bothered her even a week earlier. She might have been happy at the possibility of giving up. Yesterday, though, she’d felt the acid inside her, the writhing wrongness that had plagued her in the Night Court, that feeling of being useless and unwanted. Even if the vision had been a lie. There were still valid reasons to talk to Tamlin, not least of which involved finding out why Elain would use the crown to compel him to her side.

Most nights, after Vassa has gone to Lucien, she studies the remnants of the vision. She’s brought herself, finally, to study her own expression, and the serene confidence on her face is startling, both because it’s foreign to her mirror, but also because that look seems to be the exact replica of the feeling inside her as she grasps Vassa’s lessons. Often she is reaching for queenliness, that stately assurance, but when it’s hers, just for a second, there’s a brightness inside her, the feeling that she is finally correct. It scares her and it doesn’t, which scares her even more, that she might still be on this path, that her best self could be a monster.

What Elain would never tell anybody, more secret than whatever lurks inside her, is what she thinks when she looks at Tamlin. The beauty of him. Now that she’s been around him in his own home, she recognizes a certain look, the controlled wildness of him, and while that sense is further muted by the Crown in her vision, she still studies the strain in his muscles, his shoulders and his thighs. She watches him try to fight the influence until all she wants is to rescue Tamlin from her future self, reach through the vision and pluck him from that dreary throne.

Last night she fell asleep contemplating the scene, the teeth of uselessness sinking deep inside her, so that when she woke up this morning, Elain was determined to get Tamlin to divulge something, anything that might help her follow a better path. If she were able to glean some information that the Night Court could use, so much the better.

She’d gotten up early, let Melis arrange her hair in waves clipped loosely and threaded through with fresh gardenias, put her in a day dress that’s nicer than the ones she uses for real gardening, white silk embroidered with some magicked thread that gives it a pearly iridescence, so that she’ll shimmer in sunlight. When she looks in the mirror, Elain looks too radiant to be threatening. Beauty is a weapon, Vassa keeps telling her.

When she descended the stairs for breakfast, she watched Tamlin walk through the front door of his estate, into the gardens. Elain’s stomach grumbled but as she watched him make a beeline for the trees, she’d only hesitated for a moment before she followed him.

Now Elain is sure that something is watching her behind the largest, farthest tree. She has no idea how Feyre wandered these woods alone, as human or High Fae, and feels the habitual guilt rise in her, intermingling with the fear that roils her gut and tightens her shoulders. The gardens aren’t so far behind her. She could still turn around.

She breathes deep and reminds herself that she’s looking for the most frightening monster in these woods. And surely, if Tamlin were near, he would come to her defense, so long as she screamed loud enough. If Azriel kissing her would be enough to create a political scandal, surely her death must be prevented.

Instead of imagining the monsters in the woods or those last furtive moments with Azriel, Elain focuses on silencing her steps. The process is easier in her High Fae body, but her slippers still seem to be drawn to the twigs that crackle most under her tread. She’d spotted Tamlin crossing the grounds and she’d followed him moments later, leaving her trowel and gloves behind. He can’t have gotten too far, even with all the training of his warrior life.

Ahead, the sunlight goes molten gold, and Elain follows the light into the clearing ahead. Her breath is harsh in her throat and she would like a moment to rest, to believe that whatever lurks in these woods would have the good sense to avoid exposure.

Instead, she steps right in front of a golden beast, fangs and horns and talons and a ferocious expression on its face, so that Elain is screaming before she realizes she’s seen those green eyes many times before.

When Tamlin’s hand covers her mouth, she’s surprised to feel his fingers on her lips. Seconds ago, they’d ended in claws. She’s never seen him in this form before, not that she can remember.

“Why would you wander in these woods?” His voice still belongs to the beast, a ragged snarl.

Elain presses her fingers to his wrist, moves his hand enough to speak.

“I was looking for you.” His fingers are on her cheek now. She can feel the callouses against her skin.

“There are terrible creatures who roam these forests. Do you have an urgent message from your High Lord?”

Elain’s mind whirls for a good reason. The only urgency truly at play is her own curiosity about her own future and how it intertwines with Tamlin. How she might prevent her vision from being her actual life.

Despite everything she’s learning, her first idea is to feign a crush, her old strategy in ballrooms. But she’s tired of being a pretty toy that men consider only in relation to marriage or lust. Maybe she’s listened at enough doorways and dinners to politick a little.

“There was a question,” she says, careful of her phrasing and trying for the tone that Vassa has recommended, relaxing her throat and not allowing her voice to rise with question or with hesitation, “about the security you’re providing at the border with the human lands. Whether another court will be able to break through and terrorize the humans.”

“Has Lucien started whispering in your ear? I thought you couldn’t stand to look him in the eye.” Again, the words are growled, ominous.

But instead of shrinking or collapsing, Elain feels herself smirking, the expression foreign and thrilling. She hopes he can read the expression with his fingers. Whatever the implications. Something in her feels wild and free as it never has before.

“This is an obvious problem,” she says. “Even I know that Beron will never agree to remain in his territory.”

“Your sister destroyed my peoples’ confidence in me. I cannot raise an army.”

It’s the way he won’t say Feyre’s name that snaps something in Elain, makes her feel truly fierce. However she might feel about the Night Court, Feyre is her sister, and Elain’s betrayed her too many times already.

“I thought you were skulking in the woods instead of building it back.” He’s quiet and instead of letting him snap back at her, she adds, “My sister destroyed nothing that wasn’t already rotten.”

“Why did you allow yourself to be sent here, then?”

There isn’t an answer that won’t get her thrown out, she thinks. He’d never allow her to stay if she knew her vision. He’s mad already, and though Elain knows Tamlin’s temper is dangerous, he might let something slip if she provokes him.

“Why did you allow another Archeron sister in your house?”

“Your High Lord did not allow me much choice.”

“You seemed willing enough,” she says, trying to muster the kind of confidence that blooms in Nesta. “I think perhaps you were lonely in these woods. That if I were here, Lucien would follow.”

“There’s an obscene amount of confidence in your family’s blood.”

It occurs to Elain, all in a rush, that if Tamlin were truly angry, he would be a beast, all roar and claws, and instead he stands tall, his body so close she can feel the heat of it, the subtle movements as he draws breath. She’s felt that hunger, for the warmth of another body, and the longing frightens her with its ferocity.

So instead of pursuing the argument they’ve been having, trying to stir him to a rage that will make him careless, she asks, “Why do you prowl these lands as a beast?”

Elain feels him go still, trying to sense what provoked the question.

“I am stronger in that form,” he says, finally.

“You’re High Lord of your court. Certainly you are more powerful than anything that roams these lands. If you could--” She’s about to say, if you could guard this forest when Amarntha ruled, but she’s not sure what that phrase would stir up. “Why are you afraid of being seen?”

He snarls but she stands firm. He cannot harm her; her sisters would destroy him in a blink. Anyway, she’s seen the future, and however horrible it may be, they’re both alive inside it.

She looks at him, braced for action, the only enemy her question, and Elain sees his eyes are dull and she sees the shadows under his eyes, the stubble on his chin, his weariness evident. Slowly, the snarl turns hollow.

“You know the things I’ve done,” he says, ducking his head so that she can no longer meet his gaze.

“Is that what you’ve decided to become, then? The blind and stupid beast?”

No bird sings into the silence between them. Even the leaves go still on their branches.

“They won’t even look at me in the village.”

“My fiancé--”

“You will not compare my people to a worthless human man who could not see your radiance.”

“All I was supposed to do with my life was marry well,” she says, hoping she’s not blushing at the barest hint of a compliment. “Don’t presume to know what’s harmed me, or its significance. What you took from me.”

At the last, he turns away from her, towards the deeper darkness of the forest, and Elain knows that if she allows him to slink away, he’ll never tell her anything. If he delves further into that darkness, she will have to follow him, compelled and compelling him until her vision comes true.

She darts forward, circles his wrist with her fingers. Looks right into his eyes so he’ll see the truth she’s offering, the secret known by a quantity of people she can count on her fingers.

“I see things, sometimes,” she says, her fingers braced against the bones of his wrist. “Futures that could be. If I try, they can be avoided.”

“Why did Rhysand send you here?”

If he had growled the words, she would have run toward the gardens. Instead Tamlin keeps his voice level, his green eyes on hers, steady as a leaf in late spring, confident of warmth and sun.

“I had a vision and you were in it.”

“What will I do?”

The thready whisper of his voice cracks something inside Elain. She’s about to tell him the truth, confess the lie, but he misreads the hesitation on her face.

“No doubt your High Lord bound you to secrecy. He thinks I’ll fulfill your prophecy sooner if I’m told.” His voice rises, angry.

“It’s both of us. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I was sent.”

He stares at her.

“What terrible thing will you do, Elain Archeron?”

She can feel her courage guttering within her. She could not admit the truth even to her sisters, even to Nesta, who would have ripped apart the world rather than let an unkind hand so much as brush against her skin.

“I’m trying to figure that out.” She swallows, gulping air. “How I’ll become a monster.”

His fingers reach for hers, and Elain realizes she’s never let go of his wrist. If he’d run into the woods she would have held on tighter, until he dragged her through the underbrush. Not even because she believed he’d reveal anything to her, if she’s being very honest. She would have held on until she could have revealed a bit more of her secret, the horrible being that lurks inside her skin.

“It’s easy to become a monster,” Tamlin tells her, once she forces herself to meet his eyes again. Slowly, one finger at a time, he releases her hand from his grip. “Becoming good again is what seems to me to be the impossibility.”

If he’d told her she was good, she would never have believed him. Instead, Elain gives a dazed nod.

“You have to keep going to the village,” she says. “Your people want to believe there is goodness inside you.”

This time, when Tamlin turns to the forest depths, Elain lets go of him and lets him vanish between the trees. Perhaps there is no saving either of them.

When Elain arrives in the kitchen, very late for breakfast, there’s an egg and scallion dish, still warm from the oven, which the cook offers her. He looks High Fae until Elain takes a closer look and sees the webbing between his fingers, the pupils which are shaped like leaves. When she asks, the cook will not tell his name, only that he prefers to be called Cook, and though Elain supposes this is not an invitation to further conversation, they pass a cheery hour as he complains and jokes about his preparations for this evening’s dinner. Elain almost managers to forget the conversation in the forest.

Eventually the food is gone, including the new cherries from the village which Cook insisted she sample, and there is kitchen business that requires focus, and Elain realizes she has no excuse to not be in the garden. Everyone would know that something was wrong if she did not make an appearance in some flowerbed.

She’s just picked up her gloves when she hears Feyre’s voice, looks around the room wildly before reminding herself that this is one of her sister’s new abilities.

I miss you, her sister says. Mor said she thinks you’re having a hard time. Do you want to come home?

I don’t know, Elain tells her, checking her mental shields to ensure Feyre can’t see this morning’s argument. Everything here is different than I expected. I think Mor thought I would be a better spy.

Even Lucien struggles with Tamlin. Mor can winnow you back for a short visit. There’s a new bakery I think you’d like.

Send me a selection the next time Mor visits.

There’s a silence, and Elain knows that Feyre is looking for a delicate way to ask her sister why she doesn’t want to be with her family at the Night Court, and Elain herself is building an additional mental shield around her conversation with Tamlin this morning, the knot of feelings and frustrations she doesn’t want to untangle anytime soon. She reaches for her gardening hat and jams it on her head, wishing for the thousandth time that she could design a hat that would better accommodate her ears without sacrificing any aspect of the crown or brim.

How do you like Vassa? Feyre finally asks, the lightness in the question a little forced.

She makes me scared of Koschei, that he could lock her up. I think Vassa could take over Prythian if she wanted. She’s teaching me about diplomacy.

I’m glad you have a friend, Feyre says, and sounds so relieved that Elain feels guilty again. She’d never tell Feyre how often she inspires that feeling. Elain deserves the shame. And how is Lucien?

I don’t see him very much. Technically this is not a lie. He usually leaves with Vassa in the morning, unless he has an errand with Tamlin. He’s perfectly pleasant at dinner.

He’s not--?

He’s perfectly pleasant.

It’s only that I thought he would want to protect you from Tamlin.

I don’t see Tamlin very much, either. I think the noise from the builders upsets him. Again, this is technically true. Tamlin likes Laella well enough, but he’s generally out of the estate by the time the noise begins, and on the rare occasions that construction has extended through dinner, she’s watched his jaw clench with every bang and clatter.

We can send Azriel, Feyre says, sweet and hesitant. Or maybe Nuala and Cerridwan can join you?

I have a maid, and Tamlin is very curious as to why three of us were sent already. I’ll visit when I have more information, I promise.

You’re sure you’re all right there? Nesta has been asking to visit but we’re not sure it’s the right time, given everything.

Even after everything, they still treat Nesta like an ill-timed explosion waiting to happen. Not that Nesta hasn’t had her awful moments, not that her powers, even depleted, aren’t fearsome, but Elain has always found her fury understandable, even deserved. It’s why those barbs hurt so much when they were pointed squarely at Elain.

Tell Nesta I miss her and that no one has laid a hand on me.

By the time she’s said goodbye to Feyre, Elain is in the middle of the garden, wondering if the lilacs could do with pruning. It’s difficult to judge with the flowers perpetually in bloom, and Elain has always preferred gardens with a hint of wildness, not those precise topiaries she hears were the fashion in the continental courts.

In the end, she spends the rest of the day wandering the garden, assessing and finding everything perfectly in place. Any visitor would be greeted by flowers of all colors, arranged to complement each other, would breathe in the sweet fragrances and want to linger on the new benches. Laella has asked Elain to consult on the interior gardens, but in a few weeks, when those are completed, there will hardly be any work for Elain, unless she decides on some silly reorganization to keep her busy.

In a few weeks, she will have no excuse to stay, and these gardens will be wasted on Tamlin, who seems to want to lurk in the woods until his court is in ruins.

Just thinking of the garden trampled is enough to keep Elain there until the sun dips beyond the horizon. She stays hidden on a bench until she’s sure that dinner is well underway, then sneaks up to her room.

Melis is waiting at the door to Elain’s closet, yellow silk beneath her fingers. When she sees Elain, her eyes are startled.

“I was about to sound the alarm for you,” she says, letting the hem of the dress fall to the ground.

“I’d like to have dinner in my room tonight,” Elain tells her, pulling the hat from her head, the gardenias from her hair. Even crushed by the day, their fragrance lingers.

“What happened?”

“I had an... encounter with Tamlin. I don’t want to say something I’ll regret.”

“If he hurt you--” Melis starts, but there’s no real threat in her voice, only worry.

“Nothing like that. Only an argument. Can you help me with these buttons?”

Elain splays her fingers on the desk, studying the lines of dirt that demarcate her fingernails. She’ll take a long bath tonight, really scrub until her fingers are totally clean.

Melis hasn’t left her post.

“Are you all right?” Elain asks, not turning to look at the maid, looking instead at the gardenias, the crushed petals already veined with brown. Later, she will regret this.

She hears Melis’ footsteps, soft against the thick carpet, but just when Elain expects to feel her fingers on the buttons of her dress, there’s a pressure on her throat, a rush of bright pain, a warmth pooling at her collarbone.

Blood.

“I need you to come with me,” Melis says, and her voice is buzzing, frantic, and Elain thinks only, I thought whoever killed me would be more sure of themselves.

“I’m not going with you,” she says, loud as she can, trying to reproduce the assured tone Vassa would applaud despite the pain which does not ebb, and still Elain is reaching for the knife at her neck, but Melis grabs her wrists and wrenches Elain backward, bending her nearly to the floor.

The knife presses in deeper. Any further and her throat will be cut. The blood is already flowing down her body, staining the white fabric of her dress.

“Let go of me.” Elain tries to scream the words, but Melis moves the knife back and forth and the scream turns into a whimper. Once again, she is helpless. She is bait.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll know when we get there,” Melis says, and she squeezes Elain’s wrists harder, and as the winnowing begins, the great winds between everyplace summoned by Melis’ magic, there’s a rent in the fabric of the world, a ripping noise as Melis pulls Elain, and as the bright room disappears into darkness, there’s a thump on the carpet, a thousand whispers emerging out of nowhere, but there are no voices and she’s in the dark with Melis, the knife still on her neck, and then Elain is gone.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (6/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: This chapter is from Vassa's perspective and I truly loved writing it. A fair amount of research went into figuring out how she might see the world in firebird form, and as a result, everybody in my life now knows about the wonders of bird vision. Thanks to them for putting up with me, and thanks to you for reading! You can read early previews of the next chapter every Tuesday by following @house.of.hurricane on Instagram. And as always, you can read all chapters at AO3 if you prefer. You can find all chapters here.

The world is alive in this form, more than Vassa can ever explain, even to Lucien. She is not sure if this is the result of magic or her firebird eyes, but by day, the world is filled with a million colors that humans have no words to describe, colors that are bright and subtle and mark every being indistinguishably. When Vassa is the firebird, there is never any mistaking one individual for another.

When Koschei first bound her, Vassa could not focus on her lost country or her lost freedom for whole days at a time, so magnificent was the sight of the water on his lake, the way the droplets spangled when struck with her wings, the play of the fire upon the water.

Eventually she became acquainted with the splendor of her view, though her thoughts move differently in this form, at times swift and darting past her human powers to parse, and at times so lugubriously working through a problem or story that Vassa aches for the setting sun, the moment when her mind will return to her.

Always, she misses the power of speech, the workings of her human mind, and company. Koschei might have other prisoners, but Vassa was held alone on his lake. Even now, during the days she spends with Lucien, she can only watch him, the play of light on hair that in this form is as alive as the fire itself, transfigured by each play of light and shadow, or the subtle changes of expression on his face. She knows Lucien has been loved before, and deeply, but she has enough pride in her to think that nobody has ever watched him as she has, knowing the topography of him that’s subtler than even faerie eyes can detect.

After a week touring the lakes on Tamlin’s lands, Vassa tells Lucien to stay at the estate until the afternoon. She has watched the darkness bloom under his eyes, the silences that stretch between him and Tamlin and Elain, and she wants to soothe them. She will stay at the lake closest to the manor house, she tells him, where she can quickly fly to safety if she detects an intrusion.

She does not tell him that she feels Koschei’s tether on her, stronger now than it ever has been. Since Master Archeron bargained her way from the lake, there has always been this invisible binding on her neck and shoulders, a spell even Helion, famous for such things, could not detect, though Vassa chose not to tell him of her fetter when he sought to free her. She wanted to test his mettle. And at the time she was practically drunk on the newness of her almost-freedom that the very mention of her invisible chains seemed its own abomination.

In the past week, it feels as if Koschei has applied both fists to the chain that connects him to Vassa and pulled with all his might. She wakes from sleeping on the easternmost corner of the bed, fingertips grazing the floor. Her shoulders pinch from the strain of holding herself in one place. At times she finds breathing to be difficult, as she is being pressed by boulders.

She is certain that Koschei is done biding his time. He will soon come to claim her.

For all his reassurances to the contrary, she knows that Rhysand has no plan to save her. Oh, his court has gleaned certain insights and may think they have the upper hand against the death-lord, but while Koschei is still alive in this world, Vassa knows he will return for her. She doesn't know why he is so determined to claim her, can only guess at why she is essential.

Alone and without speech, she is free to follow these thoughts where they lead, caught between mourning and contemplation and the wariness alive in each beast.

Which is why she spots Elain’s hair glinting in the dappled forest light before the girl is near enough for her slippered steps can break a twig.

Vassa studies the girl as she draws closer to the lake. Elain’s eyes become more dazzled, shaded by her hand, so that Vassa is certain that the girl left her gardens and came searching for the firebird.

If Elain Archeron is lovely to Vassa’s human eyes, the girl the firebird sees is stunning, her hair a shining riot of color, her eyes deep and glinting, all of her glowing and alive with the subtle movements of her body as she makes her way through the trees. Her gown, perhaps a drab fabric to other eyes, is all the colors of the spring flowers, the hopeful entreaty that winter end its grip. There is a sadness to this girl, but now especially Vassa wants to shake her, frustrated with the idea that such a beauty could find anything lacking in this world.

Of course, Vassa was known as a beauty to her people, a beloved queen. She knows these gifts are no assurance and yet Elain still bothers her, a vision of discontentment and wasted gifts. She knows she should feel pity towards her, but she does not. If Lucien is her mate, then she is unbound. She could be anything at all.

When Elain approaches the lake, Vassa glides toward her, head unbowed, her magic eyes unflinching, until the girl blinks and looks away, focused on the waters that sparkle with Vassa’s fire.

“Things have been awkward between us,” Elain says. “I saw Lucien at breakfast and I thought it might be my chance to speak with you. I thought, maybe you do not know how it is for the High Fae, when they find mates.”

Vassa cants her head to the side, although she wants to scoff. Let the girl continue in her folly.

“I confess that I’m newly acquainted with all of this myself. And I’ve never felt -- my point is, I admire you and I wish that we could be better companions.”

She is looking down the length and breadth of Vassa’s body, and then Elain pulls out her skirts, settles herself on the rock where Lucien sits. In her hands, there is a book.

“I know you cannot speak and so I will not try and settle things between us. I only want to say that I wonder if you understand how it feels to be wanted by someone whose attention or admiration you have never desired. Someone who was forced upon you by fate. And that someone might be wonderful, but the forcing itself makes him more than a little repulsive.”

Elain looks up from the water, as if she’s worried that Vassa will fly at her in a blaze of fury. But Vassa learned early that there is value in letting a person tell their entire story without interruption, and frankly she is curious to learn what caused Elain to make herself into a little doll, beautiful but hardly useful.

“I was about to be married when I was captured by Hybern. My betrothed, I think you know him, he has little regard for faeries. He did not want me when he saw how I had changed. And then Lucien was there, always there, watching me with longing eyes, and I felt as if I had to perform for him, all the happiness and wanting I’d felt for Greyson so naturally. But there was another person, another male, who helped me to heal. He was kind and quiet with me, and I never thought about what I had to be to him, what I had to be for him, until it was too late. Because we couldn’t… and then he fell in love with someone else. And they discovered shortly after that they were mates. Do you know, I think that this whole idea of mates is awful. To have that looming over you. I thought I loved Greyson because I loved him. Even if we were fated to fall in love, I thought that I’d met all of the people I’d met in my life and I’d chosen him. And with this other male, it was always forbidden. Lucien had claimed me as his mate. It was a matter of political significance. But I thought, even if I find him a little repulsive, at some point in the many centuries in which I’m now to live, maybe I would feel as if fate had given me a gift. Maybe I would look at him longingly, the way he looked at me. Instead he found someone he liked better. And you seem wonderful, but to look at you that night, to smell his scent on you, the scent of this faerie who had been chosen for me irrevocably, was as if there was suddenly no reason for me to be in this world.”

Elain lets out a long breath and Vassa circles the lake, averting her eyes for a few moments to give the girl her privacy. The small muscles of her face will reveal too much.

When Vassa comes back to Elain’s rock, those brown eyes sparkle with tears, bright as topaz, and she understands how Lucien could have loved her at first sight. She looks like a princess in need of rescue, the ordeal and the reward completely intertwined.

“I know that I have hurt you,” Elain says, when Vassa is settled before her, “and I am sorry for that. I have been awkward and I should have apologized sooner. I hope that we can be friends. Or at least that you can tell me, I don’t have the word exactly, but how it is to be you.”

The word Elain looks for is grown or queenly or powerful, and Vassa longs for a miracle of speech so that she could suggest each, impart a lesson. Though she would start by telling Elain the truth, the secret she now begins to regret knowing, that she has been free all along. Instead, making sure she’s far enough to avoid singing Elain’s skirts, she lays her head upon the rock where the girl is seated, splays her wings. She lays down her power for just a moment.

When Vassa returns to her turns about the lake, to her contemplation of the forest, Elain begins to read her book. Vassa would have expected a trifling novel, a melodrama full of powerful men and swooning women, but Elain has found a book that tells the history and myths of Prythian, and her voice does not stumble as she reads.

One day, decades from now, when she’s a wrinkled crone and Elain’s eyes are still exactly this wide, Vassa will tell her that she’s read this book before.

That night, at dinner, the silence is as thick as usual, so that when Vassa, seated at the foot of the long table, turns to Elain, on her left, she feels as if she’s moving underwater, the very air resisting her gestures.

“I wonder if you’d walk in the garden with me after dessert,” she says, raising her glass of wine to her lips. “I’ve been told you’ve been hard at work.”

Vassa feels Tamlin and Lucien staring at her, tense, and for a second, Elain’s mouth is a perfect pink circle, but it’s quickly replaced by a smile.

“I’d love to show you around, your majesty. The jasmine should be lovely at night.”

“You’ve imported some Night Court favorites, then?” Every person from that land carries a hint of jasmine in their scent, so that Vassa sometimes wonders if it’s naturally occurring in their water.

“I think it is important for a garden to be as beautiful as possible at all times. In each season, there should be blooms. My time in the Night Court has shown me that there can be flowers at every hour. The climate here is perfectly suited.” Suddenly the girl has vanished. Elain sounds like the people who have surrounded Vassa all her life: queens.

Vassa asks a few more questions about what it’s like to garden in a land that’s perpetually spring, and the color rises in Elain’s cheeks as she answers, praising the quality of the soil and the talent of the Spring Court gardeners, so that Tamlin eventually joins the conversation. When he compliments the new arrangements Elain has made in her garden, her face flushes, and for a second Vassa wonders -- but she pushes the thought aside, tries not to think about Lucien’s lingering silence, the wariness in his posture. One thing at a time. Her mission tonight is a diplomatic one, and since she was a little girl, Vassa has very rarely failed.

When she walks into the garden with Elain, the air is sweet with lilac and jasmine, and Vassa can’t help but smile. The girl may be wasting many of her gifts, but she is a talented gardener.

“That was a pretty speech you gave this morning,” she says, and Elain’s breath catches. “Though you were foolish to trust me with so much information.”

“I’m sure Lucien has told you most of it already.”

This is the first moment when Vassa could tell Elain the truth and it rises up in her, a bubble of fire in her chest. She forces it down by imagining Lucien’s face, his fingers working at the buttons of his shirt, the way he is in the evenings when he can finally release the cares of the day. She will not be the one to take that from him.

“Your gardens are beautiful. I would never have thought there was such a tempest inside you,” she says instead, another version of the truth.

“I have a habit of hiding in the garden and working until all my rogue emotions are beaten out of me.”

“Until you are perfectly ladylike?”

“My tutors often said I was most lovable after I’d had the sun on my face. And later -- but that is an unpleasant story, your majesty.”

“Often the most entertaining kind. Why do you not call me Vassa?”

“I never thought a queen would be asking me for gossip.”

“Your father was known even in my country. Your sister is High Lady of the Night Court. You are not such a bumpkin as you pretend.”

“I was told that a lady should be demure.”

“Do you think you will be happy playing in your gardens for all eternity?”

Elain turns to her, skin glowing blue-white in the moonlight, the exact color at the center of a flame, and her face is stricken. Vassa draws in a deep and silent breath through her nose. She needed to ask the question, she tells herself. For all that Elain could possibly be.

“I think that there is more to life than war and politics. You all play at death all day long and consider your time spent well.”

“Is this what you imagine your sister does in her court?”

Elain turns toward a cherry tree, pulls a drooping branch toward her, fat with blossoms, and the air fills with their perfume, blocking Vassa from getting closer in the guise of admiring her own handiwork.

“My sisters are warriors. This has never been my talent. I watched the legions on the battlefield and I could pick out the details of each face, and I thought, each of these people has a family waiting for them. I could not be the one to ensure they never returned.”

“You killed the king of Hybern.”

Elain’s eyes skitter once more towards the flowers. Vassa places her own hand on the branch, pressing it away, so that she’s standing close to the girl, can tell she’s about to lie.

“Nesta killed the king of Hybern. I only -- I had the knife in my hands.”

“You think your sisters wanted to go into battle?”

“Will you tell me whatever it is you want to tell me?”

Vassa has to bite back a smile. It’s like hearing a kitten issue a rebuke.

“You have such mandates in you about what you must be as a lady, but it seems they only apply to you. Do you believe you were born only to be ornamental? I hear you speak about these gardens, and you assume the voice of a ruler. There are tales that you were blessed by the Cauldron with gifts. And yet I think you are afraid.”

“You’re angry at me for this?”

“I have lost my kingdom and I am imprisoned inside the firebird all day. I cannot save my people from the wrath of weak and terrible rulers.” Vassa lets go of the branch in her hand, so that it thwacks upward and showers them in petals. “I think you could be anything at all, and you’ve decided to become nothing.”

Elain works her fingers in a tight knot, looks at her delicate rings instead of Vassa, the long and graceful digits. Even the hands of the High Fae are too beautiful to be human. She’s mostly grown to accept this, but sometimes Vassa finds herself a little jealous.

“I was supposed to marry somebody,” Elain says, finally, and the words are raw, as if they were dredged up from the very marrow of her. “Nobody ever thought I’d be anybody, all on my own.”

“I can show you, if you’d like.”

Even before Elain’s head nods at the top of her lovely neck, Vassa’s begun planning her lessons.

After that night, they fall into an easier pattern: once dinner has ended, Vassa teaches Elain about court life and diplomacy, all the ways a human woman can be a queen and how they might apply to the faerie courts. Elain listens attentively, and asks questions that show Vassa that she’s reading the histories in Tamlin’s library. Her voice takes on a certain gravity, and in Vassa’s presence, she rarely blushes. In exchange, Vassa talks about her people, her dreams for Scythia. She knows that men suppose that women’s deepest secrets involve their emotions toward men, but her own secrets have been her wishes for her country, what she might achieve with and for them. She tells Elain a few of these secrets, the lesser ones which wouldn’t cause particular harm in the telling, and when Tamlin and Lucien do not bring them up, when the servants do not comment, Vassa decides that she’s found a worthy confidante.

After her lesson with Elain has ended, Vassa spends the rest of the night with Lucien. As he promised, he still goes out to the lakes with her in the mornings, even sometimes taking her to far-off but beautiful vistas that require hours of walking through the darkness, his fingers always twitching for his sword. But now that she’s survived without his constant supervision, he returns to Tamlin’s estate after a few hours, and at night he fills her in on the comings and goings: the Night Court visitors who laugh with Elain and ask him questions about Koschei and the human realms, the stilted conversations with Tamlin, the visits to the village which dispirit him more than anything. He tells her about how the Spring Court used to be, the way the people felt safe with their warrior High Lord, and though they did not love him, necessarily, they trusted him enough to die for him. She nestles herself against him, braiding his long hair until he realizes what she’s doing and chases her around the room, the two of them breathless with laughter, each throwing a bouquet of curses until his mouth is on hers and she doesn’t feel like saying anything else.

Sometimes, Vassa is startled to think that this is perhaps the happiest she’s ever been. Even the weight of Koschei’s claiming lightens.

Two weeks into this routine, Tamlin turns to Lucien at dinner and asks if he’d like to take a ride into the village. Vassa knows it’s not anatomically possible, but she swears she feels her heart twist at the light in Lucien’s eyes when he agrees.

“I think you made that happen,” Elain says later, when they’re walking through the gardens. Her eyes are bright and eager. “How?”

“I would claim the credit if I could, but I believe the credit goes to you. Your speech at the lake. Your wanting to make friends. You held a mirror up to Tamlin and his reflection looked extremely small.”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” Elain says, but her cheeks have flushed. Vassa stops walking and places her hands on the girl’s shoulders.

“What do you want your legacy to be?” Vassa asks, the kind of question that has become habitual between them.

For a long moment, there is silence between them, only the rustling of leaves in the fragrant breeze, the whirling of Elain’s mind, which works faster than Vassa ever expected, faster than Elain has ever allowed anybody to see.

