63 pages • 2 hours read
Kristen CiccarelliHeartless Hunter
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Rune Winters
Content Warning: This section mentions graphic violence, execution, intimate partner violence, and abuse.
Rune Winters is one of the novel’s protagonists and the antagonist to Gideon Sharpe. Rune is described as a beautiful girl with strawberry-blonde hair, gray eyes, and a pale complexion. Rune has a carefully crafted a reputation as “an informer. A witch hater. A darling of the New Republic” who betrayed her grandmother to the Blood Guards (4). Another aspect of her crafted persona is “the silly, shallow heiress she pretend[s] to be” (31). Orphaned shortly after birth when her parents drowned in a terrible shipwreck, Nan, a witch, adopted and raised Rune.
Mere months after the Red Peace when Rune was forced to turn her grandmother in and watch her execution, Rune discovered that she, too, is a witch. To avoid capture, Rune doesn’t scar her body for casting. Rather, she uses the blood from her monthly cycles. This method considerably weakens her magic but keeps her body free of the silver scars that will condemn her as a witch.
Kristen Ciccarelli describes Rune’s magic as like the sea. Her magic’s distinct scent is the salty ocean breeze, and the feeling of her magic is either a wave she crests or a tidal wave threatening to pull her under. By day, Rune poses as a vapid socialite, and by night, she saves witches scheduled for the gallows disguised as the Crimson Moth.
The Crimson Moth is the way Rune atones for her betrayal of her grandmother. Despite being told to do so by Nan, guilt and shame plagues Rune. Rather than seek happiness as her Nan would want her to do, Rune places herself in daily danger as punishment for her crime. While Rune’s character doesn’t undergo much dynamic growth in this first installment, her steadfast open-mindedness and compassion toward others provide a positive example of a good witch in a society where witches are believed to be inherently evil.
Gideon Sharpe
Gideon Sharpe is one of the novel’s two protagonists and the antagonist to Rune Winters. Gideon is the older brother of Rune’s best friend, Alex Sharpe, and an infamous witch hunter who captains the Blood Guard charged with purging witches. He is widely well-known for his part in assassinating the Sister Queens and sparking the rebellion that dismantled the witch regime and placed the Good Commander in charge of the New Republic.
Despite having “the same tall frames and handsome features: firm jaws, prominent brows” (32), the author describes Gideon as Alex’s opposite in values, behavior, and personality: “[W]here Alex was golden and warm as a summer day, Gideon was closed and dark as a locked, windowless room” (32). Gideon’s body is lean and muscular due to years of boxing and service in the Blood Guard. His newfound hardness overshadows the tenderness of his past as an aid to his tailor parents; there is “no softness. No warmth” (33).
A thorny rose enclosed inside a crescent moon brands Gideon’s left pectoral, a sign of the territorial abuse he suffered at Cressida’s hands—trauma that physically lives on and in his body. Considering the dark connotations flowers contain toward his past, Gideon’s willingness to sew Rune silk flowers holds deeper meaning as his feelings for her grow.
Gideon’s tragic backstory of how witches destroyed his family evidence a conflicting viewpoint on witches than the one Rune’s character presents. Gideon’s experiences relate exclusively to the corrupt Roseblood family who tortured his family and used cruel, outlawed magic for personal gain and pleasure. This is why he hates all witches.
Alexander “Alex” Sharpe
Alex Sharpe is Rune’s oldest and closest friend. He’s described as looking “like a lion” with golden hair and a courageous personality. Alex represents comfort and safety for Rune. He knows her identity and yet has never judged or condemned her for it. In a society where everyone, even her friends, would send Rune to the gallows the moment they discovered her identity, Alex is the one person who protects her at all costs.
Alex is a talented pianist and shares Rune’s kind heart. He helps the Crimson Moth with every witch rescue out of compassion for every individual. Alex is “always waiting on the other end. Sometimes with horses or a carriage; other times with boats. He was the getaway man in their heists, and he never let Rune down” (19). The significance of Alex in Rune’s life is unmatched, even by her other close friend, Verity de Wilde. Alex is irreplaceable, “the one steady rock in her life. Always there to lean on” (177). This particular role cements the emotional charge of Alex’s eventual death in the novel’s climactic action.
Though Alex rarely talks about his family, he wears a silver ring on his left hand that he habitually twists to bring himself comfort. Alex’s character provides the narrative and both its protagonists with external and internal conflicts. His compassionate nature leads him to lie about killing Cressida, who becomes the ultimate antagonist of the story. His feelings for Rune complicate his loyalty to his brother and Gideon’s courtship with Rune.
Verity de Wilde/Cressida Roseblood
Verity de Wilde is Rune’s best friend and the Crimson Moth’s second-in-command. Verity “came up with as many plans as Rune did and helped implement them” (41). Verity is also the series’ antagonist, Cressida Roseblood, in disguise. While Ciccarelli describes Cressida as a wispy platinum blonde with crystal blue eyes, Verity is a curvy, bespectacled girl with perpetually sunken, tired eyes and shoulder-length, curly brown hair.
Verity de Wilde is a scholarship student at the capital university, and Rune believes she is fully human, although Verity does admit to having two older sisters who were witches but were killed during the Red Peace rebellion. Rune never pries about this information out of respect for Verity’s loss. However, this foreshadows the reveal that Verity is Cressida. The author describes Verity as wearing heavy lavender perfume. While Rune believes this is Verity’s personal preference, it’s later revealed that Verity wears heavy perfume to overpower her magic’s rose and blood scent that Gideon could easily identify. Rune attributes the dense shadows under Verity’s eyes to “many late nights helping the Crimson Moth, then staying up until morning to finish her biology homework” (52). However, it soon becomes clear that Verity’s fatigue is due to late nights spent murdering Blood Guards for blood to fuel her castings.
Cressida Roseblood is a royal of the former Reign of Witches. She was more reserved than her sisters, who had a vicious hubris. According to many, including Gideon, Cressida is remembered as exceedingly prideful and “thought herself better than everyone else” (76). This characteristic influenced her romance with what rumors claimed was her “lowborn lover” whom she never brought “with her to public gatherings or appearances, as if she were ashamed of the dalliance” (77). Gideon’s effect on her pride is apparent through his point of view. While courting Rune, Gideon is often insecure about his status in society and suffers from low confidence.
Cressida’s character strengthens many aspects of the novel. Her lack of morality brings attention to the Ethical Dilemmas in a Divided Society that both witch-supporters and witch-haters face. She also serves as a foil to Rune; her cruelty contrasts Rune’s kindness and depicts two witches on opposite ends of the good and evil spectrum. Cressida represents the stereotypical witch that society fears and shows how easily power can corrupt.
