#aerion

You stared at the screen for a few seconds. You were wide awake, and you definitely didn’t have the energy to start on your own work.

You giggled at your own message before hitting send.

YOU: I sold it oops

The reply came before you could even exit the app.

UNKNOWN: stop fucking around man im not in the mood

YOU: I dont think this is the right number lol

A minute passed with the typing bubbles flickering on and off a couple times.

UNKNOWN: the fuck

YOU: If ur stuck on his class just check the 2022 archive

There was no response after that. You eventually drifted off to sleep, figuring that was the end of a weird interaction.

Four days passed, and you completely forgot about the random text until friday when you received a notification from the same number.

UNKNOWN: it worked

You blinked at the message, trying to remember who it even was.

YOU: Yeah

UNKNOWN: howd you know about that

YOU: I saw his desktop open with that site and took my chances

UNKNOWN: youre actually not michael?

YOU: No im pretty sure im not a guy

You thought the conversation would end there, but about ten minutes later, you got another text.

UNKNOWN: any other shortcuts u know about

YOU: Maybe

Over the next two weeks, the texts became a weird regular thing. It wasn’t a constant back and forth, but it turned into a daily routine.

You’d get a text in the middle of the afternoon about whatever, or you’d send a quick message about random things in your life.

You didn’t know each other. There was no pressure. You didn't have to put on a performance to try to impress whoever it was you were talking to.

UNKNOWN: what were u saying

UNKNOWN: just got to the gym

YOU: Tf didnt you just leave ur room

UNKNOWN: yeah

YOU: Is the gym right next to ur house or smth

UNKNOWN: the gyms downstairs

YOU: Oh you live in an apartment??

UNKNOWN: no

UNKNOWN: i have a gym in my house dumbass

YOU: Oh!!!!!

YOU: Different tax bracket

UNKNOWN: funny

You found yourself looking forward to those short, blunt messages. He was definitely arrogant, but he was always honest and that pulled you in.

By the third week, the conversations started stretching later into the night. You’d be lying in bed, messaging your friends, and a text would pop up at 1 AM.

👻: why the fuck are you awake

YOU: Im readingg

YOU: why are YOU awake

👻: driving

YOU: Ur gonna die

YOU: Get off ur phone

👻: you sound like my dad

👻: hes the reason im driving

YOU: Shit is he at the hospital??

👻: no im clearing my head

YOU: Oh

YOU: You okay?

👻: family dinner was so fucking annoying

👻: just micromanaging my schedule like im some kid

YOU: I feel that, my parents keep controlling my life its so stupid

👻: exactly its pathetic

👻: honestly its weird talking to you

You: Ok whyd i catch a stray hello

👻: no i mean its off talking to someone who isnt trying to get something out of me

YOU: Idek who u are so theres nothing to get

👻: keep it that way

Then during one morning, you walked into the lecture hall for Professor Davis’s class.

The room was already buzzing with students and you took your usual seat next to Tanselle who was busy drawing sketches on her paper.

“Did you finish the reading he gave last week?” Tanselle asked, not looking up from her page.

“Barely,” you muttered, pulling your laptop out of your bag. “I read like two pages.”

Down in the fourth row, right near the aisle, Aerion Targaryen was slouched back in his seat. He had his dark leather jacket slung over the back of his chair and was surrounded by his usual crowd.

One of them said something, and Aerion let out a short laugh. The guy looked around the group with triumph all over his face, proud that he managed to impress Aerion.

Just then, your professor began talking and it didn't take long for you to lose focus.

Bored out of your mind as Professor Davis started droning on about the text you guys were supposed to read, you pulled your phone out under the desk.

YOU: Im bored entertain me

You hit send.

You kept your eyes on your screen, but then out of habit, your gaze drifted back down toward the front of the room.

Down in row four, you watched Aerion reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone, a small smirk tugging on the corner of his lip.

His jaw set as he read something, and his thumbs immediately typed out a fast response before he shoved the phone face down on his desk.

Your phone vibrated in your palm.

👻: go entertain yourself

Your breath hitched. You stared at the screen, your heart doing a weird thud against your ribs.

No way, you thought. The lecture hall is massive. At least forty people were on their phones. It’s a coincidence.

Your fingers hovered over the keyboard. You needed to be absolutely sure. You typed out a reply, keeping your eyes glued directly on the back of his silver head.

YOU: Ok unkind

YOU: So ur actually paying attention to class?

The exact moment your text delivered, you watched as Aerion’s head tilted down. He picked his phone back up, scoffing under his breath. His thumbs moved around the screen, typing quickly.

Buzz.

👻: no im looking at my phone because a dumbass is texting me

A cold wave of panic hit you.

Your eyes darted from the screen to the back of his leather jacket. Your mind was short-circuiting, trying to connect the dots.

Aerion Targaryen.

Aerion Targaryen who had a reputation for being, well, himself— was the exact same person who had been texting you until midnight.

You spent the remaining minutes of that lecture staring into the wall. Every time Aerion shifted, your eyes snapped straight to him.

When the bell finally rang, the sudden noise of chairs scraping against the floor made you jump.

“Thank god,” Tanselle muttered, slamming her notebook shut. “You coming to the library?”

“I don’t think so,” you replied after a beat, shoving your things into your bag.

At the front, Aerion was already walking. One of the guys threw an arm over his shoulder and Aerion swatted him off with a grin.

He didn’t look back once. He had absolutely no idea.

For the next three days, every time your phone buzzed, your stomach did a flip. You knew exactly who was on the other side of the screen now, while he remained clueless.

During a late saturday night, you were eating with your friends when your screen lit up.

👻: this movies terrible

👻: why would you recommend this

You stared at the text. Knowing it was Aerion, reading the texts felt completely surreal.

YOU: Ok my bad ill just die

YOU: Its good tho idk what ur on

👻: its not

You: Lol turn it off then

👻: im already an hour in

👻: wouldnt wanna hurt your feelings

YOU: Aww how sweet

YOU: Stubborn bitch…

You bit your lip as you sent the second message. No one would dare to call him that in person, it was thrilling.

👻: lmao

👻: what are you doing anyway

YOU: Eating cheesecake

YOU: Wait have u done the assignment due next week

👻: nah im dreading the partner assignment on monday

👻: if i get paired with one of the idiots im doing it alone

You swallowed hard, grabbing your glass to drink the strain away.

YOU: Maybe youll get someone decent

👻: doubt it

You closed your phone and pressed it onto your chest. He was so different in real life.

When monday came, the room was silenced as Professor Davis tapped his microphone, turning on the massive projector behind him.

“Alright, I’ve randomized the pairings for the research,” he announced. “Check the board, find your partner, and spend the rest of the period discussing with them.”

Your eyes scanned the list, stopping as you found your name near the center column.

Your lungs locked up.

Aerion Targaryen was written right next to it.

“Oh, jeez,” Tanselle said, looking at you with worry. “You got Aerion… Good luck babe.”

Down in row four, Aerion didn’t even bother looking back to find his partner. He simply opened his laptop, ignoring the rest of the room while his friends started moving around. He clearly expected whoever his partner was to come to him.

You took in a deep breath, grabbing your bag.

Walking down the steps felt like walking a plank. As you got closer to his seat, a couple of his friends looked up at you. One of them nudged the guy next to him to clear a seat for you, leaving an empty chair next to Aerion.

You gave them a light smile before sliding into the seat, setting your laptop on the desk. Up close, he smelled like expensive cologne and musk.

“You’re my partner?” he asked, his voice a careless drawl. He still didn’t look at you, opening a blank document.

“Yeah.” You kept your voice as even as possible.

“Type in your email,” he said, turning the laptop just an inch so you could see the screen. “I’ll do the body and everything else. You do the outline and introduction.”

You blinked at him, the contrast hitting you like a physical punch. No jokes, no banter, no casualty.

You were aware he had a reputation for being a ‘womanizer.’ So why was he so cold to you?

“Okay,” you mumbled as you awkwardly reached out to type in your email.

He didn’t say another word to you for the rest of the hour. You sat right next to him, occasionally looking at the side of his sharp profile, realizing this was the same guy who had texted you about the miserable movie you recommended to him just two nights ago.

By 10 PM that same day, you were sitting on your bed, staring at the shared Google Docs. He had already finished his sections before you did.

Your phone buzzed on your blanket.

👻: just wrapped up that history project early so i dont have to deal with it later

You read his message, a sour feeling building up in your chest. You picked it up, your expression hardening.

YOU: Lucky, im still doing mine

You lied.

👻: thats sad

Chewing on your inner cheek, your thumbs moved before you could stop.

YOU: Hows ur partner

The typing bubbles appeared immediately.

👻: its some girl in my section i didnt pay attention

👻: she didnt mess anything up, shes whatever

She’s whatever.

Your eyes fixed on his message until they blurred. You had spent weeks listening to him, laughing at his texts, sharing personal concerns to each other—and yet in real life, you were just a boring, insignificant whatever to him.

The irritation flared up. You tossed your laptop onto your bedside table and sat back against the headboard of your bed.

YOU: Cool

A minute passed without a response.

👻: just cool?

YOU: Yeah

👻: youre acting weird

You left the text on read. Not like it mattered, his read receipts were off. Throwing the phone somewhere in your bed, you didn’t reply.

For the next few days, you struggled returning to how you normally were.

He didn’t text you the next morning but eventually did at night, and you left it unreplied for two hours before sending a short answer.

👻: you alive?

YOU: Yes

👻: ok whats wrong then

YOU: Nothing

👻: ???

YOU: What

👻: fine

It felt petty, but each time you looked at your phone, you remembered him sitting right next to you and not even glancing your way. You felt stupid, but his words hurt too.

If you were just a blank space to him in person, you figured it would be better if you were that way on every platform.

By the end of the week, the silence between your texts was heavy. He didn’t text you back after the last chat, and you definitely weren’t going to break first.

You were sitting in class when Tanselle walked in, settling in the chair beside you.

Professor Davis cleared his throat before speaking. “Alright, before we start today’s lecture, I’ve set up a group thread for the upcoming peer reviews. Click on the link and make sure you’re in it by the end of the day.”

You opened your phone to join the chat, then automatically shoved the phone back into your bag. You had no intention of participating.

The period of the lecture ended with a few minutes remaining and your phone started vibrating nonstop.

You tried to ignore it, but the constant noise was getting frustrating. You reached into your bag and pulled it out, looking to mute the group.

A new message popped up at the bottom of the chat. A classmate tagged your number directly because you hadn’t put your name on the sheet yet.

Too annoyed with the whole class to care, you swiped the app and locked your screen.

Then, your eyes subconsciously drifted toward Aerion. You watched as he pulled his phone out.

He was scrolling through the mass text thread when suddenly, he froze.

His head tilted slightly. Narrowing his eyes, he looked at the only text tagging a number. The number he’d been texting every day.

Up front, the classmate who had sent the message lost his patience. He turned around, looking up at where you and Tanselle were sitting.

The guy called out your name, his voice turning multiple heads in the quiet room. “I just tagged your number in the group, you need to upload your topic.”

The sound of your name echoed through the lecture.

Aerion’s head snapped up.

He didn’t look at the guy talking to you. His eyes darted straight up until they locked dead onto you.

The usual expression on his face dropped away. His eyes searched your entire face, his brows drawing in closer.

He saw the phone in your hand before going back to your face.

It clicked.

You stilled under his gaze, the blood rushing loud in your ears.

Beside you, Tanselle nudged your shoulder. “Babe. Babe? He’s talking to you?”

“Yeah,” you managed to choke out. Your fingers felt like wood as you uploaded the topic into the sheet. “Done. It’s in there.”

The classmate muttered a quick thanks and turned back around.

But Aerion didn’t.

He stayed shifted in his seat, his body turned toward your row. One of his friends said something, laughing and clapping him on the shoulder, but Aerion blindly shrugged the guy’s hands off without looking at him. His dark gaze remained on you.

You looked down at your screen, pretending to type, but you could feel the weight of his stare.

A quick glance back down confirmed it. He was staring at you like he was seeing you for the first time, his mind putting the pieces together.

Some girl in my section, she’s whatever. He finally understood why you had iced him.

When the bell rang, you instantly stood up, already packing your bag.

“Why are you in such a rush?” Tanselle asked, shaking her head with confusion.

You gave her a tight smile. “I just need to get back.”

You wanted to wait out the crowd, hoping he’d leave first, but Aerion was already standing by the row exit.

He leaned his back against the desk, ignoring his friends as they stood confused as to why he was still there.

Panic flared in your chest. You didn’t think this through properly.

Without thinking, you threw yourself into the small crowd shuffling through the other exit at the top of the hall.

You basically sprinted across the stone of the parking lot, your keys already clutched in your hand. Unlocking the car, you threw your bag into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

You slumped on the headrest, gripping the steering wheel as you finally let out a breath.

Then, your phone lit up with two notifications.

There were two missed calls and above them another notification popped up. It was a text.

It had been almost nine months since you had begun carrying that child within you. Every morning you woke hoping to finally feel your waters break; every evening you fell asleep disappointed, knowing you would have to wait again. You and Aerion had been counting the days for weeks now, even joking about when your child would choose to come into the world. Each time he saw you stroking your belly, he smiled like the young boy he still was, unable to hide his excitement. More than once he had bent down to speak to the child through your skin, telling them absurd stories or promising them rides and training sessions before they were even born. Those promises always made you laugh, but deep inside they nurtured a desire that grew stronger with each passing day: to finally hold that little one in your arms and see Aerion's face light up in the moment he became a father.

The waiting, however, seemed endless. Your body had reached the limit of its strength, and even the simplest actions had become tests of patience. To get out of bed, you needed someone to support you; putting on a dress without the help of the servants had become nearly impossible; even washing your hair required assistance. Walking made your ankles ache, your back felt as though it would break every time you stood too long, and the baby seemed to delight in pressing all his weight against your ribs. Aerion tried to help in every possible way, often lifting you into his arms even when you protested out of pride, but not even his presence could ease that constant heaviness that followed you through every day.

It had only just become afternoon when it happened.

One moment you were standing before a shelf, idly flipping through an old history book illustrated with miniatures now faded by time, trying to distract yourself from yet another day of waiting. The next, a sudden and violent pain tore through your abdomen like a burning blade. Your breath caught. Your fingers immediately tightened over your belly in an instinctive attempt to protect it, while the book slipped from your hands and fell heavily to the floor with a dull thud that echoed through the silent room. Your legs faltered beneath your weight, and you had to grab onto the nearest shelf to keep from falling. The pain was unlike anything you had felt throughout the entire pregnancy. It was deeper, more intense, and seemed to crush you from within.

A sudden warmth slid slowly down the inside of your thighs. For a brief instant, panic made you think you had wet yourself, but when you lowered your gaze and slightly lifted your skirt, the blood staining the skin of your legs immediately dispelled that thought. Your pupils dilated, your heart began to pound so hard it echoed in your ears, and a sudden chill ran down your spine despite the sweat already beading on your forehead. Was it normal? Did all women bleed before giving birth? Or was something happening to the baby? A thousand questions crowded your mind without giving you time to find an answer.

The first person you thought of was Aerion. His name flashed through your mind like lightning. You needed him. You needed him beside you, holding your hand and telling you that everything would be alright. But you immediately remembered where he was. As every afternoon, he was in the eastern garden, engaged in his daily sword training. Too far. Too distant for you to reach in your current condition. Another contraction bent you forward violently, forcing you to bite your lip until you tasted blood. You had to find someone. Anyone.

