Gideon Sage: The Prodigal Brother, His Blocking Magic, and the Weight of a Kingdom's Secrets

Overview: The Knight Who Holds the Key to the Past

Gideon Sage enters Apprentice to the Villain not as a villain but as a man whose entire existence has been shaped by secrets, manipulation, and a desperate hunger for redemption. Evie Sage’s older brother was presumed dead for ten years after the very magic that should have protected their family tore it apart. In truth, he survived—rescued by the rare blocking magic that also suppressed their mother’s starlight on royal orders. His reappearance as a masked Valiant Guard informant shatters Evie’s world and forces the narrative’s darkest secret into the light.

Gideon’s arc is a braided story of guilt, chosen family, and the question of whether a person can ever atone for being a weapon in someone else’s war. While the book keeps us guessing about true loyalties, his actions ultimately prove that he belongs not with the kingdom that used him but with the sister he abandoned.

Plot Role: From Anonymous Informant to Essential Ally

Gideon first appears obliquely—first as Evie’s mysterious informant slipping her warnings, then in person as the knight whose power-suppressing ability immobilizes The Villain during the ambush (Chapter 21). When ordered to deliver a killing blow, he instead murders his own captain and unmasks, revealing himself to be Evie’s long-lost sibling (Chapter 22). That single act instantly flips his narrative function: he ceases to be an antagonist and becomes the critical inside man.

His past as a Valiant Guard insider allows him to smuggle Evie into the Gleaming Palace, giving her a fighting chance to rescue Trystan and confront King Benedict. Later, on the manor grounds, Gideon covertly aids the battle against the Valiant forces, most notably when he tackles the knight about to fire a giant spear at the male guvre, diverting the shot even though it costs him a severe beating (Chapter 77). In the final stretch, he privately hands Evie the antidote he was blocked from delivering earlier and nudges her toward the truth about the kiss that woke her from the sleeping-death fruit (Chapter 83). In the epilogue, he pieces together the prophecy’s “unmasked Villain” and “blackened good heart,” realizing that Evie herself has been revealed to the world as a force of change.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Gideon is driven by an overwhelming, sometimes paralyzing guilt. From childhood he idolized the noble knights of Rennedawn and dreamed of joining them. When a fever awakened his rare blocking magic, that dream was twisted by the king and his own father into a covert duty: to suppress his mother Nura’s starlight magic every night, supposedly to protect her from its overwhelming power. His compliance—born of a naive trust in authority and a desire to serve—eventually led to the catastrophe that killed his mother and blasted him into amnesia.

That guilt colors every subsequent choice. After his memory returned, he stayed away for five years, too ashamed to face Evie and Lyssa. When he finally seeks them out, it’s not with a grand gesture but with small, fumbling attempts to be useful: protecting Evie in the skirmish, allowing himself to be assigned a minder in Massacre Manor, patiently playing “Flying Guard” with a sister he barely knows. His self-loathing is explicit; at one point he thinks, “He despised Benedict, but not half as much as he despised himself just then.”

Yet Gideon is not paralyzed. His decision to murder a fellow knight to save Evie speaks to a ferocious, if belated, protective instinct. He risks his life to divert the catapult spear, and when finally cornered, he cracks jokes about slipping in blood—an echo of Evie’s own dark humor. Through these actions, the book paints him as more than a penitent: he is someone actively choosing to side with his sister’s found family over the institution that created him.

Chronological Arc: From Fever to Prophecy

Gideon’s story unfolds across multiple timelines, but the novel parcels out the revelations to maximize emotional impact.

