The Iron King characters

Appears from the start

A girl turning sixteen in rural Louisiana, living on her stepfather's hog farm with her mother and her four-year-old half brother Ethan. Her own father walked out of her life when she was six and was never found. Poor, unpopular and largely invisible at school, she is stubborn and fiercely protective of Ethan, and she has spent years quietly ignoring the things she keeps seeing at the edge of her vision.

Appears from the start

Meghan's four-year-old half brother, attached to a stuffed rabbit and to Meghan herself. He insists that a man hides in his bedroom closet and that things move through the house at night, claims the adults around him dismiss.

Appears from the start

Meghan's mother, who married Luke Chase and built a quiet life on his farm. She is protective in a way Meghan finds stifling, and she deflects every question about Meghan's father and about the years before her second marriage.

Appears from the start

Meghan's biological father, who disappeared when she was six: he took her out for the day, walked away toward the water, and was never seen again. No trace of him was ever found, and the unexplained loss shaped the family Meghan grew up in.

Also known as Robbie Goodfell, Robin Goodfellow

First appears in chapter 4

Meghan's best friend at school, a red-haired troublemaker she has known for years as Robbie Goodfell. When the truth about Ethan comes out he stops pretending: he is Robin Goodfellow, the trickster called Puck, and he has been posing as a schoolboy in order to keep watch over Meghan on the orders of a master in the fey world whose name he will not give her. He treats mortal danger as entertainment and jokes without pause, but he is a very old and very capable creature underneath it.

First appears in chapter 7

A grey cat of the Nevernever, a cait sith, who talks, vanishes at will and appears to know a great deal about everyone he meets. He agrees to guide Meghan on the strict understanding that she will owe him a favour to be named at a time of his choosing. He gives excellent advice, refuses to fight, and leaves whenever a situation stops being interesting.

Also known as The Erlking

First appears in chapter 9

Ruler of the Summer Court of the Nevernever and, as Meghan learns, her true father. Ancient, formal and difficult to read, he acknowledges her openly as his half-human daughter and admits that he placed Puck at her side years ago. His evident care for her sits uneasily beside his refusal to send the Summer Court after whatever took her brother.

First appears in chapter 9

Queen of the Summer Court and Oberon's wife, radiant, imperious and quick to anger. Meghan's existence is public proof of her husband's affair with a mortal woman, and Titania makes no secret of wanting the girl out of her court by whatever means the rules of Faery allow.

First appears in chapter 12

The youngest son of Mab, Queen of the Winter Court, a prince who hunts for his mother and has a reputation for never coming back empty-handed. He is cold, exact and courteous, and Oberon's half-human daughter is exactly the sort of prize his queen would want. Under the truce that governs the courts' shared gatherings he cannot simply take her, which leaves bargaining, and he is very patient.

First appears in chapter 12

Queen of the Winter Court, Titania's opposite and equal, who rules the Unseelie fey from Tir Na Nog. She is Ash's mother, and her interest in Oberon's half-human daughter is not a friendly one.

First appears in chapter 16

The Iron King: ruler of a new kind of fey, and the figure Meghan glimpsed moving inside her computer screen and Ethan saw standing in his closet. His creatures took Ethan, and everywhere his realm spreads the old fey sicken, rust and die.

First appears in chapter 18

A fey seer hiding in New Orleans in the shape of an old woman, who trades in knowledge of what is coming. She knows what took Meghan's brother and where it lives, and she will say so only at a price she sets herself.

First appears in chapter 20

One of the Iron King's lieutenants, an enormous horse built of black iron and steam who leads the hunt for Meghan and her companions. He is relentless, deafening, and oddly formal about the duty he owes his king.