#Az being doomed is something that can be so personal

[flowerflamestars]

Effloresce snippet

“And her daughter,” Azriel went on, quiet, “Shahar, heir to the Kingdom of Illyria and the Court of Night.”   “They died,” Nesta’s voice rang, cold clarity, a knife through Cassian’s ribs, “On Illyrian soil. The father blamed the assassins and the son”- “Yes,” Azriel hissed, not a man, a shadowsinger born of mountain cold and absolute cave darkness, cruel in what he could not unknow.   Shahar, the hope and dream of two different worlds. Patient cleverness, wrathful magic- a half Illyrian child who could sing the wind to shape so easily as she could winnow darkness and call down dreams.   A high lady worth following, at just seventeen.   An awing, devastating, dangerous power- to no one more than Cassian’s brother, who’d followed the song of his soul all the way to servitude.   It was Vanserra- quick, bright Lucien- who fearlessly leaned closer, and put a hand on Azriels shoulder. Embers floated free in the air, beautiful, delicate temporary stars. “There’s somewhere we need to go, Shadowsinger.”   Horror rippled visibly over Nesta’s face, greying her pallor further.   She swallowed. Retraced her steps to reach, without a shred of hesitation, and fold her smaller hand over Azriel’s unmoving grip. “Tell us what you need, and you will have it.”   Gentle- gods and fucking stars- Lucien Vanserra tugged on Azriel’s shoulder, and unresponsive, pulled the fell wind of the north willing into a winnow.   The sudden magic didn’t startle Nesta, not like it would have Feyre. She went right back to pacing, quick and vicious. Cassian watched through three revolutions before Nesta’s steps stalled.   “She was his”-   Her furious shoulders framed before the window, steel. Starlit snow through the glass, Lucien ember’s flung around her still, like magic itself could not resist that draw any more than he himself wished to. She was beautiful and terrifying, a light herself in this world, and Cassian was not Azriel- he would not have survived without her, now that he’d found her.   “Yes.”

[acourtofthought]

I have to wonder if certain comments I've seen in the fandom are hyperbole or if the person truly believes what they're saying, one being that there are absolutely no hints for Elain leaving the Night Court to end up in another. Apparently Gwyn's eyes glowing like a sunlit sea is evidence she'll end up in the Summer Court (despite becoming a Valkyrie) but none of this could hint at Elain leaving the Night Court? 🤔

So here we go:

frowning at the violets and roses I'd painted around the knobs of Elain's drawer (also, for anyone claiming they have flowers and gardens in the NC, that would be like someone claiming the stars on Feyre's drawer meant nothing as they have stars in other courts too).

She would have marveled - likely wept - at the gardens I'd become so accustomed to, at the flowers in perpetual bloom at the Spring Court"

"Outside of these (NC) borders, the rest of the world celebrates tomorrow as Nynsar — the Day of Seeds and Flowers."

"I painted flowers for Elain on her drawer," I said, sawing and sawing. "Little roses and begonias and irises."

"I think she and Amren would be fast friends. I think she would like Velaris, despite herself. And I think Elain — Elain would like it, too." (That might not look like foreshadowing but that em dash shows interruption to Feyre's train of though. Whereas she spoke with certainty about Nesta liking Velaris despite herself, Elain's part reads as if Feyre had to pause to think on what Elain would like there).

The suite was filled with sunlight. Every curtain shoved back as far as it could go, to let in as much sun as possible.

As if any bit of darkness was abhorrent. As if to chase it away.

Seated in a small chair before the sunniest of windows, her back to us, was Elain.

She had always been so full of light. Perhabs that was why she now kept all the curtains open. To fill the void that existed where all of that light had once been.

I found Elain in the family library. Still staring at the window.

Elain only turned toward the sunny windows again.

Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window

Her eyes were the brown of a fawn's coat (It's funny how some on IG were up in arms over SJMs Bambi sweater, educating readers on the difference between a stag, fawn and deer while completely ignoring how the majority of fawn's are born in late May to June, aka Spring)

"What can I get you, Elain?" "Sunshine."

She was a rose bloom in a mud field. Filled with galloping horses (symbolism anyone? Elain is out of place in with the Illyrians?!? Doomed to be trampled?!)

If Elain was a blooming flower in this army camp, then Nesta...she was a freshly forged sword, waiting to draw blood.

I should have asked Amren to train her too.

The gates to her mind...Solid iron covered in vines of flowers — or it would have been. The blossoms were all sealed, sleeping buds tucked into tangles of leaves and thorns.

Elain ... She'd taken one look at us in the swaying grasses outside that wagon, the legs and assets on display and turned crimson. Viviane stepped in, offering a Winter Court fashion that was far less scandalous. / In the heat, it'd be miserable, but Elain was thankful enough that she didn't complain.

The lovely fawn, blooming spring vibrant behind her. Standing before Death, shadows and terrors lurking over his shoulder. / The only bridge of connection...that knife. (I wonder if this was SJM hinting at what lay ahead for Elain in the war. Upon accepting Truth-Teller from "Death" himself, creating that bridge between them, shadows and terrors awaited her in the form of her stabbing the king. Cruelty bothers Elain yet she then ended up having to stab someone. Accepting the knife from Az is what opened her up to something she never wanted even though I don't think she regrets saving her sister).

But Elain had given it back — had pressed it into Azriel's hands after the battle, just as he had pressed it into hers before. And then walked away without looking back. (Elain choosing to walk away from what lurks over "Deaths" shoulders).

Elain politely refused, taking up a spot in one of the wooden chairs set in the bay of windows. Also typical.

Elain was like a dog, loyal to whatever master kept her fed and in comfort.

And while I might never run to Elain first with problems or for advice, we had a peaceful, amicable understanding. I found her to be a pleasant companion. I wonder if she'd resent that judgement, I certainly would.

Elain stood at the wall of windows.

"I would like to build a garden, " she declared. After all of this...I think the world needs more gardens."

It was Spring, and yet it wasn't. / Distant — because on the estate, nothing bloomed at all. The pink roses that had once climbed the pale stone walls of the sweeping manor house were nothing but tangled webs of thorns. The fountains had gone dry, the hedges untrimmed and shapeless.

"You've been trying to bring Tamlin back for awhile. But he isn't getting better, is he?"

Her sister's delicate scent of jasmine (the first scent Feyre noted in Spring once her glamour was removed) and honey lingered in the red-stoned wall like a promise of spring.

Elain would love this place. So many flowers, all in bloom, so much green — the light, vibrant green of new grass — so many birds singing and such warm, buttery sunshine.

But Elain ... The Spring Court had been made for someone like her. Too bad her sister refused to see her. Nesta would have told Elain to visit this place. And too bad the lord who ruled these lands was a piece of shit.

Elain in black was ridiculous

But wearing black, no matter how much she claimed to be part of this court...it sucked the life from her

He knew the cruelty of the Hewn City troubled her

[jungleslang]

I'm sorry, but I cannot understand people who say that Elriel shippers hate Lucien and want to cause him pain or are advocating for him to experience pain and ultimately be unhappy. I understand that the mating bond is a huge deal in fae culture, and that it's more difficult to deal with for the male than for the female. But shipping Elain with Azriel despite this does NOT mean that I hate him. The opposite is actually true. It literally makes zero sense.

I've seen this argument too many times throughout the years, and I saw it again today, so I've decided to address it. I'm going to discuss why Elriel doesn't equal Lucien being unhappy, as well as some Elriel and Vucien foreshadowing, and why this could lead to Lucien's happiness. Be aware that I'm obviously biased, and this is in no way meant to hate on Elucien or Elucien shippers. I'm just addressing this specific argument. All ships are valid, and we don't ship shame in this house. This is just my personal opinion, and I know that what I ship might not be endgame.

Also this is gonna be pretty long, don't say I didn't warn you.

I want to start off by saying that a big reason why I don't ship Elucien is honestly BECAUSE I love Lucien. Elain has consistently shown not even an ounce of interest in him for the past three books. Lucien himself also says that Elain was "thrown at him," while Jesminda, his past love, chose him. Elain has never used or shown her appreciation for any of the gifts Lucien gave her (which is her right). She has clearly stated that she does not want a mate. She also currently has feelings for Azriel, and it's been said that Elain "shrinks" in Lucien's presence, her newfound boldness suddenly gone. I'm sorry, but why would I want this for Lucien?? Why would I want Lucien to be with a woman who does not love him and currently has feelings for another male? A woman who literally shrivels up when he is near her? Lucien deserves to love and be loved wholeheartedly. And of course, Elain does, too.

Additionally, Lucien's words about Jesminda highlight that having a choice and being truly chosen are things that matter to him. And who are the people that Lucien has actively chosen to be with? Jurian and Vassa. Lucien is a centuries old fae male, with experience in multiple courts, and he's chosen to shack up with two humans in the human lands. That means something, and it shows that Vassa and Jurian are the people he feels comfortable with, the people he trusts, and most importantly, the people who make him feel wanted. Wanted enough to literally live with them after all of his trauma, after being barred from his home in the Spring Court by Tamlin, a person he loved cherished more than anyone else. And Jurian and Vassa have also chosen him.

As someone who absolutely loves Lucien, THIS is what I want for him. For him to be with people he chose and who in turn chose him. I want what's best for him, and so far, the text has indicated that Jurian and Vassa are what's best for him. I mean come on, the three of them literally created a name for themselves, the Band Of Exiles. The one time we saw Lucien actually laugh in ACOWAR was when he was with Vassa at the end. He blushes at the mention of her and has a "spark" in his eyes when he talks about her. Let's also not forget about this part in ACOFAS:

Lucien says that he's not living with them, the manor belongs to all of them. And even Feyre remarks how he's more comfortable around them, two humans, than people of his own race. I feel like this part is so overlooked. To me, it really demonstrates that Lucien has indeed found a home with these people, a home that belongs to all of them, and that he feels he truly does belong with them.