You began to drag yourself along the corridor, one hand clutched to your belly and the other pressed against the wall to keep your balance. Every step was agony. The pain seemed to radiate from your abdomen to your back and then down your legs, making them tremble beneath your weight. Your breath came out short and uneven, broken by groans you desperately tried to suppress to avoid losing control entirely. The castle, which only minutes earlier had felt familiar and reassuring, now seemed vast and endless. The corridors stretched before your eyes as every step required all the strength you still possessed.

At last, a young servant appeared at the corner of the corridor, a heavy basket of clean linens clutched in her arms. The moment her eyes met yours, all color drained from her face. Her gaze immediately dropped to the blood staining the floor behind you. The basket slipped from her hands, spilling the white linens across the stone floor as she rushed toward you without a second thought.

"My lady, what is happening? Are you well?" she asked in a worried tone, immediately wrapping an arm around your waist and letting you lean almost entirely on her.

"The baby-" you groaned through clenched teeth, squeezing your eyes shut as another wave of pain stole your breath. "It's coming."

The girl stifled a gasp and swallowed hard before regaining a measure of composure. "You must lie down, my lady. Your chambers are not far."

With her help, you managed to slowly reach your apartments. The path felt longer than you remembered, and several times you had to stop as the contractions left you unable even to breathe. Once inside, the servant helped you with trembling hands to remove your heavy garments, leaving you only in a thin underdress now clinging to your skin with sweat and lightly stained with blood. She guided you to the bed, making sure you did not fall, arranging pillows behind your back before turning again toward the door.

"I will fetch Master Samwell and the midwives at once. A-and your husband as well." she said firmly, though her voice trembled slightly, before rushing out of the room.

Left alone, time seemed to stop completely. Remaining still was impossible. The pain increased every few minutes, forcing you to rise from the bed again and again, pacing slowly and uncertainly across the room. You clung to furniture, to the drapes, even to the bedposts just to stay upright when the contractions became unbearable. Sweat ran down your temples and the nape of your neck, your breathing was labored and uneven, and between one groan and the next you found yourself cursing the gods, fate, and above all Aerion for putting you in this situation.

At last, the doors burst open decisively. Four midwives entered the room quickly, followed by Master Samwell, whose face betrayed a calm built upon years of experience. The women immediately began preparing hot water, clean cloths, and everything that would be needed, while the old man approached you with slow steps, observing you carefully.

"My lady, please, sit on the bed. Walking with this pain will not help you." he said in a patient tone, extending a hand toward you.

You shook your head stubbornly, breathing heavily. When he tried to help you, you pulled your hand away with a sudden motion. "No! I-" you panted, clutching your belly as another contraction nearly doubled you over. "Where is my husband? He should be here!"

"He should be informed any moment now." Samwell replied calmly, without losing patience.

One of the midwives approached with a damp cloth, gently trying to wipe the sweat from your forehead and cheeks, but you immediately turned your face away, unable to bear anything that was not Aerion's presence. In that moment, you did not want reassuring words or skilled hands. You only wanted your husband to walk through that door before the pain returned once more to steal your breath.

"No! Don't touch me!" you cried firmly.

You slowly turned your gaze around you, desperately searching for a familiar face, something to hold onto while the pain seemed to devour you from within. The midwives spoke to one another in low, focused voices, Master Samwell gave instructions with a calm you found almost irritating in that moment, yet none of them managed to make you feel safe. They were strangers. People you had perhaps passed dozens of times in the castle corridors, but who now meant absolutely nothing. They were not your family. They were not the people you loved. Above all, none of them was Aerion. The realization of being alone struck you with a force even greater than the contractions. It felt absurd that the most important and terrifying moment of your life should unfold surrounded by strangers, while the one person you longed to have beside you had not yet arrived.

Another contraction surged through your abdomen like a violent wave, forcing you to bend forward with a stifled moan. Your hands instinctively tightened over your belly, as though they could contain that force pressing from within. You felt the baby move, your body stiffen beyond your control, and panic slowly began to replace your clarity. You lifted your gaze toward the master, your eyes bright with fear, your breath breaking unevenly between your lips.

"I want my husband! Bring him here!" you cried with all the strength you still possessed, loud enough to startle even one of the younger midwives. The cry echoed against the chamber walls, immediately followed by another moan as the pain once again stole your breath.

The women exchanged worried glances, but none dared contradict you. Samwell sighed faintly, as though he had witnessed such scenes countless times, and once again tried to approach. "My lady..."

But you did not let him finish.

You shook your head firmly, breathing hard. Sweat ran down your neck and back, soaking the thin underdress now clinging to your skin. Every muscle in your body seemed tightened to the point of spasm, and remaining on your feet was becoming increasingly difficult. You stubbornly continued to pace beside the bed, stopping only when a contraction forced you to double over. You wanted to keep waiting for him standing. You wanted to be the one to see Aerion enter through the door, not for him to find you already lying there, helpless, in the bed. But your own body betrayed you.

Your legs began to tremble so violently that they could no longer support you. Your knees suddenly gave way, drained of all strength, and the floor seemed to rush up toward you. Before you could fall, the midwives and the master quickly caught you, grasping you under the arms and gently guiding you toward the mattress.

"No..." you protested weakly, even trying to free yourself from their grip. "Leave me..."

But no one listened. With the utmost care, they laid you down on the bed, arranging pillows behind your back to keep you slightly elevated. You felt the cool sheets beneath your burning skin, but that pleasant sensation lasted only an instant. Another contraction came almost immediately, so intense it arched your back. The pain was something you had never experienced before. It did not resemble a wound, nor an illness. It was as though someone were slowly breaking your body from within, separating every bone, every muscle, every fiber. It burned. It burned everywhere. From your abdomen the pain spread to your back, your hips, your legs, leaving you breathless each time. It seemed impossible that a human being could endure something like that and remain conscious.

Tears began to blur your vision. You tried with all your strength to hold them back. You did not want to cry. You did not want to appear weak in front of them all. You bit your lip so hard you tasted blood, hoping that small pain might at least distract you from the immeasurably greater one consuming you. But you were exhausted. Your strength was slowly leaving you. Breathing had become as difficult as moving, and even keeping your eyes open required a tremendous effort.

Samwell studied your strained face carefully, then lowered his gaze between your legs. His expression changed. "My lady..." he said, his voice calm but firmer than before. "It is time. You must begin to push."

Those words made your blood run cold. An unnatural chill spread through your body, in stark contrast with the suffocating heat that had enveloped you for hours. You slowly shook your head as another contraction tore a trembling moan from your lips. Your damp hair shifted slightly against your skin. "No! I cannot push until my husband is here!"

The master went pale instantly, his eyes widening slightly. Around him, the midwives exchanged quick, anxious glances, as if none of them knew how to convince you. "My lady, do not speak nonsense. We cannot wait for the prince's arrival!"

But his words seemed to shatter against a wall. You did not want to listen to anyone. Your entire being refused to face that moment without Aerion. Your body fought against your will, instinctively urging you to push and bring the child into the world, but you clenched your fists, tensed every muscle, even held your breath in an effort to resist. It did not matter how unbearable the pain was. It did not matter how afraid you were. You needed him. You needed him there, looking into your eyes, reminding you that you were not alone.

What followed were two endless hours. Every minute stretched into an eternity marked only by contractions growing closer and closer together. The room was thick with the acrid smell of sweat, hot water, and medicinal herbs. Several times the midwives tried to persuade you, almost begging you to cooperate, but you continued to refuse stubbornly, now too exhausted even to speak. Your lips were dry, your breathing uneven, and your eyes so heavy they threatened to close on their own. You could feel your strength slipping away, like sand falling through your fingers. The pain had become constant, an unrelenting presence that gave you no respite.

Then, suddenly, a commotion erupted beyond the chamber door. Urgent voices, heavy footsteps, someone protesting. You barely lifted your gaze, but in that same instant a contraction far stronger than any before tore through your body like lightning. The scream that escaped your lips was the loudest of the entire day, a desperate cry that seemed to fill the whole room. The door burst open violently, and Aerion entered at a near run. His face was tight with anger, his cheeks slightly flushed, his chest rising and falling quickly from breathlessness. His hair, usually immaculate, was disheveled, as though he had crossed the palace without stopping for even a moment. His amethyst-colored eyes burned with a fierce fury, so intense that several of those present instinctively stepped back.

Without sparing anyone a glance, he crossed the room in a few strides and reached the master. He grabbed him brutally by the collar of his robe, nearly lifting him off the ground. "Why am I only being told now that my wife is in labor?! Explain it to me, old man." he spat venomously, each word forced through clenched teeth.

Master Samwell's face lost all color. He swallowed with visible difficulty as his trembling hands tried uselessly to free themselves from the prince's grip. "My prince, normally fathers do not attend the birth. I simply thought-"

"Use that useless head of yours to think one more time, and I'll have it cut off!"

A sudden silence fell over the room. No one dared intervene. Even the midwives had stopped moving, frozen by the prince's fury. Aerion seemed incapable of seeing anything but that elderly man who had dared to decide in his place. Rage flowed through him like living fire, ready to consume anyone who stood before him.

It was the sound of your cry that broke that moment. His expression changed in a single breath. Aerion released the master at once, who staggered backward, and turned toward you. All the anger that moments before had seemed uncontrollable gave way to something entirely different. Concern? Fear?

In just a few steps he reached your side and knelt beside the bed without hesitation. With a gentleness that stood in stark contrast to the violence he had shown moments earlier, and often in his daily life, he let one hand slide into your damp hair, carefully brushing a few strands away from your sweat-beaded forehead. His fingers barely grazed your skin, as if he feared even that simple touch might hurt you.

Feeling that familiar touch, you slowly opened your eyes. Tears blurred your vision, yet you were still able to make out his face. For a moment, it felt like a dream. All the fear that had accompanied you until then suddenly faltered. Your heart tightened in your chest as a soft, reassuring warmth spread through you, easing at least part of that relentless pain. He was there. He was truly there. His fingers continued to caress you with the same infinite gentleness he had always known how to show, and in his eyes you finally found what you had searched for through endless hours: home.

"Aerion... you're here..." Your voice was nothing more than a trembling whisper, so faint it nearly blended with the ragged sound of your breathing. Each word seemed to cost you immense effort, as though even speaking had become difficult after hours spent battling a pain that had consumed you inside and out. And yet, the moment your eyes finally met his, everything else lost importance. You no longer saw the midwives moving around the bed, no longer heard the constant coming and going of footsteps or the crackling of the fire in the hearth. Only Aerion existed. His face, both familiar and reassuring, seemed to be the only stable thing in the chaos that had surrounded you all day. For the first time in hours, you felt the weight on your chest begin to lift.

"Of course I'm here. Where else would I be?" His jaw remained tightly clenched, the muscles in his face taut, betraying all the anger still boiling inside him. He was furious with anyone who had dared to keep him away from you, furious with that absurd tradition that demanded husbands be kept out of the room during childbirth, furious even with himself for not arriving sooner. And yet, despite the fury still burning in his eyes, his voice never changed when he spoke to you. It remained calm and low. He would never allow you to feel even a shadow of his anger in that moment, you already had enough to endure.

"I don't know... I thought... I thought you wouldn't make it in time." The words broke into a stifled whimper as the tears you had tried so hard to hold back for hours filled your eyes again. With a slow, almost desperate gesture, you lifted a hand toward him. Your fingers trembled visibly from exhaustion and effort, but Aerion was faster. He immediately took your hand in his, holding it firmly, as if he meant to keep the entire world from taking it away. The warmth of his skin against yours anchored you to reality. It was a steady, protective grip, the same one that had reassured you so many times without the need for words.

"As if I could ever leave you alone in a moment like this." He would’ve rather die than do such a thing. Aerion let out a soft breath, more directed at himself than at you. He leaned down slowly, pressing a feather-light kiss to your forehead just above your brow. His lips lingered there for a moment longer than necessary, as if he were trying to give you all the strength he could not offer in any other way. His fingers continued to stroke your sweat-damp hair, tucking it gently behind your ear with that tenderness only you knew. In the midst of all that pain, that simple gesture reminded you of who you were beyond the suffering. You were his wife. And he was there.

"It hurts, Aerion."

Those three words pierced his heart more deeply than any blade. He saw your face contorted in pain, the tears still tracing your cheeks without you having the strength to wipe them away, the way your body trembled after each contraction. He bit down hard on the inside of his lip until he tasted blood. His hands itched with frustration. Inside him, a blind, uncontrollable anger grew, with nowhere to go. He would have faced a hundred armies, challenged dragons, given his own life without hesitation if it meant taking even a fraction of that pain away from you. And yet he could do nothing. He was forced to stand there and watch you suffer. Worse still, a part of him could not stop thinking that this suffering was his fault. That child existed because of him as well. You were enduring that hell for him too. If having more children meant seeing you reduced to this state, then he would never again ask you to go through such torment. No heir was worth your tears.

It was that very frustration that made him lift his head sharply toward the master of the midwives. His eyes narrowed into two violet slits, cold and sharp as steel. "Can't you see she's suffering? Do something!"

The room seemed to hold its breath. No one dared interrupt. The old master hesitated for a moment, lowering his gaze slightly before the prince's wrath. "There is nothing we can do, my prince. She must push now."

Those words were like oil poured onto fire. Aerion clenched his teeth so hard his jaw tightened visibly. For a brief instant, the urge to seize the man again and shake a different answer out of him crossed his mind. Useless old man, he thought bitterly. If that was all the wisdom a lifetime of study could offer, then it was pitifully inadequate. But it only took hearing you groan once more for all his attention to return to you. His fingers laced with yours again, gripping firmly, as if he could bear part of your burden.

From that moment on, time ceased to have any meaning. The memories of what followed would, over the passing hours, blur into confused images, disconnected fragments surfacing without order. You remembered screaming until your throat burned and your voice broke into hoarse, ragged sounds. You remembered the salty taste of tears on your lips, the sweat running down your neck, Aerion's hands never leaving yours for even a single moment. Every time a contraction came, you squeezed his fingers with all the strength you had left, leaving deep reddish marks on his skin. He never complained. He remained there, supporting you, whispering words you often could not even distinguish, yet which still held the power to keep you anchored to reality. And above every other memory remained the pain. Immense, haunting, so intense that more than once it made you believe you no longer had the strength to go on.

But all that pain seemed to vanish the moment a cry echoed through the room. It was a small, fragile sound, and yet it seemed to fill every corner of the chamber, sweeping away in an instant the suffocating weight that had pressed on everyone until then. Your heart swelled in your chest until it almost hurt. The pain did not disappear, but it suddenly felt distant, almost insignificant before that sound. You felt someone approach, and moments later a small, warm body was placed gently upon your chest. Her cry continued, her tiny legs moving weakly against you. You could feel her heart beating fast, the warmth of her still-damp skin, the delicate and unmistakable scent of a newborn. It was a sensation impossible to describe. That little creature had been inside you for all those months. You had protected her, nourished her, loved her long before you knew her. And now she was finally there.

"Congratulations, a beautiful princess." One of the midwives smiled softly as she adjusted the newborn more securely in your arms, helping you hold her.

You slowly lowered your gaze to her, looking as though the rest of the world had suddenly ceased to exist. A small tuft of white hair already crowned her tiny head, soft as silk. You could not hold back a tired but tender smile. She has her father's hair.

You slowly turned your head toward Aerion. He could not take his eyes off the child. His gaze, usually so stern and controlled, was completely different now. There was wonder, disbelief, almost fear. As if he could not yet truly comprehend that the small creature before him was his daughter. His pupils trembled slightly as he took in every detail of her face, as though trying to etch it into his memory forever.

"Aerion... I did it. She's here." Your lips finally curved into a smile, the first after hours of suffering.

He swallowed slowly, unable to look away from the baby as he carefully extended a finger toward her tiny face. He barely brushed her plump cheek, as if afraid he might break her with a simple touch. "Yes, you did it. You were... so brave."

