Scythe & Sparrow

Fionn Kane is the male romantic lead and one of the primary first-person narrators. In the narrative present, Fionn lives a controlled, orderly life in Hartford, Nebraska, where he moved upon leaving his brothers and his unsavory work as a contract killer in Boston. This lifestyle shift gave Fionn the opportunity to reinvent himself. In Hartford, Fionn works as a doctor at a local clinic and hospital, devoting himself to helping and healing others rather than harming them. In his downtime, he works out at the gym, attends a crochet club, and participates in the Blood Brothers boxing club. However, he keeps these activities infrequent because he doesn’t want to make friends in Hartford. Weighed down by guilt and shame over his past actions as a contract killer, he is convinced that avoiding new relationships will keep him from harming anyone else. In actuality, Fionn is hurting himself with his alienating habits, for he is suppressing the issues of his past and compartmentalizing his trauma.

However, Fionn begins to change when Rose enters his life. When they first meet, Fionn knows that helping an unknown person might be dangerous, but he feels powerless to deny her his help when he notices her “big brown eyes” and “angelic face” (50). He is also moved by her vibrant personality, which makes him acutely aware of the banality of his daily existence. When she moves into his house, she immediately changes the energy of his otherwise monotonous domain. Over time, Rose’s confidence and empathy help Fionn to change his habits, and she also encourages Fionn to open up about his past so that he can confront his trauma, heal, and move beyond it.

Like Rose, Fionn is a dynamic character. He initially resists change because he wants to avoid reverting to a former, more aggressive version of himself. However, Rose immediately suspects that Fionn is hiding a complex identity that he is not fully inhabiting, and she eventually learns that Fionn is hiding from his dark side in an attempt to atone for his past mistakes. With Rose’s help, he learns to let go of his guilt and fully accept himself. As he falls in love with Rose, the relationship opens his heart and widens his realm of experience in the present.

Matt Cranwell is a secondary character and a key antagonist throughout the novel. True to the archetype, Matt has wicked, nefarious tendencies and shows no remorse for his behavior. He is married to Lucy Cranwell and regularly abuses her. When Lucy comes to Rose’s booth for a tarot reading, Rose immediately notices the bruises on her face and the scared look in her eyes and realizes the nature of her marriage to Matt, a weak person who tries to gain power by hurting vulnerable people. Rose attacks Matt in an attempt to kill him for his abuse of Lucy, but he fights back and brutally beats Rose with a baseball bat, breaking her leg. His violence changes the course of Rose’s life and creates a lingering threat throughout her time with Fionn.

Fionn has treated Matt at the clinic in the past. He is familiar with Matt’s violent behavior and fears that the man will come back to hurt Rose. The threat of violence from Matt provides the impetus for Fionn to insist that Rose stays at his house. As he tells her, Matt is “not the kind of person you want to fuck with” (45). Fionn therefore helps Rose avoid encounters with Matt, but the antagonist resurfaces repeatedly despite Fionn’s best protective efforts.

Whenever Matt reappears, the narrative mood grows ominous because his presence foreshadows violence. He is an unsympathetic character who delights in others’ suffering and does everything in his power to destroy those he perceives as threats. He pursues Rose so doggedly because he wants to punish her for daring to attack him at all. He is a static character who proves incapable of changing because he doesn’t have a conscience. Rose and Fionn ultimately kill him in Chapter 21, a plot point that alleviates one threat but unleashes additional narrative conflict: namely, Fionn’s involvement with Leander Mayes. Ultimately, the author uses Matt as a narrative device to create tension and propel the plot forward.

In Scythe & Sparrow, Lachlan and Rowan, Fionn’s older brothers, serve as secondary characters. While the first two installments in the Ruinous Love trilogy follow their stories, they now remain in the margins of Fionn’s story, making only infrequent appearances because Fionn has intentionally tried to separate himself from them. Although he loves his brothers, he doesn’t want to be involved in their violent work or lifestyle anymore. Even so, when Lachlan and Rowan come to him for help, Fionn drops everything to support them, tending to Sloane’s injuries and helping Lachlan to search for the missing Lark.

Fionn’s relationships with Lachlan and Rowan contribute to his complex views of his own nature and darker urges. When he finally tells them about his sustained guilt over killing their abusive father, Fionn ultimately heals their fraternal dynamic. His brothers are forgiving and understanding, and their supportive response alleviates Fionn’s shame and reminds him of how much he needs Lachlan and Rowan in his life. The epilogue scenes therefore reiterate the Kane brothers’ closeness and depict their efforts to make amends and reintegrate their lives.

Lark and Sloane are minor characters in Scythe & Sparrow. They are respectively Lachlan’s and Rowan’s romantic partners. Like Lachlan and Rowan, Lark and Sloane’s stories are featured in the first two installments of the Ruinous Love trilogy. Butcher & Blackbird features Sloane, while Leather & Lark explores Lark’s enemies-to-lovers progression with Lachlan. In Scythe & Sparrow, both Lark and Sloane play more peripheral roles, but they do influence Rose and Fionn throughout the novel.

Rose becomes particularly attached to Lark and Sloane because it has been “so long since [she has] had female friends [her] age” (194). Just “a few days” after meeting Rose, the women welcome her in “like [she is] always meant to be here” (194). They admire Rose as a person and do not simply see her as Fionn’s love interest. Fionn immediately notices how Sloane interacts with Rose when the two women first meet in Chapter 12. Sloane “likes Rose” and “trusts her” immediately, and this instinctive bond makes her protective of Rose when Rose’s relationship with Fionn shifts. Sloane and Lark become Rose’s confidantes and friends while Rose is in Boston, and these new connections make it hard for her to leave. The author gives Rose these friendships in order to balance her relationship with Fionn. Although she is falling in love with him, Rose does not solely rely on him for companionship and connection, as her relationships with Lark and Sloane also help to sustain her emotional equilibrium.