“A peace that is nurtured by beauty,” she breathes, the words hardly audible. “A world where nobody has to worry about war.”

“Then I think we are ready to begin,” Vassa says, turning toward the estate, the library inside. Tamlin’s collection is relatively meager, even compared to the human realms, but she knows he has some relevant volumes.

“Didn’t we begin weeks ago?” Elain’s skirts rustle has she tries to keep up.

“I’ve given you some very rudimentary tools. Now we start working on your legacy.”

There’s a pull at Vassa’s chest and shoulders right as she makes the statement, and when she looks over her shoulder, certain that Koschei has escaped his lake, has found her latest hiding spot, Elain is the one who reaches for her arm, pulling her to a different entrance.

“Tria said she’d have extra chocolate cake. Let’s celebrate our little victory first.” Her smile is a little sly, and Vassa can’t tell if she’d sensed the spell or was experiencing a moment of oblivious good luck. “You never told me if you had sisters or brothers.”

Vassa thinks of her cousin Leda, willful and gorgeous, heir to Scythia if Vassa herself cannot return. She rubs at her chest, where the enchantment weighs heaviest.

“I was my parents’ only child,” she says, finally, her voice high in her ears. A child’s voice, one she banished long ago.

“Well, your majesty, as it happens, I have two sisters, and we have a custom of celebration with sweets. Surely even a queen can spare a few hours for chocolate.”

Vassa intends to save a slice for Lucien, but within an hour, she and Elain have devoured all that remains of the cake and have started drinking wine, and before she knows it, Vassa is laughing uproariously at Elain’s theory that Tamlin was never hugged as a child.

When Lucien runs into the kitchen, eyes wide and worried, Elain offers him a glass and lingers while Vassa recounts their evening.

“I’ll leave the two of you to raid the larder,” she says, after a while, giving an exaggerated stretch that is obviously faked, aiming a smile at Vassa as she leaves the kitchens.

Vassa never wanted to leave Scythia or her people, but as she raises her glass to her lips, the faerie wine heady on her tongue, she thinks that maybe it would be all right if she was stuck in Prythian a bit longer.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (5/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: I both love and hate writing Lucien (and Vassa! more of her soon) because he's really smart and perceptive, and honestly it's always easier to write characters who know less than I do. But these are my very favorite characters to read about, so, you know, writing growth? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You can read early previews of the next chapter every Tuesday by following @house.of.hurricane on Instagram. And as always, you can read all chapters at AO3 if you prefer. You can find all chapters here.

Lucien watches the despair in Elain’s eyes transfigure itself into fear. On reflex, he reaches for the place her hands should be, but his fingers slice through the air. He works his way up her arms, his fingers skittering to find whatever is left of her body, and when he feels her elbow, her upper arm, the curve of her shoulder, his breath rushes into his lungs, pure relief.

“You’re all right,” he says, his palms on her shoulders, a lie he needs her to believe. He’s long suspected that the Cauldron gave Elain some formidable magic and that she has never learned to wield it, and now he thinks that gift is swallowing her up. He does not want her to see his fear, to begin to panic. He takes another deep breath, forces his heart to slow.

“What is so wrong with me?”

She reaches out for him again and he notices that her sleeves do not move as if they’re empty. The fabric moves around a wrist that is no longer present in the world, a magic Lucien knows is beyond his capability to resolve. It lacks the familiar resonance of spells or Fae power, as if whatever has hold of Elain is more tightly woven into the fabric of this world.

“There is nothing wrong with you,” he says, instead. His fingers press against her shoulder blades, his thumbs against her clavicles, the bones that are solid and here. He has heard all the meanings in her question and answers the one he knows will infuriate her most, distract her from the disappearance of her hands. “I didn’t think you’d realize. I didn’t think you even wanted me.”

She sighs, too polite to agree or tell an obvious lie.

“I wanted to want you,” she says, the rage and panic slipping from her voice, a cool despair taking hold. He feels for her elbows and cannot find them, and Lucien realizes, trying to contain his smile, that he’s figured out the rules of this game. Sometimes the world feels as simple as a key in a lock.

“You were always looking elsewhere. How could you imagine I wouldn’t get tired of rejection?”

“Aren’t we all going to live for thousands of years?”

“So you thought I could wait for at least one hundred.”

“I thought you would let me…” He watches her eyes carefully focus on his, trying to hide her thinking as she reaches for the right word. The cover might fool anybody else, but Lucien has been looking for tells since he could walk, trying to survive the Autumn Court.

“I think you are only upset because you feel discarded,” he says, quickly, and feels her elbow against his palm.

“You smell of Vassa. The human queen.”

“You were a human not so long ago.” How quick she is to adopt the High Fae prejudices, sneer when she says the word human. He would be more annoyed if he didn’t feel her arms rematerializing.

“My sister told me how you treated her.” The swerve to this insult is clumsy, a baby’s first steps, but he’s still intrigued by this seeming transfiguration to Elain’s personality. Previously, she has dealt out all her slights with silence, at least where he’s concerned.

“And yet you stay in Tamlin’s home.” He keeps his voice low and silky, which he knows is infuriating.

“I thought he was your friend.” Her cheeks are pink and Lucien wonders if maybe he’ll be spared from this deception sooner than he thought.

Below her sleeves, Elain’s wrists are now visible.

“Our lives are too long for you to remain an ornament,” he says, casting around for an insult strong enough to really rouse her, force her to stay. Somehow Lucien has always been asked to rescue the women who will fall in love with other men, which is probably why Vassa is so eminently capable of saving herself.

“You’ve made me into an ornament!”

And when she swings a hand toward him, he doesn’t mind the ineffectual slap because he feels the tips of her fingers on his cheek. Still, when Elain runs toward the house, her whole body intact, he wonders if she even realizes what happened, its magnitude and implications. Even after all his years of attention and scheming, he cannot quite conjure an explanation.

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Elain cannot stop running one hand over the other, tracing the curve of her fingernail, her knuckle, the tendons at the back of her hands and the bones of her wrists. You’re here, you’re whole, you have all your fingers and all your toes, she whispers to herself, sounding like Feyre fussing over Nyx.

She had still felt her fingers, her arm, connected to her body, but they were distant, prickling, as if she’d slept on them and the blood was reentering each limb. Where had she gone?

Elain does not think much on the argument with Lucien. She’d seen the panic in his eyes, surely a mirror of her own. His words were a frantic spell, a summoning.

Her mind catches, instead, on the look when he’d found her screaming and wailing all her grief. The pity in his eyes. She cannot imagine how this male is supposed to be her mate, her one true love.

Gradually she banishes the image of him from her mind. She replaces him with the surety of her fingers, the line of dirt that never disappears from under her fingernails without magic, the little etchings at each knuckle. All present and near and normal.

She falls asleep without eating her dinner, her hands clutched around each other.

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“That could have gone better,” Vassa says by way of hello, as soon as Lucien walks into her bedroom. There’s no point in distance, now that Elain already knows what’s between them. Still, Lucien hesitates before he kisses Vassa. The lie is relatively easy to maintain when he’s far from Elain, but now they will be close for weeks or months, maybe longer. Now he will have to practice some form of daily pining, particularly for Tamlin, who knows the way the mating bond can wreak havoc on a male.

“She’s more observant than I remembered,” he says, unbuttoning his tunic. The hardest part of all this lying are the words he says to Vassa, which are often so unlike the phrases he wants to bestow on her.

“Is this the way all mates behave?”

“Sometimes our marriages are political. I’ve heard this is a common practice in the human realms.”

Vassa swats him.

“You forget how long I’ve been around your people, now.”

“Hardly any time at all, for us.” He drapes his tunic over her desk, where she’s left pages covered with her blots and scribbles out for anyone to read. Was Vassa always so trusting, or does she simply believe her thoughts are so uninteresting for his people to contemplate? Her handwriting is bad enough that it’s possible she believes no one will bother to decipher it.

“I never knew you to be cruel,” she says, and when he turns to her he sees the hurt in Vassa’s eyes.

“I would never hurt you.”

She sighs from her chest, the sound as deep as a groan.

“A queen is expected to have better judgement.”

“The situation is more complex than it appears.”

“Men often say this in simple situations when they are in the wrong.”

Vassa’s shoulders are thrown back, her arms across her chest. She has told him that queens must show mercy but also embody justice, and Lucien has no doubts about which quality she thinks is vital in this moment.

“Do you know how easy it would be for a High Fae of certain talents to learn all of the secrets in your mind?” He’s begun to work on the buttons of his shirt, hoping he can distract her from an argument, though he knows from experience that at this point, when her eyes are bright and calculating, that any attempt is futile.

“You’ve shown me how to make a mental shield and you’ve told me secrets.”

“This secret endangers the peace between our courts.” He does not tell her a skilled daemati could storm her mental shields in a second. Vassa is rightfully proud of her own strength and cunning, and he has caused her enough hurt tonight.

“And yet you’ve made it obvious to anybody who cares to pay attention.”

“Tell me what you think you know.”

“Elain Archeron is not your mate.”

He keeps his face too still and triumph flashes on her face, transfigured quickly into a more sober expression as her mind whirls into action, her eyes now a brighter blue, her lower lip caught between her teeth, an expression he wants to memorize and study until he can never forget it.

“That would only be a political disaster if you knew her real mate,” she says, moments later. Her voice is hushed but still the words echo. “And why has he or she not challenged you?”

“I’m not sure,” he says, glad that he can tell her this truth, for the wide description that shows that Vassa hasn’t guessed they’re in the grand home of Elain Archeron’s actual mate. “I would have thought--”

“Tell me.” Vassa steps toward him, extends her hand.

“You are safest if I tell you nothing.” He reaches for her hands, twines her fingers in his own. Her skin is so soft, so new. He would not be surprised to learn that the spell remakes her body completely each evening.

She raises her eyebrow, refusing to be drawn in completely. “I am under a curse and bound to a death-lord, Lucien. You think I’m afraid of a little court intrigue?”

“All of our monsters have been awfully good to you.” He presses a kiss to her jaw, her earlobe. He’ll make a map of her, catalogue the way Vassa feels against his lips. He doesn’t want to think of Elain or Tamlin any longer. The only benefit to this evening’s scene should be that he can share a room with Vassa to only moderate approbation.

“Tell me, Lucien.”

“What if I share another revelation?”

“Dazzle me, Lucien Vanserra,” she says, her voice so dry he lets out a bark of laughter in spite of himself. Cauldron boil this woman’s enemies, the ambassadors who will visit Scythia from foreign courts.

“Elain was weeping when I found her.”

“Naturally. Her mate was dallying with another woman.”

“I can’t tell if you’re making sport of me,” he says.

“I feel sorry for the girl.”

“You’re barely older than she is.”

“Some women -- or females, I suppose -- remain girls longer than others. Anyway, she was weeping.”

“The word might not be strong enough. She was screaming loud enough to rouse the village. But when she heard me approach, her hands had disappeared.”

“Surely you’ve seen more impressive magic in your storied centuries.”

He explains the buried quality of the magic, the way the reappearance of Elain’s hands had been so clearly connected to her emotions, her seeming lack of comprehension at all that had happened.

“That seems a useful talent, if she could control it. An invisible woman would make a perfect spy. Do you think that’s why she was sent here?”

“I don’t think Elain is in control of any of her powers.”

“She has others?”

“Rhysand has never said exactly what, but I gather that he and his court have noticed that she has other abilities. But I’d be surprised if this wasn’t the first time this disappearance manifested itself.”

“Perhaps you’re underestimating her. She could be gathering intelligence for the Night Court.”

“If so, Rhysand would never have summoned us.”

“He doesn’t trust our host.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Rhys to contrive a situation where Elain and I were trapped in the same house.”

“The firebird would be included for what, romantic lighting?”

He pulls her close against him, so that the embroidery of her gown lays down its marks on his skin.

“Included for your knowledge of Koschei,” he says, because on the whole it is a relief to tell her the truth, “and also for my great good luck.”

Vassa lifts her cheek from his shoulder to smile at him and despite the evening’s events, he smiles back at her, celebrates the tiny solitary miracle that is the two of them together in her room. No matter the secrets, the lies he has to tell to contain them, Lucien finds himself believing in that moment that everything will be all right.

He’s always found delusion to be a particularly heady emotion.

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In the morning, before dawn, Lucien is in a rush, fumbling with his clothes and pulling Vassa from her bed before she transforms and singes the mattress. Tamlin’s servants meet them at the door with a wrapped breakfast that he doubts Vassa will have a chance to eat, and sure enough, before they’re halfway across the gardens, Vassa is a firebird, flapping her wings across the lavender sky, the new dawn.

She does not speak in this form but she follows him easily as he makes his way through the trees, looping and diving to get a better idea of the terrain. In this form she is formidable but still very exposed, and since the war, she’s learned to be vigilant.

After an hour of walking, they reach the lake nearest to Tamlin’s estate, and Vassa launches herself at the sparkling water. Around her, the water bubbles, the steam rising from the place where she dove. Lucien settles himself on a boulder and scans the forest, palms his dagger in one hand and his breakfast in the other. When he’s sure that the only sounds are Vassa’s splashing and the other birds awakening, he puts the knife down and eats the bread and eggs and cheese, watching her flames mirrored on the surface of the water.

Tending to Vassa was the work of servants for months before Lucien took it over, well before they’d wound up in their latest arrangement. He enjoys watching the world wake up, loves watching her transformation, imagining the way that she beholds the world in this form. She has trouble describing the experience, only its limitations, but he can see Vassa’s character inside the bird, her watchfulness and unbroken spirit. If he does not keep her sufficiently entertained, she’ll splash him or draw close enough to leave a burn on his sleeve. As a result, Lucien has told her nearly all of his stories, decades of court intrigue and gossip, rivalries and petty jealousies and tendres. At first, he wrapped these stories in fine telling, with voices and dramatic pauses as if she were a paying audience. But gradually, as they grew more familiar, he began to tell her the stories and secrets that stuck inside him, his voice low and sometimes hesitant. He’s told her about Jessaminda, about Tamlin’s kindness and his rage, the way that despite most evidence to the contrary, he still doesn’t fully trust the Night Court. During these stories, Vassa always watches him with her great blue eyes, still as a swan while she circles the lake.

At night, Vassa will tell him her own secrets, the intrigues of her court, and though Lucien had long scorned the human realms, he finds herself drawn in by the tales, asking her questions, trying to better envision her world.

Behind him, a fallen branch cracks under a foot and the birds scatter. Lucien is on his feet in an instant, Vassa a warm fire close behind.

When he sees the golden beast, Lucien takes a breath before returning his dagger to his belt. Tamlin has appeared more in control lately, but he’s witnessed enough of his old friend’s behavior over the past few years that Lucien can’t be sure there won’t be an explosion.

“You’ve found a pretty spot to while away the morning,” Tamlin says. The words would be charming if the fangs of the beast weren’t quite so large and sharp.

“I promised to show Vassa your lands.”

“I gather that you’ve made many promises to Vassa.”

Lucien holds himself still. He wants to reach for his dagger, give Tamlin an idea of the danger he’s courting, but knows the gesture would reveal too much. Just this once, he’s grateful that Vassa is unable to speak in this form.

“Rhys recruited you to play matchmaker?” he says instead, trying for the kind of courtly sneer that comes so easily to Eris.

Tamlin shakes his head, sending leaves spiralling out of his golden fur, and then in a flash of light, he’s High Fae again, tall and golden against the trees. Lucien is sure that all the motion was simply a distraction from his shuddering at the idea of being implicated in one of Rhysand’s schemes, however harmless, but once again he wonders if Tamlin senses the mating bond.

“I came to seek your counsel,” Tamlin says.

“Vassa--”

“We’ll stay nearby. You will have the chance to defend your queen.”

Lucien looks toward Vassa, who bobs her head on its long neck as if to say go on.

From behind, Tamlin looks the way he always has, his warrior’s body always ready to strike as he strikes a relentless pace through the trees, and Lucien can imagine that he and Tamlin are the friends they were before Amarantha, before Feyre and the war with Hybern, before the Archeron sisters wound up in the Cauldron. It startles him to think that this before is now long ago, past the human lifespan.

When Tamlin stops, his face is grim, his mouth bracketed by deep lines that Lucien has never seen before.

“Why did Rhysand send you here?” he asks, the words almost lost in his growl. There are talons, now, where his fingers were seconds ago.

“I haven’t spoken to him in weeks,” Lucien says. He’d been avoiding the entire Night Court, thinking of what they’d report back to Elain, the implications. “You were the one who asked me to come here, remember?”

“I forget nothing.” Tamlin’s eyes make Lucien think of trees after an unexpected ice storm, the leaves a deeper, brighter green within their crystallized prison. He’s thinking of Feyre’s escapes, the way Lucien aided her and fled himself. The memories of the High Fae are too long for comfortable recollection.

“His people were investigating Koschei,” Lucien says when it’s clear that Tamlin will not elaborate on his suspicions. This is common enough knowledge by now. He should have found a way to the Night Court over the past week, but he was too focused on those last nights with Vassa which have turned out, now, not to be so finally over after all. “I’m sure that’s why they asked for Vassa. And if Elain was sent to your court, I think that matchmaking is once again the most likely answer.”

Tamlin snorts. “There will be hell to pay when Rhysand finds out you’ve rejected Elain.”

There’s a rustle in the trees and Lucien whirls toward it, his knives in his hands. Nobody appears. Since Amarantha arrived in Prythian, he’s stopped trusting these woods.

“Who is patrolling your borders?” Lucien asks. He hadn’t spotted anyone when he and Vassa approached yesterday, but Tamlin’s sentries know these forests, would surely have been warned about the firebird.

“I keep my lands safe.” His voice is gruff, tight, the pride and shame braided together.

“The army you raised--”

“The people of these lands feared Hybern more than they hated me. Once peace was assured, they went back to their homes.”

“Perhaps a visit from their High Lord would convince them.”

“A High Lord who could offer them what, exactly?”

All at once, Lucien is exhausted with this self-loathing.

“Your people will not love you overmuch when the Autumn Court storms your lands, or if a force from the continent invades. Without a wall, your lands are exposed for the taking.”

“There are tales of the beast who roams these lands.”

“Everyone knows that beast is you, Tamlin.”

A surge of power in the air around them, sharp-toothed. Far away, Lucien hears the beat of wings on water, knows that Vassa felt it.

As he always has, Lucien holds still until Tamlin’s temper ebbs. He imagines what it must be, to feel you’ve had everything you wanted and then have it pulled away. To have been held, Under the Mountain, the principal subject of Amarantha’s poisoned regard.

But this time, Lucien does not feel his own anger melt away. What happens if Vassa is captured, or Elain? Each would command a hefty ransom. Elain could drive the lands to war; he’s still puzzled by her powers but can only conclude that they are mighty and dangerous, if it’s anything like the magic her sisters command. But it’s the image of Vassa, back in Koschei’s clutches, which tears at Lucien’s heart, drives him forward.

“I would help you raise the troops,” he says, the force in his voice a surprise even to himself. “Elain and Vassa could be trusted to rouse support. Your people will remember their roles in the war with Hybern. With a little kindness and a little pleading and ample compensation, all of which are seemingly too much for you, they could even be persuaded to remember the way you double-crossed the king of Hybern and joined the battle at a crucial moment. They can still be rallied, should the High Lord care enough. But you have given up on these people and these lands. You think that once your enemies have slaughtered you, then it will only be oblivion and peace, and that might be true in your own experience, but you forget the fact that when your lands are overrun, it will be your people who suffer day by day. They know this already even if you refuse to acknowledge reality. And so they will not mourn you when your lands are seized and you yourself are killed prowling your imagined borders. You will not be worth a single tear.”

Tamlin’s eyes are wide, and before the anger can burn in them, Lucien stalks off in the direction of the lake.

Behind him, the forest is silent.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (4/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: I had a lot of fun writing this chapter -- so many gowns and flowers! people who are doing what they love to do! Nesta! -- but also it's hard to keep putting Elain through the wringer. That said, I am very excited to show you more of What Is Going On With Elain. You can find all chapters here.

“I didn’t think that Tamlin’s gardens extended so far into the forest,” Mor says, leaning against a tree. She’s been delivering flowers from the continent over the past three days, and once the plants are handed over to the gardeners, she finds an excuse to hover over Elain while she gardens. Elain is sure that Mor has received instructions not to leave her alone, but she doesn’t mind chatting with Mor while she gardens, preparing all the special plots she’s not sure she could convey to the Night Court gardeners in words.

“I’m trying something new,” Elain says, patting the soil around a columbine, the blue and white flowers bobbing in the fragrant breeze. “These flowers are happier in the wild.”

“Any news from Tamlin?”

“You may be scaring him away.” She aims a smile at Mor to show she’s mostly joking. “I’ve seen him in the gardens a few times but we’ve only exchanged pleasantries about the renovations. Feyre warned me that he takes hardly anybody into his confidence.”

She feels the golden weight of Mor’s gaze, the frank and generous assessment that Elain has always loved and admired, even those first months after the Cauldron. Mor sparkles like champagne, effortless and loveable and impossible to forget.

“You have the makings of an excellent spy,” Mor says, apparently out of nowhere.

Elain snorts, and Mor laughs at the sound, the way she always has, the overwrought daintiness that, she’s told Elain a dozen times, she can’t quite believe is real. Elain has never told Mor about the hours she spent practicing the sound until it was pretty, the way she was always expected to be.

“I’m not trying to flatter you,” Mor continues when she’s collected herself, settling herself more firmly against her tree, so that her golden hair catches on the bark, “I mean it. A good spy is a person you’d never expect, a pleasure to talk to, someone who listens well.”

“Azriel never said--” Surely the spymaster of the Night Court would have recognized her potential if it had ever existed.

“Az can be a little blind when it comes to the people he cares about.” There’s a strain in Mor’s voice, which Elain thinks she’s being allowed to detect it, because she’s heard Mor’s effortless diplomacy in a hundred more trying situations. “He likely wouldn’t want you to come to any harm.”

“And you do?” Elain asks, to keep the conversation going more than anything, while she works on the hole for the bleeding hearts, her favorite forest flowers, the pink and white blooms almost too good to be true. Give her enough time at the Spring Court and she’ll adorn the forest with them, all the way to the human lands, to their wretched cottage and straight on to that little village that never cared if the Archerons lived or died.

“Of course I don’t want you to be hurt,” Mor says, firm enough that Elain realizes she angled the question too harshly. “It’s only -- I think that maybe you are tired of beauty alone. Not that it isn’t enough. I’ve spoken with so many people who have found healing in the gardens you’ve helped them build.”

“But you think I could be useful in other ways.” Elain looks up at Mor from her crouch on the forest floor, and sees the other female’s worried expression. She wipes a scraggle of hair off her brow, feeling the dirt as it forms a smudge. “There’s something you aren’t telling me, Mor.”

“Do you ever get tired of being seen as easily broken?”

Elain finds that her hands are grasping air, the bleeding heart having fallen from her gloved hands and into the ground with hardly a thump.

“Only when I can’t --” she starts saying when she knows she won’t begin to cry, because what’s inside her is pathetic and dangerous enough, and therefore must be spoken as prettily as possible. “I think there is something truly wretched and useless inside me. I think that’s what you see when you tell me I could have this other life.”

Mor takes Elain’s shoulder in her palm and squeezes, then says, “I grew up in a place where I was a beautiful object to everyone but my own heart. I worry, Elain, that you have fooled yourself and believe that’s all you could be.”

The vision swims up through Elain’s mind, so vivid even on repeat that she almost gasps with the force of it, the sheer power of the Crown on her head, Tamlin looming over her, the life in him banked in the gloom, though he’s still broad and tall and handsome and breathtaking in spite of everything, though these are thoughts she would never admit, not even if the vision were pulled from her by force, even if a knife were held to her throat. Before, considering the vision, she thought they’d be in his ruined estate, but that’s changing thanks to Laella and her builders, fixing the rooms wrecked by Tamlin’s rage and the obliging elements, and adding all those sparkling windows and interior gardens, so apparently she will one day go and build her own house of horrors.

She does not know the first thing about being useful, has no idea how to prevent this fate, except for her certainty that her jealousy and wretchedness will lead her there. And perhaps she was born to be more than a sweet and pretty girl who men could easily fall in love with. Perhaps that is how she can unravel the vision, make a new future in which she can be approximately good. Or perhaps that is how she becomes the crowned monster on the throne. The visions never contain sufficient instruction for Elain to know that she’s avoided the future until the moment passes by, the danger suffocated by a new reality. She’s all too aware that, for example, there are other battlefields on which Cassian could be killed.

She does not tell Mor any of this, only: “Tell me how to be a spy.”

And calmly, in her sparkling voice, Mor begins the lesson.

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On Elain’s last night at the Night Court, Nesta enters her room without knocking.

“You thought I’d let you leave without a goodbye?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest, the ring Cassian gave her at their mating ceremony brilliant even in the candlelight.

“I knew I’d see you at dinner.”

“You left without a word to anybody.”

Gwyn and Emerie had been there, and everyone had laughed, and a small cross part of Elain had felt as though they would all be fine without her. Azriel, across the table from her, had been smiling and laughing, content as she’d never seen him, his hazel eyes golden when he so much as glanced at Gwyn. Elain had left as soon as she finished dessert, telling Feyre she had a headache, and her sister had squeezed her hand firmly enough that Elain knew she’d heard the lie in her words. In the morning, she would start her residence in a new court. For a little while at least, she’d be able to leave these feelings behind.

But of course Nesta had found her.

“Did you really ask Rhysand to send you to the Spring Court?” Occasionally Nesta will still believe the worst of him, despite all the witnesses to the contrary.

“It was my vision,” Elain tells her. “I’m the one who--”

“You know what Tamlin did to Feyre.”

“I’m not--” She stops, not sure what she’s going to say next. Without a plan, the next words will surely be too revealing. “You were the one who once said I could stand to be more useful in this world.”

“If he so much as lays a hand on you, I swear to you I will un-Make him.”

“I expected nothing else,” Elain says, and the smile is easy. All her life, she has been comforted by Nesta’s growling, known that she’s always been safest inside the circle of her sister’s wrath.

“And in spite of everything, I’m glad that you’ll finally see the Spring Court.” Nesta’s words are a grudging grumble, their impact lessened by her hand in Elain’s, the two of them in a long embrace that says everything they have a hard time saying, now that everything has changed. “I heard that Tamlin is unleashing you on his gardens.”

Elain knows that Nesta truly loves her because her sister listens to her plans and ideas and dreams for the garden for an hour, despite the fact that she has no more than a passing interest in even the most exquisite blooms. She even asks Elain about the arrangements of colors and fragrances, and Elain pulls out her parchments and perfumes so that Nesta can have the closest thing to a full garden experience it is possible to conjure indoors.

“Who knows, maybe one day you’ll bring one of your novels to the finished gardens.”

Nesta makes a sound between a snort and a growl, totally unique to her sister, that prickly glee, but then her face grows somber.

“I keep thinking that he’s finally got what he wanted, when he showed up at our cottage years ago.”

“Tamlin isn’t dragging me out into the snow,” Elain says, though she doesn’t remember the scene, a side effect of the glamor that turned Feyre’s disappearance into a joyous reversal of fortune.

Sometimes she wonders what memories her mind has hidden from itself, what secrets it’s been forced to keep silent.

Nesta’s hands are around hers, squeezing until Elain can feel their pulses beating, aligning as they look at one another.

“I never wanted to give you up,” Nesta says. “I would have let him shred me to pieces before I let him touch you.”

Elain knows she should tell Nesta she’s not as fragile as her sister thinks, but that would lead to a conversation which would be deep and cutting and maybe devastating. Instead she reaches for Nesta and holds her close, murmurs that she will be all right, until Feyre enters and hugs them both, and when the three of them wake up hours later in Elain’s bed, warm and sleepy, Elain wonders, half-asleep, why she ever thought of leaving.

But when her sisters have gone to their mates’ beds, and Elain is alone again, her sleep is not dark and dreamless as before. Instead she dreams of her father as she last knew him alive, the straight back and broad shoulders and thinning hair and the kind smile that made his lips disappear. When Elain was little and bold enough to ask about such expressions, he told her that his joy had swallowed up his lips, he was so glad to see her, and then he would whirl her around until she’d give unladylike whoops and get scolded. After what feels like an eternity of watching him, it occurs to Elain that she has never been to the place where they’re standing, a gray-blue blur that looks like the inside of a cloud or wall of seawater.

“Where are we?” Elain asks, with none of the certainty she experiences in dreams.

Her father’s face clouds, the smile winking out, and she begins to wonder how, exactly, this dream will turn nightmarish. She’s already seen his corpse.

“There is only one thing I can tell you, sweet one.” Her father’s eyes are glinting, his fingers balled into fists, the knuckles the same skimmed-milk color as the air around them. “The thing you seek is inside of you. It is inside of--”

He is reaching for her, as if to indicate the location of the thing, and then he vanishes, and Elain opens her eyes in bed, the light through her window still gray, her mind racing, the way she always feels after a vision.

A thousand questions immediately surface. How can her father appear to her in the future? Where is he, that she can find him and receive directions? And who has silenced him? Has he seen the monstrosity inside of her? And if he has, she does not understand how he can smile at her in that way, so lifelike and tender.

Elain breathes deep again and again, trying to will herself to sleep, hoping she will see him, hoping for even just another second of his smile. She’d always loved the way her father beheld her, that delight. For years she’d imagined a similar expression on her husband’s face. His features shifted depending on her circumstances and feelings, except for the light in his eyes, the smile with joy that would gladly pay whatever cost was required of it.

Morning arrives and she is still staring at the ceiling, trying to puzzle everything through.

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Elain’s arrival at the Spring Court is more uneventful than even she anticipated. Tamlin greets her and Rhys and Mor in a smooth and practiced way that leaves his rage only an assumption, even when Rhys makes veiled threats during his goodbyes, promising to return whenever she’d like for a visit to the Night Court. When he’s gone and Tamlin has left her to the company of the newly hired servants, while Mor winnows to the continent for the last of the tulips, Elain makes her way to the newly renovated room that will house her at this estate.

The room is perfect, in shades of pink and white, the white warm and bright, and the pink-upholstered sitting area almost mauve. On every flat surface, there are flowers, their scents carefully considered so that the room is fragranced but not oversaturated, and the outside wall is nearly all window, with a view of the woods, the growing hedge of tulips which is even more gorgeous than the last time she’d seen it, two days ago. The curtains are gauzy pink, thin enough that she’ll always be able to wake up to this view, the blossoms and the gentle fluttering of leaves in the breeze.

She had explained her favorite colors to Laella, hoping the dryad wouldn’t think she sounded like a little girl, and instead she walked into the most beautiful space she’s ever been able to claim. Tamlin told her that a maid would arrange her things, but Elain hangs her dresses and stores her jewelry in the cunning little box that keeps each chain and thread from tangling, arranges her perfumes on the vanity until there’s a knock at her door and the maid enters, not looking Elain in the eyes as she walks over to the trunks and boxes. She’s half Elain’s height and her skin is pink and her hair is alabaster, so that for a second Elain wondered what lengths Laella took, to make this room so perfect.

“I am sorry to be late, Lady,” the maid says, her voice a buzzing hum, the sound of bees drowsy on nectar, an accent Elain adores immediately.

“Nonsense,” she says, reaching out to squeeze the maid’s hand, gentle and watching in case the faerie flinches away. She never forgets her training. “And please call me Elain.”

“The High Lord said--”

Elain waves her hand, trying for imperious, in command, the kind of person Tamlin would trust with his military stratagems and political intrigue. “Leave the High Lord to me. You can call me whatever you’d like in front of other people, but I’m just Elain.”

“There are whispers about you, Lady. The winds say that the Cauldron granted you great powers.”

Elain would say that unreliable bits of the future don’t seem like such a remarkable gift, but she’s not sure whether the deprecation would help or hurt her cause.

“What is your name?” she asks instead, shifting her tone so it’s gentle as the petal of a rose.

“I’m Melis, Lady.” The faerie’s hands have not strayed from Elain’s clothes, arranging them on the hangers so that the pleats and ruffles fall just so, and there’s a longing in her eyes that reminds Elain of the way she’d look at roses in those years when she was poor and they would not grow in her pitiful garden by the cottage.

“Would you like one of my dresses?” Elain asks, after Melis has hung the golden gown she never feels quite ready to wear but loves to admire among the other dresses, a ray of sunlight in her wardrobe.

“Lady, the offer is generous, but I do not know where I would wear such a fine gown.”

“There are no celebrations in the village?”

“Nothing that requires a gown so… elaborate. And the High Lord allowed me to design the servants’ liveries.”

For the first time, Elain looks at the maid’s dress, the green-gray muslin gown which is moulded perfectly to Melis’ shoulders and torso, the skirts light enough to allow an easy movement but sufficient to sweep aside for a dramatic moment. The color makes Melis even rosier, her sparkling white hair striking. Even the white fichu at the neckline is soft and light and lovely. She thinks of the elegance of the new footmen, the muted green of their tunics. No doubt Melis had designed their garments. Elain feels slow, not to have caught these details right away.

“You have quite an eye for clothing.”

“I learned from my mother. She was employed by the High Lord, for the ladies of his court, before Amarantha. I grew up learning the possibilities of fabrics.” Another darting look at Elain. She’s sure that Melis is thinking of Feyre.

“I don’t want to give you more work, but I’m sure that most of my gowns could use some adjustments.”

Melis smiles, her teeth flashing white and pointed. “I would love that, Lady, though I doubt your dresses will need much improving.”

Elain shrugs and smiles while she reaches for a simple muslin gown, a dusty pink from which Nuala and Cerridwen have removed a hundred garden stains. As Melis helps her with the buttons, Elain jams a broad-brimmed hat on her head, her pointed ears squashing against the braided straw.

“If anyone asks, I’m in the garden,” she says as she heads toward the door, Lucien’s gloves in her pocket. The thought of seeing him today is warm in her stomach, and she can’t tell if the feeling is anticipation or anxiety. She’s my mate, he’d said, and though she’d barely been able to understand in those moments of terror and confusion, the first of her new life, the words have clung to her, defining too many aspects of her existence. She knows she would feel differently if she’d wanted him, if she’d felt the curl of affection and desire that Azriel roused from her as she awakened into her new life, the first beacon she’d been able to glimpse. Even what she felt for Greysen was stronger. Even knowing what she knows now, how he would reject her new self.

Whenever she sees Lucien, there’s a great whirling inside Elain: all of her wants to want him, and that swarm of hoped-for desire swirls around itself, centered on nothing. She’s encountered this feeling before, as a young debutante, but she always knew that at the next ball, another gentleman might catch her eye, that her father or else Nesta would save her from anyone particularly daunting. Now her father is dead and mates are a certainty and tonight, Elain will be face-to-face with Lucien again, practically alone with him in Tamlin’s estate.

She’s halfway across the grounds before she launches herself against a broad chest. Her hat lands in a lilac bush with a bristly sigh, and Elain knows she’s too slow to realize the sheathed knife that’s pressed against her nose, the dagger that would cut her cheek except for the leather around it.

When she finally meets them, Tamlin’s eyes are not as annoyed as she anticipated.

“Someone told me these gardens would be so beautiful that my guests would be compelled to linger,” he says, his fingers ghosting her shoulders as she rights herself. “I had assumed this meant they would be preoccupied by the flowers, not their own thoughts.”

He stands there for a moment, hands dangling at his sides, as if he’s waiting for her to laugh, but Elain’s not sure if he’s made a joke, and anyway nothing he said is particularly funny. Why she would use the Crown to compel him, Elain has no idea. Still, guided by both her mother’s training and Mor’s rudimentary instructions on spycraft, she schools her lips into a gentle smile, and averts her eyes. Let him think she’s shy, awed by the presence of the High Lord of Spring.

“Is everything to your liking?” he asks, finally. His thumb strokes the jeweled hilt of the dagger strapped to his chest. “I know the builders are still filling the place with noise, but, for example, your room...”

“My room is lovely,” she says before he can fumble for another phrase. Their previous conversation, their first time alone together, had been almost too easy, too revealing, and she wonders if he’s remembering it now, is determined not to revisit that swarm of truths. She herself feels too exposed already, even if she’s checked to determine that her mental shields are still in place. “It makes me feel as if I’m in the center of a flower.”

His smile is barely a quirk of his lips and Elain remembers all the stories she’s heard about him, particularly rumors that he’s spent the past two years as a beast, and she wonders if all that time in his other form has made certain expressions difficult. If conversation is difficult, and now that Rhys isn’t present, Tamlin has allowed a bit of that discomfort to show.

A generous bumblebee examines the crown of her hat, which is still perched in the branches of the lilacs.

“There was a story I heard when I was a little girl,” she says, almost without thought, only wanting to put them both at ease, “about a girl who was only the size of a human thumb. She lived inside the flowers and her friends were butterflies and birds and squirrels. The pages fell out of the book right where the story was written, from all the times my governess read me the tale.”

“You have always wanted to be smaller?”

Elain blushes at the question and she’s not sure why. Maybe because of the truth nestled inside the words.

“Maybe,” she says, not wanting the awkwardness between them to expand further. She wants pleasant conversation, light and meaningless. He will never trust her if her emotions are ragged, if she demands too much from him all at once. “But I have always loved the feeling inside a garden, the idea of beauty and nature all in perfect harmony. There are so many dark and dreadful corners of the world. A garden is never one of them.”

“I’m afraid I don’t agree with your assessment. That beauty could banish evil seems a tall order.”

“Now you will speak to me of sacrifice and war.” She’s slipping into the tone she found so easily at their last meeting, a veneer of confidence that makes her sound unbreakable, which perhaps glosses over her more unsavory truths. “But will you tell me, what happens when the war is over, when the time for sacrifices has ended?”

“I have rarely known such a time.” He looks so grave and certain and miserable that Elain knows she should make her way to the tulip fields, and at the same time, that she will needle him a little longer, until the expression is gone from his face. Her one little act of well-intentioned mischief.

“Then what keeps you fighting when all hope and certainty of your own goodness has left you?”

“In those moments I don’t allow myself to think. And you are thinking that I am some tragic hero, Elain Archeron, but you have never been in battle. Thinking is dangerous. It is easiest to empty the mind and unleash your body on its enemies.”

She is wide-eyed for a moment too long.

“I have offended you,” he says, “but I am only telling the truth.”

“I am only thinking, how sad it is, to be forced to sacrifice so endlessly.”

“One begins to think of any spark of joy as an earned reward.” His face is grave. He is thinking, she knows, of Feyre, the words the barest suggestion of an apology.

“Thank the Mother, then, for your gardens,” she says, and plucks her hat from the lilac. “I will see you at dinner?”

“Lucien and Vassa will arrive shortly after sundown. I imagine you would like to greet them, and then we will all dine.”

She nods and allows her skirts to swirl as she makes her way further into the garden, letting the blooms fill her vision until she’s only thinking of the proper arrangements, the groupings of plants that would make any being happy, and calm, and nearly overtaken by gratefulness that such simple beauty, such sweet fragrance, could exist.

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Elain is sweetly tired when she makes her way into the great hall of the Spring Court. She’d spent the day amidst the tulips, supervising the arrangements of color that she wants to look disordered but still correct, no corner dominated by red or violet blooms but rather as if a meadow’s riot of color had been transfigured into a mass of tulips.

Tamlin waits at the foot of the staircase, and when she’s halfway down and he looks up at her, Elain is glad she wore the deep blue dress which makes her skin glow like a pearl and her bearing a little more regal than usual. She feels, just for a moment, like the rightful emissary of the Night Court, not the High Lady’s sister who lied her way into someplace she’d never been.

Right as she’s made it to the bottom of the staircase, the servants sweep open the large wooden doors, and Lucien and Vassa appear, both of them gleaming bronze despite the lack of sunlight. As the pair of them approach, Elain dips into a deep curtsey that befits Vassa’s rank, a gesture she’d learned as a girl and always assumed would be useless.

Out of the corner of her vision, she watches the queen’s cheeks go pink. For a moment, Elain thinks that this is strange, that the proper greeting would be so discomfiting, and then she wonders if all the time that Vassa has spent as a firebird has caused her to startle at human gestures. Then Vassa and Lucien walk nearer, and Elain knows the true reason.

She can smell Lucien on Vassa’s skin. And she can smell the scent of the queen, amber and lemon, and Lucien. She has been High Fae long enough to know how these scents are intermingled, how difficult it is to wash off the scent of another after a while, how Feyre and Nesta will always carry the scent of their mates.

She’s my mate, Lucien had said, and those three words had changed her life, circumscribed it. Her mind fills with images, not of him, but of Azriel, about to kiss her, of Rhys looming at the top of the stairs. Her love and longing now a matter of politics between courts.

Now her mate has fallen into bed with another woman.

Elain knows that silence is the proper way to bear this indignation. She can envision, already, the proper smile that should appear on her lips: sad and a little knowing, but mostly hopeful. She tries to find the expression, but when she looks at Lucien, she sees in the furrow between his eyebrow and the gleam in his eye, equal parts guilt and badly concealed happiness, that he knows exactly what she’s realized, and that perfect little smile of the good mate scorned dies on her lips. Inside her there is such a writhing confusion, a rage that she knows will explode from her the moment her lips part.

She turns away from the group and runs away as fast as her silk slippers will allow, not caring that she’s making a scene, that she looks like a scared little child. All she wants is the cool night air on her skin, the proximity of her flowers, the knowledge that nobody is looking at her. She pushes through door after door, stumbling over the tools the builders have left for tomorrow’s work and nearly tripping over loose tiles, but finally she is in the garden.

The moonlight silvers the leaves and the air is fragrant with lilacs. Instead of pushing her thoughts away, Elain feels the writhing inside her grow stronger, as if a monster has taken residence inside her body, turning all her thoughts into a whirl of angry colors, jagged reds and black shards shot through with bright exploding lights.

All those years she believed that beauty and sweetness and delicacy would save her, and maybe they would have if she’d stayed a human woman in the thick-walled manor which had so nearly been hers. Instead she has been discarded, over and over and over. She cannot stop imagining their eyes as they look at her, the pity and scorn and guilt and the joy of finding someone who is not Elain Archeron.

She cannot wield a sword or summon flame, so instead Elain’s hands are frantic, tugging first the petals of the lilac and then her own hair, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, and then she’s sobbing so hard she’s nearly screaming, so that when there’s a hand on her back, she does scream, the sound shrill and rough in her throat, and when she turns toward the intruder, before she can determine who has touched her, she doesn’t mind the realization that she might die right here in the Spring Court gardens.

Instead she sees Lucien, and there is such regret on his face, etching lines around his eyes and mouth. Elain has been taught kindness until it’s second nature. Before he can say anything, apologize or explain, she reaches toward him.

Except that where her hands should be, there is only empty air.

#acotar #acotar fanfiction #elain archeron #elain is my queen #elain x tamlin #tamlin #tamlin redemption arc #tamlin x elain #lucien vanserra #queen vassa #vucien #vucien is goals #inner circle #nessian #feysand #post acosf #acosf spoilers #gwynriel

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (3/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: Honestly, this chapter might just be a celebration of my love for Lucien and Vassa, and I'm okay with that. Also, Lucien briefly quotes Manon from Throne of Glass early in this chapter, because I couldn't resist. You can find all chapters here.

Lucien is inside Vassa when he hears the growl outside the window. He succeeds in not cursing, not wanting the queen sprawled on the bed below him to think he’s at all distracted. Her bronze skin picking up the luster of the candles and her hair its own firelight, spread across the pillow, her lips open as she moans, scrabbles her fingers on his back, pulls him closer. As much as he adores Vassa in the middle of a clever conversation, outsmarting everyone around, he prefers her in this wordless state.

Lucien decides that Tamlin can wait, and runs his thumb against Vassa’s lower lip, thrusts inside her until she stifles her moans into his hand.

She rises from the bed within minutes, not wanting to waste her hours in human form, and he follows her, adjusting his jacket as he winnows to the grounds of the Greysen manor, his mechanical eye whirling in search of Tamlin.

“You’re sure the human queen hasn’t enchanted you?” his old friend asks, prowling out of the shadows. Lucien decides that pointing out the irony of the statement would be unwise.

“I’m surprised you were allowed past the gate,” he says instead.

“You’d be surprised at how easy it is to scare a human.” Tamlin glances at the backs of his hands, as if he’s not sure whether the claws are still visible. After all the conversations Lucien has had with him in his beast form, he supposes it’s a reasonable concern. “And I’m surprised to see you’ve given up on your mate so easily. I’d thought you’d be a model of courtly love.”

Lucien does his best to look mollified. He has told many lies in his life, dancing between truth and half-truth and truth’s opposite so nimbly that he considered his lies blessed by the Mother herself. After centuries, what’s most embarrassing is that he assumed these lies would always come easily to him and slip away with no resistance.

Then came Hybern, the Cauldron, and the dozens of golden threads Lucien watched form between Tamlin and the newly-Fae Elain Archeron, the mating bond so clear he wondered why he was the only one who could see it, though such uncanny sightings were not unusual for him, especially with his new eye.

Within seconds, Lucien had known what would happen if the bond was revealed. Feyre would never let her sister go to the Spring Court. Rhysand -- Feyre’s true mate, Lucien knew, could not reveal to Tamlin for fear of the resulting furious explosion, a regret that had already lit a fire in his gut -- would go to war over the weeping girl, more and more luminous with each tear that spilled from her sweet brown eyes. Prythian would be shattered, invaded from both coasts. And Tamlin would be destroyed. He’d gone to battle with the Night Court over the woman he loved and doomed his actual mate to kidnapping and the Cauldron, trauma and a life she’d never wanted, a cosmic joke that would have been funny if Lucien had read it in an epic poem written millenia before.

The lie, then, was easy.

You’re my mate, he’d told Elain, the shock and wonder and horror true as anything else in his long and miserable life.

Lucien had been sure that Tamlin would confront him, raging about the fact that Lucien had claimed the female who the Mother had given to Tamlin himself. But Tamlin had only doted over Feyre, stalked his lands, conspired with Ianthe and Hybern, and Lucien had been forced to keep up the lie to everybody. It had not been difficult to leave the Spring Court with Feyre, despite everything, and though the constant rejection from Elain had been grating, the smug disinterest of the Night Court an annoyance that gnawed at his very core, Lucien found that these discomforts were bearable, at least in the beginning. Even the times Feyre pried into her mind and he had to cloak his thoughts did not bother him as much as he would have thought. He’d dealt with worse. It was the span of the deception that rankled, the fact that Tamlin never seemed to realize he’d met his mate, that Elain had fallen into love or else infatuation with Azriel when there were both real and imagined bonds pulling her elsewhere. The stream of invitations from the Night Court, trying to pair Lucien and Elain together. Gradually Lucien realized that he was the only one who knew the substance of his lie, the only one who’d even glimpsed the truth.

And of course Vassa had only complicated the situation further. He’d tried for months to stay away, if not for an imaginary love story with a woman who did not want him, for the sake of Prythian, for the sake of all involved. He’d even thought that Vassa and Jurian would anger each other enough to wind up lovers, and once he lived with them in their Band of Exiles, breaking up their constant arguments had left him feeling dried and worn. If he hadn’t been used to being overlooked, it would have been a blow: considering the way Vassa burned bright in either form, her mind always analyzing a situation on a dozen levels but her mouth often blurting out the truth as she saw it, refined just enough by her confidence for diplomacy. Her lips twin rose petals, her words the thorns bent on ensnaring lesser minds and beings in her net. She was beautiful, of course, but her mind was gorgeous. His fear and regard for Koschei and the other human queens were predicated on the fact that the death-god could have imprisoned such a woman.

Last month they’d talked late into the night, the embers of the fire giving her face a fragile golden outline, and it occurred to Lucien that he and Azriel and Rhysand were no closer to determining the breaking of Vassa’s enchantment, that she might live out the rest of her life under this imprisonment. And still her whole face brightened with their conversation, about the latest innovations in the Dawn Court and their potential implications for Prythian and the human realms, Scythia in particular. How lovely her amber eyes were, lit with her hope and intelligence, the curve of clavicle shaded by the night. Lucien had been certain that he’d never met someone less deserving of her curse, and still she dreamed of the ways in which she might aid her kingdom on her return.

He’d taken a step toward her, another, pressed his lips to her cheekbone, gentle and slow, giving her a chance to pull away. Instead she smiled and said I was hoping you’d get the idea, and so he kissed the curve of her jaw, the curves of her ear, until she’d reached out for him and pulled his mouth to her, her tongue on the seam of his lips within seconds, their bodies flush against each other.

Despite the month they’ve spent in and out of each other's beds, Lucien hasn’t told her about the lie. As far as he can tell, Vassa thinks she is a second choice, or a rebellion against the Mother’s wisdom. He cannot risk a daemati peering inside Vassa’s open human mind and learning this secret, and in spite of this, the lie burns most heavily on him when he’s with her, so that, despite decades of training himself in deceit, he has almost revealed the truth to Vassa a dozen times.

“My mate has centuries to come around to the idea of me,” he says now, trying to sound sly instead of weary, “but I find the prospect of this wait no longer holds much appeal. What brings you to the human lands tonight, Tam?”

“Rhysand wants you in my court, along with Vassa. He’s sending your Elain as his emissary and thinks she requires protection.”

Matchmaking aunt Rhysand, Lucien thinks, scrubbing a hand over his face. The scent of Vassa’s skin still on his fingers.

“And you allowed this?” he asks instead, playing for time.

“You know that Rhysand only begins his strategies with polite requests. I’d wake up one morning to an invasion.”

“I can be at your estate tomorrow.”

“In a week.”

“Why the delay?” Lucien has never known Rhysand to bide his time. Once a plan is put in motion, there are no delays. Even if he’s grateful for the reprieve. He does not know what he will say to Vassa, or Elain.

“Apparently my estate requires renovations.” For the first time in years, Tamlin’s face is rueful, a surprising expression after so much rage and sorrow and self-pity. “The most crucial will be completed in that time. Your mate has claimed my gardens and will begin installing flowers. The Morrigan is winnowing her.”

Lucien weighs the possibility of telling the truth right then, telling Tamlin that the female in his gardens is his own mate, that there is a reason his voice goes soft, approaches tender, when he speaks of her. But this is the best he’s seen Tamlin look since before Amarantha appeared on their lands, the first time it’s been easy for Lucien to remember why he’d always liked the High Lord of Spring in spite of more recent evidence to the contrary. Perhaps Tamlin will realize the truth on his own.

“I’ll be at your estate as you request.”

“Make sure you wash the smell of the human queen off before you arrive.”

“Her name is Vassa,” Lucien snarls, a brief unleashing of his temper.

“While I have no interest in who is in your bed, you know that Rhysand would not accept the slight to his court so easily.” Tamlin is trying to help, Lucien knows, but he’s been stalking the forests for so long that he does not realize Lucien has had three meetings with Rhysand since the first night with Vassa, preceded by scrubbing and spells that leave him raw and nearly without scent.

“Perhaps it would be a relief to Elain.” He’s reaching, the lie too heavy for his shoulders when he imagines where he’ll be in seven days. Already he’s forming a plan for every night until he must appear at the Spring Court with Vassa.

“Females generally like to do the leaving, I find.”

“You sound ridiculous when you speak that way,” Lucien says, giving the words a breath of laughter to soften them. He is pushing as he never did before, but instead of bristling, Tamlin sighs.

“I used to think I understood this world,” he says, and Lucien thinks that now, with so many befores to consider, for once he does not know the story Tamlin’s telling himself.

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Vassa knows that something’s wrong as soon as she finds Lucien back in bed. Generally he spends his nights awake with her, sleeping in the pockets of time when he’s not needed elsewhere in Prythian. Now he’s sprawled on the mattress, jacket discarded on the headboard, his breathing too light for sleep.

“Who summoned you?” she asks, knowing that he’s more likely to tell her than if she asks what’s wrong?

“We’re both expected in the Spring Court in a week. Elain Archeron will be there as well.” He mutters the words into the quilt so that Vassa has to lean closer to him. He forgets, sometimes, that she has only human ears.

“Why would Tamlin need me at his estate?” She does not point out that much of his estate lacks intact walls or windows, that its High Lord was the building’s principal destroyer. These facts only poke a would inside of Lucien, and so she holds her tongue.

“Rhys wants us there.”

“More questions about Koschei, then.” She’s told the Night Court all she knows, unless the sorcerer took her memories, in which case Vassa wishes he’d remove the more painful of her recollections, the horrors of the life she lived imprisoned on his lake.

“Azriel has been investigating. Maybe there’s a way to break the enchantment on you.” He reaches out for her hand and traces the lines of her fingers. Vassa holds back a shiver of anticipation, knows that he will hardly touch her as soon as they’re in the Spring Court. Six nights together, perhaps the last that they will ever spend, if the enchantment is somehow lifted and she’s able to go back to her own country. These years in Prythian were always meant to end.

“Tamlin knows I’ll need a place that cannot burn?”

“I’ll show you all the lakes the Spring Court has to offer. You can choose your favorite.”

“I’d prefer a new location every day, I think.” She reaches out for him until she’s lying next to him, letting the warmth of his body still her whirling mind. So many hours pass every day where she cannot think like a human, where she’s trapped inside the body and mind of an animal, and although she’s managed to gain some control over the firebird, the most gutting loss is her own right mind, its familiar quicksilver darting, so that it seems to work in triple time whenever she’s human again. The mind of the firebird is slower and angrier than Vassa has ever allowed herself to be. The anger of a queen is deadly, and she has always been mindful of her citizens, how best to rule them.

“You know it’s you I want to be with, don’t you?” He props his cheek on his hand, gazing at her, and Vassa raises her eyebrows. The mating bond between the High Fae is the stuff of legends, stronger than love or fear or desire.

“I could never marry you,” she says, meeting his russet eyes only because she’s been so immaculately trained since childhood. “I need to return to my country as soon as I can.”

“It’s not as if I’m bound to Prythian.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “You are employed by half the High Lords and held in high esteem by nearly all. I don’t think you’d know what to do if your days weren’t filled with counsels and entreaties and schemes.”

“Plenty of schemes to hatch in the human lands.” He reaches for a lock of her hair, wraps the tendril around his finger until she’s so close there’s nothing to do but kiss.

“What about your mate?” she asks, after a kiss long enough to make most females, Fae or human, forget the thread of the conversation.

“I do believe she will survive.” He pulls her toward him again, this time working at the fastenings of her dress, the corset beneath, and all the while Vassa thinks, even while she runs her fingers against his copper skin, that this cruelty towards his mate seems so incongruous with everything else she knows about Lucien. She does not flatter herself that he has fallen in love with her. They have known each other for three years now, hardly a moment in his long life, shared beds for only a month. Soon he will forget all about her, Vassa is certain. And perhaps a certain amount of longing is dignified for a queen, helps her to understand the plight of her citizens, the secret sufferings in their own hearts.

If she had more time these days for contemplation, Vassa would have a chance to realize that she’s deluding herself. Still, she presses herself to Lucien until they’re barely more than heated skin and ragged breaths.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (2/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: This chapter, from Tamlin's perspective, required a lot of careful thinking and revising and research on my part, specifically on whether abusers can ever recover and what that looks like. Personally, both in real life and in the ACOTAR world, I do believe that recovery is possible, but that abusers must admit the harm they have caused, reckon with themselves to create new patterns of thinking and behavior, and make amends if possible. This has shaped the way I've written Tamlin here and in future chapters. I do think that in the ACOTAR novels and fandom, Tamlin gets criticized for his behavior in a way that other characters with similarly abusive patterns of behavior (Rhys, Nesta, Eris) do not. I also think that redemption is possible for him. All that said, if you don't agree, or if you find Tamlin triggering, I completely understand. You can find all chapters here.

There are footsteps in the darkness, and Tamlin follows them, the breeze disappearing from his skin as he’s surrounded, pulled from the scent of flowers by walls of stone. It is impossible to gnash his teeth in this form so he growls instead, the sound amplified and echoing in the hollow chambers of his estate. Once, they were full of his courtiers and servants, studded with visiting nobles who sought his favor or his counsel.

Now, only Rhysand waits for him, at home in the darkest corner of the great hall.

“What do you want?” Tamlin asks, his voice clotted, scraping his throat.

“I’d like to send Elain Archeron to your court as my emissary.”

“Running short of spies, Rhysand?”

“If I wanted to spy on you, would I be here asking your permission?” He drawls the words but Tamlin has been listening in the forests, his hearing even sharper in this form, and he can hear the slightly anxious pitch in the man’s voice. And it’s curious that he would send someone, let alone his mate’s sister, as if he hadn’t ordered Lucien to make regular visits to Spring. “I’d like to be assured that she’ll be safe.”

“My lands are none of your concern but the dangerous creatures have all been put in their places.” He feels a fraction of his old self when he’s hunting, the mission clear and certain. He loves the feeling of his body obeying his commands, the only being in Prythian in whom he can put his trust.

“I need your word that she will be safe here.”

“You think I’ll lock her up in a ruined castle and throw away the key?”

Rhysand, damn him, simply takes a look around, the gloom deep enough to make his tan face pale as milk.

“Does Lucien stay here when he visits you?”

As if he doesn’t know that Lucien winnows himself to that castle in the human lands when their meetings and councils are over, preferring to spend his time with that Band of Exiles than stay a night in his ruined bedroom, or search the estate for another room that managed to escape its High Lord’s wrath.

Sometimes, he looks back at the being he was during the war with Hybern and feels no spark of recognition. Sometimes he has to coax himself to admit that it was he himself at those moments, starting a war over a woman he knew, even then, did not love him. And sometimes he does not force himself to recognize the truth of his own actions because the realization is always an explosion inside of him, blinding and horrifying, destroying another part of him every time he realizes what he became. What he is, still. It’s partly for this reason that he avoids the face he wore in those days.

“When would you like the Archeron sister to come to my court?” As if he doesn’t know who Elain is.

“She would like to arrive as soon as possible. I believe she stayed up last night packing her trunks.”

“So eager to get away from you?” The pleasure he feels at saying the words catches in the throat of the beast, unused to speaking like a lord, smooth words concealing the whirling of his mind.

“All the members of my court are free to go where they wish.”

Rhysand must really want this outcome, to tread so lightly. Usually his response would have been along the lines of Fuck you, you imprisoned my mate, and now Tamlin watches as he coaxes his mouth into a line resembling a smile’s curve and, as he so often does, picks a nonexistent piece of lint off his tunic.

“What do you require for her?”

“Nothing too impossible, I think. A bed, a bathing-room, a door that locks. A guarantee that she’ll be fed at regular intervals. I did mention that Lucien and Queen Vassa would be joining Elain, didn’t I? So it will be three of everything.”

“Such confidence in their desire to reside here.”

Rhysand’s lip curls. “If you think this is impossible--”

He should decline, insist again that these lands are him, but compulsion pulls at him, a heady thrum.

“It will take at least a month to make this estate adequate to your needs.”

“Elain would like to be here sooner.”

“There is a cottage in the village.”

“If I assist?”

Tamlin lets the growl build in his throat. He’s not sure which is worse: Rhysand knowing the exact layout of his home, or having Rhysand’s people build it because Tamlin himself isn’t sure who would dedicate this kind of service to him, now that they’ve seen the rot at his core. At least they still fear him enough to leave his jewels untouched, or else are unable to breach the surrounding wards.

“Am I to believe that you would send your precious artisans to build the home of your enemy?��

“I’ve given you reason enough to believe anything of me,” Rhysand says, and the words are transparent, infuriatingly so: a person could see that he was truly good if only they were in the mood to look. That Tamlin had allowed himself to believe otherwise for centuries gnaws at him, even as he wants to believe that this decent version of the male is just another mirror, a trick of the light.

“If we begin with the kitchens and three bedrooms, a week will be enough.” He shifts from paw to paw. “Ask Elain what she would like to look at, what colors she prefers.”

“Elain likes the colors of flowers. Soft and delicate furnishings.”

“And she cannot speak for herself?” The words come out harsh, grating, nothing like the tone he’d envisioned in his head, which would, all on its own, indicate the irony of Rhysand taking an Archeron sister for granted, presuming her words. He would say, if there was anybody who cared enough to ask, that after so much time in this form, he has lost the art of modulating his tone.

“I’ll ask her,” Rhysand says, soft and dangerous, “my precious artisans and builders will arrive tomorrow at first light, then. Should I advise them to look for you in this form?”

“I’ll look as civilized as you.” He manages to match Rhysand’s tone. The control required is exquisite. “Though I’m sure you’ll be around to make sure they survive the morning.”

“Prove me wrong, then, Tamlin.”

Of course, Rhysand disappears before Tamlin can lunge for him, his claws snapping on nothing but laden air. The marble floor, dull with inattention, pounds his paws and then his joints as he, the beast outside and inside, hits the floor. The foundation of the estate rumbles in complaint.

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There are no mirrors to allow Tamlin to observe the face of his Fae form, but his arms and legs are only skin and muscle. If he were slaughtered and prepared as a meal, the diners would complain about the gristle of him, the sharpness of the knife required to make the meal palatable.

He finds a clean shirt and pants and boots which are not spangled with embroidery or jewels, and though the fabric gives off a musty scent, he doubts that Rhysand, his artisans, or his builders will get close enough to judge the stink. Tamlin knows the way that gossip travels across the seven courts, imagines there are stories about his haunting of the Spring Court forests, that they’ll only be surprised he doesn’t appear with fur and claws or else covered in dirt. With this in mind, he scrubs his face and body with water and the last gritty bits of soap until the skin squeaks clean under his fingertips.

After centuries of seeing his own reflection, Tamlin knows how he might look, but no matter what he envisions, the result is disappointing. Any beauty undone by the rot inside, which tears inside of him, an animal gnashing its teeth. The reason he prefers to be transformed, the creature outside matching the way he feels inside. He knows that he deserves this punishment, does not stop imagining Feyre’s wasted body, the sound of her retching, Amarantha destroying that weak and beautiful human frame while he was so careful to be still and silent. He deserves this feeling for Hybern, for calling Feyre a whore, for her sisters in the Cauldron and all the hurt he caused. The list is endless and he recounts each item on it, filling up the hours when his forests are silent, when all the monsters within are too afraid of him to stir.

Despite all his years as a warrior, he never thought that he was such a terror. For a time he tried to blame Feyre for this unleashing, then Rhysand, but too soon there was only the stark reality that he himself was the only one to blame. How he’d never noticed the horrible thing inside his chest is beyond him, a question that will tear him up for all the centuries remaining to him.

Still, in spite of the punishment he is owed, Tamlin is tired of lurking in shadowy corners, in the parts of his forests that made even Amarantha’s creatures hesitant. He does not know what will happen when he is not alone, but finds himself thinking that even the harshest punishment would be better than this life.

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The builders arrive, the artisans and gardeners and even an architect, all peering over Rhysand’s wings to get a glimpse of Tamlin. He can see disappointment in her eyes, that he is all High Fae, and for a moment he wants to tell them how strange it felt, to spend the night so naked and unarmed. Then he thinks the sight of his estates will generate pity enough.

