Crescent City Series by Sarah J. Maas. This contains spoilers for House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath. These summaries contain adult content, and is intender for readers 18+

Series Timeline

HOEAB:
– Danika comes to Griffin Antiquities to warn Bryce that Phillip Briggs (human rebellion leader in Valbaran) is being released from prison.
– Bryce goes on a date with Reid Redner after Connor begs her to give them a chance. She dumps the human, agrees to see Connor and parties with Juniper and Fury. While she’s out partying, Danika and the Pack of Devils are murdered by a demon.
Twenty-two Month Later:
– Bryce has moved into Danika’s high end apartment after it was left to her in Danika’s will.
Micah strikes a deal with Jesiba to have Bryce help with the newly opened case now that Maximum Tertain was killed the same way as Danika and the Pack of Devils. Bryce and Hunt are assigned to work together.
– Ruhn is ordered by the Autumn King to search for Luna’s Horn because like calls to like, and his Starborn powers might connect him to it because it originally belonged to the first Starborn Prince.
– Bryce buys Obsidian salt in the Meat Market to lure out the Viper Queen to question her about Danika and Maximus. The Viper Queen tells Bryce to look toward where it hurts the most.
– Ruhn uncovers that the demon is a kristallos, a demon made specifically for hunting the Horn.
– There’s a second murder: an acolyte from Luna’s Temple. She learns that the angel she saved in the alley the night Danika died was Micah himself.
– The Raven club explodes while Bryce, Juniper, Hunt and Ruhn are there. The explosives have the mark of the human rebellions as well as a symbol that could be the Horn.
– Bryce and Hunt get approval to meet Phillip Briggs, who is still in prison. They learn that the likelihood of him being involved with the bombing is nonexistent.
– There’s a third murder: in Asphodel Meadows, the victim is a guard from Luna’s temple, one that was on duty the night the Horn was stolen. Declan looks at the Temple footage from the night the Horn was stolen and realizes someone switched the videos. Danika’s mom, Sabine.
– Ruhn seeks info from the witch from the kristallos crime scene and she tells him that if someone thought to treat the Horn as a living being instead of an object, they might have figured out a way to heal it.
– Hunt is attacked by the kristallos and he realizes that its venom blocks magic. They have a run-in with Sabine in which Bryce accuses her of killing Danika. Sabine tells them she was protecting Danika because Danika is the one who stole the Horn.
– Tharion sends them info on bodies found in the Istros that match bites and venom from the kristallos. Bryce realizes that the Pack of Devils, Maximum Tertian, the acolyte and the temple guard were all shredded into piles. They don’t have the same bite marks and venom in their bodies as those found by the folks of Many Waters. The kristallos didn’t kill the victims they’ve been investigating.
– Bryce summons Aidas, Prince of the Chasm. We learn that he and Bryce know each other from when Bryce saw the Oracle at 13. Aidas is shocked to realize that Hunt wields lightning, and that he wears the “black crown” (the Fallen halo tattoo).
– Declan sets up Viktoria to rerun the Danika samples through the Fae Mimir tech. Hunt is called on an assassination and returns to the apartment broken, and Bryce takes care of him. When he wakes to her in his bed, he says it smells like home and eternity. They have a deliciously tension filled morning.
– Jesiba moves a nøkk into the basement tank. Viktoria tells them that the analysis came back with traces of synth: a drug that’s a combo of organic material, tech, and magic (“light that is not light, magic that is not magic”).
– Video chat with Ember snd Randall. Hunt buys Bryce a white opal for joy.
– Tharion tells Bryce that a day before Danika was killed, she was seen dealing synth on the river.
– Bryce has her leg healed and the venom taken out. The venom proves to work as an antidote for synth. Hunt is given the Living Death for his actions against Amelie (when she ruined Danika’s birthday memorial croissants).
– Bryce finally gets into Danika’s Render Industries account, finds a folder called BRYCE, containing only a photo of her leather jacket. Bryce cuts it open and finds a flash drive containing three videos. They are research trials for humans on synth. Bryce concludes that whoever killed the Pack of Devils was high on synth.
– Hunt and Bryce give into their tension. Bryce tries to visit her old apartment but finds the building on fire. Tharion texts her about a synth deal going down. Hunt is there buying synth from the Viper Queen. Micah arrives on the barge and they realize that the Viper Queen had ratted them out to Micah.
Micah tells Bryce that Hunt, Justinian and Victoria thought to buy the drug and use it to overpower their masters. Hunt tells Bryce that two year ago Danika leaked the formula for synth, sold it, was addicted to it. Micah tells her that the night Danika died, she took too much synth, killed her pack and then killed herself – like the humans in those videos. They tell Bryce that the surge of magic from taking synth summoned the kristallos on accident. The black salt in the synth has a sentience, its measurement in the synth formula matches the unholy number of the kristallos.
– Fury appears, gun pointed at Hunt. Hunt tries to plead with Bryce, that he was there to stop it. That he’d seen the trial video and knew this wasn’t right, but that Justinian and Viktoria wouldn’t give it up. Bryce hurls the white opal at Hunt and tells him she never wants to see him again. Fury tells Micah that Bryce is done with them and if they bother her again, Fury will pay them a visit.
– Hunt is given back to Sandriel. Bryce shows up to first try and buy him, then to offer herself in his place. Sandriel melts the Archesian amulet. Sandriel reveals that she knows that Bryce is the daughter of the Autumn King and considers the deal, but Ruhn appears and claims his right of ownership over Bryce, forbidding her from making the trade.
– Bryce goes to the docks and is attacked by the kristallos but Ruhn & Co. save her.
– The Summit: Hypaxia is revealed and crowned. Micah gets called away. Jesiba has Declan put the gallery’s feeds on the screen of the Summit where they watch Micah’s confession: 1) Bryce is the Horn thanks to her tattoo in containing the ground remains of the Horn, 2) Micah set Danika up to steal the Horn for him. He killed Danika for not giving it to him, 3) He used Bryce’s need for vengeance to find it again, 4) he’s responsible for the the bombing at the Raven
– Micah injects Bryce with synth and then drops Syrinx into the nøkk tank to get her to yield. He blasts her full of magic but nothing happens. She uses a book to force him into the bathroom. Bryce faces her Ordeal and rescues Syrinx. Lehabah sacrifices herself to buy Bryce enough time to get The Godslayer Rifle ready. She shoots Micah in the head. She dismembers his entire body before lighting it on fire. She then vacuums up his ashes.
– Micah’s experiment actually worked and all the gates turn into portals to Hel. Bryce fights her way to Asphodel Meadows and then uses her Starborn magic to seal the gate at Old Square. Sandriel tells the Asteri, they bomb Crescent City, Hypaxia removes Hunt’s halo and he kills Sandriel. They rush to Bryce, he shields her from what would be a fatal bombing. Bryce makes the drop with Danika’s last kernel of energy – her first light heals all of the city and Hunt.
– Rigelus calls Bryce and warns her that she needs to stay in her lane or else she and Hunt will have to be dealt with.
– Epilogue, Aidas and Jesiba: Aidas tells Jeisba that Bryce carries Theia’s light. That Hunt’s father would be proud of him and that Prince Pelias actually killed Theia.

HOSAB:
Three months after the events in HOEAB
– Prologue: Sophie goes to Kavalla to rescue her brother Emil. She is ultimately captured and thrown into the ocean by the Hind, while her brother and agent Silverbow are rescued by Pippa, with Ophion.
– Cormac arrives and announces that he and Bryce have been betrothed by their fathers.
– Two weeks after Sophie is sent into the ocean, Tharion goes looking for her corpse and finds nothing but her blocks and chains with unlocked shackles.
– Ithan shows up at Bryce’s apartment, after being beaten and shunned by Sabine for a quote in an article.
– Cormac tells Bryce that their union has been foretold by the Oracle in Avallen – “That our mingling would bring great prosperity to our people.”
– Celestina, the new Governor, comes to Crescent City along with Pollux (the Hammer) and Bastian Argos (the Helhound)
– Tharion finds emails between Sophie and Danika (BansheeFan56) regarding “Dusk’s Truth” and “Project Thurr.” He takes the info to Bryce.
– Fury reveals that Danika was a bloodhound (could scent bloodlines, the secrets in them).
– Aidas visits: he reveals that Bryce has Theia’s light while Ruhn has Pelias’s light. He reveals that Pelias was an imposter Prince who killed Theia and forcibly married Helena. Aidas tells her that the 15,000 year old war is reaching a crescendo. “Hel’s armies shall strike at your command, Bryce Quinlan.” Before disappearing, he outs Cormac as agent Silverbow (*we find out that this was actually Rigelus).
– Cormac and Bryce make a deal. They’ll help with Emile if he teaches her about her Starborn magic and they’ll keep their engagement as a rouse.
– Tharion tells Ithan the truth about Micah and Sandriel. Ithan breaks the apartment’s table and out comes Danika’s college papers, research on the Asteri, and a blank paper titled “Dusk’s Truth.”
– Cormac and Ruhn meet regarding Agent Daybright. Cormac wants Ruhn to reestablish contact to work on a hit on the Spine (railway) so they can get info on the new mech-suits the Asteri are working on.
– Hunt has a visit from Apollion (Prince of the Pit, Stareater): He tells Hunt that he doesn’t even begin to understand what Hunt and Bryce might accomplish together. Apollion calls them conduits.
– Ruhn makes contact with Daybright and they become Night and Day.
– Ruhn is taken by a Reaper into the sewers where we learn that Cormac can teleport (winnow; is a starborn gift), and the Starword sings for Bryce and is capable of killing the unkillable.
– Bryce and Hunt declare their love for each other and decide they are mates.
– In the Bone Quarter, Bryce and Hunt learn that the Sailing is only so that the Under-King may determine which souls have enough energy left to feed the Deadgate with their secondlight (energy from the dead), and that the Sleeping City (the afterlife) is a lie. Bryce and Hunt face the UK’s hound – and realize that A) Hunt can funnel energy from things, convert it into his own and channel it into Bryce, and B) Bryce can use that energy in conjunction with the Starsword
– The Captain of the Dreadwolves (the Hind’s spy team) is Mordoc, Danika’s father.
– Ithan, Tharion and Bryce visit the mystics. They talk with Thanatos, Prince of the Ravine. He tells them Connor is still in the Bone Quarter.
– Declan uncovers that Danika looked in one of Jesiba’s books on Wolf geology going back 15,000 years ago to when the Rift opened.
– Ithan speaks with the female mystic and realizes she’s an alpha wolf, he takes the fire sprites (and a dragon shifter, Ariadne, no one knew about)
– Bryce, Hunt, Ruhn, Cormac and Tharion meet Pippa to see the mech suit. Hunt determines that it’s made with gorsian stone, and able to draw fistfight to it, allowing the suits to have infinite power and weapons. Hunt destroys the suit and all of the weapons and ammo. They are chase by the Hind but rescued by one of the Ocean Queen’s city-ships (Commander Sendes). Ruhn reveals that Bryce and Hunt are true mates, like in the Fae sense.
– Bryce and Hunt have sex for the first time, power share, and teleport. Commander Sendes tells them they recovered Sophie’s dead body – on which she had carved a series of numbers and letters.
– Bryce reveals to Hunt that she’s been keeping Emile, a powerless human, with the Viper Queen this whole time. She arranged for him to be adopted by her parents.
– Dragon fire can harm the Princes of Hel.
– Ruhn assigns Ithan and Ariadne to protect Hypaxia in exchange for her trying to contact Connor with her necromancy. Ari disappears on her first assignment.
– The Autumn King legally changes Bryce’s name to Danaan.
– Autumn Equinox: Bryce publicly announces that Hunt is her mate. Ruhn attempts to meet Day but runs into the Harpy and the Hind. Hypaxia and Celestia are in love. Hypaxia and Ithan fail in summoning Connor, and summon the Under-King instead.
– Tharion finds Ari at the Meat Market, fighting for the Viper Queen.
– The Under-King leads Bryce, Hunt, Ruhn and Hypaxia into a trap for Pippa at Urd’s temple. They escape and Baxian reveals he was Danika’s mate. He tells them that they met because of Danika’s research into lineage. He gave Danika the alpha-numerical code for a room in the Asteri’s archives (the same code that Sophie carved into her arm) after seeing Sandriel go into the room and emerge horrified. They confirm that Sophie made it inside the room too.
– Tharion breaks his engagement with the Princess and swears himself to the Viper Queen. Ithan tells the Prime about the female wolf mystic and learns she is another Fendyr heir.
– Ruhn speaks with Day but he thinks she’s in danger so he rushes to the group and begs them to enact their plan to get into the Asteri’s archives the next day. Cormac and Tharion handle a distraction, by blowing up a lab and drawing Pippa to them. Ruhn, Bryce and Hunt go to the archives.
– Bryce sees the pipes and power level screens and realizes that Vanir are energy sources for the Asteri, endless sources of food; firstlight and secondlight. She finds the Dawn room and sees the history of their multi-planetary conquests; she realizes that Midgard is a planned farm and Hel once tried to save them but failed.
– Tharion and Cormac create a distraction at the lab, five of the Asteri come, Cormac explodes the lab, Pippa and himself while Tharion runs for the water.
– Ruhn, Bryce and Hunt are shackled. Ruhn realizes that the Hind is Day by her scent. Lidia kills the Harpy and then Pollux and her take them to Rigelus, who admits that he impersonated Aidas to steer them toward the rebel path. Bryce tells Rigelus she’ll help him open a portal if he spares Hunt and Ruhn. When she says goodbye, Ruhn drops something into her pocket. Bryce and Hunt release their shackles, Bryce grabs the Starsword, they battle Rigelus, and Hunt charges her enough that she portals to another world.
– Hunt is re-enslaved by Rigelus himself, and seems to forget everything (?)
– Bryce lands in Prythian; Amren reveals the Starsword is the pair to Az’s Truth-teller, Gwydion.
– Ithan wakes the lost Fendyr heir.

House of Earth and Blood

At one point, the date is said to be: April 12, 15035

Part One: The Hollow

Chapters 1-5:
– Bryce is working at Griffin Antiquities when Danika shows up. Lehabah doesn’t like Danika inside the gallery. Bryce warns her that Jesiba, her employer and supremely powerful enchantress, doesn’t want Danika to store her stuff in their supply closet.
– Bryce tells Danika that she’s mad at her because her back tattoo hurts still. Danika’s matching tattoo is already healed. Bryce muses that it’s because Danika is full-blooded Vanir, while Bryce is half human.
– Danika needs to shower at the Gallery because she has a meeting with the City Heads (seven people). Danika’s grandfather is Prime of the Valbaran Wolves, her mother (Sabine) the Prime Apparent, but it is whispered that Danika will be tapped for Prime when the time comes. Sabine has been salty ever since their family’s heirloom sword called to Danika on her 18th birthday.
– Danika tells Bryce that Phillip Briggs is being released that day: leader of the human rebellion in Valbara (confined to the northern parts of Pangera, across the Haldran Sea). The humans want to overthrow the Vanir that oppress them, but specifically, the Asteri – who rule the planet of Midgard from the Eternal City. Phillip had been captured and arrested by Danika and her pack, the Pack of Devils.
– Danika goes to leave and Bryce says she’ll come too, that Jesiba has her looking for the missing Luna’s Horn (ancient Fae relic). The horn had been stolen during the power outage.
– Danika is the only one in the Pack of Devils who hasn’t made the drop into immortality. Danika tells Bryce that her bother, Ruhn, will be at the meeting.
– Danika urges Bryce to stop looking for the horn, that she should lead Jesiba around but not actually put herself in danger by looking for it.
– Bryce wears an Archesian amulet (a knot of tree entwined circles). Ember Quinlan, Bryce’s mom calls. Randall, her step-father taught her how to defend herself, how to shoot. Bryce and Danika tell Ember to postpone their trip to the city.
– Bryce and Danika go to the Heart Gate in Old Square. We learn that the gates were originally communication devices for the guards, that it takes a drop of magic to power them. We learn that Danika is equally feared and revered by people.

“The power shall always belong to those who give their lives to the city.”

– A superstition grew that the gates could grant wishes, that to offer a drop of magic at the gate is to make an offering to the five gods.
– Bryce and Danika wanted to make the Drop together: take the plunge into their matured power together, encounter whatever lay at the bottom of their souls, and then race back up to life before the lack of oxygen kills them. Danika was expected to come into so much power that she would potentially outmatch the Fae King. Danika has the potential to become the Alpha of all wolves on the planet.
Fury: made the drop at 21, had been forced upon her.
– Bryce comes home from work to find the Pack of Devils in her house. She has some flirty moments with Danika’s enforcer, Connor Holstrom. Danika tells Bryce that they released Briggs. Danika also mentions that two CCU students were killed near the temple where the horn is kept during the blackout. Danika was supposed to be watching the temple at that time and Sabine is blaming her for their deaths.
– Danika reminds Bryce that she has a date tonight with Reid Redner. Reid is a human, something that Bryce looks for in a partner because she doesn’t want to deal with mating and mates that sometimes comes with Vanir. Reid works for his father’s business, a human owner magi-tech company, Redner Industries, where Danika does part time work.
– Bryce gets ready for her date. Before she leaves, Connor corners her in the kitchen and lays it out that he’s ready to take her out, doesn’t want to keep dancing around their attraction for each other. Bryce leaves without confirming or denying.
– She walks to the restaurant for her date, but Reid is late. She receives a text from Connor telling her that he wants her and wants to give them a chance to try. Then Reid shows up. He tells her he was late because of some calls regarding the Pangeran conflict: 40 years of humans fighting the rule of the Asteri. Vanir have been in charge for 15,000 years, keeping humans under their thumbs as slaves and workers.
– There are slaves in Crescent City, many among the 33rd, marked with SPQM slave tattoos on their wrists.
– Bryce relinquished her allegiance to House of Earth and Blood in order to accept the civitas rank her father got her – she now belong with House of Sky and Breath.
– Bryce receives another message, from Danika, asking her to try and give Conner a chance. That he’s been waiting years for her. Bryce realizes that this date is terrible and there’s no reason for her to keep on with Reid, so she dumps him and leaves the restaurant, calling Fury and Juniper to see if they want to go out. They all agree to meet at the White Raven.
– Bryce waits for her friends and messages Connor back, telling him she’ll go on a date with him. Fury shows up. Bryce doesn’t know what kind of Vanir Fury is, or what house she belongs to. Bryce gets trashed. When she becomes conscious enough to recognize things, she’s walking down her street without any memory of how she got there. When she arrives to her apartment building, she doesn’t notice that she’s walking on glass, or that everything stinks. It’s not until she drops her keys next to a puddle of blood that she realizes something is wrong.
– Bryce opens the already broken into door and sees nothing but carnage. The entire Pack of Devils lay around the apartment in bloody heaps of flesh. Danika and Connor are dead.
– She hears a noise from outside the apartment and realizes that the attacker is out there. Bryce chases the beast, like nothing she’s seen before, and corners it in an alley where it’s feasting on an angel. Bryce smacks it with the table leg she took from her apartment. It rears gashes her thigh with its fangs. She hits it again and then it runs away. Bryce is faced with either chasing the beast or helping the angel. She walks toward the angel and presses one hand against his chest wound while she digs out his phone and calls for help. Then the drugs pull her back under.

Chapters 6 & 7:
– Bryce is taken to the processing facility a few blocks from the Comitium by Isaiah. Hunt comes to inquire about whether she has talked. She hasn’t. Isaiah hands him a file on Bryce: 23 years old, near negligible power rating.
– Hunt had been on the scene when they found Bryce in the alley. She was near feral and he had to tell her to calm down. She held his gaze the entire time that he stapled her up. Hunt reads the file and realizes that Danika and the Pack of Devils are dead. Isaiah tells him that Phillip Briggs has been arrested for their murder.
– Sabine storms into the building and starts immediately accusing Bryce of stealing their family’s sword. Shes obviously angry and grieving, screaming about how terrible Bryce is and that Danika did this to herself by putting her nose where it doesn’t belong.
– Viktoria, the wraith, comes to conduct the interview with Bryce. Vik shows Bryce the text threads between her and Danika leading up to Danika’s death. Then she plays the audio picked up from the camera in the hallway of their apartment. It’s graphic and terrible. Hunt orders them to stop the video.
Bryce snaps and throws the table and chair against the room before collapsing in on herself. Isaiah gets a call stating that Ruhn Danaan, Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae is demanding that they let Bryce go. They have no choice but to comply.
– Ruhn storms inside looking for Bryce, but they’d already sent her upstairs. He demands to speak with Briggs, but he hasn’t arrived yet. Ruhn threatens them to stay away from Bryce.
– Six days later, Bryce visits the Bone Quarter. Ithan had called Bryce to tell her that she’s not welcome at the Sailing.

Part Two: The Trench
Twenty-Two Months Later

Chapters 8-10:
– Bryce steps out of the bathroom at the Raven after screwing a lion shifter, who she realizes thinks she’s a prostitute. She’s there for a business meeting with one of Jesiba’s clients – Maximus Tertian.
Bryce sees a firstlight party in the club and is reminded that she’ll never get to do that with Danika like they planned.
– Bryce closes the deal with Maximus and is trying to leave but he stops her, trying to get her to offer a little sugar with the deal. Then Ruhn walks in, and Bryce is able to get away.
– She speaks with Ruhn and he tells her that the club owner, Riso called him for backup. He also tells her that the Autumn King has asked that she lay low since the Summit (every 10 years, Valbara’s rulers come together to debate issues and deal with whatever the Asteri have ordered) is approaching, he wants Bryce to lay low.
– Ruhn walks Bryce home (at a distance) to her apparent that she got in Danika’s will.
– Hunt returns to his room at the Comitium after doing a job for Micah. Naomi tells him that Micah wants him and Isaiah to investigate something. Hunt is currently working for Micah to earn his chance for freedom. Micah offered him a deal whereby he must kill the same number of people that were killed by the rebellion. 2,217. In four years, he’s killed 82.
– Hunt and Isaiah go to Griffin Antiquities. Bryce doesn’t let them in and gives them a hard time but Hunt insists they must speak, that it’s about a murder. They tell her that Maximus Tertian died two hours after his meeting with Bryce. He was killed the exact same way as Danika and her pack, suggesting that Phillip Briggs didn’t murder them after all.
– They ask her about her whereabouts and alibis, then tell her that Micah is on his way to speak with her. She realizes that people are dying after interacting with her. Bryce calls Jesiba, to warn her that Micah wants to speak with her too.

Chapters 11-15:
– Micah comes to the gallery. Bryce sets them up to video-call with Jesiba. Micah tells Jesiba that he wants Bryce to assist with finding the true murderer. Micah tells Jesiba that he wants the murderer found before the Summit in one month. Micah tells them that the new Witch Queen will be announced and that Sandriel is coming for the Summit.
– Micah says they need Bryce because she’s the only person alive to have seen the demon. He also mentions that Danika and Maximus were friends. He wants Bryce to use her knowledge of Danika to add new info to the investigation. Hunt orders Bryce to work on a list of suspects before leaving.
– Micah tells Hunt that if he solves this murder before the Summit, he’ll lower Hunt’s quota to only ten more assignments. Micah leaves and Isaiah tells Hunt he needs to go speak with Ruhn, but that he’s stationing Hunt on guard duty for Bryce to keep him away from the Comitium, and Sandriel. Hunt apparently broke Ruhn’s nose the last time they were in the same room.
– Jesiba tells Bryce to be careful and keep Hunt close. Bryce reasons that even if it wasn’t Briggs who killed Danika and the pack, it was still a very targeted attack.
– Bryce is slowly trying to leave employment with Jesiba, but she owes her debts.
– Ruhn goes to see his father, the Autumn King in FiRo. He reminisces about how the King hasn’t said Bryce’s name in 12 years, not since her first and only visit to see her father. Ruhn had kept in touch with Bryce after her visit to the Oracle until they had a fight.
– Ruhn’s mother isn’t considered Queen or Consort but was picked by the Autumn King for breeding. The King asks Ruhn to use his Starborn powers (which are negligible) to direct light through a prism. His father records everything in The Old Language from when they first arrived to Midgard through the Northern Rift.
– Ruhn asks his father what he’s even doing and he replies that he’s studying how light moves through the world and how it can be shaped.
– Two major Rites for all Fae children: a visit to the Oracle at 13, and then their Ordeal.
– The King warns Ruhn that he will need to marry someone for political advantages considering the war raging overseas between the Asteri and the humans. The King offers Hypaxia, daughter of the deceased Witch Queen, Hecuba as an option.
– The Autumn King also demands that Ruhn find Luna’s Horn. The King explains that the Fae have long been fading, their magic is waning with each generation. “Find the Horn, Ruhn. If war comes to these shores, our people will need it in more ways than one.”
– The King tells Ruhn that with his Starborn powers, he will be more likely to find it because the Horn was possessed by Pelias, the first Starborn Prince; like calls to like.
– Ruhn leaves angry, remembering what the Oracle told him all those years ago, “the royal bloodline shall end with you, Prince.”
– When Bryce gets home, she realizes that Hunt is on the roof across from her apartment. He calls her from the roof and they talk. She refuses to listen to him, so after they hang up, he flies into her window and argues with her about how the case should be handled.
– Hunt muses that chimera are able to pick locks and open doors, as well as move between places as if they’re simply moving between rooms, yet Bryce has a cage for Syrinx. In fact, Syrinx appeared next to him at dawn and bit him in the butt.
– Hunt is waiting for Bryce to get her nails done the next morning. When Bryce comes out of the salon, Hunt is pissed and demands to know why she’s ignoring the fact that she was ordered by the Governor to investigate the murders.
– At work, Lehabah wants Bryce to allow Hunt into the gallery, but she declines. We learn that Sprites are forever cast as slaves ever since they joined the angel’s rebellion 200 years ago. They were even expelled from House of Sky and Breath. Bryce bought Syrinx from Jesiba. Lehabah guards the Library because there are books down there that are vicious, and her flames are the threat they need to behave.

Chapters 16-20:
– Ruhn is stoned when Bryce shows up. He sees starlight-like aura around her, and notices that the Starsword is glowing, practically singing. She drags him living space to sober him up.
– Alone, she asks him what he knows about the night Maximus died. Specifically about the Viper Queen because she needs to speak with her. Ruhn is pissed that Micah has ordered her to look into this. She blows him off and he follows her outside to see that she’s being protected by Hunt, which enrages him. He tells Hunt not to allow Bryce to see the Viper Queen then Hunt follows Bryce’s departure.
– Hunt tails Bryce while she tells him that she researched Maximum and found out that he had a girlfriend, which happened to be the female who did her nails that morning. The girlfriend told Bryce that there’s no way Danika and Maximus knew each other, but they had a common associate, the Viper Queen, who is now Bryce’s number one suspect.
– Hunt walks her to her apartment and then she sneaks out on to her scooter. She arrives in the Meat Market and waits patiently for Hunt to arrive. He does, and says he going to kill her. They head into the underground market.
– They find a salt vendor. Hunt realizes that the merchant is, shockingly, scared of Bryce. Bryce asks for Obsidian Salt (capable of summoning very large, very bad demons). The merchant claims he doesn’t deal in Obsidian, but Bryce calls his bluff. She threatens the merchant with Jesiba’s enforcers and he finally gives in and she purchases the Obsidian salt.
– The Viper Queen intercepts them on their way out of the market. She takes them to her office, which is much dingier than Bryce or Hunt expected.
– Bryce asks the Viper Queen about her relationship with Danika and Maximus’ dealings with the Meat Market. She has no new info for them, but hands over a flash drive with info on her alibi for the night that both Danika and Maximus died. The Viper Queen tells Bryce to “Look toward where it hurts the most. That’s always where the answers are.” They leave.
– The next day at work, Bryce tries to make a timeline of Danika’s last days and ends up inviting Hunt inside. Lehabah wants to see Hunt. He flirts with her and she eats it up. Bryce takes him into the Library below the showroom. Lehabah tells Hunt that Bryce bought Syrinx’s freedom. Bryce asks Hunt to ask her questions so she can retrace Danika’s steps on her last days. They work on the list and Ruhn texts her to come to Luna’s Temple.

