The Prison
A spoiler-free guide to A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR).
Only showing what’s been revealed up to your current progress. Future events, identities, and relationships are hidden.
Overview
The Prison is an ancient mountain jail occupying an island in the Western Isles. It predates the High Lords and the present order of Prythian, and its inmates include creatures and criminals of immense age and danger.
Access is deliberately forbidding — blood-worked gates give onto lightless depths watched by things bound into the stone itself, with its oldest and most dangerous captives held far beneath the mountain’s roots.
Legend holds that pegasi originated on the island and grazed in fair meadows there before the land became the barren, mist-covered home of the Prison.
Important Events
Nesta locates the Harp in a deeply buried chamber beneath the known prison structure. Reaching it exposes a hidden section of the mountain protected by ancient wards and surrounded by cells holding dangerous beings.
Lanthys escapes his cell during the search for the Harp and is killed inside the mountain. The other captives rattle their doors and scream during the breach, then pound against their cells in fear after his death, as though the entire Prison senses what has happened.
Location and Access
The Prison stands on an island in the heart of the Western Isles. Its wards prevent visitors from winnowing inside or flying directly to the entrance, forcing them to cross the island and make the long approach on foot.
Ancient spells also block communication through the mating bond while visitors are inside. The entrance is reached by an exposed climb across a cold, mistbound island before the route descends into the mountain.
Rhys places an additional shield around the entire Prison to prevent enemies from releasing its inmates. Hostile outsiders can pass through the gates when that shield is lowered and they are directed to the entrance.
Layout and Features
Hidden gates made of bone open with blood and lead into lightless, winding passages through the mountain. Listeners and shadow-like guards inhabit the stone itself, and the Bone Carver's cell lies beneath the mountain's roots.
A concealed passage near Lanthys's rune-marked iron door leads through apparently solid rock to a round lower chamber. Extremely old wards protect the room, whose walls bear constellation-like symbols arranged around an eight-pointed star.
The Prison is one of three anomalous barren mountains alongside the sacred Mountain and Ramiel. Like the sacred Mountain, it contains an extensive subterranean complex, suggesting that the site belongs to an ancient pattern beyond its familiar use as a jail.
Function and Rules
Although the Prison lies under Rhys's jurisdiction, it operates almost as a separate court and a law unto itself. Once sentenced captives cross its gates, the mountain claims them permanently.
Confinement is not always imposed: the Bone Carver entered voluntarily and allowed the Prison to contain him because his cell offered refuge from his siblings.
The Prison hears and remembers what its captives are. Amren escaped by binding herself into a new, lesser body that the mountain did not recognize, causing her cell to unlock rather than forcing it open.
The concealed chamber holding the Harp raises the possibility that the prison complex, or its collection of dangerous inmates, also served to hide the artifact beneath layers of monstrous magic.
Residents and Affiliations
The Bone Carver occupies a cell beneath the mountain's roots.
Known captives also include ancient threats such as Lanthys, Lubia, and Blue Annis. Cassian imprisoned Lanthys after tricking him into a mirror bound with ash wood, while Amren is the Prison's exceptional known escapee.