Hey! So this was something I posted originally on my Substack newsletter, but I wanted it here on the website, too. I haven’t written a fanfiction in AGES……but as I explained on Substack, I JUST HAD TO.
Disclaimer: this is fanfiction. I do not own the ACOTAR world/characters. The author of the ACOTAR universe, S. J. Maas, referenced the ACOTAR old gods a few times and my imagination went wild – that is how this fanfiction was born.
As explained on substack: I did not edit this except for some very minor things. I wanted to leave it just as it is, and put more time into writing my own stories! (But still…I fell in love with the ACOTAR universe and had to write this).
WORD COUNT: 5074 ; SFW (clean)
A Bet Between the Gods of Old
All of us felt it when Amarantha took over Prythian. My sister Agari, the goddess who first created fear and spread it out over the world, had just come back from her hunt when the rumbles swept through our island like an earthquake. That invasiveness of a huge burst of magic that most living creatures had forgotten to hear, but still cowered from as if they could feel it.
She set the rabbits down, threw her head back, and roared with laughter. We all looked at her with various emotions on our face. And, as goddesses, these were still quite extensive – we weren’t that different than the beings who had been created by the one the normal immortals called The Mother, our distant cousin. The main difference was that we were truly powerful, and old. Older than most things could fathom.
Some of us watched the tapestry being built, and some of us even intervened.
But these days most of us just made silly bets. Saiya, though, the one who had created pride, usually sat with her twin Taiya – lust and nostalgia, a sore attempt to copy love – in the corner, and gloated. Saiya liked that her idea, her creation, her “thing,” had become so infectious, even amongst the gods and goddesses. Even with me, the one who had created love.
I could see the wolffish grin start to build on Saiya’s face out of the corner of my eye as I watched Agari’s reaction. I could almost feel the questions burning on her mind: would my pride come out today? Would there be a fight? Entertainment?
Had she already checked the tapestry to know, or would she have left it as a delicious surprise?
“I think that means I won, Oggie,” Agari said to me once she calmed her laughter. I didn’t want to give Saiya the satisfaction today. That meant there was only one action I could take.
I got up, my revealing light of love shining brighter and brighter with every step – a gift I had partially given to the high lords of the day court to pass down their line – and I hugged my sister while various sounds of disgust erupted from behind me.
“Yes, it seems so – I admit defeat,” I said. “They all fell to Amarantha’s tricks. To her fear; to their fear; to your fear. Well played, sister. But perhaps when our cousin The Mother comes calling, you’ll let her know that it was your idea?” No pride.
I stepped back in time to see the glimmer of greed in Agari’s bright red eyes fade to happiness, as I winnowed her rabbits to my chef – the best in the universe who cooked everything with the power of pure love. With my loss, I had agreed to gift half a year of his cooking – to all of the gods and goddesses in the realm. Agari nodded at me in glee. She was grateful that I would hold up my end of the bargain immediately.
A collective hum went up behind us. Everyone liked the food my chef made with pure love; they were all happy about it.
I rarely bet it when I thought I would lose. Even more rarely had I given it freely, so that it didn’t become something they got used to. Ever since Lilai had created greed and jealousy, I hadn’t wanted to let it become skewed by those things. I didn’t want it hoarded. Used to start fights. Used to spread hate.
So this – my loss – had been a surprise outcome.
I still remember it as if it was yesterday. Our bet. Agari had asked one day, “What will they do with our creations if we leave them alone for 6000 years?” And with her usual humor, she had thrown her head back and said that “surely” her fear would win. But, for some reason, I was equally sure that love would thrive and come out in the lead.
I hadn’t known back then that the worm of pride had found it’s way into my system. It took me a while to discover it. But no one noticed, and instead thought it was a worthy experiment and encouraged it. So a bargain was made, bets were cast, and it came to pass. Agari and I both were given limited time to set the stage with our creations – love and fear – like mines on a battlefield, and then everyone had to remove their hands entirely from the world.
And then we waited as the mortals and immortals forgot about us.
None of us were allowed to interfere until the 6000 years had passed.
All of us gods and goddesses locked ourselves away on our pocket of land that neither Fae nor human remembered, and amused ourselves by watching and waiting…feasting and inventing…as well as mingling with the other gods from other godly lands who had become equally as bored.
Some of them had gathered with us today to see the outcome. To declare the clear winner.
Today was the day that marked the end of that bet. And somehow, despite how well I thought I had set the stage, I had lost.
It was a loss that I would have to remedy…and soon. My mind was already working out how. Saiya just sat in her corner and snickered at my pride from having lost – the tiny worm wriggling within me.