Chapters 21-25:
– Ruhn waits at Luna’s Temple, encased in shadow. Bryce and Hunt arrive and Ruhn tells them he’s been tasked with finding the Horn.
– Pelias & The Horn: A weapon welded by Pelias, the first Starborn Prince, during the First Wars. The Fae forged it in their home world, and used it to battle the demon hordes once they made the Crossing. The Stareater bred the kristallos demon to hunt the Horn (made from the spilled blood of Pelias; a beast twisted out of light and darkness). During the final battle of the First Wars, Prince Pelias and the Prince of the Pit (Stareater) faced off. Pelias banished the demons back to Hel with the Horn as the Stareater struck his fatal blow. Pelias sealed the Northern Rift forever. Sealing the rift cracked the Horn in two, rendered powerless, which is why it was in the temple.
– They all agree that the person summoning the demon must be looking for the Horn, and further, because the kristallos is hunting within Crescent City, the horn must be there. Ruhn admits that he can track the horn just like the demon because of his blood.
– Hunt calls Justinian and asks him to research the kristallos.
– While Hunt is on the phone, Bryce asks Ruhn if their father is the one summoning the demon. He is adamant that he is not. They fight about their bad history, how Ruhn called her a half-breed slut. She storms off toward Hunt and they leave.
– The next day, Bryce is asked to send files to Jesiba from her office. On the wall is Godslayer. Jesiba tells Bryce she hasn’t heard anything about the Horn.
– Hunt calls Bryce to inform her that there’s been another murder, near the Gate in the Old Square. Hunt and Bryce go to investigate. It’s an acolyte from Luna’s temple. Bryce is triggered by the crime scene and Ruhn steps in to remove her. He, Bryce and Hunt have words and she walks away. Hunt follow and tells her that he was there that night that they found Bryce after the attack. Hunt asks her how she survived that night and she simply says it ran away. He reveals that the angel she saved was Micah.
– Bryce is angry that no one told her that the angel she rescued survived. Then she becomes enraged when she finds out, that until moments before, she was a suspect to Hunt. She runs until she reaches the Raven, then slips into the alcove on the side of the building.
– Bryce’s Memory: she and Danika are kneeling on the asphalt, shredded from a motorcycle crash, hands behind their heads as men search for bullets to execute them. Danika tells Bryce that she loves her for the first time. Bryce tells Danika to close her eyes.
– Hunt follows Bryce, knowing that he really messed up by taking her to the crime scene and then admitting the he thought she was a suspect. Hunt follows Bryce into the club where she’s meeting with Juniper. Hunt introduces himself and he and June order food. Hunt tries to take her alcohol away only to realize she’s drinking water and hasn’t drank since Danika died.
– Bryce storms off and June follows. Ruhn approaches Hunt. Ruhn says that the owner called him to tell him Bryce was at the club. He tells Hunt that Bryce wanted to be in the ballet but stopped dancing competitively, then stopped dancing altogether after Danika died. Hunt looks to where Bryce and Juniper are speaking and the club explodes.

Chapters 26-30:
– The club explodes and Bryce lunges for Juniper, protecting her from the blast. Hunt flies over to them with Ruhn and gets Bryce up. Juniper hits Bryce for protecting her when June made the drop two years ago and Bryce hasn’t.
– Ruhn gives Hunt keys and an address and he takes Bryce to what seems to be a party house. She’s in shock. He tends to her wounds as she explains that she covered Juniper to try and keep her from injury that could affect her ballet career. Hunt sees Bryce’s leg scar from the kristallos and realizes that all her limping and the scar means that she never got it healed. He feels guilty for having haphazardly stapling it together the night of the attack, for treating it like a solider’s battlefield wound.
– Ruhn comes home and tells them that the human rebels are most likely to blame – that they found their logo on the explosives. Ruhn also says there was a curved C shape that could be construed as the Horn. Hunt insists they need to speak to Briggs, who is in Adrestia prison.
– Ruhn warns Bryce that he told the Autumn King that Bryce is assisting his search for the Horn, and that the King wants her to have a live-in body guard. Bryce volunteers Hunt.
– Ruhn asks to see Jesiba’s library to see if any books jump out at him. Bryce says she’s let him in if she can have access to Declan and his skills to track Danika the week she died.
– The Autumn King tells Ruhn that no matter what happens, the angels cannot get their hands on the Horn
-Hunt and Bryce return to her apartment. Hunt asks her why she won’t make the Drop and she admits that she was waiting to do it with Danika. Hunt asks Bryce if she and Danika were lovers, because she mourns Danika the way Hunt mourned Shahar. She tells him no, but that the Pack of Devils was her everything.
– Bryce’s mom calls to make sure she’s okay after hearing the news about the Raven and Bryce lies that everyone is okay and uninvolved. Hunt admits that he has high stakes in solving the case too, that Micah offered him a deal.
– In the guest room, Hunt sees pictures and realizes that Bryce’s adoptive dad is Randall Silago, famed sharp-shooter. Hunt wakes to the smell of a male in his room, but it’s only Syrinx. Hunt checks on Bryce, but she’s still sleeping. Then Juniper walks in the front door. She drops off some croissants and leaves for rehearsal.
– Bryce and Hunt bicker about him being an alpha-hole. On the way to work, they discuss why she and Ruhn have a stilted relationship, and how she hates her father almost more than anyone in Midgard. Hunt admits Sandriel is at the top of his hate list.
– Ruhn comes to Jesiba’s library, and his powers direct him to a Fae romance book. Declan sends over Danika’s coordinates. They realize that Danika was stationed at the temple for two days, including the night of the blackout when the Horn was stollen.
– Ruhn finds information of Pelias: Pelias was the high general for a Fae Queen named Theia. Lady Helena was Theia’s daughter. Queen Theia was Starborn, as was her daughter Helena. Theia had a younger daughter with Starborn power as well, but isn’t mentioned in the text. “Night-haired Helena, from whose golden skin poured starlight and shadows.” The text says that the Horn was made for Fae like them, and only worked when starlight flowed through it. The Starborn powers can be channeled through magic objects, and bring them to life. The text claims that the Horn is irreparably broken and can only be fixed by “light that is not light; magic that is not magic.”
– Hunt suggests the they speak with the Oracle about the Horn but Bryce and Ruhn refuse to speak with them.
– Hunt takes her to the Comitium to retrieve his things. On the way there they stop to get Bryce a new phone since her was destroyed in the explosion. Bryce looks through Hunt’s phone and sasses him about having hardly any photos. She takes a selfie on his phone. In his room, Bryce asks if he ever regrets the rebellion but he can’t say much on it while they’re at the Comitium.

Chapters 31-35:
– They go to leave and run into Micah with Sandriel. Hunt freezes, unable to kneel or do anything, so Bryce takes her phone out and proceeds to snap selfies with the Archangels, then she tries to drag Hunt away. Micah interferes and forces an explanation for why they’re there. Then he asks Bryce to dinner and she declines. They leave.
– On the roof, Hunt thanks Bryce for saving him with Sandriel and then he scoops her up and away they fly. They drop his stuff off at her apartment and then head back to the Antiquities where she works until close.
– On the way home, Hunt gets a call from Micah – he has a job for him. Hunt calls Justinian to come watch Bryce and he goes to do Micah’s dirty work. He comes back to Bryce’s after trying to piece himself back together from murdering people, and Bryce tells him she recorded the Sunball game for him.
– Hunt visits the Oracle, a Sphinx. He asks her why someone is seeking the Horn and she tells him they want to reopen the Northern Rift and make a doorway to another world. She cannot see how the Horn can be repaired, only that I can be. She cannot see who seeks it. The Oracle tells Hunt, “You remind me of that which was lost long ago… I had not realized it might ever appear again.” She also tells him, “keep well away from Bryce Quinlan.”
– Hunt meets up with Bryce and Ruhn and explains about opening the Rift. Ruhn suggests that maybe the Horn could be healed with magic, like a medwitch might heal a wound.
– Back at Jesiba’s, Hunt asks Bryce about her Oracle visit, as the Oracle tried to tell Hunt about it. Bryce explains that when the Oracle looked into her future, she started screaming and pawing at her eyes. She went blind for a week. Her father called her a disgrace and banished her.
– Hunt gets the call that Briggs is ready to be questioned. They meet with him under the Comitium. He doesn’t even know what year it is, and admits that his followers would never commit crimes in his name, given how he failed them. He doesn’t know anything about the Horn, but does admit to knowing Danika in some sense. He tells them that she was on her way to begin a rebel sympathizer and he’d hoped that she would be an asset to the anti-Asteri cause. Hunt realizes that he was just as fanatic with Shahar as Briggs is and it leaves him unsettled.
– At home, Hunt tells Bryce that seeing Briggs brought up a lot of stuff about his time being tortured after the rebellion was squashed. He was tortured for nine years.
– They continue to work the case, looking at timelines and suspects. Hunt suggests that they relook at the footage of the temple the night the Horn was stollen; something might have been missed, and even more, Danika might have known who took it and was hiding it.

Chapters 36 & 37:
– Bryce and Hunt meet Declan, Tristan and Ruhn at a shooting range. Bryce asks Declan if he’ll look at the Temple footage again, and he agrees. She asks Ruhn to keep their meeting from the Autumn King for a few days.
– The boys challenge Bryce to a shootout and she accepts. She shoot the same place in the target three times in a row, only making one hole. Bryce looks at Hunt like she’s worried that showing him this side of her will change his opinion. Instead, he simply picks up the gun and shoot a single round through the same hole she did. “I see you, Quinlan… And I like all of it.”
– Isaiah calls to say there’s another murder, this time in Asphodel Meadows. Everyone packs up to go to the scene, and Hunt pulls Bryce away to tell her that he can go alone if she needs him to. She tells him that she needs to go, so he helps her thought some breaths to get her calmed down.Bryce is amazed that she let herself be vulnerable with Hunt when she’s never let anyone see her that way before.
– Isaiah tells them the victim is a guard from Luna’s temple, one that was on duty the night the Horn was stolen. Isaiah also tells them that the demon knew how to stay out of the cameras, which means whoever is summoning it must have some clearance to know where the cameras are.
– Bryce pulls up a map of the city and marks where the murders happened and realizes that they all happened near ley lines – highways of power. Hunt calls in to Viktoria to check for blips in the power grid around the time of the murders, to determine if the perpetrator is using the grid to summon the demon.
– Hunt and Bryce leave the scene and he tells her about Shahar. He grew up in her territory and rose through her ranks before he fell into her bed. He loved her, and believed in her vision for the world. “Another dreamer crushed under the boot heel of the Asteri.” Bryce tells him about a terrible hookup she had with a vampry. She asks him if he still has a thing for Shahar, and he responds “until the day I die.”
– Sabine appears from a crowd and stalks toward them, demanding to know where Danika’s sword is. Hunt manages to get them away from Sabine.
– Declan calls Bryce with news on the footage analysis. He tells them that when he listened to the footage, he heard people in FiRo, halfway across the city from the temple. Someone swapped the footage. Declan tells them that he already looked into who it was… Sabine Fendyr.

Part Three: The Canyon

Chapters 38-40:
– Hunt now strongly suspects that Sabine could be the one summoning the demon. Hunt calls Isaiah and asks him to read the transcripts from when Sabine stormed the holding rooms the night Danika died. It sounds like she’s saying that she wanted Danika to keep her mouth shut about something and blamed her death on her inability to do so.
– Ruhn visits a medwitch clinic to see the witch that was on scene for the latest murder. They have lunch together. Ruhn asks her if she knows of any way that a magical object might be healed. The witch says that it’s possible someone thought to treat the Horn as a living thing instead of an object – someone might have figured out a way.
– Isaiah joins Hunt on top of the gallery and informs him that Vik has news on the power grid research. Hunt flies Bryce to Vik’s lab. Viktoria found a temp drop of 77 degrees near Moonwood last night, a summoning. Vik was able to trace its movements to the Den where it disappeared before reappearing in FiRo, where its paw was caught on camera.

Chapters 41-45:
– They pick up Syrinx from Jesiba’s to take him back to the apartment. Then they go to the Rose Gate in FiRo, where the kristallos demon was caught on camera. Hunt realizes that maybe they were wrong about the ley lines and that the kristallos is actually choosing those locations for their proximity to sewer grates – which would allow the demon to move around invisibly.
– They discuss going into the sewers, but ultimately they need to be more prepared. Hunt suggests they speak with someone from the House of Many Waters since the sewers dump into the Istros.
They go back to the apartment to shower and warm up. Hunt’s bathroom is out of soap, so Bryce directs him to the linen closet for some more. Hunt finds her box of Starlight Fancy horses unicorns & her unicorn Pegasus, Jelly Jubilee. Bryce tells Hunt that playing with them made her feel normal with the other kids.
– The next day, they visit Tharion Ketos at the Istros. Hunt asks him to keep an eye and ear out for strange things appearing in the waters. Bryce sees a messenger otter and freaks out.
– When they leave Tharion, Hunt explains that they started working together on a string of mer murders last year in which Tharion’s little sister was killed. They caught the killer together.
– Back at the Antiquities, Hunt asks Bryce why she kept Danika’s leather jacket and she says that if she’d given it to Sabine, it would have been thrown away. Bryce says that her back tattoo is supposed to say the same thing as the jacket, “through love, all is possible.” Bryce says that when Danika visited the Oracle, all the Oracle told her was through love, all is possible. Hunt tells her that his Sunball hat is the first thing he bought himself with his first paycheck from Micah.
– Bryce and Hunt have a heated moment in which she reminds herself over and over that she cannot hook up with the Umbra Mortis.
– Bryce goes to the Den in Moonwood to confront Sabine. The gates are guarded by members of the Black Rose Wolf Pack, led by Amelie Ravenscroft with Ithan Holstrom as second. Amelie causes some strife, not really letting them come in the compound but Ithan steps up and tell her that Bryce isn’t worthy the hassle of fighting back.
– We find out that Ithan and Connor’s parents died and Connor raised Ithan during his teen and young adult years. Ithan was on track to be a pro Sunball player.
– Ithan takes them to Sabine. Bryce reminisces about how to the wolves, she and Connor were fated, an item, all but mated, and wolves takes loyalty very seriously.
– Their meeting with Sabine goes nowhere and Bryce storms out before it gets worse. Bryce tells Ithan the murders are starting again, and he needs to be careful. They run into the Prime on the way out.
– Ithan catches up to them and tells Bryce that she never deserved Connor and that Sabine wants her dead. Bryce tells Ithan that Connor would be ashamed to see that he’s letting Amalie run rampant.
– Later, Hunt and Bryce are talking and she tells him that people viscerally hate her for the messages that leaked after Danika’s death. That some packs sing a song they made up about her hooking up with someone that night. She remembers, but doesn’t tell Hunt, that people harassed her so bad, she almost jumped off the roof.
– They speak about her father, Randall. She tells Hunt that she had to fight him, physically, to earn the right to live in Crescent City.
– Bryce and Juniper are talking on the phone and June mentions that her instructor is hosting some dance classes open to the public, and she thinks Bryce should go.
– Hunt is away having beers with this angel friends when he gets the call that Bryce left the apartment, even after promising she wouldn’t. Naomi is tracking her toward FiRo.
– Hunt goes to the coordinates that Naomi sent him and asks Bryce what she’s doing breaking her promise to stay at home. Shelby admits that being home alone is hard sometimes. They get caught up in a flirty moment when the kristallos demon attacks hunt, biting his shoulder.

