A Court of Thorns and Roses: the story so far

Feyre Archeron shot a wolf in the woods to feed her family, and the wolf turned out to be Fae. Under the treaty a life was owed for a life, so rather than die she crossed the wall with the beast that came to collect: Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court, whose household wore masks they could not take off.

She learned to read, learned to want him, and learned from a captured Suriel that a blight was spreading through Prythian and that a woman called Amarantha had made herself its queen. Rhysand of the Night Court found them together at Calanmai, and Feyre gave a false name, Clare Beddor. Tamlin sent her home. Clare Beddor's family was tortured to death for it.

Feyre went back to find the Spring Court emptied. Alis told her the truth: Amarantha had stripped the High Lords fifty years earlier and cursed Tamlin for refusing her, and only a human girl who had killed a Fae out of hatred and then come to love him could break it. None of them had been permitted to say so.

Under the Mountain, Feyre took three trials for everyone's freedom. She survived a wyrm, and Rhysand healed her afterwards at the price of one week a month with him for the rest of her life. She could not read the riddle of the second trial, so he fed her the answer through the tattoo on her palm. The third trial was three hooded innocents to stab through the heart. The third hood was Tamlin, whose heart was stone, and she did it.

Amarantha broke her word and broke Feyre's bones, and Feyre solved the riddle aloud as she died with her neck snapped. Tamlin killed Amarantha. The seven High Lords each gave a thread of power to remake Feyre as High Fae. She went home to Spring immortal, sick with what she had done, and owing Rhysand a week of every month.

Feyre came back from Under the Mountain unable to eat, sleep or paint. Tamlin sealed her in the manor for her own safety, told her she would never be his High Lady, and let Ianthe run the wedding. Standing at the altar, Feyre begged silently for anyone at all to stop it, and Rhysand answered.

The Night Court was not what she had been told. Behind the Court of Nightmares lay Velaris, a city Rhysand had kept hidden from Amarantha for fifty years, and an inner circle: Mor, Cassian, Azriel and Amren. He taught her to read and to shield her mind, and asked her to help stop the King of Hybern, who wanted the Cauldron and the Book of Breathings to bring the wall down.

She stole a truth orb out of her own worst nightmares, robbed the Weaver, bargained with the Bone Carver, and lifted half the Book from Tarquin's Summer Court, which cost her his friendship. She learned that Rhysand's father had killed Tamlin's family, and that Tamlin's father had killed Rhysand's mother and sister.

The Suriel told her what Rhysand had known for months and never said. They were mates. She was furious, and then she was not, and they accepted the bond.

Then Hybern came. The mortal queens had sold them out. Nesta and Elain were dragged to Hybern's court and forced into the Cauldron, and came out Fae: Nesta having taken something from it, Elain a seer and, Lucien realised, his mate. Rhysand was collared. Feyre broke them all free by playing the recovered hostage, then chose to leave with Tamlin and take the Spring Court apart from the inside. Nobody there knew what she was. She had been made High Lady of the Night Court the night before.

Feyre spent weeks inside the Spring Court smiling at Tamlin while she dismantled it, turning Lucien against him and setting the war camp on itself. On her way out she used her daemati power to make Ianthe crush her own hand with a stone. She had already learned that Hybern meant to use the Cauldron to collapse the wall, and she went home to Velaris with Lucien.

Her sisters were in the House of Wind, Nesta furious and Elain barely present, both altered by the Cauldron. Feyre trained with Cassian and Azriel. The Night Court bought Keir's Darkbringers with the price of admission to Velaris, which Mor could not forgive, and pulled the Bone Carver, the Weaver and Bryaxis out of the prison and the library.

The wall came down. Jurian turned out to be working for them and not for Hybern. Ianthe shot the Suriel dead moments after it told Feyre that Nesta was the one who could nullify the Cauldron. Hybern took Elain, and Feyre, Azriel and Lucien went into the enemy camp to bring her back.

On the northern plain the king held Feyre's father up as a shield and snapped his neck in front of his daughters. Amren shattered herself with the Book to break Hybern's army. Elain stepped out of a shadow with Azriel's dagger Truth-Teller and drove it through the king's throat, and Nesta took his head.

Feyre and Rhysand poured everything they had into remaking the Cauldron, and Rhysand died doing it. Every High Lord, Tamlin last, gave a piece of himself to bring him back, and Rhysand asked the remade Cauldron for Amren, who returned High Fae with her ancient power gone. The Cauldron was hidden on Miryam and Drakon's island, and the courts went home to argue about a treaty.

A year after the war, everyone was still carrying it. Feyre and Rhysand spent the Winter Solstice rebuilding Velaris and buying a house on the river with a nursery in it. Rhysand gave Feyre a studio of her own. Feyre gave Rhysand a painting of the son the Bone Carver had once worn the face of.

Nesta had moved into a room above a pub and was drinking through the Night Court's money, refusing every invitation and saying almost nothing to anyone. Cassian kept turning up anyway. He gave her a Solstice present he had spent months tracking down, and she left him standing in the street.

Elain gardened and cooked and would not look at Lucien, who was living between courts and had stopped pretending the mating bond meant anything to her. Azriel put himself between her and every awkward moment at the table. Mor went back to Vallahan, still not saying out loud what Feyre already knew about her.

The Spring Court had emptied out and Tamlin was alone in the ruins of it, and Feyre found she could not quite manage to hate him. Rhysand had a larger problem waiting: the Illyrian camps had lost too many warriors, the survivors were restless, and the lords who kept their women's wings clipped were not going to be reformed by asking nicely.

By the end of the holiday, Feyre and Rhysand had agreed that Nesta could not go on as she was. What they intended to do about it was left for the next book.

Nesta had spent the year since the war drinking through the Night Court's money, and Feyre and Rhysand ran out of patience. The choice was the human lands or the House of Wind: training with Cassian every morning, the library every afternoon, and no more coin.

She climbed ten thousand steps, hated all of it, and slowly stopped hating it. In the library she found Gwyn, a priestess who had survived Hybern and never left the mountain. In the camps she found Emerie, a shopkeeper whose wings had been cut. The three took up the training manual of the Valkyries, a company of women the Illyrians had wiped out. Nesta also forged a great sword without meaning to and named it Ataraxia.

Another war was gathering underneath. Briallyn, the mortal queen the Cauldron had left ancient, had allied with Koschei, the death-lord chained to his lake. Both were hunting the Dread Trove: the Mask that raises the dead, the Harp that opens any door, the Crown that takes minds. Nesta found the Harp and hid it.

Feyre was pregnant, and the child had wings. Rhysand and the healer knew the birth would kill her and had agreed not to tell her. Nesta told her.

Briallyn had the three of them thrown into the Blood Rite, the Illyrian trial on Ramiel with no magic and no weapons. Nesta held the pass while Gwyn and Emerie reached the stone at the summit, and all three came out named Carynthian, the first women ever. Cassian arrived at the top under the Crown's control, ordered to kill Nesta, and turned the knife on himself instead. Nesta destroyed Briallyn and accepted the bond between them.

Then she took all three Trove objects, held death off Feyre, Rhysand and the child, and gave back nearly everything she had taken from the Cauldron. Nyx was born. Koschei was still out there.