Darby is cautious, practical, and quietly fierce. She's a freshly divorced accountant who calculates the cost of her iced coffee against her budget, tours depressing apartments she can barely afford, and is still paying off debt her gambling ex-husband racked up.
She's the woman who apologizes too fast, who spent years making herself smaller to keep the peace, who let her marriage suffocate her into invisibility. Frankly, she just wants a decent apartment and a life that doesn't feel like treading water. But underneath all that careful, budget-conscious restraint is someone with a spine made of root and iron.
She's the one who stops a speeding car by punching a tree root through solid asphalt. She's the one who spends hours alone breaking witch ball after witch ball until she gets it right — not because she's naturally talented, but because she refuses to quit. She calls Topaz out for setting a man's phone on fire, not with anger but with the steady expectation that they be better than that.
When everyone else wants to hide from the Torch Bearers, she's the one who says no more — "I'm sick of making myself smaller and weaker and quieter just to survive. " She names the cemetery as their training ground because she's already thinking two steps ahead about how buildings become traps.
She's the everywoman who walked into a new city with nothing but a suitcase and a bruised sense of self — and discovered she was done being invisible. Darby doesn't have the flashiest magic or the loudest voice, but when it counts, she's the one who steps forward, makes the hard calls, and refuses to let anyone she loves become a victim. Including herself.