His voice was rougher than usual, emotion tightening his throat. A moment later, he lifted one of your hands and pressed a long, grateful kiss upon it. At last, you felt your body relax. The tension built during labor slowly melted away, leaving behind only an endless exhaustion and a happiness you had never known.

"What do you want to call her?" you asked softly, never taking your eyes off that little face as it slowly drifted into sleep in your arms.

Aerion remained silent for a moment, continuing to stroke the baby's head with infinite gentleness. "Daenys."

You repeated the name, tasting it on your lips.

"Like the Dreamer..." you murmured with an affectionate smile, holding your daughter a little closer to your chest. "I like it."

The carriage had barely rolled to a stop in the courtyard of Summerhall before Aerion was at the window.

He had not meant to be at the window. He had made a solemn vow to himself, sworn on the blood of Old Valyria and the bones of Balerion the Black Dread and every other suitably dramatic thing he could think of, that he would not be waiting for you. He would be in the great hall. He would be seated. He would be reading something—a history, perhaps, or dragonlore—and when you entered, he would look up with calm, measured surprise and say something devastatingly casual. Ah. You've returned. I hadn't noticed you were gone.

He had practiced the line. He had practiced it in the mirror. He had practiced it on Aemon, who had stared at him with the blank, unimpressed expression of a child who had seen too much and said, "You're going to cry the moment you see her."

Aerion had been deeply offended. He did not cry. He was a dragon. Dragons did not cry. They smoldered. They burned with quiet, dignified intensity. They did not weep.

And yet, when the outrider had appeared on the hill that morning, when the word had spread through the castle like wildfire—the princess returns, the princess is coming home—Aerion had felt something crack open in his chest, something hot and desperate and utterly undignified. He had abandoned his carefully planned position in the great hall. He had abandoned the book he was pretending to read. He had abandoned all pretense of nonchalance and had pressed himself against the window of your shared chambers, palms flat against the glass, breath fogging the pane as he watched the distant speck of your carriage grow larger and larger against the green of the Reach.

Three weeks. You had been gone three weeks. Three weeks and two days, if one was being precise, and Aerion was always precise when it came to you. Three weeks and two days of emptiness. Of cold sheets and cold meals and cold everything. Three weeks and two days of his family looking at him with varying degrees of pity and exasperation. Three weeks and two days of writing you letters—gods, so many letters—each one more desperate than the last, each one sent with trembling hands and a prayer to whatever gods might be listening that you would read them and understand. That you would read them and come home.

And you had written back. Twice. Do not starve. I will be back when I am back. And then, three days later, after his seventh letter had gone out, a second note: Stop sending ravens. You're going to exhaust the poor birds. I'm coming home. Do not starve before I get there.

He had kept both notes under his pillow. He had read them so many times the parchment was starting to wear thin at the creases.

Now you were here. The carriage was in the courtyard. The door was opening. A footman was extending a hand—

Aerion was moving before he consciously decided to move. Down the corridor. Down the stairs. Through the great hall, past servants who pressed themselves against walls to avoid being trampled, past Aemon who called something after him that he did not hear, past his father who was also in the courtyard, apparently, because Maekar Targaryen had abandoned his dignity approximately two letters ago and was now standing by the main doors with an expression of profound relief that he was trying very hard to conceal.

Aerion burst through the doors.

The sunlight hit him like a physical force. He squinted, blinked, and there you were.

You were climbing out of the carriage with the particular carelessness of someone who had been traveling for days and no longer cared about grace. Your traveling gown was rumpled. Your hair was escaping its pins in a dozen directions. There was a smudge of dust on your cheek and a distinctly unimpressed set to your jaw as you surveyed the courtyard, and you were the most beautiful thing Aerion had ever seen. You were more beautiful than the sunrise over starfall. You were more beautiful than the flames of wildfire. You were more beautiful than every poem he had written in your absence, which was saying something, because he had written some truly excellent poems. And sent them. All of them.

He opened his mouth. His carefully prepared line—Ah. You've returned. I hadn't noticed you were gone—rose to his lips.

What came out instead was a sound that might generously be described as a strangled wheeze.

Your head turned. Your eyes found him. For a moment, just a moment, something flickered in your expression and Aerion felt his knees go weak.

Then you raised an eyebrow. "You look terrible," you said.

Aerion's mouth opened and closed. He was aware, suddenly, of his appearance. He had not shaved in four days. His hair, usually immaculate, was a silver disaster that he had been running his hands through obsessively. He was wearing a doublet that did not quite match his breeches because he had dressed himself without servants, unable to bear anyone in his chambers while he was in such a state. The shawl—your shawl, the one you had left draped over the chair, the one that still smelled like you—was still wrapped around his shoulders. He had forgotten he was wearing it. He had forgotten it was not actually his. He had been wearing it for three weeks.

He was a mess. He was a complete and utter mess, and you were standing there looking at him with that eyebrow raised and that smirk playing at your lips, and he loved you so much he thought he might die.

"I—" He swallowed. Straightened his shoulders. Attempted to gather the shreds of his dignity. "You are mistaken. I am perfectly well. I have been perfectly well in your absence. I barely noticed you were gone."

Your smirk widened. "Is that my shawl?"

Aerion looked down. The shawl—soft wool, dyed a deep Targaryen crimson, embroidered with tiny black dragons along the hem—was indeed wrapped around his shoulders like a sad, silver-haired grandmother.

"No," he said.

"It is."

"It is not."

"Aerion."

"It is—" He grasped for an explanation, any explanation. "It is a new fashion. All the princes in the Seven Kingdoms are wearing their wives' garments. It is a statement. It signifies—" He waved a hand vaguely. "—devotion. Fealty. The eternal bond of—"

"You've been sleeping with it, haven't you."

"I have not—" He stopped. Your eyes were sparkling. You were enjoying this. You were standing in the courtyard of your home, rumpled and dusty and perfect, watching him flounder, and you were enjoying every second of it.

Something in his chest loosened.

"Yes," he admitted, and his voice came out smaller than he intended. "I have."

Your expression shifted. The smirk softened into something fonder, something that made his heart stutter in his chest. You crossed the courtyard toward him, your boots clicking against the stone, and stopped just in front of him. Close enough to touch. Close enough that he could smell you, that floral, sharp, you scent that he had been chasing in empty pillows for three weeks.

You reached up and touched his jaw. Your fingers were cool against his stubble rough skin.

"You didn't shave," you observed.

"I was—" He swallowed. "I was occupied."

"Occupied with what?"

With missing you. With writing you letters. With sending you letters. With waiting for ravens to return. With reading your two-sentence replies a hundred times each. With standing in the rain because the sky was crying and I did not know how to stop. With talking to your rose bush. With forgetting how to breathe.

"Reading," he said. "I was reading. Histories. Important—important texts. I have been very productive in your absence. I have barely thought of you at all."

Your thumb traced the line of his jaw. "Barely at all."

"Perhaps—" His voice cracked. "Perhaps once or twice. In passing. When I had a moment to spare. Which was rare. I am very busy. I am a prince. I have—I have responsibilities."

"Mm." You were smiling now, properly smiling, that sharp, wicked smile that meant you knew exactly what you were doing to him. "And the shawl?"

"I was cold."

"It's summer."

"Summerhall is drafty."

"Summerhall is not drafty."

"It is when you are not here," he said, and the words came out before he could stop them, raw and honest and utterly without pretense. "It is cold. All the time. The fires do not help. Nothing helps. I have been—" He stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "I have been cold for three weeks."

Your hand stilled against his jaw. For a long moment, you simply looked at him—looked at him properly, taking in the shadows under his eyes, the pallor of his skin, the way his hands were trembling slightly at his sides. Your expression flickered through something complicated. Fondness. Exasperation. Something that might have been guilt, though you would never admit to guilt.

Then you sighed. It was the sigh of someone who had long since accepted that they had married a madman and were, against all reason, perfectly content with that decision.

"You are ridiculous," you said.

"I am devoted."

"You are a fool."

"Your fool."

"My fool," you agreed, and then you grabbed the front of his doublet and kissed him.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was not soft or sweet or any of the things that poets wrote about. It was sharp and demanding and it tasted faintly of dust and travel and the honeyed figs you had been eating in the carriage, and it was the best thing Aerion had ever experienced. Better than flying. Better than fire. Better than every poem he had ever written and sent and agonized over.

He made a sound against your mouth, something embarrassingly close to a whimper, and his hands came up to grip your waist, pulling you closer, pressing you against him as though he could fuse you together and never be separated again. The shawl slipped from his shoulders. He did not notice. He did not care. You were here. You were warm and solid and real, and you were kissing him, and nothing else in the entire world mattered.

When you finally pulled back, your lips were red and your eyes were bright and you were looking at him with that expression, the one that said I see you, I have you, you are mine.

"Three weeks," you said, and your voice was rough. "You couldn't survive three weeks without me."

"I could not survive three days." He pressed his forehead to yours, breathing you in. "I could not survive three hours. I am nothing without you. I am less than nothing. I am—"

"I know." You kissed him again, quick and soft. "I know. I got your letters."

Aerion went very still. "You—my letters. You got them. All of them."

"All seven." Your smirk was back, sharper than ever. "Including the one with the forty-line poem about my eyes. And the one with the drawing. And the one where you described my laugh as 'a silver bell that shatters the darkness.'"

The world tilted slightly. He had sent those. He had sent those. In the grip of his madness, in the depths of his longing, he had actually sealed them with wax and handed them to the maester and watched ravens carry them away toward King's Landing. Toward you.

"The drawing was—" His voice came out strangled. "The dragon was meant to be breathing a heart-shaped flame. It was symbolic. It represented—"

"It looked like a deformed lizard."

"It was a dragon."

"It had three legs, Aerion. I counted."

He opened his mouth to defend his artistic vision, but you were laughing now, that sharp, bright, shatter-the-darkness laugh that he had written forty lines about, and the sound of it made everything else fall away. You were laughing. You were here.

"You wrote to me every three days," you said, and your voice was softer now. "Even when I only sent two lines back. Even when I told you to stop exhausting the ravens. You kept writing."

"I could not stop." His hands were still on your waist. He could not let go. He would never let go again. "I tried. I sat at your desk and I told myself I would not write. I would be strong. I would give you space. And then I would find something—a ribbon, a book you had left open, the dent in your pillow—and I would be at the desk again, writing, because it was the only way I could—" His voice cracked. "It was the only way I could feel close to you."

You looked at him for a long moment. Then you reached into the folds of your traveling gown and pulled out a folded piece of parchment, worn and creased from being opened and closed many times.

"I kept them," you said quietly. "All of them. Under my pillow. Even the one with the terrible drawing."

Aerion's heart stopped. "You—"

"My mother asked why I was smiling at breakfast. I told her it was the figs." Your lips curved. "It was not the figs."

He kissed you then. He could not help it. He kissed you with three weeks of loneliness, with seven letters worth of longing, with every poem and every unsent word and every moment he had spent staring at the horizon waiting for you to come back. And you kissed him back, just as fierce, just as desperate, your fingers curling into his disastrous silver hair and holding on.

When you finally broke apart, both of you breathing hard, Aerion became aware of several things at once.

First: his father was still standing by the main doors, and he was not alone. Daeron had emerged from whatever corner he had been hiding in. Aemon was there too, small and serious, watching with the particular resignation of a child who had seen far too much. Even Aegon had wandered out, blinking in the sunlight like a man who had just woken up, which he probably had.

Second: the entire courtyard had gone silent. Servants, guards, stable hands, all of them were staring at their prince and princess with varying expressions of embarrassment, amusement, and in the case of Maekar Targaryen, profound, bone-deep relief.

Third: Aerion did not care. Not even a little.

"My prince," one of the guards ventured, his voice carefully neutral. "Shall we see to the princess's luggage?"

Aerion did not look away from you. "Yes. Fine. Do that. Take everything to our chambers. Actually—" He paused, considering. "Leave the luggage. Take everything else. Take the furniture. Take the tapestries. I do not care. I need nothing but my wife."

"Aerion," you said.

"The bed," he continued, warming to his theme. "Take the bed. We do not need it. I will hold her in my arms for the rest of eternity. I will become her bed. I will—"

"Aerion."

"Yes, my love?"

"We are keeping the bed."

He considered this. "The bed stays. Everything else—discretionary. I am feeling generous. I am feeling magnanimous. My wife has returned to me and I am willing to share her with the furniture, but only barely."

You sighed, but you were smiling. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Being dramatic."

"I am expressing my joy." He pulled you closer, tucking you against his side as though you might vanish if he let go. "This is restrained joy. You should see me when I am truly happy. There is usually fire involved."

"There will be no fire," came Maekar's voice from across the courtyard, flat and tired and deeply parental. "There has been enough fire in this family. No more fire."

Aerion ignored him. He was too busy looking at you. The way the sunlight caught your hair. The way your eyes were still bright with laughter. The way you fit against his side like you had been made to be there, like the Seven themselves had shaped you specifically to fill the empty space beside him.

"I wrote you another poem," he said quietly, as the courtyard slowly returned to life around you. Servants began unloading the carriage. Daeron retreated back toward the library. Aemon lingered for a moment longer, watching his brother with something that might have been affection, before Aegon tugged him away. "On the road, I mean. While you were traveling. I did not send it. There was no point. You would be here before the raven arrived. But I wrote it anyway."

"What is it about?"

"Your return." He pressed a kiss to your temple. "It is very good. I think you will like it."

"Does it compare me to the sun?"

"Among other celestial bodies."

"The moon?"

"Of course."

"The stars?"

"All of them. Every single one. You outshine them all."

You laughed again, and Aerion felt it in his chest, in his bones, in the very core of him. The world had color again. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. Everything was exactly as it should be.

"I love you," he said, and it came out simple and true, without drama or flourish or any of the things he usually wrapped his feelings in. Just the words. Just the truth.

You stopped walking. You turned to face him fully, and for a moment, you simply looked at him, this ridiculous, dramatic, utterly devoted man who had married you and somehow made you believe that love could be like this. Fierce and consuming and absolutely, completely mad. Who had sent you seven letters in three weeks. Who had worn your shawl and talked to your rose bush and stood in the rain because the sky was crying with him. Who loved you so loudly that everyone in a hundred-mile radius knew it.

"I love you too," you said. "Even when you smell like a stable."

"I smell like—"

"Longing. I know." You took his hand and tugged him toward the doors. "Come on, my dragon. Let's get you cleaned up. And then you can read me that poem."

Hope flickered in his chest. "Truly? You want to hear it?"

"I want to hear all of them. Every poem you wrote while I was gone. Every letter you didn't send." You glanced back at him, and your smile was soft and real and his. "I was only gone three weeks, Aerion. You have a lot of poetry to catch me up on."

He had never loved you more than in that moment.

"I wrote fourteen poems," he admitted, as you pulled him through the great hall. "Fifteen, if you count the one about your hands. And there are fragments. Many fragments. Some of them are just your name repeated with different adjectives."

"Of course they are."

"'Beautiful' features heavily. 'Radiant' as well. I am particularly proud of a stanza that compares your eyes to—"

"Tell me upstairs."

"—dragonglass lit from within by an inner fire that—"

"Aerion."

"Yes, my love?"

"Upstairs."

He went. Of course he went. He would follow you anywhere.

Later that evening, after Aerion had bathed and shaved and eaten an actual meal and split your insides in two, he lay in your shared bed with you curled against his side. Your head was on his chest. Your hand was over his heart. You were warm and solid and there, and he was never, ever letting you leave again.

He had read you all fifteen poems. You had laughed at the right parts and gone quiet at the right parts and kissed him at the end of the last one, soft and sweet, and told him he was a madman. He had agreed. Happily.

"I'm not going to King's Landing for at least a year," you murmured against his skin. "My mother asked if I would come back for a tourney in three moons. I told her no."

Aerion's heart, which had been beating steadily for the first time in weeks, stuttered. "You did?"

"I did." You tilted your head up to look at him, your eyes soft in the candlelight. "Apparently my husband cannot survive three weeks without me. I would hate to see what three more would do."

"I would die," Aerion said seriously. "I would simply perish. They would find me in the courtyard, turned to ash, with only your shawl to mark my—"

You kissed him. It was quick and soft and it silenced him completely.

"I know," you said against his lips. "That's why I'm staying."

Aerion pulled you closer, burying his face in your hair, breathing you in. Outside, the moon rose over Summerhall. The birds had started singing again. The flowers in the garden were blooming.

And somewhere in the castle, Maekar Targaryen was writing a letter that he would never send, addressed to no one, consisting of exactly two words:

Thank the gods.

---

It started the morning after your return.

You woke, extracted yourself from Aerion's octopus-like grip, and padded toward the privy. You had made it approximately four steps when you heard the rustle of sheets behind you.

You turned.

Aerion was sitting up in bed, silver hair a catastrophic mess, eyes still half-lidded with sleep but fixed on you with the intensity of a man watching his only lifeline drift out to sea.

"Where are you going?"

"The privy."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"Aerion. No."

"I will accompany you."

"You will not."

"What if you fall?"

"Into the privy? I'm not a toddler."

"What if you realize you've missed me terribly and need me there?"

"I am going to pee."

"And I will be there. For emotional support." He was already standing, already reaching for your shawl—which he had apparently decided was now his shawl—to wrap around his shoulders. "You held my hand through three weeks of despair. The least I can do is hold yours through this."

You stared at him. He stared back, tragic and earnest and utterly insane.

"Fine," you said, because you were still too tired to argue. "But you are not coming in."

Which is how you found yourself, five minutes later, seated on the privy with your husband's hand clutched in yours through the crack in the door. True to his word—and your demand—he had tied a cloth over his eyes. He was sitting on the floor just outside, his back against the doorframe, his fingers interlaced with yours like you were both on the verge of something profound and sacred rather than you simply emptying your bladder.

"I can hear you," he said softly.

"Stop listening."

"I am not listening. I am being present. There is a difference. I am offering my unwavering support during this—"

"Aerion."

"—this intimate moment. This private ritual. This—"

"If you call my pissing a 'private ritual' one more time, I am locking you out of our chambers tonight."

He fell silent.

For approximately three heartbeats.

"I wrote a poem about this," he whispered.

"About what."

"About this. About how even in the smallest moments, I want to be near you. About how absence has made me cherish every breath you take, every step you make, every—"

"You wrote a poem about me pissing?"

"I wrote a poem about us. About how love is not just the grand gestures but the quiet intimacies. The hand held through a door. The presence offered without question. The—"

"Aerion."

"Yes, my love?"

"I am finished."

You cleaned yourself. You stood, adjusted your nightgown, and opened the door fully. Aerion was still on the floor, blindfold still in place, hand still extended toward you like a knight awaiting his lady's favor.

You pulled the cloth from his eyes.

He blinked up at you, violet eyes soft and devoted and completely, utterly mad.

"Welcome back," he said.

You stared at him for a long moment. Then you sighed, pulled him to his feet, and kissed his forehead.

He stood beside his parents in his uncles solar of the Red Keep, hands slightly clammy clasped behind his back, listening as Maekar Targaryen and his wife were announced. The doors opened, and in swept heat from the late summer air, and with it, noise. A child’s cry.

High, pleased babbling echoed against the stone walls.

Valarr’s spine went rigid.

Maekar entered first, tall and imposing, his wife followed, smiling warmly, and in her arms.

Valarr blinked.

You were smaller than he expected.

Wrapped in pale silks, white threaded with faint red embroidery, you were all soft curves and bright, curious violet eyes. Your hair was fine and light, silver-blond catching the sun pouring in through the high windows. You made an indignant sound when your mother shifted her grip, little hands fisting in protest before settling again.

The adults exchanged greetings. Polite words, and familiar courtesies.

Valarr barely heard them.

He was staring at the little dragon wrapped in her mother's embrace.

“You remember my brother, Prince Baelor, of course,” Maekar was saying, gesturing to Valarr’s father. “And this is his wife, and his son.”

Introductions continued, and then.

“And this is our youngest,” your mother said, voice warm with unmistakable pride. “Our daughter.”

She tilted you slightly forward, inviting admiration.

Valarr swallowed.

You stared back at him.

Your gaze fixed on him with startling intensity for someone so small, eyes wide and unblinking. A slow smile spread across your face, gummy and delighted, as if you’d found something you very much approved of.

Valarr had the absurd thought that you looked…pleased. As though he were a novelty.

“Well,” Baelor chuckled, “she seems like a lively one.”

“She always is,” Maekar’s wife replied fondly. “Especially when there are new faces.”

Your attention did not waver. Your small hand lifted, fingers opening and closing in a clumsy, curious motion.

Valarr shifted his weight.

This was fine. Perfectly fine. You would be admired, cooed over, perhaps passed to a septa or attendant. He would smile politely from a distance. That was the proper order of things.

He relaxed, just a fraction.

And then Baelor said, far too lightly, “Valarr.”

Valarr felt dread bloom instantly.

“Yes, Father?” His words coming out to meek for a prince of his stature.

“Why don’t you greet your cousin properly?”

Before Valarr could respond, before he could so much as draw breath to suggest an alternative, Maekar’s wife laughed softly.

“Oh, would you like to hold her?”

The room seemed to tilt.

“I-” Valarr began, his mind urging him to refuse his uncles good wife.

It was too late.

You were already being transferred.

Your mother stepped closer, carefully placing you into Valarr’s arms with practiced ease, as if handing over a bundle of linens instead of a living, breathing child. Your weight was unfamiliar, warm, solid, and alarmingly fragile.

Valarr froze.

His arms locked in place, instinctively stiff, elbows tucked awkwardly at his sides. He stared down at you in open panic, acutely aware of how many eyes were on him.

You blinked up at him.

For a heartbeat, there was silence.

Then you reached for him.

Your tiny hand latched onto the front of his doublet with startling strength, fingers curling into the embroidered fabric just below his collarbone. Valarr inhaled sharply.

“Oh,” Baelor said, amused. “She’s taken a liking to you son.”

Valarr did not move, and you tugged harder.

The Targaryen crest, three-headed dragon molded from steel, pulled under your grip. Valarr watched in horror as the stitching around it strained.

“I think-” he said faintly, “I think she has to strong a hold on me.”

You made a pleased sound, babbling happily as you tightened your grip and brought the emblem closer to your face, examining it with grave seriousness. Your other hand joined the first, fingers patting and scrunching the sigil as though testing its texture.

Someone laughed.

“Careful,” Maekar said dryly. “She’s strong.”

Valarr believed it.

He looked up helplessly at his mother, who was smiling far too serenely.

“Support her head Valarr.” she reminded gently.

Valarr shifted one hand, too fast, then stopped again, terrified he’d done it wrong. You wobbled slightly, offended, and let out a sharp sound of protest.

Valarr’s heart leapt into his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted instinctively, as if you could understand him.

You stared at him, then promptly shoved a fist into your mouth and chewed on it, apparently satisfied.

The adults laughed again.

Valarr flushed.

You, meanwhile, were delighted.

Your attention drifted back to his chest, to the shining emblem that had caught your eye in the first place. With unwavering determination, you tugged again, harder this time.

The thread held, barely.

“Oh-no, no,” Valarr muttered under his breath. “You cannot-”

You could.

With a triumphant little noise, you yanked, and Valarr felt the stitching give way slightly beneath your grip. Not fully torn-but loosened enough to make his stomach drop.

“She’s stealing from you,” Baelor boomed in laughter.

Valarr looked up sharply. “She’s taking the emblem father.”

“It seems fair,” Maekar said. “She is a Targaryen after all.”

Your mother laughed softly, eyes shining. “She’s always liked shiny things.”

Valarr looked down at you again.

You were beaming now, utterly content, clutching the piece of metal like a prize you’d won through sheer will. Your chubby fingers were red from gripping it so tightly.

He should have handed you back.

He should have insisted.

Instead, something strange happened.

You leaned closer, entirely unprompted, and pressed your forehead briefly against his chest, a clumsy, affectionate bump. Then you sighed, a soft, sleepy sound, and settled.

Still holding the sigil.

Valarr went very still.

The room seemed to fade at the edges.

You were warm, and real. Breathing softly against him, your tiny weight anchored in his arms as if you belonged there. His panic dulled into something quieter. His awareness heightened, careful not to drop you.

You trusted him.

For reasons entirely beyond his comprehension, you trusted him.

“Well,” his mother said softly, “I don’t think she intends to let go.”

Valarr swallowed.

“I-I don’t think I can move,” he admitted.

Maekar’s wife smiled at him, something knowing in her expression. “You are doing just fine my prince.”

You shifted slightly, adjusting your grip, fingers still curled in the dragon’s heads stitched over his heart.

Valarr thought, distantly, that he would remember this.

The weight of you.

And how, for the first time that day, he hadn’t minded holding onto a babe.

Valarr realized, belatedly, that the problem was no longer holding you.

The problem was that no one seemed inclined to help him stop.

You had settled fully now, cheek pressed against his chest, breath warm through the layers of his doublet. Your fingers remained tangled stubbornly in the loosened embroidery, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for you to keep hold of him.

Valarr stood there, acutely aware of every inch of himself, his posture, his breathing, the tension in his arms. He had never been more conscious of the fact that he was alive and responsible for something far smaller and more fragile than himself.

“I think,” he said carefully, after a long moment, “she is…asleep.”

You were not, not quite, but your eyelids had drooped, lashes resting against flushed cheeks, your mouth slack in the way of someone very close to drifting off. One hand still clutched the sigil. The other had gone lax, resting against his collarbone.

“She does that,” your mother said cooed. “Decides she’s comfortable and refuses to be moved.”

Valarr attempted to shift his weight again, just enough to ease the strain in his arms.

You responded immediately.

A small, displeased sound escaped you, sharp and indignant, and your fingers tightened. Valarr froze mid-motion, heart hammering.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, absurdly earnest.

This time, you opened your eyes.

They were a pale, bright violet, too clear, too knowing for someone so young. They focused on his face, studying him with an intensity that made Valarr’s breath catch.

Then you smiled.

A small, satisfied curve of your mouth, as if to say: There. Don’t do that again.

Baelor laughed outright.

“Oh, she’s clever,” he said. “Look at her. She’s got you trapped.”

Valarr shot his father a look that was half plea, half accusation.

“She’s-she’s holding my clothes,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Maekar stepped closer, studying the situation with a measured eye. He reached out, fingers brushing gently against your hand.

You did not release the sigil.

Instead, you drew it closer to yourself, little brows furrowing in displeasure.

Maekar paused.

“Well,” he said slowly, “she’s claimed it.”

Valarr stared at him. “She cannot have it.”

“Why not?” Maekar asked mildly. “It’s hers as much as yours.”

Valarr opened his mouth, then closed it again.

He had no answer that wouldn’t sound ridiculous.

Your mother hid a smile behind her hand.

“She’s never taken to strangers like this,” she said. “Usually she fusses.”

Valarr swallowed.

“I’m not-” He stopped himself. “I mean, I don’t-”

He trailed off, at a loss.

You shifted again, settling more securely in his arms. Your head tucked just beneath his chin now, breath puffing softly against his throat. Valarr stiffened instinctively, then forced himself to relax, lowering his head just enough to keep you steady.

He could feel the warmth of you through the fabric. The slow, steady rhythm of your breathing.

Something quieted inside him.

“Valarr,” his mother said gently, stepping closer. “You may hand her back now if you like.”

He hesitated.

He did want to, or he truly did. His arms ached, and he was painfully aware of how ridiculous he must look, standing there, rigid and wide-eyed, holding a baby who had apparently decided to take possession of him.

And yet, he looked down at you again.

Your fingers had loosened slightly now, grip slack but still determined, the metal sigil in between your touch. One foot stuck out from the folds of your linen enclosure, kicking faintly with contentment.

You trusted him, completely. Like how a small cat would nap near its siblings.

The thought landed with surprising weight.

“I think,” Valarr said slowly, “she’ll be upset.”

As if to prove his point, his mother reached out carefully, attempting to slide your fingers free from the the sigil.

You woke fully at once.

Your grip tightened. Your face scrunched, and a sharp, offended cry burst from you, loud enough to echo off the stone walls.

Valarr startled.

“Oh-Seven-” He pulled you closer without thinking, one hand coming up to support your back. “No, no-please don’t-”

Your cry cut off mid-sound.

You blinked and sniffled.

Then settled again, apparently appeased, cheek pressed firmly against his chest.

The room went silent.

Then Baelor laughed again, softer this time.

“Well,” he said, “it seems she’s made her choice.”

Valarr stared straight ahead, cheeks burning.

“I didn’t-” he began weakly.

Maekar gave a low huff that might have been amusement. “She’s stubborn,” he said. “Takes after her brothers I reckon.”

“Gods help us all,” your mother murmured fondly.

Valarr felt oddly proud.

The realization startled him.

He had done nothing to earn it. He had simply…existed. And yet, something about the way you clung to him, unbothered by rank or expectation, made him feel, as ridiculous as it was, chosen.

Minutes passed. Conversation resumed around him, drifting to safer topics. Valarr remained still, barely daring to breathe too deeply in case it disturbed you.

He adjusted his grip minutely, learning your weight, how to support you without startling you. The tension in his shoulders eased by degrees.

Eventually, your breathing slowed again, deeper now, unmistakably asleep.

Your mother watched closely.

“She’s truly out,” she said softly. “Now might be our chance.”

Valarr nodded, careful.

He shifted, slow and deliberate, loosening your grip finger by finger with infinite patience. You stirred but did not wake, lips pursing briefly before relaxing again.

The sigil slipped free at last.

Valarr exhaled, relieved.

But when he began to pass you back, something unexpected happened.

Your hand shot out again.

This time, instead of grabbing the piece of metal, your fingers curled around his.

Valarr froze.

The contact was brief, and clumsy, but it sent a strange jolt through him. Your grip was weak, barely there, but the intent behind it was unmistakable.

Don’t go.

He looked down at you, heart doing something uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

Your mother paused, watching the moment with quiet interest.

“Oh dear...she’s going to be a handful,” she said softly.

Valarr managed a breathless laugh. “I can tell.”

Eventually—carefully, gently—you were transferred back into your mother’s arms. You protested faintly, a soft sound of displeasure, before settling again against her shoulder.

Valarr stepped back, arms suddenly empty.

The absence felt…strange.

He smoothed his doublet automatically, eyes flicking to the loose threads that once connected the metal symbol of his house. The sigil sat askew now.

He didn’t fix it.

“Well,” Baelor said, clapping a hand lightly on Valarr’s shoulder, “you’ve survived.”

Valarr nodded, still staring at you.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I think I have.”

As your family prepared to depart, Maekar paused beside him.

“She likes you,” Maekar said, matter-of-fact.

Valarr glanced at him, startled. “She is but a babe.”

Maekar’s mouth twitched. “Even so.”

Valarr looked at the dragonian symbol in his hands, then he lifted it up towards his uncle, "perhaps she might search for this when she awakes."

Maekar slowly took the sigil from the young boy, thanking him quietly.

They left soon after, the solar returning to its usual stillness. Valarr remained where he was long after the doors closed, fingers curling unconsciously where yours had been.

