The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Maas, Sarah J. House of Earth and Blood. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.

Part 1 began in Griffin Antiquities as Bryce Quinlan spoke with her best friend Danika Fendyr, a powerful shifter and Alpha of the Pack of Devils. They split up as Danika left to go to a meeting with the City Heads about Philip Briggs, a criminal who had just been released from prison and had a vendetta against Danika. When Bryce arrived at the apartment she shared with Danika, the Pack of Devils were already there eating dinner. Bryce left to go on a date with her rich boyfriend Reid. As she left, Connor, Danika’s Second, asked Bryce out. Bryce waited 45 minutes at the restaurant then broke up with Reid. She agreed to go on a date with Connor that weekend. She met her friends Fury and Juniper at the White Raven, a popular club. They took party drugs and danced. When Bryce returned home, she found the dead bodies of Danika and the entire Pack of Devils. She ran away as a demon chased her out of the apartment. The demon attacked an angel in an alley and Bryce hit it with a table leg to make it disappear. She used the angel’s phone to call the emergency line, though she was still in a state of shock. The perspective shifted to Isaiah Tiberian and Hunt Athalar, two angels in the 33rd Imperial Legion, who watched as Bryce sat in a holding area. They had arrested Philip Briggs for the murders. Viktoria, a wraith in the legion, interrogated Bryce by reading her text exchange with Danika and playing an audio recording of Danika’s murder. Still in shock, Bryce flipped a table and threw up. The angels released Bryce after they received word from Ruhn Danaan, Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae, to let Bryce go, since she was half-Fae. Later, Bryce said goodbye to Danika at the river.

Part 2 took place 22 months later. Bryce had sex with a random shifter in the bathroom of the White Raven. Then she met Maximus Tertain, a vampyr, for a business deal with the gallery. Maximus hit on her, but Bryce was able to get out of the situation once Maximus noticed Ruhn nearby. Bryce spoke to Ruhn, who was her half-brother, although they claimed to be cousins. Ruhn watched over Bryce as she walked home, although she did not want him to help her. Meanwhile, Hunt Athalar, the infamous Umbra Mortis, tortured a man for his boss Micah, the Governor. He had been a part of his dead love Shahar’s failed rebellion years ago. Micah had bought Hunt’s sentence from Sandriel, Shahar’s vengeful sister. Hunt must kill 2,217 lives for Micah in order to meet the lives of those he took during the war.

Isaiah and Hunt found Bryce at the gallery. They informed her that Maximus Tertian has been murdered and they suspected that it was related to Danika’s murder. Micah arrived and enlisted Bryce to help with the investigation alongside Hunt. Hunt asked Bryce to make a list of suspects and Danika’s whereabouts before she died. Micah told Hunt that he would lower Hunt’s quota to only 10 more assignments if he and Bryce found the murderer before the Summit. Ruhn argued with the Autumn King about not wanting to marry and finding Luna’s Horn. Meanwhile, Hunt waited for Bryce to write her list on a roof adjacent to her apartment window. Bryce shut her blinds.

The next day, Bryce went to get a manicure, which annoyed Hunt. She visited Ruhn at his house to gather insight about the Viper Queen, who was in charge of the Meat Market where Maximus had died. Ruhn was high along with his friends, Tristan Flynn and Declan Emmet. He tried to caution Bryce not to get involved, but she did not heed his warning. Bryce returned to Hunt and showed him the list of suspects she had made the night before. She explained that her manicurist has been Maximus’ girlfriend and she learned that the Viper Queen may be connected to both Maximus and Danika. She snuck away from Hunt to go to the Meat Market, but Hunt found her there. Bryce bought obsidian salt from a dealer to get the Viper Queen’s attention. They spoke, but the Viper Queen had an alibi for both murders. Later, Bryce invited Hunt to the gallery to help her in the basement archive library. Hunt met Lehabah, a fire sprite whom Jesiba had bought. Then, Ruhn texted Bryce to meet him at Luna’s Temple. He told her and Hunt that the Autumn King wanted him to look for Luna’s Horn. He had researched the kristallos, the demon that the killer had summoned.

The next day, Hunt told Bryce that there has been another murder. Bryce had to leave because seeing the body reminded her of Danika’s death. Hunt tried to comfort her, but Bryce did not want him to help. He told her that the angel whose life Bryce had saved in the alley was Micah. Bryce and Hunt argued and she left. He followed her to the White Raven, where she met her friend Juniper. Ruhn found them there. Then a bomb exploded in the club. They escaped the building. Bryce argued with Ruhn when he said that Autumn King wanted her to be guarded at all times. She decided that Hunt could be her guard and let him stay in her guest room.

Later, Bryce, Hunt, and Ruhn looked through the books in the gallery library. They learned that Danika had been stationed at Luna’s Temple when the Horn was stolen. Bryce and Hunt went to the Comitium, where the 33rd Imperial Legion worked. They ran into Micah and Sandriel, Hunt’s former owner. Micah asked Bryce out to dinner, but she rejected him. Micah sent Hunt on a mission to kill someone that night. The next day, Hunt went to the Oracle to ask for insight about Luna’s Horn. The Oracle implied that the Horn could be fixed and cautioned Hunt about Bryce. Bryce explained to Hunt how she had rendered the Oracle temporarily blind when she visited her at age 13.

Bryce and Hunt visited Philip Briggs in prison. Briggs confirmed that he was not involved in the bombing at the White Raven. Hunt doubted himself, since he felt like he was just as bad as Briggs for his own participation in the angel rebellion, but Bryce reassured him that this was not true. Bryce and Hunt asked Ruhn and his friends to help look at security footage. Then, Isaiah called Hunt and told him that a guard from Luna’s Temple had been murdered. Later, Declan told Bryce that Sabine had swapped the security footage of the Temple on the night of the theft.