Then, beside Rhysand, the Morrigan appears, holding the hand of Elain Archeron, who does not break his gaze, not even when he feels the length of the stare, the blaze of his own eyes.

“Elain wanted to assist in the gardens,” Rhysand says, by way of introduction. “She has quite the talent for arranging flowers.”

“I see you will put anybody in your court to work for you,” he snaps back, just to watch the Morrigan lurch toward him, her beauty gilded with her fury. Rhysand’s court will bark at any slight towards their High Lord.

“I have heard about the famed beauty of the gardens of the Spring Court and I wanted to see them for myself.” Elain Archeron has dipped into a curtsy, the pearls at her ears gleaming in the first rosy fingers of dawn, her gown the colors of sunrise, rosy pink and coral and orange delicately interwoven. When she looks back up at him, her face is all serene, except her eyes, which stay fixed on Tamlin, assessing his expression as if a face could be a trove of knowledge. All he’s ever heard about this sister is her beauty, her kindness, her sweet softness, as though she were a statue made of sugar, but now she regards him like a goddess, piercing and certain amidst the glow of herself.

“Spoken like my emissary.” Rhysand nods at her and she aims a thin-lipped smile at him. “Elain will walk your gardens and propose a design for them. I think you’ll find her taste to be exquisite. And Laella has come with her proposal for renovations to your estate.”

The architect steps forward, scrolls in her hands, which she unfurls and explains to Tamlin without so much as a greeting. While she speaks, he realizes two things: that she is a dryad, and that her plans for the estate are lovely. She will polish the marble, working with the existing design, but add windows and open-air spaces so that those in residence can enjoy the breezes and the sunlight without having to step outside. Tamlin has never been to the palaces of the Night Court, but he cannot imagine that this design is a copy, and as the architect’s fingers scratch over her parchment, he finds himself nodding along. Laella has erased the border between indoors and outdoors. In such a house, he would not feel so surrounded by stone, so deprived of air. He could even imagine wanting to stay, always.

And if, in the end, he cannot bear to stay inside, it will give him a certain satisfaction to watch Rhysand’s reaction to the ruin.

“The complete renovation will take at least a month, but I will have a better estimate once I inspect your home and have your approval for changes.” The dryad’s voice rasps and moans, wind in the branches and the strain of the tree trunk beneath. Tamlin can feel Rhysand’s eyes on him, waiting for a slight, a show of prejudice against this faerie, not a High Fae, and while he aims a smirk at the other male, he nods over the plans.

“You are aware that I’m a beast?” He points, at random, to a large room made brighter and more spacious in the plans.

“Our High Lord has told us stories,” Laella tells him, a wisp of deep green hair escaping from its arrangement, her gray skin flushing in spite of her professional composure when she sees the talons that appear on the backs of his hands, summoned without a thought. “He also said you saved his life.”

“I imprisoned his mate in this place,” he counters, his voice rising, the artisans and builders and architects no longer straining to hear. Rhysand and the Morrigan have taken subtle steps to block Elain Archeron from view. “I had her sisters kidnapped by the king of Hybern. Ransomed my lands for an obsession with a female who rightly wanted nothing to do with me.” He can hear the ragged edge in his voice, the growl, and fears that in a moment he may turn animal again, that he has been cursed with an unwilling transformation without his knowing, an inversion of his powers.

“A truly evil person never believes they have done wrong,” Elain Archeron says, from behind Rhysand’s wings. Her voice is soft but pitched to carry. “From what I’m told, these lands are filled with beings who do evil deeds with no remorse for the suffering they leave behind.”

Rhysand has turned towards her, staring as if he’s never heard Elain say so many words. Everyone is staring at her. Tamlin feels the weight of their eyes fall off his shoulders, heaves a breath.

“Anyway,” she continues, more hesitantly, as if she’s aware that everyone is watching her, “I have to believe that the path to becoming evil is hard to distinguish. That we could get there with the best intentions.”

She flushes and goes silent, and he notices that she said we instead of you, and he thinks that maybe Rhysand’s sister-in-laws are not as moon-eyed over him as the rest of his court. The Morrigan squeezes her hand, and for a second Tamlin almost smiles; seeing the Morrigan out of battle and her armor will never stop amusing him, like seeing a jungle cat begin to sing.

“Are the plans to your liking, Tamlin?” Rhysand asks once it is clear that Elain will not say anything else. “I will pay for the renovations in exchange for one favor.”

“I have enough gold in my stores to compensate your people fairly.” He learned in the cradle, never to accept a favor as payment, especially without detailing very particular terms.

“You don’t know what I’ve promised them in payment.”

Tamlin growls and nods his head toward Laella.

“I offer double what your High Lord promised,” he snarls. “So long as you finish within the month.”

Those smiles are the first he’s received in years. No matter that he had to purchase them. The gold was sitting in his vaults, unused.

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Hours later, Tamlin stalks the grounds of the estate. The builders have already begun basic repairs under Laella’s guidance, the artisans scouring each room for pieces which might fit the dryad’s vision. Noise echoes throughout the halls, a mirror effect that leaves him dizzy. He has spent too many days in the forest.

“Have you come to see my plans?” Elain Archeron asks, appearing at his elbow, breathing hard.

“You followed me.” He growls, wanting to scare her off. No good can ever come of an Archeron on his trail. He’ll tell this to himself until it feels true.

“Your gardens are too beautiful to be so overgrown.” Again, no malice and no flattery, only gentle confidence. “I’ve been making all kinds of plans”

“You want to change everything.”

“You have an opportunity to have the greatest gardens in all of Prythian, maybe all of this world, and you are letting them go in favor of thorns and rot. As a gardener, I’m honestly offended.”

Tamlin stops mid-stride and watches her, assessing the truth of the statement. Her hands settle on her hips, the parchment of her plans bunching under her fingers. One colored pencil, pink, is tucked behind her ear, and three more are tucked into the bodice of her gown, thinnest fingers of blue and green and gold reaching for her clavicle.

“Your sisters must have warned you about me.”

“Oh, I don’t think Nesta’s ever been afraid of you,” she says, a smile forming on her lips.

“I don’t mean Nesta.”

He can feel the strain in her as she keeps her eyes on his, her breath hissing past her teeth.

“I will not talk about Feyre with you. If she ever wants to see you again, she knows how to find your doorstep.”

“Then why is Rhysand sending you here?”

“Night Court business.” She’s trying to say the words smoothly, but she blushes, the tip of her nose going pink.

“You’re lying.”

“I don’t owe you every single morsel of the truth.”

“You’re on my lands,” he says, only realizing the menace in his tone when she takes one step away from him and then another. “Why are you here?”

“My sisters have often told me that I need to see the gardens of the Spring Court.”

He rakes his fingers through his hair, catching a snarl so roughly that he has to hold back a wince. “That is a trip for an afternoon. Your High Lord sends you as his emissary and his gardener.”

“He -- I volunteered.”

“Tell me, Elain Archeron, are you Rhysand’s spy as well?”

“I would be a horrible spy if I told you that, High Lord. At any rate, do you think I have the skills for such a mission?”

“I hear you came out of the Cauldron with gifts, but their dimensions are vague in every recounting.”

She goes pale, as if she remembers who she’s speaking with, the calculus that made her Fae and took, he’s heard, a life story she deemed precious.

“You forgot for a moment that I ruined your life,” he says. He does not want to draw out the awkwardness. Let her walk away, let her leave, if she’s so inclined.

“Did you know that Hybern would capture us?”

“I believed the king. I thought that Feyre would be rescued, the enchantment broken, that we would live happily in my court for a thousand years.”

Elain snorts.

“You’re an idiot,” she says.

Tamlin just stares at her.

“Aren’t you supposed to be some fearsome warrior?” she continues, crossing her arms at her chest, “Even someone with no idea of strategy could tell you that Hybern would have never honored your promises. Even a human could have told you that.”

“You have never been in love then. You’d believe anything. Give anything. Do anything, just to have your beloved in your arms again.” His chest is tight and yet his skin feels too big for his body. He wants to hug himself but wills his fingers into fists, feeling the strain of the claws against the muscles of his hands.

“You nearly destroyed my sister.”

“You need to--”

“What I want to know,” she says, as if she doesn’t hear him at all, has no regard for rank or even danger, “is if a part of you did it on purpose. If you saw her suffering and wanted it to continue.”

He holds her gaze, the warm brown like whiskey, strong and sparkling.

“You do not believe what you said earlier, then.”

“I want to know if it could be true.”

“Is that what brings you to the Spring Court?”

She sighs, then uncrosses her arms.

“First,” she says, unfurling the parchment between them, “I’d like you to tell me what you think about my ideas for your gardens.”

He decides to look where she’s pointing instead of breathing another threat. She speaks of hyacinths and peonies and ferns, the lilac and forsythia bushes, and cherry trees and weeping willows that will line the paths, under which she proposes he install benches for lingering.

“Who do you think will be staying in these gardens so long?” he asks, the words more melancholy than he intends. He hates the way this male sounds, all longing and self-pity and no action at all, but he can’t keep the noise from escaping him.

She rustles the parchment, making it thunder. “There aren’t any other residents of Spring Court?”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“Why don’t you try to keep them?”

“You think I could have done something different?” He’s daring her to make a list of her suggestions. Cauldron boil him, his own list is endless and ever-growing.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” she says, sighing as if there is more to say but she is too weary to muster the words, and he cannot believe that Elain Archeron, with her soft voice and her poise, all the glow of her, would be ignored, but Tamlin keeps quiet, allowing her to speak. “Anyway, I haven’t shown you my favorite part of my plan. I want you to install a field of tulips where the grounds meet the forest.” She sweeps her hand in that direction. “Mor has promised to find bulbs on the continent. I grew up hearing stories of tulip fields that went for miles.”

“You don’t think it sends a message of weakness to our enemies, to greet them with flowers?” It’s the second time within the moment when he’s asked for her opinion instead of stating his own.

Her nod is decisive, no sweetness in the gesture.

“Your enemies will know that the true terror is inside. Only the weak require a strong wall to hide behind.” He wonders if she’s thinking of her human lord, the one who left her. Tamlin has wandered as a beast for months, but the gossip of Prythian still finds him. Lucien has an ear at every door, and Rhysand’s monthly meetings are full of updates on political dealings that make Tamlin’s head ache.

“I’ll allow the tulips,” he says. “After all, you’ll be living here for a while, according to your High Lord. If my enemies are encouraged, you’ll see the result yourself.”

She nods, absently, no longer looking at his face but off into some middle distance. Probably considering a different arrangement of flowers, Tamlin thinks, deciding not to wait until she trains his eyes on him again. Instead he lets his feet carry him into the forest without only the smallest nod of goodbye.

He travels miles before he can rid himself of the image of her in his hall, rosy with the dawn light and fragrant as the gardens she dreams up. It is dangerous to think of an Archeron sister more than fleetingly, though, and so gradually Tamlin fills his mind up with the sights of the forest, the dappled light and the creatures that dart away when they hear him coming.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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Bloom & Bone (1/32) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: I haven't written fanfiction in a decade, but this idea wouldn't let me go, especially once I got to thinking about Elain. And Tamlin. And then I fell in love with Lucien and Vassa. This is a long ride but everything's outlined, and I hope you'll join me on this journey. You can find all chapters here. You can also read this chapter on AO3.

Elain cannot look at her sister when she describes the vision: the spark in Tamlin’s green eyes, Feyre’s anguish, the press of his fingers into her wrist. The Crown on his head and his talons hovering just above the blue veins that are so stark against her younger sister’s milk-pale skin, a sickly shade that Elain has never actually seen on Feyre in life, not even in the cottage, in the dead of winter.

Instead, while she addresses the Court of Dreams, Elain makes herself look at Rhys, his rage-dulled eyes, at Mor, who moves toward Feyre as if magnetized, wanting to protect her friend. Even Amren is easier to watch, her face revealing no emotion but a certainty bordering on arrogance. Elain glances only occasionally at Azriel, the force of his glance a blow in her gut. Though the pain, in its own way, is useful, giving her voice a wobble that could be understood as horror or incomprehension. Mostly Elain angles her head so that she studies the swirls of marble on the floor. They are used to believing she is diffident, cowed, and honestly she often feels this way, in spite of her Fae body and her powers, no matter what new rancor stirs in her lately.

She recounts the vision’s grand finale: Tamlin and Feyre on the thrones in the ruined Spring Court, the Crown the only spark of light in the gloom, the room empty and covered in thorns.

“Azriel told me once,” she says, once the words have had sufficient time to settle, “that he thought my powers were not the visions alone, but the ability to change them.”

Elain allows herself, then, to turn from the floor to Cassian, the first person she’d saved knowingly, applying her fingers to Truth Teller, the knife to the king of Hybern’s throat. She’d seen his death in a vision, but not her father’s, and a kernel of her hates him for this, all those easy smiles. She had only ever told Azriel the details of the vision. At the time he was the only one who’d believed what she was seeing, who thought she might have the power to change things. The one who’d put the knife in her hands. Now she does not look at him.

Instead, she keeps her eyes on Cassian. Not because she needs to read the expression on his face. His reactions to her vision would have been audible even to her human ears, the horror at the mere possibility of a future for his High Lady. Cassian, who she knows will relay the story directly to Nesta, the sister who grew up entwined around her and can read the nuances behind each of Elain’s gestures, the timbre of her voice, and instantly detect a lie. She’d bided her time until Nesta was occupied with the Valkyries, a training exercise that could not be rescheduled, occupying her sister and also Gwyn, of whom Elain prefers not to think.

From the heavy silence in the room, she knows they all believe her.

“Then what should we do?” Feyre says, finally, her High Lady voice its own armor. She looks toward her mate, not even glancing at Elain. Her job, it seems, is to supply the visions, then return to her garden. For once in her gods-damned life, this is not Elain Archeron’s plan.

“I would like to go to the Spring Court,” she says, working her hands into fists. She waits for Azriel’s growl, but there’s only silence, Feyre’s mouth working silently, trying to determine the right words. As if her sister has suspected that something vile is brewing inside Elain, acrid and corrosive, that now she wonders why, unlike the other times, Elain could so calmly recount the details of her vision, a power mastered seemingly without training.

Instead her sister says, “There is no chance I’m letting you within Tamlin’s borders. Do you remember how you ended up in the Cauldron?” The words spit themselves from her lips.

“Who else do you suggest we send?”

It surprises them, the steel in her voice. For a moment, they are all silent, trying to determine what it means, Elain snapping at her sister. She watches as Rhys reaches out for Feyre, and the weariness overcomes her, the weight of the lie suddenly laid on her. That she could become a creature against whom her sister needs protection.

She clenches her fists tighter. Her fingernails dig into the callouses left by her gardening tools.

“Nesta could--” Feyre begins.

“Nesta could summon the Crown right to Tamlin,” Amren cuts in, before Elain can get the words out herself. Amren, who knows Nesta’s powers better than any of them.

“Nesta would never do that,” Cassian growls, and Elain bites her lip to keep from smiling. Of the entire Night Court, she can always predict Cassian’s responses most easily.

“If you were threatened?” Elain says, her voice low, concerned. “Nesta has her own duties. I can detect the Trove but not summon it. I couldn’t be used so easily as bait.”

“You are still--” Rhys starts, but Elain cuts him off, continuing as though she does not hear him, you are still one of the Cauldron-blessed Archeron sisters, the words a curse that will not leave her, the facts of her existence that have taken everything away from her, every choice she’d once thought to be her own. Hoping he’ll forget that until now she always has been bait, the soft and useless sister who could best be used to harm the others, the ones with real value in and of themselves.

“Send Lucien with me, if you like,” she says. Feyre’s eyebrow’s raise, and Mor’s, and though Elain is afraid she’s said too much, she allows the blush to rise to her cheeks. Let them think, now that Azriel’s found his mate, that she’s considering Lucien with renewed interest.

“I’ll go with them,” Mor cuts in.

“You’re needed in Valhallan,” Rhys says, fingers splayed under his chin. He’s all languorous consideration and sparkling violet eyes but Elain knows his mind is whirling, that the pleasant veneer is mostly for her benefit. After three years in the Court of Dreams, everyone still thinks she’s going to shatter. Even if they’ve given her ample reason to fall apart. “Would Vassa join your merry band, do you think? I’d like to keep an eye on her, given what we’ve learned about Koschei.” Thanks to Azriel and Gwyn, Elain knows, but Rhysand does not say.

“We shouldn’t leave Jurian unattended.” Cassian cracks his knuckles, his armor shifting.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Azriel says.

“Then it’s settled. Elain will act as our emissary in the Spring Court,” Rhys says, and when Elain finally does look into Feyre’s eyes, she doesn’t want to read her sister’s expression, only knows it’s one she’s never seen before.

Then again, Elain has never told such an incredible lie in her life. She’s not entirely sure what kind of creature that makes her.

“You don’t have to try and save me,” Feyre says later, standing on the threshold of Elain’s room with Nyx on her shoulder. The baby is almost asleep, his wings making languid circles that catch Feyre’s cheek in a sigh. Nyx is nearly too big to need holding, but Feyre is holding on to these last moments before he’ll be off and running or flying, a brilliant and holy terror.

“I know you can fight against Tamlin. But I’d like to see if that can be avoided. And... I’d like to have something to do. To be useful.” Elain busies herself with her dresses, selecting those which most resemble her favorite blooms, the pale azures and pinks that herald spring and the rich yellow that shows that fall is on the horizon.

“Is it Azriel?”

For a while now, Feyre has been dancing around this question with a poise that reminds Elain of Nesta’s skill in a ballroom. She invited Elain to sit for a portrait last month and began a hundred soft questions that Elain demurely did not answer.

Elain continues sorting through her dresses. This orange makes her look sickly, and of course the black gowns have no place in the Spring Court, would only serve to advertise her status as an outsider.

“I know that he and Gwyn were unexpected,” Feyre begins again, in a voice that she must use when meeting with her public, a voice that’s low and soothing and guaranteed to make them proud of their High Lady, “but I did not realize that you were so attached to him.”

Elain has turned, now, to her jewels. She grits her teeth against the scream that curdles inside her. You did not see Rhysand at the top of the staircase at the Solstice party the year before last, she does not say, because the words are too ridiculous for all that’s inside her. Azriel could have kissed her anyway. She could have reached for him. Instead they gazed at each other across rooms, let their fingers brush, until he stopped meeting her gaze. Two weeks later, Gwyn showed up at the house on the river, a faint blush on her cheeks, standing too close to Azriel for there to be any question as to the reason for her visit. And there was Nesta, taking a fighting stance at her friend’s side, the expression on her face so familiar to Elain that she could practically feel the grime of their old cottage on her skin. Between the two of them, Elain could hardly have approached Gwyn if she’d wanted to, if she’d had anything inside her head but roaring and emptiness. When she’d spotted the rose necklace Azriel had fastened to her own neck on Gwyn’s throat, Elain had excused herself from dinner before dessert.

That had only been the first dinner, the first hint of a smile she’d never seen before on Azriel’s face. Soon Gwyn appeared at all kinds of court affairs and family gatherings, and Elain has found herself seeking corners, wanting quiet. The roiling inside her grew stronger, a twist in her stomach and acid in her muscles, so that even a small group could feel overwhelming. Her gardens have never been more beautiful, or her hemlines so streaked with dirt. Nuala and Cerridwen sometimes tease her, wondering if she has found a lover in the gardens, and Elain laughs to keep them from asking questions. She schools her expression to be pleasant, never demanding, never petulant, never angry.

When she was human, which seems so long ago already, Elain had been the beautiful sister, the one her parents anticipated would marry well, enrich their family or establish them as aristocracy. They had told her always to be sweet and gentle, never creating a reason for a man to fall out of love with her. The instructions were not a burden for Elain, not the way they would have been to her sisters. But now, her character finely honed, she would never have expected to be without a husband, without the love and affection she sees between her sisters and their mates. She’d worked too hard on being loveable to be forced to end up with a mate for whom she has no regard.

Now, Feyre sets Nyx down on Elain’s bed and comes over to the jewelry box, untangling the pearls from the emeralds and rubies. Elain has always favored delicate jewels, nothing too large or ornate, and the golden chains seem to catch no matter how carefully they’re arranged.

“I always thought you were better suited to the Spring Court than I ever was,” she says, picking up a diamond earring and clasping it to its mate. “I wish you could have seen the gardens the way I first did. Though I think they would have a hard time competing with any of your gardens.”

Elain breathes a laugh through her nose. “You always try too hard to flatter me.”

“Only because you can never take a compliment.”

For a moment, they are girls again, in a funhouse mirror of what their adolescence could have looked like: Feyre always more self-assured than anyone would expect for a girl her age, Elain seemingly serene, allowing herself to be led down pleasant paths.

“You know that the Spring Court is dangerous.”

“I’ve been to the Court of Nightmares and lived to tell the tale.”

“The Court of Nightmares has a ruler.”

“Tamlin knows what would happen if he harmed me.” Elain runs her fingers over a set of combs shaped like branches that know winter is ending, emerald leaves unfurling. She will have to pack these in her trunks.

“Not according to your vision,” Feyre murmurs, and though the tone is pitched to be soothing, an acid knot forms in Elain’s stomach. “I know that Rhys will make things clear to him, but you can’t let Tamlin walk all over you.”

“He needs to trust me somehow.”

Feyre puts down the bottle of perfume she’s been toying with, releasing a puff of peony and rose. She pulls on the end of her plaited hair, not so much thinking as gnawing on her memories.

“I used to think that Tamlin only told his secrets to Lucien, or perhaps Ianthe, but now I don’t think… I think he is very alone. And he never trusted me with very much of anything.”

“He was wrong about you, Feyre.”

“I only mean, I think that a beautiful maiden would not necessarily inspire Tamlin to confess anything of interest. He will only trust, and grudgingly, the people he sees as his equals.”

“I am not some damsel, sister.”

It’s only when she catches Feyre’s wide-eyed look that Elain realizes the sharpness in her tone. The kind of tone her sisters both wield so well, but which no one expects to emerge from between her own lips.

But Elain does not want to ruin the moment, maybe the last in which she and Feyre will be so close, so she takes her sister’s hand and listens to her sister’s stories of the Spring Court, drying the occasional tear, until neither of them can talk for yawning. Before Feyre goes to her own bedroom with Nyx, Elain pulls her into a close embrace, taking in her sister’s scent of lilac and pear, until she’s sure that nothing could pull these memories out of her mind.

Alone in her darkened room, though she’s exhausted and worn, Elain does not sleep. This is a common side effect of her visions, she would say if anybody asked her. The futures she sees always haunt her to a certain extent, their texture real and yet unhinged, the world mostly nightmarish.

Elain has never seen herself in her visions, though. Not before this last one. Because she had lied to the Court of Dreams. She herself has been the Archeron sister sitting next to Tamlin in that ruined court. And she, not that High Lord, had been wearing the Crown.

Even more than that vision of herself, the haughty set of her chin and a glint in her eye that matched this newfound roiling inside her, the expression on Tamlin’s face drove away all possibility of sleep. His eyes were not alive, the green gone cold and deep, like the dying moss on an overturned stone, but the features of his face were calm, and, even unpracticed as she is in the analysis of her own visions, Elain could swear that she’d seen the hint of a smile on his lips, that in spite of the compulsion of the Crown, the joy was real.

She hates that she would be so desperate, even in the small room of her own mind, that she would look so closely at a prisoner’s face to find this kind of affection. Already, in the two days that passed while she tried to figure out how best to resolve this situation, she’s wondered if she could simply claw out the part of her brain that generates these nightmares. She would scoop out the part of herself that is evil, too, if only she could identify these horrible parts.

Elain isn’t sure if it’s the Night Court that is making her a monster, or if it was a gift from the Cauldron. Perhaps the Spring Court will change her, or maybe it was losing, twice already, the possibility of love.

All she knows is that she needs to leave before her sisters witness the transformation. She will die before she sees her monstrous self reflected in their eyes.

#acotar #acotar fanfiction #elain archeron #elain is my queen #elain x tamlin #tamlin #tamlin redemption arc #tamlin x elain #vucien #vucien is goals #lucien vanserra #queen vassa #inner circle #nessian #feysand #post acosf #acosf spoilers #gwynriel

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (24/28) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: The angst-to-banter ratio on this chapter is really high, so if that's your jam, I think you're going to enjoy. You can find all previous chapters here, or read Bloom & Bone on AO3. Thank you for reading! ❤️ If you'd like to get an early preview on the next chapter, follow me on Instagram at @house.of.hurricane.

“You seem more preoccupied than usual,” Vassa says in the middle of their after-dinner walk, nudging her shoulder against Elain’s, “and Tamlin has you extremely preoccupied lately.”

“I’m worried about Koschei,” Elain says, and Vassa’s first thought is to tell her not to worry, that everything is fine, but her second thought is that Elain has visions of possible futures on a regular basis, and her worries bear more weight than most.

“Have you had a vision?”

“Nothing about that,” she says, though her cheeks flush, and Vassa wonders whether her visions have taken a different kind of shocking turn, “but my visions don’t always act as alarms. When he came for us the first time--”

Vassa stiffens without wanting to. When she thinks about Koschei’s hands on her, in this place, she wants to run into the forest, take her chances against the fangs and claws of the beasts.

“You have your power now,” Vassa says, taking Elain’s arm at the elbow, reassuring them both that everything is different. “I’m proof of what you can do. You and your sisters. And all of us, here. Even if the High Lords will not listen.”

Vassa herself has sent out missives over the past week, whenever she’s not talking with Elain or training with Lucien or distracting Lucien from training her by kissing him or removing their clothing with the wind she’s learning to summon.

Despite her pleas to the High Lords outside this court, only Rhysand has responded.

“Tamlin will try to convince them,” Elain says, her lips forming the smile that has quickly become habit whenever his name is mentioned. “But Feyre will barely speak to me. She did not break your curse out of sisterly kindness.”

“Your sisters are good people, and strong-willed.”

“I think I owe her an apology.” Her voice dies out in her throat, the way a child speaks in the face of punishment.

“Then offer it, queenling,” Vassa says, fondly pronouncing her nickname for her friend, a reminder of all she has become. She knows that the relationship between Feyre and Elain is fraught, but perhaps all sisters feel this way. She had no siblings, and was taken from her cousin so often in order to learn to be a queen, and then to rule. They had no time for anything but smiles and confessions. She has written to Leda, a message delivered by Lucien, and received an enthusiastic response, an assurance that her kingdom awaits. But her cousin has always believed too strongly in the goodness of people. Setting these thoughts aside, she turns back to her friend, reminds her: “You’re the one who can appear wherever she likes.”

“Technically Feyre can winnow.”

“You’re making excuses.”

“I’ll have to tell her about Tamlin.”

“Is your alternate plan never to see your sisters again?”

Elain shrugs her shoulders, resigned, and Vassa almost regrets her tone.

“I’ll go to her tomorrow. I’ll apologize and I’ll ask her to help us,” she says, as they pass the window to the library, where Lucien and Tamlin are intent on their conversation, though the glass is too thick to hear what words are behind those emphatic gestures.

“Do you think they’re talking about us?” Vassa asks, taking the conversation in a lighter direction.

“Definitely,” Elain replies, her fingers pressing on the windowpane. “I just saw Lucien say your name.”

As if he hears them, Lucien turns to the window, finds Vassa in the darkness, and grins with all his teeth, a challenge and a promise. He’ll find her later.

But Vassa pushes down her anticipation. Her life has been extended by a thousand years, if Koschei does not manage to claim her for a third time. The possibility, newly considered, makes her skin grow cold.

And then she thinks, she is a new being now. It is possible that she could get her vengeance. The thought runs through her with surprising pleasure.

“Do you have any idea how we can destroy the death-lord?” she asks her friend, and hopes that in Elain’s surprising mind, there is an answer.

The next day, Lucien noticies a difference in Vassa’s attention during training. She grasped the fundamentals of her magic quickly, so that within days she could command a gust of air in the direction of her choice, but now she summons a lazy swirling gust with no particular direction.

“Do you need a break?” he asks, crossing his arms. She’d asked him to be hard on her so that she can learn quickly, and today he regrets agreeing to play the role.

“Is it going to be enough, against Koschei?”

“Don’t tell me you are planning to go to the lake today.”

“Elain and I are working on a plan. She is going to speak with her sisters today. Tomorrow, perhaps, we could go to him. But when I call the wind now, there is no response.”

“You and Elain have decided that you will be the one to kill the death-lord?”

“She has given me the opportunity to destroy him but I cannot. What did I think I was going to do, blow him away?”

He’s never heard this note of helplessness in her voice, not even when the curse was ripping her apart. Their training session isn’t over, but Lucien can’t help himself from reaching out to Vassa, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling him against her.

“It’s possible that you have other powers,” he says, right into her ear.

“You’re not going to start distracting me with seduction.”

“That comes later. Close your eyes.”

“They’re closed.”

“You’re lying,” he says, smirking. He feels the tension in her shoulders, the tilt of her chin towards the window, knows she will never get her fill of sunlight. “I won’t let you go.”

Her posture eases slightly and she leans her shoulders against his chest.

“My eyes are closed,” she says.

“Can you find the place where your power lives?”

She scoffs, resisting.

“You make it sound as if I’m a house with many rooms, Vanserra.”

“Focus,” he says, draining the emotion from his voice.

She stills.

“Your magic is a new facet of your self. What does it feel like?”

“The sea when there is no wind.”

“The ocean is vast. There is a breeze somewhere.”

She straightens in his arms, as if she is looking. He thinks of all those days he spent with her and Gabriel Archeron, crossing the waters, Vassa flying overhead, resplendent. He was desperate to return to Prythian before Hybern destroyed them but still he could not stop watching her flight. Always she has been a creature of the wind, held aloft by her own power.

“I think I’m getting closer. I feel… the sensation before a storm? The air is full of power. Not wind yet, but… lightning.” Her hands reach out for him, grip his arms so tightly that he can feel her fingernails through the fabric of his shirt and jacket. “I thought my power was wind, Lucien.”

“I’m here with you. Nobody can harm you now,” he says, trying to only convey his faith in her. “Keep looking. I won’t let go of you.”

She is still for a long moment, draws a deep breath and releases it with a sigh. Now her quiet is searching, determined.

“I see the wind now. There is more than I-- and the air here, Lucien, I think I can…” She raises her hand and the air rushes into his lungs and he coughs against it. She lowers her hand and turns to him, stepping out of the circle of his arms.

Her eyes are open now, and afraid.

“I have some of Koschei’s power.” Always brave, though, she does not ask the question. She knows herself, already understands the contours of her magic. What it contains.

He takes her hands in his.

“What if he can take me back?”

“That won’t happen,” he says, his mind working through the problem like a key in a lock, and then, before she can ask him to reveal his plan, he kisses her, tries to forget that he could ever lose her.

“You said you would go to Feyre today,” Vassa says, before they’ve taken three steps into the garden.

Elain resists the temptation to pull herself out of this world and avoid the conversation, especially because Vassa is right. Koschei could attack at any moment.

“I just keep hoping this is over,” she says, thinking of the afternoon she spent with Tamlin in the village, where she went to every house and shop and introduced herself, the new emissary of the Spring Court and the High Lord’s intended. All those hours she spent smiling, nearly convinced she was in a different world. That Koschei had simply removed himself from their lives. The kind of lies she used to live by.

“You know that he will come for us. And then he’ll rip this world apart. Your sister is not so small-minded as to hate you so fiercely that she destroys the world.”

“My sisters are heroic,” Elain says, hearing Vassa’s remonstrance in the words.

“So are you,” the queen says, twining her arm around Elain’s. “Would you like me to go with you?”

“You owe her no apology. And forgiveness isn’t real if it’s compelled by a queen. I’ll go tomorrow, I promise.”

