A Court of Silver Flames

“Everything in her life, from the moment she was born, had been controlled by other people. Things happened to her; anytime she tried to exert control, she’d been thwarted at every turn—and she hated that even more than the King of Hybern.”

Nesta’s comment indicates just how other-directed her life is. However, this quote is also a grand excuse. As Feyre points out a few lines later, Nesta needs to learn how to control herself. It doesn’t matter how much she blames others for controlling her actions. The real problem is her unwillingness to control her own thoughts and emotions.

“They had thrown them all, mere children and a crumbling man, to the wolves. So 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.”

After the loss of their family fortune, the Archerons are reduced to living in a hovel. Nesta justifies her angry attitude by blaming others who threw the family to the wolves, figuratively speaking. At least in this quote, she shows a glimmer of self-awareness by admitting that she should have put the wolf away by now. Of course, the quote also implies that she believes she has no control over the wolf and is incapable of doing so.

“‘But when we fell into poverty, when I started hunting, it got worse. Our mother was gone, and our father wasn’t exactly present. He wasn’t fully there. So it was me and Nesta, always at each other’s throats.’ Feyre rubbed her face. ‘I’m too exhausted to go over every detail. It’s all just a tangled mess.’”

Feyre is explaining her difficult relationship with Nesta to Cassian. While the family was certainly dysfunctional, the reader is left to wonder why the youngest daughter, Feyre, showed more emotional maturity and self-restraint than her eldest sister. Rather than taking charge, Nesta continued to resent Feyre’s role as the head of the family. In doing so, Nesta once again demonstrates a tendency to blame others and avoid responsibility for herself.

“She was proud as all hell. Appearing foolish, making herself vulnerable—she’d rather die. Would rather sit on a freezing rock in the icy wind for hours than look like a fool in front of anyone, especially arrogant warriors predisposed to mock any female who attempted to fight like them.”

Cassian has been pondering a way to get Nesta to train, but she objects to the Windhaven venue. In this quote, the general is showing some insight into Nesta’s character. He is also acknowledging the Illyrian male tendency to degrade and humiliate females. This will become a much bigger issue by the end of the story, as will Nesta’s forceful response to it.

“He leaned back in his seat. ‘You learn to live with it. How to block the horrors from your present thoughts.’ He added a touch quietly, ‘But they still lurk there. In the back of your mind.’ She wished she knew how to do such things: to push all the thoughts that devoured her behind some wall, or into a hole within her, so she could bury them deep.”

Cassian has just told Nesta some horror stories from his own past. Rather than admiring his ability to transcend past harms, Nesta interprets his statement as proof that he has successfully suppressed such thoughts. This is the quality she admires most. She still has no interest in confronting her demons. Rather, she wants to bury them so deeply that they never rise to consciousness again.

“What they learned was that we love each other as true brothers. And there was nothing that we wouldn’t do, no one we wouldn’t kill, to reach each other. To save each other. We killed our way across the mountains, and made it through the Breaking.”

Cassian is describing the victory he shared in the Blood Rite with Azriel and Rhys. Little does he know that Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyn are about to repeat his experience. While Cassian emphasizes the emotional bond among the three men, sisterhood is a concept that is rarely demonstrated through combat. In fact, Nesta’s biological sisters squabble continuously. Her found family proves to be much more helpful to her because they don’t share a troubled past with her.

“She had failed in every aspect of her life. Utterly and spectacularly failed, and keeping others from realizing it had been her main purpose. She had shut them out, had shut herself out, because the weight of all those failures threatened to shatter her into a thousand pieces.”

This is one of the earliest points in the novel when Nesta actually admits her true motivation to herself. She has behaved terribly to everyone else in her life. Prior to this point, the reader is left to assume she is just an awful person. In fact, her sheer awfulness is a fabrication of her own self-loathing. Rejecting others is a preemptive strike to keep them from rejecting her once they see all her faults.

“Cassian was good. In his soul, in his warrior’s heart, Cassian was good in a way Nesta knew most people were not. In a way she knew she was not and would never be.”