• Childhood and the Fever: At age twelve or thirteen, Gideon catches a fever at school. The trauma awakens his magic—a rare ability to suppress others’ powers. His father Griffin hides this from the family and begins secret training, eventually bringing in King Benedict, who sees the potential to leash Nura’s burgeoning starlight.
• The Nightly Suppression and the Catastrophe: For months Gideon uses his magic on his sleeping mother. One night he falls asleep early; Nura wakes with her full unchecked power, causing an explosion that devastates the field and seemingly kills her. Gideon is flung far away, stripped of his memory and identity.
• Amnesia and the Valiant Guard: Found near the Gleaming Palace in burned clothing, he is pointed toward Valiant Guard recruiters. King Benedict recognizes him but keeps the secret. Gideon serves for years as a loyal knight, his past a blank.
• Regained Memory and Secrecy: About five years before the novel’s present, Gideon’s memory returns in fragments. He pieces together who he is and what his magic did, but he remains in the Guard, paralyzed by guilt and the knowledge that revealing himself would endanger his sister. He becomes Evie’s anonymous informant, feeding her information from inside.
• Reunion and Conditional Alliance: In the woods after Otto Warsen’s decapitation, he confronts Evie and begs to help. She gives him a chance, driven more by tactical need than forgiveness. He guides her into the Gleaming Palace and gradually earns a place in Massacre Manor, though always under watch.
• Confession and Confrontation: After Evie stabs their father and learns that Gideon holds the final truth, she chases him through the manor and forces the confession: he tampered with their mother’s magic. The revelation fractures the family anew but also clears the fog. Gideon’s open guilt becomes the first step toward possible healing.
• Final Acts of Service: In the Guvre battle he physically diverts the spear; later he gives Evie the antidote and confirms the true love’s kiss. In the epilogue, isolated and pensive, he reads the prophecy aloud and grasps that Evie’s unmasking in the glass casket means she, too, is now marked by fate. The stage is set for his role in the coming conflict.

Relationships: Fractured Ties and Found Family

Evie Sage: The central relationship. Evie’s fury at Gideon’s abandonment is volcanic; she threatens him with a dagger more than once. Yet beneath that anger runs a deep, unkillable love. She defends him against Damien, snipes at him with an almost playful exasperation, and eventually lets him into her circle. Their dynamic is a raw, realistic portrait of sibling betrayal and fragile reconciliation.

Lyssa Sage: His youngest sister meets him with unnerving directness, asking why he didn’t come back. Lyssa’s innocent judgment slices through his excuses. Gideon’s willingness to play games with her and his protective astonishment when she asks to see a severed finger show a man stumbling toward a big-brother role he never imagined he’d have.

Trystan Maverine (The Villain): Initially, Trystan is consumed by jealous misunderstanding when he sees Sage embrace the knight; the moment he learns Gideon is her brother, relief and embarrassment collide. After that, Trystan regards Gideon with a grudging respect, though he never quite lets go of the impulse to kill anyone who upsets Evie. In battle, Gideon saves the life of one of Trystan’s guvres, solidifying his place within the household.

King Benedict and Griffin Sage: These two men perverted Gideon’s childhood dream. The king manipulated him, and his father directed him to harm his own mother. Gideon’s eventual betrayal of the crown is not an act of rebellion but of reclamation—taking back the agency that was stolen from him at twelve.

The Manor Staff: Keeley, Min, Tatianna, Rebecka, and the other employees represent the found-family opposite of his biological betrayal. Gideon is initially a curiosity and a threat, but Tatianna’s warning about holding secrets and Keeley’s grudging tolerance indicate that he is being absorbed into the fold, provided he continues to earn it.

