u/smoopiewoopie

I was rereading ACOWAR chapter 24 and something stuck out.

It’s the first real conversation between Elain and Lucien in the House of Wind. He introduces himself, her eyes focus a little, and then:

“But Elain blinked slowly. ‘You were in Hybern.’

‘Yes.’

‘You betrayed us.’”

Elain blinks, or her eyes focus a lot when she’s having visions. We’ve seen that pattern before. So the timing feels deliberate.

On the surface she’s talking about Hybern. Lucien even apologizes for it. But Hybern wasn’t really all his fault, and the books treat it as complicated. Still, Elain never warms up to him. Not in ACOWAR, not in Frost and Starlight, not in Silver Flames. The distance just stays.

Then, in ACOSF, Mor (who is Truth) basically says they can’t fully trust Lucien anymore because he’s gotten too close with Vassa and Jurian.

Mor took another bite from her pastry. “Lucien can’t be entirely trusted anymore.”

Cassian started. “What?”

“Even with Elain here, he’s become close with Jurian and Vassa. He’s voluntarily living with them these days, and not just as an emissary. As their friend.”

What if the blink and “You betrayed us” wasn’t only about the past? What if she got a flash of something still coming?

Eta:

And i just found this in ACOSF (Chapter 58)

Nesta referring to Elain: "Her brown eyes were WARY. Usually, that look was reserved for LUCIEN."

Wary is so specific.

Wary: feeling or showing caution, care, or suspicion about potential danger or problems.

I'm sorry, but if the SEER doesn't trust him, neither do I.

SUS.

​

1. Nesta: “At each other’s throats, as they like to be,” he said, a tad sharply. She wondered what that was about—and *for the life of her couldn’t read it*.”

2. Cassian: “It doesn’t matter what I want.” Distant words—ones that prevented Cassian from prying further. He was still happy to be Mor’s buffer with Azriel, but there’d been a change lately. In both of them. Mor no longer sat beside Cassian, draped herself over him, and Azriel, those longing glances toward her had become few and far between. As if he’d given up. After five hundred years, he’d somehow given up. *Cassian couldn’t think why.*

3. Cassian: “Azriel offered her a small smile that Elain quickly looked away from. Cassian tucked away his *puzzlement*.

"As Gwyn poured herself a glass, she said, “At the temple in Sangravah, we had a set of ancient movements that we would go through every sunrise. Not for battle training, but for calming the mind. We did cooldowns after those, too, though we called them groundings. The movements took us out of our bodies, in a way. Let us commune with the Mother. The groundings settled us back into the present world.”

But then there is also this moment with Cassian:

“Elain had already departed with Feyre, claiming she had to be up with the dawn to tend to an elderly faerie’s garden. Cassian didn’t exactly know why he suspected this wasn’t true. There had been some tightness in Elain’s face as she’d said it. Normally when she made such excuses, Lucien was around, but the male remained in the human lands with Jurian and Vassa.”

What’s interesting is that SJM first framed the upcoming arc as one story divided into movements, and Gwyn had already used that exact word for the priestesses’ dawn ritual.

Elain is heavily tied to growth, light, and the morning. Some people speculate she could be "spy" training, but I feel like a sunrise ritual for grounding fits her character profile far better than martial combat training (I could be completely wrong) ETA: Or she could be training secretly in more ways than one.

Now we know the books are officially The Valkyrie Cycle, structured in four movements.

This may be sheer coincidence, or it could be a quiet Easter egg hidden the entire time.

If part of Elain’s upcoming story involves finally learning to steady her visions, those sunrise rituals could be the way she does it and a subtle callback to the language of the title.

It might also create a link between Elain and Clotho, who would be familiar with these dawn practices. Clotho’s name translates to “the spinner.” In mythology her task is to spin the thread of life onto her spindle, deciding when people are born and shaping their destiny. There are already theories bouncing around that Clotho may be connected to the stygian spiders… and what’s on the cover of Book 7? A spider.

ETA: I'm not saying we know Clotho teaches Elain these movements. That's obviously just speculation on my part. I'm saying that if SJM wanted to introduce this concept into Elain's story, Clotho is one of the few existing characters who could plausibly connect those dots.

​

"A ray of hope there still may be in this, the gift I give to thee. Not in death, but just in sleep, the fateful prophecy you’ll keep, and from this slumber you shall wake, when true love’s kiss, the spell shall break."

^ Quote from Merryweather from Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

I was reading this theory today about Elain's story being tied to sleeping beauty. I'm sure it's been discussed here. Very fun read! :)

The quote instantly made me think of the blurb of 7.

SLEEPING BEAUTY: "A ray of hope there still may be in this, the gift I give to thee."

ACOFM (English): "But hope can be spun from the darkest of shadows... and the Night Court has its own part to play in the looming crescendo."

ACOFM (French): “But even in the deepest of darkness, the notes of forgotten melody can resonate… the notes of hope.”

All pieces use the same core contrast!

Hope/light against darkness/sleep/shadow, with the implication that hope is what breaks or redeems the dark state.

Plus, we already have the spindle and the thread...

Could this be pointing toward the shape of the upcoming story?

ETA: 1)Flora gave the gift of beauty. Fauna gave the gift of SONG. 2) Elain's defining motif is the ability to find or plant seeds of "hope" in places of bleak, structural darkness.

Life and death and rebirth.

Sun and moon and dark.

Rot and bloom and bones.

Hello, sweet thing. Hello, lady of night, princess of decay. Hell, fanged beast and trembling fawn.

Love me (Feyre), touch me (Nesta), sing me (Elain).

---

Hear me out. What if ‘sing me’ represents Elain finding her voice. She has spent much of the series being defined and spoken for by other people. We know what everyone else thinks Elain wants, but we still don't fully know what Elain herself wants.

The new titles are FILLED with musical language:

Splintered Harmony --> a story in which the different pieces are fractured and out of alignment.

Forgotten Melody --> something lost, buried, or forgotten being reclaimed.

And that pairs beautifully with “SING ME.”

Let's also look at this:

“Hope can be spun from the darkest of shadows.”

Elain has been associated with hope since ACOTAR, where Feyre contrasts her own despair with Elain's ability to look at the same broken home and see HOPE. Then, in ACOFAS, Elain encounters the void tapestry and specifically asks about the silver thread, which the weaver calls Hope.

And now we're given hope + shadows in the same sentence.

Elain has an established connection to hope.

Azriel is a Shadowsinger.

I believe SJM is continuing to build a beautiful thematic connection between Elain and Azriel.

The upcoming story is structured as multiple movements, and harmony requires multiple voices coming together. The Valkyries can be central to the battle and the larger conflict, while Elain's individual story unfolds within that same composition.

If Elain's arc is about finding her voice, the metaphor isn't simply that she learns to sing. It's that the story finally lets us HEAR HER.

Fractured Harmony = Elain's voice exists, but it isn't being heard or integrated into the larger “song.”

Forgotten Melody = Elain's voice has been surpessed and overlooked for so long that her own desires have become “forgotten,” and the story brings that voice back.

SING ME.