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Faerie Quotes

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Faerie Quotes

“In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose – an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king – that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not – unless it was built before our time.”

“She took my wings,' he whispered. Tamlin's green eyes flickered and I knew right then, that the faerie was going to die. Death wasn't just hovering in this hall; it was counting down the faerie's remaining heartbeats. I took one of the faerie's hands in mine. The skin there was almost leathery, and, perhaps more of a reflex than anything, his long fingers wrapped around mine, covering them completely. 'She took my wings,' he said again, his shaking subsiding a bit. I brushed the long, damp hair from the faerie's half-turned face, revealing a pointed nose and a mouth full of sharp teeth. His dark eyes shifted to mine, beseeching, pleading. 'It will be all right,' I said, and hoped he couldn't smell the lies the way the Suriel was able to. I stroked his limp hair, its texture like liquid night- another I would never be able to paint but would try to, perhaps forever. 'It will be all right.' The faerie closed his eyes, and I tightened my grip on his hand. Something wet touched my feet, and I didn't need to look down to see that his blood had pooled around me. 'My wings,' the faerie whispered. 'You'll get them back.' The faerie struggled to open his eyes. 'You swear?' 'Yes,' I breathed. The faerie managed a slight smile and closed his eyes again. My mouth trembled. I wished for something else to say, something more to offer him than my empty promises. The first false vow I'd ever sworn. But Tamlin began speaking, and I glanced up to see him take the faerie's other hand. 'Cauldron save you,' he said, reciting the words of a prayer that was probably older than the mortal realm. 'Mother hold you. Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey. Fear no evil. Feel no pain.' Tamlin's voice wavered, but he finished. 'Go, and enter eternity.' The faerie heaved one final sigh, and his hand went limp in mine. I didn't let go, though, and kept stroking his hair, even when Tamlin released him and took a few steps from the table. I could feel Tamlin's eyes on me, but I wouldn't let go. I didn't know how long it took for a soul to fade from the body. 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. A clock chimed somewhere in the house, and Tamlin gripped my shoulder. I hadn't realised how cold I'd become until the heat of his hand warmed me through my nightgown. 'He's gone. Let him go.' I studied the faerie's face- so unearthly, so inhuman. Who could be so cruel to hurt him like that? 'Feyre,' Tamlin said, squeezing my shoulder. I brushed the faerie's hair behind his long, pointed ear, wishing I'd known his name, and let go.”

“But after he had been singing awhile, mist and shadows seemed to gather about him, sometimes coming out of the sea, and sometimes moving upon it. It seemed to him that one of the shadows was the queen-woman he had seen in her sleep at Slieve Echtge; not in her sleep now, but mocking, and calling out to them that were behind her: 'He was weak, he was weak, he had no courage.' And he felt the strands of the rope in his hand yet, and went on twisting it, but it seemed to him as he twisted, that it had all the sorrows of the world in it. And then it seemed to him as if the rope had changed in his dream into a great water-worm that came out of the sea, and that twisted itself about him, and held him closer and closer, and grew from big to bigger till the whole of the earth and skies were wound up in it, and the stars themselves were but the shining of the ridges of its skin. And then he got free of it, and went on, shaking and unsteady, along the edge of the strand, and the grey shapes were flying here and there around him. And this is what they were saying, 'It is a pity for him that refuses the call of the daughters of the Sidhe, for he will find no comfort in the love of the women of the earth to the end of life and time, and the cold of the grave is in his heart for ever. It is death he has chosen; let him die, let him die, let him die.”

“I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must weep until the Eternal gates swing open.”

“I remember how angry she was when Taryn and I gave in to Faerie and started having fun. Crowns of flowers on our heads, shooting bows and arrows at the sky. Eating candied violets and falling asleep with our heads pillowed on logs. We were children. Children can laugh all day and still cry themselves to sleep at night. But to hold a blade in my hand, a blade like the one that killed my parents, and think it was a toy, she'd have to believe I was heartless.”

