A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)

by Sarah J. Maas

Nesta had become a wolf. Armed herself with invisible teeth and claws, and learned to strike faster, deeper, more lethally. Had relished it. But when the time came to put away the wolf, she’d found it had devoured her, too.

“I was my mother’s creature.”

Never again. Never again would she be weak. Never again would she be at someone’s mercy. Never again would she fail.

She was a wolf who had never learned how to be a wolf, thanks to that cage humans called propriety and society. And like any maltreated animal, she bit anyone who came near.

She had been born wrong. Had been born with claws and fangs and had never been able to keep from using them, never been able to quell the part of her that roared at betrayal, that could hate and love more violently than anyone ever understood. Elain had been the only one who perhaps grasped it, but now her sister loathed her. She didn’t know how to fix it. How to make any of it right. How to stop being this way. She didn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been angry. Maybe before her mother had died, but even then her mother herself had been bitter, disdainful of their father, and her mother’s disdain had become her own. She couldn’t quell that relentless, churning anger. Couldn’t stop herself from lashing out before she could be wounded. She was no better than a rabid dog. She had been a rabid dog with Amren and Feyre. A beast, exactly like Tamlin. She hadn’t even cared that she’d made it down the House stairs at last—did it count, when it was driven by fury? Did she count—was she worth being counted? It was the question that sent everything crumpling inside her.

“I hate it,” she said. “Every part of me that … does these things. And yet I can’t stop it. I can’t let down that barrier, because to let it fall, to let everything in …” This was what would happen. This shrieking, weeping mess she’d become. “I can’t bear to be in my head. I can’t bear to hear and see everything, over and over.

Gwyn whispered, “I am the rock against which the surf crashes.” Nesta straightened at the words, as if they were a prayer and a summons. Gwyn lifted the blade. “Nothing can break me.”

Ataraxia, she had named that magic sword. Inner Peace.