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Nobody can say Elain didn't try, fuck she did try very hard, Heaven knows she tried --- she kept her distance, she turned the cold shoulder, she even attempted to kiss somebody else with spectacular failure rates ---, but she could not fight it, every other thought, every too-realistic dream, every bought of desire that descended upon her before the afternoon tea when she was just minding her business, all of it circled around Lucien fucking Vanserra.
It was him she bit her nails about and him that gets her distracted enough to prick her palms in the roses and him she thinks about in her steaming hot bath, closing her eyes and pretending he is there waiting for her to come out.
Don't just leave her on the damned floor-
His voice was so beautiful she had forgotten to say to shout to yell leave me down, the floor is not the problem! Look what they done to me! Look at this hideousness! Look at me! But her freezing skin crawls for the warmth of the fabric and her overwhelmed senses beg for the scent of it.
His voice was so beautiful she almost didn't hear his words. You're my mate.
And it would be the death of him.
She hadn't quite understood what the vision meant, but it had been the first to come, the clearest of them all: the male who had called her his mate lying down like a princess in a tale wreathed in grey shadows before her crouched weeping figuree. Bloodless golden face, bloodied lips, the sound of his heartbeat familiar like the song of a Kiskadee in the morning abruptly stopping. And the silence so loud Elain could feel her ears bleed.
And somehow she knew, it was her fault.
She got too close, she gave too much, she had him in her hands and she lost him.
And the hollowness that followed was so painful it rocked her awake.
And the nightmare came again and again and again and again and again.
To say Elain was losing her mind was an understatement, to say that the sight haunted her would be making light of the horror behind her eyes.
In the night she dreamt of Lucien, in the Day she longed for Greysen for a simpler life for her simple human mind for her wedding preparations for her future house of great grey walls that would keep her well away from fey and mating bonds and lovely dead men.
Even bloodless, bloodied, asleep, he'd been so beautiful her lungs gave out inside her leaving her a gasping mess. And she wanted him to open his eyes just once, just one more time so she could see the russet and gold and know he saw her too --- because they could set her on fire; soaked to the bone in freezing cauldron water, and he had set her on fire with one stare alone.
The nightmare was then interwoven with new visions as the palace of her mind expanded, as Elain welcomed the madness. Abstained from food, abstained from mirrors, became soft, less awake --- sometimes she was afraid she would float away lighter than light.
Maybe she could weaken this body and return to what she was.
(Amren looked at her with seven thousand years behind each irises. Can the butterfly become a caterpillar again?)
Cloud soft and cloud light. A bird of fire circled her thoughts like a vulture, no trace of smoke in its wake, only glittering sparks. Regal. Each feathered flame screaming I am Loved I am Loved Crowned six times with Gold, my enemies love me but by my brethren I am loathed, how is that so?
Enraged sparks rained upon Elain's eyes. When will you sing for me, oh bird of flame?
How can I sing songs of the humans in foreign lands?
The sight of Lucien then was a punch to the gut, tea and biscuits to soften the blow.
And, for a moment, it crumbled the weightless thing she had fought so hard to become, why did you have to come and break everything? Drown me in and pull me out. Larva Pupa Butterfly. He was beautiful enough to empty her head and leave only enough fuel to light a single angry flame and his name written in the same gold that made up his mechanical eye.
She was dazzled, but she was angry.
He didn't understand what she had become; she didn't understand it either.
I was to be married in a few days.
Dressed in white, crowned with iron, seen for what she was because he could see her. Human. All her heart's desire would be all his heart desired. Grey like the walls of the manor she'd touch and bring to life with color, grey like the shadows wreathing his face bloodless bloodied- He Doesn't Understand.
Can you hear my heart? I can hear your heart at night, echoes of a Kiskadee in the dew-veiled twilight, now too far up in the mountains for the birds to sing for her, but his heart would.
The flame he left grew and his name shone and the nightmare kept coming, brighter than ever. And with it, everything else became clearer, everything else bathed in sunlight. A black box, more precious than anything. Swans dancing, gliding, surrounded by great grey walls. A sorcerer lord holding chains in his hands.
Her sister sat her in a room with him, where his scent was of sun-warmed apples and roasted sugar nuts and cold morning breeze instead of blood-touched death. And it was worse, so much worse. Ambrosial steaming tea went untouched, she wanted only to taste him. Sitting very still, lighter than light. Tempted, she was being tempted - biscuits and tea and he still doesn't understand her world crumbling right before his eyes and---
A tug. A burn. A golden thread unraveling from the fabric of her spirit and connecting her to him, ebb and flow. How hadn't she noticed before? Twenty-three years, and she had never noticed the lattice work of her soul.
Too close.
Her rib but his bone. One flesh. Mine. Yours.
His heart, Kiskadee song.
Maybe it was then that she had decided to say no and keep saying no. If she stayed close, she ought to fall.
And pulling away from him somehow meant getting closer to the Illyrian soldier, the prettiest of the three, the quietest, smelling of cool mists and pine. So if he offered his hand she would take it, and if that hand led her away she would welcome it. Azriel, like a gust of wind that blew away the fog and gave her wrongness a name.
Seer. Clairvoyant. Diviner.
Like the missing piece in a riddle, the linchpin, name it and watch it come to life. The ravens, the queen, the sorcerer, the swans, the dead male taking with him half her heart, cleaving her chest and her whole life in two.
