The Dread Trove · Mortal Queen · Koschei's Pawn
Briallyn
A queen the Cauldron robbed of her years — and a death-lord made his hand.
One of the mortal queens who bargained with Hybern in the war; Made by the Cauldron into aged, brittle High Fae instead of the youth she was promised, then bound to the death-lord Koschei and set loose on Prythian as his hand. She holds the Crown of the Dread Trove, and through it, other people's minds.
At a glance
What is left of the queen.
The bargain that ate her
Youth traded for a leash.
Briallyn began as one of the mortal queens who sat across the table from Hybern in the war for Prythian — sovereigns who sold their own kind for the promise of immortality and were repaid in ruin. When she finally took her place at the Cauldron to be Made into immortal High Fae, the youth she was promised never came: the diminished Cauldron poured out age instead, leaving her ancient, shrunken, her body failing while her hunger does not. What she once was, she is now a thing remade and put to use — bound to the death-lord Koschei and sent out on his errand because he himself cannot leave his lake.
The Crown on a withered brow
A queen who rules the inside of your skull.
What makes a frail old woman dangerous is the relic on her head. The Crown is one of the three Dread Trove objects the Cauldron made — a large crown of golden spikes that bends minds to the wearer's will, turning living people into instruments. Briallyn uses it to seize others and act through them, and her standing order from Koschei is to gather the rest of the Trove: the Mask that commands the dead, the Harp that bends space and time. Three relics in one hand would make their holder very nearly unanswerable, which is precisely why she wants them — and why the Night Court cannot let her have them.
The end of the errand
What the deathless spend.
Briallyn is a means, not an end. Koschei does not love her and does not mourn her; she is a tool he directs to reach past the boundary of his lake, and tools are spent. Her bid to assemble the Dread Trove runs headlong into the Night Court — and only Nesta Archeron can summon all three relics, the very thing Briallyn covets and can never wholly hold. By the close of A Court of Silver Flames Briallyn is dead, and the threat she carried passes back to its source: the deathless death-lord is awake, patient, and content to spend others to do his reaching for him.
Iconography
What she carries, what carries her.
The marks of a queen made into a weapon.
Threads
Who pulls her strings, what she hunts.
Her turn
From sovereign to instrument.
The mortal queen
One of the human queens who allied with Hybern in the war — and lost everything when Hybern fell.
Aged by the Cauldron
Made into High Fae, but the diminished Cauldron gives her age instead of youth: old, withered, brittle — and then bound to the death-lord as his.
The Crown's hand
Set loose on Prythian with the mind-bending Crown, she seizes others and hunts the rest of the Dread Trove for her master.
Killed in ACOSF
Her bid for the full Dread Trove collides with the Night Court and the one who can summon all three relics. By the book's end she is dead — but Koschei remains.
Continue
Koschei →The deathless death-lord bound to his lake who raised her from death to be his reaching hand. She is one errand of his long patience.
The Crown → The Dread Trove → Nesta Archeron →