Sublimecoffeefestival - Coffee In An IV, Please

Beautiful art by Charlie Bowater

Elspeth Spindle and the Nightmare from One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig

My friends who have never experienced flooding, and who are about to deal with it from this storm, please remember:

1. NO. YOU CANNOT MAKE IT THROUGH THAT WATER ON THE ROAD. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'RE DRIVING. TURN. AROUND.

2. DO NOT GO WADING THROUGH THE WATER. EVEN IF YOU JUST WANT TO SEE HOW DEEP IT IS. THAT. WATER. IS. CONTAMINATED.

3. IT IS CALLED FLASH FLOODING FOR A REASON. THE WATER RISES AND SURGES IN A FLASH. STAY. HOME.

4. If you're at risk of flooding, raise up any of your belongings now. Put the legs of tall things in buckets. Know where your important documents are.

5. Stay safe.

I screamed out of delight when they were so mean to each other. It scared my dog.

We Could Call It Even

Summary: Newly made and terrified, Elain Archeron's human fiance tells her of a creature that could turn her back and keep them together and Elain will stop at nothing to make rumor a reality.

There is no force that can undo fate. No magic that can unmake a mating bond. And Lucien Vanserra isn't about to let his mate throw herself in the path of certain death on a fools hope. Lucien will be forced, instead, to watch her love another man for eighty brutal, miserable years.

While Elain Archeron will have to contend with a life she hoped to never live…and a mate she never wanted.

Thank you @shadowisles-writes for the moodboard!!

Read on AO3 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

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“Return to me quickly,” Graysen told her that morning, wrapping a wool cloak around her shoulders. “Return to me human.”

“And…” Elain’s bottom lip trembled as she swallowed her fear, “And if I don’t?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he replied, clearly convinced this was going to work. Elain, though…she was uneasy as she set out. She left in the dead of night to cross back over into Prythian. The closer she got, the more her magic stirred in her chest, crowding against the edges of her vision. 

She shoved it down. It wasn’t natural, she reminded herself. Wrong. She wasn’t faerie, she was simply a human trapped in faerie skin. Like the old stories where faerie magic could trap a child if they weren’t careful or a bargain was worded poorly. She simply needed to break the spell.

True love wasn’t enough, though in the stories it always was. Elain found herself frustrated when she couldn’t keep the magic at bay, her knees sinking to the snow as she crossed the border into Prythian.

Her visions had always been chaotic and half-formed. Disjointed, she supposed. With her forehead pressed to the cold ground, Elain groaned, trying—and failing—to banish what now burst brightly behind her eyes. 

Autumn leaves burning, smoke curling like shadow toward a darkened sky. A ruined, burnished crown clattering to white marble floors. Spring blooms bursting through the ground, the petals opening as rain cascaded from the sky. A night sky, alive with vivid lights dancing across an otherwise empty space. 

Elain gasped. “I hate you,” she whispered, unclear if she was talking to herself or the powers that coursed through her. She’d clenched her jaw so tightly she tasted the coppery tang of blood and her fingers had curled into the frozen ground, causing several of her nails to break. 

It was fine, she told herself, though in truth it wasn’t. Blood oozed over one of her nail beds, dripping three bright red spots over the stained, gray snow still gathered beneath a shady spot. It reminded her of gardening, a hobby she’d promised to give up once she was married. Graysen said he didn’t want a wife with dirt under her nails.

Back before the cauldron, she’d hoped to reason with him. Now, though, it seemed a fair compromise. He’d get an immortal wife that would almost certainly cause them to be shunned from society. And besides, she’d still have a say in the grounds. She could design it, plan it…just not execute her vision.

Graysen expected her to journey on foot to Night Court where she’d board a ship. No human ship would take her toward the faerie held territories, which meant Elain had to make her way back to the one place she’d hoped to never step foot again. It meant using more of the magic she hated. Feyre had once tried to show her and Nesta how to winnow. Nesta had refused the lesson outright but Elain, afraid she’d lose the last place she could stay if she refused, did the lessons. 

Screwing up her face, nose wrinkled, Elain called on the well of magic bubbling in her stomach. It made her want to vomit when she felt the edges of the world press in on her, constricting her breath. It was only a moment, dumping her just on the outskirt of Velaris, but enough to elicit a soft sob from her throat.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was unfair. 

Elain wanted to rage at the few people lumbering down the street, awake despite the glittering stars overhead. Didn’t anyone care? It was as if nothing had happened. She knew they all wanted her to just get over it. Was that what Feyre had done when she’d turned? Elain wracked her brain for the memory of how Feyre became fae, but it eluded her. Elain simply didn’t care how Feyre had handled the loss of her humanity.

