#acosf reread
~25 ACOSF Days of Solstice~
There was nothing in Nesta’s head but screaming. Nothing in her heart but love and hatred and fury as she let go of everything inside her and the entire world exploded. The baying of her magic was a beast with no name. Avalanches cascaded down the cliffs in seas of glittering white. Trees bent and ruptured in the wake of the power that shattered from her. Distant seas drew back from their shores, then raced in waves toward them again. Glasses shook and shattered in Velaris, books tumbled off the shelves in Helion’s thousand libraries, and the remnants of a run-down cottage in the human lands crumbled into a pile of rubble.
—ACOSF Ch. 74
The moment Nesta finally erupts.
There’s no question I, along with many I’m sure, have been waiting for this since ACOWAR when Amren said to a Nesta in the early stages of grappling with her power, “When you erupt, girl, make sure it is felt across worlds”…
Since ACOMAF, after what the Cauldron did to her, tried to do to her, after males with power and violence in their fabric forced her to be irrevocably changed, after that violation…
Actually going all the way back to ACOTAR when we see a brittle Nesta hardened by a life in which, even before her family lost their material comforts, Nesta was groomed to objectify her very self in the most insidiously innate way, leading her to accept the idea of an abusive husband if it meant fulfilling that narrow understanding of her supposed duty and purpose…
The imagery in this moment is really fucking powerful for me. Especially that of her cottage in the human lands crumbling, the cottage where she felt and experienced formative trauma, and here I mean of the familial variety. The dynamic in the Archeron home at the start of ACOTAR is so familiar to me in its toxicity (because I experienced something like it in my family growing up). It’s a tragedy.
And yes, earlier in ACOSF Nesta did find hard won peace in a final visit to said cottage with Cassian at her side as partner and support, but here?
The rage that is always there, even if it’s calmed by a life lived well, is finally expelled so others might see it, feel it, have their worlds shaken by it. It’s vital and essential and wonderful.
Mark this one down as one of my favorite moments in Nesta’s story. ✅
I don’t have the words to express just how incredible these insights are and I thank the writer for sharing them
Thank you for this positive feedback and you’re welcome! I’m so glad my little reflections on the growth of our favorite queen resonate with more people than just me!
25 ACOSF Days of Solstice Masterlist
✨Complete✨
Day 25 ~ Chapter 56 ~ Nesta in the heart of the House
Day 24 ~ Chapter 57 ~ Nesta prefers dancing to magic
Day 23 ~ Chapter 58 ~ Nessian yield to each other
Day 22 ~ Chapter 59 ~ Valkyrie trio friendship bracelet making
Day 21 ~ Chapter 60 ~ Gwyn cuts the ribbon
Day 20 ~ Chapter 61 ~ Nesta reaches the bottom of the staircase
Day 19 ~ Chapter 62 ~ Nessian fight
Day 18 ~ Chapter 63 ~ Cassian is ready to take responsibility for his mistake
Day 17 ~ Chapter 64 ~ Amren is powerless and I am petty
Day 16 ~ Chapter 65 ~ Nesta is not an object to be wielded
Day 15 ~ Chapter 66 ~ Nesta rescues Emerie from the river
Day 14 ~ Chapter 67 ~ Cassian is confident Nesta can protect herself in the Blood Rite
Day 13 ~ Chapter 68 ~ The Valkyrie trio tell their stories
Day 12 ~ Chapter 69 ~ Nesta prepares to hold the Pass of Enalius
Day 11 ~ Chapter 70 ~ Nesta thinks of Ataraxia
Day 10 ~ Chapter 71 ~ Enalius, Ramiel, Cassian, and Nesta connections
Day 9 ~ Chapter 72 ~ “Because my mate taught me well.”