Chapters 46-50:
– Hunt and the kristallos grapple until Bryce is able to distract it by taking Hunt’s gun and shooting it. Hunt then stabs it in the spine, rendering it dead, decapitates it, slashes its head into small pieces and then yanks out its heart. Backup arrives.
– Hunt is suffering from the kristallos venom, something Bryce knows well. A medwitch (the one Ruhn met with) rushes over with special leeches to suck out the venom. Hunt explains that the venom stopped his magic.
– Micah arrives on scene and demands to know who it attacked and who killed it. Then he burns the corpse to nothing and walks away.
– Bryce is stunned. She doesn’t understand how she walked away from the kristallos twice while so many have died. She doesn’t understand how she and Hunt killed it when the entire Pack of Devils were slaughtered.
– Hunt pulls Micah aside and tells him everything about their investigation, how they think Sabine is responsible. Micah is mad, but tells them they need more evidence and to keep him updated.
– Ruhn arrives on scene moments after Hunt and Bryce leaves. The medwitch stops him from investigating some of the kristallos blood on a plant. She also tells Ruhn that she’s looking into that they spoke about and when she returns from a small trip, she will send him the research.
– Hunt and Bryce land on the roof of her apartment building. Bryce hugs him and tells him she’s glad he isn’t dead. He buries his face in her neck and inhales, getting wild with her scent. Then he drags his lips up her neck and began to grope her body when the roof door slams open and Sabine steps out.
– Hunt has a gun pointed at Sabine’s head, Sabine has a gun pointed at Bryce’s heart. Hunt drops his aim and stands behind Bryce. He realizes that Sabine had to have messed with the cameras, otherwise backup would already be there.
– Sabine tells them they should have stopped looking into things and Bryce tells her that they know she’s the one who killed Danika. Sabine tells them that she’s been trying to protect Danika, because Danika stole the Horn.
– Bryce is listless for days after. At work, she and Hunt are in the library when Ruhn shows up. He had no new info on the kristallos to share. But he does have info from the Medwitch. She believes that a new drug, a synthetic healing drug, that has healing rates double firstlight.
– Ruhn explains that his sword has no power without the knife. The sword was part of a pair – both made from iridium from the same meteorite that fell on the Old World.

“When knife and word are reunited, so shall our people be.”

– Ruhn and Bryce start fighting, again about their father but Ruhn has to leave.
– A messenger otter comes. Tharion sent them an image, a body that was shredded by the kristallos. Tharion searched their records and found that two others were found with similar wounds two years ago, around the time of Danika’s death. This year, they’ve found five with the same wounds.
– Bryce realizes something. The Pack of Devils, Maximum Tertian, the acolyte and the temple guard were all shredded into piles. They don’t have the same bite marks and venom in their bodies as those found by the folks of Many Waters. The kristallos didn’t kill the victims they’ve been investigating.

Chapters 51-55:
– Bryce decides they should go to the source and summon a demon to ask them what kind killed Danika. She summons Aidas, the Prince of the Chasm, the fifth level of Hel.
– Bryce asks Aidas if he knows about the krisallos and who is summoning it. He doesn’t answer but finally realizes that Hunt is there (“as if he hasn’t cared to notice, with Bryce before him.”) Aidas takes a closer look at Hunt and is shocked when he senses that Hunt has lightning powers: “What are you doing here the a black crown around your brow?”
– Aidas assures them that the darker Princes of Hel are not rattling the Northern Rift. He reminds them that while the Asteri made the angels, the other beings on Midgard came there from their own planets.
Bryce asks him one more time what killed Danika. He tells her to run the tests again, “find what is in between.” As he departs, he tells Bryce to make the drop, and then contact him again. “The Oracle did not see. But I did.”
– When Aidas leaves, Hunt demands an explanation: After Bryce saw the Oracle (age 13), she was crying in the park. A white cat with unworldly blue eyes appeared next to her (she doesn’t know how he got there). He asked her, “what blinds an Oracle?”
– Bryce calls Declan and asks if there are any tests that should be reran from the data collected on the Pack of Devils’ remains. He asks if anyone has ever ran the results in a Mimir test. Declan drops the bomb that this better tech was available two years ago but that the Autumn King told the Fae to not offer the tech for the investigation.
– Bryce runs all the way to the Autumn King’s residence but his guards won’t let her in. Ruhn shows up and tries to help, but the guards treat him barely better than they are Bryce. Ruhn tells her to fight a different fight with the King and she runs off to a bar.
– She and Hunt exchange heated words, he gives her medwitch potions for her leg, and then leaves when she says something crappy about Shahar.
– Two hours later, she comes back to the apartment with groceries. Bryce apologizes for how she acted and she tells him how she’s felt stuck for a long time. That she’s watched her friends doing things with their lives and she feels like she’s done nothing. She tells Hunt about how her and Danika tried to bust an illegal animal trading ring their senior year of college. Bryce admits to killing some of the traders to save her and Danika’s lives.
– Bryce asks Hunt if he’d rebel again, knowing everything and he says that being a servant was always his destiny. No matter what, his power would have made him a weapon to wield. He still believes that angel hierarchy is bogus.
– Bryce tells Hunt that even after the case, the spare bedroom is his.
– Hunt takes clothes that Bryce retrieved from Danika’s possessions to Viktoria, who got the Mimir info from Declan.
– Hunt gets called to Micah’s office, sans Bryce. Micah is angry about Sabine finding out that she was a suspect. He warns that Sandriel has been offering to trade back and if Hunt fails, he might consider it. Then he’s handed a file, another assassin mission.
– The day drags on and Bryce is increasingly more worried about Hunt not answering her. By time evening rolls around, she’s worried enough that she calls Ruhn to ask if he’s seen Hunt. Just as he’s about to put Declan and Finn on the case, Hunt walks into the apartment, wearing his helmet, covered in blood.
– After she waited an hour and the shower was still running, she went into his room to find him on the floor of the shower, under the scalding hot water, skin red and angry. She turns off the water and then asks if she can wash him, he nods. Bryce washes Hunt and tucks him into bed. He grabs her wrist when she goes to leave. Stay, he seems to ask. She strokes his hair until he falls asleep.
– When Hunt wakes he thinks it, “smelled like paradise. Like home and eternity and like exactly where he was meant to be.” He carries a sleeping Bryce to her room and notices her phone lit up on the counter, full of texts from Ruhn, making sure they’re okay.
– In the AM Bryce and Hunt meet in the kitchen, where he tells her he likes seeing her in his shirt. He kisses her on the cheek and thanks her for taking care of him last night. Bryce gets turned on and Hunt can sense it, asks her what she’s thinking about. The tension between them ramps so high it seems like they’re going to give in, but it breaks when the pan Hunt was cooking starts to burn.
– Jesiba moves a nøkk into the basement tank.
– Viktoria meets them with results from the new analysis. Trace amounts of something synthetic, a combo of organic, tech, and magic. A drug used mostly for medical purposes in small doses. All of Danika’s clothes held traces of it, as did Maximus’s. The drug is called Synth. They realize this could be what the medwitch was talking about.
– They call Ruhn, who looks through the research the medwitch gave him on synth and he finds that one of the main ingredients is obsidian salt. Bryce is wants to rush to the Meat Market to see if there are synth dealers but Hunt insists that she stay and video chat with her parents as promised. He tells her that his mom was murdered for her small savings and he never knew his father. This is also the first time that Hunt thinks about Shahar in a negative light; that she took his memories of his mom and twisted them to fit her agenda.

Chapter 56-60:
– They video chat with Bryce’s parents. At the end of the chat, Hunt brings up her still pained leg with her parents. He tells them he worries there’s still venom in the wound and that if she makes the drop without getting it looked at, she’ll be in pain for the rest of her life. Ember insists that Bryce see a medwitch.
– After the call, Hunt asks how her parents met: Ember ran from Bryce’s bio-dad before he knew she was pregnant. She made it to a Cthona temple in Korinth where she stayed and gave birth to Bryce. They stayed until Bryce was three. Then Ember heard whispers that the bio-dad was looking for her because he’d heard she had a child. He wanted the child brought back to him at any cost. The plan was to get Ember and Bryce to the House of Earth and Blood headquarters in Hilene where they could beg for asylum. They went to Solas’ temple in Oia to pick up their holy guard, Randall. Before they could make it to Hilene, the Fae sent to capture them caught up. They were handled. The House of Earth and Blood named Ember a vessel for Cthona and Randall a vessel for Solas, which granted them an official order of protection.
– The next day, they head to the Meat Market. They come upon an opal vendor. Hunt buys a white opal (for joy), and gives it to Bryce. Bryce tries digging for info on synth from the vendors, they ultimately report that the Viper Queen won’t allow it. Instead they tell Bryce to check the river.
– Bryce sends an otter to Tharion to meet with them. Tharion tells them that Danika was selling synth on the river.
– Bryce calls Fury, who tells her that Danika had told her about Synth, but they agreed not to tell Bryce because they were worried she’d try and take it to get more magic.
– Bryce calls Ruhn. He tells her that the medwitch he’s been in contact with told him that she’s been working on an antidote for synth using the krisallos venom but that she needs more.
– It’s Danika’s birthday. Bryce goes to the docks across from the Bone Quarter to eat chocolate croissants in her honor, but when she opens the box, the top one says TRASH in icing. Hunt immediately flies back to Moonwood Bar. He pins Amelie to the wall by the neck. He warned her to never mess with Bryce again.

Chapters 61-65:
– Bryce finally goes to see a medwitch, the one Ruhn has been working with. At the clinic, the witch notes that she and Hunt have a powerful bond.
– The witch begins the process of removing the venom and healing her leg. It’s hell for her, but Hunt is there the whole time, supporting her and talking to her. He leans forward and barely brushes his lips to hers, “A star bloomed inside her at that kiss. A long-slumbering light began to fill her chest, her veins.”
– The witch runs a preliminary test and the venom seems to work as an antidote.
– Hunt is called to Micah’s office, demanding Bryce’s presence. Sabine is there, demanding retribution for his attack on Amelie. Micah tells him Hunt will suffer the Living Death. His wings are cut off. Sabine breaks the news that she knows that Bryce traded her own spot in the Bone Quarter for Danika to have a place. Sabine tells Bryce that Danika now suffers an eternity of shame because of what Bryce did.
– They take Hunt back to Bryce’s apartment, where he sleeps off the potions and trauma of having his wings cut off. Bryce texts Ithan and tells him they they’re all disgusting and if she ever sees Sabine again, she’ll kill her.
– Hunt wakes to Bryce sleeping with him, he tucks her closer and realizes that her pleading for him today was dangerous.
– Bryce calls Ruhn to come and take care of Hunt while she works. Bryce finally gets into Danika’s work files for Redner Industries. She finds a hidden folder titled BRYCE and inside is just a picture of Danika’s leather jacket. Bryce grabs the jacket and cuts open the back, where a flash drive falls out of. There are three unnamed videos. “Gods spare us.”
– Bryce goes home and pulls up the video for Hunt, titled “Amplification for Power Dysfunction” – synth research trials. In the video a human female is injected with synth and then tears apart two Vanir males. After the female rips opponent after opponent to death, she turns on herself and rips herself apart. Bryce concludes that whoever killed the Pack of Devils was high on synth.
– Hunt convinces Bryce to drop the synth for now and focus on the Horn instead, but tells himself he needs to make some calls. Then Bryce brings up their kiss as the medwitch office. She asks if he meant it and when he tells her yes, they kiss again. Hunt ends up pleasuring her with his fingers but before it goes further they stop because his wing wounds get reopened.
– That night after Hunt goes to sleep, Bryce leaves for her old apartment. When she’s on the same block, she realizes that her old apartment building is on fire. She receives a text from Tharion telling her a synth deal is going down and to get there soon.
– Tharion and Bryce approach the barge. The Viper Queen is there, selling synth. They scoot closer so Bryce can try and snap some pics to show Hunt and Ruhn, but when one of the buyers turns, it’s Hunt.

Chapter 66 & 67:
– Micah arrives on the barge and they realize that the Viper Queen had ratted them out to Micah. Micah tells Bryce that Hunt, Justinian and Viktoria thought to buy the drug and use it to overpower their masters. Hunt tells Bryce that two year ago Danika leaked the formula for synth, sold it, was addicted to it. Micah tells her that the night Danika died, she took too much synth, killed her pack and then killed herself – like the humans in those videos. They tell Bryce that the surge of magic from taking synth summoned the kristallos on accident. The black salt in the synth has a sentience, its measurement in the synth formula matches the unholy number of the kristallos. Bryce looses it, screaming at Hunt that he knew and didn’t tell her.
– Fury appears, gun pointed at Hunt. Hunt tries to plead with Bryce, that he was there to stop it. That he’d seen the trial video and knew this wasn’t right, but that Justinian and Vik wouldn’t give it up. Bryce hurls the white opal at Hunt and tells him she never wants to see him again. Fury tells Micah that Bryce is done with them and if they bother her again, Fury will pay them a visit.
– Ruhn meets Bryce in her apartment lobby and gets her upstairs. Then he hold her on the couch while she breaks apart. Fury returns and tells Ruhn that Justinian has been crucified and Vik was stripped from her body and placed in a box that will be put in a trench in the ocean.

Part Four: The Ravine

Chapters 68-70:
– Hunt has been in a holding cell, watching his friends being tortured on a screen. Isaiah comes to visit, he tells Hunt that he thought Hunt finally had a reason to stop trying to rebel, that a possible future with Bryce was enough. Hunt asks him to tell Bryce he’s sorry.
– Three days pass. Bryce receives the letter from the medwitch that she perfected the antidote and sent Bryce a vial of it, which she placed in Jesiba’s safe. The door buzzer at the gallery goes off and Bryce freezes – it’s the Autumn King.
– The King tells Bryce that he’s ensured her safety after Hunt’s treachery. He insinuates that she shouldn’t stop looking for the Horn. He also tells her that he loved her mother very much, so much that he had the paperwork ready to make her his queen. He tells her that Bryce is very much like Ember, but is also like him, and it’s not a good thing.
– Sandriel visits Hunt in his holding cell and forces him to watch a slideshow of all the pictures he and Bryce took over the past few weeks. Hunt looks at the pictures and sees the life he pissed away. Then Sandriel tells him that she’s his owner again.
– Fury visits Bryce to warn her that Micah gave Hunt to Sandriel again. Fury also admits that she kept in contact with Juniper over Bryce because she and Juniper are in love.