Of all my sisters, save myself, Saiya was the most in tune with her creations. She could see the single worm of pride mingling with my brightness of love, even if the others couldn’t. But she didn’t say anything. It was Sitha who spoke next.
“Well? It isn’t every day that Oggie loses a bet. I must admit that I’m surprised. I guess the next half a year will be full of magnificent feasts, before we migrate at Starfall to our seasonal home. And that…sounds like a cause for celebration. So I’ll get the decorations!” She left before anyone could notice her, creeping out with the silence of a mouse.
Sitha was one of my favorite sisters, and had created meekness and instinct. At first, no one had thought much of those things. But that only lasted until they realized that both qualities tended to enhance, or activate, almost everything else. She had become popular after that, but was also conveniently hard to find. Mostly she just liked to party and see pretty things, so none of their opinions really mattered to her and she got bored of being hounded.
But I saw her true self. Her heart, and love. She had once told me that she created instinct to help people find their way to a good glass of wine…and other memorable experiences. The meekness was to hide and withstand anything if someone else came along with fear and other dark things in their heart.
None of the other sisters knew how deeply she had considered her creations. None of them liked mine well enough to be able to appreciate Sitha’s motivations, either. She was full with love, almost as much as I was from creating it, and she used it as much as she could. She saw the same beauty I did.
But enough thinking and feeling. While my cook was busy, and since the bet was over, I had to do something. I had to find out what had happened. I had to know why there had not been enough love left standing. I had to know.
“Going somewhere?” Saiya said through a sneer as she saw me take a step towards the door.
I smiled at her and nodded. She flinched as my glow of love was directed towards her – it was, unfortunately for them, one of the strongest and oldest creations amongst us – but then she grinned.
“I just couldn’t help but notice…your anxiousness, your fear, let’s call it, to get away from us,” she said with venom.
“You know I’ve always been a meddler, just like The Weaver and our cousin The Mother,” I said and willed the worm of pride to go still.
All eyes were on us because of this exchange.
But I didn’t care. All I could think about was what had gone wrong, and lucky Sitha, who had already ducked out to find her decorations, and no doubt a bottle of wine from her favorite vineyard. She had watched them continue the line for thousands of years, hoping they’d survive without her patronage and intervention. They had.
I had given them enough love to survive anything.
But part of me wondered if that’s why the rest of the world hadn’t fared so well. If that was why I had lost the bet. I wondered if I had given them too much attention, and left other places too much alone. Our time to set the stage had been limited. And our creations affected even us in mysterious ways; love tended to overpower my ability to think and plan. So I had acted out of love for Sitha, and then tried to think and set some more. But maybe it hadn’t been enough. Or in the right places.
Our creations were still so mysterious, and magnificent, even to us.
Despite our hundreds of thousands of years alive, they still surprised us – tricked us, inspired us. We couldn’t get enough of watching them all interacting and changing, even amongst ourselves. We lived for it. They kept most of us going. There were only a few, like Sitha, who still delighted in more than just what their own hands had wrought around them. The joys of the physical.
With sudden clarity, it hit me how much most of us valued our workings…with pride. I looked around and could see the pride worms in nearly everyone in the room. It was almost infectious, everywhere.
And perhaps that had been the secret I had missed. Why even a tiny worm of pride had worked it’s way into me.
Maybe I had underestimated Saiya’s creation. Maybe we all had.
Maybe that’s why she was gloating in a corner right now, and had been for most of the last 6000 years.
And that’s why I had to go see up close what had gone wrong, why fear had taken over and won on this day. And whether there was anything I could do to alleviate it all. Fear was not supposed to be more powerful than love on its own. Fear was not supposed to take over everything when love existed in the world.
I smiled at Saiya. “And besides, my own meddling aside, isn’t that a little bit like the pot calling the kettle charred, sister? Isn’t it you who says, every Starfall, that you refuse to partake just to see what will happen, only to get anxiety and go anyways?”
She snarled at me. “That’s different.”
My smile grew sweeter. “If you say so. But Oreli may have a different opinion, as his chariots can only sweep through here for the annual cleansing if we’ve ALL completed the migration. You know how he dislikes the…meddling….in his affairs, despite your affections.”
Saiya glared at me, and looked as if she might expose the single worm now sitting quietly somewhere in my arm. But instead she got up and stalked out the door, making much more of a show of it than Sitha had. Maybe there was a reason she couldnt expose it.