Day 8 ~ Chapter 73 ~ Briallyn: “He’s mine now.” Everyone:
Day 7 ~ Chapter 74 ~ Nesta erupts
Day 6 ~ Chapter 75 ~ Cassian after Nesta erupts
Day 5 ~ Chapter 76 ~ The Archeron sisters and the Mother
Day 4 ~ Chapter 77 ~ Nesta’s bargain with the Cauldron and the Mother’s response
Day 3 ~ Chapter 78 ~ Nesta, a quick study in using her powers
Day 2 ~ Chapter 79 ~ Cassian and Eris
Day 1 ~ Chapter 80 ~ Nesta finds peace regarding her father
I am around 25 chapters away from the end of A Court of Silver Flames, reading it in full for the second time. I want to finish it by Christmas, so I’m challenging myself to read one chapter each day, and as a gift to me and anyone who follows me I’m going to share a favorite, standout passage or quote from each chapter with my reasons it stood out for me. This post will be a masterlist linking to each quote post.
Think of this as an ACOSF themed Advent calendar. This will be fun! I’m starting with a post I shared yesterday and continuing from there. Link list is above.
Happy Solstice!
I finished this post series yesterday, in case anyone wants to follow me through my reread of the last 25 chapters of ACOSF. Happy New Year!
~25 ACOSF Days of Solstice~
Feyre had asked this morning if Nesta wanted to come. To show their father the baby. And there had been no answer in Nesta’s heart except one. So she nodded to her sisters to go on ahead, and they obeyed, easing back down the grassy hill as Nesta lingered by the gravestone. She searched for the words, for any explanation or apology, but none came. The sun was a warm hand on her shoulder, like the one that had prevented the last of her power from vanishing, as if telling her that the apology, the begging for forgiveness … it was no longer needed. Her father had died for her, with love in his heart, and though she might not have deserved it then … She would do all she could now to earn it. To deserve not just his love, but that of those around her. Of Cassian. Some days might indeed be difficult, but she’d do it. Fight for it. Her father had died for her, with love in his heart, and Nesta held love in her own heart as she pulled the small, carved rose from her pocket and set it upon the gravestone. A permanent marker of the beauty and good he’d tried to bring into the world. Nesta brought her fingers to her lips, pressed a kiss to them, then laid her hand upon the gravestone. “Thank you,” she said, blinking back the stinging in her eyes. “Thank you.”
—ACOSF Ch. 80
Ten days ago, on the Winter Solstice, in the thick of this holiday season, was the anniversary of my father’s death.
My relationship with him was similarly complicated in the way Nesta’s relationship with her father is in these books, beginning in bitterness and resentment way back in ACOTAR, through the remarkable but complex turn it takes at the end of ACOWAR, then through the angry grief we see in ACOFAS, and culminating in the journey we get to witness Nesta make through that destructive grief to something more healthy in ACOSF.
I say this as context for how my reading of this last chapter of ACOSF is shaped and formed by my own experiences. I’ll disclaim by saying I know alternate readings of this ending exist and that they are also valid, but I’ll share now why this last moment and scene mean so much to me as a reader, and close out my 25 ACOSF Days of Solstice posts with this passage and reflection that I’m aware not everyone will relate to in the same way.
The idea that sometimes the resolution to a complicated mental and emotional journey through grief is not tie-up-able with a neat verbal bow of meaning-making is very realistic to me.
In Nesta’s case, she always assumed some kind of apology, felt or spoken, to her father for being a flawed human being in her adolescence who felt rage toward him and let it shape her behavior (because she had no models of mature self-regulation), only to have him do his flawed best to make up to her and her sisters for his very real neglect by fighting then dying for them in a way that turned the tide of a war they found themselves on the front lines fighting…..that Nesta realizes, perhaps through the calm and forgiving presence of the Mother, that words are no longer needed to find peace in relation to her father, is so fucking real to me.
Implicit in Nesta’s journey through her grief, that I am able to infer from this moment in Chapter 80, is that Nesta has forgiven her father at some point. She speaks (in her mind) here of his forgiveness of her — and I think that’s the detail most open to scrutiny and critique by those who don’t like this scene — but for her to be able to acknowledge that her father died (was killed before her eyes) with love in his heart, means she has found peace, imperfectly shaped as it may be, regarding his neglect of their family in her adolescence. Peace isn’t the same as defense or excuse-making; it is only, and simply, peace.