Chapter 71-75:
– Hunt is being escorted out of the Comitium by Sandriel and Pollux when Bryce screams at them to stop. She offers to buy Hunt from Sandriel, gives her the Archesian amulet too. Sandriel melts the amulet. Bryce then offers herself in his place, right as Ruhn bursts in. Sandriel says that most would call her a fool for taking the trade, but she knows that Bryce is the only daughter of the Autumn King. Ruhn lays claim to Bryce, telling the room that she is belong to him and their father until she marries and she doesn’t have his permission to sell herself in Hunt’s place. Bryce storms off once they drive away with Hunt.
– Flynn and Declan are pissed at Ruhn for keeping Bryce’s real identity a secret.
– Bryce goes to the docks to speak to Danika. While she’s crying, the kristallos demon attacks her. Declan, Flynn and Ruhn manage to save her.
– Hunt is at the Summit. Micah holds four different Summit meetings, one for each quadrant of his territory. It’s being held in the Psamathe Desert, five hours from Crescent City. He realizes that the medwitch that they’ve been dealing with is actually Queen Hypaxia of the Witches.
– The center table is: the Prime of Wolves, the Autumn King, the two Governors, the River Queen’s daughter, Queen Hypaxia and Jesiba with their seconds in a ring of tables behind them; seven rings of ranks in total. The Asteri project on to their screens and Ruhn speaks into Hunt’s head for the first time. The Asteri formally recognize Hypaxia as Queen. When the Asteri sign off, Micah begins the meeting.
– Bryce watches the Summit from the showroom of the Antiquities. Three days prior she received the white opal in the mail from Isaiah.
– Ruhn corners Hypaxia at the Summit to discuss why she didn’t tell him who she is — he never asked, and if she knows what the Autumn King wants from them — she’s not interested.
– When the reconvene, Sandriel announces that Micah has been called away. Sandriel wants the Mer to stop their opposition to building transportation canals for the war effort. Tharion reminds them that it’ll hurt his people and the planet. Hypaxia backs his statement. Hunt is bored to death, but his wings have healed.

Chapter 76-80:
– Bryce has been moping all three days of the Summit. On the third day, she’s looking for legal ways to free Hunt when Micah comes down into the library. Micah tells her that he’s been looking for her.
– Jesiba receives a message on her phone and has Declan connect video to the screens. They see Bryce and Micah: Micah tells Bryce she’s surrounded but the fabled Great Library of Parthos. He tells her that those books house 2,000 years of human history prior to when the Asteri arrived.
– Micah demand that she give him the Horn. She tells him he has no idea where it is but he insists that she knows everything, even about how synth can repair it. Micah says he figured out the truth when Sandriel destroyed her Archesian amulet, because not an hour later, she was attacked by the kristallos. Micah tells her that she IS the horn – that Danika had the horn ground and put into the tattoo ink, then tattooed on her back. Her tattoo is the language of universes and spells out a direct command to activate the Horn through a blast of raw power onto the tattoo itself.
– Bryce tries to fight herself free but Micah starts manhandling her. She accuses him of killing Danika and he confesses. She asks him why he did it. He tells her he’s an investor in Redner Industries. Danika’s job there was to track down people- including a group of Ophion rebels who had been experimenting with synthetic magic. The rebels had been able to pinpoint what exactly the kristallos nullifies and found the source of magic. Micah also tells Bryce that Danika had her own research too – that she didn’t disclose to Redner.
-Micah set Danika up to steal the Horn for him. He killed Danika for not giving it to him. And then he used Bryce’s need for vengeance to find it again. Ruhn realizes that every time he thought about the Horn it took him to Bryce. Micah also admits to the bombing at the Raven.
– Micah wants to inject her with synth to heal the Horn and then pump her full of magic to see if it works. He injects her but she grabs a book that makes a magical bubble around her before he can test the Horn. He tells her that he’ll just have to make her comply. Micah grabs Syrinx and throws him into the nøkk tank.
– Micah blasts her with power and nothing happens, she’s able to use a book to blast him away before he tries again, and Lehabah does the same, shutting him in the bathroom.
– Bryce grabs Micah’s knife and goes to the tank. Flynn, watching, says, “This is her fucking Ordeal.” She grabs Syrinx and manages to get him to Lehabah before the nøkk comes and drags her under. She grabs him by the balls and gets free. She drops and starts trying to resuscitate Syrinx. He comes to and Bryce limps to the stairs, slowly trying to get free. Lehabah knows that Bryce will never make it, that Micah is seconds from breaking free. Lehabah wants to give Bryce time, to sacrifice herself. Bryce tells her that she set her free a week ago, and that she doesn’t need to do this. She’s free.

“Then let the world know that my first act of freedom was to help my friends.” Lehabah uses her magic to break the tank. “My friends are with me and I am not afraid.”

– Bryce races to Jesiba’s office and begins assembling The Godslayer Rifle. She shoots Micah right in the head.

Chapters 81-85:
– Time slows (which happens every time an archangel dies). Hunt watches as Bryce emerges with twin swords, one of them Danika’s, and drops to the floor to slice Micah’s head in two. She dismembers his entire body before going to fetch a can of gasoline and dumps it on his body and lights it on fire. She then vacuums up his ashes.
– She hears screaming, Micha’s experiment hadn’t failed at all. Outside, Bryce sees that Micah managed to open a portal to Hel right in the Heart Gate. From her apartment, she sees that every gate in the city became portals to hell. Sirens go off, warning everyone to get to a bomb shelter.
– At the Summit, the leaders of Valbara are in chaos mode. Hypaxia says she’s going back to Crescent City, that she’d rather die trying like Bryce. On screen, Bryce is running through the streets, begging everyone to find shelter.
– Hunt screams at Sabine to order a wolf pack to the Old Square, she tells him there are no wolves left. The Prime wakes and says, “One wolf remains in the Old Square.”
– Hunt borrows Isaiah’s phone to call the Viper Queen.
– Ithan brings the shifters to Asphodel Meadows
– The Viper Queen’s Fae bodyguards come to help Bryce.
– At the Summit, Sandriel returns and says that the Asteri ordered them to stay there, that the Asteri are sending help to Crescent City.
– The shelters are closing. Bryce and Ithan run but only one will make it, Bryce chooses to save Ithan. Bryce begins running and fighting toward the Old Square.

Chapters 86-90:
– Bryce stops and calls Hunt. She gives everyone her goodbyes. Bryce hangs up. On screen they watch as a faint white radiance begins to glow around Bryce. The light is coming from her chest, eyes blazing like the first rays of dawn. “I am Bryce Quinlan…Heir to the Starborn Fae.”
– It flashes to the day Bryce and Danika got caught by the animal traffickers and Bryce uses her power to blind them and kill them. To protect Danika.
– At the gate, she pulls the star from her chest. She approaches the gate and thrusts her starlight into the Gate’s clear stone. She closes the gate to Hel.
– The Autumn King calls Ember, demanding an explanation and she tells him that Bryce loved Ruhn more than she hated him, that she chose to keep her secret for Ruhn.
– Hypaxia begins secretly unweaving Hunt’s power-dampening magic and they realize that Sandriel told the Asteri about Bryce. That she IS the Horn and also the only person capable of using it. His halo disappears. He kills Sandriel. All the angels kneel to him.
– Hunt tells Fury to get the helicopter ready. They all prepare to leave. They get word that the Asteri have sent tanks to bomb the city – to get rid of the demons and Bryce in one swoop. The tanks release brimstone onto the city.
– Fury’s helicopter takes them to the Old Square and Hunt leaps from it, flying to shield Bryce with his body just as the brimstone hits.

Chapters 91-95:
– Bryce comes to and realizes that Hunt shielded her, and is laying on the ground, barely alive.
Bryce walks to the gate and puts her hand on the dial pad. She asks for someone, anyone to come to their nearest gate. She asks for someone to anchor her while she makes the Drop. She tells the world that the Firstlight from her drop will heal everything. Save everyone. She goes to Hunt and whispers to him that she loves him.
– Then she hears Danika telling her to light it up. The seventh gem on the dial lights and Danika tells her to light it up. Bryce runs to the disk, slams her hand down and makes the Drop.
– From the conference room, Declan, Hypaxia, the Autumn King, Sabine and Jesiba watch Bryce make an unimaginable plunge. She speeds past her power level, deep, deep. Using the power bestowed into he gate by everyone who ever touched it, Bryce descends. Light pours from the gates, making a six-pointed star in the grid. Her light heals the city, closes the portals. Bryce falls over, her mortal life over. Heart stopped. And now the Eleusian system began counting down six minutes.
– In the depths of power, Danika and Bryce talk. Bryce tells her she has no aspirations for making the Ascent. Danika tells her she’d better.
– Declan watches the timer. At 0.003 seconds to true death, Bryce begins her ascent. The Autumn King says it’s impossible but the Prime of Wolves reminds them there is a magic more powerful than all “Through love, all is possible.”
– Hunt gives her chest compressions, zapping her with his lightning. Bryce comes back to life.
– Back at Bryce’s apartment, they notice that she now has an eight-pointed star scarred into her skin. They start kissing and getting heated but then Ember calls. She informs Bryce that Declan told them what happened and that Bryce is now more powerful than the Autumn King.
– Isaiah asks Hunt to come help at the Comitium, where things are insane.

Chapters 96 & 97:
– Rigelus calls Bryce. He tells her to stay in her lane, don’t attract attention, don’t cause problems and she and Hunt can do as they please. They free Hunt.
– Ruhn is waiting for her on the sidewalk. They talk and makeup and he assures her he doesn’t care that she is also Starborn.
– Bryce walks to the docks and the mist surrounding the Bone Quarter parts for Bryce to see Connor and the Pack of Devils waving at her.

Epilogue:
– Jesica meets with cat-Aidas in the park. Jesiba asks why he didn’t tell her about Bryce – he didn’t trust anyone to know, she thought Theia’s light was forever extinguished – so did he. They say that Theia died by Prince Pelias’s blade.
– Aidas tells Jesiba that Bryce definitely carries Theia’s light, that his memory of its very shade is like a song in his heart.
– Aidas says that Hunt’s father would have been proud of him.
– Jesiba warns him not to screw them over this time

House of Sky and Breath

Prologue:
– Sofie Renast is in the Kavalla Death Camp but will be leaving for the port of Servast tonight. She is able to switch between human and Vanir identities and is a rare human that has made the drop. 
– The children in the camp were the kids of human rebels who’d been caught or sold out. Sophie and Emil’s parents had been betrayed and ultimately tortured by the Hind and her dreadwolves. 
– Sophie had been working with Ophion to get info on her brother Emil. They found his whereabouts and she had to convince Ophion to let her go to Kavalla. Pippa – leader of the Lightfall unit – had to help Sophie get permission to rescue her brother. 
– Sophie managed to learn information that would finally end the Asteri’s war of terror and made sure Ophion knew that she completed the mission so that she could hold the info as collateral. Now, they will have to keep their word and rescue her and her brother. 
– Emile had begged her to rescue twelve other children as well. 
– Sophie touches the electric fence and the power within moves into her, becoming hers to do with as she wants. She cuts through the fence with energy and they run. 
– Even firstlight could not stand against her power. They make it to the van where Agent Silverbow waited. Silver had gone with Sophie, against orders, and hidden with her for two weeks. 
– They drive to Servast. Silver does not trust Pippa, who he believes is a fanatic. Sophie had handed over her comm crystal to Command, having prepared to die. 
– The dreadwolves arrive and Sophie asks Silver to take the children to the boat. She runs toward the wolves and runs into the Hind. She leads the wolves into some water and uses her power to electrocute them. This energy manipulation indentifies her as a Thunderbird. 
– Sophie hates Ophion, almost as much as she hates the Asteri. She recalls that she was only ever a tool for the rebellion. 
– Sophie runs toward the boat to join the rebels, and sees that Silver has been hit by a gorsian stone bullet, rendering him powerless to help her. She gets shot by the Hind and the boat gets surrounded by imperial subs. 
– Pippa waits on a ship and learns that they lost Sophie, but gained Emile and that Omega subs are trying to sink the ship. All around them, in the city or Servast, a massive blackout spreads. The subs loose power. Then a mighty white light emerges from the ocean and wraps itself around a sub. It sinks two of them and then destroys brimstone torpedos from the third. 
– Sophie lay dying on the docks. The Hind takes her out on the ocean. The Hind throws a white stone into the water, then she pushes Sophie into the sea. 

Part One: The Chasm 

Chapters 1-5:
– Bryce, Ember, and Randall are at the Crescent City Ballet to watch Juniper perform. Bryce notes that it feels like the statues of the gods are watching her. Randall points out a frieze that reminds him of Hunt: a powerful Fae male behind an anvil, hammer to the sky, with lighting crackling down, flowing into a sword on the anvil. It’s called The Making of the Sword (in the Old Language of the Fae). 
– The other art in the building depict the Princes of Hel trying to conquer Midgard in the First Wars. 
– Bryce now works at the Fae Archives. Within a day of the attack in spring, Jesiba has cleared out the gallery and the Library of Parthos disappeared again. Bryce loves her new job. 
– Hunt arrives as they sit in their seats. A waiter brings drinks from Juniper, and Hunt tests it for drugs and poison. Juniper and Fury have moved in together. Hunt and Bryce have been friends but more – without the physical for 3 months. They made a deal to wait until Winter Solstice to act on their desires. 
– Bryce’s star scar starts to glow unexpectedly. Hunt places his large hand over it to stifle the light. 
– Bryce and Hunt go to a party at Ruhn’s after the ballet. Her friends give her a hard time about her no-sex bargain with Hunt. Bryce feels weird about doing normal things like going to parties when she feels so guilty about what happened in the spring. She’s worried that if she enjoys herself too much, she’ll invite bad things to happen. 
– Hunt gets the call that new Archangels have been chosen for Micah and Sandriel’s territories: Ephraim is going to take Norther Pangera. Celestina is taking Crescent City. 
– “Ruhn Danaan knew three things with absolute certainty…” Ruhn is engaged to Hypaxia but is currently enjoying a female sitting on his face. Tristan comes to interrupt them because Declan’s security picked up a blip of an anomaly. He goes downstairs to find a male portaling into his house via familiar shadows. 
– Cormac, an Avallen Prince (son of the High King of Avallen) has arrived. He claims to be distantly related to Bryce via the Autumn King (Einar). He also claims that he and Bryce are betrothed. He leaves after confirming that she is Starborn.
– Bryce is worried about getting her parents out of town before they find out about the engagement. Ruhn tells them that Cormac was the cousin that came close to killing them during their Ordeal. 
– When Bryce and Hunt return home, their door is open. Inside lay Ithan Holstrom bleeding all over the floors. 
– Tharion is on a small fishing vessel as punishment from the River Queen. He’s there to find a body, two weeks after it was dumped. The River Queen wants him to find Sophie Renast’s remains. 
– Tharion is betrothed to the River Queen’s daughter. They look for three and half hours before finding the lead blocks with empty chains. He tells the River Queen the shackles had been unlocked. The Queen remarks that it is unusual that the water did not tell her that – as if it were silenced. 