Feyre had likely celebrated, Elain concluded as she marched her way down the sloping road to the harbor. She’d probably been overjoyed to shed her old skin and take up the mantle of power and beauty. It suited Feyre so well, which only angered Elain more. Where was Feyre’s grief? The years of life stripped away in favor of binding her to a man she barely knew and was so old, he’d participated in the first war against the humans? 

Elain’s fingers curled to fists, feet stomping on the cobblestone. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t see the figure overing at the waters edge where stone met wood.

“Going somewhere?”

That voice clanged through her, bringing with it a veritable rising tide of emotions. Yearning. Hatred. Desire. Loathing. Elain whirled just as Lucien Vanserra, Seventh Son of Autumn, lowered the hood of his cloak. His expression was cool, arms crossed over his chest and legs spread a shoulders width apart.

She tried to shove wordlessly past him, but he used his body to block her.

“Move,” she ordered.

He didn’t.

“Turn around and go home,” he said instead, nodding his head in the direction behind her.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she whispered, her body trembling as she faced him. The wind dragged the soft, masculine scent of him directly to her and every inhuman part of her wanted him.

Elain had never hated herself more. Shame welled up in her—this was a betrayal to her engagement, to the man she’d left behind. She wasn’t supposed to want someone else. 

Lucien cocked his head, oblivious to the slant of her thoughts. Was this his poor attempt at flirting? Or worse, had he somehow known she was coming and intended to drag her off until she was so beaten down she agreed to whatever nefarious plans he had? 

“Let me guess…you think you can make a bargain with a death god in exchange for your humanity?” he whispered, banishing Elain’s shame in favor of pure, undiluted fear.

“How—no—he’s not…he’s a—”

“There is no such thing as benevolence in this land, Elain,” Lucien ground out, looking as if he hated her. Perhaps he did, though that bothered her, too. He wasn’t allowed to hate her—only she could hate him. 

“You don’t know everything—”

“And you don’t know anything,” he shot back, his contempt dripping from his words. “You’re a child fumbling about in the dark, content to damn us all if she can live out a fantasy—”

Elain slapped him. She hadn’t even thought about it. Her outrage had simply consumed her and she’d decided to hit him a split second before she did. Lucien staggered back a step, his fingers grazing his cheek as that golden eye held her wholly in place.

“Don’t you dare speak to me that way,” she whispered, voice trembling. “You are nobody. You have no home, your family hates you, and your friends would discard you the moment you’re no longer useful to them. Don’t presume you can stand there like an authority and speak down to me.”

Lucien’s brown cheeks went ashen at her words. 

“You might be right,” he told her, drawing himself to his full height. He was tall, she realized. And fae. Unlike Feyre’s mate and his friends, with their short hair and rounded ears, Lucien looked so very faerie with that magical eye and his long, auburn hair half braided off a face that had once been handsome before he’d ruined it. 

“Get out of my way—”

“I may be all the things you say, Elain, but at least I am not so spoiled, so selfish that I’d risk the lives of everyone so I might be happy.”

“Why shouldn’t I be allowed to be happy? I’ve never been given a choice—”

“You’re exercising your choice right now!” he shot back, his voice drowning hers out. “No one stopped you from hiding away with a human. One bad thing happened to you, and now you think you’re owed far more than you’ve ever given.”

“You don’t know me,” she whispered.”

“I don’t want to know you,” he replied, his own voice shaking. “Elain, from Feyre’s stories. Too spoiled and self-absorbed to care if her sister was starving, too. If she was safe, if she was happy, if she had anything comforting. She did one helpful thing once, and thinks it makes her some kind of saint.”

Elain could feel the tears gathering in her eyes. “You let Feyre die.”

“You did so first. I heard, when Tamlin came to collect her, that you hid behind your father and your sister. When a faerie general demanded I tell her Feyre’s name, I kneeled silently and let her torture me. I saved her life in the first trial. You let a faerie take her in the night. Don’t mistake us as equals, Elain.”

“We had no choice—”

“How very convenient,” he sneered. “Is that you have no choice, or you simply refuse to acknowledge your own agency?”

“This is why you remain alone, you know,” she said, wanting to hurt him as badly as he’d hurt her. She wanted to scar Lucien emotionally for daring to say the things she only ever privately thought. “And you can defend Feyre all you like, but if I went to her and showed her what you said, she would never forgive you.”

“I don’t care. Give me the ticket.” He held out his hand.

“I’ll scream.”

“Go ahead. Scream as loud as you like. Let the authorities come and take us both before Rhysand.”

Elain’s stomach bottomed out. “Please—”

“Give me the ticket.”