In my personal experience, that peace comes from some combination of forgiving one’s flawed parent and letting go of all the shit and baggage those flaws have passed on to you through osmosis and generational trauma.
It doesn’t disappear. But it does stop actively shaping you in the present because you choose to let it go and no longer identify with it so much that you don’t know yourself without it.
Nesta now has an identity that isn’t defined by her rage and trauma. Those things still exist, and she can and should acknowledge and honor them, especially when triggers cause them to poke through into the present in unexpected ways, but they are no longer the center of her understanding of self.
It takes so much mental health work to reach this point. I’m not fully there yet myself, but I’m far enough along to be able to see this as the desired outcome of my work on my own grief and rage. And I think SJM writes Nesta’s healing journey across four books and a novella in a way that has very much earned this outcome for Nesta.
I’ll end by saying that, in a situation where one of the two parties that has hurt each other is well and truly gone from the earthly plane where restitution might occur, the one that is still here? Alive and breathing and just trying to fucking live when they possibly don’t even know how that even works because there weren’t too many examples to draw from?
Whatever way that person remaining is able to find peace that includes love in their heart, is valid and right and preferred to a grief and rage that has no end point except destruction.
I am breathlessly in awe that Nesta has love in her heart in this closing scene of ACOSF. It’s something I covet.
Nesta is my fucking hero for myriad reasons, but this, how she lands in relation to her father, is the biggest one of all for me.
Happy Solstice and New Year, dear friends who read this post series! I have an Ask about Nesta and the Mother I will answer in the new year when I can work from a full keyboarded computer. Otherwise, thus endeth my 25 ACOSF Days of Solstice ✨
~25 ACOSF Days of Solstice~
“You know, Eris,” he said, a hand wrapping around the doorknob. “I think you might be a decent male, deep down, trapped in a terrible situation.” He looked over his shoulder and found Eris’s gaze blazing again. But only pity stirred in his chest, pity for a male who had been born into riches, but had been destitute in every way that truly mattered. In every way that Cassian had been blessed—blessings that were now overflowing. So Cassian said, “I grew up surrounded by monsters. I’ve spent my existence fighting them. And I see you, Eris. You’re not one of them. Not even close. I think you might even be a good male.” Cassian opened the door, turning from Eris’s curled lip. “You’re just too much of a coward to act like one.”
—ACOSF Ch. 79
This penultimate chapter brings us something I think is very needed and welcome at the end of this book: a look into where Cassian lands in his own arc at the end of this journey primarily through the arc of his mate.
But we get it through the lens of this intriguing scene between Cassian and Eris.
Eris who has been one of Cassian’s most offending slinger of insults for the majority of his life. Eris who has been a source of belittlement for Cass, belittlement that hits its mark every time because of their respective and different origins and statuses in the world.
Eris has a fan base now post-ACOSF, and while I’m not sure I’m a canon Eris stan yet (his brutality is a little too stark for me overall in the story we’ve seen so far), I cannot deny that this second to last scene of a freaking long installment of a multi-part series with more parts to come, absolutely screams to us readers that Eris has depth and complexity we are only getting a glimpse of so far, which is likely to be revealed in future installments.
In fact, it’s Cassian giving us that glimpse here in his p.o.v. But what I really love about this moment is the fact that Cassian, who has a gift for reading people, observes the Eris facade as just that, a facade, and analyzes the puzzle pieces of Eris’s recent actions and sees a picture he never expected to see. Because of Cassian’s reliability as a reader of people, I think we can trust Cass’s observations about Eris’s character here.
But even more, those observations are, for Cassian, cast in sharp relief when compared to his self-reflection on just how loved he is and how worthy of love he realizes he has always been.
His current status as a mated male who fought tooth and nail physically, emotionally, and mentally for his mate, to show her how loved she is and his steadfastness for her, finally allows him to truly see his own worthiness in a way he hadn’t been able to before. I don’t think Eris’s insults will hit their mark anymore moving forward.
As one of the two romantic leads of this story, that Cassian gets this moment to see this about himself is lovely and important as ACOSF winds down.
