Cress characters

Also known as Crescent Moon

Appears from the start

A sixteen-year-old Lunar shell - born without the ability to manipulate what others perceive, and therefore marked for death as an infant. She was taken instead and put to work. For seven years she has lived alone aboard a satellite in Earth's orbit, a gifted hacker forced to run surveillance on Earth for the thaumaturge who keeps her there. She has never cut her hair and knows the world almost entirely through net feeds and dramas, which have left her romantic, imaginative and hopelessly unready for actual people.

Appears from the start

Levana's head thaumaturge, who visits the satellite to collect her spy's reports. She placed Cress there as a child and has kept her useful and isolated ever since, and she is hunting the escaped cyborg for the queen.

First appears in chapter 2

The fugitive cyborg mechanic, now certain she is Princess Selene, the missing Lunar heir, and hiding aboard a stolen ship with a crew she did not plan on. She is trying to learn to use a Lunar gift she has spent her life suppressing and hates using, and has settled on a goal she has no idea how to reach: stop the wedding, take Levana's throne, and end the invasion of Earth.

First appears in chapter 2

The captain of the stolen ship Rampion, a thief with an unshakeable opinion of himself and a talent for talking his way through situations he should not have entered. He treats the crew's suicidal mission as a business opportunity and Cress, whom he has never met, as a voice on a comm link.

First appears in chapter 2

The farmer from southern France, aboard the Rampion after the loss of her grandmother, sharpened by grief and impatient with the crew's caution. She is the one person who treats Wolf as a man rather than as a weapon.

First appears in chapter 2

The former Lunar special operative who broke with his pack in Paris. Aboard the Rampion he is the crew's only source on how Luna's soldiers and thaumaturges actually work, and he is uneasy in his own body, watching himself for the instincts that were built into him.

First appears in chapter 2

Cinder's android friend, installed as the Rampion's ship system, where she runs the sensors, complains about the accommodation and campaigns steadily for a body of her own.

First appears in chapter 3

Emperor of the Eastern Commonwealth, publicly engaged to Queen Levana and privately counting the days. The wolf soldiers' attacks have killed thousands across Earth, the antidote he bought with the engagement is being rationed out to him a shipment at a time, and the wedding is to be held on Luna.

First appears in chapter 3

The queen of Luna, days from the marriage that will make her empress of Earth's largest nation, holding the plague antidote as leverage and the invasion in reserve. She still wants the escaped cyborg found.

First appears in chapter 3

The Eastern Commonwealth's royal advisor, managing a young emperor, a war and a wedding at once, and the only person Kai can be honest with.

First appears in chapter 26

Sybil Mira's personal guard and pilot, a young Lunar soldier who says as little as possible and gives away less. He ends up in the hands of Cinder's crew, where he is entirely uninterested in being rescued, recruited or thanked, and appears to be protecting something on Luna he will not name.

First appears in chapter 36

Levana's stepdaughter and the princess of Luna, adored across the moon for a beauty that is entirely her own, with three fine scars across one cheek. She refuses on principle to use her Lunar gift to control anyone, and the refusal has cost her: she sees and hears things that are not there, and the court treats her as harmless and mad. She is kinder than anything else in Levana's palace.

First appears in chapter 38

The Lunar defector and former palace scientist, found at last in a small desert town in Africa, where he has been treating plague patients and waiting. He knows more about the origins of letumosis and about Luna's programmes than he has ever admitted, including things he has kept from Cinder.