"the Cauldron’s blast hit the Illyrian forces. / And where a thousand soldiers had been a heartbeat before …
Ashes rained down upon our foot soldiers.
Seconds after that.......
But the Cauldron did not hit the same spot twice. And Hybern was willing to incinerate part of his own army if it meant wiping out a strength of ours.
An unearthly, female shriek broke from deep in the Hybern forces. A sister’s warning—and pain. Just as that white light slammed into the Bone Carver.
But the Carver … I could have sworn he looked toward me as the Cauldron’s power crashed into him. Could have sworn he smiled—and it was not a hideous thing at all.
The Cauldron wiped him away without any sign of effort.
Nesta wasn’t going anywhere. She could barely stay sitting. And Elain … Amren was holding Elain upright as she vomited in the grass. Not from the Cauldron. But pure terror.
(Previously in the series, Nesta vomited when the Cauldron was used to take down the wall. It's power / vibration is what caused her to be sick: Nesta moaned, body tensing as if she’d vomit again. But then we felt it. A shuddering through the earth. Through air and stone and green, growing things. As if some great god blew a breath across the land. Then the impact came. Rhys threw himself over me so fast I didn’t register wholly that the mountain itself shook, that the building swayed. We hit the stones as debris rained, and I felt him readying to winnow— Then it stopped. Screaming rose up from the valley below. But silence reigned in the palace. Amongst us. Nesta vomited again, and Mor let her sag to the floor this time.
With Elain, it seems to be the deaths that caused her sickness, not the power surge.
Elain at last slid into the chair near Mor’s, her dawn-pink dress—finer than the ones she usually wore—crinkling beneath her. “Will—will many of these soldiers die?”
Whereas the other characters are bothered by the loss of their soldiers, they seem to accept it as unavoidable.
Nesta is matter of fact when she tells Elain that yes, many soldiers will die.
And while Feyre sends up a prayer for the warriors decimated by the Cauldron and the others begin to discuss what their next move will be, Elain is the only one to have an extremely physical reaction to the deaths that just occurred.
There are some who celebrate "Elain the Kingslayer" but I think we're going to find she's struggling with what she did, taking a life. That she would shun that moniker.
She loves Nesta and would obviously do what was needed to save her but I don't think she's glad to have gotten revenge on the King.
The other characters don't usually blink at taking out someone who harmed their family but I think Elain will always carry an immense amount of guilt for any life she takes, deserved or not. In her mind I don't think it's something she can justify.
Elain begged Feyre not to harm Graysen, no matter what (meaning even if it was deserved).
When Lucien acknowledged her part in killing the King, she immediately turned the attention towards Nesta.
It was very pointed how SJM said Elain returned Truth-Teller and "didn't look back". (Think about what TT is used for, what Elain used it for. It is a tool for death, something Elain walked away from without looking back not to mention possible foreshadowing for Elain walking away from the one who represents death).
The cruelty of the Hewn City specifically bothers Elain. The other characters think it's residents are trash but they embrace the roles they step into while there. They enjoy seeing Kier put in his place. Elain tries to prove she too can belong but it's clearly not something she's comfortable doing.
If Elain vomited from the terror she felt over the lost lives during war (which is pretty much a certainty in battle), then how can anyone honestly think she'll support what Azriel does and the way he thinks?
“If Lucien kills Graysen, then good riddance.”
"I'll defeat him with little effort"
What we did to the Attor wasn’t pretty.”
the quiet voice that had broken countless enemies.
People often made the mistake of assuming Cassian was the wilder one; the one who couldn’t be tamed. But Cassian was all hot temper—temper that could be used to forge and weld. There was an icy rage in Azriel I had never been able to thaw.
“Break its legs, shred its wings, and dump it off the coast of Hybern. See if it survives.” / The Attor was already screaming beneath Truth-Teller’s honed edge when I left the cell.
I held his gaze, though. Held that ice-cold stare that still sometimes scared the shit out of me. I’d seen what he’d done to his half brothers centuries ago. Still dreamed of it. The act itself wasn’t what lingered. Every bit of it had been deserved. Every damn bit. But it was the frozen precipice that Az had plummeted into that sometimes rose from the pit of my memory. The beginnings of that frost cracked over his eyes now.
The way he hesitated before he said learned said enough: he’d tortured it out of someone. Many people.
Azriel leaned against the wall by the lone door, Truth-Teller bloody in his hand
the male bleeding from places Azriel knew would hurt but not kill. Az knew where to slice up a male without letting him bleed out. Knew how to make this last for days.
But Feyre, Cassian knew, had been aware of what she’d see before entering. And well aware that these ten minutes had only been the opening movements in a symphony of pain that Azriel could conduct with brutal efficiency.
Feyre struggled watching Azriel torture. Knowing Elain, does anyone truly think she'd be better at witnessing it than Feyre? She has an inner strength, yes, but she is canonically more gentle and sensitive. Inner strength does not necessarily translate to being fine hurting others.
And the second Azriel sensed that Elain was uncomfortable with what he does, what would be the result?
Azriel leaned against the carved wood footboard at the end of his bed. “Little to add to what you already know.” Smooth, easy liar. Far better than me.
The only character in this series who has been entirely in their right to inflict violence on someone but chose a different route is Lucien.
He would not be wrong in going after Eris (especially early on in the series) or in going after Beron and I don't even think anyone would blame him for putting Ianthe in her place. He could have suggested Rhys take Tamlin out for the way Tamlin has treated Lucien rather than encouraging Rhys to have mercy on him. He could have also easily gone after Graysen.
Yet he has made the choice time and again to avoid violence, only using it in defense.
Elain has not gotten to know Lucien because of the bond, she's using that as her shield and refusing to let her guard down.
But honestly, based on personality and personality alone (and not who wants who at this point because we know that can change), how can anyone think Elucien would not well matched?
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