ser breakbones

And also, we've got a few other swords in Rhaenyra's apartment. Her lover, Harwin Strong's sword. So there's just a few elements there that help to tell the story from a props point of view about Rhaenyra.

𝐏𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐓, sweeter than poison and twice as difficult to swallow. The parchments lay scattered beneath her hands, rain-softened scraps mottled with dirt, grease, and the black smears of unlettered fingers, as a bitter taste gathered beneath Rhaenyra’s tongue. She had thought herself long past being wounded by expectation. All her life, expectation had dogged her heels like a hound bred for blood. When she had been a child, they had expected her to be pleasing. When her mother died, they had expected her to bear the honour of being named heir with grace, though the honor had been forged from Aemma’s blood and the son cut from her womb. When she had flowered, they had expected chastity. When she had wed, obedience. When she had borne sons, they had expected them to resemble a husband who could scarcely endure touching her. When her father sickened, they expected patience. When they stole her crown, they expected surrender. When they murdered her boys, they expected restraint. And now they expected salvation. There was no end to what the realm demanded. Her mouth curved, but no mirth lived in it. Her sons had once believed her capable of every rescue. When they were small, there had been no hurt her hands could not soothe, no fear her voice could not quiet. Jace had come to her with scraped knees and solemn grievances, trusting that she might mend both with equal ease. Luke had feared storms for a time when he was very young, though he would deny it later, and on nights when thunder rolled over Dragonstone he would creep into her chambers, barefoot and furious with himself for being afraid. He would burrow beneath her blankets and press his face against her shoulder, and Rhaenyra would tell him that storms were only dragons quarreling beyond the clouds. A mother’s lie. One of the tender sort. ( She had told so many. ) No harm shall come to you. Your grandsire will defend your claim. Your brother shall return. You are safe. The gods themselves might have laughed to hear her. ❛ They prayed for my father, too. ❜ Her gaze remained lowered. ❛ I heard them. When I was a girl. ❜  Memory opened before her with the suddenness of a knife-slash. King’s Landing beneath summer banners. Streets strewn with flowers already crushed brown beneath the hooves of horses. Long live the king. Viserys the Peaceful. Viserys the Beloved. Fathers had lifted their children upon their shoulders that they might see him pass. Women had reached toward him with wet eyes. Men who could not afford meat had spent their last coppers upon cups of ale to drink his health. Rhaenyra had ridden near him, young enough still to believe that love shouted by a crowd must be true. She could see her father as he had been then, before disease devoured him. Viserys in red and black; his silver hair bright beneath the sun, one hand raised to the adoring crowds. He had smiled so easily in those days, whilst musicians played and bells pealed and the smallfolk shouted themselves hoarse for love of him. He had loved them too, in his fashion. Viserys had loved the realm as he loved his model of Old Valyria: from above, in miniature, every jagged edge smoothed by distance. He had loved the idea of peace more fiercely than the labour required to keep it. Each quarrel had been another unwelcome crack in his little kingdom, each warning another voice disturbing the music. And so he had filled the cracks with feasts, with marriages, with denials spoken so often they hardened into law. For years she had judged him for it. Now she sat in his place and felt the ghost of his cowardice take her hand like kin. 

𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐖𝐈𝐍'𝐒 𝐈𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐍. To remain where he stood as an unwavering bastion, so that she need not spend precious breath upon so small a thing as the mark upon his face. However slight the bruise that bloomed across his skin, he did not wish to add himself to the already bottomless well of burdens that threatened to drown her. Yet the infernal storm that kindled behind violets in the threadbare space of his hesitation pulled him forward — as irresistibly as the tide adheres to the moon's behest. He saw, beneath the queen’s fury, terrible fear. Beneath the dragon’s fire, the vulnerability of a woman who had watched too many of her own perish and now reached for any wound still within her power to name and mend. Harwin's armour murmured its low, metallic groan as he strode closer. The gentle strike of his boots against the flagstone rang through the chamber, his damp cloak brushed the stone floor in a soft whisper. Torchlight found the bruise along his cheekbone and gilded the deepening purple and pale yellows — presenting to her a testimony of the city’s desperation written upon his skin.

❛ It is nothing, my queen. Too mere a thing to be named a scratch at all. ❜ He offered in reassurance and gentle defiance of her worry, both, ❛ A thief. Starved and half-mad with it. He sought to tear a young woman’s brooch from her cloak, and more thereafter. He has been seized and will answer for it. Your grace need not trouble herself. ❜ So near to her now, the depth of her sorrows struck him with such merciless force it threatened to bring him to his knees. He saw the exhaustion carved deep beneath the ire, the desperate wish to honour every duty that had been laid upon her shoulders since the day her father named her heir. Gods knew she had never hungered for power itself. Only to fulfil the promise her father had made when he named her the realm's future protector. The claws of exhaustion had sunk deep burrows into her, and through the whole living tapestry of her ran the black, intricate roots of grief; more complex and more enduring than those of any weirwood. The sight ignited within Harwin's own chest an unspeakable pain, an urge they were both too exposed to indulge — the fierce, savage desire to gather her against the fortress of his body and ward away every ill and sinister thing that still circled. Crueller still was what lived beneath that valiant roar; a ghostly whisper that asked whether he was worthy of the honour to protect her at all. A whisper that asked whether he had not already failed her in ways that could never be unmade. That he had failed their sons. That had he insisted, years ago, upon following her to Dragonstone rather than complying to remain commander of the gold cloaks, he might have stood between the boys he loved from the shadows and the Stranger's claiming hand. The thought was a bitter bile, a knot of barbed wire that choked the throat. Harwin swallowed against it, forced the guilt to return to the locked chambers of his heart, and took again the composure she required of him. He would not falter. Not when she needed him strong, not when she needed a fortress to safeguard the little flame of warmth that remained to her.

❛ Matters in the city have been dire. The smallfolk uncertain and afeared. They yearn for stability, they can only hope who sits upon the throne harbours some fragment of affection for them. I was amid them — their cheers for the usurper carried a heaviness, a shame. The air was taut with hesitation. They knew it wrong. Yet a starving man will risk poisoned bread in the hopes of relieving his hunger. Those who erred learnt swiftly that they had when Aegon forsook them and you sent provisions from across the Blackwater. You gave them hope, Rhae—your grace. ❜ Harwin's shoulders tensed. He straightened his posture. The near slip thieving him of breath. He had not spoken her name so freely in . . . long. Very long. Still, each word had been woven with candour that might have been considered bolder than naming her. But he would not waste time, for time was of the essence now, there was no space for softer truths. Indeed, the usurper's name had been cheered, yet she held favour of many in her city; he had seen it, heard it, felt it.

❛ There is only one who will be named monster, I assure you. You have come to the aid of your people before, and you will do so again. They trust you. ❜ Harwin's voice had gained fervour, each syllable laced with the ardent conviction he possessed that she would succeed and succeed well. He recalled that morrow when the boats had come — unmanned vessels drifting into the shore beneath the black and red banners of House Targaryen. Laden with grain, salted fish, barrels of fruit, and sacks of root vegetables. The city had erupted in joy, relief, reverence. Taverns that had long been suffused with despair suddenly rang with her name. Men and women and children alike rushed to the shore, weeping as they received the first true meal in weeks. Mothers pressed bread into the hands of their little ones with shaking fingers. Old men who had not smiled in moons raised their frail voices in cheers for the queen who had remembered them. Even in the gold cloaks’ barracks, while the usurper still slept mere walls away, Harwin's men had raised their cups in quiet, fierce delight. The loyalty had been unmistakable, though spoken only in the silence of shared glances and the careful tilt of tankards. They had known whose name sat upon their tongues, and they had eagerly drunk to it.

❛ If I may speak plainly, your grace. There is a matter I have wished to raise with you. A possible solution . . . ❜ He began, tentatively. Upon the faintest inclination of her head, permission granted in the smallest of gestures, he continued, gaze searching hers with careful, almost tender intensity. ❛ I have reason to suspect that in your absence, certain nobles clawed for provisions and coin far beyond any rightful need. They fattened their stores already overflowing, and what they seized came from your people — from the smallfolk who had already given more than they could spare. ❜ Harwin had remained in King's Landing with his men long before the late king Viserys had passed, long before the usurper had dared steal her throne. He had remained when Dragonstone received her, her husband, and her children. And he had not sat idle. Night after night he had walked the alleys and the markets, watching and listening. He had gathered every grievance whispered over thin stews and watered ale. He had assessed which of his own men could be trusted with the unspoken knowledge of their true loyalty and which must be removed — reassigned to distant posts or allowed to resign under the pressure of a commander’s disfavour. He had walked the corridors of the Red Keep when banners of green littered the walls. Among the arrogant lords who saw in him only a gold cloak and never a mind capable of discerning their sins, he had overheard the self-satisfied whispers of grain and coin cunningly rerouted, of cellars swollen while the city’s children starved. Harwin had remembered every name, every diverted wagon, every inconsistent ledger.

❛ You are our queen. It is your right to demand tribute from your subjects to restore what was taken in greed. Such succour might flow at once into the city's empty belly. It would be but a modest salve, aye, yet a salve nonetheless. And it would grant you time. ❜ Harwin's hand loosened around the hilt of his sword; his palm burning with the forbidden urge to reach for her, to brush a thumb along her cheek to chase away the tension. Or to simply rest his fingers against the back of her hand for the span of a single breath — pouring devotion and warmth, the fervid vow that he had her, into the merest of grazes. Instead he let the hand fall to his side. ❛ You need not worry yourself with my men. They remain loyal. They will wait unwavering for recompense as long as their queen requires. But the smallfolk suffer now. A gesture such as this might ease their desperation while greater remedies are still being forged. It would, too, show them that the rightful ruler does not forsake her people. ❜

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐘𝐄𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐘𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒, though the heavens had been threatening rebellion since dawn. None seemed to heed the warning. The lords rode beneath their silken standards, too well pleased to trouble themselves with the sky, as their ladies sweated prettily beneath veils of Myrish lace. Knights in bright enamel boasted of tourneys won before Rhaenyra had been born, while squires laughed dutifully at jests they had surely heard a hundred times before. Somewhere behind the royal wheelhouse, a singer had taken up a ballad concerning a maiden with golden hair, a true knight, and a tower of black stone. He had reached the maiden’s third lament before Rhaenyra decided that death by lightning would be the kinder fate. She had endured three days of such pageantry. Three days of halls made fragrant with crushed rushes and roses already browning at their edges. Three days of bread presented upon silver platters, venison drowned in sauces too sweet to stomach, and proud old men reciting the names of their ancestors until every dead lord in the realm seemed more alive than Rhaenyra herself. Three days of being displayed beneath banners. Everywhere she turned, there waited another pair of appraising eyes. The lords looked upon her and saw a crown not yet worn: their sons saw a marriage bed, and their wives saw a girl whose womb might raise or ruin their house. That afternoon, Lord Bar Emmon had insisted the progress halt beside the ivy-devoured remnants of a watchtower whose every stone, he solemnly declared, had been laid during the reign of the Conciliator. Rhaenyra had listened until she could bear no more. Her mare had been restless beneath her, tossing her pale mane and worrying the bit as though she, too, found the lord’s history intolerable. Rhaenyra had stroked the animal’s neck, murmured something about wishing to see the riverbank, and slipped away before a septa, sworn sword, or overzealous lordling might volunteer to escort her. She knew Ser Harwin Strong would follow. The certainty of it pleased her more than it ought.

