Fire characters

Appears from the start

Seventeen years old and the last human monster in the Dells: a young woman whose hair runs through every shade of red, gold and orange, whose beauty pulls at everyone who sees her, and who can enter minds, read them and steer them. She lives quietly in the far north of the kingdom, keeping her hair covered, hunted by monster predators drawn to her blood and by people who loved or hated her father. She is a serious musician, teaches the local children, and refuses to use her power on anyone if she can avoid it, because she saw exactly what such a power does in the hands of someone who enjoys it.

Appears from the start

Lord Brocker's son, Fire's oldest friend and her sometime lover, an archer of such accuracy that his name has become a joke about him. He is generous and quick, and also jealous, possessive of Fire and unable to stop himself pursuing other women, which is the running argument of their lives.

Appears from the start

Archer's father, lord of a northern holding and once the commander of the King's Army, considered the finest military mind the Dells has produced. King Nax had his legs broken years ago and he has used a wheeled chair ever since. He raised Fire alongside his own son, and he still advises the crown's soldiers when they come north.

Appears from the start

Fire's father, dead before the book begins. He was a human monster of extraordinary power who took hold of King Nax's mind and, through him, of the kingdom, ruling by whim and cruelty for decades and leaving the Dells lawless and near bankrupt when he died. He adored his daughter, which is the part Fire finds hardest, and everything she fears about herself she learned by watching him.

First appears in chapter 5

Commander of the King's Army and brother to the king, a hard, plain-spoken man who has spent his adult life holding the kingdom together with soldiers because its government cannot. He hates monsters and distrusts Fire on sight, for reasons that go back to what Cansrel did to his father and to the Dells.

First appears in chapter 8

King Nax's widow, who keeps her own fortified holding in the north and a great deal of the kingdom's remaining common sense. She is a shrewd political operator, one of the few people who treats Fire as an asset rather than a temptation or a threat, and she knows more about the last reign than she says.

First appears in chapter 10

King of the Dells, Nax's eldest son, a decent man trying to rule a kingdom his father ruined and largely failing. He is honest about his own weakness in front of Fire, whose power over minds he can barely withstand.

First appears in chapter 12

Nax's daughter, half-sister to Nash and Brigan, who runs the crown's intelligence work with her brother Garan. Sharp, unsentimental and openly curious about what Fire's power could do for them.

First appears in chapter 12

Nax's son, half-brother to Nash and Brigan, who manages the crown's spies and its accounts alongside Clara. He is chronically ill and works through it, and he is slower than his sister to trust a monster in the palace.

First appears in chapter 12

Brigan's small daughter, about five years old, raised in the palace by her aunts and uncles. She is fearless, horse-mad, and entirely unbothered by monsters, and she attaches herself to Fire immediately.

First appears in chapter 12

The soldier who commands Fire's personal guard, chosen because her mind holds firm against a monster's pull. Steady, direct, and unwilling to let her charge out of sight.

First appears in chapter 12

One of the young soldiers assigned to Fire's guard, quiet and competent, who has her own reasons for being uncomfortable around Archer.

First appears in chapter 10

A great lord of the north with lands on the Pikkian border, who has spent years building a private army larger than the crown can comfortably ignore. He is courteous to the king and openly contemptuous of the king's authority.

First appears in chapter 10

A great lord of the south, the crown's other looming problem, wealthy, vain, and gathering his own force for a move on the throne. He is less capable than his northern rival and more easily flattered.

First appears in chapter 18

Mydogg's sister, married into the Pikkian nobility and at least as dangerous as her brother. She is the one holding his alliances together and she does not underestimate Fire.

First appears in chapter 29

A boy with strangely mismatched eyes, found in the far north, whose father came into the Dells from the unknown country beyond the western mountains. Whatever he says, people do: his power is in his words, it leaves minds foggy and obedient afterwards, and it is the explanation for the blank-minded men who have been turning up all through the kingdom. He is curious, patient and entirely without pity.