SJM in her CHD interview didn’t add anything new she literally reiterated everything she said in chapter 24 in ACOWAR so it’s not like anything new
“Why not make them mates?” I mused. “Why Lucien?”
“I’d keep that question from Lucien.”
“I’m serious.” I turned toward him and crossed my arms. “What decides it? Who decides it?”
Rhys straightened his lapels before plucking an invisible piece of lint from them. “Fate, the Mother, the Cauldron’s swirling eddies …”
“Rhys.”
He watched me in the reflection of the mirror as I strode for my armoire, flinging open the doors to yank out the dress I’d selected. Scraps of shimmering black—a slightly more modest version of what I’d worn to the Court of Nightmares months ago. “You said your mother and father were wrong for each other; Tamlin said his own parents were wrong for each other.” I peeled off my dressing robe. “So it can’t be a perfect system of matching. What if”—I jerked my chin toward the window, to my sister and the shadowsinger in the garden—“that is what she needs? Is there no free will? What if Lucien wishes the union but she doesn’t?”
“A mating bond can be rejected,” Rhys said mildly, eyes flickering in the mirror as he drank in every inch of bare skin I had on display. “There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some … preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.” A smile at me—at the rareness, perhaps, of what we had. “Even so,” Rhys went on, “there will always be a … tug. For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female. Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does “does not happen often, but … Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”
I scrounged up the jeweled, dark belt from an armoire drawer and slung it low over my hips. “So you’re saying she could walk away—and “Lucien would have free rein to kill whoever she wishes to be with.”
“Do you think she and Lucien match well?” I pulled out a pair of sandals that laced up my bare thighs and jammed my feet into them before beginning work on the bindings.
“You know them better than I do. But I will say that Lucien is loyal—fiercely so.”
“So is Azriel.”
“Azriel,” Rhys said, “has been preoccupied with the same female for the past five hundred years.”
“Wouldn’t the mating bond have snapped into place for them if it exists?”
Rhys’s eyes shuttered. “I think that is a question Azriel has been asking himself every day since he met Mor.”
I honestly don’t know I’m very conflicted, at one point I feel like her actions are pointed to Elriel and on another point I can’t let go of Gwynriel
I’m trying to understand all ships and accept them so I wouldn’t feel let down when the book is released since she is the writer and we’ll respect whatever she chooses
Ugh I really don’t know, SJM is really lucky she gets to sleep every day knowing who ends up with who
Anyways there’s still fan fictions 😅 after whatever couple she chooses