Branches caught at her riding cloak; ferns lashing upon her boots. Beneath the thick summer canopy, her mare surged forward at the slightest pressure, and Rhaenyra bent low over the animal’s neck and laughed, as somewhere behind her came the thunder of another horse. She knew the sound of Ser Harwin's riding by then. There was little grace in him of the courtly sort, none of the polished prettiness minstrels bestowed upon their silver knights, yet there was something surer. Rhaenyra urged her mare faster. The woods blurred into green and brown and rain-bright silver; her heart climbed against her ribs, light and fierce as a dragon beating its wings against confinement. For a precious little while, she was only a girl fleeing through the trees. But Ser Harwin gained upon her regardless of every fallen branch and twisting path she placed between them. She glimpsed him once when she glanced over her shoulder—a broad shape astride a dark courser, his cloak streaming behind him, his hair already made blacker by the mist. Even at a distance there was no mistaking him. Breakbones, the court named him, sometimes in admiration and sometimes in fear, though the name seemed ill-suited to the man Rhaenyra had come to know in fragments. There was no cruelty to him.

She faced forward once more, a smile threatening her mouth.

The rain thickened then, and what had been a maiden’s veil became a widow’s shroud; the sky groaning overhead. Within moments, the heavens opened, rain falling in generous sheets.It silvered the air, battered the treetops, and poured through the canopy in sudden cold rivulets. Rhaenyra’s hood was down, and before she could seize it the wet had soaked through her hair, her cloak, the velvet upon her shoulders. Her mare shied when thunder broke over the wood, throwing up her head and slipping sideways in the mud. Rhaenyra caught the reins and fought to steady her, but the path had become a treacherous ribbon of black earth; the mare’s hindquarters swung perilously close to a tree, and for one sharp instant Rhaenyra imagined bone breaking, silk tearing, a dozen lords declaring afterward that such was the ruin brought by a girl’s willfulness. Then Harwin was beside her. His courser pressed close enough that their stirrups nearly struck. One of his hands closed around the mare’s bridle, broad fingers sure against the wet leather, and the horse quieted beneath the strength of him, though rain continued to roll along the muscles of her trembling neck. Wet hair clung to his brow. Water traced the hard line of his nose and gathered along the dark bristle at his jaw. His cloak was plastered to his shoulders, making him seem broader still, some rain-soaked giant out of the old tales who had wandered down from the hills to guard a foolish princess from herself.

Rhaenyra lifted her chin. ❛ I had her, Ser. ❜ Whether he believed her or merely possessed the good sense not to challenge her mattered little. Harwin released the bridle only once the mare had settled. Another growl of thunder rolled across the heavens. She pushed wet hair from her cheek. ❛ We ought to return before my father sends half his guard into the wood. ❜

Even as she said it, she knew they could not; the storm had swallowed all direction, and every tree appeared the same beneath the downpour.  They rode in a silence filled by the violence of the rain as it drummed against leaves, armor, leather. Her cloak grew heavy upon her shoulders; the cold crept down her spine and beneath her shift, stealing feeling from her fingers. She clenched the reins more tightly to disguise their trembling. It was Harwin who found the shelter. The hut crouched beneath the shoulder of a hill where the forest thinned into open grazing land, though no sheep had wandered there in many years. It was a poor, forsaken thing, built of rough stone and roofed in sagging thatch, half-hidden beneath ivy and lichen. One shutter hung crooked beside a narrow window. The little yard before it had gone wild with nettles, and the remains of a sheepfold leaned drunkenly beneath the storm. She dismounted before Harwin might think to help her. That was her intention, at least. Her skirts had twisted around her knees, heavy with water. Her boot slipped against the stirrup, and the earth seemed to tilt beneath her. A breath later, a strong arm encircled her waist. Harwin caught her before she struck the mud. For one suspended heartbeat she hung between saddle and ground, held against him by the sheer certainty of his strength.

Rhaenyra felt the heat of his hand even through sodden velvet. She felt the hard breadth of his chest close to her shoulder, the leather and wet wool beneath her fingers where she had grasped him without thought. The world narrowed to the place where his palm spanned her waist.  She looked up at him; the rainwater clung to his lashes. Harwin’s hand fell from her waist. Rhaenyra stepped back with as much dignity as one could muster while dripping like a half-drowned cat.

❛ . . . You may forget that happened. ❜  She turned toward the hut before he could answer, though she imagined amusement in the silence behind her. The door had swollen in its frame and resisted them, but Harwin forced it open with one shoulder. The wood groaned, the rusted latch giving way with a brittle crack. Inside waited darkness, cold ashes, and the stale scent of abandonment. The hut contained little. A narrow pallet stood against one wall, stripped of bedding. A three-legged stool lay overturned beside the hearth. There were hooks along the rafters where herbs or game might once have hung, though only cobwebs remained now, silvered faintly by the light that entered through the broken shutter. But the roof held, and in truth, that was enough. Harwin shut the door against the storm, and at once the rain became distant; its roar softened by stone and thatch. She drew down her hood. Her hair, half escaped from its braids, tumbled wetly over her shoulders; silver-gold strands clung to her throat and cheeks, ruined beyond repair. She reached back and pulled free the remaining pins. One by one they fell into her palm until the last of the braid surrendered. Her hair spilled down her back in a pale, dripping curtain. When she looked toward Harwin, she found his gaze upon her. A hot little triumph rose within her, swiftly followed by something more uncertain.

❛ . . . You are staring, ser. ❜ She waited only long enough to see whether he would deny it before turning toward the hearth. The wood stacked nearby was old and damp at the edges. Harwin knelt before it, stripping away the worst of the rot with his dagger and arranging the driest pieces beneath the chimney, and Rhaenyra perched upon the stool once she had set it upright. It listed dangerously beneath her. ❛ I pray your skill with kindling exceeds Lord Bar Emmon’s skill with history. Else we shall be frozen stiff before he reaches his fourth grandsire. ❜ A spark leapt from flint to tinder and died. Another followed. Rhaenyra watched Harwin bend over the meagre nest of wood, shielding it with hands broad enough to close around both of hers; the third spark caught. A faint orange tongue trembled to life beneath his breath. Soon the fire began to feed. Flame crept along the shavings, curled around the smaller branches, and found purchase in the split wood. Warmth breathed slowly into the room. Smoke climbed the chimney, though some of it escaped into the hut, making Rhaenyra’s eyes sting.

She stretched her hands toward the heat.

❛ There. A deed worthy of song. Ser Harwin Strong, Breakbones, conqueror of damp firewood. ❜

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐄𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐘, and within a narrow breath the rain clung to him as though it had become one with his skin. It doused his hair until the dark curls glistened and hung heavy, it sent cold rivulets racing down his temples, along the nape of his neck, and tracing the length of his spine. Beads of rain clung and dripped from his beard, soaked through the thick wool of his cloak, through doublet and the loose linen beneath. Not a fragment of him remained dry by the time they had forded the overgrown garden and crossed the threshold into the abandoned hut. Yet for all the chill that had carved into his own bones, all he could truly concern himself with was the return of warmth to hers. In truth, Harwin might have been more vexed by her sudden flight if he did not understand her so completely. If some part of him had not already expected that she would resort to some fierce attempt to reclaim whatever scraps of sanity still remained to her. She had endured three endless days of simpering flattery, of lords and their ambitious sons vying for her hand with lavish stories that inflated them far beyond their true measure. She had heard honeyed promises of honour and kindness and grand romance — all of which echoed blatantly hollow. As duty bade him to shadow her every stride, more than once Harwin had thought that if a man needed to declare his own honour and kindness so loudly, there was almost certainly none of either to begin with. He had watched her grow weary of the spectacle with every passing hour, had noted the false smiles she offered that scarcely reached her eyes. He had sensed the impatience, the restlessness searing beneath her skin; the hunger for reprieve from the greedy gazes that looked upon her and saw only a prize to be won, a womb to be secured, power to be grasped. He had, too, told himself that his devoted discernment of her moods sprang solely from his duty as her sworn protector. That the thorn which pricked him whensoever another pompous noble waltzed forward with arrogance ( and with no intention at all of truly asking anything of her, or of listening should she deign to answer ) was nothing more than simple sympathy. And not, under any circumstance, something far more ruinous.

Harwin might have been more troubled by her sudden flight as well, had he not made efficient work of their circumstances and coaxed the fire to life. For she was right — he had been staring. His gaze had lingered upon the sodden velvet that clung to her shoulders, upon the wet silver strands clinging to her temples, upon the fine tremor that pride and stubbornness forbade her to admit she was suffering. Concern had stirred in his chest; insistent, impossible to quieten. It mattered not that she was blood of the dragon, that fire itself was said to run through her veins; Harwin knew if she did not warm soon, if she did not dry, the threat of sickness and fever would loom larger than he could permit. He had watched the first sparks leap and die, then catch at last into fragile embers. Those embers had slowly grown into thin ribbons of flame that licked at the damp wood with tentative hunger. Only when the last of the moisture had fled in vapour did the fire truly awaken, growing into something bright and warm. When he was satisfied it would hold, Harwin stepped back to grant her decorous berth. One broad hand motioned her forward, a quiet invitation towards the growing heat. Despite the cold that still trembled through her frame, she met his eyes with that characteristic, unwavering roguish blaze of hers — defiant, delighted, and somehow more radiant than the flames themselves. Harwin could not help the low, rough scoff of incredulous amusement that escaped him.

❛ A kind accolade, princess. Though perhaps too generous. I was a boy raised in the Riverlands—damp firewood has hardly ever proven a fearsome foe. ❜ He spoke the words in modest jest, lifting one hand to undo the leather laces that bound half his hair. The dark curls fell free, heavy with rainwater, spilling over his brow and temples so that they might begin to dry in the rising heat. Outside the hut, the storm still raged — its violent force muffled from their hideaway, yet unmistakable still. Rain pattered against the rotting roof, lightning poured silver into the amber room, thunder rattled the ancient walls. Drops of rain slipped in through the narrow window whose shutter had long since gone to ruin.