Additionally, it bothers me when people imply that rejecting the mating bond automatically equals unhappiness while accepting it guarantees love and happiness. Elain and Lucien rejecting their mating bond does not mean that Lucien is doomed to be unhappy and in pain for the rest of his life. And accepting it does not mean they'll be happy, either. We literally have proof of this in the books, and it comes in the form of Rhysand's parents. Rhys says that his parents were wrong for each other, and that his mother eventually came to hate his father, only staying with him because she was grateful to him for saving her wings. That is not a happy relationship.

Also, something that is one of the biggest hints toward Elriel for me, is the fact that every single mated couple we see in the books that actually ended up together had feelings for each other BEFORE the mating bond snapped into place. Rhys had feelings for Feyre while they were under the mountain, and Feyre fell in love with Rhys before she knew they were mates. Nessian's mating bond also didn't snap into place until after they already loved each other. And we also have Kallias and Viviane, who were in love before they discovered they were mates. These relationships all had solid foundations before the mate bond came came into play. Romantic feelings were established before the bond. For Elucien, this was not the case. Their mate bond snapped into the place the day they met each other, which directly mirrors Rhys' parents, whose mate bond snapped into place the moment they met and who also weren't right for each other. (Coincidence? I think not.)

We also have to remember that we have never been inside Lucien's head, with the exception of that one scene where Feyre infiltrates his mind while he's talking to Elain. That one glimpse alone mainly deals with the feelings he has for Elain due to his instincts because of the mate bond. It's also where he says Elain had been thrown at him. We don't actually know the extent of what he feels or doesn't feel for Elain. We don't know if he has romantic feelings for her outside of his instincts because of the bond, which we know is important based on what we discussed above. Yes, Lucien gives her gifts and clearly wants to get to know her, but we don't know whether he's just doing this out of obligation because the bond is so important in fae culture. Which might also be the reason Elain hasn't formally rejected him yet.

I think that there is a decent chance that this is the case based on what we've seen in the books. I also get the feeling that Lucien might be pursuing Elain out of obligation because Elain hasn't given him the time of day, and they've had no meaningful moments/conversations up until now. He doesn't really know her. How can you have feelings for someone you don't know and haven't spent any real time with? There are also these scenes from ACOFAS and ACOSF:

In ACOFAS, Feyre says that Lucien doesn't seem to have a real interest in bridging gap between him and Elain. In ACOSF, Cassian says the words "my mate" drip with discomfort when Lucien says them. This indicates that he's not so comfortable with calling Elain his mate / having her as his mate.

I also think this part is important because the level of comfort the characters have with each other is a distinguishing factor of the ships. Lucien is more comfortable around Vassa than Elain, while Elain is more comfortable around Azriel than Lucien.

As I stated before, this is the only time we see Lucien laughing in ACOWAR. Additionally, his shoulders are loose, indicating that he is not only comfortable but also relaxed, which is a rare thing for Lucien in the recent books with all the shit he has going on. In contrast, there's always a tension underlying his and Elain's interactions. Based on the fact that Vassa is chatting with him "animatedly," I would say she's likely comfortable around him, too.

There are also these two passages from ACOMAF, which I'm sure every Elriel shipper already knows lol.

We can also see that Elain has been at least somewhat comfortable around Azriel from the start, even when she was afraid of the fae and engaged to a fae-hating man. She even engaged him in a genuine conversation about flying. These two excerpts also show that Elain is somewhat attuned to Azriel as well. She notes his body language and uses it to gauge the situation. This also indicates a certain level of trust in him. And this has only increased as the story progressed. He's content to just sit beside her in the garden, she tells him about her plans for the garden, and they stay up late talking to each other. Their interactions signify how at ease they are with each other, which I think is big thing for Azriel, who's always described as cold and filled with an icy rage. Rhys says it took Mor centuries to get Az to loosen up, but he eased up around Elain in a remarkably short amount of time for someone usually so closed-off.

So, the conclusion here is that Elucien is not the only ship that guarantees all characters' happiness as some people say. Lucien is completely capable of being happy and finding a home without Elain accepting the bond, and the evidence is in the books. The fact that Lucien actively chooses to live together with Jurian and Vassa, and that Elain has constantly chosen to be around Az while showing no interest in Lucien is the reason while I will always stan Vucien and Elriel over Elucien. It's all about choice for me, which is something that's also emphasized in the books and seems to be important for both Elain's and Lucien's arcs.

And all Elriel shippers absolutely don't hate Lucien. If I'm being honest, I actually like Lucien as a character more than Azriel. While I am a diehard Elriel stan and I adore Az, Lucien is a more interesting character to me. He was raised in the Autumn Court, lived in the Spring Court, and ended up becoming part of the Night Court, as well. Then we find out he's the heir to the Day Court, and now he lives in the human lands with Jurian and Vassa. He has connections to so many places, and yet struggles to belong. He was lost, and found a home with two other lost people. The Lost Queen Vassa, and a human who was resurrected in a world that moved on without him.

This is also why, in my opinion, Vucien / The Band of Exiles has so much more potential than Elucien. I don't want another story about mates ending up with each other. Give me the found family trope that is the Band of Exiles.

If you've made it through this whole thing, thank you. As always, I'd love to hear your opinions!

[alltheworldsinmyhead]

my predictions for a court of silver flames (and the book 5)

since i’ve just forced myself to re-read acofas, i emerge now with head clear and heart full of utter dismay for feysand bullshit. this novella is pretty good at setting up a ton of hints for the next book, so at least there’s that. here are some of the plot points/character arcs which i think are worth to keep in mind before reading acosf, especially for those who finished reading acowar and acofas a while ago. 

MOR

Mor is going on a journey to the Continent as a Night Court ambassador, possibly with Azriel. I don’t know to which extent this escapade will be described, but it will definitely happen and it will be important for both of them - Mor especially. My personal opinion is that the toxic triangle in which she’s tangled up with Cass and Az will meet its sad end in this book, due to many reasons such as Cassian;s relationship with Nesta, Az’s growing interest in Elain and, hopefully, Mor’s own growth as a person or her new romance. I also think that Mor’s relationship with her father will be a major plotpoint and the Court of Nightmare will play a BIG role either in this book or in the next one. Also-

ERIS

Eris will take the throne from Beron in acosf. I will be shocked if he doesn’t. Possibly the reprecussions of this event  will be discussed in the next book. Also possibly, there may be some kind of coup that will result in killing more than one High Lord (yes, I am thinking about Helion)

ELAIN

I’m sorry, but I literally cannot see it any other way - Elain will deny the mating bond with Lucien. The hints for this are scattered all over acofas. She doesn’t want it and she is not, in any freaking way, interested in him nor she is even interested in being interested. I think she’ll also get some opportunities to show more of her character and, hopefully, Mass will finally let her utilize her powers in some sensible way, but this might be saved for the next book. 

TAMLIN

Lucien warned Feyre they will need Tamlin as an ally ‘before the dust settles’. I am half-tempted to make an assumption that Tam will die in acosf, but it’s not based on any evidence, so it’s just my personal theory. Regardless, I do believe the destruction of the Spring Court will fucking bite half of Feyre’s ass in the following books and Tamlin either redeems himself (whether or not he should redeem himself when he is already in such a pitiful state is another question) or truly become a villian of the series. The one thing acofas hammered in my head is that his story with Feyre is far from over. 

LUCIEN

My fucking heart bleeds for him. My prediction is that he will cut all the ties with the Night Court, if he did not already done it after Feyre was an absolute bitch to him in acofas. I am also like 80% sure that Helion will die and Lucien will inherit the Day Court, thus getting a permanent place to call home, just as he has always wanted (but absolutely not IN A WAY he has wanted). Besides that, I am only praying for Mass to grant him some fucking happiness. i have no doubt that his relationship with Vassa and Jurian will be discussed in more details, if not, I am rioting. 

AZRIEL

There are a couple of issues Azriel will have to deal with in this and the following book:

a) his doomed relationship with Mor,

b) his blooming romance/friendship with Elain, 

c) his Illyrian identity.

I do think acosf will be a begining of some longer journey for him. Based on the snippets, I think we can also expect a lot of interactions between him and Nesta and I am so fucking excited for it that I can barely contain it.

Also, I subscribe to the theory that Az’s mom lives in the misterious Rosehall and that we will meet her soon. 

FEYRE AND RHYSAND

They are basically the same person at this point, let’s be honest.

Rhys will contine to be horny 24/7 and Feyre will continue to focus on small, non-important stuff instead of the actual business of ruling and managing the court, and they will both remain to be terribly self-involved - 

okay, enough of my bitterness.

I HOPE Feyre won’t be pregnant in the next book, but let’s be honest, it will probably happen rather soon, so, there’s that. From the snippet of acosf in acofas, it seems that they will have some disagreement about Nesta and I am all for it. Besides that, I think their personal arcs and journeys are over and I believe that there won’t be too much of them in the next books. Same with Amren - I don’t think she will play a big role, besides being an awesome secondary character. 

