Blood Promise characters

Also known as Rosemarie Hathaway

Appears from the start

A dhampir who walked out of St. Vladimir's Academy weeks before she would have graduated, and is now alone in Russia hunting Strigoi. She is still bonded to Lissa Dragomir and can slip into her mind from any distance, but the connection runs one way and Lissa cannot reach her. Skilled, underfed and single-minded, she is following the promise she made to Dimitri Belikov, and she has no plan for what happens to her afterwards.

Appears from the start

The guardian Rose loves, taken alive during the raid on St. Vladimir's and awakened as a Strigoi. Rose and Dimitri promised each other that neither would be left in that state, and she has crossed the world to keep her half of it. What she knows of him is now the problem: he was the best fighter she has ever seen, he thinks several moves ahead of everyone around him, and none of that was lost when he died.

Also known as Vasilisa Dragomir

First appears in chapter 2

The last of the royal Dragomir line, left behind at the Academy when Rose walked out on her. Rose watches her through the bond without her knowledge: grieving, angry, still using spirit, and now carrying its darkness herself with no one to take it away.

First appears in chapter 4

A Moroi with fire magic and a long history of being written off for his parents' choice to become Strigoi. He is Lissa's boyfriend and, in Rose's absence, one of the few people willing to tell Lissa when she is wrong.

First appears in chapter 4

A royal Moroi and spirit user who has taken on Lissa's training in the aftermath of the attack, and who can reach Rose in her dreams wherever she is. He drinks steadily, cares more than he admits, and is the only person who can contact Rose directly while she is abroad.

First appears in chapter 5

A young human Alchemist, one of a secretive order that has worked for centuries to keep the existence of vampires out of human knowledge, cleaning up after them and marked with a golden lily tattoo made from vampire blood and chemistry. Precise, faintly nauseated by everything Rose is, and posted to Russia against her preference, she is instructed to escort Rose across the country and does it with open reluctance.

First appears in chapter 7

A Moroi businessman known throughout Russia as Zmey, the serpent, expensively dressed, permanently amused, and feared by people who are not easy to frighten. His interests run well outside Moroi law. He takes a personal interest in Rose the moment he learns she is in the country, and gives no reason for it.

First appears in chapter 8

Dimitri's mother, who keeps a crowded, welcoming house in the dhampir town of Baia in Siberia, with two grown daughters and their children living around her. She takes Rose in without hesitation and treats her as family from the first evening.

First appears in chapter 8

Dimitri's grandmother, tiny, ancient and almost silent, who watches Rose with undisguised assessment. The town credits her with knowing things nobody has told her, and she says as little as possible about how.

First appears in chapter 8

Dimitri's youngest sister, close to Rose's own age, warm and impatient with the limits of a small dhampir town. She attaches herself to Rose immediately and wants a friend more than she wants a guest.

First appears in chapter 11

A dhampir living quietly in Baia, decades older than Rose and bonded exactly as she is: he died, a spirit user brought him back, and he has been shadow-kissed ever since. He is the first person Rose has met who already knows what the darkness does to someone who carries it.

First appears in chapter 11

A Moroi spirit user in Baia, Mark's wife, deliberately hidden from Moroi society and careful about how much magic she uses. She is able to draw the darkness back out of her bondmate instead of leaving him to carry it, which Rose had not known was possible.

First appears in chapter 9

The daughter of St. Vladimir's new headmaster, a few years older than Lissa, worldly and funny and untroubled by rules. Watching from thousands of miles away through the bond, Rose sees her attach herself to Lissa quickly and fill the space Rose left, and cannot tell whether her own dislike of her is fair.

First appears in chapter 14

A young dhampir in Novosibirsk who refused a guardian's assignment so that he could hunt Strigoi with a group of friends his own age. Fervent, badly outmatched by what he is chasing, and delighted to have Rose confirm that his way is the right one.

First appears in chapter 22

A Strigoi who was a guardian before she turned, and who trained Dimitri years before Rose ever met him. She runs a large fortified estate and a criminal operation from it, with a guardian's decades of skill and none of the restraint that came with being alive.