Emerie · The full story

They clipped her wings. She climbed the mountain anyway.

Clipped wings. Unbroken spine.

Windhaven

She survived the house she was born in.

Illyrian, born in Windhaven. Her father clipped her wings himself, badly, after she fought him. Her mother he beat to death, and he made Emerie dig the grave and told the camp it was a miscarriage. He died in the war with Hybern, and when the news came she was glad. We would have been too.

The shop

Her father's. Now hers, and run better.

Cassian met her first, the winter he walked into Proteus's shop and found the daughter running it. He bought every coat, glove and scarf she had and told her to get them to the families who needed them, from the High Lord. She said half the camp wouldn't like it and had it done by sundown. Her uncle and the men of the camp have been trying to take the shop and marry her off ever since. The shop stays hers.

Nesta

Two prickly women recognise each other.

Nesta came in for warmer leathers and noticed the wings. Emerie said the words and offered to try her suppliers, and when Nesta admitted she'd been cut off, Emerie told her to pay when she could. Nesta asked her to train. She said no. She turned up the next day anyway. Training with clipped wings was brutal. She kept coming, partly because she'd found someone who read the same books.

The Valkyries

Second to cut the ribbon.

She failed the ribbon with the rest of them. Then, right after Gwyn, she cut it. Mind-Stilling, the drills, the sleepover where Gwyn taught them bracelets and picked green, purple and gold for her spirit. Nesta and Gwyn were the first people who were ever truly hers.

The Blood Rite

They came for the wrong three women.

Taken from her own bed, in her own shop, with Nesta and Gwyn asleep beside her. She got away from the first Illyrians by jumping into a river, and Nesta found her unconscious on a fallen tree. Her cousin Bellius set a trap for them with Gwyn's nightgown. At the Pass of Enalius she told Nesta how her family had hated Rhys, Cassian and Azriel for reaching the peak, and said she would climb it for her mother.

Carynthian

She carried Gwyn up the mountain.

Gwyn couldn't climb on the arrow wound, so Nesta knocked her out and tied her to Emerie, and Emerie carried her up Ramiel on a body that couldn't fly while Nesta held the Pass below them. Two hands on the onyx stone. The Rite ended, the stone healed them, and she walked out of it the first Illyrian female in history to be named Carynthian. The lesson they meant to teach her landed somewhere else.

Her story · Out of Windhaven

They clipped her wings. She climbed the mountain anyway.

Six moves. The last one is the one her father's camp never thought a female could make.

The shop
Cassian walks into a Windhaven clothier and meets the female who runs it.
The friend
Nesta comes in for warmer leathers. Two prickly women recognise each other.
The training
Into the ring with clipped wings, running the shop between sessions.
The ribbon
Second to cut it, right after Gwyn.
The Rite
Taken from her bed. A river. Bellius's trap. The Pass.
Carynthian
Gwyn on her back, her hands on the stone. First Illyrian female in history.

Her things

A thread and a stone.

The braceletGreen, purple and gold, the colours Gwyn said matched her spirit. Nesta's wish on it lit the way to each other in the Rite.The onyx monolithThe stone at the top of Ramiel. Her hands on it, with Gwyn's. It ended the Rite and healed them both.

Wielding all three

Emerie, at the Pass of Enalius · A Court of Silver Flames

← Back to Emerie

We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research, and I can't put Emerie on a shirt without knowing her right wing opens nearly all the way and her left barely half, 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