CHARACTER
An Ember in the Ashesby Sabaa Tahir

Helene Aquilla

Helene Aquilla

Quick Facts

  • Role: Only female student at Blackcliff Military Academy; scion of Illustrian Gens Aquilla; elite Mask-in-training; later the Empire’s Blood Shrike
  • First appearance: Early Blackcliff chapters, already established as top of her year and Elias’s closest ally
  • Key relationships: Best friend and foil to Elias Veturius; adversary to Marcus; wary disciple of the Commandant
  • Notable features: Silver-blonde hair in a crown braid; pale blue eyes; a silver mask that has fused to her skin—an outward sign of inward loyalty

For a broader look at the book’s cast, see the Character Overview page.

Who They Are

Bold, brilliant, and bred for command, Helene Aquilla is the Empire’s ideal soldier—disciplined, dutiful, and terrifyingly capable. She begins as the righteous counterpoint to Elias’s doubt, embodying the path of obedience and honor within a system he wants to flee. Her mask—melded to her face “like a silvery second skin”—isn’t just uniform; it’s a metaphor for an identity so tightly bound to the Martial ethos that it’s indistinguishable from the self. As the story tightens the screws, she becomes the novel’s sharpest lens on Duty vs. Conscience: what happens when a perfect soldier realizes the system her honor sustains is morally bankrupt?

Personality & Traits

Helene’s convictions are sincere, not cynical. She believes order protects the weak and that law restrains the worst in people—beliefs that make her both deeply principled and dangerously compliant. The power of her arc lies in how her virtues are weaponized against her: loyalty binds her to tyrants, courage is spent on impossible orders, and clarity of mind is twisted into rationalizations she struggles to live with.

  • Loyal and dutiful: She lives “Duty first, unto death”—not as a slogan but as a creed. This pits her against Elias whenever he questions orders, sharpening the book’s moral conflict rather than flattening it.
  • Disciplined and principled: She condemns Elias’s rule-breaking because it violates the ethics she was raised on, not merely because it risks punishment; her objection is moral, not tactical.
  • Fiercely protective: Her instinct is to shield Elias—from Blackcliff’s politics, from Marcus, even from his own self-sabotage—often serving as his early-warning system and reluctant accomplice.
  • Brave and ruthless: Ranked third in her class, she’s a strategist and a finisher. In battle she moves with cold efficiency, earning the respect and fear of male peers; her ferocity threads the theme of Fear and Courage.
  • Perceptive: Helene reads the room and the hierarchy—she’s first to sense the depth of Elias’s unrest and the specific danger Marcus represents.

Character Journey

Helene starts as the Empire’s clean conscience—its best argument for itself. The Trials fracture that certainty. In the First Trial, she confronts her terror of heights and learns that courage is not the absence of fear but its mastery. In the Third, she orders friends to their deaths, discovering that “duty” can demand atrocities and that she is capable of carrying them out. The Fourth Trial breaks her: ordered to kill an innocent, Laia of Serra, she prepares to do it for the greater good and for Elias—until Elias refuses. To save him, she bargains with the Augur Cain and swears herself to Marcus. The choice is a triumph of love and a catastrophe of ethics, crystallizing the theme of Family and Sacrifice. Bound by oath, Helene becomes the system’s sword even as she recognizes its rot, a living emblem of Freedom vs. Oppression: she chose servitude to save someone, and now her agency is the price.

Key Relationships

Elias Veturius Elias is the axis of Helene’s private life and the thorn in her public one. Their bond—formed in childhood and tested by Blackcliff’s brutality—makes Helene both his sharpest critic and staunchest defender. The unspoken love between them intensifies every decision: when she sacrifices her freedom to save him, it’s both an intimate act and a political catastrophe.

Marcus Farrar Marcus embodies the Empire at its ugliest—ambition without honor, violence without restraint. Helene’s hatred of him is visceral, sharpened by his harassment and by her clarity about what he will become if he wins. When she is forced to serve him, the dissonance between her ideals and her reality becomes unbearable, redefining “duty” as complicity.

The Commandant (Keris Veturia) To Helene, the Commandant is both blueprint and warning. She respects the Commandant’s lethality and command presence while recoiling from her cruelty—especially toward Elias. The Commandant shows Helene a future in which a woman can wield absolute power—if she abandons empathy to do it.

Defining Moments

Helene’s turning points expose the costs of living by an ideal inside a corrupt machine. Each moment narrows her options until the only “choice” left is the one that traps her.

  • Confronting Elias in the catacombs (Chapter 6–10 Summary): Helene nearly uncovers his desertion plans. Her instinct to investigate—because duty demands it—collides with her instinct to protect him, inaugurating her central conflict.
  • The Armory Brawl (Chapter 46–50 Summary): After Marcus assaults her, Helene pins him at knifepoint. The scene reveals both her deadly competence and the vulnerability she hides; Marcus’s whispered threats linger, poisoning every later interaction.
  • The Third Trial (Chapter 36–40 Summary): Ordered to pit her platoon against Elias’s, she gives the kill order. It’s the moment her creed turns murderous, proving she will uphold law even when it demands the unthinkable.
  • The Fourth Trial: Faced with executing Laia, she prepares to comply—until Elias refuses. Helene’s secret bargain with Cain and her oath to Marcus save Elias but enslave her, transforming “duty” from a virtue into a chain.

Essential Quotes

“Duty first, unto death.”

This is Helene’s spine and her blind spot. The motto explains her bravery and her brutality—she will face any fear, commit any act, if commanded. The tragedy of her arc is discovering that the motto can sanctify injustice as easily as it can uphold order.

“Don’t be an idiot. Marcus would love to sabotage the heir to Gens Veturia a day before graduation. He’s all but accusing you of sedition.”

Here, Helene’s protective pragmatism shines. She sees the political board several moves ahead and tries to steer Elias away from ruin—not to silence him, but to keep him alive long enough to matter.

“I swear fealty to Marcus Antonius Farrar, Emperor, he who was Foretold, High Commander of the Martial Army, Imperator Invictus, Overlord of the Realm. I will be his Blood Shrike, his second-in-command, the sword that executes his will, until death. I swear it.”

The oath is a love letter written in shackles. Helene trades autonomy for Elias’s life, recasting her loyalty as personal rather than imperial. The language—grandiose, ceremonial—ironically underscores how small and circumscribed her future has become.