Sharon
Sharon is Gideon's cousin and the newest member of his squad. She is a top graduate of the Swordmaster Academy who earned it the hard way, and she has never learned to keep her opinions to herself.
The cousin
Sharon and Gideon grew up together. She joins his squad straight from the Academy, and on her very first day the two of them turn one of Kang Yu's pranks back on him.
Her success did not come easily. At the Academy she was a slow learner who “couldn't even swing a sword,” and an instructor told her to quit and run her mother's shop instead. She cried, then trained on her own until she graduated at the top, praised for her knowledge and for the greatest improvement with the sword.
She is outspoken, sometimes dangerously so: Commander Jackal overhears her insulting him. Faced with the Marked Ones for the first time, she sees people, not monsters. When the squad finds a little Marked girl named Nisa hiding in the mansion, Sharon stands between her and harm: “She's just a girl who needs someone to protect her, whether she's a Marked One or not.”
Spoilers up to Chapter 12Tap to reveal
When the squad must decide the refugees' fate, Sharon argues for helping them. As a child, the neighbourhood kids called her “kind-hearted Sharon,” and at the Academy she stood by her friends Aaron and Hunter. In the end, she leaves the decision to her cousin: “You will always be the leader.”
