Prythian is a land of immortal faeries, separated from the mortal world by an ancient wall. Its seven courts are each ruled by a High Lord — divided between the Solar Courts (Day, Dawn, and Night) and the Seasonal Courts (Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter). Beyond Prythian, the mortal lands stretch to the south, and the island kingdom of Hybern lies across the sea.
A Court of Frost and Starlight takes place after the war with Hybern. The King of Hybern is dead, killed by Nesta and Elain Archeron. The Cauldron has been reforged and spirited away. For the first time in five hundred years, humans and Fae share open borders. All seven High Lords survived, though the alliance between them has already begun to fray. Prythian’s courts are rebuilding. Tamlin’s Spring Court is in ruins, its people scattered. The mortal lands at Prythian’s southern edge are ungoverned, and Jurian and Vassa are attempting to establish order from a manor in the human territories.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Series
Book 1: A Court of Thorns and Roses
Book 2: A Court of Mist and Fury
Book 3: A Court of Wings and Ruin
Book 4: A Court of Frost and Starlight
Book 5: A Court of Silver Flames
Book 6: COMING SOON… (27 October 2026)
Book 7: COMING SOON… (12 January 2027)
Main Characters
Feyre Archeron: High Lady of the Night Court.
Rhysand: High Lord of the Night Court and Feyre’s mate.
Cassian: Illyrian commander and member of the Inner Circle.
Morrigan (Mor): Rhysand’s cousin and Third-in-Command of the Night Court.
Nesta Archeron: Feyre’s eldest sister. Living alone in Velaris.
Elain Archeron: Feyre’s middle sister. Living at the townhouse.
Azriel: Rhysand’s spymaster and shadowsinger.
Amren: Rhysand’s Second-in-Command. Now fully High Fae after the war.
Supporting Characters
Lucien Vanserra: Elain’s mate. Living with Jurian and Vassa in the human territories.
Tamlin: High Lord of the Spring Court. Alone in his decaying manor.
Eris Vanserra: Eldest son of Beron, High Lord of the Autumn Court.
Keir: Steward of the Hewn City and Mor’s father.
Devlon: Lord of the Windhaven Illyrian camp.
Recap Summary
Although the war with Hybern is over, Feyre and Rhysand are still recovering from it. Feyre continues to dream of Rhys dying, her father’s murder and the Illyrians falling from the sky, while Rhys has his own moments of disbelief that they survived. Both have thrown themselves into work, but when Feyre is encouraged to take the Solstice week off from helping rebuild Velaris, she is forced to confront how much she has relied on staying busy.
Rhysand and Cassian travel to Windhaven, where Cassian pushes Devlon to continue allowing Illyrian females to train. Resentment is spreading through the camps after the enormous losses suffered in the war, with some Illyrians accusing Rhys and Cassian of deliberately sacrificing their warriors because of how they were treated growing up. They know someone is encouraging the unrest, but not yet who. After Rhys leaves, Cassian visits the abandoned camp where he was born and remembers what happened to his mother, who was cast out after giving birth to him and later died before he could find her. His determination to train Illyrian females is rooted in ensuring that what happened to her cannot keep happening to others.
Back in Velaris, Feyre walks through the damaged Rainbow and meets Ressina, an artist who tells her that a ruined gallery belonged to Polina, who was killed during Hybern’s attack. Ressina invites Feyre to join a weekly painting group, but Feyre is uncertain whether she is ready to paint again.
That evening, Feyre, Rhys and Mor visit the Hewn City, where they find Keir meeting with Eris. Being around them forces Mor to relive the trauma of what her family did to her and Eris’s refusal to help when he found her abandoned across the Autumn Court border. Eris warns them that Beron may try to expand into the newly exposed human lands through Tamlin’s weakened territory. With the wall gone and the Spring Court barely functioning, the warning raises wider concerns about how fragile the post-war peace is.
Those concerns extend beyond Spring. Illyrian unrest is spreading, the surviving human queens remain on the continent, Hybern is bitter over its defeat and other Fae territories may attempt to exploit the human lands. Jurian has meanwhile taken on a leadership role among the ungoverned mortals, with Vassa still in Prythian during the temporary reprieve from her curse.
At Windhaven, Cassian also meets Emerie, an Illyrian female whose wings were clipped and whose father died in the war. She has inherited his shop despite the camp’s hostility towards a female running her own business, and Cassian buys her winter stock so she can distribute it among families affected by the approaching storm.
When the night of Ressina’s painting group arrives, Feyre cannot make herself go inside. Instead, she secretly enters Polina’s abandoned gallery and paints alone. The act gives her a release she has struggled to find elsewhere, and she begins returning to the studio.
