A Court of Frost and Starlight

Elain and Nesta are Feyre’s sisters. As teens living with Feyre and their father, they did very little to support their family, relying on Feyre’s hunting. At the end of A Court of Mist and Fury, the King of Hybern used the Cauldron (the source of fae magic and of all creation in their land) to transform both human sisters into High Fae, using them to test whether the human queens, Hybern’s allies, could become fae themselves.

Elain spent most of A Court of Wings and Ruin wasting away, both from the pain of their experience and from sorrow at the loss of her human betrothed, who hates fae. Her newfound powers—seeing visions of the future—also haunt her, making her despair worse and worrying her friends. By the time of A Court of Frost and Starlight, the efforts of Feyre and her friends to help Elain have begun to see fruit. Elain speaks as she used to and seems happier, even if she is still quiet. Azriel’s kindness in particular helped her, and he helped her recover her interest in gardening. Two of Rhys’s servants, Nuala and Cerridwen, “lesser” types of fae, also help Elain, bringing her into their kitchen and helping her use the activity of cooking and baking to keep busy and find peace. Nonetheless, Elain still grieves her human fiancé and pushes away Lucien, who discovered upon Elain’s transformation that she is his destined partner. Her resentment toward Lucien and her sorrow over Nesta’s attempts to abandon both her and Feyre create lingering difficulties, which are not resolved in A Court of Frost and Starlight but are instead set up as continuing conflicts for the next novel.

In A Court of Frost and Starlight, Nesta falls into a downward spiral emotionally. Each sister has had a period of despair as a result of emotional duress that concerns those around them. For Feyre, it came after her time in Amarantha’s court, and Tamlin’s treatment of her in the aftermath made things worse. Even when Feyre decided not to return to Tamlin’s court and to instead remain in Velaris with Rhys, she struggled for a time to return to herself. Elain similarly withdrew into herself after her transformation into High Fae. Nesta kept herself together during this time, focusing primarily on Elain’s well-being and relying on her protective sisterly instincts to get her through her own experience. Her emotional duress—and the months of ignoring it—have caught up to her by the time of this novel. Feyre and Elain are hurt and angry, but Feyre notices at the Winter Solstice celebration that Nesta “look[s] at [them] through some sort of window. As if she were still standing out in the front yard, watching [them] in the house” (187). When Nesta gets home that evening, her thoughts reveal that she hasn’t felt any emotions except anger in months. She spends much of her time drinking alcohol and having sex. Even before the emotional wounds of the war, Nesta had a much colder personality and did not usually confide in others; in her despair, these traits are amplified. A Court of Frost and Starlight sets up her inner conflict as the primary character of the next novel, A Court of Silver Flames.

Cassian and Azriel are Rhys’s closest friends and highest-ranking soldiers. Both are from the Illyrian tribe, which is composed of faeries with large black wings, known for their fighting abilities. Both are also outcasts in that society because of their status as fatherless sons of women servants. Both were rejected and mistreated for many years and only begrudgingly accepted as warriors because of their unprecedented powers; both are exceptional warriors with more magical power than any other Illyrian, and Azriel has rare shadowsinger gifts, which allow him to wield and control shadows. Cassian describes himself and Azriel as “the most powerful Illyrians in their long, bloody history. […] It [i]s a gift and a burden that he’[s] never taken lightly” (29). Despite these powers, the Illyrians still treat them with disrespect and disdain several centuries later. Both men were introduced in A Court of Mist and Fury, when Rhys brought Feyre to Velaris after she left Tamlin.

The two Illyrian men are also the adopted brothers of Rhys, whose mother took them in and cared for all three while Rhys lived in the Illyrian camp and learned how to fight. Their bonds of brotherly love are strong, and they have spent centuries supporting and defending one another. Despite these similarities, each of them is quite different.

Azriel is quiet, often seeming as if he lives in the shadows he wields. He uses his powers to particularly strong effect in his role as Rhys’s spymaster, where he has built a team of spies around their world to keep Rhys informed. His emotional-duress response makes a brief appearance in A Court of Frost and Starlight, when he stops Cassian from eating before Elain, who made some of the food, sits down to Winter Solstice Eve dinner with everyone else. Cassian’s behavior, Rhys tells Feyre, reminded Azriel of how his mother was mistreated in the Illyrian camp. Aside from these emotional wounds, Azriel’s primary conflict is his relationships with Mor and Elain. He has loved Mor for centuries, but she has avoided initiating any kind of relationship, particularly since she has discovered that she is more comfortable in relationships with women, which she has only disclosed to Rhys and Feyre. Elain is Lucien’s destined partner, but it is clear that she and Azriel feel some sort of connection and affection for one another; even Feyre wondered in the previous novel why Azriel is not Elain’s partner rather than Lucien. These minor conflicts go unresolved in A Court of Frost and Starlight, leaving them as open questions that may be addressed in future books.

Cassian is, in many ways, the opposite of Azriel: He is boisterous and light-hearted most of the time, and he jokes around and prods at his friends. One of his unresolved conflicts is his relationship with the Illyrians; despite their mistreatment of him, he still loves his people. He also wants to make their culture better, especially for women, who are traditionally mistreated, with their wings clipped and their roles reduced to drudgery for the men. Rhys observes that “[t]his mission of Cassian’s, hatched years ago and perhaps close to fruition […] It [goes] beyond bets for him. [Goes] down to a wound that ha[s] never really healed,” a wound related to how the Illyrians treated his mother (222). This conflict remains unresolved in A Court of Frost and Starlight. The other unresolved storyline for Cassian is his relationship with Nesta. Although he has not said anything about whether they are destined partners, his interest in and care for Nesta is obvious. He tries to reach out to her, sometimes seriously and sometimes jokingly, but she rejects him. This conflict is set up to be addressed in A Court of Silver Flames.