Characters / Knights of the Borrowed Dark

Characters from Knights of the Borrowed Dark and The Forever Court. Beware of inherent and unmarked spoilers.

The Knights of the Borrowed Dark

Denizen Hardwick

The thirteen-year-old protagonist. Raised in Crosscaper Orphanage until he was swept away into the world of the Knights, and an ongoing quest for answers and resolution around his family. He's angry, he's stressed, and he numbers his frowns.

Tropes:

• All-Loving Hero: With all his anger and the walls he puts up, it's easy to forget that Denizen risked a fate worse than death to save a little girl he'd never met, and that this is the ultimate reason he decided to join the Order. It's his kindness and compassion that gain Mercy's trust, and his hope is the reason she gives him knowledge of the Cants.
• Blood from Every Orifice: After Denizen messes up the Higher Cant, his nose, eyes, and hands are bleeding.
• Break the Cutie: Let's see. He's had numerous near-death experiences, been betrayed, watched his mother get shot in front of him, had someone he cares about die, overcome his trust issues enough to make a second friend only for them to be hurt and taken away, shove his feelings into mental boxes, develop a case of Survivor Guilt, and get drugged and kidnapped and held at knife-point. Oh, and his eye exploded. Poor kid...
• Brutal Honesty: Says exactly what he means.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Between Mercy and the Order.
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: Especially when it comes to Vivian.
• Facial Dialogue: He has twenty-four numbered frowns.
• Fiery Redhead: With youthful freckles to boot.
• Genre Savvy: Zig Zagged. Denizen has read these kind of fantasy stories and is able to lampshade and exploit a good number of tropes (like Geometric Magic and a Trust Password), but his story doesn't always actually conform to these, so this knowledge can be ineffectual sometimes. He also seems to be painfully oblivious to other tropes, like that the mentor certainly does not have plot armor.
• The Heart: While he isn't at all soft about it, he does serve this role, particularly toward the end of the book. He manages to prioritize and remind Vivian that her personal revenge quest is not as important as saving the world, and even saves his own life by talking Grey down.
• Height Angst: Being short is apparently as bad as being pathetic and cowardly.
• Heroic Safe Mode: Oh, Denizen... This is his main way of dealing with emotions and vulnerability, especially when he has important things to keep doing. Just bottling them up, hiding them away until the adrenaline wears off—or, as he'd prefer, permanently. He enters this at the end of book one, and is in it for most of book two in regards to Grey.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Denizen is anxious and very hard on himself. He feels like he's the Load to the Knights.
• Innocently Insensitive: He comes across as this due to not being willing to see, or just simply not seeing, another person's point of view.
• Kid Hero: He's thirteen.
• Meta Guy: Oh gosh. “And none of you find that weird?”
• Naïve Newcomer: Very new to the world of Knights and Tenebrous.
• The Napoleon: He's short and seriously considered burning almost every other character's face off at least once.
• No Social Skills: Denizen doesn't know how to talk to people, especially people his own age. He's often lost for words, and end up breaking new ground in with and charm as he splutters out something he deems stupid. He says “em” a lot and ignores people when they're talking to him (deliberately or not), or he's blunt or rude. At the beginning of the book, Simon is his only real friend, and he has no intention of making more—both because he's content, and because he has trouble with it. (However, he does consider Grey a friend by the end.)
• Resigned to the Call: There's no way he's going back to Crosscaper, but he's not too happy about having to save the world, either. He just wants to be left alone with a book.
• Skilled, but Naive: He knows all the Cants, but has still only been a Knight for six months.
• Socially Awkward Hero: See No Social Skills.
• Squishy Wizard: As of the end of book one. Denizen hates sports and doesn't know how to fight at all, but Mercy showed him the Cants, so he can use his powers better than anyone else in the story.
• Survivor Guilt: Has a massive case of this in The Forever Court, due to the fact that he got out of the battle with the Clockwork Three (mostly) unscathed, while D'Aubigny died and Grey suffered immensely.
• Thinking Out Loud: After using Sunrise in Rathlath.
• Unreliable Narrator: Not unreliable, exactly, but very, very biased; he points it out most of the time, but not always. His worldview is colored by severe abandonment and trust issues, which influence his perceptions on other characters.
• Unstoppable Rage: One of his most notable and interesting character traits. When he gets mad, he gets mad; his Dawning manifested as fire because of his disposition and tenancy towards anger, and his power is fueled by this. Even just at a personal level, he's very unforgiving and blunt. When Denizen Hardwick is mad, he will say exactly what he thinks of your actions, regardless of danger. Several people have tried to justify actions Denizen thinks were wrong, and he straight-out told them that their excuses were nonsense and that they could have done something else.
• Useless Without Powers: He doesn't get de-powered, but the Redemptess's wires prevent him from using them, and he realizes that he has no way to defend himself without the Cants since he doesn't know how to fight and has been relying on them.
• Youthful Freckles: Including one on his lip.

Simon Hayes

Denizen's childhood best friend and fellow Knight-in-training.

Tropes:

• Action Survivor: Played With. He tries to be a Reconstruction of this; when the visitors come to Crosscaper and he's the only one awake, he decides to stay alive and learn what he can so he can at least warn Denizen when he comes back, if not get help himself. It doesn't got as he planned, but he doesn't fail either. He is able to survive and give Denizen information (though most of it was just confirming what Grey had said), but can't do much more than that due to under qualification and Break the Cutie.
• Break the Cutie: This book is not nice at all to poor Simon. His chapters are terrifying, but just how much he's broken only really becomes obvious when Denizen finds him.
• Deadpan Snarker: Turns out he's quite the little snarker. “Yeah, Denizen, I've always thought my nose would look slightly better to the left.”
• Genre Savvy: Read detective novels, which is how he knew how to hide and sneak around Crosscaper.
• Invisibility: After his Dawning, he bends light and is able to become invisible.
• Meaningful Echo: When Denizen finds him and tries to use a Trust Password to prove that he's real, Simon tells him not to overthink stuff—a phrase he used when Denizen first left.
• Muggle Best Friend: Subverted. Simon is Denizen's best friend, and he is normal for most of book one. However, that's because he hasn't had his Dawning yet. His powers awaken on his birthday, and he joins the Knights.

Darcie Wright

A teenaged Knight, and Seraphim Row's Lux Precognitae and librarian.

Tropes:

• Anger Born of Worry: Darcie becomes very snappy at Denizen when he decides to join the Order, because that means that she'll be responsible for him, too, and worries about killing him if her information is incorrect.
• The Cassandra: Played With. Cassandra is apparently the inspiration for Darcie—but her curse is not that nobody believes her, but that everyone believes her.
• Guilt Complex: Darcie can detect Breaches, and thus feels responsible for the other Knights. If her information is wrong, they could get hurt or die, and she blames herself for that.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Lux Precognitae are very, very rare, and what she can do even creeps out some of the other Knights.
• Seers: She can see Breaches before they happen.
• The Smart Guy
• Teen Genius: Seraphim Row's resident genius! She's the librarian, and identifies Tenebrous the other Knight's fight.

Abigail Falx

Another Neophyte, Abigail comes from a family of Knights and has been training since she was young.

Tropes:

• Action Girl: Abigail has been training to be a Knight since she was little, and is very skilled.
• Genki Girl: Downplayed, but she still has a lot of energy.
• Motor Mouth: Much to Denizen's dismay in the first book, she's really chatty. This is probably partly due to her family and history—she moved so much that she never really got to make any friends before, or even have conversations with kids her own age.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Bright blue, as she sees wonder in the world.
• Little Miss Badass: She's still only thirteen.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Downplayed. She's optimistic and sees brilliance everywhere, but isn't actually as naïve as she appears.

Vivian Hardwick

Denizen's mother, a Malleus of the Order of the Borrowed Dark and the leader of Seraphim Row's cadre. Cold, aloof, astonishingly skilled at fighting, and a war hero of the Order.

Tropes:

• The Ace: She is the best, and has a far-reaching reputation among Knights. She could probably be running the Order, not just one cadre, except she likes working alone.

• Anger Born of Worry: Much of her anger towards Denizen is this.
• Crusading Widower: Her husband was killed by the Clockwork Three and she put her two-year-old son in an orphanage so she could seek vengeance and possibly keep him out of her world.
• Deadpan Snarker: Well, everything she says is deadpan, but she has her moments of snark.
• Death Seeker: Ever since what happened eleven years ago, she's been this, throwing herself entirely into her duty as a Knight.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She's becoming more talkative and snarky as the series progresses.
• Failure Knight: She got her husband killed and is now dedicated to protecting Denizen. Although, since she's simultaneously trying to avoid him, she doesn't do that great of a job, and most of her attempts to protect him are indirect.
  • She's even more of this in The Forever Court, where she's fiercely overprotective of Denizen rather than trying to avoid him.
• Family Honor: Oh so much, since the Hardwick family is so connected to the Order and Knighthood.
• His Story Repeats Itself: Basically, although both her and the Clockwork Three are far more skilled than they were eleven years ago. The Clockwork Three return with the same goals, and target her cadre— and while they don't wipe everyone out because they got what they wanted on the first try, they do manage to kill one person and break the other two.
• It's Personal: When the Clockwork Three come back.
• Living Legend: Due to being The Ace, she's incredibly well-known and respected throughout the Order.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Admits at the end of the first book that she's Denizen's.mother.
• Mama Bear: Not that she isn't normally intimidating and violent, but heaven help anyone who even looks like they might mess with Denizen.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: She is brutal when killing The Clockwork Three, even though they were already being dealt with by the Endless King.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: She laughs, and it's a big deal. She cries, and Denizen freezes.
• Revenge Before Reason: Vivian loses her calm when dealing with the Clockwork Three because it's personal for her. This causes her to make mistakes and walk into a trap, after isolating herself and disconnecting her cadre from the situation, which puts them in massive danger. This is Lampshaded by Grey, who even goes so far as to claim that she's just as petty as the Three are.
• Sole Survivor: She's the only person from the Seraphim Row cadre who survived eleven years ago.
• The Stoic: She very, very rarely shows any emotion.
  • Not So Stoic: When explaining to Denizen what happened eleven years ago, she's overcome with emotion.
• Survivor Guilt: Due to being a Sole Survivor and her husband being killed.
• They Call Him "Sword": Other members of her cadre often simply refer to her as "Malleus."
• Tranquil Fury: Sometimes.
• The Unfettered: Completely committed to her duty as a Knight and getting revenge on the Three.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Denizen really wants to prove himself to his aunt, so that she'll give him the time of day and talk to him.
• Workaholic: To the point where she has trouble doing anything other than her duties as a Knight.

Graham McCarron ("Grey")

The colleague Vivian sent to pick Denizen up, who quickly becomes Denizen's mentor and friend. As of The Forever Court, he's a former member of the Dublin cadre.

Tropes:

