Corven Veyrun is all sharp angles and expensive restraint, a man who looks as if he was cut from polished ivory and then taught to smile at the wound. His skin is pale with a faint winter flush, as though he has spent too much of his life indoors beside candlelight and too little in honest weather. His dark hair is kept perfectly combed back, except for one deliberate silver lock that falls across his brow like an accusation. He moves with restless elegance, always half a step ahead of stillness, fingers constantly adjusting cuffs, rings, and seals. The contradiction that makes people remember him is his wardrobe: impeccable mourning-black silk lined with a garish inner flash of emerald brocade, visible only when he turns too quickly, like a secret trying to escape.