Sophie’s desire to discover who engineered her and why provides much of Exile’s narrative momentum. Her need to fix Alden’s broken mind lends urgency, fueling her desperate quest to find her missing journal and her dangerous choices to enter Prentice’s mind, meet with the Black Swan, and drink the limbium. She repeatedly expresses frustration about all that has been taken from her, often feeling that the secrecy unnecessarily complicates things. However, her quest to find out about herself teaches her not only about her powers but also to understand them and how to wield them. This ultimately serves to refute Bronte’s claims about them to both her and him.

Bronte and Fintan, though on opposites sides of the conflict within the elvin world, express a similar sentiment about special abilities: They’re instinctive. Elves have an innate drive to use them, and left unsatisfied, this drive can become dangerous. Bronte’s argument is that Sophie can never understand them because she doesn’t come by them naturally and can’t relate to the need to use them. However, the secrets that the Black Swan organization keeps from Sophie force her into situations that call forth her powers, creating the very conditions that Bronte and Fintan describe.