~25 ACOSF Days of Solstice~
“I gave it back to the Cauldron in exchange for the knowledge of how to save them.” She swallowed. “But a little remains.I think something else—someone else—stopped the Cauldron from taking all of it.And I made some changes of my own.”The Mother. The only being who would see the sacrifice Nesta had made and give a little back. Perhaps it was she who had peered out at them through the Mask. // “But I adjusted myself to match what the Cauldron did for Feyre. For when the time is right.” He couldn’t tear himself from the quiet joy lighting her face.
—ACOSF Ch. 78
Ok so me grabbing this passage from Chapter 78 might appear as though I’m gonna focus on the fact that Nesta made it so she can safely bear Illyrian babies someday.
That ain’t why I am quoting this part.
For me, this little admission from Nesta gets me so giddybecauseshe used her power to make a change, successfully, after seeing how the same change was accomplished by the Cauldron to save her sister.
It does appear that, while Nesta asked for the knowledge of how to save Feyre with her magic, the Cauldron accomplished this by showing Nesta.
Then Nesta, our quick study, went ahead and accomplished on herself the same thing she just saw, on the first try.
I think back to when Nesta studied so hard with Amren in ACOWAR to understand and use her powers.
It’s also confirmed here by Nesta that not all of her power left her, that “someone else—stopped the Cauldron from taking all of it.”
The Cauldron had a personality in ACOWAR that was So Extra. Also in the prologue to ACOSF of Nesta’s POV in the Cauldron.
That the Mother done stopped the Cauldron from taking back all the power Nesta took from it makes the Mother my new best friend.
I’m telling you,
Nesta Archeron The Mother
~25 ACOSF Days of Solstice~
And the death that Nesta felt around her sister, around Rhysand, around the babe in Mor’s arms—she bade the Mask to halt that, too. Hold it at bay. In the beginning / And in the end / There was Darkness / And nothing more / A soft, familiar voice whispered the words. As they had been whispered to her long ago. As it had warned her in Oorid’s darkness. A lovely, kind female voice, sage and warm, which had been waiting for her all this time. // She reached inward, toward the power that had made deathless monsters tremble and wicked kings fall to their knees, but … she didn’t know how to use it. Death flowed through her veins, yet she did not have the knowledge to master it. One wrong move, one mistake, and Feyre would be lost. So Nesta held her sister tightly, with Time halted around them, and she whispered, “If you show me how to save her, you can have it back.” The world paused. Worlds beyond their own paused. // “I give it back,” Nesta said, one more time, and Mask and Crown tumbled from her head. The light exploded, blinding and warm, a wind sweeping past them, as if gathering every shard of itself out of the room. And as it faded, dark ink splashed upon Nesta’s back, visible through her half-shredded shirt, as if it were a wave crashing upon the shore. A bargain. With the Cauldron itself.Yet Cassian could have sworn a luminescent, gentle hand prevented the light from leaving her body altogether.
—ACOSF Ch. 77
We are up to some of my fave stuff in ACOSF. And I surprise myself with that because it happens alongside a Pregnancy Plot ™️ I could care less about.
I am, of course, talking about Nesta’s bargain with…the Cauldron? the Mother? Both?
The sacrifice of the power she took from the Cauldron so that Feyre might live and not die is powerful and meaningful, and certainly lends healing to their relationship as sisters.
But I’m way more into all the things we learn or confirm about Nesta and the Mother through this exchange between them. Such as:
- Yes, it was the Mother’s voice in the Bog of Oorid who urged Nesta to run to safety, and possibly also to run away from the Mask.
- The Mother had been “waiting for her all his time” [and omg the Frozen 2 vibes here ✅].
- Nesta doesn’t have the knowledge to use her power to master Death. The offer she makes to the Mother and the Cauldron is to be shown how to use that power, not to save Feyre.
- I repeat, Nesta asked for and was given the knowledge to use the power inside her to save Feyre through physical healing. She didn’t ask the Mother or the Cauldron to save Feyre, she asked them to show her what she needed to know in order to do it herself .
