Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Soon, one morning, Death comes creeping in the room
Crying, “O My Lord, o My Lord, what shall I do?”
~ “Hush,” traditional spiritual
The Cauldron soothed her.
As Hybern’s guards unceremoniously tipped her into the Cauldron, Elain Archeron felt the strange waters embrace her legs, then her torso, then her shoulders, until at last she was submerged with one final gulp of air. The waters—if they could be called that, viscous and shimmering as they were—were warm. Inviting. Of its own accord her body’s shaking and shivering quieted as she was subsumed. The waters muffled all her senses; sound, smell, sight were all overtaken. In moments, she began to lose all sense of place. She slowed, then stilled her limbs. She couldn’t figure out if she faced up, toward the outside world, where Feyre and Nesta and the various saints and sinners of Prythian were assembled, or down toward the fathomless depths.
She drifted.
It felt good.
Elain didn’t remember the last time she had felt like this. Soothed, supported, strengthened. Many had assumed that she lived in luxury these last few months, after the sudden influx of coin gave her family a grand estate with servants to attend it. Villagers saw her gliding down from her carriage in a frothy gown and pictured her sleeping unbothered on a bed of roses. They couldn’t imagine that anyone so fortunate as her spent most nights hunched in a chair next to the fire, cold and yet perspiring as the hours before dawn ticked slowly by.
Perhaps she had never known a gentle caress like this. Certainly not from her betrothed, as manly and proper as she could have liked. Not even from her mother, who—gods rest her soul—spent more time scrubbing her daughter’s face free of blemishes and scheming with the local mothers of eligible sons than she did cuddling her beloved daughter.
No, she had never known a touch like this. Maybe no one ever had.
She didn’t know if the Cauldron was sentient. She hadn’t known much about the Cauldron until a few moments ago, when she saw the fear it struck in the others upon sight. But gods, she swore she felt a distinct caress run through its infinite waters, soothing all the way down her spine. If the Cauldron was meant to end her life, then at least she would go out painlessly.
I forgive you, she thought. She knew what it was like, to be a vessel for someone else’s means. And if, in a moment when she opened her mouth and breathed her last, she could feel warm and safe for that brief slice of time, then she would accept that kindness where others had none.
Heat began to bloom within her chest as she strained from holding her breath. Her throat tightened, and fear lingered at the edges of her waning ability to command her body. I’m sorry, she thought instinctively, and opened her mouth to breathe.
Fresh, glowing life filled her lungs.
Hybern’s words had led her to expect tortuous pain from his experiment. But the Cauldron laughed at the mortal’s plans.
Below the surface, the waters calmed and soothed her. They were warm and vast and they felt like an extension of her own body. Elain didn’t know how she could possibly live so long within the waters, but her need to breathe paused as every bit of her existence turned and began to radiate light from within. She felt each piece of her individually change—surely she spent a century as every minuscule portion of her body, one by one, became something new. She didn’t know whether her eyes were open or closed, but she could marvel at each subtle change within her. When at last her body felt both whole and new, she saw a light even more bright than her own descend upon her. It settled just above her head, and it questioned her. It spoke no words, and yet Elain could read the question in the waters around her. It was something… fortuitous. Powerful… beyond powerful. A chance, for a willing soul.
She flexed her new, strong body and nodded.
She opened her mouth, but the light was already within her, searing her insides. Hotter than flame, quicker than forgery fire, it made her over again. She gave over to pain and ecstasy.