Five hundred years before the series begins, the faerie King of Hybern, an isolated island nation, fought a seven-year war to keep humans under faerie enslavement. On the massive, neighboring island, the High Lords of the seven Prythian faerie courts fought either with Hybern or alongside the mortals who eventually achieved freedom and established an enchanted Wall to separate the mortal and faerie realms. Two years before the end of this war, Rhysand, son of the High Lord of the Night Court, scans a battlefield, exhausted from fighting the Hybern forces and afraid his best friends, Cassian and Azriel, are among the dead. War has changed his idea of death from a “sweet, sad lullaby” to “the droning of flies” (2).

Five hundred years later, and several weeks after the events of A Court of Mist and Fury, Feyre Archeron paints in her studio at the Spring Court. In the previous novel, Feyre left Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court, for his nemesis Rhysand (Rhys), who is now High Lord of the Night Court many miles to the north. Feyre and Rhys are mates, a romantic and spiritual connection that transcends typical love.