❛ A man who hopes to be remembered in praising song has already thought too much of himself. But if I must be put into verse, ❜ he continued, an undertow of mirth running beneath his voice, ❛ let it be for keeping the princess from taking a fever. ❜ Even as the syllables fell from him with levity, a buried unease stirred. How had they come to this place? They should not be here like this. This dance of theirs, where they teetered far too near the precipice of the forbidden. It was infinitely perilous, it would mean his undoing. She thrilled in it; he could see the satisfaction gleaming in her eyes, in the smug, knowing curve of her mouth whenever she spoke words a breath too bold for propriety. She thrilled in watching him tremble upon the edge of uncertainty. In the quiet of his mind Harwin could hear his father’s stern chastisement, his voice beseeching him to feel some measure of shame for indulging the princess so freely. He did, gods, he did. Yet he found himself unable to refuse her. He told himself the present predicament was naught but a cruel bout of ill luck. She could not have known the storm would break so terribly, and what manner of sworn protector would he be if he did not follow when she absconded into the forest? What sort of protector did not do everything in his power to keep her safe — even from her own reckless mischief? Another shiver seized her frame then. Harwin’s brows furrowed. The sight should not have made his heart ache as it did. But it did, undeniably.

❛ Forgive me, princess, I mean no disrespect, but you might wish to remove your cloak. We are like to be here a while, and it will do no good in warming you while it remains so wet. ❜ As he spoke, Harwin's hands deftly worked the leathers and clasps that secured his sword to his hip. With almost reverent care, he set the weapon against the wall beside the hearth, beside his saddlebag with modest provisions. Though he had always run warm, the chill of the storm had reached deeply into his own bones. His cloak hung heavy and sodden over his doublet, his breeches clung cold and dark against his legs, the leather of his boots still glistened with rainwater. Yet Harwin's eyes remained upon her; quietly pleased to see her draw nearer the flames, to watch the ends of that long cascade of silver hair begin to lift and dry in the rising heat. His hands moved next to his own cloak. He undid the clasp and lifted its weight of the sodden wool from his shoulders. She must forgive the deep hum that reverberated in his chest as he, for a fleeting moment, simply stood there, letting the fire’s warmth touch the soaked fabric of his doublet and kiss the cold skin beneath. After an indulgent breath, his gaze swept the desolate hut once more.

Everything lay in ruins. Vagrants had long since stripped the place of anything remotely of value. The wood of the walls and beams was rotting, dust and the debris of the forest decorated every surface, shattered ceramics and scraps of fraying cloth littered the uneven floor. Whoever had once called these walls home was long gone. Yet in the far corner, beside the pallet, stood a dusty chair. Its wood chipped and darkened with age, the back so rickety it looked ready to give way beneath even the lightest weight. Useless for sitting. Still, Harwin went to it without hesitation. His hand closed around the rough frame and drew the chair close to the fire, which had grown larger and hungrier than he had expected. He turned the chair so that its back faced the flames, then carefully draped his own sodden cloak over the seat where the heat might begin its slow work. The empty back he left clear and waiting for the lavish fabric of hers — where the flames would reach it more swiftly, more thoroughly, and dry it all the sooner.

From where he stood, Harwin looked down upon her as she held her hands toward the fire. For a moment he simply watched the way firelight danced across her face where she sat upon the frail stool. Windswept and rainsoaked; she was a vision he had no right to notice the way he did. Bathed in the soft amber glow, her cheeks still touched with the flush left by lashing cold air, silken strands of silver clinging damply to her temples. There was the swell of ache behind his ribs again, the unbidden rise of memory of how she had clung to him earlier when he had caught her as she slipped. She had bid him forget it had happened — but he could not, even if he tried, forget the searing heat where his hand had splayed against her. Entirely uncouth, forbidden, a feeling of tenderness more intense than honour should allow. Madness. Utter madness. He exhaled an incredulous, grounding breath before bowing his head slightly. He held out his hand, palm open, ready to receive her cloak.

❛ Might I? ❜ The question left him softer than he had intended, almost a murmur. It felt strangely wrong to speak any louder in that fragile space; as though the fullness of his voice might somehow disturb the old beams and bring the thatch down around them both. There was another flash of lightning, another rumble of thunder. When Harwin spoke again, every trace of earlier mirth had gone. His voice was low, steady, and threaded only with sincere concern. ❛ Please. We must see you warm, princess. ❜

𝐃𝐔𝐓𝐘 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐊𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃𝐋𝐘. 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋. Almost absently, her hand rose between them until her fingertips found the broad plane of his chest. Beneath velvet and linen beat the very same heart she had listened to in stolen embraces before they had ever stood before gods and men to exchange vows. How many times had she sought that rhythm? After Viserys had breathed his last. After each child had been placed slick and squalling upon her breast. After nightmares that left her waking with tears cooling upon her temples. After battles. After funerals. After victories that had tasted too bitter to celebrate. Her thumb drifted in slow circles, as though committing him anew to memory despite knowing every contour already by heart. Her thoughts wandered, unbidden, toward Genna. The child who had returned from every ride with scraped knees, leaves tangled in dark hair, and stories that somehow always involved climbing where she ought not have climbed; the girl who preferred the clang of steel in the training yard to the music of embroidery needles, who had looked upon every rule as though it were merely another mountain awaiting ascent. A laugh threatened her lips before dissolving into sadness. Gods. The signs had always been there. Secret smiles had accompanied every exasperated sigh a septa loosed over Genna's impossible nature. Harwin's mock sternness had fooled no one who truly knew him; pride forever betrayed itself in the corners of his mouth whenever their daughter returned from the training yard having bloodied yet another noble boy's nose.  ❛ I fear . . .  ❜ she confessed at last, ❛ . . . that she inherited too much of us. She has your stubbornness, though you pretend otherwise. She has my inability to suffer fools. Between the two of us, we fashioned a daughter wholly incapable of bending when the realm demands it. I cannot decide whether that is the greatest gift we have ever given her... or the cruelest. ❜ Her gaze drifted beyond him then, through the open casement where King's Landing sprawled beneath an indifferent sky. ❛ If we choose such a path for her . . . ❜ she murmured, more to the silence than to the chamber itself, ❛ . . . it cannot merely preserve appearances. I will not condemn her to another prison simply because its walls are lined with velvet instead of stone. If there is a husband, he must be a good man. One who understands precisely what is asked of him. One who would sooner stand beside her than possess her. ❜ 

She could not bear another gilded cage. At last she reached for his hand again, threading their fingers together, her grip tightened all a once. Scarcely a fortnight had passed, yet the afternoon returned to her now with cruel clarity, polished now by hindsight. Lady Arianne had been nestled beneath the broad boughs of the old elm, a book spread across her lap. Some yards away, Genna crossed blunted steel with Joffrey, the sharp, bright song of their swords rising through the gardens like birdsong wrought from iron. Rhaenyra had lingered in the gallery above, smiling despite herself as daughter and son circled one another with all the fierce exuberance of youth. The bout ended as most between them did, and Genna prevailed. Victory lit her face before she had even lowered her blade, her cheeks flushed with exertion, loose strands of hair clinging to her brow, though it was not toward her brother that she turned to receive congratulations, nor toward the knights observing nearby. Without thought—without hesitation, as naturally as a flower inclines toward the sun—her eyes sought Lady Arianne beneath the elm. Rhaenyra had thought little of it then. She thought of almost nothing else now.  Emotion tightened unexpectedly beneath her ribs. Once seen, it could not be unseen. 

❛ I would sooner leave her unwed forever than condemn her to spending a lifetime apologizing for loving honestly. ❜

𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐖𝐈𝐍'𝐒 𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐑𝐇𝐀𝐄𝐍𝐘𝐑𝐀’𝐒 where it rested above the steady thrum of his heart. Palm cradled palm; his touch soft, reverent, thumb brushing with infinite tenderness across the ridges of bone and the silken planes of skin he had long since carved into the deepest depths of himself. Every line, every delicate hollow, every faint mark was so thoroughly known to him now that he could recite the dazzling shape of her in mind alone, could find her in the darkest pitch of night still know her by touch. A fond amusement stirred beneath the weight of the moment, that their daughter should have surrendered herself to a forbidden affection with the same unrepentant hunger that had once claimed her parents. She was, it seemed, the purest distillation of them both. Fleetingly, Harwin's mind drifted to the years before the word husband had ever passed Rhaenyra's lips in that hall of chaos. A time when she had been a young dragoness in covert pursuit of what she desired, and he had been utterly, gloriously helpless to deny her. Stolen glances across torchlit halls teeming with courtly eyes. Stolen caresses of fingertips or the brief brush of a shoulder in passing. Stolen sighs and broken breaths in darkened alcoves, in the shadowed privacy of her chambers, in any hidden hollow the Red Keep offered them. Gods, it had been madness — but he had never wished to refuse her. He never could have possessed the power to. From the very first collision of their eyes he had been drawn to the crackling, dangerous fire of her spirit. In time, any guilt had died beneath the exquisite hand of his affections; and amidst the forbidden haven that they had kindled, Harwin had strived for naught but to honour her, to cherish her, to love her so thoroughly it would be worth the sacrifice of his vows. It had, of course, been worth it. It had led him to the holiest vows he had ever spoken — the words that had bound him to her eternally.

Now he glimpsed that same fire kindled between Genna and Arianne; sweet, bright, and perilous. The knowledge settled within his chest with both delight and caution. Such emotion was a gift, indeed, though it must still be walked with care.

❛ Genna is of the most beautiful parts of you, ❜ he murmured, voice low and suffused with endearment, ❛ You are both magnificent—my girls. ❜ He allowed her to take his hand fully, their fingers weaving together as instinctively as breath itself. His opposite arm drifted of its own accord to the place it could never long resist — the base of her spine. His palm splayed with habitual protectiveness as he drew her near, so that he might press upon the crown of her silver hair a lingering kiss and draw an indulgent inhale, drinking deep of the familiar redolence that was his queen, his wife, the very breath of home. When he withdrew, the expression that painted his features spelled both affection and pensiveness. They would have to tread delicately, so carefully that the ground itself might not sense their weight — for Harwin would sooner perish than condemn his beloved daughter to any prison, gilded or not.

❛ We have time yet for this matter. There is no haste. Genna will come to us when she is ready. She will place the truth of her heart into our keeping, and then we may offer her a path ahead. I believe, perhaps, to allow her to name her own husband might be where to begin. ❜ A smile curved the corner of his mouth, warm and knowing, for Genna would choose just as Rhaenyra had once chosen; claiming her freedom with her own voice. ❛ Let her suggest a match she believes worthy. Someone she knows understanding. ❜ It was a perilous thing, still, and it demanded great finesse. Genna might yet fail to find a soul willing to compromise as she required; a man of noble enough standing to befit a princess of the realm, yet open to his bride finding soulbonded affection not only elsewhere, but with another lady. It was a great ask. Many would name it depravity. The thought made Harwin’s jaw tighten; there was little in this realm that made less sense to him than the cages men sought to place around love. And from that very bristling came an idea so simple, so obvious, that he nearly laughed at its clarity. The traditions of the Crownlands remained rigid . . . but the customs of the south were softer, more forgiving of the heart’s true shape.

His chest clenched at once with a father’s reluctance to watch any of his children bloom so far from the shelter of his reach. He hesitated, a low hum vibrating through his chest. The hand that had rested at her spine rose to find her chin, tilting her gaze until violet met dark. There was an odd thread of remorse woven through the tenderness in his eyes.

❛ Trust that I do not put this forth lightly . . . but perhaps we ought to send Genna south with Lady Arianne for a time. Framed as a political visit. Dorne has trusted the crown to send its daughter here, to betroth her to our son. We may return the favour in part as a display of our unity. ❜ He paused, brows knitting, thumb sweeping her knuckles, still. He did not wish his headstrong, spirited daughter so distant for so long; the mere thought awoke every protective instinct that had ever resided within him. But he could not imagine her discontent in a place such as Sunspear — and was it not every father's fiercest dream for his children to be happy? A soft, almost wistful smile touched his mouth. ❛ They are far kinder to such tastes in the south. There, our girl may roam more freely. She may stand a better chance of finding her match among those of like mind. ❜

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐈𝐒 𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆, winter loosening its grip on Winterfell, and with it goes the last of her pretending, the final breath of freedom before duty wraps its chains around her womb. The bitterness coils tight beneath her ribs, a serpent she cannot name, nor can she tame, and it winds itself around her lungs, her heart, constricting until every breath tastes of fury . . . and a grief she cannot fully articulate. Crown and beloved. Power and tenderness. It had seemed possible, once. In those stolen hours before the wedding tour, in the fevered nights where the world narrowed only to the two of them and naught else mattered. She had thought, foolishly, that she could take what she wanted and still remain whole, that love would not demand the same sacrifices as power, that being a woman did not mean surrendering every piece of herself to the machinery of dynasty and legacy.

How naive she had been. How unutterably, catastrophically naive.

Her jaw tightens as his thumb traces the curve of her chin, tilting her face toward his, and she meets his gaze. The unfairness of it all. It's maddening that he can stand there with that boyish smile, that unguarded joy written across his features like sunlight breaking through clouds, while she feels as though she is being slowly buried alive beneath the burden of what this means. What it will cost her . . . what it has already cost her, though the child is barely the size of a seed pearl, barely true except in the nausea that claws at her throat each morrow and the exhaustion that drags at her bones like chains. She knows it is not his fault, and she knows he would bear this burden himself if the gods allowed such mercy. He loves her. He has proven that in a thousand ways, both vast and true, from the moment he first looked at her as though she were the sun itself made flesh. And she loves him, wholly, but love does not make this fair. Love does not erase that she is the one who will swell and sicken and suffer, that she is the one who will risk her life in the birthing bed, that when this is over, if she survives it, if the babe survives it, he will be celebrated as a father, while she will be scrutinized as a mother, judged on every choice, every perceived failure, every deviation from the maternal perfection that women are expected to embody from the moment they draw their first breath. Her free hand lifts, pressing briefly to her temple as though she might steady the spinning chaos within; the maelstrom of thought and feeling that threatens to pull her under. She feels like a fraud, like she is failing him even now by not mirroring his joy with her own, by not falling to her knees in thanks for the blessing they have been granted. What is wrong with you? The voice hisses. Other women would weep with happiness. Other women would count themselves fortunate beyond measure.  ❛ The sickness is manageable. It is everything else that threatens to undo me. ❜ Her hand shifts beneath his, turning until their palms meet, fingers threading together in a grip that is equal parts anchor and plea. She needs him to understand, even if she cannot find the words to explain. She draws a breath that shudders through her chest, tasting snow and smoke and the faint metallic tang of her own fear. ❛ I am well enough to travel. The sooner we depart, the sooner this is done. Delaying will not make the return any easier. ❜ Her throat tightens dangerously, and for a moment she thinks she might actually weep, but she swallows it down, that tide of grief and gratitude and overwhelming feeling. ❛ You are too good to me, ❜ she whispers. ❛ Too patient. Too kind. I do not know what I have done to earn such devotion, but I—  ❜ Her fingers curl into the fabric of his tunic. ❛ I am sorry. ❜ Her gaze lifts to his again, and this time there is no veil between them; it is only her, stripped bare and trembling like a leaf in winter wind, standing in a godswood that does not belong to her gods, carrying a child she does not yet know how to love. ❛ But I am... I am glad it is you. If I must do this, if I must become, whatever it is I am becoming, I am glad it is with you. That it is your child I carry beneath my heart. That it is your hand I hold when the fear threatens to swallow me whole, when I feel myself slipping beneath the surface and cannot find purchase. ❜  

𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐇𝐈𝐌 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌 𝐋𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐑𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓. He saw the perilous flash of indignation behind those vibrant violet eyes, the subtle tightening of that proud mouth, the barest warning arch of a brow. His fierce wife did not take lightly to being made the source of mirth, and standing face to face with the living proof of that temper only made his treacherous smile grow wider, hopelessly besotted. Harwin's amusement had not been born of mockery but it sprang from pure, incredulous wonder at the absurdity of her words. That she could look upon his devotion and not only style it as some sort of accomplishment of his, but something she did not deserve to receive. Deep beneath his mirth ran a crueller vein, an ache that twisted itself through him as though a blade. Harwin knew the root of such ghostly thoughts. They grew from soil long starved of unconditional love, of kindness given freely. She thought his tenderness unique, praiseworthy even, only because she had scarcely been allowed to taste it before. The realisation made his hand splay firmer against the small of her back; protective, possessive, defiant against every soul who had ever dared wound her.

❛ Forgive me, Princess, for I must be uncivilised—it is sheer nonsense that you should allow such thoughts purchase within your mind. ❜ He said in gentle rebuke that spelled his disbelief. The amusement faded slowly from his visage, melting into profound softness, warmth threaded through with a ribbon of quiet remorse. He was utterly undone by the strength and unwavering fire of the woman who stood before him and commanded they embark upon the long, taxing road home rather than suffer herself to be sequestered and coddled. To Harwin she had never been more magnificent, more radiant, more ethereal. Still, he saw the fatigue that had carved itself into her bones, the way the new burden weighed upon her even as she refused to bow to it. He felt it in the way her svelte fingers clung so firmly into the weave of his tunic. He saw the fear, those fleeting shadows that passed through her gaze when she believed him unseeing. False. Harwin always saw. The moons they had shared had carved him into something attuned to her and her alone, able to read every tremor, every silence, every unspoken dread, even when such discernment might make his formidable wife chafe.

❛ I will not be praised for what is the barest of efforts one might expect of any man. I am not too good, nor too patient, nor too kind. I am only a man in love with his wife. ❜ He paused, thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, flushed the palest pink from the thawing northern cold, or the simple exertion of standing, or both. Then, slowly, he brought his brow to hers; the gesture soft, spinning around them a cocoon of sweet, private intimacy that shut out the godswood, the brisk air, the realm and its greedy, expectant eyes. ❛ You deserve everything. I will not suffer you believing elsewise. ❜ The words were murmured into the narrow breadth between them, his lips brushing the crease between her brows before he withdrew just enough to capture her gaze — so that she might witness herself the infinite well of his sincerity.

The thought struck his chest then again, as it oft did of late; a surging deluge of emotion so fierce it nearly thieved him of breath. How far they had come. How ridiculous it felt now to cast his mind back upon those early tempests that had once ravaged their union; the anger, the indignation, the distance he had clung to. To think he had once looked upon her with anything less than the reverence that filled him now, immeasurable, unadulterated, vast as the northern firmament. And it grew vaster still, as she spoke. Rhaenyra had undone him utterly with her words, spoken so softly, so sweetly, granting him the complete vulnerability of her heart. Her trust was more precious to him than breath itself. Harwin's heart ached with all the love and devotion he held for her, with the behemoth ferocity of his desire to liberate her from the grasp of her fears. Her comfort, her safety, her solace; these were matters for which he would lay down his own life without a sliver of hesitation. For who would not do such a thing for a life that was as glorious, as beautiful, as blazing as his? His hand brushed tenderly along her spine, his palm warm against her cheek. His eyes agleam with how beloved she was to him.

❛ I have you. I will guard you, I will anchor you when you cannot find purchase. And by the gods above, Rhaenyra, I will always choose you. ❜ The assurance came in deep, unwavering tones, a reminder and a vow both. Should the day ever come when the realm presented him with what it styled an impossible choice, he would claim it no impossibility at all, for there existed no world in which he chose anyone, anything, over her. They could make more children, gods willing, but there was only one of her, and Harwin would sooner fall upon his own sword than allow her to be taken from him.

❛ Aye, our child will change you—that much cannot be denied. But you are not claimed from yourself. What you are becoming is Rhaenyra grown fiercer, not a stranger. Your heart and soul is still yours. ❜ His gaze searched hers, as though the sheer intensity of his stare he might pour into her the truth of what he saw when he looked upon her. ❛ Motherhood will not dim you, my love, it is only another radiant face you will wear. And I can scarce believe the gods have granted me the honour of standing by your side through it. ❜ Every syllable was ardent and laced with ineffable certainty. Her ghosts were cruel and vast in number; Harwin knew this was but the first of many battles he would leap to fight against them. He saw no burden in the matter. He would do it eagerly, readily, until warm breath no longer resided in his lungs. He leaned in, swept a soft kiss to her temple, and when he whispered again his voice had regained the merest fragment of warm mirth. ❛ I requested ample provisions of lemon cakes for our journey. They are secured in a chest with your name carved upon it. I shall only pilfer one, I swear. ❜

𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐈𝐌 𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒, 𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐃, and Rhaenyra felt a fierce satisfaction bloom, unfurling through her chest, spreading its tendrils into every corner of her being until she was suffused with it, drunk on it, more intoxicated by the power of that confession than by all the arbor gold she had consumed this night. Perhaps it did frighten her, somewhere in the distant reaches of her consciousness where reason still held a tenuous foothold. But fear had never stopped her from reaching for the things she wanted, and she wanted this, wanted him, with a ferocity that eclipsed every lesson she had ever been taught about restraint and propriety. The sheet had slipped lower, pooling around their hips in a tangle of linen and silk, and she could feel the heat of him all along her length; chest to chest, hip to hip, the tangle of their legs beneath the fabric. One of her arms draped across his torso, possessive, claiming, and she splayed her fingers wide over his ribs as though the strength of her wanting could anchor him to this moment that she wished would stretch into eternity. His skin was warm beneath her palm, almost feverishly so, that furnace-heat he seemed to carry always, and she pressed nearer to it like a cat seeking warmth on a winter’s night.  ❛ Selfishness, ❜ she traced idle patterns against his skin in circles and spirals, mapping the planes of his chest, the ridges of muscle and bone, the scattered constellation of scars. ❛ I wonder if you understand the depths of my own, ❜ she whispered against his throat, ❛ because I will not let you go. Even knowing I should. Even knowing that every night you spend here is another risk, another roll of the dice, another chance that this will all come crashing down around us and drag us both into the flames. Even knowing that the wise thing, the right thing, would be to end this now, before we are in too deep to save ourselves, though perhaps we are already past that point, perhaps we crossed that threshold long ago and have simply refused to acknowledge it. ❜ She pressed a kiss to the column of his neck, open-mouthed and lingering, tasting salt and smoke and the ineffable flavor of him. ❛ I am a dragon, ser,. We are greedy creatures by nature. We hoard what we treasure, and we do not share. We keep what is ours with fire and blood, and gods help anyone foolish enough to try to take it from us. ❜ She thought of all the things she wanted to say to him, all the confessions that crowded behind her teeth like prisoners desperate for release, clawing at the bars of propriety and fear that kept them locked away. I love you, she could say, those three small words that would change everything. I am terrified of losing you, she could say, and that would be the truest thing of all. Her thumb traced the curve of his lower lip, and she watched, fascinated, as his eyes darkened in response to even that small touch; pupils dilating until they swallowed the warm brown, the want written plainly across his face for her to read. Such power she held over him, she marveled, turning the thought over in her mind like a coin. Such terrible, wonderful power. ❛ Tell me something true, ❜ she said softly, ❛ something you have never told another living soul. A secret for a secret, Ser Harwin Strong. ❜

𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐌𝐀𝐃𝐄 𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐇𝐈𝐌 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐇 𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓 𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐑. She arrested his breath. She poured light into the hollows of his chest. She had given him her trust, and that was the most sacred gift of all. What words were there to convey to her the depth of what he felt? That it mattered not that she was a dragon guarding her hoard — for none had ever been as gluttonous, as selfish, as she had rendered him. The Princess Rhaenyra had lit in him, a man who was regaled for being unbreakable, unshakable, an all consuming hunger. She had woven herself deeply into the very fabric of him, and Harwin found himself longing for even the merest glimpse of her in the days where they did not steal away as such. He wished to tell her how her roguish smile was the kindest balm, how her laughter had become the rhythm of his pulse, how the memory of her sigh against his throat had supplanted every oath he had ever sworn to anyone but her. His life, his soul, his honour, all of it belonged to Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra alone — as irrevocably as the sun belonged to the firmament, and the tide belonged to the moon. She claimed she could not let him go and it coaxed a warm laugh from the deepest depths of his chest — for he did not wish her to. Harwin would live there, in their current settling, happily for all eternity. He would love her from shadows afar, love her in these stolen moments of solace, savour her fire and spirit, her smile and laughter and the way she breathed his name. He had not known such a glorious fate to exist, but now that it lay in his hands he would not change it for any other. For as long as she would have him, he would be there. He would honour her. He would honour every breath she gave him. And should his soul be damned for it, it was a worthy price to pay for the sweetness of her.

❛ I pity any man who would be foolish enough to dare attempt to claim anything from a dragon. ❜ Harwin replied, his timbre hushed and roughened by the comfortable laziness enveloping them. His throat rippled beneath her kiss; the gentle brush of her mouth lighting perilous, inevitable flames within his depths. His embrace tightened, his hand devoted to gentle caresses across her soft cheek, revelling in the warmth of her, in her silken skin beneath his callouses. It felt almost like desecration, in truth, to caress something so lovely with hands so scarred. ❛ I am yours, princess. And I will remain so until the day you no longer wish it. Until then, I have no desire for you to let me go. I am content, happy, as we are. ❜ Yet the words had scarcely left him before that old companion of remorse reclaimed its place within him; the guilt came not in shame for cherishing her so immensely, but in what it would mean should they be discovered. Discovery would not destroy him in solitude; the calamity would engulf her as well — it would spell his failure to protect her.

The thought savaged him, inspired him to tighten his arms around her, to draw her nearer to the fortress of him. He guided her to lay more completely upon his chest; her legs extending between his, their limbs a tangle of strength and softness beneath the disordered sheets. Her heat seeped into his heart, banishing the cold dread there and leaving naught but comfort; her breath fanned against his skin as though divine hymns, her breasts pressing against the steady thrum of warmth emanating from beneath his ribcage. He allowed one palm to splay protectively, possessively, at the low of her back, the other feathered gently up and down her spine. The muscles relaxed beneath his touch and it drew a pleased hum from him; he continued, his touch reverent, tender, infinitely loving. His lips formed a slow smile as they rested against her brow, brushing soft kisses there — where she so oft housed a troubled crease when not within their sacred cocoon of intimacy.

Gods, this was forbidden, a sweet and ruinous madness he never should have allowed to take root in the soil of his honour.

But what was the worth of honour compared to love?

Harwin's chest swelled infinitely full with it; her name had been seared upon his heart long before he had the mind to halt it. When she murmured so sweetly against his throat and asked him to speak truth, to speak secrets none were privy to, Harwin hesitated for only a moment. He would disobey her with what he wished to share, for it was certainly no secret — they were words he had spoken with touch, with breath, with the beat of his heart against hers. His mouth lingered against her forehead, the press of his lips a wordless vow, his hand endlessly devoted to its reverent pilgrimage along the elegant line of her spine. His chest expanded in the wake of a deep, trembling inhale; he drew her in, breathing the fragrance of her mingled with wine and figs and the remnants of himself upon her skin. Harwin savoured her nearness as a starving man — though not because her fire had ever left him parched. He should not speak what he intended to speak; every vow he had sworn, every code he had lived by, cried out against it. Yet she had asked, and Harwin had scarcely ever been able to deny his princess anything, least of all the truth that had set him alight for moons upon moons.

❛ Forgive me, for it is scarcely a secret, but aye—it is the truest truth I carry, my truest vow . . . ❜ his brows drew together for a fleeting, trepidatious breath before the tension eased, his expression softening into the very image of unguarded, warm devotion. His hand sailed from the base of her spine to seek her face anew, guiding her gaze to his, the pad of his thumb traced a slow, worshipful path along her jawline — that same curve he had mapped with his mouth only moments earlier. His eyes held hers; devastatingly vibrant violets seizing him irrevocably, and in their depths Harwin saw naught but everything that had ever been precious to him. His heart leapt with such vehement force against his ribs that she could not possibly fail to feel it where their bodies lay pressed together. Harwin's mouth curved; the softest, most reverent of smiles ghosting his lips, before he laid himself bare in every possible definition of the word.

❛ . . . I love you. ❜

𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆’𝐒 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐁𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐘𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐘𝐈𝐄𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐓. That, Rhaenyra learned soon enough, was the cruel jest of conquest. A city might open its gates and still keep its hatred barred behind every shutter. A people might lower their spears and still sharpen curses beneath their tongues. The Red Keep might be won, the banners changed, the usurper’s colors torn down and cast into the muck, but none of it filled a belly. None of it sweetened sour milk. None of it made bread rise in the ovens of Cobbler’s Square, nor brought fish to the stalls along the river, nor put silver back upon the finger of a mother who had sold her wedding ring for half a loaf gone gray with mold. She had taken her father’s throne at last, and she sat upon it and felt the realm bleeding through the seams. Gods, how her father had loved peace, how he had nursed it like a fragile babe, wrapped it in feasts and marriages and willful blindness. She understood him better now, and hated him more tenderly for it. Viserys had sat this same throne and called himself king, but he had ruled with curtains drawn against every draft that might disturb him. Rhaenyra had no such luxury. Every window had been flung open. The stink of the city came in. Smoke and rain and horse dung; fish left too long in barrels; Flea Bottom stews thinned with water. Wet wool. Rotting rushes. Fear. It seeped even into Maegor’s Holdfast; it clung to the stones beneath her feet and gathered beneath doorways. It moved in whispers ahead of her passage. Queen Rhaenyra feasts while babes starve. Queen Rhaenyra locks grain below the Red Keep. Queen Rhaenyra taxes widows to feed her dragons. 

By the time the doors opened, it seemed almost fitting that Harwin Strong should step through with the city still upon him, as if he had carried some portion of its misery in with his own two hands. Rain had darkened the shoulders of his cloak. Mud clung to his boots. Beneath the gold of his command there was dust, sweat, the faint iron tang of blood; his hair was damp at the temples, curling where weather had undone discipline; his face looked older in torchlight than it had in memory, though she knew the years had been no kinder to her. There were lines beside his mouth carved by restraint. A bruise shadowed one cheekbone, yellowing at the edge. Some stone thrown in a crowd, perhaps. Some fist raised by a frightened man before he knew whose jaw he struck. Some price paid in the streets before he came to lay the cost before her. Rhaenyra dismissed the last attendant with a turn of her hand, and the door closed upon them with a hush too soft for the thing it sealed inside.

❛ Well? ❜ she asked.  The word emerged sharper than she had wished it.

Harwin's answer did not come swiftly. He only drew forth what he had brought, which appeared to be a handful of folded scraps, rough parchment, half-smudged notations made by his own hand or by men who served beneath him. One page told of bakers accused of hoarding flour for noble houses, their ovens smashed by a crowd that had gone beyond pleading. Another named dockhands fighting over barley spilled from a broken sack, grown so desperate that grown men scraped grain from between planks with their fingernails. Another spoke of washerwomen boiling linen with vinegar so the steam might fool their children into thinking there would be supper. Another of a boy whipped bloody for stealing onions, and of the merchant who had begged the Watch to take the lad away before the crowd decided mercy itself was treason. By the time she reached the account of a woman near the Gate of the Gods selling her dead husband’s ring for bread, the letters blurred. Rhaenyra lowered the parchment.

❛ They think me a monster already, do they not? ❜ Her mouth curved, though there was no mirth in it. ❛ How simple it must be, to suffer beneath a crown and believe the crown has only to wish otherwise. ❜

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐅𝐔𝐋 𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓. A queen triumphant, the banners of her house billowing once more from the Red Keep’s towers, the usurper’s colours trampled into the muck of the streets she had reclaimed. Yet triumph had not promised her respite. It had not filled the empty granaries, nor warmed the bellies of the starving. Nor had it eased the weight of the crown that cinched her brow. The city had been bleeding long before Rhaenyra's conquest. The Greens had left the realm a hapless corpse; the treasury a hollow vault, the people forsaken by those who had claimed to protect them. Harwin had walked its wounds with his own two feet, breathed its poisoned air, carried its rotting filth upon his cloak and sword. Famine clung to every alley; children gnawing on crusts gone green and drinking from puddles dark with mud. Fear and desperation had rooted deeply in every corner. Filth choked the gutters where the usurper’s men had let the pipes run dry or turned the flow to their own cisterns. They had torn mere striplings from their beds; pressed swords into hands too small to lift them, then clapped ill-fitting helms upon heads that would never grow into them. And those fortunate enough to be granted the luxury to remain amidst the cesspools of the city suffered deeper still. As commander of the gold cloaks he had ordered his men to move in larger packs, their patrols longer, their eyes more vigilant. He had prowled with them through all the hours, the weight of his armour so familiar now it was a strangeness to not bear it. He had pulled apart men who fought like dogs over the crumbs of a baker’s stall, had dragged screaming women from the grip of depraved men, had dragged thieves and murderers alike to the cells — all to safeguard some thin thread of order until she returned.