He looked down at his chest, the lack of the dragon symbol apparent.

Valarr thought, with quiet certainty, that he would never forget this.

And though he did not yet know why, he suspected it would matter.

—

The journey from Summerhall to the Red Keep was loud with celebration, though none of it felt particularly official to you, only familiar.

Your father indulged you shamelessly.

When you lingered too long admiring the view from a rise in the road, he ordered the caravan slowed. When you expressed even mild interest in a ribbon from a passing merchant, it appeared in your hands before the day was done. He listened when you spoke, smiled when you laughed, and waved off any suggestion that you were being spoiled.

“She’s allowed,” Maekar said flatly, daring anyone to disagree.

Your brothers hovered like they always did.

Daeron walked at your left, satchel of wine in hand. He was relaxed but watchful, ready with a joke or a steadying hand. Aerion stayed closer than necessary, sharp-eyed and territorial, correcting servants before they could fumble and scowling whenever someone stared too long.

“She doesn’t need all this,” you said at one point, gesturing to yourself and at the attention.

“She absolutely does,” Aerion replied. “And more.”

Attendants fussed endlessly.

Your hair was brushed and rebrushed. Your sleeves adjusted. Your jewelry inspected, removed, returned. At one point, an older attendant fastened a small trinket at your neckline, a simple piece of metal sewn into a ribbon, shaped like the three-headed dragon of house Targaryen.

You touched it absently, as you always did.

Your favorite.

No one remembered where it had come from. You certainly didn’t. It had simply…always been yours it seemed. You liked the way the jagged metal felt beneath your fingers, worn slightly dull with time. It calmed you.

Behind it all, your mother watched.

She said little, but her gaze was sharp and measuring, tracking every indulgence from the attendants. She saw how easily you were loved, and how easily that love might become leverage.

And quietly, without your knowledge, she decided.

You would be betrothed to Valarr Targaryen. for why should her daughter, beloved by the realm, settle for anything other than the heir of the heir.

—

Trumpets announced your arrival.

The Red Keep rose before you, pale stone glowing in the afternoon sun. Courtiers gathered, and servants hurried.

You felt it, even if you didn’t flinch.

Your father rested a hand briefly at your back. Your brothers closed in slightly. The attendants fluttered, whispering reminders.

Inside the keep, Valarr Targaryen was being given the vaguest instruction of his life.

“Be attentive,” his mother told him calmly. “She is important.”

Important could mean anything.

Valarr smoothed his doublet, fingers brushing the sigil at his chest out of habit. The old one had been replaced many years ago, but his hand still went there without thinking.

“You’ve met her before,” Baelor added, almost as an afterthought. “Once.”

Valarr looked up sharply. “I have?”

Baelor smiled faintly. “She was very small.”

The memory struck like heat.

Tiny hands, the warm weight. The dragon tugged loose beneath her grip.

Valarr went still.

“I remember,” he said quietly.

—

You entered the hall with sunlight caught in your hair, laughter soft on your lips as Daeron murmured something in your ear. You looked unguarded, and entirely yourself.

Valarr saw you immediately.

And then he saw it.

The trinket at your neckline.

The dragon.

Not the polished sigils worn by courtiers, but a small, slightly worn, metallic mold, attached with a silk bow and silver chains.

Valarr’s breath caught.

His gaze dropped without permission, tracking the familiar shape, the way the ribbon and chains pulled ever so slightly at the edges.

You noticed his stare and followed it down, fingers lifting automatically to the trinket.

“Oh,” you said lightly. “This?”

You rubbed the embroidery between thumb and forefinger, absent, affectionate.

“Well, my prince, I’ve always liked it. ever since I was a child.” you continued. “I don’t remember where it’s from. It’s just…mine.”

Just like that.

Your fingers curled around it.

Valarr felt as though the room tilted, the same familiar feeling from when he held you as a boy all those years ago.

—

Conversation carried on around you, but Valarr heard very little of it. His attention stayed fixed on your hands, on the unconscious way you held the sigil when you laughed, when you listened, when you grew thoughtful.

At one point, you leaned closer to him to inspect the one on his chest.

Your fingers brushed over the smooth metal.

The motion was instinctive, and terribly familiar.

Valarr’s pulse jumped.

Years ago, you had done this exact thing, clutched the dragon over his heart with all the certainty of someone who knew what they wanted and refused to let go.

You did it now without realizing.

Valarr swallowed hard.

“You favor that trinket,” he said carefully.

You smiled at him. “I suppose I do. It makes me feel safe.”

The word struck deeper than it had any right to.

—

Your mother noticed.

She watched Valarr’s expression shifted, how his composure cracked just enough to let something genuine through. She saw the way he looked at you as if seeing a memory made flesh.

She said nothing, although she didn’t need to.

Your father further discussed something Daeron said, while Aerion shot Valarr a warning glance from across the table.

And you, utterly unaware, tilted your head toward Valarr, curiosity bright.

“You’re very quiet,” you observed. “Is court always like this?”

Valarr smiled faintly.

“Not usually,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ever been quite like this.”

Your fingers tightened on the dragon again.

Valarr knew then, with quiet certainty, that this was no coincidence.

You had found him once before, And somehow, you had found him again.

—

Valarr told himself it was coincidence the first time.

The Red Keep was enormous, after all, vast halls and endless corridors, gardens that folded in on themselves, staircases that led nowhere and everywhere at once. It was entirely reasonable that paths might cross. Entirely natural.

He repeated this to himself as he rounded the corner of the eastern gardens and nearly collided with you.

You stopped short just in time, skirts swaying, breath slightly quickened as though you’d been moving fast.

“Oh,” you began, then blinked. “My prince.”

Valarr straightened instinctively, his court etiquette snapping into place before he could stop it.

“Princess,” he greeted.

You rolled your eyes immediately.

“Please don’t,” you said, smiling despite yourself. “I was trying to escape that.”

He followed your gaze.

Daeron and Aerion stood several paces behind you, mid-argument, clearly in the midst of deciding who was more responsible for whatever irritation had driven you off. Daeron gestured animatedly; Aerion’s arms were crossed, expression sharp.

Valarr’s lips twitched.

“I take it they’re the cause of your flight.”

“They always are,” you said lightly. “One of them decided I needed guarding inside the Red Keep of all places.”

“An unforgivable offense,” Valarr agreed playfully.

Your laughter surprised him.

It was bright, and it eased something tight in his chest. You shifted your weight, fingers lifting unconsciously to the dragon trinket at your neckline, rubbing the worn thing between thumb and forefinger.

Valarr noticed.

“I won’t keep you,” he said, though he made no move to leave. “Unless you’d prefer my company to theirs.”

You tilted your head, studying him.

“I think,” you said after a moment, “that I would.”

Daeron noticed them. He paused mid-sentence, gaze snapping to Valarr. Aerion followed a heartbeat later, eyes narrowing.

You turned just enough to wave them off.

“I’m fine,” you called. “Go bother someone else.”

Aerion’s jaw tightened, and Daeron sighed theatrically.

“You’re certain sister?” Daeron asked.

“Yes,” you replied. “Unless you’d like to argue in front of the prince.”

That decided it.

Your brothers retreated, reluctantly, casting Valarr one last look that was all warning.

When they were gone, the garden seemed quieter.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “They mean well.”

“I know,” Valarr replied. “I imagine I will be similar if not the same if I were to ever have a sister.”

That earned him another smile.

You walked then, not formally, just drifting along the garden path side by side. The silence between you wasn’t awkward. It settled easily.

Valarr found himself glancing at you when you weren’t looking, to preoccupied with the budding flowers or bugs on the leafs.

At the way you moved without self-consciousness. At the way your fingers kept returning to the trinket, as though drawn there by instinct. At the faint crease between your brows when you grew thoughtful.

He told himself, again, that this meant nothing. he was being courteous is all.

The second time happened in the library.

Valarr had retreated there deliberately, seeking refuge from council murmurs and polite inquiries. He’d chosen a far corner, half-shadowed, shelves towering overhead, the quiet thick and blessed.

He was halfway through a page when he heard footsteps.

Light, feminine steps.

He looked up.

You stood a few paces away, scanning the shelves with open curiosity, an attendant hovering helplessly behind you with a stack of books already in her arms.

“Oh,” you said when you noticed him. “My prince, we meet again.”

Valarr closed his book slowly.

“Should I be offended,” he asked, “or relieved?”

You smiled, stepping closer.

“Relieved,” you decided. “I was hoping for something more interesting than titles about trade tariffs.”

He gestured to the shelf beside him. “History, then. Slightly more intriguing.”

Your eyes lit up.

“You read history for fun?”

“I don’t recommend it,” he said. “But it does grow on you.”

You leaned closer, scanning spines, and without realizing it, without even looking, your fingers found the dragon again.

Valarr’s breath caught.

The same motion, the same unconscious curl of your hand.

“You do that often,” he said quietly.

You glanced down, surprised, then laughed softly.

“Oh. That. I suppose I do.”

“Does it mean something?”

You considered.

“I don’t think so,” you said. “It’s just familiar, and it comforts me.”

Valarr looked away before you could see his expression.

“Yes,” he murmured. “I imagine does.”

You chose a book then, thick, well-worn. You tucked it under your arm.

“Borrowing this,” you said cheerfully. “I’ll return it. Probably.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he replied.

When you left, the space you’d occupied felt suddenly empty. Valarr sat there for a long moment afterward, staring at the shelf without seeing it.

Twice.

Coincidence, he told himself.

The third time made him laugh.

It was a narrow corridor near the royal apartments—one he rarely used, chosen out of habit more than intention. He rounded the corner quickly, deep in thought—

—and stopped short.

So did you.

For a heartbeat, you simply stared at one another.

Then you laughed first.

“This is becoming suspicious my prince,” you said.

Valarr found himself smiling before he could stop it.

“Either the Red Keep is smaller than I remember,” he said lightly, “or you’re following me.”

Your laughter rang out, a genuine one.

“I assure you,” you replied, “I’d have chosen a more dramatic approach.”

Something in Valarr loosened at the sound.

He relaxed visibly, shoulders easing, the careful distance he kept from most people slipping without effort.

And as you passed him, close enough that he caught the faint scent of summer on your clothes, he realized something unsettling. He hoped it would happen again. That you would always be their as he turns every corner. That you'd inhabit the spaces he so commonly ventured into.

—

Later that evening, as Valarr found himself choosing paths he might run into you on, he stopped short.

And laughed quietly to himself. Valarr did not mean to look for you.

That was the lie he told himself as he chose the longer path through the eastern wing the following morning, one that curved past the small terrace overlooking the Blackwater rather than cutting straight through the council corridor. He told himself he wanted air. Quiet. Space to think.

He did not tell himself he hoped you might be there.

The terrace was empty.

He felt an unreasonable flicker of disappointment before he caught himself and frowned, annoyed at the thought. Ridiculous. You had your own schedule, your own obligations, attendants, family, duties he barely understood. It was foolish to expect-

“My prince?”

He turned.

You stood in the doorway, sunlight at your back, one hand braced lightly against the stone as if you had only just decided to step outside. You looked surprised to see him, and then pleased.

“Oh,” you said, smiling. “There you are.”

There you are.

The words settled somewhere uncomfortably warm in his chest.

“I could say the same,” he replied, a little too quickly.

You stepped onto the terrace, skirts whispering softly against the stone. An attendant hovered briefly behind you, then, at your gentle insistence, retreated inside.

“Everyone keeps telling me where I ought to be, these days,” you said. “It’s exhausting.”

Valarr huffed a quiet laugh. “They do that.”

You leaned against the balustrade beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of you without touching. Below, the water moved steadily, indifferent to courtly fuss.

Your fingers lifted to the dragon trinket again.

Valarr watched the motion.

“You always go to your neck, when you’re overwhelmed,” he said before thinking better of it.

You blinked. Looked down.

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

You considered that, rubbing the sigil thoughtfully.

“Hm,” you murmured. “I suppose I do. Although my prince, you shouldn't stare at a ladies chest so much, some may find it indecent.”

He could feel the teasing notations behind your words, but he didnt entertain it further. Settling instead to cough into this fisted hand and wait for the warmth of his cheeks to wear off.

—

The feast that evening was unavoidable.

Your nameday demanded it, music, laughter, long tables heavy with food, and a sea of eyes eager to measure, compare, and whisper. Valarr entered with practiced composure, scanning the hall without conscious intent, finding you immediately.

You sat with your family, your father at the center, your brothers flanking you like loyal guards. You looked radiant, not because of your finery (though that was impossible to ignore), but because you were comfortable. At ease. Laughing openly.

Valarr realized, distantly, that he was smiling.

“Careful,” Baelor murmured beside him. “You’re staring son.”

Valarr straightened. “I was not.”

Baelor’s expression said everything.

Valarr, wanting to ignore his father, made his way toward the high table, intending to sit where protocol dictated. Halfway there, you glanced up.

Your eyes met his. You smiled small, and unmistakably meant for him.

Valarr changed course without even noticing he’d done it. By the time he realized, he was seated beside you.

Your brothers exchanged a look. Daeron raised a brow, and Aerion narrowed his eyes.

You, blissfully unaware, leaned closer.

“I was hoping you’d sit here my prince,” you said.

Valarr felt the words settle into him like a promise.

“Was that so?”

“Yes,” you replied simply. “You make this all fuss feel much less loud.”

Conversation flowed easily, about things he had truly no interest in. Although when you would talk he'd find himself straining his ears just to hear you a little clearer. You spoke of Summerhall, of books you’d borrowed and not yet returned, of how strange it felt to be celebrated so publicly. Valarr listened, found himself answering with more honesty than he ever offered at court.

At one point, Aerion leaned in.

“So,” he said, tone deceptively casual, “dear cousin, how long have you two known each other?”

Valarr hesitated.

You answered first.

“Oh, not long brother,” you said. “We just keep running into each other.”

Daeron snorted. “Funny how that happens.”

Valarr hid a smile behind his cup. Your fingers found the trinket again as laughter rose around you. He noticed how you stilled slightly when someone down the table laughed too loudly. How your grip tightened just a fraction.

—

After the feast, Valarr told himself, again, that he would sleep early. Instead, at the dead of night, he found himself wandering. The corridors were quieter now, torches casting long shadows across stone. He passed servants and guards, nodded politely, turned corners without thinking.

And then, there you were.

Seated on a window bench, skirts gathered around you, moonlight painting silver into your hair. You looked up at the sound of his steps and smiled as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

“Do you ever sleep?” you asked.

Valarr laughed softly. “Rarely.”

You shifted to make room. He joined you without hesitation. For a while, neither of you spoke. The silence was companionable. Comfortable in a way Valarr had rarely known.

“I think,” you said at last, “that the Red Keep is playing tricks on us.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” you continued. “It keeps putting you in my way.”

Valarr glanced at you, amused.

“Or,” he said lightly, “you’re really following me.”

You laughed. “You’re impossible.”

He liked the way you said that.

Your hand drifted, again, always, to the dragon at your neckline. You rubbed the thread slowly, thoughtfully, eyes distant. Valarr watched, heart tight.

“You don’t remember where you got it,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, you shook your head in response.

“No. I’ve asked before. No one seems to know. It’s always just been with me.”

He swallowed.

“Do you mind that?”

You considered.

“No,” you said finally. “Some things don’t need explanations.”

Valarr thought of a baby’s grip, of laughter, of a torn sigil mended too carefully to discard.

“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “Some things don’t.”

Later, when Valarr finally did return to his chambers, he paused before the mirror. His gaze dropped, unconsciously, to the dragon over his heart.

He smiled faintly.

Across the keep, you slept with the trinket curled in your fingers, unaware of the pattern you were weaving.