“I couldn’t talk about it, about them—not yet. So I breathed “Later” and hooked my feet around his legs, drawing him closer. I placed my hands on his chest, feeling the heart beating beneath. This—I needed this right now. It wouldn’t wash away what I’d done, but … I needed him near, needed to smell and taste him, remind myself that he was real—this was real. “Later,” he echoed, and leaned down to kiss me. It was soft, tentative—nothing like the wild, hard kisses we’d shared in the hall of throne room. He brushed his lips against mine again. I didn’t want apologies, didn’t want sympathy or coddling. I gripped the front of his tunic, tugging him closer as I opened my mouth to him. He let out a low growl, and the sound of it sent a wildfire blazing through me, pooling and burning in my core. I let it burn through that hole in my chest, my soul. Let it raze through the wave of black that was starting to press around me, let it consume the phantom blood I could still feel on my hands. I gave myself to that fire, to him, as his hands roved across me, unbuttoning as he went. I pulled back, breaking the kiss to look into his face. His eyes were bright—hungry—but his hands had stopped their exploring and rested firmly on my hips. With a predator’s stillness, he waited and watched as I traced the contours of his face, as I kissed every place I touched. His ragged breathing was the only sound—and his hands soon began roaming across my back and sides, caressing and teasing and baring me to him. When my traveling fingers reached his mouth, he bit down on one, sucking it into his mouth. It didn’t hurt, but the bite was hard enough for me to meet his eyes again. To realize that he was done waiting—and so was I. He eased me onto the bed, murmuring my name against my neck, the shell of my ear, the tips of my fingers. I urged him—faster, harder. His mouth explored the curve of my breast, the inside of my thigh. A kiss for each day we’d spent apart, a kiss for every wound and terror, a kiss for the ink etched into my flesh, and for all the days we would be together after this. Days, perhaps, that I no longer deserved. But I gave myself again to that fire, threw myself into it, into him, and let myself burn.”

“Tamlin’s arm tightened around me, and he kissed the top of my head. I pulled back, looking up at him. The gold in his eyes, bright with the rising sun, flickered. “What?” “My father once told me that I should let my sisters imagine a better life—a better world. And I told him that there was no such thing.” I ran my thumb over his mouth, marveling, and shook my head. “I never understood—because I couldn’t … couldn’t believe that it was even possible.” I swallowed, lowering my hand. “Until now.” His throat bobbed. His kiss that time was deep and thorough, unhurried and intent. I let the dawn creep inside me, let it grow with each movement of his lips and brush of his tongue against mine. Tears pricked beneath my closed eyes. It was the happiest moment of my life.”

“Hidden behind a veil of velvet shadows pooling beneath low-hanging branches, Violet waited until Em had turned the corner of the path toward the sunlight, then collected the gifts. Wool black as night, glass like ice threaded on silk, and a jangle of pins the color of last autumn's leaves. She held each reverently, the potential of transformation shining in each. The girl had changed, her soft freckled face gaining the planes of an adult's and the sharp timbre of her laugh softening, transformed by the magic of the earthbound that couldn't touch Fae. But something of Fae remained in the girl-turned-woman, a thread binding them together as surely as blood might have. Violet smiled softly, pride in the girl she'd sent from Fae into her earthbound fate swelling like the bloom of magic.”

“Now, there are a few dryadologists who could resist the opportunity to sample faerie food, the enchanted sort served at the tables of the courtly fae---I know several who have dedicated their careers to the subject and would hand over their eye teeth for the opportunity. I stopped at a stand offering toasted cheese---a very strange sort of cheese, threaded with glittering mold. It smelled divine, and the faerie merchant rolled it in crushed nuts before handing it over on a stick, but as soon as it touched my palm, it began to melt. The merchant was watching me, so I put it in my mouth, pantomiming my delight. The cheese tasted like snow and melted within seconds. I stopped next at a stand equipped with a smoking hut. The faerie handed me a delicate fillet of fish, almost perfectly clear despite the smoking. I offered it to Shadow, but he only looked at me with incomprehension in his eyes. And, indeed, when I popped it into my mouth, it too melted flavorlessly against my tongue. I took a wandering course to the lakeshore, conscious of the need to avoid suspicion. I paused at the wine merchant, who had the largest stand. It was brighter than the others, snow piled up behind it in a wall that caught the lantern light and threw it back in a blinding glitter. I had to look down at my feet, blinking back tears, as one of the Folk pressed an ice-glass into my hand. Like the food, the wine smelled lovely, of sugared apples and cloves, but it slid eerily within the ice, more like oil than wine. Shadow kept growling at it, as he had not with the faerie food, and so I tipped it onto the snow. Beside the wine merchant was a stand offering trinkets, frozen wildflowers that many of the Folk threaded through their hair or wove through unused buttonholes on their cloaks, as well as an array of jewels with pins in them. I could not compare them to any jewels I knew; they were mostly in shades of white and winter grey, hundreds of them, each impossibly different from the next. I selected one that I knew, without understanding how, was the precise color of the icicles that hung from the stone ledges of the Cambridge libraries in winter. But moments after I pinned it to my breast, all that remained was a patch of damp.”

