Character Analysis
Miss Sophia, if that even is your real name, we don't like you very much. Is a Zhsmaelim even a real thing? We don't think it's a real thing…
Maybe you just made up your own title to feel important?
This bespectacled, unassuming religion teacher packs a much bigger punch than we originally thought she would, but she fooled us all with her dotty librarian act. Underneath those smart glasses and those snazzy outfits, though, lies a heart of pure, calculating evil.
Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover
Miss Sophia's betrayal might be the most shocking event in the entire novel, since form the get-go, we're conditioned to think she's going to be a nice older librarian who takes a genuine interest in Luce. At first, she seems totally unassuming and kind: "Luce felt instantly at ease with this woman, and glanced down at the nameplate on her desk. Sophia Bliss. She wished she did have a library request. This woman was the first authority figure she'd seen all day whose help she would actually have wanted to seek out" (2.40).
Those don't sound like the makings of an evil killer…but we guess first impressions can be wrong. So very, very wrong.
Based on this initial interaction, we really have no reason to dislike Miss Sophia. In fact, she's one of the only bright spots in a sea of terrible. Her last name is "Bliss," for crying out loud. She's practically programmed to be a likeable character.
However, there is one little detail that, if we were looking for it, might have tipped us off. We get it from Luce's perspective: "It was only after she'd left the librarian that she wondered about the strange, intimate way the woman had called her by her nickname" (2.43).
Maybe that's not a red flag at this point, but it's definitely a little nugget of detail to make us wonder.
Otherwise, Miss Sophia is helpful when Luce and Penn are looking for information on Daniel, and she never once tells them that what they're doing is borderline stalking—although she does advise in a very benign way that perhaps "it is hardly our place to be digging into another student's business" (14.103).
True Colors
We only start to get a glimpse of Miss Sophia's real potential for evil when Luce goes to talk to her after discovering that maybe Daniel's story isn't so far-fetched, Miss Sophia responds with a reaction that is probably stranger than Luce's is. She seems both surprised and disbelieving that Luce and Daniel had kissed, but she doesn't seem surprised that Daniel had told Luce he can live forever.
Um, shouldn't those reactions be reversed?
Instead, Miss Sophia tells Luce, "A kiss between you and Daniel is not only irrelevant, dear, it's usually impossible" (17.91). She goes on to say other equally strange things about Luce's situation with Daniel, including this gem: "He's damned Lucinda…you both are" (17.101).
Then, when Luce tells her that she wasn't baptized and had no religious upbringing, we get this doozy: "Miss Sophia was sitting very still, with her hands in her lap under the table. She cleared her throat a few times, flipped back to the front cover of the boo and ran her fingers over the photograph, then said, 'Did he reveal anything more? Do you know who Daniel is?'" (17.118).
Okay, red flag. RED FLAG.
We can see that Miss Sophia's hiding something. Unfortunately, we don't have time to learn what it is before Luce goes searching for Daniel…with Miss Sophia hot on her heels. It's only when we finally get to the cemetery with Daniel that Miss Sophia definitely seems to have more knowledge about what's going on than she originally let on, as she walks Daniel through the implications of what danger Luce is currently in. In fact, she tells Daniel at this point that he has no right to tell Luce the truth, that it will kill her (17.77). "It is not a little truth…And you will not survive it. As you have not survived it in the thousands of years since the Fall" (17.79).
Geez, lady, spoiler much?
Daniel begrudgingly takes Miss Sophia's advice, and when she volunteers to take Luce to safety, he also agrees, especially once Cam's little show for revenge kicks in to high gear. Miss Sophia takes Luce to "safety" in the gymnasium, picking up Penn like a rag doll on the way. (Superhuman strength?) We think all's well until we're faced with the fact that Miss Sophia just dragged a dagger across an injured Penn's throat, killing her, and now she's bolted the door so that Luce can't get out.
Safe haven or murder lair?
Clearly the latter.
Luce is shocked by Penn's death, but at this point she's also starting to think that maybe Miss Sophia isn't the nicest person at Sword & Cross.
Indeed, she is definitely not.
Tipping the Balance
Miss Sophia, it turns out, is a turncoat, a traitor to the angelic cause. Her reasoning for capturing Luce and keeping her separated from Daniel isn't to keep her safe, but to kill her, just as she's killed Penn. (Except she had no reason for killing Penn.) She sees Luce's death as the only way to end the battle that has been going on for thousands of years, calling her actions "tipping the balance" (19.24), something that will give Daniel "the push [he] needs" (19.31) to join the winning side.
We might not be able to glean much from this very one-sided conversation, since Luce isn't working with all the information, but it seems like Miss Sophia wants to join Cam's side of the fallen angels and thinks that if Luce is out of the way once and for all, Daniel will just cave in and convert. She also reveals to Luce that the information she spilled about never being baptized is the missing key to her current status: because she hasn't been baptized in this lifetime, her soul won't be reincarnated if she dies.
And that would mean the end of Luce's life cycle forever.
Thankfully, Daniel, Arriane, and Gabbe show up in the nick of time, just before Miss Sophia can bring the dagger down on Luce. Knowing that the battle is over for now, she exits, pursued by a bear.
Okay, not a bear, by a "helper" (19.71)—whatever that means.