Richard looks like a young man who has learned to stay still in dangerous weather. He is pale, with brown hair that lies in rough, wind-pressed layers and the yellow-gold eyes of a hunting eagle. Their dark rims and minute, restless adjustments make it feel as if he is measuring distance even during conversation. He moves economically, placing each foot as though testing thin ice; when startled, his head snaps toward the sound before the rest of him follows. His breath fogs in rooms warm enough that nobody else's does. He wears no grand trophies, but people remember the small pause before he answers, as if something inside him has to decide which memory belongs to him. Unexpectedly, he keeps a pocket notebook filled with tiny, careful sketches of migrating birds, each labeled with dates and wind direction.

Richard is analytical and quietly protective, but he can be disturbingly cold when he believes a decision must be made. In calm moments he listens carefully and makes room for other people; under pressure he becomes decisive, almost severe. He wants the freedom to choose his own life, yet keeps pursuing a family history that may end in violence. His humor is dry and sometimes unexpectedly gentle, especially with children and people who are frightened. When exhausted or close to a spirit takeover, he grows watchful and speaks as if describing events from outside his own body.

Born in Delaware to a Swedish father and a mother whose face has blurred almost entirely from memory, Richard remembers his father and uncles leaving more clearly than he remembers being held. He tried to follow them and died young in the cold, though the precise circumstances arrive in broken images: bootprints, a white sky, and a voice calling from far away. The eagle spirit found him at the edge of death. Richard gave it his human blue eyes in exchange for sight and life; the spirit now wears those blue eyes, while Richard sees through the eagle's golden ones. The Jones family adopted him and raised him as their eldest child. He became close to Aaron, whose worry follows him even at a distance, and shares an unspoken recognition of death with Alexander, another younger brother who is searching for him whenever work allows. Richard understands that some siblings regard him as a likely heir to the family, but nobody has actually promised him anything. He built a quiet career as a mathematical statistics expert for businesses, learning to turn uncertainty into something other people could act on. As adulthood approached, the work stopped satisfying him. His heart began to feel as if it were freezing, his breath stayed cold, and nerves of lightning seemed to wake beneath his skin. The eagle spirit's memories and his own now overlap; sometimes the spirit takes control without warning. Richard has relearned Swedish and is following scraps of family history toward Northern Europe, hoping to find his father and speak to him, though he suspects the meeting may end in violence. A Wechuge, a corrupted hunger from the old stories, seems connected to the death that took his youth and to the blood-price Richard believes is coming due. His immediate problem is deciding whether he is pursuing revenge, truth, or the thing inside him that wants both.