“A long table- longer than any we'd ever possessed at out manor- filled most of the space. It was laden with food and wine- so much food, some of it wafting tendrils of steam, that my mouth watered. At least it was familiar, and not some strange faerie delicacy: chicken, bread, peas, fish, asparagus, lamb... it could have been a feast at any mortal manor.”

“Wait," I said. He tilted his head in exasperation, clearly anticipating some sort of lecture. He went completely still when I strode up to him and kissed him. For one strange moment, I felt like laughing, because it was so clear that I had shocked him. I soon forgot about that, though, as well as everything else. I had not kissed him since Ljosland, and that barely counted; the first time, I had been so nervous that I barely touched him, while the second he had been in his other, oiche sidhe form. Perhaps it was the leaves rustling invisibly or the breeze that plucked at my hair, but I had the sense that I had left the mortal realm somehow, and that when I opened my eyes, I would find myself in some enchanted grove surrounded by faerie lights. This impression was so strong that I pulled away, dizzy.”

“Every gift comes with a price.” I frowned, and he grinned. “A kiss.” “Absolutely not!” But my blood raced, and I had to clench my hands in the grass to keep from touching him. “Don’t you think it puts me at a disadvantage to not be able to see all this?” “I’m one of the High Fae—we don’t give anything without gaining something from it.” To my own surprise, I said, “Fine.” He blinked, probably expecting me to have fought a little harder. I hid my smile and sat up so that I faced him, our knees touching as we knelt in the grass. “What about your part of the bargain?” “What?” He leaned closer, his smile turning wicked. “What about my kiss?” I grabbed his fingers. “Here,” I said, and slammed my mouth against the back of his hand. “There’s your kiss.”

“I really am hungry." I leaned down to whisper in her ear. "I'm hungry for something too." She turned an adorable shade of red and tried to scoot away from me, which wasn't going to happen since I had put my arm around her waist and there was no way she could break my hold. That's when we heard the most unexpected sound. Laughter. I looked up to see the fae in the end booth laughing. She had scooted her book aside and was trying to cover her mouth, but she was laughing. "I'm sorry," she giggled, wiping at the tears in the corner of her eye. "I didn't mean to spy on you guys, but whatever he just did to you reminds me of my mate." She burst into giggles again and her laughter bubbled loudly enough to draw the fae from the kitchen. "Thea, what happened?" The kitchen fae opened the door. "No, nothing. That big one just did something to the witch and it reminded me of Devin.”

“And I take it the distraction from before was at your location, Lady Thea?" Ryker kneeled down next to me, putting an arm around my shoulders. The Lady of Winter tightened her hold on the little girl. "It was, but we stopped it." "There was a loud boom," Ryker prodded for details. Thea's mouth was a grim line. "There was. It seems someone... someone came into her powers unexpectedly. The threat was handled." Her eyes fell to the child cuddled under her chin, shivering in a pink nightgown, not from the chill but from the trauma of the night. We all stared, and the girl peeked around her little shoulder long enough to show me the flash of blue eyes to match Thea's under the mop of dark hair that matched Devin's.”

“She was clad in a tea-colored dress and white apron, and on her head was an enormous buttercup worn like a kerchief, two of the petals pinned together beneath her hair. Her face was very red, very shiny and very plump. She looked, I thought, a little like a lost doll, though not one mortal children would enjoy playing with; her eyes were the usual all black, and she appeared to be a type of faun, with large and intimidatingly sharp black horns that curved backwards out of her head, and legs that ended in hairy hooves. "A butter faerie," Niamh said. "The queen had several in her service--- this one, I am told, had the queen's particular affections due to the quality of her product." "Fascinating," I said, wishing I had time to make a sketch. My encyclopaedia's entry on butter faeries had been sorely lacking in detail. "I have never encountered one before." "They're quite rare," Niamh said. "A good thing, I've always thought. They are peevish, half-mad little things, particularly if you remove them from their creameries." "I did not know they were found in Ireland," I said. "Most of the tales of butter faeries are from Somerset, are they not?" "Ah!" Niamh said, her face alight with scholarly enthusiasm. "Indeed they are. But once upon a time, as you know, Where the Trees Have Eyes had several doors leading to British faerie realms. One of these, I'm told, led to a pretty corner of Somerset. I theorize that the creatures used to go to and fro before the door collapsed, trapping several of them in this realm.”

“The faerie's creamery was not too deep, happily, or at least it did not feel so; a chimneylike skylight cut into the stone roof admitted the warm gold-green light of the forest. Given the faerie's size, the workspace was expansive--- even Wendell, the tallest among us, did not need to duck--- with a hard-packed earthen floor and an array of shelves, some of which held blocks of butter wrapped in paper and twine. In the middle of the workshop was the butter churn, beside which was a tin bucket of milk with condensation forming on the side--- which I think is what the faerie had been worrying about, for she immediately rushed over to it and carried it into her cellar. The air was cool, on the edge of cold, and the smell of the place made my mouth water. Not only of butter, but thyme and lavender, strawberries and honey, which the faerie used to flavor some of the blocks. Those on the nearest shelf had leaves tucked beneath the twine--- basil, I think.”

“We seemed to have emerged upon a snowy curve of mountainside below a glacier--- I believe we were in Faerie, for there were two little stone houses tucked in amongst the jagged icicles at the glacier's edge, with smoke curling from their chimneys. One had an apple tree in its yard, the apples coated in a rind of ice. The icicles themselves were like a forest of glittering trees, through which the fox faerie was darting, deeper into the glacier. "Hurry up!" the faerie called. I hurried, against my better judgment I might add, but then that is almost always the case when interacting with the Folk; stumbling into an impossible forest of icicles is not the most ill-advised thing I have done in my career. The forest made little plinking sounds and reflected our darting shapes strangely. In the distance, there was music.”

“Wendell pushed the door open. Light. It was full morning, and my vision flooded with color. Primarily green, but there was also the yellow of moss and lichened stone, the violet of bluebells clustered at the edge of the forest, the gold of sunbeams, and the rich azure of the sky. The door opened onto a hill in a small clearing, beyond which a wall of trees nodded their boughs in the wind, as if in greeting. The air was wet from a recent rain and heavy with the smell of green and growing things--- all as I remembered.”

“But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it." "Right," I said dryly. Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me.”

“How different this world to the one about which I used to read, and in which I used to live! This is one peopled by demons, phantoms, vampires, ghouls, boggarts, and nixies. Names of things of which I knew nothing are now so familiar that the creatures themselves appear to have real existence. The Arabian Nights are not more fantastic than our gospels; and Lempriere would have found ours a more marvelous world to catalog than the classical mythical to which he devoted his learning. Ours is a world of luprachaun and clurichaune, deev and cloolie, and through the maze of mystery I have to thread my painful way, now learning how to distinguish oufe from pooka, and nis from pixy; study long screeds upon the doings of effreets and dwergers, or decipher the dwaul of delirious monks who have made homunculi from refuse. Waking or sleeping, the image of some uncouth form is always present to me. What would I not give for a volume by the once despised 'A. L. O. E' or prosy Emma Worboise? Talk of the troubles of Winifred Bertram or Jane Eyre, what are they to mine? Talented authoresses do not seem to know that however terrible it may be to have as a neighbour a mad woman in a tower, it is much worse to have to live in a kitchen with a crocodile. This elementary fact has escaped the notice of writers of fiction; the re-statement of it has induced me to reconsider my decision as to the most longed-for book; my choice now is the Swiss Family Robinson. In it I have no doubt I should find how to make even the crocodile useful, or how to kill it, which would be still better. ("Mysterious Maisie")”

