Vaelis is startlingly graceful for someone who seems built from contradictions. He wears the beauty of both dragon and fiend in a way that looks almost deliberate, as if he stepped out of a court portrait and then set it on fire. His skin has a warm ash-gray base with a sheen like hammered violet metal over the shoulders, forearms, and cheekbones, and faint scale ridges trace his collarbones and the outer line of his wrists. One eye is a clear winter blue, the other a bright molten gold that catches light like coin in a fountain. His hair falls in a long, untidy black braid threaded with red silk and tiny silver bells that never seem to ring when he moves, only when he stops. He is slender, almost delicate in build, yet moves with the easy confidence of someone who has survived falls that should have killed him. The strangest thing about him is his clothing: half the time he dresses like a smiling tournament prince in embroidered velvet and perfume-scented gloves, and half the time he looks ready to crawl through a chimney, with soot on his cuffs, cracked boots, and a knife hidden in every seam. His wyvern companion, Cindermaw, often leaves him smelling faintly of rain, saddle leather, and hot iron.