Chapters 6-10:
– Bryce and Hunt tend to Ithan. Ithan tells them that he was kicked out of the pack by Sabine. Bryce declares that she and Ithan will share her bed and it makes Hunt sick with jealousy. But the truth is, Bryce wanted eyes on him because she doesn’t Sabine to stay away. 
– In bed, Bryce tells Ithan that Connor’s spirit helped her as much as Danika’s did when she made the Drop. He tells her that Connor thought that Bryce was his mate. 
– Ruhn demands his father stop the betrothal with Cormac. Cormac tells him that his own fiancée is the progeny of a necromancer, and her sister is the Hind. Cormac says that marrying Bryce is a huge disgrace but he’ll do it anyway, and the Autumn King actually gets angry at him. Ultimately, the King says they will both marry their fiancés. 
– Hunt and Ithan square off in the kitchen. Ithan reminds Hunt that he and Bryce were best friends for years. That his brother, Connor, loved her the entire time he knew her and by the end, only got her to agree to a date. He wishes Hunt good luck. 
– Bryce calls Jesiba. Jesiba compliments Ruhn for being one of the few who’s been strong enough to shun what he is. Bryce tells her she has no plans of making waves and Jesiba tells her that’s boring. Jesiba also tells Bryce to think through the advantages of marrying Cormac before she refuses. 
– Cormac: “Your star glows in my presence because our union is predestined. In case you were wondering.” Bryce: “Says who?” Cormac: “The Oracle.” The Oracle of Avallen said Cormac was “destined to unite with a princess who possessed a star in her heart. That our mingling would bring great prosperity to our people.”
– Hunt meets with Celestina. She claims that she wants her triarii to be her partners, not her servants. She tells them that the rest of her triarii are coming soon – The Hammer (Pollux Antonius) and the Helhound (Baxian Argos). When they enter the room, Hunt tackles Pollux to the floor. 
– Ithan contemplates being a lone wolf. Being without a pack is like having a soul-wound. He knows it will be some time before he can manage being in his wolf form and feeling the pack’s loss. 
– Bryce picks up Hunt from the Comitium, where he was placed in confinement for attacking Pollux. 

Chapters 11-15:
– Tharion hates working for the River Queen. It seems like he doesn’t even particularly like living as a Mer, either, preferring to live in the air-filled buildings under the water. Tharion is looking for info about where Sophie might be by going through her emails. He finds one called Dusk’s Truth. From there he finds an email chain with BansheeFan56 reading “Project Thurr.” He uses Declan’s program to unearth who BansheeFan56 is, and it’s Danika.
– He gets a message about a small boat found in the Nelthian Marshes where there was an adolescent life vest. He travels to the location of the little boat and finds an adult male arm shredded by the local sobeks. The arm had a sleeve from the Lightfall squadron. 
– Bryce and Hunt are at a park and Bryce mentions that her motor bike isn’t working right. Hunt says he can look at it – that his lightning powers give him an affinity for how things work. He tells her that Sandriel had him study the machines that humans were using so that he could strike them in battle. 
– Bryce tells Hunt that his stunt with Pollux cannot happen again. As they go to leave for home, a Reaper appears in a boat and walks into the city. 
– Then, they see Tharion bustling toward shore on a wave skimmer. They take him to Bryce’s apartment. She texts Ruhn to come over too. Tharion asks Bryce if Danika ever mentioned Sophie. He explains the situation to them, that he’s been tasked with finding the thunderbird siblings. 
– Tharion leaves and Hunt and Ruhn try to talk Bryce out of getting involved with Tharion and his hunt. But she and Ithan worry about there being a child (Emile) out there all alone. 
– They have pizza and Declan and Flynn show up too. They speak about Ruhn, Dec and Flynn’s Ordeal. Dec had been bragging that Ruhn could retrieve the Starsword and so King Morven of the Avallen Fae ordered him to try. They go into the cave and Ruhn finds the Starsword and is basically faced with either removing the sword or dying. 
– In the AM, Ember calls Bryce because she’s heard about her engagement to Cormac. 
– Bryce meets with Fury and Juniper with questions about Danika. June tells them that she got passed up for Principal dancer again. June leaves and Bryce and Fury speak. Fury doesn’t know anything about Danika’s involvement with the rebels or the two projects mentioned in the emails. She does tell Bryce that Danika was a bloodhound (could scent bloodlines, the secrets in them). 
– Baxian (Helhound) corners Hunt at work. He tells Hunt that they’ve been ordered to pair up. Baxian tells Hunt that Pollux doesn’t like being away from Lidia, because he can’t control her if he’s away – this tells Hunt she isn’t coming to Lunathion to look for Emile. 
– Tharion goes back to Bryce’s apartment. Tharion and Ithan go head to head and he grills him about Danika. Ithan only mentions a paper she was writing in college that seemed to mysteriously amount to nothing. 
– Ruhn meets Bryce to walk her home where Ithan and Tharion are waiting. Ruhn warns Bryce that any move she makes is now politicized because she’s a power player. When they get to her apartment, Aidas in cat form, is purring on Ithan’s lap. 
– Hunt arrives just in time to hear that Aidas is there. Aidas wants to know why Bryce doesn’t know how to use her powers yet. Aidas reveals that Bryce has Theia’s light while Ruhn has Pelias’s light. He also says that Pelias forcibly wed Helena (Theia’s daughter) after killing Theia. He asked his brother, the Stareater to kill Pelias for his crimes. 
– Aidas tells them that the history they know is what the Asteri want people to know. Aidas tells her that the 15,000 year old war is reaching a crescendo. “Hel’s armies shall strike at your command, Bryce Quinlan.” He urges her to join the cause but she tells him she doesn’t know any Ophion rebels. Before disappearing, he outs Cormac as agent Silverbow. 

Chapters 16-20:
– Hunt manages to get everyone to sit down and talk about what’s happening. Cormac reveals that he’s been trailing Tharion because he knows they’re looking for the same person – Emile. Cormac promised Sophie he’d look after him. He claims Pippa is the reason Emile ran. Ruhn talks into Bryce’s head: Cormac was in love with Sophie. He tells them that Sophie’s entire mission in joining Ophion was to find Emile. She didn’t care about anything else.  
– When asked why the Hind killed her, he admits that she knew intel on the Asteri and was holding it hostage. Tharion tells Cormac that he hasn’t found Sophie’s body. Cormac admits that the reason he agreed to marry Bryce was because he knew she was friends with Danika, and he wanted info on her. Cormac also wanted access to Ruhn, because he can mindspeak (a rare Starborn gift).
– Cormac says that Danika wanted Sophie to get information on the Asteri 3 years ago – that she sensed something was wrong. It took Sophie that long to get the info – Danika died before ever learning it. 
– Bryce realizes that Aidas led Cormac to their meeting because Cormac is a walking encyclopedia on everything Starborn and Aidas was just telling Bryce that she needed to learn more about her powers and heritage. Cormac and Bryce make a deal. They’ll help with Emile if he teaches her Starborn magic and they’ll keep their engagement as a rouse. 
– Hunt is reeling. He’s been free for only a few short months and now finds himself back on the cusp of rebellion. 
– Tharion and Ithan continue to talk at the apartment and Tharion tells him how Sandriel and Micah actually died (Hunt & Bryce killed them). Tharion warns Ithan that fate works in mysterious ways and there’s a reason that Ithan was brought into all of this. Tharion leaves, and Ithan finds Danika’s sword and swings it around. He’s on top of the table, pretending to attack invisible opponents when Bryce walks back into the apartment. The table breaks in half. Out comes all of Danika’s college papers. 
– Ruhn tells Declan and Flynn everything, they tell him they’re in if he is. Ruhn decides he has no choice but to meet with Cormac. 
– Bryce and Ithan sort through the papers: they seem to be research and article about Firstlight’s use, how it’s made into weapons. There’s even info on the origin of worlds and what the Asteri even are. In the papers Danika wrote, “All we have as proof of their so-called sacred power is their word…Who has ever seen such a star manifest? If they are stars from the heavens, then they are fallen stars.” She rifles through them and finds a blank paper titled “Dusk’s Truth.” 
– Ruhn meets with Cormac: Cormac tells Ruhn that Sophie was in contact with the rebellion’s most vital spy – Agent Daybright. Daybright has direct access to the Asteri. Cormac says they need someone who can mind-speak to get into contact with Daybright. Cormac gives Ruhn a communication crystal and tells him to try and use it, alongside his gifts, to contact Daybright. Cormac says they’ve been trying to organize a hit on the Spine (railway). Daybright has been getting info on a new mech-suit and Ophion wants to get ahold of one. 
– Tharion is cornered by the River Princess, his betrothed. She wants to be intimate but he shrugs her off. After she leaves he’s miserable about his fate of being her husband and fathering her children. He sees it as a cage. 
– At the Comitium, Hunt is getting tired of showing Baxian around, but when Baxian doesn’t know what the gaming system is, Hunt realizes that Baxian is in the same spot Hunt was when he was given to Micah. 

Chapters 21-24: 
– Hunt and Bryce can’t take it anymore and get intimate. 
– That night Hunt has a dream: he’s stuck in a black abyss. He hears leathery wings. A voice tells him to use his gifts to free himself from his restraints. Hunt realizes he’s speaking with the Prince of the Pit, The Stareater, Apollion. Apollion tells Hunt he wanted to meet him and assess him. He tells Hunt that he doesn’t even being to understand what Hunt and Bryce might accomplish together. Apollion calls them conduits. 
– Ruhn, Dec and Flynn set up for Ruhn to try the crystal. He casts out and finds a woman, cast in flames, on the other side. Ruhn realizes he’s been presented as a form of night and stars. Daybright names him Agent Night. 
– Hunt has a meeting with Celestina. Baxian and Pollux got into a fight that was recorded by bystanders – Baxian was trying to stop Pollux from assaulting a female. The Asteri are unhappy and are ordering Celestina to mate Ephraim (the archangel Lidia works for) at the Autumn Equinox (Death’s Day) in 1 month. 
– Celestina dismisses them all except Hunt. She informs him that she knows about Bryce’s engagement to Cormac. Celestina tells him that Shahar was her friend. She tells him that she tried to buy Hunt three times but was denied by the Asteri every time. 
– Ithan is with Tharion at a crime scene where a female was killed in a manner that makes it seem like she was tortured for information. Ithan smells two human scents on her. In private, Ithan tells Tharion that he suspects the selkie female helped Emile and was then captured and tortured for info. 
– Bryce and Ruhn walk together. She tells him about her and Ember’s postcards when they get into a fight with each other. She invited him to Nirados for the winter Solstice with her and Hunt. Ruhn asks why she won’t touch the Starsword and she tells him that it’s his, he found it. And if the prophecy means anything, then maybe there’s a knife out there for her. Ruhn is suddenly taken by a reaper and dragged into the sewer. 
– Ruhn is in some kind of stasis. Day breaks into his mind, telling him he’s in danger and needs to wake up. Bryce finds Ruhn with ten reapers. They say they have a message for her: they were sent by the Prince of the Pit, “Apollion, Prince of the Pit, is ready to strike.” They claim that Apollion wants to face Bryce at her full power. Cormac poofs into the sewer and helps them, he gets Ruhn out and throws the Starsword at Bryce. The sword sings with light and she kills a Reaper. Cormac teleports them to the Aux building. They are all stunned; the sword had killed that which was unkillable.  

Part Two: The Abyss

Chapters 25-30:
– The River Queen is mad at Tharion for suggesting a date Above with her daughter and reinforces that he must find Emile before anyone else. 
– Ruhn meets with the Autumn King, wanting to know the lore of the Starsword: it’s an ancient sword from another world – made from the metal of a fallen star; a meteorite. “The sword exists beyond our planet’s laws.” The King says that he doesn’t want to see what a union of Bryce and Hunt would result in – that he wants that power to be reserved for the Fae. 
– Cormac explains to Bryce that he can teleport (exactly like they do in ACOTAR, winnowing). Cormac says that teleportation is a gift of the Starborn, and tells Bryce she might be able to do it too. 
– Bryce calls Jesiba and asks to buy Death Marks. 
– Declan and Ithan look through the Black Dock footage to find where the reapers came from. They cannot immediately determine if they came from the Bone Quarter, but assume they were moving through the sewers. 
– Bryce leaves to go to the gym, Hunt follows, but really she drags him out to look for Emile in the Meat Market. They meet up with Juniper and Fury who are there to help look. They don’t find Emile. Fury tells Hunt that Juniper’s brother Julius was a fighter for the Viper Queen, addicted to her venom, that died 10 years ago. 
– Bryce and Hunt actually do workout when they return. But it turns into Hunt pleasuring her. And they say they love each other. In bed, they discuss calling each other mates. 
– Ruhn finds himself in the Day-Night headspace: Day tells him that the shipment that Ophion wants is going to be shipped in three days time, the hit is on. 
– In the AM Ruhn tells everyone and Cormac. Cormac warns Bryce that her and Hunt’s mingling scents are going to cause issues for their fake engagement. Cormac, Ithan and Ruhn go to deal with the news about the Spine raid, while Bryce and Hunt go to the Bone Quarter. 
– Baxian intervenes when they toss their coins into the water – telling them that they’re stupid for going to see the Under-King. A boat appears and they take it to the Bone Quarter. They are greeted by an archway of carved, ancient bone with Momento Mori carved across it. 
– Past the arch, there are giant marble and granite obelisks inscribed with strange symbols. The Under-King (UK) claims he did not send the reapers. Bryce demands to know where the Pack of Devils are, where the green pastures she was shown have gone, where Lehabah is. The UK tells Bryce that lowers have no *use* in the Bone Quarter. He tells them that he gives back every, life and power to the Dead Gate and all of Midgard. 
– Because Bryce made the Drop outside of the Eleusian system, she contains Firstlight still – which the UK calls “nutritious.” The UK says that he feeds on the souls of the dead, only those worthy, with enough energy left. There is no judgement beyond whether a soul has enough energy to feed the Deadgate. Once the dead are forgotten by their people, he herds them though the Dead Gate to become Secondlight (power from the dead). The Sleeping City (afterlife) is a lie. 
– Ruhn and Ithan and Cormac are in the city, where the dreadwolves have taken over. Cloaked in shadow, they are cornered by the captain of the Dreadwolves, Mordoc – who smells them. Ithan admits that he knows him, because he’s Danika’s father. 
– The UK calls forward his shepherd, a demon made by the Prince of the Ravine during the First Wars. It attacks and when Hunt zaps it, it splits into three hounds. Bryce runs and ends up by the crystal Dead Gate. 
– Ithan, Ruhn and Cormac speak mind to mind. Ithan admits that Mordoc is a bloodhound as well. Ruhn orders Cormac to teleport Ithan away, and he does. Then he comes back for Ruhn. 

