Jericho in Greymoor Academy: The Monster Who Stayed

This Jericho in Greymoor Academy analysis covers chapters 1–273. Spoilers throughout; his past includes dark events that we mention without describing.

In a book full of loud men, Jericho barely speaks. In chapter 12 Maisie describes him as the one who scares her most. By the second half he is the one she runs to. That change, from the most frightening of the four to the safest, is his whole arc.

The fire

Jericho's past arrives in chapters 119–120, on a jet to France. When he was six, in Sochi, villagers who believed his family were demons set their house on fire with the family inside. His mother pushed him out of a window. He shifted for the first time that night, and then spent years caged and mistreated.

Queen Lysandra found him at thirteen. She fed him, healed him and taught him to speak and live again, and he became her enforcer: her hand, her sword, her most loyal servant. As a teenager he won the Annual Hunt, and she wanted him as her sixth mate. The Convergence would not take him. He tells Maisie it had always been her. The book lets Maisie see the Queen's "kindness" for what it was, and so should we.

Malyshka

The word matters. "Malyshka", Russian for "little one", is what Jericho calls Maisie from the start. It is also the word she remembers from the night rogues came for her at twelve, when four young Lycans saved her in the woods. Jericho's chapter 77 adds another memory: when the four took a screaming little Maisie away from the rebels, Jericho was the one who carried her, and dropped her out of fear. Soren caught her.

The nightmares

Jericho's nightmares are part of him. He sleeps in a harness at home. In France, one of them turns dangerous and he wakes up hurting Maisie in his sleep. She does not run. She crawls to him and tells him that if he must be a monster, he is her monster. It is the best line in the book, and it defines their relationship: she sees the worst of him and stays.

The steadiest of the four

Jericho's actions are consistent in a way the others' are not:

• He tells her the truth about the bite in chapter 17.
• He talks her down when she loses control on Cole in chapter 113: she is not that person, and some things stick.
• At a royal breakfast where he refuses to speak to her, he still de-bones her fish.
• After the time skip, he is the only one who never stops treating her as his. He tells her she does not have to explain herself: the Ivanovs protect their own.
• In chapter 254 he works out that she came back on purpose, from her perfect test scores.

Not a saint

Jericho is not simply the "safe" option. He admits to watching Maisie sleep from her first night at Cresthill and keeping things of hers, which the book treats as romantic and we find unsettling. He was the Queen's enforcer for years. And he goes along with the others' worst decisions, including the interrogation.

Our read

Jericho is the heart of the brotherhood. Where Soren plans and Mercer fights, Jericho stays. His love for Maisie is quiet, patient and occasionally a little frightening, and in chapter 256 he puts it more simply than anyone: he is angry with her, but he loves her more than he is furious. If the four survive what comes next, we suspect Jericho is the reason.

See also our Maisie Adams analysis, Quinlan Chastain in Greymoor Academy and Recap Part 3.