#it's hardly a spoiler that the center can't hold forever

[flowerflamestars]

Effloresce snippet

Buried in hinterlands long abandoned by high fae, shrouded in a magic so thick it had changed the land and stilled the day: what their foremother had called Mist for the fog, an estate large enough for an entire royal court, trapped forever in the same night and day of late harvest season. A lost, cursed, forgotten kingdom. It was as safe a place Lucien could imagine. If it hadn’t been within the boundaries of the Court of Night. “I could make even better wards out of Rhysands bones,” Lucien murmured, curved down to her temple, before pressing a kiss to her soft skin. “But it will feed and house a damned nation, given the chance.” They’d be a nation, too, if they survived long enough. Honeysuckle sweet, smoke stinging dangerous, Lucien breathed in the grounding, perfect scent of her right up until it changed. Gold and bone. Moss and blood. Eyes cracked open, there it was- the crown of Autumn, shining alongside twisting vermillion ribbons in her curling hair, like it had always been and always would be a part of her. “Elain.” She didn’t startle, but the bond burst like a door, Elain responding to Lucien’s panic like it was her own. He didn’t- couldn’t- Lucien simply picked up her hand and molded it, careful not to burn himself, over gilded bone, pollen teeming into the air. She shook her head. Met his gaze with more question that horror. “I didn’t call it.” Fire flared, a quick crackle of crimson light, the single leaf it carried falling on phantom wind directly in front of her. Smoldering, it burned nothing it touched, fire only further illustration to the single word punched through green. RUN A dozen, a hundred, tree fall itself a wrongness in Lucien’s heart, green leaves and red leaves and crunching oak, a forest filling the air, the entire empty hall, piling on benches, covering stone: RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN-