Ianthe

At a glance

What stands at the altar.

The Hand at the Altar

Devotion as a ladder.

Ianthe came to Tamlin trailing the gloss of an old friendship — they had known each other young, and she wore that intimacy like a credential. After Amarantha's fall she returned to the Spring Court and installed herself at Tamlin's side as High Priestess, advisor, and confessor, all serenity and pale blue-grey robes, and made his grief her instrument. To Feyre, returned hollow from Under the Mountain, Ianthe offered ritual and reassurance, and Feyre — too numb to see it — let the priestess steer her wedding, her days, her silences. The holiness was real to look at and false all the way down: every blessing Ianthe gave bent toward her own ascent.

The Betrayer

What she sold, and to whom.

When Hybern moved against Prythian, Ianthe was already theirs. She handed up Feyre's family — Nesta and Elain among them — to the King, and the Archeron sisters were dragged to a fate the priestess helped arrange: forced into the Cauldron and Made against their will. And in her youth she had turned her appetite on the males of Rhysand's Inner Circle, an old predation that Mor and the others never forgave. Ianthe's faith was only ever a costume for hunger.

The Reckoning

The altar collapses.

Ambition outran her at the last. With her treachery laid bare and Hybern's cause failing, Ianthe's flight ended at the cottage of the Weaver of the Wood — the ancient, death-dealing creature called Stryga, who lives in the heart of Prythian and is no one's instrument. The priestess who had used everyone found herself used up: the Weaver took her, kept her silver circlet for a trophy, and the cold sanctified light that had hidden Ianthe's rot for so long went out with her. She died as she had lived — overreaching, certain to the end that holiness would protect her.

Bound to

The threads of the priestess.

Continue

Tamlin →

The High Lord whose grief she fed on — and whose court she handed to the enemy.

The Spring Court → Feyre → Hybern →