And somewhere between chance and intention, between memory and instinct. The prince who kept finding you realized something dangerous. He didn’t want to stop.

—

Valarr did not believe he was flirting.

That was the first and most critical misunderstanding.

From his perspective, he was being thoughtful. Attentive in a way befitting someone who had been told, rather unhelpfully, that you were important. He listened when you spoke. He answered when you asked. He made sure you were comfortable, and safe.

None of that, in his mind, constituted flirting.

It did, however, result in him saying things like—

“You…walk very quietly.”

You paused mid-step, turned to look at him, and burst out laughing.

“That is a compliment?” you asked.

Valarr felt heat rush to his face.

“I meant,” he said quickly, “that you move without-without drawing attention. It’s…efficient.”

“Efficient,” you repeated, eyes bright with amusement. “How flattering.”

He winced. “That came out wrong.”

You smiled anyway, and that somehow made it worse.

From then on, it only escalated. Valarr overthought everything.

Every word was weighed twice. If he spoke too much, he worried he’d bored you. If he spoke too little, he feared he’d offended you. If you smiled for longer than a heartbeat, he went quiet, convinced he’d said something foolish and you were being kind about it.

You, meanwhile, assumed this was simply how he was. Polite, reserved, and earnest Valarr, in an almost awkward way.

You found it endearing. Everyone else found it obvious.

Daeron noticed first.

It happened during a late afternoon walk along the inner ramparts. You were speaking animatedly about a book you’d borrowed—still hadn’t returned, Valarr noted—and he was listening with the kind of focus usually reserved for council matters.

Daeron watched him for a long moment, then leaned closer to you.

“He looks at you like you’re the only person in the keep sister,” your brother murmured.

You blinked. “He does not.”

Daeron hummed skeptically.

Aerion noticed next, and was far less subtle about it.

“So,” he said one evening, arms crossed as Valarr approached. “Is this intentional?”

Valarr stiffened. “Is what intentional?”

“This,” Aerion gestured vaguely between the two of you. “The constant proximity. The hovering around my sister.”

Valarr opened his mouth. Closed it.

“I am not hovering,” he said finally.

Aerion’s gaze sharpened. “You haven’t been more than three steps away from her all evening.”

You laughed, nudging Aerion’s arm. “You’re imagining things brother.”

Aerion looked unconvinced, but said nothing more.

Your father noticed.

Maekar watched the way Valarr adjusted his pace to match yours, during your now daily strolls in the garden with the prince. The way he angled his body toward you, shielding it, he obviously did so without realizing it. The way his expression softened when you laughed.

He had said nothing.

Your mother noticed, and smiled.

She noticed the unconscious gestures. The way your fingers always found the dragon when Valarr was near. The way his eyes followed that motion, every time, as though it were something precious. If it was any man she'd have him beheaded for looking at the princess in such an inappropriate manner.

She did not intervene.

Valarr, meanwhile, was miserable.

He stood in his father’s study one evening, hands clasped tightly behind his back, pacing in short, agitated turns.

“I don’t think she knows I like her,” he said finally.

Baelor looked up from his writing, expression unreadable.

“She doesn’t?”

“No,” Valarr said, running a hand through his hair. “She’s kind. She laughs. She speaks to me easily. I think she assumes I’m merely, being polite.”

Baelor studied him for a long moment.

“You escort her everywhere.”

“Yes, but—”

“You seek her out daily.”

“That’s coincidence.”

Valarr hesitated.

Baelor set his quill down.

“Valarr,” he said gently, “my son you are courting her in plain sight.”

Valarr froze.

“I am?”

Baelor smiled.

“You compliment her, terribly,” he added. “You grow flustered when she teases you. You go quiet when she smiles at you too long, and you look at her like she already belongs beside you.”

Valarr stared at him, horrified.

“That’s-” he stopped, swallowing. “That’s obvious?”

“To everyone but you and her it seems,” Baelor replied.

Valarr sank into a chair, covering his face with one hand.

“She deserves someone-,” he muttered. “-Someone who knows what he’s doing.”

Baelor chuckled softly.

“She deserves someone who sees her,” he said. “And you do.”

The realization hit Valarr slowly. Every interaction replayed itself in his mind with new clarity.

The garden. The library. The corridors. The way you smiled when you saw him. The way your fingers curled around the dragon without thinking.

He had been courting you.

Not with grand gesture, with care. The next time he saw you, he was acutely aware of it.

You approached him in the courtyard, sunlight warming the stone beneath your feet. “There you are,” you said easily.

Valarr’s heart stumbled. “Here I am,” he replied.

You smiled at him, that same unguarded smile, and for once, he didn’t look away.

“Can I walk with you?” he asked. You didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

And as your fingers drifted, once again, to the familiar trinket at your neckline. Valarr thought, with equal parts terror and certainty.

Seven help me. I am in love with her.

—

The solar was quiet in the way only old stone rooms could be, thick walls holding in the warmth of the afternoon, shutters half-drawn against the sun. Baelor stood near the window, hands clasped loosely behind his back, gaze fixed not on the city beyond but on the reflection in the glass.

Maekar did not sit. He never did, not when something mattered.

“You wished to speak brother,” Maekar said, arms crossed, voice level. “So speak.”

Baelor turned slowly, studying him. He had known Maekar his entire life, knew the set of his shoulders when he was bracing, the way his jaw tightened when he expected to be challenged.

“This concerns your daughter,” Baelor said evenly.

Maekar’s expression hardened at once.

“Then you should choose your words carefully.”

Baelor inclined his head slightly. “I intend to.”

Silence stretched between them.

“She is remarkable,” Baelor continued. “Unaffected by court in a way few are."

“She is young,” Maekar replied sharply.

Baelor did not argue that.

“I have no intention of rushing anything,” he said. “But I would be remiss not to acknowledge what is already plain.”

Maekar’s eyes narrowed. “Plain to whom?”

“To anyone with eyes,” Baelor said quietly. “Valarr, most of all.”

That did it. Maekar let out a low breath through his nose, something between a scoff and a warning.

“My daughter is not a consolation prize for a prince who happens to notice her,” he said. “Nor is she a political convenience.”

Baelor held his gaze steadily. “I would never suggest my niece to be that.”

“She has brothers who would tear this keep apart for her,” Maekar went on. “She has a father who has bled for this family. I will not hand her over lightly.”

“I would expect nothing less,” Baelor replied.

Another silence.

“She is fond of him,” Baelor added carefully. “Even if she does not yet know what that means.” Maekar’s jaw tightened.

“And what of Valarr?” he asked. “Is he fond, or merely intrigued?”

Baelor did not answer immediately. “He is…earnest in his affection,” he said at last. “In ways that do not always serve him well. He is thoughtful to a fault. He remembers things others forget.”

Maekar’s brow furrowed. “Such as?”

Baelor hesitated only a moment. “She wore something today,” he said. “A small dragon. Worn with age.”

Maekar stiffened. “That trinket,” Baelor continued, “once belonged to Valarr. Or rather, she took it from him.”

Maekar stared. “She was a baby,” Baelor added. “She grabbed the sigil from his chest and would not let go. We thought nothing of it at the time.”

Maekar said nothing. “Valarr did not forget,” Baelor finished quietly.

The silence that followed was heavier than before. Maekar turned away, pacing once across the room, boots striking stone. When he spoke again, his voice was lower.

“She does not remember,” he said. “She knows nothing of that moment.”

“No,” Baelor agreed. “But she repeats it.”

“She touches the dragon whenever she is overwhelmed,” Baelor said. “Without knowing why, and my son, Valarr notices every time.”

Maekar closed his eyes briefly.

“That does not mean I will give my consent,” he said. “I have seen what the crown does to good men. I will not watch my daughter be swallowed by it.”

Baelor nodded. “Nor would I.”

Maekar looked at him sharply. “Then why are we having this conversation?”

“Because,” Baelor said gently, “whether we sanction it or not, something has already begun.”

Maekar’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

“She deserves a choice,” he said.

“So does Valarr,” Baelor replied. “And he has made none lightly.”

Maekar studied him for a long moment. “You speak as though this is decided.”

“No,” Baelor said. “I speak as a father who sees his son walking into something that matters, and I am speaking to another father who would burn the realm before seeing his daughter harmed.”

That, at least, Maekar understood.

“She will not be pressured,” Maekar said firmly. “She will not be paraded. If Valarr wishes anything from her, he will earn it."

Baelor smiled faintly. “I would expect nothing else.”

Maekar turned toward the door, then paused. “If he hurts her,” he said without looking back, “he will answer to me. Crown or no crown.”

Baelor met his back with calm certainty. “He knows.”

Maekar left without another word.

Baelor remained by the window long after. Some bonds, it seemed, did not need memory. Only time.

—

By the final days of your nameday celebrations, the Red Keep no longer felt like a palace.

You had lost track of how many feasts had been held in your honor. How many gifts had been pressed into your hands. How many times servants had bowed too deeply or courtiers had smiled too brightly, their eyes lingering just a moment too long.

Your father indulged you through all of it.

When you complained of sore feet, he waved off protocol and had chairs brought where there should not have been any. When you grew tired of sweet wines, he ordered something lighter without question. When you asked to walk the ramparts late at night, he assigned guards but did not forbid you.

“She’s had enough ceremony for a lifetime,” he said once, flatly.

Your brothers hovered relentlessly.

Daeron teased you about the attention, about how often your name was spoken in halls not meant for it. Aerion said less, but stood closer, watched harder.

Attendants fussed like it was their sole purpose in life. Everyday their were new gowns, new ribbons, new jewels, and endless adjustments.

—

Valarr had never hated celebration more.

Not because of the noise or the spectacle, he had been raised in it, but because celebration demanded visibility ,and with visibility came the scrutiny. And over the course of the week, every look he cast your way felt noticed.

He had not intended for things to become so obvious.

He had not intended to escort you so often, to linger so long, to learn the rhythms of your presence the way one learned music, without effort, without realizing it had happened.

Yet here he was, standing beside you again as musicians played softly in the gardens, torchlight flickering against stone.

“You look tired,” he said, immediately regretting it.

“I am,” you admitted cheerfully. “But it’s a pleasant sort of tired.”

“You’ve been generous with your time,” Valarr said.

You laughed softly. “As if I had a choice.” Your fingers, like oppositely charged magnets attracted towards the sigil at your neck.

Valarr’s gaze followed the motion before he could stop himself. You noticed this time.

Instead, you smiled. “You keep looking at it,” you said.

“I-” Valarr stopped, then exhaled. “I’m sorry, it’s familiar.”

“So you’ve said.”

He hesitated. “Do you ever wonder where it came from?”

“You've also asked that many times," you laughed lightly. “It is all the time I wonder, but I don’t mind not knowing.”

He wondered if you ever would.

—

By the sixth evening, no one pretended anymore.

Servants seated Valarr beside you without asking, musicians timed quieter songs for moments when you two would grace the dance floor. Courtiers bowed a fraction deeper when addressing the two of you as a unit.

—

It was late when you found yourselves alone in a quieter corridor, the sounds of celebration distant. Torches cast long shadows; the keep felt hushed, expectant.

“Valarr,” you said suddenly.

He turned to you at once. “Yes?”

“You’ve been…different,” you said carefully. “This week.”

His heart stuttered. “Different how?”

You considered, fingers worrying the three dragon’s.

“Like you’re thinking several things at once,” you said. “And none of them are simple.”

He laughed quietly. “You’re perceptive.”

“I have good teachers,” you replied.

Silence settled.

“There’s something happening,” you said slowly. “Isn’t there?”

Valarr’s instincts screamed to protect you from it, from politics, from expectation, from the weight of what was coming.

“Yes,” he said honestly. “There is.”

You looked up at him, searching his face. “And does it frighten you?”

He met your gaze. “Yes.”

That answer surprised you. “And yet,” you said softly, “you’re still here.”

Valarr’s voice was very quiet. “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

—

Baelor stood beside Maekar in the high gallery overlooking the hall below. The music swelled. You stood among the guests.

“And if she says no?” Maekar asked bluntly.

Baelor did not look away from the scene below. “Then we listen,” he said. “And Valarr will learn to accept it.”

Maekar nodded once. “She will be told tonight,” he said. “Not as an order.”

“No,” Baelor agreed. “As a possible match for the future.”

Maekar exhaled slowly. “My daughter deserves nothing but joy,” he said.

Baelor’s gaze shifted, just briefly, to Valarr, standing close at your side, speaking quietly. “She may have found it already brother.”

—

The final feast of your nameday week was grander than the rest. Banners hung high. The hall glowed with torchlight. The air buzzed, not with celebration alone, but anticipation.

You sensed it. Something about the way servants moved more carefully. The way your mother adjusted your sleeves herself. The way your father’s expression was unreadable.

Valarr felt it too.

When he offered you his arm, his hand trembled just slightly. “Whatever happens,” he said quietly, “I hope you know-”

The music swelled suddenly. A hush began to ripple through the hall. Baelor rose, and your father straightened.

Somewhere deep in your chest, the dragon trinket warmed beneath your fingers.

The hush had crept over the celebrations.

Conversation softened, laughter thinned, the musicians’ tempo slowed until even they seemed to sense it, bows drawing more gently, notes stretching longer than intended. One by one, heads turned toward the high table.

You felt it before you understood it.

Your fingers tightened around the dragon trinket at your throat, the familiarity pressing into your skin. The warmth there steadied you, even as something in the air shifted.

Valarr noticed immediately.

He had been speaking to you, something small, something meant to distract, but the moment Baelor rose, his words faltered. He straightened without thinking, shoulders squaring, expression composed with effort rather than ease.

Your father stood as well.

Baelor waited until the hall was fully still before he spoke.

“Lords and ladies of the realm,” he said, voice carrying easily through the vast space. “We gather tonight to mark the close of a week of celebration, one honoring the nameday of a daughter of House Targaryen, my lovely neice.”

A polite murmur followed.

You felt suddenly visible in a way you had not all week.

Baelor continued.

“It is fitting,” he said, “that such a celebration should also look forward, toward the future of our house, and the bonds that will strengthen it.”

Valarr’s heart began to pound. slow and heavy.

This was it.

He had known it was coming. Had felt it circling the edges of every conversation, every look, every carefully chosen word. And yet, the reality of it struck him all at once, sharp and breathless.

You glanced at him then, not in fear, more so in question.

Oh his sweet girl, he wishes he hide you away now, to not bother yourself with these pagentrys. But he could not, all he could do now was squeeze your hand slightly under the table.

Valarr met your gaze and held it, Whatever happens, his eyes seemed to say, I am here.

Baelor turned slightly, gesturing.

“It is with the blessing of both families,” he said evenly, “that we announce a betrothal.”

Your breath caught.

Maekar spoke then, voice firm and unyielding.

“My daughter,” he said, “has been raised with choice, with care, and with the understanding that her happiness is not a thing to be traded lightly.”

Your heart thundered.

Valarr’s chest felt tight.

Maekar turned fully now, his gaze sweeping the hall before settling, briefly, deliberately, on Valarr.

“She will be wed to a man who has shown her respect,” he continued, “who has sought her company without demand, and who understands the weight of what it means to stand beside her.”

A pause.

Then Baelor finished it.

“To my son, Prince Valarr Targaryen.”

The hall erupted.

A whirl it was, all the whispers rushing like wind through banners. Gasps, and murmurs. The rustle of silk as courtiers leaned closer, already weaving narratives in their minds.

You did not hear any of it, you were staring at Valarr.

He was staring at you.

For one suspended heartbeat, the world narrowed to the space between you.

Your fingers clenched around the dragon.

Valarr swallowed.

“I-” you began, then stopped.

Daeron reacted first.