• Badass in a Nice Suit/Sharp-Dressed Man: In his first appearance. He wore a suit when he picked Denizen up from Crosscaper, and just happened to have to fight in it when there was a Breach nearby.
• Big Brother Mentor: Sees Denizen as a brother.
• Big Eater: Grey has a whole pot of coffee, three sausage rolls, and two bags of chips in under half an hour in the cafe with Denizen. Might be a case of Cast from Calories.
• Break the Cutie: He was broken before the story even began, so most of it happened in backstory, but it's possible to watch him break even more as the book progresses. The Clockwork Three made him their thrall; he was tortured, mind-controlled, and forced to forget what happened and what they made him do, unless it would hurt him more to remember. He's lonely and isolated from the rest of the Knights, because he puts up such a good mask that people genuinely think he's okay, or just stressed and still recovering from Rathlath. The only person he has to talk to is Mercy, a Tenebrous and the daughter of the Knights' greatest enemy, so he does, and brings her books out of guilt. He tries to get information out through her, but ultimately is unable to do anything but watch both sides fall apart.
• Broken Smile: Wears one in chapter 25 and onward. It doesn't seem to be going away.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: He smiles like a cat-burglar.
• Covered with Scars: It's unclear whether he truly has more scars than anyone else, but they certainly are emphasized more. At the very least, his arms and one side of his face are covered in them.
• Deadpan Snarker: He normally sticks to lighthearted jokes, but falls into this when annoyed.
• Friendly Address Privileges: Seemingly. He introduced himself by his full name to Ackerby, but when Denizen called him Mr. McCarron, he corrected him with, “My friends call me Grey.” Also, Vivian calls him Graham after he betrays her.
• Having a Blast: Makes a coffee cup explode. Also, a car.
• In-Series Nickname: Grey, which is shortened from Graham.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Clockwork Three make him forget what they did to him, and most of what they make him do.
• Manchurian Agent: His role as the Clockwork Three's thrall. Whatever they did to him in their process made them able to control him, physically and mentally, and then force him to forget what he did. He built Mercy's cage, left Simon's birthday card for Vivian to find, brought the Hardwicks to Crosscaper, and likely more, although given that he was unhinged and barely-coherent when he was explaining his situation, not much is known about thralldom.
• Nice Guy: Easily one of the nicest of the Knights.
• One of the Kids: He takes on most of the Neophytes' training, and also tends to act significantly younger than he actually is.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: He's called “Graham” in a serious context a grand total of once.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: People notice when usually impulsive, reckless Grey is adamant about staying away from Os Reges Point... although they figure it's just because of stress due to the impending End of the World as We Know It.
• Sanity Slippage: Goes through a very steep and possibly deliberate one. He gets better after the Three die.
• Stepford Smiler: He's nice, fun, witty, and always seems to be wearing his quirky little grin. And while Denizen actually does notice that his charm is a mask, he still believes Grey is okay. He isn't; he uses smiles to hide most of himself, making it very hard to say what, exactly, even is behind that mask. But he's horribly lonely, and despairing, and becomes increasingly unstable. He exhibits this trope since the very beginning, but his tenancies become so much worse after Rathláth.
• Tattoo as Character Type: Has a phoenix tattooed across one shoulderblade. He's a formidable warrior wielding light-based powers, and a good deal of his later arc revolves around returning (partly) from a crossing of the Despair Event Horizon.
• Terrible Ticking: Not only does he hear ticking, but it also makes him do things.
• Walking Spoiler: He's close to being this, due to it being very hard to talk about him without mentioning him being the Clockwork Three's thrall.
• Weak-Willed: He tells Denizen that he doesn't have much self-control. This becomes significant later.
• Weapon Twirling: It doesn't seem to be for aesthetic purposes, but just because he seems to fiddle a lot, and if a weapon is what he happens to have on hand, well...

Corinne D'Aubigny

Another Knight working out of Seraphim Row.

Tropes:

• Action Girl: D'Aubigny is a Knight, so of course this applies. She's extremely skilled at combat, and barely needs to use Cants at all.
• Bilingual Bonus: D'Aubigny calls Jack “mon petit géant,” which means my little giant in French.
• Dual Wielding: She often fights using two blades.
• Happily Married: To Jack.
• Precision F-Strike: “We will not go quietly, wretch.”

Fuller Jack

The cadre's blacksmith.

Tropes:

• The Blacksmith: He makes the weapons for the other Knights of the cadre using spoken steel.
• Gentle Giant: Jack's a blacksmith, so he's very large and muscular, but also extremely kind and rarely battles.
• Hidden Depths: He's incredibly strong personality-wise. After being on the receiving end of vicious Cruel Mercy, he learns to cope with what happened and is on the road to acceptance. He's one of the only people who's able to talk about the tragedies of the first book without breaking.
• Happily Married: To D'Aubigny.

Edifice Greaves

The Palatine of the Order of the Borrowed Dark.

Tropes:

• Ambadassador: Well, he is the Palatine.
• Badass in a Nice Suit/Sharp-Dressed Man: Always. He's the Palatine, and has an, um... flair for the dramatic.
• The Charmer
• Dissonant Serenity
• Foil: Of the similar-but-different variety to Grey, which helps effectively force Denizen to confront his issues involving him. To elaborate, Greaves shares a lot of qualities and quirks with Grey, even down to having a similar speech pattern, but is noticeably lacking anything resembling Grey's distinctive kindness. Where Grey used his charm mainly to help Denizen and let him feel more comfortable, Greaves is usually manipulative and pragmatic with it.
• The Gadfly: Denizen notes that he likes pushing people's buttons. He greeted the Neophytes in customized ways—exploiting Abigail's pride in her family, Darcie's love of books and response to flattery, and Simon's unknown lineage—and Denizen becomes wary of him after this. He uses Grey to get into Denizen's head.
• Large Ham: He's... he's very Edifice Greaves.
• Motor Mouth: Capable of talking for hours on end.
• Pragmatic Hero: The general consensus in-universe seems to be that he's this. He makes a very good Palatine, and the safety of the world and the Order seem to be his primary concern, but some of his actions are sneaky, manipulative, or otherwise questionable, leaving him often at odds with the main characters.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Of an interesting variety. He does give the Kid Heroes the time of day, as is necessary for the trope, but also ends up working slightly against them; he's a Pragmatic Hero who has to prioritize the Order, and is by no means villainous, but is still considered untrustworthy because he's so committed to this goal that it could end up putting Denizen in a bad situation.
• Smug Smiler: Has shades of this.
• The Social Expert
• Stroke the Beard: He does this when he wants to appear thoughtful.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Is described as such (but not too much).

The Family

In General

Tropes applying to several members of the Croit Family.

Tropes:

• Blind Obedience: They follow the Redemptress and Grandfather without question.
• Family Honor: Oh, yeah, fanatically so. Croits believe that Family is more important than anything.
• Family Theme Naming: Several Croits' names end in “-el,” which means of God.

Uriel Croit

A thirteen-year-old, newly-Favored Croit, and a second point-of-view character introduced in The Forever Court.

Tropes:

• Archangel Uriel: Not literally, but alluded to. The Family believes the Redemptress to be a god, so him sharing the name of an angel is apt. He also wields a Flaming Sword, and goes “astray” when his faith breaks.
• Break the Haughty/Break the Believer: Uriel's Family pride and belief in the Redemptress get completely thrashed over the course of the book.
• Character Development: He starts the book as confident and haughty, believing unconditionally in the Redemptress and his Family, but once She wakes, he begins to see holes in the history. His Crisis of Faith leads him to make his own decisions—including standing up to Grandfather—and grow into a much more open-minded and better person.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Between his Family, and the Redemptress.
• Crisis of Faith: A large part of his character arc.
• Foil: Both he and Denizen are bookish, skeptical, and don't trust easily. Unlike Denizen, Uriel grew up surrounded by Family, with his heritage and history in plain sight. But the Redemptress's awakening, and meeting the Adversaries, threw his world on its head and everything he knew into doubt. His story loosely parallels Denizen's in the first book, and helps Denizen work out his issues with Vivian.
• Meaningful Name: Uriel means “God is my light,” and also references the angel.
• Undying Loyalty: To Ambrel.

Ambrel Croit

Uriel's fraternal twin sister.

Tropes:

• Book Dumb: Uriel makes jokes about how she doesn't read often.
• Dark Action Girl: She's one of the most fanatical of the Croits, could have killed Denizen at one point, bested Uriel in their faith-fight, and was the one who suggested the Redemptress kill other Croits to get Denizen to cooperate.
• Flaming Hair: During the prologue, when her power manifests.
• Meaningful Name: Ambrel means “amber,” but may also be derived from Ambriel, the name of an angel associated with Gemini, the Twins.
• Undying Loyalty: To the Redemptress.

Tenebrous

The Clockwork Three

A trio of misery-eating Tenebrous: The Man in the Waistcoat, The Woman in White, and The Opening Boy.