- And then she does it, and offers that same power back in return for the knowledge of how to use it.
- Except the Mother, according to Cassian’s understanding of what he sees and how he interprets it, “prevented the light [Nesta’s power] from leaving her body entirely.”
- And Nesta now has a tattoo on her back to mark this bargain struck with the Cauldron, a tattoo I absolutely interpret from the text to be in the image of a wave crashing against her back.
HERE’S WHAT I THINK BASED ON ALL OF THIS ☝️☝️☝️
I think it was incredibly deliberate on SJM’s part that Nesta did not ask the Higher Being of the story to save Feyre.
Instead she asked to be shown how to wield the power inside her, that she’s struggled and grappled with since being forced to become Fae, in order to heal the physical trauma in both Feyre and Nyx caused by a traumatic, premature birth.
I think Nesta’s possession of this knowledge is key to the Mother’s decision to prevent all of the power in Nesta from leaving her.
(It REALLY has me interested in the faith/religion/mythology world building around the relationship between the Mother and the Cauldron only she can hold and tip so that the world can be formed and created by that which pours from it. Mother and Cauldron seem a little at cross purposes here and I’m here for it)
I also think this knowledge, and the power that remains in Nesta, will be an important element in the future books.
As will the bargain Nesta made with the Cauldron here. Though it begs the question, is there a condition under which this bargain might be fulfilled, resulting in the tattoo disappearing from Nesta’s back?
I don’t have a confident answer to that question, but it merits asking.
But my biggest takeaway from this incredible scene is that Nesta asked for the knowledge of how to use the power inside her in order to heal her sister and nephew, she was given that knowledge, used it, and then was gifted back some of that power by the Mother for future use.
I can honestly say I deeply love where Nesta lands with her power at the end of ACOSF more than where she starts with her power in this book.
~25 ACOSF Days of Solstice~
A hand slid into Nesta’s, and she found Elain there, shaking and wide-eyed. Nesta squeezed her sister’s fingers.Together, they approached the other side of the bed. And when Elain began praying to the Fae’s foreign gods, to their Mother, Nesta bowed her head, too.
—ACOSF Ch. 76
This chapter is a heavy one. Pregnancy plot coming to its fruition, etc. But more important to me, Nesta wielding all three Dread Trove items.
But my passage isn’t directly about either of those.
It’s this moment at a dying Feyre’s bedside, between Nesta and Elain. It’s a moment really between the three of them, and if I may be so bold, the Mother as well.
I softly gasped when I reached this moment during my reread. To have a vulnerably strong moment of openness and care between the Archeron sisters in this room where Death hovers to take one of them away from the others…
To have Elain, who has perhaps struggled most of all with her forced turn to Fae, invoke the Fae gods including the Mother in a prayer for Feyre, and for Nesta, who we recall has been attending the priestesses’ evening worship services to fill the part of her that loves music, to join in that prayer…
Nesta who has also been blessed and favored in some way by the Mother throughout this story…
I just think this is a really meaningful and powerful collection of images when considering the series-wide character arcs of the Archeron sisters, as a family and as individuals.
I also think (predict) that this moment situates our thoughts of the three sisters in a way that sets up for what will come in future books.
~25 ACOSF Days of Solstice~
Cassian lay facedown on the earth. Nesta rushed toward him, praying, sobbing, her magic still echoing through the world. She turned him over, searching for the knife, the wound, but— The knife lay beneath him. Unbloodied. He groaned, cracking his eyes open. “I figured,” he rasped, “I should lie low while you did that.” Nesta gaped at him. Then burst into tears.
—ACOSF Ch. 75
This is a quick post for a quick chapter.
Here Cassian is referring to Nesta’s eruption in the last chapter, including Unmaking Briallyn
I love several things here.
That he’s using his signature humor to signal to a frantic Nesta that he is okay and uninjured.
That he’s confident in his place at the side of someone who can destroy worlds if she so chooses.
That he’d have it no other way and his ego isn’t the least bit threatened by her baddassery.
That’s my OTP right there.