“I’ll ask Cook to make a celebratory cake.”

“You know he’s scared of you? Apparently he bullies Tamlin into accepting his chosen menu, but he never makes a single objection to your requests.”

“Maybe that’s because of my good taste,” Vassa huffs. “Tamlin is overfond of roasted meats. Cook has showed me his requests. Are you sure you’re ready for that kind of life? You could be emissary to Scythia instead. I promise to serve only the finest delicacies, and let you have dominion over all my gardens.”

“I will visit you all the time,” Elain says. “But I couldn’t, any more than you could plan your life apart from Lucien. Anyway I thought you liked Tamlin.”

“I do,” Vassa says, and then she sighs. “Even so, I will miss you. It is rare that a queen is allowed to have a friend and confidant who is not working towards their own ends.”

“Your advisors and generals will all want to get rid of me, I’ll be there so often.” Elain squeezes her fingers. Around them, the air is fragrant with the scents of lilac and roses.

“I’m not sure they’ll allow me to take the throne.”

“Your country has not crowned another queen, and you were been bound by Koschei’s curse for years. They know what a treasure they have in you.”

“You’re sure you do not want to rule, queenling?” Even in the moonlight, Vassa’s bronze skin glows brighter.

“I want to ensure that there is real peace. You know, I taught the villagers some new techniques for growing vegetables and berries today, and somehow I remembered all their names, and I’m as proud of that as any of my powers.”

“You know you saved my life and Tamlin’s. I’m new to this form, but yours doesn’t seem like an ordinary magic.”

“But imagine if our world had a peace so profound that I only had to use it to visit you and then take you to all the worlds we haven’t seen yet.”

“I would tell you that first we have to destroy Koschei.”

“I’m working on a plan,” Elain says, as if she’s thought of some daring twist since the last time she and Vassa determined their strategy, the necessary contributions from her sisters. “It’s only, what if we don’t survive this? What if these are the last moments when we are happy?”

“Is your peace worthwhile only if you get to enjoy it?”

Vassa dips her head to rest on Elain’s shoulder as if to add, I know you don’t believe that, and when Elain begins to weep, her friend holds her until she is empty of tears. She feels as if she has been in motion for so long, trying to investigate that horrible vision that brought her here and then trying to rescue Vassa and learn her powers and then save Tamlin and break Vassa’s curse. And now she has found herself in love, with friends, in a home and with so many plans for the future.

“I cannot lie and say that I am sure we will survive this, and anyway you are the one with visions of the future.” Vassa’s words are barely above a whisper. “Perhaps you have seen something.”

“The future is a blank to me.” The words catch in Elain’s throat, threatening to set her crying again.

“Then it’s ours to determine. We can give the world your peace and beauty.”

“I see why you are such a beloved queen.”

“Oh, you’ve barely scratched the surface.”

Elain arrives in the kitchen of the river house only because the garden, this late in autumn, is too cold to bear for more than a moment in the gown that was perfectly suitable for the Spring Court. Cerridwen is whisking vanilla extract into dough, and for a moment Elain does not speak, only inhales the aroma.

Of course, Cerridwen, trained in spycraft, notices her right away.

“It’s been a long time since I saw you,” the wraith says. Though there is no judgement in her voice, Elain still feels a flush of shame on her cheeks. Nuala and Cerridwen were the first to help her find a place in Prythian, a spark of joy, when she was drowning under the weight of all she had experienced. She should have come back to see them, even if it meant incurring Rhys’ wrath.

“I’ve missed you,” Elain says, hoping Cerridwen can hear how much she means it. “You always made this court feel like home to me. I promise I’ll visit more often.”

“So it’s true you are not coming back.”

“I’m still needed in the Spring Court.”

Elain spent an hour this morning scouring her skin and hair, trying to remove every trace of Tamlin’s scent. She does not want to mention his name unnecessarily, not before she talks to Feyre.

“You look happy, Elain.”

She is tempted, for a moment, to tell Cerridwen everything that has happened, the threat that looms on the horizon. But she knows that she is only putting off her apology to Feyre.

Instead she smiles and asks about Nuala, who, Cerridwen suggests but does not exactly say, is on a spying mission for Azriel. At this point, Elain would normally ask about the latest gossip, but instead she hugs Cerridwen tightly, breathes in her friend’s scent of lemon and violet, tries to put into the gesture all she is afraid to say in words. That this swift greeting could be their last time together.

“You brought me back to life.” Elain nearly chokes on the words.

“You would have found your way back,” Cerridwen says, giving her a little squeeze, the way she used to, when Elain felt barely tethered to this existence. “I’m glad to have helped you however I could. But I expect your sisters will be waiting for you.”

Elain isn’t sure how how Feyre and Nesta knew of her arrival when she hadn’t announced her plan to anyone outside the Spring Court, or how long they’ve waited in the cozy sitting room, Nyx between them, playing with a set of wooden blocks. With all their responsibilities, this isn’t a place her sisters normally linger.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, as soon as they look up at her entrance, their gazes revealing nothing, though Elain tries not to dwell on the implications of this lack of gesture. “I shouldn’t have -- I lied about the vision and I should have told you I was struggling. And I should have told you about those meetings with Helion, and everything about my powers, and I should have told you about Tamlin without trying to shock or hurt you, because you are my sisters and you have both always been better to me than I deserve and I am trying but it seems I just hurt you no matter what I do, so I probably don’t deserve your forgiveness, but--”

Feyre cuts her off with a swooping hug, tight and soothing. Her arms an acceptance all their own, no words needed. Elain had thought she had passed the outer limits of Feyre’s deep kindness, her boundless generosity, but somehow her sister has looked past everything, and that makes Elain feel doubly ashamed amidst all her relief, that she had assumed her sister so incapable of understanding.

“You did a very thorough job of washing yourself today,” Nesta says as she comes to claim her own embrace. Elain takes a deep breath and then steps out of her sister’s arms.

She needs to make this admission standing on her own.

“I--I accepted the mating bond, but you won’t ever need to see him, either of you. He’s different now, healed, but he hurt you, Feyre, and I know that and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t--” She stops in the middle of this second outpouring of words, not because either of her sisters has intervened, but because Elain isn’t sure what she should say next. Whether she would destroy this new peace if she says what is true: I couldn’t stop myself from falling in love with him.

“If he ever even thinks of harming you, I will destroy him, mate or not.” Nesta’s arms are crossed over her chest and Elain has no doubt her older sister can carry out her threat, but it’s to Feyre she looks, trying to decipher all the emotions swirling in her younger sister’s gray-blue eyes.

“Does he try to keep you in the estate?” Feyre asks, mirroring Nesta’s pose. “Or control the way you master your powers?”

“I left him in the passageway between worlds once, before we went to Koschei’s lake. He knew I could have left him there for the rest of time and he stayed willingly.”

“And in the Spring Court?”

“He took me to the estate village. And he began to train me to fight, but I’ve barely progressed beyond the fundamentals. I don’t think I am like the two of you in that way. I’m not a warrior.”

A look passes between her sisters, a knowing smile out of the corner of their eyes, which makes Elain relieved but also jealous, that they have this silent language, which she does not understand.

“He trusts you?” Feyre asks, and reaches for Elain’s hands, squeezing them within her own. A statement below her question.

“He named me emissary and he listens to my advice. Not only about little things, like the garden, but about strategy and leading the Spring Court and how to handle the borders of his land.” She takes a breath. “I didn’t want to fall in love with him, Feyre. I thought -- well, I’m sure you can imagine what I thought. And you know I had good reason to distrust him. But then he proved me wrong, over and over. And I still thought, perhaps it was all for show, but I truly think that there is a real change in him. Even when the world tilts toward disaster. He is better, and he’s my mate, and I think that my place is with him now.”

The words hang in the air, and Elain doesn’t breathe as she watches Feyre thinking. It occurs to her that her sister, as High Lady of the Night Court, could bar her from seeing Tamlin. In spite of her friends’ jokes about everyone underestimating her, she still finds it easy, sometimes, to forget her sister’s power.

But no matter what Feyre says, Elain has come into her own powers. Feyre can’t lock her away. She can leave whenever she likes.

“He apologized to me,” Feyre says, finally, and her voice is soft, hard to hear over Nyx’s burbling, the sounds of blocks against blocks, “before we went to Koschei, and I know what he did for Rhysand at the Autumn Court. If you say he’s different, Elain, then I believe you. It’s been years since I’ve seen you look this happy. But if anything changes, there will always be room for you here.”

Now Elain is the one who hugs her sister, crying so hard that Nyx begins to wail himself, and Feyre scoops him up, murmuring reassurances.

“Nesta really will destroy Tamlin if he’s behind your tears,” Feyre said, when all the crying has settled.

“It’s Koschei,” Elain says, drawing in a shaky breath, and then she lays out her concerns, the outline of her plan.

Nesta begins to offer suggestions, and then Feyre sets Nyx down on the ground.

“We need to involve the High Lords,” she says, in her High Lady voice, so that Elain can’t groan, though Feyre has known her long enough that her sister raises an eyebrow at whatever expression has darted across her face. “If you really want peace in Prythian, a lasting peace, we cannot take this kind of action, use this kind of magic, without at least informing them.”

“Will we have Rhys’ support?” Elain asks.

“As long as he can join in the fight.” Feyre smiles. “I think he’s getting bored of politicking.”

“Oh, he’s definitely bored. He’s already started planning for that damn snowball fight,” Nesta grumbles. “Ask me how I know.”

“We should have Helion and Tamlin supporting us as well,” Elain says, not able to suppress a little laugh as she thinks of Rhys and Cassian and Azriel all staying up late for months, plotting for victory in their snowball fight. There’s no pain in her at the thought. “Especially now that Helion can openly acknowledge Lucien.”

“Do you think that Lucien will go to the Day Court?” Feyre asks, and Elain realizes that she’s been waiting for a while to ask that question, and despite her sister’s forgiveness, her regret is acid in her throat at how she’d stayed away, that they hadn’t had this conversation sooner.

“I think he’ll go to Scythia with Vassa first.”

“Such a mated male,” Nesta smirks, as if her own mate were not completely besotted.

“At least he can winnow,” Feyre says, ruffling her fingers through Nyx’s hair. “Though from what I’ve heard about Helion’s reunion with Cybele, Lucien might want to stay out of the Day Court for a few months yet.” She wrinkles her nose, and Elain and Nesta burst out laughing, even if the innuendo wasn’t especially hilarious. Simply laughing with Feyre and Elain feels wonderful.

Their talk of strategy and Prythian gossip for hours, until Cerridwen brings them hot chocolate and cake and Nyx falls asleep in Elain’s lap, warm and sweet. It’s not until the sky is dark outside the windows that she hands him over to Feyre.

“I think I’m needed at home,” she says, not sure how her sisters will accept her phrasing. She’s relieved when they only nod, their expressions unchanged. “But we’ll start on the messages to the High Lords tomorrow?”

“You don’t need to scrub yourself so much tomorrow,” Feyre says, with one parting hug.

It’s perhaps the widest that Elain has ever smiled in her time at the Night Court.

When Lucien suggested the trip to the Day Court, Vassa was hesitant. There was the matter of her training, of course, but more than that, she knew that this would be a visit of some significance, meeting Lucien’s newly reunited parents. She herself has no parents living to approve of the match, and has no idea what will impress two High Fae who have lived centuries and who, no matter what Lucien says, may have enslaved some of her own citizens in the course of their long lives.

Still, Vassa loves Lucien, and so, when their morning training session is complete, she bathes herself and dresses her hair with the help of a female from the village, hired days ago by Elain, who will not stop asking about what it’s like to live with the High Lord Tamlin and Lord Lucien, blushing furiously when she dares to say either of their names. Vassa speaks of them as if they are distant acquaintances, because half of her thinks that the girl would expire if she revealed her relationship with Lucien, and the other half worries she’d find her throat slit. Still, she arranges Vassa’s curls prettily into a loose thick braid studded with diamond- and sapphire-tipped pins. When she looks at herself in the mirror, an ancient queen stares back, no need for a crown to mark her.

She changes into a blue silk dress that matches the gemstones in her hair, the neckline low but narrow enough, she thinks, to meet Lucien’s parents, especially with the long sleeves. She adds diamond earrings that hug the curve of her ears, and one of her more demure crowns.

“I’m worried that Helion is going to claim you as his bride,” Lucien says as soon as he sees her, and then proceeds to muss her cosmetics with a thorough kiss. Vassa is sorely tempted to rip the dress off her body, especially with their bed mere steps away.

“He was just reunited with the love of his life, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t see how anybody could look at you and not want you by their side.”

Lucien has changed from his training clothes too, into a blue velvet jacket like the shadow of her dress, cut close to emphasize the way his broad shoulders taper to his narrow waist. The shirt beneath is white and open at the collar, exposing the golden skin of his throat. And his pants are perfectly fitted, his boots shining, his hair soft and carefully brushed. She’d braided a plait near his ear during a break in the morning’s training and he left it, neatened slightly, and her heart warms, seeing the way he’s left this evidence of her on his body. That he would treasure even this momentary evidence of their laughter.

“They’d have to rip me from the most beautiful male in Prythian,” she says, swallowing back her desire. He’s promised the visit will be short.

“Careful not to let Rhysand hear you say that.” He unleashes the most glorious smirk, and then he reaches for Vassa and takes her into the roaring darkness.

Seconds later, they appear in a small library, with delicacies arranged on the tables, but the library is empty.

“Are you sure you got the time right?”

“They’ll be here any minute,” Lucien promises, a new strain in his voice. She squeezes his hand. “If they don’t arrive, we can--”

The door to the library opens behind them, and the High Lord of the Day Court and the former Lady of Autumn enter from the bedroom, Helion’s draped garment a little askew and wisps of hair escaping Cybele’s intricate chignon. There’s no mistaking the expressions on their faces, the warm satisfaction underlined by his arm wrapped around her waist.

She can practically hear Lucien rolling his eyes next to her and has to bite back a wide grin.

“You’re late,” Lucien says.

“I’ve heard it’s always wise to give newly bonded mates a few moments before entering a room,” Helion retorts, guiding Cybele to the center of the room, where their visitors stand.

“We just left a bedroom,” Vassa offers dryly, the kind of remark she would make to her generals when she first started out, wanting to demonstrate that she was not a squeamish young thing.

She had expected Helion to enjoy the remark most, but it’s Cybele whose eyes brighten, an expression she’s seen on Lucien’s face before.

��My son is lucky to have found you,” she says, clasping Vassa’s hand.

“Vassa reminds me frequently,” Lucien grumbles, but he can’t help but smile at his mother.

Vassa doesn’t miss the longing look that passes quickly over Helion’s features. For all Elain has told her about the difference in his private persona, she’s still surprised at the difference from their encounters at formal meetings. She could imagine this male as Lucien’s father.

The conversation between the two is halting, though, but luckily Vassa and Cybele are quickly able to find topics of conversation. They do not speak of Koschei or of politics, the treaty or the future of their lands. Instead Cybele speaks of Lucien’s childhood mishaps, and Vassa tactfully boasts about him, each lapping up the other’s stories in spite of Lucien’s protests.

Eventually, even Helion asks for more details, his arm around Cybele’s waist as she recounts the time Lucien unraveled a complex spell at some endless Autumn Court dinner, in between bites of a pumpkin pastry.

Lucien has told Vassa, in pained fragments, how his mother was abused by her husband, the High Lord of Autumn, and she’s heard the stories of how Cybele was found during the battle at the Autumn Court keep, imprisoned by her own sons. To watch her now, animated and laughing as she recounts the better moments of her past life, Vassa has a sense that the female is forcing the slate clean. Much like she herself is doing, with her hours of training and the hours in bed, living only in the present with Lucien. Not thinking about the past or even too far into the future. She cannot always live like this, she knows, but for a few weeks, it’s a lovely respite.

“Will you break the curse on Eris?”

The laughter in the room evaporates at Cybele’s question, and Vassa realizes, too late, that this is what she’d been building to with those little stories. Vassa has been trained to recognize these traps, and yet she was lulled into the camaraderie, thinking she was lucky that Lucien’s mother had liked her right away.

“I wasn’t the one who broke Vassa’s curse, Mother,” Lucien says, his voice too calm.

“But you could--”

“As I understand it, great magic was involved,” Vassa offers. “I think it is only a matter of time, and with Koschei--”

“We need to destroy him before he comes for Vassa and Elain.” Lucien’s eyes are blazing. “There is reason to believe that he will tear apart this world in search of them.”

“Koschei is still bound to his lake, correct?” Helion’s voice is light but he instantly controls the conversation. “How will he reach them? You are going to say through magic, in which case, shouldn’t you unbind Eris as a simple precaution? What choice would he have but to turn on you, if Koschei claims him?”

Vassa thinks of Eris telling her to run on her last day at the lake. He could have saved himself alone but he slowed the pace of his sprint to accommodate her, her human strength and her sodden skirts.

She presses her fingers against the back of Lucien’s hand, the slightest contact, silently willing him not to say anything else. That they still have work to do before they can return to Scythia and lock themselves in her most ample bedroom. That her vengeance is nearly at hand.

“We’ll make sure to tell the Archeron sisters,” Lucien says, rising from the couch. “They’ll be glad to hear that their powers are in such demand.”

“You don’t have to leave already?” his mother asks, the question too plaintive, and in spite of the awkwardness only moments ago, Vassa does not rise.

“We’re sharing a home with another newly bonded pair of mates,” she says, making a silent apology to Elain, “I’m sure they’d enjoy the extra time alone. And I’d like to hear more stories about little Lucien.”

She doesn’t miss Helion’s smile, or the way he pulls Cybele a little closer against him as she tells them a story about Lucien’s determination to make cookies with his own power, because he wanted the outside to be perfectly crisp and the inside to be dough. She recounts each of his failures, and when Lucien adds in the experience of his burning fingers and the sweet talk required to get the Autumn Court cook to give him more chocolate, Vassa feels her throat go tight. That even in the midst of an awful home, he had these moments of joy.

Much later, when they finally leave the Day Court, Lucien grumbles in her ear, “If I end up with a baby brother in ten months…”

“What if it’s a sister?” Vassa can’t hide her grin.

For a moment, he just stares at her, as if the possibility had never occurred to him. Though, she supposes, he did grow up with six brothers.

“It would be a relief,” he says, finally, “not to be a High Lord’s heir. Not to have that target on my back.”

“I can imagine you ruling the Day Court. You would be good at it.”

“While you are queen of Scythia?”

“I still don’t know if they’ll accept me.”

“You showed me Leda’s letter.” He kisses her temple and she shivers at the contact.

“When you’ll meet Leda, you’ll understand why I don’t share her confidence. My throne is far from certain.”

“And I am the bastard son of the High Lord of the Day Court.” But instead of the frown she’d anticipated on his face, he smiles at her before he runs his fingers down the neckline of her gown. She fumbles for the buttons of his jacket, her desire flaring already. In all her life, she’s never felt this kind of hunger. “Now we make our own future, Vassa.”

“First we destroy Koschei,” she whispers against his lips.

He steps away and she moans at the absence of him, the cool air against all the places he touched seconds ago.

“We don’t speak his name until tomorrow,” he says, and pulls her towards him so that she nods against his shoulder.

Perhaps their futures will be short. She only lets herself think it for a minute before she surrenders to Lucien’s clever fingers, undoing the buttons of her gown.

The world, so far, has not yet ended.

Tamlin hadn’t noticed the darkness until the first faerie, bearing a lamp, came to collect their child and the wooden practice sword that little Kaelie had refused to part with. He’d ended the impromptu lesson shortly afterwards, but still the children of the village had lingered around him, asking questions about battle and weapons and when they will be allowed to wield real swords.

The session had begun in the morning, when he’d decided to visit the village after Elain left for the Night Court. He’d been there the day before, so there was no urgency. He simply wanted to check in on Ilya and also Marlena, an old dryad who was feeling poorly even under the auspices of the local healer.

As he’d walked between the houses, Kaelie had found him, asking about the battle at the Autumn Court, if it was true he’d saved two High Lords and survived the magic of a death-god.

“You could do it too, if you started training,” he’d said, squatting down to meet her wide eyes, a deep brown that makes him think of Elain even though her eyes are lighter, more golden. Kaelie’s long blonde hair is tangled at the ends, no doubt from days spent outdoors, and her skirts are grass-stained, muddy at the hems.

“Will you teach me?” she’d asked, her chubby fingers clasped together in earnest.

Tamlin would like to think he would’ve started her lesson even if he were not alight with the possibility of his own children, that future that Elain had unfurled before them. But as he starts his lesson, and other children gather around Kaelie, copying his stances and his breathing and the mechanics of a punch, he can’t help imagining what it could be, to teach his own child all he’s learned.

He realizes, too, that he hopes that all these lessons are for nothing more than exercise. That there will be peace in these lands, once they kill Koschei. That his armor will rust and he’ll finally master the art of diplomacy over trivial requests between Spring and the other courts.

The children begged to “learn swords,” and so Tamlin had dismissed them for lunch while he’d gone to his estate for the wooden practice swords.

Just as Elain was months ago, they are awkward with the weapons, surprised by the heft required to wield them. But he’d taught them, bit by bit, until they can follow the barest essentials without dropping the swords or giggling at their mistakes.

He’d told them within the first hour that a warrior does not laugh when he is focused, and a girl named Nyra had retorted that she might actually be very focused while laughing.

He’d mentioned the Valkyries, old and new, how they saved their laughter for celebrations after their victories, and Nyra was rapt for the rest of the day.

When Elain appears, Nyra is in the middle of her third question about the Valkyries, and Tamlin is trying to think how he will tell her that he does not know the answer to her query, that he was a young soldier in the war-bands when the Valkyries were in their prime.

Elain kneels next to him, and smoothly tells the girl about her sister, Nesta, and her training. She hasn’t answered the question but Nyra is delighted all the same.

“I’m sure my sister would be happy to hear that the Spring Court will be defended by such a fierce warrior,” Elain says with a smile, then rises to guide Nyra to her waiting father, who still walks with a heavy limp after the war with Hybern.

“How was your visit to the Night Court?” he asks her, wrapping his arms around her and inhaling her scent, the roses and peonies which are sweeter against her skin than any garden in his lands.

“We have a plan to end Koschei,” she says.

Only when the fabric of his shirt clings to his chest does he realize that Elain has begun to weep in his arms. The tears are silent and she has fought the sobs into total stillness.

“If he puts the Crown on me, and I cannot remove it,” she says, finally, her face bright even in the moonlight, gilded with her tears, “you have to promise that you will kill me.”

Tamlin only pulls her closer against him. For a moment, he cannot speak.

There are stories that mates cannot harm each other, and maybe they are true. Perhaps he will fail to do this thing that now seems so unbearable, to wipe Elain out of existence.

But her agony is so total, her fear thick in the air, and Tamlin knows that she will die every moment that she’s under Koschei’s command, that she cannot be the one who makes it possible for him to destroy this world, to place his claim on all the realms beyond. That such an existence would be worse by far, for Elain, than a swift death by his own sword.

“I swear to you that I will not allow you to live as Koschei’s puppet,” he says, kissing the crown of her head, willing her every comfort and assurance.

There is, of course, another vow that he makes to her in silence: that he will die before the death-lord can cause her a moment of pain.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (28/28) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: It's the final chapter! All of my final notes appear at the end, so click through to read. You can find all previous chapters here, or read Bloom & Bone on AO3. Thank you for reading! ❤️

&&&

Of course, following Koschei’s death, there are endless meetings to determine the contours of the new era in Prythian, the new peace, and by the third one, Lucien has found himself staking out the seat next to Elain. After a few weeks of recuperation in her bed, she insisted on joining the High Lords and their advisors in these meetings. Still, the aftermath of the battle against Koschei and her pregnancy have left her easily tired, and when she falls asleep during the long afternoon sessions, neither Tamlin nor Vassa are cruel enough to wake her.

Lucien, who knows she stays up late preparing for these meetings in spite of Tamlin’s hovering, faithfully nudges her with his shoulder until she starts awake, offers her a piece of fruit under the table. He’s started taking particularly meticulous notes so that Elain can study them after her unplanned nap and still join in the discussion.

When, in the latest meeting, her plan for guarded waystations between the human and faerie realms is approved by a majority of the courts, Lucien scrawls well done, emissary on the parchment between them. She doesn’t notice for half an hour, caught up in the moment, but he watches her read the words, feels her squeezing his fingers.

Thank you, Prince of Scythia, she writes in her dainty calligraphy, I learned from the best.

He tears off that corner of his parchment. He’ll frame and hang it in one of Vassa’s palaces, he decides, just as the Queen of Scythia makes another appeal for better negotiations with the human realms, supported by Jurian and Tarquin, an unexpected boon, while Rhys and Tamlin nod along. Little by little, argument by argument, their peace is taking shape.

When the discussion is paused for the day, and everyone begins to leave for dinner, Helion approaches Lucien’s seat. At these meetings, he is usually imperious, but now his eyes are downcast. As if the High Lord of Day is nervous.

“May I speak to you a moment?” he asks, and Lucien watches Vassa’s eyes go wide, the smile she barely conceals.

Lucien nods, allows Helion to lead him to a balcony that overlooks the Summer Court coast, the sea lit fuschia and orange by the setting sun.

“It is not right that you don’t have a home,” Helion says after a moment, his fingers gripping tightly to the railing.

“I will join Vassa in Scythia,” Lucien replies, wondering if there was a way Helion had not heard. It has been a month since they killed Koschei, and he’s spent every day not in meetings winnowing Vassa’s generals and advisors to the Spring Court, where they prepare for her arrival, the most advantageous position. Though she insists that her reception is uncertain, none of her counselors have resigned or even offered real worry. Lucien thinks that with one glimpse of her, strong and confident, brilliant and beautiful, nobody could reasonably care about whether she was human or fae. They’d only want her to lead them.

“I know you have found love,” Helion says, interrupting his thoughts, the image of Vassa, “and for that I am glad. But you could be the heir to the Day Court, if you wanted.”

“I am a bastard, in case you’ve forgotten.” He tries to make the words into a courtly joke, but they grate in his throat. The truth he’s always had to live with, how unwanted he’s always been.

“I should have fought to claim you. I will always regret not carrying you away. When Cybele speaks of your childhood, I imagine what you would’ve been like in my libraries. Growing up in my court. I cannot say I would have been a model father, but I would have tried to make you safe, to give you a certain place in the world. And though it is perhaps too late, I would like to give this to you, at least.”

“It might be too late,” Lucien says, even as Helion’s face falls, his eyes go distant with regret. He takes a breath, inhaling the salt air. He thinks of all those nights in Helion’s library, when the High Lord never betrayed frustration or exhaustion despite the late hour, the intricate models that Lucien produced of Koschei’s curse, the demanding conversation. He had thought that Helion was distracted by the puzzle and then by the presence of Elain, the promise of new worlds, but then he always looked away under the weight of Helion’s gaze, not wanting to read whatever glinted in the eyes of the male who sired him.

“I am sorry.”

Helion’s voice is low but the words reverberate in his chest.

Lucien nods his head, lets the moment pass in silence.

“Anyway,” he drawls, running his hand through his hair, “you and my mother might decide you want to have a proper heir.” I would understand, he thinks but does not say, not sure how many of his secrets he will show to Helion.

There’s a warm weight on his hand, and it takes Lucien too long to realize it’s Helion’s palm.

“Even if we had a thousand children, I would want you for my heir.”

Lucien looks to the sea until he’s sure his tears will not fall, but even as the sun dips below the horizon, Helion does not leave him, does not move his hand from Lucien’s.

Tamlin has known for weeks that Lucien and Vassa planned to leave for Scythia as soon as the peace meetings in Prythian ended, and still, waking on the morning of their departure, he can’t quite convince himself that this will be their last breakfast together. He moves through his morning rituals, his exercises and ablutions and dressing, the donning of his weapons, in a haze that’s only punctuated when Elain rises, and he tries to determine how bad her nausea will be today, what he can do to help her. Today, at least, the contents of her stomach stay inside her, but she clings to him, breathing in his scent.

“I’m going to miss them so much,” she says, and he can tell she’s trying not to cry.

“I will too,” he says, running his hand over her back, her skin warm below the thin fabric of her nightgown. “Lucien says he will winnow us there next week, and then you can visit all you’d like.”

Her magic has been returning, a slow tide, and the first time Elain tried using it, moving from the bedroom to the garden, Tamlin had been terrified until he’d seen her waving from the window.

He had tried to ban her from going to other worlds, but she’d stood firm, gentle and stubborn as only Elain can be, until he’d relented, though she’d agreed to take someone with her on her visits to places unknown, where she could not fully ascertain the danger or speak the language. She’d accused him of wanting more of those cinnamon pastries that Cook is still vainly attempting to replicate. He had only smiled.

Although he is frequently exhausted, more afraid than he thought he’d be in any peacetime, Tamlin has never been so thoroughly contented. Elain is happy and healthy, thriving in her role as emissary, sweeter and funnier and smarter than he would have ever imagined his mate to be. Their baby grows inside her, undaunted, adding the slightest roundness to her belly.

After so many years convinced he’d spend his life alone, Tamlin has ended up inside a family.

Which is, perhaps, why his vision blurs as he walks with Elain from their bedroom to the formal dining room, which she’d insisted upon for such a momentous occasion, even if the food was their normal breakfast and she herself was in a simple day dress with a grass-stained hem, in preparation for a rare day in the garden.

“I was wondering if you’d sleep through our departure,” Lucien says as soon as they enter, rising with a little bow to Elain.

“You seem to forget I’m sleeping for two,” she shoots back, sticking out her tongue.

Vassa, grinning, rolls her eyes and pours herself coffee to the brim of her cup.

“You have no reason to be nervous, Majesty,” Tamlin says, approaching her before he takes his seat. “If my own people could forgive me--”

“You were never turned into the stuff of monsters,” she says, her tone a little mocking, but Tamlin does not bristle, especially not when she is right.

“No, I made myself a monster without anyone’s intervention. And I was not half the ruler you are. But if for any reason you need an ally in Prythian, know that we will always come to your aid.”

She clasps his hand, and then she drawls, “I would be more grateful for the offer if I did not know Elain would insist upon it.”

“I never said I wasn’t lucky,” Tamlin responds, his words punctuated by Elain’s laughter to a remark Lucien has made, and their meal is merrier than anticipated, until finally Vassa and Lucien rise to say their goodbyes.

Within seconds, Elain pulls Vassa into an embrace, and as soon as he realizes they are both weeping, Tamlin turns to Lucien.

“Will you be all right in the human realms?”

“You know, I used to think that humans were incredibly boring, preoccupied with the short length of their lives. But now I wonder if they make more drama and intrigue than any of us to make the most of those few years. I think they’ll keep me well occupied.”

“I will miss you, you know,” Tamlin says, clasping Lucien’s shoulder, drawing him close for just a moment. The way he’d always imagined he’d embrace a brother on the eve of his departure for a grand adventure.

“You gave me a home when I needed one.” Lucien looks at him in that way of his, as if he can see everything visible and invisible, straight through to Tamlin’s soul.

“And you were my first hope of a family.”

Lucien’s russet eye is bright, and Tamlin’s own eyes fill with tears, and then they both laugh at their emotion. They were both taught to conceal these feelings, to think only of the throne room or the field of battle.

“I’ll be back in a week,” Lucien says. “And again for your mating ceremony. I hear you are inviting most of Prythian.”

“Elain wanted to show off the garden.” Tamlin shrugs and Lucien raises an eyebrow, seeing through his attempt at deflection. He has invited all of his citizens, regardless of their rank or position, adding to Elain’s list, which had already spanned all of their friends and acquaintances, mutual or otherwise, the citizens of the villages near the estate, and delegations from every court.