Once again, this quote reveals Nesta’s self-loathing. However, her reaction to Cassian is a marked change from her negative view of everyone else she knows. Her self-contempt is generally mirrored in her contempt for others. However, this statement indicates a level of idol worship where Cassian is concerned. Given Nesta’s self-hatred, her admiration only widens the gulf between them.

“Cassian laid the last container on the table, a large marble box that weighed at least two pounds. Emerie yanked off the lid and let out a laugh. ‘Salt.’ She pinched the flaky crystals between her fingers. ‘A lot of salt.’ Her eyes shone as a rare smile flitted across her face. It made her look younger, wiped away the weight and scars of all those years with her father.”

Cassian has just presented Emerie with Nesta’s gift of tea and spices. Because Cassian is an Illyrian himself, he is aware of the brutal treatment that Illyrian females receive from their families. Although Emerie lives alone to avoid more abuse, she is haunted by the past. Cassian’s comment about her facial expression indicates just how much of a burden that past must be.

“‘I dreamed of the Cauldron. What it did to me.’ Gwyn said, playing with her hair, ‘I dream of my past, too.’ But Gwyn’s admission, Nesta’s own, didn’t weigh them down. Nesta’s head had cleared slightly. And somehow, she found she could push herself harder. Perhaps in voicing those truths, they’d given them wings. And sent them soaring into the open sky above.”

Before Nesta begins to bond with the other traumatized females in her immediate circle, she sees herself inhabiting a world of one. She magnifies her pain by thinking it is unique. The act of articulating a past trauma in the presence of another survivor causes the memory to lose its power over her. Gwyn seems to benefit from giving voice to her pain too.

“Though she had fought back against Tomas, against the Cauldron, against the King of Hybern, they had all happened to her. She had survived, but she had been helpless and afraid. Not today. Today, she would happen to him.”

Nesta has just put on the Mask that can command a legion of the dead. She summons them to aid her in battling the kelpie. Initially, she perceives him as yet another male intent on victimizing her. The power of the Mask gives her a radically different view of her role in the encounter. She is getting a chance to experience her own agency for the first time in her life.

“Never again. Cassian’s voice stopped, and then the world paused, and all that existed was him, his fierce smile, as if he knew what song roared in her blood, as if he alone understood that the blade was an instrument to channel this raging fire in her.”

Up to this point in the story, Nesta has trained without weapons. Even though she is only practicing with a wooden sword at the moment, the weapon gives her a newfound sense of confidence. For the first time, she believes she can defend herself against an attacker. The mantra of “never again” indicates how deeply she felt and hated the weakness that put her at the mercy of others.

“What’s the point in learning fighting techniques if I don’t know their true purpose and uses? You’d train me into a weapon, and I’d be just that: someone else’s weapon. I want to know how to wield it—myself, I mean. And others.”

Nesta has just taken an interest in reading books about battle strategy. When Cassian questions her choice of subject matter, she returns again to the subject of personal power. A foot soldier follows orders. A general gives them. Nesta is clearly done taking orders. She wants to give them too.

“‘Feyre doesn’t love me.’ […] Amren barked out a laugh. ‘That you believe Feyre doesn’t only proves you’re unworthy of your power. Anyone that willfully blind cannot be trusted. You would be a walking nightmare with those weapons.’”

Once Nesta has unwittingly forged magical weapons, she resents Amren’s desire to withhold that information from her. Amren’s choice of words to describe Nesta is apt. The latter has proven herself willfully blind to the love that surrounds her. She has allowed her doubts, fears, and self-absorption to warp her perspective about those closest to her.

“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.”

Nesta describes herself in words that evoke images of a monster. While she might seem fearsome to others, this description also implies how frightening Nesta is to herself. The violence of her emotions and her inner turmoil terrify her to such a degree that she spends every waking moment trying to suppress these feelings. Her obsession with doing so prevents her from seeing how useless such a strategy is.

