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When Elain wakes, she is expecting to open her eyes to darkness, yet endlessly hoping for the light of a new day. She can taste the metal of magic in her mouth, hard as the spellbound cuffs on her wrists. This is a nightmare, a hellish nightmare born of that damned Cauldron or some other evil fae curse, the kind she had been warned about since she was a little girl, the kind that nearly killed her younger sister. Surely, it is a nightmare or perhaps she has simply never left that icy Cauldron water afterall, she is still there, drowning, dying, deathless--
“Elain,” her sister hisses in the pitch black of their shared prison cell. “Elain, we have to fight.” Even if each day starts with the sound of her own name, Elain cannot help but feel utterly disoriented, as if her very self has lost its familiarity, as if by Nesta speaking it over and over again, it has only erased her. When the cell door opens, Hybern’s guards entering her vision, she shut her eyes to soften the deja vu eating itself raw in her throat.
She’s lived this day before. Again and again.
*
She hates this part.
“Put the prettier one in first.”
The screaming, the wailing, the eruption of their desperation. The wretched sobs that once tore through her falter with each new day. She is tired. Tired of the ache, as if her fragile human body simply cannot contain it anymore. She wonders if they notice that the fight leaves her a little less each time, that she is fully aware that what is to come is inevitable. Her foot pushes off the Cauldron.
*
This is the only part that she can never be prepared for--the only part that feels new no matter how many times they shove her under.
When Elain’s head goes under, into the abyss of the Cauldron, she welcomes death every time. End it, she pleads. End the cycle. Instead, the Cauldron pulls her down deep, as if into the depths of an icy ocean without a bottom, nothing but a boundless, cruel eternity. Darkness consumes every inch of her, wraps its talon around every bone, devours her very essence. A soft caress quivers against her being. A gift, it always promises, a lovely gift for you.
Forever passes. Forever. And forever.
Until a tidal wave of the ink stained water tosses her body, hollowing out everything she had ever known. She is reforged into something foreign against her will.
And then--pain. Always pain.
Time and time again, she crashes onto the floor and feels the world splinter. Nothing can be changed for this part. There is no control within the Cauldron’s grip. It’s as if she had just been put back together again only to break open again in fragile, fragmented pieces, not quite right. She is a loyal slave to the script, never changing, as she attempts to blink the water and darkness from her eyes, the room spinning and spinning, a collision of sounds and colors and light and screaming crashing into her core.
*
Elain pushes off her elbows.
“Get her off the damned floor--”
This never changes either. It’s always that voice. A stranger speaking in shades of violent protectiveness, for her? Why? She cannot ever understand it. His soft touch burning her, such disparity from the Cauldron’s bone-chilling cold, marking her with a scalding intensity. On the third day, Elain is angry as she emerges from the water. Angry at the fae faces surrounding her, the wretched human queens, the absolute absurdity of being subjected to the torture again and again.“Get off me,” she hisses. She pretends not to notice the flicker of hurt on his face or the one needling her own ribs.
She never rejects the cloak around her shoulders. Never. That detail is certain, a thread sewed into the very fabric of her sanity, perhaps the only thing in the madness keeping her from falling apart.
*
The most disconcerting part of it all is when the blonde whisks them away in a blur of shadows, whiplash every time, and Elain does not think she will ever get used to this day. It is always here, in the supposed safe house where they’ve been abandoned, where Elain can hear everything with her newly forged fae body. Except. It is not the worms or the birds or cinders of the fire or Nesta screaming at the skies in her ears. It’s inside her chest, like a distant thunder strike, reverberating the world around it. You’re my mate. You’re my mate. You’re my mate.
That’s what he had said. It echoed through her blood like a foreign language, shuddering at every inhale she took against the cloak. Elain laid on the ground, tears pooling on the wood, a finger circling the ring on her left hand, and learned that iron did not harm fae after all. But the words--they burned and burned and burned.
*
The Cauldron promised her a gift. Without fail, every time. But this could only be a curse and she was no cursebreaker like her sister. Everything unraveled against Elain’s control. There was no fight, no choice, no change to the ruthless script. Nothing was as cruel of a reminder of her inherent weakness, not even waking up human.
*
“I was to be married today,” she whispers into the darkness to no one in particular, although it is Nesta listening next to her in the cell. It has been seven days of hell. Even if she cannot see her sister’s face, she knows the look of pity creasing her face. “Elain…” she whispered in that placating voice of hers. “We’ve only been here a day. You need to be strong and fight--”
Elain shuts her voice out, shaking her head into the crook of her elbow. You do not know my fight she wants to say in return. The wild struggle her sister displays each day, all nails and biting and thrashing, would not do her any good. Her battlefield roars inside her head.
She tries to think of the wedding, of handsome Graysen, the tulips she chose, the dress she picked, the human details, but she finds her fiance’s face difficult to recall. Would he rescue her? Would he still love her? Surely, he would, surely--
The guards return.
Surely death would come before he ever did.
*
If each day is darkness, there is only one glimmer.
She could not move, could not think, could not breathe as she tumbled out of the water, despite the faint faraway screams of her sisters. Red hair, the expanse of skin, bruised lips, tangled hair, garden in ruins , the rapid visions filled what the Cauldron had carved away inside her, barraging her like stars in her eyes, too bright, too overwhelming, but still, she could not look away even if she tried.
It’s when the strong hands lift her from the floor that any semblance of warmth returns to her body. Elain blinks the visions away, slowly, her heart racing at the anticipation of what comes next.
And just as quickly--the warmth always disappears. She feels the absence first, then her feet hitting the ground, slipping on the wet stone, as if the ground were pulling away. Nesta’s hands grip her tightly, the sound of Elain Elain Elain just a distant memory somewhere elsewhere from here. Not in this world.
Everything finally stills. The ground is beneath her feet. If every other minute of this never ending nightmare is rushed and suffocating, this is the only moment that feels slow. Real. The iciness that had curled inside every vein, every corner of her ribs, every sinew, melts like snow. Light filters in. Rightness returns. A tether snaps in place. Something inside of her unfurls, like a single petal.
When Elain looks at his face, even for the tenth time in a row, it was as if she was seeing the sun after a never ending darkness.
*
On the eleventh day, something in Elain cannot take it anymore.
When the red-haired male looks at her again and breaks out, “You’re my mate, ” she finds her voice.
“What does that mean?” Her words were hoarse. It’s been haunting her now and this is her only chance to know. She stares and stares at him, and she wonders if he feels just as tired from reliving this day with her, if he awakens feeling just as battered, if the sorrow in his eyes is from the intimacy of knowing loss all too well.
She has never spoken to him before.
As if his body knows, as if she has broken the routine, he stumbles back. But then he straightens himself, a reserve of fire in his eye. He begins to kneel and Elain finds herself surprised for the first time in ages.
“It means,” he bows his head before finding her eyes again. “I am yours.”
*
Nesta is screaming at the skies again. Elain is wrapped in his cloak. Nothing changes. There are no tears this time around and she ignores the suspicion from her sister’s silvery eyes, but even Elain cannot recognize who she is anymore so what is there to say about it?
I am yours. I am yours. I am yours.
She tries to think of Graysen, her fae hating fiance, the iron ring still clamped around her finger. But she has mourned him ten times before now. I am yours. From what she remembered of the tales spun in the mortal lands, mated males were supposed to be possessive and savage beasts. Wouldn’t that mean--why didn’t he say you are mine instead? Something pulls inside her ribs, the memory of him on his knee looking up at her so gentle, so safe--
He is yours.
*
She studies him carefully. From the moment they appear before the Cauldron, before the King seals her fate, before she is thrown into its horrid waters. His dark skin, the sharp jaw and nose, the molten hair. She wants to hate him but it would not change anything.
He always meets her gaze.
He always breaks free with his white light, surging for her.
He always covers her.
He always comes.
*
On the fourteenth day, Elain has a plan. She is taking a chance.
She has memorized everyone’s parts. She knows their lines, their footsteps, the tears they choke. By now they are tattooed into the back of her eyelids and she suspects they make up her dreams between the folds of her spiraling hell.
As the King of Hybern pointed a finger at Rhysand, ready to snap their bond in half, she listened to the one begging inside of her chest. As the agony of a cleaved bond exploded around them, a High Lord crawling on his knees, his friends broken, Elain found the red-haired male’s eyes and prayed and prayed to the forgotten gods he would understand. It was just one word-- Please. They reach for each other at the same time as Tamlin grabs Nesta and Feyre.
In the seconds Mor winnows to them, Elain’s hand is already laced between his fingers.
*
She expects darkness, but instead she is met with light. The smell of cinnamon and cedar and an autumn breeze. As her eyes adjust to the light, her hands find the soft embrace of silk sheets. “Elain?” It’s that voice. But this time the syllables steady her, a taut thread catching her from a weightless freefall. The faint recognition of belonging in her name again.
Slowly, she sits up, to find the red-haired male gripping the arms of his chair seated next to her bed. Neither move, perhaps their bodies aware they’ve never quite been here before, in this unknown territory.
“You saved me,” her voice breaks. And there he goes, moving to kneel at her bedside, his hands so afraid to near her they grip the blanket instead. He does not know the depths of his rescue, she thinks. He does not know the relief singing in her veins to see the sunshine of spring through the window, the vase of flowers in the corner, the soft glow of reverence and awe as if she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Even if he does not know, something flickers in his russett eye as if he has been waiting for those words for centuries.
“Who are you?” Elain whispers.
“I am Lucien. Seventh son of the High Lord of the Autumn Court.”
“Lucien,” she said. “From my sister’s stories. Her friend.”
The corner of her lips turn slightly upward, the ghost of a smile clumsy on her face. She is out of practice, the muscle memory forgotten. She could only hope the curse that had plagued her endlessly, the cruel loop of time and darkness, was finally, finally broken. She looks at him softly, aches to tell him how lonely that hell had been, the madness that had begun to settle behind her eyes. But she doesn’t. Not because Lucien would find her delirious, but rather, because she sensed he felt the very same way too. That he was just as familiar with hell.
Instead, she tilts her head, half a whisper.
“You’re my mate.”
As Lucien smiled, full lips and sunshine, Elain finally understood that in this world, curses and gifts could be one in the same. That perhaps whatever tied mates together was the only answer she could trust. The blessed gift of a new day, a new dawn shone through the room.
She only knew this--she hoped to see him smile again. Again and again.