“You don’t understand—”

“The ticket—”

“I love him!” she cried, the tears she’d been holding back finally spilling like a dam. “Can’t you understand that? Or are you so cold you’ve never once experienced love. I will be careful how I word it, I’ll—”

“He’s a death god,” Luicen repeated, a strange, almost sad look crossing over his features before they hardened back into ice. “He’s not required to honor his bargains and you are not clever enough to beat him on your own.”

A horrible, cruel idea was forming in her head. “Come with me, then—”

“No.”

Lucien spoke the word flatly, devoid of all the hatred that had spilled from him before. Now there was simply nothing, as if his soul had left his body and all that remained was a creature that could do nothing but deny her passage. 

“He could break the bond.”

“Nothing can break the bond,” Lucien informed her in that same, soulless voice. “The Mother made it, and only she could unmake it. Just as nothing can unmake you—your human form is gone, burned away by death. If you beg the death god to free you of your faerie form, there will be nothing left of you but ash.”

“How do you know?” she demanded, wanting him to yell at her again. Anything but whatever this was. 

“I was there,” he whispered, shadow flickering over his russet eye. “He is a god, bound to the land as punishment for a crime lost to time. It wasn’t written down because we had no language, were still creatures running on four legs. Humans were mere thoughts, beasts more accustomed to the seas than to land. To think you could outsmart him is folly and foolishness. Turn around and go back to your home, Elain. Put this idea out of your mind.”

“I promised,” she half wailed, despair replacing her anger. “If I go back—”

Lucien cocked his head, some of that fire flickering back to life. “Yes?”

She pulled the ticket from her pocket and slammed it roughly into his chest. He didn’t move, fingers brushing hers as he took it before it fluttered between them.

“Even if he didn’t want me, I would never want you.”

His lip curled over his teeth. “How very fortunate for me.”

She knew it was a lie. Feyre had told her the men felt the mating bond far more strongly than women, and rejecting it often made them insane. It was tempting to break the bond right then and there and prove Lucien right. He’d accused her of being spoiled and selfish, caring only about herself. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Maybe she was vindictive, too.

But Elain was suddenly tired and a little afraid. Anxious, too, that Graysen was going to change his mind when she told him there was no bargain to be made. Suddenly Lucien didn’t matter. The fight had simply gone out of her, blinked out like the stars overhead. The sky, once inky black, had lightened to a pale violet. At any moment, the sun would fully break and the world would see her for what she was.

And she was terrified Lucien was right about her. Every accusation he’d made against her was true. She hadn’t cared, though she had known Feyre was allowing herself to be the martyr if she and Nesta were happy.

And she had hidden, hadn’t thought even once to suggest herself in place of Feyre. She’d just wanted that creature to leave, and if that meant Feyre had to leave with him, well, so be it. Knowing that Feyre had told him that, when Feyre had only ever told her such kind things about Lucien, brought back more of the shame from before. 

“None of this would have happened if you’d stood up to your High Lord,” Elain whispered, holding his gaze. Lucien’s mouth went slack and right then, she knew she’d wounded him just as thoroughly as he’d wounded her. “I may be spoiled, but you're a coward. You did this to me. I will never forgive you for it.”

She turned, then, needing to get far, far away. Elain only dared to look over her shoulder once, but Lucien was gone. Had he ever been there? The ticket was gone from her pocket, but all that remained was the tell-tale racing of her heart. She didn’t know what to do with herself, but she knew she couldn’t stay in Prythian. Feyre would learn she’d been here, if Lucien hadn’t already raced off to tattle on her.

Elain winnowed again, dumping herself with a sob on the border between Spring and the wall. Curling her knees against her chest, fingers balled into fists and pressed against her chest, she sobbed like a wounded animal. It was unfair. Nothing was as it should be. Was it selfish to simply want? Spoiled to hope for something? 

She hadn’t thrust them into poverty.

She hadn’t done anything. Lucien didn’t know anything. He was living his same life, marred only by her presence. She doubted he’d been thrilled to learn they were mates and now he was punishing her for it. Elain decided to discard his words, wiping her eyes on the edge of her sleeve. 

Elain couldn’t go back that night. She needed Graysen to believe she’d at least tried. Instead, once she felt like she could walk away, Elain stumbled through the familiar woods of the village she’d once resided in for the cottage that now rotted on the very edge. The door had been replaced, propped up to keep animals out. 

Elain stepped inside, shivering violently at the memories that came flooding back. She’d been happy here, somehow. No one else had been—Feyre and Nesta would rather have died than return. But Elain remembered how they used to sleep in that too-soft bed, jostling for blankets and space when it got cold. 