He leaned back in his chair, exhaling sharply through his nose, a crooked smile tugging at his mouth.

“Well,” he muttered, just loud enough for Aerion to hear, “that explains a great deal.”

Your mother reached for your hand. You realized then that she had known.

“How long?” you whispered, not looking away from Valarr.

She squeezed your other hand gently. “Long enough.”

Baelor raised his hand, the hall gradually settling again.

“This betrothal,” he said clearly, “is made with the understanding that it honors not only tradition but prosperity for the realm.”

Valarr felt his lungs finally draw breath.

You turned toward your father. Maekar’s gaze softened carefully.

“My dear girl, you are not commanded,” he said quietly, meant only for you. “this is an offering.”

You looked back at Valarr. He had gone still, utterly still, waiting.

“I accept,” you said. The words felt solid in your mouth.

The hall erupted properly this time.

Cheers, applause, exclamations too loud to track.

Valarr’s breath left him in a rush so sharp it nearly made him laugh. He bowed his head, briefly, respectfully, then turned back to you.

His voice, when he spoke, was quiet. Almost reverent. “Are you certain?”

You smiled. “Yes.”

Your fingers relaxed, then, without thinking, reached for his sleeve.

Just for a moment, the same way you had when you were a babe.

—

Later, much later, you stood together on a balcony overlooking the city, the noise of celebration dimmed by distance.

Neither of you spoke for a while.

Finally, you laughed softly. “So,” you said. “I suppose this explains why everyone’s been looking at us strangely.”

Valarr huffed a breath of a laugh. “I was told I was courting you.”

You glanced at him. “Were you?”

He considered. “Yes,” he said honestly. “Very badly.”

You laughed again, leaning closer. “I didn’t mind.”

Moonlight caught the dragon at your throat.

Valarr reached out, hesitant, and careful, and brushed his fingers lightly against it.

“You took this from me once,” he said softly.

You blinked. “I'm sorry?” Clearly not understanding his words.

He smiled, warm. "You were only a few moons old, when Lady Dyanna had me hold you, you found the symbol on my chest so captivating you had to have it. So you did, taking it right from my doublet."

Your face grew slightly red, facing the view instead of the prince in front of you. To ashamed to think you had done something so egregious in your early years. "Did I really?"

“Yes,” he said. “And I think I’ve been waiting for you to return it ever since.”

You did not pull away, some bonds, after all, did not need memory.

Only time.

They said you had been born at dawn. Not merely in the hour before the sun rose, no, for court never left a simple thing unadorned when beauty might be made from it. They said the eastern sky had opened like a pomegranate, red and gold spilling over Blackwater Bay. They said the clouds had caught fire. They said your first cry had come just as the first light touched the towers, and that Prince Baelor Targaryen, called Breakspear by men who loved courage more than crowns, had wept when they placed you in his arms.

That part was true.

Baelor had been young enough then for wonder still to wound him. He had taken you from the midwife with hands more suited to sword and lance than cradlecloth, and when you opened your eyes, violet as dusk seen through wine, he had gone still. There were men who looked upon their daughters and saw alliances. Baelor looked upon you and saw judgment. A thing so small, so breakable, so entirely his to protect that it terrified him.

“My little star,” he had whispered, and bent his brow to yours as though swearing fealty.

Afterward, songs were made of that too.

The realm adored making songs of you. It had begun before you could walk, before you could speak, before you understood that adoration was only another kind of hunger. You were Baelor Breakspear’s daughter, and that alone would have been enough to turn eyes toward you. But you had also been born with the old Valyrian beauty in its cruelest form, the kind that made people forget themselves. Pale silver and gold hair, soft as poured light. Eyes dark violet and bright together, changeful as twilight over a blade. Skin the court ladies called pearl, though pearls were duller. A face too composed in repose, too vivid in anger, too radiant when you smiled.

By the time you were twelve, singers had compared you to moonrise, maidenhood, dragonfire, and dawn. By the time you were fourteen, men old enough to have sons your age had begun watching your hands at feasts. By the time you were flowered and marriageable, half the realm had learned to say your name softly, as though gentleness might disguise ambition.

They wanted you beautifully. That was the trick of it. No man ever said plainly that your hand would bind him closer to Baelor, that your father’s honor would gild his house, that your blood would strengthen his children’s claim to old Valyria’s vanishing glory. No lord confessed aloud that to marry you would be to marry a song, a banner, a promise, a piece of the realm’s faith in better princes. They spoke instead of admiration. Of devotion. Of courtly reverence. They begged for dances, favors, glances, permission to wear your color in the lists. They knelt before you with the faces of worshippers and the appetites of wolves.

You learned early that beauty was not softness. Beauty was coin. Beauty was command. Beauty was a gate men pressed their mouths to while dreaming of conquest. Beauty could quiet a hall more quickly than a drawn sword, if worn correctly. Beauty could excuse cruelty when cruelty smiled. Beauty could make silence seem like innocence and calculation seem like grace.

Your father knew this. Baelor Breakspear knew court too well to trust it. He watched you be praised as other men watched borders.

When knights bent too low over your hand, Baelor’s gaze cooled. When a lord’s compliments grew too warm, Baelor interrupted with courteous murder in his voice. When letters arrived from houses too proud, too hungry, too close to old grievances, he set them aside unread until morning, when temper had less chance of ruling him. He did not lock you away, for he was not a fool and you were not a jewel to be kept in a box. He let you shine. He let the realm love you.

But he stood always between you and the part of love that devoured. Or he tried. There was one hunger he had never been able to turn aside.

Aerion Targaryen had been born ten months before you, and from the first moment he was old enough to understand the insult of those months, he made a kingdom of them. Ten months, to him, was seniority. Ten months was wisdom. Ten months was a crown, a sword, a divine decree. When you were both children, he would remind you of it whenever you defied him.

“I was here first,” he would say, chin lifted, silver hair falling into eyes too bright with malice for any nursery.

“You will die first too,” you told him once.

He had stared at you, then laughed until the nurse crossed herself.

You were first cousins. Your fathers were brothers, though little else in them seemed made of the same substance. Baelor was the noble dream of the dynasty, honor given flesh, a prince who made lesser men ashamed and better men braver. Maekar was iron where Baelor was light: stern, proud, sharp edged, a man who loved his children as he loved his sword, by keeping them hard.

Aerion was Maekar’s son in bone and temper, but there was something in him that had outrun even Maekar’s severity. Something theatrical. Something fevered. Something that looked at the world and did not see people, only fuel.

The court said you and Aerion had been bound from the cradle.

That was true too, though not in the way the court meant.

When you were still swaddled and sleeping in carved wooden cradles near one another, Aerion would scream whenever you were taken away. Not cry. Scream. He had a prince’s lungs and a demon’s persistence. Wet nurses came and went with bloody bitten fingers. Maids whispered that the little prince knew when the little princess left the room even in his sleep. If your cradle was moved nearer, he quieted. If it was moved farther, he raged. If you stirred, he stirred. If you wept, he shrieked as though your grief were theft from him.

“Charming,” the ladies called it.

“Dragon children know their own,” said men who enjoyed prophecy when it cost them nothing.

Baelor did not call it charming. Even then, he watched.

You were no gentler. That was the secret everyone took years to learn, and some never learned at all. You were quieter than Aerion, but quiet was not mercy. He was flame leaping openly from dry wood; you were the coal hidden under ash, waiting for breath.

When he stole your painted wooden dragon, you did not cry. You waited three days, smiling sweetly through lessons and prayers, until you found his favorite ivory horse unattended beside a window. Then you dropped it from the tower stairs and watched it break upon the stones below.

Aerion found you there, looking down.

“You broke it,” he said.

“You stole from me,” you answered.

His face twisted, not with grief, but with furious delight.

“I shall tell.”

“Tell,” you said. “I shall weep. They will believe me.”

He lunged at you then, small hands clawing, and you struck him across the mouth with your little fist hard enough to split his lip. Blood shone red against his teeth. A nurse shrieked. Aerion touched his mouth, looked at the blood on his fingers, and smiled at you as if you had given him a jewel.

“There you are,” he said.

He could not have known what the words would become. He was a child then, beautiful and wicked and half formed, with blood on his mouth and wonder in his eyes. But some phrases are born older than the mouths that speak them. Some vows choose children before children know the shape of vows.

After that, he followed you everywhere. Not gently. Never gently.

If you walked in the gardens, he appeared between the hedges with burrs in his hair and mud on his boots, accusing you of abandoning him. If you sat with your septa, he found ways to ruin the lesson, dipping quills in ink and drawing little black dragons along the margins of your prayer book. If a page made you laugh, Aerion tripped him before supper. If a lordling offered you a sugar plum, Aerion snatched it from your hand, took one bite, and crushed the rest beneath his heel.

“You cannot eat what is given by sheep,” he told you.

“You are very tiresome for someone so grand,” you said.

“I am a dragon.”

“You are a boy with dirty fingernails.”

He shoved you into a rosebush for that.

You came out bleeding from three scratches along your forearm, your gown torn, your silver hair caught with thorns. The gardener gasped. The nurse began to cry. Aerion stood very still, perhaps realizing too late that he had damaged what the court treated as sacred.

You looked at the blood. Then at him. Then you laughed. Not because it did not hurt. It did. But pain, you discovered, could be made into a throne if one refused to kneel before it. Aerion’s face changed. The fear vanished. Something hotter took its place.

You pulled a thorn from your sleeve and pressed it into his palm until he hissed and bled.

“Now we match,” you said.

For years, that was the shape of you.

The court saw two dragon children, wild in the way noble children were permitted to be wild before decorum was strapped upon them like armor. They saw silver heads bent together over cyvasse boards. They saw you racing through halls where kings had walked, your slippers silent and Aerion’s boots loud behind you. They saw him tug your braid and you smile like a saint before stepping on his foot hard enough to make him curse. They saw quarrels. They saw laughter. They saw blood sometimes, yes, but royal children were strange, and Targaryen children stranger still.

They did not see what Baelor saw.

They did not see the day Aerion found a beetle with a cracked shell and declared himself its king because it could not flee him. He placed it in the center of the nursery table and built a court around it from broken toys. A headless doll for a queen, a wooden knight without legs, a cracked cup for a throne. He commanded the beetle to bow.

“It cannot hear you,” you said.

“Then it is treasonous.”

You were seven. He was nearly eight and carried those ten months like a drawn dagger.

He lifted his hand to crush it.

You caught his wrist.

For a moment the two of you only stared at each other, violet eyes against violet eyes, old blood looking into its own dark mirror.

“Do not,” you said.

Aerion sneered. “Have you grown tender?”

“No.” You plucked the beetle from the table, carried it to the open window, and let it fall into the garden below. “I only wanted to be the one who decided.”

Aerion went silent. Then he kissed your knuckles. Not with sweetness. Not with innocence. With ceremony. As though you had done something worthy of homage.

The nurse, entering too late, saw only a prince bowing over a princess’s hand and clasped her own hands to her breast.

“How dear,” she whispered.

You and Aerion looked at each other and smiled.

When you were nine, you dared him to climb the broken outer wall above the training yard after rain had slicked the stones dark. He climbed because he would rather have fallen and cracked his skull than let you call him afraid. Halfway up, his foot slipped. For one sharp moment he hung by both hands, face white, boots scraping empty air. Below, boys shouted. A master at arms cursed. Someone ran for help.

You stood nearest, looking up at him with your heart hammering so hard it felt like joy.

“Beg,” you called.

Aerion bared his teeth. “Never.”

“Then fall.”

He laughed, wild and breathless, and hauled himself up by sheer spite. When he reached the top, soaked and shaking, he looked down at you as though he had conquered a kingdom. You climbed after him before anyone could stop you, your skirts torn to ribbons, your palms rubbed raw by stone. Baelor arrived just as Aerion pulled you over the parapet.

Your father’s face was the color of death. The rage came later. First came fear, and fear in Baelor Breakspear was more terrible than anger in lesser men. He did not shout before the guards. He did not strike Aerion, though for one moment his hand flexed as if it remembered every sword it had ever held. He only lifted you down from the wall himself, set you upon the ground, and cupped your face between both hands.

You had blood on your palms. Mud on your cheek. A torn sleeve. A smile you had not yet remembered to hide. Baelor saw it. That was the first time you understood that your father’s love had eyes.

“My star,” he said softly, and the softness made you look away. “There is no courage in courting the Stranger for sport.”

“It was only a climb.”

“It was a test.” His gaze flicked to Aerion, who stood rigid under Maekar’s grip. “And tests are not harmless because children name them games.”

Aerion’s mouth curled. “She wanted to climb.”

Baelor did not look away from you. “I know.”

That hurt worse than if he had blamed Aerion alone.

Later, in your chamber, as the maester wrapped your palms in linen, Baelor sat beside you and told you of dragons. Not the way singers told it, with wings blotting out suns and kings kneeling in ash. He told you of reins. Saddles. Commands. The bond between beast and rider. The discipline of guiding fire.

“A dragon left to hunger becomes a ruin,” he said.

You watched his hands. Broad, scarred, gentle. “I am not a dragon.”

“No,” he said, after too long a pause. “You are my daughter.”

That should have been answer enough. It was not. Because Aerion heard the same stories and learned the opposite lesson. To him, dragons did not require reins. They were not meant to bow beneath saddles, nor answer little men with little laws. Dragons took. Dragons burned. Dragons proved themselves by leaving marks upon the world. He grew beautiful in that belief, as poisonous flowers grow beautiful by drinking from graves.

By twelve, he had learned courtesy well enough to insult without consequence. By thirteen, he knew which servants feared him and which could be made to fear him. By fourteen, he smiled like a prince before fathers and septons, then turned in private with cruelty still warm beneath his skin. He was not mad in the way fools were mad. He was worse. He understood enough of the rules to know when he was breaking them.

And you understood him. That was the sin beneath all the others.

You understood the thrill he took in making the world flinch. You understood why obedience bored him, why gentleness offended him, why a person who would not resist seemed hardly alive at all. You despised his clumsier cruelties, not because they were cruel, but because they lacked art. Aerion was a torch thrown into dry straw. You preferred candles placed carefully beneath silk curtains, so that by the time anyone smelled smoke, the room was already doomed.

Once, when a young lady of House Darklyn mocked the Dornish cut of one of your gowns, you did not answer. You lowered your eyes. You let your mouth tremble. The court saw wounded sweetness and gathered around you in outrage. By sunset, the girl’s mother had apologized twice, her father had withdrawn a petition, and the girl herself stood red-eyed beside the fountain while you kissed her cheek and forgave her before half the court.

Aerion found you afterward in the godswood, though the Red Keep’s heart tree was pale and carved and strange beneath southern skies.

“You should have slapped her,” he said.

You adjusted the fall of your sleeve. “Then she would have been pitied.”

“She cried.”

“Yes.”

“You liked that.”

You looked at him. He was leaning against a tree, dressed in black and red, silver hair loose at his forehead messily, his face almost too lovely to belong to anything human. That had always been the trouble with him. Aerion looked as a prince in a tapestry ought to look, bright and dreadful, the sort of figure maidens dreamed of before waking afraid. His eyes shone when he was amused. They shone brighter when he was cruel.

“You would have made her bleed,” you said.

“I still might.”

“How vulgar.”

His smile widened. “There you are.”

You hated when he said that. You loved when he said that.

No one else spoke to the hidden thing in you so directly. The court praised your grace, your beauty, your modesty, your perfect courtesy. Your father praised your wit, your discipline, your strength when strength was yoked to honor. But Aerion looked at the pretty mask the realm had painted upon your face and laughed as though he could see your teeth beneath it.

