Feyre-Elain's moments that make me sob
Rereading changed my view on Elain so much. I'm so grateful to her for these sisterhood moments 😩💞
It still hadn’t stopped me from buying her seeds for the flower garden she tended in the milder months, whenever I could afford it.
And it hadn’t stopped her from buying me three small tins of paint — red, yellow, and blue — during that same summer I’d had enough to buy the ash arrow.
«Feyre, you should have told us!» Elain said, still gaping. «Oh, how awful — and you had to endure losing her all on your own, you poor thing.»
«Come inside. We’ll show you the house! We don’t have a room decorated for you, because we thought you’d be with poor old Aunt Ripleigh for months yet, but we have so many bedrooms that you can sleep in a different one each night if you wish!»
Instead I spent most of my time with Elain in her little garden. I was content to listen to her talk about every bud and bloom, about her plans to start another garden by the greenhouse, perhaps a vegetable garden, if she could learn enough about it over the next few months.
She had come alive here, and her joy was infectious. There wasn’t a servant or gardener who didn’t smile at her, and even the brusque head cook found excuses to bring her plates of cookies and tarts at various points in the day. I marveled at it, actually — that those years of poverty hadn’t stripped away that light from Elain. Perhaps buried it a bit, but she was generous, loving, and kind — a woman I found myself proud to know, to call sister.
I gazed again at that sad, dark house — the place that had been a prison. Elain had said she missed it, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at the cottage. If she beheld not a prison but a shelter — a shelter from a world that had possessed so little good, but she tried to find it anyway, even if it had seemed foolish and useless to me.
She had looked at the cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger.
My father murmured his praises to Elain, who beamed at him and rested her head on his shoulder. And I was happy for them — for the comfort and ease of their lifestyle, for the contentment on both my father’s and my sister’s faces. Yes, they had their small sorrows, but both of them seemed so… relaxed.
But I tried to smile, if only for Elain, who flitted about the room, personally greeting each guest and dancing with all their important sons.
I wrapped my arms around her. «Be on your guard. All of you.»
She nodded, tears in her eyes. «I would have liked to see the continent with you, Feyre.»
I smiled at my sister, memorizing her lovely face, and wiped her tears away. «Maybe someday,» I said. Another promise that I’d be lucky to keep.
Something in my chest broke at Elain’s voice from the hall behind her.
At the sweetness and youth and kindness, untouched by Prythian, unaware of what I’d done, become —
I backed away a step. I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t bring this upon them.
Then Elain’s face appeared over Mrs. Laurent’s round shoulder.
Beautiful — she’d always been the most beautiful of us. Soft and lovely, like a summer dawn.
Elain was exactly as I’d remembered her, the way I’d made myself remember her in those dungeons, when I told myself that if I failed, if Amarantha crossed the wall, she’d be next. The way she’d be next if the King of Hybern shattered the wall, if I didn’t get the Book of Breathings.
Elain lifted her teacup. «Whatever the reason, Feyre, we are happy to see you. Alive.»
She put a hand on Nesta’s knee, the purple of my sister’s gown nearly swallowing up the ivory hand. «Feyre gave and gave — for years. Let us now help her. Help… others.»
«Please,» I begged the king, who motioned Elain to be shoved into the water. «Please, I will do anything, I will give you anything.»
Swift revenge helped no one and nothing but my own, roiling rage.
Even if every time I spoke to them, I heard Elain’s sobbing as she was forced into the Cauldron.
Ianthe lifted her head, scanning my unsure, if not a bit aloof, face. «So you could be with them forever. And if Lucien had discovered that Elain was his mate beforehand, it would have been… devastating to realize he’d only have a few decades.»
The sound of Elain’s name on her lips sent a snarl rumbling up my throat.
I cut in, «If Elain is not up for it, then she won’t see him. I won’t force the meeting on her. But he does wish to see her, Nesta. I’ll ask on his behalf, but the decision will be hers.»
Elain had always been gentle and sweet — and I had considered it a different sort of strength. A better strength. To look at the hardness of the world and choose, over and over, to love, to be kind. She had been always so full of light.
I said, watching the space where my friends had vanished from the town house, «I need you to understand, Elain, that if this goes badly… if he tries to harm you, or any of us…»
«I know. You will defend your own.»
I stood. Met Azriel’s wrathful stare.
«I’m going with you,» I said.
«You’ll never get far enough into the camp,» Cassian warned.
«I’m going to walk right in.»
Before I could turn back, Elain threw her arms around me. I did not remember when I began to cry as I felt those slender arms hold me, tight as steel.
I did not remember the healer who patched me up, or how Rhys bathed me. How I told him what happened with Jurian, and Tamlin, Nesta hovering around Elain as Helion came to remove her chains, cursing the king’s handiwork, even as he admired its quality.
But I did remember lying down on the bearskin rug once it was done. How I felt Elain’s slim body settle next to mine and curl into my side, careful not to touch the bandaged wound in my shoulder. I had not realized how cold I was until her warmth seeped into me.
I quietly asked the nearest camp-mother to dig up some platters of food for my sisters. Elain was likely starving, and I doubted Nesta had eaten anything during the hours we’d been gone.
Elain faced me. «Do we help her?»
I fiddled with the end of my braid. «Yes — but not today. Not tomorrow.» I loosed a breath. «When — when she’s ready.» When we were ready, too.
Elain nodded, smiling up at me, and it was tentative joy — and life that shone in her eyes. A promise of the future, gleaming and sweet.
«I would like to build a garden,» she declared. «After all of this… I think the world needs more gardens.»
My throat was too tight to immediately reply, so I just kissed my sister’s cheek before I said, «Yes — I think it does.»
Elain met me halfway to the kitchen, bearing a tray of jam tarts toward the table in the dining room. Where an assortment of baked goods had already begun to take form, tiered cakes and iced cookies. Sugar-frosted buns and caramel-drizzled fruit pies. «Those look pretty,» I told her by way of greeting, nodding toward the heart-shaped cookies on her tray. All of it looked pretty.
Elain smiled, her braid swishing with each step toward the growing mound of food. «They taste as good as they look.» She set down the tray and wiped her flour-coated hands on the apron she wore over her dusty-pink gown. Even in the middle of winter, she was a bloom of color and sunshine.
She handed me one of the tarts, sugar sparkling. I bit in without hesitation and let out a hum of pleasure. Elain beamed.
«I asked Nuala to do it in that order,» Elain said as the others gathered round. «Because you’re the foundation, the one who lifts us. You always have been.»
Feyre said, «It is Elain’s choice, Nesta.»
Nesta whirled on her, ignoring the warning flicker of primal wrath in Rhys’s stare. «Keep out of this,» she hissed at her youngest sister. «I have no doubt you put these thoughts in her head, probably encouraging her to throw herself into harm’s way —»
Elain cut in sharply, «I am not a child to be fought over.»
Nesta’s pulse pounded throughout her body. «Do you not remember the war? What we encountered? Do you not remember the Cauldron kidnapping you, bringing you into the heart of Hybern’s camp?»
«I do,» Elain said coldly. «And I remember Feyre rescuing me.»
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