The Serpent and the Wings of Night

Raihn is Oraya’s romantic interest. He is described as tall and broad, with rust-red eyes and wavy, dark red-black hair that falls to his shoulders. His body is covered in scars, including the “diamond-shaped patch of mottled flesh over his shoulders” (240), which runs down the center of his back. His wings are covered with red-black feathers, indicating his Nightborn Rishan descent. Other than Vincent, Raihn is the only other vampire to possess the rare and powerful Asteris magic. In Chapter 45, it is revealed that Raihn is one of the rare Turned vampires, a transformation that only two of three humans survive. As a human, he was married with a child on the way. As a newly Turned vampire, he became enslaved to the former Rishan King, Neculai and fell in love with the king’s wife, Nessanyn, who died during Vincent’s coup to usurp the throne of the House of Night.

Raihn carries himself like a warrior, but also possesses a witty humor and wears a wry smirk that contradicts his first impression. He’s described by his friend Mische as loyal and trustworthy. These qualities are extensions of the qualities Raihn possessed in his human life. Although becoming a vampire typically erases what remains of the victim’s former human life, Raihn desperately clings to the remains of his humanity. It is for this reason that Oraya perceives him in such a way, noting, “Raihn’s features were strong—almost unpleasantly so, like each held too much personality to be combined in such a way” (72). The value Raihn places in his remaining humanity allows him to convince Oraya of the value in her own, even though Vincent has attempted to devalue the human aspects of her existence.

Raihn embodies the archetype of the anti-hero, whereby his motivations are good, but the things he must do to enact on them inevitably hurt the protagonist, Oraya. Though Vincent is a tyrant who has murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents, Oraya still perceives Raihn as the anti-hero when he murders her father. Though his means are justifiable and even noble, Oraya’s complex relationship with Vincent compels her to perceive Raihn’s actions as villainous.

Vincent is described as being incredibly ruthless. He has moon-silver eyes and pale blond hair and stands as the archetypal father figure to Oraya and the antagonist to everyone else. Oraya is aware of this dual role and even refers to the different sides of Vincent almost as separate people, for she draws clear distinctions between Vincent “her father” and Vincent, the “Nightborn King.” Her realization of her father’s two-faced nature highlights his conflicting roles in the story; as her father, he sometimes shows her a conditional form of love, but as the Nightborn King, he “was too ruthless to allow the slightest challenge, love or no” (123). In this regard, Vincent-as-father presents as an anti-hero who strives to protect the human daughter whom he loves—while King Vincent is the antagonist who heartlessly decimates Salinae to destroy Oraya’s remaining human family and cause widespread devastation.

Vincent is a round and dynamic character; his complexity is attributed to his conflicting desires to maintain his rule over the House of Night and to protect his human daughter from harm. Vincent’s most vital tenets are “Never trust. Never yield. Always guard your heart” (23). His opposing desires create internal conflict for Vincent, because he must choose between obeying his own tenets or ignoring them to properly love Oraya. Despite being aware that Oraya is his biological daughter and a potential Heir, which is a threat to his rule, Vincent keeps her alive rather than murdering her as he did every other member of his family. This decision, in addition to his support over her success in the Kejari, demonstrates his first violation of his tenets. His love for Oraya, and the all-consuming fear for her life, represents another.

Though Vincent loves his daughter, his character struggles with loving properly, presenting the theme of The Complexity of Love. Although his ruthlessness nature makes him a powerful king, it renders him incapable of expressing healthy affection, and this dynamic becomes clear when Oraya nonchalantly mentions that “[h]e never sounded more affectionate than when he was insulting [her]” (20). Just before his death, Vincent verbally acknowledges his love for Oraya for the first time. However, this admission does not atone for his previous actions, and Oraya remains locked in a paradoxical impasse even after his death, for she states, “He was a terrible person in so many ways. And yet I loved him” (450). Thus, the complex interpersonal dynamics serve to reveal the subtler aspects of his character development since the moment he adopted her. Whereas he was once nothing more than a ruthless king, the addition of Oraya to his life has slowly taught him to love, to trust, and to be vulnerable in ways he never had before, even though his version of such things falls far short of the mark.

Mische is a vampire, though even her best friend, Raihn, doesn’t know which House she belongs to. She was a human priestess for Atroxus, the sun god and member of the White Pantheon, when she was attacked by a vampire on the street one night, Turned, and left for dead. Oraya views Mische as “the most unusual vampire [she’d] ever met” (141). Mische is vivacious and friendly even though most vampires are known to be cruel and reserved. She reminds Oraya of Ilana with her outgoing and unapologetic personality, but without Ilana’s sharp edges.

She is graceful like a butterfly, with curly short hair and a slender frame. Her facial features match her strange personality, as “[h]er eyes were too large for her face, almost comically out of proportion with her small nose and forever-upturned mouth” (110-11). Mische suffers severe injuries in the attack on Moon Palace and is devastated when Atroxus doesn’t answer her call for help, leaving her defenseless against the demons and Nightfire without her fire magic. Oraya is worried over the event’s impact on Mische, noticing “[b]efore, Mische had flitted about like a butterfly, and now someone had ripped her wings off and left her here to wither” (225). Though Mische is a vampire, her personality remains human. The impact of the Moon Palace attack and Atroxus’s abandonment on Mische’s spirit represents the struggles that both humans and vampires face when trying to survive the brutalities of daily life within the House of Night.

Ilana is a static character who makes a single appearance before her death in Chapter 6. Despite her brief appearance in the story, she continues to have a profound impact on Oraya’s character development. Ilana is described as an older woman with “black-and-gray streaked hair piled atop her head with admirable volume” (11). She wears vibrant clothing and lives in a messy apartment “just as colorful and vibrant as she was” (11). She smokes cigars, and Oraya will associate the smell of cigar smoke with her friend long after Ilana’s death. Oraya admires Ilana because although Oraya had no choice in her own entry into vampire society by Vincent, Ilana has chosen it for herself. Ilana gets paid to be a human blood vendor for the vampires, an occupation that Oraya disapproves of. However, Ilana has survived longer than most. Her survival is attributed to her strength of spirit and character, which Oraya wishes she could emulate.

Because she functions as a mother figure for Oraya, Ilana serves as a foil to Victor’s own parental role. Her love is much healthier and less restrictive than Vincent’s, which is apparent by her obvious distaste for the vampire king. Although Ilana is similar to Vincent in that “[a]ll the raw honesty, all the unpleasant tenderness” (16), she encourages Oraya to embrace her own desires instead of forcing her to deny her true self, as Vincent does. Ilana’s hopes for Oraya live on in the purple silk scarf she gifts to her, which Oraya holds onto throughout the Kejari.

Jesmine is a minor character who remains flat throughout the novel. She makes minimal appearances, but her presence in the final scenes foreshadows her importance in the novel’s sequel. Jesmine is a Hiaj vampire in the House of Night. She has wings of slate gray and is described as having wavy ash-brown hair, a lushly shaped body, and a white scar in the center of her sternum; the scar is rumored to be from surviving a staking.

She is Vincent’s newly promoted head of the guard, and by extension, his Head of War. The head of the guard position is typically given to men, and while Oraya approves of the fact that a woman has taken the position, she doesn’t know Jesmine and therefore, “[she] certainly didn’t trust her” (30). However, at the end when Jesmine pays a secret visit to Oraya—after Oraya’s forced marriage to Raihn—and professes her loyalty to Oraya’s claim to the crown, Oraya admits that “maybe [she] had misjudged Jesmine (475). Jesmine reveals the origin of her abdomen scar in the second-to-final chapter, admitting, “I was bound to a man who sought to control me too, once. I nearly gave my life to break that bond. But I’m free now. I could free you, too” (476). Though her character isn’t developed much more in this particular novel, this scene marks the first hint of depth and sets up Jesmine’s character for a more important role in the installment to come.