Key Decisions and Their Consequences

1. Agreeing to suppress Nura’s magic as a child. The decision that set everything in motion. It cost him his mother, his memory, and over a decade of his life. Thematically, it’s a sharp critique of blind obedience and the corruption of youthful idealism.
2. Staying hidden after his memory returned. This choice prolonged his family’s grief and forced Evie into years of solitude. While rooted in shame, it also preserved his cover as an informant, arguably saving Evie’s life multiple times.
3. Killing his captain to protect Evie. The act that proved his true allegiance. It marked his irrevocable break with the Valiant Guard and his commitment to atone through action rather than apology.
4. Confessing the truth about their mother. Though it nearly cost him his life, the confession removed the last barrier between him and his sisters. It transformed him from a mystery to a person they could choose to forgive or not.
5. Diverting the spear in the Guvre fight. A split-second, selfless move that bought the male guvre’s life and signaled to the entire manor that Gideon would bleed for their cause.
6. Handing Evie the antidote and hinting at the kiss. This final gift allowed Evie to understand the full scope of what saved her, even as he quietly acknowledged his own powerlessness to stop the events already in motion.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Found Family versus Biological Betrayal. Gideon’s arc is the starkest illustration of this theme. His biological family (father, king) weaponized him, while the chaotic found family of Massacre Manor gradually accepts him not despite his past but because of the honest ugliness he finally lays bare.

The Cost of Emotional Walls. Gideon spent five years hiding behind a helmet and a forgotten name. His secrecy nearly got him killed by his own sister. The book argues that such walls are unsustainable; they must eventually collapse, and only the truth—no matter how painful—can build something new.

Prophecy, Fate, and Self-Determination. Gideon’s blocking magic is a literal “suppression” that echoes how the prophecy’s pieces have been hidden. In the epilogue, he deciphers that Evie is the “unmasked Villain” with a “blackened good heart,” linking his sister’s fate to the very magic that destroyed their mother. His own role may be yet unfulfilled.

Guilt and Redemption. Gideon embodies the question of whether a person can be redeemed for participating in an atrocity they didn’t fully understand. The novel doesn’t offer a tidy answer, but it suggests that redemption is a process of repeated, small, active choices—showing up, telling the truth, taking a blow meant for someone else.

Questions and Answers

1. How did Gideon manage to suppress his mother’s magic?

Gideon’s rare blocking ability emerged after a fever when he was about twelve or thirteen. At night, while Nura slept, he would use this magic to dampen her burgeoning starlight power. King Benedict and Griffin Sage presented it as a safety measure, but their true motive was to control a magic they feared. The nightly suppression destabilized Nura’s power, so when Gideon accidentally fell asleep early one evening, her full force burst out uncontrolled, resulting in the tragedy.

2. Why did Gideon not contact his family after his memory returned?

His memory came back in fragments about five years before the novel’s present. By then he was deeply integrated into the Valiant Guard and knew the king was watching him. His main motivation, however, was shame. He believed he had destroyed his mother and abandoned his sisters. Facing Evie felt impossible. Instead, he stayed hidden and fed her information as an anonymous informant—a penance carried out from the shadows.

3. What finally drove Gideon to reveal his identity to Evie?

The ambush in the woods after Otto Warsen’s death forced his hand. Evie was in immediate danger, and her murder of Otto marked a point of no return. Gideon used the chaos to kill his own captain, unmask, and plead for the chance to help rescue Trystan. It was a mixture of desperate protectiveness and a recognition that staying hidden any longer would make him complicit in her death.

4. How does Gideon’s magic influence the larger prophecy?

The novel’s epilogue reveals that Gideon’s blocking magic connects directly to Rennedawn’s Story. While he initially uses it to suppress others, the prophecy mentions an “unmasked Villain” and a “blackened good heart.” Gideon realizes this refers to Evie, who was unmasked before the kingdom when she lay in the glass casket. His own ability to suppress magic may be the key to understanding how the prophecy’s final piece—a fourth object—will be unlocked, positioning him as a crucial figure in the next book.

5. Is Gideon truly redeemed by the end of Book Two?

The novel does not grant Gideon a simple redemption. He is still tormented by guilt, and Lyssa’s piercing questions show that the family wounds are far from healed. However, his actions—saving the guvre, confessing his darkest secret, and handing over the antidote—demonstrate a sustained commitment to his sister’s cause. The manor staff gradually stops treating him as a prisoner and starts treating him as an ally. Whether redemption is achieved remains open, but the foundation for it is laid through honest, painful truth-telling and repeated acts of self-sacrifice.