Tropes:

• Clockwork Creature: The Woman in White and the Man in the Waistcoat.
• The Dog Bites Back: Indirect, but epic. The Opening Boy helps Denizen lift the hammer to destroy Mercy's cage.
• Emotion Eater: They feed on misery.
• For the Evulz: The root of their motivation is to have “a little more misery in the world.” also feeds them, but they don't seem to be as concerned about that.
• Forced to Watch: Basically the whole reason the other two keep the Opening Boy around is to invoke this.
• Hell Is That Noise: The Opening Boy's crying, dear god!
  • Also, the Terrible Ticking that Grey hears.
• Hero Killer: The Clockwork Three killed four members of Vivian's old cadre, including her Malleus, and D'Aubigny.
• Hope Crusher: They delight in being this.
• Humanoid Abomination: They're Tenebrous but disguise themselves and try to pass as human. They don't do a very good job.
• Person with the Clothing: Two of them are only ever referred to as the Man in the Waistcoat and the Woman in White.
• The Speechless: The Woman growls, but doesn't talk.
• Tears of Remorse: The Opening Boy's sobbing slips into this during chapter 16.
• White Hair, Black Heart: The Man in the Waistcoat and the Woman in White.

Mercy

The diplomatic Tenebrous princess, daughter of the Endless King.

Tropes:

• Adorable Abomination: She may be an extradimensional shapeshifter, but she sure is cute.
• Enigmatic Empowering Entity: A mysterious, magical glowing girl who gave Denizen knowledge of all seventy-eight Cants.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She's the Endless King's daughter, and he was willing to start a war to find her.

• Hard Light: As a Tenebrous, she can create a body out of anything—she likes using light.
• Have You Come to Gloat?: *ahem* COME TO GLOAT, WHELP? COME TO MOCK YOUR PRISONER?
• Heart Trauma: She was referred to as the Endless King's missing heart.
• Hostage MacGuffin: In the first book, she was kidnapped in an attempt to start a war.
• Innocently Insensitive: Probably due to being a Tenebrous, she doesn't seem to notice when what she says is upsetting.
• Mystical White Hair: In her human form her hair is bright and silver.
• Politically-Active Princess: As of book two, she's calling for the end of a war that's been going on for centuries.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Possibly the most powerful Tenebrous shown so far, in fact. She took care of Malebranche, a member of the Forever Court, off-screen, and it didn't even seem to be a big deal for her... although she seems more inclined towards peace. That, and she's an adorable princess.
• Really 700 Years Old: Likely older than that, but still considered a teenager by Tenebrous standards.
• Save This Person, Save the World: Well, if the Knights don't return the mercy, the Endless King will Breach, which is an extinction-level event, so...
• Walking Spoiler: Oh so very much. Just the fact that the Endless King is missing his mercy is a spoiler—the fact that the mercy is a Tenebrous and his daughter is an even bigger spoiler.
• Young Face, Old Eyes: When she takes on the vague appearance of a young girl for Denizen's benefit, he can still see how ancient she is.

The Endless King

The mysterious godlike Tenebrous king.

Tropes:

• Dimension Lord: Of the Tenebrae.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Seems to care about his daughter a lot.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Endless King has never actually appeared, but looms over everything.
• I Have Many Names: The Endless King, That-Which-Is-Endless/He-Who-Is-Endless, the Father of Shadow, the King of the Tenebrae...

Mocked-By-A-Husband

The herald of the Forever Court.

Tropes:

• Youkai: Alluded to with one of its alternate names, Kuchisake.

Malebranche

The Spymaster of the Forever Court.

Tropes:

• Animal Eye Spy: Crows, obviously. There was one spying on Coronus and the Croits, that he killed when it started developing a mind of its own.
• Creepy Crows: His body is made up of a multitude of these in a vaguely, vaguely humanoid shape.

• Tuckerization: His name is derived from a group of demons that attack the protagonists from The Divine Comedy.

Rout

The executioner of the Forever Court.

Tropes:

• Slasher Smile: So creepy that Denizen didn't even want to look at it.

The Redemptress/Coronus

The mysterious being worshiped by the Croits.

Tropes:

• Crusading Widower: The Endless King is Her Adversary because of the First Croit's anger about him sending Her into a deathlike sleep. Coronus picks up this quest when she awakens.
• Non-Malicious Monster: She's been asleep for the entirety of the development of the Croit's cult, and wakes up absolutely confused. And when they tell her of the War That Will Come, she jumps on it as an opportunity to take vengeance on the Endless King and the Order... but she's mostly just confused and grieving, and far from being actually evil.