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A Court of Mist and Fury Chapters 14–27 Summary
This Sarah J. Maas A Court of Mist and Fury chapter summary contains full spoilers.
A Court of Mist and Fury Part 2: The House of Wind
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 14
Rhysand brings Feyre to his private townhouse in Velaris. He explains it’s his personal home, separate from where he conducts official business, and that the city itself has been shielded for thousands of years. Rhysand tells Feyre that she’s safe there and she’s free to go wherever she wants.
Feyre and Rhysand don’t get much time to settle in before several members of Rhysand’s Inner Circle turn up at the door, loud and argumentative. Rhysand offers Feyre a choice between meeting them now or slipping upstairs to rest, and she takes the out without hesitation. The twins, Nuala and Cerridwen, lead her to a warm, comfortable bedroom overlooking a winter garden.
Once the twins and Feyre are alone, Feyre asks them the question that’s been nagging at her: how did the city survive Amarantha’s reign completely intact? The twins sidestep it, telling Feyre that’s Rhysand’s story to explain, not theirs. Feyre accepts that. She then insists the curtains stay open, unable to face being shut in the dark, and eventually drifts off to sleep.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 15
Feyre wakes after four hours of sleep and Rhysand takes her out to explore Velaris, a hidden faerie city kept secret from Amarantha for millennia. As they walk around, Feyre confronts Rhysand about why he never opened the city as a refuge while the rest of Prythian suffered. Rhysand deflects and refuses to discuss it.
At one point, Feyre nearly slips into dark thoughts about death. Rhysand reads her mind and reprimands her. Suddenly, Feyre accidentally slips into Rhysand’s mind and sees how hollow Feyre herself looks. Rhysand then warns her about “daemati,” mind-readers like themselves, and urges Feyre to keep her mental shields up to protect Velaris’s location.
Back at the townhouse, Rhysand tells Feyre they need to fly up to the House of Wind for dinner with his Inner Circle. Feyre resists, but Rhysand promises she can leave at any point with no questions asked. He carries her up in flight.
Feyre and Rhysand land on the balcony of the House of Wind. Then Feyre admits to Rhysand that she thinks she fell in love with Tamlin mainly because Tamlin offered safety and kindness when she was lonely and desperate, and that who she has become no longer fits that relationship. The conversation ends when two of Rhysand’s winged companions appear in the doorway.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 16
Feyre meets Rhysand’s Inner Circle at dinner. Cassian and Azriel are Illyrian warriors who grew up alongside Rhysand in a war camp, and Amren is a small, unsettling woman whose silver eyes suggest she’s something far older than High Fae. The group trades stories from their pasts, and Cassian offers to train Feyre to fight. Feyre then formally agrees to work with the court against Hybern.
Rhysand then gets to the real point of the evening. The King of Hybern is planning to bring Jurian back from the dead. Jurian was an ancient warrior whose soul Amarantha had trapped inside a ring, and what little remains of him physically has since gone missing. The group connects this to a string of recent attacks on sacred sites, and Azriel confirms that one of the sites was raided just days ago.
Amren says the only way to figure out how to stop the resurrection is to visit a place called the Prison and speak with the Bone Carver. Amren refuses to go herself. Rhysand decides that he and Feyre will make the trip on the logic that the Bone Carver might actually talk to someone who carries a mortal soul in an immortal body, which sets Feyre apart from everyone else at the table. Feyre agrees to go.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 17
After dinner, Rhysand flies Feyre back to the town house. Feyre asks about the bond between them, and he admits he doesn’t fully understand how it works.
When they land, Feyre confronts Rhysand about his reputation as a cruel ruler. Rhysand tells her the reputation is a front to protect the people he loves and explains the price he paid during Amarantha’s rule. He used nearly all of his power to hide Velaris and erase the city from the memories of anyone Amarantha captured. That effort left him with almost nothing to fight her with. To stop Amarantha from digging deeper, he chose to become her whore.
That night, Feyre has a nightmare about Amarantha and wakes up screaming, her fingertips blazing and her sheets shredded by flames. Rhysand appears and helps her put out the fire. They share a quiet moment as they acknowledge the trauma they still carry from Under the Mountain before Feyre falls back asleep.
The next morning, Rhysand takes Feyre to a mountain called the Prison, home to the most dangerous creatures in Prythian. When the moment comes to go inside, Feyre can’t make herself do it. Her time Under the Mountain left marks she can’t push past. Rhysand takes her home, and Feyre spends the rest of the day in bed.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 18
Amren arrives uninvited in Feyre’s room and lends Feyre a magical amulet that once helped Amren escape the Prison, warning Feyre to return it when she’s done.
Feyre and Rhysand enter the Prison through gates of bone that open only to Rhys’s blood. He makes it clear that no one sentenced to the Prison ever gets out.
Deep beneath the mountain, the Bone Carver appears to Feyre as a dark-haired boy of around eight. Rhysand pays the Bone Carver with a bone from the Middengard Wyrm, and the Bone Carver agrees to answer one question in exchange for one of his own. He asks Feyre to describe what she experienced when she died. She tells him about the darkness, the thread connecting her to Rhysand through their bargain, and how she followed it back to life.
Feyre then asks whether a soul trapped inside an object could be placed into a new body. The Bone Carver says only the Cauldron could accomplish something like that. He explains that the Cauldron is an ancient source of all magic and that its three feet were removed and stored at separate temples to limit its power. He also explains that whoever is raiding those temples is trying to restore the Cauldron.
After further exchanges, the Bone Carver confirms that the King of Hybern holds the Cauldron and that a Book of Breathings exists with spells capable of neutralizing it.
The Bone Carver explains that after the War, the Book was split in two. The High Lord of Summer holds one half, and the human queens hold the other. Magic protects the queens’ half from theft and requires a mortal queen to surrender it willingly. Bringing both halves together would give Feyre and Rhysand a real chance of stopping the Cauldron before it tears down the wall between human and faerie lands.
As Feyre and Rhysand make their way out, Rhysand reveals that the Bone Carver appeared to him not as a child but as Jurian.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 19
Rhysand briefs the Inner Circle on what the Bone Carver confirmed. The King of Hybern has been raiding temples to recover pieces of the Cauldron, and the group’s best counter is to find the Book of Breathings and nullify the Cauldron before Hybern can act.
Because Feyre absorbed magic from all seven High Lords, she may be able to track objects tied to their power, which makes her the most valuable asset for locating the Book. Before risking a mission to the Summer Court, though, Rhysand wants to test that ability. He plans to bring Feyre to a dangerous creature called the Weaver to see if she can retrieve a personal object of his from its hoard.
Rhysand also assigns Feyre as emissary to the Night Court for the human world. The mortal queens hold the other half of the Book, and since magic has no sway over them, someone must persuade them in person. Feyre agrees to use her family estate as a meeting point and bring her sisters on board despite knowing that her sisters won’t take it well.
The next morning, Rhysand prepares Feyre for their visit to the Weaver. She can only carry knives, since anything unusual might alert the Weaver. According to Rhys, Feyre and the object share the same magical imprint, so the Weaver won’t sense her presence as long as she touches nothing else. If the Weaver detects her, then it will be a true test of Feyre’s capabilities.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 20
Rhysand brings Feyre to a primeval forest deep in the neutral territory at the heart of Prythian, a lawless place where the Weaver of the Wood holds power over everything around her. He tells Feyre that even Amarantha left the Weaver alone, which says enough about what they’re walking into. On the surface, the mission is simple. Feyre needs to get inside the Weaver’s cottage, steal a specific object, and get out without the Weaver noticing her.
Alone at the edge of a clearing after Rhysand vanishes, Feyre makes her way to the cottage. Inside, the Weaver sits at a spinning wheel with her back turned, singing an old, unsettling folk song. Feyre moves through the cluttered, dimly lit room, searching for whatever she came for, but nothing catches her eye at first.
Eventually, something like an invisible tug pulls Feyre’s attention toward a shelf by the hearth. There she finds a ring, an ornate band with a striking blue stone. Feyre immediately associates it with Rhysand. The moment her fingers close around it, the Weaver goes silent.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 21
Feyre manages to steal a ring from the Weaver’s cottage, but the Weaver detects her and blocks every exit. Feyre sets fire to the room and climbs the chimney, only to get stuck halfway when the Weaver follows. She fights through her panic, loosens a brick from the wall, and uses it as a weapon to drive the Weaver back. She pulls herself free, scrambles across the roof, and escapes through the trees until Rhysand intercepts her and winnows them to safety.
At the House of Wind, Feyre confronts Rhysand about the mission. Rhysand admits it was designed to test both her tracker abilities and her ability to control her panic under real pressure. Feyre asks Cassian to train her in combat, and he agrees. Rhysand then reveals the ring belonged to his mother, who’d left it with the Weaver so he wouldn’t squander the ring.
Back at the town house, Rhysand pushes Feyre to break through his mental shields. She fails, but he opens a section of his mind and shows her a memory of Ianthe propositioning him at the Court of Nightmares. When Ianthe wouldn’t leave, Rhysand injured her hand and threw her out. Rhysand uses this memory to teach Feyre two rules about entering someone’s mind, then leaves her alone.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 22
Mor slips into Feyre’s room while Feyre and the others prepare to travel to the mortal realm. Mor unexpectedly opens up about her past in the Court of Nightmares, where her extraordinary power made her a prize in political alliances rather than a person with any say in her own life. She then tells Feyre she won’t be joining them on the trip, explaining that Cassian helped convince Rhysand to let her stay behind. Before Feyre leaves, Feyre and Mor share a genuine moment that feels like the start of a real friendship.
With Mor and Amren staying behind to hold things down in Velaris, Feyre sets off with Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel. She chooses to fly with Azriel rather than Rhys, and Rhysand winnows the group in pairs as they cross the sea. During the flight, Feyre and Azriel share a brief exchange about not quite knowing where they fit in the world. Then they pass through the gap in the wall, which unsettles Feyre because the magic seems to push back as she slips through.
On the other side, the air turns colder, and Feyre looks out over the snow-covered fields that she once called home.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 23
Feyre returns to her family’s estate as a High Fae, with Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel waiting out of sight nearby. The housekeeper answers the door, unsettled, but Elain appears behind her and immediately recognizes Feyre. Nesta comes downstairs shortly after, and Feyre steps inside.
Once the sisters are seated, Feyre pulls back her hood to reveal her Fae features and tells Nesta and Elain what happened to her, including her death, her transformation, and the danger Hybern now poses. She asks to use the house as a meeting place for the High Fae and the Queens of the Realm. Nesta refuses, worried about the risk to Elain’s upcoming engagement to the son of an anti-Fae lord.
Elain steps in and points out that no walls or soldiers will keep them safe if Hybern succeeds, and she proposes sending the servants away and keeping everything quiet. Nesta gives in.
While Elain goes to dismiss the staff, Feyre and Nesta talk briefly about the engagement. Nesta is wary of the father but not his son. The conversation then turns to Tamlin, and Feyre explains that his need to control her is what drove them apart. Feyre then asks Nesta if she’d like to meet Feyre’s new companions.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 24
Elain sweet-talks the household staff into leaving and gives them money to help move things along. Once the house is empty, Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel arrive, and Feyre brings the three of them inside to meet her sisters.
The introduction doesn’t go smoothly. At dinner, Nesta takes a jab at Feyre for barely being able to eat the food, and Cassian calls Nesta out for standing by while a teenage Feyre hunted alone to keep the family alive. Elain admits that she and Nesta both let Feyre down back then.
The tension eases enough for a real conversation about Fae politics and the difference between High Fae and Illyrians. By the end of the meal, Nesta agrees to deliver the group’s letter to the queens the next morning, and the group decides to spend the night there.
Feyre, Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel work on the letter until midnight. When Feyre and Rhysand turn in, Rhysand admits that the dinner affected him more than he’d expected, as seeing Feyre’s sisters made it real to him how young Feyre had been and how little she’d been looked after. Feyre points out that without all of that, Rhysand might never have been freed.
The mood lifts when Rhysand mentions a bank account he’d set up for Feyre in Velaris with her court wages, and Feyre and Rhysand laugh about how Nesta and Cassian can barely stand to be in the same room.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 25
Feyre and Rhysand head into a snow-covered forest so Feyre can practice using her powers. Before they get started, Rhysand shows her an actual map of the Night Court territory. He then gives her a challenge. Using only her magic, Feyre has to light a candle, put it out with water, and dry the wick. Feyre tells him she can’t focus with him nearby, so he disappears and leaves her to it.
Alone for an hour, Feyre tries to get something, anything, to happen, but the candle stays stubbornly cold. During a break, Feyre and Rhysand start passing notes back and forth through some kind of magic, teasing each other the whole time. Feyre gets so caught up waiting for Rhys’s next reply that she doesn’t notice someone creeping up behind her until it’s too late. A hand clamps over her mouth and yanks her off her feet. When the attacker threatens her life, Feyre recognizes the voice instantly. It’s the Attor.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 26
The Attor has seized Feyre, but Rhysand appears and pins the creature to a tree using his powers, asking it for information. Admittedly, the Attor says the King of Hybern sent it to capture Feyre but offers no reason. The Attor also reveals that Hybern’s army is enormous and that the kingdom has supporters waiting across every territory. Azriel arrives shortly after, and Rhysand hands the Attor over to him. Rather than kill the creature, Rhysand and Azriel plan to send it back to Hybern as a warning.
Feyre then turns on Rhysand for using her as bait without telling her. Rhysand stands by the decision, insisting that Feyre was never in real danger. The argument shifts when Rhysand challenges Feyre for forgetting her own strength and capabilities. Furious, Feyre tries to physically confront him, but Rhysand keeps winnowing just out of reach and goading her. Her frustration forces her to focus, and she manages to winnow for the first time, tracking Rhysand through the darkness and tackling him into the snow.
A Court of Mist and Fury Chapter 27
Feyre pins Rhysand in the snow and tells him never to use her as bait again. She challenges his offer to make her a weapon, saying that if that’s what he wants, he needs to actually train her. She warns him she’ll walk away from their deal if he keeps treating her as expendable. Rhysand concedes, asks her to show him how she pulled off the move she just used on him, and apologizes. Feyre refuses and says she wants to go back to the chateau.
Afterward, Feyre asks why the King of Hybern is after her. Rhysand says he’ll find out, then apologizes again. He suggests they get breakfast before heading home, but Feyre corrects him and says Velaris isn’t her home. Rhysand winnows them back to her family’s house.