Story so far
An empty shell walking from the burning fortress, Darrow makes the choice that damns him: he will not return to Luna to save his son Pax, but will go to Mercury, where Atalantia's fleet may already have trapped his nine million marooned soldiers. He gives Sevro the Nessus to reach Luna and recover their stolen children—but Sevro, learning Darrow abandons his own son, breaks with him at last: 'You're a father!... my baby...' and vows he won't follow him again. Accepting the Ash Lord's judgment that nothing of the Red remains in him—that he has become the very men he and Sevro once failed to understand, Lorn and Magnus and Octavia—Darrow takes the Ash Lord's shuttle with Alexandar, Colloway, Tongueless, Thraxa, Rhonna, and the Deepgrave Gold prisoners as human shields to run Venus's guns.
He honors his word to Apollonius, deactivating the skull-bomb and granting him Venus, but keeps the hostages, leaving the Minotaur enraged. Sailing away from his dead friends and his son, he pockets Pax's key, sets aside the father and husband, and lets the old rage take hold: Atalantia has awoken the Reaper.
Appearance
A tall man of thirty-three, gold-red hair and golden eyes, face still crusted with dried blood, armor battered; hollowed by grief, Pax's key stowed away in his bag as he becomes the Reaper again.
Role
POV protagonist; the Reaper who forsakes his son for his army, breaks with Sevro, and turns back to war reborn in rage.
Relationships
Sevro — His oldest friend, whom he sends to save their children and who breaks with him for abandoning his own son.
Pax — His stolen son, whom he chooses not to chase, entrusting his rescue to Mustang and Sevro.
Atalantia — The enemy whose trap has awoken the Reaper in him, and whose fleet he sails to meet.
Apollonius — The Minotaur he frees and grants Venus, keeping the hostages and leaving him enraged.
Rhonna — His niece, one of the few who stay with him on the shuttle toward the war.
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
Sources — 13 recorded facts, by chapter
Chapter 1
- Red-born, Gold-carved war hero of the Rising; ArchImperator weary of a war he cannot set down.
Chapter 9
- Red-born, Gold-carved war hero and ArchImperator, now exposed for burying the enemy's secret peace offer.
Chapter 15
- Stripped of command and outlawed, the Reaper flees Luna to behead the Ash Lord rather than break his Republic.
Chapter 20
- Outlawed Reaper who, fleeing to kill the Ash Lord, accidentally cuts down the Obsidian hero Wulfgar and shatters the Republic he built.
Chapter 26
- Outlawed Reaper who raids the undersea Deepgrave Prison to free a war criminal as his key to Venus—only to find the cell empty.
Chapter 29
- Outlawed Reaper who frees the monstrous Minotaur from Deepgrave and sails for Venus, hollowed by guilt over Wulfgar and his son.
Chapter 33
- Outlawed Reaper who binds the Minotaur to a scheme to coup Venus from within and behead the Ash Lord, offering him revenge.
Chapter 44
- Reaches Venus in disguise and, using Apollonius's homecoming, seizes the traitor Tharsus's island in a single bloody night to begin his coup.
Chapter 45
- Sickened among the Valii-Rath brothers, he wrings from Tharsus that the Ash Lord reigns cloistered on Gorgon Isle behind an army—so a coup will need its own.
Chapter 52
- Launches the assault on the Ash Lord's island fortress, weathering Sevro's accusation that he's drunk on his own myth as the battle turns to a nuclear brink.
Chapter 53
- Bleeds his Howlers against the Ash Lord's dragoon guard and is nearly scalped alive—saved at the brink by Apollonius, who breaks the guard four-to-one.
Chapter 59
- Reaches the Ash Lord to find a withered husk and a devastating truth: the whole coup was a trap, his fleet is doomed, and his son has been stolen.
Chapter 64
- Emptied by the day's ruin, he chooses his marooned army over his stolen son, splits from Sevro, frees Apollonius, and sails for Mercury as the Reaper reborn.