House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)

by Sarah J. Maas

Her quest for the truth began with her bloodhound gift. Not a gift of the body’s strength, but of magic, such as the shifters should not have. She could scent other shifters with strange powers.” Like Sofie. And Baxian. Danika had found him through researching his bloodline, but had she scented it, too? “It prompted her to investigate her own bloodline’s history, all the way back to the shifters’ arrival in this world, to learn where her gifts came from. And she eventually began to suspect the truth.” Bryce’s throat worked. “Look, I already did the whole villain monologuing thing with Micah this spring, so cut to the chase.” Rigelus chuckled again. “We shall get to that in a moment.” He went on, “Danika realized that the shifters are Fae.” Bryce blinked. “What?” “Not your kind of Fae, of course—your breed dwelled in a lovely, verdant land, rich with magic. If it’s of any interest to you, your Starborn bloodline specifically hailed from a small isle a few miles from the mainland. And while the mainland had all manner of climes, the isle existed in beautiful, near-permanent twilight. But only a select few in the entirety of your world could shift from their humanoid forms to animal ones. The Midgard shifters were Fae from a different planet. All the Fae in that world shared their form with an animal. The mer descended from them, too. Perhaps they once shared a world with your breed of Fae, but they had been alone on their planet for long enough to develop their own gifts.” “...