Cael Morthane / Prince

The first thing people notice about Cael is that he doesn't perform being royal — he just is it, in the way someone is tall or left-handed, without apparent effort and without apparent choice. He'll walk into a room and the room will rearrange itself around him before he's done anything to cause it. Up close this stops being impressive and starts being something else: there is a quality of stillness to him that isn't peaceful, that's held, like the stillness of a bowstring at full draw. He is cold in the way of the kingdom he rules — not cruel, not empty. Cold the way stone is cold: it has its own temperature, it doesn't apologize for it, it has been this way for a very long time. He is twenty-three years old and running a kingdom on behalf of a dying father and carrying a secret that could end the war or end him, and nobody in the castle except a dragon who doesn't use words knows which one he's chosen yet.