The Audacity Quotes

“Steps scuffed down the hall. A warning. From someone who knew how to remain silent.
...
Cassian had just finished setting himself to rights when Azriel strode in.

'Good evening,' his brother said with a grating level of calm, striding toward the table.

'Az.' Cassian wasn't able to keep the bite out of his tone. He met his brother's too-aware stare and silently conveyed every bit of annoyance he felt at his timing. Azriel only shrugged, surveying the food the House had brought him. As if he knew exactly what he'd interrupted and took his chaperone duties very seriously.

Nesta was watching them, but as soon as Cassian turned to her, she launched into movement, pushing off the table and aiming for the door. 'Good night.' She didn't wait for him to respond before she was gone.

Cassian levelled a glare at Az. 'Thanks for that.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Az said, even as he smiled down at his food.

'Asshole.'

Az chuckled. 'Don't show your hand all at once, Cass.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

Az nodded toward the doorway. 'Save something for later.'

'Busybody.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“I'd painted nearly every surface in the main room.

And not with just broad swaths of colour, but with decorations- little images. Some were basic: colours of icicles drooping down the sides of the threshold. They melted into the first shoots of spring, then burst into full blooms of summer, before brightening and deepening into fall leaves. I'd painted a ring of flowers round the card table by the window, leaves and crackling flames around the dining table.

But in between the intricate decorations, I'd painted them. Bits and pieces of Mor, and Cassian, and Azriel, and Amren... and Rhys.

Mor went up to the large hearth, where I'd painted the mantel in black shimmering with veins of gold and red. Up close, it was a solid pretty bit of paint. But from the couch... 'Illyrian wings,' she said. 'Ugh, they'll never stop gloating about it.'

But she went to the window, which I'd framed in tumbling strands of gold and brass and bronze. Mor fingered her hair, cocking her head. 'Nice,' she said, surveying the room again.

Her eyes fell on the open threshold to the bedroom hallway, and she grimaced. 'Why,' she said, 'are Amren's eyes there?'

Indeed, right above the door, in the centre of the archway, I'd painted a pair of glowing silver eyes. 'Because she's always watching.'

Mor snorted. 'That simply won't do. Paint my eyes next to hers. So the males of this family will know we're both watching them the next time they come up here to get drunk for a week straight.'

'They do that?'


They used to.' Before Amarantha. 'Every autumn, the three of them would lock themselves in this house for five days and drink and drink and hunt and hunt, and they'd come back to Velaris looking halfway to death but grinning like fools. It warms my heart to know that from now on, they'll have to do it with me and Amren staring at them.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“So, who won the fight?' Cassian asked the next morning as she sat on her rock and watched him go through his exercises.

He hadn't asked at breakfast about the black eye and cut chin or how stiffly she'd moved. Neither had Mor upon her arrival. That the bruising and cuts remained at all told Nesta how bad the fall had been, but as High Fae, with her improved healing, they were already on the mend.
...
'What fight?' She examined her mangled nails. Even with the... whatever it was she'd flung out to catch herself, her nails had cracked. She didn't let herself name what had come from within her, didn't let herself acknowledge it. By dawn, it had been strangled into submission.

'The one between you and the stairs.'

Nesta cut him a glare. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Cassian began moving once more, drawing his sword and running through a series of movements that all seemed designed to hack a person in two. 'You know: three in the morning, you leave your room to get shit-faced drunk in town, and you're in such a rush to conquer the steps that you fall down a good thirty of them before you can stop yourself.'

Had he seen the step? The handprint?

She demanded. 'How do you know that?'

He shrugged.

'Are you watching me?' Before he could answer, she spat. 'You were watching and didn't come to help?'

Cassian shrugged again. 'You stopped falling. If you'd kept at it, someone would have eventually come to catch you before you hit the bottom.'

She hissed at him.

He only grinned and beckoned with a hand. 'Want to join me?'

'I should push you down those stairs.'
...
'Well?' he demanded, an edge creeping into his voice. 'If you've got those glorious bruises, you might as well claim it came from training and not a pathetic tumble.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames