The Ballad of Never After characters

Appears from the start

No longer the hopeful shop girl who knelt at a Fate's statue in Valenda. She has spent her three kisses, watched what the first of them did to Prince Apollo, and cannot tell herself any more that she is a bystander in someone else's story. She is stranded in the Magnificent North, responsible for damage she did not intend, and still inclined to trust people she has every reason not to.

Also known as The Prince of Hearts

Appears from the start

The Fate whose bargain set the whole of Evangeline's life in the North in motion. He is immortal, effortlessly charming and consistently dishonest by omission, his kiss is lethal to whoever receives it, and he wants something from the sealed Valory Arch that he has never named. He is also the only person available to Evangeline who understands the North's old magic well enough to be useful.

First appears in chapter 3

The North's young ruler, whose devotion to Evangeline was the work of a kiss rather than his own feeling, and who did not come through the end of the previous book intact. What he has become is dangerous, and Evangeline holds herself responsible for the kiss that began it.

First appears in chapter 6

Evangeline's friend from the Magnificent North, generous with her help and reticent about herself. Her familiarity with the North's oldest stories runs deeper than the life she appears to be living would explain.

First appears in chapter 8

A vampire of the Magnificent North, powerful and thoroughly transactional. He will help Evangeline, at a price, and his own history with the North's older residents matters more to what he does than anything she can offer him.

Appears from the start

Evangeline's stepsister, turned to stone at her own wedding in Valenda by the bargain Evangeline made. She has not been restored, and putting that right is one of the debts Evangeline is carrying north.

Appears from the start

The man Evangeline once loved, turned to stone beside Marisol at their wedding. He remains a monument in Valenda and a permanent reminder of what Evangeline's first bargain actually bought.