NESTA’S and CASSIAN’s arcs seem to be rather obvious, unless Sarah will somehow break our necks with the narrative 180 degrees spin. I think the biggest mistery is whether or not they are truly mates but, regardless of that, they will end acosf as a couple. Personally, I don’t belive Cassian will die in this book. Sarah is pretty allergic to killing her protagonists in a permanent way. Given that he has already suffered two major injuries throughout the series, I am inclined to belive that it’s time for Cassian to give in to fury over injured Nesta. In my book, there are two possible routes for them to get together:

1) a lot of angsty, heart-breaking hate sex slowly transforming into comraderie, friendship and, finally, romance, 

2) no sex, only angsty misunderstandings and sexual frustration strong enough to push them into romantic relationship fairly quickly which then results in more misunderstandings, wrong ideas about each other’s feelings and a whole fucking mess of feelings. 

Nesta and Emerie will, in 1000% meet and become friends as Nesta truly fucking needs her own found-faimily type of friends. She will also discover and develop her powers, learn to manage her emotions and to have healthy relationships with people whom she loves. 

Cassian will have a somehow similar arc as Feyre in acomaf, during which he will realize his own true potential and self-worth. 

Some plotlines I expect to happen:

ILLYRIAN UPRISING

I think it’s rather unavoidable at the point and it will come as a surprise to no one. I also think Devlon may turn out to be an unexpected ally. 

RIFT IN THE INNER CIRCLE

This one is something which I hope for, cause it would make so much sense, but I am quite apprehensive to make any definite statements about it. If Cassian and Nesta are to get together in acosf, I cannot see it happening in a way which will not disrupt the delicate balance of the inner circle given a) Nesta’s relationship with Rhys and b) Cassian’s with Mor. In general, I do believe Cassian;s arc will be about gaining confidence in himself and his own feelings and insticts, which will involve some separation from his friends. Also, the downfall of Az-Mor-Cass simply cannot be executed bloodlessly.

ANCIENT POWERS RISING

Feyre toyed with the very fabric of this universe. It has to have some kind of consequences. At this point, we know Koshei will make an appearance (in regards to Vassa), Bryaxis is still on the loose (and Feyre has still not fullfilled her bargain) AND we got an interesting scene of Mor sensing something evil luring in the forests around her estate in acofas. 

and last but not least-

WE WILL LEARN WHAT WAS IN THE FUCKING BOX

please feel free to add your own predictions and expectations! I’m sure i missed a lot of stuff 

[withclawandvine]

ACOTAR ships as Taylor Swift songs 🖤

i realized don’t really interact with anyone on here, and i wanna change that! i saw this post by @halaberdara and i wanted to give it a try! i did one for all of the main ships (despite my personal biases lol) so everyone feels welcome to interact! 

so yeah if you love fictional relationships and taylor swift as much as i do, come chat with me about it xx 

feysand || call it what you want 

this song couldn’t be more perfect. feyre definitely goes through her rep era—completely ghosting the spring court (as she should 😌), finding herself and a lasting love that didn’t have to save her, but supported her as she saved herself, and loves her like she’s brand new. and of course the lyric yeah, you know i did one thing right: starry eyes sparking up my darkest night    

honorable mention: untouchable 

nessian || peace 

this song hurts and so do they. a really big part of nesta’s arc was realizing she was worthy of cassian’s love. admittedly, taylor seems to be singing about external forces threatening her love, rather than nesta’s internal struggles, but it still fits. i'm a fire and i’ll keep your brittle heart warm​​—nesta and her silver flames, the ones feyre painted for her. i think the line, it’s like i’m wasting your honor is so similar to nesta telling cass that he is “everything i have never been, and will never be good enough for. your friends know it, and i have carried it around with me all this time—i do not deserve you.” but she goes on to fight so hard to change that, even though cassian never believed it in the first place 

honorable mention: cruel summer

elriel || ivy  

i could probably write a five page essay about how quintessentially them this song is. but i’ll spare y’all and just say that both are about forbidden love, full of yearning and quiet intensity. the descriptions of the lover fit azriel like a glove: i wish to know the fatal flaw that makes you long to be magnificently cursed and your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand. the imagery of her love growing and covering her (the ‘gentle flower grower’ herself) like ivy. not to mention lucien’s ability to literally burn the metaphorical house to the ground 

honorable mention: wildest dreams

elucien || willow  

look. i know daylight is the more obvious choice, but hear me out: the whole life was a willow and it bent right to your wind gives off the whole fated to meet, cosmic intervention vibe of a mating bond. and if elain chooses to give it a chance, she’d be begging for you to take my hand, wreck my plans ‘cause that’s elain’s whole thing, right? her whole life plan got disrupted when she was made. i also think the line wherever you stray, i follow is very sweet, since lucien has always been a bit of a vagabond. and i mean… look me in my eyes and tell me they count me out time and time again wasn’t written about elain. oh wait you can’t 

honorable mention: daylight 

gwynriel || king of my heart   

the opening lines makes me think of gwyn and her life in the library, and your love is a secret i’m hoping, dreaming, dying to keep reminds me of what azriel thought about gwyn’s smile being “a thing of secret, lovely beauty.”  but i think what really does it for me is the bridge! everything from the fact that their big scene together was up on the roof (late in the night while the city was asleep, i may add) to the idea of az being part of gwyn’s healing journey (and vice versa)

honorable mention: state of grace

and hey, even feylin 🤢 gets one || wonderland 

the flashing green eyes, love that’s doomed from the start, you get it. wonderland is a metaphor for the relationship, but it can also be taken more literally. instead of alice falling into wonderland, it’s feyre’s fall into prythian. and how tamlin was right there with her. and the bridge just perfectly summarizes their end: i reached for you, but you were gone. i knew i had to go back home. you searched the world for something else to make you feel like what we had. and in the end, in wonderland, we both went mad.

had to include some honorable mentions to prove i have some Range and listen to more than rep and evermore haha

[tomtenadia]

Go your own way

Ok, I did something crazy and I wrote an ACOTAR fan fiction.

I haven’t written a fan fic in decades and I found myself rusty beyond belief.

I wasn’t even sure I would remember how to do it. But the ACOTAR series is so full of angst that for some reason i found myself inspired (who doesn’t love a nice angsty ff?)

First of all I want to apologise. As I said... i Haven’t done this in a very, very long time so my writing style is suffering. Also, I am literally new to the fandom as I finished the series this weekend. I did try to follow canon as much as i could, but please be patient if i have gone OOC a bit. Again, learning again how it all works.

The fic is about the moment when Mor finally tells Az why she can’t love him. And there is also a hint of Elriel because I am savagely shipping Elain and Az. 

It’s definitely set in a not so far future after ACOFAS.

In my head it sounded great, I am not sure if I did manage to write something decent. So please have patience.

The title is from the song Go your own way from Fleetwood Mac.

I would like to thank you @illyrian-lover-flower for the chat that actually sparked the idea for this fic. I hope you like it.

Thank you all for reading. Let me know what do you think.

***

Go your own way

I look at Azriel from a hidden corner in the kitchen and a tug of happiness fills me.

He is sitting in the living room beside Elain and they are chatting in the rare calm of the town house and her smile is so bright that it could lit up the room. His gaze instead… the one of a fool in love.

His scarred hand gently cover hers, a touch almost out of place and perhaps appearing far too gentle to those who do not truly know the Shadowsinger.

But I do. And he can care. He had been at my side for over five centuries, he saved my life. He loved me. He still does and I keep breaking his heart because I can’t muster the courage to tell him the truth. Because truth is… I do care about him. More that I can admit. Just not the way he would like me to. And because I love him I always avoided the truth.

I need to let go. He needs to let go.

I study him with Elain and I sigh happily.

She might have another man claiming to be her mate but I noticed how they slowly got closer together. How she showed him day by day her growing affection. No sudden and glorious declarations of undying love. Just those timid steps toward their own personal corner of paradise after hell was literally unleashed on all our lives.

Slowly I move my body and I make sure that Az notices my presence in the kitchen.

His head snaps to me and with a tiny movement of my head I tell him to join me in the kitchen.

He bows to Elain and like the prince charming that he is, I see him kissing her hand and excusing himself.

I brace myself for the discussion ahead. One I am not sure I am ready to have.

“Were you spying on us?” He says to me with a strange glint in his eyes “You know that’s my job.”

“I was just here for a tea.” I tell him showing him my mug still full with steaming liquid.

I take a deep breath and he notices the tension rising in my body.

“What’s wrong?”

I can see him going in full alert. The war was over but there was still so much to do that we could still not declare us fully safe.

“We need to talk.” I said to him in a whisper and I look at him in the eyes.

“Strategy talk?”

I shake my head “Us talk.”

He freezes in front of me. I take a sip from my mug trying to buy me some time to think how to best breach the subject.

“Az, I need you to be happy.” I can see him staring at me, confused.

My right hand touches his arm and he is startled at that contact “I can’t give you what you want from me and I know that deep down you know it as well.” I take a pause to study his reaction but he just stares at me almost terrified by my admission “We have been dancing this dance for over five centuries, but the time has come to let go. But also…” and I take a deep breath because I know that once I admit to him that I lied to him all this time, it will hurt more that the whole revelation in itself. “I can’t love you, Az because I like women. I have known for a while now but, a part from Feyre, no one knows, because I am too much of a coward to tell everyone.” And as I finally open up my heart to him I see a flash of something dangerous in his eyes. But he still stares at me in silence and a part of me wishes he would just lash at me. It would hurt less.

“I love you, like a brother and that will never change. But this is all I can give you.” And I feel disgust wash over me. After all he has done for me… but words are betraying me and I don’t think I will ever be able to fully tell him how much he means to me. Not even if we have another millennium together.

