And Happy 10th Anniversary to Elucien!! Let’s bring it home in the next ACOTAR book! 🥳
“Elain definitely has her own journey to go on as well. I think she's the character that I didn't really see coming—and that Lucien won't see coming, either. Her gentle strength, her hope, her joy.... What happened to her in Hybern will have major consequences (for Elain and everyone around her), and she has a long path ahead, but it's one I'm really excited about.”— Sarah J. Maas
Suddenly, the future did not frighten Elain – a surprising discovery considering she’d lived the last two years as though the past and the future did not and would not exist.
She did not dwell on the past. It only made her miserable.
And as for the future…
Fate had pointed her finger at Lucien, and said ‘him’, and Elain, who had never ever disobeyed anyone, disobeyed Fate. She placed a blindfold over her powers so she wouldn’t have to see, and instead chose to live a shadow of her human life within the Night Court, smiling as though she had two fingers pressed to the corners of her mouth curving up her lips.
But fate was inescapable and undeniable, and now that they were bound by bond and blood, Elain found she wasn’t as distressed by it as she thought she’d be.
Hi Amanda, how are you? I don’t remember if it was you who commissioned it (I vaguely recall it might have been, but I’m not sure), but I was looking through your IG and couldn’t find it. It was a somewhat NSFW Elucien fanart where in the first part Lucien is being gentle with Elain, and in the second part Elain appears sweaty with Lucien grabbing her hair. Was it you who commissioned it? If so, do you have the link? I tried to find it but couldn’t.
Hey anon!
I hope you’re doing well too!
Here’s the artwork you requested! Yes it’s one of my commissions. It used to be up on Instagram page, but then a bunch of jobless elriels reported it. Suprise surprise!! They tend to report any art that doesn’t support their ship.
Anyways, my commission got removed from Instagram so I’ll post it here 💛💛
For @tamlinweek Day 4 - Family (YEAH I'M LATE AGAIN, AND WHAT OF IT?)
I massively fell out of love with the original concept for this since I failed to render it how i wanted. i'm just not skilled enough yet. a shame because how these two meet has always been very vivid to me. Maybe I'll try to do a better job way down the line in procreate or smthn, I think it's a good exercise.
I'd originally had Tam and Rhys meet immediately after the human war under the pretense that Tam was in his teens when it concluded, but learned later that Tam would've only been 7 lol. So the interpretation has changed a bit...
This occurs at the Dawn court like a whole decade after the human war for independence is won. Tensions had mostly died down between Prythian and the Spring Court, the only court that fought staunchly in favor of slavery. They had lost plenty and faced significant indictments during the negotiations that followed, to the extreme displeasure of Tam's father. And yet, there are still negotiations to be made. Dawn Court was considered a neutral touchpoint.
Tamlin himself was silently grateful for the war’s outcome. He’d always been the softest brother, never having been able to stomach his family’s treatment of their slaves. When Tam is asked to shadow the rest of his family as a scribe, he doesn't complain.
Spring and Night’s families pass by each other in the halls in between meetings. Neither would have courteous words to say to one another, as such, everyone is silent despite the palpable tension in the air.
Rhysand, hair still cut close to his scalp from his time commanding the military, stays close to his mother, and pointedly ignores the glares of the Spring royal family. He never let the brutish appearances of the southern slave-owning court ruffle him, despite his burning contempt. Celyddon was easily the strongest high fae male he’d ever seen, and his sons had all inherited his build. Their bodies blocked the sun from his eyes as they walked past.
As the two groups had almost completely passed each other, Rhysand double takes when he spots the unfamiliarly small figure at the back of the entourage.
Since when did Cel have a third son?
The male young, likely no older than fifteen; a child. He has the awkward lanky build of one experiencing their first growth spurt, and Rhysand distantly wonders if this one would grow to be as tall, broad, and violent as the others. The boy's hair is as golden as his mother’s and falls like a messy mop about his shoulders. He’s underdressed compared to the rest of the group; almost plain looking. Instead of gripping a court sword, he holds a stack of parchment in his arms.
Eyes like newleaf glance towards him warily, and Rhysand notices the purple swelling around his left eye.
One could not expect even basic courtesy from Celyddon, such as to glamour the obvious hand he or his ilk had laid on his youngest child, but nevertheless Rhys cannot keep the look of pity from his face.
Lucien ignored it. Elain was sleeping naked in his arms – what else mattered? He felt himself slipping into another dream of soft skin and softer moans, but the knock persisted, rattling the door.
“Fuck off,” Lucien growled. He didn’t care who it was or what they wanted.
“Lord,” one of the sentries called through the door. “The High Lady has requested your presence right away.”