Concerned about Spring’s exposed border, Rhys visits Tamlin. He finds the estate almost deserted and Tamlin living with virtually no servants or sentries. Tamlin refuses Rhys’s offer of Night Court soldiers, and the conversation deteriorates as Rhys attacks him over what he did to Feyre, telling him that he deserves the ruin he has brought upon himself. Rhys expects Tamlin to retaliate, but he simply tells him to leave. Rhys departs unsettled by how completely broken Tamlin has become.
As the Inner Circle gathers in Velaris for Solstice, Feyre’s concern increasingly turns to Nesta. Elain has slowly begun rebuilding her life through gardening and her friendship with Nuala and Cerridwen, but Nesta has withdrawn from everyone. Feyre eventually finds her drinking and gambling in one of Velaris’s roughest taverns. Nesta has lost a disturbing amount of weight, refuses every job offered to her and spends many of her nights drinking and taking strangers home. She refuses to attend Solstice until Feyre makes payment of her rent conditional on her coming.
Rhys meanwhile offers Mor a new role representing the Night Court among the faerie kingdoms and human territories on the continent. Mor is tempted by the chance to leave, but worries that doing so after Keir’s alliance with Eris will look as though her father has successfully driven her from Velaris.
When Feyre later asks Amren for help with Nesta, she discovers that Nesta still visits Amren regularly. Amren refuses to interfere, insisting that Nesta needs time and space.
Solstice morning is also Feyre’s birthday. Cassian and Azriel drag Rhysand away for the annual snowball fight the three have held since childhood. Before the evening celebration, Lucien arrives and reveals that he now spends most of his time living with Jurian and Vassa in the human territories. The three have become close enough to jokingly call themselves the Band of Exiles. Lucien admits that he no longer feels he belongs in Spring or Velaris, particularly while Elain wants nothing from him.
After Lucien leaves, Feyre presses Elain about the way she treats him. Elain finally pushes back, pointing out that the mating bond does not entitle Lucien to her time or affection and that she does not want a mate.
That evening, the family gathers for Solstice and Nesta eventually arrives. She remains distant throughout the celebration, accepts a collection of romance novels from Elain and barely speaks. She stays through dinner, then leaves in the early hours of the morning after Feyre gives her enough money for three months’ rent. Cassian follows her into the snow with a present he has spent months finding. Their conversation turns into an argument when he urges her to stop shutting everyone out and she tells him to stop trying to pull her into his family. When Nesta walks away, Cassian throws the unopened gift into the Sidra.
Back in her apartment, the extent of Nesta’s deterioration becomes clearer. She has spent months feeling almost nothing beyond occasional anger and sometimes loses track of entire days. Despite the winter cold, she refuses to light her fireplace because the sound of cracking wood reminds her of the King of Hybern snapping her father’s neck.
Later that night, Feyre and Rhys retreat to the cabin. Feyre shows Rhys the image of the dark-haired, blue-eyed boy the Bone Carver once appeared as and tells him that she no longer wants to wait. After spending months confronting how easily they could have lost each other, she wants to begin building the future they nearly never had.
The following morning, Rhys takes Feyre to a ruined estate along the Sidra and reveals that he has bought it for them. Rather than rebuilding it himself, he asks Feyre to design their future home, with space for their family, her painting studio and, now, a nursery.
Rhys then returns to the Spring Court. This time he finds Tamlin sitting almost unresponsive before a dead elk. Rhys tells him that he has arranged for Summer Court soldiers to guard Spring’s border. Tamlin asks whether Feyre will ever forgive him, then whether Rhys forgives him for his involvement in the deaths of Rhys’s mother and sister. Rhys does not, but neither does he attack him again. Instead, he prepares some of the elk and orders Tamlin to eat, recognising that however much he hates him, they may still need the Spring Court in whatever comes next.
Mor retreats to Athelwood, an estate she has owned for centuries, and considers whether to accept Rhys’s offer. While riding there, she senses an unfamiliar darkness watching her from the woods but instinct tells her not to approach it.
Two days after Solstice, Feyre visits Polina’s family intending to buy the abandoned studio. Instead, they give it to her. Feyre asks Ressina to become her partner and decides to turn the space into somewhere people affected by the war can create and heal.
At Windhaven, Devlon has kept his promise and a small group of Illyrian girls are finally training. Rhys, Cassian and Azriel also identify the main source of the unrest: Kallon, the young son of the Ironcrest camp-lord, has been deliberately stirring resentment against Rhys and Cassian. For now, Cassian refuses to interfere with him and focuses on the small progress represented by the girls in the training ring.
A month later, Feyre and Ressina open the renovated studio, offering free art classes to children and families affected by Hybern’s attack. After the first class, Rhys comes to meet Feyre. Despite the Illyrian unrest, the human queens and everything else still unresolved, Feyre realises that she is excited to wake up every morning — to paint, to work, to build their home and to live the life she and Rhys nearly lost. They leave the studio together and walk home through Velaris.
Next in Series
The next instalment in the series is A Court of Silver Flames. Nesta is removed from her Velaris apartment and sent to train with Cassian at the House of Wind.
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