The City of Pearl · The Summer Court of Prythian
Summer Court
“Tarquin was summer incarnate in turquoise and gold, bits of emerald shining at his buttons and fingers. A crown of sapphire and white gold fashioned like cresting waves sat atop his seafoam-coloured hair—so exquisite that I often caught myself staring at it.”
A Court of Mist and Fury
Built back from devastation into a sun-and-sea paradise of pearl, sapphire and aquamarine. The youngest High Lord, his dream of a fairer Prythian, and the alliance we sailed in and stole from. We know.
Adriata round a half-moon bay, the palace on its mountain-island, the waters guarding a half of the Book of Breathings — and the friendship we watched get broken anyway.
At a Glance
The Summer Court
The Court
Summer incarnate, and it knows it
The most blatantly tropical of the seven courts, and it knows it. Turquoise sea, that dry suffocating heat the breeze off the water barely touches, pearl-white stone the colour of coral, sea glass and shell and a bay full of ships. Adriata, the city of pearl, spilling around and below the palace that crowns a mountain-island at the heart of a half-moon bay — tan walls, red roofs, canals, sea-spray, streets left open to the air. Amarantha gutted it once: Nostrus and his entire line slaughtered for refusing her. Then Tarquin rose from prince and admiral to youngest High Lord and rebuilt the whole thing, out loud dreaming of a Prythian where the lower-caste fae aren't servants and slaves anymore. The optimist of the bunch. We were rooting for him.
What Happens Here
Trust, theft, and the long way back
This is where Mist and Fury made us complicit. Tarquin takes Feyre, Rhysand and Amren in as honoured guests — dinner aboard a pleasure barge under that wave-crest crown, real friendship, an actual alliance offered — and the whole time we were there to rob him of his half of the Book of Breathings. Feyre traces it to a temple the tide swallows for most of the day, carries a drop of Tarquin's own Made water-power to reach the lead box on its dais, and then lies to a sentient Book that calls her a liar to her face and floods the chamber to drown them. Water-wraiths tear the door off to settle an old debt; the Book only gives once it names her 'Cursebreaker.' Theft exposed, Tarquin answers the only way honour leaves him: three blood rubies, one each, blood feud declared. It doesn't heal until Wings and Ruin — Hybern besieges Adriata, the Night Court shows up for the defence, and Tarquin rescinds the rubies, says no debts remain, and throws the Summer fleet into the war. The long way back. Worth it.
Landmarks & Relics
Of pearl and the deep
From the Page
Summer Court
“Tarquin was summer incarnate in turquoise and gold, bits of emerald shining at his buttons and fingers. A crown of sapphire and white gold fashioned like cresting waves sat atop his seafoam-coloured hair—so exquisite that I often caught myself staring at it.”
A Court of Mist and Fury