In Part 3, Ruhn met with a medwitch to ask about healing Luna’s Horn. Bryce and Hunt went to the Istros River to meet with Tharion Ketos, who was Hunt’s mer friend and the Captain of Intelligence in the River Queen’s court. Bryce and Hunt went to the wolves’ Den to speak with Sabine. Amelie Ravenscroft and Ithan Holstrom acknowledged them coldly. Sabine lied, saying that Danika was not at Luna’s Temple on the night of the theft. Later, Hunt went out for drinks with his friends and Bryce snuck out. He found her taking a walk and then a kristallos demon attacked him. Hunt and Bryce fought off the demon. Bryce thought it was strange how easily they had killed the demon.

Sabine confronted Bryce and Hunt when they returned to Bryce’s apartment. When Bryce accused Sabine of killing Danika, Sabine clarified that she had been protecting Danika by covering up the footage of Danika stealing Luna’s Horn. Bryce struggled to process this news for the next few days. Tharion sent a message with a photograph of a victim of the kristallos. Bryce realized that Danika had not been killed by this demon. Despite Hunt’s protests, Bryce decided to summon a demon to ask for help. She spoke with Aidas, a Prince of Hel, who had appeared to her as a cat when she was a child. Later, Declan called to tell him that there was a Fae test they could run on Danika’s clothes. Bryce was angry that the Autumn King had prevented this test from being run two years ago. She went to a bar and broke her no drinking rule. Later, she apologized for her behavior to Hunt. The next day, Micah called Hunt into his office. Hunt did not respond to Bryce’s messages all day. She worried about him. Hunt finally returned home covered in blood. Bryce helped him wash off and go to bed.

Bryce and Hunt flirted with each other the next morning. Viktoria ran a test on Danika’s clothes and found traces of a drug called synth. Later, Bryce called her mother and step-father to introduce them to Hunt. The next day, Bryce and Hunt went to the Meat Market to try to learn more about synth. Bryce asked Fury about Danika’s involvement with synth. Bryce bought a box of chocolate croissants for Danika’s birthday, but Amelie had written “trash” on them. Hunt threatened Amelie. Bryce and Hunt went to the medwitch Ruhn had met with earlier to extract the kristallos venom that was in Bryce’s leg wound. The witch used this venom to make an antidote for synth. Then, Micah ordered Hunt to come to his office to punish him for attacking Amelie. He cut off Hunt’s wings, while Bryce, Amelie, and Sabine watched. Bryce brought Hunt home afterward.

Bryce went to work at the gallery the next day as Hunt recovered. Bryce found a flash drive that Danika had sewn into her leather jacket in the phrase, “through love, all is possible,” which Danika had also tattooed on Bryce’s back. Bryce went home and showed Hunt the videos on the flash drive of synth research trials that turned the human subjects violent. Bryce and Hunt decided to pursue a romantic relationship and began hooking up, but Hunt’s wounds reopened. Bryce called a medwitch, then left after Hunt fell asleep. She received a message from Tharion to come to the river, where a synth deal was taking place. She found the Viper Queen selling synth to Hunt. She confronted Hunt, who had teamed up with Viktoria and Justinian behind her back to rebel against their masters for freedom. The Viper Queen alerted Micah to the deal and he came with other angels to arrest them.

In Part 4, Micah tortured Justinian and Viktoria and sold Hunt back to Sandriel. As Hunt was about to leave for the Summit with Hunt, Bryce came to the Comitium and offered to buy Hunt from her, using an expensive necklace she had always worn, or take his place. Sandriel revealed that Bryce was the Autumn King’s daughter. Ruhn arrived and stopped Bryce from making a deal with Sandriel, which angered Bryce. She ran away to the river, crying, when a kristallos demon attacked her. She fought it off, with Ruhn’s help, then returned home. Isaiah later returned Bryce’s necklace to her.

At the Summit, the leaders of each House gathered at the heart of the Psamathe Desert. Ruhn learned that the medwitch he had met at the clinic was Queen Hypaxia. Sandriel wanted to wage war on the human rebels. Meanwhile, Bryce worked in the gallery library when Micah ambushed her. She called Jesiba, who projected the video call onto the screens at the Summit. Micah wanted Bryce to give him Luna’s Horn. He knew that Danika had stolen the Horn and realized, once Bryce took off her necklace with the power to protect her from demons and a kristallos immediately attacked her, that Danika had ground the Horn into a powder and tattooed it into Bryce’s back. He had blackmailed Danika into stealing the Horn for him, then injected Danika with synth when she would not tell him where she had hidden it, which resulted in her killing her pack and herself. Micah searched for the Horn for two years, then realized that Bryce was the key to finding it. He drew her into the murder investigation that he had orchestrated. Now, he injected Bryce with synth to activate the Horn. Bryce fought Micah off with her powers and locked him in the bathroom. She got a rifle from Jesiba’s office and shot Micah with it when he escaped, then cut off his head and set his body on fire.

Then Bryce realized that activating the Horn had opened a portal to Hel in the city and demons were coming through the city gates. The Viper Queen and Ithan’s pack helped Bryce fight the demons. Bryce ran toward the gates, instead of the shelter, and announced that she was Starborn, which she had always hidden to protect Ruhn. She used her Starborn powers to seal the gates. Sandriel sent the Astrian Guard to kill Bryce. Hypaxia used her powers to free Hunt from his bounds. Hunt killed Sandriel. He took Fury’s helicopter back to the city and jumped out to find Bryce. Bryce found him unconscious and made the Drop, using Danika’s dead soul as her Anchor, and gained more power than the Autumn King. She returned to her body and reunited with Hunt.