Agari roared with laughter again. “Well this is going well. But be careful how much you push her, or you might find her trailing you and sabotaging everything you do, Oggie. Go spread your love,” she said, gripping my shoulder tightly before letting go. “I know you’ve been waiting for thousands of years to get back into it.”
I eyed her suspiciously, instead. “Has Saiya sabotaged me before?”
Agari, though, zipped her lips and refused to say anymore. She pretended to talk as if she couldn’t undo it, and then shrugged at me in feigned innocence when nothing would come out. One could never know for sure what Agari knew or didn’t. She acted both innocent and guilty no matter what she was asked, to keep everyone second guessing.
She enjoyed the uncertainty.
She was one of the goddesses that the mortals did their best to steer clear of because, with her around, pain could follow pleasure just as fast with no warning – the uncertainty was a game, to Agari. Only the autumn court revered her highly.
I laughed delicately, pretending to be amused and unaware. Somehow, I suddenly understood exactly what had gone wrong.
Sabotage. The stage had been sabotaged. And I think I knew who had done it.
I went down to the mountain for that horrible party that Amarantha threw. The rumble we had all felt was from the moment when she took their powers, and they all tried to shield and warn what they loved most. The fear was extreme – it sent ripples everywhere, even to places that didn’t need it. The love they expressed in the middle of that fear should have been enough to overcome it, but something else must have joined the mix. Something that I now had a hunch about.
And as I hid at the top of that great throne room hall, glamoured from everyone’s senses except for a young Fae seer from the night court, I watched as Amarantha tried to force Tamlin to her bed. Again and again. It seemed that fear had taken over – her fear that if she didn’t make him submit, then she would fail and the lords around her would consume her, kill her – and she didn’t want to die. She wasn’t ready for that.
She didn’t realise that the fear was driving her mad; didn’t realise that…ah, there it was…I could see it wriggling about. Pride. With an added dash of lust, and nostalgia – gifts from Saiyas twin, Taiya.
Lust, nostalgia, and pride worked their way through Amarantha and joined with her fear, forming and unforming into a terrible snake that was all consuming. I watched it uncoil around inside her, spreading and taking over, pushing out love. Pushing it out, and eating it. Corrupting it. They must have planted it before the bet began.
What a curious mixture that my sisters had concocted. What a curious outcome…that I had to change.
Because it annoyed me.
Tamlin had been my favorite ever since he was born. I had watched him from our island with great hope, and confusion, as what I had planted did not fully come to fruition. I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. His line was supposed to be the most connected with love – the most connected with nature around him. Nature was born of love – it lived off of love. The spring court was full of love.
Everyone in the olden times had known that I was their goddess. That I had often even walked among that court. The day court had some of my abilities, but the Spring court had parts of me, myself.
But from our palace of the gods, remote and far, it had been impossible for me to see the tiny workings of pride, lust, and nostalgia. Only the well trained eyes of the sisters who created them could see them from almost anywhere.
My sisters had cheated. They must have planted tiny pieces of these things behind our backs while Agari and I set the stage. That must have been why they gloated for so many years. They knew, the whole time. They watched their worms grow, the whole time. They waited patiently for me to lose, and get their reward.
How curious, that even my attempts to prevent their hoarding and greed over my love-filled food…had still failed. They had likely manipulated the bet to turn out like this. To the detriment of the poor Fae in this mountain.
But how fascinating our creations were in the world. Inside me, the worm of pride fluttered again but I willed it to be still as I watched the snake of many feelings unfurl itself and consume more and more inside Amarantha. The worms of pride started their feast inside Tamlin, too, and I began to have a hunch that he might not survive this moment if I didn’t intervene.
So I did.
I whispered love into Amarantha’s ear, and overpowered the lust. It wasn’t enough to calm the nostalgia, fear, and pride of the snake, but it changed some of its scales into pure love. Now, more than half of it was driven by love…and I saw the decision within her change with it.
She would spare him, and his court, for her love for him. But, because of the other things writhing around inside her, it was a twisted kind of love. A painful one. She kept wanting to punish him, to keep him. She was looking for a way, looking for a plan, looking towards a way in the future.
I almost sighed with relief and left, thinking it was enough. Thinking I had done enough, all things considered. I would be a hypocrite to destroy the creations of my sisters outright – destruction wasn’t usually an act of love. But to shift it a bit, to add a dash more, that was okay. It would be painful for them, but they would live. They would live and still love.
But just as I turned to leave, I could see in my peripherals that more lust and pride worms started to eat through the new scales filled with the extra light of love. Overpowering it. Slowly devouring it. There were so many, all of a sudden.