“You never…” he finally manages, reining in his fury “Why you didn’t say anything? Did you think that I would judge you for your sexual choices? You know I don’t care. Why? Why the secrecy and the lies?” His tone rises a notch and I can feel tears welling in my eyes. And in his… fury.

His body shifts and it looks as if he getting ready to leave and I grab his arm again “I am sorry.” Is all I can breath while I try not to break “I am still dealing with this. Still accepting who I really am and I don’t know, Az. This is so fucked up.” My other hand abandons the tea on the table and lands on his other arm, grabbing him almost as if to ground me to that earth that was slowly sliding away from under my feet.

“I loved you. I love you.” And his confession hits me deeply. Never had he pronounced those words to me. But I have always know.

“I know.” I say softly as the tears eventually start to run down my cheeks “I know.” I repeat and I take a step toward him.

“Five centuries, Mor. Five damned centuries.” He sighs deeply “I need…” he stops as if not being able to finish that thought. I can see him struggling with something.

“I need you to be happy…” I finish the sentence for him and his stare is like a knife in my heart.

With my head I nod to Elain in the other room “Go your own way. Be happy. I have hurt you enough. You have endured enough.”

“I am not leaving you.” Word uttered with fierceness.

“You will still be my friend. I will still be here. I am just asking you to stop pining for me.” I turn his body around with force and point it to the living room “You gave her Truth-Teller. You almost died for her to save her. Don’t tell me that you don’t feel anything. By the Mother, everyone can see how close you two are.”

“She is someone else’s mate.” I can hear him whisper quietly while I track his gaze slowly following Elain’s movements in the living room. “Story of my life. Azriel, the sad bastard doomed to fall in love with women he can’t have.” And I hear him snort.

And that confession breaks my heart because I can taste his pain. I squeeze my hands harder on his arms “Stop it.” And my voice looses all its gentleness “Hate me, curse me, shout at me if it makes you feel better but please give up on your love for me. I am not worthy of you.” And I see his head snap back at me incredulous at my admission. Not knowing that I am aware that the only reason why he never told me it’s because he never felt worthy of me.

I caress his face and I try to give him a smile while my tears still run down my face “You are worthy.” And slowly I move a step toward him and I bury my face in his chest.

For a moment he doesn’t move then I feel his strong arms fold gently around my back.

He kisses my hair and I hear him sigh “Do you really think I have a chance with Elain?”

And a fragile smile appears on my lips as I sense the change of tone in his voice.

I move away from the embrace and look at him “Just get a move on… Cassian might get tired of chasing Nesta and decide to give it a go with the last Archeron sister available.” I joke and I can see a glint of fun in his eyes and my heart feels suddenly lighter.

“You can always ask Cassian if he has some female friend to lend you. Considered how obsessed he is with Nesta there is probably a long line of females all sad and lonely down in Velaris.” He winks at me and he turns to go back but he stops on the threshold.

I grab his hand “I love you.” I whisper to him.

He doesn’t reply but turn to me, stoops and kisses me on the cheek. Then disappears back in the living room.

I can see him placing a gentle hand on Elain’s shoulder. Her face turn upwards and gives him a beautiful smile.

I take a sip of my now almost cold tea.

“Go your own way…” I whisper to him.

“Be happy.”

[myworldofbooks]

ACOMAF first read part 3:

You know the drill about spoilers....

Ok so last time I didn't touch on the conversation that Rhys and Feyre had before going into the dinner because it was getting long and lets be honest theres ALOT to unpack so here it is!!! It's such a raw moment between the two of them and it's so honest and open with no judgment or comment and I love it! They're both hurting over the same thing albeit for different amounts of time and experiences... Neither of them thought they were going to survive and 😭😭😭 I love that they're sorta comforting and helping eachother through... Rhys being the lead of it all coz he knows Feyre is struggling big time... They're sorta being each others confidants and secret keepers whilst becoming someone the other person just just be there to understand without the pity or judgement others would likely give them.... I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰 I WANT MY BABIES TO BE OK!

Alright so the dinner with Rhys' inner circle after he shows Feyre around Veleris! fucking loved it!!! The banter between them is 👌👌 and I loved how we find out about their back story and how Cass Az and Rhys meet and Mors story a bit... There's still alot of mystery about them and the worst most scarring stuff isn't discussed but I like that we find out some of it and Feyre gets to feel like she truly can connect with them and sees they're bonds I LOVE IT!!! 🥰🥰🥰

OMG WHEN RHYS HELPED FEYRE COME OUT OF A NIGHTMARE AND THEN HELD HER HAIR BACK AS SHE WAS SICK!!! 😭😭😭😭😭 And then confessing his nightmares and tucking her into bed! 😭😭😭😭 HE IS ONE SOLID HEART OF GOLD AND ANYONE THAT SAYS OTHERWISE CAN FIGHT ME!!!! 🗡️🗡️🗡️

Ok so attempt one to go see the bone carver was rough and you can see how messed up Feyre is and again I am left BAFFLED at how Tamlin the little fuck didn't notice.... or maybe he did but chose to ignore it.... ANYWAYS... when Rhys just takes her back no questions asked! 😭😭😭 And then I love the whole scene with Armen and you can't help but like her... not that we didn't before but yano she seems scary... and she comes across as someone that really cares when she gives Feyre that bit of jewelry! Like damn! THESE ARE SOME SUPPORTIVE ASS PEOPLE THAT JUST GET IT YANO...

THOSE MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!!! I WANT TO RIP OUT THE THROATS OF AZRIELS HALF BROTHERS AND THAT BLOODY BITCH WHO IS THEIR MOTHER!!!! 😡😡😡😡😡

The whole conversation about Armen being the last of Rhys' court left..... 😲😲😲.... '... If that day comes, I'll find a way to break the spell on Armen and unleash her on the world. And ask her to end me first....... and if she ever finds a way to shed her prison of flesh and bone... Cauldron save us' HOLY FUCK WTF IS SHE!!!! IM EVEN MORE CURIOUS NOW!!!! 😲😲😲😲😲

So the prison is a creepy place but kinda cool at the same time... Like guards that live in the walls?! Holy fuck that's creepy... But then cool coz like magic is cool and can do shit like that! THE BONE CARVERS DOOR SOUNDS SUPER FUCKING COOL! LIKE ALL THOSE IMAGES!!! 😍😍😍 although him/her/it is CREEPY AS FUCK!!!! WHO THE HELL THINKS SHOWING UP AS A KID IS A GOOD IDEA??? omg everything that Feyre admits in the cell too!! 😭😭😭 SHE HEARD THE CRACK OF HER OWN NECK WHEN SHE DIED!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭 AND THEN REMEMBERED EVERYTHING AFTERWARDS!!! 😲😲😲😭😭😭 Holy shit the cauldron is a real thing!!! I feel like SHIT IS GOING TO HIT THE FAN AT SOME POINT WITH HYBERN!!!

OMFG OMFG OMFG FEYRE SAID SHE WOULD HAVE KILLED HERSELF IF AMARANTHA HADN'T DONE IT AND THAT SHE ONLY CHOSE TO LIVE AFTER SHE WAS DEAD AND FELT SHE STILL HADN'T DONE WHAT SHE WAS BORN TO!!!!! FUCKING HELL!!!! RHYS' REACTION TO THAT!!!! OMG HE WENT DEAD STILL AND SEEMED FRIGHTENED AS FUCK!!!! HOLY SHIT GUYS!!! THE BONE CARVER IS GETTING ALL THOSE SECRETS OUT!!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺

So there's some hope... After all that heart breaking honesty and brokeness and secrets that were spilled... Tbh I think the bone carver liked Feyre and that's why he ended up answering her question without anything.... I think he liked how open and honest she was and FUCK DID THAT HONESTY HURT ME!!!!! DUDE!! MY BABY GIRL IS BROKEN SO DEEP!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭 ok but back to the hope... The hope to stopping and hopefully ending all the doom that is likely to be Hybern! A BOOK ITS A FUCKING BOOK!!! and why did SJM have to make it such a hard task... Like HOW THE FUCK are they going to convince 6 mortal queen's to WILLINGLY hand over this book so that it doesn't melt to ore???? LIKE THESE PEOPLE FUCKING HATE THE FAE?! well... AND OMG THEY BOTH SAW SOMETHING DIFFERENT! A CREEPY ASS CHILD AND JURIAN..... WHO THE FUCK IS THE BONE CARVER TO BE ABLE TO KNOW EVERYTHING WHILST LIVING UNDER THE ROOTS OF A MOUNTAIN?????? AND OMFG THE GOODBYE?! DUDE!!!! 'i shall carve your death into this bone feyre' FUCKING HELL!!!!!

Ok imma end here before I end up on a rant! Hope you enjoyed my insane reactions.... I MEAN HOW COULD YOU GET ANY CREEPER WITH THE BONE CARVER LIKE SERIOUSLY????? 😳😳😳 IM FREAKED OUT.. THAT GOODBYE JUST.... NAH DUDE!!! THAT IS GOING TO HAUNT MY DREAMS.... BYE BYE RAINBOWS AND UNICORNS HELLO CREEPY KID CARVING DEATHS INTO BONES.... can I run and hide now?? Ok...

[flowerflamestars]

⭐ do you have any crumbs about tidal? ⭐

TIDAL MY MONSTER CHILD MASTERPIECE

Endless crumbs, but I'm going to try to remain circumspect. Three fun scenes. Bold for commentary from here on out!

Cassian knew all the rumors.

Cassian has been ACTIVELY SEEKING OUT THE RUMORS. Their careers circle each other- their stats make them nearly level on a playing field that barely even exists. Cassian thinks Nesta in combat is like...the platonic ideal of a drift pilot.