“As the last dish of confections was removed a weird pageant swept across the further end of the banqueting-room: Oberon and Titania with Robin Goodfellow and the rest, attired in silks and satins gorgeous of hue, and bedizened with such late flowers as were still with us. I leaned forward to commend, and saw that each face was brown and wizened and thin-haired: so that their motions and their wedding paean felt goblin and discomforting; nor could I smile till they departed by the further door. ("The Basilisk")”

“Wait,” I repeated. The darkness vanished, leaving Rhysand in his solid form as he grinned. “Yes?” I raised my chin as high as I could manage. “Just two weeks?” “Just two weeks,” he purred, and knelt before me. “Two teensy, tiny weeks with me every month is all I ask.” “Why? And what are to … to be the terms?” I said, fighting past the dizziness. “Ah,” he said, adjusting the lapel of his obsidian tunic. “If I told you those things, there’d be no fun in it, would there?” I looked at my ruined arm. Lucien might never come, might decide I wasn’t worth risking his life any further, not now that he’d been punished for it. And if Amarantha’s healers cut off my arm … Nesta would have done the same for me, for Elain. And Tamlin had done so much for me, for my family; even if he had lied about the Treaty, about sparing me from its terms, he’d still saved my life that day against the naga, and saved it again by sending me away from the manor. I couldn’t think entirely of the enormity of what I was about to give—or else I might refuse again. I met Rhysand’s gaze. “Five days.” “You’re going to bargain?” Rhysand laughed under his breath. “Ten days.” I held his stare with all my strength. “A week.” Rhysand was silent for a long moment, his eyes traveling across my body and my face before he murmured: “A week it is.” “Then it’s a deal”

“I spotted Poe immediately. He was raking the leaves around his tree home, a lovely aspen. The whiteness of its bark seemed brighter than the other trees, the knotholes darker; the moss creeping up the south side was luxurious with fat purple flowers, and the leaves were a riot of green in every shade with veins of pure gold. It was, in short, the prettiest tree in the Kyrrðarskogur, which was Wendell's doing, but Poe was clearly taking his responsibilities as the owner of such a fine specimen seriously. He had built a trellis against the tree, up which climbed a vine of wild roses, and he had made little furrows in the ground to irrigate the tree's roots.”

“What, suddenly I am a figure from an ancient bit of nursery nonsense?" He lifted a forepaw and began chewing his toes, the picture of dismissive indifference. "And the next egg you come across you'll ask, 'Tell me, sir, what were you doing up on that wall anyway?'" "Are you ashamed to answer?" "I am ashamed of nothing. I am a cat." The cat gracefully placed his paw next to the other, sitting as prim as a perfect statue.”

“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Taryn and she had a faerie lover who came to her at night. He was generous and adoring, but visited only in the dark. He asked for two things: one, for her to keep their meetings secret, and two, never to look upon his face fully. And so, night after night she took delight in him but, after some time had passed, wondered what his secret could be.”

“You think because you've got that good royal blood in you, you're better than us,' says the ogre, pressing one long fingernail against the prince's shoulder. 'Maybe you are. Only way to be sure is to have a taste.' There's a drunken wobble to Oak's movements as he pushes off the ogre's hand and obvious contempt in his voice. 'The difference in flavour would be too subtle for your palate.”

“I stomp back through the hall to my room and swing open the door, only to find Oak lounging in one of the chairs, his long limbs spread out in shameless comfort. A flower crown of myrtle rests just above his horns. With it, he wears a new shirt of white linen and scarlet trousers embroidered with vines. Even his hooves appear polished. He looks every bit the handsome faerie prince, beloved by everyone and everything. Rabbits probably eat from his hands. Blue jays try to feed him worms meant for their own children.”