A Song of Faithless Shadows

Prologue

Elain rushed through the streets of Velaris in the dark of night, wrapping her cardigan tightly around herself as she slipped into the alleyway. The last thing the seer wanted to be was seen.

She knocked on the door twice, sharply, and too instant for the hour, the door was swung open. Elain lowered her gaze onto Amren. "You said to tell you if I had anymore dreams," Elain explains breathlessly, some part of her still afraid of the tiny woman.

"Get in here quickly, child. Before you're spotted," Amren pulls the middle Archeron inside, locking the door behind her. Elain sits down on the velvety sofa, wiping her palms on the long skirts of her night gown.

"How did it start?" Amren asks, wasting no time, sitting levelly across from the seer.

She swallows. "It started in the River- maybe it was the Sidra, I'm not sure," she says, shutting her eyes. She could still see the way the moonlight shone off the turquoise waters, rippling with the gentle current. "There was this beautiful voice, intoxicating. The kind of sound that could sing someone off a ship."

Amren leans forward, calculating the disturbed look on Elain's face. "Go on..." she hedges.

"And then there was this bright white light," Elain holds her cardigan tighter. "Like staring straight into a star. The beautiful singing never stopped, even as I started to scream. My ears and eyes felt like they were drowning in something thicker than water, bleeding."

"And then?" Amren wasn't as reactive as Elain, though she was no less disturbed. She just needed to know more.

"And then, the voice changed, a different pitch, and it was darkness," Elain says quietly. "It was black, and I was drowning in shadow. I was suffocating, and I was blind."

"There's something more," Amren says. Elain wasn't easy to read, but there was always something more with her, Amren knew. The middle Archeron had her secrets certainly, and Amren wasn't a stranger to deceit. She could sniff it out in even the most conserved individuals, Elain included.

Maybe that's why they've been so close as of late.

Elain nods hesitantly, biting her lip. "He-" she pauses, taking a deeper breath. She felt the suffocation again as she glanced at the corners of the room, the shadows of tree branches casted in pale moonlight. Something didn't want her to say it, but she ignored the warning. "He sounded like Azriel."

Amren hadn't guessed it, but she wasn't surprised. There was something about the Shadowsinger that opposed her. Their darknesses clashed, two different shades of black. His shadows were boundless, a mystery to even her- Amren hated mysteries. She had tried every measure to pry into his abilities for years, but Azriel kept that part of himself so closely guarded. Not even Rhysand knew of it, and Azriel always seemed to resent Amren for her suspicion- of course, not in any outward way.

Amren could just feel it. Feel the way the shadows despised her. Feel their watchful eyes whenever Azriel was around. Those shadows didn't trust her, and she wasn't sure she blamed them.

Azriel shadows had scared Elain as well, but they didn't come around much more. Elain had liked to think it was because she was somehow helping Azriel, banishing his darkness, but after her dream, she wasn't so sure.

"The other voice," Amren says. "Did you know it?"

Elain shakes her head. "I'd know it if I heard it," she says. "But I could only make out that it was female, smooth and soft like the River current."

"I'll put on some tea," Amren says. Elain didn't like that brute determination in the woman's eye. "I'm sending word for a friend. I think it's time you try scrying again."