All the stories- Serene Majesty’s design included armor made from Kaiju bone (TRUE, THANKS PROFESSOR VANSERRA), Serene was painted to match the exact blue shade of her older pilot’s eyes (False, but a very sexy coincidence that absolutely made it into war propaganda), Serene’s nuclear core was the oldest still running, and they were lucky she hadn’t melted the ocean floor of the Bering Strait right down to the mantle.

Fact: Nesta Archeron had solo piloted forty-one minutes longer than the nearest record holder, who’d died in minute sixteen.

Can you hear Cassian's admiration? That LONGING for partnership. The raw appreciation of skill. MHM BABE YOU ARE NOT LOOKING RESPECTFULLY AND YOU KNOW IT Story: Nesta Archeron called him a patchwork dickbag within moments of meeting him, and proceeded to kick his ass, before they even let them drop test.

Picture, if you will, the very Fun Mako/Raleigh fight with the poles? the compatibility test? Right. That. Tank tops. Barren light and sweaty skin. REALLY GOOD HAIR. But a hand-to-hand fight.

Cassian: oh fun yes fuck let's do this lets see how we move together, come play Archeron

Nesta: walks right up to him and clocks him

The first thing Elain said when she saw Asani was, “Oh, Nesta.”

And despite the fact that Nesta felt more like climbing bare through the Breach than getting in a jaeger with the man, she knew what her sister was seeing. The smile- two dimples on the right but one of the left. Close-cropped dark curls getting just long enough to assert themselves.

Shoulder and arms and everything that matched the face saying- you’re looking at a sculpture. You’re looking at a person whose whole being might as well have been idealized from an artists eyes.

14 drops, 12 kills. Only two back to back drops in the same jaeger.

Hand to hand combat elite. Muay Thai. Second generation marine.

Charm that had cracked Amren.

Elain: Nesta that man is more your type than Your Type. HE CAN KEEP UP WITH YOU. He's not afraid of you. “I know,” Nesta said. Nesta: YES I WANT TO CLIMB THAT MOUNTAIN

Elain arched a pale brow- different color, same shape- and hummed. “And he’s?” Elain: a perfect lock, a fucking doom, a sync so deep and long lasting you probably can't drift with ANYONE ELSE? “Yep.” Nesta: Yes. Nesta to Nesta: SO I'M PROBABLY GOING TO END UP ACCIDENTALLY KILLING HIM IN FUCKING DRIFT LIKE I DID YOU- THAT PERFECT STUPID ASSHOLE- Quietly, Elain swore.

She stole the binder out of his hand- they both pretended he hadn’t already been holding it out, that their reaches hadn’t perfectly, on time, overlapped. STILL GHOSTING BESTIES

She opened it. “Mhmm. Where are we from? Easy, we’re both American. Do we have siblings?” She snickered. “Yes. Where did we go to school? Places that are under the ocean now.”

GUYS guys guys they are both from places that no longer EXIST. They both came of age in war! they both, in a fucked way, thrive in the war. It's what they have- the infinite drift, purpose, and their siblings who are a direct part of that. Cassian tried to take the binder back. She shut it on his hand. “That gave us the childhood trauma book?” AMREN IS GOOD AT HER JOB (AND FUCKING WITH NESTA) She flicked the hand he hadn’t moved, lodged between the pages. “Origin stories, Asani.” Nesta is a fucking NERD and she likes the shape of Cassian's name in her mouth. “We already know all of this, Archeron,” He sighed, and she finally let him pull back. “Wanna flip?” It seemed like a trap- it felt like…fun. Cassian had the distinctly wild thought that Nesta must have been a nightmare in first level training, and half wished he’d seen it. Had her voice already contained that murder drawl at sixteen?

The only thing messier than baby! Feysand would have been Baby Nessian. It would have been on sight. It would have been a CATASTROPHE. they would have fucked it up so hard and then longed for each other for years until like...out of the blue eloping the very next time they crossed paths. No hesitation.

Cassian leaned forward, propped elbows on knees. “Go ahead.” He might have said it like a challenge- Nesta’s face might have brightened in catlike pleasure.

“Cassian Karam Asani. Twenty-seven years old, in service since your eighteenth birthday.” She was watching his face, and Cassian could do little but stare back. “You grew up on the East coast. Have an older brother. You’re a caffeine addict who likes to box. Dad died when you were ten.You have your mother’s green eyes and your paternal grandfathers face.” Her gaze flickered up, caught him.

Cassian could hear his heart hammering in his chest, pull from the rise and fall of his ribs too fast. “That’s not in my file.”

Cassian to the world: calm, cheerful, good at his job. Cassian to himself: Sure I'm Good at this Sure I Can Feel Her in my BONES- sure i definitely fucked this up- there's no way nESTA WANTS TO KNOW ME- SHE CAN'T POSSIBLY-

Nesta: it's real bitch “We dropped, Asani.” More than a drop, a successful drift. He didn’t need to say it, Nesta was already sniping in victory. “You love strawberry matcha cake.” “I can make it, too,” Cassian shot, with forced lightness.

Cassian: I COULD MAKE IT FOR YOU? what else did you see? if I'm yours...you're mine? please.

“Nesta Iseult Archeron. West Coast. Your mom taught literature, which is how you got that name. She died when you were twelve. You’re the older sister. You’re also a caffeine addict. Three tattoos. You miss sparring with your sister, and it makes you feel like shit. You horde Korean moisturizer.” “Eight tattoos.” She didn’t mean herself. SHE'S GOING TO LEARN THEM WITH HER TEETH YALL

“You hate the color blue.” hELLO, Trauma She laughed, and it wasn’t particularly joyful. “Your brother’s downstairs in the labs.” “Wrong.” Realer smile, he wanted to keep talking, “I have two.”

Nesta recrossed her legs, the entire table monopolized. “Middle child?’

An outstretched brown hand, tilted back and forth, “Azriel is only a year older than me. My other brother is…more complicated. Much younger. Az and I half raised him, but we don’t really talk.” And Nesta, mystifyingly said, “Me too. Two sisters, I mean.” She rolled her shoulders, made a face that said fuck, as her mouth continued with, “I’ve been trying to keep her out of a jaeger since she was fourteen.”

Nesta casts them IN THE SAME ROLE in her head. The middle child thing trips her for precisely two seconds and then. of course. Yeah, of course. “Three Archerons in the corps? Thats”- “The Admiralties wet dream, I know. She’s good- she’s so, so good, but I’m trying to make sure she grows up first.”

Nesta: OVER MY DEAD FUCKNG BODY WILL MY BABY SISTER GO FIGHT THIS WAR

“Rhys can’t drift. He’s Airforce now, incredible- twenty years ago, he’d be on tract to be an astronaut, but now-“ I loved making Rhys finally bad at something? He's a smart, angry kid thrashing around in a difficult world. He's SO CLASSICALLY YOUNG AND STUPID ABOUT EVERYTHING “Now the world is gone to shit?” “Tried to, at least.” Her laugh was nearly silent, small. Real.

Cassian looked at Nesta, and Nesta looked at Cassian.

The Look. The i SEE YOU AND YOU SEE ME, no this changes nothing, no this changes everything Look-

Amren is very, very, VERY good at her job, have I mentioned that?

[houseofhurricane]

ACOTAR Fic: Bloom & Bone (4/32) | 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: 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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

[gloomtowndykes]

ohhohoho you are wrong! i did win the butt party contest, lol. the college one was a lie, just a complete lie on that one. college????? no thank you. so yes i have juggled knives (technically machetes), but i became axe anon cause doom said something like "bringing down the axe" cause of my accurate deduction, lol.

hahahah you never said ALIVE grandparents so i just assumed dead ones counted... oh well. 6 would be a lot to have left alive. also.. wow the penny eating story does sound like a middle child thing, gotta admit. weren't getting enough attention so you gave yourself a medical emergency? yea, middle child energy

the states... make sense. you probably live around the PA area.. vacationed in HI... have family in AL, GA area, and older family in AZ. i'm guessing your not including states you've had a layover flight in cause you probably would have been to IL at some point from that. birthday one i have no reason to not believe. capricorn, okay. so i'm going to say the renn faire one is a lie. still (2 | 0)

my turn:

1. i have been bitten by a snake

2. i have never been stung by a bee

3. i have never been bitten by a dog

- axe anon 🪓

AMDMAND OK WOW RUDE THE MIDDLE CHILD MICROAGRESSIONS.../LH

also DAMMIT but honestly u right college is AWFUL. also?? machetes????? bro holy SHIT how does it feel to automatically be the coolest person in the room.

and!!!! yeehaw u got it right!!! ive been to the renn faire twice in my life and on god once covid is sorted out imma make that THRICE in my life. im a dumb rp nerd what can i say sjdjwhdv

so!!! (2 | 1) i think >:3!!!

oooohh ok i am. torn. between the snake and the bee. solely bc it's very easy to not get stung by a bee (case in point, ive lived 21 years without having been stung by one; god bless apiphobia >B) ) and with being bitten by a snake....you never specified it was a BIG venomous one so it could've been a lil bitty bby one so!! snake is the truth!!!

time 2 go AGAIN:

1. i was in pageants when i was younger

2. i've never had a pet dog in my life, only cats

3. i once slept outside a concert venue to ensure i got a good spot and to this day i would never want to do it again

[ourownsideimagines]

At the Center of Conflict, You are Our Light (Crowley x NB!Phoenix!Reader x Aziraphale)

Characters: Phoenix!Reader (Non Binary), Crowley, Aziraphale

Requested: Yes

Requested by: @enoughofabastard

Point of View: Third Person Limited

Warnings: A N G S T

Words:  1514

A/N: I decided to add a little bit of fun and make the reader a phoenix, you’ll see why. Also, I was writing a fem!Reader at the same time so if I used any gendered pronouns by accident please let me know so I can fix it!

