Velaris · The Artists' Quarter
The Rainbow of Velaris
The one street in Prythian we'd actually move to — paint still wet, colour running down to the Sidra.
Where Velaris stops hiding
The whole Night Court runs on masks — the cruel act Rhys wears for Amarantha, the politics, the things nobody says out loud. And then there's the Rainbow: the hill of studios and galleries and little maker's shops running down to the Sidra, painted every jewel-colour there is, where the artists just make the thing they feel and hang it in the window. It's Rhys's favourite view of his city, and once you understand why, it becomes yours too — this is the one place in the whole court that never learned to pretend.
The night the war came for it
Defender of the Rainbow
Of everything in Velaris, Hybern went for the quarter that made beauty in the open. That was the point.
The mortal queens sold Rhys to the King, and the Attor led a legion into the one place that couldn't defend itself. Not the palace. Not the Court of Nightmares. The Rainbow — the painters, the makers, the little shops. Burning. Bathed in blood. They came for the softest, brightest thing on purpose, because that's what a war like that is for.
Feyre heard a female scream and winnowed straight into it. And then she did the thing none of us saw coming — she bent the Sidra itself, pulled water-wolves and eagles and falcons out of the river and set them on the soldiers. Ressina was already out there, one artist against a legion, with nothing but a rusted pipe. That's the Rainbow. Nobody there was built to fight and every one of them stood anyway.
She drove ash arrows into the Attor's wings, turned herself to fire, and put the blade in three times — one for Rhys, one for a mortal it had killed, one for herself. And afterward the residents didn't remember the High Lord's mate or the Cursebreaker. They remembered that she came for them. Rhys named her Defender of the Rainbow, and it wasn't a title. It was them telling us what she was.
She was a painter before she was any of the rest of it.
Before the mate, the Cursebreaker, the High Lady — Feyre paints, and the Rainbow is where she learns to say the thing Under the Mountain took the words for. Colour as the language you reach for when the other one fails. That's what the quarter really stands for, and why the war aimed at it: making beauty out in the open, where anyone can see it, is its own kind of refusal to be afraid — and it turns out that's the hardest thing in the world to burn down.
Enter Velaris →
We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — I can't put the Rainbow on a shirt without knowing it burned when Hybern came — 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.
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The Rainbow, answered
The quick questions — the story's up above.
What is the Rainbow of Velaris?
The artists' quarter of Velaris — a tumble of studios, galleries and little shops running down a hill to the Sidra, home to the city's painters, musicians and makers. Every building is painted in vivid jewel colours that seem to glow in the moonlight, which is where the name comes from.
Why is it called the Rainbow?
For the colour. The whole quarter is hand-painted in bright jewel tones — reds, oranges, golds, greens, blues, violets running down the hill — so from a distance it reads as a literal rainbow of houses and shops against the dark of the Night Court.
Where is the Rainbow of Velaris?
It's a district within Velaris, the City of Starlight and capital of the Night Court, set on a hill that runs down to the Sidra river. Follow the colour toward the water and you're in it.
The colour runs down to the river. So do we.
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A Court of Thorns and Roses, ©2015-2021, Sarah J. Maas. Artwork © Caffeine and Curses.