Partly out of shock, and partly out of horror, I turned back and watched. My sister and her twin had silently crept into the mountain, too – I hadn’t noticed them. Saiya and Taiya. They were countering everything I did.
“Your pet will not survive this, but mine will,” Saiya purred into my mind, full of hate and…her own pride.
I said nothing in response. My mind was busy elsewhere. I could feel it when the seer of the night court, sheltered in the crowd by her meekness, picked up on this thread from my sister. Saiya didn’t know that she had left her own mind open, nor that she freely shared it with the lesser immortals who had those abilities. So the seer caught on, and slowly kneaded at the thread, barely understanding it at first, but slowly working out the pattern of it.
Once she had it, her eyes went wide with shock, as did those of the high lord of her court.
The high lord of the night court, Rhysand.
My sisters didn’t notice any of this, luckily. They vanished, not caring to see the outcome of their intervention up close, not bothering to check the tapestry. The worms of pride and lust were eating through my additional love, and a new decision appeared in Amarantha’s mind.
My sisters knew it would happen fast. Had planned for my actions to fail. Had allowed their own own pride and lust to interfere and twist this entire 6000 year bet. Had hoped that my own pride worm would writhe and squirm to make me suffer.
I couldn’t intervene fast enough to stop it.
Tamlin agreed to the bargain, and it was done. His own pride worms wriggling in glee. Too much. Too many. I was horrified to see how badly he had been infected with them. How had I not noticed this in the spring court before our bet began? How had I never been able to see any of them despite my careful watch over his family?
And that’s when I heard it. Clear as a bell ringing across the valley on a cold winters day.
“Are you…sure? Is that really what you see?” Rhysand asked his seer through their minds. He was trying so hard to keep the others out as he thought this to her, keenly aware of his weakened power, and that Amarantha had at least one daemati in the crowd.
He was succeeding with them, but none of the Fae could keep a goddess out. Not even a high lord.
None of them understood what true power was, anymore. It wasn’t their fault – we had left them alone too long. Most of them didn’t even remember us. Didn’t know how to counter us. Didn’t remember how to protect themselves for when we would return to rule and, in my sisters case: torment them.
And judging by my sisters reactions just now: that return would be happening sooner rather than later. They had enjoyed this. So much that they hadn’t even thought to check the tapestry. They had gotten lazy over the years. Sloppy.
Their loss was my window of opportunity.
The seer of the night court had shown Rhysand what she had sensed from my sisters. I added in my own thoughts for her to feel, hoping that maybe this far subtler approach would be what could salvage things. It would take time, but love could work with time. I had been careful with how I created love, and made sure it had few weaknesses and many paths.
It worked. The seer shared the story of Tamlin’s innocence, of his near death experience, of his excessive pride. She told him of the grace of love, and asked her high lord, Rhysand, to hang on to it.
So much talent for a youngling. She had so much connection with the magic that had formed even the higher gods. And it was all so wasted in her lesser immortal body, as I knew she was about to die. Most of the night court here would perish under Amarantha.
Another effect of the excess pride, lust, and nostalgia now flowing through her.
I looked closer at Rhysand. And there, after he heard the thoughts of his seer, shining through almost as brightly as my own, almost as brightly as that of the Suriels that roamed this land, I could see love. Somehow, my love that had been given to the spring court…had made its way to him instead.
Somehow.
“Sitha,” I whispered to myself and had to work hard to keep my glamour intact.
For hiding there within the high lord of the night court, were meekness and instinct. They attached to the underside of my love, like undiscovered diamonds deep within the earth. They were guiding him, giving him direction. Keeping him quiet. Keeping him from death. Keeping his family from death. They would keep him safe. It would even eventually keep Tamlin safe.
The burst of love from me as I realised my sister’s actions was strong, almost shining through to light the entire room. Sitha had quietly, equally unnoticed as the sabotage of my other sisters, planted things of her own to help me along. I wonder how much she knew, how much she saw, of what Saiya and Taiya had done 6000 years ago?
I could see her gifts in him so clearly, suddenly. And as I checked the tapestry once more, I saw that the threads that connected to our creations in him had been woven in gold – unchangeable. It was tiny, and hidden, but it was there. The love, instinct, and meekness within him could not be damaged, or changed by the actions of anyone else. Love would happen. It was guaranteed.
I wondered if the pride and lust of my sisters had blinded them. Had made them forget to check the tapestry to verify their changes. I wondered if they knew that they had failed.
Rhysand kept reminding himself of what the seer had showed him, in the darkest corners of his beautiful mind.