“Shit,” Lucien muttered to himself. The night was young, they’d only dozed an hour or two, but anything could have happened in that time.
Continue reading on A03
And a big thank you to my beta @fierling for helping with the emotional ups and downs in this chapter 🥰
I'm excited that in the podcast Sarah did in fact confirm that Elain considers Lucien her "enemy", the one she blames for what happened to her and did confirm them as mates. And for anyone who claimed that Lucien was suspicious and couldn't be trusted? That his actions when trying to take Feyre back to Tamlin and allying with Hybern made him the bad guy? That there's a reason he's known as a fox? I guess that just makes him morally gray.
And chances are that if this is a shared pov, Gwynriel is going to be confirmed as mates too as Az still needs one and the trope says Sarah is not going a different route anytime soon.
Adding: I know this is not the official release of anything so I would never assume there's no chance of things being updated / changed but it's still pretty exciting to see.
When thinking about the CHD podcast and what future focused topics SJM gave more thorough answers to, I think it's pretty clear that Elain, her feelings about the bond, and discovering the answer for herself whether she and Lucien are *soul mates* who can truly be in love and not only ruled by biological connection is going to be a major focus of these next books. And that discovery is going to take time. It'll require her to spend time with Lucien, get to know him as a person, flaws and all, and actually confront the bond rather than simply "rejecting" it at face value (and importantly there was no emphasis that any other character is involved in her figuring that out). The slow-burn, full of tension romance is really clear. It's also really clear how many of the dire fantasy plots that Elain and Lucien are tied to. Koschei, Vassa's curse, a dying Spring Court, and Beron's eyes for conquest have all been set up in Silver Flames as impending dangers that are close to the brink of becoming real problems. And then you have the whole matters of Elain's Cauldron-given powers of being a Seer and potentially some other powers (life/earth powers) we don't know about as well as Lucien's Day Court powers of spell cleaving - all of which have very clear connections to helping any of the aforementioned fantasy plots.
Idk it just seems obvious to me that both the narrative tension and Sarah reminding all of us of the important questions and tensions as it concerns Elain's mating bond are pointing to this large narrative arc she is speaking about focusing on Elain's journey. And Lucien is inextricably connected to all of it. Elucien is going to be the major thrust of this narrative.
Look at them, destined, golden, soft and cunning, gentle and wild, perfectly matched and so gone for each other.
My heart can’t handle this level of soft, fated energy 😭 and I can’t thank luciaarandart enough for bringing this vision to life. Lucia, you always blow me away with your incredible talent, it’s such a joy creating together every time. I can’t get over the details and how stunning this piece turned out.
Not quite on prompt again, but I’ve always wanted to do a masquerade theme for Elucien. Excited to share it with you all today for @lucienweekofficial
This is a brain child of chatting with @the-darkestminds and @zenkindoflove. Something I struggled to wrap my head around was some of the details SJM mentioned (listed below) and why the releases are happening so close together.
We should pay attention to how she described the book:
“What I was writing felt right, like that was the story that needed to be told. And I decided I wasn’t going to approach this project from a traditional format of a book.”
“Why can’t we tell… like why do we have to stick to these boxes of like this is how you tell a story from A to B. Im like no, like what if we do something different?”
Can you tell us whose pov it is? “No. And that was one of the surprising things for me in writing this, and what came out of it… it’s like, you get a lot of insight into various things.”
This doesn’t sound like a typical standalone book, nor does it even sound like a dual romance POV or multi POV book like she wrote with TOG.
It sounds like the novella will be a collection of Elain’s visions.
Hear me out. This would be COMPLETELY different as she is suggesting, wouldn’t tell a traditional story from point A to B, and would give us various insight across characters and situations.
I’m picturing Elain is inside the visions. We learn about Koschei, we learn about Lucien and her bond, maybe we even get clue to HOFAS and what that means. Maybe her visions are memories. Maybe she can enter past, present and future. It would be non linear storytelling which is brand new for her. There’s so much potential.
It would inform the next book (1,000 pages) by providing us with important information needed to set it up. It checks off everything she said in the interview about how this is going to be unlike anything she has written before.
From what SJM said so far, we’re headed for a long, slow-burn arc between Elain and Lucien. Everything we already knew tbh, with the added bonus that Elain knows Lucien is hot, which only makes the tension better 🫶🏼
Happy birthday, @zenkindoflove ! You are such a sweet, supportive, and talented friend, and I was very excited to capture your work of Alexius x Eris again in all its glory with a book cover for Pull Me In Deeper 🥹 If you can't tell, I got the Eris side vs Alexius side of the front cover's border, picking out the symbols for both was so fun! Back cover and closeups under cut:
