A Court of Silver Flames recap

A year after the war with Hybern, Nesta Archeron is drinking herself to death in Velaris, estranged from the sister who became High Lady and from the Illyrian commander who will not leave her alone. Given an ultimatum, she moves up to the House of Wind to train with Cassian and work in its library. What was meant as punishment becomes a life: she finds work she is good at, friends in Gwyn, a traumatised priestess, and Emerie, an Illyrian shopkeeper, and a body and a temper she can finally govern. She also begins to use the power she took from the Cauldron, and helps hunt three Cauldron-made objects sought by a remade mortal queen and the death-lord Koschei. When Nesta discovers that Feyre's pregnancy will kill her and that Rhysand is hiding it, she says so in front of everyone and is exiled to the mountains, where she, Gwyn and Emerie are thrown into the Illyrians' lethal Blood Rite and win it. She returns to find Feyre dying in labour and trades away her Cauldron-given power to save her sister and the child. Feyre lives, Nyx is born, Nesta and Cassian accept their mating bond, and Koschei remains at large.

Previously: mortal huntress Feyre Archeron was taken into the faerie land of Prythian, fell in love with Tamlin of the Spring Court, and broke the curse over the courts by facing the tyrant Amarantha Under the Mountain, where she died and was resurrected as immortal High Fae by the seven High Lords. She afterward left Tamlin's suffocating protection for the Night Court, found that its High Lord Rhysand had hidden a decent man behind a monstrous reputation, learned they were mates, and was made High Lady - his equal rather than his consort. The King of Hybern then invaded, meaning to use the ancient Cauldron to tear down the wall between the faerie and human realms. In that war Feyre's mortal sisters Nesta and Elain were forced into the Cauldron and remade as High Fae against their will, and Nesta took something from it as she went in: a raw, unnamed power nobody understands. Their father was killed in front of her by the King of Hybern. The courts united, Rhysand died binding their power together and was resurrected by the High Lords, and Hybern was defeated. In the months after, the Night Court rebuilt. Feyre took up her rule and opened an art studio in Velaris; Cassian worked on the restless Illyrian war camps; Elain settled uneasily into a life she had not chosen, still refusing Lucien, the mate the Cauldron gave her; and Nesta cut herself off from all of them, drinking and spending Rhysand's money in a rented room. Loose ends remained in the human lands, where Lucien, the resurrected commander Jurian and the cursed queen Vassa keep an uneasy watch.

Nesta's self-destruction in Velaris finally forces the family's hand. Confronted together by Feyre, Rhysand, Cassian and Amren, she is given a choice: move up to the House of Wind above the city, train with Cassian and work shifts in its library, or be sent back to the human lands with her allowance cut off. She takes the House, largely out of spite. Life there is deliberately hard - ten thousand steps between her and the city, physical training she is nowhere near strong enough for, and hours spent shelving books in the great library beneath the house, a sanctuary run by priestesses who have survived violence of their own. Nesta arrives determined to make everyone regret the arrangement, and is at her worst with Cassian, who takes it and keeps coming back. The House itself starts behaving oddly around her, providing things she has not asked for.

Nesta grudgingly settles into the shape of her days: training with Cassian at dawn, library shifts after. She begins to be useful among the books and is drawn in by the priestesses, particularly Gwyn, a half-Fae survivor of Hybern's attack on her temple who has not set foot outside since. Nesta also starts reading for herself, working through the library's romance novels, while the House goes on quietly anticipating what she needs. Feyre tells the family she is pregnant, news Nesta takes badly. Meanwhile the power Nesta took from the Cauldron surfaces at bad moments and has never been controlled, and the court has its own reasons for wanting it understood: objects made by the Cauldron are loose in the world, and Nesta appears able to sense them. Her fights with Cassian continue, with the antagonism increasingly hard to tell apart from wanting him.

The court's problem takes shape. Three objects made by the Cauldron long ago - a mask, a crown and a harp, together called the Dread Trove - each command terrible power, and someone is hunting them; Nesta appears able to sense them, and she agrees to help. Her training goes from punishment to something she is genuinely good at, and it starts to spread: Gwyn comes up from the library to the ring, and on a trip to the Windhaven camp Nesta meets Emerie, an Illyrian shopkeeper whose wings were clipped as a girl, who has her own reasons for wanting to learn. Nesta also finds she can do more than sense the Cauldron's work - she can Make things, forging objects out of the power still sitting in her. The friction with Cassian keeps escalating, and less and less of it is dislike.

Nesta goes with Cassian into the Prison, the mountain holding Prythian's oldest and worst captives, and recovers the Harp; an ancient thing slips its cell and nearly kills them both before her power destroys it, and the Harp proves as dangerous as anything set to guard it. The enemy also takes shape: Briallyn, a mortal queen who came out of the Cauldron during the war holding power she should not have, working with Koschei, an ancient death-lord bound to a lake on the mortal continent who reaches the world through the bargains he makes. Briallyn holds the Crown, which can force obedience, so the court must move around her very carefully. Eris Vanserra, heir to the Autumn Court, supplies Rhysand with information strictly on his own terms and can be trusted with none of it. Nesta, Gwyn and Emerie now train in earnest, taking the name of an old order of warrior women, and other priestesses begin drifting up from the library to join them. Nesta keeps Making, among other things a sword of her own and a writing implement for Clotho, whose hands were ruined long ago. She and Cassian stop pretending about what is between them.

Nesta's life at the House has become something she does not want to lose: the dawn training, the library, the two women beside her in the ring, and Cassian, whom she is now with even if neither will name it. She helps track down the Mask, the piece of the Trove that can raise and command the dead, and keeps Making with the power the Cauldron left in her. Against all of that, Feyre's pregnancy is going badly. Nesta learns what the healers have told Rhysand and what he has chosen to keep from his wife: the child has its father's wings, Feyre's body was not made to bear it, and as things stand the birth will kill her. Nesta is left holding a secret that is not hers, in a family that has never trusted her with anything.

Nesta breaks the secret open. In front of the family she tells Feyre what Rhysand has been hiding about the pregnancy, and the room turns on her; being right does not excuse the way she did it. She is sent out of Velaris to the Illyrian mountains in disgrace, and everything she had built - the training, the library, her friends, the House itself - is cut away at once. At the same time the court moves against Briallyn and Koschei: Cassian and Azriel are caught in an ambush where the Crown is used against them and come very close to dying. Isolated in a war camp with Emerie for company, Nesta has to face what she did and what she wants to be instead, while the Illyrians around her make plain how little a female is welcome there.

Nesta, Emerie and Gwyn are swept into the Blood Rite, the Illyrians' annual trial: hundreds of warriors stripped of weapons, magic and the use of their wings and turned loose in the mountains to fight their way to the sacred peak of Ramiel over a week. No female has ever been permitted in it. The three keep together, are hunted for the offence of being there, and fight through Illyrians who mean to kill them. When the alternative is losing her friends, Nesta uses the Mask and raises the dead to fight beside her, and pays for it afterward. The three of them reach the mountain and Nesta touches the stone at its summit, winning the Rite outright - a result the Illyrians can neither dismiss nor undo.

Nesta comes down from the mountain to find Feyre in labour and dying exactly as the healers predicted. She bargains away the power she took from the Cauldron in exchange for her sister's life, remaking Feyre's body so that the birth can happen. Feyre survives and her son Nyx is born. Nesta comes out of it stripped of most of what the Cauldron gave her, reconciled with Feyre for the first time since they were mortal, and finally done punishing herself for their father's death; what she keeps is what she built instead - the training, the library, and the two friends who went into the mountains with her. She and Cassian acknowledge the mating bond between them and stop fighting it. Briallyn is killed and the immediate danger from the Dread Trove passes, but Koschei is untouched at his lake and still holds the queen Vassa, Eris's arrangements with the Night Court are unresolved, Elain's situation is unchanged, and the Illyrians must now live with three women who won the Blood Rite.

Nesta, Emerie and Gwyn survive the Blood Rite, and Nesta reaches the summit of Ramiel and claims it - the first females ever to win a trial the Illyrians reserve for their warriors, a result that cannot be argued away and that changes what Illyrian women can demand. Nesta returns to Velaris to find Feyre in labour and dying just as the healers foretold. She bargains away the power she took from the Cauldron in exchange for her sister's life, remaking Feyre's body so the child can be born. Feyre survives and her son Nyx is born; the sisters are reconciled for the first time since they were mortal, and Nesta stops holding herself to blame for their father's death. Stripped of most of what the Cauldron gave her, she keeps what she built in its place - the training, the library, and the two friends who went into the mountains beside her - and she and Cassian accept the mating bond neither had been willing to name. Briallyn is killed and the immediate danger from the Dread Trove passes. What remains open is larger: Koschei is untouched at his lake and still holds the queen Vassa; Eris Vanserra's arrangements with the Night Court are unfinished and his father still rules Autumn; Elain's position between Lucien and Azriel is unchanged; and the Illyrian question Cassian has pressed for years can no longer be ignored. The Night Court ends the book intact, with an heir and a war it has not yet had to fight.