And the more I witnessed it, the more a twinge of sadness hit me. His old threads, ones that hadn’t been gold, were being unraveled to be repurposed elsewhere. Had my sisters not intervened, had they not planted extra lust and pride just now, the meek but godlike seer might have become this high lords mate….within days. Maybe hours, even.
So close, and yet so far. This showed me that I had almost won the bet, despite the sabotage. These two would have been the happiest of all couples for a long time, fading into legends as the most devoted of lovers, and the ones who defeated Amarantha.
It was a fate I had tried to weave for Tamlin’s family.
But in my own naivety, it had been sabotaged and almost been lost from these people entirely. It was only thanks to the love of my sister Sitha, and her keen eye, that had allowed it to pass to others and survive there, hidden. Giving it another chance. Giving it…time. Another path.
I could see more of the wider tapestry being woven, now, with extra pride and lust. And extra…of something else. More of my sisters were at work, meddling. Changing things. Some of it was being done somewhere far away from here, but the effects would still be felt here…eventually. Soon. Too soon.
The seer would not survive anymore, and no one would know of her true gifts. She became merely Rhysand’s subject. Those threads of his future that included her were not golden, and were not immune to the workings of us higher immortals. They were almost entirely unwoven, now.
The gold one belonged to…something else. Someone else. But I couldn’t tell who, or what.
I could see the meddling more clearly, now. Whichever sister it was, it was as if they were attempting to bury it, hide it, make it nearly impossible – I wasn’t the only one to notice it, then. It must be something – someone – important. Something that they cared about hiding. Especially from me and my careful eyes. Threads went over it, hiding the sheen and glow.
Curious. Too curious.
And that’s when the idea occurred to me. Suddenly, and without warning.
The humans.
They contained a magic that even my sisters and I could not break or mould – they were the answer. One of them must be this little golden thread. They could make sure that my Tamlin survived. That love survived.
But it would still need a lot of work, from me. So I got started. I sent hope to the seer, telling her to ask Rhysand to hang on to those threads until I should return. He would know it when I did. I didn’t say how, or when, but just that he would. Once again I watched as both of their eyes went wide, unnoticed by anyone else in the hall as the fear still festered.
Good. They had heard my hope. He would hang on. And now I would have to search. To find the one.
Years passed – it felt like nothing to me, although it dragged hard on the ones trapped under Amarantha. I could feel it, see it. Even in the human world, I heard what Amarantha did. Whispers of it were felt by the human seers, and they trembled at what it might mean. No one believed it, so most humans went around without knowing that their lives may soon be forfeit…if I should fail to find the one I knew I needed.
A few of the wiser human queens had also heard the whispers and reached out to Hybern, the pet of Saiya and Taiya. The crisscrossing threads that another sister had woven. A sister who watched the tapestry as closely as I did, who had wanted to hide the golden thread. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that a golden thread – a fate woven in gold – could not be avoided or thwarted, even by us. It would happen. No matter what.
And for many years I did fail, over and over. My sisters were curious, but couldn’t get a single word from my lips. I knew the strings were golden, ensured to happen at some point, but I couldn’t let them intervene to prolong it. I couldn’t let them see my plan and sabotage it again. But I still didn’t find her for a long time.
I needed to find The one with the right qualities, the strength. I needed to find her alive and well, the one with The true gifts of our cousin, The Mother. I needed to make sure she was raised just right. Humans thought they were so weak, and Fae had long since forgotten the truth told to them, but human fragility had all been by design. Mortality was a threat…to the gods.
Should the humans be turned immortal, and it could happen thanks to The Mother’s cauldron, then the consequences were severe. All the gods and goddesses knew what could happen. They were the only way that we could die. By their hands, the hands of the turned…the hands of the ones who lost their choice. The cauldron gave them a choice, in exchange for the one that they lost, with no rules attached.
It was a trick of The Mother to keep us from interfering too much. All it had taken was Agari’s fear, and Adami’s hate, for our cousin to realise that her own creations needed protection. To make a pawn that could hold those things check. Humans were that pawn. Their mortality their greatest asset.
And this was the pawn that I needed to find. I knew that Any human would do the job… but our cousin had also told me herself…that there was such a thing as a perfect recipe. That there was a specific type of human that was to be feared above the others, for our kind.
And if I could find that human, then that would surely be my golden thread. That would be what survived despite the new threads.
****
On Starfall nearly 50 years after I lost the bet, I threw joyful glitter at the One, the little golden string, and the high lord of the night court, as they watched us gods and goddesses migrate to our seasonal home.
I had found her, and protected her, and everything had changed. She would ensure the balance of everything.