Chapter Text
Xaden Riorson has a secret.
He has a lot of secrets, but there is one in particular that he rarely shares with anyone, and never puts himself in a position where they could discover the full extent of it.
Everyone has a magical relic somewhere on their body, of course. It starts small, a mark the size of a thumbnail, in childhood, and doesn’t manifest fully until adulthood. Xaden’s is on his back, a black dragon that covers the area from shoulder to waist on the right side of his spine. There is a second, smaller relic tucked under the black dragon’s wing, a shimmering gold dragon that people assume is a tattoo. When he bonds Sgaeyl, she claims the other side of his back, mirroring his soulmate mark and wrapping her tail around the little gold dragon.
Very few people are lucky enough to see the three dragons on his back, to trace the scars that mark his responsibility for the children of the Apostasy who will be given a chance to bond their own dragons and make their own marks in the world.
No one, though, has been allowed to see the red daggertail that curls in the hollow at the top of his left thigh.