Days of Blood & Starlight (daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2)

The second book in the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy picks up after the devastating revelations that ended the first novel. In Prague, Karou's best friend Zuzana and Zuzana's boyfriend Mik contend with Karou's ex-boyfriend Kaz, who exploits his connection to Karou's media nickname, "the Girl on the Bridge," for attention. Meanwhile, Karou has vanished into Eretz, a parallel realm inhabited by seraphim (angels) and chimaera (animal-aspected beings with human intelligence), accessible through magical portals.

Akiva, the seraph soldier who revealed to Karou that her chimaera people were destroyed, crosses into Eretz tormented by guilt. He searches the ruins of Loramendi, the chimaera fortress city his actions helped annihilate, but finds no trace of Karou. In the Kirin caves, ancestral home of a winged chimaera tribe, he discovers a thurible, a vessel used to preserve souls for resurrection, inscribed with Karou's name in the handwriting of Brimstone, Karou's former guardian and the chimaera's master resurrectionist. Believing her soul is trapped inside, Akiva assumes she is dead. He returns to Cape Armasin, a former chimaera garrison now occupied by seraphim, where his half-siblings Hazael and Liraz, fellow soldiers in the Misbegotten, the emperor's bastard legion, forgive his betrayal on one condition: no more secrets.

Karou, however, is alive. She has become the new resurrectionist for the chimaera rebellion, operating from a crumbling kasbah in the Moroccan desert under the command of Thiago, the White Wolf. Thiago is the charismatic general who, in Karou's previous life as the chimaera Madrigal, had her executed for loving Akiva. Using teeth, pain, and the magic Brimstone taught her, Karou builds monstrous new bodies for chimaera soldiers. Thiago controls her through isolation and manipulation: He assigns his lieutenant Ten as a constant watchdog, volunteers to provide the pain tithe for her magic to gain access to her room, and reminds her ceaselessly of the debt she owes for her treason. The other chimaera distrust her, calling her "traitor" and "angel-lover."

Thiago launches coordinated strikes across the former chimaera territories, leaving mutilated seraph bodies marked with slit smiles, an ancient chimaera symbol of defiance, and blood-scrawled messages: "We are arisen." Emperor Joram responds with overwhelming force, dispatching his brother Jael and the elite Dominion legion to crush all remaining chimaera. Akiva begins secretly warning chimaera villagers of approaching sweeps by flying ahead at night under an invisibility glamour. When he and Hazael discover fugitive sheepfolk hiding in a gully, Hazael pretends to hear only a bird, and together they spare the refugees.

Thiago's rebellion escalates. The Shadows That Live, a pair of sphinx assassins, slaughter an entire seraph garrison near the imperial capital. When Thiago dispatches all his soldiers on a second wave, his true strategy emerges: Rather than defending chimaera civilians, the teams attack seraph homes, targeting women and children. Only one team defies orders and flies south to defend their own people; they die fighting. Ziri, the last Kirin in his natural flesh and the team's designated safety, tasked with gleaning fallen comrades' souls, watches helplessly and walks into a trap set by Jael. Jael tortures him, but an enormous summoning of birds, which Ziri suspects Akiva caused, creates enough chaos for him to escape.

Karou's isolation deepens until Zuzana and Mik arrive at the kasbah, having decoded her cryptic e-mail and hiked through the desert. Thiago immediately leverages their safety as another means of control. Ziri returns alone, grievously wounded, and Karou heals him over many hours. He tells her the truth: Thiago has been lying to the soldiers, claiming Karou sold chimaera secrets to the seraphim, and has forbidden anyone from speaking to her.

Akiva, still carrying the thurible, tracks the rebels to the kasbah and appears to Karou under glamour. She unleashes her hamsas, the magic eye-tattoos on her palms that sicken seraphim, and he endures the assault without defending himself. She drops her hands, unable to kill him. He gives her the thurible and departs. Karou opens it and discovers the soul within belongs not to Brimstone but to Issa, the Naja serpent-woman who helped raise her. She secretly resurrects Issa, gaining a trusted ally.

Issa delivers Brimstone's final message: Before Loramendi fell, thousands of chimaera descended into a cathedral beneath the city, where Brimstone sealed them in a massive vessel, preserving their souls in stasis. His personal message to Karou affirms his belief in her dream of peace: "Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope." Armed with this knowledge, Karou confronts Thiago before the assembled host, challenging his terror campaign as futureless and revealing the buried souls. A few soldiers move to her side, but Thiago defuses the rebellion by pretending to consider her arguments.

That night, Thiago retaliates. He murders the soldiers who supported Karou, lures her to the corpse pit, and sexually assaults her. She fights him off and kills him with a knife. Ziri arrives and makes an extraordinary sacrifice: Understanding that the chimaera will never follow Karou without their general, he slits his own throat so she can place his soul into Thiago's mended body. Karou buries the last Kirin body, resurrects an ally named Haxaya into Ten's body after Issa's serpents kill the lieutenant, and presents the resurrected "Thiago" to the host. Only Karou, Issa, and Haxaya know the deception.

In the Empire, Akiva, Hazael, and Liraz travel to the capital, Astrae, where Emperor Joram has summoned Akiva. He plans to assassinate his father to end the cycle of war. Akiva's mother was a Stelian, a member of a mysterious, magically powerful seraphim nation. Drawing on memories of her, he achieves sirithar, a transcendent state of magical clarity, and kills Joram. But the assassination was orchestrated all along by Jael, who murders the crown prince Japheth, frames the Misbegotten, and seizes power. Hazael is killed defending Liraz. In grief, Akiva unleashes an enormous burst of power that shatters the Tower of Conquest, felt across all of Eretz.

Akiva and Liraz carry Hazael's body to the kasbah, desperate for resurrection, but his soul has already dissipated without a thurible. Ziri-as-Thiago must perform the role of the contemptuous general while Akiva, seeing Karou at the Wolf's side, cannot understand why. Before leaving, Akiva warns Karou that Jael has learned about the human world from Razgut, a captive exile with knowledge of Earth, and plans to invade with the Dominion to acquire human weapons. He tells her he will seal the portals and asks which world she will choose. "I am chimaera," she answers. "My life is there."

As the chimaera prepare to evacuate, Zuzana and Mik return screaming that hundreds of angels have appeared in human skies. The Dominion has already come through. Akiva reappears, too late to seal the portal, and proposes what once seemed impossible: His Misbegotten army fighting alongside the chimaera rebels against their common enemy.

The novel closes in the Kirin caves on the eve of battle, two armies divided by mutual hatred and separated by stone walls. Across the firelight, Karou and Akiva find each other's eyes, and the connection between them burns bright as they face an uncertain tomorrow together.