“It’s a wise move, politically speaking,” Lucien says, looking over to where Vassa and Elain are whispering their parting words, their cheeks streaked by tears, their fingers clasped. These two females who could, between them, destroy this world and remake it better.

When Lucien embraces him, one last farewell as he leaves the place where he and Tamlin spent so many years together, sometimes miserable and sometimes much less so, Tamlin does not resist his friend. He holds him close, with all his strength, wishes him happiness and peace, and he can tell from the grip of Lucien’s arms that his friend means him well.

After all their parting words have been spoken, and Lucien and Vassa have assured them that they know they can always return, and will in fact see them before much time has passed, they winnow away, leaving Tamlin and Elain standing in the great hall, alone.

They’d each made plans to work: him on changes to Calanmai, her in the garden for the first time in months, after all her preparation and strategizing for the peace talks, the plans and battles before. But he finds that now he does not want to leave her side.

“There’s something I’d like to show you in our bedroom,” he says, whispering the words against the velvet skin of her neck, savoring her little shiver, the slightest moan that escapes her lips. For all their time spent together, in their bed and out of it, making love in nearly every room of the estate, he finds he only wants her more.

When he pulls away to hear her response, he finds Elain’s eyes are bright, but not with the tears she shed before Vassa and Lucien departed. She looks as if she is about to reveal a particularly cunning plan.

“I think we’re needed in the garden first,” she says, her hand in his, already leading him outside.

Grinning, he follows her into the brightness of the day.

Vassa had agreed when her advisors suggested a royal parade into Kamianka, her capital, spending three days showing herself, strong and beautifully arrayed, to her people. As if she had been here all along, instead of trapped in Prythian, betrayed by her fellow queens, bound by a curse, transformed into a firebird by a sorcerer.

The queens have fled and the sorcerer’s ashes lie mouldering in some remote world, and when Vassa raises her hand to wave at the throngs of citizens who await her triumphal entry, she cannot help a grin that is, strictly speaking, a bit too wide to be regal. Even if her heart thumps in her chest, anxious at what awaits her, whether her people will reject her once they learn what she’s become.

At least she has dressed herself perfectly for this moment, consulting with her advisors and Elain. In the morning, her maid anointed her skin with oil, so that, at her neckline and wrists, her skin glows golden. Her hair, the mass of red curls, has been brushed, braids and gemstones scattered through its mass, highlighting her youth and beauty, the grace that’s only become more apparent in her fae body. Her gown is the same blue as her eyes, embroidered with diamonds and sapphires, which cluster on her shoulders and the plunging neckline like a mantle. The ingeniously split skirts, an invention of her foremothers, allow her to ride astride without showing a hint of her leg, and the weight of the fabric and jewels and petticoats feels like armor. On her head rests her most glorious crown, that halo of diamond and sapphire which gives her the air of a sovereign risen from legend.

She looks into the face of each person along her route, and is glad and grateful for what she finds there: joy and admiration, and something that she thinks resembles affection.

“You thought they wouldn’t love you,” Lucien murmurs from his own mount, a pace behind her own.

“They haven’t realized what I am,” she says. Her hairstyle purposefully covers her ears, allowing her to reveal herself at the most advantageous moment.

Although it is unwise, she still reaches over and clasps her hand in his. Even though she braced for it, the quiet that follows the gesture is a blow.

Still, the cheers grow in volume and ardor as they reach her palace in the center of the city, the spires plated with gold even more shining than she remembered, a sovereign crown that rises above her capital.

With one last wave, she enters her palace. She will address her citizens from the balcony, but first Vassa takes in her first view of this palace in years. When she was last here, a new queen, she wondered if she was unworthy of all the splendor, this ancient palace with its priceless artwork and lush fragrance. No detail is lacking: the tiles below her feet have been carefully laid to depict the natural wonders of her country, are carefully restored by skilled artisans every few years to repair the damage from so many powerful feet.

Vassa breathes in the scent of her home, the seat of her power, and, as she savors the fragrant resins, the scent of fruits that cannot grow outside these borders, she realizes that she still feels unworthy. But now she is not afraid of this feeling.

Instead, she takes Lucien’s hand in her own and ascends the marble staircase, a pure white she has never seen outside her country, which so many eyes in Scythia will never glimpse. It may, in fact, be her last chance to climb these stairs as sovereign, and so she ascends slowly, taking the time to savor every detail that surrounds her.

At last, she reaches the balcony.

Before her advisors can speak, Lucien pulls on her hand, leads her to a little alcove where the two of them can talk without being easily overheard.

“Remember that you are more than a queen,” he says, pressing a kiss into her palm.

“I am lucky,” she replies, summoning a smile, hoping she hears everything that underlies that statement. Her joy that he is in this world with her, that after all they’ve endured, they are still standing side by side.

Then she steadies herself, summons all her training, and goes out to address her people.

The street is full of upturned golden faces, all smiling and shouting for joy, and for a moment Vassa simply soaks in the scene. She is home at last, and her people have come to welcome her.

Her advisors form a line behind her, Lucien among them, and she reaches for him, so that he stands before her people. At first his head dips a little under the weight of their regard, their quiet, but then he gives a little wave, and there are cheers, and then she sees the smile on his lips, the straightening of his spine.

She signals the fanfare of the trumpets that announces her speech, and when the crowd goes silent, she begins.

“It is good to be home,” she says, unable to contain her wide smile, the joy and relief in her voice. “For years, I was held against my will by the other queens of this continent, who sold me to a death-lord out of fear over what this country could become under my rule. I used to think that there was something great in me that made them fear me in this way, but now I understand it was this: they saw that I would give anything, do anything, to improve your lives. They saw my will and my training and understood that their own hard hearts would be revealed in your own happiness and prosperity.

For every day of my captivity, and then my exile, I longed to return to you. I missed everything about Scythia, the country and you, my beloved people. Your warmth and kindness and your bravery.”

She pauses for a moment to applaud them, is gratified when they join in, not sure if they’re congratulating her or themselves, and already well beyond caring. For so long, she never thought she’d stand before her people like this, and now, at last, the moment has arrived.

“But, perhaps like you yourself have found in times of hardship,” she says, when they’ve quieted, “I found beauty even in the midst of my curse. Through the eyes of the firebird, I saw a world transformed. By night, in a strange land, I found that the fae of Prythian, the monsters I’d long feared, were in fact as complicated as Scythians. They protected me, advised me, and befriended me when I had no power and no kingdom, when I wasted away under the death-lord’s curse.”

She clasps Lucien’s hand tightly in her own, as strong a mark of affection as a sovereign can show in public, and she hears the whispers begin below her.

“I fell in love,” she declares, raising her chin, daring them to reject this most beautiful truth, then readies herself to reveal another as she pushes her hair back, revealing her delicately pointed ears, accented with diamonds so that nobody, even in such a crowd, can misunderstand. “To escape my curse, to avoid certain death, I was transformed completely. I am no longer human, the way all my foremothers, the queens of Scythia, have been.”

She takes a deep breath, hears it echo in the weighty silence. Although she has not spoken all these words to her advisors, has argued over them with Lucien, she feels they are engraved on her heart, impossible to forget.

“I was reborn with certain powers. Alongside my friends in Prythian, I destroyed the death-lord before he could terrorize this world and so many others. I have made a hundred plans for how to wield these powers to make your lives easier, in addition to my radical ambitions for our country.

But first, I would like you to choose what your destiny will be. I know you’ve always regarded the Fae as monsters, villains who terrorized you with their magic. I stand before you as one of them, powerful and long-lived and only nominally your queen. And I will not let this great country, most beautiful in this world, fall to ruin because I insisted on maintaining my position.

If you will have me as your queen, I will rule over Scythia for sixty years, the time I would have ruled if I had remained a human queen blessed with a long life. If I bear children in that time, they will not inherit the rule of this kingdom. Instead, your next ruler will be chosen by all of you. I do not think that ruling must be the business only of one family and their descendants. I believe that among you are leaders who will make even our most glorious queens look uninspired.

If you will accept it, I will spend my years as your queen making you prosperous and happy, building a lasting peace, and I will work to ensure that the transition from my rule to your next ruler, this new government of your own making, will be only the beginning of centuries of your flourishing.”

She can feel Lucien’s eyes on her. She had told him that she would offer her people the choice, but had never mentioned the limit on her rule. As much as Vassa knows he would sacrifice his life in Prythian for her, she cannot simply accept. Not when she sees how Helion regards him, as if to offer Lucien the world entire. Not when she believes that he deserves it.

Before he can say anything, object to the bargain she’s made with the crowd, she raises her voice to address her people.

“I ask you, my beloved Scythians, will you accept the rule of a faerie queen?”

She had expected silence, hesitation.

Instead, the crowd explodes in cries of yes, yes, yes.

She bows to them, just this one time, in thanks and love, and then she blows a kiss, and their cheers grow louder.

“You never had to sacrifice this,” Lucien whispers in his ear. “I never wanted you to give up your country for me.”

“You’ll benefit from the advice of a queen when you’re High Lord of the Day Court,” she says, unable to contain her smile, her joy. “I am doing what is best for the country. What will be best for us, I think. And I hope that Helion lives another thousand years. Because I would like to have a chance to enjoy this peace we’re building, my love.”

“I hope my father never dies,” he says, desire edging his voice as he pulls her into a deep kiss, making her people whoop with glee, to see their queen so happy.

For all the years Vassa spent imagining this moment, the reality so far exceeds her dreams.

Elain had thought that life at the Spring Court without Vassa and Lucien would be lonely, but the three months she spends planning her mating ceremony pass in a heady blur. After the first month, the exhaustion from her pregnancy and the battle with Koschei finally fades, and she has seemingly bottomless energy for all the minutiae of the party, in addition to her duties as emissary, which she does not allow Tamlin to curtail. There are weekly visits with Vassa and Lucien, who show Elain and Tamlin their palaces with pride and reverence, and speak of their reforms and dreams for the country with increasing enthusiasm. They debate long into the night about the best way to rule, how to translate vision into action, how to strengthen diplomatic ties. Sometimes these supposedly elevated topics remind her of ballroom gossip more than anything, and sometimes Elain leaves those conversations with a parchment full of books and treatises to read and think over.

A month before her mating ceremony, she joins her sisters in the Autumn Court to remove the remnants of Eris’ curse. Tamlin comes with her, not trusting that Eris is reformed, and though she would not admit it, Elain is glad for his presence. She never wants to linger in the Autumn Court, with its lack of sun and the scent of Koschei’s power still lingering.

In the end, though, she removes the curse with a simple press of her hand to Eris’ shoulder, with no need for the aid of her sisters’ magic. Koschei’s death has unbound the spell just enough that it is easy to send that small vestige of his magic into the world she made, where it will dwell amongst the lightning and the darkness.

Still, when she finishes, Eris beholds her as if she was made new.

“You’re sure you’d prefer to say in Spring?” he says, an offer in his eyes. As if he does not see her growing belly, which has just begun to require alterations to her dresses. As if he does not understand the life she’s built for herself.

Perhaps in a hundred years he will realize what she’s capable of. In the meantime, she has work to do.

“It’s only that I’ve worked so hard on the gardens,” she answers Eris, all sweetness as she takes Tamlin’s hand.

They stay for an interminable dinner with Eris and his nobles, made brighter by Nesta’s sparring with the new High Lord of Autumn, by the looks from Feyre which are half exasperated and half amused, and as the courses drag on, Elain rests her hand in Tamlin’s lap, a clear suggestion.

“This is emissary business, I believe,” he says gently, though he lets her hear the desire in his voice. As if he, too, is counting the minutes until they can escape, and has charted a path straight to their bed.

She heaves a sigh because he’s right, and the making of peace will not always be pleasant. In the end, she speaks with a few of Eris’ advisors regarding the coast of the Autumn Court, their treaties with the fae on the continent, how they are rebuilding from Koschei. Just as she’s slipping into the rhythm of the conversation, they look surprised at what she knows already, the suggestions she makes. She forces another sweet smile on her lips, thinks that she’s glad Lucien found a way to leave this court behind.

Later, she hears Tamlin speaking to the same group of his brilliant emissary, how she saved their world and has been so essential in Spring Court diplomacy. She has to hide her smile behind her hand, but she doesn’t bother to mask the scent of her arousal.

When they finally reach the Spring Court, she barely lets him reach their bedroom before she begins removing his clothing, his hidden daggers.

“That could have been you,” she says, into the heated skin of his chest. His fingers trace over her spine and she arches into the touch. “Whenever I see Eris I think, thank the Mother that Tamlin turned out different.”

“It’s only that I’m lucky,” he tells her, the words coming from deep in his chest as he works the last buttons of her gown. “And I had particularly excellent advisors.”

“Now you’re stuck with them.” She smiles at him because she can’t help it. The relief she feels at being home, her joy at being with him, all make laughter bubble up inside her, lighter than air.

He rests his hand on her belly and looses his own bright smile, as if to say that he is glad that this is how they’ve ended up. Then he pulls her dress to the floor and Elain’s thoughts are replaced by sensation, delight.

Late that night, she feels the child move for the first time, light as a butterfly fluttering inside her. She presses Tamlin’s fingers to the spot, and they stay awake for hours, caught up in their excitement.

And so, when the morning of Elain’s mating ceremony finally dawns, she finds that the day does not hold all of the emotion she’d long anticipated. She and Tamlin will speak their vows to each other, promises they make and keep each day, and they will celebrate with roughly half of Prythian, and Cook has humored her enough on the menu that she has begun to dream about that meal. But still, Elain realizes, stretching lazily in bed, her fingertips brushing against Tamlin’s back, that this will only be one lovely day among the thousands that await her in her life.

There will be difficult days also, she knows, days where the hard work barely seems worthwhile. Days when this peace might be threatened, or the citizens of the Spring Court might become unhappy with Tamlin’s rule. Days when she will be unhappy even with this life she’s built.

But she knows now that she is strong, that her life is her own, and on the morning of her mating ceremony, Elain Archeron is not afraid of what lies before her.

Vassa provides her with a large mug of coffee and supervises Melis’ attentions to her hair, glaring at the little pink fairy whenever her fingers pause, until Elain has to assure Melis that everything is well and offer her strawberries and cream from the tray that Cook has sent up personally, in order to welcome Vassa back to the Spring Court.

Her sisters arrive during this interlude, Nyx racing through the room to hug Elain, to play with her hair until Melis gently pulls it away. She had a vision a week before of Feyre with a baby daughter, and in fact her younger sister looks a little green, but Elain only pulls her and then Nesta close in greeting.

Lately, all the visions she’s seen do not require her intervention, and anyway they are not certain, and so Elain has found it best to move through each day on its own.

“You look so happy,” Feyre says, her tattooed fingers squeezing Elain’s shoulder.

“But it’s not too late to run, if you want to,” Nesta says, aiming a meaningful look at Feyre, who rolls her eyes. “We will take you to any corner of this world you like. I hear the Summer Court is particularly nice this time of year.”

“This is where I want to be,” Elain says. “But I’m glad to know you will always rescue me.”

Her sisters, heroes of legend, beam at her, and Elain summons a maid for more strawberries while the conversation turns into Night Court gossip and the latest developments in Scythia.

“You’re quiet,” Feyre says to her after their hair is arranged and their cosmetics are applied, and the only thing left is to slip Elain into her dress.

“She’s strategizing,” Vassa responds, resting her head on Elain’s shoulder for just a moment. “Elain will be at your home tomorrow with recommendations on how to resolve any tension between your court and your people. I speak from experience. Though I hope she’ll take a vacation. And then help me plan my own wedding.”

In truth, Elain has already started work on Vassa and Lucien’s wedding -- their mating ceremony will be private, to avoid a political scandal -- in the midst of the Scythian mountains, a place of such wild, raw beauty that she cried when she first visited.

For now, though, it is her turn, and Vassa applies her favorite perfume, fastens a delicate necklace of pearls and diamonds that dips between her breasts, matching earrings that dangle amidst the curls of her hair. Her dress, embroidered by Melis with all the flowers of her garden, so vibrant and detailed that they look like living blooms, is slipped over her body, a second skin.

When they make their way to the gardens, where Tamlin and their guests await her, Elain takes a moment to watch as her sisters and her dearest friend walk before her, smiling brightly. The child gives a kick in her belly, alive and ready.

Finally, the music begins and Elain walks forward to Tamlin, his eyes bright as new leaves and his smile that makes her burst out into the widest grin. The wildness has not left him, that coiled strength, but he looks at ease as he stands in his finery before the crowd assembled before them, to witness this official beginning of their lives together.

In her mind there are a thousand visions, a series of hopes for the future. But now there is only the present, perfect moment.

Elain steps forward without hesitation, into the rest of her life.

A/N 2: It's hard for me to believe that this is the end of Bloom & Bone. I vividly remember the night in March when I started writing this, how the first 500 words just poured out of me. I hadn't written fanfiction in nearly a decade, but after reading ACOSF, I couldn't silence this idea inside my mind, a story about Elain's coming into her own, finding unexpected love along the way. At first I thought this was going to be a quick diversion from working on original fiction, but the idea kept growing, and I ended up with a ten-page outline (most of which I had to rewrite!) and four characters whose stories I couldn't wait to explore. This is some of the best writing I've ever done, and I've never had so much fun creating anything.

One of my favorite things about writing fanfiction is getting to be part of the community of readers and writers, and getting to know all of you has been such a joy. Every message you send me, every line or scene you've enjoyed, I've really cherished them. And getting to know you and hear from you has been the best. Thank you for your support, kindness, and friendship.

Finally, I'll be doing an AMA on my Instagram this weekend, so please follow @house.of.hurricane if you want to know what happens to these characters after the final chapter, what was on my original outline, what any of the gowns in Bloom & Bone were based on... and what fics are coming next. I'll put up an ask box around 10 AM EST on Saturday, 11/13, and will save everything in a highlight. Thank you so much for reading 🧡

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (26/28) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: Would it be the final battle if there weren't a few surprises? You can find all previous chapters here, or read Bloom & Bone on AO3. Thank you for reading! ❤️ If you'd like to get a sneak peek of the next chapter, follow me on Instagram at @house.of.hurricane.

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From the moment she wakes, Vassa only focuses on what is right in front of her. There is Lucien’s mouth to kiss, a tunic and pants she’s borrowed from him to wear, plaits to braid and pin close to her head, so that no one can take hold of her hair. There are boots to pull over her calves, and coffee to drink, and now dawn is breaking and she hears the members of the Night Court as they appear in the great hall.

“We should go meet them before Nesta burns the whole estate down,” Lucien says, tying his own hair back with a strip of leather.

“Still so afraid of her,” Vassa teases, letting herself pretend, just one moment longer, that this is an ordinary day, that she will not come face to face with Koschei, that she might not survive the encounter. She slips her hand in Lucien’s while he explains that he’s never quite trusted the official story, that Nesta no longer has most of her powers, that if anyone could wrestle them back out of sheer force of will, it would be the eldest Archeron sister.

In the great hall, the members of the Night Court have chosen to wear Illyrian leathers, and Vassa wishes she’d asked to borrow a pair, if only for the way Feyre and Nesta look transformed into some powerful fusion of dragon and High Fae.

At least her clothes still smell like Lucien, she thinks, giving his hand a little squeeze.

“How are you adapting to life as High Fae?” Rhysand asks her, nodding toward Lucien.

“It’s better than spending my days as a cursed firebird,” she says. “Thanks to Feyre and Nesta.”

“I helped,” Lucien points out.

“You’re forgetting Elain,” Tamlin says, his arm over her shoulder as they walk down the stairs.

There is something different about her friend, aside from the pants and tunic she’s wearing, which are their own significant change. It’s as if something has shifted fundamentally in Elain, made her scent a little sharper, like new leaves in a forest. Perhaps it’s some physical manifestation of Elain’s own hope, Vassa thinks, greeting her with a smile, as if this were another morning where they’d enjoy the new luxury of dawdling over their coffee while the sun was in the sky, before they were summoned to matters of import.

But Elain is looking at her sisters, shaking her head, as if to warn them.

For just a moment, Vassa catches the grave expressions on Feyre and Nesta’s faces, the concern they are quick to transmute into courtly smiles.

“We’re all ready?” Elain asks. Her hands hang at her sides, and in these close-fitting garments, Vassa is newly aware of how small she is, how sweet and innocent she looks even when directing legendary warriors on the brink of battle, all trace of her fierce mind hidden behind her gentle gaze. She hopes that Koschei will see Elain this way, as she herself used to, believe her incapable as she builds his new prison.

“You’re not going,” Nesta says, and she is reaching for her sword.

Tamlin moves to step in front of Elain, but she catches his arm, stands her ground in front of Nesta.

“I’m pregnant. I’m not ill. My powers are the same,” Elain says, and Vassa thinks of her tears last night. Wonders if she knew. Wants, more than anything, to wrap her friend up in her arms, congratulate her, and shield her. Deep in her bones, she understands Nesta’s edict.

“We can find another way,” Feyre says, her voice gentle. “Koschei hasn’t attacked in months.”

“What other way is there?” Elain looks at each of them in turn, but nobody responds. “Nobody else has my powers. And if we do not strike today, then what will we do? Wait for him to capture Vassa and put the Crown on my head? He’s already infiltrated Velaris and the Autumn Court. Eris is bound to him by his curse. If we remove it, Koschei will only find another way. He will never stop until this world belongs to him, until it doesn’t matter that he’s bound to that lake in this world, because there are so many others he can own.”

“We shouldn’t speak in front of Melis.” Cassian pulls the pink servant girl from the back of the room. “We don’t know how she communicates with Koschei.”

“We continue as we planned,” Elain says. Calm, as if there could be no objections.

“You’re not even going to try to save her?” Nesta aims the words at Tamlin, who flinches under the accusation in her gaze. “You’re going to stand around and let her die for you? How many of us will you allow to fall?”

“This is my own decision.” Elain crosses her arms over her chest. “Tamlin doesn’t have my powers. You know he couldn’t take my place. No matter how much he would like to.” She doesn’t mention all of his objections over the days when they formed this plan, his sacrifice in the Autumn Court for Rhys, but when Elain looks at him, then back at her sister, these facts blaze golden in her deep brown eyes.

“You’re not going to sacrifice yourself,” Nesta snaps. “Not after everything.”

Elain crosses the space separating her from her sister, and squeezes her hand.

“I’ve been useless for too long. I let Feyre go into the woods alone, and you bargained for my life when we had nothing, and you both fought the war with Hybern while I sat in the garden. I can do this one thing, Nesta,” she says. “And even if Koschei will bide his time, what if he’s harming someone else? If I had the courage to use my powers sooner, Vassa would be free.”

“What if he kills you?” Vassa is shocked when the words come out of Nesta’s mouth a sob. She’d never thought the Valkyrie could lose her control.

“You think I want to die today? To risk my baby?” The questions are thick with Elain’s own tears. “But what if that could save everyone else?”

For a moment, Nesta only glares at her, and then her arms are tight around Elain.

“I would have ripped apart this world to keep you safe,” she says, the words full of anger and despair, love at its brink.

Elain says nothing, only cups her hand at the back of Nesta’s head, pulling her closer.

Soon Feyre hugs them both, murmuring something too low for Vassa to hear, but when the three sisters separate, despite their tears, they do not look so grim as they did moments ago.

“We are ready?” Vassa asks, looking around the room. At the Night Court in their Ilyrian leathers. At Tamlin, who breaks his attention from Elain just long enough to give Vassa a small nod. At Lucien, her beloved, who meets her gaze with no fear in his eyes. And then Vassa looks at Elain, who dips into a curtsey despite the absence of skirts to give the gesture elegance. The same curtsey she performed when Vassa was a human, on that first day in this court, moments before Elain ran from her. So much has changed since then.

“It’s time for your vengeance, Queen of Scythia,” Elain says, and deep inside, the magic inside Vassa sparks and thunders in answer.

At last, she thinks, despite her fear, despite the cost. At last.

Lucien tries not to betray any emotion on his face, knowing Vassa will tease him, but of course he had to work with Nesta Archeron on Koschei’s downfall, and on their first stop to the lake, she unleashes a tremendous scowl as they appear on the western edge of the Autumn Court.

“If your brother is about to play the villain, I swear I will end him,” she grumbles, and when she reaches for her sword, Lucien genuinely isn’t sure if she means to aim it at him.

“We don’t have time to linger,” Vassa says, scanning the forest. They are the first attack, to be followed by Rhysand and Tamlin, their raw power mostly a distraction, a bulwark in case the plan goes wrong.

He clasps their hands and wills them into the darkness, across the ocean, and then, before Nesta can tell him how unsatisfactory his winnowing is, he makes the final leap, to Koschei’s lake.

Both Nesta and Vassa stiffen at the eerie vista, the dark forest that surrounds the steam-covered waters.

There is a rustle in the trees and they all startle.

No one emerges from the forest.

In silence, they walk along the side of the lake towards the house. Vassa has warned them of its enchantments. Nesta keeps a hand on her sword, and Lucien’s gold eye roves in every direction. The death-god has surprised him twice, but today, he will not snatch Vassa away. Today, Lucien is ready.

Then woods explode into flame behind them.

“Fucking Eris,” Nesta groans, breaking into a run, while Lucien, following her and Vassa, studies the fire. There are gaps in the magic, the kind of thing he would expect to see in a faerie with weaker gifts. Not a new High Lord, bursting with power, wanting to make his mark. Especially not Eris.

“Koschei knows we’re here,” he says to them, trying to keep his voice low, his breath even. “This is curse work.”

As he’d anticipated.

He sets up a quick shield. It will not survive a strike at full blast from either Eris or Koschei, but neither will it drain his magic for the fight ahead. He runs toward the house, the meeting-place they designated without realizing they might be running from something, as well as towards.

He senses Koschei before he sees the death-god. It’s the quality of his magic, the anger and the storm, the complicated matrix of power that even his golden eye struggles to decipher. Lucien prepares to shift and strengthen his shield, his eyes darting between Koschei and Vassa, calculating the space between them.

“I thought you meant to bring my Vassa back,” Koschei says, that voice that haunts his dreams. Lucien braces himself, feels Nesta doing the same, consolidating what’s left of her magic. “I would have given you a kingdom in exchange for her, fireling.”

He takes a step towards Lucien and then another, and Lucien barely draws in breath, feeling Koschei’s magic move across his body and slither inside his mind. He barricades his thoughts, secures the shields on his consciousness.

“I smell her scent on you, prince of the day.” Koschei turns on his heel, and Lucien almost believes he is at ease, doesn’t realize the trap they’ve sprung, but surely he must realize, sense, at a minimum, Nesta’s terrifying power, even in its diminished form.

But when the death-god smiles at him, revealing pointed teeth, a brilliant white that makes his mouth look bloody, Lucien cannot conceal his shudder.

“You have a reputation for cleverness, so I expected you to realize I would know when you brought me an imposter.”

In the instant between his last syllable and the arrival of his attack, Feyre’s magic explodes from Vassa, her water wolves charging for Koschei as she winnows herself and Nesta away from the blast of Koschei’s magic, into position.

“I’ve wondered what it would take for those stuffy High Lords to accept a High Lady,” Koschei says, stunning the wolves with a bolt of his power. Feyre dissolves the magic in a flash of white light and reveals her face. She’s stalling for time, exactly as planned.

Lucien prepares his spell as gradually as he can, so that the magic does not register as Koschei studies Feyre, his eyes lingering too long on her lips.

“The High Lords have always loved a pretty face,” he says, and for that alone Lucien aches to kill him, smash his skull with fists and rage alone. The thought of what he must have done to Vassa, alone and without defenses, bound and afraid.

Feyre has said she can stall him, maintain the distraction, and even with a wall of fire at her back and a death-lord before her, the High Lady of the Night Court does not flinch. She widens her eyes and lets a little smile form on her face, as though she is captivated.

Lucien has learned better than to trust that expression, but Koschei steps closer, the shark’s smile widening. As if he means to swallow her whole.

“They say my sisters and I are blessed,” she says, and the sword closes in on Koschei’s neck as Tamlin and Elain appear on the breeze of another world.

Tamlin has curved his body nearly all the way around Elain, to protect her from harm, but she’s managed to secure one hand on Koschei’s arm, while the other closes on the blade of Nesta’s sword. Lucien whips the tether through the air as Tamlin’s shield slams into place around them, keeping Koschei from escaping.

He’s holding onto Koschei and Elain, added Feyre and Nesta, only waits for Elain to pull them from this world, when he feels a small unraveling to the magic. A white light in Feyre’s hands.

I’m sorry, Feyre says, at the edges of his mind, Vassa made me promise.

Before Lucien can reassemble the spell, the four of them disappear into another world. The place where Vassa waits to claim her vengeance.

Tamlin sinks to his knees on the grass, while outside, Melis pounds on the shield.

Within seconds, Tamlin’s shield dissolves, reforming itself around the lake, fortified by a dark magic that signals that Rhysand has arrived. Within the shield, Cassian leads a small group of Illyrian warriors, their siphons gleaming with leashed power. As a means of last resort.

Azriel should already be inside the house with Gwyn, Lucien reminds himself, using the plan as a distraction from the fact that Vassa should be face-to-face with Koschei in a world she does not know, her new powers nearly as strange. All he can think is that if there are other women in that house, if they were tortured like Vassa, he himself will find a way to kill Koschei a second time, a third, a fourth. Then his mind turns to Vassa, raging at the fact that he cannot be with her, help and protect her.

The mating bond still glows inside him, though. At this moment, Vassa is still alive.

Behind him there’s a whimpering, and Lucien whirls to see Tamlin looming over Melis, who is sobbing, facedown, in the grass.

“I hope you will swear to me that you did not betray her,” he says, and Tamlin’s voice is deadly, the roar contained within the precision of a courtly inflection. A High Lord in the fullness of his power. “If I find that you were at fault for even the slightest harm to her, I will pay it back double.”

Lucien scrambles over to them, in between his friend and the pink faerie, who only sobs harder now.

“Elain wouldn’t want you to destroy her, Tam,” he says, trying to put himself in the path of the sword, even if he wonders whether the sacrifice would be worth it, over someone who has already betrayed him and likely has again. “Remember? We don’t torture Melis?”

Tamlin draws a heavy breath, the muscles of his arms relaxing.

“She’s gone from this world,” he says. The courtly mien has vanished from his voice. There’s only hopelessness in it now, not even the rage that used to sustain him. Lucien is amazed that the shield of magic above them does not buckle.

“She’s still alive,” Lucien responds, hoping it is true. “Do you feel her through the bond?”

“She’s still alive,” Tamlin agrees, “but for how much longer?”

At their feet, Melis sniffles.

“I hated to hurt her,” she says, and now it is Lucien who whirls on her.

“Elain may believe in a better world, and Tamlin may have promised to build it, but you led my mate right into Koschei’s clutches. Vassa wants to claim her vengeance. And I have made no promises to leave you unharmed.” He lets his power flame in his eyes, reveals his teeth. “So this is your chance to save yourself, Melis. What did you tell Koschei?”

“I told him that you were coming,” she says, and her voice is wretched, and Lucien has to work to keep the snarl on his face. Because this is what they wanted Melis to tell Koschei, exactly the same way that they’d left Eris bound by the curse, so that the death-god would think them overconfident and unprepared.

“I told him that Elain is with child,” Melis continues, and Lucien barely holds back Tamlin as he surges toward her, snarling. Koschei, really anybody with a sense of smell, would know that within seconds. And Tamlin must realize this, because he does not make a second attempt to get past Lucien. “I told him that the human queen is no longer human. I had to tell him something.”

