#pro-elain

Is anyone else seeing this??

Heartlines - love triangle story where the heroine is already in a sparkless relationship and centres around her fighting against patriarchal norms

Lady's Handbook of Espionage - Two spies are forced together on a mission in a regency romance

It HAD to be done, y'all. Behold! @jadedbug and I present to you 'Dirt and the Tractoring Fawn'.

For Day 6 of @elainweekofficial: Earthworks.

Chapter 1: Thaw

It was a dreary day, in Spring. The villagers told them it was often this way, now – not the liquid sunlight of high spring, but the tumult of a late thaw, cool and wet, every morning wreathed in fog. By the time Elain and Morrigan approached the outer walls of Tamlin’s estate, their boots were caked in mud. Elain let her hem fall into it, observing a gate hanging on its hinges.

"Are you sure about this?" Rhysand’s third asked gently, sounding nothing at all like a politician. Sounding almost like a friend.

"Until someone has a better idea, yes."

"Even without one," Mor countered with her wry, sultry smile, "it doesn’t have to be you."

Elain only looked at her. They both remembered how they had come to be here.

"I will go," she’d said to them the week before, hovering in the doorway of her sister’s library. They’d all startled, glancing up at her and between each other, as if having forgotten she was there – all except Lucien, who looked like he’d tried to forget but had been unsuccessful. The Lordling of Autumn winced, pained by her voice, her presence, even if he hadn’t objected wholly to her suggestion.

"No," he declared. "There must be someone else." He couldn’t look at her directly, metal eye dancing around the outline of her, like she was an eclipse. Some ill-fated thing.

"Who, Lucien?" She could tell his name on her tongue was unmerciful, but it sealed the remaining arguments in his mouth. "You?"

A rhetorical question; everyone in that room knew Tamlin would maul his former friend the moment he entered his lands. They were silent a beat, a range of emotions playing across their faces. Only Rhysand looked calm, but Elain knew he must be hiding his disapproval behind the mask of the High Lord, searching for his rebuttal, debating a simple order instead. The fact that he hadn’t yet made one…

"Elain–" The Shadowsinger’s voice was quiet, nearly plaintive. She lifted a hand to quiet him.

"All of you have too much history with him. There is so much betrayal and bloodshed between you. Tamlin has wronged me, but I have never returned the harm. He owes me. He will be more likely to listen to me. He will at least be more likely to wait a moment before throwing me out." She looked at each of them, meeting their skeptical stares with her own: earnest, assured. "Tell me I’m wrong."

"But…you look…"

The sisters gazed at each other as Feyre trailed off, leaving the rest of the sentence to hang. Like me, she meant. Worried it would make him hostile. Worried it would make him something worse.

"That might work to my advantage, Feyre," she said soothingly, in the voice she used to coax bulbs and calm skittish horses. Her sister shook her head, hating that idea even more.

"She’s right," Rhys spoke at last. Feyre gawked at him, Mor cursed, and Cassian opened his mouth to say something incendiary and unhelpful, but Rhys was already batting their concerns away with a graceful hand. "I didn’t say I liked it, I just said she was right. I don’t have another suggestion. Do any of you?"

"Just walk in there and put him in his place," Cassian snarled, arms crossed over his chest so tightly his biceps strained his sleeves. "Why are we treating him with kid gloves? A swift kick to the ass and he’ll be back to…whatever we’re calling that still-shitty-yet-preferable state he was in before."

Rhys heaved a sigh.

"Does anyone have a reasonable suggestion?"

Cassian made a sound that conveyed his suggestion was perfectly reasonable, thank you, but the rest of the inner circle went silent, and still. Lucien had drifted to the window, looking out over the High Lord and Lady’s gorgeously manicured gardens, so much more inviting than the ones he’d left behind.

The ones Elain stared at, now.

Morrigan stepped beside her, following her gaze across the once-pristine hedgerows, the roses, the blossoming trees. It was hard to imagine any plan or cultivation, in its present state. The orchard had become gnarled and scrambling, the flowerbeds choked with competing blooms and weeds. Apple petals floated on a stiff, cool wind, glinting like chips of silver in the half-light of impending rain and smattering the pathways with patterns of white-on-gray. Amidst it all, Elain thought she caught a glimpse of shadow drifting between the trunks of the nearby wood.

"They insisted," Mor verified, her smile turning tight. "If you need me, send Nuala. Cerridwen will go straight to Az "

Elain nodded, grateful for the half-wraiths’ company in this strange land, even if she did not wish to admit it aloud, make Morrigan question her resolve. They shared a stiff embrace, awkward even after all this time, and then the Night Court’s seneschal winnowed away, the air around her shimmering like a mirage.

Despite knowing Nuala and Cerridwen lingered nearby, Elain felt wholly alone.

She was, in every way that mattered. The twins would not be able to speak freely with her, and there did not appear to be anyone else on the grounds: no guests, no gardeners, no guards. The regal columns of the manor were cracked beneath the ministrations of ivy and climbing roses, the latter of which more resembled a berry bramble than a garden flower. Thorns the length of Elain’s fingers anchored the vines into the stones and shutters. She could see them spilling through broken window panes, strangling doors until they were suspended somewhere between open and shut. Even the front doors, massive wooden things that had seen the most use out of all those within view, had errant tendrils crawling across their hinges.

Elain strode toward those doors, her steps sounding hollow and loud on the cobbles, then sharp as a knife tapping on the marble steps. She knocked, knowing nobody would come, called into the house knowing nobody would answer, then tucked herself into the corner of the portico to wait. She might have sat, if the few chairs there did not seem ready to disintegrate beneath the next gust of wind. Instead she paced a slow arc, swinging back, and forth, her breath steady as her steps. Waiting.

It took longer than expected, but at last the Beast of Spring appeared.

At least, she thought that was what she saw. As Tamlin emerged from the gathering mist, she realized he was merely rough and dirty, with a great stag slung over his shoulders, the antlers appearing to rise from his back like skeletal wings. His hair was dull and matted, his bandolier was smeared with blood; mud crusted his trousers, his boots, so much that it flaked as he walked. The work of many days. When he noticed her, standing like a specter in the shadow of his house, he came up short so abruptly he might have struck a barrier. His green eyes went wild and wide.

Then reality reasserted itself, and he laughed.

Elain did not think she had ever heard anything more terrifying.

Tamlin laughed loudly, harshly, bitterly, the sound more animal than fae, his anger and wretchedness scraping out each breath into an empty facsimile of mirth. Elain watched him, schooling her face into a calm mask, listening to him go hoarse. Then he adjusted his quarry, resumed his ascent.

From afar, she did look just like Feyre. But up close, she was more beautiful – dazzlingly, heartbreakingly so. The kind of untouchable beauty imagined by painters and playwrights that so rarely coalesces into real flesh, real blood. Galatea. She’d been astonishing as a human, even as poor as they were. But now, reborn and healed and cared for, dressed in ivory and purple that made her brown eyes so warm, her hair like honey’s gold, her cheeks flushed from the chill…

"Even for her, it was cruel to send you," Tamlin said as he came abreast of her, canting his head like a hawk.

"I sent myself," she countered, clasping her hands against her skirts.

Tamlin frowned. Studied her. She could see the question on his face, even if it never reached his lips: why. A moment later he seemed to answer it himself.

"They sent you to watch me."

Elain blinked at him, then at the crumbling manor, the feral gardens, the howling orchard. When she turned back to him, her brows were raised.

"Can you blame them?"

His lips twitched into a sneer.

"No," he growled, so low it seemed to reverberate through the house, the earth, her bones. She thought she detected a trace a shame beneath his anger. He shook his head, as if to dislodge it. "Go back to your court, Elain Archeron."

"Which court is that?"

"Not this one."

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Read the rest on AO3! 

I think Elain is really interesting and I wanted to write about her. I think her relationship to Spring and all Feyre's observations in the books about that relationship are interesting. I think the place we left Tamlin is interesting. So I mostly just wanted to mess around with those ideas and try to write something pretty and achey and a bit raw about this as-yet undeveloped character and everyone's least favorite High Lord.

Aw, I'm so glad 🥺💓

I wish Elain was appreciated more. She’s the best girl.

My favorite traits are Elain’s:

Kindness

Perseverance

Loyalty

Courage

Practicality

Empathy

My favorite scenes/quotes have to be:

“What now?” Elain mused, at last answering my question from moments ago as her attention drifted to the windows facing the sunny street. That smile grew, bright enough that it lit up even Azriel’s shadows across the room. “I would like to build a garden,” she declared. “After all of this … I think the world needs more gardens.” (ACOWAR, Chp. 80)

or

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. (ACOWAR, Chp. 15)

or

When Rhys spoke like that, it was more of a command than a question.

Elain waved a hand in dismissal before flinging open the veranda doors and striding into the open air. (ACOSF, Chp. 17)

or

Nesta was wrong, Cassian realized, to think Elain as loyal and loving as a dog. Elain saw every single thing Nesta had done, and understood why. (ACOSF, Chp. 44)

or

And he knew the cruelty of the Hewn City troubled her. But she hadn’t hesitated to come. When Feyre had offered to let her remain home, Elain had squared her shoulders and declared that she was a part of this court—and would do whatever was needed. (ACOSF, Chp. 57)