He had known she would come. He had trusted it as he trusted the sun's ascent upon each morrow and his own lungs drawing breath. Yet knowing had not made the sights easier to bear. The hollow faces of children, the numb forms of mothers who had sold their last precious ware for scraps, old men cursing gods and realm alike. These things did not grow lighter with repetition. The guilt lived in him, feeding upon every horror he could not prevent, and it fed most ravenously when he returned to the barracks and the warmth of a fire while the city outside still screamed.

Still, even amidst the harrowed cries, Harwin had heard it. Amidst the reek of death and wails of the desperate, the city had begun to sing her name in whispers. In shadowed alcoves, in doorways stinking of sickness and old blood, he had heard the prayers. She will come. The queen will set it right. Rhaenyra remembers us. He knew her capable of rendering order from this chaos, but he knew too that what the folk craved was swift succour, and swift succour was a mercy she could not yet give. She was still finding her footing upon a throne built of bones and broken oaths.

She was grieving. They were both grieving; savagely, mercilessly. He could scarcely breathe, though his ache was for none's knowledge but his own.

Harwin had gathered the clandestine hymns naming her saviour as diligently as he gathered complaints — for they were the other half of the city’s truth. Today, he had walked the streets not only with sword and command, but with his palms held to receive parchments. He had taken testimonies, complaints, pleas; every woe the smallfolk could press into his hands. A mercy, perhaps. Hope. A way to let them feel heard while the crown found its balance. She would need hold audience in time; the realm would demand it. But for now these little papers, smudged and damp with rain and filth, would have to serve. He entered the council chamber with the brisk air still clinging to his skin and cloak, rain weighing his hair and glistening against his armour. Tapestries lined the firelit walls, their threads depicting maps and stratagems of war. The great table loomed vast before him, all chairs forsaken but the high seat — upon which sat his queen. What he noted first was how viscerally tension riddled her. He saw it in the shoulders he had once known intimately, in her eyes, in the way her jaw clenched as though she held back a scream or a sob or both. The sight of it cleaved him cruelly through the chest. His own jaw tightened in answer, and a sharp bloom of pain unfurled across his cheek where a thief’s desperate blow had landed. Harwin did not acknowledge it, instead he lowered his gaze, bent his head in deference.

❛ Your Grace, ❜ He greeted, the words suffused with formal propriety, though beneath it she would hear the reverence carved from something deeper than mere courtly decorum. His armour clinked and his cloak whispered softly across the flagstone as he bridged the chasm, placing before her the testimonials he had gathered. It felt a poor offering to provide her, scraps of fraying parchment where she deserved much more. Though each piece of paper was too a testament of his oath; of his devotion to her, a vow that he would ford the darkest of pits if it meant aiding her even by a fraction. As she sifted through the sheafs, he placed himself at a respectful distance; his posture tall and formidable, the very image of the commander the city knew.

❛ The people have suffered greatly beneath the usurper’s heel, ❜ he said, his eyes meeting hers — fraught with grief, exhaustion, dragon's fury. In that collision of gazes, the breath fled his chest and it filled instead with ferocious protectiveness. ❛ They name you their saviour. Yet it is true that few grasp the labour that lies ahead to undo the ruin your enemies have wrought. They are desperate, Your Grace, and desperation blinds even the clearest eyes. ❜ Though the chamber held no witnesses save the ghosts of kings past, he let his gaze warm; just enough, he prayed, for her alone to hear the sonorous vow that she was not alone. When he spoke again his timbre had softened, quieted, the reverence in his voice a thing that belonged to her alone. ❛ They have waited for you, my Queen. I have heard the songs and prayers with mine own ear. ❜

𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐁𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐄 to Rhaenyra in those first black days, none caused greater disquiet among the greens than Ser Harwin Strong. For Harrenhal was the black heart of the Trident; and Breakbones, long thought exiled from the princess’s fortunes, returned to them with sword, banner, and a loyalty no rumor had ever managed to kill. Some named it ambition. Others, old sin ripened into war. Yet those who saw him ride beneath the queen’s dragon-black standard wrote only this: that House Strong had given Rhaenyra its walls, its men, and its last true son . . . and that Harwin Strong, for love or honor, never once looked back. 

Mushroom, ever fond of making a bedchamber of every council, tells us that in Prince Daemon’s absence the queen leaned most heavily upon Ser Harwin Strong, and not merely in matters of war. This we may safely doubt, or safely believe, according to the temper of the reader. What cannot be doubted is that Breakbones was oft seen at Rhaenyra’s side in those days: at table, in council, upon the battlements, and once, if Septon Eustace can be credited, walking with her alone beneath the pale towers of Dragonstone while the sea fretted black against the rocks below. Whether his counsel was that of a sworn sword, an old beloved, or something yet more dangerous, no man can now say. But when ravens came bearing ill tidings, and when the queen’s grief threatened to unmake her, it was Harwin Strong who quieted quarrels, and whose great shadow stood between Rhaenyra Targaryen and a realm eager to devour her.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐓𝐇 𝐎𝐅 𝐇𝐈𝐌 𝐖𝐀𝐒, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐀𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍, the truest compass she possessed, truer than any maester's star charts, truer than the cold calculus of being a queen that demanded she navigate every tenderness with the same tactical precision she brought to war councils and trade negotiations. His brow against hers; she exhaled against him, and the knotted thing within her chest began to loosen all at once. Her thumb traced the ridge of his knuckles where their hands remained joined; the very same unconscious mapping she had done for years, as though she might memorize him through touch alone against the possibility of loss . . . a fear she had never wholly outrun, though the years had softened its edges. ❛ I know, ❜ she whispered, ❛ I know we must wait. I know the wisdom of it. ❜ Patience had never been among her cardinal virtues. Her father had told her so with great affection on more occasions than she could easily count, half-amused and half-exasperated with a fundamental gentleness that could not quite be extinguished even by the very real frustrations that attended it. You feel everything at once, little one, he had told her once, when she was perhaps eight years old and furious about some long-forgotten injustice, and you want to resolve it all at once, and the world simply does not move at the pace of your wanting. She had thought him wrong then. ( She was less certain now. ) In the courtyard below, life continued with its cheerful indifference to her distress. Two stable hands moved between the horses, their heads bent together over some minor crisis . . . a thrown shoe, perhaps, or a horse gone lame, or simply the ordinary small catastrophes that attended their management. They were laughing, she noticed. Whatever the crisis, it had not prevented them from finding the joy in it, and she watched them. When had she last laughed like that? Freely, without calculation, without the awareness of watching eyes? She could not place it precisely.  ❛ But the realm will not wait for her to find her courage. Celtigar spoke truly when he said she is five-and-ten. Every passing moon will bring more offers, more pressure, more eyes turned toward her, scrutinizing her every move and friendship and expression. They will watch her the way they once watched me, looking for any sign of weakness, any deviation from what they expect a princess to be. ❜  She could already imagine it, the whispers that would begin if Genna was not betrothed soon, the speculation about what was wrong with her, why the queen's daughter remained unwed when girls of noble birth were often promised before they had even bled. They would start with concern . . . surely there must be some defect, some hidden flaw that made her unweddable. Then the whispers would turn darker, more insidious. They would question Rhaenyra's judgment, wonder if the queen was too indulgent with her children, if she had failed in her duty to secure advantageous matches for them. And Genna would bear the weight of that scrutiny; she would feel herself being judged and found wanting, and Rhaenyra did not know how to protect her from it without revealing the very thing that would make the judgment infinitely worse.

❛ If what we suspect is true . . . if what she feels for Lady Arianne is what we think it is . . . then we are not merely shielding her from vultures and whispers. We are protecting her from a from a realm that will call what she feels unnatural, sinful, an abomination before the gods. ❜ The frustration rose in her like bile, acrid and choking. How could love ever be an abomination? How could the simple truth of a heart's desire be sinful? But she knew the answer, of course. She had sat through enough sessions with the High Septon; she had listened to enough sermons to understand precisely how the Faith would view such a thing. The Seven in their wisdom had created man and woman to be joined together, to create life, to fulfill their proper roles in the divine order. Deviation from that order was a cosmic transgression, an offense against the very structure of creation itself. The great houses of Westeros had been built upon bloodlines, upon strategic marriages that cemented alliances and produced heirs. A woman who loved another woman was useless for those purposes, a dead end, a waste of valuable matrimonial resources. They would not care that Genna's heart might be fully engaged, that she might have found something rare and beautiful and true. They would care only that she was not fulfilling her function, that she was not producing the alliances and heirs that justified her existence in their eyes. ❛ I fought so hard for the right to choose my own path, ❜ she continued, spilling out now in a torrent she could not stem. ❛ I defied my father, defied the realm's expectations, claimed a throne that half the kingdom believed should never be mine. I thought that by winning that battle, by proving that a woman could rule in her own right, I was making things easier for my daughters. That Genna would inherit a world where women had more freedom, more choices, more power to determine their own fates. But I was thinking too small, wasn't I? 

⠀⠀⠀𝐍𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐌𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐔𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐖𝐈𝐍 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 of the instinct that came with the sacred titles of husband and father. Though the seed of such profound protective impulse had been sown not with the vows of their wedding, but with the vows he had sworn to earn his cloak — when all he was to her was a fortress whose sole purpose was to shield her. Of course, it had been inevitable; the instinct had rooted intricately upon their first collision, had thrived and grown when their inextricable tether existed only in secret shadows and stolen moments of reckless indulgence. Even in that brief span of time when she had named him husband without forewarning, sealing his fate before he could so much as draw breath to question it, the savage urge to cradle her safely persisted immovably within him — an eternal flame that would sooner devour all around it than smother. Naturally, in the years since, it had grown vast beyond comprehension. When love had finally claimed them both, wholly and irrevocably, it had swelled within him until its crest contended with the height of constellations that scattered the obsidian firmament. It had woven itself through every fibre of his being, had fortified with a devotion so intricate that the roots of the ancient weirwood would shame beside it. He had felt it when he watched her holy body swell with his babes, when she had clutched his hand through the blinding agony of labour, when, one by one, she had placed in his trembling hands the precious gifts that was each their children. Jacaerys. Lucerys. Joffrey. Genna. Aemma. Each name a sacred hymn carved into his bones. What Harwin had felt gazing down upon them was a mystical thing — an emotion so vast, so ineffable, that not even the Seven themselves might comprehend it.