Chapters 31-35:
– Ruhn is worried. Mordoc knows his scent now, and knew that Ithan’s scent had been there. That’s why they’re in a bar, on camera, for an alibi. Ruhn asks Ithan to move in with him and the guys. Then the Harpy and the Hind arrive at the bar and sidles up to them. 
– At the Dead Gate, Bryce is surrounded by hound and reapers. The reapers begin awakening the Gate, and it glows faintly. She has to dive for the Starword, and gets scratched on the back. As she stands, ready to take her final blows, Hunt lands next to her and “let out a bellow that shook the gate itself.” Wreathed in lighting, Hunt lookS just like the Fae male carved in the CCB. As he unleasheS his lighting toward the hound, Bryce jumps in front of the blow, Hunt’s lightning hits the Starsword, “and the world erupted.”
– The lighting travels up the sword and into Bryce. She stabs into one of the hounds, and when it falls, its tail hurls Hunt into the Dead Gate. The sword loses power, and Hunt realizes that the Dead Gate is a well of power, fed by the dead. Hunt presses his hand to the brass plaque and Secondlight surges up his arm, draining the Gate. He then shoot a bolt of the power into Bryce, which Bryce funnels into the Starsword. Hunt picks up Bryce and they fly after the hound, killing it. Then they run for the Istros. 
– The River Queen refuses to tell Tharion why she wants Emile. 
– Hunt feels fried from taking the Secondlight, converting it into his own energy, and funneling it into Bryce. Tharion picks them up on a wave skimmer, they battle a group of sobeks, make it to the dock and then they all run to Bryce’s apartment. They realize they haven’t heard from Ruhn. 
– The Hind shuffles cards to play poker with Ruhn, and introduces herself since he’s engaged to her sister, Hypaxia. The Hind knows things about Ruhn’s daily activities that suggest she’s watching him. She also knows that Ithan is in love with Bryce. 
– Back at the apartment, Bryce, Hunt, Ithan, Tharion and Ruhn debrief. Hunt is called to Celestina for Ephriam’s arrival, he kisses Bryce on the way out. Ruhn comments that she now smells different. 
– Celestina and Ephriam have their public reunion as soon to be mates. 
– Everyone with Bryce discusses the day. Why did Apollion send them to the Bone Quarter? To learn the truth? So see how their combined powers work? A knock at the door disrupts them, when Bryce answers, Sabine grabs her by the throat. 
– Sabine is angry that Bryce is harboring Ithan. Bryce texts Hunt, who receives the message and tries to slink off, but catches Celestina’s disappointment and displeasure as he leaves. Ithan and Sabine are close to squaring off, when he flings his knowledge of Mordoc at her, and she falters, losing her cool. Ithan and Bryce gang up on her, verbally breaking her down over Danika being a potential rebel, about her fears of Bryce being in a position of power now. 
– Ruhn points a gun at Sabine and tells her to leave, just as Hunt arrives and orders her out. Then Baxian appears (unbeknownst to Hunt) and Sabine is genuinely scared. She leaves. After Sabine leaves, Baxian admits that he knows Sabine, in passing. Ithan accepts Ruhn’s offer to live with them and they leave. 

Chapter 36-40:
– Ruhn and Day mind-speak. They talk about their shared loneliness. 
– Ithan goes to the docks to try and get in contact with Tharion. Ithan contemplates what the Hind brought up about his feelings for Bryce: everything she said was true. He had pined after her the entire time he knew her, and the night that Connor finally asked her out, it was because Ithan had pressured him to, because he was sick of waiting and wanted to step forward and ask if Connor never would. 
– Tharion arrives and Ithan asks him to take him to the Bone Quarter because he needs to know if Connor is there and if he’s okay. Tharion refuses and tells Ithan that they can get all the info they need, if they visit the mystics. 
– Bryce is at dance class with Juniper, who tells her she was passed up for principal again. They know it’s because she spoke against closing the bomb shelters in the spring. Bryce calls the CCB. 
– At the Comitium, Hunt is called to see Celestina. In punishment for going to assist Bryce with Sabine, Celestina has ordered Hunt to stay in the barracks for two weeks. 
– Bryce, Tharion and Ithan visit the mystics. The Astronomer (male who runs it) has rings with fire sprites in them. The mystics lay submerged in greenish water with breathing masks. To get Ithan’s answer about Connor, the Astronomer must use bloodsalt [blood for life and blood for death; summoning salt infused with blood from a laboring mother’s sex and blood from a dying male’s throat – represents the two great tensions of a soul in and out of this world]. 
– The male mystic reaches the fourth level of Hel, the Ravine, and speaks to Thanatos, its Prince. Thanatos asks who sent the mystic, and the mystic tells him. Thanatos asks to see them, and the mystic opens his eyes. In the holographic orrery, Thanatos appears. He tells Bryce that he can smell the starlight on her. She tells him that she’s unsure why he was contacted and he tells her he’s a prince of death and souls bow to him. 
– Thanatos tells them that Connor’s soul still resides in the Bone Quarter, that someone ordered him to be left alone for the normal amount of time – but he doesn’t know who made the order. Thanatos gets tired of answering questions and instead consumes the male mystic’s soul. Thanatos tells them that he doesn’t abide the same rules as his brothers and that when the gates between worlds open again, he will feast on them all. 
– Thanatos shuts down the system and mystics in their tubs begin to drown. Ithan rushes down and gets them all out but when the female comes to, she begs to be sent back. The Astronomer tells them that they cannot and do not want to exist in the real world anymore.  
– Outside of the mystics building, Bryce tells Tharion that they’re never working with him again. When she turns to grab Ithan and leave, Mordoc appears. They brush him off and Bryce and Tharion make up. Bryce mails another postcard to her mom. 
– Hunt and Baxian hang out at the Comitium. Later, he and Bryce have phone sex. 
– Tharion confronts the River Queen about what happens at the Bone Quarter. Tharion realizes that even if they overthrow the Asteri, the current folks in power will keep the energy situation as status quo. 

Chapters 41-45:
– Bryce has been training with Cormac. She can’t teleport and has failed to produce shadows. Only light. Dec calls and says that he finally has info about Danika’s movements in Jesiba’s library. Declan finds footage of Danika snapping photos of a book called, Wolves Through Time: Lineage of the Shifters. Bryce calls Jesiba about the book and she sends it to her apartment. Inside, they find a family tree going back 15,000 years ago to when the Northern Rift opened. The first Fendyrs: Niklaus Fendyr and Farris Hvellen.
– Bryce decides she needs to speak to the Prime. The Prime tells her that the wolves yielded who they really were to become the Asteri’s pets after the First Wars. 
– Cormac is waiting at Bryce’s apartment, bloody, having been nearly captured by Mordoc. The hit on the Spine was a success and they obtained the mech suit, it’s being shipped to the Coronal Islands. 
– Juniper calls Bryce and is enraged that Bryce used her influence to get her the principal spot. 
– Bryce meets with Celestina and asks for Hunt to be released for one day to “come to her parent’s.” The request is granted. 
– The Prime calls Ithan and offers him a pack of his own as Alpha. Ithan isn’t sure if he can go back and be under Sabine’s rule. 
– Ithan goes back to the mystics, but the Astronomer isn’t there. He finds the female mystic is still awake. He gets her scent – snow and embers, she’s a wolf. She tells him that she was sold when her gifts manifest at three years old. She doesn’t know her name or family name. He tells her the Prime will help her if she comes with him, but she declines. She tells him to seek a necromancer for info on Connor. Ithan realizes that she’s an Alpha. He takes a box on his way out. 
– Day and Ruhn meet: he tells her about the mech suit and she grills him on info about the drop to make sure it isn’t a trap. She tells him to run, not fight, if they’re caught. Day suddenly convulses and disappears. Ruhn chases her across the bridge and comes into contact with an adamant wall. He gets flashes of touch: Day is having rough, painful sex – consensual but not enthusiastic. When she returns, he asks if she’s alright. She tells him that she hates the male she sleeps with but it’s complicated. They stay on the bridge together and rest. 
– Cormac teleports everyone to the island where the mech is. He says that Pippa already got her claws into everyone and they gave her the weapons and she’s now in charge of the Valbaran front. Hunt inspects the mech suit: it is made with gorsian stone; it allows the suits to draw Firstlight from its stores around the world and turn it into weapons. It makes it so that the suit never runs out of ammo, or power. Pippa is obsessed with the technology while Hunt cautions against allowing this to become reality. 
– Pippa’s Lightfall squad kills their Vanir crew and then walks off. Hunt destroys the mech suit with his lighting. Trucks begin to explode and then Tharion helps Hunt destroy the brimstone missiles under the water.  
– Cormac is hit with a gorsian bullet and cannot teleport them out, as the rebels turn to get them. Bryce glows to blind the rebels and they all run for a boat. They speed away and Bryce tells Cormac that they are done, she refuses to work with psychopaths like Pippa who kill their allies. As they speed away, Hunt sees Baxian as a dog, barking in warning – if he’s near, so is the Hind. 
– The Hind is on a boat, coming for them. Tharion tells everyone to jump in the water, seconds before a torpedo hits their boat. Then, they become surrounded by Omega subs. A single speedboat breaks from the pack, the Hind coming for them. She nears them, sees who they are. She drops a crystal into the water and tells them they either come with her or get dropped to the bottom of the sea – just like Sophie. 
– Hunt becomes primal – completely lost to his lighting. Lightning in his eyes, in a crown around his head. Then a sub emerges – not imperial. They enter the sub and run away. The female inside the sub tells them that their Oracle told them they needed to be there and that their light, Bryce’s light, called them. 
– Ruhn mind speaks to Bryce – Hunt is going ballistic in the way that true mates do when their mate is threatened. He tells her that they are mates, in the way Fae are mates. Ruhn tells her that he’s lethal like a mated Fae male. 
– The female, Commander Sendes, tells them that they are on the Depth Charger, one of six city-ships of the Ocean Queen’s court Beneath. 
– Back in Crescent City, Ithan is dealing with the fact that he stole the fire sprites from the Astronomer. Three of the four look exactly like Lehabah, the fourth globe, however, looks like pure fire. Flynn breaks the first three out and they warn him not to break the fourth but it’s too late. He breaks the glass, and fire erupts. In its wake, a human-sized, naked female lays smoldering on the coffee table. The female warns them that the Astronomer is going to kill them, and Flynn says, “Good thing a dragon now owes me a debt.”
– Back on the city-ship: Commander Sendes points out a bio dome in the ship that acts as a backup way to produce fresh water. The female also shows them that the ship is camouflaged, allowing them to escape the omega subs. Cormac gets whisked away for medical help. The ship passes pillars covered in carvings “from long, long ago.” They were part of a highway, a grand avenue the mer used to swim between great cities. 
– Bryce asks if she and Hunt can have some time in the bio dome. Sendes agrees and has it cleared and the door sealed. 

Chapters 46 & 47:
– Bryce and Hunt have sex for the first time in the bio-dome and it seems to calm his primal urges. But when they come together, they teleport to the airlock. 
– Back in Crescent City: Flynn learns the names of the sprites: Rithi, Malana, and Sasa, triplet descendants of Persian Falath, Lady of Cinders. The dragon is named Ariadne. She confirms everything the wolf mystic told Ithan about their treatment under the Astronomer. Ariadne also tells them that her slave tattoo keeps her from shifting, and acts as a tracking beacon. 
– On the city-ship: Cormac confirms that Bryce teleported them. Hunt is reeling from the feeling of raw creation that he felt when he magic shared with Bryce. Cormac wonders if the key to Bryce’s power is that she sometimes needs energy input, like Hunt’s magic. 
– Commander Sendes tells them that they were tasked with rescuing Sophie weeks ago, but she had drown by time they arrived to get her. Cormac visits her body in the morgue. They are shown a picture of her bicep where she had carved numbers and letters. 
– Tharion and Sendes speak: she tells him that her queen remembers a time before the Asteri, when leaders were elected – that is what the ocean queen wants to see the world restored to. Sendes asks Tharion if he considered that the River queens wanted Sophie’s corpse to reanimate her into a soulless weapon. 
– Ruhn and Day speak: he updates her on what happened and she agrees that Pippa is a fanatic that needs to be stopped. She’s sad to learn that Sophie died. She tells him a bedtime story and they fall asleep together. But she wakes and runs off. 

Part Three: The Pit 

Chapter 48-50:
– No one in Crescent City seems to know what happened on the ocean and they wonder why the Hind is keeping everything locked down. Baxian showed up at Bryce’s, claiming that he wants in on wherever they’re doing. They deny being rebels and refuse to include him. He tells them to find him when they want answers. Everyone leaves and then Hunt finally corners her about Emile. 
– Ruhn learns about the sprites and dragon. 
– Hunt figured out that Bryce somehow got Emile to the Viper Queen. All the bodies that Tharion kept finding were thanks to the Viper Queen’s mercenary, not Pippa. They go to see Emile at the Meat Market, and Bryce reveals to Hunt that Emile is powerless. They question Emile. He doesn’t know what secret Sophie held, but he does recognize Danika’s name. 
– Emile tells them that Danika found Sophie by scent, and asked her to do something that Danika couldn’t because she’s too recognizable. Hunt asks Bryce what they’re going to do with the boy, he can’t stay with the Viper. Bryce calls Fury and tells her to come around. Bryce tells Emile that he isn’t Emile anymore, that Bryce has arranged new papers, adoption papers, her parents are adopting him. Hunt and Bryce are mad at each other over her secrets. 
– Ruhn has Bryce come over to see the sprites and dragon. The dragon tells them that she was gifted to the Astronomer from an Archangel, in payment for a very important reading. The dragon recognizes Hunt’s name. 
– Bryce calls Jesiba to have her pull some strings with the Astronomer to see if he’ll accept payment for the sprites and dragon. Jesiba makes it seem like Ariadne isn’t the dragon’s real name: “is that what she calls herself? Fascinating.” When Bryce arrives at her desk at work, there’s a file on dragon fire, dating back 5,000 years. The article says that dragon fire is one of the few substances known to harm the Princes of Hel. 

