Meet the architects, kings, fools, lovers, and pieces behind the events of the Through the Fire saga.
SPOILER-FREE · CHARACTER GUIDE
JADE — THE CO-ARCHITECT
She didn’t inherit the kingdom. She helped design it.
STRATEGIST · CONFIDANTE · BELIEVER
Jade has spent much of her life believing the world is badly designed.
Belial offers her the opportunity to rebuild it.
Intelligent, composed, ambitious, and fiercely loyal, Jade doesn’t merely stand beside the Architect. She studies people, chooses alliances, manages personalities and helps transform an ancient dream into a modern political reality.
She believes in what they are building.
Perhaps even more dangerously, she believes in him.
But Jade understands other people far better than she understands the place she occupies in Belial’s life.
And the closer their vision comes to completion, the harder it becomes to separate devotion from jealousy, purpose from possession, and the woman helping move the pieces from another piece on the board.
This feels much more accurate than simply “the woman beside the Architect.” She’s genuinely a co-architect. The manuscript even has her assuming operational command after Lemuria and dividing their influence geographically while recognizing that Belial has assigned everyone a position.
BELIAL — THE ARCHITECT
Nothing was ever left to chance.
FALLEN ANGEL · STRATEGIST · KINGMAKER
Belial does not simply manipulate people.
He builds worlds around them.
Kingdoms. Religions. Relationships. Political movements. Even identities.
Ancient and extraordinarily patient, he understands that the strongest prison rarely looks like one. Give people the right dream, the right enemy, the right lover or the right version of themselves, and eventually they will walk exactly where he wants them to go.
Usually.
The Architect follows the events of Through the Fire from the side of the man who believed he understood why everything happened.
And exposes the dangerous difference between designing a plan and controlling the people inside it.
That’s especially appropriate because we learn his architecture extends far beyond Lemuria. Even Flo is revealed as one of his long-running social experiments; he has been shaping Deacon’s community for decades.
HANS / THE JESTER — THE FOOL
Everyone thinks the fool is joking. That is what makes him dangerous.
JESTER · SERVANT · OBSERVER
Hans is almost always nearby.
Opening doors. Serving drinks. Standing in corners. Watching.
And occasionally saying something nobody understands until much later.
Known simply as Hans in Belial’s ordinary life and increasingly as the Jester within the Lemurian Order, he occupies a strange position inside the Architect’s world. He appears subordinate to Belial, yet speaks about kings, fools, lovers and destruction with an unsettling detachment from everyone else’s schemes.
Jade finds his riddles irritating.
Ignoring them doesn’t make them less accurate.
In a world populated by people desperate to control the future, the quiet man dressed as a fool may understand more about where everyone is headed than any of them realize.
This is why I think Hans is important.
He isn’t a conventional supporting character. He’s almost the novel’s chorus/fool/oracle.
His lines repeatedly sit outside the immediate psychology of the POV character. He warns Jade not to get between “the archer and his mark”; watches her transformation after taking the mark and describes bitterness reaching the roots; comments cryptically on Roselyn becoming the fool and Leo/Maricel as the separated lovers; and at the gala tells Jade that what has been lost cannot be undone.
And there’s another fascinating thing: Belial doesn’t dismiss him. At the gala, Belial actually smirks at Hans’s cryptic observation.
So I would preserve his ambiguity on the website. Don’t explain what Hans is. Make a new reader think, Wait—why does the servant get his own character card?
That’s perfect.
AZAZEL — THE KING
He was given a kingdom. Nobody asked whether he could be controlled once he had it.
FALLEN ANGEL · KING · RIVAL
Belial understands Azazel better than almost anyone alive.
His vanity. His appetites. His impulsiveness. His loneliness.
And his extraordinary capacity to destroy whatever carefully constructed role has been prepared for him.
Azazel is supposed to become the visible king of a world other people have designed behind the scenes.
Instead, he repeatedly behaves like exactly what he has always been:
Azazel.
Ancient history binds him to Belial. Maricel complicates that history. And beneath their alliances lies the uncomfortable question of which brother has actually been manipulating the other.
This is much stronger through Architect than “old rival,” because Belial is simultaneously contemptuous of Azazel and deeply invested in positioning him. He thinks Azazel has control at the gala while privately regarding that control as an illusion.
MARICEL — THE VARIABLE
She was supposed to follow the script.
ACTRESS · BELIEVER · WILDCARD
Maricel is not the protagonist of The Architect.
For perhaps the first time, readers are asked to watch her from the outside.
Jade initially sees an inexperienced young woman spectacularly unsuited to rule anything.
Belial sees something more useful.
Then something more interesting.
Then something he cannot quite categorize.
Maricel possesses an inconvenient tendency to believe people completely—and an equally inconvenient tendency to stop believing them once she sees behind the illusion.