Lucien thinks of Koschei’s presence in his mind, slithering like an enormous reptile, a creature of myth. Wonders how he extracted secrets from Melis.

“What did they teach you, in the Night Court?”

“They mostly locked me in a room. But sometimes the High Lady taught me things. She said it was a favor to her sister. How to shield my mind.”

Lucien wants to grin at this revelation, at the way that Feyre’s kindness, and Elain’s, may be what saves them in the end, but this is still a negotiation at the outskirts of a battle, the outcome still uncertain.

“If Vassa and Elain survive this day,” he says, “the High Lord of the Night Court will examine your mind. And I swear upon all my hopes for the future that if you are lying, you will regret it every day of the rest of your long and miserable life.”

Melis nods miserably.

“If they survive,” she says, wiping away her tears with her fingertips, “I will do anything.”

It’s all Lucien can do not to say me too, to keep his face impassive.

The bond is still intact.

Somewhere, Vassa is still alive.

Elain is in the clearing of the world she’d selected, one hand on the back of Koschei’s neck, the other grasping Nesta’s sword with her fingertips. Then, before she can set her feet on the grass, she is flying through the air, trying to get her bearings.

She lands on the ground more lightly than she’d anticipated, surrounded by a warm wind, and springs to her feet before Koschei can run away. He would only find himself trapped by the shield Tamlin built here before they went to the lake with Melis, but the longer Koschei believes he has the upper hand, the more chances they will have to end him. So she’s quick to gather herself, to push her feet onwards.

Her sisters stand before the death-god, their arms extended, their magic poised for an attack, but Koschei only stares at Vassa, anger and desire warring in his eyes, a hungry smile on his mouth that reveals too many teeth. Bile rises in Elain’s throat at the sight, but she aims herself between the two of them, summoning her magic to the surface, willing herself to be ready.

Koschei turns his eyes on her and his smile is lazy. As if this will be the easy part. Elain rests her hands on her hips, tries to keep the smile on her face as she summons her power and her anger.

“I see that much has changed since I last saw you, world walker. Congratulations are in order.” He takes a delicate sniff of the air. “And yet you’d put your child in such danger for a battle you’re sure to lose, when I could give you so much more than your paltry High Lord.”

“You’re trapped next to a lake, sorcerer.” It’s only the training of her governess, of a dozen narrow escapes in ballrooms, that keeps the smile plastered on Elain’s face. She feels his magic rising, the power in him immense, pressing upon her very self. “What can you give me?”

“I think the better question, dear sweet Elain, is: what do you think you can take from me?”

In an instant, Nesta’s sword is in his hand, and too late, Elain sees her mistake.

When he flung her away, she’d clutched the sword in her hand, the sharp end biting into her palm. Only for a second, but that was all it took for the blade, well-tended by Nesta, to draw blood.

Koschei dips his little finger in the largest drop, and Elain feels her mind caught in a new grip. His power surrounds her, surging in her veins.

She had thought through every particular, and now the world is lost on a reflex, the clutching of her fingers.

Vassa moves into Elain’s line of sight and her eyes are wide and pleading. Fight him, she mouths, and Elain wants to warn her, but Koschei merely swings back his arm and then Vassa is bound by lightning across the clearing, and Elain knows that Koschei is inside her mind.

There are still some secret chambers. The places she stores her hopes. But the parts of her mind most strongly secured are the ones that house this plan and all of her contingencies. Because there might be half an instant where she can act before Koschei realizes what she is doing.

“Will you do my bidding, sweet one?” he asks. “I have heard many stories about you lately, and the tales all conflict when it comes to the matter of your character. In some you will listen to a strong man. In others you will betray even those you profess to love.”

Feyre’s eyes widen, her fingers twitching with the desire to strike, but Elain does not signal her, does not so much as move her eyes in the direction of her sisters. She had envisioned their attack, the four of them striking as one, but Koschei has taken control, and she is afraid for what will happen, if Feyre and Nesta launch an uncoordinated attack. How easily Koschei will rip them apart.

“Will you listen to me?” Koschei asks her, approaching step by careful step. His fingers, still smeared with her blood, come to rest on her chin, the curve of her jaw, the touch too soft, too sticky.

She manages to meet his eyes, to keep her gaze soft. The girl who any man would want to marry, who sighs prettily and does not complain and sinks into the shadows her husband leaves behind. The girl who is nothing at all.

Elain has not been that girl for some time, but she wills Koschei not to notice, to see what, for years, everyone has seen when they look at her.

“I will admit you almost fooled me,” he says, plucking at a loose tendril of her hair. “You play the innocent so very well. But you know what I want.”

His power saturates her mind, and in its wake, there is one image, clear as if it were before her: the Crown.

Koschei’s power buffets her like waves, the compulsion rising in her to reach across worlds, into the Night Court, and summon the Crown to her. The Crown has an affinity for Nesta, not her, but still Elain feels it reaching out as if in answer.

She knows one thing in the part of her mind that is still her own: it cannot end like this.

There is hardly any time before she is forced to pull the Crown to herself, but her magic is quick. She reaches out for the tethering spell and pushes against the Bone in Nesta’s pocket, willing her sisters and Vassa back to their own world. Back to where they will be safe from her, the monster she will soon become. Between them, they will find a way to destroy him. She was always the weak one among them.

Her vision sparks and blurs at the intrusion of Koschei’s magic, but still Elain sees Feyre and Nesta vanish. Vassa remains, held by Koschei’s binding, and Elain wants to scream in frustration, that she could not keep her friend from another captivity, another series of momentary deaths.

“You are stronger than I thought, Elain,” he says, and now his hand is on her stomach, over the place where her child awaits their future in the warm darkness of her body. She tries not to think of that life, barely distinct from her own self, because otherwise she will crumble. “When your heir is born, I’ll teach it to mind me better.”

With the last part of her secret mind, she vows to make him a liar. Even if it means her death. She knows now, falling into his invasion even inside herself, that being under Koschei’s will is a worse fate by far than dwelling in the realm where her father waits.

Missing is a part of being grown in the world, he’d told her, and it is Elain’s last thought before she seals off those last precious corners of her mind and surrenders to Koschei.

His magic overwhelms her will, and Elain loses her grip on her own powers.

In an instant, the Crown is before her.

Distantly, she hears Vassa begin to scream as a small pair of hands with crescents of dirt under the nails, so like her own, reach towards the place where the Crown is suspended on the air, and place the Crown upon her head.

All the sound and light in this world disappears, and Elain feels herself falling deep into the darkness.

“Welcome, sweet one,” Koschei’s voice says, and Elain cannot help it. She stops resisting.

When Feyre and Nesta appear by the lake, Tamlin convinces herself that Elain will follow in an instant. That she and Vassa are so taken by their moment of triumph that they cannot wait to celebrate. That Vassa would want another look at the world, the strange trees of this new forest, and Elain, ever the perfect hostess, would pull them through the shield he’d built for her and show her the unique foliage, the flowers neither of them have ever before encountered.

Then he sees Nesta’s face. The devastation engraved deep on every feature.

“What happened?” Lucien asks, already beside them, looking behind the two sisters, as if Vassa has hidden herself behind them.

“Koschei has them,” Feyre says, her eyes going wide and unfocused as she receives a message in her mind. “The Crown is missing from the Night Court. I think she pushed us out before--”

Tamlin vowed he would be brave, that he would fight until the last drop of blood seeped from his body, but the reality of Elain in Koschei’s clutches, in a realm he cannot reach, steals the breath from his lungs.

He falls to his knees, the grass giving a little sigh at his weight. As if the world has already given up.

He pulls on the mating bond, the thread like a flowering vine inside of him, and finds it pulled tight, silent and aching. For now, bound or unbound, she is still alive.

But Elain does not respond.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (23/28) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: This is the chapter where things get steamy, which is to say: there is smut in this chapter. You can find all previous chapters here, or read Bloom & Bone on AO3. Thank you for reading! ❤️ If you'd like to get an early preview on the next chapter, follow me on Instagram at @house.of.hurricane.

In spite of her exhaustion, Vassa is determined to spend her first post-curse day awake, so she takes her breakfast with Lucien and Elain and Tamlin in the garden, their food and coffee balanced awkwardly on their laps on one of the benches Elain installed. Vassa is too distracted by the flowers to eat. It’s been years since she saw flowers by day, and surely it's not only her fae vision that makes the gardens of the Spring Court more gorgeous than even the queen’s garden in her principal palace in Scythia.

“I don’t know what stories you’ve heard, but you still need to eat in this form,” Lucien says, nudging her thigh with his own. She gulps down coffee, winking at him over the rim of her mug.

“I want you to show me the gardens,” she tells Elain, whose brilliant smile turns into a yawn that she’s quick to hide behind her hand.

“The flowers are at their best in the morning,” her friend says, “and there are new tulips from the continent that almost look like roses, although they cost a minor fortune.” She slants her gaze at Tamlin, who returns a smile that makes Elain’s cheeks grow pink.

“I’d like to see the garden as well, if I wouldn’t be interrupting,” Lucien says, and Vassa reaches over to squeeze his hand, revelling once again in how good it feels to touch him, the absence of pain. She leans her head against his shoulder, her hair sighing against his jacket, a sound she’d never noticed before today. Before her ears had been made new.

“I feel a little offended that you’ve never asked for a tour before.” Elain tries to sound affronted but can’t keep the smile out of her voice. She turns to Tamlin. “And it’s been ages since you’ve seen your own gardens.”

“In our defense, we had other priorities,” Tamlin says, transferring berries to Elain’s plate. “I believe I heard rumors of a battle.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve all been very heroic and I very much appreciate it.” Vassa stands up, smoothing her skirts, not able to believe how skinny she’s gotten in the past months, how quickly her stomach filled. “Now let’s see the flowers.”

Although the flowers are beautiful and Elain has more passion for their cultivation than Vassa can fully understand, she soon finds her head spinning with exhaustion, and when Lucien steers her back to the estate, she does not object beyond murmured apologies to Elain.

“She’ll be glad for the time to sleep,” Lucien tells her as he leads her up to their bedroom, practically carrying her up the stairs. “The amount of power she harnessed last night...”

There are implications to his words, surely, and perhaps Vassa should care. This is her world now. But her eyes will not stay open, and all she can feel is relief when Lucien carries her to bed, loosens her bodice, and pulls the quilts over her.

“You look tired,” Tamlin says as they watch Lucien lead Vassa back to the estate. Even with her exhaustion, Elain feels a bone-deep relief at the change in Vassa: the glow in her skin and the energy about her is completely different from the human woman of last night.

“Are these the kinds of compliments I should expect from now on?”

She bends to pick the dead blossom off a rosebush. It’s still early for the Spring Court gardener, but it’s been weeks since she’s had the chance to get her hands in the garden. More and more, without her having made a declaration, this place feels like it could be hers. The growing realization doesn’t bother her.

When she straightens, she realizes that Tamlin was staring at the place where her bottom had strained against her skirts. Without thinking, she smooths her fingers over the same place, smiling at his sharp inhale.

She’s been wanting to touch him for days. Despite all the time she’d spent frantically researching how to break Vassa’s curse, the dearth of hours she’d been able to sleep, she’d still woken up in the middle of the night with desire throbbing between her legs, sweaty and all but moaning with need.

All that’s held her back is the knowledge that Tamlin would hurt himself if she gave him the slightest sign. But last night, he stood guard over the Spring Court, leading a group of warriors from the village, and the sight of him leading the group, his muscles straining at his jacket and pants, nearly made her forget the whole point of the evening. Vassa Vassa Vassa, she kept chanting to herself, so that she wouldn’t forget the stakes.

Now Vassa has been remade free of her curse and Tamlin is healed, and at the sight of the hunger in his green eyes, Elain feels her own need rise up in her, thundering in her veins.

She takes a step toward him, and then another, until his arms are on her waist, and he lifts her up into a hungry kiss, his lips slanting on hers. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, opens her mouth to his tongue.

“You can take me to whatever world you like,” he says, in a ragged whisper, though they are alone in this corner of the garden, and the gardener will not be here for hours.

She thinks of the inn in the world at peace, the heady scents of spice and desert stones. The way she’s dropped Tamlin’s hand when anybody can see them, blushed at the slightest compliment or innuendo. In spite of all the ways he’s changed, made himself the kind of High Lord who is worthy of legends. The kind of person who could have stayed a monster, but found a way to turn himself back into someone better. Someone good and thoughtful and heroic.

And still, he was nearly taken from this world. Nearly killed.

Her mate.

“Here.” She almost moans the word.

She wraps her legs around his waist, the movement bunching her skirts around her knees. Her slippers fall to the grass. She’s never been like this with him, with anyone, before, so brazen in her need. Her own arousal is thick in the air, and the scent of his need makes her dress feel entirely too tight around her heavy breasts, her racing heartbeat. As if her body can barely contain all this desire.

“Elain,” he says, through panting breaths. “Are you certain?”

She does not think of the mating bond. She thinks of the day he let her leave him in the passageway between worlds, the trust he had in her. The time she wept in his arms and he held her until she was empty. The way he’d looked before the battle in the Autumn Court, or when he returns from his visits to the villages, the building of a quiet confidence. She thinks of the wildness of his body, which cannot be quite contained.

She thinks of the person Tamlin is, the person he has worked so hard on becoming. And she does not hesitate.

“I claim you,” she says, pulling her lips away from his skin so that she can see his eyes, hold his gaze. “You are mine, Tamlin.”

For a second, he is utterly still, and then he surges forward, his lips on her throat, his teeth finding the spot that nearly makes her weep with desire.

“I am yours,” he is saying, between each kiss. “Always, I am yours.”

Now she does not hesitate, but works her fingers on the buttons of his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders as she slides against him to the ground, unable to hold back a moan as her sex rides up against the erection that strains at his pants. He growls in her ear, reaches for the buttons of her dress, his fingers deft against her spine.

“You have too many buttons,” he grumbles, and she almost tells him to use his magic to disrobe her, but each time his calloused fingers brush up against her revealed skin, there’s a burst of sensation, a shiver on her skin.

She pulls his baldric with its daggers over his head, and then his shirt, and for a moment, Elain just stares at him, his golden skin and the map of all his muscles, the still-pink scar from Ealars’ attack. She presses her lips to it.

“You saved me.” He breathes the words against the dip where her shoulder meets her neck, punctuating the sentence with his teeth and tongue.

“You saved us first.”

She dips her fingers below his waistband, removing the daggers he’s hidden with a smile as she sets them neatly on the bench, within reach. Confident that, no matter what evil lives in these woods and in this world, at this moment she is perfectly safe.

When she rises, her dress falls to the ground with a sigh, her corset and drawers following seconds later.

The spring breeze wafts around her naked body and Elain has to fight the urge to cover herself under Tamlin’s unblinking gaze. She’s always been a little plumper than Feyre and Nesta, and now she wonders what he thinks of the slight curve of her belly, of her thighs and arms, if he’d prefer if she were more slender. She reaches for his pants, but he catches her wrist.

“Let me look at you,” he says, his thumb resting on the place where her pulse races.

He only drops her wrist to twist his fingers in her hair, lift it off her neck, and run the other hand down the length of her, unfastening her stockings when his fingers reach her thighs, a touch that makes her gasp.

“I have never seen such beauty,” he murmurs into her ear. “You make the garden look like a wasteland.”

Though it makes it harder to kiss him, Elain can’t help the smile that rises to her lips.

“Let me see you,” she says, reaching again for the buttons that fasten his pants. He helps her, pulling off his boots.

She had planned to look at him, to study every glorious detail of his sunkissed body, the golden hair that makes him glow in the gentle morning sunlight, to marvel at the breadth of him, his shoulders and his thighs and his cock, all bigger and more powerful than they had been even in her dreams. Almost beyond believing.

But once Elain gets a glimpse of Tamlin, she can’t help but pull him closer, run her hands against his body so that it’s him that’s groaning, letting out a strangled growl when she runs her fingers down the length of his cock.

The soft skin that lies over that hard, insistent need makes her mouth water. She closes her fingers around him, giving him one stroke and then another.

He responds by falling to his knees in the grass and taking her breast in his mouth, his teeth and tongue against the peak, and then his fingers make their way down her belly, to the curls between her thighs.

When he dips a finger between the folds of her sex, Elain has to bite her lip against the sounds that rise in her throat.

For years she has tried not to think of Greysen, and after a while she’s mostly succeeded, but now she thinks of their first and only coupling, the way he thrust into her, the pain in her body which she tried to smother. The way she hadn’t been sure if she should reach for him, if that would look too eager, so she’d laid still on the bed until he’d spent himself.

But now that experience is extinguished from her mind, because Tamlin’s thumb the place that throbs for him, the nub her own fingers have sometimes furtively explored in the bath, and Elain can’t help the keening sounds that escape her, the clench of her fingers as they twist in his hair.

He slides a finger inside her, and then another, and she braces herself against his shoulders, riding him as the tension builds between her legs, low in her belly, until she is coiled with a delicious tension.

She rakes her fingers down his back, waiting for the moment he will thrust inside her, when the tension inside her will calm, will be replaced by pain.

Instead Tamlin’s eyes are fixed on her, watching her face as he thrusts his fingers inside her, strokes the place where she aches for him most, until her thighs clench around his arm and the world is bright with a thousand colors, thick with the pounding of her heart. The sensation builds and builds and then it overtakes her, until she is wrung out with pleasure, boneless and undone.

She falls to her knees and Tamlin catches her, arranging his jacket before he lays her on it. Elain thinks, dazed, that she has never seen a bluer sky.

He watches her from the space between her legs, his gaze a question. His cock is even larger now, a bud of moisture at the tip. She sits up and reaches for it, the soft skin hot under her fingers, and he hisses with the contact. His desire is bright in his eyes, alive in every muscle.

Already, with the absence of his fingers, she feels empty.

“I want you inside of me,” she says, reaching for his hand, pulling him down to the ground.

He enters her gently, but even so Elain feels herself stretching to fit him. But at each wince, Tamlin asks her if she is sure, if she is all right, and when she nods, he kisses her, finding the place on her neck that makes her gasp, the nub in her sex, right above the place where they are joined, that is already eager to be touched by him again.

Moment by moment, he fits himself inside of her, and then, as he thrusts in and out of her, slowly at first and then faster, a little rough, Elain feels that thick pleasure growing in the core of her, building with each thrust, the friction of him.

She reaches for him, wrapping her legs around his waist, her hands raking his shoulders, his back.

“You are mine,” she breathes, and when he growls her name she can hardly understand it, as if he’s spoken in another language. Or maybe she is too far gone with pleasure, the feeling of him inside her.

The rhythm of his thrusts is nearly frantic now, and she angles her hips toward him, her interior muscles clenching around him with each thrust. When he tightens his grip on her, she realizes she’s nearly gone, the coiling sensation is almost more than she can bear.

“My lovely Elain.” His words are a harsh whisper at her lips, and then she’s completely undone, the world torn asunder with her climax.

He comes with a roar, spending himself inside her, holding her close as he thrusts, chasing the remainder of their pleasure.

When he’s finished, he cleans her thighs with his shirt and then pulls her against him, and Elain has never felt so at peace in all her life.

She is half-asleep already when he presses a kiss to her shoulder.

“Did you design your gardens with this in mind?” he asks.

“You think they’re my gardens?” she asks, instead of answering.

“I’ve always thought of them that way. Like you, they’re more than I’ve ever deserved,” he says, lifting her hair off her neck and replacing it with his kisses. Even after what she’s experienced, the thrill of their joining, she can’t help the little moan that escapes her.

“You deserve so much better than you think.”

“You know who I am,” he says, and his eyes are on hers, suddenly serious. “You know what I’ve done.”

“I’ve heard all the stories. And I’ve heard the ones about Amarantha, too, and what she did to you. The rumors about your father. And you forget that I’ve seen the person you’ve become. The High Lord who is worthy of the title for more than just power. Who listens to his people, and cares for them, and fights alongside them, and keeps them safe.”

“You are too kind.”

He does not quite meet her eyes, and so she reaches out, holds his chin until his green eyes are on hers.

“I am proud to claim you as my mate,” she says. “If you will have me.”

He does not seem to care that she is naked, that he is, when he lifts her up into his arms and twirls her through the air, holding her so tightly that Elain knows, now and always, she will always be safe in his arms.

“When we’ve defeated Koschei,” he says, after he’s finally set her safely on the ground, her feet on his jacket, “we will have our mating ceremony in these gardens. We can invite all of Prythian, or nobody, just as long as you will claim me as your mate, and let me claim you as my own.”

“I’m yours,” she tells him, and does not let go.

When Vassa awakes, the afternoon sun is thick and golden through the window, and Lucien startles himself awake in bed next to her.

“Are you all right?” he asks, already scanning the room for any threat.

“Perfectly well,” she says, and then she laughs because it is true. The sun is in the sky and she is not a firebird. The curse does not bind her any more. She can reach out and touch Lucien as much as she pleases without pain, and it’s this thought that drives her fingers below the blankets, where she finds him still dressed in his jacket and shirt and pants.

“I was tired too,” he says with a shrug as she gapes at him.

“That can’t be comfortable.” She reaches for him, intent on removing his clothes, on learning what it’s like to bed him in this body, but he twines his fingers in hers, a grin on his face, too clever by half.

“I have an idea,” he says. “Find your favorite crown and follow me.”

Years ago now, during the war with Hybern, her generals had brought a few of her treasures from Scythia. They’d thought then that her curse would be broken in a matter of weeks, that she would soon return to her throne, and they had wanted her to make the kind of grand entrance that would reassure her people that their ruler had returned with might and glory.

Of course, she’s rarely had occasion to wear the grand gowns with their endless petticoats and heavy embroidery, and she’s only worn the smallest crown for the few times she’s needed to appear before a High Lord or an assemblage of faerie nobles. Better, always, to let them think that she was weak, so they might be compelled to free her.

Now she selects the most ornate crown, fashioned out of diamonds and sapphires to create a halo of light around her head. When she shows it to Lucien, he only nods, desire simmering in his gaze.

He takes the crown from her, and she shivers when their fingers brush, and then he settles it on her head, arranging her hair so that her curls skim her shoulders.

“My queen,” he murmurs, dipping into a bow, kissing the back of her hand. The perfect courtier.

She should countermand him, remind him that in his realm he is the heir to a ruler, that in his veins runs a powerful magic, but the weight of the crown on her head, the sight of his reverence, it all sends desire flooding through her.

This new fae body, it seems, was made to want Lucien Vanserra.

When he leads her from the bedroom, she follows, not caring that her bodice is so loosened that her breasts are barely contained. Each time they bounce against the fabric of her corset, Vassa has to work to keep her breath steady. As if, even walking three paces ahead of her in these sunlit hallways, Lucien has still managed to touch her.

He leads her down the grand staircase of the estate’s entryway and on through to the rooms that Tamlin uses for his official business.

When he opens the door and reveals a throne room and she sees the way his russet eye has darkened with desire, Vassa opens her mouth to object. Not only because a throne room is important to a sovereign, but because the wall to the outside is made entirely of glass, the garden in plain view.

Here, anybody could see them.

“I’ll lock the door,” Lucien says, smirking, as if he could see all of her thoughts. “But I won’t draw the curtains. You deserve to see the sunlight, Your Majesty.”

“And if anyone sees?”

“Imagine they’re your courtiers, who wish to see their queen made happy.” He presses a kiss to her clavicle, dips his fingers below the bodice of her gown. She arches herself against his touch, the words igniting her. Such a desire is wicked, and of course she would never perform such an act in front of her courtiers, her subjects, but the idea of such a thing, here in another realm, leaves her crossing her legs tight together, searching for friction, desperate to be sated right here.

But she wants this on the throne itself.

The sound of wind fills the room and the windows fly open.

Opened with her own power.

She will consider this discovery, the capacities of her new self, at another moment.

“Now, now, my queen,” Lucien drawls, easing a sleeve from her shoulder. “I intend to make our satisfaction very loudly known. It wouldn’t do to have the gardener come running to rescue you, would it?”

She tries to call back the wind but the doors stay open. After a moment, he closes them with a flick of his wrist, sketches a bow.

“As your humble courtier, I am happy to volunteer to train you in the use of this ability.”

“That’s the game we’re playing?” Her laugh bubbles up inside her.

“I intend to worship you on this throne.”

“You couldn’t be a visiting sovereign? Pursuing a diplomatic alliance and falling in love with a powerful queen?”

Lightning crackles at his fingertips until the moment he touches her, but she still feels the spark as he eases the sleeve off her other shoulder, so that the gown is held up tenuously by the bodice and luck.

“And I’ve been stuck in awful meeting with our courtiers,” he says, stepping behind her, his fingers on the buttons of her dress as he whispers in her ear, “who have the uncanny ability to drone on and on about topics that are of no interest to either of us or our people, but all the while I’ve distracted myself by looking at you. A queen more beautiful than any being I’ve ever known. Every time you open your mouth to say something clever, I’ve wanted to cover it with my own. So the words are a secret between us.”

“Sir, we have been working to arrange these meetings for months,” she says, reaching up to pull at his hair, the way she knows he likes.

“Which is why I’ve asked for this private meeting in your throne room, Majesty. So that you and I can talk about our dreams for our people. The fundamentals of our alliance. But you’ve come wearing your glorious crown and I cannot help but wonder what it would be like to fuck you on your throne, while you wear nothing but this mark of your glory.”

He removes his hands from her back and her clothes fall away, the air itself a caress on her heated skin.

She reaches for him, but her magic reaches Lucien first, and his jacket is torn away by a knot of wind.

“My impatient queen,” he smirks, and she tears the shirt away with her own fingers, pulls away the buttons as she fumbles with his pants.

When he’s finally naked, Vassa runs her hands all over him, delighting in the feeling of his skin against her fingers, the absence of pain and the force of the desire inside her, the throbbing low in her belly, the slickness between her legs.

He holds up his hands before she’s even halfway through with her exploration.

“Get on your throne, Majesty,” he says, his voice dazed with lust.

His hands are on her waist as she climbs up the dias, and he half lifts her onto the throne, the wooden seat cool under her thighs.

She spreads her legs and smiles up at him. She’s made this request before but never after weeks without his touch, never on a throne.

He kneels and opens her knees wider, kissing his way up her thighs until he reaches her sex, and when he licks her opening, reaches the bundle of nerves above it, Vassa press her hand over her mouth.

“Don’t hold back, Majesty.” His voice rumbles against her.

Soon his lips and tongue overcome her and she is moaning, canting her hips and pulling his hair to bring him closer. He pushes his fingers inside her, sliding in and out, and when he nips at that throbbing nub, Vassa cannot contain the wild exclamation that escapes her. The world is on fire, brilliant and bright, and she is overcome with a pleasure so intense that she nearly pushes Lucien away. She’s not sure if she can bear it, but he continues with his fingers and his mouth, and she follows the rising tide of fire inside her until she’s consumed entirely, breathless and liquid.

“You were meant for the throne,” Lucien says after her breathing has settled, running his fingers over her skin. Still, even after that climax, after all the times they’ve been together in this way, she arches toward his touch.

“I have an idea,” she says, and rises from the throne, then drapes herself against the arm, revealing herself completely.

For a moment, though she’s spread herself like this across his desk before, Lucien just stares at her.

“You are exquisite,” he says, and she beams, inspired.

“Imagine your visit drags on longer than expected,” she suggests, raising herself just slightly, so that he can see her breasts. “The courtiers do like to hear themselves talk. And we keep meeting secretly, to determine every facet of the treaty. How it will benefit our people.”

She skims her fingers down her body and he draws a rough breath.

“Our meetings grow more frequent, of course,” she continues, turning away from him as if she isn’t paying attention to his every gesture, “so that even the servants have begun to speculate. There are times when your hands stray beneath my skirts during those long days of deliberations, and I have to try and hide my responses behind outdated reports. But you are so clever with your fingers, I don’t ever want you to stop.”

All she can hear is the jagged sound of his breathing, close to her but not touching, and Vassa aches for Lucien so badly that she nearly spoils the effect by turning around and pressing herself against him.

Then his hands are on her hips, and he enters her with a single deep thrust, and Vassa has to hold tight to the arm of the throne, her fingers pressed into the rose carvings, because she’s not confident her legs will hold her. She manages to raise her hips in time with his rhythm and he groans over her.

She has always loved the feeling of him inside her, but now the fit seems even more perfect, as if they’d been made for each other.

As he thrusts in and out of her, her pleasure builds again, and Vassa swears she can hear the wild beating of his heart, distinct from her own. She reaches for him, catches his hand in her own and squeezes it, one more reminder that they are here together. That they’ve survived.

Then his other hand dips to her nub and Lucien replicates the rhythm with his thumb against her, and this time the pleasure builds like a mountain emerging from the center of the earth, molten and powerful and certain.

“Come for me, Majesty,” he drawls in her ear, trying to hide the sounds of his own desire but she hears them them anyway, knows he’s just as close as she is, and that certainty pushes her over the edge, bound to this earth only by his scent and power as her release overtakes her, as his own release thunders through the room, his shout and the rumble of his magic.

Later, he scoops her to his chest and pulls her to the throne. She can hear, so clearly now, the sound of his heart.

“How was it?” he asks, stroking his fingers through her hair, careful not to disturb the crown.

“This form was clearly made with you in mind.”

“And you seemed to enjoy yourself. Do you have a private throne room in one of your palaces? Because I think we will have to try this again.”

She stills and he kisses her cheek.

“I will go to Scythia with you,” he says, and she looks up at him, shakes her head.

“Your father is a High Lord. You have duties in every court, and countless friends. Why would you bother with a human kingdom?”

“You’re too intelligent to ask this question, Vassa. Didn’t you feel the bond between us even in that darkness?”

She thinks of that place where her self had no form, only perception, the way that golden cord had kept her from scattering into nothingness. It had smelled of Lucien, had felt like his power, and that was when she knew that everything truly would be all right.

“You don’t have to follow me to Scythia simply because we’re mates,” she says, though the words grate in her throat. She has always been prepared to make these kinds of sacrifices, so well trained in the life of a queen.

“It doesn’t matter that we’re mates. I will follow you to Scythia, or to wherever you might lead, because I have been hopelessly in love with you from the first moment I set eyes on you, and since that moment, I find myself unable to imagine a life without you. This mating bond hardly matters. I’d chosen you already.”

“Our first meeting was hardly pleasant,” she says, the words wavering around her tears, the glut of emotion. For all that they speak of everything, politics and history and their deepest thoughts, there is still so much that has gone unspoken between them. These omissions were acts of preservation, she knows now, in case their story faced an unhappy ending. And now it seems that they will have more years than she knows how to imagine.

“I had never met a well-born lady who could curse so fluently, let alone a queen.”

She takes his hand and draws it to her heart.

“I love you,” she says, and she knows that, even if she lives a million years, she will never forget the brilliance of his smile.

Hours later, when they dress in anticipation of the gardener’s approach, Elain decides she would prefer to stop wearing clothes entirely. Already she misses the sensation of the breeze and the grass and Tamlin’s skin against her own.

As they make their way to Tamlin’s room, hands clasped together, the servants regale them with knowing gazes. She feels the leaves falling from her hair, knows that Tamlin’s jacket is full of stains from the earth and grass, can only imagine what a spectacle they are, grinning and redolent of sex.

Still, Elain cannot find it in herself to be ashamed.

The minute they’re in Tamlin’s room, the door locked behind them, she lets her dress fall to the floor. This time, when he lifts her up to kiss her, she does not return to the ground for a long while.

Later, when they’ve settled in his bed, she lifts away the quilts and linens so that she can see all of him, trace every muscle with her fingertips.

“Is it always like this,” she asks, “with the mating bond?”

