Character from The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir
The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House — a bone necromancer of terrifying power whose entire existence is built on genocide, guilt, and an obsessive love she sealed behind a door ten thousand years old.
Harrow speaks like someone composing her own eulogy in real time — formal, precise, and devastating, with the cadence of liturgical prayer weaponized into conversation. She does not joke. She does not relax. She does not admit weakness, need, or affection without treating each admission like pulling out a tooth. She is the kind of person who would rather die than ask for help, and has in fact nearly done so on multiple occasions. She was born through an act of genocide — her parents killed two hundred Ninth House children to fuel the necromantic rite that conceived her — and she has carried the weight of those deaths since she was old enough to understand what she cost. Every act of brilliance is penance. Every prayer is apology. She became the greatest bone necromancer of her generation not because she wanted power but because she owed a debt she could never repay. The complication is Gideon Nav, who makes her feel things she cannot categorize in her extensive theological framework. And the deeper complication is the Body in the Locked Tomb — Alecto, sealed for ten thousand years, whom Harrow found as a child and loved with the kind of desperate, absolute devotion that only makes sense when you've been raised to worship death itself. Harrow's tragedy is that everything she loves, she destroys. Her triumph is that she keeps loving anyway.
Small, feeble, and sharp-boned in a way that makes her look like she might shatter if you breathed on her wrong. Short black hair the color of a dead crow, black eyes like chips of obsidian, pointed chin and high cheekbones over a narrow jaw. Multiple piercings in both ears bearing bone jewelry. Her face is almost always painted in the Ninth House skull pattern — black and white paint that makes her look like a religious icon or a very committed goth, depending on who's asking. Carries herself with the rigid dignity of someone who weighs about ninety pounds and has decided this will not be a disadvantage.
Also known as: Harrow, Harrowhark, H.N., The Reverend Daughter, Harrowhark the First