The Library
The Night Court · City of Starlight
The address we'd give if anyone asked where we really live.
Perpetual twilight, lanterns on the Sidra, shutters painted by hand — a city lit from the inside. Rhys kept it hidden for five thousand years because some things are too good to let the world touch, and burned out the last of his power keeping it off the map while he was Under the Mountain. We read one chapter and started apartment-hunting. We never checked out.
Who Lives Here
The people whose city this actually is — the ones who live here so we can visit.
Three places we'd walk you to first, if the wards ever let you in.
The painted heart of Velaris — every colour the rest of the city keeps hidden, all in one quarter. It's also where Hybern's war did its cruellest work, which is why we don't take a single lantern for granted.
Enter The Rainbow
Red stone carved into the peak, the Library folded beneath it, the training ring open to the sky. Home to the Inner Circle — and yes, we counted the steps so you don't have to.
Enter The House of Wind
The water the whole city curves down to meet. Starfall lights it, Solstice warms it, and the River of Souls runs quiet underneath. We could sit on that bank forever.
Enter The SidraTHE CITY OF STARLIGHT
Five thousand years hidden from everyone — and the first outsider he ever chose to show it to was her.
The bargain pulled her north, out of Spring, into a court that had frightened the whole world for as long as the world could remember. And then he brought her here, and the mask he wears everywhere else — the one he'd worn for fifty years without setting it down — came off. He showed her the city no living soul outside had ever seen. Not a threat. Not a bargaining chip. Home.
One chapter. That's all it took. The Night Court stopped being the thing that scared us and became the place we'd been trying to get back to ever since — the broken girl standing in the starlight, about to become the person a hidden city had been waiting five thousand years for. The night it opened for her, it opened for us too, and none of us have left.
Hidden in plain sight for five thousand years.
Ancient wards kept Velaris off every map — hidden even from the Court of Nightmares in Hewn City, because Rhys trusted no one with something this good. When Amarantha rose, he spent the last of his power scrubbing the city from the minds of his own Court so it would outlast the fifty years he'd lose Under the Mountain. It survived. So did the reason we keep coming back.
Enter the Rainbow →The city arrives in Book 2. You never really leave.
Where it all begins. A huntress, a curse, and a door into Prythian none of us got to un-walk through.
The one that broke us. The Night Court arrives. Rhys arrives. Velaris arrives. Whatever this series was to us before, it rewires right here.
The war that bound them. Every court, every debt, every promise called in at once.
The quiet between wars. Short, warm, and quietly devastating in the way only a calm chapter gets to be.
Nesta. Cassian. The Valkyries. The redemption arc we'd have waited three more books for — and didn't have to.
Announced. Title still under wraps. The second SJM says a word, this updates.
Announced. Title still under wraps. We refresh the feeds like it's a full-time job.
We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — I can't put Velaris on a shirt without knowing the mountains above it are red — so we keep the notes here where everyone can use them. The pages are fan-made, not official; the licensed designs are in the shop.
Officially licensed
Admit one obsessive reader.
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Everything a first-time visitor wants to know about the City of Starlight.
Velaris is the hidden capital of the Night Court in Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses series — 'the City of Starlight,' the seat of the Court of Dreams. It's a peaceful, art-filled river-city kept concealed from the rest of Prythian for around five thousand years, and it's where Feyre learns to live again.
Velaris is fictional — it's a city within the Night Court in Prythian, the faerie world of ACOTAR. It's not a real place you can visit, though every reader who's been there will tell you it feels like one. It sits on the Sidra river, hidden behind ancient wards.
Velaris is home to the Inner Circle: Rhysand (High Lord) and Feyre (High Lady), plus Cassian, Azriel, Morrigan, Amren, Nesta and Elain. They live at the House of Wind above the city — the found-family at the heart of the Night Court.
Not quite. The Night Court is the whole court Rhysand rules; Velaris is its hidden capital city — the bright, secret heart of it. The Night Court also includes Hewn City (the Court of Nightmares), which is everything Velaris is not. Same court, two very different faces.
Velaris first appears in A Court of Mist and Fury (ACOMAF), the second book in the series, when Rhysand brings Feyre to the hidden city. It's the moment the Night Court stops being frightening and starts being home.
The Rainbow of Velaris is the artists' quarter — the painted, colourful district that gives the city its brightest colour, full of galleries, studios and craftspeople. It's also where Hybern's forces struck during the war, which makes it one of the most loved and most grieved places in the whole city.
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A Court of Thorns and Roses, ©2015-2021, Sarah J. Maas.
Here be spoilers
This whole place is written for people who already fell in — so we spoil freely, name names, and never explain the lore. That's kind of the point. Not caught up yet? Wander gently.
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