Emilia

"I took another step, followed by another. Each one more difficult than the last. I strained against the drumming of my pulse, but no other sounds emerged from the darkness. It was as if I’d conjured the earlier noise from fear."

- Emilia

Emilia Maria di Carlo is a streghe, witches living among humans while disguising their powers. She grew up in Italy sometime in the late 19th century, where her family runs a restaurant called Sea and Vine.

Early Life
Emilia was born in Sicily, to Nicoletta and her unnamed father. She has a twin sister, Vittoria. During a stormy night, they were both gifted amulets known as cornicellos, and they learned of their powers and history from their grandmother. Her family has owned the Sea & Vine at least since she was a child, but possibly since even before she was born.

When she was eight, Emilia said she wanted to be a green witch and grow up to make herbs and own a trattoria of her own. She was the calm contrast to her sister's recklessness. She started weaving flowers into her hair so that others could better differentiate between her and her sister.

Kingdom of the Wicked
At the beginning of Kingdom of the Wicked, Emilia finds her sister's body in a back room of the monastery, a figure looming over her. Both Vittoria's heart and her cornicello are missing. In her quest for answers, she summons Wrath to a cave just outside of the city, and discoveres that he was the man she found with her sister. She accidentally binds the pair of them in a betrothal through her spell, and though Wrath realizes this immediately, Emilia doesn't until later in the work.

After briefly attacking him, she learns he wasn't the killer, and instead he'd found Vittoria like that already. Emilia keeps wrath trapped in the cave within the bounds of her spell while she looks for more answers, stumbling across some of Wrath's brothers—Envy and Greed. Both of them express an interest in allying her to their houses, but she declines.

In her search for her Sister's cornicello, Emilia is injured by the Viperidae Greed had guarding it. Wrath escapes the cave in just enough time to find her and save her life, but he does so by marking her. Wrath and Emilia form an alliance—neither of them want to see more witches die, for their own respective reasons, and so they will find the killer together.

Kingdom of the Cursed
Once reaching Hell, Emilia and Wrath travel through the Sin Corridor: a long, winded path down the mountains that tests newcommers affinity to the houses. It influences Emilia's emotions and subjects her to visions that alter her perceptions. Nearing the end of their trek, Emilia falls ill, the combination of exhaustion and the frigid weather leading to her contracting hypothermia.

Emilia later forces a confession out of Wrath, as he's kept her at his house and constantly refused to bring her to Pride. Wrath tells her that Pride is not her intended, and never has been; instead, Emilia is betrothed to him.

Over the next few weeks, Emilia travels to Envy's house uppon receiving an invitation, where her powers are blocked by a curse after she steals something from his personal library. She then attends the Feast of the Wolf, a celebration between the Seven Circles in which the guest of honor must give up one fear to the crowd. The guest of honor this year is Emilia.

Emilia later finds out Wrath's true name and identity, and using a magic object, learns that Vittoria is actually alive and in the Kingdom of the Wicked and had been playing Antonio. Vittoria taunts Emilia to follow her to the Island, and the book ends with Emilia and Wrath reconciling and deciding to consummate their marriage.

Appearance
Emilia is described as being wholly beautiful, with rich dark brown wavy hair and warm chocolate colored eyes. Her skin is described as being olive. She always wears her necklace, as she believes it keeps her safe from the Wicked.

At the beginning of Kingdom of the Wicked, she wears flowers in her hair to distinguish her from her twin sister, implying the two of them are physically identical.

Personality
Emilia is stubborn and headstrong. She differs from her sister in that Vittoria is described as reckless, while she thinks things through a little more. She is caring and kind, and she has a lot of empathy for others, as can be seen in her reactions to the deaths of streghe around Italy and in how she treats those around her. She is brave enough that she faces a Viperidae on her own half-way through Kingdom of the Wicked, unwavering even though she knows she is risking death for her sister's amulet. Otherwise, her quest to find her sister's killer and the dedications she shows proves she is determined and insistent.

Emilia's relationship with Wrath, particularly in Kingdom of the Cursed, proves that she doesn't like to be vulnerable around others. This is also evident in how she reacts to the other Princes at the Feast of the Wolf. She doesn't like to appear weak.