⠀⠀⠀It was why even the faintest shadow cast towards his family provoked within his depths the savage urge to leap to shield them all; his wife, his children, Genna. Their daughter who was such an uncanny coalescence of them both. Oft had the realisation made him laugh aloud when he watched her move through the world. She possessed her mother’s fire, that audacious, defiant spark that made men and women tremble. She carried Rhaenyra’s appetite for mischief, for provocation, for dancing boldly along the precipice of scandal. Yet there was much of Harwin in her too; the honour, the natural affinity for blade in hand, the depth of feeling that rushed so fervidly beneath the surface it sometimes threatened to consume. And now the realm dared whisper that such a soul was somehow insufficient. That the manner in which Genna loved was depraved. The thought alone spurred a hot and furious surge through his blood. A slow, steadying breath left him as his arms drew Rhaenyra nearer, pressing her against the warm breadth of him.

⠀⠀⠀❛ My radiant wife, your mind has never been home to thoughts so small. You have reshaped the realm’s understanding of legacy merely by drawing breath. The seven kingdom's at long last boasts a ruler worth following — and whether those antediluvian fools care to admit it or not is of no consequence. ❜ He said, voice rich with affection, before punctuating the statement by gently lifting her wrist to his lips, pressing a lingering kiss to the place where he felt her molten dragon's blood rush hottest. For a breath he remained there, drinking in the familiar warmth of her skin, sowing his reverence across her until he gathered enough will to cease. Then he drew her closer, chin settling upon the crown of her silver hair while both arms wreathed firmly around her waist.

⠀⠀⠀❛ Though Genna has not yet entrusted us with the fullness of her heart, we need not sit idle. While we grant her the time she deserves to come forth, we might yet prepare ourselves for the path ahead should our suspicions prove true. ❜ He paused briefly, one hand tracing tender arcs along the base of her spine — a habit born of years embraced, one that stilled even the faintest stirrings of unease. ❛ Her heart’s favoured taste may be too refined for the common mind to grasp, but that does not mean she must be denied the life she wishes to live. ❜ Harwin's chest trembled ever a touch with an amused breath, before he dove into a tale from long past.

⠀⠀⠀❛ Many, many turns of the seasons ago, prior to us, when I was a young knight riding neath your uncle Daemon's command, we raided a den of smugglers trafficking all manner of unsavoury wares. When the fighting was done, we found ourselves in a tavern, where the men drowned the aftermath of battle with strong wine. Your uncle had set his sights upon a Myrish lady that night. It would be my first lesson in the relentless nature of a Targaryen’s pursuits. Though scarce did I know I would later meet a far more formidable example of it. ❜ A teasing curve unfurled across Harwin's lips, his voice laced with the smirk he donned. ❛ But I stray from the point. The lady was wed, a ring plain upon her hand, yet she was not in the company of her husband at all. Instead she was openly indulging the affections of another woman, a friend. Daemon was deeply wounded by her lack of interest in his princely self. ❜ an amused chuckle reverberated through his chest, and he loosened his arms ever a touch to allow his gaze to find Rhaenyra's, one hand drifting from her spine to brush a loose curl of silver from her brow. Harwin's thumb lingered against her cheek, brushing tenderly along the skin he knew more intimately than his own soul.

⠀⠀⠀❛ The lady spoke of something she called a lavender marriage. A mutual, understanding, a union between man and woman arranged for appearance alone, wherein both live as they wish beneath the cloak of night. I doubt she meant to reveal so much — the wine had loosened her tongue considerably. Yet the notion lingered with me long after the night was done. ❜ Harwin's eyes sought Rhaenyra's, his own teeming with meaning, ❛ There are . . . ways for Genna to live true. ❜

𝐓𝐘𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃, 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐈𝐍𝐕𝐎𝐋𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐘 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐂𝐄 to the crown, that the worst conspiracies always revealed themselves in the small hours when honest men were sleeping and only fools and schemers remained awake to contemplate them. Before him, spread across the scarred oak table like the entrails of a tedious beast, lay the evidence of rot. Ledgers filled with neat columns that didn't quite align. Requisition orders for grain that had somehow evaporated between Oldtown and King's Landing. Payment vouchers for ships that existed only in ink and imagination. It was all very tidy, very clever, a theft that required intelligence and access in equal measure. In truth, Tyrion had always appreciated a well-executed crime, even when he was the one tasked with unraveling it. He reached for his wine cup, fingers closing on air above the rim before memory caught up with intention. Empty. Of course it was empty. He'd drained it sometime around the third ledger, or perhaps the fifth—they had a way of bleeding together after a certain point. The bottle sat at the far end of the table, tantalizingly out of reach unless he felt inclined to make the undignified scramble across scattered parchment that his height necessitated. ( Pride won out over thirst. Barely. ) Someone was bleeding the crown. The who remained elusive, dancing just beyond the reach of certainty. He had his candidates, naturally. The trick lay in distinguishing the genuinely guilty from the merely suspicious, and he'd learned through painful experience that the two categories often failed to align as neatly as justice might prefer. The soft scuff of boots on stone pulled him from the increasingly dark spiral of his thoughts. Tyrion's hand moved on instinct, reaching for the dagger he kept perpetually within arm's reach, a Myrish blade, beautifully balanced, sharp enough to split a hair or a throat with equal ease. His fingers had just closed around the hilt when he recognized the broad-shouldered silhouette filling his doorway, backlit by the torches that lined the corridor beyond.

Ser Harwin Strong. The Lord Commander of the City Watch. A useful man, by all accounts Tyrion had gathered. Loyal—truly loyal, and honest to a fault, if the whispers were true, which made him either admirably principled or dangerously naive in a city where lies were the common currency and truth a luxury few could afford. He had yet to determine which category the Lord Commander occupied. ( Perhaps it was both. )  ❛ Ser Harwin, ❜  Tyrion greeted, painting over exhaustion with the wit that had served him better than any sword. ❛ Unless the Red Keep is burning down around our ears or my lord father has finally decided to have me quietly murdered in my sleep—and truly, I'm shocked he's waited this long—I confess myself surprised by such a late visit. The City Watch's purview rarely extends to the small hours unless there's blood involved, and given that you're not dragging me from my chambers in chains, I assume I haven't been implicated in whatever fresh atrocity has occurred this evening. ❜

⠀⠀⠀𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐁𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐑; daring to circle nearer to the crown with their greedy eyes and sharp talons. But Harwin would have titled such audacity by its truer name — foolishness. For traitors who believed the realm ripe for pilfering mistook the silence of the night for absence of watchful eyes; they believed the crown unattended, believed the halls of the Red Keep and streets of the city neglected. They were wrong. Not under his watch. Not while breath yet warmed his lungs; corruption and rot would never touch her. Whoever dared stretch their hungry, scheming hands towards the realm, whoever sought to gnaw at the foundations beneath her, would find no easy harvest in King's Landing. Harwin had not worn the cloak of the City Watch merely as ornament, nor borne the title of Lord Commander as some gilded medal he paraded for praise. Since the whispers of vanishing coin, phantom freights, and false records had first begun to slither through the corridors, he had moved through the shadows with relentless purpose. Patrols had been doubled, then doubled again. Routes tightened as though the noose strung around a traitor's neck. Sentries placed in the smallest of crevice where shadows once lingered undisturbed. Every man gifted the gold cloak had been chosen by Harwin's own hand; he trusted them because he had challenged their loyalty vigorously, meticulously. He had ensured they were men whose honour did not crumble beneath the weight of coin or silver-tongued promises.

⠀⠀⠀Ser Harwin Strong had sworn an oath before gods and men; to defend the realm, to protect the crown and those who bore her blood. There was no fate beneath the heavens he would not gladly welcome before allowing that very oath to shatter in his hands. He would sooner die than fail to honour his vow to keep them safe; the Princess Rhaenyra, and their her sons. It was a savage instinct, primal in nature, entirely unyielding; to safeguard the precious extensions of his own heart.

⠀⠀⠀That fiercely protective instinct had drawn him here tonight, long after Rhaenyra had surrendered to the rare realm of sleep, the lines of her face peaceful in such a pure way it had made Harwin ache with devotion. He had not wished to part from her, but he refused to smother the urge to appraise; the lion had been summoned to court, clever of tongue and sharp of mind, brought forth to sift through ledgers and parchments until the rot beneath the crown’s coffers revealed itself. Harwin knew his kin well enough. Jason and Tyland Lannister were creatures of false smiles and calculating eyes, men whose loyalty leapt wheresoever power and coin went. Tonight he would learn whether yet another vulture had been granted entry into her halls, or whether the younger Lannister might prove a hunter worthy of trust.

⠀⠀⠀❛ Lord Tyrion, ❜ Harwin greeted with a curt nod of his head, crossing into the chamber with the steady stride of a man accustomed to authority. Warm firelight bathed every surface, flickering over the sheafs of yellowed parchment, scrolls, and ledgers strewn across the table. His gaze swept the battlefield of documents before settling upon Tyrion, studying. ❛ While I find it is in the quiet of late nights where guilty men struggle most to conceal themselves . . . ❜ He began in low, steady tones, ❛ . . . I do not yet have reason to seize you. Though, I must confess the hour tempted me to test the notion. ❜ Fleetingly, a shadow of amusement touched the corner of his mouth as he paused beside the table where the bottle of wine stood. Harwin claimed it with little hesitation, pouring into Tyrion’s empty chalice before filling his own. Setting the bottle aside, he lowered himself into the chair opposite the Lannister with a quiet scrape of wood against stone.

⠀⠀⠀❛ As Lord Commander of the City Watch, and sworn shield to the Princess of Dragonstone, it is my duty to know the movements of those who might wish harm or instability upon the crown. ❜ His fingers curled loosely around the stem of his chalice before he lifted it in wordless salute and brought to his lips to drink. Over the rim, his eyes remained fixed upon Tyrion’s — searching for the faintest tremor of duplicity, ❛ I understand that you have been tasked with untangling the source of the recent . . . inconsistencies. ❜ The word lingered between them with quiet distaste — the threat of corruption carrying a flavour that ignited something scorching deep within him. When Harwin spoke again, it was cordial, still, yet tinged with the subtle tension that rippled beneath his surface,

⠀⠀⠀❛ Rumours say you are a discerning man, Lord Tyrion. Tell me then, what have you found? ❜

𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐘, 𝐈𝐓 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐔𝐓, 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐌 𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐋 but a scattered deck of cards . . . and someone had removed the entire suit that might have explained how she'd gotten here. Her eyes opened to industrial ceiling tiles, and she sighted the particular beige of St. Harrenhal's private rooms, that aggressively neutral non-color the hospital had selected, she imagined, specifically to offend no one and comfort no one in equal measure. She had spent hundreds of hours beneath these tiles. Taking histories. Adjusting IV drips. Watching monitors flatline while families wept in the corridor outside.

