How Does It Feel?

The protagonist, Callie Peterson, initially presents herself as an innocent human who stumbles into the intriguing, dangerous world of the Fae. She is the archetype of the romance-genre heroine—beautiful, resourceful, and resilient. Most of the novel is told through her point of view; her true identity as an assassin is hidden until the end of the novel. Callie is Calypso, a human in league with the Seelie Fae, rivals to Prince Mendax’s Unseelie faction. For all of Callie’s bravado and desire for freedom, she is ultimately a pawn in a larger war between fairy factions.

Callie harbors emotional scars due to the loss of her mother and sister in a car accident when she was young. She has led a peripatetic life without allowing herself to get close to people: “I remembered why I didn’t make friends when I moved around. They never understood when you left” (9). This loner persona befits a person who exists between worlds; Callie occupies a liminal space in between the human realm and the Fae realm. She has sacrificed much to warrant the protection of the Seelie Fae. As she repeatedly notes, “I could never whole-heartedly love someone, not after everything that had happened in my past” (23).