The fall and the return

The place

A city of light and music, taken.

Orynth is the royal city of Terrasen, on a hill above the Florine river in the north of Erilea, and the beating heart of Throne of Glass — Brannon Galathynius's ancient capital, seat of the stag-bannered kings, once home to the greatest library in the world. In its bright years it was a city of light and music under an alabaster castle whose opal tower could be seen for miles. Then Adarlan came: King Orlon murdered, the library burned for its books on magic, the city taken. For ten years it stood occupied and grieving, waiting on a queen everyone thought was dead.

What happened here

Two battles bookend everything.

The first was the fall — the doomed stand at Theralis on the plain below, the royal family slaughtered in the palace, little Aelin fleeing into the Florine while Lady Marion Lochan died to buy her the run. The last was the relief: a hundred thousand of Morath's soldiers at the walls, Gavriel dying to seal a breached gate for his son, Manon arriving with five thousand Crochans, the Thirteen spending their lives in the Yielding to bring down the final witch-tower — and Aelin cresting the last hill on the Lord of the North to see her river running black, and charging. Inside the Keep, Erawan was finally unmade; on the field, Maeve fell to Goldryn.

What it means

Home — lost on page one, earned back on the last.

Orynth is home, the thing lost in chapter one and earned back at the end. Every choice Aelin makes gets measured against this hill: the assassin who wouldn't say her own name, the queen who walked back onto the plain her family died on. When the fighting stops she is crowned here, handed Mab's crown by the Little Folk, made Faerie Queen of the West as well as Queen of Terrasen. And the victory cry that goes up across the field isn't her name — it's Yrene's, the healer who ended the dark king. The city gets its music back.