---

(Name)’s tears had stopped falling hours ago. As they sat in the dank, dark room, all they could think about was a hot shower, a fresh change of clothes, and their boys (not entirely in that order, or in the same amount). They wondered how long the demons would keep them down here, before concluding that it would probably be for the rest of their life, and all those that followed.

Their gift had suddenly become a curse, and for the first time in their lives, they no longer wanted to be a phoenix.

To understand how they got here, it’s best to start at the beginning.

(Name) had met Aziraphale first, having come to his shop many times. They had realized early into their friendship that there was something not quite human about him, but couldn’t quite put their finger on it. That was, until one day, (name) had been at the bookshop having some tea when a group of tall, tough looking men came in and not-so-subtly threatened their friend.

(Name) had been prepared to jump into action, had it not been for Az’s own handling of the situation. As he stood there, politely speaking to the men, (name) saw a shadow in the dim store light - a set of invisible wings sprouting from Az’s back until they had become fully stretched out. And then, like nothing had happened, the men had left and (name)’s friend rejoined them at the table. (Name) spent a full week building up the nerve to tell their friend that they know, and that they also had a secret.

That had been almost twenty five years ago. They’d been working with him at the bookshop ever since, Aziraphale not aging and (name) doing so at a slow pace. They hadn’t even started getting grey hairs when they finally met Crowley ((name) didn’t know if they could even grow grey hair). They’d taken a liking to him quickly, much to Aziraphale’s dismay. The two got along like peas in a pod, and Aziraphale would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a little jealous. That had been thirteen years ago, two years before the beginning of what was meant to be the end.

(Name) had been there when Crowley called to tell them about the Antichrist, and they’d been there when their two best friends got drunk off their tits.

(Name) agreed to keep the bookshop while Crowley and Aziraphale helped to raise Warlock, the supposed Antichrist who turned out to just be a normal, human child. They sat idly, falling in love with both parties when and if they came around, and wondered if either of them might have felt the same about them.

Eternity was starting to get lonely, and they wanted someone (or some ones) to spend the rest of their lives with. With the way things were looking though, it seemed they would be spending eternity truly, deeply, undoubtedly alone.

Shortly after the supposed end of the world, Crowley had kindly invited Aziraphale and (name) to say at his place, since the bookshop had burned down. When morning came, (name) knew there was something off about their friends, but thought better than to question it. They’d returned to the newly restored bookshop with Aziraphale and agreed to watch over the shop when he needed to pop out.

That might have been their first mistake.

Because alone in that shop, they usually listened to their music, and the volume they put it at left them with little ability to hear anything happening, including a group of demons gathering behind them before hitting them over the head with… well, they didn’t know what, just that it really hurt.

It didn’t matter much now, what it was they used. What mattered now was that they were stuck is some kind of… purgatory. A dimly lit, paint-peeling room with no doors, or windows, and some kind of thick, greenish-brown sludge living on the walls. When they’d first woke up, they assumed it was all some kind of dream, but soon came to realize that it was all too real when they found a single scrap of paper on the center of the room.

It read ‘They get death. You get much worse.’

If someone asked (name) if they regret ever getting to know Aziraphale and Crowley, even now in their current situation, they would always say no. No, they didn’t think they could ever regret it. In fact, they wish they could have met the boys sooner. Maybe then they would have figured out faster the love they felt. If someone had told them, during one of their first lives, that they would end up falling in love with two 6000 year old Angels - one fallen - they would have laughed.

Now, at the idea of them being gone - of them being really, truly gone - all (name) could do was weep until there were no more tears left, for themself and for their boys. They would give anything now to see them again - they would give up eternity to see Aziraphale smile, or the glint of trouble in Crowley’s eyes.

Slowly, (name) began curling up on the cold ground. They though, maybe, if they just burst into flames then and there that the Lord might have mercy and let them die. Maybe, they would be free. (Name) wasn’t entirely sure how long they’d been there. It could have been hours. Or days. Maybe even minutes. However long it was though, it was driving them absolutely insane.

Maybe it was the aura of the place, they thought. Maybe it was designed that way. There wasn’t a doubt in (name)’s mind that hell would be capable of such torture.

The note was right. This was much worse.

“(Name).” They shot up, glancing around the room for the source of the voice. It seemed to come at them from all sides. It called to them again, and despite their original thought they felt tears once again rolling down their cheeks.

“Crowley?” They croaked, stumbling to their feet. Another voice called out, almost in relief. “Aziraphale!?” Then, they thought better of it. Perhaps this was another part of their punishment. “Oh god, please let it really be you.” They sobbed. “Please, please, please.”

There was some muffled talking, of which they could understand very few words. Then, from the ceiling, came a hand, followed by an arm dressed in black. They cried out in relief when a head of fiery red hair popped in.

“C’mon, we can’t hold this open long!” Crowley shouted, and (name) rushed forward, grabbing Crowley’s hand and allowing him to pull them up and out of their personal doom.

They landed, with a grunt, on top of the demon, as a murky portal closed behind them, leaving the three alone in the bookshop. Aziraphale looked a bit winded, hands pressed to his knees as he gazed down at the two.

“Oh, thank the Almighty.” He breathed out, falling down beside (name) before pulling both of them into a hug, of which the demon was happy to return, and the phoenix even more so.

They sat there like that, hugging, and crying until they had all calmed down.

“How did you find me?” (Name) asked them as the boys helped them to the couch.

“Well,” Crowley shoved his hands in his pockets. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Let’s just say that we have our ways.” Aziraphale finished, gently brushing some of (name)’s hair with his fingers.

“Where… where was I?”

“So, uh, hell had these… what would you call them, Angel?”

“Pocket dimensions?”

“Yeah, let's call them that. Hell has these pocket dimensions they usually use for torture. They stopped using them a couple hundred years ago when they realized doing the torture in front of a croud was much more… satisfying.” The idea made all three of them grimace. Crowley finally sat down, efficiently squishing (name) between himself and Aziraphale.

“I thought you two were dead.” They told their companions quietly, “They left me a note. It told me that your punishment was death, but mine was worse.” They clench their fists tightly. “How long was I down there?”

“Well, it took us about… half a day to find you. And assuming that you were taken at the same time we were, that would add another couple of hours.”

“It felt like… days.” They sighed, leaning their head against Aziraphale’s shoulder. “I felt so… alone.” Crowley took their hand in his, giving it a tight squeeze.

“They can’t hurt you now, (name).” Crowley promised. “We’ll make sure of that.”

“How about some lunch?” Aziraphale suggests. “That table at the Ritz is still open.”

“I’m game, if you are love.” Crowley looked down at them. (Name) thought for a moment before nodding.

“But I need a shower first.” They said. “I feel disgusting.”

“Of course, my dear.” Aziraphale nodded.

“We’ll stop by my place on the way.” Crowley offered.

“What are we waiting for, then?” (Name) gave them a shaky smile. “Let’s go.”

[wisdomrays]

The Architects of Thought who will Build The Future

QUESTION: Some educators state that in addition to certain material shortages and difficulties, they are badly affected by students’ disinterest and unwillingness to study. What is your stance on this issue?

ANSWER: By taking into consideration certain religious principles, we can say that learning and teaching are two exalted duties whose ends extend into the heavens. In so many verses of the Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet, the importance of knowledge (ilm) is emphasized and people are encouraged to pursue it. For example, God Almighty points to the fact that those who know are more superior than those who do not, with the verse meaning, “Are they ever equal, those who know and those who do not know?” (az-Zumar 39:9). In another verse, He compares those who know to those who can see, and those who do not to blind people, “Are the blind and the seeing alike? Will you not, then, reflect?” (al-An’am 6:50).

The inheritors of the Prophet’s way

As the supremacy of Prophet Adam over the angels is mentioned in the Qur’an, his having a potential for knowledge is also emphasized, which is a meaningful indication of the importance the Qur’an lays on knowledge. After teaching all the names to Adam, God Almighty asked the angels about them, who did not know, whereas Adam told the names taught to him (al-Baqarah 2:31–32). It is understood from here that what gives supremacy to humanity over the angels is the teaching of “names” to them; in other words, their having a potential for sciences.

In a way, the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, encouraged learning as the Prophets’ heritage and stated that “The Prophets do not leave behind money or wealth as their heritage; the heritage they leave is knowledge (ilm); whoever attains that knowledge attains a great share indeed.” In another statement, the Messenger of God said that he was sent (to humanity) as a teacher. Thus, he both, emphasized the importance of acquiring knowledge and teaching it to others.

So a teacher is a representative of such a lofty mission, a worker, and an architect of ideas. I think a teacher with spiritual concerns can enlighten the minds and souls of his or her students by utilizing the advantages of the contemporary age and reaching into the essential points of sciences, finding ways through every branch of science such as math, biology, physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and geology. Thus, it can be said that the most suitable way of shaping people and making a monument of them is by being a teacher. It is for this reason that the Qur’an lays so much importance on learning, and the Prophet insistently emphasized this matter. In this respect, individuals who wish to be beneficial to their society, people, and all humanity must face all kinds of difficulties and serve in this field against all odds, and definitely make use of such an important tool.