“According to the stories, it will be like this for months.” He pulls her fingers to his lips, dips each one against his lips. Already desire stirs in her again. “The frenzy is supposed to ensure that there are children. But there are potions to avoid them, of course.”

“What if we didn’t take the contraceptive potions?” The words tumble out of her, cobbled out of the fragments of her thoughts. Futures she never allowed herself to consider.

“You want to have a child with me?”

He looks into her eyes as if he can’t believe it.

She is quiet for a moment, trying to form the words. She never had a plan for this conversation.

“I want--I want to build my home. My family. And you need an heir.”

He reaches for her, pulls her close against him.

“There is no hurry for an heir, lovely. If I fall in battle, I know that you can lead this court.”

She breathes in the scent of him and considers. Since she was a child, there has always been the expectation that she would marry well, find some rich lordling and bear his heirs, preferably at least two boys to start, and then some daughters who could be used to build alliances for power or money. A beautiful object in a powerful man’s home, his path to greater glory.

Even now, after years in Prythian and months in this court, all the time spent growing her powers and capabilities, Elain is still learning to determine what it is she wants.

She thinks about Tamlin, the way he is with her now, the way they’ve been together even before either of them knew about the mating bond. Their secrets revealed to each other even while they attempted casual conversation. The way he will always try to protect her, even while recognizing her brave moments, her capacity for strategy and power. His trust in her, which at one time had seemed impossible. She does not want him by her side because of any expectation or even the mating bond. She wants him because of who he is. Who they could be, together.

And when she thinks of a child, she thinks of Nyx in her arms, his sleepy breath against her neck, the warmth of him cradled against her body. How she’d delighted in him, before she began to feel she had no place in the Night Court, before she exiled herself to the garden. The hours she spent singing little songs that turned her voice silly, exclaiming when he discovered words, the use of his wings. The possibility of her own child, sharing that being with Tamlin, makes her heart clench in her chest with longing.

What she wants, for herself and for him, for the two of them together, is enormous. And yet Elain thinks that she can trust him with all of it.

“I have never wanted to rule,” she says, finally, and then the words spill out of her. “I want my home here, and I want to be your emissary. To the other courts, and to the continent, and to the human kingdoms. I want to go to other worlds and see and learn from them. And I want the people of this court to feel safe and contented. I want to help you build a home for them, and make them glad to live on these lands. To show them our care and shield them when they need protection. I want the gardens of this estate to be beautiful and enjoyed not only by us, but by the servants and the people in the village. I want to have balls and parties. I want the nobles and really all the citizens of this court to want to come here, not to flatter you or me, but because they know this is a kind place, and they want to spend time together with us, in our home.”

She takes a breath, ducks her head so that she says the final words to his shoulder, to the muscles that shift with the slightest movement.

“But I think I could do all of that with children. Can you imagine what we could show them of this world, and all the rest besides?”

He smooths the hair from her face until she looks up at him, and his eyes are bright. She can see the smile in them even before she sees his lips and kisses them.

“It’s only,” he says, against her mouth, “that I don’t want you to feel as if you must make this choice for fear of disappointing me. Or because of the bond between us.”

“You’ve changed. You stopped hiding in the woods, and you started leading your people. You sacrificed yourself to save Helion and Cybele and even Rhysand, and your army came home from the battle with not a single death. You trust me. And I am tired of trying to make everybody happy with me. I am tired of waiting for the life I want to begin. And I should have told you all of this while you were recovering, but--”

“You were busy with Vassa. Breaking her unbreakable curse. Tending to me, too. You’ve hardly slept in weeks.”

“I love you.” She blurts out the words, the one last admission she’d held to herself. “I didn’t want you to think I only told you because you were so close to dying. But I should have told you sooner.”

“Instead you saved me,” he says, and then, “I should have told you sooner as well. That I love you. And I would love to have this life with you, exactly as you describe. With all the children you would like. It would be my greatest honor, Elain.”

This time, when he pulls her to him, she does not stop to speak, only kisses him until she can hardly breathe, lets him show her what it’s like to make love in his bed.

Later, when she’s curled up against him, her head on his broad chest, he winds a lock of her hair around his fingers.

“I never thought I could feel like this,” he says.

“Tired? Hungry? Bored of a woman?” she shoots back, rising on her elbow to reveal a lazy smile. He cups her jaw, runs his thumb against her cheek.

“My life has been shaped by battles. The space between them always felt empty, as if the best part of me were going to waste. But now I am envisioning a future in this court with you, and I am hoping there are centuries of peace.”

She kisses him, lets him pull her flush against him, a perfect distraction against the thoughts that form in her mind, the reality they will have to face.

“We need to destroy Koschei first,” she says. “He has been too quiet.”

“Between you and Vassa, the death-lord doesn’t stand a chance.”

Elain knows, looking in his eyes, that he believes this. It’s one of the reasons why she loves him. Even though she remembers the feeling of being trapped in the world, still has nightmares about herself wearing the Crown, about Vassa’s screams. The death-lord is always one step ahead of them and now, when she is so happy, Elain is most afraid that all this will be torn from her.

Still, they have this moment, and so she allows the smile to bloom on her face, full of all the joy she does not have words for. Let them have this moment, where the possibility of a happy ending to their story seems so possible.

“You flatter me, High Lord,” she says, and reaches for him, to return the compliment.

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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Why Vassien Is Endgame: The World Peace Theory

At the end of ACOWAR, all of the characters are focused on healing from the war with Hybern and creating peace in their world. One major aspect of this peace is High Fae, "lesser" faeries, and humans all living at peace with each other. In ACOSF, we find out that the terms of the treaty that would broker this peace are not going well -- particularly on the side of the High Fae. (Established power's never going to give up its power quite so easily, but I digress.)

This is where Lucien and Vassa come in. Lucien is the heir to the Day and/or Autumn Courts, with the potential for a claim to Spring if Tamlin were to die without heirs. (I mean, I don't know how Prythian's inheritance laws work, but it seems like a strong possibility.) Vassa is one of the seven human queens who rule the human realms, and could end up as the only queen if the betrayal of the others were to come to light.

Imagine how much easier peace in Prythian would be if there were a realm ruled by a human queen and her High Fae consort? Or a court ruled by a High Lord and his human High Lady? I know the Night Court has a formerly human High Lady, but now Feyre is a High Fae with a lot of power. The Night Court is a remote destination, nearly impossible for humans to reach. Its pro-human attitude is mostly symbolic. But Vassa as a co-ruler of the Day Court, the brave and brilliant human queen who broke the enchantment of the death-lord Koschei? Lucien, a powerful High Fae and rightful heir to at least one Prythian court, divesting of his power in favor of supporting his beloved human queen? Those stories are powerful. That's evidence that a better world is possible. And the High Fae, petty and politicking as they are, might actually be moved by it, just enough to consent to a treaty that makes life better for everyone.

Vassien already has immaculate vibes -- the beauty, the snark, the meeting of the minds! -- but throw in world peace, too? It's got to be endgame.

#vassien #vassien is goals #vucien #acotar theory #lucien vanserra #queen vassa #prythian politics #world peace in prythian

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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Not making any promises, but today I started working on a Lucien/Vassa one-shot. I love writing them together, they’re clever AND snarky AND beautiful AND each the heir to a kingdom? I MEAN...!

#acotar #acotar fanfiction #lucien vanserra #queen vassa #vassa #vassien #lucien x vassa #vassa x lucien #vucien #vassien is goals

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houseofhurricane · 3 years

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ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (21/28) | Elain x Tamlin, Lucien x Vassa

A/N: With Tamlin and Vassa on the brink of death, is there anything Elain can do to save them? You can find all previous chapters here, or read Bloom & Bone on AO3. Thank you for reading! ❤️ If you'd like to get an early preview on the next chapter, follow me on Instagram at @house.of.hurricane.

Elain has been pacing the Spring Court estate since Tamlin left, hours before dawn. Her fingers trembled so badly that Mor, come from the Night Court, was forced to button her dress, then forced Elain to sit while Mor held a cup of tea to her lips. Elain could taste the whisky in the mixture but accepted the burn in her throat without complaint, nodded when Mor told her it would be all right. She’d watched Tamlin in battle dozens of times, she said, and the Mother always protected him, you’d think a male so big would be an easy target, but Tamlin always knew exactly where to be, when to wield his magic or his sword or the shape of the beast. Mor’s babbling, Elain knows, and yet her musical voice is so soothing that it’s all she can do to keep herself from begging Mor to stay with her. But she’s here to guard Vassa, to winnow her if Koschei attacks.

She’s let Vassa down enough, Elain knows. She cannot allow her friend to be captured by Koschei, not after seeing what this second captivity has wrought, the way Vassa is crumbling.

So when the queen and the Morrigan go to the lake to await the sun, Elain stays in the estate with Lucien, alert to every sound. Finally, he retreats to the library after placing a spell on her that will alert him to the presence of another living being, and Elain takes to the halls again, her heels clicking on the marble and the old stone. Normally she would linger at the windows, comfort herself with the view of the flowers and her endless hypotheses about how to improve the garden, but now the blooms are a smear of color in her vision, refusing to become distinct and consoling.

She spends an hour in the kitchen, letting Cook boss her through the baking of the day’s bread, but eventually he shoos her away for over-kneading the dough.

If she had not promised Tamlin otherwise, she would go to the Autumn Court, no matter that the only places she knows are likely already in the thick of battle. If only she could see him for a few more moments, she thinks, striding through the estate one more time.

Mid-stride, the pain hits her. The agony begins on the left side of her torso, the place where her waist curves, and then it consumes Elain whole, a blaze of agony.

The pain makes her silent, drives her hands into fists so tight that blood seeps from between her fingers, from where her nails have punctured her palm.

“Lucien,” she breathes through the pain, though perhaps it is a scream, “someone has cast a spell on me.”

Though she can see no magic around her, detect nothing with her own powers. The attack from Koschei has begun, she realizes, and when she disappears out of the world, even though the pain remains, flaring and ebbing, she waits to hear his voice, feel the spark and crackle of his powers.

Instead she appears outside her room in Feyre and Rhys’s river house, and Rhys is muttering, “if you die like this, it’s going to look as if I killed you, and we both know this isn’t how I would kill you,” and then, despite the fire that clamps its jaws tighter on her, Elain runs until she reaches Tamlin, nearly falling out of Rhys’ arms. She knows exactly how far they’ve walked by the thick trail of blood, a shocking red against the gleaming floor.

“Get Madja,” she orders Rhys, reaching for Tamlin, a challenge in her eyes. She won’t ask what happened. There is no chance that Rhys would have left a losing battle with Tamlin instead of Cassian or Azriel. Which means that Tamlin had some plan he didn’t divulge to her. But she will be angry with him later.

Now, she only tells Rhys that she can bear Tamlin’s weight and braces herself for him, his head coming to rest on her shoulder, the blood of his injury warm on her hip. She presses her hand over the gash, walking him step by agonizing step to her bedroom, murmuring, you’re all right and hold on and please, Tamlin, please until none of those words have any meaning and her voice sounds like a shrill whine in her ears.

Finally, they reach the bedroom and she eases him as gently as she can onto her bed, pressing with all her might on his side, the magic in the wound sparking against her own. Koschei was behind this attack somehow, of this Elain is certain.

But as she presses on the wound, calling her magic up inside herself, willing it through her fingers in a golden glow, the pain in Elain’s side recedes.

She can still feel Tamlin’s blood, hot and throbbing against her palm, but Koschei’s magic is gone. All she can detect is Tamlin’s own magic, and Rhys’, where he tried his best to throw a patch on the damage.

There is still so much blood, though. Enough that a man would be dead. Elain has never much liked the sight or smell of blood, but she pushes through the bile that rises in her throat, presses her hands hard against Tamlin’s side, willing his blood to stay inside his body, for his own rapid healing to begin. Hoping it will be quick enough.

“You need to live,” she tells him, “because I want to scream at you for whatever made you decide to sacrifice yourself. And then I want to apologize for all the times I told you to do something, to lead your court. Because I didn’t realize it would hurt me so much to see you like this.”

She can still feel the warmth of the blood trying to escape his body, and Tamlin’s eyelids don’t so much as flutter. Despite his tan from so many hours spent outside, his skin is pale, going blue and gray, as if shadows have begun to claim him.

“I could’ve lived with the pain in my side,” she goes on, as if he had been listening to her, “but the pain in my heart at losing you is too much. I can follow you to the realm where the dead go, and if you die today you will find me in that world. But I want to know what it would be like to be with you in this world and unafraid. So you need to hold tight to whatever binds you here and live.”

She sets free a pulse of magic through him, not sure if it will do any good, but there is no answering gush of blood, and she hears a steadier breath leave Tamlin’s lungs. The seconds drag on and Elain holds her hands to the wound, alert to Koschei’s magic.

When the hand presses to the back of her neck, cool and dry, Elain screams.

Then she registers Madja’s scent, the calming herbs that seemed to have seeped into the healer’s skin.

With a practiced gesture, Madja slips her hands around Elain’s, then replaces them, pressing on the wound. Her magic, a white glow, surrounds Tamlin's side, spreads itself across his body.

“It is only his flesh that is harmed,” Madja says, and her voice is equal parts calming and annoyed. “I had thought from the state the High Lord was in, that there was a magical catastrophe of some kind.”

“Koschei’s magic was in the wound. It felt spiky and strange, like lightning in the air but more… evil, somehow.”

“There is nothing like that in this wound. Not even a trace of that kind of magic. I sense yours, and his, and the High Lord’s awful attempt at healing. It is as if that magic has not existed in this world, Lady.”

“You can call me Elain, Madja,” she responds, which is what she always tells the healer despite no evidence that Madja will listen, but behind her words, Elain’s mind is whirling. That she could remove Koschei’s magic from this world. There are a thousand things that she could do with that power, beginning with freeing Vassa from her curse.

She’s dimly aware of Madja’s magic as she wields it on Tamlin, knitting his flesh together, which Elain feels now in her own body, an easing inside her, the banishment of pain. She finds herself clutching at Tamlin’s hand, feeling the pulse at his wrist protesting her tight grip.

Yet inside, her mind works through the implications of this new facet of her power. This magic of Koschei’s was weaker than what she’d previously encountered, and untethered to Tamlin. It reminds her most of Beron’s magic when he interrupted the meeting of the other High Lords, and of course Koschei would have had to offer something to cement a continued alliance with the Autumn Court. Helion and Lucien could help her finesse her powers, will spend happy hours bickering over the best way to navigate the curse on Vassa.

This time, when she squeezes Tamlin’s hand, it’s because she is eager for all that awaits her, the unfolding of her plan. And this time, his fingers reach out and squeeze hers, and Elain can’t contain the little shout of joy that rises in her throat.

“Will he be all right?” she asks Madja.

“He will be weak for a few days while his body heals,” the healer says, applying a fragrant bandage to the wound, “but then it will be as if he were never harmed.”

Later, Elain will hear about the victory at the Autumn Court, how Eris claimed his throne and how Helion and the Lady of Autumn absconded to the Day Court, and joy will rise inside her, mixed with relief. But now, as Madja tightens the bandages and checks her handiwork, as color returns to Tamlin’s face, premature as it may be, this is when Elain rejoices.

Exhaustion robs Vassa of most of her capacity for celebration. When Elain and Tamlin are returned to the Spring Court after the battle by Rhys, who recounts everything that has happened to Lucien and Vassa and the Morrigan, who has remained faithful to her duties as a guard, the most Vassa can manage is a smile that reveals her teeth. She wants to lean in to Lucien, pillow her head with his shoulder, but even the idea of the pain of that gesture will involve robs the desire from her, sends her to the opposite corner of the couch, tucked into herself so that there is less of her to touch.

She wants to rejoice for Eris but she worries about the curse on him, which Lucien says resembles the architecture of her own. Koschei feels only a whisper away, the grip of his magic so strong that it seems as if his own hands brush against her, polluting her. But she does not have the resolve to point this out to the grinning members of the Night Court, not after Morrigan’s bright chatter kept her distracted all day, and Vassa does not have the capacity to tear at the fragile hope in Rhys’s eyes. She should have the strength to hold Lucien close and allow him to mourn or celebrate the deaths of his other brothers however he wants, but it’s as if a thousand sleepless nights now press in on her, painful and muffling, so that she can only think of what she requires in each moment. And the idea of holding Lucien close, letting his touch cause her pain, is beyond what Vassa can currently bear.

Instead, after Rhys and the Morrigan leave, she hovers at the threshold of Tamlin’s room, where Elain has carefully arranged him on the bed. Lucien has quickly established himself on a deep armchair, his feet propped up on a low table as he works on a worn parchment which Vassa knows quite well. It contains a detailed analysis of her curse.

“You don’t know if the bond played a role,” Lucien is saying to Elain, who looks up from the fragrant compress she’s laid on Tamlin’s forehead just long enough to wrinkle her nose in annoyance.

“Even if it did, I don’t see how this isn’t worth a try.”

“You’re very sure of yourself for someone who learned this power moments ago.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“You know that Lucien is generally right,” Tamlin croaks, and the way Elain’s fingers reach for his jaw, trace the line the bones make under his skin, makes something clench, tender and jealous, inside Vassa.

She steps inside the room and they all turn towards her, her heavy human tread.

“Didn’t you always tell me that everyone underestimates Elain?” Vassa says, summoning levity to her voice, a wink towards Elain. She can tell from Lucien’s expression that he hears the strain anyway.

“I think that it is possible that I can break Koschei’s curse on you,” Elain says, in a voice that is sweet and adorably unsure, though Vassa is predisposed to give those words in any tone a rosy judgement.

“How?”

“Earlier, with my magic, I sent a spell of Koschei’s out of this world and into another. I think that I could do the same with your curse.”

“That was magic Koschei gave to my brother,” Lucien says. “My brothers were--”

“Your brothers were all powerful sons of two powerful High Fae, just like you.” Elain’s words shift between comfort and accusation, a tone Vassa recognizes. One she taught Elain herself.

“Try it now,” Vassa says, walking towards the bed and extending her hand toward Elain. She tilts her palm to the ceiling, the way a queen bestows her favor.

Then Elain steps off the bed and takes Vassa’s hand, and the pain cleaves her completely. It is as if her blood is boiling fire, as if there is an animal inside her, slashing at her with its teeth and claws, as if the world has turned to pandemonium and ragged screaming.

When Vassa finds herself on the floor, Elain and Lucien and Tamlin all staring at her, wide-eyed, she realizes that her throat is raw. That the screams were her own.

“I’m so sorry,” Elain says, and Vassa has to hold herself back from reaching for her.

Because as horrible as that pain was, when Elain reached out to her, there was an end to it. And the pain that Vassa endures every day feels endless, a life sentence.

She does not want to think about what it implies, that she wants Elain to grab her and hold on until the pain stops.

Instead, Vassa summons the depths of her will, assures her fae companions that she is all right, that she would like a few moments alone to collect herself, and manages to keep from collapsing until she reaches her own bed.

“You were going to rip her apart,” Lucien growls, as soon as Vassa is out of earshot, and for a moment Elain is actually afraid of him. She’s never heard him so full of wrath.

Still, she cannot help asking: “What did you see?”

“Did your magic keep you from hearing her screams?” There’s an edge in his voice that threatens tears, wrathful sobs. Still. She had felt the magic rise in her, the will. A possibility that seemed apart from Vassa’s torment. Even in spite of her friend’s suffering, the maelstrom of pain, Elain had almost kept her fingers wrapped in Vassa’s tight grip. Of course, she will not tell Lucien how her friend clung. Perhaps she will never reveal the extent of the queen’s desperation.

“You saw something else,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady. She feels Tamlin’s hand on hers, warmer than it was even moments ago, and the luck of it, the fact that he is here in his court and healing, makes her plunge onward. Because she has been trying to pretend that there is plenty of time to break Vassa’s curse, but that is clearly now a lie. “Tell me what you saw, Lucien, and we can try to fix it. We can go to Helion, or--”

Lucien interrupts her with a wave of his hand, lightning between his fingers. So powerful and yet completely unlike Koschei’s magic.

“That curse is interwoven with an essential part of Vassa. When you try to send it into another world, you are ripping that out of her.”

“Can you determine what part it was?”

Lucien’s face has gone pale, his lips yellow-white.

“It was her life, Elain. Her human life.”

“But that’s easy,” she says, not understanding his misery. “We’ll just summon the High Lords. Feyre was a human once.”

“Feyre saved our world and half the High Lords would still kill her to get that bit of their power back, if they didn’t believe she herself would destroy them in the process,” Tamlin says, the words between a groan and a sigh. “Now that they know the cost of such a miracle, you’ll never summon all of them. Not for a human queen who can offer them nothing.”

Elain is preparing a blistering retort when he reaches for her, squeezes her hand.

“If it were my decision alone, Vassa would already be High Fae.”

She dips her head and kisses him, a gentle press of lips that belies the furious workings of her mind. Because the moment Tamlin said her sister’s name, Elain’s own words to Feyre echoed in her mind. Your magic is something new entirely , she’d told Feyre. And isn’t it true of herself, too? Of Nesta?

“As soon as we can get a guard on this house,” she tells Lucien, “we go to the Night Court and then Helion. I have an idea.”

“I won’t let you kill Vassa,” he says, already halfway out the door, feet pointed in the direction of her room.

Elain only nods, doesn’t say that Vassa will surely die without her intervention. It would not be a kindness.

Instead, she turns back to the bed and smooths Tamlin’s hair away from his face, checking for signs of fever and too relieved when she finds none. She forgets, over and over, the fact that they aren’t human, that their lives are no longer so fragile, even in the thick of battle.

“You’re going to have to tell me why you weren’t shielding your forces,” she says, letting frustration suffuse her words.

“Helion and I went to rescue Cybele.” His eyes on hers are steady, no apology in them. “The Summer Court was better equipped to hold a shield against the Autumn Court’s fire.”

“So you had to be a hero?”

“You were angry when I hid in the forest,” he says, a sharp tone in his voice. “This is what it means, to be High Lord. To gain the peace you seek.”

His skin stands out against his white sheets now, and, had she not known the sight of him so well, Elain would think Tamlin unharmed. Still, she can see the exhaustion in his features, the pale cast to his skin.

“I didn’t know it would hurt so much,” she says, her voice breaking as soon as she meets his gaze. “I thought that you were going to die of that wound. That magic.”

“Now you know how it felt for me when Beron took you.” He reaches for her, his thumbs swiping away the tears that have fallen down her cheeks.

“Is it just the mating bond?”

“I--I sometimes think about what it would be, if you left this house. If you left me. The emptiness. And still I think I could… I think you’ve shown me how I could bear it, being alone. Anyway I probably deserve it.”

She lays herself carefully against him, avoiding his injured side, nestling close against his warmth.

“You are much better than I used to think,” she says.

“Better than I was. It isn’t much.” She hates that he won’t take the compliment. Accepting his flaws and failures is one thing, but this sorrow, in the face of his survival, still worries her.

“You were ready to sacrifice yourself for the Lady of Autumn. So that Helion could get away safe, and Rhys would be all right.”

“Who told you all that?” A confirmation in his eyes, the green gone bright as new leaves.

“Vassa was right when she said everyone underestimates me,” she says, taking his hand and sliding his fingers under the bodice of her gown. She does not want to talk about strategy or battle now. What she wants is far more than she can express in words. Not the desire for a man to protect her. More than the fervent kisses they exchange in other worlds. So many things in the world are awful, and Elain is tired and relieved and alive, and what she wants is Tamlin against her, inside of her, somehow still alive with her at the end of this day.

She stretches, allowing his hand to fall, cup her breast, and feels the heat rise in her at his harsh breath.

“I thought we were going to argue,” he says, his thumb pressed against her nipple. She can feel every movement, every hesitation.

“You’re alive,” she says, casting out with her magic to pull the door shut, leaning towards him so that her breasts swell against the neckline of her gown and his fingers are trapped against her soft flesh. “And I will have to go to the Night and Day Courts in the morning.”

In seconds, with his assistance, her dress is undone, landing on the floor with a muffled thump, her undergarments flung alongside, and then Elain reaches for Tamlin, pushing up the soft fabric of his shirt and running her fingers over his skin, the golden hair that’s light on his chest and thicker on his forearms, the muscles of his chest and abdomen, the cock that strains through his pants at the gentle exploration of her fingers.

She’s never touched him there before. She’s never dared.

His lips are on her neck, his teeth against the skin as his thumbs, featherlight, skim her breasts, teasing her soft skin, and she can’t help the moan she looses, the urgency of her own fingers, scrabbling between his back and the wall of pillows she’s constructed.

“Are you all right?” she asks, knowing that in a moment all semblance of consideration will desert her.

He pulls her against him and nods, but she feels his fingers going cold. She pulls her hands from behind him and cups her palms around his fingers, holding them above her heart.

“I’m alive,” he says, a growl edging the words, as if to distract her from the exhaustion in his words. “I’m alive thanks to your magic.”

“I’m never going to let you forget that.” She curls herself beside him, hoping he hears the promise in the words. The declaration in them.

With a groan, he reaches over and tucks the blankets around her, up to her chin, strokes his thumb across her lips.

“You saved me,” he says, and though the weight of the day bears down on her, a thick exhaustion, Elain can’t stop smiling.

Over the next week, the firebird flies less and less, and Vassa spends more of each night in her room, curled up on the bed. Though he tries to hide it, Lucien has taken to sleeping on the floor, rousing himself at the slightest motion before spending his days far away. They’re getting closer to figuring out how to break her curse, he tells her, but Vassa has to work to feign interest, let alone believe him.

In both her human and firebird forms, her body feels as if its wrapped tight with cotton and pain, everything muffled, everything a strain. Elain’s laughter is harsh against her ears, Lucien’s worried looks are cloying and overfilled with pity. She hates that she cannot bear them.

She finds herself, one night, in the doorway of the High Lord’s bedroom, where Tamlin has been forced to wait for his innards to knit themselves together again. Already he looks fully healed to Vassa, but Elain has compelled him to remain in bed and Tamlin is clearly too besotted to put up much resistance.

“I see Lucien and Elain are still away,” he says when she greets him, the words not quite as jovial as he intends. A creature like that, forced into confinement, never rests easy. “Elain barely sleeps. She thinks only of breaking your curse.”

“Do you think that there is hope?” Vassa does not ask about Lucien, who no longer speaks to her about the breaking of the curse, but who is away with Elain, and who stays awake puzzling at all hours over reams of parchment and obscure spellbooks that smell like centuries of dust. Vassa falls asleep and he is leaning over his desk, making annotations, and when she wakes before dawn, she keeps finding Lucien in the same position.

“I believe in Elain,” Tamlin says, his gaze landing on her so powerfully that Vassa is reminded of what it means to be a High Lord, “I think she is only beginning to realize her capabilities. If she says it can be done, I believe her.”

“I am not so sure. I think Lucien has lost hope.” She has not made this confession to Elain or to Lucien himself because she can imagine the vast sadness in their eyes, the onset of grief. That she would be lost to them.

Still, even the sadness in Tamlin’s face is enough to steal her breath. She, who was bred and raised to withstand armies.

“I think Lucien would sacrifice the world if it meant keeping you safe.”

“In the stories,” she says, leaning on the threshold, “you were not nearly so perceptive.”

“If the stories are true, they describe me rightly as a monster.”

“You sacrificed yourself at the Autumn Court. No monster of my acquaintance has ever been so noble.”

“I knew this court would go on without me. The stories say you were beloved in Scythia.”

“All I ever wanted was to rule,” she says, because a queen accepts a compliment gracefully, but it’s been so long since she was last among her people that she’s beginning to wonder if it is true. If the things she’s always thought she wanted are the things she truly wants, now.

“Before you return--” Tamlin begins, but he’s interrupted by a flurry of footsteps, the intake of breath that precedes Elain’s voice.

“We figured out how to break the curse!” she announces, a riot of joy as she sweeps into the room, careful not to make contact with Vassa.

Behind her, Lucien and her sisters take a more sedate walk, and before Vassa steels herself to meet Lucien’s eyes, she takes in the careful void of emotion on Feyre Cursebreaker’s face, as she walks into Tamlin’s bedroom. Vassa knows enough of Prythian gossip to know what a moment this is, even if the tableau is innocent, the High Lord convalescing and his gaze intent on Elain, all pride and delight.

“Is it true?” Vassa makes herself ask, wrenching her eyes on Lucien. The deep violet under his eyes.

She does not miss the look that passes between him and Elain, the weight of it.

Still, he nods.

“When I touch you,” Elain says, her voice gone serious, “the pain is unique because my magic is attempting to pull the curse out of this world and into another, where it cannot harm you. But as part of his adjustments to the spell, Koschei ensured that if I removed the spell, I would shatter your humanity. That’s why I couldn’t take you from this world. I would kill you.”

“I was Made High Fae under similar circumstances,” Feyre says, every inch the High Lady even in her sweater and leggings and boots scuffed with wear. “But after realizing that assembling the High Lords was unlikely, Elain thought that Nesta, who can Make and Unmake, and I, with power of the High Lords, might be able to approximate their capacities. We’ve been determining a theory and practicing the spell and its timing for the past week.”

“ Someone is too slow with her magic,” Nesta interjects, rolling her eyes towards Feyre even as she smiles at Vassa with the confidence of an alpha predator.

If Vassa hadn’t been listening so closely, that would have been the moment she thought that everything would be resolved.

But: “I would be High Fae?”

“The combination of your curse and our magic means that you would have to become something new,” Feyre says, in a voice she no doubt uses on her child when he is so tired that all he can do is sob. The way that Vassa feels now.

All her life, she was raised to be the human queen of Scythia. She had always envisioned herself returning to rule there for the rest of the years that remained to her. Because she grew up learning the history of the faeries of this world. Such a queen would never be recognized, would never be accepted.

She would no longer be Queen Vassa of Scythia. She would no longer be a firebird, or a cursed queen, or a human woman.

She would no longer live with this curse eating its way through her, the fire raging in her veins as it prepares to swallow her whole.

She turns to Lucien, meets his eyes for the first time since he walked in the room. Sees the despair in them, the fear, and the hope. And another emotion, which at this moment Vassa can hardly bear. Still, she does not look away from him, tries to etch his expression into her mind, so that she’ll never forget his russet and gold gaze, which sees everything that makes up this world, the lips she’s kissed a thousand times, the bronze skin and red-orange-gold of his hair. The jagged scar which only highlights the handsome angles of his face and makes him more dear to her, for everything that he’s survived. Her Lucien, with his clever remarks and the wit that makes her cackle with laughter, whispering secrets and endearments to her every night, who has always made her feel as if maybe it were possible to live under this curse, so long as her life was illuminated by his light.

“This magic could kill you,” he says, “or destroy you past the point of recovery.”

She thinks of what it felt like, when Elain touched her this last time. What she might become even if the Archeron sisters are successful.

“How much longer do I have if we do nothing?” She tries to stay calm, not to upset Lucien, but still the words feel jagged in her throat.

“It’s possible that Koschei could reverse the spell,” Elain says, “if we compel him.”

For the first time since she’s entered the room, Tamlin speaks.

“You will not offer yourself to the death-lord,” he growls.

Elain moves toward him, but Vassa reaches toward her first, her fingers grasping for Elain’s wrist. A bolt of pain that shocks through her. The kind of pain that carries its end within itself, which cannot last forever.

Vassa thinks, in a rush, of all those new years she might have with Lucien, should this plan succeed. All the nights where the pain of holding him has overwhelmed her. Who she might be, at the end of this. No more days trapped within the mind of the firebird, no more nights watching the life drip out of her. There will be pain, but maybe, after, there will be something new. A future she has never even allowed herself to imagine.

“Break the curse,” she says.

For the first time in a long while, she sounds like her rightful self.

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