But she was not standing beside a bed.

She was in it.

Rhaenyra turned her head on the pillow and the motion exacted its toll immediately in a sickening lurch behind her eyes, the room tilting on a axis, gravity pulling wrong. Her throat felt thick, difficult. The aftermath of intubation, perhaps—she recognized that soreness, the bruised feeling of tissues that had accommodated a breathing tube. Which meant surgery. Which meant anesthesia significant enough to require airway management. Which meant something had happened, something serious, something that had landed her on this side of the medical equation for reasons she could not currently access. ( What happened? ) The room swam, and she caught sight of a figure in the chair beside her bed. She blinked, trying to resolve the shape into clarity. ( Harwin? ) The name surfaced finally, bringing with it a cascade of associations. Her chief attending physician. Dr. Strong was sitting at her bedside. His elbows rested on his knees; his hands clasped in front of him, fingers interlaced as if he were in prayer. He looked exhausted. He looked like he'd been sitting in that chair for a very long time. ( He looked like he'd been terrified. ) Their last interaction had been a brief exchange in the hallway, both of them excruciatingly professional, neither acknowledging what had passed between them beyond a mutual agreement, unspoken but understood, that it would not be repeated. He'd asked about a patient's lab results. She'd provided them. He'd nodded and walked away, and she'd watched him go and felt nothing but relief that they could apparently pretend the whole thing hadn't happened.   ❛ Dr. Strong? ❜ Her voice emerged thin, rusted, and she watched the ripples move across his face, fracturing behind his eyes, then quickly smoothed and absorbed, hidden. The questions crowded her throat, but before she could voice any of them, there was a rhythmic beeping she couldn't immediately place, but it was fast . . . almost like—  A fetal heart rate monitor. ( One-forty. One-forty-two. One-thirty-nine. ) Rhaenyra's hand flew to her stomach. She looked down—past the hospital gown, past the thin blanket pooled at her waist—and caught sight of the rounded swell of her own abdomen. The flesh beneath her palms firm and warm; the tension of a gravid uterus, the tight drum of skin stretched to accommodate growth. She pressed harder, as though the truth might emerge beneath the hallucination, dispelling whatever pharmaceutical haze had constructed this false reality. ( The hookup . . . god, the hookup, six weeks ago or eight weeks ago, time had gone strange and slippery since then. The way he'd looked at her afterward, in the hallways, during consults; the way she'd avoided him . . . the way she'd avoided everything, really, since the test came back positive. The test. ) ❛ . . . What— I don't understand. ❜ She heard herself from a distance, ❛ I don't—this isn't—I was going to— ❜

She would not have kept his baby.  She would not have—

❛ I remember the positive test, and scheduling the . . . I was going to end it. I was going to end it. I had a plan. I had— ❜ She looked down at her belly, at the evidence of a plan abandoned, a choice reversed, a life she couldn't account for. ❛ I don't remember changing my mind. ❜

⠀⠀⠀𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄. That cruel fact had pierced itself deep within Harwin's chest, steadily suffusing his flesh with poison. He had insisted she was running herself ragged for no good reason, that she needed reprieve from the relentless rhythm of the emergency room. Patient and coaxing at first, he had reminded her that she was very much pregnant and ought to be soaking in a warm bath with her feet up rather than sweeping through a fourteen hour shift as though a tempest refusing to pause. Naturally, Rhaenyra had fought him. She had reminded him that she was not made of glass, that pregnancy was not an illness, that she would not bend. That was who she was; incandescent fire and glorious defiance, the most stubborn person Harwin had ever met. His wife had never been someone who took orders easily. Still, he had pleaded, he had taken her hands, cradling them between his own, and spoken with tone bordering on desperate. Glimpsing the depth of his concern, she had given him a long, theatrical sigh and reluctantly acquiesced. She had been gone scarcely fifteen minutes when her name lit up his pager. Not as doctor. As patient. And within half a breath, Harwin felt himself tumble into oblivion with sickening velocity. Nothing might have ever prepared him for the savage violence of the terror that ripped straight through him. MVC on the highway. Truck driver asleep at the wheel. One casualty. Criticals incoming. Dr. Targaryen among them. No, no, no — that made no sense, it couldn't be right. The dread that seized him in its sinister clutches was macabre; icy tendrils that curled around his spine, squeezing until his bones cracked and his vision dimmed, tugging with such ferocious force it made him stagger where he'd stood at the nurse's station. One hand had slammed hard against the counter just to keep himself upright.

⠀⠀⠀After that, time shattered. It no longer moved in minutes or hours but in jagged fragments that refused to fit together.

⠀⠀⠀The memory of her on that stretcher tormented him — unconscious, streaked with blood and littered with shards of glass. The bruising already spreading dark along her temple and cheeks like violent blooms. Harwin had roared commands as though some feral creature, had ordered crash carts and IV lines and monitors. He had demanded the operating room be readied immediately, all while trying to battle the devastation that threatened to spill at feeling the stillness of her body beneath his hands, stained with her blood. Severe head trauma. Someone from neuro had warned him quietly about what it might mean, about the unpredictable ways the brain sometimes rewrote itself after injury. She might never be the same. His heart had shattered anew. He remembered standing above the operating theatre while the surgeon worked, the world tilting ruthlessly around him while his pulse howled so loudly in his ears it swallowed every other sound. Except the monitors. He focused on them as though they were his lifeline. Her heartbeat. And their baby’s. Gods, he could not lose them. He could not lose her.

⠀⠀⠀Harwin kept vigil at her bedside as though a penitent before an altar. Breath had abandoned him the moment the paramedics had rushed her into his ER, and it had never returned. Two days had passed since then. Two endless, agonising days of staring at the rise and fall of her chest, of listening to machines confirm she still lived, of wondering whether the woman he loved would ever truly come back to him. Sometimes he spoke to her. Sometimes he simply pressed his forehead against her pale temple and whispered trembling affection, swore his love and devotion, dampening her skin with tears he could not seem to stop. He told Rhaenyra how the house felt wrong without her voice in it. How he missed her so fiercely it felt like something vital had been lost. And when the hospital dimmed at night and the corridors grew quiet, Harwin begged through silent sobs; for her forgiveness, for her life, for her to wake. He told her about Jace. How their boy asked for her, how he had picked flowers for her, how he ached to see her.

⠀⠀⠀Harwin had not yet brought Jacaerys to the hospital. The thought of their boy seeing his mother tangled by wires and monitors had been unbearable. Instead Harwin had knelt in front of him in their living room, features exhausted yet held brave for their precious boy. He had tried to steady hands that refused to stop shaking, tried to tame his voice beyond the choking knot in his throat long enough to explain that mama had been hurt and the doctors needed to take care of her for a little while. Jace had listened with a deeply furrowed brow, trying so very hard to understand. Then he had asked with heartbreaking simplicity why mama could not stay home if daddy was a doctor too. Harwin had nearly unravelled. He had gathered his son into his arms and held him firmly against his chest, anchoring himself in the warmth of him, in the countless unmistakable traces of Rhaenyra imbued into this perfect child. Then, steadying his voice as best he could, he told Jace he would be having a sleepover with Auntie Jeyne and his cousins. The boy lit up instantly, bright as sunlight, delight bursting from him in excited wriggles and relentless bouncing in Harwin’s arms. Harwin managed a smile for him, brittle but earnest, and some hours later he delivered Jacaerys to Jeyne’s house.

⠀⠀⠀Then he had driven back to the hospital. Where his wife's frail voice now echoed as the sweetest, most holy sound he had ever heard; absolving him from the shackles of cruel torment. She was awake. Alive. And looking at him like he was a stranger.

⠀⠀⠀Amnesia.

⠀⠀⠀He had never thought it possible for a heart to split in two within the same breath. Dizzying relief crashed through him because she lived. Because their child lived, and his breath trembled sharply, his eyed burning with tears as they captured her gaze — those beautiful eyes he'd been deprived of for days. And yet sorrow followed relief in remarkably swift pursuit, because the woman looking at him no longer remembered every sacred thing they had built over the last three years, she no longer remembered loving him. His hand drifted towards hers before he could stop himself, instinct stronger than reason. But he halted just shy of touching her; in Rhaenyra's reality, he was not her husband, he was not the man she would soon share two children with. Gods have mercy — Jace. Even the fleeting thought of their son rushing eagerly to his mother, only to be met with bewilderment, was a pain of such visceral calibre it gutted him. Harwin dragged his hand across his face; pallid, eyes red-rimmed and etched with weary lines, and forced a brittle smile.

⠀⠀⠀❛ Hey, sweeth— ❜ He caught himself, restraining habit and sensing his very soul cry out in protest, ❛ —easy, you're okay, you're safe. ❜ He assured, voice rough yet soft; if stripping the urge for tenderness from his hands had been difficult, banishing it from his tone was impossibility. Her gaze had dropped to her stomach again, to the unmistakable swell of pregnancy she had no memory of choosing. When she looked back at him the expression in her eyes was painfully familiar; the same stunned disbelief from the day they discovered their one reckless night together had turned into a child. She didn’t remember. Not their marriage. Not their son. Not the second baby they had yearned for and rejoiced over. Harwin’s throat tightened until it ached excruciatingly. How could this be? How could such a profound injustice exist? He felt the beginning embers of a fury deep within him, the urge to rage at something, anything, for this impossible reality where their life was lost to her.

⠀⠀⠀❛ Rhae . . . ❜ He continued calmly, tenderly, as her heart rate climbed on the monitor. Instinct triumphed then. Harwin took her hand, fingers brushing gently over her bruised knuckles; to soothe her, to soothe himself. He lingered on the finger where her wedding ring should have been. His late mother's, it now hung from a chain hidden beneath his sweater. He drew a deep, steadying breath, tightened his hold on her hand, and fixed her gaze with his own. ❛ . . . a few days ago you were in a car accident. Pretty bad one, truck driver nodded off on the highway and collided with you. You had surgery, and it went very well. You’re stable now. The—the baby’s perfect, heartbeat’s strong, everything looks good. But, ❜ His eyes burned. He could see confusion and fear blooming anew in her expression and it made something inside him twist painfully. His thumb swept over her knuckles again, along the skin he had memorised years ago. ❛ You took a pretty hard knock to the head and it can make memories feel . . . fuzzy for the moment. But hey—Rhae, listen to me, that's okay. The only important thing is you’re here, you’re alive. I've got you. I've got you both. Right now, the only thing you need to worry about is resting, alright? ❜