Hope Griffin Diaz

“Tam would gut me if he caught you drinking that.”
“Always looking after your best interests,” I said, and pointedly chugged the contents of the glass.
It was like a million fireworks exploding inside me, filling my veins with starlight. I laughed aloud, and Lucien groaned.
“Human fool,” he hissed. But his glamour had been ripped away. His auburn hair burned like hot metal, and his russet eye smoldered like a bottomless forge. That was what I would capture next.
“I’m going to paint you,” I said, and giggled—actually giggled—as the words popped out.
“Cauldron boil and fry me,” he muttered, and I laughed again.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“This eye,' Lucien gestured to the metal contraption. 'It can see things that others... can't. Spells, glamours... Perhaps it can help me find her. And break her curse.' He glanced at Elain, who was again studying her lap. 'I'm not needed here. I'll fight if you need me to, but...' He offered me a grim smile. 'I do not belong in the Autumn Court. And I'm willing to bet I'm not longer welcome at h- the Spring Court.' Home, he had almost said. 'But I cannot sit here and do nothing. Those queens with their armies- there is a threat in that regard, too. So use me. Send me. I will find Vassa, see if she can... bring help.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin

“But even now there is hope left. I will not give you counsel, saying do this or do that. for not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part what shall be. But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hop remains while all the Company is true.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“To keep Velaris safe, to keep Mor and Amren and Cassian and Azriel and… Rhys safe.

I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, “When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.”

A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark, membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive—so sensitive, these Illryian wings.

Lucien backed up a step. “What did you do to yourself?”

I gave him a little smile. “The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord’s pet.”

Lucien started shaking his head. “Feyre—”

“Tell Tamlin,” I said, choking on his name, on the thought of what he’d done to Rhys, to his family, “if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me.”

There was something like genuine pain on his face.

I didn’t care. I just watched him, unyielding and cold and dark. The creature I might one day have become if I had stayed at the Spring Court, if I had remained broken for decades, centuries… until I learned to quietly direct those shards of pain outward, learned to savor the pain of others.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury