The war had already taken too much. Your sister’s crown. Your freedom. The last easy night’s sleep you could remember. And now this—Daemon bargaining with your life and your dragon as if they were coins on a table.

“…Gold,” he said, “Enough to keep the queen’s cause breathing. Or we take back what belongs to the blood of the dragon. The girl. And the Pearl.” His violet eyes flicked toward you. “Vaelys is one of our largest dragons next to Vermithor and would serve the realm far better beneath a rider who isn’t hiding in the clouds.”

Jeyne’s mouth tightened. The Vale had sheltered you and had asked the dragon’s presence as the price for her soldiers marching into war. Losing either would gut her defenses.

A long, tense silence stretched. Then Jeyne exhaled through her nose, practical to the bone. “Take the gold but keep your threats behind your teeth, Daemon Targaryen. The dragon remains where it protects the living.”

Daemon’s smile was of satisfaction, the look of a man who had just watched an opponent fold. “Wise. The queen will remember your loyalty.”

He waited for a beat to let the victory settle. Then those eyes found you again, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop another degree.

“May I speak with you, niece?”

Your fingers curled tighter into the robe, shielding the gentle curve that no one in this room was supposed to see.

“You may speak right here, uncle,” you said flippantly. “There are no walls in the Eyrie that haven’t already heard every secret worth keeping.”

Jeyne’s brow lifted, but she said nothing. Daemon’s smirk deepened, though something colder flickered behind it. “Aemond has disappeared from Harrenhal. The whispers say Criston Cole’s army remains there now without their one-eyed prince guarding the skies…”

Your stomach turned.

“Reclaim it and return here,” Daemon went on, “Take Vaelys. Burn the traitors out before they root deeper. One strike and the queen’s path to the throne clears.”

You stared at him, the exhaustion cracking sharper. “Reclaim it? Just like that? And what if Aemond and Vhagar are waiting in the dark for me. What then?”

Daemon waved a dismissive hand. “Aemond is gone. My eyes in the riverlands confirmed it days ago. Harrenhal breaks even dragonriders; the castle stands exposed now, its prince vanished like mist off the water. If he remained, the skies would already be black with Vhagar’s wings and the riverlands would be ash. They are not. The fortress is ripe. Take it.”

You glanced at Jeyne—your shield in this high, lonely place—searching for an anchor in the storm of his words. But Daemon moved before she could speak, voice dropping almost intimately.

“Isn’t your husband there, among Cole’s ranks?”

The laugh that escaped you was short and brittle. “You’d have me burn my husband and his army?” The words came out softer but no less cutting. “Turn Vaelys’ fire on Gwayne? To what? Test my loyalty?”

Daemon’s gaze didn’t waver.

“Are you? That’s the enemy’s army, niece. Your loyalty is to your blood. To your sister.” A pause, his gaze flocking down to your stomach. “You have more than yourself to think of now.”

“You dare question where my loyalty lies?”

Your blood turned to ice. The child had been the one thing that still belonged only to you. Not to the Blacks. Not to the Greens. Not to the war. And now Daemon spoke of it as though he had every right to know. How? How in the seven hells did he know?

You had only discovered the pregnancy after the lines had been drawn, after there was no safe way to send word. Rhaenyra knew. Jeyne knew because she had to. Rhaenyra had sent you here, with child and vulnerable, to keep the child safe from the upcoming storm. Since sides had been chosen and love had become a battlefield of its own.

Daemon watched the shock ripple across your face with that same infuriating calmness. “Do stop reaching for your belly each time you grow frightened. Even the dullest courtier would have guessed it eventually.”

You drew a slow breath in, the thin mountain air sharp in your lungs, and forced steel into your spine. “I shall go… yet I would hear the order to burn spoken from my sister’s own lips. Not from yours.” You turned then to Jeyne. “I shall return, My lady.”

Jeyne’s eyes softened, she nodded as she accepted. You stormed past Daemon without another glance, the hem of your robe whispering over the cold stone, and deliberately shouldered him as you went. You were already descending the winding steps when his voice carried after you.

“You should thank me, niece. For now you shall see your Hightower husband before he meets his end.”

His words chased you down the steps, but the true weight of them had already been living behind your eyes for weeks. The dreams you get are always the same. The brief flash of auburn hair. The sudden bloom of dragonfire. The way a body crumpled beneath the heat. You had woken gasping his name more nights than you could count, certain the gods were showing you Gwayne’s end—the price of loving a man who wore the wrong colour in a war of dragons.