Even clearer now that it would be her fault.
It was hard but she tried, always half a step from going to him, tell him to stay, tell him be safe, don't be reckless if you are my other half don't unravel and leave me torn and frayed. His eyes set her ablaze half a step away. Who are you fooling, girl? He's safer an ocean away. It's better to silence the song now, snuff out the light, turn and run before they can catch you.
So she tried. Heaven knows she tried. When he was away on a mission to follow her lead --- because somehow he trusted her enough to go --- she sought her old love out, tried to fit her butterfly body into a caterpillar house. But it was too late, her mouth was full of flame and she said his name like it fucking mattered that Greysen knew and it coated her tongue in gold.
And it matters! It matters for fuck sake!
And so Elain tried, fuck she tried very hard to forget that it mattered so much. She became solid, cold, fed, and strong. On her knees on grave dirt, the weight of a dagger in her hand, the weight of her heart on the other. So she buried her flesh and fashioned a dagger for a heart, her own blood flowed through it in a drip drip drip, dressed like an apparition and became a memory in cobalt blue. Did not forget, did not forgive.
She welcomed the cold hands and the stolen stares and the silence.
Somehow all about them was said with silence. Say something! Call my name and make it sound like him.
Let the fire, the sunlight, and the gold pass her by replanting her garden with sky colored hydrangeas, forget-me-nots, and bluebells, wearing black and speaking only when everybody has gone to sleep so they don't hear a whisper of her desire --- because desire still thrummed and the hunger only grew, to be seen, to be touched.
Blue-grey also a color, the silence also a song.
Cauldron and Mother forbid I ever desire to be loved.
In Lucien's absence, it was easier, the Kiskadee song but a whisper.
But in his presence flashes of red. Red hair in wine shaded orange she could almost swallow, red cheeks and warm skin of her face, red ribbons on the box where her gift was placed inside, red crimson coat that smelled of autumn from her childhood, red shoes that stepped away as he got close, red in her vision as she realizes he understood.
Enchanted gloves so that your hands aren't stained red with blood anymore.
I am entitled to the blood and the earth, caked beneath my nails as I try to dig my way out of here. No males, no mates, no seer, no fae.
Red and blue, violet nights all alone, days melting together in a lavender haze.
It was then she learned she could freeze that vision in time, knelt beside him for a hundred years, snow falling, piling all around them. She wiped the hoar frost off his skin and said a prayer to all higher forces she knew. Cauldron-blessed, she calls you now, spare him of my hands for they are marred with blood.
Alone in her garden, frozen by the winter air.
Violet fades into grey, in silence is easy to fade.
But in his presence, red melts into orange melts into yellow melts into gold. Looking at him feels like looking at the open sky when his gaze is turned away, lovely male, lovely man.
And if their eyes meet, like staring into the sun, only a few seconds of mercy before she's blinded, sparks behind her eyelids, only that lonesome flame and his golden name. Lucien, Lucien, lullaby.
He sips his wine, a drop from the corner of his lips licked away, gazes averted, yet they're both painfully aware of each other. Bloodless bloodied.
Next year, pearl earrings, sisters but not twins, uneven surfaces of the real thing bought in Summer just for her.
Who had told him? Her sister? Her father? She hoped they did, she hoped he hadn't guessed and somehow landed on the very thing she found loveliest, more precious than stones.
Every breath, every look closed the distance, pulled that bond taught.
So that night she'd try, one less genuine attempt to kill that flame, no fire, only heat. The shadowsinger is easy to love, she thinks, easy to please, easy to look at without feeling like her soul is in cinders. Set the stage, lie in wait, make the move you planned, no witnesses to your desire no witnesses to your shame.
Transparent in all things. A rose in glass. It doesn't show the thorns, but that's okay. Elain could be a rose with soft, pretty petals, sit her in the garden and forget about it. Touch me and preen my petals open, call for the bees and the butterflies, the moths and the beetles, the hummingbirds and the kiskadees.
His heartbeat so close, a floor above, making her blood boil, singing what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing.
She closes her eyes. Kiss me, kiss me, silence it.
But with a brush of cold shadows, he doesn't. A mistake, he called it.
And so the flame grows, a forest fire in her chest, so bright her eyes water. I'm sorry.
And he faded before she could tell him it is my plan to make a mistake and break the bird's neck and become the shorter half of this wishbone. But he was gone and, alone, the weight of the necklace weighs her down, brands her --- the rose is a lie, the glass a facade; Elain is opaque, Elain is murky waters, Elain is a cactus flower and a prickly poppy.
She wants Lucien with violence in her heart, with teeth and claws. Why do I want you want so? Why is my heart racing with vengeance, yet it beats for you alone? Why is my body betraying me?!
Every thought, every too-realist dream, every bout of desire before afternoon tea.
She has Lucien tied to the pyre burning in her mind --- so beautiful the sight makes her lungs give out, so she swallows flames. Golden brown, texture like sun. But this altar is not a place of sacrifice; it is a place of worship. My burning heart like bramble bush which the fire cannot consume.
She steps into it, kissed by the flames, and touches his chest. I'll be the death of you.
He smiles, the brightness of a giant star. And it'll be a heavenly way to go.
The crackle pop is so loud it makes her ears bleed. But it'll be the death of me too.
And whatever after there is, I'll be waiting for you.
And so the birdsong continues, the most beautiful she's ever heard.