She was meant to occupy a predetermined place in someone else’s kingdom.
Instead, her choices begin changing the people who were supposed to control hers.
That is much closer to what the manuscript actually does with her. Belial becomes fascinated precisely because her attachment doesn’t resemble Jade’s or Venus’s transactional desires; he recognizes something in her devotion that he cannot manufacture.
I also wouldn’t call her “The Obsession” on the website. That’s too revealing. The Variable tells the reader exactly what her structural function is without spoiling where Belial’s feelings go.
LEO — THE WEAPON
A weapon is useful until it chooses its own target.
ASSASSIN · SURVIVOR · DISRUPTION
Leo was raised to obey.
Other people have spent years deciding whom he should fear, whom he should kill and what he should believe.
That should make him easy for Belial to understand.
It doesn’t.
Violent, guarded and far more perceptive than his silence suggests, Leo becomes increasingly dangerous whenever his loyalties stop aligning with the people attempting to use him.
Belial knows how to manipulate an assassin.
The problem is that Leo keeps becoming a man.
JALEN LOVELL — THE STATESMAN
He doesn’t need a throne if the entire world is listening.
POLITICIAN · STRATEGIST · POWER BROKER
Jalen understands human power better than nearly anyone around him.
Unlike the ancient beings surrounding him, he doesn’t require supernatural abilities to command a room. He understands institutions, appearances, public fear and the value of giving people exactly what they need at precisely the right moment.
Belial provides the architecture.
Jalen learns how to sell it.
And unlike many of Belial’s human collaborators, Jalen has ambitions entirely his own.
I’d elevate Jalen significantly from our first draft. He isn’t merely “the politician.” He’s part of the original strategic trio with Jade and Belial during the Lemuria planning, and later becomes essential to converting their supernatural agenda into legitimate political authority.
TESS — THE VESSEL
She spent her life wanting to be chosen. Something finally chose her.
FIRST LADY · PRIESTESS · RIVAL
Beautiful, ambitious and intensely conscious of status, Tess has always understood life as competition.
She wants the role.
The man.
The attention.
The better life.
What she doesn’t understand is how long other forces have been preparing her to receive them.
From Jade’s perspective, Tess initially seems far better suited to their plans than Maricel: polished, ambitious and capable of following the script.
But becoming exactly what someone wanted you to become carries a price.
That captures the Naamah component much better. The manuscript explicitly establishes Tess as a vessel Naamah has cultivated for years.
ROSLYN — THE WHISPERER
She doesn’t need to move the pieces if she can tell them where to move themselves.
MANIPULATOR · CONFIDANTE · INSTIGATOR
Roselyn rarely needs physical power.
People tell her things.
She notices weaknesses.
And when she finds the right insecurity, she knows exactly where to press.
That makes her useful inside a movement built on manipulation.
It also makes her dangerous to the person who believes manipulation belongs to him.
Roselyn understands Jade’s jealousy, Tess’s attachments and Belial’s increasingly contradictory behavior perhaps better than any of them would like.
The mistake is assuming understanding the Architect means you’re safe from him.
And I love that Hans essentially comments on her manipulation immediately after her confrontation with Belial.
VENUS — THE DEVOTEE
Some people spend centuries waiting to be chosen.
IMMORTAL · DEVOTEE · SURVIVOR
Venus knows exactly what it means to orbit powerful men.
She has loved, waited, competed and survived long enough to understand that immortality does not make rejection hurt less.
Where Jade wants purpose and Maricel offers faith, Venus wants something painfully ordinary:
to finally be wanted by the person she wants.
In Belial’s world, even that can be exploited.
Meet the survivors, believers, skeptics, prophets, and ancient powers caught amid the fire.
THROUGH THE FIRE · BOOK TWO
SPOILER-FREE
AMID THE FIRE
Three years ago, Maricel disappeared.
Now she lives in Dallas under another name.
She works in a bookstore. She attends community college. She studies scripture. And after years spent rebuilding her life from almost nothing, she has found something she once desperately lacked:
purpose.
But Maricel hasn’t forgotten what happened to her.
She hasn’t forgotten Azazel.
And while the people around her see political unrest, strange events and a world becoming increasingly unstable, Maricel sees something else.
Prophecy.
Volatile was about stepping into a world Maricel didn’t understand.
Embers begins with Maricel understanding enough to be terrified of what may come next.
THE CENTER
MARICEL
The woman who escaped one life only to discover the story wasn’t finished with her.
SURVIVOR · SEEKER · PROPHET
The Maricel who begins Embers is not the young actress who once dreamed of meeting an angel.
She has already met one.
And she knows what extraordinary things can cost.
For three years, Maricel has lived publicly as Patricia, trading Hollywood for books, school and a quiet life in Dallas. Her growing faith has given her a new way to understand the things she experienced—and the things she believes are still coming.
Because Maricel doesn’t believe the instability around her is random.
She believes she can see what’s ahead.
The problem is convincing anyone else.
Can you become someone new when the world keeps calling you back to who you were?
THE ONE WHO LISTENS
MASON
The one who takes her seriously when almost no one else will.
BOOKSTORE OWNER · BOSS · BIBLE STUDY LEADER
Dr. Mason Richmond is Maricel’s new boss.
Even-tempered, intelligent and interested in many of the same theological questions that consume her, Mason offers Maricel something increasingly rare:
He listens.
When others find her ideas strange, Mason encourages her to speak. When Maricel questions whether she has any authority to interpret what she’s seeing, Mason sees potential in her.
Their shared interest in prophecy draws them closer.
And being believed can make someone extraordinarily important to a person who has spent years being doubted.
What happens when someone finally tells you the things everyone else doubts might be real?
THE ONES WHO REMEMBERS
LESLIE
The best friend who has already seen Maricel through one impossible life.
BEST FRIEND · CONFIDANTE · LOYALIST
Leslie knew Maricel before Dallas.
Before Patricia.
Before prophecy became something Maricel studied instead of something that happened to her.
As Maricel’s best friend, Leslie doesn’t need to understand every supernatural force surrounding her to recognize when Maricel needs someone beside her.
She listens when Maricel is afraid.
She tells her things she may not want to hear.
And when Maricel’s life becomes impossible again, Leslie does what she has always done:
she stays.
That loyalty is particularly explicit when Erich volunteers them for a dangerous mission with the simple answer, “Leslie and I as always.”
Some friendships survive because neither person ever learns how to leave.
ERICH
The skeptic who learned that disbelief doesn’t make danger disappear.
SKEPTIC · WITNESS · FRIEND
Erich has never needed Maricel’s supernatural explanations to recognize danger.
He remembers Hollywood.
He remembers Claudius.
And he remembers watching someone he cared about become entangled with something he never trusted.
Years later, Maricel has found faith and a new explanation for the world around her.
Erich remains willing to ask the questions other people don’t.
But skepticism has never meant abandonment.
When Maricel walks toward danger again, Erich is still there.
You don’t have to share someone’s beliefs to believe what happened to them.
THE FRIENDS WHO JOINED THE JOURNEY
CAROLINE
The friend willing to listen before she understands.
BELIEVER · FRIEND · HEART
Caroline enters Maricel’s life knowing her as Patricia.
What she eventually receives is a much more complicated truth.
Warm, devout and open-minded, Caroline doesn’t always understand Maricel’s interpretation of the world.
She doesn’t have to.
Where others respond to uncertainty by becoming rigid, Caroline leaves room for compassion.
And as Maricel’s world becomes increasingly divided between believers and skeptics, prophets and impostors, Caroline offers something deceptively simple:
someone willing to stay beside her while still asking questions.
Sometimes believing someone begins with listening.
KEVIN
The husband who discovers that his wife’s new friendship comes with a much larger world.
HUSBAND · FRIEND · COMPANION
Kevin enters Maricel’s world through Caroline.
But as that world becomes stranger—and considerably more dangerous—he doesn’t remain merely his wife’s plus-one.
He becomes part of the group itself.
Practical, social and willing to follow his friends into situations none of them could have anticipated, Kevin helps make Embers feel less like the story of isolated prophets and supernatural beings and more like something happening to ordinary people alongside them.
When the group faces one of its dangerous missions, Kevin’s answer is telling:
if Caroline is going, so is he.
Sometimes loyalty means entering a story you never expected to be yours.
WARREN
The friend who never quite stops asking whether any of this is a good idea.
FRIEND · REALIST · COMPANION
Warren brings something Maricel’s increasingly prophetic world desperately needs:
another person willing to question it.
He can joke when everyone else is terrified, challenge plans that sound suicidal and still climb into the car when the group decides to go anyway.
That combination makes Warren part skeptic, part comic relief and part reminder that not everyone traveling beside Maricel has to experience events with the same solemn certainty.
When an extraordinarily dangerous mission is proposed, his eventual answer is simple:
“Count me in.”
You can think the plan is insane and still refuse to let your friends face it alone.
POLITICIAN · REFORMER · CONTENDER
Jalen shouldn’t be introduced through everything we know about him from later material or the AU. He should be Embers Jalen only.
His section should essentially establish:
Jalen is a rising political figure entering a world already destabilized by fear, religious upheaval and questions about what comes next.
To most people, he is a politician.
To Maricel, politics can no longer be separated so easily from prophecy.
And as Jalen’s influence grows, his place in the changing world becomes increasingly difficult for her to ignore.
When you’ve spent years studying the end of the world, how do you look at someone promising to build a new one?
THE OTHER PROPHET
LEO
The stranger who sees what Maricel sees.
OUTSIDER · PROPHET · SURVIVOR
For years, Maricel has carried knowledge that sounds impossible when spoken aloud.
Then she meets Leo.
Unkempt, unpredictable and operating by a moral code very different from the people Maricel has surrounded herself with, Leo isn’t an obvious answer to anything.
But he understands things he shouldn’t.
He sees patterns Maricel recognizes.
And most unsettling of all, he possesses the same strange gift Maricel has been struggling to understand in herself.
For someone who has spent years wondering whether anyone could truly understand what she sees, Leo represents something Maricel didn’t expect to find:
recognition.
But recognition and trust aren’t necessarily the same thing.
What happens when the person everyone tells you not to trust is the first person who truly understands what you see?
THE LIFE HE LEFT BEHIND
CICELY
The woman everyone once thought Leo would marry.
RIVAL · TRADITION · LOYALIST
Cicely knew Leo long before Maricel did.
In Flo, their future once seemed almost predetermined. Their families expected it. Cicely believed in it. And even after Leo walked away from the life chosen for him, the possibility of his return never entirely disappeared.
Then he comes home with Maricel.
To Cicely, Maricel isn’t simply another woman competing for Leo’s affection.
She’s an outsider.
She carries beliefs Cicely distrusts, a history tied to people Cicely has every reason to hate, and a connection to Leo that threatens the future Flo once imagined for him.
The manuscript makes that pressure explicit: Leo’s father tells him that his mother’s dying wish was for him to return, marry Cicely and have a normal family in Flo.
So Cicely represents more than romantic rivalry.
She represents the life Leo was supposed to choose.
What happens when someone else’s freedom means losing the future you thought was yours?
That question makes her much more dimensional than simply labeling her “Leo’s jealous ex.”
THE THRESHOLD
Now the entire page changes.
Everything above has been contemporary:
Dallas. Books. Friends. Faith. Flo. Human relationships.
MARICEL LEFT THEIR WORLD.
THEIR WORLD NEVER LEFT HERS.
THE ANGEL SHE ESCAPED
AZAZEL
The angel Maricel once knew as Claudius.
WATCHER · KING · FORMER FIANCÉ
For three years, Maricel has tried to construct a life beyond Azazel.
But Azazel was never simply someone she loved.
He is an ancient angel—a Watcher whose history stretches far beyond Maricel’s own—and Maricel now understands his world far better than she did when she first met him as Claudius.
Whatever Maricel believes she escaped, Azazel hasn’t forgotten her.
Nor has he abandoned his vision for what she could become beside him.
THE QUEEN
TESS
The woman who steps willingly toward the world Maricel ran from.
BELIEVER · QUEEN · COUNTERPOINT
Maricel has spent years trying to escape a world of ancient powers, predetermined roles and beings who seem certain they know what she should become.
Tess sees that world differently.
Where Maricel has learned to question extraordinary promises, Tess is willing to consider what might be waiting on the other side of them.
That makes her a counterpoint to Maricel:
two women confronted with the possibility of becoming something larger than the lives they once knew—and responding very differently.
What looks like a cage to one person can look like a kingdom to another.
ONE FACE IS MISSING.
BELIAL
There is another angel woven through Embers.
Ancient. Calculating. Mocha-eyed.
A name Maricel has encountered before.
But showing you which face belongs to him would answer a question the novel should answer first.
MARICEL · MASON · LESLIE · ERICH · CAROLINE · KEVIN · WARREN · JALEN · LEO · CICELY · AZAZEL · TESS
Some believe her.
Some doubt her.
Some remember who she was.
Some understand things no one else can.
Some represent the lives that might have been.
Some have already decided what Maricel should become.
And somewhere between prophecy, faith, friendship, love and power, Maricel is trying to answer something for herself:
FROM THE AUTHOR
What interested me in writing Embers was what happens when escape doesn’t mean the story is over.
Maricel begins the novel believing she has already survived the most dangerous part of her life. She has changed her name, rebuilt herself and found a faith that gives meaning to things she once couldn’t understand.
But Embers isn’t the aftermath.
Maricel is still amid the fire.
The difference is that now she knows she’s burning.
As her old world collides with the new one, nearly everyone around her seems to have an idea of who she is supposed to become.
Some see a prophet.
Some see someone they need to protect.
Some see someone they can love.
Some see someone who belongs to them.
And some see a role for her in a future she isn’t sure she wants.
Others see something much more dangerous.
Where some see prophecy, others see obsession. They see a woman losing her grip on reality, drawing the people around her deeper into beliefs that sound increasingly impossible. To some, the little community forming around her doesn’t look like fellowship.
It looks like a cult.
And there are others who don’t merely doubt Maricel.
They want to stop her.
At the center of all of it is a question Maricel is finally beginning to ask:
If everyone believes your life has a purpose, how do you know which part of that purpose you actually chose?