Abilities

 * Emilia can see a person's luccicare, "a faint shimmer or aura surrounding a person" (8). The luccicare of humans is usually purple. Wraths is black
 * She, like other witches, can use magic through spells for various different things, such as summoning demons and moving objects.
 * She also developed the ability to summon fire

Wrath
In Kingdom of the Wicked, Emilia summoned Wrath, one of the seven princes of hell, when she was trying to get answers about Vittoria's murder. The spell binds them, and the protection charm Emilia uses makes it impossible for Wrath to harm her. She is unaware until later that the latin phrase she used in the charm actually meant "bound forever" in matrimony, which marked the pair of them as magically betrothed. The spell manifests in a physical tattoo that appears on both of their arms as twin crescent moons surrounded by stars. The two become unlikely allies in finding Vittoria’s murderer, both for different alining reasons. Also because of this bond, Wrath is unable to lie to her outright, though he often works around it with half-truths or silence. After Emilia is almost killed while searching for her sister's cornicello, Wrath marks her in order to save her from death. The tension develops over the course of the novel, kindled by danger and threats from outside forces. Their relationship goes awry when Emilia learns Wrath was not telling her the whole truth about his motives for helping her and being on earth.

Later, in Kingdom of the Cursed, Wrath brings Emilia with him to hell to fulfill what she believes to be a betrothal to Pride, one of Wrath's brothers and another prince of hell. Emilia is led to believe that this betrothal nullifies that of her and Wrath, releasing them both from the charm even though they still wear the tattoos. He brings her to his home, where he cares for her after their trek through the mountains and frigid terrains outside has left her hypothermic. After she heals, their romance rekindles in the form of lustful passion, as Emilia abandons the propriety of earth under the certitude that she's now in hell, and no longer has to follow those rules. After she's injured, Wrath tells her that their betrothal was never broken, and that she was never engaged to marry Pride, and instead they are still linked through the magic of her first spell as well as the mark he placed on her in the first novel, which is unbreakable even by death.

Vittoria
Vittoria was Emilia's twin sister and fellow witch. The two of them grew up sharing a room in their family's home in Italy. Of the two of them, Vittoria is described as more rambunctious and risky, often making claims of casting spells and witchcraft in the presence of mortals and finding humor in the fact they believe she is joking. Vittoria and Emilia were very close, and up until her sister's appeared death, Emilia believed that the only secret between them was that she could see luccicare, as she never told Vittoria about that ability. It becomes clear through the progression of Kingdom of the Wicked that this is false, as more and more of her Vittoria's secrets come to light through Emilia's investigation into her death. In the weeks leading up to it, Vittoria acquired a summoning spell and made a deal with Pride, agreeing to become his bride in order to break the curse that kept him trapped in hell. She also interacted with Greed, another prince of hell, shapeshifters, and werewolves, which Emilia didn't know existed. Vittoria's body is found in the monastery early in the first novel, mutilated and missing her heart. It's revealed towards the end of the novel that the culprit was Antonio, Emilia's first love, and one of the fratello's of the monastery. It is not until the end of the second novel, Kingdom of the Cursed, that it is revealed Vittoria is not truly dead.

Antonio
Antonio Vincenzu Bernardo is one of the newly appointed members of the holy brotherhood, working out of the city's monastery. He is three years older than Emilia, and grew up next door to their family. Emilia was infatuated with him since they were children, and deeply disappointed by the fact he'd taken a vow of chastity when he joined the brotherhood, making it impossible for him to ever marry. The two of them had a friendly relationship up until the conclusion of Kingdom of the Wicked, when Emilia learns it was him who had been murdering the young witches, including her sister Vittoria. He has a deep rooted hatred for witches, not only because he believes them to be evil, but because he claims one killed his mother after he sought help when she was ill. He was influenced by what he thought was an angel, and was told that if he didn't kill the witches before one of them could marry Pride, then the devil would return to earth.

Claudia
Claudia is another streghe, and Emilia's closest friend besides her own late sister. Her magic works best with scrying, and she sometimes gets visions, though they are not always trustworthy as she cannot differentiate between them and her own imagination. Claudia's cousin, Valentina Rossi, was another one of the streghe victims, having been murdered later in the novel after she was chosen to be another one of Pride's potential brides. After she conducts a scrying spell using the bones of the dead, something that is known to be dangerous, she descends into a state of psychosis that leads her to recite comprehensible premonitions and screams, seemingly having lost her mind similarly to her grandmother, Sofia Santorini, 18 years before.