“What you feel, this guilt and pain and self-loathing—you will get through it. But only if you are willing to fight. Only if you are willing to face it, and embrace it, and walk through it, to emerge on the other side of it.”

Cassian offers this advice to Nesta at a point when she can finally hear something besides the voices in her own head. She has just been subjected to a brutal mountain trek that has left her physically exhausted. She no longer has the strength to lash out or defend herself. She is also too spent to run away from herself any longer. As Cassian points out, facing one’s demons is the only way to truly escape them.

“His throat bobbed. ‘I can’t risk you.’ The words slammed into her heart. ‘I…You can. You have to.’ Before he could further object, she said, ‘You are training me to be a warrior. Yet you’d keep me from danger? How is that any better than a caged animal?’”

While Cassian is far more emotionally evolved than his Illyrian male counterparts, he still wants to protect Nesta from harm and keep her from accompanying him to retrieve the Harp. In this sense, he is treating her like a pet, which she points out to him. Pets are deprived of agency in the same way that Nesta has always been. Warriors must fight their own battles.

“Would she live the rest of her life like Emerie, always glancing over a shoulder for the shadow of the past to haunt her? Did she appear as Emerie had this afternoon, terrified and pained? She owed herself more than that. Emerie, too, deserved more. A chance to live a life without fear and dread.”

Nesta is debating lighting a fire. Throughout the novel, she has dreaded the crackling sound because it reminds her of her father’s death. This quote reveals that she is finally tired of running away. It also indicates that she has taken Cassian’s advice to heart. The only way to defeat one’s fears is to face them.

“You are everything I have never been, and will never be good enough for. Your friends know it, and I have carried it around with me all this time—that I do not deserve you.”

This is the first point in the book when Nesta actually admits her true fears to Cassian. Up to this point, she has pushed him away emotionally without explaining her petulant behavior. In part, this is because she has been a stranger to herself and her own motivation. Admitting this sense of unworthiness, no matter how mistaken it may be, demonstrates that Nesta is growing up emotionally and owning her feelings.

“Emerie said, ‘Nothing can break us.’ The world seemed to pause at the words. As if it had been following one path and now branched off in another direction. […] Right then and there. That was when it all changed. Azriel went wholly still, as if he, too, had felt the shift. As if he, too, were aware that far larger forces peered into that training ring as Gwyn moved.”

Cassian has heard these words and feels a sense of wonder and admiration. Although he has trained Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyn in physical battle tactics, he couldn’t impart a sense of confidence into the females. This was something they learned for themselves. Such paradigm shifts can change the world, and Cassian and Azriel both seem quite cognizant of that fact.

“That’s the key, isn’t it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it…that’s the important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder.”

Amren and Nesta are having a quiet conversation about overcoming past horrors. Both have suffered, and both have moved beyond the trauma of the experience. Amren’s comment suggests that the only danger lies in getting stuck in the darkness and not being able to move past it. Her words also are a quiet acknowledgment that the trauma will always remain as a memory, but not one that needs to be buried or suppressed. Now, Nesta realizes that truth too.

“Nesta’s fate was her own. She was strong enough to forge her own path, even through the horrors of the Blood Rite. He’d taught her the skills to do so himself. And even if the laws had allowed it, he would never take that away from her: the chance to save herself.”

Although Cassian is very worried about Nesta undergoing the Blood Rite without him, he is also wise enough not to treat her like a pet. He expresses his confidence in her courage and her battle skills. However, his confidence in her is nothing if she hasn’t internalized a sense of her own competence in facing the worst the world can throw at her. The victory must be hers, or it is meaningless.

“‘No,’ Nesta said at last. ‘We win to prove to ourselves that it can be done.’ She bared her teeth in a feral grin at the mountain. ‘We win the whole damn thing.’”

Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie have decided to continue to the top of the summit even though they have already gotten farther along the Blood Rite course than any of the males will do. Ultimately, the grueling ritual isn’t about claiming victory over males. It’s about claiming victory over themselves. In surviving the trial, they are proving their inner worth.