Tuff

The smell of salt and fish entrails permeated the air between them, an invisible barrier that Valarr tried to ignore with each step he took toward the damp sand. The sun set in blood-red hues over Blackwater Bay, illuminating the scars on her arms, marks left by rough nets and creatures of the deep that no lord would ever dare to face. She held a cleaning knife with the ease of someone wielding a scepter, her salt-hardened hair gleaming in the twilight as she gazed at him with eyes that held the untamed vastness of storms.

"I am nobody in the eyes of kings, queens, dukes, or lords! You would marry someone of your status, and I would always remain your mistress! I am a fisherman's daughter, I stink like old fish, my hair is dried by the sea, and I have scars just like you, but mine come from sea monsters. And even if you considered me someone, what would I be? Just a prince's wife? Where would my independence be, my free will to go to sea without being surrounded by arrogant nobles? I am a daughter of the ocean, Valarr!"

She gestured towards the horizon, where the waves crashed forcefully against the hull of her small, worn-out boat, the only possession that truly mattered in her life. The distance between the fine silk of the Prince of Dragonstone's clothes and her soiled rags seemed like an insurmountable abyss, a chasm in the world that no dragon could fly over. The pride in her voice wasn't that of someone pleading for mercy, but of someone who had already accepted that freedom had a price that nobility could never pay.

"Sailing the sea and fishing as much as I can for my family is the only thing I've learned and know how to do on my own! I never saw myself just sitting in a room gossiping at meaningless parties while waiting for you to return from council meetings. I was born into poverty, and our worlds will never be the same, no matter how much your heart tries to tell me otherwise tonight. My crown is made of salt and scales, and it weighs far less than the gold you carry on your head."

Valarr took a step forward, his fine leather boots sinking into the low tide mud, his eyes pleading for an alternative that the laws of Westeros didn't allow. He reached out, ignoring the strong odor and dirt covering her skin, desperately trying to reach the woman he loved before she became just a memory of the sea breeze. His voice came out hoarse, heavy with the weight of a thousand real expectations he was willing to crush underfoot.

"I can abandon everything! I can leave the titles, the succession, and this cursed castle behind if it means I won't have to watch you leave beyond the horizon where I can't follow you."

She let out a bitter laugh, a mournful note lost in the sound of seagulls circling the fish remains on the damp sand. His sacrifice was noble, but she was wise enough to know that love wouldn't sustain a man made to rule when he found himself adrift in a strange land. With a heavy sigh, she began to push her boat into the water, feeling the ocean's cold embrace her ankles like an old friend coming to fetch her.

"You weren't made for salt and the smell of fish blood on your hands, just as I could never survive the weight of a crown and the poison of whispered words in the corridors of the Red Keep. If you followed me, you would end up hating me when you realized you traded a kingdom for a life of misery and calloused hands. I will not be the cause of Westeros' ruin, nor yours; I prefer to leave now, being the only truth you ever knew, than to stay and watch you become a ghost of the prince you should have been."

Her words cut through the air with more precision than the cleaning knife she used on the docks. Valarr remained still, the sound of waves crashing against the hull of the boat seeming to punctuate the painful silence that settled between them. He wanted to protest, wanted to say that the throne wasn't worth a single strand of his salt-hardened hair, but the brutal clarity in those stormy irises disarmed him, for he knew she saw the world with an honesty that nobility would ever allow.

"Don't look at me as if I'm breaking your heart, when in fact I'm saving your life from a regret that no bard's song could cure. You were born for marble and for the lineages of fire, Valarr, and I was born to belong only to myself and to the horizon that has no owner. If I stayed, I would become a caged creature, and you would end up embittered, looking at the sea and wondering what the kingdom you abandoned for a fisherwoman's whim would have been like."

She pushed the boat with one last physical effort, feeling the sand give way to the fluid freedom of the cold water. The boat rocked, accepting its familiar weight, and she took the oars without hesitation, each movement exuding the confidence of someone who knows the strength of her own arms. The space between them began to widen, a strip of dark, salty water growing like the distance between two planets that could never collide without destroying each other.

"Goodbye, my dear silk prince!"

The sound of the water lapping against the hull was rhythmic and dry, muffling any sigh or word the prince might still have held back as the ship receded.