She remembered how she’d curl up around Nesta, who seemed to radiate warmth even when she was bone thin and hungry, or how, when Feyre had gotten sick, she’d slept on her back so Feyre could rest her head against Elain’s shoulder. Her younger sister had still sucked her thumb back then, whimpering softly for their mother who’d been dead for years.

Before, in the giant estate, Nesta had been consumed by her lessons and Feyre had taken to all but living in the trees, wilder than an animal. Elain had felt so isolated, trying—and often failing—to find friends that filled the gnawing void in her chest. Those friends had vanished along with the wealth, but Feyre and Nesta had remained.

They’d been her only friends for years and Elain had clung to it, in her way. Perhaps she’d done it badly, selfishly. Perhaps it was spoiled to wish nothing had ever changed. Maybe Lucien was right about her, but that didn’t mean he understood why. He didn’t know her at all, only what he believed because she hadn’t fallen into his arms.

Maybe she was spoiled and selfish, but at least she wasn’t mean. She wasn’t bitter. Lucien could only see the ugliness but standing in that cottage, Elain could still see the beauty of it all. The hope, the joy, the love. And maybe she was simply more human than she wasn’t. Humans were all the things he’d spat at her. Was she supposed to be ashamed?

Elain sighed, making her way to that one room where the bed remained. The window was still in tact, keeping the elements away. Everything looked exactly as it had been, though somehow less bright. In her memory it was all so beautiful, but here in the early morning light, it was dull. Empty.

Ordinary.

There was nothing special about any of it. For some reason, that was the biggest disappointment of the day. Elain sat on the edge of the bed, kicking up a cloud of dust that settled in her lap like fallen stars. She decided to stay for the night before trudging back to Gray and hoping he understood why she couldn’t go.

More than anything, Elain was terrified he was going to change his mind once he realized the only life available to them was one of tragedy. She wouldn’t age—but he would. They’d likely never have kids given how difficult it was for the fae to conceive. He’d be shunned from society for his choice, forced to live as an outsider.

She almost didn’t blame him if he decided she wasn’t worth the hassle.

But to Elain, it was worth it. Even if it meant watching him grow old and die—at least they’d have the time together. 

Elain ate from the rations in her little bag before curling up on the bed. It was too early to sleep, but with nothing else to do, she drifted in and out. When she couldn’t, she stared up at the ceiling and tried to banish Lucien’s voice from her head. He had no right, she decided, to say those things about her.

To her.

Night was worse—the wind howled, rattling the thin glass in the rotting wooden frame. Animals clawed at the structure before the world fell eerily silent. She supposed it was like that—the darkness was at its zenith, scaring even the wind itself. It didn’t stop her from feeling as if she was being watched. 

The dawn broke, bringing with it the realization that she’d made her choice, had burned all the bridges she might one day need to return. There was nowhere to go but back home. Elain set out, bones aching from her restless sleep, mind racing with all the possibilities of what might be waiting for her. 

It was nearly noon by the time she reached the fortress. The doors were opened to her immediately, and the sentry waiting just inside greeted her with a nervous smile. The staff was growing accustomed to her presence, their wariness often replaced with a pitying smile. It was better, she supposed, though Elain wasn’t certain she wanted to spend the rest of her life being pitied, either.

Graysen was up, dressed in his fine breeches and a rather nice blue and black jacket. He paused in the stone hall when he saw her, shadows half obscuring his face. “You’re back,” he exclaimed, eyes falling on her pointed ears. “You’re back early.”

“I can’t go,” she whispered, deciding she would just lie. She’d intended to tell him the truth, but fear gripped her heart. “When the captain learned, he…he said it was an ill omen to travel to a death god—”

“Not a death god,” Graysen interrupted, but Elain knew Lucien was right. Damn him all the same, but he was right.

“Yes, Gray. A death god,” she repeated gently. “He turned me away.”

“Then we’ll lie—”

“They can read minds, remember?” she said, telling yet another lie. He didn’t know it wasn't entirely true, though. Graysen’s face fell as he walked to her, skimming his fingers over her arms.

“What happened to you is an injustice. Is there no recourse, then? They’re just allowed to harm you and I have to sit here and make my peace with it?”

His concern was a balm for her wounded feelings. “I’m alive, at least.”

“That you are,” he agreed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Still, there was a tightness to his features she didn’t like. He’d been too hopeful and now they were dashed, ruined and wilted. 

“Are you reconsidering?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “We will continue with the wedding.”

Elain sighed, relief replacing the heavy weight of fear. She could still have the life she wanted. 

And maybe, someday, she’d find something to restore her humanity.

Lucien Vanserra be damned.

One of last year's drawings I did for elucienweek. I wanted to capture secret wedding vibes.

Tumblr already has a personalization algorithm it's called my beloved mutuals who have great taste and only wish to psychologically damage me sometimes