Behind the Character: Synvar Corydris

Synvar is a mer-fae, the now untethered mate of the previous High Chair of Caelthys, Selena, and one of the quietest characters in Caelthys' Awakening, until he isn't.

At first glance, he is easily dismissed. Adopted by Shaelor in near-infancy and raised out of the public eye, coming from two different worlds and being claimed by neither, he has spent his entire life carrying the burden of being conditionally accepted. In the cell he is imprisoned in, he does not move. For a hundred years, he has not spoken. Every fae in that cell can understand why he would have nothing more to say.

Except that he does. He has been saving his voice, because that is the way of the merfolk, for a moment when it would matter.

What breaks his silence is a single question, asked gently and with no malice, by the only person who would ever be able to answer it. What would she do. Selanor asked because he felt the guilt of a century when he finally looked at Synvar, who had carried his grief like a burden meant only for him and never let it touch another. And when Synvar answers, he does so in mersong, a sound so rare and unwitnessed, that fae who have become desensitized to emotion over the past century find tears in their eyes and their hands covering their mouth instinctively.

That's what I wanted this character to be. Not a subplot to Selanor's grief, but a grief entirely his own, running in parallel, unacknowledged by almost everyone for exactly as long as Selanor's was. Synvar wasn't Selena's brother. He wasn't bound to her by blood or duty or crown. He simply loved her, without asking for anything the bond might have entitled him to, and when she died, nobody thought to ask what that cost him.

He can't look at Selanor without seeing her. That's not metaphor. It's literal, and it's cruel, and it's the reason he spends all his time with Selanor refusing to meet his eyes even as he sits close enough to feel his breath. Grief, for Synvar, isn't something he gets to process and move past. It's something he has to look at every time he looks at the person across from him.

What I love most about him is what happens when he finally meets Selanor's gaze and holds it. Not forgiveness, because there never was anything he needed to forgive. Just a truth he offered, because he could never dishonor her memory with anything less. Ever. She would have smiled. In his mind, she still did, the way she had done for centuries.

Synvar spent a century being the quietest grief signature in the entire Moonstone Prison. His grief was larger than almost every other's.