Chapters 51-55:
– Hunt checks in with Celestina and everything seems to be okay, she’s not suspicious. But the Harpy caught rebels at the meetup and blood-eagled them on the Angel’s gate. 
– Hypaxia goes to Ruhn’s house: Hypaxia asks Ruhn for an escort because she doesn’t trust her coven. She explains that she was tutored by the dead; her mother summoned three spirits to teach her different things (battle & physical training, math & science, and one for history, reading and language). Hypaxia tells Ruhn she’s worried the coven will put her sister, Lidia in charge as a figurehead and Morganthia, the general, will rule. She also tells Ruhn that the coven wants a closer relationship to the Asteri, despite that not being her or her mother’s wish. Ruhn assigns Ithan to guard her (and Ariadne). 
– Tharion spilled everything to the River Queen. On the surface, Hunt flies to him, saying they need to talk about the demon reports he received from Nena; they captured an image of a death-stalker demon (bred by the Prince of the Pit). Hunt also tells Tharion that Emile has been found and is safe. Hunt tells him that Emile is powerless and doesn’t know the intel. Tharion decides he will milk this info, keep it from his Queen, and enjoy his freedom to explore the Above while “looking” for Emile. 
– Ithan asks Hypaxia if she’ll try and contact Connor, she agrees. 
– Hunt meets Bryce outside the Fae Archives, saying he needs to research something. Hunt tells her about the demonic breaches at the Northern Rift, tells her that if the Princes are planning something, this is probably the first hint. Bryce and Hunt have makeup sex in the archives. 
– Ruhn and Day speak: She warns him that Pippa is planning retaliation. They have a fight about Ruhn’s cavalier attitude about the war. He declares that he is no one – Prince of Nothing. 
– The Autumn King confronts Bryce the next day at work. He tells Bryce that he wanted her to marry Cormac for many reasons, but especially because Avallen’s mist is impenetrable by the Asteri. He also tells her that since she’s been throwing his name around to get what she wants, he filed the legal paperwork to have her name changed to Danaan. He recognizes the letters and numbers on Sophie’s arm. He warns her that if she messes up, the Asteri will kill her parents first.  He also tells her that he knows she’s looking for the truth, something he’s been looking for a long time. 
– Bryce calls Hypaxia for some girl time. They talk about how Hypaxia’s ghost tutors lived before the Asteri. Hypaxia speaks about how the witches are losing their power, the same as the fae. As they’re walking around, a massive beast emerges and attacks Ithan, ripping out his throat. 
– Bryce tells Hypaxia to shoot her magic into Bryce, to charge her. Hypaxia hits her with healing magic and Bryce teleports to Ithan to grab his gun. She shoots one demon and then she and Hypaxia work together to kill the other. TheY go to Ithan and Hypaxia starts healing him. 
– Hunt and Isaiah arrive on scene and Hunt confirms that they are the deathstalkers that crossed the rift. Hunt wonders how in the heck Bryce is unscathed. She admits to him, away from Isaiah that she teleported. They decide that the demons were either sent to kill Bryce or Hypaxia. 
– Ruhn drops the news that Bryce is officially a Princess and Hunt is stunned. 

Chapters 56-60:
– Ithan wakes in Hypaxia’s embassy. Hypaxia tells him what happened, and that the dragon fled. She assures him she will try and help Connor as promised. He asks about the wolf mystic but she doesn’t think she can help with that. Flynn, Dec and Tharion come to check on Ithan. 
– Tharion and Hypaxia speak; they have a small friendship from their time at the Summit. They see dreadwolves, Pollux and Mordoc walking down the streets. Hypaxia says their presence is an ill omen. Then Tharion goes to Ruhn’s and asks if they have room for one more. 
– At home, Bryce finally breaks down about being a Princess, being her father’s subject for real now. But she has a plan. 
– Ruhn and Day speak: she apologizes for how she acted the last time they spoke. She tells him she’ll be in Lunathion on the Autumnal Equinox. Ruhn suggests they meet at the ball for the governors. 

*2 Weeks Pass*
– It’s the night of the ball. Bryce bypasses her father upon arrival and goes straight to the archangels with Cormac on her army and Hunt trailing behind. She publicly announces that she and Hunt are mates and the Autumn King has no choice but to accept it. 
– The archangels broadcast the Asteri to the party: they congratulate Celestina and Ephriam. Then they congratulate Bryce and Hunt. 
– Ruhn and Hypaxia go to Lidia; this is Hypaxia’s first time meeting her sister. Ruhn leaves them to speak while he slinks to the place he agreed to meet Day. He finds the Harpy, but she doesn’t respond to “Day.” He goes to leave the fountain area and sees the Hind watching from the shadows. 
– Bryce and Hunt sneak off to find a room to have sex in. They find a locked one and break in to find Celestina and Hypaxia getting it on. They all come to an agreement that they will not speak of the females’ relationship. 

Chapters 61-65:
– Hypaxia and Ithan summon Connor, but the Under-King shows up, wanting to test Hypaxia. The UK set the area up into a labyrinth of wards, trapped them in with the hunting hounds of the House of Flame and Shadow. 
– Ruhn and Day speak: Day was in the garden, saw him and knows that he is Ruhn.  Ruhn tells her that he waited the whole night to see her, and then he kisses her incorporeal form. She tells him that he makes her feel alive. But then she is called from their bridge. 
– Hunt and Bryce have sex and she teleports them to the apartment building’s roof. While she sleeps, she is visited by Apollion. He tells her that Theia was Aidas’s great love, that she was allied with Hel against the Asteri, and Pelias was fighting for the Asteri. He also tells her that Hunt was “bred to be receptive to our kind.” He tells her she needs to open the gates to Hel so they can end this. She refuses and he tells her to find him when she finds out the truth. 
– Bryce trains with Hunt and Cormac, learning how to teleport after being charged by Hunt’s power. They are forced to hell Cormac about Emile being powerless, but safe. Ithan and Hypaxia show up. They tell them about the ward labyrinth and tell them the UK wants to see them in an hour at Urd’s temple. 
– In the Meat Market, Tharion finds the dragon and calls Flynn and Dec. When they meet with the Viper Queen, Ari is there, now one of the Queen’s prized fighters. Tharion and the Queen go to chat privately and he sees the Harpy with a bunch of lightseeker. Tharion asks the VQ about Pippa and she tells him he’d better call his friends. He tries them all, Hunt, Bryce, Ruhn, Ithan, Hypaxia, and no one answers. 
– The UK made it clear that only Bryce, Ruhn, Hunt and Hypaxia may come to Urd’s temple, so they do. The UK is there. He tells them that the reapers that attacked Ruhn were from the Eternal City. He stalls by barely answering any of their questions, just as Pippa marches in, flanked by Lightfall Soldiers. Pippa and the UK made a deal because war means death and death means souls. 
– Bryce poofs away to use the gates to announce that Ophion was attacking Urd’s temple. Bryce gets Ruhn and Hypaxia out before she loses too much energy to teleport again. Baxian appears in dog form and leads them to a secret exit. Outside, Bryce pulls a gun on him and demands to know why he’s following them and helping. He reveals that he’s Danika’s mate. 
– Baxian says they met two years before she died at a meeting of Pangeran and Valbaran wolves, Danika was sent as emissary. He had two years with her. Danika has sought him out because she was researching wolf ancestry and his is unique – very ancient but laid dormant until him. He tells them that Danika was looking into the origins of shifters and Fae. She wanted to find another world, somewhere she and Bax could be together. 
– Bryce mentions the numbers and letters on Sophie and Baxtian tells them it’s part of the Asteri’s archive numbering system (which he told Danika after he saw Sandriel go into that specific room and come out looking horrified.)
– Declan tries to hack into the Asteri’s archives but it’s ironclad. The cameras, however, aren’t. So he looks through the footage to see if Sophie ever entered. He finds the footage: she goes into the room, spends 15 minutes there, and leaves, face white as a ghost. Time stamped for right before she left for Kavalla. Bryce decides she needs to get into that room. 

Chapters 66-70:
– Bryce meets with Fury, wanting her intel on the castle. Fury is pissed but agrees. She is going to take Juniper and Syrinx away. 
– Tharion meets with his fiancé and calls off their engagement. 
– Ithan meets with the Prime and Sabine and tells them of the mystic wolf. The Prime asks after her scent, and tells Ithan that the female mystic is another Fendyr heir. Ithan decides to stay in Valbara and help this wolf instead of going to Pangera. He tells Hypaxia to tell the others he needs to do something, and then runs toward the Astronomer’s to keep watch in case Sabine comes to kill her. 
– Tharion runs to the Viper Queen and swears loyalty to her by drinking her blood/venom. She now has control over him and brainwashes him to return after he helps his friends. 
– Ruhn and Day meet: she tells him she cannot meet with him anymore because he distracts her from the mission. She tells him that if the male she’s seeing finds out, he’ll destroy Ruhn; her fate is tied to his. Ruhn commands that her fate is tied to his, instead. They have sex in the bridge realm. He tells her that they’re breaking into the archives and she tries to warn him that the Asteri know something but she’s yanked away. 
– Ruhn demands that they go to the Crystal Palace tomorrow so that he can save Day. They decide to incite Pippa into acting and use that as their distraction to break in. Tharion suggests that he and Cormac can instigate the raid at the Lab Pippa wants to hit, to force Pippa to come. Then when everyone shows up, they blow the lab to smithereens. Meanwhile, Ruhn, Bryce and Hunt will have Declan on cams watching as they break in. 
– After Bryce goes to sleep, Hunt goes to his old room in the barracks and grabs all of his extra weapons and his helmet. Celestina corners him and tells him that he can come to her if he needs an ally. 
– Tharion and Cormac arrive at the lab the next day. Pippa is already there, in the trees. Cormac slips away to teleport Ruhn, Hunt and Bryce to the castle. 

Chapters 71-75:
– Bryce teleports into the archives and ends in a hall where there’s seven crystal pipes shooting into the ceiling with seven plaques beneath, with small screens. Each plague says the name of one of the seven Asteri. Bryce watches as Firstlight flares across the floor and shoots up all six active pipes. The little screens flare to life, and she sees they have readings on them, “power levels.” She realizes that the Asteri feed on Firstlight. She realizes that these pipes sit directly under the throne room. Vanir are just food – a never ending supply of energy. 
– Bryce runs to get out of the archives in the amount of time they agreed upon, but sees a door labeled Dusk. Inside the room, Bryce finds maps of worlds and solar systems, and notes about when they were conquered and left. There’s a note that explains that the Asteri tricked beings from other planets to come to Midgard; they essentially made a farm. In the center of the room is a digital orrery. She sees Hel; the note says that the creatures of Hel saw through the Asteri and kicked them out, chased them after getting info from the Asteri’s captured lieutenants. They followed them to Midgard and attempted a coup with some of the people there; Theia. Bryce hunts through the notes for the Asteri’s home planet but cannot find it. Rigelus enters and tells her she’ll never find it because they’ve even forgotten where they came from. Rigelus tells her that she walked into his trap; that he wanted her there to open the rifts. He tells her about the history of Fae; her ancestors came from one planet, while the shifters were Fae from another planet (Dusk’s Truth). Rigelus admits to steering Micah toward killing Danika. Bryce teleports back to Hunt to find him chained in gorsian, and the Harpy chains her too.
– Ruhn leaves the group early and goes to the dungeons to look for Day, but he runs into Mordoc and the dreadwolves. Shackled, he watches as Bryce and Hunt are hauled into the dungeon too. Mordoc tells them that he’s been scenting them and following them, reporting to Rigelus. He also mentions that Hunt doesn’t smell right, doesn’t smell like any angel he’s smelled before. The Harpy commands Mordoc to leave and then the Hind comes and pushes her out of the way before she can hurt Ruhn, he recognizes her scent – and his scent mingled with hers. Lidia beheads the Harpy. 
– At the lab, Cormac has gone rouge, and Tharion realizes that Cormac never intended to leave the lab alive. Cormac turns into a giant ball of fire and explodes himself, the lab and Pippa just as five of the Asteri arrive. Tharion runs to the water. 
– Lidia reveals to all of them that she signaled to the city-ships to save Sophie, but they were too late. Pollux begins walking toward them and Bryce has to beat Lidia to make it look like Lidia is innocent. Pollux, Lidia and guards take them to the Rigelus. Hunt notices that Lidia did not secure Bryce’s shackles – she knew that Bryce had to get out with the intel she knew. Ruhn is destroyed by the news that Lidia is the woman he bound his soul to. 
– They take them to a room where Rigelus is situated by a quartz gate. 

Chapters 76 & 77:
– Rigelus has them all by the balls. Bryce tells the room the truth about the Asteri, that they’re parasites that feed on Firstlight and Secondlight. Rigelus admits to impersonating Aidas the night that Aidas broke into her apartment and was sitting on Ithan’s lap. 
– Rigelus says this about Bryce’s Star: “It’s a beacon to the world from which the Fae originally came. It sometimes glows when nearest the Fae who have undiluted bloodlines from that world. Prince Cormac, for example.” “It glowed for Hunt,” Bryce shot back. “It also glows for those who you choose as your loyal companions. Knights.” “So what?” Bryce demanded. “So that star will lead us back to that world….” He goes on to say that he wants to go back there and get revenge. 
– Bryce says she will open the portal if Rigelus allows Hunt and Ruhn to go free. He tells her to say her goodbyes. She kisses Hunt. Ruhn drops a stone into her pocket. He tells her to take the Starsword and portal to Hel – get armies. Bryce throws her chains to the ground and slams Rigelus with starlight while Hunt throws his chain to the ground and he slams lightning into Rigelus. Bryce runs, Pollux chases, but Baxian tackles him. Bryce runs and Rigelus slams Hunt into a wall. 
– Rigelus chases Bryce toward an arch, throwing power at her left and right. Hunt manages to throw lighting at her back, which shoots from her chest into the arch. The arch begins to turn murky and black. She teleports closer to the gate but only by a little before she hits a wall – wards. She keeps teleporting ten feet at a time until she manages to jump into the portal, begging it to only take her. Then she fell and fell until she felt a YANK. 
– Hunt, Baxian and Ruhn are gaged and bound in gorsian. Rigelus tattoos another halo on Hunt’s head; and the pain is like nothing he’s felt before.

“Then Hunt knew nothing at all.”

Chapter 78: 
– Bryce collides with the ground. She landed in someone’s immaculately groomed lawn, across a river from a beautiful city. A knife presses to her throat and someone says in a language she doesn’t recognize, something along the lines of, “don’t move.” The person turns her and she sees his giant black wings, demon’s wings. Bryce begins crying, asking to be taken to Prince Aidas. 
– The male blindfolds her then scoops her and flies her away. He opens a door and takes her hand to lead her inside. He tosses her over his shoulder and walks in. She begins to worry she isn’t in Hel. He pushes her into a chair and again tries to ask for Prince Aidas. Bryce removes her blindfold and asks him what level of Hel she’s in. He repeats Hel, but is confused. 
– The front door opens and then several people rush in: a short female with angular eyes like Fury. She notes their clothes are like the Avallen’s. There’s also another winged male with a female. They don’t understand her language either. She switches to Ancient Fae, “Is this world Hel? I need to see Prince Aidas.” The small female is shocked, she eyes the Starsword. She nods to the first male and he unsheathes his knife – a twin to the Starsword. They begin to glow, flares with dark light; “Alpha and Omega.” The female points to the sword and calls it, “Gwydion” 
– The small female tells Bryce that no one has spoken the Ancient Fae language in their world for 15,000 years, and that she isn’t in Hel. 
– A woman covered in paint walks in, followed by a male that Bryce thinks is Ruhn, says that he could be his twin. Bryce asks the first female for help; that her world is in grave danger. The painted female wants to know her name: 

“My name is Bryce Quinlan.”
“Hello, Bryce Quinlan. My name is Rhysand.” 

Epilogue:
– Ithan still waits outside of the Astronomer’s, having heard nothing about his friends. He sees Amelie but warns her off. Flynn calls: he tells him some things went down, Ruhn and Hunt are prisoners, Cormac is dead, Bryce disappeared. Flynn begs him to come to the house. 
– Ithan breaks into the Astronomer’s and begs the female to wake. The lost Fendry heir opens her eyes.