You were not a fool. You knew what he was. You had seen him order a stableboy to hold a coal in his bare hand because the boy had laughed when Aerion slipped in mud. You had seen him draw his dagger over a table during supper, carving wings into the polished wood while an old lord pretended not to notice. You had seen him smile and laugh when men grew uncomfortable. You had heard him speak of smallfolk as though they were weather. You had watched his pride swell into something deformed whenever the word dragon left his mouth.

And still, when he entered a room, some part of you woke.

Baelor saw that too. Your father’s protection changed as you grew. When you were small, he shielded your body from falls, blades, fevers, careless hands. When you became beautiful, truly beautiful, the kind of beautiful that moved through court like a drawn curtain revealing fire behind it, he shielded your future.

Suitors came first in trickles, then in tides. A Baratheon cousin asked for permission to wear your favor in a melee and looked at your mouth instead of your eyes. Baelor refused him so politely the boy thanked him before realizing he had been dismissed. A Hightower lord sent pearls the color of milk and a letter praising your virtue with such oily precision that Baelor burned both. A Lannister wrote from Casterly Rock in phrases polished bright as coin. A Tyrell sent roses enough to drown your chamber in perfume.

You smiled over them all. Sometimes you enjoyed it. That was another truth too ugly for songs. You liked watching proud men become reverent. You liked choosing who might hope and who would be made ridiculous by hope. You liked the way ladies stiffened when their brothers stared too long. You liked knowing that your hand could alter the balance of great houses, that your glance could stir envy, that your silence could be mistaken for maidenly innocence when it was often judgment.

Baelor did not scold you for that enjoyment, which made you feel worse. Instead, one evening, he walked with you along a gallery where the dragon skulls slept in shadow below, vast and black and eyeless. Torches burned along the walls. Outside, rain tapped at the windows like fingernails.

“Power is not sin,” he said.

You glanced at him. “Have I been accused?”

“Not by others.”

You smiled faintly. “By you, then?”

“By your own face when you think no one is watching.”

That silenced you. He stopped before the skull of Meraxes, great and ruined, her empty sockets wide enough for a child to hide inside.

“You are loved,” Baelor said. “You are admired. You are desired. Those are three different things, and court will spend your life trying to confuse them.”

You looked at the dragon skull rather than him. “And what does Aerion feel?”

Baelor’s jaw tightened. There. There it was. The name neither of you had spoken, though he had walked between you from the beginning like a drawn blade.

At last your father said, “Aerion wants.”

You waited.

“He wants as fire wants,” Baelor continued. “Without gratitude. Without conscience. Without end.”

“He is my cousin.”

“Yes.”

“We are Targaryens.”

“Yes.”

That word hung there, silver and red, ancient and accursed. In other houses, blood was a wall. In yours, blood was a road. The histories were full of it. Brother to sister. Uncle to niece. Cousin to cousin. Dragonlords preserving dragonblood, kings wedding queens with the same pale hair and violet eyes, the realm protesting until victory or beauty or fear made it quiet again. You had been raised among portraits of ancestors who looked like reflections marrying reflections, their hands joined beneath painted dragons, their eyes solemn with destiny.

So Baelor did not say what another father might have said. He did not call the thought impossible. He did not pretend the blood between you and Aerion made desire unthinkable in a house built upon blood’s own vanity. That was not what frightened him.

“Aerion thinks blood absolves,” Baelor said. “He thinks being born of the dragon means never needing to become worthy of it.”

“And you?”

“I think the higher the blood, the deeper the duty.”

You looked at him then. Truly looked. He was not old, your father, though grief had not yet claimed him and Ashford had not yet opened its red mouth. He was strong still, handsome in the plain and noble way men trusted before they understood they loved him. His eyes held a gentleness that court had failed to kill. There were lines at their corners from laughter, from squinting beneath tourney suns, from worrying over the realm and over you.

“You think he will ruin me,” you said.

Baelor’s expression changed. “No.”

“No?”

“I think he will ask you to ruin yourself and call it freedom.”

You hated him a little then, for knowing. You loved him more for the same reason. That was the cruelty of Baelor Breakspear’s love. It was not blind enough to be easy. He did not worship the perfect princess as the realm did. He saw your vanity and did not turn away. He saw your temper, your hunger, your secret pleasure in being obeyed. He saw the sharpness under the silk. Yet where Aerion saw that hidden self and grinned as though finding treasure, Baelor saw it and grieved, not because he despised you, but because he believed you could master it.

Aerion never wanted you mastered. He wanted you revealed.

The year you came fully into the court’s gaze, the Red Keep changed around you. Or perhaps it had always been so, and you had only grown old enough to see the knives beneath the flowers. Feasts became theatres. Dances became negotiations. Every gown chosen by your ladies sent some message, whether you meant it or not. White made you maidenly. Red made you bold. Black made you dynastic. Blue softened you. Gold turned every singer witless. Pearls made old women sigh. Rubies made young men stupid.

You learned to enter halls slowly. Not timidly. Slowly. There was power in letting silence arrive before you reached the center of a room. Power in permitting people to look. Power in appearing unaware of the effect you had while measuring every last breath of it. You were Baelor’s daughter, yes, and the court loved you for his sake. But increasingly they loved him for yours too, because beauty rewrites loyalty in ways honor cannot.

At a harvest feast beneath a ceiling hung with red silk, Prince Valarr himself danced with you first.

Golden Valarr, your father’s son, your brother, bright with all the promise the realm had fastened upon Baelor’s line. He was courteous, handsome, beloved in that easy way Aerion hated most, as though admiration had simply come to him and laid itself at his feet. He smiled when he took your hand, brotherly or princely or both, depending on who watched and what they wished to see.

“You are causing unrest,” Valarr murmured as he led you into the dance.

You tilted your head. “By standing?”

“By standing beautifully. It is a grave offense.”

“I shall try to limp.”

“That may make it worse. Half these men would compose tragedies about the wounded swan of House Targaryen before sunrise.”

You laughed, and the hall warmed around it. Across the room, Aerion watched. He had been drinking, though not enough to blur him. Aerion never liked to be blurred. He preferred the world sharp, so that he might cut himself on it or cut others first. He stood with one shoulder against a pillar, a cup loose in his hand, black velvet at his throat, rubies like drops of hard blood along his collar. Firelight made his hair gleam white-gold. His eyes did not leave you once.

When Valarr turned you beneath his arm, Aerion smiled. It was not a pleasant smile.

Later, a Fossoway knight begged a favor for the morrow’s riding. He was young, freckled, earnest, and doomed by the hope in his face. You let him kneel. You let him speak. You let the watching ladies lean close behind their fans.

Then you drew a narrow ribbon from your sleeve, pale as moonlight, and held it just beyond his reach.

“You may wear it,” you said, “if you remember that a favor is not a promise.”

His face flushed scarlet. “Princess, I would not dare presume—”

“Men dare many things once cloth is tied around their arm.”

He swallowed. The court smiled. You tied the ribbon yourself. It meant nothing. That was why you did it.

You felt Aerion’s gaze like heat between your shoulders for the rest of the night. He waited until the feast had spilled into its softer hours, when wine had deepened voices and the musicians played slower songs. Baelor had been drawn aside by a lord with maps in his hands and worry on his brow. Valarr had gone to speak with friends. Your ladies had relaxed just enough for you to slip away beneath the pretense of air.

The terrace beyond the hall was cold. Below, the city breathed in darkness. Torches moved along the walls. Far off, the Blackwater carried moonlight in broken pieces. Above, the stars were pale and indifferent, all those cold little witnesses Baelor loved to name you after.

You had only taken three breaths before Aerion spoke.

“Did you enjoy it?”

You did not turn. “The feast?”

“The worship.”

Now you looked back. He stood in the archway, half shadowed, half lit. Beautiful as sin in a sept window. His cup was gone. His hands were empty, which made him seem more dangerous.

“I enjoy many things,” you said.

“Yes.” He stepped onto the terrace. “That is what they never understand.”

You faced the city again. “Go back inside, Aerion.”

“No.”

“I did not ask.”

“I know. I refused anyway.”

He came to stand beside you, close enough that his sleeve brushed yours. You could smell wine on him, and smoke, and the faint sharpness of the oils he used in his hair. For a moment neither of you spoke.

Then he said, “You gave him your favor.”

“I gave a ribbon to a boy who asked prettily.”

“You tied it yourself.”

“Was I meant to throw it at him?”

“You were meant not to give it.”

You laughed once, softly. “Because every ribbon in the realm belongs to you?”

His head turned. You felt it more than saw it.

“Everything of yours concerns me.”

“That is a sickness.”

“That is blood.”

You looked at him then, and there it was between you, ancient and breathing. Blood. The word that excused kings, doomed queens, built dynasties, warped cradles, joined hands, spilled brothers, crowned monsters, and made the realm swallow what it would have spat from any lesser house. Blood had placed you in the same nursery. Blood had made your fathers brothers. Blood had made your faces mirrors of old Valyria. Blood had taught Aerion that wanting you was not trespass but inheritance.

“You mistake relation for right,” you said.

His eyes glittered. “You mistake denial for virtue.”

“You are my cousin.”

“Yes.”

The word was not shame in his mouth. It was claim.

“You have been mine since before you knew words,” he said.

Your pulse struck hard once, then again.

“No,” you said.

Aerion smiled as though you had answered exactly as he wished. “You screamed when they took you from me.”

“I was an infant. Infants scream.”

“I screamed louder.”

“You still do.”

His smile sharpened. “Careful.”

“Or what? You will push me into roses again? Frighten another servant? Poor Aerion, forever proving himself fearsome to people too low to answer.”

The air changed. It always did when you cut too near the bone.

His face stilled, and the boy from the nursery looked out through the prince’s beauty: the child with blood on his teeth, the little tyrant commanding beetles, the creature who had hung from wet stone and laughed rather than beg. Only now he was taller than you, stronger, nearer to manhood than boyhood, with malice refined by years of practice.

“You think yourself above fear because men kiss your hand,” he said.

“I think myself above you because I do not need to announce I am a dragon every time I enter a room.”

His hand closed around your wrist. Hard enough to bruise. Hard enough to remind. You looked down at his fingers, then up at him.

“Let go.”

“No.”

“Aerion.”

He leaned closer. “Say it again.”

“What?”

“That I am not a dragon.”

You should have stopped. You knew the shape of the precipice. You knew Baelor’s warnings. You knew Aerion’s pride was not armor but a wound dressed in scales. You knew, too, with a thrill that made you hate yourself, that no one else in the world would let you be this cruel and call it truth.

So you smiled.

“You are a prince desperate to be a dragon,” you said. “That is not the same thing.”

For one heartbeat, you thought he might strike you. Instead, you struck him. The sound cracked across the terrace, small and bright and vicious. His face turned with it. Your palm burned. A red mark bloomed along his cheek, stark against the pale perfection of him.

Inside the hall, no one noticed. The music swelled. Laughter rose and fell. The court went on worshipping itself.

Aerion slowly turned back to you. His eyes were alight.

“There you are,” he whispered.

You hated the words. You had always hated them, because they reached past gown and jewel and courtesy, past Baelor’s little star, past the realm’s perfect princess, past every song ever made to cage you in beauty. There you are. As if he had hunted you through yourself and found the door unguarded. As if the cruelest, proudest, truest part of you had lifted its head at his call.

“You know nothing of me,” you said, but your voice had changed.

“I know what they do not.” His fingers loosened from your wrist only to rise to your face. He did not touch you gently. He touched you as though testing whether silk could burn. “I know the look in your eyes when men kneel. I know you smiled when that girl cried by the fountain. I know you wanted me to fall from the wall before you wanted me saved. I know every pretty lie they tell about you, and I know the thing beneath it that listens.”

“You know what you want to see.”

“I see you.”

“No.” The word came quickly. Too quickly. “My father sees me.”

At that, something ugly passed through Aerion’s face.

“Baelor sees a star,” he said. “Something distant. Bright. Untouched. He would hang you in the sky if he could, where no hand could reach you and no desire could stain you.”

“He loves me.”

“Yes.” Aerion’s mouth curved. “That is his weakness.”

“And what is yours?”

His gaze dropped to your lips.

The answer was there before he spoke it.

“You,” he said.

It should have sounded soft. From another man, perhaps it would have. From Aerion it sounded like a threat made before witnesses, though the stars were the only witnesses and they had seen worse from your house.

“You do not love,” you said.

“I do not love like sheep love.”

“You do not love at all. You claim.”

“Yes.”

The honesty of it robbed you of breath. He moved then, sudden as flame catching oil, and kissed you.

It was not sweet. Nothing about Aerion had ever been sweet except his face when he wished to deceive. The kiss was anger, recognition, conquest, punishment. His hand slid to the back of your neck, not pleading but holding. You should have pulled away. You should have thought of your father. You should have thought of the ribbon tied around some foolish knight’s arm, of Baelor’s careful warnings, of blood as burden rather than permission.

For one moment, you thought of nothing. Or no, that was not true. You thought: so this is fire. And worse, far worse, you answered. Not softly. Not innocently. You answered with the same violence with which you had once broken his ivory horse, the same pride with which you had laughed bleeding in the rosebushes, the same secret hunger you hid beneath pearls and lowered lashes. Your hand fisted in his doublet. His breath caught. Aerion, who made servants tremble and boys bleed and lords uneasy, trembled once beneath your touch. That pleased you. The knowledge of your pleasure frightened you more than the kiss.

When you tore yourself away, both of you were breathing hard. The mark of your hand still burned on his cheek. His mouth was red. His eyes were almost black.

“You see?” he said.

You wanted to slap him again. You wanted to kiss him again. You wanted to run to your father and confess like a child with bloodied palms. You wanted to stay exactly where you were until the terrace burned down around you.

Then Baelor called your name. Not loudly. He did not need to shout. Your father stood in the archway.

For a moment, the world narrowed to three Targaryens beneath the moon: Baelor in the light from the hall, noble and still; Aerion beside you in the cold, smiling with your handprint on his face; and you between them, beautiful enough to be forgiven, proud enough to be damned.

Baelor’s eyes went first to your mouth. Then to Aerion’s cheek. Then to your face. He did not speak Aerion’s name. Somehow that was worse.

“My daughter,” he said, and the tenderness in it cut deeper than accusation. “Come inside.”

You went. Of course you went. Each step toward him felt like waking from one dream into another. The warmth of the hall touched your skin. Music returned. Voices rose. The court was still there, jeweled and hungry, unaware that anything had shifted. Men still watched you and thought you perfect. Ladies still measured your gown. Knights still hoped for favors. Singers still prepared to make you into something simpler than flesh.

Baelor offered his arm. You took it. His hand covered yours, warm and steady. For a moment you were small again, palms wrapped in linen, listening to him speak of dragons and reins. You wanted to tell him everything. You wanted to say that he had been right, that Aerion was fire without conscience, that the danger had teeth and violet eyes and knew your hidden name. You wanted to say you were sorry. But sorry for what? For the kiss? For wanting it? For being seen?

Baelor bent his head slightly, his voice for you alone.

“My little star,” he said.

The name broke something in you. Because stars were distant. Stars were pure because no one could touch them. Stars burned alone where men could admire them safely.

But across the hall, Aerion had followed. He stood at the terrace arch, the red mark of your hand bright upon his cheek, his eyes fixed on you with a look older than desire and darker than love. When your gaze met his, he lifted a cup from a passing servant’s tray and raised it slightly. Not in apology. Not in farewell. In vow.

And in that glittering hall, beneath dragon banners and candleflame, with your father’s loving hand closed over yours and Aerion’s claim burning from across the room, you understood the first cruel truth of your life. You were Baelor Breakspear’s daughter.

But Aerion Brightflame was the first person who had ever made you feel like a dragon.