Soren Black in Greymoor Academy: The Prince Who Plans

This Soren Black in Greymoor Academy analysis covers chapters 1–273, with spoilers for the whole story so far.

Soren is the first Lycan Maisie meets, the first she marks, and the one who always seems to be three moves ahead. He is also the love interest who makes the most decisions on her behalf. Whether you love him depends on how you weigh those two facts.

First impressions

Soren arrives in chapter 5 as a teasing stranger in biker leather who buys Maisie a gift and leaves a card with four crests: "You're it." For the first stretch he is playful and untouchable. When Maisie declines his dance at the masked ball in chapter 29, the book tells us it is the first rejection of his life, and he does not take it well.

The worst of Soren

It would be dishonest to skip it. In chapters 47–48, blind with jealousy after she kisses him to stop a war, Soren humiliates her and says unforgivable things. Later, in chapter 114, his jealousy turns ugly again. In the second half he makes Maisie's decisions for her, from negotiating with Margaret Hunt without asking her to having his mother's ring welded onto her finger in chapter 249. He almost always has a reason. He rarely asks first.

The debt and the pink dress

What changes how Soren reads is his backstory. When he was four, an assassin named Silas Thorne came to end him and could not do it. Silas left him a dagger and a life debt. Years later Soren found him living as Richter Adams in Night Shade, and saw a little girl in a pink dress on the steps. The book calls it imprinting. Soren says she tormented him: he took up pancakes, extra cream and pink clothes.

When the second dagger arrived on the eve of his wedding to Tessa, he chose the debt and was exiled for it. He arrived too late to save Richter, hid Maisie as a maid to keep her away from her enemies, and helped erase her memory of the worst night of her life. He watched over her from a distance for years. It is devoted and it is controlling, often in the same breath.

The best of Soren

When Soren gets it right, he is the most romantic of the four:

• In chapter 87, during the heat, he tells her the right is his as her first-marked mate, but he will not claim it without her choice.
• In chapter 112 he takes liquid ash meant for her across his own back.
• In chapter 128 he tells her that not everything is a prelude to taking things from her.
• In chapter 162 he gives her his mother's ring on a chain, with one condition: wear it only when you decide to stay.
• During her nine months on the run, he writes her short letters. "Come home. I won't ask questions."

The chess player

Soren thinks in strategies. His plan for Samhain, revealed in chapter 207, is the purest version: thin the border guards, let Margaret's people strike the wedding, let Margaret remove the Queen, then hand Margaret to the Council and put Maisie on the throne. He kept it from Mercer, because Mercer still loved his mother.

It backfires completely. The Queen had her own trap, and all four princes end up arrested. Later we learn Soren bargained his freedom and the others' against a promise: if he cannot prove Maisie innocent, he will bond with Tessa. The chess player keeps putting himself on the board as a piece.

Our read

Soren is the most compelling of the four and the most frustrating. His love for Maisie is never in doubt; his respect for her choices often is. The book seems to know this: his best moments are the ones where he gives a choice back, and his worst are the ones where he takes it. If he becomes king, the question will be whether he has learned the difference.

Compare him with Mercer and Jericho, and read about his aunt in Queen Lysandra explained.