A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)

by Sarah J. Maas

Against slavery, against tyranny, I would gladly go to my death, no matter whose freedom I was defending.”

He smiled at me still, broadly and without restraint or hesitation. Isaac had never smiled at me like that. Isaac had never made my breath catch, just a little bit.

This was the moment I knew she had started to fall in love

I stood in the puddle of blood until it grew cold, holding the faerie’s spindly hand and stroking his hair, wondering if he knew I’d lied when I’d sworn he would get his wings back, wondering if, wherever he had now gone, he had gotten them back.

He never once glanced back.

And even though I wore my ivory underthings, that gaze alone stripped me bare.

each a story and an experience, each a voice shouting or whispering or singing about what that moment, that feeling, had been like, each a cry into the void of time that they had been here, had existed.

“If it grieves you,” he said, the words caressing my bones, “then I don’t think it’s absurd at all.”

His callused fingers, strong and sturdy, were gentle as he lifted my bleeding hand to his mouth and kissed my palm. As if that were answer enough.

Kissed it carefully—in a way that made heat begin pounding in my core, between my legs.

“Because your human joy fascinates me—the way you experience things, in your life span, so wildly and deeply and all at once, is … entrancing.

Standing before me was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

I was as unburdened as a piece of dandelion fluff, and he was the wind that stirred me about the world.

“I’m sending you away because it makes me sick thinking about you in their hands!”

She had looked at that cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger.

“Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.”