A field of influence that extends from a student to all of his relatives

On the other hand, even though children cannot be legal witnesses in religious matters, they actually are the strongest witnesses of the world in terms of human psychology. Everybody believes what a child says. Therefore, the person a teacher addresses is not only the child in sight; students have many relatives who are in contact with them. When the child comes home, he will naturally relate what happened at school and their relations with the teachers. Therefore, when the teacher expresses himself to the child, he will reflect it to his family in the same way. For example, about a teacher who did kindness to him, the student will say, “he did such and such kind act for me. He listened to our troubles. He found a solution for such and such problem. When we felt sad, he dispersed our doom and gloom and consoled us thus…” and statements to that effect. This kind of reports will form a good opinion of the teacher among the family. And if the teacher establishes a sound dialog with them by taking the opportunity of family visits and other similar ones, then you sometimes see that a single student helps establishing a relation with an entire group of relatives. In this respect, a teacher who is caring for a student can be doing the same for a home, even all of the relatives who have some kind of relation with that home. For this reason, a teacher’s field of influence is a really wide one.

It is not the money everything depends on. Perhaps the Prophets were the most financially disadvantaged people in the world. However, it was the Prophets again who won people’s hearts, guided them to righteousness, and offered a fresh life to the world. With these words, I do not mean to say that teachers should seek poverty artificially. The point I am trying to make is that money is not everything, and besides that, there are many different riches like gaining hearts, reaching into spirits, and orienting people toward lofty goals. Particularly at a time when the world is globalized through education, teaching has gained a different importance. While some try to carry out this job with coercion and extreme dislike in spite of all positive feedbacks and reactions, you should do it trying to realize journeys to the hearts of people with your gentleness and affection. And the impulsive force behind that kind of approach is teaching. In this respect, I hold the opinion that students of all levels should be motivated in this sense and encouraged to become teachers. Let there be no misunderstanding; all of the professions that make a society stand and survive should be given importance for sure, not leaving gaps in any field of life. However, we should not forget that teaching has an outstanding position of giving life to a society.

Gaining people to pray for you in gratitude for a lifetime

Let us come to the issue of naughty behaviors of students and their indifference to learning. First of all, we need to accept from the very beginning that all students can present such behaviors. An important aspect of teaching is acknowledging these kinds of troubles and putting up with them. Even a sculptor makes so much effort to make a dry body of marble into a work of art. The sculptor sweats, gets tired, and tries to give a certain shape to the marble in the end. A teacher’s job is no easier than that! The teacher takes the potential human, and tries to raise them to the level of true humanity by rounding their sharp pointed sides. In other words, by working all of the precious potentialities in them like a jewel-smith, the teacher helps them make a monument of their souls. Like a gifted artist, the teacher almost builds the human anew. Despite all of these, if there are still certain students that pose serious problems and disturb the general harmony, they can seek different solutions such as meeting their parents or applying alternative guidance programs for them, in order to prevent them from harming those around at least. This way, these students will also have been taken under protection in a certain way. For example, if necessary, it is possible to invite the family members of such students and let them watch the situation of their children from afar; then they can seek different methods of solutions in consultation with the teachers. The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, turned the most bigoted, savage, and uncivilized people into teachers for a civilized world, and thus, he became the beloved one of so many hearts. This was to such a degree that people who once came to the Prophet’s presence and shouted, “Who is Abdulmuttalib’s son Muhammad?” started to listen to him attentively, as if they were afraid of startling a bird on their heads. So this is the greatest example of teaching and guidance. Given that the Prophets made wildest people into upright figures to be role models for all, this must be possible at all times. Then the teacher will endure pains and suffering if need be, but in the end he or she will gain individuals to pray for them in gratitude for a lifetime. In addition, their students’ good deeds will also add to the teachers’ as well. For such an outcome, it is worth bearing whatever it takes. A teacher may not be able to bring all of the students under his responsibility to a certain desirable quality and fail to gain all of the students he maintains contact with. Nonetheless, some people abandoned the circles of even the most perfect guides and prepared their own ruin. In this respect, what befalls on the teacher is to show all the effort they can. The one to create the outcome is God Almighty. But it should never be forgotten that if a teacher takes the task he does as the prime goal, and strives to fulfill the due of his job, God Almighty never lets his efforts be wasted, grants him different favors, and inspires him different ways of solution.

There is no matter unsolved with the message of a person’s disposition

An important point that should not be neglected by teachers is providing guidance to students with the language of their disposition and with the depth of their representation of values by personal example. Controlling the evil feelings in human beings—with a potential for evils and bad morals, such as wrath, lust, grudge, hatred, and violating others’ rights, all of which can make one fall to the lowest of the low—who are doomed to go corrupt when left on their own, and cultivating benevolent feelings, in them can only be realized through a good guide whose attitude and behaviors are envied and who is taken as a role model.

To conclude, one needs to take teaching very dearly, perceive and consider it as the Prophets’ way. The truth is that, among the people who serve a nation, it is not possible to show anybody of equal importance to teachers, since service and investment for humanity are more sacred than everything. If you become the gardener of all of the world’s gardens, this does not compare much next to teaching something meaningful to a few people. Let alone that, even kingship is not of equal value as a duty in comparison to making people ascend to true humanity. After all, weren’t great rulers of the human history apprentices in the hands of excellent teachers? Taking all of these into consideration, we can say that the people closest to God are teachers who devoted themselves to being beneficial to others. For they are the ones who build the human; they are the ones who build the society. The ones to build the present and future, and the ones to put their stamp on the future are teachers.

[doomedandstoned]

To Helltown & Back: Electric Citizen’s Laura Dolan Speaks

~By Jamie LaRose~

Photographs by Sally Townsend

My recent visit with Laura Dolan, the commanding winger of Cincinnati’s Electric Citizen, was both enlightening and welcomed. She is a vegan, a lover of classic cars, and a well-experienced thrift store fashionista. I remember meeting Laura in 2014, when Satyress had the pleasure of playing a show with Electric Citizen and Fu Manchu at Dante’s in Portland, Oregon. I found the band to be a delightful, friendly, and talented bunch. Electric Citizen is currently on tour with Monster Magnet in support of the new album, 'Helltown' (2018 - RidingEasy Records). Their third album is reminiscent of their first, 'Sateen' (2014), with its raw, powerful sound. This is a great Cincinnati Northside-true album, written, recorded, engineered, and inspired by “Hell Town” itself. Get your dose of heavy psychedelic healing at one of the tour dates listed below and get your copy of Helltown while you're at it!

I don’t know if you remember, it’s been a while, but we’ve played a show together. It was the Fu Manchu show in Portland, Oregon in May of 2014.

I thought so! Yes, I remember your band. You were wonderful.

You, too! I remember meeting you and talking with you about essential oils.

I remembered it was Pentagram or Fu Manchu because we played the same venue, it was at Dante’s.

All of us at Doomed & Stoned are excited to get the chance to talk to you at this time of your new release 'Helltown.' I was interested in the meaning behind the name of the album and the band. I read that “Hell Town” is one of the names by which the neighborhood you live in is known. I would like to know a little bit about the relationship between that and the writing process for the band on this album.

Absolutely. I chose that name for several different reasons. I mean the most obvious is the translation of where the album was written and practiced, recorded. It just kind of made sense to pay homage to that. I also like that it can also take on these multiple meanings, which is something I really try to do with songwriting, as well. It can be a futuristic thing, or it could play into current times.

Helltown by Electric Citizen

As far as what our neighborhood means to us is this is where everything happens. The studio where we record is a stone’s throw away from our house, which is also where we practice and write all the music. It’s just this really great little neighborhood which is unique in Cincinnati where there’s a lot of different ethnic groups, and there’s a lot of artists, the LGBTQ community is strong here. All of these different types of people that we are surrounded by are hugely inspiring to me. I just have this very special place in my heart for this neighborhood, and the guys share the same sentiment. "Hell Town" is a nickname that was more commonly used in the 1800s when it was an entertainment district for the factory workers because we are in a very industrial area. So this is where they would go and hang out after they got off work from the factories and it was just known as "Hell Town." There were so many different things about it that are so meaningful that it just makes it the perfect title for this album.

Where do you find or draw inspiration in the process for the band or when writing any music in general?

I like to start by writing a track and feeling out where it’s going from the melody standpoint, and then trying to craft something meaningful into that. The melody is such a hugely important part of the song. There’s so much to draw inspiration from like today’s political state, relationships between people, our current times. I feel fascinated by the idea that we are living in this huge turning point, the dawn of the era of technology and how that’s affecting us as a human race. That’s something I love exploring. Every day is like an episode of Black Mirror. What’s going to happen to us? There are so many things happening right now that we’ve never experienced as the human race.

I can hear that questioning nature of inspiration in the lyrics and music. What type of challenges might you face while working together and making and recording music together?

Well, we’re pretty lucky in that we get along. That’s something I don’t take for granted because we’ve had a few different change-ups in the lineup, and we’re now kind of back to where we were at the beginning of the band. We had a great time with our other bass player, but the dynamic can be very different. Having the energy of the original band, and the relationships we all have with each other is a huge help as far as writing and making the music, as well as enjoying the process the whole way. I think we make it harder on ourselves by choosing to record analog; that’s definitely a much more tedious task than recording digitally. We have a pretty standardized process where Ross writes the basics of the song, and then we all start layering on top of that using a huge amount of editing. I think it’s a really important quality to have to be able to stand back and say, “You know what, I’ve created something and it sucks,” and I’m going to scrap it and try again. I think that self-reflection is really important.

It is the universal nature of some good work to be thorough. Speaking of the process of the mixing and the engineering, can you explain a bit about that process as used in the new album?

