Silver Shadows characters

Appears from the start

An Alchemist, a trained witch and a prisoner of her own order, held in a re-education facility whose location she does not know. Everything she relied on has been taken from her: her charms, her books, her contact with the outside, and eventually daylight, food and sleep. What she has left is her mind, which the facility exists to dismantle, and a very clear understanding that visible resistance will only prolong the process. She is one of this book's two narrators.

First appears in chapter 2

A royal Moroi spirit user and the book's other narrator, left behind when the Alchemists took Sydney. He is off the medication that stabilizes him, which means his magic works and nothing else about him does. He tries to reach her through dreams, cannot, and has no legal standing to demand anything from a human order the Moroi are not willing to fight over. Grief, spirit and drink make an extremely poor combination in him.

First appears in chapter 2

The Alchemist directing Sydney's re-education: composed, patient and entirely convinced she is performing a kindness. She frames every deprivation as treatment and every confession as a step towards health, and she is not moved by anything Sydney says.

Also known as Jill Melrose

First appears in chapter 4

The Moroi queen's half-sister, still in hiding and now without the Alchemist who ran her protection. Bonded to Adrian, she experiences his collapse from the inside, and it costs her more than anyone around her understands.

First appears in chapter 4

Jill's dhampir guardian, who takes Sydney's disappearance as a personal failure and puts himself into the search for her without being asked.

First appears in chapter 4

The young British dhampir guardian attached to the group, correct to the point of stiffness and more entangled in other people's lives than his manner suggests.

First appears in chapter 5

Sydney's younger sister, who reported her and now has to live with what the order does with a report. She was raised to believe re-education is treatment, and the belief is not surviving contact with the result.

First appears in chapter 5

The Keeper-raised dhampir attached to the group, blunt, loyal and impatient with everyone's caution about rescuing Sydney.

First appears in chapter 6

A Moroi spirit user whose sister was restored from Strigoi by her own magic. Kind, lonely and bonded to a sister she cannot find, she is drawn to Adrian, who is the only other person who understands what spirit costs.

First appears in chapter 14

An Alchemist detained in the same facility, held far longer than Sydney and worn down to compliance. He knows the routines, the guards and the geography, and he is a reminder of what waits at the end of the process.

First appears in chapter 8

The former Alchemist who broke Sydney's tattoo, brought back into the search because he knows more about the order's internal workings than anyone else who will speak to Moroi.

First appears in chapter 8

A Moroi spirit user and restored former Strigoi who lends the search her contacts and her judgement, and keeps the group's rescue effort from becoming a suicide attempt.

First appears in chapter 10

A dhampir guardian of formidable reputation, himself once Strigoi and restored, who joins the effort to find Sydney because the people asking are his people.

Also known as Ms. Terwilliger, Jackie

First appears in chapter 10

The witch who trained Sydney, now trying to help find her by means the Moroi and the dhampirs cannot supply, and painfully aware that she is the reason Sydney had anything worth hiding.

First appears in chapter 18

Nina's older sister: a Moroi who was Strigoi and was restored by her sister's spirit magic, one of a handful of people this has ever happened to, and therefore of enormous interest to anyone who studies the condition. She has been held and examined rather than helped.