Unlike the process of the second album which may have been a bit more polished than we would mean, we knew on the third album that we wanted to try to capture what we had in the first album.

It sounds like everything about 'Helltown' was done in “Hell Town.” From the new tracks, I can see its relationship to the first album in its grittiness and more natural nature. What are the details of the release?

The album official release date is September 28th. It’s being released worldwide through Riding Easy Records. There is distribution all of the world, you can get it at Riding Easy Records in the states and of course we are also starting a tour with Monster Magnet on the same day so you can come get it from us at the merch booth.

What are some of your most successful accomplishments so far as a group?

Beyond what we’ve created, which is really the whole reason we’ve started doing this, I think that some of the bands we’ve gotten to tour with have been a huge accomplishment. There’s been Arthur Brown, a long-time hero he is the godfather of shock rock. He’s inspired so many different artists. We’ve opened for King Diamond, Joan Jett, Fu Manchu and this tour with Monster Magnet is a big deal for us. That’s a band that’s really made a name for themselves. Getting to tour Europe, I personally had never been over there before touring as a band. It’s great to go into a project like this having no expectations, and then having all these things happening. Every single one of them has kind of been mind-blowing for us. That’s one of the things I’ve learned growing older, have no expectations and life will exceed them all.

How have you grown as a singer and artist over the years?

When I was first starting out, singing in bands, I had such a fear for doing what I’m doing. As soon as I was able to release that and have the fearlessness of, “If I fail, I fail. If I don’t, I don’t.”, I would encourage anyone that’s going into any form of art; remember to have that fearlessness. It’s so freeing. I feel like that’s such an important message, especially to young girls that are interested in doing this and following in our footsteps, singing in a band or whatever it is. It’s just, "You have nothing to fear except fear itself!"

What is your message to the universe?

Oh wow, that’s a good one. Hmm, that is such an important question. I think really for me it comes down to… just be kind to each other. Everybody in this world is fighting their own fight, and I think it’s so important to remember to give room for people to behave like they do because you just don’t know what’s going on with their life. I think that ultimately what this world needs more than anything right now is kindness. I guess it would be just as simple as that. Be kind to each other. Maybe to ask everyone to love each other is too much, but if you can’t find that in your heart, just be kind.

Electric Citizen & Monster Magnet on Tour

10/02 - Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge 10/03 - Minneapolis, MN @ Cabooze 10/05 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater 10/06 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge 10/08 - Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theater 10/09 - Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom 10/10 - Seattle, WA @ El Corazon 10/12 - San Francisco, CA @ Thee Parkside 10/15 - Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory 10/16 - San Diego, CA @ Brick By Brick 10/17 - Phoenix, AZ @ Rebel Lounge 10/19 - San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger 10/20 - Dallas, TX @ Canton Hall 10/21 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall 10/23 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade 10/24 - Nashville, TN @ Basement East 10/26 - Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage 10/27 - New York, NY @ Gramercy Theatre 10/28 - Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair

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[rowan-buzzard-whitethorn]

a) dittoing is official also google isn't marking it with the red squiggly line of doom so omg is it ACTUALLY official? #TheMoreYouKnow. but ANYWAY. u reblogged an ask meme. I am a simple, predictable needy wench: 9 For Cazriel b/c like that has happened before and we all know it, 12 for Rowcan b/c thou art a Queen, aaaaand 11 for Tarcien (these are options btw, not like... do ALL OF THESE MWUHAHAHA... although I'm not stopping you :P)

@squaddreamcourt omg I’m so glad someone added dittoing to the dictionary yes

and you know what, for making me T W O moodboards and making my heart explode I am going to feed all of your wenchy needs. But I’m also in a teasing mood so…. 

leggo

9. Cazriel: We’re hiding from the authorities and it’s very close quarters in here, I can feel your body against mine.

Azriel rolled his eyes for what felt like the ninth time in the span of two minutes.

”Will you shut up?”

Cassian did not shut up. He was practically giggling. His body kept bouncing against Azriel’s back in a supremely distracting way considering the situation they were in. He whisper-hissed to the general direction behind him, “you do realize that you just irrevocably damaged our relationship with the summer court, yes?” 

”Eh, it wasn’t that great to begin with anyway.” Azriel squeezed his eyes shut in the blackness of whatever gods-forsaken broom closet they were stuck in. “You know, I spent four months preparing for this trip.” All for naught- as the lingering scent of burnt hair and rubble clung to Cassian’s clothes. 

“I can make it up to you…” Cassian crooned in a sing-song voice.

“No.”

“Aw c’mon,” Cassian said, already wrapping his hands around Azriel’s waist, gliding them down the front of Az’s hip bones. Azriel just made a disgusted noise. “They’re going to find us if you don’t quit.”

“I’m not worried. You’re very good at being quiet,” he said as he undid Azriel’s leathers just enough to jerk them down and pull out his cock and balls. The leather dug into tender skin below his sack, in a way Cassian knew he liked. Cassian used his forearms to pull Az even closer, forcing his wings into an awkwardly cramped position between them, creating a line of tension all the way down to his toes.

“I don’t know why I bring you along,” Azriel murmured while his head fell back against his brother’s shoulder. Cassian licked a lewd trail up the ridge of one wing, making his hips buck involuntarily into Cass’ hands. 

“Someone’s gotta keep you out of trouble,” Cassian growled against his ear, giving the head of his cock a tight squeeze.

12. Rowcan: We were pretending to be lovers but I’m not pretending anymore and I have to know if you feel the same way

“What are you doing?” Lorcan hissed. 

“I thought we were supposed to be exclusive lovers. Just playing my part.” Rowan pushed the alcove’s billowing curtain out of his face, again. 

“Why are you acting like this? I just wanted to get that dignitary to set her designs on a different male for the evening.”

“Why would you want to? What’s to stop you.”

Lorcan’s face fell, and Rowan knew he’d said too much. Lorcan kept his eyes on the ground as he said, “you were exclusive already.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Lorcan.” And with that he pulled back the curtain to head down the long hall back to the ballroom.

Before he was able to take two paces, a hand gripped his wrist and yanked him back. He was shoved back against the wall but it was a needless act. Rowan didn’t resist for a moment, limp in Lorcan’s grasp. That is, until Lorcan pressed his mouth against his, his tongue already licking his lips aggressively. 

Rowan grabbed a fistful of Lorcan’s hair and pulled him back. He didn’t say a word, just stared into Lorcan’s eyes. Lorcan’s heavy breaths slowed, his lids heavy. “I’m with you Rowan. I’m with you.”

Rowan gave a single nod, bringing Lorcan’s head centimeters closer. Lorcan pulled against the pressure, begging to be released. Instead, Rowan switched their positions and kissed right next to his ear before whispering, “let’s go. That’ll be message enough for that dignitary.”

He shoved the curtain aside and walked the opposite direction down the hall, with Lorcan’s hand planted firmly in his own.

11. Tarcien: You’ve said you’re going to leave, but I don’t want you to go and if I don’t say something now… (I am contractually obligated to tag Luna because she loves Tarcien @aedicn)

“As always High Lord, your assistance is greatly appreciated.” Lucien bowed deeply, a slight smile playing on his lips as he looked up to where Tarquin stood. “Until we meet again.”

Tarquin watched the back of Lucien’s head as he ate up the long distance across the foyer in sure, long strides. His attendants held the large stone doors open for him, allowing the afternoon sunlight to pour into the room and cast Lucien’s lithe frame in sharp relief. Warm light was able to sneak between the strands of red and light up an orange glow around Lucien’s head. Tarquin clenched his hands, seized by a wave of undeniable tension.

Lucien only made it one step passed the threshold. “Lucien!” He called down from the curving staircase, perhaps slightly louder than necessary. The Fox turned around, eyebrows raised. 

“I need to discuss one more matter with you before you return to Spring. Come up to my study.” He turned on his heel and entered his private study, walking directly to the arched opening that let in the warm sea breeze. When he heard footsteps he half-turned his head. “Close the door, please.”

He continued looking out to the water on the horizon, refusing the urge to look down at his hands. He sensed Lucien stop beside him, not quite two feet away. “You understand that my reign in this court is under constant scrutiny. That every decision I make is harshly criticized by every member of my court.”

Lucien took a half step closer. “I completely understand. I am well used to keeping my personal matters private. And out of the hands of those that might use it against me. Or others.”

Tarquin turned quickly to look at Lucien, surprised that he was able to catch on so quickly to the purpose of this conversation. Lucien’s golden eye missed nothing, and his russet one caught even more.

Tarquin pivoted to face Lucien fully, taking a half step closer as well. He wished he could see his face completely- be able to read his expression as well as Lucien could so clearly do to himself. Instead he was forced to trust his instincts and lean in. 

He placed his knuckles under Lucien’s chin to tilt his head up as he pressed a light kiss to Lucien’s full lips. He pulled back slightly, looking into the more expressive eye for confirmation. Lucien leaned in a fraction, looking at his own mouth. When their lips met again, it was with surety; lips gliding together, melting into one another as they pressed in closer, Lucien’s hands on his waist, pressing their hips together. Tarquin slanted his head, savoring the taste of Lucien’s tongue, when his nose pressed into cool metal. He held Lucien’s head between two hands, reluctantly pulling back, giving Lucien a wry smile. 

“I hate this thing,” Tarquin said as his fingers grazed the edges of the mask.

Lucien snorted. “You’ve only dealt with it for a minute- imagine how I feel.”

“I wish I could be able to see every expression that crosses your face tonight.”

“Oh don’t worry, I’m plenty expressive in other ways.”